Nigel Chanaford and David Lees discuss the government's new anti-hate campaign and the role of the anti-racism group, the Anti-Race Foundation, the Race Relations Foundation of Canada, and other groups involved in the campaign.
00:04:58.640I don't know that there are that many Aryan Nations compounds left to go report on.1.00
00:05:05.340Well, it's a very good question, Nigel.0.87
00:05:07.660I think what you have is kind of the usual suspects in the sense that you have a coalition of groups that do uphold the narrative that our country, Canada, is a hopefully systematically racist nation, that we need to identify people on their tribe based on their skin color or their sexual orientation.
00:05:31.580And what is interesting is that they seem to be going about this in phases.
00:05:35.740So they're identifying a variety of partners that, or sorry, pardon me, they're identifying a variety of parties that offend their sensibilities around key narratives.
00:05:48.440So for example, you have the so-called residential school denialists, you have parties that dare to disagree that somehow residential schools were not simply akin to Nazi death camps, and there were a myriad of mass graves, and as we know, there has not been evidence to suggest that there are mass graves.
00:06:12.520um and so i think you have something more profound going on as well you have um an effort really to
00:06:20.840take on anyone that would question this so-called diversity equity and inclusion narrative and that
00:06:28.080that as you know is is very much a based on a marxist uh cultural ideology where um there's a
00:06:36.740endless drumbeat of oppressor versus the oppressed. And in this case, anyone who would
00:06:42.980dare question that narrative then is going to be positioned to be able to be sought after,
00:06:49.760complained about through a very interesting process. My sense is that they're not going
00:06:55.560to be going after people through the regular court system, but rather through human rights
00:07:00.280tribunals. And of course, we know that the application of the law then is not the same
00:07:06.960as our larger court system. So it's really been, it's a kind of a typical playbook that we see
00:07:14.960through human history of totalitarian regimes demonizing their ideological opponents,
00:07:22.280separating them out, and then eventually persecuting them in the form of legal action
00:07:27.240or public humiliation and basically weaponizing the law against your ideological opponent.
00:07:36.040Yeah, but David, what you're describing is the kind of thing that happened in the French Revolution
00:07:40.500or in the Russian Revolution or in Nazi Germany.
00:07:45.180Surely you're not proposing that the government of Canada is using the same kind of techniques
00:07:53.060as these very admittedly authoritarian and cruel regimes?
00:10:01.860they also drew to attention that there was a nice young couple who were concerned about
00:10:08.420educational policy and especially as regards to the what was taught in the classroom about
00:10:14.460trans ideology to quite young children and they were running for school board and in order to
00:10:21.520have their say on that in an appropriate forum and they were labeled as haters so on the other
00:10:27.580hand, I have seen nothing about the hate of, for example, a Jewish community in Toronto being
00:10:36.720swarmed by a hostile pro-Gaza, anti-Israel crowd. So how do the, you know, where is the hate and
00:10:47.120what is the distinction when it comes to funding these groups? Does anybody care about what
00:10:57.120obviously is truly hateful. You know, that's the irony, Nigel, is what you see is a effort
00:11:04.540to define hate on their terms that clearly supports their narrative. So if you see acts
00:11:12.900of anti-Semitism, most likely they will turn a blind eye to that because it does not fit within
00:11:19.240their narrative, their political coalition, if you will. So what you have is the irony that you
00:11:25.240have time and time again, all kinds of examples of hate. Let's take, for instance, as well,
00:11:32.520Nigel, the burning of some 100 Christian churches right across this country. And in almost all
00:11:39.140cases, we still do not have a sense of how the perpetrators are being prosecuted or investigated.
00:11:47.520You have a kind of a double standard of the application of the law. And so this is, again,
00:11:55.240begs worrisome questions about how this type of initiative will actually be used to just simply
00:12:02.560go after parties that do fit their narrative, based on reality or not. But it's a way to weaponize
00:12:12.680the rule of law against their political opponents. So on one hand, this is driven by ideology,
00:12:18.120I would argue, but it's also driven by cynical application of identity politics.
00:12:23.180Has any government of Canada ever actively gone after a section of its own population in order to divert attention from other things that they may be doing that wouldn't be so popular?
00:12:38.480You know, I can think of many examples, as you full well know, Nigel, where governments have sought to change the channel to kind of draw attention to something that is not working, but not in this regard.
00:12:54.420I think this is a very concerning development in our society.
00:12:59.060Canadians are drawn together in unity based on the principle that we are citizens of this great country,
00:13:05.360not because of the color of our skin or our sexual orientation,
00:13:10.460but because of our shared commitment to principles that allow for the rights and freedoms of individuals
00:13:54.860I mean, many of us had our differences with the Liberal Party as it operated under Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien and back to Pierre Trudeau.
00:14:06.240But this kind of assault on free speech that you are describing, in which the government funds are actually given to people to be snitches, to actually go out and to find what they think is hateful.
00:14:26.740And, of course, to then discover that what they think is hateful is to most people probably a reasonable discussion on a point of principle and not actually hate at all in the conventional system.
00:14:39.920And yet, when you do confront, when you do find real hate going on, and we're using the example of the invasion of Jewish neighborhoods in Toronto by hostile crowds, good Lord, I mean, if that was a group of skinheads invading the same neighborhoods, there probably would be instant action.
00:15:03.120But because it's a pro-Gaza crowd, not much happens.
00:15:52.620I would frankly never believe we would see the day, Nigel,
00:15:56.880as someone who's observed this and studied this for decades, really,
00:16:01.780that we would see a day where grievance studies like this
00:16:04.540would somehow have any credible following as a public policy maker.
00:16:09.760This is something new, and this is very disturbing.
00:16:12.920But it is not new in the context of totalitarian regimes in history,
00:16:17.440whether it's Maoist China, whether it's the Soviet Union.
00:16:22.260These are very important lessons to pay attention to.
00:16:25.320And again, it's the same type of methodology,
00:16:28.560where there's a demonization of different parties
00:16:32.580who dare to disagree with the narrative that different persons in power wish to uphold and
00:16:37.880manipulate, and then it's the separation and ultimately the persecution in its different forms.
00:16:44.080Do they believe their own rhetoric, or is this an entirely cynical use of the force of government
00:16:53.180in order to establish the narrative of a ruling party in a hope of just continuing and extending
00:17:00.880its rule. Do they really actually believe this? You know, it's a brilliant question, Nigel. I
00:17:07.040think we all wonder this regularly, but I think it's both. I think you have parties who really
00:17:13.280do believe that Canada is irredeemably racist systematically, and that it is a country filled
00:17:21.900with, quote, white supremacists and all the rest, which of course we all know it isn't. Canada is
00:17:28.540filled with people who are unified and proud of their history. They don't believe it's perfect,
00:17:33.400but they do know that racism has no place in our country. But what we see also is the application
00:17:40.460of cynical power politics. And I think that this is a situation where you have announcements being
00:17:47.720made that appears to be credible public policy, when in fact, I would argue that it isn't.
00:17:52.960It's self-serving, and it's been serving towards a particular set of special interests who want to do the proxy or the bidding as third parties on behalf of the government who wishes to promote this type of narrative.
00:18:08.600Why? I think all in terms of a run-up to an election where a lot of the policies that they pursued, and I think you've alluded to this, Nigel, are not sadly working.
00:18:19.020I mean, they are destroying Canadian standard of living.
00:24:05.640And it's not a surprise that you haven't read about it in the newspapers
00:24:08.840because the newspapers, the mainstream media, are silent about it.
00:24:14.060And it's only through organizations such as our own, and there are a number of other worthy warriors in this cause, through how any of this comes out.
00:24:24.900But anybody who wanted to could go onto the Heritage Canada website, and they would find a list of organizations that are very open about it,
00:24:33.040who have received money from the government under this program, and the amounts of money that they received.
00:24:40.540And now there is an extra top-up of $273 million to generate this enormous impression that Canada is full of hateful people and only the liberal government can save the citizens from the haters.
00:25:03.480That's kind of where we have reached in this country.
00:25:10.540And I think we should keep a larger strategic perspective, if I may, and that is that this type of initiative will do great harm to our society instead of building bridges.
00:25:22.760And it's interesting, they're going to be holding a series of national workshops across Canada as a way to train them up on so-called best practices to identify what they believe or hate, and then learn how to report them so that they can in turn be prosecuted.
00:25:42.600And I would say it's not about prosecution then, it's really going to be about persecution. And I hope I'm sincerely wrong on this, but I doubt it.
00:25:52.760So in this context, this will do enormous damage, Nigel, to the fabric of our society.
00:25:58.840So instead of building those so-called bridges, it will actually rip apart communities as
00:26:06.600we dare to have honest debate and discussion about very important issues, not just about
00:26:13.640science, but about all kinds of issues where there are different perspectives.
00:26:18.420And one of the strengths of our Canadian society has been a tradition where we have a tolerance for each other, even though we have different perspectives, that we can agree and disagree to build this country.
00:26:31.860And in unity, we do that effort. We have been able to build an incredibly prosperous and successful nation.
00:26:39.880And all people come from all over the world so that they can take in the so-called Canadian dream.
00:26:46.320So this initiative is very disconcerting, and I believe that it is very important that citizens become informed about this initiative.
00:26:56.320And so I congratulate you, Nigel, and certainly the whole team there at the Western Standard,
00:27:00.880because citizens need to speak up now to their MPs, their representatives, and say,
00:27:06.680this is not the Canada that we have signed on as citizens.
00:27:10.480Our tradition is one of tolerance and working together.
00:27:13.540This will very much radically undermine that, all in the name of diversity, equity, inclusion and their perspective.
00:27:23.160This is not about inclusion. This is about excluding, ironically, our tradition of a free and democratic society.
00:27:29.920You know, unfortunately, our experience during the COVID-19 crisis suggests that there are all too many people who are quite prepared to rat out their neighbors without being paid.
00:27:45.000Add the accelerant of government funding, and this could be extremely serious.
00:27:51.560Talk to us about Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, and how that dovetails with what we've been talking about so far.
00:27:59.920Well, Bill C-63 perfectly is a complement, pardon me, is complementary to this initiative. Why? Because Bill C-63 provides, yet again, the larger legal basis to pursue the silencing and the blocking of any narrative that the government disagrees with.
00:28:26.260So Bill C-6-3 is very much tied into this.
00:28:29.400They want to limit the discussion within the public square.
00:28:34.880So Bill C-6-3 is obviously very much connected to this initiative
00:28:39.720and will be, again, it needs to be seen as part of this initiative, I believe.
00:28:48.520I think you used the phrase dark times a couple of times earlier.
00:28:53.540My understanding of Bill C-63 is that the government will provide funds for professional snitches and that those people who have put things on Facebook or on Twitter and are years ago can be prosecuted for that in the future if they don't remove them, if they have the power to do that.
00:29:21.600and that it requires only an allegation from an anonymous source,
00:29:28.240and these anonymous sources will be paid to actually go to war with the people
00:29:47.580So essentially, you can connect the dots here.
00:29:51.600This initiative should not be seen unto itself, but rather connected to Bill C-63, where parties can anonymously complain, be able to initiate all kinds of legal actions against parties that they may not even know, but are offended by, because their opinions that are being pursued do not fit their own narrative.
00:30:14.780And so that is redefined as hate speech. This is entirely foreign to our rule of law and precedence
00:30:23.400that's already exists in this country about how we see hate speech. So this is a radical departure
00:30:29.860from our traditional Canadian law. And I actually refer to this as the introduction of Marxist law,
00:30:37.720because it's pursuing particular outcomes and judgments that change social equality. I think
00:30:46.220if you speak with a number of legal analysts on this, you can see this is one of the big grand
00:30:52.780debates, quite frankly, in our law schools between a traditional, more classical liberal perspective
00:30:58.860of the law, and this type of law that emphasizes equal social outcomes. So this is a very worrisome
00:31:08.020trend. And I think what you're going to see here is when they talk about these national workshops,
00:31:12.980and ironically, the workshops will be called building bridges. It's not about building bridges.
00:31:19.480It's about animating and weaponizing the law against your fellow citizens and groups that
00:31:25.780you disagree with? Do you think it'll pass? I mean, I think that's, I think it remains to be
00:31:37.040seen. I mean, this is such an outrageous initiative and set of legislation that is
00:31:44.720entirely not in keeping with the Canadian tradition of a respect for the rule of law
00:31:51.380and freedom of speech. I'm doubtful that it will be passed, but I think the difficulty is that this
00:31:57.600government is so probably desperate to remove itself out of the doldrums of negative polls
00:32:06.380that it is possible that they will. Then, of course, there'd be a period of time during which
00:32:13.080regulations would need to be written and then an election which, you know, is that the salvation
00:32:19.480here that this government loses the election and this thing just falls on the wayside indeed it is
00:32:25.240but it is a an important signal that this government is making to again its coalition
00:32:31.760of special interests who really want desperately to see this legislation so that they can go after
00:32:38.300with not just you know their own suasion but the whole rule of law behind them and i think this is
00:32:46.120very concerning. We need more than ever healthy debates about the issues that we face as a nation.
00:32:53.640This is one of our strengths. And for me, this is a very, this is the Rubicon.
00:33:00.320If you can refer to the, you know, the ancient river in Italy, where history was made with
00:33:06.840Julius Caesar passing into the Roman region. This is the Rubicon of Canadian society. Now,
00:33:13.780If we can't hold the line to, you know, paraphrase Tamara Leach and the whole reference that was made there during those protests in Ottawa a number of years ago, if we can't hold the line on this one, I believe our Canadian society will arc downward rather quickly because we are undermining the ability to speak freely, to seek the truth.
00:33:40.820And as you know, there's many cases in history where people have not been able to come to grips with the truth.
00:33:48.540And it was a courageous small group of parties, a minority, if you will, that spoke up and dared to confront the powers that be, the king, the queen, whoever it was, and say, you were wrong.