Juno News - Why Canada is still so WOKE (w⧸ Jonathan Kay)

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is the Candace Malcolm Show. Today is Tuesday, March 31st,

00:00:07.500 2026. We have a great episode for you folks. We have John Kay from Quillette joining us in just

00:00:12.280 a few minutes. I want to come to you with a bit of sad news, a bit of breaking news here,

00:00:16.020 which is that Stephen Lewis, who is the father of Abby Lewis, has passed away,

00:00:21.100 former Canadian politician, journalist, and diplomat dead at 88. He was a former leader

00:00:25.500 of the Ontario NDP party, as well as the UN ambassador. And I want to share what I thought

00:00:31.740 was a very touching moment from Alvi Lewis's acceptance speech at the NDP convention on

00:00:36.700 Sunday evening. Here he is talking about the legacy that has been passed down from his grandfather to

00:00:41.260 his father, down to him, and what he had to say about his father, Stephen Lewis. Here is a clip

00:00:47.340 from the convention, this is thought seven. He told me something kind of heartbreaking

00:00:51.740 that David, his father, said to him once.

00:00:55.440 David said, son, not in my lifetime, but maybe in yours.

00:01:00.400 And recently my dad told me the same thing.

00:01:03.200 Not in my lifetime, maybe in yours.

00:01:06.640 Well, dad, I refuse to tell that to my kid.

00:01:13.660 So I guess we're talking about an NDP government federally.

00:01:17.160 It's kind of interesting, though.

00:01:18.340 I mean, it's a nice touching moment.

00:01:19.380 I wanted to share that.

00:01:20.040 I think Avi Lewis is actually a very talented speaker, and he certainly had the crowd behind him.

00:01:24.500 Kind of funny, though, because the idea that socialists always just want to try one more

00:01:29.020 iteration of socialism, like it didn't work there, but maybe it would work here. And it's sort of this

00:01:33.520 idea, you know, we do have socialism in our lifetime. It still exists today. Of course,

00:01:38.020 it existed in the 20th century, still exists in countries like Cuba, North Korea, and to an extent,

00:01:43.580 Iran. So, you know, you don't have to wait for a change in Canada. We could already see what will

00:01:48.040 happen when you bring in these kinds of policies. I want to talk about this a little more, go a

00:01:52.560 little bit deeper into that NDP convention that we've been talking about. And I'm pleased to be

00:01:56.100 joined by John Kay. You probably know John from his X account. You should really follow him. He

00:02:01.040 is a very interesting follow, but he is the editor over at Quillette, a writer, podcaster,

00:02:06.320 ex-lawyer, engineer, and coder, and very astute commenter on public affairs in Canada. So John,

00:02:11.940 welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So, I mean, I think that Canada sort of

00:02:17.900 went viral for all the wrong reasons. I think we're increasingly becoming like a cautionary

00:02:21.160 tale for the rest of the world of how not to do things. And I know that you cover the sort of

00:02:25.560 woke madness extensively over on X and in your writing. But I mean, why don't you walk us through

00:02:33.040 a little bit of what you saw at the NDP convention over the weekend? By the way, I should just say

00:02:37.580 that as recently as maybe like, I don't know, a year, two years ago, I mean, I saw myself as

00:02:43.880 somebody who is transitioning out of this space because it was like i mean even the word woke

00:02:49.020 seems kind of like antique it was something we were talking about in the late 2010s and

00:02:53.260 uh in a lot of parts of the world you see people kind of rejecting the the excesses of it um but

00:03:00.480 canada i guess especially the ndp especially places like british columbia actually where

00:03:06.660 are you broadcasting out of where are you okay all right so we can make fun of british columbia

00:03:11.080 and no one will take it personally uh like we still hear stories from these parts of canada

00:03:17.380 that it might as well be like 2018 or something it might as well be the great awokening uh and

00:03:23.740 quillette is mostly international readers and listeners at our podcast it's like i think 12

00:03:28.840 or 15 canadian uh international news consumers is kind of just shocked like i mean typically we

00:03:36.180 associate the word progressive with woke but it doesn't really seem progressive anymore it seems

00:03:40.620 like just old-fashioned in the sense like it's still uh i don't know like the height of the

00:03:46.380 george floyd phenomenon where um people were getting canceled and certainly like the pronoun

00:03:53.160 stuff is still very big in some subcultures in canada uh so yeah i i write about that for

00:03:58.940 quillette um but i i thought i was getting out of that space because it just seemed like

00:04:02.940 how long is that going to last like i wanted to write about other things and i

00:04:07.240 I actually do write a lot about other things but Canada's kind of like especially the arts

00:04:13.440 activism academic academic communities just refuses to kind of like give up the fight when

00:04:19.740 it comes to to some of these things that again that the rest of the world has moved past and

00:04:25.220 the NDP was the NDP convention was kind of like put all that on display you had the pronoun stuff

00:04:33.000 you had um people flashing these real physical gender equity cards and they were like different

00:04:41.640 colors i western standard had a piece on it i i got the sense because i think one was purple and

00:04:47.340 one was orange and red and some of the shots you see like stacks of them so i think some of the

00:04:51.720 cards are for like different aspects of your intersectional being or whatnot um but i remember

00:04:57.880 seeing it it was like a portlandia sketch like it it wasn't i i feel weird using terms like

00:05:02.700 progressive or woke or whatever because it people have been saying things like oh wouldn't it be

00:05:09.780 funny to like play the race card and we'll make like an actual physical card then you can play

00:05:14.260 the race card haha like this was the stuff you'd see on college fix or other right-wing satirical

00:05:19.500 sites the idea of actually making cards that people could use to gain the moral advantage at

00:05:25.140 events but then the ndp just like went and did it uh and again they didn't do it in 2018 or 2020 or

00:05:31.660 2020 they did it in 2026 um and it's kind of sad like it's this movement did have political legs

00:05:39.520 for certain kinds of progressives uh you know ndp obviously are courting the progressive vote

00:05:44.220 um but as you can tell from the viral social media reaction it's just it just seems ridiculous now

00:05:50.060 like yeah i completely agree like i i couldn't even believe that they had these literal race

00:05:55.180 cards that people were using so they had people lining up at the mics i'm sorry i don't i don't

00:05:59.000 know that there's a race card i know that they had a physical thing called a gender equity card

00:06:02.480 i don't i don't they might have i don't know that they had a physical thing called a race

00:06:06.540 although that'd be hilarious although you probably saw it there was a clip where some

00:06:10.880 ndp apparatchik got up at the mic and said well we're going to expand the system so like the next

00:06:17.680 time we have the convention it's going to be like disabled and 2s lgbtqi cat stepped over my keyboard

00:06:24.460 stuff and it's going to be this and it's going to be that it's indigenous so like everyone's going

00:06:28.360 to have some kind of card right because i mean even even you and me if we thought about it long

00:06:33.140 enough we'd be able to come up with a card or two for us right like so it's just the next convention

00:06:38.340 is going to be even more hilarious because people are going to come to the mic with like 10 cards

00:06:41.340 and it's like well he's got eight cards i got 10 this guy's got 12 so like it's it's going to be

00:06:46.980 i joked it's going to be like a pokemon convention where people are trying to make sets of the

00:06:50.220 different colors again it sounds like satire but the ndp is actually doing this like this is this

00:06:54.920 is real life and so i wonder like why that is right because i agree it seems to me that the

00:06:59.820 world sort of moved on like it became normal and mainstream to sort of like reject the idea of

00:07:05.420 men coming into women's locker rooms even the olympics said you know we're not going to do 0.88

00:07:09.120 this whole transgender thing anymore if you're a man you have to compete with men and women for 1.00

00:07:13.380 women and and yet it seems like canada we still do have this little obsession with the wokeness

00:07:19.340 uh obviously it was on full display at the ndp convention but you write a lot about how it

00:07:24.780 happens on university campuses i can't tell you how many times we see job postings for university

00:07:29.740 jobs where basically says white men need not apply right uh we also saw we're going to get to this

00:07:35.100 later in the program folks uh the juno awards right uh they kind of got overshadowed by this

00:07:40.060 ndp convention uh but the juno music awards which is sort of like a sad little made in canada

00:07:44.860 performance was incredibly woke as well. And so you see that this kind of stuff actually still

00:07:49.380 has a lot of power and influence in our society, even though, John, I would argue that most Canadians

00:07:55.260 don't like this stuff, had enough of it, rolled their eyes, cringe. They don't like it. And it

00:08:02.360 obviously, your point is a bit of a period. I want to just share a couple of clips of the audience

00:08:06.040 because we didn't get to these ones yesterday. These ones sort of just came out. So Jagmeet Singh

00:08:09.600 was a former leader of the NDP party. I would say he was objectively a very bad leader, right?

00:08:14.380 just just looking at the numbers right when jack layton was leader of the party in 2011

00:08:18.180 they had 30 now that was an all-time high but even in 2015 right the ndp still had a good 20

00:08:25.420 under tom will care they were decimated down to six percent in the last election as recently as

00:08:30.000 2021 i think they had 18 and they went from 18 to six and change right so i mean absolutely

00:08:36.020 disastrous yeah you could you could just say from like a political perspective obviously not a well

00:08:40.700 liked leader by the canadian public so the ndp put up a video tribute to the leader and basically a

00:08:47.980 party member came up and just said you know he's clearly not happy about it he said i just want to

00:08:51.580 know how much money and how much resources were spent on this video of course um he has he you

00:08:56.940 know he has the sin of being a young white male and so we'll just uh say it doesn't go over where

00:09:01.900 it will but first let's show this clip this is not one of a young man uh questioning why this video

00:09:07.100 was made and i have a question about the video we just watched the tribute to jagmeet singh

00:09:12.780 i want to know how much money it costs i want to know how much time it wasted out of the convention

00:09:17.660 and i want to know who decided on it rising on a personal point of privilege that comment that

00:09:24.860 was just made is absolutely unacceptable i'm in my house of party where i belong as a racialized

00:09:32.700 person and we've paid a tribute that is incredibly fitting for an incredible leader anyway the second

00:09:40.860 person that was speaking was a visibly like an india zeek woman which is very outraged like how 1.00

00:09:46.620 dare you say that um how could how dare you criticize uh you know a person of color basically

00:09:53.660 even though i mean look i i've hung around politics a lot of my life the guy you know he's

00:09:58.540 kind of like a harmless young man with like a thousand buttons on his jacket that's kind of

00:10:02.060 of like a typical canadian political uh you know insider or whatever young enthusiastic volunteer

00:10:08.380 and yet he kind of gets like ripped just for stating the obvious um and how dare he do that

00:10:14.060 as a white man against a black man i guess or sorry a brown man i guess so i know it's in that

00:10:20.540 clip and you didn't show the whole clip i remember seeing it and that the woman went on she started 0.60

00:10:26.380 babbling about genocide i forget how she tied it in um but she went on some non-sequitur rant 1.00

00:10:33.580 the whole thing was nuts i kind of get where she was coming at it is kind of bad manners look it

00:10:40.700 doesn't matter how unpopular and disastrous the former leader is there's this convention in

00:10:45.420 politics and in corporate life and academic life like you know when when someone passes the baton

00:10:52.060 willingly or unwillingly you know you throw them a dinner and you know people make speeches and

00:10:57.420 say nice things and there's a tribute video like it's just kind of the um the normal part of of

00:11:04.780 passing the baton even when it's somebody who had to have the baton like ripped from their fingers

00:11:09.340 because they were they were so incompetent uh and so this kid got up and he probably said what a lot

00:11:15.260 of people are thinking like why are we celebrating the legacy of a guy who had you know we lost

00:11:21.500 official party status we've got we're down to six mps uh you know the reason we're so desperate

00:11:28.140 that we we have to elect to have you lewis for god's sakes is like because of jagmeet singh

00:11:33.740 and it's one of these things that everybody was thinking but he actually had the bad manners to

00:11:37.820 say so it was kind of funny because it's it's kind of like one of these things where somebody says

00:11:43.020 this rude thing that everyone's thinking uh and then but then like everything else the convention

00:11:48.380 it was turned into a race thing like there's a whole bunch of clips where people aren't even

00:11:53.020 talking about race but it's like just within 30 seconds everything about my race my racialized

00:11:57.900 this my racialized that my lived experience with race my intersectional this that um like there's

00:12:03.180 something profoundly narcissistic about this whole thing and even the people who weren't talking about

00:12:07.100 race they were you know talking about very dubious disabilities that they claimed to have that you

00:12:13.020 it made it very difficult to navigate the convention space uh there was one point like

00:12:18.540 the chair herself started talking about how she had you know she was disabled when it came to 1.00

00:12:22.620 hearing um and a lot of it had to do with the sort of jockeying with this gender equity card at one 0.69

00:12:28.220 point there was this trans identify it was a man but you know long-haired and presented as a woman

00:12:34.940 who was complaining that like somebody else was using a gender equity card an actual woman was 1.00

00:12:40.220 using a gender equity card and got to speak before he did but he was like more oppressed because he

00:12:45.580 was a woman and like even better like a trans woman so it's and a person color too right i i 0.54

00:12:52.140 know that yeah he was i appeared to be talking about yeah and um i mean the whole thing was just

00:12:57.100 kind of sad but it was also like very juvenile like it was um i know many of these speakers

00:13:02.460 didn't even get to the substance of whatever it is they were purporting to talk about like this

00:13:07.820 the the trans person who was talking about how racialized he is and how intersectional he is

00:13:13.980 he he talked a lot about how he resented the fact that an actual woman was allowed to talk before

00:13:18.380 him and he said you know i have all this intersectional lived experience i come from

00:13:22.220 alberta where you know trans people are being oppressed and whatnot but he like never got

00:13:27.420 to the actual substance of what he got to the mic to talk about he just went there to fetch

00:13:32.140 about how other people were getting more attention than he was and it seemed like there was a lot of

00:13:36.620 that so there's something very narcissistic about it and juvenile but you know sometimes people say

00:13:43.660 well why why does it you know the rest of the world is rejecting a lot of this stuff it's it's

00:13:47.840 a subject of satire it's why is it you know certain ecosystems in canada why is this happening

00:13:52.760 and a lot of it is just organizational behavior is that the andp a lot of the positions of power

00:13:58.660 a lot of like the local writing associations you know the numerous committees and whatnot that

00:14:04.940 that define every organization of that size over the last decade have been taken over by people

00:14:10.400 who like this is what they live for this is their thing this is their cause this is the reason

00:14:14.940 anybody pays attention to them this is the reason they have any social media presence it's all they

00:14:19.620 talk about and so understandably when those people are going to organize a convention

00:14:24.660 you know damn right they're going to talk about it 24 7 because like that's their thing

00:14:31.340 uh it's the same as any organization where a certain clique of people take control and this

00:14:37.620 is why Canada is different from the United States like in the United States a lot of the DEI stuff

00:14:41.320 was led by corporations uh and especially during the George Floyd period um you know you saw like

00:14:47.100 I don't know weapons manufacturers and defense contractors go heavy on DEI it was kind of absurd

00:14:51.580 um but then after you know 15 minutes they were like oh my god this is terrible this is terrible

00:14:58.040 for for morale it's terrible for recruiting it's affecting our bottom line like our employers

00:15:03.280 aren't happier they're just they're fighting more like so they got rid of it i mean took maybe a

00:15:07.700 year or two but that's because the profit motive was at play and i'm not like a hard-boiled

00:15:12.380 capitalist but i do know that there's something sobering about having the bottom line there to

00:15:18.360 remind you what works and what doesn't in terms of human resources and in terms of um how much

00:15:23.460 you're going to let ideology creep into your corporate practices but if you look at you know

00:15:28.260 an academic faculty if you look at um a political party if you look at an activist group uh any kind

00:15:35.140 of government subsidized entity or if you look at the arts here in canada like i think we wanted to

00:15:40.780 talk about the junos which is uh recording artists i mean almost all their money comes from the

00:15:46.600 government there there is no profit motive because there's no profit and so as a result they're free

00:15:51.460 to indulge their their ideological fetishes as much as they want because there's no to a certain

00:15:57.260 extent there's no financial consequences they're living in a world without that discipline being

00:16:02.800 imposed on them which they like um i mean it's nice to to live in a world without consequences

00:16:07.740 but then what happens is when that world gets looked at by outside observers through youtube

00:16:15.380 you know through all these these snippets from the convention all these snippets from

00:16:19.020 the juno i mean no one actually watches the junos but some of the snippets have made it onto social

00:16:24.460 media because they're so ludicrous people look at it and and they realize how absurd it is because

00:16:30.140 it it's so discordant with kind of like the normal day-to-day life and concerns and politics that 0.96

00:16:36.340 the vast majority of canadians have it just it looks insane it does look very silly i i agree

00:16:42.800 with so much of you said i mean i was uh joking with my uh producers earlier that you know when

00:16:48.640 was in university and you know my 20s we used to make fun of people who got like a gender studies 0.83

00:16:54.080 degree because it's like what are you going to do with that degree right you're going to be

00:16:57.280 unemployed right uh it turns out we were wrong they're not going to be unemployed because they're

00:17:01.200 going to it turned out what they did was they created all of these different kind of industries

00:17:06.160 for themselves through hr uh through civil service groups i mean one of them i know you wrote a piece

00:17:12.480 about the chairwoman or i guess we should only call her chair um of the ndp convention who's

00:17:17.920 whose videos got mocked far and wide on social media, her name's Adrienne Smith, and she's 0.99

00:17:23.060 sort of like a professional wokester.

00:17:24.820 So just to remind the audience who I'm talking about, this was probably the most infamous

00:17:30.040 clip from the NDP convention, where the non-binary chair, Adrienne Smith, argues with a keffia-wearing 0.98

00:17:37.500 anti-Zionist over her pronouns.

00:17:40.360 This is sort of one of those things that, you know, they're quibbling over who got to

00:17:44.200 speak next and who who got oh i was supposed to speak next but somehow this person did even though

00:17:49.160 i have this card that says whatever and then and then it all ends with uh smith saying don't call

00:17:54.920 me she don't call me a woman i'm i'm a they them um so we'll just uh roll this clip to uh jog your

00:18:00.360 memory this is sought eight yes hello i i was standing here with my gender equity card before

00:18:05.640 you called on the previous speaker canada cannot and will not be part of the legacy of blood that

00:18:13.320 was built in iraq in palestine and now in iran this is a no question debate i call this question

00:18:22.280 adam and chairs thank you your points quite well made uh speaker i'll again thank delegates not

00:18:34.600 to call me madam chair or madame la president i'm a non-binary person my pronouns are they them and

00:18:39.480 there. Chair is sufficient. And with regret, you've spoken to the resolution. It's not open

00:18:49.500 to you to also call the question. If the question is the will of the house, someone else must call

00:18:54.580 it because we heard from you in substantive debate. Okay, so you get the point, right?

00:19:00.240 A lot of quibbling over the very small menu rules, but you can see there that there is some kind of

00:19:05.900 an oppression olympics happening here where uh you know the room kind of applauds for her for 1.00

00:19:10.540 for saying you misgendered me uh she's a long history of this so you wrote about how she was

00:19:14.540 caught on tape conducting a struggle session uh back in 2023 with a group of bc public servants

00:19:20.380 apparently i mean she's a lawyer she represents human rights um complaints she's an employment 0.93

00:19:24.860 lawyer so this is this is she's like a professional you know someone who promotes this sort of law 0.98

00:19:30.860 fair and the the adding adding this gender i don't i don't even know gender infused ideology

00:19:38.620 into our laws into our government um she has a sort of long history of being involved we actually

00:19:43.820 run a guest piece uh today at juno news by nick osmond jones i believe you know who was basically

00:19:49.340 writing about this woman's background all the things she's been involved you should go check

00:19:53.180 out that piece over at juno news um but including the fact that on her website it says that if you

00:19:57.980 you misgender her during one of her sessions, she will fine you $100. So she's very serious

00:20:02.860 about this whole misgendering thing. But again, kind of just like a reminder, these people have

00:20:07.580 a lot more power in our society than we really think. You know, we laugh at them, we see these

00:20:10.700 videos, it's so absurd that they're actually influencing you. She testified as well in favor

00:20:14.940 of Bill C-6, which was a very controversial legislation, not controversial for the MPs,

00:20:19.260 they all voted in favor of it. There's unanimous consent in the House of Commons in favor of this

00:20:23.740 bill that bans uh what they call conversion therapy but it also bans therapy for gender confused

00:20:30.060 um young people that you have to have affirming care so affirming care is like the reverse of

00:20:34.620 what you think it means it means that if a person comes in and they're gender confused you have to 0.77

00:20:38.300 affirm the delusion that they are the opposite gender so again uh uh just you know some someone

00:20:44.780 who's actually very involved in uh implementing these kinds of things in in government and in

00:20:50.700 in academia as well uh what do you think so the clip you showed was interesting what you cropped

00:20:57.580 off the beginning of the clip where the the woman in the kafia she herself identified herself as she

00:21:04.220 they uh what's interesting is like a whole bunch of other ndp candidates delegates there even when

00:21:09.900 they were talking about everything else under the sun those like it seems like 30 40 50 percent of

00:21:14.700 of them uh had some semblance of like they pronouns so it was it was a very odd thing and

00:21:22.360 you could tell the whole room wanted to like explode in laughter for this kathia woman who 0.97

00:21:26.740 was talking about the the war crimes of the united states and it was going to be like this big bonding

00:21:32.920 moment and you could see her voice rise to the occasion and then the chair this woman adrian

00:21:38.240 smith just like kind of kills it and it's like well let's talk about me actually my pronouns are

00:21:43.300 they them and and the whole room is kind of like okay what and then like this sort of this clapping

00:21:50.920 for her for her pronouns and it wasn't clear like okay can we go back to clapping about how bad the

00:21:55.520 united states is and the whole moment just like became this um extremely awkward sort of example

00:22:06.720 of why a fixation on on labels regarding your personal identity it kind of destroys the whole

00:22:16.540 group esprit de corps that's the basis of party politics that's the basis of like sports teams

00:22:21.360 that's the basis of tightly knit companies it's it should be about a common project but you could

00:22:27.460 see that this chair who otherwise you know acquitted herself in a fairly you know she 0.60

00:22:33.180 she obviously knew like Roger's rules of order and she's citing chapter and verse in terms of

00:22:38.000 what people are allowed to talk about like she's very officious and bureaucratic and legal-minded 0.67

00:22:42.980 when it comes to the actual procedural elements but then when it comes to this sort of en passant

00:22:49.080 throwaway remark about Madame Chair she just completely hijacks the conversation and starts 1.00

00:22:53.780 lecturing people about this non-existent thing called a non-binary identity she's clearly a

00:22:58.460 woman. And as you said, she's been known to me since at least 2023, I think, because this

00:23:06.300 contributor you have, his name's Nick Osmond-Jones, lives in BC. He, if I remember correctly,

00:23:12.280 worked for the BC government or an agency, I think it was an arm's length agency of the BC

00:23:17.320 government. And Smith had been brought in in 2021 to lecture everybody about gender weighing

00:23:22.840 and gave you know to our presentation about um asexuals and the whole thing is on tape and in

00:23:31.000 fact if you go to quillette and read his article we have a link a soundcloud link to it and um

00:23:37.900 and then nick asked like some perfectly innocent question well i regarded as innocent and she went

00:23:44.960 ballistic and in fact i think this policy that she has on her website about how when she's giving a 1.00

00:23:51.060 gender weighing training session and somebody's transphobic or misgenders or whatnot that you

00:23:55.720 know she charges her client an extra hundred dollars i think it's probably based on what

00:23:59.960 nick did because she went ballistic and then um like reported nick to his boss and nick was was

00:24:08.460 dragged into the the deputy um the deputy's office and it just became a whole thing and so what was

00:24:16.160 supposed to be this kind of it was one of these like friday afternoon box lunch professional

00:24:21.360 development sessions supposed to be you know kind of casual but instead it was this maoist struggle

00:24:26.240 session about gender weighing and as soon as anybody asked a question that was off base from

00:24:30.720 her dogma uh like the first thing she did is she reported this person for discipline which kind of 0.97

00:24:37.600 you know speaks to the kind of um authoritarian ethos that governs this uh and then subsequent to

00:24:44.000 that so i was watching this ndp thing and i remember looking at that room looks really familiar

00:24:50.000 like she has a very distinctive look um like the haircut and the everything about it's like i've

00:24:57.200 seen this this person somewhere before and and then on twitter nick said that's the same woman

00:25:04.000 that's her like that's the same woman who who gave this insane gender weighing presentation 1.00

00:25:10.720 and then turned me in turned state's evidence on me and and and i think eventually gotten fired if

00:25:15.840 i remember correctly and um and then so as this was crowdsourced online i also learned that she

00:25:24.160 was behind half a dozen other things like so she was one of the um proponents of defunding the

00:25:31.920 vancouver rape crisis center which is for women because it's a rape crisis center and there was

00:25:37.840 this 61 year old man who wanted to be a peer counselor to female rape victims and the vancouver

00:25:44.080 rape center rape crisis center said no because that's completely inappropriate and if if i 1.00

00:25:50.480 remember correctly she was on his side and the whole thing was subject to a human rights complaint

00:25:56.480 but in the end the vancouver rape crisis center was defunded by the city of vancouver in large part

00:26:03.440 thanks to her agitation which is by the way i should say which is how i became a regular donor

00:26:09.360 to the vancouver rape crisis center because they needed more money from private donors because the

00:26:13.140 city of vancouver decided they weren't going to give money to a female rape crisis center that 1.00

00:26:17.980 actually cares to females so um i became a donor and i encourage other people to investigate

00:26:24.760 donating to them anyway she was behind that she also took the side of that i don't remember that

00:26:30.720 Yeah, we know him, John, because he sent us a cease and desist letter last week because he sent one to everyone saying, if you don't, if you retweet Billboard Chris again, I will haul you in front of the BC Human Rights Board.

00:26:44.740 I mean, I think he sent it to like 30 people, including Juno News, including Western Standard and many others.

00:26:49.900 It's time to modernize Canada's rules on nicotine.

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00:27:17.000 even banned from the products.

00:27:19.080 Nicotine pouches remain banned in convenience stores across the country,

00:27:23.100 and current laws ban communication about the risk of these products compared to cigarettes. 0.89

00:27:28.820 It's absolutely ridiculous.

00:27:30.760 The evidence is here. 0.73

00:27:32.060 The tools exist.

00:27:33.360 Canadians deserve to have the freedom to know about them, to learn about them,

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00:27:43.080 So learn more about this campaign and our friends over at Unsmoke

00:27:46.960 by visiting their website unsmoke.ca and thank you so much to unsmoke for sponsoring this episode

00:27:53.040 anyway we got it we got to move on we got to get to the juno awards i teased it at the beginning

00:27:56.800 and we don't have much time here so you know this all this got really overshadowed by the

00:28:00.200 ndp convention uh we usually do cover the juno awards you know we have the same name uh they

00:28:04.920 came first they were the juno awards uh a very sort of woke um ode to canadian subsidized music

00:28:12.060 which is you know the real canadian musicians don't show up to this thing because it's a joke

00:28:17.180 uh part of the reason we named our company juno news is because we wanted to take back this name

00:28:21.500 juno right juno was the really that was the soldiers yes that's the more consequential

00:28:27.180 juno i would argue well exactly right and and that and that that is part of our canadian history

00:28:32.220 that was where canada had an outsized role fighting the nazis and helping the good guys

00:28:36.540 win world war ii um and so we wanted to take back that name but we wanted to uh just you know show

00:28:41.900 show a little bit about these juno awards i thought you characterized it perfectly john when

00:28:46.060 you wrote this on x you said this is called the juno awards it's a hallowed annual canadian ritual

00:28:50.460 where government subsidized canadians pretend that ordinary canadians enjoy listening to whatever

00:28:54.860 this is supposed to be and then we'll just play a quick clip of this inook uh singer performance

00:29:00.860 here. This is SOT 3.

00:29:02.460 that is so bad okay just one more here this is the host

00:29:31.140 of these juno awards her name is may martin also uh they them a non-binary and this is very cringe 0.63

00:29:38.580 she goes like full fangirl over mark carney and apparently his speech in davos which was very

00:29:43.860 moving to her like how the audience explodes with laughter as if everybody watched this like

00:29:48.580 davos speech i mean maybe they did i don't know but anyway and then she she basically says that

00:29:52.740 mark carney is like her daddy uh let's roll this as a soft five i do have to say though that when

00:29:58.740 i saw mark carney's speech at davos did you see that it i felt as a childlike pride i felt like

00:30:07.460 he was canada's dad sticking up to the bullies i was like that's my prime minister and then i saw

00:30:12.980 him posing with the cast of heated rivalry and just my nerve my nervous system just relaxed

00:30:22.260 and then just one more of that host may martin uh talking to delhi for tatto maybe one of the 0.99

00:30:27.780 more bankable canadian musicians that actually bothers to go to this um where she's pitching 1.00

00:30:32.340 a new version of promiscuous girl but she wants to call it they them this is just pure cringe this 1.00

00:30:37.380 is sought sex and i'm actually vibrating right now because i'm standing near the great nelly furtado 0.97

00:30:43.140 hi nelly hi how are you how are you i'm uh i'm so i'm glad we have like a private moment alone the 0.92

00:30:54.820 two of us here and because i actually wanted to pitch you something i wanted to do a cover

00:30:59.380 of promiscuous girl it's promiscuous they them do you like that it doesn't have the same ring 0.63

00:31:04.100 to it you love it okay great it could be the video could be good it's me in sensible jeans

00:31:09.300 trying to decide which bathroom to use thank you thank you yes a little bit of self-deprecating

00:31:17.060 humor i guess there but kind of to your point right that it's all it's all very narcissistic

00:31:22.340 the whole woke idea that you know it's all about her and and and her being they them kind of feels

00:31:27.620 like group therapy a little bit where she's talking about uh uh you know being they them

00:31:33.460 trying to decide which bathroom to go into it it's all just so cringed jonathan but the point

00:31:37.940 really is that this is kind of like mainstream in cam i mean i don't know the juno awards are

00:31:42.420 supposed to be like our national music where i don't know how many people watch them probably

00:31:45.700 not many uh but they obviously feel so comfortable pushing forward this ideology that they that they

00:31:51.860 made it sort of front of center front and center in their music's armani bay having a non-binary

00:31:57.220 hose it did kind of a very similar thing that the ndp chair did what do you make of it well one thing

00:32:02.900 i you know people people will complain like this like anti-woke people will complain like oh this

00:32:10.420 another cherished canadian institution has been destroyed by wokeness

00:32:14.420 i'm like well really did you even watch the junos 10 or 20 years ago before it was destroyed by

00:32:19.540 wokeness like no you didn't because it was an unendurable farce for completely different reasons

00:32:25.060 like the the hosts pretended we listened to all these other like hoser bands that no one actually

00:32:30.420 listened to um and it was like the same kind of cringy thing it was just it was like more mainstream

00:32:38.660 cringe and this cringe i mean it's kind of sad that may martin couldn't even get like a decent

00:32:43.540 belly laugh out of people going to her bread and butter they them stuff like you can just tell

00:32:50.100 they workshop that joke forever and it didn't even land which is kind of sad she's a professional

00:32:54.180 comedian i've been told she's actually like a skilled comedian i take her word for it i um

00:32:59.980 i confess like i don't watch a lot of tv or um listen to a lot of canadian music in general

00:33:06.500 so i'm not an expert i do consider myself an expert on calling out cringe but i don't consider

00:33:12.760 myself an expert on these art forms but if you take this another context like if you take the

00:33:19.160 grant i don't think a lot of people watch the grammys either but the people who do the grammys

00:33:23.340 wouldn't do like this kind of really embarrassing um fawning tribute to the sitting president

00:33:31.880 whether it was like obama or biden or trump or whatnot because they say well this is this is

00:33:36.260 ridiculous this is we're going to alienate half the country if we do this like it's just totally

00:33:40.340 inappropriate but that's because they presume they're going to have a mass audience whereas 0.91

00:33:45.340 the sad thing about what we just saw with the junos is the only way that full shtick would make

00:33:51.440 sense is if the people in the room just kind of acknowledge well no one's watching anyway so we

00:33:55.300 can just kind of say what we want and treat it as like our own private little treehouse

00:33:58.640 where we just kind of like we're talking to each other and when you watch stuff like that 0.91

00:34:04.100 i guess it's kind of like the ndp convention the reason it sounds so ridiculous and cringy

00:34:08.320 is you're watching clips it's presumed that very few people outside that little

00:34:16.300 cliquish ecosystem are watching it and those people all have monolithic politics like there's

00:34:22.900 probably you know no one in that room who's or very few people in that room who's a conservative

00:34:26.300 voter or who would admit to it so like of course they kind of pretend to laugh and put their hand

00:34:31.380 oh yeah the date like do they even know what davos is probably not but may martin is telling

00:34:36.700 them to clap for it so they do and that's the thing that annoys me most about it isn't you know

00:34:43.480 it's not that the music is so terrible some of it that you just played is pretty hard to listen to

00:34:49.100 but it's just this kind of smug cliquishness and all of it is made possible with taxpayer dollars

00:34:56.000 and this pretense that they're all like artistic geniuses who are you know channeling the voice

00:35:05.400 and consciousness and artistic brilliance of an entire nation that's like you know

00:35:11.400 the distillation of 40 million people our musical soul is brought to the world at the Juno events

00:35:18.680 which is quite it's nonsense it's like essentially an incestuous little clubhouse event where they

00:35:24.520 tell jokes that they pretend to find funny for the benefit of each other because no one else is

00:35:28.240 listening and when other people do listen and they watch they're horrified like the Daily Mail

00:35:33.300 which is a british newspaper they ran a whole article about how appalling that that juno's 1.00

00:35:38.500 juno spectacle you showed was like that um the tribute to the suede tribute to nelly frittato

00:35:45.700 um which like if you're not in that world and and if you're not like as a canadian we're just

00:35:53.540 kind of roll our eyes it's like oh right it's the junos it's unfortunately this happens every year

00:35:58.420 but in britain where they've never heard of the junos like to them juno really does mean juno

00:36:03.060 beach right uh and there's oh there's this music award show in canada called the juno so i guess

00:36:09.780 it's just you know justin bieber and that's drake and stuff but then no it's like this appalling

00:36:15.460 thing and they they find it hilarious as well they should um i think i think we've gone full circle

00:36:21.620 there because it's true that canada has become like the laughing stock when it comes to the woke 0.99

00:36:26.500 excesses and we we're sort of a cautionary tale on many public policy issues from our made policy

00:36:32.900 um and the expansion of euthanasia uh to yeah the silliness of having basically it feels like

00:36:39.700 a bunch of university students out there lecturing the country and taking us back to 2018 where we

00:36:45.460 had to all say our pronouns and uh you know not misgender one another go ahead i'm going to push

00:36:50.340 back on the euthanasia thing um probably not a popular opinion with with your views i actually

00:36:56.020 support made uh that's medical assistance and dying i um i'm a libertarian when it comes to

00:37:01.060 that and there's all sorts of horror stories about you know people being pressured to it

00:37:04.580 there needs to be guardrails um i actually think that marijuana legalization

00:37:12.420 made there's certain things that justin trudeau got right and like i'm

00:37:17.140 i think we'll have to disagree agree i'm a progressive at heart yeah yeah

00:37:20.500 Yeah, fair enough.

00:37:21.640 It's the optics.

00:37:22.520 We got to wrap up this episode.

00:37:24.680 We've gone long already.

00:37:25.500 I really appreciate having you on.

00:37:26.500 We will have you back though

00:37:27.440 because I totally disagree with you on MAID.

00:37:29.700 I think it's just a total affront to human dignity

00:37:31.980 and it's a slippery slope.

00:37:33.340 And we're seeing that, you know,

00:37:34.560 when you talk about guardrails,

00:37:35.440 it's like people go in for a medical appointment

00:37:37.480 that's totally not related to MAID

00:37:38.840 and they don't come home because they are offered MAID.

00:37:42.120 And so it's like, you know,

00:37:43.420 we're living in a society

00:37:44.260 where it's one of the number one causes of death.

00:37:47.600 It doesn't happen in other countries.

00:37:49.500 i'm glad i will have the option i'm glad i will have the option to determine my own fate when

00:37:54.980 that time comes all right let's let's let's end it at that and we'll have to have you on for a

00:37:59.400 broader debate on that so i think i appreciate your time and uh the back and forth here we'll

00:38:04.240 have to have you on again soon all right folks that's all the time we have for today thank you

00:38:07.880 so much i'm kind of welcome thank you and god bless

Juno News - March 31, 2026

Why Canada is still so WOKE (w⧸ Jonathan Kay)

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