Western Standard - August 27, 2024


How the Government of Canada uses your money to tell you you're a racist


Episode Stats

Length

26 minutes

Words per Minute

174.8181

Word Count

4,661

Sentence Count

143

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary

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

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.

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 good evening western standard viewers and welcome to the hannaford show with me this week is dr
00:00:22.720 mark milkey founder and president of the aristotle foundation he is a frequent contributor to the
00:00:29.440 pages of the western standard and he last year was the year before wrote a book on uh why canada
00:00:37.360 should be cherished not cancelled how's the book doing mark the 1867 project myself and 19 other
00:00:44.480 authors it's doing well it sold 11 000 copies in canada which is pretty amazing for a book on
00:00:50.720 history and a little bit about the existing problems we have in canada as well so no the
00:00:56.000 the 1867 project has done very, very well and still a bestseller.
00:01:00.080 So that's the best you can hope for in Canada, and it's done well.
00:01:05.820 Mark, it's because of your particular focus on culture and Canadianism
00:01:11.640 that I wanted you to come on and talk about a new story that we had in the last week.
00:01:17.020 Our own Jen Hodgson wrote this piece up,
00:01:19.960 but it was about a group that calls itself the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.
00:01:24.900 and they made news because they alleged that some Catholic charities,
00:01:34.120 pro-life charities, were actually hate groups.
00:01:38.020 And they named a number of other organizations that they didn't approve of.
00:01:42.560 It seems like a really strange organization, but they get money from the federal government.
00:01:49.800 Can you just, who are we dealing with here?
00:01:51.860 How much money do they get, and how can they contort things to make a Catholic charity into a hate group?
00:02:00.520 Well, they've been in the news before.
00:02:02.820 Several years back, I think they got a grant for, I think it was $150,000 or $200,000,
00:02:08.040 to produce a pamphlet for schools that basically, or at least part of it,
00:02:11.680 said the red enzyme, the old Canadian flag pre-1965,
00:02:15.860 was also potentially a hate symbol or a symbol of white nationalism,
00:02:21.220 or what else did they say? So, you know, so they've been in the news before for that sort of
00:02:27.660 thing. As far as I can tell, I mean, they're a government funded lobby group, which, you know,
00:02:31.740 has, that's exploded across the country in the last several decades, the idea of government
00:02:36.660 funding for advocacy groups. And so, but this latest pamphlet they put out was really a 40 page
00:02:43.640 rant, accusing all sorts of groups of potentially being involved in hate. Weirdly enough, I mean,
00:02:51.940 they mentioned anti-Semitism, for example, but don't talk about the potential for, say,
00:02:57.200 I don't know, Hamas-sympathetic protesters to be a hate group. So this Canadian Anti-Hate Network,
00:03:05.620 and you've got to love the name, I think are kind of on an ideological bender, if I can put it that
00:03:11.980 way. They're government funded. And they seem to think there's hate under every bed or around
00:03:18.700 every tree. But that's in part what's being funded by governments these days, this notion that we're
00:03:24.020 this deeply racist systemic society as if Canada in 2024 was no different than, I don't know,
00:03:29.780 Alabama in 1924. Well, why would the federal government actually want to fund a group like
00:03:37.000 that? I mean, there's one thing if you're like, we think of anti-hate, we think of neo-Nazis and
00:03:41.640 skinheads and you know people who we really don't want to have dinner with and yet they're talking
00:03:48.300 I know this group has once condemned parents who were running for school board because they didn't
00:03:54.540 like the way that trans sexualized education was being introduced into the curriculum now well
00:04:02.940 that was hate so now pro-life is hate like why would the government want to support that I can
00:04:10.320 see the you know the neo-nazi thing but i can't see why they would approve grants to people who
00:04:17.040 say the perfectly nice ordinary folks who are trying to do good are actually hate merchants
00:04:21.120 well i guess if if your view of the world is again that the main issue these days is racism
00:04:27.560 and not say you know high home prices or a lack of education for certain cohorts in society right
00:04:34.380 where their their situation would improve if they had a trade or university degree um or that you
00:04:40.240 Everything, 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.
00:04:46.860 If that's your view, then I guess you fund stuff that, you know, dovetails with that kind of view.
00:04:53.160 And 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.
00:05:09.960 or systemic discrimination or this sort of thing. Well, that's actually not really that defensible.
00:05:15.500 What you find, for example, is that East Asian Canadians are at the top of the income heat.
00:05:19.760 Guys with, you know, palettes like you and me are in the middle. And Indigenous Canadians and Black
00:05:24.160 Canadians are at the bottom. But in part, that's explained by education levels. It's explained in 0.90
00:05:28.820 part by how long a cohort, statistical cohort has been in the country on average, you know,
00:05:34.400 or the majority of its members have been, things like that, or how far an Indigenous Canadian is
00:05:39.220 from opportunity in education. If you're in the middle of a reserve in northern Manitoba,
00:05:43.860 chances are your economic opportunities are less, which in part explains your lower
00:05:48.340 income on average. These things don't seem to matter though to the current federal government
00:05:53.060 or others across the country in universities who also promote this view, which is very monocausal
00:05:58.020 that racism explains all differences in outcomes. Really, nothing to do with geography, education,
00:06:04.020 time in the country, whether you know French or English, this sort of thing. But that's the view
00:06:08.820 the federal government and they fund a lot in universities the shirt grants advocacy groups
00:06:14.980 like these to tell canadians they're racist and that there's you know what an explosion of
00:06:19.780 potentially people with you know uh funny looking mustaches uh wearing brown shirts just around the
00:06:25.460 corner again as if this was 1937. that's the problem is that there's there is this belief
00:06:31.540 in some quarters but that's the main threat facing canada today it's ridiculous and it doesn't
00:06:36.580 actually deal with yeah what you're describing sounds very much like critical theory as
00:06:42.420 espoused by paulo freire and some of the other philosophers of that genre from the frankfurt
00:06:48.820 school of the 1930s you're what what you're saying is that this has infected the federal government
00:06:56.980 in a very big way yes and you see it in their funding i mean we've looked at some of the again
00:07:02.020 the grants to the Social Humanities and Research Council known as SHIRC. We've looked at some of
00:07:06.560 the funding for advocacy groups like this self-proclaimed anti-hate network, which is
00:07:10.960 ridiculous when you use things like anti-hate or anti-racism. If you're going to use terms like
00:07:16.240 that, not you, Nigel, but groups like this, then you better be Martin Luther King because he was
00:07:21.660 engaged in anti-hate and anti-racism, the actual kind, not the fake kind, again, that sees a threat
00:07:28.720 around every tree or blames every difference in outcomes on racism. No, but you're right. Part of
00:07:34.640 this originates with this notion that's been prevalent for some time in the universities,
00:07:40.560 and you're right, came from Marxists in the Frankfurt School and others, is that there's no
00:07:45.660 physical or other structural realities out there that everything is imposed. In other words,
00:07:51.000 you can create your own reality, just like the Marxists used to think with economies.
00:07:54.260 We'll just make everyone happy, fat, and free from the top down.
00:07:58.400 No, that's anti-reality.
00:08:00.520 And in our century, we have other anti-reality people, again, who ignore data, ignore statistics,
00:08:05.440 ignore nuanced explanations.
00:08:08.040 And in this case, I guess they go after groups that they just disagree with, whether it's
00:08:12.160 a, in this case, it's a pro-life group, but it could be a different government funding
00:08:16.020 attacks on pro-choice groups.
00:08:19.360 So, you know, what's distressing is that government shouldn't be funding any groups.
00:08:23.940 Let people, you know, argue it out in the public square.
00:08:26.880 Don't get involved in funding one side or the other.
00:08:31.000 Fund good data and leave it at that.
00:08:32.880 But 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.
00:08:48.520 and that'll solve a problem it won't it actually just ramps up perhaps misconceptions how many
00:08:54.120 people are involved in this anti-hate network not sure to be honest so again i briefed their
00:09:00.840 40-page document which i think was actually taken from an american or amended uh some some american
00:09:07.320 rant and it's literally it's from this network it's a 40-page document that sees threats everywhere
00:09:13.240 as defined by extreme hate, you know, however you define that. I mean, I think it's a bit like the
00:09:21.540 former Supreme Court justice. You kind of, you know, like the definition of pornography might
00:09:26.120 be hard to define, but you kind of know it when you see it. You know when someone's being a jerk
00:09:29.700 or being hateful. But to suppose, which is the basis for the $600,000 grant, your tax dollars
00:09:36.620 and mine and everyone else's, to fund a rant against groups they don't like and assume that
00:09:42.280 everyone's full of hate. Look, I mean, I think the problem there, again, is they're kind of,
00:09:48.760 I think, ignoring some other realities that are around the corner today in an obvious view.
00:09:53.360 When you see people that are arguably anti-Semitic, or at least the very least anti-Israel,
00:10:00.560 and possibly pro-Hamas, marching on our streets in the past year since October the 7th,
00:10:05.400 I think that's a greater problem than some guy that might admire in the back of his mind Adolf
00:10:11.900 Hitler. That's a problem too, but I actually don't think that's a great threat in Canada 0.72
00:10:15.960 these days. I think that was dealt with 80 years ago, and you'd have to be a lunatic
00:10:20.820 to think Nazism and the notion of race purity is a good idea. I'm sure there's a few people 0.55
00:10:25.920 like that around, but I don't think they're quite equal to some of the anti-Semitism we've
00:10:30.040 been seeing spilling out in the streets, and which this particular group has been pretty
00:10:33.880 mute on.
00:10:34.580 So how many groups are the, I think it's Heritage Canada that actually funnels the money
00:10:40.160 to a group like the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.
00:10:44.840 My recollection of Heritage Canada at the time that I served in Ottawa
00:10:49.760 was that, in fact, they put out a citizenship guide,
00:10:52.640 which was very much in tune with what the 1867 project was all about.
00:10:58.620 It encouraged people to be proud of Canada and talked about the history and so on.
00:11:03.540 I'm sure that's long gone.
00:11:04.900 And 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.
00:11:16.180 But really, it's all deeply embedded in this critical theory.
00:11:20.240 And it's like they want there to be hate so that they can react to it.
00:11:27.040 And 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.
00:11:54.300 Now, is this what is going on?
00:11:57.840 Are they actually running the propaganda ministry?
00:12:00.920 Well, perhaps.
00:12:01.940 Look, I think people by nature are control freaks, right?
00:12:04.920 Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts, absolutely, as Lord Acton said.
00:12:08.680 So there's always a temptation when you're in government or in a position of power
00:12:12.760 or you've got a budget in a ministry to fund stuff you think should be funded.
00:12:18.540 But there was a political scientist, I think it was Leslie Powell, about 20 or 25 years ago,
00:12:22.740 and I forget the name of the book, but his basic thesis was, as compared to the past in a very kind
00:12:27.380 of classic liberal society, where the idea was government should be arbiters, but not be involved
00:12:33.120 in the ring. They should be the judges. They should be of, you know, what's happening in the
00:12:38.460 boxing ring, so to speak, but they shouldn't be in the boxing ring, you know, funding one box or
00:12:44.640 another, or in this case, in other words, one citizen group or advocacy group or think tank
00:12:49.060 over another right they should enforce the rule of law they should you know make sure that people
00:12:54.420 have access to information that sort of thing but they shouldn't be taking sides as a government as
00:12:59.060 an institution funding sides in a debate and it doesn't matter what the debate is let people think
00:13:03.700 it out and argue it out but once you have government governments massively funding um one
00:13:09.940 one side you know in a five-sided argument um you know then that's what people start to think
00:13:15.220 is the main issue and these days it apparently is this notion that again we're institutionally
00:13:19.300 systemically racist as if nothing has changed in a century as if in fact that's the main causal
00:13:24.900 explanation for a lot of outcomes that you see as i mentioned a moment ago no if you're
00:13:29.060 indigenous canadian on average your income is lower except if you do an apples to apples comparison
00:13:34.340 where you know if you're between 25 and 34 have a university degree work full year full time guess
00:13:39.700 what your income is exactly the same as every other canadian who has that sort of makeup so um
00:13:46.340 but you're dealing with people that again have this it's almost a conspiratorial belief about
00:13:51.380 racism that again it's reared its ugly head in a way that ignores the obvious it has in some quarters
00:13:57.860 if you're trained in gaza all of your life the jews are a problem and you show up in montreal
00:14:02.740 guess what that's what you're seeing expressed in montreal these days and in some other cities 0.98
00:14:06.900 So maybe, maybe if you're going to analyze a problem like racism or modern versions of
00:14:12.180 antisemitism or hate, maybe look at that. But as a general principle, I don't think
00:14:17.540 government should be certainly funding what I think is a faulty flawed analysis of current
00:14:23.780 problems in our society. I think civil society organizations should be debating that out,
00:14:28.340 as should universities and academics, who are also funded to a great degree to tell us we're all
00:14:32.580 racists you know the mark the last time i looked on the heritage canada website i think there were
00:14:38.900 quite a few of these groups they're all getting um i think this one's probably getting one of the
00:14:43.860 larger grants but you know 200 000 here 150 000 there tell us how bad things are and then of
00:14:51.140 course this validates government action this actually i want to take you mark to another
00:14:56.820 thing that's been in the news recently and that was the surprising choice well the man by the name
00:15:02.820 of tatani to lead the human rights commission the canadian human rights commission of course
00:15:08.660 arbitrates uh places where people think they've been discriminated against on i don't know how
00:15:14.580 many grounds of discrimination there are now there's more every year certainly at any rate
00:15:19.220 this gentleman had connected himself with some anti-semitic propaganda anti-semitic groups
00:15:31.860 how does somebody who actually holds that point of view come to be chosen to arbitrate human rights
00:15:40.420 disputes in canada what went wrong there well i mean i've read the same headline intentional
00:15:45.860 Well, 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.
00:16:15.860 and that that's what matters.
00:16:18.620 And that's how you define, you know,
00:16:20.040 what's actually racism or not.
00:16:22.600 If you come from that viewpoint,
00:16:24.240 then I guess it's no surprise when you hire people
00:16:26.260 that you think are, you know, in quotes, victimized,
00:16:30.020 and therefore they have a moral leg up
00:16:31.760 on some other group or person.
00:16:34.040 But that's a silly way to hire a person
00:16:37.000 for a Canadian Human Rights Commission position.
00:16:39.160 I'm not sure, by the way,
00:16:40.700 that these Human Rights Commissions
00:16:42.140 or Human Rights Tribunal should exist.
00:16:44.160 They've long been a problem.
00:16:45.860 And 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.
00:16:56.040 But 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,
00:17:13.000 or the deep problem of beliefs that are anti-Semitic, you know, among some.
00:17:19.180 So I'm not sure that these human rights commissions or human rights tribunals are all that useful.
00:17:24.600 They're costly. They become controversial.
00:17:27.100 This particular fellow, you know, appeared to have snuck in through deceit.
00:17:32.280 Say again, he did what?
00:17:33.880 He apparently, you know, he looks like he snuck in through deceit.
00:17:37.140 well then i guess there's uh i guess there's not much to be done if people are actively trying to
00:17:43.460 deceive you but it does seem that there is a problem with screening of uh prospective people
00:17:48.820 for anything at the moment we have the other case that's very current at the moment where
00:17:53.460 two men were apprehended in toronto by the police they are charged with uh with crimes under the
00:18:01.020 terrorism sections of the canadian criminal code there's a ban on publication of details and so
00:18:05.780 forth. But it's out there. I think we can safely say that one of these individuals had been
00:18:11.580 featured in an ISIS snuff film, if you want to call it that. At any rate, he left ISIS,
00:18:23.460 came to Canada, became a citizen. In this day, when we've got facial recognition technology
00:18:29.300 and all the resources of the internet.
00:18:32.160 Again, is there a problem with vetting and screening in Ottawa?
00:18:37.140 Well, there is, isn't there?
00:18:38.900 And we've got a problem in terms of expelling people.
00:18:42.100 You almost can't in Canada.
00:18:44.260 I just read a headline, I think it was last night,
00:18:46.420 I believe it was France that expelled an imam for radical views.
00:18:50.620 He wasn't a French citizen.
00:18:52.580 And the French were able to deport him,
00:18:54.220 like within 12 hours of his anti-Semitic speech.
00:18:57.300 so I don't know how France does it and we don't how they're able to but I think there's something
00:19:04.680 to that I think what's not understood these days Nigel in part is beliefs matter right and you can
00:19:11.380 have deep beliefs and if you're inculcated for much of your life in ISIS type beliefs or Taliban
00:19:16.140 type beliefs that women don't have equal rights they should cover themselves up and that you're
00:19:22.200 going to meet 70 virgins or 72 virgins in the afterlife if you actually believe this stuff if
00:19:26.620 you're actually inculcated in this stuff and you think jews are somehow controlling the world you
00:19:31.120 have some conspiratorial belief there if this is what you're inculcated in for years and decades
00:19:36.940 and then you arrive in a country that says well no actually um you know we treat people as
00:19:42.840 individuals women can do what they want um you know you've got a clash of cultures or samuel 0.88
00:19:49.260 hunting called a clash of civilizations it doesn't mean there aren't plenty of exceptions to that 1.00
00:19:53.460 rule i wrote years ago in the globe and mail but what you want you know the kind of immigrants you
00:19:57.780 want for example you want a 30 year old uh female physician from islamabad who believes in equal
00:20:03.380 rights for women what you don't want with your respect to you know those over a certain age
00:20:08.420 is you don't want the 75 year old or 65 year old male from northwest pakistan who thinks women 0.50
00:20:13.220 should be covered or don't have equal rights or will kill them um if they choose their own
00:20:17.780 boyfriend or spouse so but we've got a problem in the immigration system apparently um it's gone
00:20:24.100 off the rails and i'm pro-immigration you know and i i think you want to unite people around ideas
00:20:29.140 not skin color uh not ethnicity not their background you know the classic liberal ideal
00:20:34.420 which ironically pierre trudeau understood better than his son um that you want to treat people as
00:20:39.060 individuals um and and and use a merit-based policy in hiring and also think about who you're
00:20:46.260 bringing in. So we should be bringing in the best and the brightest from around the world who can
00:20:51.380 contribute to Canada and share what has been the classical liberal ideas that this country was
00:20:56.580 founded on. The worth of the individual, the equal rights of women, the growing consensus over the
00:21:01.700 last 150 plus years that you can succeed here regardless of where you're from or regardless of
00:21:07.140 your skin color or gender. But that seems to be breaking down again in part because we've got
00:21:11.380 people that are very tribal for various reasons um and that's concerning you know mark it is just
00:21:19.620 one of the curious things that we can be sitting here and lamenting actually things were better
00:21:27.140 under pierre trudeau and the irony of history nigel you make the case that he actually had
00:21:35.140 more of the classical liberal tradition guiding him even though people said he was a communist
00:21:40.100 and I think he did hang out with communists
00:21:42.800 but nevertheless when it came
00:21:44.860 to the application of the law
00:21:46.520 he treated people as individuals
00:21:49.200 and was something of a libertarian
00:21:51.220 look this has been
00:21:53.080 a fascinating discussion Mark
00:21:54.800 how do people
00:21:57.540 respond
00:21:58.860 when they see these things
00:22:00.700 is there anything that they can do
00:22:02.180 do you write to your MP
00:22:03.680 and complain
00:22:05.720 well look I think
00:22:08.160 it's hard to say what individuals should do. I mean, you know, raise your family well,
00:22:12.600 that sort of thing. Of course, vote, get involved in politics if that's your thing.
00:22:17.780 You know, follow us at the Aristotle Foundation, right? I mean, we founded this to try and promote
00:22:21.720 reason, democracy, and civilization. There's a lot under those three things, reason, democracy,
00:22:26.600 civilization. But I think, you know, civilization is always, it must be nurtured and protected.
00:22:32.960 It's like an oak tree. You want the oak tree to survive because it can protect so many people
00:22:37.780 underneath it, so to speak. And it's a beautiful creation. So we've got to be careful about things
00:22:43.840 that can injure the oak tree, or in this case, the oak tree that is Canada, the civilization that
00:22:48.120 is Canada. So however people contribute to that, you know, by loving those around them, by giving
00:22:53.660 their kids a good, solid education that's based in reality, you know, acting responsibly too.
00:22:59.660 We haven't talked about that today, Nigel, but a lot of people emphasize rights these days,
00:23:03.260 and I'm happy to do so, and freedoms, but people also need to act responsibly, right?
00:23:08.040 And from every community.
00:23:10.380 So, and there's a breakdown in the responsibility ethos, I'd argue these days.
00:23:15.060 Look, I mean, you know, follow us at the Aristotle Foundation and, you know, find out what we're
00:23:20.000 up to, you know, and that's why we founded this organization, to try and bring some sanity
00:23:24.140 on some of these crazy issues to Canada.
00:23:26.020 Well, and you're certainly doing that, Mark.
00:23:28.180 In a way, you kind of circled us back to where we began, because you're recommending that
00:23:32.080 people make sure that their kids receive a proper education and learn to respect the
00:23:37.920 things that matter and the things that are proven to work, and yet when they do that,
00:23:44.880 they find groups funded by the government working against them.
00:23:49.780 This is the world we live in, is it not?
00:23:51.740 Unfortunately, it is.
00:23:53.240 Look, I like to be an optimist, nothing goes on forever.
00:23:56.340 And I think fundamentally we've got two problems these days.
00:23:59.460 is anti-reality in a number of areas and the second is a not terribly nuanced view of history
00:24:05.580 and the latter has been used to beat up the present and there's lots of anti-reality thinking
00:24:11.680 these days and so I think part of the challenge is to say okay and this is why I don't care about
00:24:18.080 politics or in that sense you know if people have bad ideas or anti-reality ideas then eventually
00:24:25.180 it's like poisoning the lake above a dam you know um you know you get yellow down in the fields
00:24:30.940 below you don't get you don't get growth you don't get green trees you don't get fields and farms
00:24:35.420 so we've got to be careful what we're putting in the the lake up above the dam and the education
00:24:39.900 system universities um you know when you're trying to solve a problem you know find out what the core
00:24:45.500 problem is and and debate that you know whether whether people are in touch with reality but
00:24:49.740 there's a lot of anti-reality thinking out there these days and i think that's part of the challenge
00:24:53.740 And, you know, it comes with an internet, you know, and a 24-7 news cycle and the rest of it.
00:24:58.660 People don't know who to believe or who to trust.
00:25:01.060 I 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.
00:25:11.000 I think those are, again, of the two things we try and address at the Aerosol Foundation, informed our nuanced history and promote that.
00:25:17.780 and critical thinking, which is actual critical thinking,
00:25:21.620 not going along with the herd when we think the herd is wrong.
00:25:25.300 Dr. Mark Milkey, you do great work down there at the Aristotle Foundation.
00:25:30.760 Thank you very much for coming on the program today
00:25:33.140 and explaining how the government sometimes tries to undo the work you're doing.
00:25:39.300 Thank you, Nigel.
00:25:40.460 For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.
00:25:47.780 If the name Ted Byfield brings back fond memories, well, we've got a party coming up for you guys.
00:26:01.420 On September 25th, Toasting Ted is what it's called.
00:26:04.660 It's going to honour a great conservative who published Alberta Report News magazine.
00:26:09.020 It's going to be bagpipes, singing, live auction stakes, speeches by Premier Smith, Preston Manning, Stephen Harper, quite a line-up.
00:26:15.160 The Western Standard is the final incarnation or the latest incarnation of Alberta Report that
00:26:20.420 Ted Byfield founded. And I mean, he was a great Albertan. He really made his mark on this province
00:26:25.840 and this evening of celebration for him is really going to be outstanding. Get there,
00:26:29.480 toastingted.ca. That's the website. You can get your tickets. This one's going to sell out. I mean,
00:26:34.240 again, if you want to see Smith, Manning, Harper, all in one spot, one night, be sure to get there.