Juno News - The road to victory for Conservatives is through culture

00:00:00.240 Why are conservatives so reluctant to talk about culture?

00:00:03.280 If conservatives want to win elections, then they have to lay the groundwork beforehand.

00:00:07.520 They have to promote conservative values and conservative ideas well beforehand.

00:00:11.920 I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:00:18.960 Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for your continued support of True

00:00:23.120 North and The Candace Malcolm Show. Now, if you're anything like me, you often feel

00:00:27.440 disappointed at conservative politicians in this country. They constantly let us down. Namely,

00:00:32.800 they often believe that in order to win elections, they have to basically abandon core principles and

00:00:38.400 core values in order to win over the sort of middle of the road, socially moderate Canadian electorate.

00:00:44.640 That's the basic conventional wisdom among conservative strategists, conservative elites.

00:00:49.280 They tell us that if a conservative party, a conservative politician wants to win,

00:00:53.680 they have to either hide their conservatism or completely throw conservatism under the bus

00:00:59.200 and instead promote the sort of latest trendy leftist progressive ideas and values. And so this

00:01:05.840 strategy, this conventional wisdom is all based on the idea that Canada is a progressive left-wing

00:01:12.000 liberal country that would never elect conservatives. I believe that's a misconception, but regardless,

00:01:17.680 that is the basic theory. And so rather than defending tradition, rather than articulating

00:01:22.800 conservative ideas and a different conservative vision for the country, what we see is conservative

00:01:28.080 politicians often just try to mirror whatever the liberals are saying and doing, including often

00:01:33.680 just the latest left-wing kooky fads, because these conservatives believe that that is the best hope of

00:01:39.760 getting elected. And look, in some ways, you can't really blame conservative politicians for failing to

00:01:44.880 lead us in a more conservative direction because at the end of the day, a conservative's job is to get

00:01:49.920 elected. And so too many are willing to just say and do anything that they need to in order to win.

00:01:55.440 So if we want to see more conservative politicians in this country, we want to see more conservatives

00:02:00.240 promoting true conservative values and ideas. It's not just up to the politicians to lead us down that

00:02:06.640 path. We need to have help from other people in society. We need more people to defend conservative

00:02:12.240 values. We need activists and leaders from the rest of society, from civil society to step up and help

00:02:17.840 pave that path. We need more voices articulating a conservative vision for Canada, more thinkers and

00:02:23.680 leaders defending conservative values, promoting and defending our history, our tradition, our way of

00:02:28.800 life, as well as the basic ideas like human dignity, liberty, and having a robust civil society that's

00:02:35.360 capable of solving some of the tough problems we encounter without always having to rely on the heavy hand

00:02:41.440 of government. So today I want to focus on an organization that does just that. It's called Cardus

00:02:46.400 and I really encourage you to check them out and to support the great work that they do. So it was

00:02:50.480 originally founded all the way back in 1974, but that back then it was called the Work Research Foundation

00:02:56.560 and it worked alongside and in support of the Christian Labour Association of Canada. It was originally

00:03:02.240 just there to sort of help out the Christian Labour Association with conferences and writing and those

00:03:08.080 kind of things. And then Cardus as a think tank came into existence in the fall of 2000 with Michael

00:03:14.240 Van Pelt as its first president and the first full-time employee and Ray Pennings, who is joining me on the

00:03:20.080 program today. He secured the initial grant and was sort of the mastermind of this project. So the two of

00:03:26.080 them together founded Cardus. Cardus focuses on human dignity, strong families, religious freedom, formative

00:03:32.240 education and healthy communities. Those all sound like wonderful things that I would like to hear more of

00:03:37.040 from politicians. And I think that the way to do that is to have more people in society talking

00:03:43.040 about these ideas, aware of the impact that they have and how much we need these sort of secondary

00:03:48.480 institutions, not just relying on government for everything, but again, relying on civil society,

00:03:53.360 relying on communities, relying on strong families. And I just want to read one bit from my friends over

00:03:59.360 at the Hub. They did a spotlight on Cardus celebrating 20 years since Cardus was formed and they wrote this,

00:04:05.360 and I think this is completely spot on. And I think it's so important. And this is part of the reason

00:04:09.280 why I want to talk about this today, but they say this. So while modern conservatives are comfortable

00:04:13.360 pointing out all of the different ways that government is the problem or is not the solution

00:04:18.320 to the problem, they're less comfortable actually explaining what the solution is. So for Cardus,

00:04:23.440 the answer is found in culture, religion, and civil society, which means we need to build a road that

00:04:28.160 connects these things to politics and policymaking. I think that's right. I think that's absolutely brilliant.

00:04:33.280 And I'm so pleased today to be joined by Ray Pennings, the co-founder of Cardus to just sort of delve

00:04:39.440 into some of these ideas a little more. So Ray, thank you so much for joining us and congratulations

00:04:44.560 on 20 years of Cardus. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. Great. Yeah. Well,

00:04:51.040 so to any of the audience out there who's not familiar with Cardus, why don't you give us a little

00:04:56.080 bit of overview on what it is that you do day to day and what you focus on? Well, Cardus is a think tank,

00:05:02.480 so we, you know, in terms of our day to day work, it's not dissimilar from other think tanks.

00:05:08.880 There are, we actually call ourselves a think tank plus, and we do so for a couple of reasons.

00:05:14.160 Think tanks usually are focused on the political and policy sphere. And the core premise of our

00:05:22.240 existence is that while government and the state and politics is part of, it is not the entirety of

00:05:29.120 public life. And in that sense, we want, we pay a lot of attention to the other institutions of

00:05:34.800 society, be that the family, the community organization, the business organization, the

00:05:39.760 church. Our, our premise, in that sense, we're probably more Burkean conservatives talking about

00:05:46.000 the little platoons and how they contribute. And our argument is that many of the problems of public life

00:05:52.640 that people are looking to government to solve are in fact better solved through other institutions.

00:06:00.400 And so we, we're a think tank, but that serves not just the political, but the entire broad sphere

00:06:06.400 of civil society and public life. That's great. It seems like so many think tanks on the conservative

00:06:11.920 side or the classical liberal side in Canada focus squarely on economics and sort of conventional

00:06:17.280 thinking that, you know, the conservative movement in Canada, it's a big tent. There's lots of different

00:06:22.400 types of conservatives. There's libertarians, people that are more traditional or social

00:06:27.200 conservative. But, but, but there's sort of conventional wisdom, Ray, that, that, that the,

00:06:31.360 the winning ideas are the fiscal ideas, the economic ideas, and that it's when the cultural issues

00:06:36.720 and the social issues kind of come up during elections, that it's bad for conservatives. And therefore,

00:06:41.200 we should just sort of push these ideas aside, ignore them, kind of come to the consensus of the

00:06:46.720 left-wing liberal establishment in the country. Whereas it seems like Curtis is taking the complete

00:06:53.040 opposite approach. And so I want you to maybe to tell me a little bit about how it is that these

00:06:58.560 cultural issues can unite conservatives just as much as economic issues. Well, let me answer that in

00:07:05.120 two ways. First, pragmatically, and then, and then more fundamentally philosophically. Pragmatically,

00:07:11.200 you know, Stephen Harper in 2003, De Civitas, argued on the importance of social conservatism alongside,

00:07:19.840 and social and cultural conservatism alongside economic conservatism. His approach, I, the day

00:07:26.640 after he was elected in 2006, I, I wrote a piece that was published in Policy Options, which highlighted

00:07:32.880 that his was a coalition that required all of, and I identified six different branches

00:07:39.440 of conservatism. And in many ways, I think the secret to the decade, Harper decade in office,

00:07:45.840 was the fact that they recognize this was a coalition of interests and, and incrementally built

00:07:51.680 along that, along that way. I would argue that when conservatives have focused only on economic

00:07:58.560 issues, they typically have lost. I actually don't think that is a formula for success in today's Canada,

00:08:04.640 Canada, which steps back to more fundamentally. And I think the argument is, it's because who we are is

00:08:10.960 fundamental as human beings. We are not just consumers, we are not just people who are focused

00:08:18.720 entirely on making money. And there are a lot of people who have a lot of money who aren't all that

00:08:22.880 satisfied and happy in life. We are created, and this is, you know, obviously, there's, there's a

00:08:28.880 fundamental anthropology that is contested along the way, but Curtis would come from the perspective

00:08:35.360 that we are created as image bearers of God, imago dei, that gives us dignity, that gives us worth,

00:08:41.200 that also makes us social beings. And we find flourishing and happiness and satisfaction when we're

00:08:48.160 in relationship with others. Whether that relationship is in the family, whether that's in

00:08:52.640 the community, enterprise being a shared social relationship, I think, you know, any go to Harvard

00:09:00.720 Business Review, go to any successful entrepreneur, and they'll tell you that if you only focus on making

00:09:07.760 money and not any other values, you rarely will continue to make money. You know, in many ways,

00:09:14.400 profit is like breathing, it's essential in a market economy. But when I wake up in the morning

00:09:20.160 and think about the fact that I need to breathe, it's probably a sign of sickness, not health.

00:09:24.720 Right. Well, and I mean, there's, there certainly seems like there's been a crisis of meaning and

00:09:30.480 purpose in our society that so many young people don't really see, they don't have the same motivation,

00:09:36.640 or they don't really know their role, because our social roles are changing so much. And this is

00:09:40.800 particularly the case for young men. And I think that the meteoric rise of Jordan Peterson speaks

00:09:47.360 volumes to the fact that he was saying something that was sort of different than the traditional

00:09:51.440 conservative message. But unfortunately, it doesn't seem like our political class has really

00:09:57.440 joined on to that. Because I mean, we're seeing a little bit of a crisis in the Federal Conservative

00:10:01.680 Party of Canada, where, you know, Aaron O'Toole, the leader, sort of took the party more to the

00:10:06.800 center, more to what we would describe as like a liberal light, and didn't really defend conservative

00:10:12.480 ideas and values. And we're seeing it across the country that, you know, before it was like, you

00:10:17.680 know, let's stay away from these divisive social issues, because they drag us down. And, you know,

00:10:22.080 maybe people perceive that Andrew Scheer being a social conservative and a Catholic hurt his ability 0.62

00:10:27.200 to win that election. But now, you know, the cultural issues that we're talking about are a little bit more

00:10:32.720 more basic to the country. Like, is Canada a horrible, genocidal country? Did we found it on 0.54

00:10:39.360 all of these terrible institutions that need to be demolished? Or is there something there? And again,

00:10:44.960 I don't really see very many conservative politicians really coming out and defending Canada against some

00:10:49.440 of the worst accusations against us. So I'm kind of wondering what, what's Curtis's position? And how do

00:10:57.600 you think we can influence more of that kind of leadership to talk about, meaning some of the

00:11:02.960 things that you were talking about human dignity, from our political class?

00:11:07.440 I, in many ways, Curtis started in 2000, out of a sense that the political institutions were failing us,

00:11:16.880 and that the ideas that were needed were very unlikely to come from within, and therefore,

00:11:21.520 they needed to come from outside of the political institutions.

00:11:24.240 I say that as a former candidate for the Canadian Alliance, having been involved extensively in

00:11:33.120 political campaigns. The argument, I think when we take a look, and let me be very clear, my

00:11:40.320 criticism would be as much on social conservatives, in terms of how they have engaged the political

00:11:45.920 sphere, and I would say typically not very wisely. So they haven't done themselves a whole lot of

00:11:51.920 favors in terms of making making the argument for their cause. I don't think you're going to win by

00:11:58.560 by cherry picking hot button issues and somehow polarizing and us versus them culture wedge in

00:12:04.320 society. I think instead, you know, I think some of the the immigration, you know, we look at what

00:12:12.240 Jason Kenney did when he was involved in the outreach for the conservatives. Many immigrants to this 1.00

00:12:18.800 country share values in terms of family, in terms of community, and a sense of identity. They tend to

00:12:26.240 be entrepreneurial and pro market, but there's a whole lot more to what they understand and expect

00:12:31.840 out of the public square and the shapes they're voting. I recall speaking to Civitas in 2003 on

00:12:39.120 why collective bargaining is fundamentally a conservative idea. I had the predictable line of people at the

00:12:46.080 mic ready to challenge in terms of my defense of unionism along the way. Now, my defense is not a defense of

00:12:52.880 mainstream contemporary unionism, to be sure. But I would argue that collective bargaining is not only

00:12:59.200 economically feasible, it recognizes the fact that a workplace is a community and there are a diversity of

00:13:05.200 interests and that when labor and management can work together in terms of building the larger pie, there are all sorts of

00:13:12.080 things positive that can happen. And there are models around the world quite different than the

00:13:18.000 adversarial North American model in which collective bargaining should be seen as a positive. You know,

00:13:23.840 I look at some areas in Europe where, you know, the EI system, for instance, doesn't belong to government.

00:13:30.000 It belongs to industry associations and unions together. I've often, you know, we've had our trouble with our

00:13:36.480 EI in terms of the differences between seasonal work and cyclical work in Eastern Canada and having those

00:13:44.160 rules apply to a manufacturing base in southwestern Ontario and a recognition that doesn't work. There

00:13:51.760 are some structural things that flow up. This isn't just about hot button moral issues. This is about a way of

00:13:58.320 organizing life away in terms of what is my obligation to those, to my co-worker, to my employer, to my

00:14:05.200 neighbor. And fundamentally, it all roots back to the fact that as a human being, I have a dignity and

00:14:13.600 a worth and I'm a social being. And flourishing is going to come in as I live with and alongside others.

00:14:20.960 No, that's great. There's definitely been a political sort of realignment. And I think that some of the

00:14:26.240 things that conservatives today are realizing is that, you know, they have a lot of allies with

00:14:30.960 traditional blue collar union voters that might have, you know, used to vote for a party like the NDP.

00:14:36.000 But with all of the identity politics and the sort of left wing fad issues that the left wing parties

00:14:41.440 are consumed with, they've sort of ignored and neglected this big part of their base that sort of

00:14:48.960 could very much fall in line with conservatives in terms of some of the values that you're discussing.

00:14:53.600 And I think to some extent, there has been an overreach on the part of the progressive left,

00:14:58.800 in which, you know, they are more proselytizing than anybody on the right that I see. And there

00:15:06.320 is a sense of a forced identity that a lot of people, you know, it's not politically correct to

00:15:12.480 say all of these things, but a lot of people say, wait a minute, that's not me. That's not what,

00:15:18.000 that's not how we live our day to day life. And that's increasing the disconnect between public

00:15:22.720 life and family life. And I think, within the cracks that are there, the light is shining in,

00:15:29.120 and they're in, I'm reasonably optimistic in terms of what the future might look like.

00:15:33.440 Well, that's great. One of the things you mentioned, when you're talking about community

00:15:37.280 is sort of the obligation that we have to one another, all the political parties, talk a lot about

00:15:43.440 your rights, your freedoms, your liberties. With regards to COVID, we did start to hear more about,

00:15:49.600 you know, the obligation that you have to others, and this idea that you might sacrifice yourself

00:15:53.920 for the betterment of society. But it's not something that we are used to hearing from our

00:15:58.400 politicians. So maybe you could tell me a little bit about what you think the duty of a Canadian is,

00:16:06.000 or ought to be, and how, you know, we can talk more about not just, you know, what you can get from

00:16:11.840 the government that you, the country that you live in, and the government. But what is your

00:16:15.680 obligation as a Canadian to provide to society? Well, I think, you know, ultimately, it is about

00:16:23.040 the stewardship of gifts. We all have equal dignity and equal rights as citizens along the way. But this

00:16:31.600 notion, this notion of sameness, sometimes we transform equality, and equity into sameness. And

00:16:40.240 yet we intuitively know from, you know, being two or three years old on, you know, in kindergarten,

00:16:46.240 grade one, I realized I wasn't the same as some other people in the class, some of them could run

00:16:50.320 faster, and, you know, we're more athletic and smarter, and all of the other things.

00:16:54.480 And I think, you know, there is a sense in which difference itself is not a bad thing,

00:17:01.360 and it can be celebrated. But when we view our gifts, not just in service of an autonomous self,

00:17:08.000 in terms of how can I win, and how can I get, but have a sense of the common good,

00:17:12.480 have a sense that a rising tide lifts all boats. You know, when we work together, and any business

00:17:19.840 recognizes that. I have yet to meet the entrepreneur who's been successful in the long run,

00:17:25.440 who says, I've done it all. The most successful entrepreneurs say, I took risks, and then I found

00:17:31.200 people who had particular gifts and talents that I didn't have. And together we accomplished it XYZ.

00:17:38.880 There is a sense in which we just know that is how we are created. That's how the world is made.

00:17:43.920 We don't live on islands all by ourselves. That's not the ordinary way of life. And I think having a

00:17:50.400 rich sense of a shared flourishing, a shared common good, ultimately makes us happier as individuals,

00:17:57.600 than simply saying, I'm going to pursue my own happiness, and I don't care who I have to trump on

00:18:02.720 in the process. Because most of us discover the fact that trumping on other people doesn't feel very

00:18:07.840 good either. Right. Well, and I think some people have a misconceived idea of what happiness means.

00:18:12.880 They think that happiness is just, you know, the joy that you might feel, the freedom of a day,

00:18:17.440 and they don't recognize that, you know, happiness is built over time with, comes in hand with more

00:18:24.880 responsibility, with service to others, with the sort of, you know, building families and communities,

00:18:30.160 and these kind of things that we don't, we don't often hear much people talking about, you know,

00:18:35.360 especially for my generation, that the sort of emphasis was really, you know, you go to school,

00:18:40.000 you get an education, you get a good job. And that's, and that's the pathway. That's,

00:18:43.680 that's the focus. And, and, you know, family is almost like a distraction from that. And I feel

00:18:48.400 like there's so many people who miss the opportunity, or forgo the opportunity to have

00:18:52.560 family and have kids, because they're so focused on a career, so focused on the economic side,

00:18:57.280 that they're really missing out on something much deeper in life. And one of the things I've noticed,

00:19:03.120 Ray, is that the generation younger than me, so young Canadians, I noticed this in a poll that

00:19:07.840 you did, they might be more inclined to have a more traditional view of things like whether there

00:19:15.120 should be religion in public life and the importance of family and marriage. Can you tell me a little

00:19:19.920 bit about the poll that you've had, and maybe how this could help conservative politicians, because

00:19:25.520 conservatives have a tough time appealing to young people in general. So maybe how these new

00:19:29.680 shifting values could could help conservative fortunes?

00:19:33.600 Yeah, we, and, you know, Curtis, right from the beginning, has, we've defined our roots explicitly,

00:19:41.040 we are rooted in 2000 years of Christian social thought. That said, within our staff, and that we

00:19:46.960 have the entire range, Catholic, Protestant, there's no one denomination, nor are we churchy or narrow

00:19:54.240 in that regard. But in right, in light of the fact of, you know, what are the roots of happiness,

00:19:59.600 what is the purpose of life, there are some fundamental questions on which we recognize

00:20:03.440 Canadians differ, we live in a pluralistic society. But we think it's valuable to put our stake in the

00:20:08.640 ground to say here is where we're coming from. And I think that has lots of implications. You know,

00:20:14.640 there, the poll that you referenced, we pulled over 4000 Canadians half over the age of 40 half over

00:20:22.400 under the age of 40. What is interesting is in terms of the role of faith in public life,

00:20:28.880 by approximately 10% younger Canadians are much more open to being authentic, including those that

00:20:36.720 they differ with. But saying it's better to instead of privatizing these conversations, it's better to

00:20:43.200 have them in the public square. It may come as a surprise to most, but statistically speaking, the most

00:20:50.080 likely to have read a sacred text or to have gone to a place of worship in the last 30 days of someone

00:20:56.720 under the age of 30 on a per capita basis. So younger people and immigrants are the are the areas in which

00:21:04.800 there is the most connection to faith and faith communities in this country. And I think that for,

00:21:10.080 you know, indicates a path forward.

00:21:12.720 I would highlight the fact that among those groups also are the most who are, I would say,

00:21:18.480 they're agnostic or don't have anything to do with faith. What they value is an authenticity,

00:21:23.440 authenticity and not the fact of, you know, we've been measuring since 2017 and we have four categories.

00:21:29.360 You have the very religious and the very non-religious. The very religious category is held

00:21:34.640 firm about one in five Canadians, you know, and that includes all faiths, you know, are very regular

00:21:43.520 and we use seven measures to do that. What has happened in the in the years that we've been studying

00:21:51.040 it is there has been a shift from the middle to the non-religious side in which the person who would

00:21:57.840 have checked the box and said, you know, I'm a Catholic or I'm an Anglican or I'm a Presbyterian or

00:22:02.800 Baptist, whatever, gone to church perhaps once or twice a year or not at all, but had been baptized.

00:22:09.120 But it really was not a meaningful part of their lives. Those are the people who are becoming

00:22:14.160 increasingly hostile to religion. However, younger Canadians, those who were not raised in traditional

00:22:20.800 faith, immigrant Canadians, there is a growing sense of a recognition of the importance of faith

00:22:26.720 and faith institutions. And I would highlight, you know, go down University Avenue in Toronto and

00:22:33.600 take a look at the names of the various hospitals and recognize the fact that, you know, our healthcare

00:22:38.080 system even today relies on religious communities who are raising significant monies for the, you know,

00:22:44.000 the Jewish community for the MRI machines at Mount Zion and, you know, the Catholic communities.

00:22:49.280 Health, education, social services, a vast proportion of that even today is being delivered by

00:22:56.160 faith communities in our country as part of our, as part of the system of delivery. And, you know,

00:23:04.640 it's a story that by and large has been forgotten, but it is and remains part of the public square.

00:23:10.240 And if all of that were to disappear tomorrow, Canada would not be at all the place that most of us

00:23:15.920 has taken for granted. Absolutely. I think that's right. I think that for myself as well, I wasn't

00:23:21.440 particularly raised in a religious family, go to church once or twice a year, but I found that when I

00:23:26.400 was older on my own, I sort of, again, the same thing that you feel like there's something deeper

00:23:31.840 here and maybe it's wise to turn to some of the traditions and ideas of the past that got us here

00:23:36.800 instead of just throwing them out and saying, you know, we're too enlightened for this now. It's like

00:23:41.040 there's wisdom in, in the past. And I know a lot, many of my peers feel similarly to that. Well,

00:23:47.600 we'll end the interview on that note, a little bit of optimism that younger Canadians are, are seeing the

00:23:52.080 value of tradition. Ray Pennings, thank you so much for joining us and keep up the good work over there

00:23:56.560 at Cardus. Thank you so much, Candice. All right. Thank you so much for watching.

00:24:00.560 I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

Juno News - November 18, 2021

The road to victory for Conservatives is through culture

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