Juno News - September 27, 2022


Why is Canada so woke？


Episode Stats

Length

5 minutes

Words per Minute

182.74208

Word Count

965

Sentence Count

61


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 So you have a unique advantage being a Canadian now working and teaching in the United Kingdom.
00:00:14.600 What would you say are the biggest differences between the two or when it comes to just the general landscape of free speech, academic freedom, wokeness?
00:00:22.420 Well, there's just more resistance in Britain against these things.
00:00:26.420 So you have, for example, the free speech union, which is going to back you up if you are trying, if you're canceled in a university.
00:00:33.200 So that's one thing. We've got government, because of the Tory government, we've now got some legislation, which I've kind of helped on,
00:00:40.120 called the academic higher education free speech bill, which means that if universities try and censor you, then they will be fined.
00:00:47.660 You can also take them to court. So you have a number of different things, instruments at your disposal.
00:00:52.840 You've also got the media here, which is more balanced than in Canada, particularly on the print side.
00:00:58.220 And they will call out episodes of cancel culture and put pressure on universities that engage in this.
00:01:04.520 And all of those things are different.
00:01:06.300 My sense in Canada is that the dissidents, they are to some degree organized into self-help groups,
00:01:12.960 you know, maybe around heterodox academy branches.
00:01:15.840 But other than that, they've got no backing politically or in the media, really.
00:01:20.620 Other than you guys, of course, you're the only bright lights.
00:01:23.480 But there's no real mainstream media backing.
00:01:27.400 And so it's very hard to push back against this culture in these institutions.
00:01:32.440 I think that the institutional aspect is so key.
00:01:35.100 I mean, obviously, the UK has media bias issues like everywhere else.
00:01:38.820 But there seems to be, I'd say, a larger volume of media outlets and also a greater scrappiness.
00:01:43.780 And I don't know if it just comes from the tabloid tradition or something else.
00:01:47.540 But when you talk about laying that groundwork for these challenges and for these fights,
00:01:52.940 is the issue that the UK is just further ahead than Canada?
00:01:56.340 Or has there been something else that speaks to that difference?
00:02:00.200 Well, there's a couple of things.
00:02:01.020 One is, I think, the UK has a long tradition of having a conservative print media, telegraph.
00:02:08.540 And even the Times and the tabloids, that doesn't exist in Canada.
00:02:12.260 I think they're much more willing to go on the offensive against high-sounding phrases around political correctness.
00:02:18.920 That in Canada, there's a lot of deference to that.
00:02:21.620 And that gives cover for the institutions to go all in on this stuff and be able to get away with it.
00:02:27.720 And I just don't think institutions in Britain that completely go all in on woke, that cancel people, can get away with it.
00:02:37.320 They will pay a cost in PR terms.
00:02:40.240 And my sense is that's not happening in Canada.
00:02:42.720 I also think probably within the culture in Canada, there is still, because of the post-1960s,
00:02:49.360 what happened to Canada, the end of the British identity,
00:02:51.540 the rise of a kind of newly invented notion of Canada as a left-wing United States,
00:02:56.560 the Multiculturalism Act.
00:02:58.440 You had the soil prepared for political correctness.
00:03:02.480 More of a monoculture in a way, that here it was always a little bit more fractured.
00:03:07.700 And so I don't think political correctness could really become the ethos of the country quite as strongly as in Canada.
00:03:13.740 We've actually spoken, you and I, on my own show, but your course on wokeness.
00:03:17.720 And now you're a couple weeks in. How's that been going?
00:03:20.020 Well, going well.
00:03:20.760 I mean, it doesn't launch until January.
00:03:22.100 January, as I mentioned before, it's an open online course to anybody.
00:03:26.100 Yeah, we're advertising it.
00:03:27.120 We're now starting to film.
00:03:29.140 And once we've filmed episodes, we're then going to circulate clips so that people get a sense of what they can expect.
00:03:36.460 But yeah, I think this is ripe for an analytical approach that just says we're going to put this ideology,
00:03:42.100 and it is an ideology, and woke is the correct term for it.
00:03:45.780 We're going to put it on the table, dissect it like we would fascism, like we would liberalism, or any other ideology.
00:03:53.200 And then we're going to ask questions about it.
00:03:54.960 So that's really the aim of this course, because the way this is portrayed in institutions is that this is very much just,
00:04:02.300 if you're a good person, these are the values everyone believes in.
00:04:05.520 And what we're saying is, well, no, this is one of a bunch of ideologies,
00:04:08.440 and we're going to look at it like we would one of any other ideologies.
00:04:11.300 And what are you hoping to get out of the ARC forum this week?
00:04:14.740 Well, I don't, I mean, it's such an eclectic mix.
00:04:17.900 I'm partly, you know, what ARC is, as it's been explained to me, is essentially an alternative to Davos.
00:04:24.560 So it's an alternative vision.
00:04:27.160 Now, there obviously are some aspects that overlap with Davos.
00:04:30.660 Davos is obviously corporate.
00:04:32.000 It obviously likes capitalism.
00:04:33.700 I mean, the difference here, I think, is there's a more questioning approach on speech issues,
00:04:39.440 on the sort of, again, a lot of what I would call the woke agenda.
00:04:42.760 So equity, this idea that outcomes have to be exactly equal across race, gender, and other identity groups,
00:04:48.880 is something that ARC clearly doesn't buy into.
00:04:52.220 And I'm interested to see how they question that.
00:04:54.920 Now, they're also questioning the environment, the environmental agenda, and that's fine.
00:04:59.420 That's part of their remit as well.
00:05:01.200 But I'm more interested in what they've got to say on equity and diversity issues,
00:05:05.780 and how they are going to challenge that narrative.
00:05:09.060 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:05:11.380 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.