Juno News - More bonuses for CBC employees coming

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

00:01:19.680 north hello and welcome to you all this is canada's most irreverent talk show the andrew

00:01:29.380 lawton show on true north on this tuesday july 9th now a couple of weeks into the official

00:01:34.560 onset of summer and i hope you are having a wonderful wonderful season as least as wonderful

00:01:40.140 as you can be in the chaos that is the canadian political climate although i guess not nearly as

00:01:46.240 chaotic as the American political climate, depending on which way you're leaning on all

00:01:50.840 of that. We'll get to that, I'm sure, as the weeks progress. If you haven't yet checked it out,

00:01:56.180 our colleague at True North, Rachel Parker now, Nay Emanuel, has not like N-A-Y, Nay. I'm not 1.00

00:02:03.300 like doing an old English, like not actually. Nay, like N-E-E, the French one. She's now Rachel 0.84

00:02:08.400 Parker, and she has a new show, Rachel and the Republic, which delves into U.S. politics. We

00:02:12.980 try to focus mostly on canadiana here at true north because you know there are lots of people

00:02:18.160 talking about the u.s but we also believe that the audience has a say in what goes on and everyone

00:02:23.140 is saying why aren't you talking about what's happening in the u.s so there we have it rachel

00:02:26.640 is up to the task but one thing we can always rely on in this country in canada that is is cbc

00:02:33.520 wanting to go and get more and more and more money now to justify the continued money that cbc is

00:02:40.040 getting from you and I, the taxpayers of this fine nation, CBC has to spend all of that money. And

00:02:46.060 man, do they find things to spend money on, notably on staff and salaries. They have never

00:02:52.700 wanted to be really transparent about how much they're dishing out. The salaries of a lot of

00:02:57.860 their key personnel have always been guarded in secrecy for years. They did this weird thing where

00:03:02.500 they tried to pretend that Peter Mansbridge, when he was like their big guy, their big kahuna, 0.82

00:03:07.740 was making like $80,000 and, you know, maybe a bus pass or something. 1.00

00:03:12.440 Like they were trying to just really mock Canadians and call Canadians stupid 0.98

00:03:17.280 for trying to have an interest in what people were making. 0.99

00:03:21.040 Well, now they're not even really hiding it.

00:03:22.900 They approved a couple of weeks back just after the House of Commons rose for the summer.

00:03:28.880 Bonuses for nearly 1,200 CBC employees.

00:03:33.020 1,200.

00:03:33.960 Now you'd think that after the ride they got from opposition members

00:03:37.100 and the media well independent media anyway about bonuses last year they would have thought better

00:03:43.400 about it but no quite the contrary CBC just doesn't seem to care just to give you a little

00:03:48.920 bit of a refresher here last year they paid out 14.9 million dollars in staff bonuses this year

00:03:57.040 we don't yet know the dollar value we don't know how much they're going to be giving but we know

00:04:01.720 it's going to be a lot. Now, this was Catherine Tate being grilled by Rachel Thomas, the Conservative 0.84

00:04:07.980 Member of Parliament, about this in the House of Commons in a committee a little while back. Take a

00:04:13.080 look. Based on the metrics that are used then, last year you gave out $16 million in taxpayer-funded

00:04:24.100 bonuses to the staff. That was an average of $14,000 to staff members at the CBC. Most Canadians

00:04:31.640 don't even see half of that in a bonus, not even a quarter of that in a yearly bonus.

00:04:37.180 $14,000 was the average amount that was given to CBC staff.

00:04:41.400 What were the metrics that were used in order to determine that bonus amount?

00:04:44.980 So again, the KPIs are published, and they're very clearly have to do with performance of the service.

00:04:52.660 For example, digital reach.

00:04:55.280 For example, engagement with news in the regions.

00:04:58.840 for example performance on engagement with kids and children all of those are published very

00:05:06.680 clearly in our annual report and i i actually want to if i'm if i may may i ask i think your

00:05:11.280 number is wrong if i want to correct the record oh there you have it cbc just performs that

00:05:19.020 well it performs that well of course they're going to give out all of that in bonuses it's

00:05:25.140 Just such an efficient operation.

00:05:27.220 My goodness.

00:05:27.880 Well, I have a feeling one of our go-to guests here will disagree with that.

00:05:32.300 Franco Terrizano is the federal director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and joins

00:05:37.200 us once again.

00:05:37.920 Franco, good to see you, sir.

00:05:39.640 Hey, Andrew.

00:05:40.220 Thanks for having me on.

00:05:41.500 So, I mean, that was obviously spin from the last round of bonuses.

00:05:44.680 I expect it won't be that different this time around.

00:05:46.760 But CBC's core argument here is that, oh, the service is just doing so well.

00:05:51.480 Of course, we have to reward the employees.

00:05:53.560 What do you make of that?

00:05:55.140 Well, I mean, come on.

00:05:56.420 You have the President Tate herself running around crying about the chronic underfunding, according to her, of the CBC.

00:06:05.600 Meanwhile, the CBC is getting more than a billion dollars from taxpayers every single year.

00:06:11.040 In the last budget, you had Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland shovel another $42 million at the CBC. 0.62

00:06:17.800 So in what world are they chronically underfunded, not the real world?

00:06:22.140 But think about this for a second, folks.

00:06:25.140 If your organization was so chronically underfunded, and if you had to lay off hundreds of employees, well, then in what world are you still handing out taxpayer-funded bonuses?

00:06:37.400 Andrew, off the top of the show, you mentioned that the CBC dished out $15 million in taxpayer-funded bonuses last year.

00:06:44.840 Well, these taxpayer-funded bonuses at the state broadcaster have cost taxpayers $114 million going back since 2015.

00:06:53.760 And now we learn that quietly, the CBC has just approved more bonuses, a fresh batch of bonuses for about 1,200 staff, including the non-union staff, the managers and the executives.

00:07:09.160 And of course, Andrew, while we don't know the dollar figure, we do know that it's going to be a big sum of money charged back to the taxpayer.

00:07:15.820 yeah and look it's one thing if you are in a private sector company that you could say one

00:07:21.340 year wow we had a really great year based on profit we were efficient and we brought in more

00:07:27.100 revenue and we made money and therefore we can use that money to fund some bonuses that's the way

00:07:32.380 it's supposed to work cbc's revenue is from the taxpayers so when cbc has a good year financially

00:07:38.940 it's not because they ran it as a good business it means they built you and i really really well

00:07:43.980 that year so i guess maybe they do want to reward themselves for that well and another thing about

00:07:48.780 the private sector and bonuses there might be bonuses there's also pay cuts and job losses

00:07:55.580 but where in the government are there pay cuts and job losses in the government there's bonuses

00:08:00.860 pay raises extra bureaucrats but like don't hold your breath waiting for pay cuts and job losses

00:08:07.420 they're almost non-existent in the federal government but you know what's even crazier

00:08:12.700 about this whole story, right? Number one, the fact that they just rubber stamped about 1200

00:08:18.380 additional bonuses after the CBSC has been absolutely grilled by members of parliament

00:08:25.080 and the public for months. But get this, Andrew, in that annual review where we found these bonus

00:08:31.920 figures, the CBC acknowledges that there are some people in the public who are upset that they're

00:08:38.100 taking our money and giving out fat bonus checks to the fat CBC cats well you got a shout out is

00:08:44.160 what you're saying yeah well guess what though you know they're also hiring a consulting firm

00:08:51.400 okay to review the compensation including bonuses at the CBC is it McKinsey please tell me it's

00:08:58.000 McKinsey well we don't know who the consulting firm is just yet we will find that out but listen

00:09:03.300 to this folks okay not only are they taking more than a billion dollars from you every single year

00:09:07.800 Not only are they turning around and giving your money out as bonus checks, but now they're going

00:09:12.220 to waste your money hiring a consulting firm to review their own bonuses. They don't need

00:09:17.900 to review the bonuses. They need to end the bonuses. Yeah, I would agree with that. And

00:09:24.740 you know, when you go back to what you had said a few moments ago about the plight of the public

00:09:28.620 sector, the so-called plight of the public sector, when we saw massive lockdown, shutdowns,

00:09:33.600 an economic downturn during COVID, it was the public sector that was insulated from that. It

00:09:38.060 was the public sector that kept their jobs, that had accommodations that have remained long after

00:09:42.520 any pandemic restriction, when you want to talk about working from home and stuff like that.

00:09:47.200 And, you know, CBC, well, they've had to, of course, make quote unquote tough decisions.

00:09:51.840 They're not the ones you see in the headlines laying off massive swaths of the workforce like

00:09:56.240 CTV, like Global, because they, again, are given this sweetheart deal from the government that

00:10:01.620 makes them just totally insulated from the realities everyone else in this country has to

00:10:05.820 deal with. That's a great point, Andrew. I mean, during COVID in the last couple of years up until

00:10:11.940 now, we've really seen a tale of two Canadas, one full of economic pain for businesses that had to

00:10:18.940 shut down, businesses that struggled for quite some time to get their employees back, but also

00:10:23.800 just workers in the private sector who were sent to the ranks of the unemployed by the thousands.

00:10:28.520 And not to mention the fact that now normal Canadians can barely afford hamburger meat or a jug of milk.

00:10:35.260 But all while the private sector has struggled, those shielded behind the golden gates of government have truly been more than comfortable, right?

00:10:44.280 So like the Trudeau government has handed out more than a million pay raises over the last four years or so.

00:10:50.900 there's been hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funded bonuses sloshing around the

00:10:57.120 federal departments and crown corporations, including the CBC is one of them. But let's

00:11:02.260 not forget that the fact that the Trudeau government has also added tens of thousands

00:11:06.420 of extra bureaucrats in recent years. Okay. So while taxpayers have been struggling,

00:11:11.980 the feds have been handing out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses. They've handed

00:11:17.080 out hundreds of thousands of pay raises. They've added tens of thousands of extra bureaucrats and

00:11:22.400 we still can't get good services from the federal government. Well, do you think that it's going to

00:11:28.160 be defunded? Let's go there. Let's give some optimism. Well, I sure hope so. And folks,

00:11:34.040 if you want to defund the CBC, I mean, you can head over to the taxpayer army, the growing

00:11:38.760 taxpayer army at taxpayer.com. We've got a great petition there for you to defund the CBC. And if

00:11:44.080 you sign up, give us your email. We'll let you know when there's some good time to put pressure

00:11:48.180 on the federal government to defund the CBC, just like it's great time to put some pressure

00:11:52.600 to end these bonuses right now. All right, Franco Terrizano, always a pleasure, sir. Keep up the good

00:11:58.320 work. Hey, thanks, Andrew. All right, let's turn from the media to the corporate world, the real

00:12:05.620 corporate world, not like the fake CBC government funded corporate world. We've talked about this

00:12:10.260 on the show in the past, the ESG scores, and we see companies that are doing what I think is

00:12:15.840 incredibly irresponsible, which is sacrificing their fiduciary obligation to their shareholders

00:12:21.040 to embrace the world of woke, to embrace all of these nonsensical goals, things that are in many

00:12:28.360 cases very pie in the sky, in some cases are antithetical to what they're doing. And there

00:12:32.420 was a fantastic piece in the National Post written by the always fantastic Bruce Barty, who is the

00:12:37.360 executive director of Rights Probe and a law professor at Queen's University.

00:12:42.340 Corporate Canada betrayed capitalism. Now it has been betrayed. Bruce, good to talk to you as

00:12:48.460 always. Thanks for coming on today. Oh, great to see you, Andrew. Always nice to talk to you.

00:12:53.680 So you touch on something. You tell a story in two acts here. So let's start with act one,

00:12:59.560 which is corporate Canada betraying capitalism. Because I'm of the mind that if you're a company

00:13:05.300 that wants to put something other than profit as your goal, you should have the right to do that.

00:13:10.120 There have been companies that have for years embedded in their existence, some form of giving

00:13:15.940 back. Maybe it's for every bracelet you buy, we clean up the ocean a bit. And that's a part of

00:13:20.900 what you're buying into as a shareholder. What you're talking about here is something else

00:13:25.620 entirely, which is companies that have shareholders that want them to turn a profit, people who have

00:13:29.920 invested their pension funds or their savings in these companies and expect them to be profitable.

00:13:34.420 and the companies decide no no no no we it's it's not actually making money that we're worried about

00:13:39.740 right now it's all of these other things that shareholders never really bought into

00:13:43.540 right exactly you know we think that big business and capitalism are synonymous but they are not

00:13:55.120 if you look at what what big business in canada have been doing past few years essentially they

00:14:01.960 have more or less turned their back on the ideas that you just mentioned. They've decided that

00:14:07.840 their fortunes lie with the powers that be that are opposing capitalism. They've signed on to

00:14:15.540 all kinds of anti-capitalist notions like ESG, like stakeholder capitalism. Let's just be clear

00:14:24.460 about what this means. Stakeholder capitalism, which is part of the ESG, the environmental,

00:14:29.560 social and governance model of of running a corporation stakeholder stakeholder capitalism

00:14:36.440 means that the directors and officers of a corporation are going to run it so as to respond

00:14:43.080 to the interests not of shareholders not of their company's bottom line not of profits

00:14:50.200 but in the interest of a much broader vaguely defined set of ideas including people on the

00:14:56.920 street environmental concerns generally as defined by anybody you like uh by by a whole set of

00:15:06.360 interests that you can't nail down so in other words and by activists who hate the company they

00:15:12.280 are now stakeholders well anybody who wants to let's put it this way yeah everybody who

00:15:18.120 wants to identify as a stakeholder that's right that's right self-identify stakeholders but but

00:15:23.800 The most important thing is that the officers and directors are giving themselves now a license

00:15:29.000 to do basically whatever they want without being accountable to the bottom line and to

00:15:37.760 the interest of the people who have invested in their companies.

00:15:41.920 And this was kind of a deal, like not an explicit deal.

00:15:45.360 They didn't go into a room and sit down at a table and say, right, here's the deal.

00:15:48.620 But over time, corporate leaders have made this unexpressed deal that if they sign on to these kinds of ideas, then they can be on the team of the progressives who are changing the nature of the country into something else, into a not capitalist, not Western country.

00:16:06.660 And if they do this, these corporate elites will be protected from whatever comes down the pike, because now they're on the other team.

00:16:15.540 and we don't think of of of corporations this way we think corporations are opposed

00:16:21.480 these are the counterweight to the state but that's not so at least not in Canada they are

00:16:29.560 they are basically both on the same team because they are both engaged in the management of our

00:16:35.220 economy big companies now like to think that they help the government manage the economy

00:16:40.600 they're not free enterprisers. They're colluding with the state.

00:16:46.500 Yeah, and it becomes crony capitalism to the nth degree. And one of the observations I've made

00:16:52.120 when I've covered the World Economic Forum is that this idea that the big corporations are in

00:16:56.920 the one world, one side, and the big government is in the other side is just so wildly inaccurate

00:17:01.680 because you see this very malign alliance between the two oftentimes where government is outsourcing

00:17:07.960 things to the private sector, but not in a way that is reminiscent of the free market,

00:17:12.220 in a way that just makes these companies, you know, the fourth branch of the government,

00:17:15.960 basically. And, you know, I wanted to then push this into the oil and gas context,

00:17:20.200 which leads us to your second act, because oil and gas companies, which have been just reviled

00:17:25.820 by activists in a way that's not quite as bad as big tobacco was, but getting there,

00:17:31.620 many of them have gone along with this as well. And you're saying this has now proven to be to

00:17:36.260 their detriment yeah and but this has been a peculiar thing for a long time right if you if

00:17:41.200 you go to the website of any major oil company you will see things like net zero being endorsed

00:17:47.280 or certainly the idea of you know climate change and anthropomorphic climate change in particular

00:17:52.300 and the idea that canada has to act to prevent climate change they have they are on the climate

00:17:58.460 change bandwagon even though they are the ones selling fossil fuels you think well how is that

00:18:04.920 your interests wouldn't would don't you think that you ought to push back on this narrative

00:18:09.800 if it's not true and it and by the way it's not true uh but no they they they decided that their

00:18:16.440 interests um were better better protected by signing on to this idea than to try to reassist

00:18:25.240 it and and they've been carrying on like that for for a good while and so you have this sort

00:18:30.200 of cognitive dissonance like how could it be that a major oil company uh is is is the one

00:18:37.080 pushing us all to think that its products are causing a huge problem but that's where they are

00:18:42.520 and now and now they get the results of this of this of this ill-advised bargain they've made

00:18:50.840 because um a recent uh bill that that received royal assent c6 c59 contains within it two provisions

00:19:00.200 that prohibit so-called greenwashing.

00:19:03.480 That is, it prohibits companies from making environmental claims,

00:19:08.160 including and especially climate claims,

00:19:10.480 that they cannot prove are true.

00:19:13.820 So what has happened is, over time,

00:19:16.800 Corporate Canada made this deal.

00:19:18.880 And now the Corporate Canada has been placed at the curb

00:19:22.820 by this new government legislation.

00:19:25.880 And there's a part of you that must just delight in there

00:19:30.020 suffering because they've asked for it but at the end of it we're all the losers of this you know

00:19:35.500 the canadian people are the losers of this oh yeah yeah well you see so you know you don't you 0.92

00:19:41.980 don't you don't want to you don't want to delight in misery but on the other hand what did they 0.98

00:19:47.400 expect to happen if if a long time ago they had decided to take a different path and and and to

00:19:54.800 oppose the trend that was starting to appear on, on climate and on a whole lot of other things

00:20:01.520 to say, no, no, this is not the proper way to govern our country. We believe in this instead.

00:20:07.420 They didn't do that. If they had done it, who knows where we might be today? I don't know.

00:20:14.020 Maybe they would have sacrificed themselves and the, the opposing powers would have been so 1.00

00:20:19.000 powerful that, that, that it wouldn't have gotten them anywhere, but they could have tried. They

00:20:23.120 didn't. And so we are now all in a very bad state, but they are now discovering what a bad deal that

00:20:31.740 they made. I know you have a great deal more skepticism than most do on the political class

00:20:38.820 and on politicians. And I think there's probably some merit to that. But I do find it interesting

00:20:44.260 that Conservative leader Pierre Polyev has come out and said that he has zero interest in cozying

00:20:50.440 with lobbyists in corporate canada he's pretty much rebuked the chamber of commerce set and and

00:20:56.120 that adds to this because all these companies that have invested in these industries that have

00:21:00.360 invested and built their entire systems around cozy relationships with politicians are now

00:21:05.160 finding themselves oh crap what do we do yeah yeah right and and and like i say you know in a way

00:21:12.760 they deserve it they've they've they've put their eggs in that basket and but in so doing let's put

00:21:19.720 put it this way in so doing they have basically signed on to the to the idea of managerial

00:21:28.340 government that is they are endorsing the idea that society and the economy in particular ought

00:21:34.300 to be managed by bureaucrats in the government with the help of the corporations now if you sign

00:21:42.360 on to that then for my money you know you're a traitor to the principles of your own society

00:21:48.340 and you know if bad things come down the pipe because you did that well then you know again

00:21:54.940 what did you expect to happen i wanted to ask you about this other piece you wrote uh for a moment

00:22:01.960 here because you had a thing in the brownstone institute a couple of weeks back that i thought

00:22:05.560 was quite good uh called who's on first but it's the wh it doesn't doesn't convey as well verbally

00:22:10.820 uh who is on first and you're talking about another aspect of this technocracy which is

00:22:16.920 what you termed the biomedical state explain what that is right so the biomedical state is this is

00:22:23.460 this well if you like it's a branch of the managerial state but its theme is to govern

00:22:30.300 society through the lens of public health and its first triumph if you like or or or main triumph

00:22:38.680 was covid it it managed to find a reason why it should be able to come along and tell us

00:22:45.600 all what we're supposed to do today and tomorrow and the next day you know don't do this don't go

00:22:51.300 don't walk through the park close your business you can't send your kids to school we're going

00:22:54.840 to tell you what to do why because we are the public health people and and we have the authority

00:23:00.740 because that's our area of expertise to direct everybody to keep us all safe now the biomedical

00:23:07.640 state is a very big thing it's it crosses borders it all kinds of institutions involved the you know

00:23:14.540 even the military, even the scientific research institutions, it's definitely the World Health

00:23:21.200 Organization, the medical profession, the pharmaceutical companies are all sort of part

00:23:26.300 of this team in an unofficial way. And one of the disputes about what the World Health

00:23:34.040 Organization was doing in the past little while, they had meetings in May, they were supposed to

00:23:39.540 pass a new pandemic treaty, which hasn't actually come to pass yet, but they passed amendments

00:23:44.360 to their international health regulations one of the cases against all of those things was that the

00:23:51.080 who was coming and taking national sovereignty away from otherwise sovereign countries canada

00:23:58.680 the us the uk and so on that was never true in in uh in my accounting what was happening is

00:24:06.760 the world health organization was was colluding with these various institutions inside each

00:24:14.740 country and especially powerful countries in order to further their own interests in other

00:24:19.860 words the who in a way was a handmaiden for national interests and national interests in

00:24:26.040 various countries so they're all in on it it's not the who versus the national public health

00:24:31.300 authorities, it's the WHO and the National Public Health Authority, all cooperating together in

00:24:37.040 order to constitute this global governance on the basis of health. And this is a bad idea

00:24:45.160 all around for all the obvious reasons. I think it's an important distinction. And

00:24:50.260 one of the challenges is that the WHO is made up at its core of sovereign nations. The WHO has no

00:24:57.420 legitimacy if the nations who are members of it don't give it that. Now, that's not to say that

00:25:01.400 the WHO does not have a bureaucratic apparatus that tends to take on a mind of its own in a way

00:25:07.160 like the UN does. But you're very right. And the reason that treaty didn't pass is because

00:25:11.320 you actually had a few countries that decided to assert their sovereignty in a way that I must say

00:25:16.940 I didn't expect to happen. And I don't think would have happened had they done this a year ago or

00:25:21.400 or two years ago. But the challenge here is that when the WHO builds all these relationships

00:25:27.340 directly with public health authorities, these are people that in a Canadian context we've seen

00:25:31.680 especially have a very one track focus. Like if your one singular goal is COVID zero, say,

00:25:38.380 and you don't care about anything else, you could do some incredibly insane things. But

00:25:42.700 the reason that public health agencies are supposed to provide input to elected governments

00:25:47.020 is because you have to balance their goals against constitutional liberties against public order

00:25:51.820 against trust against all of these things which all of these institutions don't really care about

00:25:56.380 so the idea that the who has this direct line in to the public health agency of canada say

00:26:02.140 that doesn't matter what the canadian government says that's a bigger problem

00:26:07.740 oh no doubt no doubt and here's what's going to happen too uh once once all of the who um

00:26:13.820 measures are in place when they, once they have the powers to do what they want to do,

00:26:17.680 which is largely the case now, what's going to happen in many cases is that national and

00:26:23.400 local officials in various places, when the who comes down with a recommendation saying,

00:26:28.500 oh, well now we're now in a pandemic, you should do this and you should do that, which

00:26:31.600 are just recommendations.

00:26:33.920 These local officials are going to say, oh, well, but we have a who recommendation, which

00:26:37.600 we have to follow.

00:26:38.780 We're obliged to follow, but therefore that's going to be the rule.

00:26:41.480 Sorry, it's not our fault.

00:26:42.480 It's the who, right? 0.57

00:26:43.820 So in that, we appear to lose the accountability between ourselves and our own elected representatives who don't want responsibility for making these calls and consider themselves sort of obliged because they're on that team.

00:27:02.080 They've been told they're on that team.

00:27:03.460 They are obliged to follow the directions from above.

00:27:06.420 We don't want them to follow those directions.

00:27:08.500 And it really should be our say.

00:27:10.580 But that say is being taken away from us.

00:27:12.420 Well, and do you remember when, I know YouTube was doing it, I suspect Facebook probably was

00:27:16.920 as well. They were building their so-called misinformation policies around whatever the

00:27:22.300 WHO said about COVID. So if the WHO said it and you said something different than that,

00:27:28.100 that was misinformation. So you apply that to this context when you have governments now that

00:27:32.700 are trying to regulate misinformation. And do you not see the risk of that same abdication

00:27:37.160 you're describing there in all of these other areas? Oh, absolutely. And you see, this is sort

00:27:41.500 this is sort of where these two issues we've been talking about come together or at least similar in

00:27:46.060 the abstract right you have a narrative and you have various kinds of powerful parties signing

00:27:52.700 on to the team with the narrative whether it's the who and the public health authorities or it's the

00:27:57.660 government and the corporations everybody is colluding to the narrative and insisting that

00:28:03.340 the story is true and if you oppose the story then you're not just expressing a different view

00:28:08.540 you are wrong or worse you are insurrectionist or you are peddling misinformation you deserve to be

00:28:15.420 censored you deserve to be stopped because you are now working contrary to the public interest

00:28:21.100 as they have defined it and the more we go down this road the more collusion there is between

00:28:26.860 international or global organizations and national bureaucracies and and domestic corporations i mean

00:28:34.300 mean all of the institutions public and private are lining up on the same side and on the other

00:28:42.020 side is really only the rank and file citizen and and that that is the division that's starting to

00:28:49.060 and is well along the way of of of being cemented into our into our politics do you have a bit of

00:28:56.940 optimism bruce that the treaty was not passed this may as it sounded like was a given a year ago

00:29:02.720 Well, that is that is a good sign. So let's just let's just acknowledge this. So within these camps, there is not a singular interest. There are various interests that are sometimes in conflict with each other.

00:29:20.580 And you see that, I think, with respect to the interest of the different countries and the different camps of countries who are trying to achieve different things with pandemic treaties and so on.

00:29:29.820 You see this as well, going back to the greenwashing and the climate change.

00:29:33.820 You see this as well with companies and governments who are who have been colluding together.

00:29:38.820 But now you see the tension between them. So it's a good thing that they don't all agree.

00:29:43.820 It's a good thing that the pandemic treaty didn't work.

00:29:45.940 It's a good thing that some countries are disputing things within their own chambers, but you can't count on that.

00:29:54.180 You can't count on that to defeat the idea that they will eventually come together and decide on what the story is going to be and how they're going to enforce it.

00:30:02.160 So, yeah, it's good.

00:30:03.480 Yeah, it's good, but it's not good enough.

00:30:06.180 We have to change the way that we are governed, and only then are we really going to see progress on this.

00:30:12.660 Well, a couple of great pieces from Bruce Party.

00:30:14.960 One in the National Post,

00:30:15.920 Corporate Canada Betrayed Capitalism.

00:30:17.860 Now it has been betrayed.

00:30:19.840 The other from the Brownstone Institute.

00:30:22.220 Who's on first?

00:30:23.340 And I will say,

00:30:24.040 normally sports metaphors go entirely over my head,

00:30:27.160 but this one was immensely readable.

00:30:29.520 And you even had,

00:30:30.040 I put it up, Sean,

00:30:30.720 we have even a diagram that comes with it,

00:30:32.520 which you kind of explained it inadvertently

00:30:35.280 and it's in more depth than the piece.

00:30:37.180 But that, again,

00:30:38.280 I even understood that once I realized what it was,

00:30:41.060 which took me longer than it should have.

00:30:42.420 But always good to talk to you, Bruce.

00:30:44.000 Thanks for coming on today.

00:30:45.420 Always good to be with you, Andrew.

00:30:46.540 Thank you.

00:30:47.300 All right, Bruce Party for Attorney General.

00:30:48.940 That's my longstanding campaign,

00:30:50.640 but then he'd have to run for office.

00:30:51.860 And I don't know if you could,

00:30:52.900 I don't know if any political party

00:30:53.920 could tame Bruce Party the way they'd need to,

00:30:56.180 but nevertheless, it would be a better country if they could.

00:30:59.520 That is one thing that I am happy

00:31:01.840 to always talk about on the show,

00:31:03.620 the national sovereignty discussion,

00:31:05.660 because it's one that is never spoken about.

00:31:07.620 But no countries have ever existed for long when they don't protect their own security and their own sovereignty.

00:31:14.200 And we have increasingly countries that are willing to abdicate that and individuals that don't seem to care about it.

00:31:19.900 But I want to return to that aspect we were talking about with Corporate Canada and Corporate Canada abdicating its responsibility.

00:31:27.680 One of the things you also see is the immersion of these companies in the DEI world.

00:31:33.160 And this is something that we see even more than in corporate Canada in academic settings.

00:31:38.720 Academic institutions have dropped even the pretense that they hire based on merit with more positions that are earmarked, not even just preferential hiring for DEI applicants, but positions that are only available to applicants that check off some box of being a member of some so-called marginalized group.

00:31:58.760 Now, interestingly enough, when we're talking about candidates, say, with PhDs, we're not talking about people who have been truly marginalized in their lives.

00:32:06.420 We're talking about the academic elites, regardless of whether you're trans or cis or black or white or anything.

00:32:14.400 Now, it was quite interesting.

00:32:15.640 There was a piece in Nature, which used to be an esteemed journal published in the United States,

00:32:20.700 a piece in nature that was celebrating the rise of diversity hiring, which comes obviously at

00:32:27.360 the expense of merit-based hiring. Why can we not just return to the basics, return to

00:32:33.280 allowing merit to govern who we're hiring, especially when, as was noted in a column in

00:32:38.640 the National Post by Professor Lawrence Krauss, there wasn't really any defense of why these

00:32:43.940 things are working or if they were. Professor Krauss joins us now. It's good to talk to you,

00:32:49.100 professor. Thanks for coming on today. It's good to be back with you. It was nice to see Bruce

00:32:53.620 Party on earlier. He's actually, I'm editing a book and he's got a chapter in it. So it's nice

00:32:57.980 to. Oh, wonderful. Well, I look forward to seeing that when it comes out here. This is, I mean,

00:33:03.380 Science Magazine has, of course, published some of the most, you know, rigorously vetted, peer

00:33:09.020 reviewed scientific research in the past. And now there's not even a pretense of scientific basis

00:33:15.160 for this explain what's what they're passing off here as justification for a dei over merit yeah

00:33:21.160 first first we should correct you earlier said nature um sorry science but it's all right nature

00:33:26.520 is not equally bad we could have an yeah fair enough nature and the ridiculous editorials that

00:33:30.920 have appeared there both nature and science which are two of the preeminent science journals in the

00:33:35.000 in the in the world um or have been and i have to say i've published in both um they uh uh

00:33:44.040 And they're both coming out and not talking about science. And in particular, you'd think a science journal, when they talked about whether some action took place, they first talked about what the empirical evidence would be to support the action and what the consequences of the action are.

00:34:00.940 But they didn't do any of those things. It was just a remarkable statement that suddenly, and it was like celebrating this remarkable fact that this university in Denmark had announced a policy where for the first six months of every year, they would only hire women.

00:34:17.120 and they announced that guess what the number of women increased isn't that amazing and it's like

00:34:24.120 it you know it's it and and again what's also equally amazing there was no discussion in the

00:34:31.340 article about merit or about qualifications except to say two things that many of the women 1.00

00:34:38.200 who were headhunted they saw they went out and sought women this is an engineering school

00:34:41.800 let's let's make that clear so it has a low proportion of women one of the reasons was 0.97

00:34:46.180 that women don't seem to want to go into engineering but that is never ever discussed

00:34:50.420 in this kind of article the assumption is that somehow they're being kept out so the school went

00:34:54.980 out and headhunted women and the only statement that was made which kind of almost humorous was

00:35:01.460 that a number of the women who were headhunted said they were amazed to be headhunted because

00:35:04.980 they didn't think they were qualified for the job and and then the president of the of the university

00:35:11.220 said you know what women are just like that you know and and so we have to take that into account 1.00

00:35:16.340 and you know what women are less likely to apply for a job if they don't have all the qualifications 1.00

00:35:21.940 but so we're really happy that they're coming and and when you read that i think okay so we really

00:35:26.580 want to take people who don't have qualifications for the job and and that's a good thing and it 1.00

00:35:31.620 also is sexist because it's just i mean it's assuming that you know there aren't men in the

00:35:35.460 world who say well maybe i really am qualified for this so i shouldn't do this and but um and and

00:35:42.180 and ultimately the final question which is you know what were the qualifications what what were

00:35:48.660 the the uh was the bar lowered for these people and and how how pervasive this is in academia was

00:35:56.260 really put home for me with a colleague of mine who's a professor at usc in california

00:36:01.060 point out that a colleague of hers who's dutch said to her well there's no there's no discrimination

00:36:07.940 here um because you know we're we're not keeping men out we're just creating position for women

00:36:14.980 and and it's like that you could say that without realizing what you're saying and

00:36:20.180 being academic in an institution is kind of remarkable let's assume for a moment that

00:36:24.980 male and female engineers are are both equally good that there's no distinction between the 1.00

00:36:30.260 the two. So in any group of 100 male engineers and 100 female engineers, let's say that there

00:36:35.120 are the same number that are qualified and the same number that are unqualified. But let's now

00:36:39.540 say that there are 10% of the engineers who are women and 90% are men, which is not actually that

00:36:45.980 far off. So if you're hiring 50% of the positions being women, that means you're necessarily 0.95

00:36:51.800 elevating people who are unqualified. And they're not unqualified because they're women, they're 0.73

00:36:56.240 unqualified because you're manipulating your talent pool in a way that you wouldn't if you

00:37:01.060 were just hiring the aptitudes I mean this is not I'm not a I'm not an eminent physicist like

00:37:05.760 yourself I'm not a scientist I get foggy with numbers but I don't think I'm missing anything

00:37:10.420 here but these people who are longer educated than I am seem to be well that you're taking the

00:37:14.280 numbers is indeed correct in general I mean you know there can always be exceptions but it is a

00:37:20.080 problem when and actually this has happened in Canada in a number of cases both in the number

00:37:25.660 people in the cabinet of the of the current prime minister but also in in in what the canadian

00:37:31.040 government is doing regarding the most prestigious chairs in in academia the canada research council

00:37:36.020 of canada research canada research chairs yes yeah and and um they're requiring that to match

00:37:41.920 the demographics of the background society exactly and therefore requiring among other things that

00:37:47.040 only women can be offered these positions and the real question is and and in order to do the 1.00

00:37:52.000 statistics properly for what you said. Your presumption is perfectly reasonable, a priori,

00:37:56.280 if you don't know any of the numbers. It's more reasonable to assume what you assumed than to

00:38:00.500 assume the opposite. But better still is to look at the pool of applicants, the pool of people

00:38:05.380 who are applying. If 90% of the people who are applying for positions are male, and you take

00:38:14.320 50% of the positions and give them to females, say, then clearly, then clearly you're doing

00:38:20.180 something wrong. I mean, if there's equal application, if there are equal pools, that's

00:38:24.020 one thing. But you have to look at the pools of the applicants. And there's lots of studies that

00:38:28.800 suggest, and every time people have tried to enforce these demographic rules in, say, engineering,

00:38:35.440 that they find that generally they attract fewer women, even if you try and do these things.

00:38:40.520 There are other fields, like, by the way, education, which are 80 or 90% women

00:38:44.840 in at universities and and and and in in colleges and but no one tries to turn around the other way

00:38:52.040 so the point is that there are predilections and in fact there have been studies of you know

00:38:57.560 there's some studies you might say that are more egalitarian like ones in in in in uh Scandinavia

00:39:03.480 and interestingly enough those which seem to have fewer barriers for women doing things

00:39:07.720 have even a larger gap between in certain stem fields like engineering than in in in in in the

00:39:14.320 west so there are many people what reasons why people may not choose to go into a field and to

00:39:19.420 say that to assume it's always sexism or racism is clearly to make an assumption that you you have

00:39:24.560 an obligation to show first of all um but secondly you're you're you know you're you're ultimately

00:39:31.340 doing a disservice to everyone if you because you're also suggesting that you're being patronizing

00:39:38.500 to women you're suggesting that they they can't compete first of all uh you know in an open playing 1.00

00:39:43.460 field and uh and it's also arguing that there are only certain fields that you want to put women in 1.00

00:39:49.780 and there and there are other fields you don't care that there are no men in the whole thing

00:39:54.900 is patronizing women discriminating against men and anti-merit there's on the surface it makes

00:40:00.580 no sense now i'm a scientist and i'm perfectly happy to be proved wrong by data and evidence

00:40:07.780 but there's no such data evidence applied here or in fact every bit of evidence i've ever seen

00:40:12.500 suggests the opposite that first of all these kind of brute force affirmative action techniques

00:40:17.060 don't work in general to affect the field they also stigmatize the the people who who do get the

00:40:25.020 jobs because you know if they get a job because it's a women-only job then they're your presumption 1.00

00:40:31.600 is that's why they got the job not because of their qualifications and the last thing is

00:40:35.900 you're generally not doing what i mean all these things are well motivated to try and increase you

00:40:42.320 know increase the opportunities for people but what especially people who are really marginalized

00:40:47.460 but what you're doing when you're hiring faculty is you're not dealing with people who are

00:40:50.980 marginalized you're dealing with the elites generally you're dealing with people who've

00:40:54.280 gone to get a phd at a reasonable university they were and so you're not you're not digging

00:40:59.120 into the people who are really you know the i used to live in cleveland the people and the kids in

00:41:04.040 the public schools there who don't have textbooks because the schools are run down and and you know

00:41:08.360 those are the people you want to try and give a leg up to you want to provide opportunities

00:41:11.960 But at the highest end of academia, you're generally not what diversity is all about.

00:41:18.020 The idea that a Harvard-educated black woman is more marginalized than a white working class guy from rural Ohio or something is just not at all.

00:41:26.480 It's discriminatory and it's exactly the right. 1.00

00:41:29.520 So it's doing none of the things that, these are all well-motivated in principle, but it's not doing what you want.

00:41:35.660 And then it's ill brought about.

00:41:40.860 And the net consequence, as far as I can see, generally hurts everyone.

00:41:45.980 The people who get the jobs are stigmatized.

00:41:47.780 People who don't get the jobs, the men who don't get the jobs are hurt.

00:41:51.100 If you're hiring people who aren't qualified or as qualified, your merit is going down.

00:41:55.360 So what's the upside except for virtue signaling?

00:41:59.600 That's what this is all about.

00:42:00.680 Do the proponents of this, in your experience, argue that diversity is just in and of itself the goal?

00:42:06.560 diversity isn't established as a first principle positive and therefore a more diverse faculty is

00:42:12.320 better or do they argue that diversity inherently increases uh something else that it makes for a

00:42:19.280 better education or a better faculty the claim the claim is that diversity improves quality

00:42:25.040 now look i can understand look the statement is always made that you know if you're if you're a

00:42:29.920 let's say a woman and all your professors are male maybe you you feel you don't feel as attached to

00:42:34.560 the field and it's nice to have a role model i understand all of that argument it's a bit more

00:42:39.040 esoteric but there's a logic to it yes yeah yeah but the notion that diversity somehow increases

00:42:44.160 improves the field is as far as i can see without evidence and and the arc and and the whole point

00:42:52.640 is that you it's what we really want is equality of the opportunity it's not equality of outcomes

00:42:57.520 and i'm and i'm all in favor and you know i my politics have i'm sure to the left of yours or

00:43:02.880 have been. But I really do think that we really need to work to try and ensure, you know, a poor 1.00

00:43:10.100 working class single mother or a single father has opportunities and, you know, they've got bigger 0.66

00:43:16.340 challenges. And so we want to try and provide equality of opportunity, but that's different

00:43:21.840 than equality of outcome. And that's what this kind of ridiculous policy is all about. And again, 0.81

00:43:27.320 in academia which is the last possible place you know the faculty if you're hiring faculty

00:43:32.520 at university you've already taken a very select hand-picked subset of the population who've gone

00:43:38.440 to get a degree gone to get a phd many of them at first-rate colleges they've already there if you

00:43:44.600 like i hate to use the word but they're already privileged in that sense and and and uh and so

00:43:50.520 i don't like anything that's sacred that you can't question and the claim that diversity improves

00:43:55.480 quality and and diversity meaning diversity of identity if we label these people and give them

00:44:01.440 identities either being female or trans or or indigenous or black or or whatever if you label

00:44:09.640 them by that that somehow having enough labels makes it better it's it's demeaning i think to

00:44:15.960 people and and and you know you need to see data and that's what's what it's all about i think it's

00:44:21.240 Yeah. And I mean, I would use, I used to, you know, years ago when I had this conversation with someone, I said, well, if you're, you know, going in for surgery, do you want the most diverse operating room or do you want the best? Now I would hesitate to even ask that question because I'm terrified of what some people would answer.

00:44:35.180 yeah and that's and and you know that's the real problem which is one of the reasons actually i'm

00:44:41.180 editing this book specifically universities is that nothing i'm i'm well known as someone who's

00:44:46.860 not particularly religious and uh quite the opposite and one of the things that i don't

00:44:51.420 like about sacredness is that you can't ask questions that nothing is sacred everything

00:44:56.060 should be subject question especially in science and what's scary is you can't ask the question

00:45:01.420 um even the question is is a more diverse operating room better for patients i mean maybe it

00:45:06.140 is but you can't even ask the question or raise a doubt without expecting to be ostracized or

00:45:11.820 sometimes removed and uh and that's scary because not only are these policies taking place but if

00:45:18.300 faculty oppose these policies then they're subject to real problems at universities so people so i

00:45:24.860 suspect that many of these universities faculty roll their eyes and say look we just want to get

00:45:29.660 down what we're doing we want to stay below the radar and if we speak out we're going to be it's

00:45:34.940 it's going to end up causing us grief and i want to just do my own thing and i just you know let

00:45:40.140 them do what they want and that's fine and and unfortunately that's the way it is i've you know

00:45:46.220 professor for 40 years and that's generally the faculty's attitude about almost anything

00:45:49.980 yeah just get by uh professor lawrence kress president of the origins project foundation

00:45:54.860 also host of the origins podcast thank you so much for coming on professor good to talk to you

00:45:58.940 it's been it's been a pleasure you take care all right you too you know my position on the

00:46:03.420 the operating room question i think is a valid one and look at the end of the day i don't care

00:46:08.060 and that's what we should be and i think generally speaking used to be striving for as a society with

00:46:13.340 not caring now let me be perfectly candid i think there are areas in which diversity is providing a

00:46:18.780 benefit but i would also say diversity of experience matters a lot more let's say you're

00:46:23.500 trying to put together a group project and you want all of these different people in your group

00:46:27.900 You don't want people that are going to think the same way.

00:46:30.840 So someone from an urban setting and someone from a rural setting, irrespective of race,

00:46:35.340 could contribute different things.

00:46:36.940 Someone who went to a community college or technical school, someone who went to a university,

00:46:41.500 that's a form of diversity.

00:46:43.420 And yes, I can see circumstances in which gender diversity would be key.

00:46:47.060 Men and women approach things differently.

00:46:49.360 But if you're talking about hiring for a position, the most qualified person is not necessarily

00:46:55.140 the one who happens to be the most diverse and this again should not be a radical thing to say

00:47:01.800 but everyone jumps up and down and says it's so offensive and my goodness what's what's wrong

00:47:06.220 with merit why is merit no longer the goal that should be the question put back in anyone that

00:47:10.520 champions these things that does it for us for today we'll be back tomorrow with more of Canada's

00:47:14.580 most irreverent talk show here on true north the Andrew Lawton show thank you god bless and good

00:47:19.080 day to you all thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton show support the program by donating to

00:47:24.620 True North at www.tnc.news.

00:47:54.620 We'll be right back.

Juno News - July 09, 2024

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