The Candice Malcolm Show - July 20, 2021


Is Canada Guilty of Genocide?


Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

196.77306

Word count

2,992

Sentence count

167

Harmful content

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this week's episode, we take a look at two stories from the legacy media, one from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and one from a reporter at the Winnipeg Sun. In both cases, the media gets it wrong about who they are and what they are supposed to be doing.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm and this is the Candice Malcolm Show. Today on the program, I want to
00:00:09.660 bring back an old segment that we used to do. We haven't done it a while, but given the current
00:00:14.000 media climate and everything that's going on in the country, I think it's important that we bring
00:00:17.620 this segment back. So it is called This Week in Fake News. It's a segment where I go through and
00:00:23.060 I find some of the most egregious examples of the media just getting it wrong, the media
00:00:27.580 misrepresenting who they are and the media just really botching a story and there's so much of
00:00:32.340 that today in Canada among the legacy media. So, you know, the legacy media are out there and they
00:00:38.260 pretend that they're these sort of champions of truth and that they're completely non-biased and
00:00:43.720 indifferent and they're just out there trying to report the facts. We all know that that's not true.
00:00:48.060 Every single reporter in Canada has their own biases and it's just a simple fact that most of
00:00:53.740 those biases lead them towards the left. Most journalists in Canada are left-leaning and that
00:00:59.260 bias does come through. They're not honest about who they are, so they pretend to be these unbiased,
00:01:03.880 impartial arbiters of facts and knowledge, but the reality is that they have their own agenda,
00:01:08.560 they have their own ideas and opinions, and that does come through. Here at True North,
00:01:13.500 you know exactly who we are and what you can get. We don't hide our biases. You know, for instance,
00:01:19.280 that our editorial position is conservative, that we see the world through the sort of right-of-center
00:01:25.040 prism of things, and that our news reports are fact-driven, straight facts. So you're not going
00:01:31.020 to see our opinions seep through in our news pieces, but when it comes to the editorial position,
00:01:35.620 we are open about the fact that we are conservative. Whereas, for instance, the CBC,
00:01:40.800 they're not open at all about their biases. They pretend to just simply be representing the views
00:01:45.980 of Canadians. Of course, we all know that the CBC is far left, that most of their reporters lean left,
00:01:51.140 but they don't acknowledge that. They don't say that they're a left-leaning organization. They lie
00:01:55.520 to you and they say that they're straight down the middle, which, of course, they are not. So in this
00:01:59.980 Week in Fake News, we are going to focus on two stories, and the first one does, lo and behold,
00:02:04.500 come from that state broadcaster, the CBC. So I noticed this piece over the weekend, and it really
00:02:09.800 just struck me as being dishonest. So here it is. It says,
00:02:13.100 three strikes and you're outed. Brian Pallister makes another inflammatory comment about Indigenous
00:02:18.740 relations. Now, you can see that this is listed under the term analysis. So back in the day in
00:02:24.100 journalism, there were sort of two camps of the types of reports that you would see. There would
00:02:27.980 be the straight news, which is what I was talking about, you know, the idea that there's no bias,
00:02:32.440 there's no, you know, worldview seeped in there. It's just impartial. Here are the facts. Here you go.
00:02:38.740 And then the other side of the aisle would be opinion journalism. And so this is the people
00:02:43.080 who add context to the stories. They give you your opinion. Sometimes they even tell you who
00:02:47.620 you should vote for and who you shouldn't vote for. But the news side is not supposed to do that.
00:02:51.500 Well, the legacy media has created this sort of third middle sector that's not quite news,
00:02:57.660 not quite opinion. They call it analysis. So this falls in that middle category. It really should
00:03:01.820 be listed as opinion because as we'll see when we go through this piece, it is an opinion piece.
00:03:06.140 But oddly enough, it is written by a reporter. So a person who does straight news, a person that
00:03:11.500 covers politics in Manitoba, presumably he's part of the press gallery there. He goes to the news
00:03:17.800 conferences and asks questions to the premier pretending to just be a straight reporter.
00:03:22.680 But then you have this weird analysis piece that really is just an opinion piece from this reporter
00:03:28.280 who basically is calling for the premier to be removed from office, which is a pretty strong call
00:03:35.000 from the state broadcaster, from the public journalists who received billions of dollars
00:03:39.440 in tax money. So as I said, the headline is three strikes and you're outed. I don't even really know
00:03:44.520 what that means. The sub headline here says Brian Pallister's latest gaffe and reluctance to acknowledge
00:03:50.340 it further illustrates his unusual leadership. So again, because it's an analysis, he's not taking
00:03:55.720 a really strong opinion, even though it's kind of buried in there. And instead it just says,
00:03:59.780 oh, this is unusual leadership, while the headline itself calls for him to be removed
00:04:04.920 from office. So I'll read from the report itself so we can get to these three supposed gaffes made
00:04:10.780 by the premier. So he starts by saying during five years as Manitoba's premier, Brian Pallister has
00:04:16.960 made a trio of statements his critics can fairly describe as impediments to reconciliation. Again,
00:04:24.000 you can see what this journalist's bias is, you can see what his opinion is, but he hides it behind
00:04:29.000 this language. So instead of just saying, this is my opinion, he says these statements, his critics
00:04:34.580 can fairly describe as being an impediment, which again, is just him hiding his own opinion.
00:04:39.480 So what are these three trio of gaffes? Well, the first one here, it says, so in 2017,
00:04:45.720 Pallister characterized divisions between indigenous and non-indigenous people fighting over illegal
00:04:50.520 night hunting as the markings of a race war. According to this piece, he later walked back those
00:04:56.380 comments as the wrong choice of words, but he did not apologize for them. So it sounds like in the
00:05:02.920 heat of a moment, he said this was a race war, which I don't really know much about this 2017
00:05:07.220 event. I'm sure the premier probably shouldn't be using terms like that, but really it's not the end
00:05:12.900 of the world. I mean, it's probably what a fairly accurate description of what was going on. And then
00:05:18.040 he later said, look, upon consideration, these were the wrong choice of words. So this reporter is kind
00:05:23.380 of being a stickler for whether or not someone apologized for really just, you know, saying
00:05:27.760 something that was true and then realizing, oh, it's probably politically incorrect and saying it
00:05:32.420 was a wrong choice of word. It looks like he did acknowledge it, whether or not he specifically said
00:05:37.120 the word, I'm sorry. Again, you know, this is four years ago now. I don't know why this is something
00:05:42.500 that the CBC needs to write about now, but let's go on to the second supposed gaffe by Premier
00:05:48.660 Pallister in Manitoba. So the second one, he said in late 2020, the premier suggested that the need
00:05:54.800 to prioritize the indigenous population for COVID-19 vaccinations puts Manitobans at the back
00:06:01.020 of the line for doses if the province does not receive the greater proportion, proportionate share
00:06:07.480 of shots. So the implication, this according to the CBC reporter, is that indigenous people are not
00:06:14.020 not Manitobans. In spite of that rhetoric, the province went on to partner with the First Nations
00:06:18.840 pandemic response team on what is widely regarded as a successful effort to ensure vaccines made their
00:06:25.120 way to indigenous communities. So this is kind of interesting because his complaint is the language
00:06:30.440 that the premier used, which admittedly isn't that great, but it ignores the actual actions of the
00:06:36.080 premier. So here we have in Manitoba, a success story, a story of the premier prioritizing the
00:06:42.300 indigenous population, ensuring that they did get their COVID vaccines. And that was successful. 0.68
00:06:46.880 And the author even confirms that in this piece saying that, well, yeah, his words were bad, but
00:06:52.860 his actions were great. And so again, it kind of negates this entire point. Sure, he said something
00:06:58.300 that maybe he shouldn't have. It seems again, like he probably just misspoke. And then the actions were
00:07:03.620 what matters. So CBC is pointing out that it doesn't matter what you do. As long as you say something
00:07:09.100 that's slightly politically incorrect, then we're going to go after you for it. Okay, let's find out
00:07:13.680 what the third statement was. So here he says, here the piece goes on to say, the third statement
00:07:19.080 arrived on Wednesday when the premier issued a plea to Manitobans who remain angry about the discovery
00:07:24.720 of the remains of hundreds of children at several Canadian residential schools. If you've been following
00:07:29.360 my reports, you know that this statement that he just wrote here isn't exactly true. It's not
00:07:33.940 confirmed. And to say that the remains are of children at residential schools is just
00:07:38.480 flatly, plainly false. I've made this point many times. For instance, the place where the unmarked
00:07:44.800 graves were discovered in Cranbrook, British Columbia was an existing graveyard that predated
00:07:50.100 the residential school by 40 years and also serviced the only local hospital in the area. So the idea
00:07:55.800 that these graves are all belonging to children residential schools is just patently false. But the
00:08:00.460 reporter repeats that myth. And then he goes on to say this, and this is pretty wild. So again, this is to
00:08:06.080 quote the piece in the CBC, during a speech intended to calm the waters, Pallister instead whipped up a
00:08:12.600 storm by suggesting the colonization of Canada was conducted with good intentions. This is a quote from
00:08:19.240 Pallister, the people who came to this country before it was a country and since then didn't come here to 1.00
00:08:24.120 destroy anything. They came here to build. Okay, so let's just pause for a second because this shouldn't
00:08:31.100 even be a controversial point. Early Canadians were good people that had good intentions. They came here
00:08:36.300 to build a country. That's true. You can argue about whether the outcomes of their policies were good
00:08:41.180 or bad. A lot of them were really good. We live in a great country. Look at the rule of law in our
00:08:45.460 country, the institutions, the education system, the health system. There are so many things that Canada
00:08:50.540 got right. Canada is a great country in the scheme of things. Early Canadians, yes, they had good
00:08:56.040 intentions. And yes, they came here to build. Did they make some mistakes? Absolutely. Were early
00:09:00.860 governments not as good as governments today? Absolutely. I think you can look at any government
00:09:04.920 in any country in the world and any time in Canadian history and point out things that are bad. But when
00:09:11.080 you compare Canada to any other country in the world, and especially at that time, right, we're talking
00:09:15.680 about the turn of the century from the 1800s to the 1900s. That's what these residential schools
00:09:20.100 were established. And then they were maintained during the 20th century, you know, at a time
00:09:24.760 when evil ideologies like fascism and communism were causing real chaos and reaping havoc all over
00:09:31.620 the globe. You're talking about real genocide, real issues of mass death and suffering and misery at
00:09:38.180 the hands of governments. Over in Canada, we had this school system that had some bad outcomes,
00:09:44.140 absolutely. But again, the intentions, were they good? Were they bad of the residential schools? That's a 0.75
00:09:49.020 debate that we can have. But to kind of blanketly say that the intentions of early Canadians were not
00:09:54.520 good. I don't think you can say that. And I don't think that you can say that they've had a negative
00:09:58.840 outcome. But again, the CBC is not interested in nuance or interested in this weird game of gotcha
00:10:04.460 journalism, taking words out of context and trying to use them to haunt someone. And of course, it doesn't
00:10:10.460 apply equally. They would never do this to Justin Trudeau. They would never do this to a liberal
00:10:14.980 premier or a liberal politician. This is just a weird gotcha game that they play against conservatives,
00:10:20.580 parsing their language, taking it out of context, using it against them. It's absolutely despicable.
00:10:25.340 And I think that the CBC should be absolutely ashamed of itself for running this piece. Okay,
00:10:30.220 let's move on to my second article that I'd like to go through in This Week in Fake News. This is over
00:10:36.640 in iPolitics. You may not have heard of iPolitics. It's a small little website, a news outlet that is based
00:10:43.140 in Ottawa and they sort of cover Ottawa-based news. But you probably will recognize the author of this
00:10:48.760 article because Michael Corrin used to be a very prominent, outspoken conservative who was a
00:10:54.480 religious conservative. And he would sort of back every position, even the controversial and extreme
00:10:59.060 ones of the Christian right and sort of defend them. And then all of a sudden, he had this weird
00:11:03.860 180 where he went hardcore in the other direction. And now he's a leftist who openly speaks out about how
00:11:09.840 much he hates sort of the political right and the Christian right in particular. So his piece over
00:11:16.340 in iPolitics is called, Let's Worried About Destroyed People First, Then Destroyed Churches. To scream at
00:11:22.660 violence without realizing its causes isn't an authentic Christian response. So it's a little rich to hear 0.75
00:11:28.760 Michael Corrin telling us about what is and what isn't an authentic Christian response, given the fact
00:11:34.500 that he has himself switched his position so much, it's hard to tell what's authentic with him and
00:11:40.400 what isn't. But the long and the short of it, and I won't spend too much time on this piece because
00:11:44.700 it's really despicable. But the idea is that we're supposed to just sort of accept the idea that these
00:11:50.080 churches are being burnt down, that churches are being vandalized, and that it's all part of the sort
00:11:55.200 of reconciliation process. And I just think that this view is absolutely abhorrent. Look, one of the most
00:12:01.100 important values in Canada is religious freedom, the ability to practice your religion. We all know
00:12:07.540 that if this was happening to any other religious group, if these were Jewish synagogues, or Muslim
00:12:12.320 mosques, or Sikh temples, or any other religious building, this would be a huge, huge national story.
00:12:18.580 The RCMP would be out there on a manhunt trying to find those responsible. And every single liberal
00:12:23.580 and leftist pundit, probably every conservative pundit too, would be condemning it. But somehow because
00:12:28.200 it's happening to Christians, and because of the news with the unmarked graves being discovered,
00:12:34.040 everyone just sort of shrugs their shoulders. And Michael Corrin is sort of the leading example of
00:12:38.780 this. And perhaps the saddest part of this whole story about the churches getting burnt down or
00:12:43.920 being desecrated is that so many of these churches are on First Nations territories. So something that
00:12:48.860 you might not hear many people talk about, and people don't really like to acknowledge, but the
00:12:53.220 overwhelming majority of First Nations people in this country are practicing Christians. Many of them are
00:12:58.080 practicing Catholics. So the churches that are being burnt down are their places of worship.
00:13:02.900 There are places where First Nations go to pray and to congregate. The idea that during this time that
00:13:09.160 is a crisis for First Nations, you know, the sort of wounds of residential schools, the wounds of
00:13:14.420 residential schools are being ripped open by the mainstream media, a lot of times in a very
00:13:18.980 neglectful way, using irresponsible language, exaggerating, sensationalizing the story,
00:13:24.460 and saying things that are flat out untrue, ripping open the wounds for First Nations
00:13:29.340 people. And then they don't have anywhere to go and pray because their local community church has
00:13:34.080 been burnt down. Look, again, Canada is a country of laws. We have the rule of law. And one of the
00:13:39.820 foremost values that we have in this country is freedom of religion. That includes the sanctity
00:13:44.300 of these buildings and the ability of Canadians to go and pray. And having someone like Michael
00:13:49.280 Corrin kind of get out there and champion the idea that it is okay that these are being burnt down
00:13:53.700 and that it's not the same as violence against individual people is just absolutely disgusting.
00:13:59.060 I want to point out one line just because it's a certainly a pet peeve of mine. But Michael Corrin
00:14:04.080 even repeats the lie that these were mass graves that were discovered. So he says,
00:14:09.500 this has all happened since the mass unmarked graves of indigenous children were found on the grounds of
00:14:15.120 former residential schools, which were often run by churches. Okay, so you see here he uses the term
00:14:20.240 mass unmarked graves, which is sort of a sleight of hand trick. They weren't mass graves. A lot of
00:14:24.860 media reported that they were mass graves. Of course, mass graves are the hallmark of genocide. And the
00:14:29.780 idea of a mass grave sort of conjures images of evil done by Nazis and communists and fascists
00:14:36.640 in the 20th century. So to use that term mass graves is incredibly dubious. And it's not true in this
00:14:41.640 instance. And so because it's not technically true, he kind of sneaks in mass unmarked graves so
00:14:47.580 that if you're not reading it very carefully, you might think it just says mass graves, but really
00:14:52.100 he's saying mass unmarked graves, which isn't really the correct language that you would use.
00:14:56.200 So shame on iPolitics for publishing this piece. Shame on the CBC for writing that weird analysis,
00:15:01.980 trying to condemn the premier for things that really weren't that bad. This is definitely your
00:15:06.940 examples of fake news for this week. Thanks so much for tuning in. I'm Candice Malcolm,
00:15:10.820 and this is the Candice Malcolm show.