The Candice Malcolm Show - The CBC should be defunded, not the police

00:00:00.000 Hi, and welcome to True North Update. I'm your host, Candice Malcolm. I'm joined today by a

00:00:09.100 special guest host, Sam Eskenazi. Sam is a contributor at True North. Actually, funny

00:00:14.180 enough, he was one of the original True North fellows back when True North was more of an

00:00:19.240 immigration think tank. So, Sam, it's great to have you back with True North and great to have

00:00:24.340 you on the program today. For sure. Thanks. It's a pleasure. And I think that, you know,

00:00:28.320 it's funny because, yeah, I did want to get involved because I was really interested in

00:00:31.820 what you guys were doing. And now I'm back. So it's great. It's great. And yeah, you've been

00:00:36.420 doing some great videos. I think one of my favorite videos you did, Sam, for True North was you were

00:00:41.200 talking about how something about how people are getting gaslit and you kind of gave a historical

00:00:48.820 explanation of what that means. Because I didn't even know what the origin of that word was, but

00:00:54.260 it comes from a movie. Is that right? Yeah. So it came from a movie. I think it was

00:00:58.260 in the original one, I think it was in the 40s. I forget now the original one, but it's

00:01:02.000 basically in the movie, the husband tries to manipulate his wife and make her think she's

00:01:06.040 going crazy when he's really the one pulling the strings. And it bothered me because everyone

00:01:10.640 always spoke about the government or just things they don't like as being hypocritical. But

00:01:15.340 it's not always hypocritical. Like if I'm a smoker and I tell you smoking is bad, but I

00:01:19.960 tell you at the same time, I'm also trying to quit. That's not the same hypocritical as what

00:01:24.380 you would normally think. So gaslighting is really when you say one thing and then literally

00:01:28.800 do the opposite and make it sound like they're the person who's doing the thing that they're

00:01:32.340 accusing you of. Exactly. And it's such a helpful example. I think that over the past few weeks,

00:01:37.280 Sam, there isn't a better word to describe how the media is treating the public, particularly

00:01:42.180 when it comes to the protests and how some of the protests have become very violent. So you

00:01:47.640 have the mainstream media saying that the protests are completely peaceful, repeated over and over

00:01:53.340 again in straight news stories and news reports, TV anchors, you hear it on CNN, but even read it in

00:01:58.380 Canadian newspapers. And they'll always say, you know, these peaceful protests. And then, you know,

00:02:02.800 it doesn't take too much to just go online and see videos of looting, arson, violence to read stories

00:02:08.500 about how police are being ambushed in many cities, that there's been many police officers that have

00:02:13.560 been killed. And it's like, wait a minute, why does the media keep telling us that these are

00:02:18.380 peaceful protests when they're clearly not? It's like, and I think that the concept of gaslighting,

00:02:23.880 when someone is deliberately lying to you to make it seem like you're questioning your own sanity,

00:02:29.460 and you're questioning your own ability to understand the world around you, it is such a

00:02:33.940 dangerous concept. And it's quite literally happening. So I appreciated that video, because it

00:02:39.000 helped me more clearly understand a framework to really try to understand and explain what we're

00:02:44.640 living through in this in this present time. Yeah, thanks. And I think really, you can see it when

00:02:50.220 they say that someone's speech is violence, whether that's on campus or on the media, people are being

00:02:55.980 shut down, as you know, we're gonna, I'm sure we're gonna get into, but they're saying that speech is

00:02:59.700 violence. And then when you see these protests, which are getting violent, like literally just

00:03:04.020 physical violence, the standard textbook definition, then they're saying, oh, no, that's just people

00:03:09.220 expressing their anger. That's, you know, people reallocating resources or some other weird

00:03:13.000 euphemism. So violence has become something that I'm now saying. So if I were to be harsh with you,

00:03:17.860 I might, you know, I'm being violent. And yet, people doing textbook traditional violence, that's

00:03:22.180 just something else. That's right. Yeah, I literally read in the National Post that there's a movement

00:03:27.520 to get rid of the term, the word Dundas Street. So Dundas Street in Toronto goes through the whole

00:03:33.160 city, there's Dundas Streets all over Ontario, trying to get rid of them, because apparently the

00:03:37.180 namesake Henry Dundas has, you know, had some unsavory episodes. And because of that, we're going to

00:03:44.980 change all these names, apparently. And in the National Post article, which again, National Post is

00:03:48.940 supposed to be a conservative newspaper. We learned that the experience of walking down Dundas Street

00:03:54.940 is violence towards black and indigenous people in Canada. So somehow just having a street name is

00:04:02.040 violence. But then, you know, to your point, actual violence is just is just speech when when it's,

00:04:07.960 you know, left wing protesters that are carrying it out. We had that New York Times magazine reporter

00:04:14.660 who's behind the 1619 Project come out and just say flat out that violence does not mean looting and

00:04:20.740 rioting. Violence means actual physical violence against people. And so it's unfair that they're the

00:04:25.700 same. This is the same word because she claimed that looting and, you know, destroying private

00:04:31.000 property and all these things that she claims can easily be fixed. That's not real violence. So

00:04:35.240 we're definitely living in some strange times, Sam. And I think that's why it's great to have

00:04:41.160 smart people like you helping explain what's going on and why we should see see through some of the

00:04:47.340 media nonsense. And speaking of media nonsense, Sam, I think the story that the big story in Canada,

00:04:53.740 as always, I mean, this has been the case going back to, you know, Don Cherry getting canceled.

00:04:58.380 You know, we have this, this culture, this cancel culture, where if you do one thing that steps out

00:05:03.840 of line, according to sort of a mob of woke tyrants that determine what what is what is right and what

00:05:10.200 is wrong, you can lose your entire livelihood, your career can be over, your reputation can be ruined.

00:05:16.300 And we saw this happen this week, really sort of a surprise target, because usually it's the CBC and

00:05:24.400 the left that's driving this, this idea that we should cancel people. I mean, it was just last

00:05:28.140 week that the CBC was part of a movement to, to punish and get rid of Stockwell Day, the former

00:05:34.080 leader of the Canadian Alliance, because of remarks that he made saying that systemic racism in Canada

00:05:39.160 doesn't exist. Well, this time around, it was CBC host Wendy Mesley. So Mesley has been suspended

00:05:45.200 from her position after she used, and this is what they say, this is a quote, a word that should never

00:05:51.300 be used, unquote, during an interaction with co-worker. So we don't know exactly what word it was, but I

00:05:56.440 think we can all kind of take a guess, because apparently she was talking about it was in the context

00:06:01.520 of race, she said that she was quoting another journalist, who was having a discussion about race. So this is

00:06:07.080 we're talking about a private meeting at the CBC, you know, a meeting among the probably staff at her show,

00:06:13.600 the weekly, where they're planning out the next episode. And Wendy Mesley supposedly said this, this word

00:06:19.700 that should never be said. And because of that, there was sort of a internal movement to have her

00:06:25.400 displaced. And so, I mean, it is kind of kind of sad, that, you know, we've come to this where you

00:06:32.040 can't even say a word in a private conversation, that's completely in context of a quote of something

00:06:37.500 that someone else said. But, you know, apparently, some words are off limits in our society. Fair enough.

00:06:42.820 But the idea that she got canceled over it, I don't like seeing it, even for someone like Wendy

00:06:48.320 Mesley, who, you know, I'm not a big fan. And I don't like her style or her approach, Sam. But,

00:06:53.040 you know, some people say she has it coming. And if you live by the SJW sword, you got to die by the

00:06:57.980 SJW sword. I don't think so. I don't think that we should ever cheer on mob justice like this. But

00:07:04.100 what's what's your take on the whole cancel culture and Wendy Mesley falling victim to it?

00:07:09.580 Well, there's two problems. And the first problem is when you have a culture that the axe comes down,

00:07:14.920 the hammer comes down on you, anytime you slip up, then you're just living in a very stressed out

00:07:20.420 way. Because you're not sure, especially when the rules are changing, as they are all the time now,

00:07:24.800 where something, you know, five or 10 years ago, a couple years ago that you used to be able to say,

00:07:29.440 or that you think you can still say, suddenly you can't, and you're not really clear on that.

00:07:33.820 And it's very stressful. It's very, it's not good for the soul to live in such a way. So that's the

00:07:39.380 first problem. The second is it eliminates the concept of a teachable moment or people growing,

00:07:45.420 people learning. I used to work at B'nai B'rith, which is a, it's a Jewish human rights organization.

00:07:50.200 And we used to be sort of the antisemitism watchdog. There, I did a lot of work regarding

00:07:56.000 their annual study on antisemitism. And I remember a case specifically where there was a former CFL

00:08:01.140 player who tweeted a number of antisemitic conspiracy theories. And so we reached out to,

00:08:05.960 he was on the Alouettes. And so we reached out to the team and said, listen, like, this is what we

00:08:09.460 got. And we received no response. The draft happened to be going on at the same time, which I guess

00:08:14.660 they were super busy, but we didn't get a response. And so we issued a public statement. But the point

00:08:19.640 is we didn't call right away for the guy to be fired. We ended up speaking to him, speaking to the

00:08:24.020 manager of the team and saying, listen, you know, I don't know if you know that what you're tweeting

00:08:27.460 there is like super, super offensive. It's just plain wrong. You know, it could lead to, you know,

00:08:31.680 serious problems down the road, whether it's actual violence against Jewish people or something,

00:08:34.840 you know, this is just bad stuff. So what we'd like to do is we'd like to help you understand

00:08:39.800 why what you tweeted was bad. And maybe you would like to, you know, do a podcast with us,

00:08:45.220 do a video with us, do something with us to help explain to people why such and such

00:08:49.640 antisemitism that you did was bad or why racism in general is bad. And that's a teachable moment

00:08:53.960 for him. That was a moment where we took someone who we could have just shut down. We could have

00:08:57.780 said, you know, hey, you get fired. That crushes dreams of being a professional athlete,

00:09:02.180 you know, just totally crushed the man. And what was that going to accomplish for anyone?

00:09:06.080 Now, I'm not saying you can rehabilitate or that every person is going to be open to

00:09:10.120 some sort of education, but we're not even trying at this point.

00:09:13.060 It's a really good point because I think a lot of times we have a lot more in common than we think.

00:09:18.100 And the idea that someone would just get completely shut off or blacklisted,

00:09:21.620 it doesn't really help anyone because even say that there are a group of people that hold sort of

00:09:27.240 these illiberal views. If you just cancel one of their, you know, colleagues or friends or someone

00:09:32.240 who thinks like them, it's not going to make the idea subside. It's not going to make the idea go

00:09:37.720 away if it is a dangerous idea or if it is sort of a mainstream idea. You know, the best way to

00:09:43.020 confront it is to actually, you know, combat it and say let's have a discussion and conversation

00:09:48.040 as opposed to just trying to silence it, which is sort of the, I think your approach that you had

00:09:53.640 with benign birth is much, much better than the cancel culture approach because it doesn't really

00:09:56.980 accomplish anything other than ruining a person's life. And then the mob just moves on. Like they

00:10:01.280 don't think twice about it and they don't really care. They're just there for that, that moment of

00:10:05.800 sort of pleasure that you might get from seeing your enemy, you know, fall. And then, and then that's

00:10:10.860 it. Even, even, you know, last week we had a whole bunch of people on the left and even people in

00:10:16.120 the mainstream criticizing Rex Murphy for a column where Rex just basically said, Canada is a great

00:10:22.320 country. Let's not forget that. We're different than, than other countries that have really,

00:10:26.920 really, really dark histories when it comes to things like slavery. Canada doesn't have that.

00:10:32.020 Obviously we're not perfect, but our society is not completely characterized by racism is the point

00:10:37.200 he was making. And everyone just totally overreacted, mischaracterized what he said,

00:10:42.160 tried to sort of do a bait and switch where they said, oh, Rex is saying that there is no racism in

00:10:47.440 Canada. That's clearly wrong because here's two or three examples of racism, which doesn't,

00:10:51.380 didn't disprove Rex. And, and they basically just said, you're an old white man. You don't have

00:10:55.720 the right to talk. I would, I would have found it much more interesting to see some kind of a debate

00:11:01.240 or, you know, if there's a couple of people that say, hey, Rex, you're wrong about Canada. I would,

00:11:06.280 I would much more, I'd be much more interested in having a podcast or having a discussion about that,

00:11:11.120 as opposed to them just saying like, you're wrong, old white man, and you don't get an opinion.

00:11:15.380 You're not allowed to talk about race anymore, which essentially is, is what happened. And it's kind of sad.

00:11:20.460 Yes. That's the thing. I mean, you know, there's things like the Indian Act. There's some

00:11:25.260 obviously terrible history that's happened to, to almost any country. You can't, you can't find a

00:11:29.140 country that hasn't engaged in some slavery or terrible, terrible history. I mean, people act

00:11:33.380 as if it was just the United States and Canada or just the United States that engage in slavery.

00:11:37.020 I mean, it was a global institution for hundreds, thousands of years, pretty much. But the thing is,

00:11:43.000 we, we have to remember that Canada is not a strictly homogenous society. There are some

00:11:47.400 countries and societies that are super homogenous. And I think we should, we should grade ourselves

00:11:53.560 based on how well we're doing or where we're headed, not necessarily the mistakes that we've

00:11:58.200 made. And there might be mistakes that we should point out and say, Hey, we're still making that

00:12:01.800 mistake. I know I've been working a lot on, on first nations and indigenous stuff, and there's a lot

00:12:06.760 of complaints about the Indian Act, but that doesn't mean that Canada as a whole is moving in the wrong

00:12:12.600 direction. Now, now you could debate that. You could say, I think it is, but saying that

00:12:17.400 Rex Murphy should be fired or just, you know, eliminated from, from public society because he,

00:12:22.280 he dared to say such a thing. Ultimately, again, that's, that's not going to help. That's not going

00:12:26.040 to teach anyone for someone who's may, who may not be aware of, of all of Canadian history to just say,

00:12:31.720 well, you know, Canada's super racist and Rex Murphy should be fired. They're just not going to

00:12:35.480 understand what's going on or, or, you know, what the different, like, what's, what's the deal here?

00:12:38.760 Absolutely. Yeah. I think that there's definitely more of a need of, for, for learning or teaching,

00:12:44.840 teachable moments, like you said. And, you know, it's kind of interesting because the CBC

00:12:48.520 is this sort of like, it is this large Canadian institution that it dominates the media landscape.

00:12:56.840 They get $1.2 billion in taxpayer money every year. And they've sort of established themselves

00:13:01.960 as like the arbiters of truth and the sort of front lines of the SJW wars on our,

00:13:08.760 in our society, culture wars. And so it's interesting to see this sort of dynamic of,

00:13:14.600 you know, they're, they're kind of out there saying that we should silence other voices that

00:13:19.720 we don't agree with, or that, that the CBC should continue to dominate the media landscape

00:13:24.200 and crush out the competition. And then when it comes to their own institutions, they're

00:13:28.920 more than happy to throw people under us. Sam, I just think this is a big example of how corrupt

00:13:33.800 the CBC is, how, how, how they've just gone wrong. I mean, they just, whatever the purpose

00:13:38.760 was originally, that's clearly not what they're doing anymore. And I think, I think they're past,

00:13:42.440 past their due. So there are a lot of calls for, suddenly there's a lot of calls for defunding the

00:13:47.800 police, for abolishing the police, for reforming the police. I think, I think before we get into

00:13:53.080 conversations about that, why don't we talk about defunding or abolishing the CBC? Because I'm,

00:13:58.280 I'm more than happy to talk about ways to cut government for ways to cut back on spending and

00:14:02.520 to have, you know, a fair, free society. I think, I think that would be a good place to start. And

00:14:07.000 I'm sure there's lots of others. One example of CBC just outright failing. This was a tweet that

00:14:13.640 came out. There's a comedy show run by the CBC called This Hour is 22 Minutes. Their Twitter

00:14:18.440 account is sort of notoriously unfunny. And I don't know who runs it, but I always feel like it's some

00:14:24.120 intern that they're like, Hey kid, just tweet. Cause I don't know. It's always so ignorant and so dumb,

00:14:28.920 but they, they posted this tweet this week and it says, new report shows that when it comes to

00:14:34.200 leadership, Canada's political parties aren't getting more diverse. And if it's even possible,

00:14:39.480 the conservatives seem to be getting paler. So I feel like this is a tweet like void of any reality

00:14:45.640 because, uh, first of all, you know, Canada's political parties aren't getting any more diverse.

00:14:51.880 I don't know that that's factually probably true. I mean, there's four major parties and one of the

00:14:57.320 leaders is Sikh. So that's pretty diverse from a Canadian perspective. I don't, I don't really

00:15:02.440 understand the tweet. And then to go even further, the conservatives are getting even paler. Well,

00:15:06.840 Sam, there's four leadership candidates running for the current leader of the party. And one of them is

00:15:12.040 Leslie Lewis, who is a black woman. So presumably when it comes to diversity, that's, that's sort of,

00:15:18.120 you know, doing a lot better than the other parties, because at least we have a conservative

00:15:23.160 black female that's in the running. That's one of the top four contenders to, to become the next

00:15:28.280 person to take on Justin Trudeau in the next election. So this, this tweet just obviously

00:15:33.320 didn't, uh, put a lot of research or thought into it before it came out. What did you, uh,

00:15:38.120 what did you make of it? Well, see the thing with the problem with this, the problem with this game

00:15:43.640 is that if you want to play the game to the end, then no one is ever going to win. And I'll give

00:15:48.280 you, I'll give you an example of what I mean. So in the tweet, they said that the party's getting

00:15:52.120 paler. Okay. Look at me. I might be pretty pale. People might say I'm pretty white, but both of my

00:15:58.600 parents are from the Middle East. My mom's family is from Syria and Northern Israel, that whole region.

00:16:03.320 And my dad's family is from Turkey. They have been for hundreds of years, both of them. I have my

00:16:07.320 family tree on both sides, but yet I might be considered a white person or have white privilege or be white

00:16:13.160 passing. And a Syrian refugee is now a person of color because they happen to be literally from

00:16:19.160 Syria where, because I was born here now I'm, I'm suddenly not. And so just saying that the

00:16:25.000 party's getting paler in and of itself, I can pull apart that entire tweet on literally one word that

00:16:29.800 you chose to smear the party or to talk about our politics. Like there's no end to this game because

00:16:36.040 again, you know, I just dug up their tweet and exposed a flaw in like two seconds. So you really have to

00:16:41.880 look at the representation of the party, the party members, do they have some sort of policies or

00:16:47.960 some sort of, you know, is there something that's preventing minorities or people of color or, or

00:16:52.040 something else that, that is stopping them from getting engaged, though it is somehow making it

00:16:56.280 unattractive to be engaged with that party. Now, if you look at just standard conservatism or small

00:17:01.400 government, fiscal conservatism, that kind of stuff, I don't really know what's, um, what's interesting

00:17:06.280 or disinteresting to any person based on their race, ethnicity, gender, whatever. That's just,

00:17:10.680 you know, just policy things. So it's pretty offensive in and of to say, to say that. And

00:17:15.480 if you look at the house of commons, I don't think you can, you know, adequately make that,

00:17:19.400 make that statement based on the representation of what the population of Canada truly is.

00:17:23.240 Right. It's like the lowest common denominator, like ignorant tweet. And you're right,

00:17:28.920 using that word paler, there's just such a racial implication that like being white is bad. So being

00:17:34.440 paler is like a dig, I guess. I don't like race based, you know, I mean, I guess that's the

00:17:40.280 basis of comedy is usually poking fun at people and stuff like that. But really, this is where

00:17:45.160 our government resources are going. And again, I, you know, the basic like knee jerk accusation that

00:17:50.440 comes from the far left against conservatives is that they're racist. And I think the basis of it,

00:17:55.000 it's usually a ghost hunt. They're trying to find justifications, but I think the basic

00:17:59.480 rationale is that conservatives tend to be more prone to tradition and promote, uh, protecting

00:18:04.200 institutions and stuff. And so they, they think that that must be because they're trying to like

00:18:08.120 maintain some kind of privilege, which is, is, is such a misnomer. And it's, it's sort of a lazy

00:18:13.400 argument, Sam, but you know, the reality of course, is that the first ever Muslim MP in Canada was a

00:18:18.840 conservative, Raheem Jaffer out in Edmonton. Uh, the first ever Chinese MP was a conservative,

00:18:24.840 Douglas Zhang. The first ever black member of parliament in Canada was a conservative,

00:18:29.800 Lincoln Alexander. So, you know, it's, it's an easy, stupid punchline joke, but the reality

00:18:34.840 is empirically untrue. And, and, and in fact, the conservatives do attract a large number of

00:18:41.000 people from diverse communities, mostly because they promote that sort of traditional ideas,

00:18:45.800 sort of family at the forefront. And when you think about immigrants and people that come to Canada,

00:18:50.920 you know, they come as a family unit, family, community, church, that's everything to them.

00:18:55.320 And, and, and I just say churches as a, as a, as a coverall for any religious institution,

00:18:59.880 uh, be it, you know, whether they're Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or whatever, uh, you know,

00:19:03.880 those are their core institutions that they believe in. And those also happen to be

00:19:07.160 the sort of core values among conservatives, which is why conservatives tend to be pretty

00:19:11.560 diverse. So lame attempt there at this, uh, comedy by the CBC. And again, I think, uh, instead of

00:19:17.800 focusing on defunding the police, we should be focusing on defunding, um, divisive institutions

00:19:22.760 like the CBC. But Sam, let's talk about that mainstream idea, that suddenly mainstream idea that's

00:19:28.840 come about in the last two weeks, that it is time to defund the police. So you see it everywhere.

00:19:34.520 Uh, you know, I, I, I've mentioned this a couple of times, but it drives me crazy. Like the front

00:19:39.240 cover of the weekend version of the, the weekend edition of the national post last year, last weekend,

00:19:43.800 sorry, said defund the police. And that, you know, even in the supposedly conservative, uh,

00:19:49.720 newspaper in Canada, you know, you see it in the Toronto star and you kind of expect it,

00:19:52.760 but when you see the national post, it's like, okay, wow, this is totally become a mainstream

00:19:57.320 idea that you hear on every news station, every radio station. They're all talking about it. Even

00:20:02.440 the city of Toronto has now announced that they will be slashing their budget by $122 million,

00:20:08.200 which is approximately 10%. And when I first heard that, I was like, okay, uh, I'm sure there's 10%

00:20:13.880 redundancies and, and, and, uh, things that can easily be cut without people noticing. Uh, hopefully

00:20:18.920 that equates to maybe a decrease on taxes because I live in Toronto and believe me, the property taxes on

00:20:24.760 my house are absurd and the land transfer tax and all that other stuff. But no, uh,

00:20:29.000 the money's not going back to taxpayers, Sam. It's going towards other services that they decided

00:20:34.040 to reallocate. So it's not, it's not actually trimming government. It's just punishing the

00:20:37.800 police presumably for, uh, you know, something that happened in another country. Uh, what,

00:20:43.560 what do you think of the whole defund the police movement and how it's become so mainstream?

00:20:47.320 Well, so, you know, from, uh, from like a marketing or advocacy perspective, I understand

00:20:52.920 they make shocking accusations or shocking headlines. These are like attention grabbers,

00:20:56.840 right? You say something sort of outlandish that is devoid of context that, you know,

00:21:01.000 nobody really understands. And you're like, oh my God, they, they want to defund the police.

00:21:04.120 Like what's that? But the problem is you have to then follow up with some sort of policy,

00:21:09.800 something that you actually want to talk about. So now if you want to say, as we were just saying

00:21:15.080 here, you know, the police budget is inflated. There's too many redundancies. They're not effective

00:21:20.120 in the roles that we expect police to be effective in. You know, they've been, for example, they've

00:21:25.080 been saddled with a lot of mental health issues. A lot of the calls that they report to, um, you know,

00:21:29.960 it might be, it might be a mental health issue and there might be some other way that we can deal

00:21:33.240 with that better, but without that plan. And that's, that's the problem with, um, you know,

00:21:38.520 when you start becoming this sort of like large mass protest movement is there's ultimately no

00:21:43.480 clear or coherent messaging. So maybe the original people who came up with this

00:21:47.720 defund the police actually mean let's move money from police to other services. But the problem is

00:21:53.800 then the message is totally, totally diluted because now every single person is putting a

00:21:58.120 hashtag and they're putting their own spin on it. And if you're a policymaker, I mean,

00:22:01.960 let's just think about it rationally for a second. You're a policymaker. You actually want to do this

00:22:06.280 thing. You know what? The people have spoken. I want to defund the police. Okay. So I'm just

00:22:10.520 literally just going to slash budgets. That sounds pretty conservative to me, just cutting

00:22:13.880 people's budgets pretty flatly. Um, what, like, what are you supposed to do? Where's,

00:22:17.880 where's the advice? Where's the recommendations that are, that you're being given as a policymaker?

00:22:21.080 What, what do you take away from this? Yeah, that's a great point because, you know,

00:22:25.240 conservatives have long been calling for things like reform in public sector unions. I think one of

00:22:30.120 the major issues that we're finding with, uh, you know, when it comes to police brutality,

00:22:35.480 particularly in the U S is that bad cops can't get fired. And a lot of that is because of police

00:22:41.240 unions and public sector unions that have negotiated. So, and here in Canada, I was just

00:22:46.040 reading this morning that the average, uh, the average police officer in Canada gets paid a hundred

00:22:51.000 grand a year. Uh, that's a, that's a pretty good salary. I'm not saying that they don't deserve it.

00:22:54.840 I think they probably do. But the idea that, you know, these public sector unions, uh, wield so much

00:22:59.880 power and control that they often do end up with sort of inflated budgets and lots of money that

00:23:05.640 can sometimes go towards things that aren't the best use. I'd be all for that, but you're right.

00:23:09.720 When they come forward with this, like really extreme sort of inflammatory statement, like

00:23:14.280 defund the police, I think, I think they lose many people that might otherwise be on board. Like,

00:23:19.800 you know, if, if you, if you might be on board, you know, like you and I are to maybe going through

00:23:25.160 the police department, seeing if there's too much money being spent or thinking about ways that we can

00:23:29.080 make the police service more effective, or maybe, you know, in certain cases, not always using

00:23:33.880 police officers, but using other types of workers. But as soon as you hear the defund the police,

00:23:38.200 it's like, what are you talking about? So it's like anarchy. And, you know, I would be for cutting

00:23:43.160 literally every other program in government. I think that the, the, the very last thing that you

00:23:48.040 should get rid of, you know, even in a perfect ideal society would be police. The, the, the basic

00:23:53.640 role, the foundational role of the state, after all, is to preserve order, law and order.

00:23:59.000 So, so you can get rid of literally every other government department and, and, and it's really

00:24:03.000 the security and safety of the people that is foundational and we need police. So the inflammatory

00:24:08.440 idea, I think, loses a lot of people. And, and then even when you dissect it a little more, Sam,

00:24:13.000 because I have been reading into this a little bit, I, I, I try to at least understand the arguments

00:24:17.560 that they're better being made. And a lot of times it's like, hey, you know, if you have a homeless

00:24:21.320 person or if you have someone who's suffering from mental illness or someone who's addicted to drugs,

00:24:25.240 it's not always the best idea to send a police officer in to deal with them. Like there are

00:24:29.960 other, you know, you could send in a, a health ex, mental health expert or addictions therapist

00:24:34.840 expert or a social worker into these situations instead of always relying on the police. Well,

00:24:40.520 my, my, my only criticism of that is that that's like literally already the policy in a lot of these

00:24:44.920 police departments, especially in Canada. I think a lot of times we see a conflation of issues in

00:24:49.240 Canada versus issues in the United States. And the reason that police end up sometimes going into

00:24:54.200 wellness checks and sometimes going in to deal with people who are suffering from, you know,

00:25:00.440 drug hallucinations or that kind of thing is usually because they are considered armed and dangerous.

00:25:04.600 So, so a social worker cannot go in because it's not safe for them. So they send up police because

00:25:09.480 it's their job to deal with violent situations. So again, the idea I think is just sort of overblown

00:25:16.280 and they're capitalizing on this moment where there was a really horrific example of police brutality

00:25:21.720 in the United States. And so they're trying to use that to see sweeping changes in Canada.

00:25:26.920 And I think that we should resist against that.

00:25:30.200 I think it's funny you touched on that. We've been chatting about this. It, it bothers me to no end

00:25:35.560 the importation of American rhetoric. I mean, you know, on one hand, I don't blame people. We're steeped

00:25:41.400 in American movies. We're steeped in American culture. Um, you know, people in, in other countries

00:25:46.440 don't know what, uh, you know, a senior, junior, freshman, all that kind of stuff is. And we, you

00:25:50.120 know, we tend to, if you watch enough American movies, you know, you know what this is, even

00:25:52.760 though it doesn't exist in this country. And so it's not surprising that you might feel that problems

00:25:57.800 they have in the States is a problem that we have here. The problem is that we're not having

00:26:03.320 conversations about issues in Canada. We can't talk about what's going on here. And when you want to

00:26:08.520 try and solve a Canadian problem, like what's going on on the streets of Toronto with, with gun violence or,

00:26:13.880 or anti-black racism, we can't look at that because we're so busy talking about police brutality in

00:26:19.560 the States. We're not looking at whether that brutality exists in the same form here,

00:26:24.280 whether racism exists in the same form here. Um, you know, I've, I think I've heard a long time

00:26:28.920 ago, something about how, uh, Canadian racism is more polite and sort of, you know, a joke about

00:26:33.080 how Canadians are more polite. And so fine. Maybe our, our discrimination is different in this

00:26:38.040 country, but we can never look at it because we're so busy protesting about something they're doing

00:26:42.360 in the States. We're not bothering to look at what are the causes or what are the effects on,

00:26:46.920 on the populace in this country. And it's really unfortunate because the people who are suffering

00:26:51.080 are going to continue suffering because no one is ever going to have that conversation in this

00:26:54.680 country. Unless we start abandoning this American rhetoric and have real Canadian discussions that,

00:26:59.320 that goes for every political leader of all, of all stripes and all levels.

00:27:01.800 Uh, yeah, absolutely. Like, and, and I think one of the other things that happens there is that when

00:27:05.880 Canadians do make that point that you're just making like, Hey, look, America has a very different

00:27:09.720 history than we do. And therefore we don't have the same issues as a result of consequences of

00:27:14.600 history. Then you sort of get accused that like saying, Oh, well, you just glossed it over. Like,

00:27:19.640 like you're defending Canada based on saying we're not as bad at the U S, but that doesn't mean that we

00:27:23.480 don't have our own problems here. It's like, no, we should establish some ground rules. Like Canada

00:27:27.640 was established after slavery was abolished in the British empire. So Canada as a country never had the

00:27:33.560 institution of slavery. It never existed in Canada, quite the opposite. Canada was the location where

00:27:39.480 a lot of freed slave from the United States came to have their freedom or, or, or after the war,

00:27:45.240 the revolutionary war, um, a lot of black Americans came to Canada because they were promised freedom

00:27:51.160 by the British empire. So, you know, there are important points in history that we should point

00:27:54.920 out to say, why are history different? We never had the discriminatory Jim Crow laws like the United

00:27:59.640 States did. That's not to say that, that no racism exists in Canada, Sam, it's just to say that we

00:28:04.680 have a different historical experience. We should base our conversations on what's happened in Canada,

00:28:09.400 Canada, and not to your point, trying to import the rhetoric from the United States. It's a really

00:28:13.720 good point. But again, a lot of that is lost today because there's just, uh, everyone is afraid to have

00:28:19.160 these conversations and, and everyone is afraid of getting canceled or, uh, you know, having the mob

00:28:25.240 come against them. Well, it's not just Toronto, Sam, that's talking about defunding their police

00:28:30.600 budgets or reducing the police budgets. Uh, budgets are under review in Vancouver, Victoria,

00:28:36.520 Edmonton, as protesters call for anti-racism reform. So hearing from local politicians in all,

00:28:42.920 all, uh, a handful of Canadian cities, uh, with the same, same rhetoric, same ideas. Um,

00:28:49.160 there is a black lives matter petition to divest police funding in Edmonton. So take away the funding

00:28:55.560 from the police and put it elsewhere. And, uh, yeah, they're really starting to gain traction. So,

00:29:01.320 uh, interesting times. And I hope that, uh, you know, politicians can, can, can find the nerve to

00:29:08.040 defend, uh, police institutions because they're just so foundational. Premier Ford in Ontario did

00:29:13.400 say that he opposes, uh, the defunding of police and we got a clip of that. So let's, uh, let's play

00:29:18.440 Premier Ford saying that he does not believe in defunding the police. All right. Thank you. My next

00:29:24.600 question is for the Premier specifically. Um, and it's on another topic. Premier, there are calls to

00:29:29.960 defund police services right across North America. The OPP is a billion-dollar operation under your

00:29:35.560 purview. What are your thoughts on defunding police in general? And specifically your thoughts on

00:29:40.520 defunding the OPP? Well, I don't believe in that for a second. I think we need a strong, uh,

00:29:47.160 police, uh, within our communities. What we do need to do is have higher standards. We need to, uh,

00:29:55.480 focus on more training. I think I'm a big believer as, as Chief Saunders always believed,

00:30:01.640 uh, in community policing, get involved in, in the community, learning, uh, more about your community.

00:30:08.520 Uh, that, that's what I believe in. But, uh, I just don't believe in, you know, uh, cutting, uh, police

00:30:14.920 budgets. I just never believed in that. So good to see a little bit of voice of reason left in,

00:30:20.760 in some politicians anyway. Uh, but you can't say that across the board. So there was a Black Lives

00:30:26.120 Matter protest, Sam, out in Alberta, in Edmonton. And this is a pretty shocking story. So they barred

00:30:33.960 entry to the event of Alberta's Minister of Municipal Affairs, Casey Maddow. So he's banned from speaking at

00:30:41.640 this event, at this anti-racism protest. The problem is that Maddow, who was born in Africa,

00:30:48.120 is Black himself. So I think this really points to the idea that these protests are not really

00:30:53.880 about race. They're more about ideology. So they would rather hear from a white guy who just happens

00:30:59.560 to be part of their ideological tribe than an actual Black person who is in a position of authority and

00:31:04.920 power in the country and can speak about his experiences. They, they don't want to hear about,

00:31:09.880 they don't want to hear from him because he happens to be a conservative, which is pretty

00:31:13.720 disappointing, but not at all surprising. So Alberta Minister of Municipal Affairs, Casey Maddow,

00:31:20.280 took to social media to record his own video. And this is what he had to say.

00:31:25.480 Hello, Casey Maddow here. Last Friday, I was invited to speak at this stage behind me about my lived

00:31:35.080 experience with racism. I was looking forward to standing with the organizers and our community

00:31:41.880 until the NDP and the allies intervened to have my invitation rescinded. To add insult to injury,

00:31:49.080 the NDP MLA for Edmonton Whitemouth, Rocky Pancholi, told me to, and I quote, reflect on why I wasn't

00:31:57.960 welcome. Well, Emily Pancholi, I have reflected and all I can see is that I am Black and yes, I am

00:32:07.640 conservative. This is the same NDP whose propaganda armed press progress called me a white supremacist

00:32:14.920 during the last election. An election where my opponent told voters to vote as if their skin was not

00:32:22.440 white. I say enough divisive NDP politics. I have always spoken openly and honestly about my lived

00:32:32.200 experience with racism. Racism is real and we all must work together to fight it. The scourge of racism

00:32:40.840 is bigger than our politics and it's also bigger than our political parties. Let's stop the divisive

00:32:48.600 NDP and left-wing politics and vow to destroy racism together. So that must be pretty disappointing

00:32:56.440 to not be welcome at an anti-racist protest. You know, even if that's something that he strongly

00:33:01.800 believes in, but you're not welcome as a speaker just because of your political affiliation. What

00:33:06.360 do you make of that, Sam? Well, again, you know, this is the problem when you start playing this game

00:33:11.320 is that you either get to a situation where nobody wins or you simply sideline people who

00:33:18.600 should not be because they're probably... Look, his black experience is probably similar to a lot

00:33:23.560 of other black Canadians. The fact that he's a minister... If I saw him on the street, I would

00:33:27.000 have no idea who it is, right? If someone is a racist person, his position is not preventing him

00:33:32.840 from suffering racism or institutional racism or any other type of difficulty that is going to be caused

00:33:38.280 because of the color of his skin. At the same time, you know, focusing simply just on how much melanin

00:33:44.840 is in his skin ignores other factors that may contribute to your experience. So for example,

00:33:50.440 you might have, you know, different, you might come from a different class, right? You might come

00:33:54.120 from a different, you might have a different mother tongue, different language. You might be an

00:33:57.240 immigrant or not an immigrant. You might be in a poorer part of the country or wealthier part of the

00:34:01.000 country. You might be from a more rural place or more urban place. All of these things are going to

00:34:05.720 contribute to your, you know, your life experience. You know, I don't like these buzzwords. I almost said

00:34:10.680 lived experience, but I believe in the concept, you know, people's life experience does make a

00:34:14.520 difference. But saying that he has literally nothing, like, that's what it is. He has literally

00:34:19.560 nothing of value to add. You, sir, have nothing of value to add to this conversation because you

00:34:25.480 happen to be a member of the UCP. Like, that's insane. He clearly is going to have some experiences

00:34:30.920 the same as other people. But to tell him that, you know what, you're probably of the wrong party.

00:34:35.320 You have nothing to contribute to this conversation. Quite the opposite. You should bring him there

00:34:40.360 and tell him, oh, hear what he's got to say. I had this experience. I had that experience. I'm like

00:34:44.440 you. Okay, Mr. Minister, I'll tell you why you're not like me. Because A, B, C, D, and this is what

00:34:50.200 you're missing. And this is what you need to advocate for. What happened to that? What happened

00:34:54.360 to reaching out to, like, he's literally in a position of power. Why can't we try and get him on

00:34:58.680 our side? Try and explain to him. That's, again, what I used to do for many years is advocacy. And that's

00:35:04.440 trying to get politicians to do something that you would like them to do, which is hopefully for the

00:35:08.840 betterment of society. So it's not just lobbying for, you know, some sector or something. But

00:35:13.800 what happened to reaching out to politicians? They're never going to agree with you or even

00:35:16.760 understand you if you just sideline them. But, you know, I guess it's much easier to sideline

00:35:21.640 them than to have some difficult discussions and maybe realize that you are not 100% correct,

00:35:25.960 or the way you're looking at something is not the only worldview. Right. Well, they're not really

00:35:29.800 interested in having a conversation or learning anything. They're just more interested in pounding

00:35:33.720 their fists and asserting their control. I think this proves because you're right. You know,

00:35:38.200 if they had allowed Minister Madhu to come and speak, maybe they would even find that they had

00:35:44.040 shared experiences with him and they could bridge a gap between the other party of the other ideology

00:35:49.320 and say, wow, you know what, we have more in common with conservatives than we thought,

00:35:53.400 creating more unity in society, which is what we really need right now. We need to talk about the

00:35:58.840 things that unite us, as opposed to things that divide us. So again, just pretty disappointing

00:36:04.120 stuff. Next story I want to talk about, Sam, which is kind of interesting and a little bit,

00:36:08.920 I don't know if this is a conflict of interest or what, but we learned this week that the Canadian

00:36:13.640 Foreign Affairs Minister, Francois-Philippe Champagne, has two registered residential mortgages

00:36:19.560 with the state-owned Bank of China in London, which opposition says opens him to personal

00:36:28.680 financial vulnerability at a time when Beijing relations are at a standstill. I find this just

00:36:35.240 a little bit of an odd story, just, you know, the facts of it. You know, why does the Foreign Affairs

00:36:40.280 Minister of Canada have two multimillion dollar properties in London, England? He's not from England,

00:36:46.600 England. He's French. So why does he have, and then he has these massive mortgages. I mean,

00:36:51.720 1.7 million dollars for one home and 1.2 million dollars for the other. I don't know the value of

00:36:56.360 the home, but, you know, usually you can't get a very big percentage mortgage when it comes to

00:37:01.000 properties that big. And then why would he go to a state-owned Chinese bank when there are like

00:37:07.400 hundreds of other banks that he could have gone to, including Canadian banks? It just seems like a

00:37:11.720 really weird story. And I feel like it does sort of make him vulnerable or a bit of a conflict

00:37:16.360 because we've heard him defend China so many times. And it's like, well, the guy's doing business

00:37:20.520 with the Chinese government state-owned banks, and he's the foreign minister representing Canada.

00:37:26.120 I don't know why this stuff wasn't disclosed a lot earlier either. What did you make of this story,

00:37:30.280 Sam? Well, I think it's really what the Conservatives said, but to expand on it, it's if you want to turn

00:37:37.560 the screws on someone, right, you want to influence them and you want to apply some kind of pressure.

00:37:41.360 So you could apply pressure because he's a foreign minister. You can say that as China,

00:37:45.160 you know, we're going to do something about trade. We're going to, you know, bar this or purchase

00:37:49.160 that. You know, there's a lot of things they could say. If you want to turn the screws on him

00:37:52.680 personally, and I don't think it's a stretch to say that China or the Chinese government has used

00:37:58.680 Chinese industries or Chinese companies to affect, you know, the relations or to meddle in different

00:38:05.080 political interests in other countries. But look, it obviously leaves him open because that's

00:38:09.560 something they could turn the screws on him. They could suddenly decide that either they're selling his

00:38:13.720 mortgage, they're renegotiating, maybe he's up for an interest rate renewal. Suddenly they're going to,

00:38:17.720 you know, quote him at a 27 percent interest. Again, it's not that, you know, even if he loses

00:38:22.920 this house and he goes bankrupt, it's that's not to say that he's going to now suddenly do whatever

00:38:27.320 China says as the foreign minister. But it's simply, it's something that it's not necessary,

00:38:32.600 you didn't necessarily need to do. And even if it, this just so happened to be that he had the mortgage

00:38:37.480 from this bank, he probably should be, or any government official should be aware,

00:38:41.480 and especially him as the foreign minister, he should be aware that this is something that you

00:38:45.240 are now vulnerable on a personal level, that if you were, if you're going to have this risk,

00:38:50.200 you should think about it and you should make sure it's not coloring or influencing your decisions,

00:38:54.360 because it might, like, we're all human. You know, I don't need to fault the guy overly,

00:38:58.360 but we're all human. If they're going to tell him suddenly we're going to cancel your mortgage or

00:39:01.320 we're going to, you know, do something to you personally, he might, you know,

00:39:04.840 he might change a couple of words in a speech or he might soften something that he wanted to say.

00:39:09.160 Right. And that's, that's not good for the country. That's not how

00:39:11.960 foreign relations should be conducted. And so it's, it's, it's a, it's a blind spot.

00:39:15.560 It's a personal vulnerability. Is it the end of the world? I don't know yet,

00:39:18.840 because it hasn't happened yet. They haven't done it to him, but it's definitely a vulnerability.

00:39:22.040 And it's a, it's a very fair point. Well, we don't know that it hasn't happened yet.

00:39:26.040 I mean, I know that he refused to say the word Taiwan, maybe, maybe they already airtight

00:39:29.800 in the screws, Sam, but no, I think, I think the real concern is, is not even something

00:39:33.480 actually happening. It's just the appearance. Like, you know, the guy's a Canadian minister

00:39:37.240 of foreign affairs, you know, for Canada. Why is he off doing, doing business with the Chinese?

00:39:42.200 It looks bad. And it makes people question, you know, exactly where his allegiance stand,

00:39:47.720 in some regard. And, you know, interestingly, this week as well, Aaron O'Toole, leader of the

00:39:54.440 Conservative Party has released a very substantive policy platform. I think it was like 50 pages,

00:40:01.160 which is a lot better than what Peter McKay released a few weeks ago, which was like,

00:40:04.920 you know, eight points, and each eight points had four bullet points, and there was not much

00:40:08.840 information. So this is a bit more of a substantive piece of policy proposal. There were some pretty

00:40:14.200 good aspects of it. He has some interesting ideas about reducing emissions and sort of promoting

00:40:22.040 Canadian energy, but bringing in different methods of collecting energy, including nuclear. He has some

00:40:30.040 policies on allowing more competition in Canada for airlines and telecom companies. He has detailed

00:40:38.040 further his plan to eliminate funding for the CBC. So he talks about eliminating funding for the

00:40:44.040 digital operations. He wants to privatize English language CBC television. And this was really

00:40:49.560 interesting too. He plans on invoking the notwithstanding clause to bring back mandatory minimum sentences

00:40:55.720 for serious crimes, including murder, kidnapping, sexual assault, and trafficking of illegal guns.

00:41:02.040 The criticism came because this policy platform was not costed, meaning we have no idea how much it's

00:41:07.960 going to cost. We don't know the full impact. Although he did have a policy where he said that every

00:41:12.680 dollar that he increases in spending would directly correlate with a reduction in a dollar of government

00:41:17.880 spending elsewhere. So presumably, it wouldn't grow, but he had no timeline for balancing the budget,

00:41:23.800 which I don't like to see that. But you know, we have no idea how much Justin Trudeau is spending.

00:41:28.440 Justin Trudeau just sort of stuck his foot on the gas when it came to spending. And I think we're

00:41:33.160 going to have about a $250 billion deficit this year. So it's hard to say exactly when you would

00:41:39.880 be able to get rid of that one when Trudeau hasn't even given a fiscal update because he doesn't even

00:41:44.360 know how much he's spending at this point. So that's pretty interesting. And one of the things I was

00:41:49.240 pleased to see was that Erin O'Toole's immigration policy seems to be reflecting

00:41:55.400 some of the policies that we've reported on here at True North. So there is an emphasis on private

00:42:01.320 refugee sponsorship, which I am a big fan of, and I've been writing about that for years.

00:42:04.920 There is also a little bit about reducing the need for skilled labor, immigration, temporary

00:42:14.040 foreign workers until the Canadian economy recovers, which just makes basic economic sense.

00:42:19.640 So I was pleased to see that. I don't quite understand why he wants to increase

00:42:23.880 family reunification policies, which don't do a lot of good for the economy or for combating

00:42:30.840 aging population. So I didn't like that. But I was pleased, Sam, to see that he – it looks like

00:42:36.680 he's paying attention to True North and reading some of our stuff on immigration. That's good.

00:42:41.320 And then speaking of immigration, we had a new report out this week that showed that the vast

00:42:47.480 majority, Sam, the overwhelming majority, three-quarters of Canadians, would like to see a total

00:42:52.040 pause on immigration. They would like to completely halt our immigration programs for the time being,

00:42:56.840 until the economy recovers, until the coronavirus threat has passed. So this is based on a scientific

00:43:02.360 research poll conducted by One, which is a research company based out of Toronto.

00:43:07.160 Three-quarters of Canadians, 76%, strongly agree or moderately agree with the statement,

00:43:12.440 Canada should temporarily pause immigration until a vaccine is developed for coronavirus

00:43:16.760 and the unemployment rate drops down to pre-coronavirus levels. What I found really

00:43:21.560 interesting about this study, this poll, Sam, is that it doesn't really matter what demographic

00:43:27.000 you're looking at in Canada, whether it be by age, by region, by province, by language,

00:43:32.440 male or female, at any education level, any income level, any political party that they voted for,

00:43:38.280 every single category had a majority of people saying that they wanted to pause immigration,

00:43:44.360 which I haven't seen that before. I mean, 67% of Liberal voters said they wanted to pause,

00:43:48.840 89% of Conservative voters wanted to pause, just an overwhelming majority of people. So it seems like

00:43:55.400 it's pretty common sense policy, although I haven't seen any Conservative leadership candidate propose it,

00:44:01.720 and I certainly haven't seen any of the other political parties willing to talk about it. I know

00:44:06.360 people think right now there is a pause on immigration, because Justin Trudeau's announced that

00:44:09.640 the borders are closed. The border closure, however, mostly just applies to tourists. People who come

00:44:15.160 for work still get in. The temporary foreign worker program is still up and running. There are

00:44:19.400 still lots and lots of immigrants coming to Canada. So the immigration programs right now have not been

00:44:24.280 paused, but Canadians would like to see a pause. What did you think about this study? Well, you know,

00:44:28.920 everything is wild now because of the coronavirus crisis. I think people are examining an issue

00:44:36.200 that I don't think they thought about, or they've been thinking about it in a way that is strictly,

00:44:41.800 you know, political rhetoric. Immigrants are maybe a group because they are all newcomers to this

00:44:47.400 country, but there are different types of immigrants. And I don't mean, I'm not all talking about where

00:44:52.520 they're coming from. I'm simply talking about, are they students? They get work visas, they become

00:44:56.600 permanent residents, they're refugees. So there's literally different types of immigrants. And I think what

00:45:02.120 people in this country are thinking about right now is that we have so much crazy stuff going on.

00:45:08.280 When you bring in people, and we need to bring in people at some point, right? Population is a

00:45:13.560 resource. Ultimately, our economy can only grow and grow at a much faster rate if we have more people.

00:45:18.520 The US economy is not only successful and large because of the type of industries that they have,

00:45:23.960 but they have a very large population. So the more people you have, that's going to have a direct

00:45:27.880 effect on your economy, especially for a growing economy, or the way that we're looking to grow

00:45:32.680 our economy as opposed to large countries that already exist. But I think people want to have

00:45:39.000 that conversation about what does this mean? Hold on. Everything is kind of crazy. Let's pause this.

00:45:43.640 And I think that's for a lot of people who were talking about immigration. I think that's a stance

00:45:48.040 that we've always taken. I mean, I had questions, not even concerns. I just had questions about,

00:45:53.960 for example, the Syrian refugees who came in. I had questions. I was not opposed to bringing in

00:46:01.560 refugees. And I think Canada is a successful country. We've been blessed. I think we can,

00:46:06.280 even if it's strictly a helping people out kind of thing, or bringing them in because we need them,

00:46:11.400 and we like their skills. But I had questions because some of these people, they're coming from

00:46:15.880 a country in which the society is steeped in antisemitism. And so I simply had questions. I wasn't

00:46:21.720 opposed to anything. I didn't take any firm stance. I literally just had questions. And I think way

00:46:25.720 back years ago, that's something you and I spoke of. And I think a lot of Canadians are now starting

00:46:29.560 to have questions. And that's okay. We can have questions about what is immigration in this country

00:46:34.760 going to look like? Where are all these people settling? Are they all tending to go to Toronto,

00:46:39.320 Montreal? What are all these things going to look like? Are they going to integrate? And what does that

00:46:45.400 mean? What does it mean to integrate? There's a lot of questions that you can have without ever

00:46:50.680 discussing anything that's remotely politically difficult. And I think we need to have that

00:46:54.600 conversation. And I hope that this survey will mean that, I hope the survey means that people are

00:46:59.240 having that conversation in their own houses and with themselves. Because I think it's a conversation

00:47:03.880 we need to have. Exactly. I think you're right. And I think that, I mean, I think you could even go

00:47:09.400 beyond questions. I mean, I've been studying this issue for years and years and years. And I have more

00:47:14.440 than questions, I have concerns. I think that there are major issues with integration in this country. A lot of it is

00:47:19.560 policy-driven. As an example, Justin Trudeau eliminated the English language or French

00:47:24.120 language requirement for a lot of new citizens. He cut down the amount of time he had to spend

00:47:28.040 in Canada to become a citizen, down to just three years part-time. And you can see the repercussions,

00:47:33.960 not just of those policies in the last few years, Sam, but of decades of open immigration without the real

00:47:41.320 dedication towards the heavy lifting, the difficult part, which is integration and making sure that

00:47:46.440 people fit in. And that's why you see in cities like Vancouver, my hometown, you know,

00:47:51.320 you have entire areas where you'll never hear English spoken. And all of the signs are in Mandarin.

00:47:56.840 And you just don't even really feel like you're in Canada. And you have people going to public

00:48:01.880 schools in Richmond, BC. And, you know, if they attend a pro-Hong Kong, pro-democracy protest,

00:48:08.280 they get threatening letters from sort of their classmates who are pro-Chinese-communist

00:48:14.200 dictatorship, who are bringing their attitudes to Canada. And I find it disheartening to look

00:48:20.520 at my country and see that kind of stuff happening. And so I think it's only natural when you have

00:48:26.120 a really large-scale immigration program, like we do in Canada, that every now and then we just take

00:48:30.840 a pause and say, okay, we've let a lot of people into our country. Let's make sure that everyone's doing

00:48:35.640 okay. That people are settling, that we're remaining sort of a harmonious, united country.

00:48:41.880 And I think taking pauses every now and then from immigration, just to ensure that the people who

00:48:46.840 are currently here feel that they are connecting to the Canadian family, I think it's important. And

00:48:52.440 I hope that people look at the report that True North put out in the scientific study that we had

00:48:58.200 commissioned and yeah, ask some of the questions and talk about some of these issues that you and I

00:49:03.880 are talking about here. Well, that's also the thing. I mean, it's not just we don't want immigrants or

00:49:08.600 we like immigrants, we don't like immigrants. It's literally the people that are here. Are they

00:49:13.560 able to fully participate in Canadian society? Are they going to be able to partake of all the

00:49:18.760 benefits? I mean, fine, they're going to have responsibilities as well, but we don't want people

00:49:23.160 to come to this country to then be prisoners in their own community, in their own language,

00:49:28.040 and never be able to fully participate in the labor force. It must suck if you can't really go

00:49:33.800 out for a walk in the evening downtown and then sit at the cafe because you don't know the language.

00:49:39.160 I mean, that's got to be pretty depressing if you're just shut out of parts of society. And

00:49:44.120 obviously it's difficult. You move from a different country, you might be older, it might be more

00:49:47.400 difficult for you to learn the language, acclimatize. The problem is really, are we making an effort to

00:49:52.760 reach out to these people? And that's what you just said. We want to check on the people that are

00:49:56.760 here, make sure that they're doing okay, they're fully participating. And I think that the rhetoric

00:50:00.360 from critics who simply, I don't even know why they jump on this, but critics want to make it

00:50:06.440 sound like you're after something totally different when the concern is making sure that people are

00:50:11.640 okay, they're doing well, they're fully participating in Canadian society. And that

00:50:15.000 means you have to acclimatize yourself. I couldn't move to Japan and refuse to speak any Japanese at all

00:50:20.360 ever and expect that I'm going to now fully partake in Japanese society. It's just,

00:50:24.440 it's not going to happen. I might be able to live, get services, et cetera, but I will never be able

00:50:27.960 to fully, fully partake in society. And that would be to my loss.

00:50:31.240 I totally agree with that point that you're making. And I think that there's also a public

00:50:34.840 safety concern. You know, the example that the Trudeau government used was say, hey, you come to

00:50:39.800 Canada and you're 65 and you're never going to join the workforce. What's the point of learning

00:50:43.240 English? And as soon as they eliminate the English language requirement, you're reducing,

00:50:47.400 you're eliminating the incentive for anyone to even try to learn. And so you're right,

00:50:51.640 they feel isolated in their community. What if heaven forbid, there was an accident and they

00:50:55.240 needed to reach out to emergency services and call 911? I mean, how would they even have that

00:50:59.880 conversation? You know, how would they be able to make friends in their community? How would they

00:51:03.320 be able to branch out? I mean, you're talking about a pretty lonely existence. And this is what the

00:51:07.720 government is, is sort of encouraging, creating incentives towards living that out, which I just

00:51:12.280 think is wrong. I think that as Canadians, we should take a stand and demand that our politicians

00:51:17.640 do more to encourage people who move to Canada to really join the Canadian family,

00:51:22.520 to participate more broadly in society, you know, to have that unity among all people,

00:51:27.640 instead of sort of isolating in these closed cultural community, which creates all kinds of

00:51:32.680 problems. Well, Sam, we'd like to end the show on a positive note. This is kind of a funny positive

00:51:39.560 note. I know Justin Trudeau went out to those protests last weekend. So after months and months of

00:51:45.240 nagging Canadians not to go outside as you know, it's our civic duty. And every time we go outside,

00:51:49.320 we're endangering people. Trudeau decided to break free of all those rules that he himself

00:51:55.400 set and go to a protest, basically to virtue signal. One of the things that kind of bugs me

00:52:02.360 is that he got down on one knee, which I don't quite understand why he did that. I think that going

00:52:08.200 down on a knee to me invokes the kind of argument that the cultural argument was happening in the US

00:52:13.000 for a couple of years around Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who decided to

00:52:18.200 kneel during the national anthem because he thought that America was a systemically racist society and

00:52:22.680 he didn't want to stand for the national anthem because that would, he thought, would sort of be

00:52:26.600 paying homage to a country that he thought was awful and racist. So the whole kneeling thing,

00:52:30.280 I think, to me, it conjured images of Colin Kaepernick. Some people say, oh, it's, you know,

00:52:34.920 in solidarity. And it's a sign of sort of peace and promoting kind of greater understanding.

00:52:43.400 I just thought, again, it was sort of woke, performative art. But apparently I'm not alone.

00:52:48.600 So True North analyzed the Twitter responses to tweets from CBC News and CTV. And it turns out that

00:52:56.760 70%, well, 69% of Twitter users responded negatively to these videos of Justin Trudeau kneeling. So maybe

00:53:04.360 his virtue signaling and his performative art didn't pan out as well as he has expected. What did you

00:53:11.240 think of that story, Sam? Well, you see, again, I'm all for, he wants to make some sort of symbolic

00:53:17.400 gesture. Fine. But you are the prime minister of this country. You can actually affect change on

00:53:24.440 literally any issue you think is a problem in this country. If you're going to go and take a knee and do a

00:53:30.200 photo op about any issue, I expect you to have some substantive or, or literally not substantive,

00:53:36.280 call for questions, call for solutions, call, like literally say, I want to help. I'm listening.

00:53:40.600 I'm listening. You know, what do you need to tell me? But that's not, it's just, I'm going to take a

00:53:44.680 knee, which again, has no, as you said, there's no real Canadian context. It's not clear what that

00:53:49.560 does in Canada. And if you're going to see, you know, fine, it's showing solidarity. All right,

00:53:53.060 I'll take it. As long as you're going to show me that he's going to do something, he's going to

00:53:58.120 say something. Now, so far, I haven't really seen anything substantive from him. I, you know,

00:54:02.720 there's always, there's always hope. Maybe there's no chance, but there's always hope.

00:54:07.080 So, you know what, if he's going to do something, fine. If not, you know, photo ops and, and virtue

00:54:11.980 signaling, like that's sadly, we've seen a lot, a lot from this prime minister on virtue signaling,

00:54:16.040 like the, the fake feminism and a lot of this stuff, which that, that's the gaslighting back to,

00:54:21.040 you know, to, to come, kind of come full circle. That's, that's the gaslighting saying,

00:54:24.500 you know, he's super woke. He's not racist. He's the guy who wore blackface. So, you know,

00:54:29.120 just going to leave it there. That's a good, good place to end the show. Well, Sam, thank you so

00:54:34.000 much for guest hosting the True North update. It's been a lot of fun and we thank everyone for,

00:54:39.400 for tuning in and viewing True North. Don't forget to check out our website, tnc.news to stay up to date

00:54:44.740 with all the latest. I'm Candace Malcolm, and this has been True North update. Have a great weekend.

00:54:51.040 We'll see you next time.

The Candice Malcolm Show - June 15, 2020

The CBC should be defunded, not the police

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