Mark Milkey is a frequent contributor to the pages of the Western Standard, and he last year was the year before wrote a book on why Canada should be cherished, not cancelled. This week, he joins me to talk about a new story about a group that calls itself the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, and they alleged that some Catholic charities are actually hate groups.
00:00:00.000good evening western standard viewers and welcome to the hannaford show with me this week is dr
00:00:22.720mark milkey founder and president of the aristotle foundation he is a frequent contributor to the
00:00:29.440pages of the western standard and he last year was the year before wrote a book on uh why canada
00:00:37.360should be cherished not cancelled how's the book doing mark the 1867 project myself and 19 other
00:00:44.480authors it's doing well it sold 11 000 copies in canada which is pretty amazing for a book on
00:00:50.720history and a little bit about the existing problems we have in canada as well so no the
00:00:56.000the 1867 project has done very, very well and still a bestseller.
00:01:00.080So that's the best you can hope for in Canada, and it's done well.
00:01:05.820Mark, it's because of your particular focus on culture and Canadianism
00:01:11.640that I wanted you to come on and talk about a new story that we had in the last week.
00:01:17.020Our own Jen Hodgson wrote this piece up,
00:01:19.960but it was about a group that calls itself the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.
00:01:24.900and they made news because they alleged that some Catholic charities,
00:01:34.120pro-life charities, were actually hate groups.
00:01:38.020And they named a number of other organizations that they didn't approve of.
00:01:42.560It seems like a really strange organization, but they get money from the federal government.
00:01:49.800Can you just, who are we dealing with here?
00:01:51.860How much money do they get, and how can they contort things to make a Catholic charity into a hate group?
00:02:00.520Well, they've been in the news before.
00:02:02.820Several years back, I think they got a grant for, I think it was $150,000 or $200,000,
00:02:08.040to produce a pamphlet for schools that basically, or at least part of it,
00:02:11.680said the red enzyme, the old Canadian flag pre-1965,
00:02:15.860was also potentially a hate symbol or a symbol of white nationalism,
00:02:21.220or what else did they say? So, you know, so they've been in the news before for that sort of
00:02:27.660thing. As far as I can tell, I mean, they're a government funded lobby group, which, you know,
00:02:31.740has, that's exploded across the country in the last several decades, the idea of government
00:02:36.660funding for advocacy groups. And so, but this latest pamphlet they put out was really a 40 page
00:02:43.640rant, accusing all sorts of groups of potentially being involved in hate. Weirdly enough, I mean,
00:02:51.940they mentioned anti-Semitism, for example, but don't talk about the potential for, say,
00:02:57.200I don't know, Hamas-sympathetic protesters to be a hate group. So this Canadian Anti-Hate Network,
00:03:05.620and you've got to love the name, I think are kind of on an ideological bender, if I can put it that
00:03:11.980way. They're government funded. And they seem to think there's hate under every bed or around
00:03:18.700every tree. But that's in part what's being funded by governments these days, this notion that we're
00:03:24.020this deeply racist systemic society as if Canada in 2024 was no different than, I don't know,
00:03:29.780Alabama in 1924. Well, why would the federal government actually want to fund a group like
00:03:37.000that? I mean, there's one thing if you're like, we think of anti-hate, we think of neo-Nazis and
00:03:41.640skinheads and you know people who we really don't want to have dinner with and yet they're talking
00:03:48.300I know this group has once condemned parents who were running for school board because they didn't
00:03:54.540like the way that trans sexualized education was being introduced into the curriculum now well
00:04:02.940that was hate so now pro-life is hate like why would the government want to support that I can
00:04:10.320see the you know the neo-nazi thing but i can't see why they would approve grants to people who
00:04:17.040say the perfectly nice ordinary folks who are trying to do good are actually hate merchants
00:04:21.120well i guess if if your view of the world is again that the main issue these days is racism
00:04:27.560and not say you know high home prices or a lack of education for certain cohorts in society right
00:04:34.380where their their situation would improve if they had a trade or university degree um or that you
00:04:40.240Everything, every difference in outcome that you see, you know, between X cohort and Y cohort must be due to hate or must be due to racism.
00:04:46.860If that's your view, then I guess you fund stuff that, you know, dovetails with that kind of view.
00:04:53.160And I think that's what the federal government, a lot in the federal government, people in the federal government, you know, politically and perhaps in the bureaucracy believe is any difference, for example, between indigenous Canadians and other Canadians in terms of average incomes must be due to hate.
00:05:09.960or systemic discrimination or this sort of thing. Well, that's actually not really that defensible.
00:05:15.500What you find, for example, is that East Asian Canadians are at the top of the income heat.
00:05:19.760Guys with, you know, palettes like you and me are in the middle. And Indigenous Canadians and Black
00:05:24.160Canadians are at the bottom. But in part, that's explained by education levels. It's explained in0.90
00:05:28.820part by how long a cohort, statistical cohort has been in the country on average, you know,
00:05:34.400or the majority of its members have been, things like that, or how far an Indigenous Canadian is
00:05:39.220from opportunity in education. If you're in the middle of a reserve in northern Manitoba,
00:05:43.860chances are your economic opportunities are less, which in part explains your lower
00:05:48.340income on average. These things don't seem to matter though to the current federal government
00:05:53.060or others across the country in universities who also promote this view, which is very monocausal
00:05:58.020that racism explains all differences in outcomes. Really, nothing to do with geography, education,
00:06:04.020time in the country, whether you know French or English, this sort of thing. But that's the view
00:06:08.820the federal government and they fund a lot in universities the shirt grants advocacy groups
00:06:14.980like these to tell canadians they're racist and that there's you know what an explosion of
00:06:19.780potentially people with you know uh funny looking mustaches uh wearing brown shirts just around the
00:06:25.460corner again as if this was 1937. that's the problem is that there's there is this belief
00:06:31.540in some quarters but that's the main threat facing canada today it's ridiculous and it doesn't
00:06:36.580actually deal with yeah what you're describing sounds very much like critical theory as
00:06:42.420espoused by paulo freire and some of the other philosophers of that genre from the frankfurt
00:06:48.820school of the 1930s you're what what you're saying is that this has infected the federal government
00:06:56.980in a very big way yes and you see it in their funding i mean we've looked at some of the again
00:07:02.020the grants to the Social Humanities and Research Council known as SHIRC. We've looked at some of
00:07:06.560the funding for advocacy groups like this self-proclaimed anti-hate network, which is
00:07:10.960ridiculous when you use things like anti-hate or anti-racism. If you're going to use terms like
00:07:16.240that, not you, Nigel, but groups like this, then you better be Martin Luther King because he was
00:07:21.660engaged in anti-hate and anti-racism, the actual kind, not the fake kind, again, that sees a threat
00:07:28.720around every tree or blames every difference in outcomes on racism. No, but you're right. Part of
00:07:34.640this originates with this notion that's been prevalent for some time in the universities,
00:07:40.560and you're right, came from Marxists in the Frankfurt School and others, is that there's no
00:07:45.660physical or other structural realities out there that everything is imposed. In other words,
00:07:51.000you can create your own reality, just like the Marxists used to think with economies.
00:07:54.260We'll just make everyone happy, fat, and free from the top down.
00:08:32.880But governments these days, you know, of various political stripes, not just the current one federally, seem to think they can solve stuff through taking tax dollars, putting them in a room with ostensibly smart people or well-intentioned people who don't like hate like most people do or something.
00:08:48.520and that'll solve a problem it won't it actually just ramps up perhaps misconceptions how many
00:08:54.120people are involved in this anti-hate network not sure to be honest so again i briefed their
00:09:00.84040-page document which i think was actually taken from an american or amended uh some some american
00:09:07.320rant and it's literally it's from this network it's a 40-page document that sees threats everywhere
00:09:13.240as defined by extreme hate, you know, however you define that. I mean, I think it's a bit like the
00:09:21.540former Supreme Court justice. You kind of, you know, like the definition of pornography might
00:09:26.120be hard to define, but you kind of know it when you see it. You know when someone's being a jerk
00:09:29.700or being hateful. But to suppose, which is the basis for the $600,000 grant, your tax dollars
00:09:36.620and mine and everyone else's, to fund a rant against groups they don't like and assume that
00:09:42.280everyone's full of hate. Look, I mean, I think the problem there, again, is they're kind of,
00:09:48.760I think, ignoring some other realities that are around the corner today in an obvious view.
00:09:53.360When you see people that are arguably anti-Semitic, or at least the very least anti-Israel,
00:10:00.560and possibly pro-Hamas, marching on our streets in the past year since October the 7th,
00:10:05.400I think that's a greater problem than some guy that might admire in the back of his mind Adolf
00:10:11.900Hitler. That's a problem too, but I actually don't think that's a great threat in Canada0.72
00:10:15.960these days. I think that was dealt with 80 years ago, and you'd have to be a lunatic
00:10:20.820to think Nazism and the notion of race purity is a good idea. I'm sure there's a few people0.55
00:10:25.920like that around, but I don't think they're quite equal to some of the anti-Semitism we've
00:10:30.040been seeing spilling out in the streets, and which this particular group has been pretty
00:11:04.900And now you have, within that bureaucracy, you have this group of people who will call them woke for want of a better, more accessible term.
00:11:16.180But really, it's all deeply embedded in this critical theory.
00:11:20.240And it's like they want there to be hate so that they can react to it.
00:11:27.040And I would propose, you may disagree, but what they do is they find somebody to tell them that there is hate, they react to the hate with new rules, regulations, possibly even restrictions on the use of the Internet by ordinary people, as we have seen under the Online Harms Act, just passed.
00:12:01.940Look, I think people by nature are control freaks, right?
00:12:04.920Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts, absolutely, as Lord Acton said.
00:12:08.680So there's always a temptation when you're in government or in a position of power
00:12:12.760or you've got a budget in a ministry to fund stuff you think should be funded.
00:12:18.540But there was a political scientist, I think it was Leslie Powell, about 20 or 25 years ago,
00:12:22.740and I forget the name of the book, but his basic thesis was, as compared to the past in a very kind
00:12:27.380of classic liberal society, where the idea was government should be arbiters, but not be involved
00:12:33.120in the ring. They should be the judges. They should be of, you know, what's happening in the
00:12:38.460boxing ring, so to speak, but they shouldn't be in the boxing ring, you know, funding one box or
00:12:44.640another, or in this case, in other words, one citizen group or advocacy group or think tank
00:12:49.060over another right they should enforce the rule of law they should you know make sure that people
00:12:54.420have access to information that sort of thing but they shouldn't be taking sides as a government as
00:12:59.060an institution funding sides in a debate and it doesn't matter what the debate is let people think
00:13:03.700it out and argue it out but once you have government governments massively funding um one
00:13:09.940one side you know in a five-sided argument um you know then that's what people start to think
00:13:15.220is the main issue and these days it apparently is this notion that again we're institutionally
00:13:19.300systemically racist as if nothing has changed in a century as if in fact that's the main causal
00:13:24.900explanation for a lot of outcomes that you see as i mentioned a moment ago no if you're
00:13:29.060indigenous canadian on average your income is lower except if you do an apples to apples comparison
00:13:34.340where you know if you're between 25 and 34 have a university degree work full year full time guess
00:13:39.700what your income is exactly the same as every other canadian who has that sort of makeup so um
00:13:46.340but you're dealing with people that again have this it's almost a conspiratorial belief about
00:13:51.380racism that again it's reared its ugly head in a way that ignores the obvious it has in some quarters
00:13:57.860if you're trained in gaza all of your life the jews are a problem and you show up in montreal
00:14:02.740guess what that's what you're seeing expressed in montreal these days and in some other cities0.98
00:14:06.900So maybe, maybe if you're going to analyze a problem like racism or modern versions of
00:14:12.180antisemitism or hate, maybe look at that. But as a general principle, I don't think
00:14:17.540government should be certainly funding what I think is a faulty flawed analysis of current
00:14:23.780problems in our society. I think civil society organizations should be debating that out,
00:14:28.340as should universities and academics, who are also funded to a great degree to tell us we're all
00:14:32.580racists you know the mark the last time i looked on the heritage canada website i think there were
00:14:38.900quite a few of these groups they're all getting um i think this one's probably getting one of the
00:14:43.860larger grants but you know 200 000 here 150 000 there tell us how bad things are and then of
00:14:51.140course this validates government action this actually i want to take you mark to another
00:14:56.820thing that's been in the news recently and that was the surprising choice well the man by the name
00:15:02.820of tatani to lead the human rights commission the canadian human rights commission of course
00:15:08.660arbitrates uh places where people think they've been discriminated against on i don't know how
00:15:14.580many grounds of discrimination there are now there's more every year certainly at any rate
00:15:19.220this gentleman had connected himself with some anti-semitic propaganda anti-semitic groups
00:15:31.860how does somebody who actually holds that point of view come to be chosen to arbitrate human rights
00:15:40.420disputes in canada what went wrong there well i mean i've read the same headline intentional
00:15:45.860Well, yeah, as far as you have. And, you know, it appears that they didn't know he had a second name, maybe his real name, but certainly had an alternate name. And, you know, didn't disclose that at the time he was being interviewed or, you know, vetted for the job. And so that was part of the problem. And again, if you come from the belief, as some do these days, that you can be categorized or a victim as a victim or, you know, as an oppressor by your skin color, ethnicity, heritage, this sort of thing.
00:16:45.860And I suppose the only argument for them is that, you know, they say, you know, people who are actually discriminated against, you know, in the workplace or something, expensive, you know, lawyer fees.
00:16:56.040But I'm not sure that they should exist, frankly, because I think, again, they promote the notion, you know, that the main problem is discrimination these days, as opposed to, say, lack of opportunity or affordable housing, you know, or brain drain to the rest of the world, which we're experiencing,
00:17:13.000or the deep problem of beliefs that are anti-Semitic, you know, among some.
00:17:19.180So I'm not sure that these human rights commissions or human rights tribunals are all that useful.
00:17:24.600They're costly. They become controversial.
00:17:27.100This particular fellow, you know, appeared to have snuck in through deceit.
00:23:53.240Look, I like to be an optimist, nothing goes on forever.
00:23:56.340And I think fundamentally we've got two problems these days.
00:23:59.460is anti-reality in a number of areas and the second is a not terribly nuanced view of history
00:24:05.580and the latter has been used to beat up the present and there's lots of anti-reality thinking
00:24:11.680these days and so I think part of the challenge is to say okay and this is why I don't care about
00:24:18.080politics or in that sense you know if people have bad ideas or anti-reality ideas then eventually
00:24:25.180it's like poisoning the lake above a dam you know um you know you get yellow down in the fields
00:24:30.940below you don't get you don't get growth you don't get green trees you don't get fields and farms
00:24:35.420so we've got to be careful what we're putting in the the lake up above the dam and the education
00:24:39.900system universities um you know when you're trying to solve a problem you know find out what the core
00:24:45.500problem is and and debate that you know whether whether people are in touch with reality but
00:24:49.740there's a lot of anti-reality thinking out there these days and i think that's part of the challenge
00:24:53.740And, you know, it comes with an internet, you know, and a 24-7 news cycle and the rest of it.
00:24:58.660People don't know who to believe or who to trust.
00:25:01.060I think that's part of the challenge, is we live in an anti-reality age and also one that thinks all their problems are due to something that happened 150 years ago in terms of their historical perspective.
00:25:11.000I think those are, again, of the two things we try and address at the Aerosol Foundation, informed our nuanced history and promote that.
00:25:17.780and critical thinking, which is actual critical thinking,
00:25:21.620not going along with the herd when we think the herd is wrong.
00:25:25.300Dr. Mark Milkey, you do great work down there at the Aristotle Foundation.
00:25:30.760Thank you very much for coming on the program today
00:25:33.140and explaining how the government sometimes tries to undo the work you're doing.