Juno News - July 09, 2024


More bonuses for CBC employees coming

Topics
CBC bonuses corporate Canada betrayal capitalism diversity in academia hiring
Mentioned
Andrew Lawton Franco Teresano Rachel Parker Bruce Pardee Lawrence Krauss Catherine Tate McKinsey Trudeau Chrystia Freeland Peter Mansbridge Rachel Thomas Pierre Poilievre Rights Probe Nay Emanuel
Poilievre takes aim at Trudeau's ＂woke ideology＂ in Stampede speech Canadian media missed the story on Joe Biden

Episode Stats


Length

48 minutes

Words per minute

173.46

Word count

8,397

Sentence count

252

Harmful content

Misogyny

12

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

13

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, True North's Rachel Parker and the Taxpayers Federation's Franco Terano take a look at the $16.9 million in taxpayer-funded bonuses paid out to CBC staff last year, and debate whether or not it was justified.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Transcription by CastingWords
00:00:30 Thank you.
00:01:00 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true
00:01:19 north hello and welcome to you all this is canada's most irreverent talk show the andrew
00:01:29 lawton show on true north on this tuesday july 9th now a couple of weeks into the official
00:01:34 onset of summer and i hope you are having a wonderful wonderful season as least as wonderful
00:01:40 as you can be in the chaos that is the canadian political climate although i guess not nearly as
00:01:46 chaotic as the American political climate, depending on which way you're leaning on all
00:01:50 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 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 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 Parker, and she has a new show, Rachel and the Republic, which delves into U.S. politics. We
00:02:12 try to focus mostly on canadiana here at true north because you know there are lots of people
00:02:18 talking about the u.s but we also believe that the audience has a say in what goes on and everyone
00:02:23 is saying why aren't you talking about what's happening in the u.s so there we have it rachel
00:02:26 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 wanting to go and get more and more and more money now to justify the continued money that cbc is
00:02:40 getting from you and I, the taxpayers of this fine nation, CBC has to spend all of that money. And
00:02:46 man, do they find things to spend money on, notably on staff and salaries. They have never
00:02:52 wanted to be really transparent about how much they're dishing out. The salaries of a lot of
00:02:57 their key personnel have always been guarded in secrecy for years. They did this weird thing where
00:03:02 they tried to pretend that Peter Mansbridge, when he was like their big guy, their big kahuna, 0.82
00:03:07 was making like $80,000 and, you know, maybe a bus pass or something. 1.00
00:03:12 Like they were trying to just really mock Canadians and call Canadians stupid 0.98
00:03:17 for trying to have an interest in what people were making. 0.99
00:03:21 Well, now they're not even really hiding it.
00:03:22 They approved a couple of weeks back just after the House of Commons rose for the summer.
00:03:28 Bonuses for nearly 1,200 CBC employees.
00:03:33 1,200.
00:03:33 Now you'd think that after the ride they got from opposition members
00:03:37 and the media well independent media anyway about bonuses last year they would have thought better
00:03:43 about it but no quite the contrary CBC just doesn't seem to care just to give you a little
00:03:48 bit of a refresher here last year they paid out 14.9 million dollars in staff bonuses this year
00:03:57 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 it's going to be a lot. Now, this was Catherine Tate being grilled by Rachel Thomas, the Conservative 0.84
00:04:07 Member of Parliament, about this in the House of Commons in a committee a little while back. Take a
00:04:13 look. Based on the metrics that are used then, last year you gave out $16 million in taxpayer-funded
00:04:24 bonuses to the staff. That was an average of $14,000 to staff members at the CBC. Most Canadians
00:04:31 don't even see half of that in a bonus, not even a quarter of that in a yearly bonus.
00:04:37 $14,000 was the average amount that was given to CBC staff.
00:04:41 What were the metrics that were used in order to determine that bonus amount?
00:04:44 So again, the KPIs are published, and they're very clearly have to do with performance of the service.
00:04:52 For example, digital reach.
00:04:55 For example, engagement with news in the regions.
00:04:58 for example performance on engagement with kids and children all of those are published very
00:05:06 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 number is wrong if i want to correct the record oh there you have it cbc just performs that
00:05:19 well it performs that well of course they're going to give out all of that in bonuses it's
00:05:25 Just such an efficient operation.
00:05:27 My goodness.
00:05:27 Well, I have a feeling one of our go-to guests here will disagree with that.
00:05:32 Franco Terrizano is the federal director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and joins
00:05:37 us once again.
00:05:37 Franco, good to see you, sir.
00:05:39 Hey, Andrew.
00:05:40 Thanks for having me on.
00:05:41 So, I mean, that was obviously spin from the last round of bonuses.
00:05:44 I expect it won't be that different this time around.
00:05:46 But CBC's core argument here is that, oh, the service is just doing so well.
00:05:51 Of course, we have to reward the employees.
00:05:53 What do you make of that?
00:05:55 Well, I mean, come on.
00:05:56 You have the President Tate herself running around crying about the chronic underfunding, according to her, of the CBC.
00:06:05 Meanwhile, the CBC is getting more than a billion dollars from taxpayers every single year.
00:06:11 In the last budget, you had Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland shovel another $42 million at the CBC. 0.62
00:06:17 So in what world are they chronically underfunded, not the real world?
00:06:22 But think about this for a second, folks.
00:06:25 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 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 Well, these taxpayer-funded bonuses at the state broadcaster have cost taxpayers $114 million going back since 2015.
00:06:53 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 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 yeah and look it's one thing if you are in a private sector company that you could say one
00:07:21 year wow we had a really great year based on profit we were efficient and we brought in more
00:07:27 revenue and we made money and therefore we can use that money to fund some bonuses that's the way
00:07:32 it's supposed to work cbc's revenue is from the taxpayers so when cbc has a good year financially
00:07:38 it's not because they ran it as a good business it means they built you and i really really well
00:07:43 that year so i guess maybe they do want to reward themselves for that well and another thing about
00:07:48 the private sector and bonuses there might be bonuses there's also pay cuts and job losses
00:07:55 but where in the government are there pay cuts and job losses in the government there's bonuses
00:08:00 pay raises extra bureaucrats but like don't hold your breath waiting for pay cuts and job losses
00:08:07 they're almost non-existent in the federal government but you know what's even crazier
00:08:12 about this whole story, right? Number one, the fact that they just rubber stamped about 1200
00:08:18 additional bonuses after the CBSC has been absolutely grilled by members of parliament
00:08:25 and the public for months. But get this, Andrew, in that annual review where we found these bonus
00:08:31 figures, the CBC acknowledges that there are some people in the public who are upset that they're
00:08:38 taking our money and giving out fat bonus checks to the fat CBC cats well you got a shout out is
00:08:44 what you're saying yeah well guess what though you know they're also hiring a consulting firm
00:08:51 okay to review the compensation including bonuses at the CBC is it McKinsey please tell me it's
00:08:58 McKinsey well we don't know who the consulting firm is just yet we will find that out but listen
00:09:03 to this folks okay not only are they taking more than a billion dollars from you every single year
00:09:07 Not only are they turning around and giving your money out as bonus checks, but now they're going
00:09:12 to waste your money hiring a consulting firm to review their own bonuses. They don't need
00:09:17 to review the bonuses. They need to end the bonuses. Yeah, I would agree with that. And
00:09:24 you know, when you go back to what you had said a few moments ago about the plight of the public
00:09:28 sector, the so-called plight of the public sector, when we saw massive lockdown, shutdowns,
00:09:33 an economic downturn during COVID, it was the public sector that was insulated from that. It
00:09:38 was the public sector that kept their jobs, that had accommodations that have remained long after
00:09:42 any pandemic restriction, when you want to talk about working from home and stuff like that.
00:09:47 And, you know, CBC, well, they've had to, of course, make quote unquote tough decisions.
00:09:51 They're not the ones you see in the headlines laying off massive swaths of the workforce like
00:09:56 CTV, like Global, because they, again, are given this sweetheart deal from the government that
00:10:01 makes them just totally insulated from the realities everyone else in this country has to
00:10:05 deal with. That's a great point, Andrew. I mean, during COVID in the last couple of years up until
00:10:11 now, we've really seen a tale of two Canadas, one full of economic pain for businesses that had to
00:10:18 shut down, businesses that struggled for quite some time to get their employees back, but also
00:10:23 just workers in the private sector who were sent to the ranks of the unemployed by the thousands.
00:10:28 And not to mention the fact that now normal Canadians can barely afford hamburger meat or a jug of milk.
00:10:35 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 So like the Trudeau government has handed out more than a million pay raises over the last four years or so.
00:10:50 there's been hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funded bonuses sloshing around the
00:10:57 federal departments and crown corporations, including the CBC is one of them. But let's
00:11:02 not forget that the fact that the Trudeau government has also added tens of thousands
00:11:06 of extra bureaucrats in recent years. Okay. So while taxpayers have been struggling,
00:11:11 the feds have been handing out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses. They've handed
00:11:17 out hundreds of thousands of pay raises. They've added tens of thousands of extra bureaucrats and
00:11:22 we still can't get good services from the federal government. Well, do you think that it's going to
00:11:28 be defunded? Let's go there. Let's give some optimism. Well, I sure hope so. And folks,
00:11:34 if you want to defund the CBC, I mean, you can head over to the taxpayer army, the growing
00:11:38 taxpayer army at taxpayer.com. We've got a great petition there for you to defund the CBC. And if
00:11:44 you sign up, give us your email. We'll let you know when there's some good time to put pressure
00:11:48 on the federal government to defund the CBC, just like it's great time to put some pressure
00:11:52 to end these bonuses right now. All right, Franco Terrizano, always a pleasure, sir. Keep up the good
00:11:58 work. Hey, thanks, Andrew. All right, let's turn from the media to the corporate world, the real
00:12:05 corporate world, not like the fake CBC government funded corporate world. We've talked about this
00:12:10 on the show in the past, the ESG scores, and we see companies that are doing what I think is
00:12:15 incredibly irresponsible, which is sacrificing their fiduciary obligation to their shareholders
00:12:21 to embrace the world of woke, to embrace all of these nonsensical goals, things that are in many
00:12:28 cases very pie in the sky, in some cases are antithetical to what they're doing. And there
00:12:32 was a fantastic piece in the National Post written by the always fantastic Bruce Barty, who is the
00:12:37 executive director of Rights Probe and a law professor at Queen's University.
00:12:42 Corporate Canada betrayed capitalism. Now it has been betrayed. Bruce, good to talk to you as
00:12:48 always. Thanks for coming on today. Oh, great to see you, Andrew. Always nice to talk to you.
00:12:53 So you touch on something. You tell a story in two acts here. So let's start with act one,
00:12:59 which is corporate Canada betraying capitalism. Because I'm of the mind that if you're a company
00:13:05 that wants to put something other than profit as your goal, you should have the right to do that.
00:13:10 There have been companies that have for years embedded in their existence, some form of giving
00:13:15 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 what you're buying into as a shareholder. What you're talking about here is something else
00:13:25 entirely, which is companies that have shareholders that want them to turn a profit, people who have
00:13:29 invested their pension funds or their savings in these companies and expect them to be profitable.
00:13:34 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 right now it's all of these other things that shareholders never really bought into
00:13:43 right exactly you know we think that big business and capitalism are synonymous but they are not
00:13:55 if you look at what what big business in canada have been doing past few years essentially they
00:14:01 have more or less turned their back on the ideas that you just mentioned. They've decided that
00:14:07 their fortunes lie with the powers that be that are opposing capitalism. They've signed on to
00:14:15 all kinds of anti-capitalist notions like ESG, like stakeholder capitalism. Let's just be clear
00:14:24 about what this means. Stakeholder capitalism, which is part of the ESG, the environmental,
00:14:29 social and governance model of of running a corporation stakeholder stakeholder capitalism
00:14:36 means that the directors and officers of a corporation are going to run it so as to respond
00:14:43 to the interests not of shareholders not of their company's bottom line not of profits
00:14:50 but in the interest of a much broader vaguely defined set of ideas including people on the
00:14:56 street environmental concerns generally as defined by anybody you like uh by by a whole set of
00:15:06 interests that you can't nail down so in other words and by activists who hate the company they
00:15:12 are now stakeholders well anybody who wants to let's put it this way yeah everybody who
00:15:18 wants to identify as a stakeholder that's right that's right self-identify stakeholders but but
00:15:23 The most important thing is that the officers and directors are giving themselves now a license
00:15:29 to do basically whatever they want without being accountable to the bottom line and to
00:15:37 the interest of the people who have invested in their companies.
00:15:41 And this was kind of a deal, like not an explicit deal.
00:15:45 They didn't go into a room and sit down at a table and say, right, here's the deal.
00:15:48 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 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 and we don't think of of of corporations this way we think corporations are opposed
00:16:21 these are the counterweight to the state but that's not so at least not in Canada they are
00:16:29 they are basically both on the same team because they are both engaged in the management of our
00:16:35 economy big companies now like to think that they help the government manage the economy
00:16:40 they're not free enterprisers. They're colluding with the state.
00:16:46 Yeah, and it becomes crony capitalism to the nth degree. And one of the observations I've made
00:16:52 when I've covered the World Economic Forum is that this idea that the big corporations are in
00:16:56 the one world, one side, and the big government is in the other side is just so wildly inaccurate
00:17:01 because you see this very malign alliance between the two oftentimes where government is outsourcing
00:17:07 things to the private sector, but not in a way that is reminiscent of the free market,
00:17:12 in a way that just makes these companies, you know, the fourth branch of the government,
00:17:15 basically. And, you know, I wanted to then push this into the oil and gas context,
00:17:20 which leads us to your second act, because oil and gas companies, which have been just reviled
00:17:25 by activists in a way that's not quite as bad as big tobacco was, but getting there,
00:17:31 many of them have gone along with this as well. And you're saying this has now proven to be to
00:17:36 their detriment yeah and but this has been a peculiar thing for a long time right if you if
00:17:41 you go to the website of any major oil company you will see things like net zero being endorsed
00:17:47 or certainly the idea of you know climate change and anthropomorphic climate change in particular
00:17:52 and the idea that canada has to act to prevent climate change they have they are on the climate
00:17:58 change bandwagon even though they are the ones selling fossil fuels you think well how is that
00:18:04 your interests wouldn't would don't you think that you ought to push back on this narrative
00:18:09 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 interests um were better better protected by signing on to this idea than to try to reassist
00:18:25 it and and they've been carrying on like that for for a good while and so you have this sort
00:18:30 of cognitive dissonance like how could it be that a major oil company uh is is is the one
00:18:37 pushing us all to think that its products are causing a huge problem but that's where they are
00:18:42 and now and now they get the results of this of this of this ill-advised bargain they've made
00:18:50 because um a recent uh bill that that received royal assent c6 c59 contains within it two provisions
00:19:00 that prohibit so-called greenwashing.
00:19:03 That is, it prohibits companies from making environmental claims,
00:19:08 including and especially climate claims,
00:19:10 that they cannot prove are true.
00:19:13 So what has happened is, over time,
00:19:16 Corporate Canada made this deal.
00:19:18 And now the Corporate Canada has been placed at the curb
00:19:22 by this new government legislation.
00:19:25 And there's a part of you that must just delight in there
00:19:30 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 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 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 expect to happen if if a long time ago they had decided to take a different path and and and to
00:19:54 oppose the trend that was starting to appear on, on climate and on a whole lot of other things
00:20:01 to say, no, no, this is not the proper way to govern our country. We believe in this instead.
00:20:07 They didn't do that. If they had done it, who knows where we might be today? I don't know.
00:20:14 Maybe they would have sacrificed themselves and the, the opposing powers would have been so 1.00
00:20:19 powerful that, that, that it wouldn't have gotten them anywhere, but they could have tried. They
00:20:23 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 they made. I know you have a great deal more skepticism than most do on the political class
00:20:38 and on politicians. And I think there's probably some merit to that. But I do find it interesting
00:20:44 that Conservative leader Pierre Polyev has come out and said that he has zero interest in cozying
00:20:50 with lobbyists in corporate canada he's pretty much rebuked the chamber of commerce set and and
00:20:56 that adds to this because all these companies that have invested in these industries that have
00:21:00 invested and built their entire systems around cozy relationships with politicians are now
00:21:05 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 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 put it this way in so doing they have basically signed on to the to the idea of managerial
00:21:28 government that is they are endorsing the idea that society and the economy in particular ought
00:21:34 to be managed by bureaucrats in the government with the help of the corporations now if you sign
00:21:42 on to that then for my money you know you're a traitor to the principles of your own society
00:21:48 and you know if bad things come down the pipe because you did that well then you know again
00:21:54 what did you expect to happen i wanted to ask you about this other piece you wrote uh for a moment
00:22:01 here because you had a thing in the brownstone institute a couple of weeks back that i thought
00:22:05 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 uh who is on first and you're talking about another aspect of this technocracy which is
00:22:16 what you termed the biomedical state explain what that is right so the biomedical state is this is
00:22:23 this well if you like it's a branch of the managerial state but its theme is to govern
00:22:30 society through the lens of public health and its first triumph if you like or or or main triumph
00:22:38 was covid it it managed to find a reason why it should be able to come along and tell us
00:22:45 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 don't walk through the park close your business you can't send your kids to school we're going
00:22:54 to tell you what to do why because we are the public health people and and we have the authority
00:23:00 because that's our area of expertise to direct everybody to keep us all safe now the biomedical
00:23:07 state is a very big thing it's it crosses borders it all kinds of institutions involved the you know
00:23:14 even the military, even the scientific research institutions, it's definitely the World Health
00:23:21 Organization, the medical profession, the pharmaceutical companies are all sort of part
00:23:26 of this team in an unofficial way. And one of the disputes about what the World Health
00:23:34 Organization was doing in the past little while, they had meetings in May, they were supposed to
00:23:39 pass a new pandemic treaty, which hasn't actually come to pass yet, but they passed amendments
00:23:44 to their international health regulations one of the cases against all of those things was that the
00:23:51 who was coming and taking national sovereignty away from otherwise sovereign countries canada
00:23:58 the us the uk and so on that was never true in in uh in my accounting what was happening is
00:24:06 the world health organization was was colluding with these various institutions inside each
00:24:14 country and especially powerful countries in order to further their own interests in other
00:24:19 words the who in a way was a handmaiden for national interests and national interests in
00:24:26 various countries so they're all in on it it's not the who versus the national public health
00:24:31 authorities, it's the WHO and the National Public Health Authority, all cooperating together in
00:24:37 order to constitute this global governance on the basis of health. And this is a bad idea
00:24:45 all around for all the obvious reasons. I think it's an important distinction. And
00:24:50 one of the challenges is that the WHO is made up at its core of sovereign nations. The WHO has no
00:24:57 legitimacy if the nations who are members of it don't give it that. Now, that's not to say that
00:25:01 the WHO does not have a bureaucratic apparatus that tends to take on a mind of its own in a way
00:25:07 like the UN does. But you're very right. And the reason that treaty didn't pass is because
00:25:11 you actually had a few countries that decided to assert their sovereignty in a way that I must say
00:25:16 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 or two years ago. But the challenge here is that when the WHO builds all these relationships
00:25:27 directly with public health authorities, these are people that in a Canadian context we've seen
00:25:31 especially have a very one track focus. Like if your one singular goal is COVID zero, say,
00:25:38 and you don't care about anything else, you could do some incredibly insane things. But
00:25:42 the reason that public health agencies are supposed to provide input to elected governments
00:25:47 is because you have to balance their goals against constitutional liberties against public order
00:25:51 against trust against all of these things which all of these institutions don't really care about
00:25:56 so the idea that the who has this direct line in to the public health agency of canada say
00:26:02 that doesn't matter what the canadian government says that's a bigger problem
00:26:07 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 measures are in place when they, once they have the powers to do what they want to do,
00:26:17 which is largely the case now, what's going to happen in many cases is that national and
00:26:23 local officials in various places, when the who comes down with a recommendation saying,
00:26:28 oh, well now we're now in a pandemic, you should do this and you should do that, which
00:26:31 are just recommendations.
00:26:33 These local officials are going to say, oh, well, but we have a who recommendation, which
00:26:37 we have to follow.
00:26:38 We're obliged to follow, but therefore that's going to be the rule.
00:26:41 Sorry, it's not our fault.
00:26:42 It's the who, right? 0.57
00:26:43 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 They've been told they're on that team.
00:27:03 They are obliged to follow the directions from above.
00:27:06 We don't want them to follow those directions.
00:27:08 And it really should be our say.
00:27:10 But that say is being taken away from us.
00:27:12 Well, and do you remember when, I know YouTube was doing it, I suspect Facebook probably was
00:27:16 as well. They were building their so-called misinformation policies around whatever the
00:27:22 WHO said about COVID. So if the WHO said it and you said something different than that,
00:27:28 that was misinformation. So you apply that to this context when you have governments now that
00:27:32 are trying to regulate misinformation. And do you not see the risk of that same abdication
00:27:37 you're describing there in all of these other areas? Oh, absolutely. And you see, this is sort
00:27:41 this is sort of where these two issues we've been talking about come together or at least similar in
00:27:46 the abstract right you have a narrative and you have various kinds of powerful parties signing
00:27:52 on to the team with the narrative whether it's the who and the public health authorities or it's the
00:27:57 government and the corporations everybody is colluding to the narrative and insisting that
00:28:03 the story is true and if you oppose the story then you're not just expressing a different view
00:28:08 you are wrong or worse you are insurrectionist or you are peddling misinformation you deserve to be
00:28:15 censored you deserve to be stopped because you are now working contrary to the public interest
00:28:21 as they have defined it and the more we go down this road the more collusion there is between
00:28:26 international or global organizations and national bureaucracies and and domestic corporations i mean
00:28:34 mean all of the institutions public and private are lining up on the same side and on the other
00:28:42 side is really only the rank and file citizen and and that that is the division that's starting to
00:28:49 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 optimism bruce that the treaty was not passed this may as it sounded like was a given a year ago
00:29:02 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 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 You see this as well, going back to the greenwashing and the climate change.
00:29:33 You see this as well with companies and governments who are who have been colluding together.
00:29:38 But now you see the tension between them. So it's a good thing that they don't all agree.
00:29:43 It's a good thing that the pandemic treaty didn't work.
00:29:45 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 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 So, yeah, it's good.
00:30:03 Yeah, it's good, but it's not good enough.
00:30:06 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 Well, a couple of great pieces from Bruce Party.
00:30:14 One in the National Post,
00:30:15 Corporate Canada Betrayed Capitalism.
00:30:17 Now it has been betrayed.
00:30:19 The other from the Brownstone Institute.
00:30:22 Who's on first?
00:30:23 And I will say,
00:30:24 normally sports metaphors go entirely over my head,
00:30:27 but this one was immensely readable.
00:30:29 And you even had,
00:30:30 I put it up, Sean,
00:30:30 we have even a diagram that comes with it,
00:30:32 which you kind of explained it inadvertently
00:30:35 and it's in more depth than the piece.
00:30:37 But that, again,
00:30:38 I even understood that once I realized what it was,
00:30:41 which took me longer than it should have.
00:30:42 But always good to talk to you, Bruce.
00:30:44 Thanks for coming on today.
00:30:45 Always good to be with you, Andrew.
00:30:46 Thank you.
00:30:47 All right, Bruce Party for Attorney General.
00:30:48 That's my longstanding campaign,
00:30:50 but then he'd have to run for office.
00:30:51 And I don't know if you could,
00:30:52 I don't know if any political party
00:30:53 could tame Bruce Party the way they'd need to,
00:30:56 but nevertheless, it would be a better country if they could.
00:30:59 That is one thing that I am happy
00:31:01 to always talk about on the show,
00:31:03 the national sovereignty discussion,
00:31:05 because it's one that is never spoken about.
00:31:07 But no countries have ever existed for long when they don't protect their own security and their own sovereignty.
00:31:14 And we have increasingly countries that are willing to abdicate that and individuals that don't seem to care about it.
00:31:19 But I want to return to that aspect we were talking about with Corporate Canada and Corporate Canada abdicating its responsibility.
00:31:27 One of the things you also see is the immersion of these companies in the DEI world.
00:31:33 And this is something that we see even more than in corporate Canada in academic settings.
00:31:38 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 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 We're talking about the academic elites, regardless of whether you're trans or cis or black or white or anything.
00:32:14 Now, it was quite interesting.
00:32:15 There was a piece in Nature, which used to be an esteemed journal published in the United States,
00:32:20 a piece in nature that was celebrating the rise of diversity hiring, which comes obviously at
00:32:27 the expense of merit-based hiring. Why can we not just return to the basics, return to
00:32:33 allowing merit to govern who we're hiring, especially when, as was noted in a column in
00:32:38 the National Post by Professor Lawrence Krauss, there wasn't really any defense of why these
00:32:43 things are working or if they were. Professor Krauss joins us now. It's good to talk to you,
00:32:49 professor. Thanks for coming on today. It's good to be back with you. It was nice to see Bruce
00:32:53 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 to. Oh, wonderful. Well, I look forward to seeing that when it comes out here. This is, I mean,
00:33:03 Science Magazine has, of course, published some of the most, you know, rigorously vetted, peer
00:33:09 reviewed scientific research in the past. And now there's not even a pretense of scientific basis
00:33:15 for this explain what's what they're passing off here as justification for a dei over merit yeah
00:33:21 first first we should correct you earlier said nature um sorry science but it's all right nature
00:33:26 is not equally bad we could have an yeah fair enough nature and the ridiculous editorials that
00:33:30 have appeared there both nature and science which are two of the preeminent science journals in the
00:33:35 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 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 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 and they announced that guess what the number of women increased isn't that amazing and it's like
00:34:24 it you know it's it and and again what's also equally amazing there was no discussion in the
00:34:31 article about merit or about qualifications except to say two things that many of the women 1.00
00:34:38 who were headhunted they saw they went out and sought women this is an engineering school
00:34:41 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 that women don't seem to want to go into engineering but that is never ever discussed
00:34:50 in this kind of article the assumption is that somehow they're being kept out so the school went
00:34:54 out and headhunted women and the only statement that was made which kind of almost humorous was
00:35:01 that a number of the women who were headhunted said they were amazed to be headhunted because
00:35:04 they didn't think they were qualified for the job and and then the president of the of the university
00:35:11 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 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 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 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 also is sexist because it's just i mean it's assuming that you know there aren't men in the
00:35:35 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 and ultimately the final question which is you know what were the qualifications what what were
00:35:48 the the uh was the bar lowered for these people and and how how pervasive this is in academia was
00:35:56 really put home for me with a colleague of mine who's a professor at usc in california
00:36:01 point out that a colleague of hers who's dutch said to her well there's no there's no discrimination
00:36:07 here um because you know we're we're not keeping men out we're just creating position for women
00:36:14 and and it's like that you could say that without realizing what you're saying and
00:36:20 being academic in an institution is kind of remarkable let's assume for a moment that
00:36:24 male and female engineers are are both equally good that there's no distinction between the 1.00
00:36:30 the two. So in any group of 100 male engineers and 100 female engineers, let's say that there
00:36:35 are the same number that are qualified and the same number that are unqualified. But let's now
00:36:39 say that there are 10% of the engineers who are women and 90% are men, which is not actually that
00:36:45 far off. So if you're hiring 50% of the positions being women, that means you're necessarily 0.95
00:36:51 elevating people who are unqualified. And they're not unqualified because they're women, they're 0.73
00:36:56 unqualified because you're manipulating your talent pool in a way that you wouldn't if you
00:37:01 were just hiring the aptitudes I mean this is not I'm not a I'm not an eminent physicist like
00:37:05 yourself I'm not a scientist I get foggy with numbers but I don't think I'm missing anything
00:37:10 here but these people who are longer educated than I am seem to be well that you're taking the
00:37:14 numbers is indeed correct in general I mean you know there can always be exceptions but it is a
00:37:20 problem when and actually this has happened in Canada in a number of cases both in the number
00:37:25 people in the cabinet of the of the current prime minister but also in in in what the canadian
00:37:31 government is doing regarding the most prestigious chairs in in academia the canada research council
00:37:36 of canada research canada research chairs yes yeah and and um they're requiring that to match
00:37:41 the demographics of the background society exactly and therefore requiring among other things that
00:37:47 only women can be offered these positions and the real question is and and in order to do the 1.00
00:37:52 statistics properly for what you said. Your presumption is perfectly reasonable, a priori,
00:37:56 if you don't know any of the numbers. It's more reasonable to assume what you assumed than to
00:38:00 assume the opposite. But better still is to look at the pool of applicants, the pool of people
00:38:05 who are applying. If 90% of the people who are applying for positions are male, and you take
00:38:14 50% of the positions and give them to females, say, then clearly, then clearly you're doing
00:38:20 something wrong. I mean, if there's equal application, if there are equal pools, that's
00:38:24 one thing. But you have to look at the pools of the applicants. And there's lots of studies that
00:38:28 suggest, and every time people have tried to enforce these demographic rules in, say, engineering,
00:38:35 that they find that generally they attract fewer women, even if you try and do these things.
00:38:40 There are other fields, like, by the way, education, which are 80 or 90% women
00:38:44 in at universities and and and and in in colleges and but no one tries to turn around the other way
00:38:52 so the point is that there are predilections and in fact there have been studies of you know
00:38:57 there's some studies you might say that are more egalitarian like ones in in in in uh Scandinavia
00:39:03 and interestingly enough those which seem to have fewer barriers for women doing things
00:39:07 have even a larger gap between in certain stem fields like engineering than in in in in in the
00:39:14 west so there are many people what reasons why people may not choose to go into a field and to
00:39:19 say that to assume it's always sexism or racism is clearly to make an assumption that you you have
00:39:24 an obligation to show first of all um but secondly you're you're you know you're you're ultimately
00:39:31 doing a disservice to everyone if you because you're also suggesting that you're being patronizing
00:39:38 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 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 and there and there are other fields you don't care that there are no men in the whole thing
00:39:54 is patronizing women discriminating against men and anti-merit there's on the surface it makes
00:40:00 no sense now i'm a scientist and i'm perfectly happy to be proved wrong by data and evidence
00:40:07 but there's no such data evidence applied here or in fact every bit of evidence i've ever seen
00:40:12 suggests the opposite that first of all these kind of brute force affirmative action techniques
00:40:17 don't work in general to affect the field they also stigmatize the the people who who do get the
00:40:25 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 is that's why they got the job not because of their qualifications and the last thing is
00:40:35 you're generally not doing what i mean all these things are well motivated to try and increase you
00:40:42 know increase the opportunities for people but what especially people who are really marginalized
00:40:47 but what you're doing when you're hiring faculty is you're not dealing with people who are
00:40:50 marginalized you're dealing with the elites generally you're dealing with people who've
00:40:54 gone to get a phd at a reasonable university they were and so you're not you're not digging
00:40:59 into the people who are really you know the i used to live in cleveland the people and the kids in
00:41:04 the public schools there who don't have textbooks because the schools are run down and and you know
00:41:08 those are the people you want to try and give a leg up to you want to provide opportunities
00:41:11 But at the highest end of academia, you're generally not what diversity is all about.
00:41:18 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 It's discriminatory and it's exactly the right. 1.00
00:41:29 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 And then it's ill brought about.
00:41:40 And the net consequence, as far as I can see, generally hurts everyone.
00:41:45 The people who get the jobs are stigmatized.
00:41:47 People who don't get the jobs, the men who don't get the jobs are hurt.
00:41:51 If you're hiring people who aren't qualified or as qualified, your merit is going down.
00:41:55 So what's the upside except for virtue signaling?
00:41:59 That's what this is all about.
00:42:00 Do the proponents of this, in your experience, argue that diversity is just in and of itself the goal?
00:42:06 diversity isn't established as a first principle positive and therefore a more diverse faculty is
00:42:12 better or do they argue that diversity inherently increases uh something else that it makes for a
00:42:19 better education or a better faculty the claim the claim is that diversity improves quality
00:42:25 now look i can understand look the statement is always made that you know if you're if you're a
00:42:29 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 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 esoteric but there's a logic to it yes yeah yeah but the notion that diversity somehow increases
00:42:44 improves the field is as far as i can see without evidence and and the arc and and the whole point
00:42:52 is that you it's what we really want is equality of the opportunity it's not equality of outcomes
00:42:57 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 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 working class single mother or a single father has opportunities and, you know, they've got bigger 0.66
00:43:16 challenges. And so we want to try and provide equality of opportunity, but that's different
00:43:21 than equality of outcome. And that's what this kind of ridiculous policy is all about. And again, 0.81
00:43:27 in academia which is the last possible place you know the faculty if you're hiring faculty
00:43:32 at university you've already taken a very select hand-picked subset of the population who've gone
00:43:38 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 like i hate to use the word but they're already privileged in that sense and and and uh and so
00:43:50 i don't like anything that's sacred that you can't question and the claim that diversity improves
00:43:55 quality and and diversity meaning diversity of identity if we label these people and give them
00:44:01 identities either being female or trans or or indigenous or black or or whatever if you label
00:44:09 them by that that somehow having enough labels makes it better it's it's demeaning i think to
00:44:15 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 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 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 editing this book specifically universities is that nothing i'm i'm well known as someone who's
00:44:46 not particularly religious and uh quite the opposite and one of the things that i don't
00:44:51 like about sacredness is that you can't ask questions that nothing is sacred everything
00:44:56 should be subject question especially in science and what's scary is you can't ask the question
00:45:01 um even the question is is a more diverse operating room better for patients i mean maybe it
00:45:06 is but you can't even ask the question or raise a doubt without expecting to be ostracized or
00:45:11 sometimes removed and uh and that's scary because not only are these policies taking place but if
00:45:18 faculty oppose these policies then they're subject to real problems at universities so people so i
00:45:24 suspect that many of these universities faculty roll their eyes and say look we just want to get
00:45:29 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 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 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 professor for 40 years and that's generally the faculty's attitude about almost anything
00:45:49 yeah just get by uh professor lawrence kress president of the origins project foundation
00:45:54 also host of the origins podcast thank you so much for coming on professor good to talk to you
00:45:58 it's been it's been a pleasure you take care all right you too you know my position on the
00:46:03 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 and that's what we should be and i think generally speaking used to be striving for as a society with
00:46:13 not caring now let me be perfectly candid i think there are areas in which diversity is providing a
00:46:18 benefit but i would also say diversity of experience matters a lot more let's say you're
00:46:23 trying to put together a group project and you want all of these different people in your group
00:46:27 You don't want people that are going to think the same way.
00:46:30 So someone from an urban setting and someone from a rural setting, irrespective of race,
00:46:35 could contribute different things.
00:46:36 Someone who went to a community college or technical school, someone who went to a university,
00:46:41 that's a form of diversity.
00:46:43 And yes, I can see circumstances in which gender diversity would be key.
00:46:47 Men and women approach things differently.
00:46:49 But if you're talking about hiring for a position, the most qualified person is not necessarily
00:46:55 the one who happens to be the most diverse and this again should not be a radical thing to say
00:47:01 but everyone jumps up and down and says it's so offensive and my goodness what's what's wrong
00:47:06 with merit why is merit no longer the goal that should be the question put back in anyone that
00:47:10 champions these things that does it for us for today we'll be back tomorrow with more of Canada's
00:47:14 most irreverent talk show here on true north the Andrew Lawton show thank you god bless and good
00:47:19 day to you all thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton show support the program by donating to
00:47:24 True North at www.tnc.news.
00:47:54 We'll be right back.