Juno News - Jordan Peterson offers to take over as Harvard president

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

00:01:20.380 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here thursday december 14

00:01:31.160 2023 as we close out another week in irreverence that is the goal to which we strive every now and

00:01:38.900 then someone will come up and say i am insufficiently irreverent to claim the title

00:01:43.140 of canada's most irreverent talk show but there are two answers to that number one irreverence

00:01:47.820 is in the eye of the beholder. And number two, I have yet to encounter anyone else who has made

00:01:52.960 a claim to be Canada's most irreverent talk show. So I am self-identifying like all those guys that

00:01:58.760 want to use tampons in the men's washroom at the parliament buildings, which is apparently this

00:02:05.180 great public service that we were in need of and didn't even know it. So I am self-identifying as

00:02:10.660 irreverent unless someone wants to come along and challenge me for the title. We can have a

00:02:14.460 a Hamiltonian-Burian duel on some battlefield if we need to sort things out there.

00:02:21.020 Nevertheless, it is wonderful to have you aboard the show.

00:02:23.620 We're going to be talking a little bit later on about online pornography,

00:02:26.800 which will either tantalize you or turn you away in disgust.

00:02:30.140 We are not going to be showing any of it, which will either disappoint you or delight you.

00:02:34.720 So I'll let you decide for yourself on that one.

00:02:37.560 Also going to be speaking later on with Professor Tom Flanagan about his new book, Grave Error,

00:02:43.560 which is a phenomenally I would say controversial book and and subversive book on an issue that I

00:02:50.500 know True North folks in True North Nation out there have been paying attention to but much of

00:02:55.320 the mainstream media has not at least not in this way so that we'll chat about with Dr. Flanagan

00:03:00.080 later on in the program but I want to begin by kind of exploding something that was meant as a

00:03:06.860 bit of a joke but might actually have merit here Jordan Peterson who you may have heard of he's

00:03:12.620 made a couple of headlines in the last couple of years he i interviewed i haven't had him on this

00:03:16.460 show but i i had him on my former show for like a whole hour and we talked about anything and

00:03:21.020 everything under the sun and i've met him a number of times he's always been a big supporter of true

00:03:26.140 north and the work that we do here he's got some best-selling authors he has just announced that in

00:03:31.740 february march and into april he's like touring basically every major and mid-level city in the

00:03:38.540 united states jordan peterson is doing and if his previous tours are any indication these will all

00:03:43.820 sell out but he is willing to give it all up jordan peterson is willing to give up the touring

00:03:50.220 give up the aggressive media schedule maybe give up the podcast even to take one particular job

00:03:56.540 that admittedly has not yet been offered to him but maybe we can start a bit of a campaign

00:04:01.260 to draft jordan peterson that job is president of harvard university now harvard is the

00:04:08.540 A school in the Ivy League that is synonymous with excellence to a lot of people, but has, as of late, become synonymous with anti-Semitism.

00:04:17.880 And the thing that's interesting about this is that so far there's no vacancy.

00:04:21.960 The president is not resigning, and that's Claudine Gay, that's her name, and so far the school is not prepared to get rid of her.

00:04:29.140 Now, she's had a bit of a one-two punch of controversies as of late.

00:04:33.700 First, there was her unwillingness to condemn in unequivocal terms that genocide and calls for genocide violate Harvard's anti-bullying policy.

00:04:45.100 There was this rather awkward exchange between her and Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik you may have caught last week in the House of Representatives and one of its committees.

00:04:55.680 Take a look.

00:04:56.180 Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for

00:05:00.760 the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no? 0.95

00:05:06.500 It can be, depending on the context.

00:05:09.340 What's the context?

00:05:11.020 Targeted as an individual, targeted at an individual.

00:05:14.420 It's targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals.

00:05:18.600 Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them?

00:05:21.820 Do you understand that dehumanization is part of anti-Semitism?

00:05:27.440 I will ask you one more time.

00:05:30.020 Does calling for the genocide of Jews

00:05:32.680 violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment?

00:05:35.940 Yes or no?

00:05:38.100 Anti-Semitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct

00:05:41.720 anti-Semitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct

00:05:45.040 that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation,

00:05:49.320 that is actionable conduct.

00:05:51.080 we do take action so the answer is yes that calling for the genocide of jews violates harvard

00:05:58.840 code of conduct correct again it depends on the context it does not depend on the context

00:06:06.680 the answer is yes and this is why you should resign these are unacceptable answers across the board

00:06:14.360 i must say i don't love the showmanship of american congressional committees i think

00:06:18.840 think it's oftentimes more powerful to let people sink themselves with their own words than to do

00:06:23.640 this feigned outrage like congresswoman Stefanik was ask a question you don't need to cut her off 0.98

00:06:28.660 and ask again because you know her answer is going to be more damning than your question is going to

00:06:32.740 be in this case but what type of conduct is it that has become the norm at Harvard well here's

00:06:38.720 us one example we plucked out for you. I forgot how short that clip was. I was looking at the

00:06:55.060 other monitor. No word on if that violates Harvard's anti-bullying policy, but that was

00:07:00.000 just the one of the one-two punch. A few days ago, some independent journalists, Christopher Rufo and

00:07:05.020 And Chris Brunette found out that there are very serious plagiarism challenges that can

00:07:10.420 be leveled against Claudine Gay's doctoral work, her dissertation, which eventually gave

00:07:15.180 her a PhD, which eventually propelled her into her career in academia that led to her

00:07:19.860 being the president of Harvard.

00:07:21.780 And they found that she has lifted a number of passages without attribution, which in

00:07:26.780 a couple of cases, the authors of the plagiarized work have said, yeah, this pretty much looks

00:07:31.180 like garden variety plagiarism.

00:07:33.340 But even so, she has not announced she's going to step down.

00:07:37.020 Now, this is where Jordan Peterson comes in.

00:07:39.760 Jordan Peterson had this rather cheeky post on X this morning.

00:07:45.380 Excuse me, Harvard, if you're looking for a new candidate for president with a proven academic track record,

00:07:52.540 a now international reputation, and the ability to stand up to the bloody narcissist of the woke mob,

00:07:58.540 I know someone who might be interested just saying and then to punctuate it he put a colon

00:08:05.440 and a clothing parentheses which I believe is a smiley face emoticon as the kids say it's not an

00:08:12.080 emoji this is a very important distinction an emoticon is like the original the emoji

00:08:16.520 is the colorized versions of it so there's your history and the development of online

00:08:21.660 shorthands for your emotions which maybe I should do a dissertation in that I can be like Claudine

00:08:26.540 Gay, and I can just copy and paste it from other folks. But Jordan Peterson's having a bit of a

00:08:31.240 lark here. I don't think he's pursuing this, although he has tried to, in the past, launch

00:08:35.920 things like the Peterson Academy. And for a time, there was a Jordan Peterson-inspired MBA program

00:08:41.540 at, I believe, the University of Austin. It was a university in Texas. But nevertheless,

00:08:47.840 what's interesting here is that Jordan Peterson is exposing in his little joke that Harvard is

00:08:54.020 not interested in pushing back against the mob. And this is the serious point underlying Harvard's

00:09:00.040 defense of anti-Semitism on its campus, is that they're saying, well, yes, we have academic freedom,

00:09:05.320 we have free speech, this is all important. And I say, absolutely, yes, I support their right to be

00:09:10.240 like that. But Harvard is very inconsistent about this, as are most universities. If you want to go

00:09:16.720 on campus and say, I believe that a male can be a female, they're going to say, well, I don't know

00:09:22.000 if you have academic freedom to say that, but if you want to get up there and talk about genocide

00:09:26.580 in this context, they want to shroud themselves in freedom. And I think this is where it gets

00:09:32.320 to be very important about applying these rules consistently. So whether or not he is actually

00:09:38.380 auditioning for the job, I don't know, but I thought it was a nice cheeky way to raise attention

00:09:43.300 to the fact that currently the status quo there is not working. I wanted to pivot back into Canadian

00:09:49.980 politics for a few moments here. There was this bill that was advanced by the House of Commons

00:09:55.560 and sent off to committee yesterday that has not gotten a huge amount of coverage. And part of the

00:10:01.160 reason is that this is a Senate private members bill. Now, these are not often pieces of legislation

00:10:06.020 that get passed. But in this particular case, we see enough support in the House of Commons to at

00:10:11.500 least move it so far. It's already passed the Senate, which is why it's in the House. If you

00:10:16.180 are trying to keep track at home of the numbers. It is a bill. Oh, now I forget the bill. It's a

00:10:20.820 Senate bill S210, I want to say. But basically what this bill does is strive to restrict access

00:10:28.420 to minors, to young people, to online pornography. Now, let me first and foremost say I wholeheartedly

00:10:37.240 agree with what the bill is trying to accomplish. I think that online porn is tremendously harmful

00:10:43.520 when you're talking about the implications on young people.

00:10:45.980 I know it's very accessible.

00:10:47.640 And there have been studies after studies after studies

00:10:50.020 that have shown that young people, children,

00:10:52.800 I mean, in some cases as young as like six, seven years old,

00:10:55.780 are accessing just absolutely horrendous and vicious things

00:11:00.980 that become part of their perception

00:11:04.000 and conceptualization of what sex and sexual expression are.

00:11:08.500 I'm talking about violence.

00:11:09.780 I'm talking about sex acts that most adults

00:11:12.440 who have been engaged in sex for much of their lives

00:11:16.260 would not even know exist.

00:11:18.300 And this is something that we see happening.

00:11:20.040 So the idea of preventing children from accessing that,

00:11:24.140 I agree with wholeheartedly.

00:11:26.300 The question becomes, how do you do it?

00:11:29.020 Now, what this bill would do if passed

00:11:31.680 is create a regulatory environment

00:11:34.080 where you need to provide proof of your age

00:11:37.860 if you want to get on a website

00:11:39.820 that is offering sexually explicit material.

00:11:42.440 proof of age. Now, does that mean like when you want to go to a website, oh, I just have to say

00:11:47.800 my birth date is, you know, January 1st, 1901 and click okay. And that's that. Or does it mean

00:11:52.680 something that is more comprehensive? They want something more comprehensive, like for example,

00:11:57.460 uploading your identification. Now, this to me is where you get into the very glaring issue here

00:12:05.000 with this. Now the conservatives, the NDP, the Bloc Québécois, they were all supporting this.

00:12:09.320 It was most liberals that said no, and then the conservatives kind of just started being

00:12:13.140 very outraged about, oh, how dare the liberals vote against this?

00:12:16.480 Now, why the liberals vote against it, I don't know.

00:12:19.120 But suffice it to say, I do not believe their approach is from the same place that mine

00:12:24.320 is, which is that I concede there is a harm.

00:12:26.840 I agree that harm needs to be dealt with, but I don't believe that this is going to

00:12:31.800 create the solution that people think.

00:12:36.100 So why this is so very important is because right now we have two aims that are kind of

00:12:41.760 working against each other. One is that we should not have excessive government regulation on the

00:12:46.220 internet. The other is that we should actually try to protect children from the harm of pornography.

00:12:50.700 Now, listen, I'm not making a judgment of people's personal tastes here. I think that

00:12:56.020 people as adults can do what they want. This is where my inner libertarian comes out

00:13:00.480 from a legal perspective. And if we want to pass all these moral judgments, that's something we

00:13:04.700 get to do as individuals and as a society. Not that I'm encouraging being judgmental, but

00:13:09.740 we can typify what is right and what is wrong on our own without government being the one to make

00:13:16.120 that call. Now, why I think this is so important for us to understand here is that if the government

00:13:24.580 is going to do this, force these companies, one of the biggest porn companies in the world is a

00:13:29.800 Canadian company, MindGeek, which owns Pornhub and some related sites, one of the things that

00:13:34.900 government will be doing is forcing them to do this age verification process. So on the surface,

00:13:41.180 there are going to be people that say, well, hang on, I don't want to have to upload my driver's

00:13:44.900 license to this, you know, porn company here and all the privacy implications that come along with

00:13:51.100 that. Well, some folks in the computer science space say you can deal with this without having

00:13:56.980 those privacy issues so i wanted to delve into that a little bit joining me on the line now is

00:14:02.900 as far adib who is a doctoral candidate in electrical and computer engineering at concordia

00:14:08.660 university uh it's good to have you as far thank you for joining me

00:14:14.420 thank you so much andrew for the invitation it's great to be here so the obvious issue here is that

00:14:20.340 people i think have a right to protect their privacy and if if you want to engage as an adult

00:14:25.380 watching online pornography the idea of having to provide identification of having to prove who you

00:14:31.520 are kind of erodes that fundamental relationship people think they have with the internet so

00:14:36.640 how can this be done in a way that protects individual privacy if it can yeah that's a great

00:14:44.120 question so right now what we usually do we use our id documents to verify our age for example

00:14:51.400 here in Canada we have our driving license our passport or maybe our health card so the current

00:14:58.940 way is if we need to prove that we are adults then we have to take a picture of the ID or we

00:15:05.500 have to scan it and there are some third-party softwares which do the verification and then

00:15:11.140 then they say this okay this guy is above 18 or maybe they are not so which is something that's

00:15:16.720 being used all over the world now privacy concern is when we are sharing our it document we are

00:15:22.640 sharing a lot of information about us so that's a big privacy concern so that's why we are proposing

00:15:28.420 some alternatives which we call biometrics that means something from our body which tells our age

00:15:34.900 for example uh some social media they have tested instagram uh i mean the egg checking on instagram

00:15:41.560 using facial image so you just sit in front of a webcam you let them take a picture of yours

00:15:47.340 and using artificial intelligence they can tell whether you're an adult or not so this is considered

00:15:53.000 more privacy assuring because we don't need to share our id documents and consequently uh like

00:15:58.720 i am doing my phd research at concorde in montreal we are working with hard signals which can tell

00:16:03.360 our edge and also there are some other technologies so in summary id document is an option the other

00:16:09.020 option is using biometrics which comes from our body and which is our page i i think this raises

00:16:15.340 though another issue i i don't not to be too graphic here but someone who's about to access

00:16:19.660 a pornography site i don't think the thing they want is for that website to be taking a picture 0.61

00:16:24.540 of them in that moment yeah it is this is really a hard call so it's up to the user they have to

00:16:31.340 decide do they want to share their id or they do do they want to allow to take their image in either

00:16:37.100 way they have to tell something about themselves and that's why we know there are other opinions

00:16:43.340 about this bill but as you rightly said andrew this bill is very important to protect our kids

00:16:49.180 because in last 10 years child sexual abuse have increased over 800 percent here in canada

00:16:55.100 and we still see this stories just two weeks ago we saw a story of a boy of 12 years committed

00:17:00.300 suicide because he was a victim of sextortion we know about amanda 13 bc who took her life 10 years

00:17:06.300 back and she was a victim of sextortion as well so we need to put it our case and that's why we

00:17:11.660 have to make some compromise so we are working with different technological options and it's

00:17:16.380 up to us whichever we take now i know there are options here i mean as it's worded now in this

00:17:21.660 bill that's making its way through parliament government could force websites to do this now

00:17:26.460 would the expectation be that each website has its own way of doing this or would there be a natural

00:17:33.180 third party that would emerge that websites would use that kind of does this that people may

00:17:38.700 trust like for example paypal is a an example where you know if you're a website instead of

00:17:43.500 just taking the credit cards yourself you could just say well you know paypal you trust paypal

00:17:47.900 you can use them and they'll pay us yeah exactly so ideally this is done by a third party there

00:17:54.860 are different companies who offer this service we can have a look at what uk are doing uk has

00:18:00.380 doing done a very good job in terms of online protection just recently they had their online

00:18:04.940 safety bill so they have their own regulator who is looking after these things so similarly here

00:18:10.540 in canada we need someone it can be crt someone else to take up that responsibility to make a

00:18:15.820 common platform where this edge verification will take place and as you rightly said andrew

00:18:21.340 whatever technology we bring people will be concerned about their data and we need to assure

00:18:26.460 them that this data remain protected it is not being used for any other purpose that's why we

00:18:31.820 need a centralized server which takes the data which ensures that this data is not used by anyone

00:18:37.500 else except for edge verification and we can integrate some third-party software to do the job

00:18:42.060 for us now so that obviously people the best systems out there are vulnerable i mean just

00:18:50.780 today in my city for example the the library's website has been subject to a massive cyber

00:18:55.660 attack and is inaccessible so one idea that you mentioned in an op-ed i read from you is that

00:19:00.940 there's a system in which the data can never be saved at all like it could basically be assessed

00:19:06.860 and deleted immediately but is that as as transparent as it sounds or does it live in

00:19:13.740 some way in a way that theoretically some hacker could access yeah ijd the law requires you to just

00:19:21.340 to check the age and maybe keep the data for a certain time it can be for one minute or two minutes

00:19:26.540 and then the data has to be deleted that's what the law requires but as you again rightly said

00:19:32.460 uh yes there are always duples in the technology and there are ways to bridge the data so we need

00:19:38.700 to give our best try so i was again i can mention about the uk example or about the european example

00:19:44.860 they have the gpdr there which is the privacy protection law which is pretty strong and

00:19:49.420 whenever there is a breach the consequences are very harsh so we have to work in both ways in

00:19:54.860 technically we have to make sure that yes we have this technology which can do the verification and

00:19:59.580 delete the data in one or two minutes or in a very new time frame and on the legal side if there is

00:20:04.780 any kind of breach we need to make sure that the companies are accountable it might be a hard call

00:20:10.460 because not everything is hosted here in canada obviously we have the big social media companies

00:20:15.100 a lot of websites who are not legally accountable here but still we have to put our best try to make

00:20:20.300 them accountable so that's what we need to keep trying well it's certainly an interesting topic

00:20:25.740 and i i think there are there are a lot of questions that people can have and should have

00:20:29.740 about uh the regulatory side about privacy rights but understanding the technology i think is crucial

00:20:35.260 to that so your uh insights have been very helpful on this as far adib from concordia university

00:20:40.540 Thank you very much. And I hope you'll be able to testify before a committee when this gets

00:20:44.620 further through. Yeah, I hope, son. Thank you so much for having me. Have a very good day.

00:20:48.980 All right. Thank you very much, Asfar. And look, I mean, I think his points there that he's raised

00:20:53.160 are useful. And I know that some of the words will trip the radars of the privacy minded when

00:20:59.080 he talks about central server and biometrics and all of that. But I think that's important,

00:21:03.960 because if you are supporting this legislation, I think you need to realize what it is that is

00:21:09.100 involved in this process. And look, I'm so sympathetic to the problem. And I cannot stress

00:21:16.260 that enough. I'm so sympathetic to wanting to keep children, vulnerable people away from materials

00:21:22.540 that they are not supposed to be accessing. But again, I also am very aware of the fact that

00:21:29.000 conservatives have spent the last few years railing against the CRTC expanding its regulatory control

00:21:35.400 over the internet so to all of a sudden wake up and say well we want the CRTC to regulate online

00:21:41.860 porn not just for Canadian content which we know is going to be coming so people are going to be

00:21:46.400 doing unspeakable things to their poutine once C11 is implemented on these websites but not just

00:21:52.260 regulating Canadian content but regulating access and making these websites collect information

00:21:59.000 about users, not just minors, but information about people who are, you know, 30, 40, 50,

00:22:06.160 that for whatever reason, they want to kick back and enjoy the latest. And the thing that I find

00:22:11.060 so fascinating about this conversation is that we're assuming that kids who are seeking this

00:22:17.760 out will not find ways around it. And this is, I think, where we go to any parent who's tried to

00:22:24.180 set up some you know parental controls on their internet surely has a false sense of security

00:22:29.020 about that kids are smart kids outsmart technology kids will find ways to work around it they'll go

00:22:34.480 to websites that are unregulated they'll uh send stuff around in whatsapp groups i mean it'll be

00:22:39.500 like the equivalent of i guess passing around that same magazine that you know your older brother

00:22:43.740 picked up or something like that in school but they will find a way to do it now does that result

00:22:48.960 in a net benefit if it's still harder to come across. Maybe, maybe it does. But I think the

00:22:54.480 problem that we run into here is that we are looking to government to be the answer. Whereas

00:23:00.740 on this issue and so many others, I want to look at parents and say parents should be very forthright

00:23:08.780 in having conversations with their children. Parents should be very aware of what their

00:23:13.280 children are doing. We should be focusing on the education here. And I don't trust right now the

00:23:18.820 public schools to, uh, do this. I don't trust the public schools for reasons we've talked about in

00:23:23.700 the last few months. Uh, one person in, in the chat says that biometrics is more invasive than

00:23:29.860 ID. Yeah. I mean, that was the thing. Like originally when age verification came up,

00:23:33.860 I'm thinking of like some poor guy that has to lay, or, or woman, you know, it's an equal

00:23:37.440 opportunity that has to go and like scan their driver's license and, you know, upload it to

00:23:41.980 Pornhub. And, uh, all of a sudden there's now some database of, Oh, uh, you know, John Smith

00:23:46.480 of 123 Maple Street loves, well, use your imagination of what John Smith of 123 Maple

00:23:52.300 Street loves, but that's the thing. And then, yeah, biometrics is even worse. So now John Smith

00:23:57.080 just has to like stare at his webcam while he's waiting for the video to load. And this is exactly,

00:24:03.080 I mean, if it's an awkward, uncomfortable topic, it should be. We're talking about people's very

00:24:07.040 intimate desires and practices and habits here and government trying to regulate those and force

00:24:13.900 companies that, let's be real, I do not trust. I do not trust your average purveyor of pornography

00:24:20.000 online to be the diligent protectors of your privacy, because these are companies that have

00:24:26.440 turned a blind eye to the sharing of non-consensual sexual images. These are companies that have

00:24:31.860 turned a blind eye to child pornography on their platforms, companies that have no sense of the

00:24:38.380 harm they are causing to society and childhood development. So no, I do not look at them and

00:24:44.220 trust them to make these decisions. So we'll follow this as it proceeds. This is where the

00:24:50.220 libertarian in me and the social conservative in me kind of have a fight about this. I'm hoping to

00:24:54.960 get my friend Jonathan Van Maron, with whom I have had many fights about this subject and related

00:24:59.600 ones on in the future, although he wasn't available today. We're going to be talking in a few moments

00:25:04.760 time with Dr. Tom Flanagan. But before we get there, I learned recently, and by recently I mean

00:25:11.940 like two and a half hours ago, it was like vaguely in my subconscious, so maybe I like saw it at one

00:25:17.780 point before, that they're making a Law & Order Toronto. Like this is not a joke. They're making,

00:25:24.100 put up the poster there. It's going to be coming to City TV in 2024. There we go. Law & Order

00:25:29.360 Toronto criminal intent. And what kind of refreshed this was I saw this morning, a friend of mine in

00:25:36.440 Toronto had stumbled upon a set where they were filming Law and Order Toronto. And it was, you

00:25:40.860 know, we're filming here, everyone be quiet, yada, yada, yada. And I was just thinking of what that

00:25:45.040 would look like. And I realized just how it would be such a horrendously boring show, because someone

00:25:49.700 would get stabbed on the subway in the first scene. And then for the rest of the episode, people would

00:25:54.260 just be waiting for police to show up and they never do. And then at the end, it would just be

00:25:58.040 to be continued. And the episode is just, you know, will the police come or are they going to

00:26:02.060 be too busy doing other things? And then I was sort of thinking about Law and Order Toronto a

00:26:06.480 little bit more and what that would look like. And I realized that we could do this as the most

00:26:12.540 inexpensive production possible, because in Canada, you don't actually need to cast multiple

00:26:17.900 actors to be different criminals. You could run the whole series on just one criminal who commits

00:26:23.340 a crime and then is released on bail at the end of the episode. And then he commits another crime

00:26:27.340 at the beginning of the next episode and is released on bail.

00:26:29.680 So you can actually just get by with just having one single offender

00:26:33.100 and that would make it more like a documentary than a scripted drama.

00:26:37.440 So I don't know if that's what the producers are doing,

00:26:39.680 but that would be my recommendation on this.

00:26:42.600 I had one person who had replied and said,

00:26:45.360 no, no, no, you're all wrong, Andrew.

00:26:46.920 The show is just going to be about police going around

00:26:49.140 banging on people's doors because their tweet was a little bit racist.

00:26:52.480 So as soon as I heard that, I felt like, oh my goodness,

00:26:55.420 that's probably going to be the more accurate account of what's been happening here. So let

00:27:00.720 me know what you think Law & Order Toronto is going to... Oh no, I did the Toronto. You're

00:27:07.480 supposed to say Toronto. I never pronounced the second T. I apologize to the people of Toronto

00:27:12.980 for mispronouncing your name. Although lately, now they've changed Dundas. So Dundas, who is this

00:27:22.500 a very positive figure in history that you may be familiar with he's the the guy i mean there's

00:27:26.740 a town in ontario named dundas we have uh dundas young dundas square we have the dundas subway

00:27:32.180 station there the city of toronto did this massive inquiry over like the last three years

00:27:38.340 to effectively rename anything with dundas in it and they realized it was going to cost a

00:27:43.620 bajillion dollars and be so disruptive and all of that and now what they've done

00:27:48.740 is they've decided to okay we won't change everything we'll just change some of the main

00:27:55.500 things so what they what they're agreeing on now is that they're going to change young dundas square

00:27:59.880 and they're going to change any ttc station that has dundas in it which i think is like two or

00:28:05.020 three of them uh they're renaming uh young dundas square sankofa sankofa square now the hilarious

00:28:14.500 thing is, this is a word, I don't know the language of Ghana. I don't know if it's Ghanese

00:28:19.640 or Ghanaian. I apologize for not being an expert on African linguistics, but it's apparently a word

00:28:25.260 that originates in Ghana. And what the word means is the act of reflecting on and reclaiming

00:28:33.120 teachings from the past, which enable us to move forward together. So they're saying that this word

00:28:40.480 is about reclaiming teachings from the past while purging the name of this historic figure,

00:28:47.640 who, by the way, has not even done the things that he's been accused of, of just being some, 0.86

00:28:51.440 you know, racist, Haiti, Haiti, hate monger. But they're trying to like put a heritage spin on

00:28:56.520 this. And it's like, if you've ever been to Edmonton, Edmonton used to have municipal ward

00:28:59.740 councils that were numbered one, two, three, four, five, six, and all that, like in every other city.

00:29:05.000 and a couple of years back they changed all the municipal wards to indigenous words and you'd look

00:29:13.240 at them now and you have people that are being elected in wards that they cannot pronounce like

00:29:17.640 i you know i could run in dene because i can say dene but you've got others that are like

00:29:21.940 i i'll get canceled if i try to pronounce them but i look at them and it's like you know 17

00:29:26.480 letters and no vowels in it and i'm all for people you know being able to pronounce foreign

00:29:31.820 languages and learn foreign languages and all of that. But this is when we just take the

00:29:36.480 reconciliation narrative a little bit too far that it starts getting in the way of practicality. And

00:29:42.600 that's effectively where we have gone to with this. And I think it's why the discussion about

00:29:48.640 the residential schools narrative is such an important one, because this is an issue in which

00:29:54.860 the, it all started with to Kamloops First Nation in British Columbia, they come out

00:29:59.000 with a very damning allegation, the discovery of unmarked graves of hundreds of children on

00:30:06.840 the site of the former residential school. Now, you compound this with a media that loves the

00:30:11.900 spicy narrative, with a country that generally speaking does not know its own history all that

00:30:17.080 well, and you had this narrative that took hold that was pushed by the New York Times, by CBC,

00:30:21.840 by CTV, that there had been mass graves discovered, that hundreds and hundreds of children

00:30:26.860 had been murdered at residential schools.

00:30:29.500 And look, I participated on a radio panel

00:30:31.640 where the host who clearly was not familiar

00:30:33.780 with the story and what was even being alleged

00:30:37.380 made this claim when that was never even

00:30:40.120 what the people of De Kamloops were saying.

00:30:42.280 But it started a bit of a trend

00:30:44.080 and other First Nations started to announce

00:30:46.600 these discoveries themselves.

00:30:48.040 We heard things that were being discussed

00:30:49.620 that no one really knew like ground penetrating radar,

00:30:52.440 which sounds like it's very precise,

00:30:54.880 but in reality just detects abnormalities in the ground that could be remains of a human that could

00:31:00.480 be nothing of the sort there have been excavations that have been done at some of these schools

00:31:06.240 and they have not turned up anything resembling bodies where there was a site that did have

00:31:11.200 bodies it was an established graveyard that was used to bury both indigenous and non-indigenous

00:31:17.040 people so this is not to say that nothing bad has happened at residential schools is to say

00:31:22.160 that we need to have a level of historic context and understanding when we engage in a very hot

00:31:28.400 button issue but this became an incredibly potent one politically it's why the flag of canada the

00:31:35.200 national flag was at half mast on public buildings for i think it was well over six months and it

00:31:39.760 became literally a news story midway through the campaign when conservative leader erin o'toole in

00:31:46.240 in 2021 says, yes, we should fly the Canadian flag at full mass. And that, I mean, again,

00:31:52.640 the idea that someone wanting to be prime minister says, yes, we should fly the Canadian flag and not

00:31:56.880 keep it at half mass indefinitely. That doesn't sound like it's supposed to be newsworthy,

00:32:01.580 but it was because that was the context in 2020 and 2021 that Justin Trudeau had set up,

00:32:08.720 that Canada was a country we should be ashamed of, not proud of, that Canada's history was something

00:32:13.660 we should run away from and condemn

00:32:15.840 instead of celebrating and building upon.

00:32:19.460 And that I think is why as a country,

00:32:22.180 understanding history is so important.

00:32:24.020 I don't know if I have the book in my stack back there.

00:32:27.100 I probably do, but I don't want you to like

00:32:28.460 have to just look at my back for some prolonged time

00:32:31.600 while I try to find it.

00:32:32.540 But Mark Milkey's book, The 1867 Project,

00:32:35.860 which was published by the Aristotle Foundation,

00:32:37.820 did a great job at bringing in a range of people,

00:32:40.960 including some from the political left,

00:32:42.740 to talk about Canada and its history.

00:32:45.640 And we had new Canadians, lifelong Canadians,

00:32:48.720 lefties, right-wingers that were all saying,

00:32:51.120 yeah, there's something about this country

00:32:52.620 that we need to celebrate and honor and respect.

00:32:57.180 And that to me is what we should be striving towards.

00:33:01.220 And we're waiting for Tom Flanagan,

00:33:02.880 who's been a very big purveyor

00:33:04.880 of historic understanding for years,

00:33:06.720 but he's also the co-editor alongside CP Champion

00:33:09.880 of a new book, which True North actually co-published

00:33:13.420 along with the Dorchester Review called Grave Error.

00:33:16.620 And it's a collection of essays

00:33:18.000 that does some of these very things that we're discussing.

00:33:21.160 I should share the subtitle too,

00:33:22.780 Grave Error, How the Medium Has Led Us 0.95

00:33:24.480 and the Truth About Residential Schools.

00:33:27.180 And there's a forward in there by Conrad Black,

00:33:29.300 who, by the way, if you have not read Conrad's book,

00:33:33.480 The Canadian Manifesto, I would encourage you to do it.

00:33:37.060 It was a very short read.

00:33:38.280 And it was not particularly expensive.

00:33:39.880 But it was a book that gave just this condensed and really accurate and compelling account of Canadian history.

00:33:49.580 And it was published by my publisher, Sutherland House, and it came out a couple of years ago.

00:33:54.280 And it was definitely one that I would encourage you to take a look at.

00:33:57.640 So if you're looking for a last minute stalking stuffer for someone who hates Canada, you can give them both Grave Error and Canadian Manifesto and hopefully bring them back on board here.

00:34:06.300 But why I think this is an interesting story is because it's not just a story of a country that does not know or care about or like its history, but it's also about a media that has that same approach and that same attitude, but also a bit more of an arrogance in how it tells these stories.

00:34:24.260 And I mean, there were a lot of journalists that I think were very afraid because of the political sensibilities around this to ask any questions.

00:34:32.340 And, you know, there were some very awkward encounters between some journalists and some indigenous people that were involved in making these announcements.

00:34:40.760 And you'd see it. And journalists were very, very nervous and very apprehensive about getting involved because they didn't want to be seen as racist.

00:34:50.380 They didn't want to be seen as not respecting their truth because we live in an era now in

00:34:55.860 which truth is subjective. And I've grappled with the residential school issue because you can't

00:35:02.080 have a nuanced conversation about it. I will not defend the residential schools program. I think

00:35:07.000 it's a tremendous shame that we forced assimilation on people that did not want it. But that's also

00:35:13.940 a small subset of the complexities around this issue. One is that the attitudes of time periods

00:35:21.080 evolve and change. There are many things we do even, I mean, look, I'm convinced that in five

00:35:25.420 years we'll be in a country in which people will look at vaccine mandates differently than they did

00:35:29.480 in 2021. We, with history, evolve and grow and we realize, okay, maybe we were well-intentioned at

00:35:35.620 the time, but didn't do the thing that we should have. But the other part that people often forget

00:35:41.720 is how many indigenous families saw this as being a positive for their children. Yes, there were 0.99

00:35:47.660 children that were snatched away from their families, but there were also families that

00:35:51.020 very much wanted their children to have a British education, to be steeped in the religious values

00:35:56.980 of the day, the English language and all of that. And the other part that's often very confused is

00:36:02.900 that the residential schools of the 19th century were not the same as the residential schools of

00:36:08.060 the 1990s. These things evolved as schools did in general. So when people say, and these residential

00:36:13.560 schools were around until 1990, yes, they were. But we're not talking about the same dynamics that

00:36:19.020 were happening and the same trends that were happening in the 19th century, the very heinous

00:36:24.080 aspects of this that carried through up until just effectively 30 some odd years ago. And it was

00:36:30.600 interesting. I was reading back on a bit of more recent political history on this because you

00:36:34.800 recall in 2008, Stephen Harper gave his very infamous apology in the House of Commons to

00:36:41.940 victims and survivors of residential schools. And one of the things that came about through this

00:36:47.540 was that there was also a payout program. It was called the Common Experience Payout. And it was

00:36:53.600 a program that had been agreed to by the Liberal government previously, and the Conservatives

00:36:58.300 decided not to rock the boat on, which gave every single victim and survivor of the residential 0.91

00:37:06.360 schools a payout for having gone through that, irrespective of what their experience was. And it

00:37:12.980 was deemed simpler to do that than to adjudicate. Now, there were additions where if you had

00:37:18.320 been sexually abused, you'd get more money. And if you'd been physically abused, you'd get more.

00:37:22.620 But there was basically a baseline there where everyone was getting access to this. And

00:37:27.960 it was very contentious. And even among conservative members of parliament, there were

00:37:31.940 some that are saying, well, hang on, I don't want to accept this premise here that everything was

00:37:36.260 this one way. Anytime a conservative politician has spoken up about this, like that Senator Lynn

00:37:42.640 Bayak, for example, it has proven to be very controversial. She was kicked out of caucus

00:37:48.900 with that. So I think we might be having some technical issues with Tom Flanagan. So we'll

00:37:54.660 have to reschedule that. But it is a book that has been very well reviewed so far. And I think

00:37:59.420 you can still get it on Amazon in time for Christmas. It's called Grave Error. So hopefully

00:38:04.980 you'll be able to take a look at that, how the media misled us and the truth about residential

00:38:09.560 schools. Thankfully, I had like a ready-made rant on this subject anyway. So it wasn't hopefully

00:38:13.680 too, too bad to, to fill the time there, but that does it for me for today. We will be back

00:38:18.100 next week with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show as the countdown to Christmas continues

00:38:23.600 here on true north thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for listening to

00:38:28.840 the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

00:38:53.600 We'll be right back.

Juno News - December 14, 2023

Jordan Peterson offers to take over as Harvard president

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