Trudeau's virtue-signalling won't stop racism in Canada
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Summary
The Prime Minister of Canada weighed in on the protests against the use of blackface in the wake of the George Floyd protest, but did he speak about systemic racism in Canada? What is the role of the Prime Minister and his cabinet ministers in tackling racism in the country, and why is it so important that they speak about it?
Transcript
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well if there's one thing our prime minister is good at it is virtue signaling he has been
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positioning himself as a staunch feminist and a moral crusader with the highest of standards
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except for when it comes to holding himself by those standards but that's beside the point so
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it wasn't really that surprising when he decided to weigh in on the george floyd protests but
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there's just one small problem with him coming out and telling the black community and all canadians
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that we as a country need to do better and no i don't mean because he was the one caught wearing
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blackface i mean because he's the prime minister of the country and the same goes for minister
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ahmed hussein he told ctv's power play that he gets his back up when he sees a police cruiser behind
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him and sometimes that when he's in a store he gets followed and this is you know this is systemic
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racism this is a serious problem and i'm not saying these things don't happen to him um i'm sure they
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do happen and i'm sure that black canadians just like him do have a different experience than myself
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i am not a black canadian i can't i can't speak to their experience but the issue here is not whether
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or not there is a racism problem in canada of course racism exists in this country of course
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that's an issue and that's something that we need to deal with the issue is that these men
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all virtue signaling by the prime minister aside are speaking for a moral cause but they're both in a
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position of power one is the prime minister and one is a federal cabinet minister if anyone in this
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country has the power to affect change on this issue it's going to be them now there's a lot of
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things they could do they could call a royal commission they could call a national inquiry
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they could ask statistics canada to put together some stats and reports so that we could try and
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pinpoint where exactly this institutional or systemic racism is occurring they could ask the rcmp
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to make some changes they could speak to some of the premiers they could do a lot of things
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more than just taking photo ops as my colleague candace malcolm tweeted about the photo op that
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the prime minister took getting on a knee which as she aptly pointed out is not even clear what is the
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canadian context what does that mean um when you when you do that here in this country but there's a lot
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of things that they could do instead of taking photo ops or going on the news to news to complain about
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this issue meanwhile you have something like this this is the missing and murdered indigenous women
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of which there were according to the news source 231 recommendations made by the truth and
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reconciliation commission the uh missing and murdered indigenous women reports and all of the other
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government panels and and things put together um national inquiry and everything put together 231
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different recommendations that use the words urgent immediately these kind of things and yet instead
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of speaking about this instead of speaking about something of which there is an action plan and it's
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not that he shouldn't speak about the other things don't don't get me wrong it's not that he should
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not speak about anti-black racism or anti-semitism or islamophobia or any of the other hate issues
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and and discrimination issues that affect us here in canada but where is he on this issue when this
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actually has an action plan the national plan that was supposed to be in place in june is now on hold
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seemingly because of the coronavirus just just like parliament is on hold now apparently we can't act on
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the missing and murdered indigenous women because of the coronavirus even though this was one of the
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one of the planks one of the things the prime minister said he was going to tackle it was a big big deal
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for him during both of his election campaigns so you know racism is a serious issue in this country
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it's something that we need to deal with something we shouldn't shy away from having that conversation
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the difference is that whereas i can simply have that conversation with you you can have that
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conversation with your friends you can try and raise awareness of the issue they can do more
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they can actually do something about it and they aren't for true north i'm sam ashkenazi thank you for