The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 493. The Brutal Shadow of Equity In Canada ｜ Celina Caesar-Chavannes

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00:00:30.000 Hello, everyone.

00:00:47.120 Canadians have benefited from or suffered under the rule of Justin Trudeau

00:00:51.780 for a substantial amount of time now.

00:00:53.620 And during that time, his administration, his government,

00:00:57.600 has been plagued by a number of scandals, some greater and some lesser.

00:01:02.340 One of the more unreported scandals has to do with the sequential departure

00:01:06.060 of some of the more powerful and opinionated figures in his cabinet and his government,

00:01:12.240 including many of the women that he so triumphantly appointed to his cabinet, 0.80

00:01:17.100 what would you say, founded on the idea of equity in 2015.

00:01:24.720 I've reached out to many of the people who've abandoned his ship, you might say,

00:01:29.880 on the liberal side to talk, to find out what it was like working with Justin,

00:01:35.980 with Prime Minister Trudeau.

00:01:37.200 And generally, they've refused to talk to me, not impolitely or anything like that,

00:01:43.660 but it just hasn't been successful.

00:01:45.240 But today it was successful because I got to talk to Selena Cesar Chavan,

00:01:51.600 who was elected in the writing of Whitby in 2015,

00:01:56.080 who left her own business, divested herself of her own business to do so,

00:02:00.840 and then was appointed parliamentary secretary.

00:02:03.980 And she told us what it was like.

00:02:06.720 She worked very closely with Trudeau, or in principle very closely.

00:02:12.160 The story is much more complicated than that for about four years

00:02:16.380 until she decided that, to put it bluntly, she'd had more than enough,

00:02:20.520 as you will discover if you attend to this podcast,

00:02:24.860 which I would highly recommend, particularly if you're Canadian.

00:02:29.020 It is devastating.

00:02:31.140 Really.

00:02:32.400 It was, it's a shocking interview, I would say.

00:02:36.000 It's an emotional interview.

00:02:38.760 She's very articulate.

00:02:40.360 She's very careful.

00:02:41.880 She's very forthright and revealing, much more so than I might have expected.

00:02:47.360 And the picture she paints is not a pretty one.

00:02:51.740 Seriously, not a pretty one.

00:02:53.620 And everyone who has the opportunity should listen to this,

00:02:58.400 if they're citizens in Canada,

00:03:00.520 because you need to know just exactly who it is that's running the show.

00:03:07.440 So join us and find out.

00:03:10.200 So, Selina, we'll start, I think, by just giving people an overview, if you would,

00:03:16.980 about what role you played with the Trudeau Liberals.

00:03:20.560 And expand on that, if you would, a bit,

00:03:23.480 so that people who are listening from other countries

00:03:25.980 have a more comprehensive idea of how the Canadian federal system works,

00:03:30.720 the electoral system.

00:03:31.740 Yeah, so I was elected in 2015.

00:03:35.580 And I should say before that,

00:03:38.440 the member of parliament in which my riding or my jurisdiction, my town is,

00:03:45.000 passed away.

00:03:46.580 He was a former federal minister, really well-liked individual.

00:03:50.560 So in 2014, that happened.

00:03:53.120 And as you would run in any other election,

00:03:56.660 a by-election was triggered at that time.

00:03:58.820 And I lost the by-election.

00:04:01.220 When that happened, of course,

00:04:03.860 the next time to run was the general election.

00:04:08.480 And a general election in Canada runs pretty much as any other democracy.

00:04:13.240 You are voting for the person in your riding.

00:04:16.720 You're not like the United States,

00:04:18.620 where you vote directly for the prime minister or directly for the president.

00:04:22.580 You vote for the person in your particular jurisdiction.

00:04:26.860 And in 2015, I ran again for the Liberals, and I won that election.

00:04:32.920 So I was a member of parliament for my town of Whitby that I've lived in for over a dozen years,

00:04:38.720 and then immediately was appointed to parliamentary secretary, to the prime minister.

00:04:44.180 And basically, the parliamentary secretary is, I would say, like the right hand of the prime minister.

00:04:51.200 If the prime minister goes left, you go right.

00:04:53.160 He goes north, you go south.

00:04:54.440 And it's really a tag team role when you're appointed to that position.

00:04:59.280 So what had attracted you first to political life?

00:05:02.640 And then more specifically, why did you decide to stand for office under the rubric of the Liberals?

00:05:09.360 So for everyone watching and listening, Canada really has, for all intents and purposes, three main political parties.

00:05:16.400 There's Liberals, who usually govern Canada, and they're a centrist party.

00:05:21.460 The Conservatives, they're a centre-right party, and you have the New Democrats, and they're a centre-left party.

00:05:27.660 There's some fringe parties, but we'll leave them out of this discussion, including the separatists.

00:05:35.020 So you decided to run for the Liberals, and of course, they're in power most of the time in Canada,

00:05:40.400 and are currently under the leadership of Justin Trudeau.

00:05:43.560 And what attracted you to the Liberals, and perhaps to Mr. Trudeau as well?

00:05:50.300 So I'll answer the last question first.

00:05:52.460 Really, coming to Canada, being from a Caribbean background, we tended to vote a lot Liberal.

00:06:00.580 My parents voted Liberal.

00:06:02.280 I've always voted Liberal.

00:06:03.740 So it was really more an affinity toward a party that had welcomed people from the Caribbean into Canada.

00:06:11.920 It was really an affinity towards a leader who at the time was very dynamic.

00:06:17.500 But I would say that getting involved in politics was for a different sort of reasoning.

00:06:25.100 At the time, before entering in, I was running Canada's first-ever national population study

00:06:31.240 or epidemiology study on neurological conditions.

00:06:34.660 And what some of your viewers or listeners might not know is that oftentimes,

00:06:41.140 even in Canada, with the social safety net of healthcare, there are some challenges around people

00:06:47.860 being able to access that healthcare system in a fair manner.

00:06:52.100 And what we were finding with that national study, people who were looking after their loved ones

00:06:56.260 with Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's or even epilepsy or Rett syndrome on the lower end of the age continuum,

00:07:03.640 they were having significant challenges looking after their loved ones.

00:07:07.340 They would have to either divorce their partner if they were making too high of an income.

00:07:12.320 They would have to divorce so that their income would drop and their partner could get services. 0.95

00:07:17.500 Or they'd have to move from province to province to be able to get the drugs covered under a particular provincial

00:07:24.040 or for the U.S. statewide formulary.

00:07:28.300 And I just thought that that was unacceptable in a G7 country and wanted to get into politics,

00:07:35.180 particularly to deal with those issues, to have a national brain strategy and a national senior strategy.

00:07:41.600 And I thought at the time the best way to do that was through a liberal government.

00:07:46.780 I knew that the prime minister, well, the leader at the time was very much in favor of science, of healthcare.

00:07:55.340 But to be honest, the study that I was running across the country was a $15 million investment

00:08:03.220 from the previous government, the Harper government.

00:08:05.940 So I could have gone either way, but my affinity was more towards the liberals at the time.

00:08:11.220 And I thought that we'd be able to get a national brain strategy and a national senior strategy in place.

00:08:18.240 So now you became parliamentary secretary.

00:08:21.360 How soon after you won the 2015 election?

00:08:25.340 Within a couple months.

00:08:27.040 So by December of 2015, I was appointed.

00:08:30.280 And had you had any previous political experience at that point?

00:08:34.380 Absolutely.

00:08:35.280 Absolutely none.

00:08:36.760 I was, I didn't even take a political science course, to be honest with you.

00:08:40.740 No political background.

00:08:42.540 So was it a shock to find yourself in that job?

00:08:45.820 I think the first shock came when I actually won the election.

00:08:50.720 I knew that, I knew that I'd be able to win.

00:08:53.840 I was out knocking doors.

00:08:54.980 I knew sort of the machinery behind running.

00:08:58.320 And so as my, because I lost the by-election, my counterpart was obviously in Ottawa.

00:09:04.380 I took advantage of that.

00:09:05.760 Knocked on 40,000 doors in Whitby to be able to win the general election.

00:09:10.820 But it was a shock to win that because the riding or the place that I lived was very conservative.

00:09:17.440 The provincial counterpart was conservative.

00:09:19.880 The former federal minister was conservative.

00:09:22.260 And so it's like a Republican sort of hotspot.

00:09:26.540 And so I was very shocked to win that election.

00:09:31.920 But I knew people trusted me at the door.

00:09:34.320 And when they said, you know, Selena, when you get in there, politics is going to change you. 0.98

00:09:38.700 I, I look back, I look them dead in the eye and I said, watch me.

00:09:41.860 I will make sure that I stay true to who I am.

00:09:44.500 So it was a, the first shock was actually getting in the door.

00:09:48.760 Becoming parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, not necessarily a shock to me.

00:09:52.980 I knew I had, although I didn't have the political experience, I knew I had the smarts to do it.

00:09:58.840 I knew that I had the capability.

00:10:01.820 And because of the by-election, the prime minister had been in Whitby at least four times.

00:10:06.980 So we had developed a relationship.

00:10:08.540 So it wasn't like it was coming out of left field.

00:10:10.920 I knew that if he needed someone on the ground listening, being attuned to not just what's happening in Whitby or across the country,

00:10:18.600 but those particular nuances that maybe his experience didn't lend him the ability to understand,

00:10:25.000 I knew that having me as a parliamentary secretary will fill that gap quite well.

00:10:29.600 So that wasn't the shock for me.

00:10:32.260 Okay.

00:10:32.900 Okay.

00:10:33.220 So it was more winning the election.

00:10:35.020 So can I, can you fill people in with regard to your background in general?

00:10:39.840 So you said you had run a large study and how, how old were you when you ran for office in Whitby?

00:10:45.660 And what was your, what was your educational and experiential background prior to, to running?

00:10:51.480 Just trying to get, just trying to place you in everyone's imagination.

00:10:55.740 Yes.

00:10:56.080 So I was 41 when I ran and my background, I have a Bachelor of Science in Human Biology from the University of Toronto.

00:11:07.340 I have two MBAs, one in healthcare management and the other executive MBA from Rotman School of Management,

00:11:14.840 again, at the University of Toronto and really ran a very successful research-based healthcare management firm

00:11:25.380 running pharmaceutical clinical trials, adjudication processes for research firms and mainly around neurological conditions.

00:11:35.660 So most of my, my career in business was running research, but particularly around the brain.

00:11:43.620 Was that a private company that was doing that research?

00:11:45.940 How was that structured?

00:11:47.880 Absolutely.

00:11:48.380 It was a private company that was running it.

00:11:50.600 And so I'd get contracts with pharmaceutical companies or with nonprofits, you know,

00:11:57.280 like working with Parkinson's Society Canada or Alzheimer's Society, helping them run their adjudication processes or partnering with the government of Canada.

00:12:06.040 And that last large study that I did running their national epidemiology study.

00:12:11.240 So it was a private firm that I ran for over 10 years, award-winning firm, and did that quite successfully for the time.

00:12:20.460 But it was really focused on the first love of my life, which was the brain.

00:12:24.740 Okay.

00:12:24.980 So that, and that was your company?

00:12:26.620 And how did you go about, okay, well, that's a, that's a difficult thing to manage, to, to found and run a private company that's research focused.

00:12:35.560 So tell me a little bit more about that.

00:12:37.480 How did you, how did you have the idea?

00:12:39.680 And actually, how did you manage that on the business side?

00:12:42.160 Because that's, that, it seems to me that that's a rare thing to do.

00:12:46.860 So absolutely.

00:12:48.440 Yeah.

00:12:48.700 Yeah.

00:12:48.980 So tell me about that.

00:12:50.060 Absolutely.

00:12:50.880 So very rare.

00:12:52.220 So I'll have to go back a little bit for your listeners, because I think this is important.

00:12:56.540 I finished my undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, first in my family to attend university,

00:13:02.920 immigrated from Grenada when I was two years old, and really lost myself at university.

00:13:07.680 Graduated high school, top of my class, 99 average, but lost myself at university.

00:13:12.440 It took me six years to finish a three-year degree.

00:13:15.500 Graduated with a 1.58 GPA.

00:13:18.240 Jordan, if you can imagine how much, how hard you have to work outside of school to get

00:13:22.300 a 1.58 in school.

00:13:24.120 I was wanting to be a neurosurgeon.

00:13:29.180 Obviously, you can't apply to medical school with a 1.58 GPA, and was lost for two years.

00:13:36.220 I ended up working as a forklift operator in a factory for a couple of years.

00:13:42.180 And then I realized, you know what?

00:13:44.180 The university gave me the university gave me the piece of paper, and they didn't put my GPA on it.

00:13:48.840 So I went back.

00:13:50.140 I did an undergraduate research course, fourth-year course.

00:13:53.460 Ended up getting an A in that.

00:13:54.920 Fell in love with research, working on nutrition and Alzheimer's disease.

00:13:58.880 And then just started to work my way up, worked at the TANS Neuroscience Building as a research coordinator.

00:14:05.880 And then I decided, well, you know, I could be a research manager.

00:14:09.260 Let me do my MBA, become a research manager, and see what happens with that.

00:14:13.860 And of course, the juxtaposition with that is you can't get the research management job if you don't have enough experience.

00:14:21.400 And you can't get the experience without the job.

00:14:24.660 By that time, I had two kids.

00:14:26.940 We were living in this run-down basement apartment, basically dumpster diving for our furniture.

00:14:33.780 And I realized that life wasn't going to keep me down that way.

00:14:38.700 So I started a company because I knew, working in research, that the most valuable asset to any of the principal investigators I was working with was a good, solid research coordinator.

00:14:50.700 So I decided that maybe I could use that as a launch pad, as a freelance research coordinator.

00:14:57.520 And I started that for a little while until the first pharmaceutical company called me and said, we have a clinical trial for a pediatric epilepsy clinical trial.

00:15:07.420 Can you find us some principal investigators?

00:15:10.720 And of course, when you're down and out, and you're trying your best to get your family out of a situation, the first thing that I said was, absolutely.

00:15:21.680 But finding a pediatric neuropsychologist to run a clinical trial in Toronto was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

00:15:30.360 But with grit and determination, I found three of them for that company.

00:15:35.160 And the first paycheck I got with that, with Resolve Research Solutions, which was the name of my company, was a down payment to my first home.

00:15:45.000 I'm a hustler.

00:15:46.880 You know, I know how to work hard.

00:15:48.540 I really studied with that MBA, used that MBA to create the blueprint for a company that ended up being very successful.

00:15:56.720 And I think finding a niche market of being able to be a site management organization for pharmaceutical companies, probably one of the first in Canada, was something that was unheard of.

00:16:09.540 And it happened to be something that I knew how to do very well, because I knew, while I didn't know everything about the brain at the time, I knew how to run a successful business.

00:16:19.660 And that's something that my principal investigators didn't know how to do.

00:16:23.300 They knew how to see patients.

00:16:24.520 They knew how to run the trial.

00:16:25.780 But they didn't know the business of the trial.

00:16:27.500 And I handled that for them.

00:16:29.180 And when did you start that business?

00:16:31.540 I started in 2005.

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00:17:43.640 2005.

00:17:44.560 So, okay.

00:17:44.940 So, by the time you won your seat, you'd run a successful business, a successful and growing business for 10 years.

00:17:53.720 For about 10 years, yeah.

00:17:54.740 How successful did it become?

00:17:57.380 Oh, it was actually pretty good.

00:17:59.700 Not to boast, but I won the Black Business and Professional Association Harry Jomar Award for Young Entrepreneur.

00:18:07.320 And in 2012, won the Toronto Board of Trade Entrepreneur of the Year Award with the company.

00:18:14.600 It grew quite successfully to the point where I was running or co-chairing with the Public Health Agency of Canada National Epidemiology Studies.

00:18:24.060 So, I think the success may have been measured in sort of dollars and cents, but I think the impact that I had within the industry,

00:18:32.860 focusing on research, focusing on a market where oftentimes you don't see people like me running.

00:18:39.140 You don't see, you know, women in that particular field. 1.00

00:18:42.840 I was doing it and doing it successfully and having impact, not just for the physicians that I work with,

00:18:48.180 but for the patients that we serve that were walking through the door.

00:18:52.280 So, what did you do with your business once you ran for office?

00:18:57.060 Yeah.

00:18:57.920 Yeah.

00:18:58.220 So, as Parliamentary Secretary to a Prime Minister, you have to, well, some of us had to divest.

00:19:04.520 Some of us didn't divest from everything, but I was naive enough to follow the rules and I divested from the company

00:19:12.000 and really had to start from scratch once I left politics again.

00:19:17.980 Okay.

00:19:18.360 Well, let's dive into that then.

00:19:20.340 So, tell me the story of your experience as Parliamentary Secretary and tell everyone what you learned and what happened.

00:19:30.440 How long were you, how long did you serve under Trudeau in the government?

00:19:36.420 Four years.

00:19:37.740 Not even four years because in March of 2019, I stepped out of the liberal fold and sat as an independent towards the end.

00:19:48.200 Even though I had a few months left, I stepped out.

00:19:51.100 But for about three and a half years, I stayed within the liberal fold.

00:19:55.260 Okay.

00:19:55.700 Well, then why don't you just start at the beginning?

00:19:57.980 Just start at the beginning and tell me exactly what happened.

00:20:02.000 Yeah.

00:20:02.360 So, I mean, it's a very interesting story because at the beginning, of course, I think with a lot of Canadians,

00:20:09.200 we had a majority went from, you know, a couple dozen seats in the legislature to over 180 seats,

00:20:18.420 a majority government.

00:20:19.940 There was a lot of excitement, very much sunny ways,

00:20:24.020 really excited about having that change of government within Canada.

00:20:30.060 And it was an exciting time.

00:20:31.860 It was an exciting time to be appointed Parliamentary Secretary.

00:20:35.020 It was an exciting time to be a member of Parliament.

00:20:37.840 I knew I'd be able to represent the people that I served very well.

00:20:41.480 But of course, being a business person, I wanted to also make sure that I was holding myself accountable.

00:20:46.960 So as Parliamentary Secretaries, as we've discussed before,

00:20:49.980 I really wanted to make sure we had a national brain strategy because I knew the research.

00:20:54.720 For every dollar you invest in brain research, you get a $4 return, either with savings of people's lives,

00:21:02.020 helping people to be able to return to work, often caregivers.

00:21:06.280 There was a four to one return.

00:21:07.780 So I really wanted a national brain strategy.

00:21:10.060 And I wanted to take care of the people that I knew were hurting the most,

00:21:13.760 often women who are caregivers for people who are really struggling with neurological diseases

00:21:18.980 or neurodegenerative conditions.

00:21:21.220 So that for me was critically important.

00:21:23.280 I drew up the plans with timelines and milestones and accountability metrics.

00:21:28.080 I presented this framework in on, I think, January of 2016, really hoping that it will work out.

00:21:35.860 And I heard nothing for a little while.

00:21:38.340 Presented it to who?

00:21:40.140 I presented it to PMO.

00:21:42.320 So within the Prime Minister's office, his chief counsel would have been Jerry Butts and Katie Telford at the time.

00:21:50.220 So I presented it to them.

00:21:53.860 And to be honest, I'm not quite sure if the Prime Minister ever saw it.

00:21:57.680 So I can't be certain of that.

00:22:00.260 Although I was his parliamentary secretary, there was very, very little interaction,

00:22:05.380 which people might think, I thought you said if he goes left, you go right.

00:22:08.920 Well, that is normally the case.

00:22:11.100 But there wasn't a lot of interaction with the Prime Minister at the time.

00:22:14.980 And, you know, right from the beginning, I thought this is awfully strange for me to have very little interaction.

00:22:23.620 If you are able to witness Canadian politics or any political system, you'll see that there is a question period here.

00:22:32.520 We have a House of Commons in which we debate materials.

00:22:36.020 At question period, we get up and we answer questions to the Canadian public,

00:22:40.580 to our counterparts on the official opposition on the other side.

00:22:45.280 And I was told that I was not allowed to speak during question period, which I also found quite strange.

00:22:52.100 I wasn't allowed to speak to media.

00:22:54.440 And it just started rubbing me the wrong way.

00:22:57.760 And so I just continued because I'm new.

00:23:04.160 And for people who are listening, and I'm not sure if this is going to bear weight,

00:23:10.020 but to me, it bared a lot of weight, knowing that during the 42nd Parliament,

00:23:15.140 between 2015 and 2019, I was the only Black female elected in the 42nd Canadian Parliament.

00:23:22.320 So with that understanding, I kind of kept myself very straight and narrow.

00:23:28.600 I wasn't going to complain too much.

00:23:30.340 I wasn't going to make too much noise about things because I was the only one there.

00:23:34.820 And I didn't want to ruffle feathers.

00:23:37.780 But as it kept going, I kept thinking, something is just not right.

00:23:42.620 I was invited to, of course, you get a new government, invited to the White House state dinner,

00:23:48.620 which was very exciting, I thought.

00:23:51.060 Last year of the Obama administration, but I wasn't invited to dinner.

00:23:57.540 I was just invited to go.

00:24:00.440 And that rubbed me the wrong way.

00:24:03.280 And a number of different things that happened on that trip.

00:24:06.180 The second time that I was invited to attend anything that the,

00:24:12.560 on behalf of the Prime Minister,

00:24:14.460 was the opening of the National African American Museum in Washington.

00:24:21.060 And that was exciting.

00:24:23.000 You know, I was sitting behind Oprah.

00:24:25.520 I mean, who wouldn't love that, right?

00:24:28.460 But it was still, it was, there was something that was not right.

00:24:32.220 And then the last event.

00:24:33.940 So I was invited to three international events.

00:24:36.680 Again, for your listeners, as a parliamentary secretary to a minister,

00:24:42.160 I am parliamentary secretary to the first minister, the prime minister.

00:24:47.100 If he goes left, you go right.

00:24:48.900 And if you can remember that 2016 term, the first term of Justin Trudeau,

00:24:52.960 he was doing a lot of international travel.

00:24:55.680 He was doing a lot of across country, across the world.

00:24:59.720 I had three international trips.

00:25:01.540 The last one was the inauguration of President Akufo Ado in Ghana.

00:25:06.620 And when I was invited to that, I started to do the mental math in my head,

00:25:12.280 where I was invited to the state dinner, but not invited to eat.

00:25:15.540 I was invited to the African American Museum.

00:25:18.120 And I was invited to Ghana.

00:25:19.980 Three events that were really Black-focused.

00:25:23.220 And at that point, I said, yeah, I'm done.

00:25:30.180 And I resigned as parliamentary secretary.

00:25:33.900 Okay, let's walk through that.

00:25:35.920 Let's walk through that.

00:25:36.740 Let's go back to 2015.

00:25:38.600 So Justin Trudeau was invited by the mavens of the Liberal Party at the end of the,

00:25:46.480 correct me if I've got any of this wrong, by the way,

00:25:49.040 at the end of the Harper term.

00:25:51.700 Harper had been running the country for a substantial period of time.

00:25:57.340 And it's pretty typical for Canadians to throw out whoever's in charge on about a 10-year basis.

00:26:02.560 And so many Canadians felt that it was time for change.

00:26:05.380 And the Liberal Party was in some degree of disarray.

00:26:08.820 And the powers that be went to Justin Trudeau.

00:26:12.000 And I had some real trouble with that right at the beginning.

00:26:15.280 And so I'd kind of like your opinion about that.

00:26:17.720 I'm not a fan of Mr. Trudeau.

00:26:19.320 And so I may have a very biased perspective, but I'd like to at least be accurate in my suppositions.

00:26:25.180 My sense was that he had no right to put himself forward.

00:26:30.140 In a fundamental ethical sense, he had no right.

00:26:33.080 He did as a Canadian, obviously.

00:26:35.000 Because the only thing that Justin had going for him, apart from his attractiveness and his charm,

00:26:40.560 which are both obvious, I would say, he had an extremely famous name.

00:26:45.620 And, but I didn't think that he had the experience or the education to dare to take on a role like that.

00:26:55.000 And then I, you know, I was thinking, well, that's a bit harsh because the Liberals did want someone who had name brand recognition and fair enough.

00:27:02.440 And he could have come to office and surrounded himself with real experts and learned like mad carefully.

00:27:09.980 And perhaps had he had the ability, became a stellar leader over some period of time.

00:27:14.600 Although I didn't see much evidence of that either.

00:27:17.080 So, and then he came out with this Sunnyways campaign.

00:27:19.660 And I think that really did capitalize on his charm and very effectively.

00:27:24.480 And there was an optimistic mood in Canada at that point with regard to the possibilities, the new leadership.

00:27:30.980 So, you were also swept up.

00:27:32.800 And that was reminiscent to me.

00:27:34.240 I was quite young when his father first came to power.

00:27:36.840 But there was a wave of Trudeau mania across the country because Pierre Trudeau, senior, obviously, was very charismatic.

00:27:46.720 And had that celebrity-like effect on the Canadian public that his son did.

00:27:53.500 Okay, so now that's 2015 and Trudeau comes to power and everybody's looking forward to having that happen.

00:28:00.460 That's when you become parliamentary secretary.

00:28:03.040 Now, you had a, let's say, a detailed plan for something that was quite practical and quite novel on the neuroscience side, let's say.

00:28:12.840 And you produced a plan and you put it forward to Jerry Butts.

00:28:17.560 And you mentioned someone else at that point.

00:28:20.920 Katie Telford.

00:28:21.760 Right, right.

00:28:22.340 And as far as you could tell, that was rejected out of hand.

00:28:26.160 And you don't believe, perhaps, that it even got to Trudeau's desk.

00:28:31.020 And although you were parliamentary secretary, you didn't have a close relationship with him.

00:28:35.660 And so, apparently, you weren't even in a position to ask him whether or not he had seen this plan that you had spent some time detailing.

00:28:43.180 Now, I think it would be useful to outline for us what the role of a parliamentary secretary is and what it was that you expected that didn't happen and whether or not your expectations were actually realistic.

00:28:57.140 And you said, you know, you were disinclined to complain and you laid out the reasons for that.

00:29:01.660 So, what's the typical, as far as you understand, how are the relations between a prime minister and his parliamentary secretary generally managed?

00:29:11.140 And what is that role generally?

00:29:13.020 So, typically, what happens, and you could check the record because I tend not to say things that are not, that don't have receipts, is that a parliamentary secretary, especially to the prime minister, is sworn into Privy Council.

00:29:25.840 And has access to, you know, a breadth and depth of information that allows them to carry out their duties in a way that is fundamental to being able to have these meetings with individuals that are on high level or high level securities.

00:29:44.000 Although I had the security screenings from CRA, RCMP, CSIS, that was all done, but wasn't able to have those meetings.

00:29:53.660 Now, when I looked at other relationships with the finance minister, Bill Morneau and Francois-Philippe Champagne, who was his parliamentary secretary, very close, very much constantly having conversations, constantly involved in the policy development, constantly involved in stakeholder engagement and relationships.

00:30:13.720 So, there is a, there is a, there's no gaps between what that minister is doing and what that parliamentary secretary is doing.

00:30:21.640 There has to be a, there has to be a tight relationship.

00:30:24.040 And as a first minister, as prime minister with the parliamentary secretary, there has to be an even tighter gap.

00:30:31.220 Because if there's any kind of ripples or spaces in between the other ministries, we need to be aware of that.

00:30:38.680 We need to run a tight ship.

00:30:40.300 We have a lot to do on the agenda.

00:30:42.000 So, making sure that you have someone that's not only competent, but has their ears to the ground, they know what is happening, is what I thought would be the relationship that I had.

00:30:53.560 And I would say that maybe, I don't want to mislead anyone, maybe it was my fault that that relationship didn't go as well.

00:31:02.400 Well, the first meeting that I had with the prime minister was in December of 2015.

00:31:08.040 And of course, everybody remembers that during that first administration, he had a 50-50 cabinet.

00:31:14.980 And he came out and said, you know, that this is the cabinet because it's 2015.

00:31:20.540 Not because the people had merit, not because, you know, I have an excellent lineup.

00:31:25.600 He said it's because it's 2015.

00:31:27.460 It was very disenfranchising, and I think it was very much flippant for someone who was a leader of a G7 country to just say, because it's 2015.

00:31:37.420 Let me dive into that.

00:31:38.780 Let me dive into that just for a sec, if you don't mind.

00:31:41.380 Well, because that also struck me really hard.

00:31:45.780 You know, I spent a lot of time assessing the research literature on hiring and determining how you do that if you hire purely on merit, let's say.

00:31:55.860 And merit is defined in relationship to the evidence you have that the people you're attempting to hire actually have the ability to do what that specific job requires.

00:32:05.100 And there are various ways of determining that merit.

00:32:08.160 You do a job analysis to find out what the job actually entails, and then you go through the person's history and you see if they have the experience and the raw ability.

00:32:17.080 Okay, so now when Trudeau announced that 50-50 cabinet.

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00:33:14.880 Because it was 2015, I thought something quite similar to what you thought.

00:33:19.200 I thought first, hey, that's pretty damn flippant.

00:33:21.980 And I thought second, you've done something there that's really not good because only 25% of the members of the House of Commons were female.

00:33:30.640 And that means you've reduced your applicant pool a priori by half.

00:33:35.420 And so there's no way that you pulled the most—statistically speaking, purely, there's no possible way that you screened and pulled in the most qualified people into your cabinet.

00:33:44.880 And you did that for show.

00:33:47.180 And so, well, if you cut your applicant pool by half on arbitrary grounds, there might be other reasons to select people.

00:33:54.320 But, okay, but you had reasons as well.

00:33:56.520 They might not have been the same as one.

00:33:58.120 I did.

00:33:58.480 But you had reasons for being irritated by that.

00:34:00.460 So delve more for me, if you would, into why it put your teeth on itch.

00:34:06.180 Certainly.

00:34:06.900 And I won't speak to sort of the skills of the individuals.

00:34:10.700 I think he had a very competent cabinet around him.

00:34:14.600 The thing that really struck me with the—because it's 2015 is because it was so flippant, because it was so—it made it seem like it was arbitrary, and it made it seem, as you said, for show.

00:34:30.220 And so I went into that meeting saying to him that, look, I understand my role here.

00:34:38.540 I understand I'm the only one that looks like me.

00:34:41.560 But what I said, and I quote, is, if I'm here to fill any gender or racial gap within your cabinet, I don't want this role.

00:34:49.940 Yeah, well, that's one of the dangers.

00:34:51.860 That is absolutely one of the dangers of gender and ethnicity selection, let's say, is that you—like, I saw this at the universities all the time. 0.99

00:35:01.980 I think it's a terrible—it's a terrible thing to have happen around people who are from a minority background who are truly qualified, because it's hard on them, because they don't know why they're selected, and it's hard on everybody else, because they don't know why they're selected.

00:35:16.700 And so that's not fun.

00:35:18.680 It's not fun.

00:35:19.760 And putting that forward right at the beginning, I wanted to put him on notice that I am smart, I'm more than capable, so use me for a particular role that you might have within this position as parliamentary secretary, but don't for a second think that I would be a token throughout your entire administration.

00:35:42.500 That was the notice that I was putting him under with saying those words.

00:35:46.300 And so after I said that, he said, you know what, Selena, do you trust my judgment?

00:35:54.700 Dude, I met you like five minutes ago.

00:35:57.220 So I said, no, I don't trust your judgment.

00:36:01.600 I have no reason to.

00:36:03.340 I've been married to my partner for 17 years.

00:36:06.480 I hardly trust his judgment most days.

00:36:09.220 But, I mean, I have to build a relationship with someone.

00:36:11.860 I'm not going to lie to you and say that I trust your judgment.

00:36:14.080 And I realized at that moment that the tension in the room got a little awkward.

00:36:21.620 And it's only—

00:36:22.480 Why?

00:36:22.500 Why did it—

00:36:22.940 Okay, let's take that apart because, okay, so—

00:36:25.420 Yeah, let's take that apart.

00:36:27.540 I'm doing my whole PhD on this.

00:36:29.460 Well, for sure.

00:36:30.360 So look, you had some reason to be apprehensive.

00:36:35.600 Two reasons, right?

00:36:36.860 The first reason you lined out.

00:36:39.040 One is because of the statements that Trudeau made about the composition of his cabinet and how he made that.

00:36:44.580 And then second, because you were the only black woman in the entire House of Commons. 1.00

00:36:49.260 And so the combination of those two things made it reasonable for you to wonder just what was going on and to make a statement.

00:36:56.440 Now, if I was going to play the devil's advocate, I'd say, you know, maybe—

00:37:01.900 And I'm not saying that this is right because I really do want to go into this.

00:37:05.880 So I want to do it in the most—in the harshest way possible so we get it straight.

00:37:11.300 You know, you might say—and I think you kind of alluded to this given that you said that perhaps you put your foot forward wrong the first meeting.

00:37:19.400 You know, you might say if you were thinking about it strategically, you would have had a calm and somewhat contentless first meeting and just got to know each other a little bit before you put your foot down, so to speak, about the role you were going to play.

00:37:34.580 But maybe not, too.

00:37:36.220 Maybe the right thing to do was to make your case right off the bat.

00:37:38.660 There's no way I can tell.

00:37:40.100 But you said that—but you were inclined to do that.

00:37:42.940 And then you said that when you did it, the atmosphere in the room wasn't perhaps what you might have hoped for.

00:37:49.420 So tell me what you saw.

00:37:51.660 And he asked you to trust him, which is also—that's something you remember.

00:37:55.500 And it isn't—it is a—it's a—it's a—it's an event worthy of note.

00:38:01.720 Because the question is, what did he mean?

00:38:04.300 Because you don't know him.

00:38:05.500 Now, did he mean you should just trust him because he's Justin Trudeau and he's the prime minister of Canada?

00:38:10.040 Or did he mean that you should start out by trusting someone if you're employed by them in a new role?

00:38:15.880 Like, I don't know.

00:38:16.880 What did you think?

00:38:18.380 Yeah, you know what?

00:38:19.240 I'm not even sure that question is warranted on the first day.

00:38:22.200 Like, do you trust my judgment on the first day?

00:38:24.860 I mean, I know that your platform was built by a number of different people.

00:38:30.400 It wasn't just you.

00:38:31.380 Why are you even asking that question?

00:38:34.420 Why are you asking that question of me?

00:38:36.320 Do you think we could work together?

00:38:37.680 Do you think we could achieve the objectives of our platform?

00:38:40.680 Do you think that we're going to do right by Canadians with this particular mandate?

00:38:44.480 Ask me those questions.

00:38:45.860 I don't really care about your particular mandate.

00:38:50.280 And it really speaks to ego.

00:38:51.940 And it really speaks to a particular sense of awareness or lack thereof that was pretty evident right from the beginning.

00:39:00.720 And if we think about this, this whole episode, me being in politics, has driven me into the PhD work that I'm doing right now on motivated cognition and understanding what motivates people.

00:39:15.060 You know, their self-appraisal, their self-enhancement, their self-verification.

00:39:18.400 It was really in that moment seeing that everything that needed to align for Justin Trudeau at that moment needed to feed into his feelings or his motivation on self, what he felt about himself.

00:39:33.720 And I came in and within that first 15 minutes of a meeting said, no, I'm not just going to arbitrarily fall into what you deem to be your methodology around your self-enhancement.

00:39:50.180 That is not my role.

00:39:51.480 My role is to represent the people of Ritby.

00:39:54.920 My role is to make sure that we execute a mandate.

00:39:57.680 And I didn't know that at the time, but it really spoke to the fact.

00:40:02.700 Didn't know what?

00:40:03.560 I didn't know at the time that probably that that wasn't the best move to make because I assumed that as his parliamentary secretary, as his right-hand person, that he would have wanted someone who was going to be honest.

00:40:19.200 And I don't think that's what he wanted.

00:40:20.760 He wanted someone to confirm a bias that he felt about himself or a lack of self-esteem that he felt about himself by saying, yes, I trust your judgment, Justin.

00:40:30.860 I don't know you, but I'm going to say yes, I trust you.

00:40:33.680 I could play that game.

00:40:35.300 I didn't want to.

00:40:36.940 Okay.

00:40:37.240 So, okay.

00:40:37.920 So that's what, that's what alerted you, let's say, is that you, if I got, tell me if I've got this right, you felt that his query about whether or not you trusted him.

00:40:50.340 It was an attempt to insist that you on no evidence, because you didn't know him, make the presumption that he was competent and that he would lead your relationship in the appropriate direction.

00:41:08.960 Now, you laid out a bunch of other questions that he could have asked you, which were more other focused, right?

00:41:13.840 They were more focused on service to Canadians.

00:41:16.320 Now, you read a lot into that.

00:41:18.120 I mean, which you just laid out.

00:41:19.920 You, it sounds to me like you were surprised, let's say, that the conversation became about him.

00:41:27.380 And it, it sounds to me that you weren't disabused of that suspicion as things progressed.

00:41:33.560 Now, you've also laid out for us already the fact that you were trotted out, so to speak, at three international events.

00:41:43.780 And they were all international events that you associated with you being put on display as a consequence of your ethnicity and perhaps your gender.

00:41:51.040 Is that a reasonable, is that a reasonable representation of what you said?

00:41:55.400 Okay, now.

00:41:56.180 It's not a reasonable representation.

00:41:58.000 It is what happened.

00:41:59.460 Okay, fine, fine.

00:42:00.600 I just want to make sure that I'm not misrepresenting this.

00:42:03.100 Okay, now.

00:42:03.860 And so, what happened to you was that you didn't establish a working relationship on a day-to-day basis with the man you were supposed to be walking arm-in-arm with, let's say.

00:42:15.000 And you would have expected, as parliamentary secretary, given that it was a key role, that you'd be in constant communication.

00:42:21.540 How often did you, in fact, speak with Prime Minister Trudeau?

00:42:25.820 I would say it was a handful of times.

00:42:27.860 I haven't, I didn't count it, but it wasn't, and it was a handful of times and of very little substance.

00:42:34.800 There wasn't, we didn't have any substantial meetings where we were talking about policy or anything else.

00:42:39.820 It was kind of in passing, yes.

00:42:42.960 So, you didn't have any meetings that were substantive.

00:42:46.540 How long was the first meeting?

00:42:47.920 Not, the first meeting was maybe about half an hour.

00:42:51.960 You know what, I should, I stand corrected.

00:42:53.760 The other meeting that I had with the Prime Minister was in August of 2016.

00:42:59.340 And in August of 2016, I brought to him a couple of things.

00:43:02.660 And I remember this because I didn't have another meeting until, I didn't hear anything about it until 2018.

00:43:09.080 So, in August of 2016, I came to him and I said, at the time, the United Nations had declared the international decade of people of African descent between 2014 and 2024.

00:43:22.680 We were two years in.

00:43:24.180 I brought that to the Prime Minister.

00:43:25.720 I said, look, we should probably recognize this.

00:43:28.480 The UN has brought it forward.

00:43:30.120 I think it would be a good idea.

00:43:31.640 He said to me, Selena, what do you want to do?

00:43:35.140 I said, that's not up to me to decide what I should do for all Canadians of African descent.

00:43:41.400 That's unfair.

00:43:42.480 We should, you know, actually do this properly, understand some of the concerns, understand some of the issues that they're having.

00:43:48.540 And then, you know, actually recognize this international decade in a way that makes sense and a way that is actually genuine to our mission and mandate as a government.

00:43:59.940 And so, that meeting ended and I didn't hear anything for a year.

00:44:08.580 And then, on January 31st of 2018, I was invited to the foyer of the House of Commons and, again, paraded in front.

00:44:19.680 Selena, you have to be there on this day.

00:44:21.580 And I'm saying, like, what's going on?

00:44:22.940 And he comes out and I hear that we're announcing the international recognition, Canada's recognition of the International Decade of People of African Descent. 0.99

00:44:35.460 And my heart breaks because I realize, then I start doing my homework.

00:44:42.400 And I realize that over the last year, there have been dozens of meetings about this issue that I have been purposely not invited to.

00:44:56.680 And again, and I'm not trying to make an excuse for bad behavior, but I understand the person that I am.

00:45:05.680 I'm a person who will fight for and advocate for people that I know don't have the privileges that I have, that don't have the luxuries that I have.

00:45:19.700 I understand the power that I have as someone who could be elected or someone who has the ear of the prime minister.

00:45:27.140 At the same time, to be so disenfranchised from an individual because I am outspoken, because I advocate, because I put the people that I serve ahead of me,

00:45:43.360 because I'm not willing to just take some garbage that you decide to put forward as policy and not interrogate it, that is not my role.

00:45:51.980 It is not my job. 0.88

00:45:53.080 And from that moment, I knew that within that particular party, within that system, I actually thought that staying in there would have killed me before it actually did anything else.

00:46:07.380 It made me really feel like I had to become smaller and smaller, and it wasn't who I was.

00:46:15.620 Let's walk through this.

00:46:17.320 Okay, so you got elected.

00:46:19.180 That was quite unlikely.

00:46:20.100 You had had a successful business career.

00:46:23.080 And you were in somewhat of a unique position in the House of Commons.

00:46:26.840 And so you had every reason to assume that, well, that you had quite a stellar opportunity and a heavy responsibility in front of you.

00:46:35.720 And you had a meeting with Prime Minister Trudeau, and it wasn't very long.

00:46:40.740 And you said some things about the kind of role that you were hoping you'd play and the fact that you weren't particularly interested in playing a token role, let's say.

00:46:50.800 And that didn't go in a stellar manner.

00:46:54.260 And he made some reference to his own, what would you say, wishes in that regard.

00:46:59.420 And then, as far as I can tell, you were essentially sidelined.

00:47:05.120 So let me ask you some questions.

00:47:06.740 And then you said that the fact of that sidelining and the fact that it was done in a relatively, what would you say, in a manner that didn't really involve you in the least.

00:47:17.620 It was done, what would I say, you're sidelined so effectively that you're not even involved in the fact of your own isolation.

00:47:26.520 And so you said that had relatively severe psychological consequences for you.

00:47:31.940 You just alluded to that, you know, and that you felt that you were being diminished.

00:47:36.600 What, with regards to your, what is it exactly?

00:47:40.440 Your confidence in your professional capacity?

00:47:42.640 What effect did that have on you?

00:47:44.940 That's a good, that's a very good question because in the initial, in the outset, it did.

00:47:55.860 It really diminished my confidence in myself.

00:47:58.780 It really made me worry about whether or not I was good enough, I was worthy enough for the job.

00:48:07.580 And to be honest, I want to be very transparent with your listeners.

00:48:11.620 During 2016, I had what is classically termed a nervous breakdown.

00:48:16.540 I was institutionalized for four days.

00:48:18.520 My depression was absolutely the worst it has ever been.

00:48:23.100 Um, it was, it was, it was very hard.

00:48:27.420 However, what that announcement in 2018 did on January 30th, parading me out to be at an announcement

00:48:37.800 where you have intentionally sidelined me for over a year, it did something to my confidence

00:48:46.420 that I don't quite know how to explain.

00:48:51.340 And I'm not sure it did something to my confidence.

00:48:53.160 It did something to my resolve to really start to use this role to advocate for people.

00:49:00.380 And I said to my partner at the time, I said, the gloves are coming off.

00:49:05.260 They're going to get rid of me either way.

00:49:07.180 Maybe I might as well go out, you know, if they're going to talk about me anyway, I might

00:49:12.660 as well give them something to talk about.

00:49:15.260 And so, let, let, let me, let me walk, let me walk through that.

00:49:18.980 Okay.

00:49:19.240 So, because I, I, well, it's, it's a complicated story.

00:49:22.540 I mean, so what you've told, what you've told us so far is that you spent 10 years building

00:49:28.460 up a bit, an unlikely business.

00:49:30.360 And so that's a difficult matter.

00:49:31.600 And that's a real indication of competence because you're working at the intersection

00:49:36.720 of two diverse fields and no one else is doing it.

00:49:40.040 And you managed to build it from scratch and make it successful.

00:49:42.600 So that's hard and unlikely.

00:49:44.380 And then it goes for 10 years.

00:49:45.920 So you're able to sustain that.

00:49:47.600 Then you ran for office and you won, which was unlikely.

00:49:50.960 And then you had to sideline your business, right?

00:49:53.540 So that's a big deal.

00:49:54.520 So like you, you, you, you sacrificed a lot in order to take that position.

00:50:00.280 And then you get a pretty decent promotion right off the bat, right?

00:50:04.860 And so then you're thinking something like, well, this is going pretty well.

00:50:07.880 And look at all the opportunities in front of me.

00:50:10.220 And then all of a sudden you find that that's all for show and that the real activity has

00:50:16.600 nothing to do with you at all.

00:50:17.980 And you're not included in the discussions at all.

00:50:21.360 And so, okay.

00:50:23.040 And so I'm curious.

00:50:24.000 Okay.

00:50:24.340 So I'm curious about the effect of that as far as these are very personal questions.

00:50:28.740 So forgive me, but this is important because it's, it's actually key to why I was interested

00:50:34.040 in talking to you to begin with, because I knew something like this had happened and

00:50:37.700 I wanted to find out what it was.

00:50:39.260 Okay.

00:50:39.700 So now that had quite a devastating effect on you, right?

00:50:43.300 That's, that's what you laid out now.

00:50:44.960 And so what, what was that?

00:50:47.360 Was that, was that disappointment in the fact that you had strived very hard to make yourself

00:50:54.700 an entirely credible and able person and that the opportunities that that sort of person

00:51:01.040 would have had, in fact, presented themselves to you, but then proved to be illusory because

00:51:06.580 someone was playing a public relations game.

00:51:08.840 Like, is that what's going on?

00:51:10.420 Is that what you discovered?

00:51:12.080 Or is there something about that I've got wrong?

00:51:14.920 Yeah, no, I think, I think you got it absolutely right.

00:51:17.680 I think that the, and again, looking at the literature around this post appointment, looking

00:51:27.060 at, you know, how tokenism can be very disenfranchising, how it could be very dehumanizing.

00:51:36.440 At the, at the time for me, I just couldn't reconcile in my head the fact that I knew I was

00:51:43.500 smart, the fact that I knew I could do this job, the fact that I knew if he put me in front

00:51:48.920 of any audience, anywhere, at any time, I'd read my briefs.

00:51:52.900 I learned French in a matter of months.

00:51:56.100 Like, this is not an easy role for someone who is hyper visible.

00:52:02.000 I am hyper visible.

00:52:03.160 If I do not show up one day, you're going to scan the room and go, where's the black girl 1.00

00:52:07.420 at?

00:52:07.760 Like, you're going to know I'm not there.

00:52:09.560 So I have to be 100% on my game all the time.

00:52:14.040 And I couldn't reconcile the fact that I am 100% ready for this.

00:52:18.820 I'm not allowed to speak to media.

00:52:20.520 I'm not allowed to speak in the house.

00:52:22.000 I'm not being sent anywhere.

00:52:23.880 And how does, what kind of trick does that play on your mind?

00:52:27.180 How does that, if we want to call it social identity threat, or we want to call it any other

00:52:32.940 of the terms that we use in cognitive research, what does that do to the mind of a person

00:52:39.200 when they know that the only thing that they're there for is like, oh my God, look at this.

00:52:43.960 I'm black. 0.94

00:52:44.800 And oh my God, look at these.

00:52:46.500 I'm a woman.

00:52:49.120 I'm sorry.

00:52:50.080 It's actually worse than that, I think.

00:52:51.640 I think it's worse than that psychologically.

00:52:53.460 Because you're actually put in a really hard place.

00:52:56.140 So, because there's an element here that we haven't explored, you see, because you had

00:53:01.220 to make a choice when you were evaluating what happened to you.

00:53:04.560 So one of the things you could have thought and should have thought if you were reasonably

00:53:09.260 self-critical was maybe you got off on the wrong foot, you know, and set yourself up for

00:53:13.480 that.

00:53:13.740 Now, we already went through that.

00:53:14.980 So I won't, so I won't, you know, you want to assess whatever role you had in the failure

00:53:20.120 of this relationship to get kindled.

00:53:21.800 But the other thing you had to understand here that is also a crisis of faith is that

00:53:28.180 you're dealing with someone who's the elected leader of a major country.

00:53:32.460 Now, he's either the real thing or he's not.

00:53:35.780 And if he's not the real thing, that's a real problem.

00:53:38.180 If he's someone who's just acting out his role.

00:53:40.500 And so now you're in a position where you have to decide whether there's something wrong

00:53:44.160 with you.

00:53:44.980 And there might be, who knows, right?

00:53:46.600 And that you're not up to scratch for the role and you're being sidelined because of your

00:53:50.760 incompetence or you have to decide that there's something seriously rotten behind the stage

00:53:56.040 at, at what, at the wonderful world of Oz and whether the people pulling the strings

00:54:02.280 behind the scenes are just not exactly who they should be.

00:54:05.320 And if you, you already put faith in the Liberal Party, you said that you were entranced at least

00:54:10.780 to the same degree that other Canadians were by the possibility that Justin Trudeau brought

00:54:14.400 to the stage.

00:54:15.280 Okay, so now you had two hard problems to deal with.

00:54:18.080 Like it's, there's either something seriously wrong with you or there's something not only

00:54:24.180 seriously wrong with him, but with the whole bloody charade.

00:54:28.080 And so it's not surprising that that would like pull you apart because either one of those

00:54:32.880 being true is not good.

00:54:34.920 Either one of those being true is not good.

00:54:38.940 And I felt that intimately for three years.

00:54:46.300 And when I made the decision in September 2018 that I said, you know what, I am not dying

00:54:53.240 here.

00:54:53.980 Like it came to the point where I actually kept saying to myself, I am not dying here.

00:54:59.200 This cognitive dissonance that exists internally compared to my external reality is so bizarre

00:55:08.920 to me that when I started to question my own abilities, I mean, I know exactly what I'm

00:55:20.300 capable of.

00:55:21.060 I didn't get to parliamentary secretary of a prime minister as a woman, as a black woman, 1.00

00:55:28.780 as whatever identity you want to call me because I'm stupid. 1.00

00:55:32.860 I didn't get there because I don't have grit. 1.00

00:55:35.260 I didn't get there because I'm not tenacious.

00:55:37.860 I got there because I have all those things and then some.

00:55:41.700 And that's not being boastful or anything.

00:55:43.620 That's just reality.

00:55:45.080 You don't get to navigate these systems like that.

00:55:48.480 Okay, so you had this crisis, you said, and it really like knocked you for a loop.

00:55:53.220 How long did it take you to convince yourself that those things that you now know to be

00:55:58.560 true, how long did it take yourself to convince, how long did it take you to convince yourself

00:56:02.840 that you weren't the, what would you say?

00:56:06.500 You weren't the problem here, let's say.

00:56:08.960 And how did you manage to convince yourself of that?

00:56:11.460 Well, that's a hard thing to do.

00:56:12.800 And obviously, you're going to have to do that to crawl out of the hole that you were

00:56:16.280 in.

00:56:16.460 And how, what process did you go through to regain your confidence?

00:56:21.920 And then tell us what happened.

00:56:23.820 So let me go back to the by-election because I told you I lost the by-election, right?

00:56:28.600 And I did the exact same thing that I did at the by-election as I did in 2017.

00:56:36.020 And I figured out why I lost.

00:56:38.720 I figured, self-awareness is a heck of a thing.

00:56:41.540 You have to figure out how you got yourself into whatever position that you're in.

00:56:45.960 Not what Justin Trudeau did, not what anybody else did.

00:56:48.860 What did you do, Selena, to lose that election or to get into this position where you're having

00:56:54.340 such a hard time that you're hospitalized for four days?

00:56:57.780 And so I really had to regain to shift my thinking and just remember actually who I was and remember

00:57:07.120 the why I was there and the how I got there, which I think people often forget in these

00:57:12.900 kinds of circumstances because I could have stayed beating myself up and then exited politics

00:57:18.820 and nobody would have been the wiser.

00:57:20.900 But I remembered how I got there and why I was there.

00:57:23.180 And both of those reasons had to do with the people that I served.

00:57:26.260 I got there because the people that I served in Whitby elected me and put their faith in me.

00:57:31.440 And I was there to make sure that I didn't let them down.

00:57:34.560 And so with those two things in mind, I realized that my boss probably wasn't as the person that

00:57:41.140 they thought was my boss, Trudeau.

00:57:43.580 That wasn't my boss.

00:57:45.400 My boss were the people of Whitby.

00:57:46.960 And then with that switch in mind, it became very easy to not placate to the puppet master

00:57:56.000 behind the wall at Oz.

00:57:57.820 It became very easy for me to stay true to the people that I served and it wasn't him.

00:58:04.060 Okay, so two questions then.

00:58:06.200 We'll go in two directions from that.

00:58:08.180 The first question is, like, who is running the show as far as you're concerned in the Trudeau

00:58:13.720 government or who was then?

00:58:15.140 And maybe it's Trudeau, but maybe it isn't.

00:58:18.340 And so I'm curious about that.

00:58:19.760 I mean, I've heard from other people that I've talked to that he is markedly absent during

00:58:25.920 discussions of ideational significance, let's say.

00:58:29.640 He's not particularly interested in policy.

00:58:31.960 He's not interested in the details of governing.

00:58:33.720 Now, I don't know that to be true.

00:58:35.860 And so that's part of the reason I wanted to talk to you.

00:58:38.280 And then I also want to know, once you realized who you're actual, who you were actually responsible

00:58:44.200 to, you know, which is a very good realization, right, in a democratic system, to remember

00:58:48.440 that.

00:58:48.960 And I can understand perfectly well why you would have forgotten that, given the glamour

00:58:53.540 and glitter around the, in the dawning days and your relative inexperience.

00:58:57.200 Okay, so then once you came to that realization, what changed and how did you, what changed,

00:59:04.480 what did you start doing differently and what happened?

00:59:06.920 So let's do the first thing first.

00:59:08.660 Who is running the show or who was running the show as far as you're concerned?

00:59:12.600 And what did that, what did that mean?

00:59:14.400 Yeah, so as far as running the show, I think most people would remember, Canadians will remember

00:59:20.500 that when Harper was a prime minister, that people kept saying that, you know, the prime

00:59:25.700 minister's office was really centralized.

00:59:28.180 All decisions were made there.

00:59:29.620 Nothing changed with Trudeau.

00:59:31.460 It was the central office.

00:59:33.320 It was his principal secretaries, Jerry Butts, Katie Telford, that were primarily running

00:59:40.260 the show.

00:59:41.020 And I don't think I'm the only one that would say this.

00:59:43.480 I would think that, you know, Bill Morneau left, said the same thing.

00:59:47.800 Others have left and said the same thing.

00:59:49.520 So don't, this is not a Selena-ized perspective.

00:59:52.360 This is something that I witnessed and I think is actually true. 0.83

00:59:55.940 When it comes to, you know, after the incident with Jody Wilson-Raybould, when Jerry Butts stepped

01:00:03.180 down, I thought he was the only adult in the room.

01:00:06.100 And when he stepped down, it became very apparent that things were going to get a lot worse before

01:00:12.460 it got a lot better.

01:00:13.340 And we could talk about that later.

01:00:15.260 What happened after, yeah.

01:00:17.920 What happened after I made that recognition was I did things completely differently.

01:00:27.860 And I got into, I still kept getting into a lot of trouble for things.

01:00:31.460 But I, at this point, I was doing it for the right reasons.

01:00:35.280 I'm getting in good trouble.

01:00:36.420 And oftentimes you'd be given a speech and said, here, read the speech, say what's on

01:00:43.540 the speech and don't deviate.

01:00:46.520 And I'd say, forget it.

01:00:47.620 I'm not saying what's on this speech.

01:00:49.060 This speech has nothing to do with the people of Whitby.

01:00:51.440 It has nothing to do with the people that I serve.

01:00:53.580 Tell me the three things that you want me to say that are really important.

01:00:56.400 I'll say those.

01:00:57.360 But I need to make sure that I'm representing Whitby.

01:01:00.320 So I'd write my own speeches.

01:01:02.380 I'd make sure I'd say them in French and English because I didn't want anybody to knock me for

01:01:06.220 it.

01:01:06.620 And I really made sure that I wasn't doing the cookie cutter politician move where you'd

01:01:12.980 see one person sends out a tweet and everybody's tweet looks exactly the same.

01:01:18.540 That wasn't me.

01:01:20.300 I was very clear to make sure that the people of Whitby knew that I was serving them.

01:01:28.340 And if I couldn't tweak the messaging, I posted nothing.

01:01:33.720 And then I think towards the end, towards especially March of 2019, I just decided that I was not

01:01:45.760 going to let the actions of one person dictate how I left government.

01:01:55.640 And I was not going to let Justin Trudeau continue to be presenting himself as this

01:02:03.100 sunny ways, great politician when I knew that he was the emperor with no clothes on.

01:02:14.340 So what did you do about that?

01:02:16.240 Like you had some famous blowups as you departed from the political scene.

01:02:20.600 Now, this is reminiscent.

01:02:21.780 You mentioned Bill Morneau and Judy Weiss and Rabel.

01:02:25.460 So you're, I mean, another of the reasons that I wanted to talk to you is because, you know,

01:02:31.080 three establishes a pattern and there seems to be very close affinity.

01:02:35.680 Maybe I'm wrong about that, but from the outside, close affinity between what happened

01:02:39.740 with Morneau and what happened with Rabel and what happened with you.

01:02:42.940 And that's three.

01:02:44.460 And so maybe you could let everybody who's watching and listening know about these other

01:02:49.440 people that departed and why you think that happened.

01:02:52.780 And then also tell us when you decided to speak in your own voice again, given that you

01:02:59.120 weren't given the opportunity to speak as the press secretary anyways.

01:03:03.020 So tell me, tell us what happened with Bill Morneau and Judy Wilson-Rabel and then also

01:03:08.940 what happened to you when you started to reclaim your territory, let's say.

01:03:13.820 Yes.

01:03:14.340 Yeah.

01:03:14.660 So it didn't start with us, though.

01:03:16.660 I want to be very clear.

01:03:18.600 Leona Alice Lev left way before.

01:03:21.400 Decorated military person who decided to leave and cross the floor to the conservatives

01:03:26.100 really early in our mandate because she was so disenfranchised with the prime ministers.

01:03:32.100 Other people left.

01:03:33.580 After we left, Eva Nassif also left because of the bullying that she received within the 1.00

01:03:38.600 party.

01:03:39.000 So there was a few people.

01:03:41.240 So it's not just a three.

01:03:42.740 By the time Jane Philpott, decorated medical professional, left, we were way beyond threes at

01:03:50.300 that point.

01:03:51.400 Yes, yes.

01:03:52.160 Yeah, so there were quite a few.

01:03:56.680 And I would say for me, I didn't have to have a public blow up with the prime minister.

01:04:02.380 When I told him that I was leaving in early March of 2019, I was very clear for all of

01:04:09.100 the reasons that we discussed before, feeling tokenized, not getting the support of the prime

01:04:14.760 minister, just being very much marginalized within a liberal, which is making, it makes

01:04:21.180 me so, it's so upsetting because it's, it's one thing to say, you know, you did some missteps,

01:04:27.980 but I felt duped by a party that I really thought understood what it meant to be center, understood

01:04:36.300 what it was, what it meant to have equity and justice, what it, what it meant to have those

01:04:41.400 things, and to be disenfranchised by them because I wanted more for the people that

01:04:46.680 I serve was, was, was disenfranchising for me.

01:04:51.240 Yes, it was.

01:04:51.920 Yeah, definitely.

01:04:52.640 That is the word.

01:04:53.560 Thank you very much.

01:04:54.540 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:04:55.020 That is actually the word.

01:04:56.780 Betrayal.

01:04:57.140 And so I called the prime minister and I said, look, I'm not running again.

01:05:03.240 I, I, I didn't even have to give him a reason.

01:05:05.580 I said, I'm not running again.

01:05:07.240 It's four years.

01:05:08.100 I'm not getting a pension.

01:05:09.000 I'm not getting anything.

01:05:10.140 I just don't want to do this.

01:05:13.880 He, he, he first, he said, well, that was the same day that Jody Wilson-Raybould had stepped

01:05:18.720 down.

01:05:19.160 He couldn't have, he put, he couldn't have two women of color leave at the same day. 1.00

01:05:24.260 That's what he told you.

01:05:25.420 It's, it's really, dude, that's not my problem.

01:05:29.440 That was his first response to your.

01:05:32.200 Yes.

01:05:32.680 Okay.

01:05:33.020 So that, so no, I'm going to play psychologist here for a minute.

01:05:35.920 Okay.

01:05:36.800 Because that's really not, that's seriously not, that's seriously not good.

01:05:41.680 Right.

01:05:42.260 Because if he was a wise man and if he was a mature man, he would have understood that

01:05:49.060 you put your, you, you divested yourself of your business.

01:05:52.780 You, your life took quite a turn.

01:05:54.400 And that even if you two didn't get along, the fact that you'd been in government for

01:05:58.720 only four years and you were leaving without running for reelection, without a pension

01:06:02.160 meant you were going back to square one in many ways.

01:06:06.080 And so the first thing he should have said, even if he would have been somewhat truly self-aware

01:06:10.980 and, and still putting his own interests first, he should have at least had the bloody sense

01:06:17.500 to act as if he cared about what you were telling him.

01:06:21.000 The fact that his first response was, I'm dead serious about that.

01:06:25.300 Like, even if he was faking it, you know, if he, even if he was a wise faker, the first

01:06:30.060 thing he should have done was said like something like, well, you know, I know we've had our

01:06:34.760 differences.

01:06:35.520 I really appreciate your service.

01:06:37.280 You put an awful lot of on the line for this.

01:06:39.800 It's really unfortunate.

01:06:40.980 It didn't work out.

01:06:41.780 Um, is there anything I can do for you to make your departure more straightforward?

01:06:46.840 I wish we could have worked together more sincerely, right?

01:06:50.280 Definitely, definitely.

01:06:51.660 And then if he was a genuine human being, so to speak, that would have actually bothered

01:06:55.240 him.

01:06:55.440 But the fact that he came out and said, I can't afford to have two women of color leave 1.00

01:07:00.540 me the first, the same day.

01:07:02.260 Like all that means is that every single thing that you regarded was as a betrayal was in fact

01:07:08.600 a betrayal.

01:07:09.680 Absolutely.

01:07:10.160 That's absolutely inexcusable.

01:07:13.240 But wait, there's more.

01:07:15.800 That's not all he said.

01:07:17.480 That was the first thing he said.

01:07:19.760 So I said, you know, Justin, perhaps if not today or tomorrow or at some point in the future,

01:07:27.540 you'll understand the level of sacrifice that I've made to be in this role.

01:07:33.820 And I repeated it again, not today or tomorrow.

01:07:37.980 But someday, I hope you understand the level of sacrifice.

01:07:43.200 And then he was not happy with that.

01:07:49.220 He said, oh, my God.

01:07:52.200 Oh, my God, Selena.

01:07:54.340 I can't believe that you're talking about my privilege.

01:07:58.160 I was like, what?

01:08:00.220 What?

01:08:02.100 He said, you know, he started talking about the fact that he has, you know, had had death

01:08:08.680 threats too.

01:08:10.600 And in my mind, I'm going, but you have an RCMP detail.

01:08:13.800 When me and my kids had death threats, I didn't have anybody, right?

01:08:18.140 Like, so there's a lot of stuff missing from this story, Jordan, that you're not, I'm not

01:08:24.220 putting out.

01:08:25.120 But he went on and on and how I needed to appreciate him because he came to the riding during the

01:08:30.600 by-election and how I should be, you know, grateful to him.

01:08:34.760 And I just was like, oh, hell no.

01:08:38.980 And I said a few choice words to him after that because I lost it at that point.

01:08:48.680 And yeah.

01:08:50.460 What did you say?

01:08:51.280 The point of me.

01:08:53.380 Oh, I said bad words.

01:08:55.100 Well, you can tone it down.

01:08:56.400 What were you conveying?

01:08:59.700 Put it that way.

01:09:01.960 I was conveying that I wanted him to know who did he think he was speaking to?

01:09:10.440 Like, I'm not a child.

01:09:13.080 I'm not someone that he could just reprimand.

01:09:16.380 I'm not, I'm a colleague.

01:09:19.180 And as a person in a professorial capacity, if he had went off the way he did with me

01:09:27.220 on, on someone else, he would have been taken straight to HR.

01:09:32.180 And that doesn't happen because he has parliamentary privilege.

01:09:35.860 And so he's able to get away with those kinds of things.

01:09:40.800 And I wanted to make him darn sure that he was not going to get away with it with me.

01:09:45.960 And I knew that he called on the prime minister's line.

01:09:49.240 And so I know that whatever I'm saying that happened in this exchange is recorded somewhere.

01:09:55.360 So I told him, absolutely not.

01:09:58.720 You are never going to speak to me like that again.

01:10:01.780 At the same time though, Jordan, that would have stayed completely quiet.

01:10:07.020 I would have never mentioned that I had that phone call with the prime minister ever

01:10:11.660 until the issue with Jody Wilson-Raybould came up.

01:10:15.960 And go through that.

01:10:19.180 Yes.

01:10:19.680 And so Jody Wilson-Raybould, for those who don't know, was the first Indigenous Minister

01:10:25.820 of Justice and Attorney General of Canada.

01:10:28.740 Decorated lawyer.

01:10:32.660 Really, really, really admirable, smart person.

01:10:38.260 When you talk about merit, absolutely has the merit for the job.

01:10:41.880 Now, whether or not you like what she did within the context of this situation is irrelevant

01:10:48.440 to me.

01:10:49.740 The fact that the prime minister's office pressured her to do something that she knew would get

01:10:57.440 her possibly disbarred and that the ethics commissioner found the prime minister in breach of and

01:11:06.240 actually wrong for pressuring her to allow this company to pressure her in doing something with this

01:11:15.660 company is quite telling.

01:11:17.840 So she was actually in the right by not taking the pressure or advice of the prime minister.

01:11:25.800 But that's not the point.

01:11:27.300 The point is, is that after this all happened with Jody, Jody stepped down.

01:11:32.420 She was being pressured to do something that she knew was unethical, was wrong by legal standards.

01:11:38.620 She said she wasn't going to do it.

01:11:40.620 She stepped down.

01:11:41.620 She was demoted first.

01:11:42.900 Then she stepped down as Minister of Justice and Attorney General.

01:11:47.040 And then she was thrown out of the party, her and Jane Philpott.

01:11:51.780 Jane Philpott, again, decorated medical doctor who was the Minister of Health, the president

01:11:58.520 of the Treasury Board, and another ministry within our government.

01:12:02.080 The prime minister, after that, decided that he was going to go on national television and

01:12:07.180 apologize to Canadians for the kerfuffle that was happening within his government.

01:12:14.180 And he said the words of, and I'm going to misquote here so we can look up the words at

01:12:20.340 some point, but he said, I want Canadians to know that my office door is open and it is

01:12:28.800 available for anyone to come in and that I treat everyone with basically kindness and respect

01:12:34.940 in sunny ways.

01:12:35.920 And I listened to that and I said, absolutely not.

01:12:43.000 I had the first phone call with him in which he raked me over the coals for not appreciating

01:12:49.760 him.

01:12:51.100 Although I had sacrificed just as much as he did and did exactly what he did to get into

01:12:56.200 his position.

01:12:56.980 I ran, I was elected.

01:12:59.520 He just had a different title.

01:13:00.800 We both worked hard, but I needed to appreciate him for whatever reason.

01:13:06.040 Rake me over the coals for that. 0.99

01:13:07.500 And then the second time I went to him, I went after that meeting and I said, I was going

01:13:12.580 to go to him and say, look, you know what?

01:13:15.240 We both said things we didn't mean on that phone call.

01:13:18.920 Let's try to be adults here.

01:13:20.180 This is the last phone call that you described?

01:13:22.060 That's correct.

01:13:24.080 The last phone call, I went to him after that.

01:13:26.640 And, you know, just like I'm sitting across from you now said, let's, let's be adults here.

01:13:31.620 We said some things we didn't mean.

01:13:33.720 Let's move it along.

01:13:34.860 The, the, the level of contempt and almost hatred that he approached me with, I was, I

01:13:50.720 have never felt more scared in my life of someone to be in a room with someone.

01:13:56.320 And I knew that that happened.

01:13:58.180 Have you ever heard of wounded narcissism?

01:14:01.500 Oh, no, I have not.

01:14:04.000 No.

01:14:04.860 Well, beware of it.

01:14:07.540 Seriously.

01:14:09.120 So, okay.

01:14:09.980 I have never.

01:14:11.060 That's a very, that's a hell of a thing to say.

01:14:12.520 Seriously.

01:14:13.020 That's, that's quite a thing to say.

01:14:14.360 Yeah.

01:14:14.800 That you were afraid.

01:14:16.360 Okay.

01:14:16.620 So I want to know why.

01:14:17.860 Why were you afraid?

01:14:19.400 That's a, yes.

01:14:20.380 Cause that's, look, that's, that's a whole different level of anything that you've revealed

01:14:26.400 so far, right?

01:14:27.160 The worst thing that you've really revealed so far is the last conversation that you had

01:14:32.020 with him where you both lost your temper and exchanged some harsh words, right?

01:14:35.640 And there was all this strangeness surrounding Raybo and, and Morneau at that time too.

01:14:40.540 But now you go there in an attempt to, what would you say?

01:14:44.540 I wouldn't say smooth over the waters, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:14:47.640 That's right.

01:14:48.240 That's right.

01:14:48.660 Put some putty on it or something.

01:14:51.420 Right, right, right.

01:14:52.280 Well, and I mean, people get upset and they say things that are emotional and then they

01:14:55.680 can have a calm discussion about it and set things moderately right so they can go ahead.

01:15:01.340 But you said, you said that there was a terrible tension in the room that you associated with

01:15:07.160 both contempt and that's not good.

01:15:09.620 Contempt is a very, very dangerous emotion.

01:15:11.740 So, married couples going for counseling who roll their eyes at one another have about a 99%

01:15:18.460 chance of being divorced in the next year.

01:15:20.820 Contempt is not good.

01:15:22.500 And contempt plus hatred, that's seriously not good.

01:15:26.580 And contempt, hatred plus fear in the target, that's really not good.

01:15:32.720 Okay, so now tell me exactly what transpired in that meeting and why you had that reaction.

01:15:37.620 There was nothing that, there was no words.

01:15:41.180 It was a glare.

01:15:42.480 It was this reddening of the face.

01:15:45.160 It was this, the exhalation of his voice.

01:15:47.640 And I stood there and I was alone in the room because it was after caucus.

01:15:52.520 I didn't want anybody else to know that, to hear the conversation.

01:15:57.060 So I waited in line because after caucus meetings, everybody goes up and wants him to sign stuff

01:16:02.340 and talk and blah, blah, blah.

01:16:03.500 I waited to the end.

01:16:04.920 There was nobody else in the room and this exchange happened with, and I said, you know

01:16:10.960 what, Justin, I'm really, and I was stopped in my tracks with the glare, the huff.

01:16:19.340 And then he got up out of his seat and he just like stormed out of the room.

01:16:24.980 And I froze because at that moment, I knew that this person actually could make or break

01:16:33.540 the rest of my life.

01:16:36.040 And I was petrified of what could happen next, how it could happen, what I didn't know what

01:16:44.280 he would do.

01:16:45.420 Right?

01:16:45.740 You have a name like Trudeau and you decide to blacklist Selena from ever working in Canada

01:16:50.660 again.

01:16:51.120 That could happen like that.

01:16:53.080 It's me versus him.

01:16:54.320 And I realized I had no ground to stand on.

01:16:58.860 And so I went back to the chamber.

01:17:03.320 I sat there for a little while and I just petrified.

01:17:10.000 I didn't know what to do.

01:17:11.260 He came in just before, and this was witnessed by everybody in the House of Commons.

01:17:16.560 He came in, I was sitting down at my seat, he came in, crouched behind me and said, not

01:17:24.300 even an attempt to say, hey, get a page, get Selena into the back room, I have something

01:17:29.080 to say to her.

01:17:30.060 Not come and stand in front of me, crouched behind me and said, hey, I'm sorry.

01:17:37.280 And I turned around and I'm like, there were no words to express that kind of cowardice.

01:17:48.340 There was no words to express how, I don't, I don't even know what to, I don't know what

01:17:59.240 words to put on that behavior because I just got up and I left and I could not, I couldn't,

01:18:10.080 it was one of the lowest points for me.

01:18:12.460 I went immediately, I called my psychiatrist and I said, I think I'm going to have another

01:18:18.520 breakdown, like I need, I need a session, I need, like, I'm in trouble, I'm actually in

01:18:25.640 trouble here.

01:18:27.440 And even talking about it now, I just wish I was stronger.

01:18:34.260 I just wish I didn't let someone

01:18:39.640 bully me.

01:18:42.760 Well, you have to understand, you have to understand that this wasn't, this is not only

01:18:48.000 your response to a personal situation.

01:18:50.620 You have to keep, you have to take that in mind when you're, keep that in mind when you're

01:18:54.340 assessing your own emotional response.

01:18:56.500 Like, at one level, you're having a very unpleasant conversation with another person.

01:19:01.860 At another level, you are having a rough time with the leader of a very powerful country.

01:19:09.820 Right.

01:19:10.480 So, so, you know, you, I wouldn't, I wouldn't go out of my way to question your emotional

01:19:17.300 reaction.

01:19:18.700 You know, I don't think that your response saying that, no, no, I don't think so.

01:19:23.640 I know, I don't think so.

01:19:25.000 I think that there's, there's more, there's many more things happening here than the merely

01:19:30.340 personal and, you know, you're asking yourself to respond without devastating emotion to a

01:19:39.800 situation that's bearing at least three dimensions of severe and unexpected stress on you simultaneously.

01:19:45.760 That's a lot.

01:19:46.780 I think it's too much to ask.

01:19:48.120 I think it's too much to ask, really.

01:19:50.120 Anyway, so if it was just, it was just a colleague, if it was just, you know, if it was just a

01:19:57.080 colleague or even just an employer, that's one thing.

01:20:00.680 But you, you didn't just have a colleague or an employer.

01:20:03.780 You were having an exchange with a man who has an incredibly powerful familial name and

01:20:10.740 who's the prime minister of a country, a big country.

01:20:13.300 Right?

01:20:13.920 So, yeah.

01:20:15.100 So, it's not surprising to me that you had the response that you had, just for whatever

01:20:19.580 that's worth.

01:20:20.400 So, let me ask you a question about this story, too.

01:20:23.700 You know, one of the things that really struck me about, and that is indicative of something

01:20:28.660 seriously rotten in Canada, and I mean seriously rotten, is that these six people that you 1.00

01:20:35.240 described as fleeing the ship, let's say, for similar reasons, and many of them, perhaps

01:20:41.980 all of them stellar people, have you had an opportunity to sit down with anybody from

01:20:48.320 the legacy media in Canada, the radically government-subsidized legacy media, I might

01:20:53.480 add, and actually have a chance to walk through what happened?

01:20:59.640 Because you'd think that the media would be interested in this.

01:21:02.400 If it only happened once, well, you ignore it.

01:21:05.960 Three times I said, that's the pattern.

01:21:07.780 You said, it's not three, Dr. Peterson.

01:21:09.700 It's not three.

01:21:10.340 It's six or more.

01:21:12.360 So, to what degree has this pattern being communicated, this pattern of interaction between

01:21:22.780 Trudeau and his people, being communicated by the legacy media in Canada?

01:21:28.780 So, let me just close the loop on this story, because I want to say how it ended, and then

01:21:34.740 I'll go into the media.

01:21:36.760 How it ends is, so, he goes in, he gives this big apology, tells people that he has this

01:21:41.740 open office, that he's welcoming and nice to everybody.

01:21:46.640 And at that moment, I'm thinking in my head, I'm at home.

01:21:49.740 I am having like the worst few days ever, and I'm holding my phone, and I start to type, that

01:22:00.940 is absolutely not true.

01:22:03.220 Do you remember our last two interactions?

01:22:05.440 And I pause before I send on the Twitter message, because I know the feeling that I had in that

01:22:15.420 last meeting.

01:22:16.220 I know that he can make or break whatever happens to me after.

01:22:20.500 And I start to press send, and I'm like, no way, there's no way I could do this, because

01:22:25.500 I will never work another day in Canada again.

01:22:29.220 And then, I also think to myself, if I don't press send, and I allow this person to just

01:22:36.580 get away with this behavior, I will never be able to look myself in the mirror.

01:22:41.700 I'll never be able to look my daughters in the face.

01:22:43.940 I'll never be able to look my son in the face.

01:22:45.700 And so, I press send, and I say to myself, that's it.

01:22:52.560 I'm done.

01:22:55.700 And, which brings us to your next question around the media, which is a really valid one.

01:23:03.380 Was that the right choice?

01:23:04.680 Was that the right choice that you made?

01:23:07.000 And why?

01:23:08.540 It may not have been the right, yeah.

01:23:10.760 Well, you said you had the practical reality of your life on the one hand, and what, it's

01:23:17.580 not exactly self-esteem.

01:23:19.240 It's, I don't know exactly how to characterize it.

01:23:21.840 You characterized it in relationship to your children, right?

01:23:24.440 You said that if you didn't push send, that you, what, you would have failed to be the

01:23:29.340 sort of person that they needed you to be?

01:23:31.060 It's something like that.

01:23:32.720 Well, it would have been, not necessarily that.

01:23:35.800 I wouldn't have been able to look myself in the mirror, because it means that, because

01:23:39.000 you hold the name Trudeau, that you're, that you are above somebody standing up to you.

01:23:46.740 You're above, you know, me standing up for someone that I know is Jodi Wilson-Raybould,

01:23:54.060 who I know did the right thing.

01:23:55.660 I'm just going to stay quiet because your name is Trudeau, and you could do something to me.

01:24:01.280 Absolutely not.

01:24:02.440 I have rebounded.

01:24:04.040 I have survived a lot more worse evident things, events than that.

01:24:11.040 So I'll, I could rebound, but was it the right decision?

01:24:14.960 To be honest with you, for a year after leaving politics, I could not find a job.

01:24:21.020 I applied and applied and applied and could not.

01:24:25.780 And, and that's not to say, well, it was me or anything, but just, just the reality of

01:24:29.980 the situation, because, you know, I, I'd call up some of my colleagues, like Roger Cousner.

01:24:35.460 I called Roger.

01:24:36.180 I said, Roger, what are you doing now?

01:24:37.360 He said, oh, I'm working.

01:24:38.860 I said, oh, well, where'd you apply?

01:24:41.880 He said, you don't apply, Selena. 0.85

01:24:43.720 If you're in government, they just scoop you up in a GR firm.

01:24:46.540 And I thought, oh, okay.

01:24:49.760 Right, right, right.

01:24:51.240 Again, I think, I think the point, no, no scooping, no scooping here.

01:24:56.200 But I think the point of it is that if you're not willing to stand for something, and this

01:25:03.000 is where it really came to head for me.

01:25:05.200 If you're not willing to stand for something, you'll fall for anything.

01:25:08.360 And I didn't, it didn't matter to me that his name was Trudeau.

01:25:13.160 It didn't matter.

01:25:14.520 What mattered was that you are railroading an individual.

01:25:20.460 Like her or hater, I do not care how you feel about Jodi Wilson-Raybould.

01:25:24.220 What happened to her was wrong.

01:25:26.220 And she needed people on her side that would say, you're absolutely right.

01:25:31.480 What I found very interesting was that, you know, we'd have gone through a Me Too movement

01:25:36.280 during that, that government, that those four years.

01:25:39.580 And every one of my colleagues, Trudeau, hashtag Me Too, believe her when she says she's believed,

01:25:45.960 believe her with this, believe her with that.

01:25:47.920 I found it was so interesting to believe her when it was convenient and leave Jodi when it

01:25:52.540 was not.

01:25:53.240 And I was not about to leave her for anybody.

01:25:55.780 I didn't care what his name was.

01:25:57.220 And so it wasn't necessarily to me about whether or not I'd work in Canada again.

01:26:03.260 It was whether or not I'd be able to look myself in the eye and look my kids in the eye and say,

01:26:09.020 I did the right thing, even when I knew it was the hardest thing to do.

01:26:13.160 And I'll end this part with this.

01:26:15.400 I don't know if you've read Clayton Christensen's essay, How Will You Measure Your Life?

01:26:22.460 And for your readers, your listeners, read this article.

01:26:26.540 It talks about, you know, your ability to stand by your values and principles.

01:26:32.620 He says, stand by your principles 100% of the time.

01:26:36.680 If you stand by your values and principle 98% of the time, you'll regret where you end up

01:26:41.620 because you're doing a marginal cost analysis.

01:26:43.800 You know, if I cheat just this one time, if I don't stand up for my friend just this one time,

01:26:48.520 it's fine.

01:26:49.500 No, it's not.

01:26:51.100 You either do it 100% of the time or you don't do it at all.

01:26:54.460 And for me, it was the 100% or not at all.

01:26:58.180 And at this point, I was so far gone.

01:27:02.520 I had experienced all that I experienced and I stayed very, very quiet.

01:27:07.100 But on this issue, it was beholden for me to stand up because that was the opportunity that I had to say,

01:27:16.040 no, you cannot continue to behave in this way as a leader of a G7 country and expect to just get away with it

01:27:25.400 without no, with, with no consequence.

01:27:31.120 And to your question about media, I think that the consequence still eluded him.

01:27:37.640 He still evaded the consequence because the consequences ended up falling more on myself as someone who

01:27:45.680 dared to stand up against the prime minister.

01:27:49.620 Um, I've been told that, you know, speaking on media is, it's not, it's, it's, we, they won't allow it

01:28:01.500 because, you know, you don't really like Trudeau.

01:28:06.400 Look, it's not that I don't like him.

01:28:09.200 I just think he lacks the self-awareness to be a G7 leader.

01:28:12.360 But I mean, I'll have a beer with the guy.

01:28:15.340 He just, he's not the barista at the coffee shop.

01:28:18.060 Oh, he's a G7 leader.

01:28:20.960 Like I'm not supposed to hold him to account because he's Trudeau.

01:28:25.880 And so I've been removed from media, some media, I should say, some of them still keep me on,

01:28:32.600 but the Canadian media has still managed to glorify this individual, um, and, and not hold him to the

01:28:40.420 account account the way that I think he should be.

01:28:43.840 All right, Selena, I'm going to stop there.

01:28:46.060 That's a very good place to stop.

01:28:47.500 We're pretty much at the point we should stop.

01:28:50.200 For everybody watching and listening, I'm going to continue this conversation.

01:28:54.340 We haven't talked about Selena's book.

01:28:56.240 Will you tell everybody the title of your book and when it was published?

01:28:59.520 It's called Can You Hear Me Now?

01:29:01.400 It was published in 2021, Penguin Random House.

01:29:04.100 And it really, it's not just about my political time in politics.

01:29:09.000 It really goes through my whole life and gives a, gives the readers a sense as to why I'm an advocate,

01:29:15.880 why I'm so strong in what I do and what I say, and why I hold fast to my principles 100% of the time.

01:29:24.440 I know what it's like to feel hurt.

01:29:26.440 I know what it's like to feel disenfranchised.

01:29:28.700 I know what pain feels like, and I don't want other people to feel the same.

01:29:32.660 So I wrote a book explaining all of my ups, downs, highs, and lows.

01:29:37.680 We'll talk more about that book on the Daily Wire side.

01:29:41.340 And also, we'll delve a little bit more well into the issues that we discussed on this side of the discussion.

01:29:49.460 I want to find out how you did get back on your feet after that year of searching for work,

01:29:54.460 after you had resigned as the Prime Minister's Secretary.

01:30:00.420 And for everybody watching and listening, join us on the Daily Wire side.

01:30:04.960 Thank you very much for agreeing to do this interview today and for walking us through that

01:30:09.520 relatively unpleasant and personal recounting of what was quite the demanding three to five year period.

01:30:20.760 I'm very much looking forward to finishing up the story on the Daily Wire side,

01:30:25.020 because I want to find out, you know, how things did go after your job search and how you put yourself back together.

01:30:31.980 And thank you very much for letting everybody know about your experiences.

01:30:38.140 I think people will find it extremely interesting.

01:30:40.920 I certainly did.

01:30:42.220 And I'm very pleased that I know the rest of the story.

01:30:46.160 So thank you very much.

01:30:47.940 Thank you.

01:30:48.500 Thank you so much for having me.

01:30:49.740 Thank you.

01:30:56.260 Thank you.

01:30:56.380 Thank you.

01:31:04.460 Thank you.

01:31:05.140 Thank you.

01:31:05.260 Thank you.

01:31:09.600 Thank you.

01:31:14.300 Thank you.

01:31:14.900 Thank you.

01:31:15.240 Thank you.

01:31:15.440 Thank you.

01:31:16.320 Thank you.

01:31:17.740 Thank you.

01:31:18.440 Thank you.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - October 28, 2024

493. The Brutal Shadow of Equity In Canada ｜ Celina Caesar-Chavannes

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