In this episode of the Canada Strong and Free Network's new podcast, I sit down with Canadian MP for Bowmanville-Oshawa North, Jamil Javani, to discuss the challenges facing young men and the need for conservative politics to address them.
00:00:00.040So in a few in a couple of minutes actually I'll just get right into it
00:00:03.920because why waste any time so as Margaret Thatcher would say it is a it is a sin
00:00:10.240to waste time so if right now I'm gonna I'm really pleased to introduce a dear
00:00:16.880friend of the movement one of its I think brightest lights he was a lawyer
00:00:23.840journalist he did a lot of work on radio I know in Ontario and of course he ran
00:00:32.080this organization for a little while before before he decided I think rightly
00:00:37.100to go and run for Parliament first in a by-election at the end of in mid 2023 I
00:00:44.120think it was in for Oshawa and then of course was recently re-elected for
00:00:49.400Bowmanville Oshawa North so I'm really really pleased to welcome my friend
00:00:53.780and a great champion of the movement Mr. Jamil Javani
00:01:04.940all righty good morning everybody thank you Adam for the kind introduction and
00:01:09.500thank you to the Canada Strong and Free Network for inviting me here today I
00:01:13.020bring greetings from the wonderful people of Bowmanville Oshawa North and yeah I'm
00:01:18.140very excited to talk about the future of our country today we'll be joined on
00:01:22.560stage by Derek shortly but I do want to share some thoughts on the future of
00:01:28.860conservative politics in our country is a topic I've spent a lot of time
00:01:32.520thinking about long before I became an MP I actually seven years ago wrote a book
00:01:37.860about the challenges facing young men and seven years later now as a member of
00:01:43.980Parliament I am compelled to point out that a lot of the problems that I wrote
00:01:49.720about seven years ago have actually gotten worse and that young men in our
00:01:53.560country are actually in a much tougher position than they were when I first
00:01:58.360started looking into this topic things are getting more troublesome and I think
00:02:03.940this is an important place to discuss this issue because I do believe that there
00:02:08.620are some very serious ideological flaws in the Liberal Party of Canada in
00:02:14.320liberal institutions and in best leaving that is true and I do not believe liberal
00:02:24.040politicians are going to rise to the occasion and fight for our young men and I
00:02:28.000do believe that is a responsibility of conservatives to take on that mantle so
00:02:32.740I want to begin by first outlining the problem because it is very rare to see in
00:02:39.220mainstream political discourse people talk about this so I do want to kind of
00:02:44.500paint the picture of it for you of what is going on not just anecdotally but to be
00:02:50.840very clear on from a statistical standpoint what young men are experiencing in
00:02:56.020this country today so I'm gonna go through some data from stats can very
00:03:00.220exciting stuff I'm sure you're excited to hear the numbers but I do think it's
00:03:03.940important in 2024 71% of apparent opioid toxicity deaths were men 71% among older
00:03:15.340teens who committed suicide 70% were boys and that's according to the SFU
00:03:21.340Children's Policy Center in 2023 among the people who were living in homeless
00:03:28.120shelters 67% were men since 2016 the homicide rate where men and boys are
00:03:36.340victims has gone up 20% the most recent unemployment statistics from May of this
00:03:44.320year showed that the unemployment rate among young men was 22% which is the
00:03:49.960highest in well over 10 years and nationally prior to kovid about 14% of
00:03:58.060boys were dropping out of high school and not graduating that number I am
00:04:02.380certain has gotten worse but stats can has not published that data since kovid
00:04:07.240occurred now I think it would be important to ask you know what is the sort of
00:04:11.740institutional apparatus that we have in government to even start to identify a
00:04:17.500strategy to respond to numbers like that and I mean the reality is that there is a
00:04:23.260minister of women and gender equality in Ottawa there is an entire department with
00:04:28.840that name there is no such minister responsible for talking about these
00:04:33.340particular issues as it pertains to young men and I think that's where the
00:04:38.980conservative movement has an important place and I'd like to clarify because as a
00:04:43.420person who sort of had these conversations in the public square before I know
00:04:47.080that people can sometimes get quite uncomfortable when you start to talk about
00:04:50.860young men as a distinct group with distinct needs and challenges I
00:04:55.720encountered this same discomfort when I first wrote my book seven years ago but I
00:05:02.100have no intention of downplaying any problems real issues that young women face I
00:05:08.140have no intention of downplaying any of the challenges that all people face my
00:05:12.820objective really is to simply highlight that our young men are being overlooked
00:05:16.460marginalized many of them feel forgotten and there is an institutional failure to
00:05:21.740respond to that feeling young men are screaming silently in our country right
00:05:26.660now because very few institutions are willing to hear them so with all these
00:05:32.660statistics available you know I think it's important to ask well why doesn't
00:05:37.520this register politically why doesn't this register in policy making circles why
00:05:41.740isn't there a task force or initiative or all the other things that
00:05:45.240governments like to do to demonstrate to the public that they're taking a
00:05:48.840problem seriously and this is where I think it's important to really highlight
00:05:53.760where liberal politics is failing and liberal ideology is failing the first part
00:06:00.660that I I'd like to point out off the top is that liberal ideology and liberal
00:06:06.460politics is committed to a particular way of looking at gender that I think is makes it
00:06:12.600difficult to even raise the issue when you separate gender from sex and you make the
00:06:18.980conversation about gender something that is many Canadians would feel they need a PhD
00:06:24.360to even engage when you make it something so complicated that it cannot be
00:06:28.380straightforward discussion about analysis and solutions you wind up creating a
00:06:33.760scenario where a lot of people in power would rather spend their time trying to
00:06:38.080figure out who a young man is than how to help him and that's sad and frustrating the
00:06:45.460second problem we have is that liberal governance and when I say liberal I don't
00:06:50.400even just mean in a partisan sense I mean in an ideological sense because this is
00:06:54.120something true at all levels of government many places across the country has
00:06:57.820absorbed a certain hierarchy of victimhood where the average working-class and
00:07:02.360middle-class man is at the bottom now that hierarchy of victimhood is sometimes called DEI
00:07:07.740and it goes by a variety of names that sound very nice and compassionate but the reality is
00:07:13.700that DEI has been very successful at advancing the careers of very small number of people to
00:07:19.980get on corporate boards of directors or to join university faculties and has been objectively a
00:07:26.420failure in addressing many of the very serious social ills in our country yeah there are many
00:07:38.040institutions in Canada right now where if I gave them those statistics that I just
00:07:42.560read to you they would first want to know what color those young men are before they
00:07:47.720would start to care and I think that is abhorrent and a third serious problem with
00:07:55.280liberal governance is related to immigration so we have embraced in this country through 10 years
00:08:04.460of liberals running the federal government an economic and immigration philosophy that devalues
00:08:09.860young men in the labor force this is going to sound harsh but I think it needs to be said at the cost
00:08:18.540of increasing youth unemployment to levels we have not seen in a very very long time liberals have
00:08:24.900opened Canada's borders to enable an unprecedented level of immigration including a variety of
00:08:30.080temporary worker programs this approach to managing our economy means that businesses and governments
00:08:36.920can effectively abandon responsibility for Canadian youth because if our youth are ill prepared for the
00:08:44.880jobs that are available or unwilling to work those jobs at the wages being offered businesses and
00:08:51.060governments can simply fill those roles by bringing people in from elsewhere instead of investing in or
00:08:57.600training or caring about why those young people aren't filling those jobs in the first place they have
00:09:04.800decoupled the health of our economy from the health of our young people in doing so and practically
00:09:12.440speaking that means young men are not treated as essential to the future of the Canadian economy if Canada's labor
00:09:20.680supply is unlimited by opening borders up to the entire world liberal economic philosophy has left young men on the outside of the labor force and the metrics that have been typically used to measure our economy like GDP for example do not reflect the quality of life of young Canadians
00:09:39.700this is really important to emphasize I believe because I think in a healthy society it would be one where
00:09:47.980you care about the future of where your country is going and that you're actively measuring your success as a government
00:09:54.820or a stewards of an economy based on how young people are being prepared for the future
00:10:01.680but basic things like home ownership statistics for example make it obvious that young people are struggling to get ahead
00:10:08.780and there's very little sense of urgency around this
00:10:12.240it is not regarded as the crisis that it should be