Juno News - Trudeau's reconciliation holiday is symbolism without action

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:06.660 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.820 Coming up, Canada has its first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation,

00:00:17.280 but the government is so hung up on symbols, it's not offering any substance.

00:00:23.000 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:26.500 Hello and welcome to another edition, the last before the weekend of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show,

00:00:36.140 the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:00:38.060 It is Friday, October 1st, 2021.

00:00:41.000 Hope you're having an absolutely wonderful start of the beginning of the weekend or start of the end of the week.

00:00:47.820 I don't know, depends what your schedule is.

00:00:49.620 But regardless, thanks very much for tuning in.

00:00:52.040 I don't know how many of you this week got to experience this new holiday that the federal government declared.

00:00:58.960 The day is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, observed by the federal government,

00:01:05.160 by federally regulated sectors like radio stations, banks, post offices, that sort of thing.

00:01:10.880 Not by a number of provinces, and I'll talk about that in a moment.

00:01:15.340 But basically, this was a day that was intended to turn the page on Canada's relationship with Indigenous people.

00:01:23.620 Having a national holiday was one of the recommendations put forward in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

00:01:30.700 It's a relatively easy one to implement, but I think it only really had political capital for Justin Trudeau

00:01:37.260 after the announcements by a number of Indigenous communities of unmarked graves,

00:01:42.480 starting into Kamloops and then Cowessess and several others as well.

00:01:47.360 And one thing that is noteworthy here is that I've got no issue with having a stat holiday.

00:01:53.200 The problem that I have with holidays in general, however,

00:01:56.660 is that they tend to obscure what is actually supposed to be recognized and respected.

00:02:03.180 One of the most notable examples of this is Memorial Day in the United States.

00:02:07.320 This is a day that's supposed to serve to honor fallen soldiers,

00:02:11.200 but it just becomes this big, giant barbecue confab.

00:02:15.400 That's all people talk about on Memorial Day.

00:02:17.920 And in Canada, we see Family Day, which, again, was implemented not for any specific solemn occasion,

00:02:24.640 but just to make people spend time with their family, but it just becomes a general day.

00:02:29.100 How many people view Labor Day as an excuse to talk about the contributions of labor and workers' rights?

00:02:35.960 No. Unions send out a press release, but everyone just views it as a day off,

00:02:39.960 the last long weekend at the cottage, and so on.

00:02:42.400 Now, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation this year has a lot of momentum.

00:02:46.600 There's a lot of interest in the media and politics to talk about the intent behind the day,

00:02:51.820 which is to commemorate those lost to Canada's mistreatment of Indigenous peoples throughout history.

00:02:58.160 But the reality is that meaning will get more and more muddled and muddied as time goes on.

00:03:05.740 And in a certain number of years, I don't know how long, it will just be a day off for people,

00:03:10.700 especially if schools start to give it to students and post-secondary institutions

00:03:15.400 and provinces start recognizing it, which has been a bit of a mixed bag so far,

00:03:20.380 much to the chagrin of many Indigenous leaders.

00:03:23.500 So, again, I mean, there's nothing wrong with it.

00:03:25.320 I'm not against it, but you have to wonder what is it actually doing?

00:03:29.800 What is it accomplishing?

00:03:31.920 And that's a question that can be asked about a lot of the things that Justin Trudeau has done

00:03:36.160 on the Indigenous file.

00:03:37.900 Jody Wilson-Raybould, the Indigenous woman who formerly was his Attorney General

00:03:43.200 before she was summarily fired for not wanting to break the law on behalf of the government, 1.00

00:03:49.100 she said that, yeah, symbolism's fine, but substantive action needs to follow it.

00:03:55.640 And this is the transition that we have.

00:03:58.060 Justin Trudeau will get up there and virtue signal all day long about any number of things,

00:04:03.080 especially on the Indigenous file.

00:04:04.840 But when push comes to shove, the action isn't there.

00:04:07.680 He's been in power now for six years.

00:04:10.500 He's had two terms to deal with this.

00:04:13.500 Yet there are still Indigenous communities that don't have drinking water.

00:04:18.060 There's still the Indian Act, which is widely regarded as an absolutely abysmal,

00:04:23.720 racist, and paternalistic act that no one likes.

00:04:27.600 No one likes it.

00:04:28.480 The left doesn't like it.

00:04:29.380 The right doesn't like it.

00:04:30.300 Indigenous Canadians don't like it. 0.90

00:04:32.080 But there's been zero action on dismantling it or reforming it.

00:04:36.200 And there are still any number of competing land claims that are still going on.

00:04:41.200 So the concrete issues that Indigenous communities are dealing with are still there.

00:04:47.180 And what do we get?

00:04:48.280 We get Justin Trudeau two years ago saying that Canada is committing genocide,

00:04:51.860 but not really following that with any action to counter this supposed genocide.

00:04:57.020 We've got flags going to half-mast for more than four months now.

00:05:01.560 And then we've also got the other dimension of this, which is this brand new holiday.

00:05:07.120 Okay, great.

00:05:08.120 But what is changing in a concrete way?

00:05:12.280 I want to talk about the flag aspect of this for a moment,

00:05:15.340 because this sort of became an issue of interest,

00:05:18.620 a little bugaboo of mine during the election campaign.

00:05:21.640 You may remember it was actually on the very first day of the election campaign.

00:05:26.200 I had asked Conservative leader Aaron O'Toole about this.

00:05:28.880 And I said, right now, the flags have been at half-mast for, at the time, three months.

00:05:34.740 What would you do as Prime Minister as far as this?

00:05:38.260 Would you just keep them at half-mast or would you bring them back up?

00:05:40.900 And this was that exchange.

00:05:42.940 After the terrible situation of the discovery at the former residential school site in Kamloops,

00:05:49.100 I offered bipartisan support for the Prime Minister

00:05:52.820 to move immediately on Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action 71 to 76

00:05:59.460 that deal directly with former residential school sites and missing children.

00:06:05.040 We as Canadians owe it to the families and to First Nations to provide a path to healing.

00:06:11.560 It's not a time to tear down Canada.

00:06:15.460 It's a time to recommit to build it to be the country we know it can be.

00:06:20.380 And reconciliation is very important and should be important to all Canadians.

00:06:25.480 I think to recommit to Canada, you have to be proud of Canada.

00:06:29.760 You can't cancel the one day a year that you commit to your country.

00:06:34.160 You need to use that day to recommit to the path of reconciliation.

00:06:39.120 So I've been talking to Indigenous leaders since I became opposition leader.

00:06:45.260 Reconciliation will be important for me, as will be pride in Canada,

00:06:50.600 building it up, making it more opportunity for more people, including Indigenous peoples.

00:06:57.520 That will be my priority.

00:06:59.040 And I do think we should be proud to put our flag back up.

00:07:02.880 Now, as it was happening, I was kind of thinking,

00:07:06.100 OK, I don't think he's going to answer.

00:07:07.360 I just don't think he's going to answer.

00:07:08.720 And then right near the end, he slips in.

00:07:10.840 Yeah, it's time for the flags to come back up.

00:07:13.780 And that actually became, as I've talked about on the show,

00:07:16.060 the story of the week in a lot of ways.

00:07:18.020 Aaron O'Toole started to talk about that in his stump speech

00:07:21.140 when he was addressing reporters.

00:07:22.940 The media ran with it.

00:07:24.240 And then the question went to Justin Trudeau.

00:07:26.980 OK, the flags have been down for three months.

00:07:29.320 You brought them down in the wake of these announcements of unmarked graves.

00:07:34.240 Sure, you want to commemorate the lives of Indigenous children that were lost.

00:07:39.160 But when will the flag come back up?

00:07:41.760 And he never gave an answer.

00:07:43.780 He never gave an answer at all.

00:07:45.340 He was asked this a couple of times,

00:07:46.720 and he couldn't articulate at what point this period of mourning will end.

00:07:51.000 And the Canadian flag will come back up.

00:07:52.980 The closest he came a couple of weeks back,

00:07:55.240 I think it was about a week before the election,

00:07:56.920 was this, in which he sort of said,

00:07:59.700 I know I'm not going to decide.

00:08:01.300 I mean, he is going to decide.

00:08:02.380 But he said, it's not my choice.

00:08:04.000 It's not my call.

00:08:04.800 How long do you plan to keep the flags lowered at half-mast at federal buildings?

00:08:09.080 And how will you decide when it's time to raise them?

00:08:11.240 I plan to keep those flags at half-mast until it is clear that Indigenous peoples are happy to raise them again. 1.00

00:08:21.100 I think Canadians have seen with horror those unmarked graves across the country

00:08:29.400 and realized that what happened decades ago

00:08:33.540 isn't part of our history.

00:08:37.980 So he says their Indigenous leaders are the ones who get to decide.

00:08:47.680 Indigenous Canadians are going to decide, 0.91

00:08:49.340 and it has to be clear that they want the flag up before the flag is going to go up.

00:08:55.340 I mean, is the government running daily polls?

00:08:57.920 Is he going to allow one Indigenous leader to make the call? 1.00

00:09:01.340 It was a whole, it was a stupid thing. 1.00

00:09:03.780 It's a stupid thing to say. 1.00

00:09:05.760 You're the Prime Minister. 1.00

00:09:06.560 You made the call to lower the flag.

00:09:08.340 You need to make the call to raise the flag.

00:09:11.360 And you may say, well, what's the, what, why does the flag matter so much?

00:09:14.820 Because I had this question asked of me when I asked Aaron O'Toole about it.

00:09:18.600 People saying, well, why does it matter so much?

00:09:20.540 Because symbols matter.

00:09:22.900 Symbols matter.

00:09:23.780 And yeah, concrete action matters more.

00:09:25.780 This is the whole point I've been making in this show thus far.

00:09:28.340 But the symbols matter.

00:09:29.660 And if it matters so much to have the flag go to half-mast as a symbol,

00:09:34.040 then keeping it at half-mast also sends a message that needs to be addressed.

00:09:40.620 And the fact that this went on as long as it did,

00:09:45.040 without anything concrete from Justin Trudeau about at what point it goes up,

00:09:49.160 at what point we can claim mission accomplished,

00:09:51.180 the longer it goes, the harder it becomes to do it.

00:09:54.000 Because now, whenever that moment comes, when Justin Trudeau says,

00:09:56.960 okay, the flag can go back up.

00:09:59.440 He's confronted with this obvious question of, well, what's changed?

00:10:03.680 What's changed?

00:10:04.560 Why does Canada now deserve to graduate from this perpetual state of mourning,

00:10:09.520 which is really what a flag being at half-mast is meant to symbolize?

00:10:12.920 And just as a matter of practicality, because the flag was kept at half-mast,

00:10:18.400 including on Canada Day, which is particularly egregious,

00:10:21.820 because the flag was kept at half-mast,

00:10:23.840 all of these days between then and now, between that day in May and now,

00:10:29.200 when the flag would have gone to half-mast for something else,

00:10:32.160 has been abandoned.

00:10:33.980 So by keeping it at half-mast, it very much becomes meaningless.

00:10:41.660 Because now you look up, I mean, this used to be the thing,

00:10:44.200 whenever you drive around, you'd look and you'd see a flag,

00:10:46.400 you'd be like, oh, the flag's at half-mast.

00:10:47.680 What happened today?

00:10:49.560 And I would always go and look, because the government maintains,

00:10:52.140 and you can see it here, this flag protocol website.

00:10:55.200 And look closely, they still have on it all of these other things

00:10:58.280 that are dropping the flag.

00:11:00.340 But none of those things are really observed,

00:11:02.480 because it's been there in a standing way, in perpetuity,

00:11:06.700 as it says there, until further notice.

00:11:10.680 Until further notice.

00:11:11.820 That's the rule right now.

00:11:13.200 That's the protocol.

00:11:15.120 So it becomes useless.

00:11:17.020 And incidentally, some Indigenous leaders have made this point.

00:11:21.300 Marie Wilson, who is one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission commissioners,

00:11:26.180 says that this has become a politicized debate.

00:11:29.080 And she said the whole point is that people stop noticing.

00:11:32.480 That flags are at half-mast.

00:11:34.300 She says if you stop noticing, it loses its value.

00:11:38.320 And also, you can't mark other occasions when the flags are already lowered.

00:11:42.620 She says, does that make these things less of a moment,

00:11:44.900 or will it just be seen as a continuum?

00:11:49.160 Lowering flags did not appear anywhere in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report.

00:11:53.960 What did appear were a lot of concrete things

00:11:56.200 that the government still hasn't managed to find solutions to.

00:11:58.900 Like, for example, ensuring safe and adequate supply of drinking water

00:12:04.000 in Indigenous communities across the country.

00:12:07.320 And I'm not here because I have the silver bullet,

00:12:09.680 the answer that's going to solve all of these problems,

00:12:11.720 but I can certainly point to the fact that focusing solely on the symbols,

00:12:16.560 focusing solely on the virtue signaling,

00:12:18.820 isn't doing it, isn't providing the solutions.

00:12:22.040 It's the government that's supposed to be coming up with these things.

00:12:24.800 And this was my frustration when Justin Trudeau accused Canada of committing genocide.

00:12:30.500 The background on this is that the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Report

00:12:34.560 had made this charge, that Canada had engaged in genocide

00:12:38.360 against Indigenous women and girls. 0.88

00:12:41.520 And Justin Trudeau accepted that the day after.

00:12:44.400 He said, I accept that it was genocide. 0.93

00:12:46.940 So he says that he's overseeing a government that has partaken or is partaking in genocide.

00:12:54.200 And you'd think that would invite something like,

00:12:56.720 oh, I don't know, calling the International Criminal Court to step in

00:12:59.860 or calling for some international commission.

00:13:02.080 But no, it was just words.

00:13:04.140 It was never meant to be something he believed,

00:13:06.500 never meant to be a serious point at all.

00:13:09.660 And that was why when I had the opportunity to put a question to him

00:13:12.780 after the French language leaders debate during the election,

00:13:16.060 I said, is Canada still engaging in genocide?

00:13:19.780 And if so, what are you doing about it?

00:13:22.420 If not, what changed?

00:13:24.400 This was that exchange.

00:13:25.920 Prime Minister, in 2019, you accepted the assertion

00:13:29.160 of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Report

00:13:31.840 that Canada had engaged in genocide.

00:13:34.740 More than two years later, do you believe that Canada is still engaging in genocide?

00:13:38.920 And if not, what's changed?

00:13:40.660 And if so, what are you doing about it?

00:13:42.720 Well, when I visited Calaisesperus Nations,

00:13:45.480 to grieve with them over the unmarked graves of the children

00:13:53.320 that we had so cruelly mistreated as a country

00:13:58.160 and ripped away from their families over the past many, many generations and decades,

00:14:05.200 we also took a very concrete step forward on removing kids at risk

00:14:13.580 from the provincial system of treatments

00:14:17.420 and keeping them in their communities, in their language.

00:14:21.040 And it is concrete steps like that, that actually doesn't just grieve over the terrible tragedies

00:14:28.880 of the past, but takes steps to correct and move forward that makes all the difference.

00:14:35.040 So as you see, he didn't answer.

00:14:36.740 He didn't answer the point of whether Canada is still engaged in genocide.

00:14:39.740 He said there was a turning point when he decided to transfer some provincial welfare

00:14:44.840 responsibilities in Saskatchewan to the Indigenous communities,

00:14:48.080 which is certainly a step in the right direction.

00:14:50.540 But if that's all it takes to end genocide, my goodness, Slobodan Milosevic,

00:14:53.860 he could have made all his problems go away if he had just made a little child welfare adjustment

00:14:58.240 and that was that.

00:14:59.340 Nothing else matters.

00:15:00.780 So the reality here is that we have a government that is insisting on virtue signaling

00:15:05.780 in lieu of concrete action.

00:15:08.580 And because they are focusing on symbols only, we are forced to combat those symbols.

00:15:16.620 And I'm with Jody Wilson-Raybould on this.

00:15:18.500 Yeah, if you're going to do the symbolism, that's fine, but follow it with substantive action. 0.99

00:15:22.920 Raise the darn flag. 0.98

00:15:24.480 And one point, and Aaron O'Toole, I think, said this very well. 0.99

00:15:28.780 If you want to fix your country, you have to have a baseline pride in your country.

00:15:33.780 You have to think your country is worth fixing.

00:15:37.040 And when you have a flag at half-mast for months on end,

00:15:42.280 including on the country's birthday, this would be unheard of in any other country,

00:15:47.440 to be in mourning about your country on the day when you're supposed to celebrate your country.

00:15:53.920 This is just not something that would happen in a real country.

00:15:58.620 So what is going to occur here is that Canadians are going to have to grapple with this fact

00:16:05.500 that the government is telling them, you know what, your country's, who cares,

00:16:09.380 your country's not worth celebrating.

00:16:11.620 Look, it's just this permanent act of penance, this perpetual self-flagellation on a national scale

00:16:17.220 that we're all supposed to partake in.

00:16:20.520 And that's the concern about this holiday, is that it isn't focused on solutions.

00:16:26.120 It's just focused on inducing a national guilt trip.

00:16:30.380 And you may say, well, the national guilt trip is deserved.

00:16:33.100 Sure, but is it all that productive?

00:16:35.080 Is it all that constructive?

00:16:36.600 As a country, you have to move forward.

00:16:39.200 And yes, there's an argument, and this was the basis of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report,

00:16:43.780 that to move forward, you have to address and remedy the wrongs of the past.

00:16:49.260 But is any of this package of stuff that Justin Trudeau is offering achieving that?

00:16:54.760 I would argue no.

00:16:57.540 And just as an interesting point here, if I may, if you'll indulge me,

00:17:01.040 Tristan Hopper in the National Post had pointed this out.

00:17:04.600 He said, the agencies that perpetuated the residential schools program are the agencies that are getting the holiday.

00:17:13.140 It was the federal government that was to blame.

00:17:15.640 The federal government's getting the holiday.

00:17:18.260 Ordinary people are not getting a holiday.

00:17:20.440 An indigenous person who works at, oh, I don't know, Walmart or something is not getting the holiday. 1.00

00:17:25.980 An indigenous person who doesn't work for the federal government or in a federally regulated space isn't getting the day off.

00:17:31.600 The architects of all of these problems are the ones being rewarded here.

00:17:36.260 And I thought that was just an interesting point. 0.93

00:17:38.160 Again, I mean, it's a silly point.

00:17:40.060 And it came from a letter to the editor in the Chilliwack Progress,

00:17:45.720 pointing out the irony that a holiday will be disproportionately marked by employees of the same federal agencies

00:17:51.200 that were responsible for the Indian residential school system.

00:17:55.120 So I found that to be a valuable thing to note here, that the ones who are telling us they're, you know,

00:18:01.500 putting this front and center are really just getting a day off in the final days of summer here.

00:18:07.560 Well, I guess we're now into the fall, but the remainder of the point still stands.

00:18:11.680 So as much as substance matters more than symbols,

00:18:15.520 this isn't to say symbols don't matter when the government itself is putting so much stock in them.

00:18:21.700 And more than an orange shirt, more than a day off, more than any of these other things,

00:18:27.080 even more than the term genocide when it's not accompanied by action,

00:18:30.260 the idea of the Canadian flag being at half-mast is more important than the flag itself.

00:18:35.980 I don't care about flags because they're pieces of fabric.

00:18:39.080 I care about a flag because a flag represents the country.

00:18:42.560 And the government giving this standing order for months on end to keep flags at half-mast

00:18:47.040 is the government saying that the country is not worth defending?

00:18:50.840 The country is not worth fighting for?

00:18:53.540 I mean, how are you supposed to wear a Canadian flag overseas

00:18:56.360 if you're one of the members of the Canadian Armed Forces Deployed,

00:18:59.520 if your government is saying that flag is something to be ashamed of?

00:19:02.240 How are you supposed to work to find a solution within Canada

00:19:04.700 when the government is telling you that Canada is the problem, that Canada is evil?

00:19:09.220 Which is the implication of saying that we need to keep the flag at half-mast

00:19:13.380 indefinitely in perpetuity.

00:19:15.260 And Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, the Queen of Canada, shared a message.

00:19:19.780 She said,

00:19:20.160 I join with all Canadians on this first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

00:19:24.820 to reflect on the painful history that Indigenous peoples endured

00:19:28.720 in residential schools in Canada

00:19:30.300 and on the work that remains to heal and to continue to build an inclusive society, unquote.

00:19:36.840 So you've got the Crown doing what all of the advocates for justice on this file have pushed for,

00:19:43.960 which is recognizing that harm took place, recognizing the wrongs,

00:19:49.480 vowing to work together.

00:19:50.660 The Crown, it doesn't get more high profile than that as far as proclamations in Canada.

00:19:55.220 The Queen doesn't issue proclamations on Labor Day.

00:19:57.960 The Queen doesn't issue proclamations on Civic Holiday.

00:20:00.760 The Queen is issuing a proclamation on this day.

00:20:03.160 And of course, they're words, but they're words that carry some weight because recognition

00:20:10.260 has been heralded as the stepping stone to progress, as the stepping stone to reconciliation.

00:20:18.640 So let's have a clear roadmap and let's follow it, but let's deal with the things that matter.

00:20:25.280 Deal with the things that matter.

00:20:26.460 I don't like that I have to spend months saying when are the flags going to go up,

00:20:30.080 when are the flags going up, but that is a necessary response

00:20:32.660 when they are at half-mast in the way that they are.

00:20:37.100 We've got to end things there.

00:20:38.160 My thanks to you all for tuning in.

00:20:40.000 This is the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:20:41.100 We'll be back with a full-strength edition of the program on Tuesday.

00:20:44.760 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:20:46.980 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:20:48.760 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:20:56.460 www.tnc.news.com

Juno News - October 01, 2021

Trudeau's reconciliation holiday is symbolism without action

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