The Critical Compass Podcast - June 12, 2024


The Need for Better Political Dialogue w⧸Eva Chipiuk | A Critical Compass Clip


Episode Stats

Length

7 minutes

Words per Minute

158.11804

Word Count

1,118

Sentence Count

2


Summary

In this episode, we discuss the need for nuance and nuance in the political discourse, and the lack of trust in our public institutions, as well as what we need to do to bridge the political divide and build bridges across political divides.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 but that's another thing that like it just is so strange when you put yourself out there
00:00:09.080 publicly how quickly people are to are ready to paint you with this or that and um this whole
00:00:17.660 dialogue over division to me it's having a conversation i enjoy conversations i like
00:00:23.020 i i don't understand how we've gotten here and i don't have the time to respond to every post
00:00:28.620 or commentary you make that's that's not the place to have an actual conversation i i don't very often
00:00:36.540 have um back and forths with people because i don't find that's productive i i'm more prepared
00:00:43.220 to have a conversation like adults like i don't know why things have become so short and you know
00:00:51.600 labeled instead of let's just have a conversation like people used to do once upon a time
00:00:57.700 sometimes people in these conversations they will they're actually having a conversation with
00:01:04.940 what they think you believe rather than actually addressing what you believe outright and that's
00:01:11.100 where i'm always curious to if somebody uses a term well we got to define that term we got to agree that
00:01:17.700 we're actually talking about the same thing if not sometimes you can be talking past each other you can
00:01:22.120 be you could be missing the mark just because you haven't actually decided that you're focused on
00:01:29.040 the same thing and then you mentioned that you're labeled you're labeled alt-right or right-wing
00:01:36.800 just because now you've kind of helped defend some citizens for their rights who are not on the left
00:01:44.120 now what what happens is people subscribe a whole other subset of beliefs onto these labels um this
00:01:53.380 middle ground is something where if you ask a lot of people the average person's somewhere in the
00:01:58.160 middle on like a lot of issues i feel like there's a little bit more commonality than there are
00:02:04.120 differences and you see this you talk about immigration uh just as one little example most people think that
00:02:11.260 there should be a limit because if you ask people well in canada should we have 10 million people
00:02:16.980 move in in 2025 people say oh that's too too much so all we're disagreeing with right now is where
00:02:26.520 should the limit be rather than like because everybody has a limit it's just we're disagreeing
00:02:32.780 about the exact number of it and and often these things get framed in black and white terms and we
00:02:39.600 need more of that nuance and kind of this shared understanding well i think that's such a great
00:02:45.280 example too and it's not i for me at least it's not just the amount of people because i don't think
00:02:53.540 um i have enough information to even comment on that what it is i think is how it affects people and
00:03:00.320 for me whatever everything i do and don't get me wrong some of some of the clients that i have i very
00:03:06.480 much believe in the ideology as well but it's all about holding the government to account so if we
00:03:11.740 have the information about okay we're going to bring in x many um immigrants wonderful great like i
00:03:18.320 understand canada was built on immigrants as well with immigrants but we they need the facilities to
00:03:24.960 live as well so let's just ensure that we're doing this responsibly and then let's have a conversation
00:03:30.560 about how many people are but first and foremost perhaps elected officials you should be listening
00:03:37.660 and talking to the citizens that are already here and what their concerns are what their issues are
00:03:44.560 what their fears are let's just talk about them and that's where i think that this is what's causing a
00:03:52.080 bit of the gap and the lack of trust in our public and institutions is i've been seeing more so recently
00:03:59.200 elected officials are talking at us rather than with us or to us they're just saying this is what
00:04:06.000 we're doing the end and not even sometimes saying why which is would be helpful and would be nice
00:04:15.120 but ideally it would be what are your thoughts on this and wow i think that would transform things i
00:04:22.480 think that that would start getting people more civically engaged that would also start building
00:04:28.640 trust and repairing that that bridge that uh we have that's quite open right now and then i wonder
00:04:35.680 whether it's sometimes done on purpose or not so maybe they just like doing their work you know over
00:04:41.040 there and not bothering but i think it's also on us to get involved yeah it makes me yeah the way that i and
00:04:49.360 i i think we've talked about this on on our show before where it almost feels sometimes like
00:04:56.240 maybe you know if you want to say that there's a you know a government media apparatus of some type
00:05:01.280 that kind of maybe focuses and keeps you know a pretty tight control of the messaging it almost
00:05:07.600 feels like they don't want us to discuss these types of things because they this is giving them
00:05:13.520 the benefit of the doubt that they don't want the conversation to go off the rails and be like
00:05:17.760 you know if you start talking about limiting immigration then before you know what people
00:05:22.400 will be talking about you know they'll be saying racist things about you know muslim immigrants or
00:05:28.000 something like they go way too far the other way as if you couldn't have any nuanced discussion in the
00:05:33.760 middle there that has nothing to do with either race or religion or anything like that but is surely a
00:05:39.680 but is simply a practical conversation on the sheer number right a hundred percent and i like that you
00:05:46.960 brought up the media and um how it's kind of captured or worse and you know with everything
00:05:54.800 that's occurred over the last four years that has been highlighted with the problems i think it's also
00:06:01.680 great i'm a forever optimist or however you say it because i also see that it's caused a lot of people
00:06:09.520 to do things that they probably wouldn't have for example me doing this podcast yourselves doing yours
00:06:15.600 and i think that's good and i think that's healthy and helpful so it really exposes things as well um
00:06:23.120 and i think just today the cbc had or somebody reported that the cbc had like the worst viewership
00:06:29.760 it ever had in a long time with the 1.5 billion dollars and the amount of content creators that they
00:06:37.600 have there so that goes to show you the power that we have all the time if we're willing to take some
00:06:57.360 ownership
00:06:58.240 so
00:07:04.080 you
00:07:04.160 you