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Juno News
- July 26, 2024
Too many immigrants in Canada?
Episode Stats
Length
41 minutes
Words per Minute
198.8036
Word Count
8,253
Sentence Count
5
Misogynist Sentences
2
Hate Speech Sentences
14
Summary
Summaries are generated with
gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ
.
Transcript
Transcript is generated with
Whisper
(
turbo
).
Misogyny classification is done with
MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny
.
Hate speech classification is done with
facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target
.
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doing a uh doing a tux for off the record isaac yeah like i was telling noah i died never worn
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the bow tie before so i thought you know it was time to bust it out in his uh honorable presence
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well i'm sorry guys i can't hear anything just give me a sec
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he missed we're off to a great start okay i can okay i can hear you now perfect oh wonderful there
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we go and now you're trying to thank you andrew i was like wait i can't hear anyone now what's going
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on oh god all right let's get this train wreck started
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hello and welcome to off the record this is the friday confab we take a regular cast of characters
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from true north we mix it up but they're all familiar faces or voices and we try to unpack
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the week that was talk about some of our top stories of the week the oddball stuff we didn't
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get to and basically whatever else comes to mind uh joining me i'm andrew lawton by the way hi good
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to see you thanks for coming uh joining me once again are isaac lamaru who you see at tnc.news
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and also here on the daily brief as well as noah jarvis for whom the same description applies but
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isaac noah welcome good to have you both here how was your week that's doing well and uh glad
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to be able to actually hear you this time but uh yeah doing good how how is uh how are things where
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you are isaac because i know you're not that far from jasper has like have you had any of the kind
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of the smoke and and what yeah in edmonton uh actually i i had to drive um to my mom's place
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downtown uh yesterday and uh my eyes were just bugging me so much i was like i need some visine and
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and then i looked in the sky and i was like i can barely see anything like i mean it was so smoky
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it wasn't like a fog or anything but just that my my vision was was cloudy in that sense so yeah
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we're definitely feeling the effects of uh the fire here uh but certainly nowhere near what's happening
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in jasper no it's it's been tragic i i remember i was out in banff or no i was actually no i was in
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calgary i think i was in calgary and banff a few years back when there were wildfires
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in bc and it really is astonishing because it's not really something i get in southern ontario
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it's astonishing just how much that travels like how much the smell travels and and the ash travels
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and uh uh it's it's the one i know you were in alberta recently no it's the one thing you that's
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like always weird when you experience what was happening in jasper has been been absolutely
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terrible where um we try to keep things light on this show so i we aren't going to go into uh the
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wildfire situation here but we do have reporting on it at true north and and i would encourage people
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to take a look at danielle smith's press conference yesterday she was incredibly incredibly moved as i
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know a lot of people in alberta are by what's been happening there and just the devastation on that
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but uh that's as dark as we'll get things on this episode for now i do want to go into this story
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which came up and i find it to be a bit of an interesting one so we covered immigration a lot
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at true north it was really our foundational issue back when when candace malcolm launched the
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organization because she saw that no one else in the country was really having a grown-up
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conversation on immigration and we have seen the liberal government just completely trample all
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over the immigration system they've trampled all over now the immigration consensus that canadians
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used to have that immigration was a really positive thing for the country that it was adding to the
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cultural fabric the economic fabric all of these things and one of the issues about which i warned
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and candace malcolm warned and other people warned quite some time ago was that when the liberal
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government stops taking things in this system seriously it turns canadians against immigrants
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and it's not to justify that it's just a statement of fact and that's exactly what's happening now a new
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poll shows that 60 percent of canadians say canada is admitting too many immigrants they feel the poll
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says like it's the highest on record in the century this is i think incredibly incredibly damaging
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statistic because when you have canadians that start to view that and by the way the liberals have
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effectively acknowledged this is the case when they talk about in trudeau's eyes bringing in more than
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we could absorb or beyond what canada could absorb but it means that canadians are likely to overreact and
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say that we need perhaps fewer than the country could sustain and you pointed out something isaac before we
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were on air that i think was interesting that that even this is based on a perception that is in and
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of itself an inaccurate assessment is it not yeah and that's whenever i mean obviously there's a lot
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of polls that have been coming out uh recently on immigration and the first thing i always do when
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reading an article or a poll about immigration is i say okay did they preface their questions with
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canada immigrates x amount of people per year and in large it's always the same 500 000 per year sum
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which we know is inaccurate as candace malcolm previously reported with true north uh the liberals
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obviously brought in 2.3 million people in 2023 when you account for permanent residents international
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students temporary foreign workers and all the different avenues of immigration illegal immigration
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included a number which has been on the rise so when we see staggering numbers of widespread
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disapproval of canada's immigration plan based on the 500 000 number you can only imagine what it would
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be if if we were talking with the real digits in the multi-millions you're right these numbers often
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get separated out and people focus only on the permanent resident number which is an important number but
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you also have to look at international student visas you have to look at temporary foreign workers
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because you're still bringing in new people into the country and in some cases people are coming in
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for you know a period of time but you know often that period of time is three four years especially
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for student visas so in the end you have a massively ballooning uh immigration uh cohort in canada
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and it's not being captured by the official data so i mean no it's no surprise the canadians are
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saying hey maybe it's a little bit too much no absolutely i mean to have a immigration system
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that maintains the support of the common people uh you need to have you know the uh the public you
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know being involved in the process and when the public tells you uh that we're bringing in too many
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people the government has to respond to those concerns and the true to government they clearly have not
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responded to those concerns sure the immigration minister has said that they're going to reduce the
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amount of uh foreign students that they're bringing into the country but statistics show that uh the
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rate at which we are admitting uh foreign students in this country has stayed the same since uh years
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past or has even increased slightly so uh when we're bringing in an excess amount of foreign students
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that are you know coming into our universities basically to help prop them up and to help uh finance them
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because they are kind of struggling uh and when we're bringing in uh permanent residents and we're
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bringing in temporary foreign workers who are potentially taking jobs that you know other
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canadians can take you know they're taking low-wage jobs that a lot of canadian youth uh are who would
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normally uh take up these jobs for example working at a tim hortons or at a grocery store my first job
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was at a grocery store uh and you know that was a really good stepping stone for me to be able to go on
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to uh you know better bigger and better things so a lot of young canadians are being denied that a lot of you
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know just canadians in general are seeing that they are having a harder time uh being able to
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find jobs being able to you know find a house to live in and be able to find an affordable house to
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live in so when all these factors are taken into consideration the canadian people are obviously
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going to turn against the immigration system and that did not have to it did not have to be this way
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the trudeau government could have you know brought in about maybe half as much as people as they've brought
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in and you focus on economic policies that would help this country flourish whether that be uh
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focusing on expanding home building and whatnot uh but instead they've done the opposite they focus
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on ratcheting up immigration to artificially boost our gdp uh and you know canadians are suffering for
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that and uh sentiment against uh immigration is rising because of it and i i have the previous numbers
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here from 2023 which was uh 500 000 permanent residents 660 000 temporary foreign workers 900 000
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international uh students and just under 144 000 illegal immigrants so that was for a total of 2.2
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million people yes in 2023 no that that's massive and and i think the issue is is that it's not like
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people want to claim that criticism of immigration is a moral judgment that if someone criticizes the
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immigration system it's it's because you're racist or it's because you're you're making some moral
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position against immigration a lot of this is a numerical issue and and this is what conservative
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leader pierre polyev was talking about when he said we need to tie immigration numbers to available
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housing available jobs capacity in the social services sector because a lot of the stuff is just
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a matter of math and if you're not able to serve your existing citizens and residents or the immigrants
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because there's nowhere for them to live they can't affordably buy a house they can't find a job then
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you're not helping anyone are you yeah for me start with you isaac thanks thanks for me it's it's
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definitely mathematical uh what what what comes to mind is uh obviously alberta uh announced
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educational funding just a few days ago which uh education minister nicolaitis said was a very um
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abnormal to happen outside of a budget cycle and they said look this is because so many people came
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to alberta our schools are overflowing we don't have enough teachers they need money
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uh if we don't provide it to them we're looking at students who who don't have a classroom to learn
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i mean you can't imagine a worse scenario in a society than than uh no education for children
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realistically and i mean the same can be said for hospitals any publicly funded resource where where
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we can only support so many new individuals okay go ahead noah
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yeah i mean uh isaac brings up the uh fact that you know our social services are being strained
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uh you even look at the healthcare system in which you know waiting times have not gotten any better
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you know if you lived in canada in the past you know 10 years you know that waiting times have never
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been a good you know never been a strong point in our uh healthcare system and they're only getting
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worse because you know more and more people are coming to the country uh they're increasingly coming
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from countries in which they don't have as great you know as to say healthcare systems as you know in
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canada uh they're they don't have you know the same standards of health uh and wellness in canada so
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you know they come and they increasingly need healthcare services uh and that crowds out other people who
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would otherwise require them and you know if you want to retain support for an immigration system
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you know having your grandmother be denied uh quick access to you know treatment uh because you
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know a bunch of people who just came to this country need also need healthcare services well uh you're
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not going to actually um you know win people over like that and if you look at you know a country like
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the united states where they have different immigration problems but you know when uh government
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bureaucrats when politicians decide to ignore the concerns of their people you get a sort of
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anti-immigration uh sentiment you know that is uh very strong in the united states and we didn't have
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that uh until recently so this is really all uh the fault of uh prime minister justin trudeau and i
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it's really you know my hope that a conservative government will have the stomach uh to be able to come
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in slash immigration you know not you know completely dismantle the immigration system because we still need
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it uh but to slash immigration to a point in which uh you know it would help to ameliorate our problems
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with uh being able to deliver social services and uh to be able to access affordable housing because if
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not um you know we're really going to see uh some problems perhaps the ppc will even rise in their
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support because these immigration concerns are not being addressed yeah there's been i mean we've done
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this i don't know if you did it isaac or if it was our colleague quinn i think it might have been quinn that
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did a report not that long ago on on what's called onward migration which is people that
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come to canada as immigrants then they just you know decide ah this isn't for me and then they go
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somewhere else and onward immigration or onward migration has apparently been on the rise because
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you have immigrants that come to the country and realize that this dream that they thought would be
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in canada is not there for them and how could it be because the dream for canadians is not there for
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people born in this country right now so if if we can't even find you know housing for lifelong canadians who at
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know 24 25 would love to set out on their own we're not going to be able to find it for anyone
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else and there's nothing racial about that it's just a fact of life i would love nothing more than
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to be able to accommodate anyone who wants to be in canada that is willing to live the canadian life
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and exhibit canadian values and contribute to the economy and contribute to society but if we can't do
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that we shouldn't pretend we can yeah i didn't write that article about onward migration but i have
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read a similar polls uh one that comes to mind is one i wrote a few months ago about recent immigrants
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those who immigrated to canada within the last decade yet 42 of them were among the voices saying
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the immigration in this country is too high despite having just themselves recently immigrated to the
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country so obviously they're coming here like immigration is terrible immigration yeah oh it'd be
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great if i were the last immigrant you know but yeah so it's funny you mention that because i met i met
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someone years ago who came to canada from china and they went to vancouver and uh they hated it
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because they're like there are too many chinese people here this is what they said to me and then
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they moved to markham which has also an insane amount of chinese people and they said there were
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too many and he was saying this to me and i was so bad because i'm like no one would ever in their
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right mind say these things out loud but that was an attitude that he had and i was thinking like well
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you came you wanted something in the country that you know you thought canada would offer you can't be
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begrudge these people to but but there are attitudes among certain immigrant communities
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like that that are part of this i mean when we look at this poll that we were talking about in
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the national post 60 of canadians say canada is admitting too many immigrants a lot of those i
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suspect are people who immigrated to canada themselves in fact it's possible that disproportionately
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they make up a share of it because often it's immigrants to the country that have a greater sense of
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pride in the country than a lot of others do because they chose to be canadian they chose this life and
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and i think canadians have often been a bit complacent about this i don't know what's your
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thought no before we move on here no you're absolutely right i recently had a uber ride uh
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coming back home from you know toronto and i had a indian uber driver who said he was in
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canada for about 20 to 30 years and he was uh talking to me about you know all this damn
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immigration you know that trudeau uh all these immigrants that i was bringing in you know i just
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kind of just sit back and listen he's like you know we're bringing in too many uh people from
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india who don't want to come to canada and become canadian you know we're bringing in too many people
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from india who are treating it like they're still living in new delhi or something this is what your
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indian uber driver said yeah that's what he was telling me you know he's like i've been in this
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country for 20 plus years and you know they want to come and you know ruin immigration for everyone and
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you know he is absolutely right you know i'm a third generation immigrant my grandmother my both
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of my grandmothers on both sides of my family came to this country uh in the 70s uh and you know
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they're not really happy with the the current state of the immigration system my dad you know second
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generation immigrant not really happy with uh the current state of our immigration system uh so when you
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have you know immigrants or sons and daughters of immigrants who are trying to tell you tell the
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canadian government trying to you know tell people that you know the current uh immigration system is
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broken uh and you don't have a government that is responding to those concerns well you know
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attitudes towards immigration in general is going to drop significantly all right well thank you for
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that noah uh we'll move on to the next topic which i've completely forgotten so let me find my notes
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here oh it's actually your topic noah uh so this one i'm just gonna like take a seat a step back and
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just let you guys handle this one because it's about the olympics uh in some way uh which i'm told is
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a sporting event that is taking place so no what take it away i know you're a sportingly uh illiterate
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andrew last week i learned about vibes cartel the uh i don't know r&b singer or rapper anyway today
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i'll learn about soccer you learn about this uh foreign sports soccer uh but yeah i know uh right
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now canada's uh women's team are trying to go back to back at the olympics they're trying to
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win another gold medal uh because they won uh the gold medal at the tokyo olympics back in 2021 however
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a wrench has been thrown in the soccer team's uh you know ability to win because it was discovered
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that an assistant coach and a member of team canada's staff uh had been trying to spy on a
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rival team that is right they were trying to spy on the new zealand uh women's national team practices
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uh with a drone so uh first of all this is stupid because the paris authorities they already had
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banned drones in paris for the duration of the olympics because they know that you know
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people are going to try to spy so what does a clever canadian assistant coach and a team i guess
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analysts do they go out they buy a drone uh they you know go outside of the new zealand national team
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soccer practice and fly a drone over uh over their practice to try and record uh what they are doing
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and they get caught uh in new zealand not not only did it happen one time this happened twice the new
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zealand national team reported that not only did they see this drone flying over their practice on july
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22nd but they also saw this on july 19th so the second time that happened they promptly alerted the
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authorities uh a man named joseph lombardi uh who is an accredited member of canada's uh women's uh
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team uh team support staff he was arrested uh questioned released uh and team canada is now sending
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lombardi and also uh an assistant coach named jasmine mander who is also involved in the plot to spy on
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the new zealand national team's uh soccer practices they they've been sent home and uh they've been
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uh removed from the team uh it is obviously a national embarrassment that you know we feel that we
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need to spy on the new zealanders i mean what do they have in new zealand like they just got like
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you know it's basically australia junior uh and you know we're a better country than australia i feel
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like so i don't know why we need to spy on them but you know it just goes to show that you know uh
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canada is not in a great place right now what do you guys uh think of this story so i'll just jump
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in with a question here which either you know or you isaac can answer because again i i don't
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understand too much about soccer i i understand there's a ball and two nets and that's the extent
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of it um so it's not a play it's not a sport like football that has plays and i i'm not even aware of
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like a real strategic component to soccer and i i don't mean that in a negative way so
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like what advantage do you even get from watching a team practice soccer it's a it's a good question
00:19:13.760
and yeah they might have like various odd ball set plays that might happen once a game like if a
00:19:20.720
certain person gets a ball in a certain portion of the field they're going to try and execute something
00:19:25.920
but primarily soccer is a a possession game wherein you pass the ball around for 30 minutes and then
00:19:31.600
eventually get a good shot off which is why it's never interested me too much it's very slow uh
00:19:37.200
possession based game at least uh i'm just imagine just imagining the uh you know like the the great
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details that the canadian spies got it's oh so they try to put the ball in the net when they have it
00:19:48.720
but i don't think you're that wrong wrong in that sense wherein obviously like i feel like soccer
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isn't like the sport to really you know cheat on you know when uh when there's that plot by the new
00:20:01.280
england patriots uh football team andrew just so just so you know i know i know what i know about
00:20:05.760
new england i know about tom brady's deflated balls that's the one thing i know about football
00:20:10.320
because they make jokes about it oh i didn't know i didn't know but darn it here i was trying to be all
00:20:15.600
indignant that i knew but i actually have no idea what you're talking about all right fine
00:20:23.280
where uh you know that they try they try to recording the other team um they basically the
00:20:28.160
other team's uh coaches or whatever to see like what plays they were calling uh and you know obviously
00:20:33.680
that's enormously beneficial so i don't i don't really know like what the equivalent of that would
00:20:37.760
be in soccer i'm not you know a big soccer guy more of a basketball guy but at the end of the day
00:20:42.560
uh i feel like any sort of advantage that you can get whether that's like you knowing which players
00:20:47.520
are going to start and which players are going to be subbed in you know what formation they're going
00:20:52.560
to use uh what sort of uh you know people i guess they're going to play through whether that could be
00:20:58.080
the center midfielders or on the wings i guess that's you know the sort of thing that they want
00:21:02.240
to figure out um but you know even that didn't work out well you know it's like the the one sport
00:21:07.760
where spying uh isn't gonna grant you a massive tactical advantage uh is the sport that they
00:21:13.760
decided to you know go out and uh do some spying operations so i think i think it's just you know
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pretty embarrassing you know as a canadian who you know kind of cares about you know canadian sports
00:21:24.720
teams doing well uh although i don't know andrew does this uh affect your uh sense of national pride
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no i so someone told me the other day that there's i think it's like the toronto star or something has
00:21:37.760
a newsletter where you can like subscribe to get an email alert the minute that a canadian wins a
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medal and i'm like i get enough emails i like i don't need why like just give me the metal tally at
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the end of it or so and i'll figure it out there i know there i i did hear that break dancing is in the
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olympics for the is it the first time i i don't follow the olympics that that uh heavily i mean
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i don't know why you wrote the story that we're talking about yeah but i didn't write all right
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let me look up if it's the first year for break dancing while you're looking that up i'll just
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give some background on uh one of the sports where spying has actually been extremely relevant and
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probably more relevant than any other sport of course which is baseball uh that being stealing signs
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because obviously every pitch comes with a sign designating what the pitch will be and some
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pitchers can throw up to 10 different pitches so obviously that makes a huge difference and um
00:22:30.240
in 2019 news of the houston astros cheating in 27 8 2017 and 2018 dropped they were using illegal
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video technology to steal signs uh from other teams which was interesting when when i was thinking whether
00:22:44.560
this uh i was asked whether the soccer team would uh repeat their gold medal performance and of course
00:22:49.760
the astros won the world series uh in 2017 and then the news broke in 2019 but they returned to the
00:22:57.040
world series in 2019 and 21 losing both times but then they won again in 2022 so obviously the news of
00:23:03.680
the astros and none of them got punished or the world series one takeaway or anything of the sort uh
00:23:07.520
didn't affect their performance in any way all right there we go we got all the trivia um okay so let's
00:23:14.960
move on to uh this story uh isaac which is one of yours goes back to alberta i had actually forgotten
00:23:21.680
about this discussion because this came up when danielle smith was running for the ucb leadership
00:23:26.480
and ultimately the premiership but now it sounds like she's making good in a part on a promise that
00:23:31.520
goes back to a very turbulent time in alberta politics yeah uh so smith is basically falling through
00:23:39.280
with one of her uh campaign pledges here and she's saying that the fall update to the province's bill
00:23:46.000
of rights will protect alberta's personal medical decisions including the right to refuse a vaccine
00:23:52.240
so this pledge initially came during a recent town hall in bonnieville attended by about 300
00:23:57.600
ucp members where smith also discussed strengthening alberta's liberties and freedoms lowering taxes
00:24:03.920
protecting the province from federal overreach and improving health care all things you'd expect from her
00:24:09.280
but then smith confirmed the plans in a statement to true north where she said quote in the fall we
00:24:15.280
will be introducing legislation to amend alberta's bill of rights several amendments are being considered
00:24:20.720
to strengthen albertans individual and property rights including an amendment to guarantee albertans
00:24:26.000
the right to accept or refuse a medical treatment so yeah as you mentioned andrew before becoming
00:24:31.840
premier in 2022 smith initially pledged to amend the alberta human rights act which would prohibit
00:24:37.440
employers from firing anyone based on their vaccination status but those were scrapped after
00:24:43.680
she was elected and she also promised to ban um post-secondary institutions from imposing vaccine
00:24:48.640
mandates on students at the time she said that any albertan who lost uh their job for basically
00:24:55.280
declining to take a vaccine was a quote human rights violation however it was realized after the fact
00:25:01.840
that the public health act takes precedence over all laws except the alberta bill of rights so her
00:25:07.360
initial plans to uh amend the alberta human rights acts wouldn't have done anything basically uh and
00:25:12.800
obviously one of her first actions when she was elected was to fire all 11 members of the alberta health
00:25:17.760
services board including the chief medical officer dr dina hinshaw who uh as any albertan will remember
00:25:26.480
advised former premier jason kenny to implement vaccine mandates uh to close schools close churches
00:25:32.080
and then they sent officers to those areas to ensure that they were complying uh and just for
00:25:38.080
the last point here uh many people may remember this which was uh during smith's first press conference
00:25:44.400
as premier she said that the unvaccinated had experienced the most discrimination of any group
00:25:49.680
in her lifetime and i'll i'll refresh your memory on a quote from justin trudeau in french so there's
00:25:56.880
a bit of different wording depending on where you're reading it but he said something along the
00:26:00.240
lines of quote there are also people who are fiercely opposed to vaccination who don't believe
00:26:05.440
in science who are often misogynistic often racist too it's a small group but it takes up space
00:26:12.240
and then he went on to say do we tolerate these people
00:26:14.800
so uh yeah i mean a lot of information in there obviously but um what do you guys feel about uh
00:26:22.960
smith finally following through with her one of her initial campaign promises to to to protect
00:26:28.480
the unvaccinated from from being fired by their employers well i think it's interesting because
00:26:36.160
in in a lot of ways and even in alberta to some extent there's just been a desire to move on from it to
00:26:40.960
accept that uh this is in the past now in some provinces it's not alberta or bc rather still has
00:26:46.560
vaccine mandates for health care workers alberta has moved on i mean all the mandates have been
00:26:51.120
repealed and i think danielle smith becoming the premier was a pretty strong rebuke of what a lot of
00:26:56.720
people including conservatives especially were frustrated about in jason kenny's government so i i
00:27:02.080
think it's good to know that she hasn't forgotten that that is an issue and that at some point in the
00:27:06.720
future there could be another government that would say hey we want to mandate this we want to impose
00:27:12.080
this and i think she's saying pretty decisively here no this is something that we will not stand for
00:27:16.880
as a province now look it's a simple act of legislation it's not like the constitution which
00:27:22.080
means that theoretically if a future government did want to do it they could still change that law
00:27:26.800
but they would have to go through that process of doing it and they would have to stare voters
00:27:30.160
in the face and say we are taking away this right you have to medical autonomy so i i think
00:27:35.280
it's a very strong move from danielle smith and probably in part because she's trying to make
00:27:39.440
sure that her base doesn't forget uh or that that her base still supports her that her base remains
00:27:45.040
in her corner yeah i think you know you bring up a good point about the base because uh any first
00:27:50.960
minister in canada whether you're a premier or a prime minister you have to be able to feed the base
00:27:56.400
i think one of the uh problems with the harper government is that he didn't you know sufficiently
00:28:01.360
feed the base uh you see a lot of discontent with doug ford because he definitely doesn't
00:28:05.520
want to do anything for his base he only really wants to do anything that keeps him in power and
00:28:09.840
the thing that got jason kenny to pose is that yeah he wasn't you know uh doing anything that the
00:28:15.040
base wanted you know he told he talked about the summer of fun and you know the summer of happiness
00:28:19.520
and then uh you know lockdowns you know a few weeks later or something like that so you know when
00:28:25.200
you're not you know attentive to the needs and wants of your base uh they're going to get rid of
00:28:30.160
you and especially in a political culture like alberta uh where there isn't you know a lot of
00:28:34.720
regard uh for you know premiers and uh leaders of political parties if you're not name is not ralph
00:28:40.320
klein so i think that you know premier smith uh you know pushing on this uh on this issue is a good
00:28:47.120
thing to you know keep those people who are starting to get a little discontent with uh you know
00:28:52.160
premier smith having to do you know premier-like things you know ribbon cuttings and you know
00:28:56.320
talking uh to you know the mayors of uh big cities that like um calgary with jody gondek who you know
00:29:02.720
she probably has to work with but you know it's not you know good optics for the base so i think
00:29:07.120
doing this uh for the base is a good thing my one concern will be that i think that adding things to
00:29:13.040
the alberta bill of rights uh will especially things that are a bit more frivolous uh will lead to
00:29:19.840
future governments perhaps a future ndp government adding things that you know conservatives uh do
00:29:25.120
not like i think once you open the door to you know exempting uh or you know adding say a vaccine
00:29:31.520
as a vaccine status as a protected uh protected status under the bill of rights you know you might
00:29:36.000
get um the ndp coming in and adding you know transgenderism or the the right uh to be able to
00:29:42.000
access uh transgender health care as a youth uh you know it's it's a slippery slope that you don't
00:29:46.880
want to sort of give the other idea uh the other side ideas uh how to you know sort of abuse that
00:29:52.240
power but uh all in all i think that i agree with the policy uh and you know people being discriminated
00:29:58.160
against vaccines is exactly something that uh we we care for uh that's for sure yeah i i so i would
00:30:05.680
agree with that my sense would be that you know effectively we're looking at constitutions and bills of
00:30:14.720
rights should be broad for that reason and and you know and not to get too boring because i'm the one
00:30:19.520
that always says we have to keep things light on off the record but you want like you want these
00:30:24.240
things to be negative liberties where you're trying to protect against the government doing something
00:30:29.040
rather than to guarantee something so uh the charter is really meant to constrain government it's
00:30:33.760
not meant to constrain canadians and i think the same should be true of a bill of rights so you're
00:30:37.760
right there is a risk though that once you start just tacking things onto this that it becomes
00:30:41.760
a tool where any other government can start like trying to manufacture these rights so i i think
00:30:46.480
these things should be done sparingly i know this is part of a broader update it's not like the
00:30:50.640
government's just going in to make this one change which i think is is uh is an important part of this
00:30:55.680
but i i think you raise a valid a valid issue there a valid possible issue uh just keeping with the theme
00:31:01.600
of alberta noah you had this story this week which was phenomenal so we've seen all sorts of examples
00:31:07.440
across the country of activists trying to take down statues and monuments and murals and rewrite
00:31:13.120
history and there's yet another example of this at the university of alberta take it away
00:31:19.040
yeah so there is this mural in the library of the university of alberta it is called the alberta history
00:31:24.960
mural also known as the glide mural because it was painted by a renowned artist named henry george
00:31:31.280
glide back in 1951 he helped to establish the fine arts department in the uh the university of alberta
00:31:38.160
in 1946 and he's just a influential uh artist in his own right but and he drew a image of basically
00:31:46.480
alberta's pioneer history and uh the history of christian missionary work uh in alberta so uh if you
00:31:54.400
see the mural you have uh father uh lacombe on the right and you have uh another uh christian uh
00:32:02.320
missionary george mcdougall on the left and they're seen sort of preaching toward uh to a group of
00:32:07.680
indigenous people as uh you know some tps are in the background you see a church in the background and
00:32:12.800
in the very back you see fort edmonton old uh fort edmonton uh and this is really supposed to be a
00:32:19.600
mural to help commemorate uh alberta's history and it's not a mural to denigrate the indigenous people
00:32:25.600
in fact back in 1951 to put uh indigenous people in such a prominent place on a mural in a public
00:32:32.960
library like the university of alberta's uh you you know it was a a groundbreaking thing this is not
00:32:38.640
something that was done back in those sort of uh backwards times however uh nowadays nowadays um you
00:32:45.680
have activists you know anti-colonial anti-racist uh those sort of types uh who are trying to
00:32:52.080
reinterpret what this mural is actually supposed to be they're trying to say that the glide mural is
00:32:56.720
some racist monument that needs to be uh torn down and you know anytime someone walks by this mural
00:33:03.440
especially if they're of indigenous ancestry you know they're they're just filled with a hatred and
00:33:08.240
you know uh you know they're like victimized or something like that even though uh you have a
00:33:12.960
uh indigenous uh professor uh who came out in opposition uh to destroying and removing them
00:33:19.840
uh the mural there's a indigenous professor at the fine uh in the department of fine arts named tanya
00:33:25.200
harnett who said that uh quote rather than destroying the mural a diet a didactic panel is needed one that
00:33:31.520
gives context to this uh complex subject matter and she's right this is you know a complex uh subject you
00:33:36.800
know there uh was uh some uh terrible things that were done to the indigenous people in canada
00:33:41.920
uh and you know during the process of colonialization but at the end of the day uh this mural is not a
00:33:48.800
depiction of you know glorifying you know uh conquering the indigenous peoples it is instead you know
00:33:54.320
depicting two christian missionaries uh doing missionary work and helping uh to you know introduce
00:34:00.480
uh christianity uh to peoples who had not known christianity and you do have uh communities of
00:34:06.800
indigenous christians around canada who i i would assume would reject the tearing down of this mural
00:34:12.800
but we've seen this before we've seen the left try and tear down statues they've tried uh you know
00:34:17.840
whenever they are you know trying to protest environmental issues they put pasta sauce on you
00:34:23.040
know uh very uh historic uh pieces of art uh so uh this is you know a trend that has been going on for
00:34:30.320
about a decade or so now but um it seems as if there's some pushback uh toward this mural being
00:34:36.640
taken down but what is uh your guys's thoughts on uh this issue yeah just uh i don't know you're dressed
00:34:43.520
like an art critic isaac so you have to take this i know i'm like hey my uncle lives in lacombe but
00:34:47.680
i'm hardly a historian so i don't know if it was named after that missionary but uh yeah just just maybe
00:34:53.200
thinking of the last story even uh in regard to legislative protection i mean maybe there has to
00:34:58.480
be and i'm not normally someone to advocate for additional bureaucracy in any sense but maybe there
00:35:04.160
has to be some further protections against historical destruction let's call it i mean erasing of history
00:35:11.600
really is what many of these examples are wherein not just woke ideologues but any extremist or
00:35:19.760
other group could could try and rewrite history if you will to to make it more to their liking which
00:35:28.800
i mean look history was a terrible thing uh in in many points in time but it's there so that we can
00:35:34.320
learn from it and grow as a society so if we erase that in any way i mean we're really shooting ourselves
00:35:41.120
in the foot here because the the most important thing that history serves to be is is is a lesson for
00:35:47.600
modern and future societies so i i really i don't know whether either of you have any ideas on how
00:35:54.880
some sort of protections could be implemented especially in the scholarly setting because
00:35:58.560
we've seen so many of this of these uh occurrences happen at university or or colleges uh but i don't
00:36:06.080
know what do you guys think about that well i i mean my the problem is that if you have two choices
00:36:11.680
between take the thing down or destroy the thing and add interpretive panels or additional context
00:36:18.240
to it i'll obviously pick that but even that i feel is coming oftentimes from a negative place because
00:36:24.240
it starts from the bench from the the baseline position that history is something we need to
00:36:28.560
apologize for i mean art is uh reflecting a lot of things it reflects the artist's view of a search of a
00:36:35.680
circumstance and it reflects the circumstance itself i mean remember the last supper is not
00:36:40.640
a depiction of the last supper as itself it's a depiction of the last supper as envisioned
00:36:46.240
by leonardo da vinci and i think that's important and in the case of this mural
00:36:50.640
the context is very much not anti-indigenous and the relationship that the uh people in the picture had
00:36:58.240
were actually not anti-indigenous and it's interesting when you study early canadian history
00:37:04.560
and you study the the people that engaged with like the first you know literal settlers or even before
00:37:10.960
settlement the first traders people like jacques cartier and then champlain and all of these people
00:37:16.080
oftentimes they forged incredibly strong relationships with indigenous people they had a tremendous amount
00:37:21.920
of respect for them and that respect was reciprocated and that doesn't mean that attitudes might
00:37:27.360
not have you know been antiquated by today's standards but we we oftentimes paint indigenous
00:37:33.040
people quite wrongfully as victims when they had agency they chose to trade they chose to engage
00:37:38.240
remember these people could have just killed anyone that turned up at their shores and in some cases
00:37:42.400
that did happen in some parts of the world that did happen to people that attempted to colonize or
00:37:47.840
settle but this art is not at all anything to be ashamed of or afraid of and it's quite despicable that
00:37:52.960
there is a push for that no and you know in the picture is uh you have depicted uh father albert
00:37:59.920
lacombe albert lacombe is of partly indigenous ancestry he is not someone who hated the indigenous
00:38:05.600
people he was one of the first pioneers who came uh to alberta and he actually helped uh helped work with
00:38:12.400
the indigenous people well he was a pastor he was a minister who had you know uh worked with the
00:38:18.400
indigenous people he had uh shared the word of god uh with indigenous people who had previously not uh
00:38:24.480
you know been uh accessed with the word of god and uh he was a great friend to a great many uh
00:38:31.200
indigenous people uh in his time uh he was a friend of indigenous people indigenous people uh loved him
00:38:37.120
and in modern times he is someone who is scorned uh which is a real shame because it is the erasure of
00:38:43.360
history and is uh the sort of smearing of someone who cannot uh you know in modern times defend
00:38:49.360
themselves if he if he were here to defend himself himself he would be able to you know say those
00:38:54.080
things but it is incumbent upon people like us uh to you know spread that his story to really you know
00:39:00.640
correct the facts and we see the the same thing happening to egerton ryerson uh we see um the same
00:39:06.400
thing happening to dundas you know the removal of his name from young and dundas square uh you know these
00:39:11.520
people they can't you know from the grave defend themselves uh and we don't have enough good people
00:39:16.720
who are willing to stand up for them saying no these aren't aren't vicious racist uh people these
00:39:21.680
are people who in their own time tried to do good things maybe made some mistakes you know from
00:39:26.560
researching uh father lacombe i didn't see anything wrong that he did he just seemed like a good friend
00:39:31.040
to the indigenous people and helped to establish um would now become alberta so i i think that it is
00:39:38.240
really uh destructive uh when we try to you know destroy our history uh because that is the foundation
00:39:44.720
upon which canada was built and once we destroy the foundation uh we we can't exactly um we can't
00:39:52.160
continue on as we are continuing now uh you know these activists they do want uh to destroy canada they
00:39:58.560
do want to destroy the west they're pretty open and about open about it uh but you know they're doing it
00:40:03.600
one step at a time and this is uh one step that that they are taking and i hope that you know
00:40:08.960
mcdougall uh lacombe and the person who uh drew this um mural glide uh they have their reputations
00:40:15.760
restored because right now they are being smeared well i was going to and i mean i always say we have
00:40:21.680
to keep it light and then you go with western civilization is being destroyed but you also had
00:40:25.840
such a mic drop there there's no point adding anything on to it so uh we're out of time for the show today
00:40:31.920
uh isaac lamoureux and noah jarvis catch their work over at tnz.news including on daily brief i'm andrew
00:40:38.400
lawton good to see you all we will have yeah i don't even know what i'm saying now this is the
00:40:42.400
problem we're going live today i don't edit that out i leave my nonsense in i sounded like joe biden
00:40:47.040
there for a second anyway uh there we go we can end on a light note have a great weekend everyone we
00:40:53.120
will talk to you next time i forgot to do the tagline i knew that's why i was fumbling i knew
00:41:05.120
there was something i was forgetting and i was supposed to say everything you heard was off the
00:41:09.040
record and i missed it all right i'm firing myself from off the record you've been uh you've caught
00:41:14.400
biden fever that's for sure you know i think that when uh when when biden you know is done with the
00:41:18.800
presidency we should invite him to you know become part of the true north team see see how that go
00:41:23.600
how that go over with our donors not well
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