Juno News - June 30, 2021


The Left in Canada is turning on the symbols they created

Mentioned
John Diefenbaker Lester Pearson Pierre Trudeau John A. Macdonald Matthew Hayday Al-Hébert
Prosecuting Thought Crimes Celebrate the successes and accomplishments of First Nations people

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

179.16

Word count

1,610

Sentence count

84

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In years past, on July 1st, we would unabashedly celebrate Canada as the best country in the world. Canada is safe, secure, free, and open, and Canadians are gracious, friendly, welcoming, and great stewards of our tradition of ordered liberty that dates back to the Magna Carta. That s the world s first written constitution, limiting the powers of government and enshrining the rights of the individual. But I say it s a tough year to celebrate Canada because the media and the Laurentian elite in this country have turned on Canada.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I won't deny that this is a tough year to celebrate Canada Day.
00:00:03.400 Hi, I'm Candice Belcom, and this is the Candice Belcom Show.
00:00:10.880 In years past, on this Canada Day, or as I typically call it, Dominion Day,
00:00:15.500 here at True North, we would unabashedly celebrate Canada as the best country in the world.
00:00:20.700 Canada is safe, secure, free, and open, and Canadians are gracious, friendly, welcoming,
00:00:26.160 and great stewards of our tradition of ordered liberty that dates back to the signing of the
00:00:31.600 Magna Carta. That's the world's first written constitution, limiting the powers of government
00:00:36.640 and enshrining the rights of the individual. Canada is a beautiful country, and there's
00:00:41.680 nothing better than getting outside, exploring the natural wonders of our country, and spending
00:00:46.060 some time in the great outdoors. Canadians are adventuresome, we're tough as nails, loyal,
00:00:51.540 and we're committed to developing and building up our great country, despite the natural
00:00:56.100 challenges, and often up against all the elements. But I say it's a tough year to celebrate Canada,
00:01:01.780 because the media and the Laurentian elite in this country have basically turned on Canada.
00:01:07.080 They've certainly turned on Canada's first and founding prime minister, Sir Johnny Macdonald,
00:01:11.440 and they've turned on Canada's early and often failed policies regarding First Nations.
00:01:16.120 But here's the thing. The media and the Laurentian elite in Canada, the ones who are now turning on
00:01:22.100 Canada, they've never aptly represented Canada or Canadians. They invented their own narrative,
00:01:28.020 a myth, that was never really that true, never really that accurate. These Laurentian elites
00:01:32.800 sneered and turned their noses at everyday Canadians, and instead invented their own anti-American
00:01:37.920 narrative to define Canada. The left in this country pulled Canada away from its British roots
00:01:43.400 and identity as being part of the mighty British Empire and crafted a new post-British identity
00:01:48.540 after World War II. At that time, Canada was known as a mighty ally and a country with grit,
00:01:54.920 determination, and innovation. Canada punched well above its weight in the Second World War
00:01:59.980 and helped to secure a victory against fascism and against the Nazis in Europe. But the new leftist
00:02:06.380 narrative of Canadian identity was defined as a softer, more progressive, more enlightened,
00:02:11.580 and more worldly version of our American neighbours. The left launched a campaign to replace the
00:02:17.360 symbolism associated with Canada's historical connection with the British Empire and introduced
00:02:22.840 new, broad, and generic symbols to represent Canada. In the mid-1960s, the Liberals pushed a
00:02:29.180 bitter debate in Parliament over introducing a new flag. At the time, Canada used both the Union Jack
00:02:35.020 and the Red Ensign, both interchangeably, as our national flag. The Liberals wanted a new flag,
00:02:40.000 some form of a maple leaf, which had long been a secondary symbol for Canada. The Tories at the
00:02:45.300 time, led by future Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, opposed the new flag, saying it abandoned Canada's
00:02:50.660 British tradition. Diefenbaker accused Liberal Prime Minister at the time, Lester B. Pearson,
00:02:56.520 of trying to use the flag debate as a distraction from his scandal plagued in unpopular government and
00:03:01.640 governing record. Public opinion was basically split among English Canadians, and according to Pierre
00:03:07.220 Trudeau at the time, French Canadians didn't really care either way. Some historians opposed the change,
00:03:13.380 calling the new flag innocuous, and saying it would not promote national unity, but would merely produce
00:03:18.340 an indifferent response. Pearson eventually got his way, and the new flag was officially hoisted at the
00:03:24.560 Peace Tower on Parliament Hill on February 15, 1965. John Diefenbaker said this to Lester B. Pearson,
00:03:31.180 he said, you have done more to divide the country than any other Prime Minister. And in fact, when John
00:03:36.420 Diefenbaker died in 1979, his coffin was draped with both the red ensign and the new maple leaf.
00:03:42.900 But the Liberals weren't done. Next, in 1982, another Liberal government first changed our Bill of Rights
00:03:48.360 and wrote a new Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and they also changed the name of our national holiday.
00:03:53.660 From the moment our country was formed in 1867, all the way up till 1982, July 1st was celebrated as our
00:04:00.400 national holiday, but it was known as Dominion Day. Then, on one hot day in July, Dominion Day was
00:04:06.020 officially thrown out, in something that can aptly be described as a coup. A Liberal from Quebec
00:04:11.420 introduced a private member's bill to change the holiday's name to Canada Day, and a near-empty
00:04:16.280 House of Commons rushed to push through this bill. Let me read a passage from the Dictionary of Canadian
00:04:21.780 Politics. According to historian Matthew Hayday, 13 members of Parliament remained in the House of
00:04:26.820 Commons on a hot Friday afternoon in July, and began debating a private member's bill, tabled by
00:04:31.860 Quebec MP Al-Hébert, to amend the Holiday Act so as to change the name from Dominion Day to Canada Day.
00:04:39.240 As Hayday told the Canadian press in 2019,
00:04:42.560 no one actually asked the Speaker of the House to verify that there was still quorum. Unless someone
00:04:47.300 asks, it's assumed that it still exists. But there were some doubts as to whether, in fact, there were enough
00:04:52.900 members of Parliament in the House. Undeterred, the MPs held first, second, and third reading in under
00:04:58.820 10 minutes on that hazy Friday afternoon. The bill eventually passed through the Senate, and it became
00:05:03.760 law later that year. So with the stroke of a pen, Dominion Day was out, and the more on-brand Canada
00:05:08.940 Day was in. So 13 MPs decided to ditch Dominion Day. Not very democratic. And interestingly, it was the
00:05:16.240 Globe and Mail newspaper that led a campaign to save the old Dominion Day. In the mid-1990s, the now
00:05:21.780 left-wing newspaper launched a national campaign called Bring Back Our Dominion Day, selling t-shirts
00:05:27.360 and posters. But alas, the campaign did not get anywhere, and it was a lost cause at that point. But there is
00:05:33.760 just a little bit of delicious irony to hear liberals and leftists today calling for our country to cancel
00:05:40.520 Canada Day, since Canada Day was the holiday that they invented and they imposed. I know that there are some
00:05:46.820 conservatives out there who chuckle a little bit when they see the cancel Canada Day trending on social
00:05:51.980 media. You know, they might shrug and say, sure, cancel Canada Day, but bring back Dominion Day.
00:05:57.840 And of course, it's not the only example. As recently as 2015, the Trudeau liberals forced another change
00:06:03.820 to our national symbol. This time, they awkwardly changed our national anthem. They alleged that it
00:06:09.080 wasn't gender neutral. They got rid of the line in All Thy Sons Command and replaced it with a really
00:06:14.920 clunky and awkward sounding, in all of us command. Liberals have a habit of changing our national
00:06:20.940 symbols to make them more broad, more generic, and less British. Their attempts to whitewash our past, 0.79
00:06:26.920 whitewash our history, and to define the country's national identity based on left-wing government
00:06:32.360 policies like universal government health care and subsidized university was always set up to fail.
00:06:39.340 That's because their self-righteous purity is based on fiction, not fact.
00:06:43.380 As much as the liberals try to distance Canada from its history and its British past, its British roots,
00:06:49.400 it can't. Canada, just like every other country in the world, and just like every other civilization
00:06:54.700 in human history, is complex. And its history is rife with examples of war, fighting, killing,
00:07:01.520 cruelty, abuse of power, and illiberal lapses in judgment. Canada, of course, is no exception or no
00:07:07.460 different. So now Canada's Laurentian elite face a crisis. Their projection of their Canada
00:07:13.420 doesn't hold up to scrutiny. The image that they propagated over the years has been shattered.
00:07:18.740 But let me be blunt, this is their problem. They're the ones that will have to reconcile
00:07:23.040 their self-constructed myth of Canada with the reality that early Canadians were anything but
00:07:28.720 kinder, gentler, more progressive versions of our American neighbors. For the rest of us who maintain a
00:07:34.440 more realistic image of ourselves and our country, not much has changed. Canada's history is comprised
00:07:39.840 of sacrifice, grit, and perseverance. We get a lot of things right, but we also get a lot of things
00:07:45.040 wrong. And when we did, we acknowledge our mistakes and we do our best to learn from them. Canada today
00:07:50.980 is a wonderful and pluralistic country, a place where we share basic principles, traditions, and values.
00:07:56.780 But this allows for a great deal of freedom, individualism, and diversity to grow on top of
00:08:01.460 these shared values. Canada's commitment to basic principles like human dignity and individual
00:08:06.700 freedom mean that fewer people get left behind, but that there's also true opportunity and upward
00:08:11.420 mobility, unlike almost every other part of the world. Canada makes lots of mistakes, and our
00:08:16.640 political leaders are often misguided and often plain wrong. But we have mechanisms to protect
00:08:21.640 ourselves from tyrannical government, and we have the ability to hold politicians accountable and elect
00:08:26.840 new governments. That is part of the reason why people come from all over the world to live in
00:08:31.580 Canada. That is why Canada routinely ranks at or near the top of global indexes measuring economic
00:08:37.360 freedom, quality of life, happiness, good governance, and safety. Canada is one of the least corrupt
00:08:42.660 countries in the world, and yes, Canada is one of the least racist countries in the world.
00:08:46.960 So this Dominion Day, ignore the media narrative, ignore the smug Laurentian elites, and raise a toast to
00:08:52.820 this great country that we call home. Happy Canada Day. Happy Dominion Day. I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is
00:08:58.360 The Candace Malcolm Show.