Western Standard - July 13, 2023


Canada’s system of racial apartheid needs to end


Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

186.64691

Word count

1,176

Sentence count

78

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Life expectancy for Indigenous people in Canada is at an all-time low, and it s only getting worse. How can we not see this as a crisis? And why is there no action being taken to fix it?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 So, the life expectancy for an Indigenous man in Alberta is now plummeted down to 60 years of age, and for Indigenous women it's down to 66.
00:00:09.000 So, if you want to see the comparison of what that means, the national life expectancy for a non-Indigenous man in Canada is 80, and women 84.
00:00:17.260 And the story across the country isn't any different with Indigenous populations, it's just a matter of give and take a couple of years. 0.92
00:00:23.400 And this issue hasn't garnered the headlines it should have, because it forces people to face a reality they'd rather avoid.
00:00:30.100 Canada's system and policies with Indigenous people, it's a complete catastrophe. 1.00
00:00:35.960 And how bad does it have to get before people admit this?
00:00:40.340 Think about that, Indigenous Canadians can expect to die 20 years before everybody else, and that number's getting worse.
00:00:47.160 The population should be screaming for systematic reform from the rooftops in light of this kind of number, but the silence is deafening.
00:00:54.040 Now, the opioid addiction epidemic is responsible for how fast it suddenly increased.
00:01:00.080 It increased by a seven-year drop in life expectancy in the last few years.
00:01:04.920 But again, those expectancies were already low, and they were already dropping.
00:01:09.100 And again, it's indicative of some big, serious problems.
00:01:12.300 Indigenous people have always had lower life expectancy than the rest of Canadians.
00:01:16.700 We shouldn't accept this.
00:01:17.680 They're dying younger than other citizens, though, because of an assortment of causes, ranging from diabetes to prostate cancer to murder.
00:01:24.640 In fact, with every single aspect, when you measure the standard of living, Canada's Indigenous people fall short. 1.00
00:01:32.120 Whether it's income, health, addictions, crime, education levels, mental health issues, housing, domestic stability, they're lagging by every measure.
00:01:40.540 And it isn't getting better.
00:01:43.020 But what do people expect?
00:01:45.060 How can somebody look at Canada's system of racial apartheid, and that's exactly what it is, and not see a socioeconomic disaster in the making?
00:01:53.340 How could a person think that keeping a race of people separated from the rest of society, on what are usually isolated reserves, with little to no local means of generating income, and think that these people are going to fare well under these conditions?
00:02:05.480 Does anybody really believe there's a sustainable future for people living on these enclaves of dependency and misery?
00:02:13.340 I mean, what do they envision?
00:02:14.880 Do they think citizens and residents on reserves will suddenly find and develop local resources and begin to live functional lives independent from government management and dependency?
00:02:23.980 Some people really believe those things might happen.
00:02:26.300 But all that tells me is they've never actually spent time on a reserve in Canada.
00:02:30.700 I'm not talking about somebody who's gone and attended the odd powwow or done a corporate retreat that had a sweat lodge attached to a resort in a native reserve somewhere.
00:02:38.980 I'm talking about getting off the main road and seeing how our First Nations populations are really living on those reserves. 0.99
00:02:46.100 Have a look at the dilapidated houses, the wild dogs, the crime, the trash strewn about.
00:02:51.320 And it's common, guys.
00:02:52.360 That's the reality of Canada's reserves.
00:02:54.880 And it's not improving.
00:02:55.860 For most indigenous people on reserves to make a living, they have to leave the reserve.
00:03:01.700 Unfortunately, many of those residents from the reserves are ill-equipped to adapt to town or city living.
00:03:06.620 And then they fall off the rails when they've gotten off the reserve.
00:03:08.840 It's terrible.
00:03:10.060 A lifetime of economic dependency in a tight and often dysfunctional social environment handicaps indigenous people when they try to break free.
00:03:17.500 And we've got to face that reality.
00:03:19.220 The reserve system is an inhumane policy failure, and it has to come to an end.
00:03:23.620 And I know that won't happen overnight.
00:03:26.140 It can't.
00:03:27.040 It's going to take decades of policies modeled to transition people away from the reserve system and into society in general.
00:03:33.640 People will need compensation, training, and adjustment for it.
00:03:37.180 Individual property rights need to be applied for people on reserves to break them out of the collectivism that's destroying them today.
00:03:43.560 And, of course, there will be legal challenges, too.
00:03:45.880 Many people have misconceptions about what treaty obligations the country actually has to indigenous people.
00:03:50.480 Now, most of those obligations, if you read a treaty, they just have to do with things like providing education, determining some land boundaries, and some minor payments.
00:03:58.680 We could apply private property rights and come up with some final settlements and still abide by treaties.
00:04:05.180 Most of the policies applied to indigenous people right now come from the outdated and terribly racist Indian Act.
00:04:10.660 That gross piece of legislation needs to be repealed.
00:04:13.840 And as a society, we need to move away from all race-based policies.
00:04:17.400 It fails the people every time.
00:04:20.380 There's a giant parasite class living on the backs of Canada's indigenous population. 1.00
00:04:25.060 There's bureaucrats, civil servants, and many lawyers.
00:04:27.920 They find the status quo very lucrative, and they'll defend it vigorously.
00:04:31.700 People calling for changes to the system will always be called racist, among other things, by those other parasites invested in the current bloated and corrupted system.
00:04:40.100 Nobody's calling out a race.
00:04:41.760 What needs to be called out, though, is a system failing an entire race.
00:04:44.940 Nobody's calling for assimilation, either.
00:04:47.660 Cultures can be preserved without being locked in an isolated reserve away from the rest of society.
00:04:53.220 And spending more money alone, it won't solve the issue.
00:04:56.060 Federal spending, just federal, on indigenous programs in 2021 was $24.5 billion.
00:05:02.800 That's above and beyond every other dollar it's spent, as it's spent on Canadian citizens in general.
00:05:07.380 And that doesn't include the spending from provincial and municipal governments on top of that.
00:05:11.960 And what are the results?
00:05:12.880 It's not the spending I'm begrudging.
00:05:15.520 If it was actually making the lives of indigenous Canadians better, I would accept it. 1.00
00:05:18.860 It's the lack of results.
00:05:20.240 It's failing.
00:05:21.480 I mean, again, they're dying 20 years younger than the rest of us.
00:05:24.060 Come on.
00:05:25.180 We could triple spending on indigenous programs tomorrow, and things wouldn't noticeably improve.
00:05:30.320 Unless the system's replaced, we're just tossing money into a black hole.
00:05:34.020 Canada's system...
00:05:34.160 I'm right on this.
00:05:35.580 Racial policies and segregation needs to be phased out.
00:05:38.560 And the best thing that could happen for indigenous Canadians suffering under the mess we have right now, this is the best thing we could do.
00:05:44.560 If one really did actually hate indigenous people, I could think of a few things more terrible that can be done than to maintain the current system. 0.98
00:05:51.540 We can't repair damage caused through race-based policy through applying even more race-based policies.
00:05:58.220 Anyway, guys, it's time to start talking about it, frankly, okay?
00:06:01.120 It's really failing.
00:06:02.140 I mean, how can we look at those numbers and say, we can fix this.
00:06:05.740 We can't, guys.
00:06:06.700 It's already failed.
00:06:07.940 If you really do care for Canada's indigenous people, it's time for some courageous, frank discussion on changing the entire system, and significantly.
00:06:15.820 And it's awful to watch it keep carrying on as it has been.