Don’t let the Woke Left ruin Remembrance Day
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Summary
Candice Malan talks with Mark Milkey about why the Woke Left is trying to ruin Canada Day, and how we can fight back. Mark is a public policy analyst, keynote speaker, author, and keynote speaker. He is also the author of The Victim Cult, and his most recent book is called, "The Victim Cult."
Transcript
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The woke left tried their very hardest to ruin and to cancel Canada Day this year.
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I'm Candice Malcolm and this is the Candice Malcolm Show.
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Hi, thank you so much for tuning into the program. It's great to have you with us.
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Now, if you have been following the news, if you've been following our reports at True North,
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you know about the controversy when it comes to the flag.
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The flag was lowered to be taken down to half-mast at the end of May.
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May, so we're talking about six months ago, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada,
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said, let's lower the flags in commemoration at the time we just learned about an apparent discovery
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of unmarked graves at a residential school near Kamloops, British Columbia.
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So the band leader came out, said that they had evidence and proof of unmarked graves of children
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who had attended the residential schools. As you know, it created an incredible media backlash.
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Several other bands came forward with their own claims of unmarked graves.
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And basically, the country went into mourning. There was this great shame cast over all Canadians
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and these really, really wild accusations that say that basically Canada committed genocide.
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Canada committed genocide. Canada was a genocidal state that the residential schools were not
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aimed at with the intention of educating people and lifting them out of poverty,
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but the intention of those residential schools was simply to kill everybody.
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That's basically the accusation that has been leveled against Canada by the woke left.
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And Justin Trudeau just sort of shrugged and said, let's just lower these flags down to have mass.
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This is totally unprecedented, totally unprecedented for the flags to be lowered down in commemoration
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of a historical event and also to remain lowered for this long.
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So more and more people were calling for those flags to go up.
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They finally did go up, mostly just so that they could go down again on Remembrance Day.
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And so I think that's at least a good sign, okay? We're coming together as a country.
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We're saying, look, some really bad things happened in the past.
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Residential schools were a horrible abuse of power and a terrible program that has gone wrong, that went wrong.
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I don't defend it in any way. However, I don't think that the intent of it was to kill people.
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I think the intent of it was good. They wanted to educate people.
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Unfortunately, you know, this one-size-fits-all policy where they took children out of their homes
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and forced them into residential school, bad idea. Lots of bad things happened. Lots of bad outcomes.
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Okay, so because of this, because of the sort of discovery and this sort of public awakening that we've had
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when it comes to the woke left demanding that every Canadian can see to this point that we committed genocide,
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that Canadians are genocidal, that our country is built on this horrible legacy, that we're all white supremacists,
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that we have to decolonize our country, that they did their best to try to ruin our country's national holiday on Canada Day.
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As you recall, there were huge efforts to cancel Canada Day, and it worked, and it worked.
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Some politicians were just so afraid to speak back against the mob, to tell them what they're saying is wrong,
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that they allowed it. They canceled their own ceremonies, that they tried to equate all of Canada's history
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to this one program that was a failed program, and because of it, we just didn't get to do Canada Day in the same way.
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I mean, let me just say that most Canadians ignored that. Most Canadians still went out and enjoyed their freedom
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and celebrated with fireworks and with friends and drinks and all the things that we love to do on July 1st,
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on Dominion Day or Canada Day. But there was that movement, and there was sort of an ugly shadow
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that was hanging over, looming over us all during Canada Day. Well, we sort of have the same moment now
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with Remembrance Day, where for some reason, instead of, you know, the whole country coming together
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to honor the good parts of our history, to honor the people who sacrificed for our freedom,
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some of the great accomplishments that Canada has had on a military front to keep the entire world safe,
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instead of talking about that, the same shame is sort of looming over us once again.
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The same woke forces are trying to cancel Canada Day.
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And so I wanted to bring on a guest today on the program to help us understand this phenomenon
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and really how we can push back and fight against it. So I am joined by Mark Milkey. Dr. Mark Milkey
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is a public policy analyst, keynote speaker, author, columnist, and an author of six books. His most
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recent book is called The Victim Cult. I really recommend you check it out. It is excellent. So Mark,
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thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me on, Candice.
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Well, so Mark, you know, it's Remembrance Day. This is a time where Canadians usually reflect upon our
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history, where we honor those who have sacrificed for our country. But then there is this sort of looming,
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you know, guilt that Canadians are meant to feel about some of the revelations about our history,
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some of the darker moments of our history. So let me ask you this, you know, you're a historian,
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you're very well versed in Canadian history. Do you think Canadians have reason to be proud? And,
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and, you know, how can we push back against some of the naysayers who say that we should just sort
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of feel this eternal guilt about being Canadian? Yeah, absolutely. We should feel proud. And I think
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the core problem in what you're seeing today, this notion that we can't celebrate Canada
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is actually utopian. I mean, I wrote about this in The Victim Cult. But if you if you look at the past,
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the last century, rather, the ideologues and the utopians, were at least looking forward,
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right? I mean, Marxists were dead wrong in economics, but they thought they could create
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this new perfect world in the future. And now we're beset by ideologues and utopians who look past
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to the past, and wonder why it wasn't perfect. Well, because you live in an imperfect planet with
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imperfect people. So the notion that we can't celebrate Canada is compared to what? Compared
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to a utopia of one's imagination of the past or the present, or the future? Or who? First Nations
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in Canada, who, you know, let me be blunt. I mean, look, everyone should be remembered fondly for their
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service to Canada, their contribution to Canada on this day. But there was really no people group in
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the history of the planet, for the most part, that wasn't involved in, for example, slavery, including
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in British Columbia, and including before, you know, what people like to call settlers, you know,
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most of us, most of our ancestors came. So there's no perfect history. And that's part of the problem
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today's people somehow weirdly expect that history and those in it should have been perfect.
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Right? Well, there's this weird, we're in this weird moment, Mark, where we're supposed to really
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carefully reflect upon, you know, Canadian history and all of the wrongs that have been done by
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Canadians. But to your point, you know, the history of the sort of pre-European history in North
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America is really largely undiscussed and undiscovered. I remember you wrote an interesting
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piece not too long ago, I think it was in the Orca, where you talked about how prior to Europeans,
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you know, the idea that First Nations were peaceful and loving is totally wrong, that they were quite
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cruel and barbaric in some ways. And like you mentioned, the history of slavery is,
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is really something that people don't know much about. What I've noticed recently is that we can't
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even really discuss the history of migration when it comes to First Nations people. Because when I was
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in school, we were taught that people came across the Bering Land Bridge, maybe it was prior to an
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ice age, but still, you know, maybe thousands of years ago, maybe, maybe more than that, maybe less
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than that. But it seems now that there's this weird notion where none of this history is even
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discussed is like politically incorrect or something. So, so why is it that some history
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is so important to dissect and look through and revisit, whereas other histories took completely
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brushed over and forgotten? Well, history has become politicized. So whenever politics gets into
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history, it's no longer honest history. And I think it's become, you know, a weapon, it's been
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weaponized from some ideologues. Look, you know, if I came from a culture that had been recently abused,
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my ancestors have been abused, and again, everyone's has, if you go back far enough,
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they're probably sensitive as well to criticism of, say, my culture. But I think the problem is
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no one owns the past, no one owns history, no one owns even one's own ethnicity or culture.
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What happened happens. The question is, how do you get to a better spot today? Which is, you know,
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where I like to go. But I think you also have to start in honesty in the past. So yes, I think,
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obviously, you know, if I was an Indigenous Canadian, I'd be pretty upset that, you know,
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the vote was removed, it wasn't restored until 1960. But I think part of what we're facing today
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is this weird dynamic where social media can amplify a past tragedy. And there are all sorts
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of past tragedies that can be amplified. But if you think pre-social media, and let's go back to the
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1970s, you know, I don't know if you're around. But you know, I was a kid. But or the 1980s or in
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the early 1990s, really before the internet took off, you would have to have, say, major newspapers
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or news hour broadcasts at 6pm, saying the United States, the big three, pound on a story again and
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again and again to make it, you know, really, you know, give it life day after day, like the Watergate
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hearings, right? Because there was something new every day. Weirdly, now, there was social media that we
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can extract an event out of the past. And again, there's no shortage of tragedies, and say, well,
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this this is the reason I am the way I am today, or my group is the way I am today. That's actually
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really dangerous. It's a false cause and effect link. But I think there's there's some of that
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happening today as well. I don't know if I fully answered your question. But I mean, that's that's
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part of the dynamic, I think that we're seeing. And we have to think carefully about really dragging
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the past out to beat up the present. Right. And and and to the point that you make in the victim
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cult is that it's not helpful. I mean, to people who come from a group that has been marginalized,
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or that have been victimized, you know, it's good to acknowledge that, but does it really help
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them move on? You know, you're thinking of some of these new concepts, these new woke concepts that
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we hear about, like white privilege, the sort of idea that is undergained is that white people have
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more power. And and and that's a very dangerous message to be putting out in society, because it it can
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give people of all different backgrounds, a really bad idea of what the real world is, you know, if
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you're if you're not white, you might think, Oh, no matter how hard I try, I'm never going to succeed.
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And if you are white, you might think, Oh, I'm going to coast through life, and everything's gonna
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be easy for me. And both of those things are obviously wrong. And so a part part of it is like,
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how do we how do we come together as a country and make sure that there is equal opportunity and that
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all people are treated fairly now, and make sure that people who are still in poverty,
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these people live in some of these really remote reserves have the opportunities that they should
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have in a country like Canada? Mark, how do we how do we make our country better amidst this whole
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sort of woke left guilt trip that we're in the middle of? Well, I think you're on to something. And
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what you mentioned earlier about remembering history. So again, I look, I'm fully in favor
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remembering history, you know, all of it, the bad, the good, the warts, the ugly. But I think part of it is,
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again, reminding people that first of all, no one's ancestors are pure. You know, you go back far
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enough, and everybody's got a black sheep in the family, their ancestral or ethnic or national
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tree. But also, you know, remembering the good parts of history, like it's not as black and white
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as people think. When one of the articles, I think you will reference that a moment ago that I wrote a
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few months ago in the work, it was about British Columbia's history. And I came across this, this book
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about the history of black Canadians, written in the early 1970s. And it had some real gems, it actually
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talked about, for example, there's a migration in the late 1850s, early 1960s, of hundreds of black
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Californians to Victoria. And they were actually warmly accepted by the local Anglican church,
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by the local governor at the time, I think it was James Douglas. And they wrote back to their, you know,
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to other, you know, friends and relatives in California saying, what a wonderful place Victoria was.
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And of course, like everybody who moves to Victoria, even then bragged about the gardens, or, you know,
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the pleasant, you know, climate and the rest of it. But this was 1860. And oddly enough, or ironically
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enough, you know, the intolerance towards some black immigrants to Canada in Victoria came a little bit
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later, when there was more American immigration from California and elsewhere of whites. You know,
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because there was, you know, I mean, they're in the middle of the Civil War, or about to enter it,
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or exiting it, depending on the period you're talking about. But Anglican Canadians, and, you know,
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British, the British Empire in early 1860s, they were welcoming to blacks. And in fact, they were
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encouraged to run for office, they were given citizenship, I think it was after nine months,
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or something like that, or certainly not to run for office, even after nine months. And so, I mean,
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there's no perfect history. And there's, you know, black spots on the history of Canada, for sure.
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But I think part of combating the nonsense today, is to kind of virtually shake people a little bit
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and say, again, you're kind of missing the point, if you think this group, you know, has some sort of
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moral advantage over this group. I mean, as you know, from the victim cult, I quoted Alexander
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Solzhenitsyn, the famous Soviet dissident, you know, and he talks about how it's common for people
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to say, if only you are removed from this situation, or, you know, taken out, you know, in communist,
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you know, dictatorships of his era, if only we remove this person, life will be better. And we see that
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person is evil. And what he said was, no, the line between good and evil runs between, you know,
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is it each human heart, it's in each one of us, that line, that dividing line. And so it's actually
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hubris for anyone to suggest that, again, we can't celebrate Canada, because someone in 1867,
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a 19th century imperialist, was a 19th century imperialist. Well, I would hope we could take stuff
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from First Nations history and celebrate it, regardless of the fact that, yes, First Nations
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practiced slavery in British Columbia, when the British tried to stamp it out, including James
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Douglas, who in one case bought a slave to free that slave in around 1850, and tried to wipe out
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slavery in British Columbia during his tenure, and it wasn't exactly successful. It lasted until the
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late 1890s in British Columbia, because the region was so remote at that time. So long answer to short
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question. I mean, I think telling the truth about history, in other words, getting people to think a
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little more modestly about everyone's history might be part of the remedy.
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Yeah, no, that's a really interesting point. And again, something that we don't often hear about,
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we often hear about how the British had slaves, held slaves, or the Americans held slaves. We don't
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often hear about how it was the British, and then the Americans who were sort of the earliest people
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in the world, to stop slavery and to fight against those who continued to carry slaves. I totally agree
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with your point, Mark, that we need to do more to celebrate First Nations people and history and
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their contributions. One of the things that happened this year, is that there was a second sort of
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Veterans Day, First Nations Veterans Day, or I think it's called Indigenous Veterans Day, that fell a
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couple days before Remembrance Day. And for me, I would prefer that we celebrate all together. We're
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all one country, our contributions came together, whether it was in the First World, Second World War,
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Korea, Afghanistan, wherever it was, we were fighting together. But to your point, perhaps having
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a second dedicated day to First Nations contributions might help Canadians learn more
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of those stories. What's your take on that? Do you think it's a good idea to have these two separate
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days? But I don't like separate ceremonies. The acerbic comedian, American comedian Bill Maher,
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has ripped a strip off of colleges and universities in the United States that have separate Black
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graduation ceremonies. Because really under, you know, he said, welcome back to separate but equal,
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right? And I think it's the same danger here, add to the add to history. You know, let's let's help
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people remember it. I mean, I just wrote a column for the Calgary Herald on Winston Churchill, remembering
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Winston Churchill properly. And the co author was Kelvin Van Esch, who's half Mohawk, his father's Mohawk,
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his mother's Dutch German. And he hates identity politics, because, as he told me in a personal
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call, I don't think he minds, you know, me saying this. I mean, what's he supposed to do? Look down
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on his mother because she's white. So this is a really dangerous precedent. We have separate this,
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separate that. I mean, the, the ideal of liberal democracy isn't isn't bad. It is that you look at
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people as individuals, only in law and policy. And it doesn't matter who you are, where you come from,
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rich, poor, your background, your ethnicity, your nationality, what happened to your ancestors,
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what your ancestors did, my ancestors, when you get before a court of law, when you apply for a
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government program, when you're in the unemployment line, or whatever it is, you're treated as an
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individual. And unfortunately, we're going away from that, that focus on the individual to, again,
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celebrating us because of, of whatever. The danger in that, Candace, is none of us can change
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this, our skin color. None of us can change, you know, much else about how we were born or our
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history. And I think it's, you know, people often make the same mistake in history and repeat the same
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evil, and sometimes from the best of intentions. So they think, well, you know, to make up for past
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wrongs, we need to kind of discriminate against someone now. I mean, think about the illogic of that.
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So let's suppose you're, I don't know, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. And somehow, because you've got
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the wrong skin color in a, in an application for employment today to the federal government,
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because you're not the right color or ethnicity, you may lose out the job. I mean, to even discuss
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it, to even have that, I think, is so offensive to the notion of treating individuals as individuals.
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And that's the danger, is we're, we're trying to correct the past, in quotes, you know, by, by making
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up for it in the present, and, and you can't. Now, look, there's, there's some, you know, if you step in
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my toe, Candace, and, you know, or hit me, you know, your car drives into mine, and it's your
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fault. Well, you know, you're on the hook for repairing my car, you know, I don't know, my
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medical bill for my foot, if this wasn't Canada, public health care. But beyond, like, pretty clear
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cause and effect links, you know, the Japanese, their properties confiscated, we owed them after
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that confiscation, and, you know, in the 1950s, for what we did in the 1940s, or Canada did. But, but beyond
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clear cause and effect links, and recent cause and effect links, it's really dangerous to go down
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this road of, your group was, you know, unkind to my group, and we're going to now punish your
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group in the present, as if anybody alive today had anything to do with slavery, you know, abolished
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in the United States in 1865, or practically abolished in Canada in 1820, and in the entire
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British Empire of 1833, in fact. So it's a very dangerous road we're going down. So again,
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I think it's helpful to remember that you want to help people as individuals. You know,
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if you're poor, we have a government program to help you out, that sort of thing. But to
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stay away from identity politics. Again, my fellow, my friend Kelvin, who wrote this op ed
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about, you know, indigenous soldiers, by the way, we added that to the column, three indigenous
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soldiers that deserve celebration. That's the way to do it. You celebrate together. You know,
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and we've come a long way to try and get to that point. And it's really moving backwards
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Well, that's very well put. And I appreciate it. Just final question for you, Mark. You
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know, it's Remembrance Day. Is there any one specific moment in history or any one story
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that you like to reflect on, you like to think about? I don't remember, so you just mentioned
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a column that you wrote about some First Nations moments. So maybe, maybe you can, you can share
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one of those with us. Well, sure. And, you know, one of the soldiers and, and so we had three names
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in the column, and it's not in front of me. But one was an indigenous sword soldier born in
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Saskatchewan, was the first Edmonton police officer of First Nations ancestry, later went off to,
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to fight in the First World War, and was a runner. In fact, he was also the first indigenous person
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in Canada to compete in the Olympics, ended up being a runner because of his, you know, physical
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prowess in World War I, tragically died in 1917. But that's the kind of thing we can, we can
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celebrate and point to. And, and we should. So that's what we did in our column. And if you look
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up the column at either markmilkey.com or the Calgary Herald, and, you know, look for, you know,
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Mark Milkey and Kelvin Van Esch, you'll see the column there about the indigenous service
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in our history. Brilliant. Well, yeah, I encourage everyone to go out and do that. And thank you,
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Mark, for joining us on Remembrance Day. I hope you have a wonderful day reflecting and doing,
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doing what you have, whatever you do on Remembrance Day. So thank you so much for
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joining us today. Thank you, Candice. All right. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Candice