I’ve found Canada’s only free speech professor. And he’s written a book!
Summary
In this episode of the Ezra Levant Show, Ezra talks about the release of reporter Anna Slats, who was falsely arrested in New York City for reporting on the protests in the streets of the city. And he talks to Philip Slayton, Canada s only free speech advocate and author.
Transcript
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Hello, my rebels. I'll give you a brief update about the case of Anna Slats, our reporter who
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was arrested in New York City. She's free. That's the spoiler alert. And then I have an in-depth
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interview with a, I think he's the only one in the country, a free speech professor in Canada.
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Yeah, I found him. I called him a unicorn. I'll let you hear what he thinks of that.
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So that's the form of a podcast, but it's also, of course, a video that's our primary medium.
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And to get the video, just become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. It's eight bucks a month or 80 bucks
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for the full year. And you get all the videos for these podcasts and you get a couple of other shows
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too. So you can get all that at rebelnews.com. All right, here's the podcast.
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Tonight, I think I found Canada's only free speech professor and he's written a book. It's June
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4th and this is the Ezra Levant Show. Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon
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consumer? I know. There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer. The only thing I
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have to say to the government is because it's my bloody right to do so.
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Hello, my friends. The happy news is that our newest reporter, Anna Slats, was released today from
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jail in New York City where she had been falsely arrested for reporting on the street protests
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in that city. She had been kept in custody for more than 36 hours and we had lawyered up lots of
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lawyers and even got the Canadian consulate in New York to help us out. But so bizarrely, instead of
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sending her to the hearing where our lawyer had indicated that he would defend her, registered as
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her lawyer, the jail sent Anna to another hearing where she had no lawyer. They didn't tell us about it
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and then they just let her out the jail but out a back door so she didn't see our staffer Yankee and
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our lawyer Michael who had been waiting at the front door of the code. It was so weird. In one sense
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that means all our efforts were for nothing. Our lawyers didn't lawyer. But it was, you know, it's like
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we did nothing, we accomplished nothing. But on the other hand, I spoke to Anna after she got out and
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she indicated there was a lot of trickery in the jail that day and she gave me some examples. And then she was
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just grateful that we went to such lengths for her and she actually said she wanted to go right back
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out and do more reporting. So that's good news. But today I want to focus on Canada. And my guest
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for a feature-length interview is a thoughtful proponent of free speech and the free speech
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culture. Something we used to have in Canada but I think we've lost it. That interview is next.
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How many free speech organizations are there in Canada? Well there's a lot that call themselves
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free speech and free press. If you look at their names, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association,
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Civil Liberties are their middle name. There's something called Canadian Journalists for Free
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Expression. There's the Canadian Association of Journalists. There's Penn International, Reporters
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Without Borders. There are almost more free press organizations than there are writers. But where
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are they in the recent pandemic where civil liberties were squashed along with leveling the curve? I didn't
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see the civil liberties fight for anyone who was slapped with a thousand dollar fine for going to the park.
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And as Justin Trudeau and other layers of government slowly shrink the bandwidth for free speech,
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I don't see the journalists for free expression or other groups fighting against that. Maybe it's
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because they're now on the dole themselves. A media bailout here, an appointment to the Senate there.
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So it is exceedingly rare to find someone, especially someone from the establishment, a former dean of law
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law at a first-rate law school, a 20-year Bay Street practitioner of the law, a professor at McGill,
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an author. It's very rare to find someone to come out with a full-throated defense
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of free speech. But I am delighted to say we have found the unicorn. And he joins us in studio now.
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His name is Philip Slayton. He's an author and a lawyer. And he has written a new book called
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Nothing Left to Lose, An Impolite Report on the State of Freedom in Canada. It's so nice to have
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you here. Thank you, Ezra. I've never been called a unicorn before. I've been called many things,
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but never a unicorn. Well, because a unicorn is so rare, one wonders if it even exists.
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Well, I exist, certainly. Well, I'm glad of it. Now, I had the pleasure of reading an early
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manuscript, a confidential review copy sent to me by your publisher, Ken White. And I have to disclose
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that I even play a cameo role in your book. You mentioned twice. Oh, I know. Well, thank you
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for that. Favorably both times. I read it. Some of my battles against free speech. Free speech
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battles are fought in many different forums, whether it's a law society telling a lawyer he can't speak
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out or a human rights commission saying you can't use this or that offensive word. That's quite true.
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I mean, I think part of the problem, Ezra, and I discuss this, as you know, of course, in the book,
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is this ingrained habit of deference to authority that Canadians have. I mean, we defer to authority
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if somebody has a big title or wears a fancy uniform or somehow is, you know, is president
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of a bank. We naturally and instinctively defer to them. They must know something we don't know.
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They must understand something we don't understand. Therefore, we should essentially do what they
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say. And that's reinforced, I think, by the often praised Canadian predilection for politeness
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and civility. You know, it's not a good thing to speak out. It's not a good thing to be critical.
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Just kind of keep quiet. Get on with your life.
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I think we saw a lot of that during the pandemic.
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There's a lot of experts who were trotted out who we had never heard of before,
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but they called themselves expert. Maybe they called themselves doctor.
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And everyone did exactly what they said. And then they flipped their position. And we did exactly
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what they said again. Wear a mask. Don't wear a mask. Go outside. Don't go outside.
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And the deference to anyone who wore like a high priest's wizard hat was shocking to me.
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Well, I agree with that. And I think there's an added problem in this particular case, the
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case of the pandemic. And that is it's so complicated. The science is so uncertain.
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The statistics are so suspect. The real causes of death are often seems to be misstated.
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I mean, if somebody who's 85 or 90 years old with underlying conditions, heart disease,
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diabetes, whatever, gets COVID-19 and dies, that's a death from COVID-19. So the whole
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question of causality is fudged, I think. So there's all kinds of complicated reasons why
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in the case of a pandemic, the Canadians' instinctive deference, Canadians' instinctive respect for
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experts may not have served them very well. But how about on matters that no one is really an
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expert on? Like, for example, political ideas. We can each have a legitimate idea. And just because
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someone's a PhD in this or that doesn't mean they're a better thinker. In fact, it might mean
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they're worse. For example, the mania that's sweeping even Canada on race relations. I think Canada is one
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of the most harmonious countries in the world, especially when you compare to any other one.
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And yet the kind of rigid groupthink and the narrowing of opinions allowed, that's not because,
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I mean, you could say it's because the issues are complex, but I don't think it's about experts or
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complexity or risk. I think it's just we've lost the reverence for individuality, the odd eccentricity,
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I mean, there used to be a time where we appreciated someone being a bit quirky, a bit funny,
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a bit odd. That was sort of a character. And now we hate anyone who is out of step with the mainstream.
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Well, I mean, I think essentially I agree with you. I mean, you've had more personal experience
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of this than I have. But I think essentially I agree with you. And of course, it has a chilling
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effect, this attitude. People become afraid to speak out. People become afraid to say, you know,
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that's what everybody says, but I don't agree for these reasons, because they may be
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tarred as, you know, racist. They may be tarred of something else that's unacceptable. And then
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it's all part of the political correctness movement as well, which unfortunately has been stoked and
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fostered by universities, for example, which it never used to be. Universities used to be places
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for independent, critical thought. Universities used to be places where students were taught,
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as I like to say, how to know a good argument from a bad argument. Now, in my opinion,
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they're not so much. Now there are places where, you know, by and large, the party line is offered
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and the party line is bought. So all this goes to deprive the general population of a kind
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of an independent, inquiring, critical mind. And as I say in the book, sometimes it's not
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a bad thing to be impolite. Sometimes it's not a bad thing to be critical. Sometimes it's
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not a bad thing to take a line that is not the popular approved line, even though it may
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cost you to do so. There's lots of examples of that. But my fear for our country, for Canada,
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is for a whole bunch of reasons, the much-wanted liberty, freedom of expression is part of it,
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but there are other things too, the much-wanted liberty that we like to sort of congratulate
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ourselves for is to some extent a shimmerer, and it's something that's rapidly evaporating.
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You know, you're saying we used to learn a good argument from a bad argument. I mean,
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they used to teach, and I'm talking a generation or two ago, what they call logical fallacies,
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the appeal to authority. I'm an expert, so believe me. That's not logic. Or ad hominem.
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Or there's so many, there's a list of these little logical flaws that if you learn what they are,
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you can have an eye peeled for them, and you can point out, well, that's not an argument,
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that's not an argument. But these days, if I had to sum up the number one argument being taught
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by the left to the left, I see it everywhere. The number one argument that's taught is,
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as a fill-in-the-blank of your grievance group, I believe. It's a pure, it's not even argument by
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authority, it's argument, it's an appeal to the authority of my racial, as a black man, as a Jewish
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woman, as a left-handed person, as a frontline nurse. So you're not even saying, listen to my
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arguments. It's, I'm going to tell you what I believe in based on who I am.
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Here's my credential, and you cannot argue with me.
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Well, and if you disagree with my argument, which is likely poorly thought out because I'm
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hanging in on my identity, I won't take it as a refutation of my ideas. I will take it as an insult
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against the, as such and so. I just said, I'm saying this as a black man. I just said,
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I'm saying this as a Jewish woman. And you're disagreeing with me? So you are negating my
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blackness, my Jewishness, my woman-ness. So it's a trick, it's a trap, it's an unfairness,
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and it's a baiting. And it's, if you dare disagree with me, I'm telling you in advance,
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if you dare disagree with me, you're negating my lived experience as a left-handed...
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Well, I think, actually, Ezra, it even goes beyond that. He goes to the point where,
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for example, you cannot question or disagree with, or even really comment on, let's say,
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a black person talking about the black experience, or an indigenous person in this country talking
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about the indigenous experience, or whatever, the Jewish woman talking about the Jewish
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female experience. Because if you're not one of those, and if you're not one of those,
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you cannot understand, so the argument goes. You cannot understand how they feel,
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how they think, and you're not qualified to offer an opinion. A very good example of that,
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I think, is a whole cultural appropriation argument that raged in the very small world
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of Canalit for a while, which said things like, if you are not an indigenous person,
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you cannot write about indigenous people. If you are not whatever, you cannot write
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about the experience of those people, which, to my way of thinking, negates the whole kind
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of intellectual integrity and history of writing.
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Well, of writing of any sort of act of imagination.
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Of all fiction itself. Oh, how can you write about Star Wars? You're not actually living
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Or suppose a farmer in Saskatchewan, who never left Saskatchewan, wrote a brilliant novel
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novel about the Holocaust. And people would say, it doesn't matter that it's a brilliant novel.
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It doesn't matter that it shows an extraordinary understanding and sensitivity.
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This man did not experience the Holocaust. Therefore, he is unqualified to write about it.
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So, I mean, the whole, that whole movement in Canada, Joseph Boyden was, to some extent,
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for example, a victim of that. He wrote novels like Black Spruce about the indigenous experience,
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and then somebody said, well, wait a minute. Is he really an indigenous person? He claims
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Can you imagine that, doing a genetic test on whether or not your book was good?
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So it pervades, I think, many aspects of Canadian life. And it's, to me, worrying. And that's
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why I sat down and wrote this book about that and many other things, which in various ways
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erode our liberties in this country, our freedom in this country, if we properly understand
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You know, I remember growing up as a kid in college, I was in political clubs, and there
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was a real custom of having debates. And it was just expected that every political party
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would attend the debate. And there was even sort of a speaker's corner when I went to school,
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University of Calgary. And there were large assemblies where students would have debates.
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And if you refused to attend, it was not even so much that you were a chicken, it's that
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you weren't serious about being in the public debates. It was, it was, you were expected
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to participate. And it was an honour to be asked. And if you declined, it was sort of
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a surrender. These days, I don't think there are debates like that anymore. Because de-platforming
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is the response, and I think it's mainly a leftist response. I have never seen a Conservative,
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and let's just go specifically, I've never seen a member of the Conservative Party, I've never
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seen a pro-life group, I've never seen a right-of-centre speaker try and de-platform
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a leftist. Maybe I've missed it, but it feels like a one-sided thing. If it's a two-sided
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thing, correct me. But I know lots of Conservatives who want to debate. I'm one of them. But de-platforming
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Well, I think, from what I know, what I understand is mostly a phenomenon of the left, but not
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If you have a counter-example, I want to hear it.
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I can't bring one readily to mind, but I think there's one or two that I mentioned in the
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book. But beyond that, the underlying phenomenon is, you cannot speak. I will not listen to
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your ideas because of who you are. Not because of the validity of your ideas, but because
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Well, let me give you an example. Global warming. The theory of man-made global warming.
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Well, I think it's more than a theory, by the way.
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Okay. I mean, you could say the theory of gravity is more than a theory, but...
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I hope it's a fact, because if not, we're going to float away.
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That's right. There are, you know, the BBC, the CBC, just to give two state-run broadcasters
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as an example, they have explicit editorial policies never to interview skeptics.
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But I'm saying it's not based on the personal identity of the spokesman. For example, Dr.
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Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace, amazing credentials, wonderful man, big heart.
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So, he's personally inoffensive in every way, but it's because of his ideas that they will
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never give him a platform. So, it's not just...
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Yeah. When I say because of who they are, I don't mean tall, short, white, black. I mean
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the whole makeup of the person, including their ideas and commitment to a particular principle.
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But I think it's clearly wrong. I mean, I personally believe in global warming, and I think it's,
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despite all the other trouble we've had recently, it's the great challenge, difficulty, fear
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of our age. But that doesn't mean that people who, for whatever reason, have a qualified
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view of it, maybe even deny it, and there are people I know who do deny the whole phenomenon,
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shouldn't be given an opportunity to speak. I mean, the best response to a bad argument
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or a bad theory is a critical analysis offering a good argument and a good theory, not shutting
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them down. As you put it, deplatforming them. Hear them out and say, here's why I don't agree
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with you, and here's why I think you're wrong. And let the audience, Canadians, who are on the
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whole sensible, reasonably well-educated people, make a judgment.
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You know, and I mentioned Dr. Moore, he was invited to be one of about 30 speakers at
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a City of Regina conference. But he was the one who was a skeptic of the theory of man-made
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global warming, so they deplatformed him. One voice out of 30 was too much for this conference.
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Well, I mean, I'm not familiar with that particular incident, but I think if it happened as you
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described it, it's clearly a mistake. I mean, if somebody has a bad theory, a bad argument,
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don't take the platform away from them. Put them on the platform, let them speak, let them
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say what they have to say, and judge them as you wish.
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But I know how it works, because I've seen it, and it's come for me more than once.
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The mob. The mob comes to your house. It's a lovely little house, but it's quite flammable.
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And they've all got their pitchforks and their torches, and they say, hey, we're going through
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the neighbourhood, finding out if you're on our side or the demon's side. So you've got about
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30 seconds to tell me, will you pick up your torch and come for the enemy with us, or should
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we torch your house too? So it's a domino effect of them going through and saying, are you with
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this guy? Tell me now, because if so, we're going to make you an enemy. And so every, like in the
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city of Regina, everyone said, oh, the mayor, the aldermen, the conference, oh, geez, don't
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come for me. Yeah, go after Dr. White. I'm just giving you an example of how it works. Please don't
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come for me. I'll join with you and kick the tar out of this bad guy.
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Well, I think in a way what you're talking about or what I hear is social media. I mean,
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so for example, somebody can be overnight on social media, tried, convicted and hanged without
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any opportunity to present their own case, to defend themselves appropriately. Often this
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trying, convicting is hanging is done by people who don't even really understand the facts,
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don't understand what happened. Sometimes if an opportunity is subsequently given to have
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a real trial with real evidence and real legal protection, it turns out they were wrong.
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But lives are ruined. Lives are ruined. People are destroyed by Twitter mobs, the kind of mob
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you talked about, but in this case on Twitter or other forms of social media. That's deeply
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concerning. It happens on social media, but I think it happens in real life too. I mean,
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I think journalists often are the worst. They call up an institution, a debate, a platform
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and they say, oh, I noticed that your conference has this odious person. Hmm. My deadline's 5 PM. You
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tell me which side. Oh, I mean, journalists call up Facebook and Twitter all the time as little
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tattletales, little hall monitors and say, I'm writing a story on why you're allowing a Nazi
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that I've just, uh, judged to be an, or why you're lying, uh, allowing a global warming denier at your
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conference. My deadline's at 5 PM. Um, Hey Facebook, let me know if you're going to de-platform him. So
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it's a, it's not even journalism. It's, it's, it's not scolding. It's tattling. It's a form of
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activism posing as journalism. That I think is a form of censorship out there because these companies,
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even Tik Tok, the Chinese company is now terrified of being called unwoke. They, they recently banned
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Tommy Robinson from a Chinese company, you know, the, the country of Tiananmen square. Oh, Tommy
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Robinson, he's too spicy for us. Well, I mean, I do think in general, as you're suggesting, as you're
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describing the climate for people who have views that are in, let's say a distinct minority,
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who have views that may be somewhat eccentric, have views that are not favored by those who run
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our society and run our government. The climate for those people is very bad. It's a combination
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of all kinds of things. Social media, I think, is important in this, but it's very bad. And it takes
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someone of considerable courage to say something that they know is going to be unpopular, that they
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know is going to expose themselves to criticism, even physical danger. That takes a lot of courage.
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Once people with views that are unpopular, once people with views that are in a distinct minority,
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whatever those views may be, once they shut up because they're scared, then we are in serious
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trouble. That's when our democracy dies. That's when we live in a state which is essentially
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authoritarian. And it's extremely dangerous. And I think there's been a failure across the board in
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Canadian institutions and Canadian life when it comes to protecting those people and those ideas.
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In all kinds of respect. I won't go through the whole long list. It's all in the book. But
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it's a bad thing. You look at young people, my grandchildren, for example. They don't really,
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I mean, it's inculcated in them. They know they've got to be careful what they say. They know,
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for example, my eldest grandson is just about to go to university. When I went to university,
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it was like an opening up of a whole new life where you could speak your mind, where you were
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respected for what you had to say, when people wanted to engage in discussion and debate.
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Yeah, you have to be careful. There's traps everywhere.
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You have to be careful, very careful. And the traps can be sprung very quickly.
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You know, you can go home one evening and overnight the Twitter storm can erupt, a Twitter mob can
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erupt, and you can wake up in the morning having lost your job, lost your respect, and being in
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physical danger. It's happened many times and continues to happen.
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Well, tell me some of the chapters in the book. I mean, I did skim through the copy that Ken sent me,
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your publisher. What are the other things that you cover in the book?
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Well, there's a variety of things. I mean, the first major chapter deals with what you and I've
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discussed already, which is the Canadian habit of deference to authority. I give a number of
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examples in that respect. I mean, give me one instance. I talk about how the Canadian Supreme Court,
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the Supreme Court of Canada, is to some extent revered, certainly not questioned. And the judges
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who are, by the way, appointed, they're not elected, as you well know, they're appointed and decide
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fundamental questions of social policy, public policy in this country. Really, the big questions,
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if you look at the history of the court and the judiciary journey since the Charter of Rights
00:23:07.240
was enacted. But that court, our court, the Canadian Supreme Court, the judges on that court,
00:23:12.500
are treated with extraordinary deference and respect, seldom questioned even by the legal
00:23:17.160
profession. Whereas in the United States, for all its flaws and all of the criticism you can level
00:23:21.840
at it, the U.S. Supreme Court and its judges is very much kind of a vibrant, almost participatory
00:23:27.360
body, where, and part of the mainstream, the judges go on television, they give lectures,
00:23:33.060
they write books. They're part of an evolving, dynamic environment. But in Canada, we have this
00:23:39.960
habit of deference. That's one example. I talk about how universities, as again, we touched on this
00:23:44.740
earlier. How universities no longer see as their mission, giving people the intellectual tools
00:23:50.620
that you need to lead a life as a responsible, concerned, inquiring, participating citizen.
00:23:56.620
They no longer teach you how to know a good argument from a bad argument. God knows there's
00:24:01.760
a lot of bad arguments out there. They no longer teach you how to say, well, wait a minute,
00:24:05.300
you say that, but I'm not sure I can see why you say that. I'm not sure I see the premises
00:24:10.020
behind the argument. I'm not sure I see the evidence behind it. The universities don't
00:24:13.840
do that. There's already, there's been a failure to some extent of the candlelit world, particularly
00:24:18.760
in the cultural appropriation area. The police, I talk about the police. Human rights commissions,
00:24:24.020
a particular favorite of yours, I know, who tend to see a breach of human right around every
00:24:29.680
corner and tend to characterize as human rights things that may be important, but they're not
00:24:35.360
human rights and so on and so on and so on. You know, by the way, one other thing I'll mention
00:24:41.340
too, and that is the increasing power, because it's come to the fore in the pandemic, the increasing
00:24:47.480
power of the executive branch, which in our country means essentially the prime minister
00:24:52.100
and the premiers of process to do what they want to do to ignore the legislature. I mean, when was the
00:24:59.880
last time the Parliament of Canada met in any serious fashion? Yeah. So there's a whole bunch
00:25:05.040
of things happening, and the cumulative effect of which is, to me, very disturbing. And I think
00:25:10.960
the point of the book is to blow a whistle to say, watch out. You know, don't be too, don't be too
00:25:17.760
complacent, Canadians. You know, there are real dangers we face. I think it was 15 years ago that the
00:25:24.400
Danish cartoons of Mohammed were published. Yes. That's a long time ago. And I remember when my
00:25:29.640
little magazine at the time, the Western Standard, republished them with commentary. I remember that.
00:25:33.940
There was a bit of a kerfuffle, but there was a pollster named Compass, and they surveyed dozens
00:25:39.860
of working journalists. So it wasn't a random public opinion poll of strangers. It was actually
00:25:45.800
calling up working journalists directly. It was a survey of them. So it didn't purport to say,
00:25:53.460
this is what all Canadians think. It was, we talked to 150 working journalists, and here's
00:25:57.660
what they said. So it was like a pulse of the industry. And I only remember one statistic from
00:26:03.040
15 years ago. 70% of working journalists back then thought that not only should I have published
00:26:10.540
the cartoons, but that every media outlet should have too. So it was overwhelming. The journalists
00:26:17.480
said, no, not only was Levant right to do so, but we should have done so too. And we didn't,
00:26:22.340
and we're sort of shy about it. Fast forward 15 years. I am certain that if you were to survey
00:26:29.080
100 plus working journalists with a similar question, it would be flipped. It would be at
00:26:34.920
most 30% would say, oh yeah, we should. The rest would say it would be Islamophobic. It would be
00:26:42.740
dangerous. I'd be hauled before a human rights commission. I'd be Twitter mobbed. Like Rex Murphy
00:26:49.100
has been over the last couple of days for his article, claiming that Canada is not racist.
00:26:54.280
Everyone's outraged by that statement apparently. I think that not only have journalists lost the
00:27:02.320
flame in the last 15 years, but in a way they've been encouraged to because so many journalists now
00:27:07.540
have in some ways merged with government. There's very few media that aren't reliant on a government
00:27:16.820
bailout of sort. Newspapers just took the $600 million payment. I think that's made them more
00:27:21.760
timid. The largest employer of news journalists, more than all of this combined actually, is the CBC.
00:27:29.700
So I think that you've actually corrupted the independence out of Canadian journalists. What do you think of
00:27:35.700
that? Well, I do think that the whole story behind journalism in this country over the last
00:27:42.180
30 or 40 years is a very sorry story. I've got to have, needless to say, a chapter on this in the book.
00:27:48.500
Sometimes I think I have a chapter on everything. And I talk about how journalists, independent journalists,
00:27:55.700
for a long time were in the central and vital part of really the, not the government structure,
00:28:00.820
but the way we governed ourselves, the way the country ran. The fourth estate, right? The fourth,
00:28:05.060
the famous fourth estate. And they had an essential role to play. Their role was to keep everybody
00:28:10.100
honest. Their role was to be the cop on the beat. Their role was to blow the whistle when they saw
00:28:15.380
something that shouldn't happen. There was a famous journalist in the United Kingdom who was asked why
00:28:20.500
so many British journalists went to the United States and were successful, and he said it's because
00:28:26.900
of the attitude that British, back a while, the attitude that British journalists had when they
00:28:31.460
interviewed a politician. They went into the room and their basic attitude was, why is this guy going
00:28:37.140
to lie to me? What's he going to lie about? Deep skepticism, a deep attitude of show me,
00:28:44.660
tell me why you say that, prove it. And that has served, that served us all very well when you had a
00:28:50.340
cadre of journalists doing that. Those people have largely gone up for various complicated reasons,
00:28:55.860
and they've been replaced by the Twitter blog, the social media blog. Which is the opposite about
00:29:00.340
Speaking Truth, Parry. It's about being a bully of the moment. Being the bully of the moment, exactly
00:29:04.580
right, where you can say things without any real argument, without any real evidence. And before you know it,
00:29:10.020
it'll be retreated thousands of times, so you've got something going. Yeah. You know, Boris Johnson,
00:29:15.380
now the Prime Minister of the UK, he's been a writer for a long time. And I remember a wonderful piece
00:29:19.620
he wrote. He said, we need a gutter press to keep the gutters clean. And I thought, you know what,
00:29:26.580
that's so true. And he was making a defense for the most extreme form of snoopy, gossipy, tabloidy journalism.
00:29:35.380
But there's some truth there. And I don't think we have much of that spirit left in Canada. Very
00:29:42.260
little. Except some pockets on the internet, but those are stamped out rather quickly. I mean,
00:29:48.020
the other thing about the traditional newspaper back in the old days was there was some kind of
00:29:52.420
serious quality control. I mean, you had an editorial process. You had an editor who would look at
00:29:56.660
something and say, you know what, you haven't convinced me on this. You've got to take it back,
00:30:00.180
rethink it, make some more phone calls, and so on. So there was some substance to the process. There
00:30:05.380
was some credibility to the process, which certainly doesn't exist on social media. I mean,
00:30:11.460
it's essentially a catastrophe. How does the average citizen figure out what the hell is going on?
00:30:16.740
Where does the average citizen get his information? Where does he get opinions that are credible,
00:30:21.060
that could be relied upon? Where does he hear good arguments? Where do they come from? How do you know?
00:30:25.700
How do you know, Ezra, what's really happening? Who do you believe? Well, that's a question that we
00:30:30.980
can apply to our entire lives and every aspect of it. And for me, the answer is we have to think for
00:30:37.140
ourselves and be the judge of that. I remember there was an epiphany I had probably in my early 20s,
00:30:43.460
and it was any story in the newspaper that I actually knew firsthand about, I could spot all the factual
00:30:51.140
errors. Every story I knew about, they got something wrong. So imagine all the ones I don't know about,
00:30:57.940
and I learned to look at the byline who wrote it. So I learned to be a skeptic at an early age.
00:31:03.460
I think the internet forces us to take that skeptical approach to everything. And by the way,
00:31:08.260
I don't think that the CBC, for example, or the Toronto Star fare too much better than an accomplished
00:31:14.980
blogger, Twitterer, YouTuber, who has built up a following because of his quality. I think that
00:31:22.500
things sort themselves out in the market of ideas fairly quickly.
00:31:26.660
Well, I mean, another thing that I've certainly noticed over the last while is increasingly the
00:31:31.060
media, certainly the traditional media, and also to some extent social media, no longer really provide
00:31:38.100
us with factual stories. They no longer present facts. They're full of opinions. I mean, you pick up
00:31:42.980
one of Canada's major newspapers. I won't mention anyone by name. And what you find is a compendium
00:31:49.540
of opinions. Everybody's got an opinion on something. We've all got opinions. I've got opinions.
00:31:54.100
And you find a collection of these opinions. But where do you find the facts? Where do you find the
00:31:58.500
dispassionate objective reporting on facts so you know what happened and you can then formulate your own
00:32:04.260
opinion and not buy into somebody else's or reject somebody else's, but formulate your own opinion?
00:32:09.540
Yeah. Well, I think that's one reason why people are rejecting these papers is
00:32:13.140
because people say, well, my opinion is just as good as that opinion. And I don't have to pay
00:32:17.140
$1.50 for that opinion. Well, Philip, it's been a pleasure to get to know you a little bit. And
00:32:22.100
I'm always interested in books published by your publisher, Ken White. He was an early writer and
00:32:28.020
editor of Alberta Report way back in the day. McLean's Magazine in its heyday, Saturday night,
00:32:33.380
and the National Post, all of those magazines and newspapers at their peak. So he really was one of the
00:32:39.140
greats. And I'm delighted he's in the book publishing business. And when he sent me the review copy of
00:32:43.940
your book, I thought, this is amazing. This is so great. And I would like to encourage our viewers
00:32:50.820
not only to read it for its own sake. That's obviously why you read a book.
00:32:53.620
But I think we've got to support the unicorn and his equally rare publisher. If there is a publisher,
00:33:01.460
and if there's a former dean of law who is willing to make the case for freedom of the press and freedom
00:33:05.620
of speech, not only should we read it to learn from it, but we should read it to support the project.
00:33:11.780
So I personally, even though I have a review copy, I'm going to personally buy a copy online.
00:33:17.300
Good man. Well, my pleasure. And we're going to have a link under this video. And buy it because
00:33:22.900
you'll like it. I read it. But also buy it because for God's sakes, there's enough books on the other
00:33:28.100
side, don't you think? We ought to support the one guy who's doing the books on our side. All right,
00:33:32.260
there you have it. Well, Philip Slayton, what a pleasure to have you in today. Thank you,
00:33:34.580
sir. It's been a pleasure. Right on. Stay with us.
00:33:41.780
Well, it was a big day for me because we had been working so hard to get Anna Slats out of jail.
00:33:50.900
And we were so prepared and we lawyered up and we were working on this and that. And then we just
00:33:55.140
learned that she was released from jail through a back door and she went through a hearing we weren't
00:33:59.700
even told about. Extremely frustrating. I was so disappointed. And I felt like we really let Anna
00:34:04.980
down. But I spoke to her and she says she knew she was fighting hard. We were fighting hard for her
00:34:09.780
and that she's just ready to get back out there and keep fighting, keep reporting. So
00:34:14.100
I guess all's well that ends well. Thank you for your support, those of you who supported us. Anna's
00:34:18.660
so new. I've only had her on my show once as a guest and she's only done a few videos for us,
00:34:23.940
but I hope over time she becomes a great journalist. She certainly has the courage for it. Well,
00:34:28.500
that's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters,
00:34:32.660
see you at home. Good night. Keep fighting for free.