Justin Trudeau is the Prime Minister of Canada and the current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is the most controversial Prime Minister in modern Canada. In this episode, we discuss the differences between his father, Pierre Trudeau and his son, Justin, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
00:05:29.660The West, you know, Quebec, Atlanta, Canada.
00:05:32.460I grew up in British Columbia and the Charlottetown Accord was on that referendum in 1992.
00:05:37.100I can tell you most British Columbians, even more than Albertans, voted against it because they didn't like the idea of Quebec having special status,
00:05:45.020which it's got all, you know, it's got all but a name now.
00:05:50.460So the divisions, I think, have been there, but they've exacerbated.
00:05:53.660And now the federal government and others have brought in divisions based on color, based on ethnicity, based on gender.
00:06:03.100What's what's a more positive way to think about Canada on candidate or what's what's a better way to go?
00:06:08.540Well, it's the old fashioned what is known as classical liberal, but today might be considered small, see, conservative ideas that you don't that you celebrate people based on who they are as an individual.
00:06:19.340You don't discriminate discriminate against someone based on irrelevant characteristics.
00:06:24.380And what that means is you celebrate the good ideas out there.
00:06:28.620You know, the the rights of the individual.
00:06:31.020I mean, classical liberalism that came from John Stuart Mill, Mary Wollstonecraft and the rights of women can be can be adopted by anyone.
00:06:39.820When Hong Kongers protest against Beijing and the crackdowns in Hong Kong over the last several years, you would often see them raising the British flag.
00:06:48.220Why? They understood that the British inheritance, for example, is about the rights of the individual, about capitalism, about the rule of law.
00:06:55.500These are ideas and they're good ideas.
00:07:04.860And it's, you know, only my religion or my skin color or what have you.
00:07:08.220And that's rife throughout history, which is why we shouldn't repeat it.
00:07:11.820But for sure, Canadians can and should unite around laudable ideas that, you know, various founders had a glimpse of and pushed to some degree.
00:07:21.980But certainly in the 20th century, starting in the 1950s, Canadians were supposed to be united around the idea of the equality of the individual
00:07:29.180and other other beneficial aspects of modern nation state, capitalism and the rest of it.
00:07:34.700That's what we should actually unite around these days.
00:07:40.380And we seem to have some, I guess, culture wars going on in Canada.
00:07:45.340I mean, we've seen some of that just recently in Calgary.
00:07:48.620City Hall didn't understand why a minor move such as getting rid of fireworks blew up the way it did.
00:07:53.980But it was because of the reasoning for it.
00:07:56.140I mean, the bottom line is there are some people who feel that Canada Day is supposed to be a day where we look at our shoes in shame.
00:08:02.460It's supposed to be when we're supposed to dwell on the negatives that happened historically within Canada.
00:08:06.460And there certainly have been some negatives rather than taking one day, though, to say, hey, we can still celebrate the positives while acknowledging the negatives.
00:08:15.100I mean, they treat it as if it's mutually exclusive.
00:08:17.540And I think it's really making Canadians depressed about their own history.
00:08:22.100Well, that's one of the things we tried to approach in the 1867 project, right, the new book that, you know, I and 19 other people wrote.
00:08:29.140We tried to give people a sense of Canadian history with nuance, with balance, with informed history, and also to kind of change the way some people view Canadian history.
00:08:39.540I think the majority of Canadians think we should feel proud of Canada.
00:08:43.060They may not, you know, and they're not part of the minority of the chattering classes that thinks we should cancel Canada.
00:08:49.060So I think most Canadians get that we should celebrate or cherish Canada.
00:08:52.980They may not fully conceptually have worked out why or why the, you know, those who want to cancel Canada are completely in the wrong.
00:09:00.260And so what we try and do in the 1867 project is make people think about Canada.
00:09:06.580And the best analogy I can give you, Corey, is Canada and other civilizations are like oak trees, right?
00:09:21.700Indigenous folk were denied the right to vote in the late 1800s by parliament, finally given it in 1960 under John Diefenbaker, that parliament.
00:09:30.180Those were, you know, the bad policies were diseased limbs that were right to be pruned.
00:09:34.100But that doesn't mean the project was a bad idea, that the oak tree, which shelters people, is a bad idea.
00:09:39.540Canada, Canada, as an oak tree, has sheltered tens of millions of people over the decades, unlike, say, Chairman Mao's China in 1960 in the Cultural Revolution.
00:09:49.140While Canada is giving the vote, rightly, to Indigenous Canadians, Chairman Mao is persecuting his own people and causing mass starvation and famine because of his ideological Marxist beliefs.
00:10:01.380So, it's not just that no nation is perfect.
00:10:04.340That's obvious, and no person is perfect.
00:10:06.340The key question is, are certain communities preferable?
00:10:09.620When Hong Kongers celebrate the ideas of freedom, the rule of law, capitalism, what they're saying is, we prefer these to what's north of the border in Beijing.
00:10:17.380And it doesn't matter if those ideas originated with John Stuart Mill and others in the 19th century in London.
00:10:22.740What matters is that they're a good idea and anybody can adopt them.
00:10:26.260You don't have to be, you know, a white person to be an Indian and say capitalism is better than socialism.
00:10:34.020So, you know, you can take some of what the British left behind and leave what you don't like.