00:05:58.680None of these ridiculous, expensive, intrusive, and time-consuming travel requirements are going to do a single damn thing to hinder the spread of COVID-19.
00:06:06.960We've established that. So why the hell are we still doing it?
00:06:10.240Truckers have been crossing the Canada-USA border for the last two years, and it hasn't been causing harm to people.
00:06:15.740It hasn't been a super spreader event or anything like that.
00:06:18.900The protests we see today were triggered by the useless and ridiculous imposition of vaccine requirements upon these truckers.
00:06:25.760The federal government has to swallow some pride and back off on these ongoing travel restrictions and mandates.
00:06:30.960At the very least, they need to release a plan for reopening.
00:06:34.200Otherwise, the pressure from these protests is just going to build.
00:06:37.620If there's no out, if there's no vent, if there's no exit, the pressure rises.
00:06:41.540And that's when things can get dangerous and bad.
00:06:43.900They're not going away. They're not stopping.
00:06:46.200Even if the Ottawa police manage to pull off the monumental task of removing protesters from Parliament Hill,
00:06:52.120We've already seen that the protests are simply going to pop up elsewhere in the country,
00:06:55.080like the one that closed the border near Windsor yesterday,
00:06:57.920and of course the ongoing one down on the Alberta border.
00:07:00.560And we have them rolling through cities all over the place,
00:07:02.680from Vancouver to Winnipeg, you name it, it's happening.
00:07:05.480Even Okotoks had one in Alberta, a smaller town.
00:07:08.960Millions of dollars are being raised by hundreds of thousands of Canadians
00:07:12.200in support of these protests, and now through multiple means.
00:07:15.460They won't be going away, and they're not going to be stopped.
00:07:17.660As long as there's no timeline for reopening and no dialogue with the protesters, the government is appearing as the thugs in this ongoing story.
00:07:27.180Abacus Data just released a poll indicating that 56% of Canadians think Trudeau's doing a piss-poor job of handling the protests.
00:07:34.140That number's going to keep growing as Trudeau refuses to compromise.
00:07:37.740I mean, you've got to remember, I don't like government by polling, but the vast majority of Canadians were always in these polls in favor of lockdowns and such.
00:07:44.740but even a majority, albeit slim, it's going to be growing. I said, Trudeau, you've got to do
00:07:48.820better than this. This isn't working. This is not good leadership. Provincially, we're a little
00:07:53.200better. Premier Scott Moe, to his credit, said he's going to be lifting local restrictions and
00:07:58.220they're coming up on Sunday night. That's all there is to it. It was good. It was good to see
00:08:01.760some backbone. It should be yesterday, it should be tomorrow, or right now, but either way, take what
00:08:06.400we can get. Most provinces are moving agonizingly slowly towards dropping their pointless mandates,
00:08:11.020however. Premier Jason Kenney is facing a caucus revolt as he obfuscates hints and defers action
00:08:16.540on lifting restrictions. In a conference to be held tonight, Kenney's expected to announce a plan
00:08:22.100to lift restrictions in Alberta. I hope it's not more talk, but we've seen where he went with the
00:08:26.740fair deal panel in Alberta. Nothing has happened yet. So we're at a point with him. I'll believe
00:08:31.740it when I see it. I mean, it likely won't be enough for most people, no matter what the plan
00:08:35.440is, but I'd like to see one. And you got to remember, Kenney said he would never implement
00:08:40.160vaccine passports. He did it. So now he has to act. He can't just talk. People don't believe1.00
00:08:44.000him anymore. That's part of why his support is in the toilet. The mandates and restrictions,
00:08:49.160they're not about health anymore. It's about politics and control. And the damage being done
00:08:55.000is unforgivable as politicians play policy chess against each other with the lives of citizens.
00:09:00.420And they're being aided and abetted by a rotten legacy media establishment. We're in a pressure
00:09:05.520cooker now. If we don't see some release, there's going to be an explosion. It's time to quit
00:09:10.440messing around and start lifting these mandates. These protests will only continue to grow as long
00:09:16.120as the government refuses to even consider giving ground. The mess lands in the laps of Canada's
00:09:20.660political establishment. It's their ball now, and they've got to act, and they've got to act soon.
00:09:26.940All right, that's what's got me triggered today. Probably have me triggered tomorrow,
00:09:31.340but I'll find something new to go on about as well.
00:09:33.700Let's bring in Dave Naylor, our news editor,
00:09:36.420to see what else is topping the news scroll here in Canada and Alberta.
00:09:57.160But leading off our website right now, Corey, is a story you hinted at about Arthur Pawlowski, who's been in jail more times than I can count on one hand.
00:10:10.500He was arrested again for some sort of actions that he took down at the Coote border crossing last week.
00:10:18.540It's unclear what the charges are going to be,
00:10:21.500but we do have video of his arrest up on the site now by Calgary police,
00:10:28.260who then transferred him into the hands of the RCMP.
00:10:31.860So they're now dealing with Pawlowski.
00:12:49.940Non-trucker related, we've got Canada's foremost gasoline expert, Dan McTeague,
00:12:56.960testifying in the Commons that the Liberals should scrap their plans
00:13:02.220to increase the upcoming carbon tax hike on April 1st.
00:13:07.580And he'd also like to see home energy rebates given to Canadians just to try and help deal with the soaring cost of inflation that is crippling everybody.
00:13:19.180And our friends at the CTF, we're all sitting here waiting, especially those in Vancouver, waiting for the Liberals to come in and tax your home equity.
00:13:28.400So the CTF's sort of laid out a plan of attack on how they're going to try and stop that.
00:13:34.040So our reporter, Eva, has got that story all up.
00:13:41.700Corey, obviously, the big one this afternoon, Jason Kenney,
00:13:46.160not wanting reporters to be able to go home on time,
00:13:49.760scheduled a 5 o'clock press conference to announce his plan.
00:13:53.440But certainly the relaxation of Saskatchewan with a fixed date
00:13:59.960is going to increase the pressure on Kenney to do something similar.
00:14:04.040Yeah, I mean, it's funny, as I was saying a bit in my rant, so much of this is now, I think, political pride.
00:14:10.100It's points of which it's outside pressure.
00:14:11.980They always want to make it look like it was their own decision and that nothing, whether it was a neighboring premier or protests or anything, were what encouraged it.
00:14:19.020I just hope that they get some good speechwriters to come up with lines to save face and at least they'll move.
00:14:23.600Yeah, I mean, you've got, I think the problem is you've got doctors and nurses and teachers saying, no, no, no, it's too early to relax the restrictions.
00:14:35.680And you've got the general public saying, we've had enough, we've suffered through this for two years now, enough's enough.
00:14:41.680So, you know, and the next step is when Kenny does make the changes, whether or not cities like Edmonton and Calgary will follow along.
00:14:50.820There is a chance that Kenny could drop vaccine mandates, but the city still require them.
00:14:57.140All I can say is good luck enforcing that one.
00:15:00.200Yeah, there's still a lot of battles to come.
00:15:02.900As you said, it's keeping you guys running like crazy.
00:15:05.760I'll leave you to your discussions on who Canada's cutest MP might be.
00:15:10.600I would hope that Liberal supporters realize, though, they voted for the pretty guy with the nice hair last time.
00:15:15.540And look how that well ended for all of us.
00:15:17.720So maybe they should look a little deeper next time.
00:15:26.280So, yeah, as Dave pointed out in Cootes, it's been back and forth last night, late at night.
00:15:32.100They temporarily blocked the border again, and then they opened it.
00:15:37.160There's a confusion with the reports on that.
00:15:39.940We had James down there. James has finally returned.
00:15:41.940He spent a long time down there reporting live for us and talking with a lot of them.
00:15:46.200And there's different points of view on how they should be protesting, you know, whether they should allow any traffic, whether they should stop it at all.
00:15:54.540It sounds like some of that back and forth is still going on.
00:15:57.480Something else that had been happening, though, it wasn't just the protesters blocking it.
00:16:00.740You see, at times the RCMP are fully blocking the road because they're trying to stop other demonstrators from joining those down near the border.
00:16:07.880So sometimes it's the RCMP that are actually stopping the traffic from coming and going.
00:17:17.380But the bottom line is, and it's back to what I was talking about earlier, until we see some progress, until we see some restrictions lifting, not more talk, not more kick in the can down the road, the pressure is going to rise.
00:20:25.060I do want to speak of our other sponsor, though, and that's the Canada Shooting Sports Association.
00:20:29.940Speaking of freedoms, these guys are standing up for your freedom to own, use, collect, sell,
00:20:36.180all of that stuff. Firearms. Responsibly, legally, like we all want to do. We're not criminals,
00:20:41.660despite what our goofy prime minister tries to label Canadians as. People who use firearms,
00:20:46.160they use them for whatever. And you know what? It's nobody's business what they use them for,
00:20:48.620as long as it's safe and they keep to themselves. These guys offer resources, all kinds,
00:20:53.300whether it's for target shooting, hunting, finding out where gun shows are, just networking with
00:20:58.760other firearm owners there, as their name says, Canada Shooting Sports Association. And you've
00:21:03.500got to get together to stand up for yourselves. And that's the organization that's doing it,
00:21:07.620because there's a lot of threat to your right and ability to use firearms as we have been
00:21:12.060for centuries, for generations anyways. So they got legal challenges out there on behalf of firearm
00:21:17.020owners too. And they need members, they need you to join them to support that because the liberals
00:21:21.040are trying to take away your ability to do that. This government does not want you to safely enjoy
00:21:26.100the property of firearms. So check these guys out, their website, look them up, Canada Shooting
00:21:32.400Sports Association. You can find them on Google or cssa-cila.org. And check them out, take out a
00:21:41.060membership. You know, they can, they need your help to keep these challenges going. And then
00:21:44.720they're helping us through sponsorship. So they're a good group. Okay, let's get on to where we were
00:21:49.340with Clinton DeVoe. He's been on the show before. We're going to start talking about the federal
00:21:53.540leadership race for the Conservative Party of Canada. So he should be. There we go. Hey,
00:21:59.120Clinton, how's it going out there in Halifax? Good. Pleasure to be here. Looking forward to
00:22:03.280chatting with you and hearing from your audience members in the coming days.
00:22:07.760Great. So, yeah, I mean, you're a very close, you know, watcher of federal issues. That's your
00:22:12.100thing. You like digging in on that and the intrigue. And of course, a leadership race is like your
00:22:17.900Super Bowl. So, I mean, that came about suddenly. I mean, we really saw, you know, the cracks were
00:22:24.160showing. There was definitely a lot of discontent in the Conservative caucus under O'Toole. But I
00:22:29.120even I was sort of floored by how quick and decisively that happened when the vote finally
00:22:33.680came. I mean, it was bang. It was a majority. And they said, get on out of here. Yeah, that's right.
00:22:40.640So, look, the party had been talking about these very issues in private circles and online ever since the federal election ended when there really wasn't any growth for the conservatives.
00:22:56.840And they actually finished with slightly fewer members of parliament and a slightly smaller percentage of vote than they did in 2019 under Mr. Scheer, Andrew Scheer.
00:23:10.460So, yeah, so obviously the parties, you know, it has a bit of a struggle ahead.
00:23:14.640It's in the process of choosing its fourth leader of the last seven years.
00:23:21.840So, you know, it needs to figure out, A, you know, how is it going to win an election?
00:23:27.540And I guess, B, is it interested in winning an election or is it content to remain like an advocacy group that's content to remain in opposition?
00:23:37.100uh and i think that is really going to be the questions that are going to come about from this
00:23:42.860leadership race well so at this point with people who've come forward i mean pierre poly have sprung
00:23:50.040right out of the gates he was obviously ready to go i'm certain he was just uh you know waiting for
00:23:54.420when the time would come and the leadership was open and there there he was uh there's a lot of
00:23:58.500names being kicked around but i'm not seeing too many rushing out yet i i saw one that was
00:24:02.820interesting yesterday Tasha Carradine uh was uh clearly kicking tires on Twitter anyways and just
00:24:09.240saying you know that kind of sort of I'm thinking about it I'll tell you within a day or two that
00:24:14.180that's political speak for saying let's see if anybody's going to offer some donations and if
00:24:18.040I've got a base and and if there isn't one then I can kind of back out with some pride but if there
00:24:22.200is she's clearly interested in going for it yeah so Tasha Carradine is somebody that I've known
00:24:27.360uh since the late uh 1990s and uh you know we've continued to talk um you know from time to time
00:24:36.420and i have talked to her uh in recent days uh i do think uh without you know uh choosing her as
00:24:44.800you know a favorite or anything like that i do think that if she were to win the leadership of
00:24:49.780the conservative party um that there would be a lot of positive signs from that i mean obviously
00:24:55.780the first and most obvious one is that here is a strong independent conservative woman
00:25:00.860that's been involved you know at the federal and the provincial scene at different levels across0.65
00:25:07.940the country now for some 30 years so Tasha obviously would bring a lot to the to the the
00:25:13.500party she's a policy wonk she has a lot of media experience so she knows how to handle that side
00:25:21.000of it uh to your earlier point uh yes Pierre Polyev for those of you who don't know is the
00:25:27.180first official candidate in the race uh clearly he's the front runner because there are no other
00:25:32.700candidates in the race at the moment um you know and so Pierre has chosen to uh you know he was
00:25:40.900always known as like sort of a fiscal conservative sort of guy uh but in recent weeks and I don't
00:25:47.700to get too sidetracked on the trucker convoy stuff but uh he seems to have kind of embraced a bit of
00:25:53.700that um kind of american style populism you know like that sort of is kind of connected in some
00:26:00.900ways with with the trucker convoy um you know and then there's some other interesting names
00:26:06.580obviously we're hearing bandied about you know besides tasha keratin uh jean chaday uh former
00:26:12.500leader of the party is uh expressing uh a real serious look at uh at jumping in this race
00:26:21.860uh i actually uh i personally know a number of individuals that uh that have heard from mr charret
00:26:28.900um you know i've heard talk about former british columbia premier uh christy clark uh jumping in
00:26:35.940again another uh interesting woman with a with a track record of winning elections
00:26:44.480Former or current mayor of Brampton, Ontario, Patrick Brown, you know, former member of
00:26:53.260parliament, former Ontario Tory leader, known for his organizational abilities.
00:26:58.600And I know we've talked about Quebec's Bill 21 in the past.
00:27:02.960You know, he's been really fighting for religious freedom and, you know, creating what they
00:27:09.220call a national municipal consensus against quebec's bill 21 um you know peter mckay is
00:27:17.060obviously another name that um would obviously have a lot of support i think there's a lot of
00:27:23.780conservatives across the country that maybe look back on peter and think that perhaps he would have
00:27:29.700been a better choice with hindsight over aaron o'toole um you know there's no doubt that peter
00:27:35.760is great with with a soundbite, you know, very good on his feet. The problem that Peter has is
00:27:42.580that he could most likely win a federal election. The question then becomes, how do you actually
00:27:48.260win the leadership of a party? You know, Leslie Lewis, you know, there's an interesting voice
00:27:55.360who's publicly spoken out, you know, against vaccine mandates, has compared
00:28:02.260the covid-19 vaccine death rates with polio vaccine death rates and these kinds of things
00:28:11.440so less than lewis is somebody that would obviously appeal to a lot of the social
00:28:15.940conservative vote um you know someone from your backyard uh michelle rempel garner from alberta
00:28:22.800a very well-known member of parliament a strong independent voice a good performer in the house
00:28:28.460of commons, you know, really has her eye on a lot of those kind of suburban urban issues.0.85
00:28:35.380She could bring a lot to a leadership race. And then I have two other names.
00:28:43.040And that would be Caroline Mulroney. She's the Minister of Transportation in the Doug Ford
00:28:48.980government in Ontario. She seems to have developed a real profile, you know, over the last 18 months,
00:28:57.280really like Michelle Rempel-Garner really follows and understands the transportation issues in the
00:29:03.280cities and the suburbs and lastly the name that keeps popping up as well over multiple years is
00:29:12.100former New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord a successful conservative premier in New Brunswick
00:29:18.840who had served multiple terms went off to the private sector developed a really successful
00:29:24.960private sector career and um you know there's obviously people calling out for bernard lord
00:29:31.020so there's a lot of interesting voices and quite frankly i would not rule out
00:29:34.640uh the possibility of former prime minister stephen harper uh jumping back in the race um
00:29:41.460you know he's a guy that i think probably takes the 2015 loss on a personal level and uh i do
00:29:50.620believe that if Mr. Harper were to run again again this is not an endorsement just a recognition
00:29:56.040I do think if Mr. Harper ran for the leadership that he would be the instant front runner
00:30:01.260and I also believe that in all likelihood he could most likely defeat Prime Minister Trudeau
00:30:08.640so there's just a few of my thoughts and I'll I'll be quiet and let you ask some questions
00:30:13.520sure I mean I'll go through some of the comments and things too because
00:30:17.140Again, we've got one outstanding, I mean, an interesting comment, you know, in divided households, which is good from Katie Swan saying her husband likes Pierre Polyev, but she doesn't trust him and she wants to see government cleaned out.
00:30:28.780And there's something a lot of people, I think, you know, all of the names almost, and that's natural, are people, of course, with a lot of political background and people kind of sour on politicians these days.
00:30:38.460But the reality is, too, if you're coming from outside, you have to have some profile somewhere or you just won't be able to win that support to take the leadership.
00:30:45.640As I said, there's two races going on.
00:30:47.140The first one will be the leadership and the next one is a general election.
00:31:27.640Yeah, I mean, it's just it's a big election.
00:31:29.900And I think there's more appetite for change.
00:31:33.240Like, I have to believe that after this long, though, no matter who comes in, Justin Trudeau, particularly if he is still the leader of the Liberal Party when the next election comes, is going to be vulnerable, if only just because people are sick of him.
00:31:47.440Like, this race, I think, is going to be very hotly contested because most leaders do feel or contenders that they're going to be the next prime minister.
00:32:13.000I'm not in any way discounting Pauliev's ability to win an election.
00:32:18.740I'm just saying that the path that he's using in regards to the leadership or for this leadership race appears to be kind of embracing.
00:32:29.960uh kind of a populist band i'm not saying that's good or bad oh yeah um you know bringing donuts
00:32:36.580and muffins and things like that out uh to members of the trucker convoy you know that's very much a
00:32:42.860populist uh kind of political move right so yeah that's all i'm i'm pointing out there um so getting
00:32:51.340a have you looked much into the nuts and bolts like are the rules going to be the same uh the
00:32:55.400last time as the last time around like something that happened the last time that does change how
00:32:59.040people campaign as well uh is there weighted ballots you know riding by riding is that going
00:33:04.500to be applied again which does force you know candidates you can't win it with just 100 000
00:33:08.760supporters in alberta you have to get across this country and pick up support uh to some degree all
00:33:13.980over the place if you're going to win yeah well you know that's the important so there's a couple
00:33:18.220of important things for this leadership race so the first one is that uh just to answer your
00:33:23.620specific questions so no the party's not made any decisions but there are meetings of its national
00:33:30.420council uh and over the coming days uh they will be putting together what's called leoc which is a
00:33:37.300basically a fancy way of saying a leadership uh committee uh so they'll be making decisions as to
00:33:44.740how long the leadership race will be uh they will make decisions as to uh you know who can join the
00:33:52.240party and who can't and who can vote and all of those kinds of things. And, you know, they'll make
00:33:57.120decisions as to, you know, how many debates there will be, where the debate locations will be,
00:34:03.760how that whole process works. What I will say is that there is a lot of behind the scenes
00:34:11.200pushes and like pushing and tugging on that in both directions. So, you know, there are
00:34:19.280individuals that would prefer a shorter leadership race uh in order to immediately uh choose or to
00:34:27.460immediately have a new leader of the party right and then there are other folks that are arguing
00:34:32.340for a longer leadership race because that will give an opportunity for more individuals to jump
00:34:38.140in it will allow for a real um you know intellectual debate of you know of the party you know where
00:34:47.100it's going what it wants to accomplish you know why it exists those kinds of things um
00:34:53.680and you know to your earlier point about uh whether or not justin trudeau is able to be
00:35:00.240defeated i mean i do think he's able to be defeated and in some ways um and this is not
00:35:06.440going to be very popular but i think in some ways the members of the conservative party are in fact
00:35:12.480to blame, uh, for prime minister Trudeau. And the reason I say this is because, uh, we have a prime
00:35:22.880minister that was photographed in blackface on multiple occasions and the leader that the party
00:35:29.800chose, uh, Mr. Shear, uh, instead of really going after the prime minister on blackface, uh, he was,
00:35:38.640busy defending his positions on gay marriage and abortion. And so he basically took himself
00:35:47.260out of the 2019 election. And I do think that any other conservative leader that would have
00:35:54.340been better prepared, quicker on their feet, would have been able to have beaten Mr. Trudeau.
00:36:01.640As far as Mr. O'Toole goes, again, I think we have to ask ourselves as Canadians, what did the Conservative Party do in its last leadership race that they had a possible prime minister who throughout the entire election campaign was taking three or four different positions on firearms,
00:36:26.640was taking multiple positions on vaccines and vaccine mandates.
00:36:35.960And so that goes back to the earlier point,
00:36:40.520and that is, is this a party which wants to win elections and be electable,
00:36:47.160or is it a party that is content to be an advocacy group
00:36:51.500and content to remain in opposition purely on matters of principle?
00:36:56.640And so I think that is the juggling act for whoever the next leader is, you know, and how this leadership race will unfold.
00:37:05.280You know, will there be leadership candidates who tell the base what the base want to hear and then run a national election campaign on those things?
00:37:17.160or will the next leader potential leader say to the base this this policy position may not be
00:37:26.700popular or this might not be popular but this is what's required in order to win government
00:37:32.000so that we can affect change so i do think that uh you know that conservative party members have
00:37:40.240to make sure that they don't repeat the mistakes that occurred in 2019, in the 2019 federal election
00:37:49.140and the most recent election here in 2021. Okay, well, we're up against the clock, Clinton.
00:37:56.300So yeah, the conservatives have a whole lot to try and sort out and figure out in a little bit
00:38:01.920of time. It's going to be a very interesting race to watch it unfold and develop. We're just,
00:38:05.940of course right in the first week of it right now so there's there's going to be a lot to watch and
00:38:10.580take uh uh keep an eye on so where can people see what you're writing on and what you're up to
00:38:15.620clinton before you go here sure uh well they can find me on twitter so it's at clinton devoe
00:38:20.580uh my hashtag and uh i'm always sharing uh stories throwing the odd comments out there
00:38:27.460uh video content just you know things that interest me and uh anytime i come across some
00:38:33.840political gossip, I'm more than happy to share it on my Twitter page as you're more than well aware
00:38:39.020of. All right. Well, thanks for coming in to join us today, Clinton. We'll be keeping an eye on
00:38:44.180things with you as they develop. Great. Thank you very much, Corey. Looking forward to hearing from
00:38:48.880your listeners and viewers in the coming days. Great. Thanks. Okay. So that was Clinton DeVoe
00:38:54.700from Halifax. And again, I do want to get as many perspectives as possible as this race develops.
00:39:00.480I think it's going to be a very important one. Andrew Scheer, I think if anything was a placeholder position, it's a dangerous one to be the first one to take the leadership after a party has lost a race. O'Toole, again, yes, I think, you know, Clinton kind of covered that too. When you get positions that change all the time, it's hard on trust, whether you agree or disagree left, right, center, you got to be consistent. And we didn't have any consistency out of O'Toole. And I think it costs him support across the spectrum.
00:39:29.400So as we said, we learned the lessons from past elections
00:39:31.920and try not to repeat them going forward
00:39:34.280or we just got more years of liberals.
00:39:36.540But it'll be, you know, again, as this campaign develops,
00:47:10.760I guess if I did, I'd be running, but I don't think the world deserves that.
00:47:15.820And we get a lot of mistrust and things going on.
00:47:17.840Elections Canada talked about how they delayed, you know, shipping mail-in ballots to 123 voters until less than a week before the Election Day records show.
00:47:27.120The Chief Electoral Office had claimed his agency was fully prepared to conduct a pandemic election.
00:47:35.480Now, I don't know if that would have been enough ballots to affect it. Probably not. There were reports that came out, too, that a whole lot of ballots showed up after Election Day. And, you know, again, it impacts the race. I'm not of a mind that that's what kept Justin in power at that time, but it shows us our half-assed system leading to more distrust, more instability, and the mess that we're in today. Get it together, you know?
00:48:02.880And this pandemic crap, I mean, during the election, you could go into Walmart and stand in line and buy something.0.99
00:49:20.360If you've ever taken part in an election, there is a lot of transparency, actually,
00:49:23.840more than some people, I think, understand.
00:49:26.320You can sit, you can volunteer for a party.
00:49:28.380you can be a scrutineer. You can sit there and watch the counting. You can watch the ballot
00:49:32.160ballots going into the box. You can even, if you're there when the station opens,
00:49:39.780the electoral officer will open up the empty ballot box to show you so that you know it's
00:49:43.660not already been pre-stuffed. So we do have a lot of controls. We do have a workable system,
00:49:48.940but I do start to get concerned when people talk about going to electronic means. And we also see
00:49:54.320that they did make a heck of a mess out of trying for mail-in ballots during the pandemic. So
00:50:00.360let's not encourage more of that. You know, I get annoyed too when people say, oh, we got to move
00:50:04.560to these things because our voter turnouts are too low and it's too hard. Oh, spare me. It's so
00:50:09.080easy to vote. You get so much notice. The amount of advanced polling available now and polling
00:50:14.680stations are nearby. The hours are great. There's no excuse. People can get out and vote. It's not
00:50:19.840that hard. We don't need to try and move towards digital systems and all that crap. If somebody's
00:50:24.300too lazy to vote with all of that opportunity. I don't want to vote in any ways. We got enough
00:50:28.280lazy voters already. Let's get the ones who at least, you know, no matter which one they chose,
00:50:33.400if somebody had the brains and gumption to get off their butt, walk in the city, it's never more0.99
00:50:37.520than eight or 10 blocks to whatever your polling station is and cast a stinking ballot. Okay.1.00
00:50:41.840I've ranted enough for the moment. I'm sure I'll have some more ranting left in me later,
00:50:44.900but I see our guest in the lobby there and that's author and Fraser Institute guy and taxpayer guy,
00:50:49.520all sorts of things. Mark Mielke, I've had him on before. And we're going to talk about a column
00:50:55.900he just recently put out that's kind of tied to his recent book there. So let's bring Mark in
00:51:01.280and have a chat here. Hey, Mark, how you doing? Corey, thanks for having me. I'm doing great.
00:51:06.960Oh, good, good. So yeah, you've written a column, I'm just kind of paraphrasing,
00:51:11.560the cultural revolution up north, and it was in the National Review, and it was about
00:51:15.540cancel culture, trying to rewrite history. Well, it was. I mean, this came from a number of
00:51:22.580inspirations, you can say, over the past month. First of all, we found out, as you know, a couple
00:51:27.140of weeks ago that Frances Whitteson, a professor, political science professor at Mount Royal
00:51:32.040University in Calgary, was fired back in December, but we all found out in early January.
00:51:38.020I've known Frances for over a decade. I did some work with her when I was with a small think tank
00:51:42.080out of Winnipeg, the Frontier Center. And she's always been empirical. She's always paid attention
00:51:48.080to realities on the ground and facts. And then, of course, Jordan Peterson, in his famous
00:51:52.260announcement in the National Post, said, look, I can no longer in good conscience supervise white
00:51:57.500male graduate students because, I'm paraphrasing a little bit, they probably don't have a hope of
00:52:02.100being hired. And so we thought it was disingenuous to continue. I mean, this is unusual for a
00:52:07.280professor of Jordan Peterson's stature to give up tenure at the University of Toronto.
00:52:12.700So both of these developments led to the call in the National Review, the woke revolution up north,
00:52:17.680the cultural revolution up north. And as some of you may know, I mean, the cultural revolution has
00:52:23.380omens of historical, not great historical events, such as China, such as Cambodia and the rest.
00:52:32.100And I'm not suggesting we're headed down that path in terms of physical harm. But certainly,
00:52:36.180think there's intellectual harm being done in universities these days and I say that as someone
00:52:40.340who spent way too much time in university getting my PhD and masters so I am somewhat familiar with
00:52:45.380the environment. Yeah and for those who aren't familiar with that you know how the tenure system
00:52:49.860is supposed to work I mean it's distressing to see somebody like Jordan Peterson you know giving it
00:52:53.780up because it's quite a a prize in academia or to see somebody like Widowson where tenure didn't
00:52:59.700protect her I mean the whole point of tenure was sort of to make sure that these professors had
00:53:04.500academic freedom, and they would never be pressured even if their view was against the
00:53:09.360majority. I mean, if you have a view with the majority, you don't need tenure. It's to protect
00:53:13.240those controversial views so you can have open discourse, and it doesn't seem to be a protection
00:53:16.560anymore. No, there doesn't, at least in her case, and we'll see how this ends up. I mean, I assume
00:53:23.300there will be some negotiations and unions, but she's part of a union at Mount Royal University.
00:53:29.800I assume there'll be some back and forth. We'll see where this lands. We'll see where this ends0.94
00:53:34.100up. And look, tenure is a double-edged sword. I mean, people can come up with all sorts of
00:53:39.120anti-reality ideas in university and be protected by tenure. But in Whitteson's case,
00:53:46.360my observation is that she simply told the truth. So for example, one of the things that Whitteson
00:53:50.980said, I thought this didn't used to be a controversial subject, was to say, look,
00:53:57.260there is no such thing as indigenous knowledge. And this is my view now, but Whitteson shares
00:54:02.980that I know, there's no such thing as indigenous knowledge because there's no such thing as European
00:54:07.600knowledge or Russian knowledge or American knowledge or Japanese knowledge or Sri Lankan
00:54:12.440knowledge. What there is in the physical world are realities that are discoverable and verifiable
00:54:18.540by everyone. That's basic science. So you do an empirical investigation, find out what's happening
00:54:23.720and hopefully link cause and effect in a tight manner. And the notion that there's knowledge
00:54:28.820that is reserved for a special people based on your ethnicity or your race or your gender or
00:54:34.060anything like that. Or historically, this concept used to occur in faith traditions. I mean, we have
00:54:38.700a special knowledge, a special connection, and only we know this. This is nonsensical. It doesn't
00:54:44.860matter if you're an Arab engineer in the 12th century, putting up a building somewhere in the
00:54:49.460Middle East, you have to pay attention to physical realities on the ground. Likewise, when Newton
00:54:55.720discovers grabbing an apple falls on his head, at least in the tail, that's a verifiable reality.
00:55:02.960Any of us can drop an apple on our heads, and it doesn't matter if you live in Beijing or Boston.
00:55:07.180So Widdowson simply stated the truth, that there is no such thing as indigenous knowledge. Now,
00:55:13.600look, every tradition has, you know, you could say, you know, grandmother's, you know, home
00:55:18.300recipes or, you know, whatever. And, you know, but those are shareable as well. I mean, you can find
00:55:23.980cause and effect as to why soup tastes one way and not another, or a home remedy that may have
00:55:29.640some use. But it's not the property, so to speak, the intellectual property of any particular race
00:55:35.260or ethnicity or anything like that. And Whitteson got into trouble for simply stating the obvious.
00:55:40.560And that to me is concerning because, again, it shows there's a bit of romanticism going on with
00:55:44.460indigenous culture, as opposed to, look, we can all share discoveries, and it really doesn't
00:55:49.440matter what your background is yeah I mean we do the words revisionism or
00:55:54.660romanticism I mean people I mean I'm certain there's a a number of great
00:56:00.480cultural things and fantastic things from the First Nations communities in
00:56:03.840Canada but they were also in a different state of I guess you can say
00:56:07.740social development than than the outside world it's not shooting I mean I think
00:56:14.160yeah yes I'm sorry absolutely for that correction yes I mean but we aren't
00:56:19.020even allowed to talk about that or as if there might be differences and we should be examining
00:56:22.840these things and not fearful and looking at some of those cultural uh differences and changes uh
00:56:28.080without fear well there are a number of weird currents going on here i would say court i mean
00:56:32.100one of them is that there's this fear of cultural appropriation so you've got this weird notion
00:56:35.800that that you know cultures these days should be 100 pure as much as possible right we've seen this
00:56:41.740in various debates a couple of years ago there was a dress worn by some graduate you know 18
00:56:46.000year old graduate I think she was in Texas you know and and some young you know fellow whose
00:56:51.160you know background was was Chinese took offense except people in China didn't take offense you
00:56:55.600know my understanding of the media coverage was that it was positive you know I mean borrow away
00:57:00.160you know wear the dress whatever you want to do we've got this weird thing today where people are
00:57:05.240overly touchy about their cultures as opposed to understanding actually you know if you look at
00:57:10.140history cultural sharing is the best way to put it as opposed to appropriation and cultural
00:57:15.140discovery, sharing between cultures, and whether it's begged, borrowed, or stolen, that's actually
00:57:20.460how any culture advances, right? I mean, one of the reasons Europe was able to advance, unlike,
00:57:25.620say, Africa for a certain time period, was because, as the economist Thomas Sowell points out,
00:57:31.420there were lots of inlets and rivers in Europe where you could transverse, and you could discover
00:57:35.580things from other countries and other parts of Europe. This led to cultural transfers, which
00:57:39.720helped the development of science, unlike the inland of Africa, which didn't have the same sort
00:57:44.280easy access um you know so or look i mean uh again europeans frankly copying from you know
00:57:52.880a superior arab civilization at the height of islamic civilization when europe was in the dark0.75
00:57:58.740ages um cultural boring is a good thing and this again relates back to the notion of empirical0.98
00:58:04.200knowledge and we're getting a bit away from my column in national review but the point is we've
00:58:08.720got people in this country now who are like fired you know because they they tell the truth there
00:58:13.280or in the case of Jordan Peterson says, look, I've got great scientists and their, you know,
00:58:18.980palette happens to be the same as mine. And are we really going to make sort of the quality of
00:58:23.780outcome, statistical outcome, the factor in hiring people? I mean, that's crazy,
00:58:30.260you know, and it's discriminatory. So we're a long way. I mean, back to the call in the
00:58:35.240National Review, you know, back to the victim call, I wrote about this. If we're actually
00:58:39.360saying that, you know, every ethnicity should be apportioned jobs and incomes and what have you,
00:58:45.620or government grants, as is happening with our federal government. If we're really saying that
00:58:50.400it has to be absolute equal outcomes, well, then what we're doing is we're getting rid of the0.98
00:58:54.200effects of education, geography, the time of new immigrant classes in the country, and this sort of
00:58:59.140thing. This is really concerning. And everything, this has to do with this notion that everything
00:59:02.940is due to racism, and somehow it must be government corrected. There are other factors,
00:59:06.800parents, family breakdown, where you grew up, the education, you know, that your culture
00:59:11.880emphasizes or not, so on and so forth. So it's very concerning that we're going down this road of
00:59:17.940cultural isolationism, as I call it, and for telling the truth, as Whittowson did,
00:59:23.580or trying to point out the offensiveness of apportioning to things by race or gender,
00:59:28.600that Jordan Peterson felt he could no longer in good conscience supervise white male graduate
00:59:32.420its students. I mean, this is a very troublesome development on both fronts.
00:59:37.380Yeah. Well, and I mean, a culture shouldn't be static. I mean, that's not healthy. As you said,
00:59:41.940cultural sharing is important. I mean, I think every culture evolved. They found things that
00:59:46.260were other cultures brought in things that were superior and they embraced them. As you said,
00:59:51.300with more exposure to the outside cultures, you could see, hey, these guys are doing something
00:59:55.780that's working a lot better than what we've been doing. Let's take that on. But we take it now. I
01:00:00.260I mean, assimilation is the buzzword quite often there.
01:00:03.240Anything that changes away from a culturally static state is now viewed as an attempt to assimilate and making things wrong or bad.
01:00:11.660And again, it's a delicate area, but we should be allowed to discuss these things at least.
01:00:17.020Well, discuss and frankly, warn against.
01:00:19.760I mean, there are two particular dangers with what I call this cultural isolationism or cultural purity.
01:00:24.360Number one is that you actually don't progress as an individual or a community if you don't borrow from other cultures.
01:00:30.960The experience of Japan when it shut itself off from the world for two and a half centuries until it was, you know, forced open in the mid-19th century by the Americans, you know, landing at Tokyo Bay basically and opening it up, you know, via a naval ship.
01:00:47.700the experience of Japan, which was very weak vis-a-vis the outside world, is a good example
01:00:52.220that walling yourself off in the outside world for centuries just doesn't work. And it certainly0.99
01:00:58.100doesn't work in the modern environment either. The other danger is this. This notion of cultural
01:01:02.540purity in history is not new. As I wrote about in The Victim Cult, the worst example of this,
01:01:07.460the most frightening example of this touchiness about cultural purity came from Germany.0.91
01:01:13.720In the late 18th century, Germany was conquered by France or parts of Germany were conquered by0.68
01:01:21.640France. And the reaction to this after the Germans kicked out the French in the early 19th century
01:01:26.840is that they began to search around for their identity again. And they said, well, let's look
01:01:29.800back to Frederick the Great and others who made us a great nation. But they also had this notion
01:01:35.880of cultural purity, what it means to be German, and was very exclusive. You couldn't be Jewish.0.80
01:01:42.920You couldn't be an immigrant. You couldn't be British. You couldn't be a liberal, by the way.1.00
01:01:46.520They rejected what they had learned in the Enlightenment. They rejected the Enlightenment
01:01:49.860lessons, which before they had learned. So Germany became culturally pure long before it became0.85
01:01:55.060enamored with race purity later in the 19th century and also with the Nazis. This is a0.85
01:02:00.580very dangerous development. Again, cultural sharing is a much better way to go about life as an
01:02:06.380individual or as a community than this notion of cultural purity, because it leads to a closed
01:02:10.780mindedness uh most of us learn uh either by doing and making mistakes or hopefully uh the better way
01:02:18.140to to learn is to is to not try and construct a building without reference to what others have
01:02:23.100done before figure out what works and build your building that way but it's the same thing with any
01:02:27.900development or any any aspect of science or any other cultural development so uh we really need
01:02:33.020to reverse on this notion of cultural isolation isolationism it's uh it's got pride and precedent
01:02:37.900in history. Yeah, and I've had you on before, because what you've been talking about, as you
01:02:42.620said, I mean, your column tied in a lot to the subject matter of your book. So we'll talk a
01:02:46.740little more about your book. I had you on about that before, and it was called The Victim Cult.
01:02:50.800Now, grievance culture hurts everyone and wrecks civilization. So I just want to give the listeners
01:02:55.800of yours to know you can get a much more expanded discussion of this whole subject out there where
01:02:59.840you've written on it. Maybe give a bit of a synopsis on what you wrote and why you're inspired
01:03:03.380two i know it's a big issue or subject well because it's so dangerous as i mentioned again
01:03:09.460look i talked to a fellow the other the other week who came from sri lanka originally about three
01:03:14.420decades ago um and he said look all of us have the same skin color in sri lanka but nonetheless
01:03:19.780we divided among tamils a minority and the majority and uh it was a disastrous experience and i wrote
01:03:25.380about the same phenomenon rwanda i mean everyone had the same skin color black but tutus and and
01:03:31.620Hutus and Tutsis divided based on that notion that somehow one was a superior, inferior race.
01:03:38.800And that led to a genocide in the early 1990s and 1994. So this notion again of I and my culture
01:03:48.300should be pure or that I'm a victim of you because of past harms, this is really a dangerous
01:03:54.600road to trod and one should not go down this road. Instead, we really need to reverse on this and go
01:04:01.500back to the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., that we should judge each other on the character
01:04:07.680inside ourselves and not on our skin killer. We've gotten away from it. Ironically, progressives
01:04:13.060have gotten away from this more than anyone else. And it's a disastrous development. And I think it
01:04:19.520can have no good end. But I wrote about this at length in the victim cult, and I touched on this
01:04:24.220again in the latest column in National Review for that reason. These are not positive developments.
01:04:28.900and progressives in particular and woke folk
01:04:32.120who think they're heading down the right avenue here
01:04:34.120had better read history a little more carefully
01:04:37.180and understand the dangers of dividing people
01:04:39.880based on identities that are unchangeable
01:04:42.640because your skin color is unchangeable.1.00