Western Standard

00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show.

00:00:21.480 It is Thursday, August the 7th. One of the big differences between Canada's political

00:00:27.040 parties is that when in power, conservatives tend to leave hard-working Canadians alone

00:00:32.900 to do their thing and set government up so that they can follow their dreams. Not so the

00:00:39.020 liberals, on the other hand. They try to set up government so that Canadians will follow

00:00:43.420 what the liberals think would be a better dream. Some people call it social engineering

00:00:49.880 or wokeness. Whatever you call it, the liberals just can't leave well enough alone, and it

00:00:56.380 means they're always looking for more control. With me today is Peter Menzies, who has been

00:01:02.600 patrolling this constituency for a couple of decades. Welcome, Peter.

00:01:07.140 Peter Menzies Thank you very much. Happy to be here.

00:01:09.380 Peter, you had a long career in print media. You were a publisher of the Calgary Herald.

00:01:14.040 You actually were my old boss for several years, and then you were a CRTC commissioner. So

00:01:20.000 you know print and you know electronic media. And of course, as the liberals started pushing

00:01:25.200 into the internet, you saw firsthand what was going on. So when I say they want to use newspaper

00:01:31.700 subsidies to control what Canadians read, and the CRTC to control what they say on the internet and read

00:01:39.220 on the internet, am I overstating my case?

00:01:42.420 Peter Menzies I don't think you are. I think the difference between, one of the fundamental

00:01:48.020 differences between conservatives and liberals is that liberals have a great deal of faith in government

00:01:53.620 as a force for good, and believe that when they do something, because they did it, it must be good.

00:01:59.860 Whereas conservatives have a more, what I would call, Jeffersonian approach, that government should

00:02:04.260 only do what only government can do, and it should focus on doing that well. And generally have a more

00:02:09.860 laissez-faire approach to the world. They will regulate things, of course. You know, age restrictions for

00:02:18.260 things like pornography and that sort of stuff, they're in favor of. But they do not get into the

00:02:24.260 realm of what you may say and what you may not say, to the extent that the liberals instincts lead them there.

00:02:31.060 So, there was a suite of bills that the liberals brought in to control the internet, control what

00:02:39.940 Canadians can do and say and read on the internet. There's Bill 11, Bill 18, and Bill C-63. The 63 didn't

00:02:48.020 go through, but Peter, can you explain to us how the liberals used those three bills, or intended to

00:02:56.660 use them, in order to control the internet? Sure. Well, I mean, part of the instinct goes back,

00:03:02.020 I can remember a few years ago, Hedy Frye, who was head of the Heritage Committee in Parliament,

00:03:10.340 but she said a few years ago, have you seen the internet? Oh my god, people can say anything on

00:03:14.980 there. Right? And so it sort of goes, holy, people can say anything. Well, I mean...

00:03:20.100 Isn't that what we were, isn't that what our democracy is supposed to be about?

00:03:24.580 Exactly. The whole foundation. Hedy Frye was an NDP, a Liberal Cabinet Minister.

00:03:31.220 Yeah. You know, she's been for years, she's in her 80s now, but she has, you know,

00:03:35.540 I think she's most famous for talking about how, as we speak, they are burning crosses in Prince George.

00:03:41.140 Oh, I remember that. And overstatements like that. But to me, that sort of expressed...

00:03:46.340 Well, that was kind of very free speech, wasn't it? It was, it was, it was. But to me,

00:03:51.300 that sort of expresses the instinct, good heavens, people are saying anything they want. And I think

00:03:56.900 they probably had a view before that if something happened that they didn't like, they could have

00:04:02.820 lunch with the local publisher, or something like that, and that they could count on their gatekeeping

00:04:09.220 powers to ensure this. But they started with the, the Online Streaming Act was really where they

00:04:15.940 started. And that was about giving the CRTC control over all audio and video on the internet.

00:04:24.180 So CRTC originally wasn't set up to do that?

00:04:26.980 No, no, no. The CRTC was set up to do over the air radio and television, which I mean,

00:04:31.860 which has to do with Spectrum, which is a crown asset in which, so they have a legitimate

00:04:37.860 crown purpose in regulating that. But they've always had rules about what you could say and

00:04:42.660 couldn't say that go along with getting your television or radio license. But the internet,

00:04:48.340 of course, is not a finite resource like Spectrum. So, but they just decided that the internet was

00:04:54.100 broadcasting. They basically just made that up because the internet isn't broadcasting and gave

00:04:57.860 the CRTC control over it. So far it has excluded podcasts, but it'll get into that eventually just

00:05:04.980 because that's the way regulatory creep works. But that sort of set the sign for the stage for

00:05:12.660 managing how you consume content on the internet. It gets very complicated, so I won't go into all that.

00:05:19.380 And then the Online News Act was about setting up a regime that would fund, provide either through

00:05:28.980 the government's actions or through its own resources, funding for media. And that involved

00:05:35.860 media then being approved by a government appointed committee. And then the last one was Bill C-63,

00:05:43.220 which died on the order paper when Justin Trudeau left. And that was called the Online Harms Act. And

00:05:51.300 the most dangerous part about that was adding new powers or reinstating old powers to the Canadian Human

00:05:58.340 Rights Commission so that you and I could complain about each other anytime we wanted.

00:06:03.860 Well, yes, that was an incredible intrusion into free speech rights. The idea, as I recall the

00:06:13.460 legislation that was dropped, was that an individual who didn't like what I was saying, or didn't like

00:06:19.460 what you were saying, could say, you know, on the basis of what Mr. Menzies has said in the past,

00:06:26.740 I think he's likely to say something hateful in the future. Yes. And therefore, he should be,

00:06:32.980 what was supposed to happen after that? Well, I think you could go to court and get,

00:06:38.420 the police could go to court and get an order to restrict you to your premises.

00:06:46.180 Take away your computer. Prior to an event. I'm not sure about taking away the computer, but I'm

00:06:50.500 sure that probably denying access to the internet or some kind of... It went down that road. I don't

00:06:57.700 want to say that it did or that it didn't because I don't have the stuff in front of me, but...

00:07:01.460 So this is the world of minority report. We think you might be about to do something, 1.00

00:07:05.220 so we're therefore going to limit your freedom. You're under house arrest.

00:07:08.660 Well, yeah. No, it's exactly, it's one thing because our hate speech legislation came in to stop

00:07:14.100 people from standing up on a podium with a megaphone or any other electronic means of communication.

00:07:20.100 And saying, tonight, I think people should pick up baseball bats and attack Presbyterians or any 1.00

00:07:27.300 other specific group that they wanted to. That that was hate speech that was likely, that was intended 0.60

00:07:34.420 to provoke violence against an identifiable group. And we're a long way from that when we get into,

00:07:43.700 I think you might say something that might hurt somebody's feelings.

00:07:47.380 And therefore, we will make sure you don't have access to any public forum.

00:07:52.500 Well, now, for the sake of the anxious viewer, let's just re-emphasize that legislation did not go

00:07:57.860 through. It died on the order paper when the parliament was brought to go for the last election.

00:08:05.700 So that is not law today. But it's the same government, almost man for man, woman for woman.

00:08:12.420 You think this is going to come back, Peter?

00:08:13.780 Well, I think it'll come back, certainly in some shape or form, because some of the groups pushing

00:08:18.020 for it originally, the original online harm scrap, the

00:08:25.540 factors within the Jewish community were pushing for protection from things that could be said

00:08:33.700 against them.

00:08:34.740 It should have been a little harder, Peter, by the sound of things.

00:08:37.220 Well, and the Islamic factor within the Muslim community were pushing for it too, 0.99

00:08:42.020 because Islam was being criticized online and they were opposed to that. And I think as we've seen with

00:08:48.900 the government's decision to, even without consulting parliament, recognize the state of Palestine,

00:08:56.740 that is a significant voting bloc that's being catered to and shifting Western political dynamics in,

00:09:07.540 I want to say, unforeseen ways, but they were foreseen but ignored.

00:09:11.460 Peter Robinson Forseen but ignored.

00:09:13.460 How frequently is that the case?

00:09:15.940 So let's see.

00:09:16.500 Peter Robinson So what we have is a government that, unlike the one that preceded it,

00:09:21.220 which tended to just leave people to, you know, keep the law, but think what they want, read what

00:09:27.220 they want, talk what they want. You've got now a government, and we've had a government for 10 years,

00:09:33.940 that cares very deeply that you think the way they think you should think.

00:09:39.540 Peter Robinson Yes. The rest of you, I think,

00:09:42.420 Justin Trudeau expressed it very well when he referred to people with unacceptable views.

00:09:46.580 So I think that might include you from time to time too, but heaven forbid, but this whole idea

00:09:55.700 of getting into the approved and disapproved, the state, I mean, these are things that churches did,

00:10:01.540 right? That, you know, no, that is apostate, that is blasphemy, that is this, you know, those sorts

00:10:09.220 of controls. These were not things that liberal democracies engaged in, and yet they just keep going

00:10:15.700 that way. And I, it's, it's actually very frightening to see, because you realize how authoritarianism

00:10:23.780 grows, right? When people who seem like nice people, who say they're doing this to keep us safe,

00:10:29.700 it's always about safety, right? It's always about your safety, your emotional safety. And one thing

00:10:34.740 about physical safety, that's an entirely different thing, but if it's about your emotional safety,

00:10:39.540 so you might say something that just, you know, triggers me or makes me go, oh my God, oh my God,

00:10:45.860 I mean, I don't, I don't feel safe, you know, in this. And that's what happened with the, with the

00:10:50.740 evangelical singer last week. People were saying, well, I don't know that people going to his concert,

00:10:56.340 I know that what sort of people would be going to his concert that could be walking by my house,

00:11:00.500 I don't feel safe. And people react to that rather than saying, you know, pull yourself together,

00:11:06.500 right? Do you, you know, find counseling, you know, see a priest do something?

00:11:12.820 Well, actually, I wanted to, I wanted to ask you, we're talking about showing foot,

00:11:18.180 or however you, however you pronounce that German name carefully, I think, yes,

00:11:24.180 under your breath, behind your hands. You know, I'd never heard of this guy. Oh,

00:11:28.820 until about 10 days ago. Um, um, the, the knock on him is apparently that, um, he has a suite of

00:11:38.500 opinions that 20 years ago would have been pretty unremarkable. Like I don't, he's not a fan of gay

00:11:45.220 marriage. He thinks the whole LBGT thing is, uh, is immoral. Um, he is, uh, avowedly, openly Christian,

00:11:55.940 wants to worship God with raised hands and, and so forth, which is, you know, some people,

00:12:01.140 that's how some people do worship and they've been free to do that for a couple thousand years.

00:12:05.620 Yes. Uh, he has also spoken up for, for, uh, Donald Trump in, in the United States,

00:12:13.460 which is not surprising that there is a certain, um, uh, there's certainly a, quite a, uh, faction

00:12:20.580 among Trump's followers who are, would identify as born again Christians and he would, he sings

00:12:27.300 their music. Yep. So yes, he's a, he's a Trumper. And that I think was what got him kicked off a 0.98

00:12:36.260 Parks Canada site in New Brunswick, which is where this particular line of news began. And the reason

00:12:43.220 they kicked him off was that it didn't align with Parks Canada values. Yes. Which were to promote

00:12:51.540 inclusion and safe spaces. Right. Now, when a couple of questions fall out of that, first of all,

00:12:58.740 when did government agencies start having values that, uh, you know, like take the, collect the money

00:13:06.100 as you go into the park and stick it in the box. Yes. And feed your grass cut. Yes. Those are values.

00:13:12.820 And don't litter. That, that, that should be about the end of it. But that is a perfect example of how

00:13:18.100 something that sounds harmless, right. Because it's going to be inclusive. We have, we have,

00:13:23.140 this is what we value. Now you can value that within your employment ecosystem. You can, you can do,

00:13:28.900 you can do that if you want, but you don't invent values like that, that, that could be violated

00:13:35.140 peacefully by any citizen or any visitor or any, or any visitor. They do. And, and, and that's the

00:13:42.100 sort of, you know, if you point to something like that, when it first occurs, people will say,

00:13:47.860 well, that's a little kooky. Aren't you being a little paranoid? You know, there's a, but there's a

00:13:52.580 long bit of evidence you can go back and say, well, this is what it leads to, because what appears to

00:13:58.260 be harmless has suddenly been used. It's been weaponized. Values have been weaponized to use.

00:14:05.220 Some people will agree with, obviously, following social media, lots of people agreed with it. There

00:14:10.820 were, there was a, a rush of people agreeing with it. Many of us disagreed with it because

00:14:17.460 we are hung up on this old fashioned idea that you have, you are going to be offended in life,

00:14:24.020 right? There were, as mom used to say, sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never

00:14:28.980 hurt you, the sort of thing that you got to suck it up buttercup and, and get through life. And that's,

00:14:33.780 that is true tolerance is, I'm, I'm sure this singer and I could sit down and talk for quite a while.

00:14:43.060 And I would leave in disagreement with him, or there could be others, others that, that do. But he has a

00:14:50.980 right to hold views that some people find offensive, provided he's not calling for harm to be done to

00:14:59.220 anybody. And there, but the, this liberal definition seems to be that holding the view is itself harmful,

00:15:07.940 right? Just if you hold a view that is unfashionable or old fashioned or, or not liberal,

00:15:14.740 or not within their, their very narrow, I think that's called the Overton window of acceptable views.

00:15:23.300 And that's what you see the CBC generally present like, and, and that window is getting narrower and

00:15:28.980 narrower and narrower. So people who hold views that even five, six, 10 years ago were perfectly mainstream

00:15:37.860 are now out of the mainstream, right? And that applies social pressure and eventually

00:15:43.860 legislative and regulatory pressure on your behavior.

00:15:46.660 Yeah. So this is starting to sound a lot like the kind of society that the Soviet Union

00:15:55.460 established for its own citizens back in, well, I guess they got 1917, but they got control around by 1921.

00:16:03.460 And that's what they started doing. And you see that with every authoritarian regime that we've seen

00:16:08.820 in the last hundred years. And probably if you were a historian and you wanted to go further back, you

00:16:13.460 would see it with the French revolution and those, and the English revolution, the, you know, the round

00:16:19.380 heads that were not particularly tolerant of dissenting religious views. But this is what we're talking

00:16:24.020 about is a, is a secular religion that this government holds to and is trying to force fit upon an entire

00:16:33.460 country.

00:16:33.780 Pretty much. I mean, I used to think it was just used for their political opponents, right? The,

00:16:38.180 the old practice of demonizing your political opponents. So which, which both parties try to,

00:16:43.140 have always historically tried to use, but it's spilled out of parliament and into the streets so that

00:16:48.740 we are now pointing at each other or given the power to, you mentioned the opponents. I mean,

00:16:53.060 as you know, I've, I worked for Harper for six years. Well, I don't recall us in that period of

00:16:59.300 time, having these kinds of mind control programs. In fact, they would have been anathema to, to Mr.

00:17:05.540 Harper, but you know, there, there, there wasn't even anything being quietly done by the sneaky operatives.

00:17:11.940 What's the difference between the conservative way of thinking and the liberal way of thinking?

00:17:17.940 Well, I think the difference, I mean, I'll use one case to sort of illustrate a point. There was a,

00:17:24.340 the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. This was when I was at the CRTC, which is the sort of proxy for

00:17:30.980 the CRTC content control, you know, like swear words and, and that sort of stuff that you're not supposed to

00:17:38.500 say. And they banned the, uh, based on the complaint of one woman in Newfoundland, the, uh, dire straight

00:17:47.140 song money for nothing, um, was banned because it uses a, an old fashioned reference to gay men. That,

00:17:58.500 was the same word English, the English used to use to refer to a cigarette. Um, and this was, this caused

00:18:06.260 this woman offense. So the playing of that song was banned. Um, so what happened in that case was,

00:18:15.860 uh, with some encouragement, the CRTC suggested that the Broadcast Standards Council review its decision,

00:18:26.500 that this was sort of an extreme, an extreme move to do that. Now, I think dire straights themselves

00:18:33.700 re-recorded the song to use a different word or something like that. But, but that was,

00:18:38.580 that to me illustrated the instincts of that government, which was like, whoa, whoa, whoa,

00:18:42.740 whoa, whoa, whoa. Right. Like, you know, sure people shouldn't gratuitously offend each other. Like we,

00:18:48.820 I think everybody agrees with that, that you shouldn't, but you are free to do it.

00:18:53.620 Good. Um, the state will not intervene and, and, uh, and ban you or ban your music or, or that sort

00:19:01.940 of stuff. And that's, like I said, it is entirely different. Whereas the liberals assume that state

00:19:06.420 intervention is always useful. I think, I think that's my take on it anyway. There may be occasions

00:19:11.620 when they don't, but they think that if they do it, it must be good. Um, and it doesn't really matter how

00:19:18.020 extreme it is because, well, we wouldn't do anything extreme, would we? We're liberals.

00:19:23.380 We don't do that, but they're, they do it more and more and more.

00:19:26.820 So, I mean, it's easy for you and I with our backgrounds and our experience in the industry

00:19:32.500 to sit here and damn the darkness, but for, from the perspective of the viewer, the person in the,

00:19:39.700 in the, in the living room, the person on the street, how do you push back against this? I mean, 0.95

00:19:45.220 do you, do you just make yourself a martyr and by martyring yourself illustrate the,

00:19:51.620 you know, the, the darkness that is descended upon us, or is there a better way of doing it?

00:19:55.700 Well, it's, it's, it's really challenging. I guess one of the things you can do is retire and just

00:20:00.180 become a, and, and then, and then you're free to say whatever you want, but there's social.

00:20:04.500 Well, actually you're not.

00:20:05.940 Well, no, I'm not, but I'm more free than I am within the sort of social con.

00:20:10.820 You don't have an employer to cut you off in the past, but if, if I were to just pull you out a

00:20:16.500 little more, Peter, and you say what you really think, we could probably get a humanized

00:20:21.620 I'm just saying it. But the, but, but, but, you know, there's, there's corporate pressure because

00:20:27.540 a lot of companies have this sort of stuff and people will turn somebody in.

00:20:31.300 Yes.

00:20:31.780 Right. People will, will say, I mean, you, you, you, people get pushed out, the HR departments

00:20:37.300 have also moved into the realm of values and, and feelings, not actions.

00:20:42.180 Yeah. You want the foreman's job. You know how to get it.

00:20:44.420 Yes. Yes. And then there's social pressures. Like you go to parties and barbecues and that

00:20:50.020 sort of stuff. And you look around and, and you say something and then you don't get invited to

00:20:55.700 any more parties. And this, this sort of casual social pressure is, I mean, I'm pretty convinced

00:21:00.740 that most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about some of these big questions and,

00:21:04.980 and big policies, particularly socially. They just kind of look around and see what the popular

00:21:11.380 view is and quietly adopt that. Right.

00:21:15.620 Because they want to, because we're human beings and we want to be accepted socially and,

00:21:20.340 and have status within, uh, at least our peer groups. Now there's other types of peer groups,

00:21:26.500 like the Western standard peer group, where you could say something like, I don't know,

00:21:31.940 I don't think all regulation is bad and I might not get invited to a party. Right. If depending

00:21:38.900 how many libertarians are around me. Right. No, but you might get taken down to the Fox and have

00:21:43.380 things explained to you. That's a, which is Art's more gentle way of dealing with, uh, dealing with

00:21:48.340 social deviation. No, but I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a problem. All right. For, for people

00:21:56.420 who, uh, and I mean, I thought you were going to say something like we, you develop communities that are

00:22:02.500 safe. You know, you find the people who agree with you and you know, you, you just look after each

00:22:09.060 other. Well, you said that much better than I do. Starting with social deviation. Yeah. Um, look,

00:22:15.540 we're almost out of time here, Peter. I hate to say it, but, uh, there's one thing that, that, uh, you,

00:22:21.300 you wrote just a couple of days ago that really intrigued me. And you, you've been, uh, a frequent

00:22:27.140 critic of the federal program that permits, uh, that, that gives money to newspapers to keep them

00:22:35.780 from going bust. Yeah. And we've shared that. We don't take that. Yeah. That's something to hear

00:22:40.020 the Western standard, um, uh, to our cost, I might add. However, you then came out and said, never mind

00:22:47.540 all that. There's going to be AI that takes down the newspapers. It could be, uh, how does that work?

00:22:53.860 Well, AI scrapes information from the internet, right? So it, it needs dependable information.

00:23:00.180 So on the one hand, it could actually rescue newspapers, but if you can get an appropriate

00:23:06.740 commercial agreement between say, you know, if AI wants to use Western standards content,

00:23:13.060 that's, that's to my, in my mind, that doesn't count as fair use under the copyright act because

00:23:18.820 you're using it to build a, a global commercial, commercial platform. So Western standard would have

00:23:25.780 to be compensated in, in, in that example. That's if they do that, right. Or if they are encouraged to

00:23:32.820 it, or if they are legislated to do it, which is sort of one thing, that's what the online harms act

00:23:37.460 missed. It went with links when, when people could see AI coming on the other hand, um, if you are a

00:23:44.820 newspaper reporter or a reporter of any kind, a platform reporter, news reporter, and all you do

00:23:50.900 is rewrite press releases and maybe throw in a quote, you're cooked because AI can do that. You

00:23:57.060 can just, and, and for smaller publishers that can actually be quite useful, right? You can just feed

00:24:04.100 the news releases into your system and you'll get a quick rewrite of it. You don't have to hire that

00:24:09.460 reports, have your reporter spending time doing that. You can actually then take your journalism

00:24:14.420 resources and apply them to getting what we used to call enterprise news, which is news you find

00:24:21.620 through your own digging and that sort of stuff, which is exclusive to you. So it, it could be a

00:24:26.980 savior, but it could just kill the whole thing. Um, by, because the big impact it's had so far as

00:24:36.020 people don't go to links anymore, the way they used to, right? Already there's like a 20% decline

00:24:42.660 and people going to links and platforms need people to go to links to see the advertising,

00:24:49.540 to, to buy subscriptions. That's their source of revenue is, is, is through links. And if that

00:24:55.060 continues to decline, then media will be in real trouble unless their salvation could also be

00:25:03.220 people subscribing. So I would encourage people watching this to subscribe to Westerns.

00:25:10.740 It's less than going to the movies for a month of, uh, absolutely of, uh, of hot news and you might

00:25:16.100 save democracy while you're doing it. Well, let's do it then. Yeah. Get your subscriptions while they're

00:25:22.340 hot. Uh, Peter, it's great to see you again. It was a great pleasure tonight. We need, we need to do more

00:25:29.220 of this, but, uh, thanks to Peter Menzies, former Calgary Herald publisher, former CRTC commissioner,

00:25:35.780 and friend of the Western standard. And, uh, just take a look in the background and you see report,

00:25:41.300 real reporters, not artificial intelligence, real reporters doing news for the Western standard.

00:25:47.940 Ladies and gentlemen, good night for the Western standard. I'm Nigel Hannaford.

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HANNAFORD： Ottawa's eternal quest to shape what Canadians say and think

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