00:01:25.860I mean, after the end of the show, though, we got to get through to the end before you pack up your virtual bag.
00:01:30.600Today, we are going to talk about this case that I've been following, which is a local case for me in London, Ontario, but has much broader implications.
00:01:40.460And that is the decision to ban a speech being put together by the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship made by the local library.
00:01:49.480The London Public Library, committed to intellectual freedom, says free speech is a cornerstone and libraries should be upholding it.
00:01:56.900But when a lecturer from overseas wants to come and talk about free speech, that's just a little too controversial to allow on library property.
00:02:06.020So we'll talk about that with the president of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, Mark Mercer, in just a couple of moments.
00:02:13.340Also going to delve into the wonderful world of corporate welfare.
00:02:17.280You may remember that case we discussed a couple of weeks ago with Volkswagen getting bajillion dollars from the government.
00:02:24.200And now all of a sudden another automotive manufacturer is saying they want more money too.
00:02:28.760So they've halted construction on a plant until they get more money from the government.
00:02:33.700So it's almost as though we saw this one coming.
00:02:37.200But first off, I want to just talk about this clip that's making its way around the internet right now, which is just a delightful, delightful clip.
00:02:45.020So Justin Trudeau today came out and his government promised some new bail reform, which is supposedly going to make it a little bit more difficult for violent offenders to get bail.
00:02:54.500But a lot of people think this is kind of window dressing, that this problem has been going on for quite some time.
00:02:59.800Police have been warning about it. People in the community safety sector have been warning about it.
00:03:04.500And there has not been a solution from the government.
00:03:07.320And the conservatives have been talking about this. They don't like the revolving door of the justice system.
00:03:12.340And Pierre Polyev, in particular, came out against this.
00:03:15.400And there was one particular reporter that just didn't get quite grasp the issue.
00:05:17.420Because we let them out early on bail.
00:05:24.320I've seen that like four or five times.
00:05:26.920If you're wondering why I was like delayed on the show today,
00:05:30.420Well, maybe you didn't know that I was, but I was slightly because I just like had watched that for like 12 minutes.
00:05:35.500And my goodness, like it just at a certain point, I like Pierre Polyev just breaking the idea of, you know, being polite and civil and courteous.
00:05:42.460And it's just like, are you serious? Like that face has got to be a meme until the end of time.
00:05:46.760So we'll talk about this a little bit more tomorrow.
00:05:48.280But I wanted you to see the clip and be able to enjoy it and bask in it as I could.
00:05:52.360Going back to the story of the London Public Library, which is London, Ontario, not London, England,
00:05:58.680which has been especially confusing because the speaker at the center of this is a speaker from
00:06:04.040england so i was like getting retweeted by all these brits that were like taking out their anger
00:06:08.880at the library in london england uh which admittedly would probably do something like
00:06:13.240this too but in this particular context it is the public library down in my neck of the woods
00:06:18.560in southwestern ontario which has barred an academic freedom group of which i happen to be
00:06:24.480member the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship from booking out its theater from
00:06:29.700paying to rent its theater to host a talk by British author Joanna Williams the talk unironically
00:06:36.080was to be titled sex gender and the limits of free speech and this was evidently too controversial to
00:06:41.660hold at the London Public Library despite its stated policy its official policy committed to
00:06:49.420intellectual freedom. And I just want to put up on the screen here for a moment the Statement
00:06:55.180on Intellectual Freedom in Libraries, which is from the CFLA, the Canadian Federation of Library
00:07:01.020Associations. And this statement has actually been adopted by the London Public Library as policy.
00:07:07.500And there's a line in here that you should read, a couple of lines, that all individuals have the
00:07:13.520right to access the full range of knowledge, imagination, ideas, and opinions, and to express
00:07:19.600their thoughts publicly, only the courts may abridge free expression rights in Canada. The
00:07:25.780policy also says that the right to intellectual freedom includes the right to seek, receive, and
00:07:31.200impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers, and it also affirms
00:07:36.940that libraries have a, quote, core responsibility, unquote, to support, defend, and promote the
00:07:44.640universal principles of intellectual freedom and privacy. So we have this policy committing the
00:07:50.940London Public Library to intellectual freedom, but when the rubber hits the road, they say that
00:07:55.560a talk on free speech is evidently worthy of being deplatformed. The president of the Society for
00:08:02.620Academic Freedom and Scholarships. SAFS is a professor from St. Mary's University by the name
00:08:07.560of Mark Mercer, and he joins me now. Mark, it's good to talk to you again. Thanks for coming on
00:08:13.120today. Now, I mean, the one gross sort of or perverse irony here is that your organization
00:08:21.740exists to combat this, and you're getting proof of the very point that Joanna Williams was going
00:08:28.300to be speaking about, which is that there are these limits on free speech that exist.
00:08:32.620Well, yes, but do you think that irony is appreciated by the people who denied us our space?
00:08:42.080Well, no, and I guess that's where I want to just talk a little bit about SAFs for a moment, because this is not, and again, I mean no offense to you and to others, because I'm a member as well, but this is not a fire-breathing organization, I'd say.
00:08:54.840Any meetings I've ever been to have been very respectful.
00:08:58.260You and I were corresponding this week.
00:09:00.120There's never been any disruptive protest added.
00:09:03.160And, you know, one member of SAF said, you know, it's a bunch of stuffy academics sitting around.
00:09:08.100It's not, you know, this controversial lightning rod.
00:09:11.440So why do you think that this ban has been issued by the library?
00:09:16.260Well, I'm not sure, but I want to take issue with some of the things you said.
00:09:19.800I was just quoting one of your speakers from this year as far as stuffy academics go.
00:09:24.500but carry on well we there's lots of controversy but uh yes we we discuss um things civilly and uh
00:09:33.620uh because we we want to uh to understand how things are we want to talk with each other
00:09:39.380uh so uh very many controversial uh things have been said at staffs meetings but but it's always
00:09:45.700done in a respectful way not to right i guess that's more where i was getting at there that's
00:09:50.340right no no fisticuffs no pushing people into the hallways or anything like that yes so it is
00:09:59.940strange to me that a group whose record has been one of civil discourse is now
00:10:08.180denied space in the library and some of the reasons I don't think I understand them but
00:10:13.460that we would deny um the library patrons um uh use of the facilities or something like that
00:10:21.460what what are we going to do uh take um uh pea shooters and and shoot at library page patrons
00:10:29.140so i really don't understand where where they're coming from yeah we're not blocking entrances
00:10:36.980no and if anyone's familiar with the layout of the library which most people listening wouldn't be
00:12:45.780And this is why I think the thing is deeply disturbing.
00:12:48.560I think the only grounds that seem to make any sense for denying us the space
00:12:55.000is that they don't like what they believe Joanna will say.
00:12:58.980It can't be that we are a threat to property or persons.
00:13:05.680so that must be it but they do have an obligation as you noted by reading the intellectual freedom
00:13:12.800statement to to grant us that space one of the things that that strikes me about that statement
00:13:20.640is that there was a big push a few years ago in ontario for example to have universities put these
00:13:26.480commitments to academic freedom and and freedom of speech these policies in place and i was a
00:13:31.680a supporter of that because I think it's better to have than not but I think that what this episode
00:13:35.720is illuminating and some of the other issues from the academy in the last few years is that you can
00:13:40.260have the words on the paper all you want but if the people in these institutions are not committed
00:13:45.880to free speech or maybe they are nominally but are too scared to follow through with it it actually
00:13:52.060doesn't really mean all that much that's been one of my central themes for 15 years or so in my
00:13:59.060writing that it's it's the culture that matters and if we have a culture of intellectual endeavor
00:14:05.380a culture of uh uh free uh freedom of expression freedom of inquiry uh then you know we don't have
00:14:11.780to worry too much about uh what the uh what the words on the paper are uh words on the on paper
00:14:16.820are good when things um become difficult but unless there is that commitment no they don't
00:14:24.980mean much at all. Universities can get around government-imposed policies. Another problem
00:14:31.940with the government-imposed policies is that there's no better way of galvanizing the anti-free
00:14:37.140speech people than to threaten government action against the university. I'm still on the fence. I
00:14:45.220think there are good arguments for governments taking a more active role than they are,
00:14:52.660but really it does come down to the professors and the students the professors and the students have
00:14:57.140to be in favor of freedom of expression in order for the university campus to be a place of freedom
00:15:02.420of expression um you probably haven't seen this yet but i'm gonna have a story about it at five
00:15:08.340o'clock today this just came about this afternoon and i i'm still giving the library the opportunity
00:15:13.700to respond to it a memo that was sent out uh internally by the ceo of the library about this
00:15:19.300incident but but one part that i i can raise with you is that the ceo says that the library policies
00:15:27.380have to be uh filtered through the lens of i'm going to pull up the exact wording here
00:15:32.580exceptional customer service and a commitment to anti-racism and anti-oppression and and those
00:15:38.340words in an academic setting i i think are they're loaded terms and they may be on the surface sound
00:15:43.780great yes anti-racism is good anti-oppression is good but what strikes me in the library case
00:15:50.080clearly and in universities is that the idea of academic freedom seems to be secondary to these
00:15:55.180things it's yes academic freedom but we have to balance this against our commitment to diversity
00:16:00.120or we have to balance this against our our commitment to anti-racism and these things
00:16:04.920don't really balance so much as be subject to a veto it seems well and that's right and really
00:16:11.600a lot depends on what one wants from a democratic, multicultural society, individualistic society.
00:16:19.440And I think the equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives and ideas have a basis in a sort
00:16:29.040of collectivity or collectivism where the group is somehow supreme. And if you are concerned
00:16:38.620about the individual, you think the individual inquire, the individual discussant is what's
00:16:45.900most important, then you won't see a conflict between academic freedom and anti-racism.
00:16:53.440But it's only if somehow the group, however it's defined, is the arbiter of what is oppressive
00:17:06.340and what isn't oppressive, that we find conflicts between freedom of expression or academic freedom
00:17:11.300and anti-racism. Now, as I indicated in my reporting, and as you've said elsewhere,
00:17:18.600the event is going on. You've had to find another venue, and the talk by Joanna Williams, which I'll
00:17:24.020be at, and I would encourage anyone else in the area to be at, is preceding Friday at the Delta
00:17:28.920Hotel. But in general, where do you go from here? I know you indicated when we spoke earlier this
00:17:34.380week that you're trying to get a sense of internal processes and deliberations here.
00:17:39.380I know I've also filed a Freedom of Information request on my own independently of you, but
00:17:44.220what do you want to do moving forward with this?
00:17:47.460Well, I want people to know about this and to approach their libraries and say that this
00:17:54.900is inconsistent with the library's mission, what the library should be doing.
00:17:59.760I think if people don't know that we were turned down, then it looks like, you know, everything's fine with the library.
00:18:08.080So, you know, I want people to know and people to say, well, you know, if they can do it to the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, which is just a talking shop.
00:18:22.360We like controversy, we like to talk about it, then anyone could be turned down.
00:18:29.760There just don't seem to be any grounds for denying us space, and then that's an arbitrary decision by the library, and everyone is affected.
00:18:43.960So that's why we want to know more about it, yes, even though we're having the talk and we'll be doing this for a number of years coming.
00:18:55.480good well that's I'm looking forward to it and anyone who is interested can learn more
00:19:01.740at the SAF's website there Mark Mercer Professor Mark Mercer and President of SAF's always good
00:19:07.020to talk to you Mark thanks and we'll see you on Friday thanks Andrew yes looking forward to it
00:19:11.320see you there all right thank you very much and yeah Joanna Williams she has never been cancelled
00:19:16.640she's had a call in the UK at one point to cancel one of her talks but it's never happened
00:19:21.340The odd thing, I didn't mention this with Mark,
00:19:24.260SAFs actually had an event at the very same library in 2019,
00:19:29.120which I was at, and I had introduced the keynote speaker,
00:19:32.560who is a University of Chicago historian, Rachel Fulton Brown.
00:19:36.000And again, no protest, no controversy,
00:19:37.900except for sort of the controversy that rigorous debate and thought can sometimes provoke.
00:19:43.900But the idea that we have libraries which are fighting tooth and nail
00:19:48.520against so-called book bans from the, you know, evil, scary conservatives in the U.S. or whatever.
00:19:54.740They talk about the importance of free exchange of ideas, except if they don't like your idea.
00:20:00.360And then all of a sudden, it is not all that important.
00:20:03.500I want to move on to the idea of corporate welfare here.
00:20:06.500And we talked a few weeks back on this show about the slippery slope,
00:20:10.240which you didn't even need to look that far down the pipeline to see coming,
00:20:13.580and the implications of the federal and provincial governments bending over backwards
00:20:18.520to give billions and billions and billions in subsidies to Volkswagen
00:20:23.460to build an electric vehicle battery plant in St. Thomas, Ontario.
00:20:28.060Again, I'm sticking with local news today, but there's a bigger picture aspect of it.
00:20:32.380$13 billion was what we found out Volkswagen was getting.
00:20:35.540And now you look just a couple hours down the 401 and Stellantis,
00:20:40.260An auto manufacturer building a plant in Windsor, Ontario, has halted because it wants more money from the federal and provincial governments.
00:20:50.040And now the great story here, Philippe-Francois Champagne, the federal cabinet minister, says Ontario needs to pay its fair share to the company to end the stalemate.
00:21:02.220So all of a sudden, it is companies shaking down the government at all levels for money.
00:21:08.140And this is just the way business is done in Canada.
00:21:11.180Aaron Woodrick is the Domestic Policy Director for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and joins us now.
00:21:16.760Aaron, it's always good to talk to you.
00:21:18.500Could we have seen this coming from a mile away that now every company is just wanting more and more cash
00:21:23.940now that they've seen how much is coming out of the government taps?
00:21:27.780Boy, if only someone could have predicted this, like you and me and a lot of other people,
00:21:32.220who said you know I do have to confess though Andrew I didn't see the chickens coming home to
00:21:36.220roost quite this quickly no I thought maybe like years not weeks yeah I mean it is really something
00:21:41.720here and look put yourself in Stellantis's shoes right I mean what they're doing is perfectly
00:21:45.720logical perfectly rational they're saying they're saying hold on a second you just gave VW 13 billion
00:21:50.980what are we doing here I mean we can clearly get more they're clearly prepared to pay more
00:21:55.280so now they're they've they've stopped constructing their plant um and you know the thing that really
00:22:00.180the real kicker here Andrew is I'm absolutely certain that nobody in the Ford government or
00:22:05.300Trudeau government when they were busy trying to you know get seduce VW with billions of dollars
00:22:10.080none of them put any thought into what it would do to Stellantis none of them put any thought
00:22:13.520into what it would do to other companies watching and learning how to play the game so that's the
00:22:18.980real uh tragedy here is this is a mess entirely of their own making now you've got Ford telling
00:22:24.460the feds to do it and you've got the feds telling Ford government to do it and I'm saying guys
00:22:28.600before you were you were climbing over each other for a chance to offer the subsidy now you're
00:22:33.640saying oh no no it's not my problem i mean the irony is pretty rich here yeah and that's the
00:22:38.840problem i mean they were just bragging about the 13 billion dollars when i would have seen that as
00:22:44.060a confession more than a boast and and now you know they've decided volkswagen is the beneficiary
00:22:49.280everyone else should just be satisfied with what they got but but again if you're a company like
00:22:54.120this and i mean basically you're holding jobs over the government's head here i i get it from
00:22:59.700a business perspective it makes sense because free money is better than no money and they know
00:23:03.540it's being dished out sure but that's that's exactly why these things are dangerous precedents
00:23:08.960once you're a government that hangs a sign in your window saying we will we will give free money away
00:23:14.080what do you think is going to happen to every any company andrew that's thinking of coming to
00:23:18.320Ontario um is going to stop at Queen's Park first and say and hint and say hey we were thinking of
00:23:24.260building this plant here we might build it somewhere else what have you got for me I mean
00:23:27.720this is the situation that they have created for themselves and it's it's just not sustainable
00:23:32.740we're going to see how tough they are I mean you'll recall on the day of the VW announcement
00:23:37.080Andrew the Prime Minister uh very explicitly said oh well you know other companies shouldn't expect
00:23:42.480this this is a one-off well it's only been a few weeks and he's about to be tested if he's going
00:23:47.300to keep his word on that. Yeah. And I know it's difficult to pull up a metaphorical crystal ball
00:23:53.120here and see what's going to happen. I mean, if you're Stellantis and you've already invested
00:23:56.820in starting this plant and you already budgeted for it, it stands to reason that if the government
00:24:02.340were to call their bluff, I would assume they would proceed rather than cut their losses. But
00:24:08.360you never know. And I think the government may not want this if the Stellantis folks end up
00:24:13.300having better pr than the government does sure and you know you might be right but uh we've seen
00:24:18.700in the past we've seen automakers that already have plants in ontario that were up and running
00:24:23.320play this game and imply that you know what if we don't get more subsidies we might have to leave so
00:24:28.520um it would be nice to see a government try and call their bluff on it for once i mean of course
00:24:33.380a lot of governments are terrified that their bluff would be called and they'd have to wear it
00:24:36.900but if you never call their bluff i mean for from a company standpoint what have they got to lose by
00:24:41.300trying to do this all the time you had a great piece in the hub i think it was i think it came
00:24:46.820out yesterday i read it this morning and when you talk about there being smarter ways to strengthen
00:24:51.420canada than with corporate welfare but one of the angles that you discussed here which i think is
00:24:55.580important is how certain jobs can be sentimentalized and i think you know factory jobs are
00:25:00.880that because it really is to a lot of people this hallmark of a bygone era where everyone in the town
00:25:05.820works at the same factory and around that factory there's a sense of community and i i don't think
00:25:11.000that that sentimentalization for lack of a term is worth the 13 billion dollars no and look there's
00:25:16.620nothing wrong with as i write in the piece of course you should be focused on working class
00:25:21.280families and communities that have lost their employers but what my argument is that you know
00:25:25.940corporate welfare is just creating the illusion of bringing back those old times it's not real
00:25:30.660i mean these are not companies that have an attachment to the community um they're only
00:25:34.600coming because they're getting a big subsidy it's a bit like saying i i've developed this new
00:25:38.640friendship when really you just paid someone to be your friend i mean that's what's going on here
00:25:43.280and i think particularly for conservatives they need to be careful that they're not sort of um
00:25:48.880you know they're not kidding themselves because this is this is not real these are not real jobs
00:25:52.720i mean if you pay someone um to to to hire you um or is that is that is that a real job i mean that's
00:26:00.560most people would find that a bit bizarre is that but that's exactly what's happening here and so i
00:26:03.920I think people need to remember that there's a massive cost involved in something that would
00:26:09.340otherwise just be celebrated as a pure gain to the community. Yeah, and I think there are
00:26:14.760examples of that. I mean, Chapman's, the ice cream factory up in Markdale is a really community
00:26:19.320oriented factory. I think the Savage Arms plant, which I toured a couple of years ago up in
00:26:24.340Peterborough, an American company, but really ingrained in the community. But a lot of these
00:26:28.240automotive manufacturers, it's not to say that they don't have roots in the community in some
00:26:32.640ways. But I don't believe for a second that if BW could do things for more cheaply in Seoul,
00:26:39.320that they wouldn't in a second just shut down overnight and move everything over there,
00:26:42.960because we've seen these big international conglomerates do that. So they aren't really
00:26:47.200invested unless the subsidies keep coming. Sure. And the other thing, when we romanticize
00:26:53.040the sort of one company town, we have to remember how those stories ended most of the time. They
00:26:57.640ended very badly, precisely because companies were at the mercy of a single company. I think
00:27:02.260if you want to build communities that are resilient, that are diversified, you can't have
00:27:06.160one employer. The goal shouldn't be one big employer. It should be a, you know, a range of
00:27:10.520employers so that you don't sort of have all your eggs in one basket. And so if anything, I mean,
00:27:14.760we're trying to recreate a situation that made a lot of these communities vulnerable. And that's
00:27:19.600not something we should aspire to. We should be aspiring to situations where when one company
00:27:23.340goes out of business, it's not devastating to the whole community. And you do that by having
00:27:27.540a lot of smaller employers instead of just one big one i know your focus aaron is on the policy
00:27:33.000over the politics of this but i but i was wondering if you had any advice on how politicians
00:27:37.860could actually criticize this when it becomes very difficult when they have to basically say no
00:27:44.120to an immediate promise of you know 2500 jobs in a particular town i mean in the case of the
00:27:50.260the saint thomas plant it's in a conservative riding and i know there was a bit of an awkward
00:27:54.020encounter there with the local conservative mp karen vecchio when she was standing beside trudeau
00:27:59.060taking pot shots at pierre polly for not supporting corporate welfare sure i mean well there's a few
00:28:04.500things and you can see that the the federal conservatives have done this by referring it to
00:28:08.100the parliamentary budget officer i think that's their way of sort of signaling we're concerned
00:28:11.780but they don't want to sort of give the strongly worded letter approach sure but they don't want
00:28:16.900to give the liberals the clip of them saying that they are against these jobs or things like that
00:28:21.460right but you know i think one thing that uh that uh you know people who want to criticize this can
00:28:26.900just be honest about is saying yeah sure it's going to be good for the people who get those
00:28:30.660jobs uh but let's be honest about the cost i mean this is not an ideal situation we shouldn't have
00:28:35.780to to get jobs this way um and and there's a real cost i mean there are a million other priorities
00:28:40.980there's so many other things canadians expect their tax dollars to go to um and the 13 billion
00:28:45.860is is is not exactly chunk change so um there's an opportunity cost here and you're right andrew no
00:28:51.380Nobody wants to sort of be the Debbie Downer and point out the bad stuff, but somebody needs to do it.
00:28:57.180Thankfully, I'm not an elected official, so I have no hesitation in calling it out.
00:29:01.680Yeah, and I mean, when you look at the math, we looked at the math last time you and I spoke about this on how much it costs per job.
00:29:07.000But even if you just look at the tax burden, $13 billion divided by 40 million people, that's $325 a person.
00:29:13.500I mean, that's not an insignificant amount of money that if you were to ask Mike in Canmore or Joe in wherever,
00:29:20.280about they'd say yeah my family could use that sure and this is for one plant in one community
00:29:25.640i mean if this is your if this is your sort of industrial policy generally how many times can
00:29:30.740you afford to do this and how many communities and how many sectors right is it really going to
00:29:34.520be the one-off uh you know color me skeptical that this is going to be the last time they do this
00:29:39.100aaron woodrick domestic policy guru over at the mcdonald lorie institute always good to talk to
00:29:44.300you aaron thanks for coming on today thanks a lot andrew i imagine we'll probably have aaron back on
00:29:49.180when the government caves to Stellantis,
00:29:51.700as I assume slash fear is inevitable in some form.