The double standard when it comes to protesting in Canada
Episode Stats
Words per minute
144.00699
Harmful content
Misogyny
1
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Hate speech
1
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Summary
In this episode, I sit down with former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to talk about his response to anti-pipeline protests in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and how he handled the situation in the face of Indigenous and environmental protest.
Transcript
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I want to ask you again though about Canada's institutions. Do you think we're in a good shape
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as a country? What do you think of the charter at 40? What do you think of the broader constitutional
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structure? How can we make these institutions more robust? What needs to be done?
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Boy, that's a very big question. We're in bad shape. We have a breakdown in the rule of law.
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It was just striking and disgusting to see how the difference in 24 months between the
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Aboriginal and environmentalist protesters in February and March of 2020, so right around the
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time that COVID was starting to become an issue, we had people blockading railway lines,
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making it impossible for ships in Halifax and Vancouver to unload, and the cause they were
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fighting for was it was anti-pipeline in the name of traditional Aboriginal territory,
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even though the elected chiefs in those areas were pro-pipeline and were looking forward to
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the job creation and getting their 80% unemployment rates, which you see on some reserves, getting that
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down and getting people working. But in the name of Aboriginal rights, in the name of the environment,
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in the name of anti-pipelines, we had these protesters that blockaded railway lines in Canada
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and the Prime Minister's response was to negotiate and to say, we have to be patient,
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even though that was definitely criminal conduct, to blockade a railway line, to blockade a highway
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and prevent any traffic, not just slowing down traffic, but an outright prohibition on train travel.
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So then fast forward to 2021, we've got vandals in Manitoba at the legislature tearing down and
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vandalizing a statue of Queen Victoria, which is criminal conduct, and police just stand by and watch.
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And then we get the truckers in Ottawa, not a single trucker charged with any crime in the first three
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weeks that they're there, which tells you just how not illegal their behaviour was when there wasn't a
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single criminal charge. There's no charges laid, no arrests made. And then you get this crackdown where
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the Prime Minister imposes martial law on the country, the Emergencies Act, and declares a national
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emergency. And next thing you know, we've got police horses trampling women, you've got unarmed
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protesters getting beaten by police clubs, and you get this aggressive physical repression of a peaceful
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protest. So the double standard is glaring. Where we're at in Canada is that if you're demonstrating
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for a cause that the Prime Minister is sympathetic to, even if you're blatantly breaking the law,
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you're not going to get in trouble. Conversely, if you're protesting for a cause that the Prime Minister
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disagrees with, like our charter rights and freedoms that have been taken away from us the past two
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years, well then we're going to have a ruthless physical suppression of peaceful protest. That
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double standard is a violation of the rule of law, and it's very, very scary.