Western Standard - Mountain Standard Time - June 2, 2021

00:00:00.000 .

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 hello and good morning welcome to of course mountain standard time and i'm your host

00:01:46.240 nathan gita today i'll be speaking with aaron ekman which is nothing new for most people who

00:01:51.120 regularly view this show except for the part that the now cancelled former board chair of

00:01:55.680 of UNBC's Board of Governors is going to be talking to us exactly about what it's like

00:01:59.640 to be canceled in real time by your own side, nonetheless. Remember to like us on Facebook,

00:02:05.360 follow us on YouTube and take out a subscription online at the Western Standard, especially if you

00:02:09.220 wish to continue supporting the only free voice in the West. Today, like I said, we'll be talking

00:02:15.440 to Aaron and he's our first canceled guest. We've had some other people who have had their brushes

00:02:19.620 with the media and people who have kind of been ignored or fallen by the wayside, people who

00:02:24.260 aren't the first people the media call anymore but this is our first a moment of having somebody on

00:02:30.700 who right before our very eyes was canceled and i think that's really important uh this happened

00:02:36.500 last friday may 28th when the minister of advanced education for british columbia informed him

00:02:41.700 and the world via twitter that his presence as board chair at the university of northern british

00:02:45.640 columbia was no longer necessary so he was clearly an intolerant racist we're going to let him

00:02:50.900 explain that a little bit better but i think it's a noteworthy moment because first of all

00:02:55.940 aaron's a close friend of mine and he's been on our show several times we all know but again

00:03:00.740 there's the reality that cancel culture itself something that we talk about often it really

00:03:06.020 happened it happened right here it happened right here in prince george maybe not the first place

00:03:10.420 you'd think that cancel culture would happen but this this disease this virus that is cancel

00:03:14.620 culture is spreading we live in such a disembodied world with a cacophony of stimuli all seeking our

00:03:20.660 outrage that we often feel disoriented and overwhelmed i've suffered the effects of

00:03:25.000 terrorists and market crashes and even viruses i mean i lived through 2001 i've lived through 2008

00:03:30.360 now i've lived through 2020 but it's not like i ever met the virus or the terrorist or the bankers

00:03:34.860 who were playing with our mortgages but uh the closest i think i ever got to that actually was

00:03:39.640 i remember being there at the air canada discount airline like not i wasn't taking that airline that

00:03:45.360 day but the air the next kiosk over was where the discount airline was and it folded that day i

00:03:50.940 watched people pack the desks pack the kiosk pack away the computers people with uniforms on not

00:03:58.140 just you know helpers and hands-on like no people who were from that airline who now no longer had

00:04:02.340 a job who were having to pack up the stuff that used to be a part of that airline so that's kind

00:04:07.100 of the only time i've ever seen it happen live today in real time uh you my dear audience and i

00:04:13.160 We're going to speak with someone who was taken out for purely ideological and selfish reasons just moments ago, and that's historic. That's historic for the show. We're not necessarily breaking the story. Aaron did speak with some local guys here, but he's leaving the big guys away. He's letting us talk to him first. He's not talking to the big news guys first. He's talking to us first.

00:04:31.900 Another point to bring up here is that clearly even northern BC is changing.

00:04:35.740 Obviously, that was a voluntary position, and it was beholden to a woke left-wing government in Victoria.

00:04:40.760 But without delving into that, we need to understand that the capital of Victoria would never have thought it could have told the northern capital, Prince George, what to do with its university board chair even 10 years ago.

00:04:52.520 Nowadays, there's people up here who are even lauding this, thinking that somehow there really was a strike for being tolerant and diversity and all the rest of it.

00:05:01.500 But the northern capital has demographics similar enough to Vancouver and Victoria, I suppose, that there really are some echelons that applauded this.

00:05:09.980 And that's not good, because that lack of solidarity will ensure we're mistreated.

00:05:14.540 I promise you that.

00:05:15.400 If we don't stick together up here, we're not going to get Victoria to listen to us.

00:05:19.680 We'll get Aaron on right away, but I'd like to point out once again that we are living in an empire of lies, which is what John Paul II used to call the Soviet Union.

00:05:26.660 The government gained nothing by cancelling, my dear friend, save to prove for the nth time its supremacy and ability to redefine the very fabric of reality. 0.77

00:05:36.580 Orwell warned us about this, a political machine that sought total control.

00:05:40.500 We've arrived at that point that he said the spirit of man was going to be stomped in the face by a jackboot by the state over and over again for eternity in the spirit of man.

00:05:52.540 Hopefully, we're able to struggle back up on top to our feet before it's too late.

00:05:57.000 We'll bring Aaron on right away and chat with you for a short while.

00:06:02.420 Aaron's going to run the show today.

00:06:05.480 You're the cancer fan.

00:06:10.260 I suppose so, yeah.

00:06:12.860 It's wonderful to join the club, I guess.

00:06:14.800 It appears to be good company.

00:06:16.640 It kind of feels like, as you know, I'm a bit of an atheist,

00:06:20.900 but it sort of feels like how I imagined going to hell would always be.

00:06:24.380 It's where all the interesting people end up, you know.

00:06:28.000 But I wanted to start by congratulating you on moving the studio.

00:06:31.120 I see that the glorious picture behind you,

00:06:33.120 the view from the Northern Legislature hasn't changed much

00:06:35.680 since you've moved from the East Wing to the West Wing.

00:06:37.780 So that's good.

00:06:39.620 I was worried you'd lose the view in the move.

00:06:42.680 No, no, no.

00:06:43.360 We've still got, we can still see a few things from here.

00:06:46.440 It's nice.

00:06:46.960 The Citadel. 0.87

00:06:47.420 The Citadel that we're going to build now that you are a pariah.

00:06:50.900 so let's walk through this so you you weren't seeking another term you were you you were let's

00:06:58.600 go right back to the beginning how did you become board chair to begin well that's a good place to

00:07:03.560 start because a lot of folks probably don't they're not they're probably not familiar with

00:07:06.700 the with sort of the standard university governance structure so it's a in bc anyway it's a bicameral

00:07:12.080 system at universities and for the most not so much a colleges because they don't have a senate

00:07:15.700 But universities have a board and they have a Senate.

00:07:19.200 The Senate, for the most part, is made up of faculty.

00:07:21.740 It's quite large.

00:07:22.980 And they have jurisdiction over, you know, curriculum changes, a lot of policy, etc.

00:07:29.340 And it's presided over by the president of the university who is hired by the board.

00:07:36.160 The board is smaller in terms of membership, but it's made up of a mixture of government appointees.

00:07:42.900 We're not elected.

00:07:43.760 We're appointed by government.

00:07:44.900 So every time you get a changeover in government, you usually start to see a changeover in the university boards.

00:07:51.900 And to be clear, in terms of public institutions across the province, there's over 300 different public boards and agencies that when a new government comes in,

00:07:59.240 they start, you know, as the terms start to expire for each of those public officials, those appointees, they reappoint them.

00:08:05.320 if you go way back to 2001 2002 when the bc liberals were first elected in bc

00:08:10.680 they wiped out every appointed member on every board and college in the province all in one

00:08:15.920 like everybody just got a pink slip and then just reappointed everybody uh and and so that was one

00:08:21.020 one method they used the ndp used a different method they chose not to wipe everybody out

00:08:25.280 in one day they just chose to wait until the terms expired and then they'd reappoint

00:08:28.540 So I ended up being the first appointment at UMBC after the NDP government was elected in British Columbia.

00:08:38.940 And so I was on the board for a couple of years as just a member of the board, they call a board of governor.

00:08:46.080 And then the previous chair had, she resigned quite abruptly.

00:08:52.620 I think, you know, there was some emergency in her family.

00:08:54.420 and um and and the next day i ended up elected by the other board members as the chair that wasn't

00:09:01.320 that long ago it was less than a year ago i think it was like july 2020 or something so that's

00:09:06.520 basically how the the boards operate there's also some elected people on the boards there's two

00:09:10.720 elected students one from the graduate student society and one from the undergraduate student

00:09:15.500 society there's a couple of faculty reps that are they're they're elected from the faculty as well

00:09:21.480 Only the faculty votes for them.

00:09:23.620 And then there's some staff and support staff representative as well.

00:09:28.040 So that's sort of how it's structured.

00:09:29.760 Now, the position is volunteer.

00:09:34.080 All the board positions are volunteer.

00:09:35.780 The chair position is volunteer.

00:09:37.360 So I've never received a penny from the British Columbia government

00:09:42.160 or from the university.

00:09:44.400 And I should also say that the decision to turf me on Friday,

00:09:48.680 you know i think caught the university by surprise as much as it did me there was no

00:09:55.000 to my knowledge anyway i mean you know i haven't really received any specific information but

00:09:59.260 it was simply an announcement on twitter from the minister directly

00:10:03.260 minister ang kang who's a minister of advanced education skills training

00:10:07.660 at 5 0 1 p.m she she posted a tweet that said something to the i think we actually have it

00:10:14.820 actually, we can probably, probably post it. But it just said, you know, we won't tolerate

00:10:23.100 racist and discriminatory comments, etc. And effectively, I'm dismissing Aaron Eichmann

00:10:27.160 from, from his position. So that happened. Yeah, it's coming up just in a moment here.

00:10:35.680 Okay. Looking for the spot. But so it's, yeah, there, it'll be up in just a moment here.

00:10:44.040 Go ahead, though, Aaron.

00:10:45.860 So the, yeah, this is the tweet.

00:10:48.380 So we have high standards for public appointees and racist and discriminatory comments from

00:10:51.880 public appointees appointments to post-secondary institutions will not be tolerated.

00:10:55.940 I'm removing Aaron Ekman from his position.

00:10:57.920 She made other tweets.

00:10:59.000 I think there was, it was like a string of three tweets, but this is the one that had

00:11:01.500 like the most information.

00:11:02.940 The other tweets were just sort of generic statements about commitments to diversity,

00:11:08.240 inclusion, et cetera.

00:11:09.240 So it's my understanding that, you know, that was the first that anybody heard about it.

00:11:12.860 So then, you know, so the university didn't play, nobody at the university, to my knowledge, played any role in making the decision.

00:11:18.620 They found out about it sort of the same way I did.

00:11:23.840 Now, the question has been, well, what did he say, right?

00:11:27.440 Yeah, that's been the question from the beginning, is that what exactly are you being canceled for?

00:11:34.840 At some point, somebody commented, there you go, brother-in-law works at UNBC, says it's getting brutal up there.

00:11:40.320 Mark Cooper's been a good commenter before he sent me some good stuff that I need to look at and get on to.

00:11:45.320 But that's exactly it.

00:11:46.960 I guess the problem is that we're trying to figure out what you said that spurred this moment for Ann Kang.

00:11:53.820 Yeah, well, just before I get there, I mean, you know, I'm very sorry, Mark, to hear that, actually.

00:11:58.920 I'm very proud of UMBC.

00:12:00.280 I'm very proud of the faculty and the senior executive.

00:12:02.780 It's been a difficult time, no doubt about it.

00:12:05.340 There's been two protracted labor disputes with the faculty since they formalized their status as a union a number of years ago.

00:12:12.820 And so there's been a couple of strikes, actually.

00:12:14.860 When I came in sort of in the middle of the labor dispute and we worked through COVID to very quietly try to bring the parties back to the table and negotiate a collective agreement.

00:12:27.500 And while I was there, we were able to achieve the first negotiated collective agreement since the faculty had unionized.

00:12:34.320 And in fact, the last two agreements have been imposed upon them by government.

00:12:40.660 So we were able to avoid that.

00:12:41.520 So I'm quite proud of that.

00:12:43.100 And the students are just amazing.

00:12:45.080 Like they, you know, I would, you know, this might be controversial as well.

00:12:49.160 And I, you know, this is why it's difficult for me to understand this, you know, precisely

00:12:52.800 what it is that I've said is I say so many controversial things in a day that I'm not

00:12:56.000 sure which one they've sort of picked.

00:12:59.580 But, you know, for people that are kind of concerned about what's happening at universities,

00:13:03.260 I would argue that UMBC is one of the last sane universities in the country, and it's, you know, it's got a very immense commitment to providing, you know, producing research, especially scientific research, environmental research, research related to forestry, etc., that's vital for northern British Columbians in particular.

00:13:22.080 And the students come from all over, but the university was created primarily from the sweat and labor of people here locally who demanded to have a university in the north that serviced northern folks.

00:13:35.040 Because the problem families have had for so long is that if their children wanted a post-secondary education, especially if they wanted to pursue a post-grad degree, they'd have to go down to the lower mainland or leave the north.

00:13:48.380 So UMBC, I've got nothing bad to say about UMBC.

00:13:51.140 I'm immensely proud of that institution.

00:13:53.100 There's people there, I'm sure, that are, you know, after this incident will be quite

00:13:56.680 critical of me, but it doesn't change my opinion at all of that university.

00:13:59.800 So, Mark, I'm sorry to hear that it's not going well for your brother-in-law.

00:14:04.500 You know, we have been making efforts to try to make things better.

00:14:07.800 And the board that remains there, they're good people.

00:14:10.820 They're from the community, and they care about the university.

00:14:13.740 So, yeah, because of all those factors, I had, as you referenced, announced my intention

00:14:19.000 to step down three months ago.

00:14:20.420 and in fact you know the upcoming meeting in a couple of weeks in june was when the board was

00:14:27.040 scheduled to re-elect a new chair because they've known for three months that i'm i'm stepping away

00:14:32.640 and i'm quite confident that the next chair will be outstanding um but it looks like you know this

00:14:38.620 government i and i have been you know i admit i've been very vocal of the bc ndp government

00:14:43.740 for the better part of a year that's no secret to anybody who who spends any time following the

00:14:49.280 things i say day to day and it just seems like you know i mean i mean the one thing that surprises

00:14:55.640 me is that uh you know they didn't come up with a reason maybe to turf me earlier um it's at first

00:15:02.440 i was a bit surprised that they tried to they ultimately tried to tag me as a racist on my way

00:15:05.780 out the door um but when i thought about i thought you know it's not really that surprising it's sort

00:15:10.860 of a pattern that's developing i know you know one of your previous guests uh aaron gunn who

00:15:14.840 is widely rumored to be running uh pondering a run for the leadership of the bc liberal party

00:15:20.380 uh he was he was just called straight out on twitter by a by a by a cabinet minister no less 0.97

00:15:25.620 uh you know i think the tweet was you're a freaking racist right and it's so it is sort 0.65

00:15:30.260 of this growing pattern of uh of progressives in particular uh and especially in the bc ndp 0.93

00:15:37.820 whenever they're confronted with somebody who either disagrees with them or questions their

00:15:41.660 narrative on anything. Rather than deal with the challenge and explain their position or

00:15:48.840 establish their position, they throw out the moniker of racist and hope that it diminishes

00:15:53.100 that person's credibility in the eyes of anybody who might be watching or listening and distracts

00:15:59.580 from the real questions that they're asking. So that's sort of where we're at. Let me get to my

00:16:04.660 speculation on what it was that I said. I think there's two different items. And there were

00:16:10.260 definitely two different groups i think that were you know advocating for the dismissal um so the

00:16:15.620 first one if you go back to may 5th uh i had i had made it i posted a tweet that referenced a piece

00:16:24.140 of government documentation that had been that was going around about covid on twitter and so this

00:16:30.160 will be the um i think we've actually got the the picture of of one of the tweets it's it's probably

00:16:35.860 pregnant people number one or something let's just put that up share button here yeah that's

00:16:43.980 my camera there we go and uh yeah we're just just bringing it up here it's always it's always fun to

00:16:50.280 see what the government's spending money on well this i'd actually planned to talk on about on your

00:16:55.520 show uh but we just didn't find time so i had planned to talk about this a um a month ago back

00:17:01.700 when I said it but I just know this just came across Twitter and I saw it and I and I it sort

00:17:08.380 of caught me a bit by surprise not and this is what I you know I should qualify in this I know

00:17:13.780 that many of the viewers will probably be a bit incensed by something like this I actually have

00:17:19.420 no problem with it right so what this signifies I think to me was that it's it's no longer kosher

00:17:28.460 to say pregnant women in government communication.

00:17:34.500 And so as you can see there, I just tweeted the link and the slogan

00:17:40.340 and just said, oh, I didn't get the memo.

00:17:41.800 It looks like pregnant women has been deleted from the list of approved phrases.

00:17:45.860 And the reason I said that is, look, I'm a union organizer.

00:17:48.740 I've been a staff rep for unions.

00:17:49.920 I've been a contract negotiator both in the private and public sector.

00:17:52.760 I've negotiated against government on the union side.

00:17:56.120 I've negotiated against private sector employers.

00:17:59.380 I've also negotiated as an employer, opposite unions.

00:18:02.960 And so, you know, I have a fair understanding of HR trends over the years,

00:18:08.060 and in particular, HR style guides and what style guides are.

00:18:13.140 And they're called different things depending on the organization,

00:18:15.120 but essentially it's a book that lists out, you know,

00:18:19.940 the kind of speech we're allowed to use in the workplace.

00:18:22.220 and so increasingly public sector workers in particular but also in private sector

00:18:27.320 corporations all sorts of places generally you know across what we I often refer to as

00:18:31.960 professional managerial class there there are these style guides that are being imposed upon

00:18:37.380 folks that that place you know some compression on what they're able to say and so there's another

00:18:43.140 tweet that you know I followed up with that as well I think it's the next one that asks for

00:18:48.720 somebody if they are willing to very quietly to send me a copy of the updated style guide which

00:18:53.860 you know specifies that they're no longer allowed to say pregnant women anymore that we now have to

00:18:59.800 refer to pregnant people and so that question sparked a bit of a twitter mob who was rather

00:19:06.780 incensed because I think you know I'm pretty certain that what they were you know from the

00:19:11.160 sort of the vitriol I was receiving what they're alleging that I'm trying to imply here is that

00:19:17.080 it's not possible for someone who's not a woman to have a baby or to become pregnant and i i suspect

00:19:24.600 you know you know knowing you and i have had a number of conversations and i know i know where

00:19:28.780 you stand on these issues so you would probably agree with what i just said i don't actually agree

00:19:32.440 with what i just said i i'm you know you know me i'm pretty pretty pretty liberal uh i actually

00:19:38.100 recognize that someone who decides as an adult to transition from a from a woman to a man can do so

00:19:46.880 I would still refer to them as a, you know, I have no problem referring to them as a man using, you know, male pronouns to describe them.

00:19:53.700 And I also understand that those, that that particular person, you know, might not opt to get surgery that removes their uterus, for instance, and could still have a baby and become pregnant and have a child, and I would still refer to them as a man.

00:20:09.760 So this is the person that they're referring to. And I guess by, you know, me questioning that, um, asking for the style guide, for instance, uh, the insinuation that was, uh, that people were saying that I was making was that, um, birth dads, I think, as they're referred to don't exist.

00:20:29.900 uh and there's one more tweet on this one as well uh that i made because i i took it a step further

00:20:36.600 and i said look i'm really interested in talking to someone like this i've never met the i've never

00:20:40.440 met such a person before someone's actually someone who knows me uh who's married to uh

00:20:45.320 a self-identified male who's had three children has actually did tell me afterwards that you

00:20:50.040 erin you did actually meet my husband they said uh at a convention and you know i apologize for

00:20:55.780 not remembering that person. It was, you know, our conventions at the BC Federation of Labour

00:20:59.860 when I was there. There are 2,500 people, depending on whether there's an election going on. So it's

00:21:05.020 difficult to remember someone. So, you know, I did say, look, I'd love to interview somebody like

00:21:09.960 that. I was going to talk to you about bringing them on the show, but we also do another show

00:21:13.060 that I would have loved to have had them on because I just think, you know, like I'd love

00:21:18.280 to hear your perspective on a number of different issues. It's not somebody that I've spoke to

00:21:21.460 before. But by posting this question, the implication was, you know, as perceived by the

00:21:27.020 people who were rather angry about it, was that, again, I was trying to prove that such people

00:21:31.320 don't exist. And then they took issue with me asking to question them, because I think they

00:21:35.720 presumed, of course, that I wanted to, you know, challenge their existence and all these other

00:21:40.920 things. Which, you know, I mean, like, I can understand, certainly, with the climate that a

00:21:46.460 number of these folks have to face, that they would draw those conclusions. But, you know,

00:21:50.840 so funny is that every single person that was sort of attacking me they all know me right they like

00:21:55.640 they all know me quite well and they know they know for instance when i was at the bc federation

00:21:59.720 of labor that i not only supported but pushed very hard to have the the gender designations taken

00:22:04.120 off the bathrooms i know lots of your listeners are probably going oh god he's one of those people

00:22:07.560 but you know like i that's where i am politically um so it was it was interesting to me uh to see

00:22:14.760 the reaction to this uh and how quickly people will sort of take a question like that a desire

00:22:20.120 to talk to somebody uh about these issues as an attack on them and absolutely at that point going

00:22:27.400 back last month there were a number of calls uh you know there was no fewer than like four different

00:22:32.360 lawyers uh from from the lower mainland who were actively sending copies of my tweets to different

00:22:39.080 groups at the university and probably to the ministry as well trying to get me fired so i

00:22:43.400 expected you know around that point that i'd probably you know get dismissed or something and

00:22:48.440 and try to be labeled as a transphobe um but it didn't you know nothing happened so the months

00:22:53.540 kind of carried on so then then the next week comes and i don't know if you if you had any

00:22:59.920 comment on where we're at so far before i carry on but uh no i mean i mean this is this is of

00:23:05.480 course what this forum is for for those of us who uh of course the albertan here and giving us uh

00:23:10.280 his two thoughts he always he always gives us a couple of his sense the narrative must be swallowed

00:23:14.240 whole without question i mean and this is just it uh they're not allowed to have any kind of

00:23:19.260 nuanced opinion here i mean what you've expressed so far as much as people might only hear the

00:23:23.320 you know taking the labels off the bathrooms thing kind of if this was fox that's where i

00:23:28.280 would capitalize but the point is that that you know you're trying to have an actually nuanced

00:23:33.800 opinion on this you're trying to speak to people who are from a different walk of life and and

00:23:38.480 you're trying to you're trying to kind of understand those things i there's nothing wrong

00:23:42.180 with that ultimately you know obviously we fall on different sides of this question a lot of

00:23:46.740 accounts but this is what this forum is for is it's for people to get their opinions out there

00:23:51.140 and talk and without without a filter that's why we're here and i that's that's all i've got to say

00:23:56.680 about that i'm just happy to have you roll along here and tell us a bit more about how you ended

00:24:00.980 up getting canceled from a volunteer position that's that's well this this is what's what's

00:24:06.620 so ironic about this sort of the whole political climate right now is that you know the guy that

00:24:11.340 supports transgender rights, the guy that, you know, thinks that we should take gender

00:24:15.920 designations off of bathrooms, has a very difficult time getting any airtime on sort

00:24:21.220 of left-wing publications. It's the right-wing conservative that has me on his show to talk

00:24:26.420 about it, who actually disagrees with me on it. So, I mean, that's just very interesting

00:24:29.440 to me, you know, and part of the reason why I like this show so much.

00:24:34.340 Yeah, no, it's telling. I mean, it's actually quite fascinating. So anyway, let's jump

00:24:40.540 forward to what happened on Friday, because despite all the efforts of, you know, what you

00:24:44.940 might describe as left-wing trans activists trying to get me fired, it doesn't appear that they were

00:24:50.280 successful. And so when we're talking about why I was cancelled, so to speak, and I want to be

00:24:57.560 clear, you know, we talk a lot about cancel culture, etc. I don't, I'm not complaining about

00:25:01.920 what's happened. I'm not, I don't see myself as having been victimized to the same extent, I think,

00:25:07.700 as many people would i like i engage in controversial discussions all the time and like i said the one

00:25:14.280 thing that surprised me the most was that you know they sort of fired me when they did why they did

00:25:19.360 and as late in the game as they did um because you know you can't you're fired

00:25:25.000 it's sort of well i think you know my i've been i've been appearing on this show um fairly

00:25:32.960 frequently and it you know that probably didn't help very much but uh you know i have no regrets

00:25:37.400 whatsoever. In any case, so let's go to Friday. So let's start with the link to the joint statement

00:25:43.380 that was put out by the Finance Minister Selina Robinson and Rakhna Singh, who's the Parliamentary

00:25:50.780 Secretary for Anti-Racism. This was a statement that was put out. It's a web link to mark

00:25:57.780 Jewish Heritage Month. And just scroll down to the fifth paragraph and let's look at the

00:26:03.940 first sentence there it is right there right at the bottom of the screen it says over the last

00:26:08.660 few years there has been an increase in anti-semitism and bigotry in bc so that state

00:26:15.520 like so i read these statements because well you know i have a hebrew name and even though i'm not

00:26:22.960 jewish i can't necessarily trust some nazi roaming around with a club to be able to tell the

00:26:28.540 difference. And so I actually, I keep track of the stats of anti-Asian, or sorry, anti-Jewish 0.87

00:26:35.400 violence and discrimination and bigotry quite closely. I track this stuff every year. And

00:26:41.220 these stats actually do exist. It's not like this has to be anecdotal information. And the reason

00:26:46.620 that statement stuck out to me is because it's not in keeping with the data that I was familiar

00:26:53.400 with. So there's a fairly well-known Jewish organization, B'nai B'rith, that produces an

00:26:59.740 annual audit every year of the number of incidents of anti-Jewish violence, bigotry, hatred, etc.

00:27:07.160 in a big report. And there's another, I think I actually included the B'nai B'rith link,

00:27:13.940 we can probably post that website as well, just to show people, I mean, you can go look at this

00:27:17.100 data. And they compile it, I mean, these are good reports, I recommend you read them, you can see

00:27:21.940 you know there's the 2020 report the 2019 2018 2017 and they go through and there's photographs

00:27:27.340 of all of the terrible things that uh get put up the graffiti the you know the swastikas that get

00:27:33.380 posted incidents of violence that kind of stuff i recommend people read this because it will

00:27:38.560 actually surprise you how much of this garbage takes place in canada and and it's absolutely

00:27:45.700 true that the rate of increase of these incidents in some areas like ontario for instance 0.75

00:27:51.740 is spiking at an alarming rate um like it's it's in the maritimes etc it's like it's not good right

00:27:58.940 so i watch this stuff with great interest but if you put up the uh cropped image of western stats

00:28:06.560 which i was familiar with because i you know like i said i've been tracking this stuff if you look

00:28:11.580 there british columbia in particular but even more interestingly you know alberta in comparison to

00:28:16.300 the other provinces is so low, and I'm not celebrating necessarily the low numbers here,

00:28:23.280 I mean, one incident is terrible of this kind of stuff, I mean, there shouldn't be any incident

00:28:27.660 of it, so I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to pat anybody on the back here.

00:28:32.560 Mackenzie King's phrase the other way, none is too many, so obviously there should be no

00:28:39.100 incidents of anti-Semitism or racial hatred of any kind. Against anyone, yeah, but especially

00:28:45.720 right now I mean these are the kind of things we got to watch because things are so heightened over

00:28:49.860 in Israel right now with you know if you turn on the news I mean it's just outrageous but Alberta

00:28:54.960 in particular I mean the stats are are so comparatively low it looks like they've you know

00:28:58.700 they've had to combine them with the northern territories in the northwest territories in the

00:29:03.240 Yukon but in both Alberta and British Columbia there's been a marked decline since 2018 so 374

00:29:10.680 in 2018 in british columbia which was a huge increase over 2017 by the way like it was a

00:29:15.660 massive increase that was a scary year uh but 2019 it would drop down to 2012 2020 dropped down to

00:29:21.900 194 and similar a similar trajectory with an even bigger decrease between this year you know 2020

00:29:27.400 and 2019 uh in alberta of 27.5 percent decrease in 8.5 in british columbia so you know when i saw

00:29:35.740 that statement um saying that it was on the increase over the last few years in bc it just

00:29:41.120 didn't sit right so i don't i don't know if you if if our producer can uh show that tweet where i

00:29:47.380 i basically clipped the statement from the uh from the jewish heritage month statement and

00:29:54.820 asked the question to the ministers is this true do you have evidence for this um and uh we can

00:30:01.500 probably show that tweet because this is the one that i think sparked all the ultimately sparked

00:30:05.920 the dismissal there's been an increase in anti-semitism and bigotry in bc say two bc

00:30:15.700 neap ministers has there does the government does the bc government have evidence of this honest

00:30:19.900 question and then i quoted the uh the joint statement so if you go on twitter and you and

00:30:25.240 you find this tweet you'll see that it it um it attracted a number of people who who called me an

00:30:34.680 anti-semite for having asked this question and it's not like i don't understand why you know

00:30:39.720 people would would draw that conclusion um i mean if you've been if you've been on twitter at all

00:30:44.020 if you've been following the news over the last couple of weeks i mean it's a it's a war field

00:30:47.840 right it's a battlefield right now between uh you know pro-israel advocates and pro-palestinian

00:30:54.140 advocates and they're just going to bat with each other and there's it's it's like this heightened

00:30:58.040 state of aggression right now and so all of those folks I think that were sort of battle-hardened

00:31:02.680 over the last week in defending the actions of Israel uh in in terms of you know like bombing

00:31:09.360 the AP offices and all the things that they're doing you know they're alleged to be doing to

00:31:13.500 Palestinians etc they saw this as an attempt to downplay uh what they feel they're facing

00:31:19.640 as discrimination, violent acts, bigotry, etc. in British Columbia.

00:31:23.700 And of course, I mean, I have no interest in diminishing any of that stuff.

00:31:26.720 I worry about it to a great extent.

00:31:29.940 But look, until Friday, I was the chair of a university, and so data matters.

00:31:34.300 And the data shows that this statement is just patently false.

00:31:38.040 And I don't think it helps us to lie about that.

00:31:40.340 I don't think it helps for government ministers to spread even more fear

00:31:45.380 when it's not necessary.

00:31:46.520 And I'm not saying that we should be celebrating that decrease

00:31:49.500 because again we can't diminish the the cases are still measured in the hundreds it's not like

00:31:53.900 you know things are great but we still have to you know i think we need public leaders

00:31:58.080 and politicians in particular who instead of making emotional arguments that they think will

00:32:03.320 sort of rile up different groups of people uh they need to make data-based arguments uh that

00:32:09.560 are based on fact and and i've always kind of i've always believed that and i think that's

00:32:13.100 one of the the main reasons why we depend on universities so much is to help sort of compile

00:32:17.220 these statistics. So, yeah, so that was, that's basically what happened. I went back and forth

00:32:23.560 with folks, you know, for the better part of another couple hours, I think, who were accusing

00:32:27.220 me of being an anti-Semite. Niko Slabinski, who actually, you know, like, nothing bad to say

00:32:34.080 about Niko at all. I've met him a number of times. I've met with him in his offices.

00:32:40.460 But, you know, he reiterates this claim as well, that there's a significant,

00:32:44.620 there's significant evidence of the increase uh which based on the the data that i've just shown

00:32:50.600 you is not true now i you know i want to i want to make a caveat here that you know in in nico's

00:32:55.660 defense he may indeed have more recent data just for the for the first few months of 2021

00:33:01.760 that i haven't seen and you know my question to the ministers was is there more data that

00:33:10.200 you're basing this on but their statement of course was over the past few years so i'm willing

00:33:14.960 to concede that you know when the 2021 data is produced that there will in fact be an increase

00:33:21.040 i mean that's quite possible especially considering what's going on right now

00:33:23.980 uh but nobody's produced this data yet and but there have been claims that you know the data

00:33:29.760 does exist so anyway that's um that's sort of how that played out and then by 5 0 1 p.m

00:33:37.260 uh the minister um uh released that tweet announcing my dismissal i don't know have

00:33:43.280 we shown that one already yeah yeah the uh yeah right yeah so i mean it's you know it's i mean

00:33:51.480 it's kind of an interesting case because i think most people that sort of hear it that are concerned

00:33:56.080 about what's going on in universities they probably get you know they get angry at at the

00:34:00.620 university etc and make make the case that you know universities are getting too canceling stuff

00:34:04.860 But in this case, it wasn't the university that made the decision.

00:34:07.800 There wasn't a huge outcry from, you know, student groups and faculty and the public to have me dismissed.

00:34:15.220 It was, you know, and in fact, like these trans activists that I've been talking about, people that I know, I mean, people that I actually agree with on most questions.

00:34:25.240 They've been trying for the better part of a month to get me turfed to no avail.

00:34:29.580 uh but this you know what i was called an anti-semite on friday to be clear they tried

00:34:35.560 to get you turf because you are a turf that's that's their point well the funny thing is i'm

00:34:40.480 actually not a turf i uh i mean you know my positions changed a little bit i have some 0.98

00:34:45.060 sympathy for what are termed the trans exclusionary radical feminists within the the the feminist

00:34:51.480 milieu but my you know i'm a marxist so my my sympathy for them i sort of see the the interplay

00:34:57.740 between trans activists in in the feminist milieu and and so-called TERFs as the same effort within

00:35:04.760 that grouping to try to expel the Marxists because the so-called TERFs are really the like the last

00:35:09.860 Marxist left in in feminism very similar to what happened between social democrats and and communists

00:35:16.060 in the labor movement back in the 50s when communists were all expelled from the labor

00:35:19.460 movement so that's sort of that's sort of playing out but you know I find I think you would actually

00:35:24.540 probably agree with uh trans like radical i prefer to call them radical feminists but i think you

00:35:29.660 would agree with them on more points than i would uh especially on their like they have what i would 0.99

00:35:33.740 regard as a rather puritan position on pornography um and uh but they you know they and they would

00:35:40.260 definitely yeah yeah i think you would like that and they definitely agree with you on you know the

00:35:44.860 kind of things that you were talking to chris elston about yesterday and i'll and i'll admit

00:35:49.000 i mean i i share concerns despite how supportive i am of if anybody's right to do whatever they

00:35:54.840 want to their body once they're an adult and change their gender etc i do have serious and

00:35:58.840 growing concerns about the kind of things that chris elson's talking about about puberty blockers

00:36:03.480 and hormones being used on um and administered to children that are underage i just don't i don't

00:36:08.560 think that's a good idea and i and i i don't have any specific data to reference on that's why i

00:36:12.540 don't talk about it very much but i do see a growing number of people emerging who are you

00:36:18.380 know basically de-transitioning as they get older and they're and they're starting to say things

00:36:22.840 that are very critical of the doctors and the counselors that were around them when they were

00:36:26.360 uh when they were transitioning as a as an underage uh person so i share those concerns as well but

00:36:32.340 ultimately i um you know like if you decide tomorrow that you want to change your gender and

00:36:37.140 you you know if you want to even pay for the surgery to to do it like i doesn't matter to me

00:36:41.800 at all right i mean i i'll i'll refer to you however you like and um and that's always been

00:36:47.460 position on it and I and that's kind of you know it's a bit of a libertarian approach to it I

00:36:51.060 suppose which is interesting for for a socialist like me but it is interesting that you know like

00:36:56.500 sort of the left folks that were the other thing that makes the case unique is that you know even

00:37:01.780 though I was I was dismissed by an NDP minister I think that the I suspect that the the culminating

00:37:09.380 incident was actually driven by more conservative right-wing forces but even that's not clear

00:37:15.780 because there were progressive Jewish folks

00:37:17.840 who were also sort of condemning the question

00:37:20.240 that I had asked, et cetera.

00:37:21.420 So it's not cut and dry.

00:37:24.080 And it's a bit of a fascinating case, I think,

00:37:26.900 trying to remove myself from it.

00:37:29.520 So we'll see how it plays out.

00:37:31.100 I mean, there's been a, you know,

00:37:33.940 like there's a lot of,

00:37:35.980 I've got a lot of critics down in the Lower Mainland,

00:37:38.100 obviously, people are,

00:37:39.260 some people are coming out of the woodwork

00:37:40.340 that have sort of disagreed with me

00:37:41.380 on a number of things.

00:37:42.640 And I know actually,

00:37:43.980 like there's pro-Palestinian people

00:37:45.340 who disagree with me on other questions who are celebrating my my dismissal because of you know

00:37:51.860 so-called anti-semitic remarks and it's just interesting to see that like the kind of people

00:37:57.300 that will kind of pile on even though you technically got turf for something that they

00:38:01.260 would agree with right but because they agree with you on they disagree with you on something

00:38:04.320 else they they sort of join the fray so it's interesting but locally up here uh i mean there's

00:38:09.140 been an enormous amount of support that i've received i've had a hard time getting back to

00:38:12.780 everybody that's reached out. I've heard from people that I haven't talked to in years, and

00:38:17.960 especially a lot of folks that, you know, a couple of folks have phoned me up and said,

00:38:23.480 look, we disagree with you on almost everything, Ekman, but we know you're not a racist. I mean,

00:38:27.160 this is BS. So that's been interesting to see as well and quite heartwarming.

00:38:33.120 But we'll see how it plays out. The last thing I want is for anybody to cast any negative

00:38:39.000 aspersions on the university the university the senior executive the board etc they they really

00:38:44.180 didn't see it coming and i think they were as surprised as as anybody uh i wasn't that surprised

00:38:49.240 of course because as you know so well i uh i tend to poke at the at the most controversial issues i

00:38:54.380 can i can identify and and i mean that's why that's why i love you i the thing is that when

00:39:01.300 it comes to this in particular it does it is kind of mind-boggling to me not only not only the course

00:39:07.880 they chose it just i i think this is the thing that gets me about cancel culture in general it's

00:39:13.100 like if you just left it alone for a couple of minutes like most people would forget what

00:39:18.160 happened now we shouldn't do that for things that go that are obvious trespasses you know harvey

00:39:23.140 weinstein and and others that are that are doing terrible things and we shouldn't just let them

00:39:28.620 like fade into the background and not be punished but but in this instance here we've got you know

00:39:35.280 we have a voluntary university board chair who has actually not made any

00:39:39.000 inflammatory statements of like calling for violence or calling for hate.

00:39:43.620 They're asking legitimate questions.

00:39:45.800 He or she's asking legitimate questions.

00:39:48.740 That's what we're going to capitalize on.

00:39:50.560 We've got so many other issues here in British Columbia that could use the

00:39:53.480 attention of the administrator of advanced education, like, you know,

00:39:57.100 trying to make things more affordable,

00:39:59.300 trying to make sure there's access in the furthest reaches of the province.

00:40:02.980 and this is what they're spending their time on i i just don't know why she would bother

00:40:08.160 and that's what i think cancel culture really gets to me on it it's a lot of energy exerted

00:40:14.880 into places where you could have taken that same energy and done something productive with it

00:40:19.320 well and what's so fascinating to me is like which pressure points or causes them to finally

00:40:25.200 make the decision so uh like i said back at the beginning of may i fully expected to receive some

00:40:30.800 similar announcement from the minister over alleged transphobic remarks over the question

00:40:34.880 I'd asked about pregnant people and wanting to interview somebody who was not a woman who was

00:40:39.560 either pregnant or has had children. But apparently that lobby didn't have the steam to make it

00:40:46.640 happen. And whereas the pro-Israel lobby, who was accusing me of being an anti-Semite, I mean,

00:40:53.000 I made that tweet at 11 a.m. ish, and the dismissal came out at 5 p.m. that day, so

00:40:59.000 uh, I, so now I'm not, you know, I, I don't know for sure whether that's, that's the thing,

00:41:04.240 I don't know for sure whether that's the one that sparked it, because she hasn't said, she's just

00:41:07.060 said racist discriminatory remarks, uh, but if you've thrown the racist moniker in there, then

00:41:12.520 it sort of excludes the trans, you know, the so-called transphobic remarks, um, and, and,

00:41:19.200 And so it leads me to believe that it was the allegation of anti-Semitism.

00:41:23.100 So it just sort of illuminates to some degree what it is that the government is most pressured by

00:41:29.300 or what they see as more of a threat.

00:41:31.720 And I think possibly context, of course, is everything.

00:41:35.140 And because things are so hot in Israel right now between Israel-Palestine,

00:41:39.920 it could be that, you know, the calls of anti-Semitism is what spooked the minister.

00:41:45.740 I don't think she really put that much thought into it, to be perfectly honest.

00:41:49.520 I mean, if you sort of understand how this stuff works, you know, there's a whole number

00:41:53.320 of layers of sort of mid- and low-level staff people who, you know, and this is the one

00:42:00.200 criticism I have of the BCNAP government is because my, you know, my uncle was Dan Eckman.

00:42:04.960 He was the executive assistant for WAC Bennett back when the premier's office had three people

00:42:10.020 in it, the premier, the executive assistant, and, you know, one secretary.

00:42:14.060 and the three of them basically carried on the the work of the office and once Dave Barrett came

00:42:21.600 in I mean the first thing the NDP did was just balloon the size of the premier's office and I'm

00:42:26.200 not even sure what the full budget is now but the last budget that just came down in 2020

00:42:30.640 they gave them you know the finance minister gave the premier an additional four million dollars on

00:42:36.320 top of his existing budget every year so it's an it's an enormous office right all communications

00:42:42.760 people probably don't really have a lot to do um and spend a lot of time you know like on twitter

00:42:49.380 keeping tabs on people like me who are increasingly critical of this government so you say a few

00:42:55.160 things over the course of a few months those folks start to identify as uh you know as an

00:43:00.740 undesirable and and what really most insidious about people call it cancel culture i call it

00:43:05.980 identitarianism and i think it uh it manifests both in the left and the right equally it's

00:43:10.580 manifesting in the left right now in an alarming rate but it absolutely exists on the right as

00:43:15.200 well um uh but you know both sides are guilty of dehumanizing people that they uh that they've

00:43:23.440 deemed to be disagreeable and so once you sort of disagree with them once you challenge their

00:43:26.860 narrative once you say something that that violates one of these prohibited grounds that

00:43:32.000 they view as lines you cannot cross you cannot ask questions uh which they view to be of a

00:43:37.680 transphobic nature you cannot ask questions about the narrative we're pushing about violence and

00:43:41.940 bigotry against a certain group of people um you know i i i had intended to post something i think

00:43:48.920 i just forgot but during asian heritage month for instance there there every politician you could

00:43:53.900 find was posting a very solemn picture of themselves holding a sign that said stop asian

00:43:59.940 hate right um and it's so you know they do these performative things they don't do anything to 0.96

00:44:04.940 actually try to deal with it because, you know, I mean, incidents of Asian hate have clearly been

00:44:11.240 on the rise. I mean, we're seeing this stuff reported on the news. You know, I got friends

00:44:14.940 who have had incidents that have been quite alarming that they were born in Canada and

00:44:18.740 people are yelling things at them on the streets that they've just never encountered before.

00:44:24.060 But, you know, I tend to be a bit critical of this performative thing that we do

00:44:28.020 where we just post these pictures of ourselves with signs, for instance. And my question about

00:44:34.400 on the Jewish question in BC in particular was,

00:44:37.660 well, okay, if it's actually on the rise,

00:44:39.320 which is alarming to me,

00:44:40.700 then why aren't you doing the same thing you did last week

00:44:42.700 about Jewish or about Asian hate?

00:44:45.800 Why aren't you all posting with more performative signs 0.71

00:44:48.660 at the very least saying to stop Jewish hate?

00:44:52.900 And they're not doing that.

00:44:54.800 But once you ask these questions,

00:44:57.600 once you ask them to establish what they've said,

00:45:00.060 stab provide details and and facts to support their assertions they dehumanize you uh and so

00:45:08.220 for me i think in this context over the last month it's been an interesting little experiment to see

00:45:13.700 uh you know what is it that sort of finally prompts them to make the decision that they're

00:45:17.780 going to slit your throat so to speak and and on that point it's it's interesting because

00:45:24.500 it is so much performance art i mean i remember for those of us who are watching in alberta

00:45:29.860 today uh some of us might be uh recalling a certain a certain allison redford was premier

00:45:36.380 of that province for a short while uh and she uh during the alberta floods uh the year of the flood

00:45:43.060 as it were uh the and everything else was going wrong in alberta during that year uh she she came

00:45:49.280 in and and i remember somebody telling me this that they'd been a staffer for her during that

00:45:53.700 time or they were just part of this group of people got to witness this happen before the 0.99

00:45:57.680 camera went on for her to do her little bit from wherever she was she picked up a shovel and she 1.00

00:46:03.800 also went down and like grabbed some she put her hand in the dirt she literally like put it across

00:46:08.980 her face like she was a brave heart and and then stood there and looked kind of dirtied and grizzled

00:46:14.060 and like i you know i am alberta and so can you right like we are gonna beat these floods you

00:46:20.280 know come come hell or high water like we're gonna get this done right and and i remember that i

00:46:25.920 remember that so uh well it's funny that story reminds me of when gordon campbell was running

00:46:31.980 you know back before he first got elected and i hesitate to tell this tell you the story because

00:46:37.240 i don't you know i know you're a fan of plaid shirts and i don't want to offend you and i

00:46:40.320 actually love your plaid shirt uh but it's i find it a bit more genuine but you know you go back to

00:46:45.100 like the late 90s when gordon campbell had first run unsuccessfully and it was it became a bit of

00:46:49.780 a meme even before you know internet memes existed that in order to try to show that he wasn't sort

00:46:55.640 of from the the upper elite of of british columbian society that he had more working class sensibilities

00:47:02.380 his comms team sort of wrapped him in this plaid shirt but it was kind of like a sears catalog

00:47:08.420 or a work world world uh ad where you know they got these models and they're wearing these shirts

00:47:13.960 but they're really crisp like you can still see the folds from the from from the packaging and

00:47:19.520 and it's just not genuine right and so it was kind of funny it was like we know you're not you know

00:47:23.360 We know what you're trying to do, and you're not one of us, really.

00:47:26.200 But it is performative.

00:47:27.680 It happens on all sides.

00:47:28.680 But the left is really engaging in it right now, and I have been very critical of it.

00:47:34.040 And in particular, I've been critical about the performance art around First Nations land issues in particular,

00:47:41.060 where the BCNEP government really sort of drums up their support for UNDRIP, et cetera, reconciliation.

00:47:48.120 but at the same time they're marching uh rcmp with sniper rifles into wet sweat and territory

00:47:53.780 and the stuff that's going on down in fairy creek right now which i think you've talked to steward

00:47:58.240 about it doesn't matter what your position is on uh old growth logging uh and i and to be clear i'm

00:48:04.660 i'm sort of torn on it like i i think for the health of our forest it's not even just a matter

00:48:09.340 of like the aesthetic of big trees uh and me having any particular um sympathy for that it's

00:48:16.100 it's more about the health of our forest going forward and the the economic sustainability of

00:48:22.020 of our forest industry it's we've learned like we already know that when you level a forest and

00:48:29.100 then you just plant a monocrop of pine back in place you don't get the same kind of wood back

00:48:35.380 because that biodiversity is gone the forest isn't as strong the the trees aren't as healthy

00:48:40.860 I mean you have to have that diversity there and that's what's left in in what I think is like

00:48:45.460 three percent of what remains of our original old growth across the province but by the same token

00:48:52.580 if if a reaction to what's happening at Ferry Creek right now legislatively speaking is to

00:48:58.340 is to eliminate like all old growth logging well it creates a bit of a problem and a good example

00:49:04.340 we were talking about on your past show last time I was on I referenced this big fat log that

00:49:10.080 people are all incensed about that they saw in that logging truck going down through Victoria

00:49:14.840 and somebody and I was kind of laughing because somebody was commenting that that must be like

00:49:20.540 100 or maybe even 200 years old and I was sort of laughing because I've got 200 year old trees in my

00:49:24.900 backyard some of which I cut down a couple of years ago that tree was like 1300 years old but

00:49:31.240 if our reaction include in terms of you know protection placing protections on all growth

00:49:35.720 includes 200 300 year old trees it's going to be very harmful for for the industry up here and so

00:49:41.320 it is a bit more nuanced but I think the thing that people should be most concerned about what

00:49:46.380 this government's doing up in Ferry Creek right now whether you're a conservative a green

00:49:50.540 environmentalist or an unrepentant socialist like me we should all be opposed to this exclusion

00:49:55.200 zone system that they set up very similar to the so-called free speech zones that were set up during

00:50:00.460 the Olympics to to corral people who were opposed to what was happening into one area I mean that

00:50:05.480 is a that's an assault on our our freedom of expression and freedom to assemble and the idea 0.78

00:50:11.260 that that uh that the rcm like a paramilitary federal force called the rcmp can come in and

00:50:17.580 decide in offense where we can exercise our free speech our right to protest etc whether you agree

00:50:23.760 with it or not that should be concerning to everyone and they're even doing it to the press

00:50:27.440 they they're you know they're they're carrying out acts of violence against uh folks that are

00:50:31.420 protesting out there and you you may be cheering them on but you shouldn't nobody should be in

00:50:36.600 agreement with restricting the rights of the press to go in and document what's happening i mean

00:50:40.120 that's how authoritarianism starts and it doesn't really surprise me that this is happening under a

00:50:45.440 bc ndp government i don't think anybody should be surprised and and why why should we be surprised

00:50:51.820 that under any under any kind of authority that think that more state control is always the answer

00:50:57.860 and you and i can debate that question all day when it comes to crown corporations etc but i

00:51:02.660 mean like as we were referencing last week you you yourself wouldn't call yourself a big state guy

00:51:07.320 i'm certainly not a big state guy um it but this is exactly it if you've got a group of people in

00:51:13.020 there and i mean this goes back even to the minister firing it's like well i mean like of

00:51:16.260 course she's queen b of course of course she just has the has the right at a whim to dismiss and

00:51:22.140 recall and and or appointed new like it doesn't of course she's in charge because she's the

00:51:27.400 minister of advanced education of course the way the system works in bc yeah yeah well and i mean

00:51:32.100 and i mean yes by law but i mean in a kind of in a kind of cultural sense it's like well you'd think

00:51:36.560 you'd want some consultation between you and that person and maybe try and do some constructive

00:51:40.580 discipline or whatever you need to do but the point is that that again when you're dealing with

00:51:45.440 a group of people who already think that the government is the answer to everything or that

00:51:48.800 the power of the government is the answer to everything it's no wonder that they're willing

00:51:52.000 to call up the queen's cowboys that's what i always prefer to call the rcmp and and send them

00:51:56.740 into anywhere right and to get their will done and to corral people and that sort of thing it's it's

00:52:01.860 it's it's just par for the course i mean it's the government doing it the government is always right

00:52:06.020 so well um maybe maybe our producer can put up that link to that article but on that was posted

00:52:12.020 on the pge daily news this uh last night i think by by peter ewart who's a well-known commentator

00:52:18.180 in prince george uh because he gets into this very issue that you're raising um uh where he admits

00:52:24.500 that yeah the um yeah i apologize for the photo all these photos that are floating around about

00:52:28.640 me are um pre-covid and so my hair is uh as you can tell quite a bit longer than it was so i don't

00:52:34.740 look the same anymore but uh you know down at the i just we don't have to read it to people but i

00:52:40.160 people should look at this article it's quite well written and he and down the bottom you know

00:52:44.600 peter admits of course that the minister absolutely has the authority to dismiss a

00:52:50.080 uh a public a public appointee and that's but i mean it raises interesting questions

00:52:55.260 and and he's drawn i think the same conclusion you have which is it doesn't matter whether you

00:52:59.320 have the legal authority to do this a you should probably talk to the person first before just

00:53:05.120 sort of announcing their dismissal on on to the world and on twitter and it was announced on it

00:53:09.560 was i mean it was put in writing uh alleging that i had engaged in racist and discriminatory

00:53:14.380 uh comments on the ministry website on ministry letterhead you know signed in the minister's

00:53:19.300 name etc which raises questions about defamation etc but and a number you know I'll be perfectly

00:53:25.460 candid I mean a number of folks have approached me some lawyers etc because they're interested

00:53:29.440 in that particular fact pattern and I mean I'll explore the options but you know really like at

00:53:34.700 the end of the day let's say I I hit government with a defamation suit and win a big whack of

00:53:38.700 money well it's not like the minister or any other politician is going to have to pay that it's the

00:53:41.880 taxpayer and I just have no interest in you know saddling BC taxpayers with having to foot the bill

00:53:48.740 for any other sort of nonsense

00:53:50.880 that comes out of this government

00:53:51.740 that they're already on the hook for.

00:53:53.780 Can you sue somebody personally

00:53:56.280 who's a minister

00:53:57.000 or are they given protection?

00:54:00.600 Well, I think, like,

00:54:01.580 if I was to explore,

00:54:03.380 like, I'm not a lawyer, right?

00:54:04.180 I'm still receiving advice.

00:54:05.880 But if I was to initiate

00:54:09.360 a defamation claim,

00:54:11.620 presumably it would be

00:54:13.040 to the minister and the ministry.

00:54:16.160 But look, I mean,

00:54:17.140 You could, as the former board chair, if I had defamed a student, for instance, the student could probably do the same and name me in the suit, but public officials are generally bonded, right, which means if they step into some kind of a defamation situation and it's successful, there's basically an insurance plan that pays for it, but the premiums will go up and ultimately the taxpayer has to foot the bill for that stuff.

00:54:47.140 So, you know, I'm not too keen to go down that road, even though there's probably, I mean, some people have said it's quite a strong case, actually. And the reason it's strong is because it was put in writing, right?

00:54:58.980 but the other interesting question is and this is something I mean I'm like I don't really feel

00:55:08.260 like my free speech has been limited necessarily because of who I am and the fact that like I'm

00:55:13.960 not going to stop talking about the things I talk about just because the minister decided

00:55:18.100 to pull me in the last five minutes of the game but the question has been raised that

00:55:25.200 you know others in the same position might it might feel that there's a real chilling effect

00:55:31.340 on their speech if they're removed from such positions because they've engaged in in that

00:55:36.680 kind of speech and so that's a whole different beast that's uh i mean that's essentially a

00:55:42.360 charter challenge uh and i'm and i'm a bit intrigued by that actually um not necessarily

00:55:47.940 because i feel personally aggrieved but the broader question the fact pattern itself is an

00:55:53.100 interesting one in whether uh what's happened to me for instance if it did happen to anybody else

00:55:58.640 does it in fact in front like does it violate our charter rights to to free speech uh the action

00:56:04.980 that's taken place so so that might be the like there's no big payday at the end of that um and

00:56:10.840 and of course you know it could be quite expensive to go that route but uh that's the interesting

00:56:14.640 question that's that's a fascinating one to me your uh your wonderful phone from another century

00:56:21.480 is ringing i can hear it from here oh is that mine well eventually it'll it'll peter out it's

00:56:27.640 in another room somewhere i apologize no it's not a problem at all uh it we have some legal advice

00:56:33.160 from our resident town crier sheldon claire uh he he likes that profile picture we all like that

00:56:39.080 profile picture but uh he's telling us a lawsuit is likely necessary yeah i mean what's this the

00:56:46.680 The Albertan, the core tenet of conservative music.

00:56:48.860 The Albertan is a call to not blindly accept assumptions and question government exercise of power.

00:56:53.540 I've met a couple of non-conservatives who also hold those opinions.

00:56:57.780 They're getting rarer and rarer, but they exist.

00:57:01.680 Well, look, I mean, I think in this current context, the Albertan's right.

00:57:07.260 It is the right that tends to be the defender of free speech right now.

00:57:11.940 It hasn't always been the case.

00:57:12.960 I always, you know, draw people's attention to the Everett massacre in Washington State a number of years ago.

00:57:22.020 There's actually a wonderful movie that, I'll find the link to it, a documentary that's been done recently.

00:57:30.560 But it was labor activists, it was union activists, you know, over 100 years ago,

00:57:35.800 who would gather on these free speech corners, prominent corners in both Vancouver, Everett,

00:57:40.980 all over the West Coast, basically, up and down U.S. and B.C., who would speak out against what

00:57:48.260 they viewed to be terrible working conditions. They'd speak out against the government, etc.

00:57:53.660 And it was usually, in those days, it was the business associations, in particular in Everett,

00:57:58.080 that would, you know, and I can't lie, with cooperation from, like, the Salvation Army,

00:58:05.820 etc they would try to drown out these protests in some cases they would they would be able to

00:58:11.100 engage the police forces are out here the either the RCMP or the predecessor force to come in and

00:58:17.860 crack heads as you know the Gastown riots etc but it was always the labor movement it was always

00:58:23.820 the left that that spoke so vociferously in favor of free speech and and what I've been saying for

00:58:30.240 years is that the left and in particular the labor movement has definitely lost any understanding of

00:58:35.580 that history and allowed the right to be the only advocates for free speech which is a real problem

00:58:41.200 i think because i think working people whether they're in a union or not whether they're

00:58:45.480 conservative or left-wing or whatever they understand the importance of free speech because 0.99

00:58:51.040 they're they're always the people in society that have the least ability to be heard they don't have

00:58:56.260 a lot of money to get on a platform i mean this show is a great example right it's literally put

00:59:00.880 on by, by a couple of working folks who don't have big subsidies from government. They don't

00:59:05.620 have, you know, a whole bunch of ad revenue from, you know, Chevron and, and, and the big companies

00:59:11.080 and stuff. And so it's, it's more difficult to compete with, you know, the state funded organs

00:59:17.120 like the CBC and, and, and the huge corporate media outlets. And, but there has to be a remembering

00:59:24.740 of the important role that free speech plays

00:59:29.380 on all sides of the political spectrum.

00:59:32.140 And I absolutely agree with the Albertan and his comments

00:59:34.460 that, I mean, it doesn't matter how much the left

00:59:36.820 used to understand that, we've forgotten it.

00:59:39.480 We've definitely forgotten it.

00:59:40.840 And it's not just a problem for people who aren't on the left,

00:59:44.420 it's a problem for the left.

00:59:45.720 It's a huge problem for the left.

00:59:47.020 It's a problem internally because what happens is 0.75

00:59:49.740 you see this kind of identitarian faction

00:59:53.360 establish themselves into most positions of authority within the whole labor movement,

00:59:58.840 and it totally changes the entire political direction.

01:00:02.680 And there are major consequences as a result of that.

01:00:06.020 And one of the biggest consequences is this total removal of the leadership

01:00:11.140 from the actual working people that they claim to represent.

01:00:15.500 And the question around gender-based language, et cetera, is a perfect example. 0.86

01:00:20.700 in that, you know, I sort of like, you know, let's go back to this pregnant people question 0.68

01:00:25.680 versus pregnant women. So you can absolutely write a style guide through your HR department and you

01:00:30.740 can get your union to sign off on it. This says that if you say pregnant woman, you're going to 0.95

01:00:36.240 get disciplined. Or if you, and healthcare workers have been privately sending me messages telling me

01:00:41.000 this, that, you know, for a number of months, even a couple of years now, they're afraid that

01:00:46.840 If they ask a woman who comes into their office who's pregnant, if they ask them what the

01:00:53.080 sex of their baby is or the gender of their baby is, they might get disciplined because

01:00:56.360 the idea is that you can't determine that gender until the child is born and decides

01:01:00.700 what their gender is.

01:01:03.420 So you can go through and you can teach workers how to speak, which is how these people view

01:01:11.200 themselves.

01:01:11.620 That's how they view their role is to teach workers the correct way to speak.

01:01:15.620 but I kind of liken it to my cat uh who you know you might hear at some point here because she

01:01:21.960 likes to jump in on the live stream uh I learned pretty early on she's about 16 years old now that

01:01:27.480 I could teach her you know I fooled myself into thinking I could teach her not to jump on the

01:01:30.880 table uh in the kitchen but you know I got a I got a baby camera to sort of watch her one time

01:01:37.100 when I was leaving for a couple of days and what I learned right away as soon as I got that camera

01:01:40.760 was I didn't teach her not to jump on the table all I could teach her was that as soon as I left

01:01:45.000 the house it was okay to jump on the table right that's what that's all i was able to teach my cat

01:01:49.580 so these folks that are they're fashioning themselves and they're participating in this

01:01:53.380 whole industry that's developed both in hr and in the labor movement to to so-called teach workers

01:01:59.100 how to speak all they're really doing is teaching workers what they can't say when they're at work

01:02:04.000 because they'll get disciplined and what they can't say when they're around a union official

01:02:08.640 or a union representative because you know they're afraid the union will chastise them or embarrass

01:02:12.780 them in front of people. But if you talk to working people outside of either of those two

01:02:16.220 environments, they speak a very different language. And so if you're challenged within

01:02:20.360 the labor movement, for instance, in trying to purport to represent working people, is that

01:02:26.300 you're already kind of removed from the interests of working folks. Well, if you're also developing

01:02:32.960 entirely different languages, you're removing yourself even further. And so it just creates a

01:02:37.920 bigger separation between union leaders and the members and the workers that they purport to

01:02:43.600 represent. And the results, and it's not, I don't totally attribute it to this, but the results

01:02:48.800 don't lie. The data doesn't lie. Density of union representation in British Columbia and Canada as

01:02:53.200 a whole, but British Columbia is the highest decrease, which means that over the last 20,

01:02:58.560 25 years or so, the number of union members vis-a-vis the working population as a whole,

01:03:04.100 percentage of union members is decreasing the number of union members might be increasing but

01:03:09.040 it's not keeping pace with the population and there is this there's the divide between workers

01:03:14.020 and their union leaders is not new uh but it's getting worse and and it doesn't help to develop

01:03:19.800 these different languages to try to repress their speech to compel them to say certain things

01:03:24.600 legally and and whack them over the head when they say the wrong thing that's that's not

01:03:29.700 strengthening the movement um and you're not really teaching like i said you're not teaching

01:03:34.080 anybody how to speak any more than i taught my cat not to not to jump on the table when i'm around

01:03:38.460 yeah yeah and i mean the the other side of the issue is too is that i think that what kind of

01:03:46.880 what kind of went wrong because the left was the left were the was the one not just protecting

01:03:52.400 free speech but they're also of course trying to expand it we look through what happened in the

01:03:56.400 70s and the 80s look at the fights uh we look at the congressional committees and the discussions

01:04:01.680 that were had around censorship uh we look at the aclu we look at you know the people versus larry

01:04:07.000 flint like these are all historical points that are being made and same in canada there are lots

01:04:12.340 of historical moments and of course there's a certain civil libertarian left-wing libertarian

01:04:17.200 sort of viewpoint out of out of trudeau senior right like i mean i think he would actually be

01:04:21.280 scandalized by a lot of the identitarian moves of his son because he was clearly a left-wing

01:04:27.320 libertarian when it came to questions of for example homosexuality right and lots of other

01:04:31.960 issues so that's not that that's not new like that the left was into the was into that world

01:04:38.520 that that happened but i think where it went wrong and you know people can accuse me of this all day

01:04:43.680 but i really do believe it went sideways with the safety regime i think physical safety eventually

01:04:50.900 bled into psychosocial uh and somewhat i guess spiritual especially if the ideology is held

01:04:57.420 that closely a certain kind of religion religiosity and puritanism around safety safety of the whole

01:05:03.920 person down to their down to their very core elements i'm not saying i want people to be

01:05:08.180 intolerant or unsafe with others but a seat belt you know is one thing and censorship is another

01:05:16.260 and i really believe that's how it came down i think it starts with starts with the modifications

01:05:21.800 of of our society in a physical way and slowly but surely especially with the smoking thing again

01:05:27.340 anybody watching this who who is against the masks i hate the masks too but i think you lost your i

01:05:33.540 think you lost your right to your own air when when smoking went out the window and the idea

01:05:37.700 that that the government could regulate the very air you breathe the same thing with the classroom

01:05:41.560 somehow all children would have to be put under the purview or the ordinance of not having peanut

01:05:48.960 butter in the classroom for one allergy it changed everybody else's dietary habits and now we have

01:05:54.500 ample evidence that resistances or sensitivities around nuts honey and other issues and even even

01:06:01.140 odors is very much it's not psychosomatic but there's there are things that can be built up

01:06:07.020 to help build that person's resistance so they don't go into anaphylactic shock so we we've made

01:06:11.980 choices and because we've made these choices and i think these because they came from quote unquote

01:06:17.060 left-wing areas the state education and health care where people who are far more about

01:06:23.980 collaboration and the eminence of the power of of the institution that they're in the that kind of

01:06:30.960 psychology that dominates that world slowly but surely bled into the rest of society to the point

01:06:36.240 where we are in this this pandemic and it's what's ruling the day the technocracy is in charge 0.93

01:06:42.200 bonnie henry is our queen we don't have an elected government anymore what she says goes 1.00

01:06:47.260 and every now and again a elected member of the legislative assembly who's appointed to cabinet

01:06:52.780 dismisses a voluntary board chair for asking questions up in northern bc and then carries

01:06:58.460 on about her friday you know and goes and gets herself a bottle of wine that she ordered on skip

01:07:02.700 the dishes like it's just like this is where we are i really believe that this has been a

01:07:07.800 progressive thing and the right is the only ones left i think holding the bag just because in a

01:07:12.260 way they're just they're driving the speed limit what's a conservative it's just a liberal drives

01:07:16.380 the speed limit they're yeah they're just 20 years behind and they're like well 20 years ago you

01:07:20.960 wouldn't get fired for that so i don't agree with it but are there is there a deep principle

01:07:24.960 position behind it for some of them there are but for a lot of it it's we're just we're just not as

01:07:29.420 far along as you guys are on this question and we're kind of freaking out well i have an

01:07:34.880 interesting response um to me anyway but before i say i should just just clarify i wouldn't

01:07:39.360 disparage the minister for um getting herself a bottle of wine on a friday evening i can tell you

01:07:44.860 i certainly uh had a beer or two uh friday night um and and look i've met her a number of times

01:07:50.780 she's uh she's actually very capable of quite quite happy to see her get that post and again

01:07:56.400 i mean she may have um put a lot of thought into the dismissal i doubt she did like i i just sort

01:08:02.920 of knowing how this stuff i used to manage i've managed countless campaigns for these people i've

01:08:07.000 i was a vice president of the bc ndp for four years right so i you know i know all these folks

01:08:11.200 quite well and i just know how government works and i suspect that you know the decision was made

01:08:15.400 sort of before it got to her desk and i think she just kind of signed off on it that's my speculation

01:08:19.760 i don't know and she hasn't said and they've you know media has asked them to clarify uh their

01:08:24.760 reasoning for it and and the ministry has said we're not going to say anything further so there

01:08:28.140 really would have to be a defamation case or a charter challenge on freedom of speech to sort

01:08:32.180 of compel them to establish it but we'll see whether it goes that far um the comment i wanted

01:08:37.680 to make just based on what you said you might find uh camille palia quite interesting um camille

01:08:44.180 palia she's um it's interesting like she's a she's been around for a long time she was a

01:08:49.000 what i would regard as a radical feminist back in the 60s is sort of where she got started i think

01:08:54.360 as a as a student who argued in those days against female specific curfews and restrictions 0.60

01:09:03.860 that were imposed on them in universities because the idea was you know it's dangerous out there and

01:09:08.980 if we you know if you're allowed out out of your dorm room after 10 p.m for instance you're going

01:09:14.220 to get raped and it's your fault for being being outside and she talks about you know sort of

01:09:19.400 getting radicalized in feminism in those days because their their big argument was uh we we 1.00

01:09:25.820 demand the right to put ourselves in in uh in harm's way and it's it's not for you to decide

01:09:34.500 whether i can leave my dorm room after a certain hour or not and she it's really interesting because

01:09:40.280 she's sort of become uh you know like she's written a number of books uh since then very

01:09:45.540 good books i think um uh which i i've read a few of them i recommend you you read give them a read 0.94

01:09:50.780 as well she's extremely uh socially liberal in fact i mean i refer to her as a she she identifies

01:09:55.900 as transgender i think she identifies as having no gender but she said multiple times like you

01:10:00.540 can call me she and call me i just don't care like what you call me doesn't change my own

01:10:04.560 idea of myself right like like she's quite strong in that regard um and so she was sort of a darling 1.00

01:10:12.260 of the left, I think, until she started criticizing other feminists, a lot of which was around 0.90

01:10:17.060 sort of the performance art, and she also, like you would disagree with her on her position 0.99

01:10:24.820 on pornography, for instance, so she takes great issue with the so-called TERFs, the more

01:10:28.800 traditional radical feminists, in that she doesn't think that all pornography is crime

01:10:33.540 and abuse, for instance, but it's interesting watching the right, because she's sort of

01:10:37.900 become prominent within right right-wing circles and conservative circles these days because she's

01:10:43.260 come out as such an a critic on the kind of cancel culture that that we're talking about right now

01:10:48.080 she's made a number of appearances uh and had long long-form discussions with Jordan Peterson

01:10:53.460 etc but she always made this argument very similar to the safety one you're making that

01:10:58.000 uh yeah uh it's absolutely dangerous for for women to to go outside in certain areas in fact

01:11:03.940 I've heard her say things like, look, if you're a woman and you're, like, if you're a younger

01:11:09.340 woman in particular and you're out running at 5 a.m. in the morning and there's nobody

01:11:12.120 else around and you're wearing skimpy clothes, it's a biological reality that if there's

01:11:17.720 a guy on the street and he's a predator and there are predators out there, him seeing

01:11:23.500 your body jiggle as it walks down the road is going to trigger some kind of a primal

01:11:27.440 urge in his psyche to chase you.

01:11:30.080 And nobody should condone that.

01:11:31.720 And if he carried, you know, 99.9% of men will not engage in that urge, but a predator might.

01:11:39.440 And so, you know, I mean, her response to that would, it's not like you shouldn't go running, but you should also realize that you're walking into a dangerous environment.

01:11:47.560 She'd probably say something to the effect of like, at least carry a gun, you know, to defend yourself. 0.99

01:11:52.600 But she doesn't deny that, like many feminists do, that like they don't sort of live in this world that they think should exist. 0.99

01:11:59.900 She lives in a world that does exist, 1.00

01:12:01.320 but at the same time, she demands the right for women 1.00

01:12:04.720 to be able to put themselves in danger.

01:12:06.860 And as a transgender person, it's just interesting to see

01:12:09.280 how critical she's been of where many trans activists have gone

01:12:13.660 in terms of trying to compel people's speech

01:12:15.460 and the danger that that, not just compel,

01:12:17.960 but also restrict what they could say.

01:12:19.560 It's this combination of restricting things you can say.

01:12:23.040 To many degrees, it was nothing new.

01:12:25.800 There are many things you can't say

01:12:28.260 without some kind of illegal consequence but it's this new development of compelling people's speech

01:12:33.000 like we have to we have to say certain things and the first example i encountered on this was

01:12:40.180 actually in the labor movement i remember you know as secretary treasurer of the bc federation

01:12:44.620 of labor i was charged with keeping our minutes of our of our senior leadership meetings and i

01:12:50.000 remember on one day in particular we were at a meeting and you always present those meeting

01:12:53.860 minutes for approval. And going back hundreds of years in the labor room, we've referred to each

01:13:00.620 other as brother and sister. And when the new gender designation came in, as we started discussing

01:13:08.320 these things a number of years ago, I had no problem with also adding things like, you know,

01:13:13.460 some people wanted to add cousins to it because they wanted to take the gender designation out

01:13:17.920 to include everybody in case there's anybody in the room who didn't identify with one of the two

01:13:22.460 genders and you know in my experience there i've been in meetings where more than one person has

01:13:27.740 been present that didn't identify as either a man or a woman so i have no problem you know adding

01:13:33.100 you know i'm a i'm a marxist so so you know my addition was sisters brothers and comrades because

01:13:38.940 i thought comrade was a pretty good non-gender non-gender specific way to refer to people

01:13:43.740 um but what what sort of caught me off guard was somebody objected to the minutes i presented

01:13:48.860 because I had referred to, in the minutes, I'd referred to a number of different individuals

01:13:53.880 of whom I knew their specified gender as either brother and sister.

01:13:57.780 In fact, I'd referred to myself as Brother Ekman, you know, said this.

01:14:01.440 And they took issue that any of that gendered language was all struck. 0.97

01:14:07.700 It's a non-gender.

01:14:08.460 And so I took issue with that, and I made the argument that, you know, 0.99

01:14:12.160 I have no problem referring to somebody who it doesn't identify by a specific gender as comrade or cousin

01:14:16.940 or whatever it is that they prefer.

01:14:18.860 But I identify as a man, and I don't want to lose that tradition, the labor movement,

01:14:25.280 that fraternal relationship of referring to each other as siblings, as brother and sister.

01:14:30.060 And there's no, like, it's, if you want to be more inclusive and more diverse, then you can add

01:14:35.220 certain words. But when you start pulling out the words that I can use, and you start restricting

01:14:40.760 the ways in which I can refer to myself, well, that's different. That's a whole different thing.

01:14:45.600 And what blew me away is because there's so much fear amongst everybody right now that if they step into these kind of things that I tend to step into on a daily basis, that they're going to get fired or they're going to get canceled or something like that.

01:14:57.480 And so when the motion went to remove all of those words from the minutes, I looked around the room and, you know, like there's old tradesmen, there's, you know, all these little guys, they all had their eyes in their lap and they all put their hand up to vote in favor of removing all gendered words.

01:15:12.480 And I thought, I'm a cult, you know, like I that's when I kind of realized this is different.

01:15:19.340 This is a this is a this is a new instance of identitarianism that is starting to take take over the left.

01:15:25.740 And that was when I first started to think, well, you know, I got to start thinking of doing different things.

01:15:32.660 It's it's a it's a dark time. It's a dark time on both sides.

01:15:35.840 I mean, within the right, we're definitely having an experience of political correctness taking over, particularly when you think of how, well, essentially, we conservatives in Canada are stuck with a political class, a political leadership class that is constantly trying to find ways to appeal to, you know, the progressive side of Canada instead of to try and keep the base satisfied.

01:16:02.160 And that doesn't mean that there's no place to try and grow the tent. It is important to make sure that people who lean right wing but are homosexuals, people who lean right wing but are from minorities, people who lean right wing and are not a part of the old stock or identify with kind of the way that Canada's history might have been, who might even use words like colonialism pejoratively, etc.

01:16:25.360 that group of people

01:16:28.040 needs to feel included in the big blue tent

01:16:29.820 there's a way to do conservatism

01:16:31.580 in a more quote unquote inclusive manner

01:16:33.900 if you want to get that technical

01:16:35.620 but what seems to happen inside of conservatism

01:16:38.140 is that everybody

01:16:39.020 while we're the only party that supposedly

01:16:42.020 opposes abortion, anyone who talks

01:16:43.960 about it gets silenced, cancelled,

01:16:45.940 kicked out of caucus. While we're the only

01:16:47.920 party that might have some discussion

01:16:50.040 about hey how might we grow the domestic

01:16:52.000 population and keep our population as

01:16:54.000 domestic as possible not that we don't appreciate immigration but only immigration is not a solution

01:17:00.180 to canada's demographic decline that again that can get you silenced that can get you called a

01:17:06.740 racist by the other side and then they carry out the task for you most recently probably in

01:17:10.960 kind of right of center political circles is still the lori thronis uh situation down in uh in

01:17:17.540 abbotsford where lori thronis said this had the whiff of eugenics handing out free birth control

01:17:23.100 as far as any of us straightforward anti-contraception pro-life people are yes that's

01:17:29.660 exactly the kind of thing that we believe we believe that is a directly eugenics there's no 0.68

01:17:34.520 question that that's eugenics and and that's fine so you're talking to your own base and he was

01:17:39.500 saying it to his own base for the most part it the NDP brought this up as a point of discussion

01:17:44.680 if if Andrew Wilkinson had not bothered for another 15 minutes another news item would have

01:17:50.240 come up and nobody would have remembered that lori thronis said this nobody would have cared

01:17:54.480 but instead he went and did the dirty work for his opposition and and you know publicly executed

01:18:00.080 lori thronis uh in front of everybody to what end i'm not sure he still lost the seat like it's

01:18:05.400 just so what this is the thing on the right for us like it feels like those of us who are pro-gun

01:18:10.840 pro-god pro you know pro-family this that we don't get a standing as it is uh you know and

01:18:17.340 that matter us farmers don't get much of a voice either so even inside the right it feels like

01:18:22.300 that populist grounded familial and fraternal understanding is slowly being beaten out of us

01:18:30.060 as well a technocratic class is taking over and it's impersonal and they might as well just use

01:18:35.180 numbers for us instead of names because we're subjects we're not we're not uh we're not citizens

01:18:41.900 in collusion together, collaborating together to make a better country.

01:18:46.660 Yeah.

01:18:47.200 The Laurie Thronis case, I think, is very important.

01:18:50.640 And, you know, it's no surprise.

01:18:52.220 Like, I've gleefully disagreed with almost everything that Laurie has ever said

01:18:56.900 for years and years and years.

01:18:59.220 And, you know, I've had back and forth with him.

01:19:00.880 I've watched him in the legislature.

01:19:03.660 I've met him.

01:19:04.480 I always found him to be rather interesting, though,

01:19:06.360 because he'd make his position, I thought, fearlessly and also quite eloquently.

01:19:11.900 um and but it was clear that he was kind of being he was sort of seen in the fringe circles even

01:19:18.000 within the bc liberal milieu he would they sort of let him speak on items when nobody else was

01:19:22.900 around he never really got anything in the question period um but you know like i also

01:19:28.280 have a certain understanding of the different opinion demographics of the province and i know

01:19:33.200 that his rioting happens to hold very similar positions by majority. And, you know, Barry

01:19:42.900 Neufeld out in, where's he, Chilliwack, the, he's a city councillor or is he a school, he's a school

01:19:48.380 trustee. Yeah, another, another good example. And if you compare both of those cases, it, it leads

01:19:55.400 to the bigger question of the role that political parties play in our political system and whether

01:20:00.300 they play a positive role or a negative one and increasingly i'm of the opinion that political

01:20:04.840 parties uh greatly reduce the amount of democracy in our system so take those two examples so you

01:20:12.540 got laurie thrown us who's you know he's he he was he'd been around for a few terms actually

01:20:16.560 he'd always he was very consistent like he it's not like what he said that day was any different

01:20:21.500 than things he'd said for years and years and years but in the middle of the election the the

01:20:25.500 ndp was as you say able to make a big issue of it and generate enough uh opposition and then there

01:20:31.380 was an you know anybody within the bc liberal party it was a lot of staffers i think who had

01:20:37.140 not liked thrown us for whatever issue over the years decided this was the moment we were going

01:20:42.580 to come out and actively like you know criticize him and so they they basically put the gun to

01:20:48.780 wilkinson and he folded um which to me was despite how much i disagree with lori throne is

01:20:54.880 that to me really shouldn't be allowed i like the american system much better where neither

01:21:00.420 the democrats or the republicans have the ability to drop a candidate uh they have the ability to

01:21:05.680 endorse a candidate that's it right and so you've got this situation where you get a guy that

01:21:10.160 actually does represent a lot of the views in in his riding because he keeps getting elected there

01:21:17.420 um who now somebody from outside is riding who didn't elect him gets to pull him right out of

01:21:25.140 the race i mean technically you could argue okay well he's still able to run but if he was in the

01:21:29.720 legislature and they drop him from uh cabinet i mean like it's a huge reduction in the in the

01:21:34.460 level of representation that those constituents have and they don't get to make that decision

01:21:38.460 the party gets to make that decision whereas a guy like barry neufeld who's not in a party

01:21:42.840 uh they can't get rid of him right because you know they they threw everything they had at him

01:21:48.500 the bctf the bc teachers federation for instance threw a lot of uh shade his way they had speakers

01:21:54.560 showing up uh chastising him at the meetings and what happens well an election comes around and he

01:21:59.380 gets elected by a wider margin and a couple people who agree with him get thrown on council as well

01:22:03.720 by the electorate and there's no party there to be able to take these people out so even if i

01:22:08.640 disagree with these people, we should be able to agree that the people who best represent the

01:22:15.240 majority position of the electorate that they're serving should be able to serve in an elected

01:22:19.980 capacity. And that means people like me have to concede that somebody like Barry Neufeld has a

01:22:25.000 right to sit on that council and people like Laurie Thronis have a right to sit in the legislature.

01:22:29.160 Because what's the consequence if you start lopping their heads off? Well, the consequence is, first of

01:22:35.060 well, those opinions don't go away

01:22:36.840 just because you take those people out.

01:22:38.700 All you do is confirm for their supporters

01:22:41.080 that the big machine that they're up against is real,

01:22:45.720 and it causes them to continue organizing

01:22:48.580 along the positions that this person's been saying.

01:22:51.880 And so, you know, I said at the time

01:22:53.320 when they tossed Laurie Thronis,

01:22:54.880 this is going to be an igniter

01:22:57.960 of a real divisive fissure within the BC Liberal Party.

01:23:02.160 And you can see that some of the leadership candidates

01:23:04.000 sense that even kevin falcon i mean one of his big campaign planks as he announced his his desire to

01:23:09.980 seek the leadership for a second time of the bc liberals is that he wants to entirely remake the

01:23:13.780 party uh but he's also putting out a whole bunch of pro-diversity statements pro-diversity inclusion

01:23:19.140 statements i think to try to placate the wing of the party the anti-thronus wing of the party for

01:23:23.060 instance and he has to do that but basically what he's signaling is you know we have to actually

01:23:28.020 restructure this party to deal with the with the fissure that has that has emerged um and and so

01:23:34.580 it's i mean they're going to continue to have to deal with this and the left you don't hear the

01:23:40.120 same kind of debate within the left i mean the reason i think why so many people on the left

01:23:44.240 despise me right now is that there are so few people on the left who are saying we have a

01:23:50.600 problem with identitarianism we have a problem with free speech on the left uh and it's it's

01:23:57.400 going to cause us bigger problems down the road it's going to remove us further from the working

01:24:01.620 class because we're not speaking their language anymore and and you know back to my situation

01:24:05.780 at the university i mean the one criticism i think that's that's launched at me from people

01:24:10.200 who agree that maybe i shouldn't have been dismissed maybe i'd haven't you know it might

01:24:13.980 be true that you didn't say anything racist it might be true that you're not a transphobe

01:24:16.820 but you know are you really conducting yourself in a way that exemplifies the professionalism

01:24:22.900 that we'd expect from a public official that's that's the question I get my answer is I mean

01:24:27.780 depending on what you how you define professionalism I think the answer is no but again I'm not a

01:24:32.520 professional I'm not I'm not a nobody's ever accused me of exemplifying professionalism I'm

01:24:38.400 a union organizer I've been fired from more jobs than I've even had because I've been fired from

01:24:42.560 some jobs twice or three times and so I'm sort of on familiar ground here but do we like think

01:24:49.080 about what you're asking for in terms of the governance of our universities do you want

01:24:52.660 like what is a professional person to you is it somebody who's you know a senior executive in a

01:24:57.360 big corporation who wants to you know further privatize universities raise tuition through the

01:25:02.120 roof so that working class kids families from working class families don't have the same access 0.89

01:25:06.560 to university education those aren't the kind of people i want governing an institution and it also

01:25:11.980 raises the question then if a government can just sort of toss these appointees out at whim

01:25:16.400 But they can't do that to somebody like, you know, Barry Neufeld in the school board system because they're elected. It raises the question, well, is this a government appointed system for leadership boards at universities the right method? Should we be, should communities that the university serve be electing their board officials?

01:25:35.080 I tend to I tend to skew towards that direction. I'd be interested. I'd actually be interested in hearing that thing debated out, you know, whether people think that government should be allowed to continue appointing directors to boards of universities or whether communities should be able to elect those people.

01:25:49.840 i i mean i have a vote on that already and it no obviously it needs to be voted in by the

01:25:55.140 community i mean it's the one of the biggest things that that went wrong with our public

01:26:01.160 medical system for example is that we no longer have elected hospital boards because we have no

01:26:06.240 elected hospital boards we now have and these are money positions if i recall correctly right

01:26:11.540 northern northern yeah those ones are those ones are yeah they're sought after and of course that

01:26:16.520 means that you will do anything for that patronage appointment which means you'll do anything the

01:26:20.600 government tells you for that patronage appointment because they're well-moneyed the thing is that

01:26:25.660 we we need to get back to some system of of electing officials into these capacities

01:26:32.760 so that we can shape those institutions in a way that matters i i was a part of one of the last

01:26:38.340 you know uh boards that that you know made a real impact it was walked back by the government at the

01:26:45.220 time but i was on the college board when after uh the the the lack of the lack of consistency by

01:26:52.340 said by said president uh we we voted as a board and it was a narrow vote but the board did vote

01:26:59.540 to remove that president and uh what and that was and that session was was you know done done

01:27:07.140 privately but but what happened was uh the the bc government the bc liberals at the time couldn't

01:27:13.940 believe that a board had gone rogue and so all of a sudden the deputy minister was appointed to our

01:27:20.180 board and was was flown into prince george before those meetings god knows how much that was going

01:27:26.420 to cost and and she was she was great the deputy minister very competent woman very intelligent

01:27:31.060 woman great great lady um but the point is that she was essentially sent in to be the school marm

01:27:36.420 and to walk the board back from where it had been with with full justification of a dismissal 0.98

01:27:43.940 uh and walk it back and ensure that that didn't happen because they didn't want the egg on the

01:27:48.920 government's face and on and on and on it went they didn't want to pay severance on and on it

01:27:53.480 went and eventually the the decision was reversed but that was a coalition between faculty and

01:27:59.140 student representation there was there was of course uh the the staff representation as well

01:28:05.060 right not just faculty staff but the but non-faculty staff right like the representatives

01:28:09.900 the various constituencies of the board in a traditional model not the real carver model which

01:28:14.920 is really just what happens when neoliberalism takes over a university um but it but a traditional

01:28:21.320 model of various constituencies collaborating together to make a decision on behalf of a

01:28:26.500 post-secondary or any institution for that matter where there might have much conflict on the ground

01:28:31.500 but ultimately they have to try and run this thing together they came together and they made a

01:28:35.620 decision a narrow majority but they did make a decision and of course the government couldn't

01:28:39.320 understand that and we need to understand that too from a wider perspective for me as as a

01:28:43.780 conservative as someone right of center and as someone who you know on a bad day you know is

01:28:48.820 it understands why the 20th century the way it went the way it did and on a good day wishes that

01:28:53.840 you know maybe anarchy was catholic anarchy non-violent catholic anarchy was was kind of

01:28:59.560 the way we went some kind of some kind of ultra montane reality for this guy anyways the point is

01:29:04.520 that that when i when i look at that though like that walking back of that decision it's like just

01:29:10.100 like the eu the eu always forced ireland to vote again and again again on joining right like

01:29:15.500 it's always the empire must be built and that empire exists and it doesn't matter where it is

01:29:20.800 it's somebody's little office that's their empire it's someone's province that's their empire

01:29:24.920 and and the empire always builds on and on and on and so i mean you just you went against the empire

01:29:30.920 right you you had your you had your say and and now the state came down upon you right and that's

01:29:37.500 how it is and so i i don't know if a stateless society is necessarily that the perfect answer

01:29:42.700 to that then but i do know that every time we have a organized society that's formalized it

01:29:48.160 does result in usually more tyranny than less because they can organize themselves into greater

01:29:53.040 greater uh apparatuses of of of tyranny but i guess i guess kind of bringing it all back around

01:29:59.000 I think that we are in a dangerous time right now

01:30:02.440 because people aren't allowed to speak their mind

01:30:04.680 and because they're not allowed to speak their mind

01:30:07.580 they are finding other ways to act out

01:30:11.440 and the discourse is getting narrower and narrower 1.00

01:30:14.440 which is making us stupider and stupider 0.99

01:30:16.920 to the point where we can't have a real conversation 0.99

01:30:21.240 about anything because whether it's residential schools

01:30:23.380 or climate change or whether or not anti-Semitic violence

01:30:27.020 is going up in this province which seems like a pretty cut and dry answer either it is or it isn't

01:30:31.900 mere mere asking of the question and whom is asking it just because you have a hebrew name

01:30:36.860 and even for that matter a last name that could easily be construed as jewish it doesn't matter

01:30:41.820 it doesn't matter it's like you met you made the mistake of even thinking the question let alone

01:30:46.300 voicing it out loud you are doomed and and that can't go on because that a society that runs

01:30:52.140 that way will not survive well i agree with you and um i mean the society can survive but the

01:31:00.140 the danger is is that it will morph into something terrifying and we've you know in instances where

01:31:05.960 we've seen this kind of identitarianism uh emerge on the right i mean that's literally what nazi

01:31:12.740 germany was it was a right identitarianism in its most terrifying form and we saw the same thing in

01:31:18.140 China during the Cultural Revolution, where it was the identity that was, that was, became a 0.85

01:31:25.220 scapegoat was largely academics, and, and of course the, you know, the, it was a class, it was the,

01:31:30.800 the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie, and so, and, you know, like there was public shaming

01:31:36.640 rituals, or they were cutting off people's hair, there was executions, all sorts of things, so

01:31:40.900 it definitely manifests on both the left and the right and i mean the people that have historians

01:31:48.120 and psychologists who have studied this stuff in great detail the question they're always trying

01:31:52.740 to get at is at what point does a society reach that threshold where it gets out of control

01:31:57.400 well nobody can say because it never happens the same way twice it manifests in very new and

01:32:03.080 different and increasingly sophisticated ways and i think this current manifestation on on

01:32:08.320 or the left or the liberal left uh is the most uh sophisticated manifestation of it so far

01:32:14.760 because it's literally coming in the in the form of anti-racism uh and and it's so so it's it's so

01:32:22.380 aurelian because you know it's this ideology that we can all it doesn't matter what our color is

01:32:27.420 the shade of our epidermis doesn't matter we can all be reduced to this base identity and that's

01:32:35.060 once you know that identity you know the color of somebody's skin you know where they come from

01:32:38.900 or their religion or their sexual orientation or their even their sexual expression their identity

01:32:44.660 that's all you need to know about them that's all they are right and so and that's that's why

01:32:49.060 i'm so interested in interviewing on on this show or our other show uh somebody who um uh is a

01:32:57.300 not a woman but is either pregnant or has had some children is because from my perspective

01:33:02.180 that's hardly all they are right and and it's just such a perfect experiment in how identitarians

01:33:09.940 react to a question like that they assume because they actually reduce that person

01:33:16.180 i'm not reducing that person to their identity but they assume that all i want to talk to that

01:33:20.580 person about is their experience as a as a trans man who has had has had children i'm actually

01:33:28.020 far more interested in knowing what their position is on bc independence vis-a-vis ottawa right

01:33:32.500 because the point that i think has to be made strongly is that we can never reduce people

01:33:40.880 to this base identity every single human is far more complex than that every single human being

01:33:46.320 has political aspirations they've got uh they've got all sorts of there's all sorts of nuance to

01:33:51.940 their positions and i've you know i had to learn this lesson the hard way years ago having

01:33:57.780 conversations with um some of my gay friends and and gay people in my family realizing that like

01:34:04.300 they were conservatives you know back in back 20 years ago and it just blew my mind because i was

01:34:10.300 making the same identitarian mistake that just assuming that just because they were gay and that

01:34:14.840 they you know had to flee a small town in the 70s because of of the violence that they were facing

01:34:20.880 every day and go down to the west end in um vancouver and hang around davie street because

01:34:26.120 that's where where a community was able to form to to try to pull together some monicum of safety

01:34:31.020 for them in some community i just assumed well you know if you'd gone through that experience

01:34:35.040 well you there's no way you could have any kind of racist views against anybody else or uh or be

01:34:40.480 like there's no way that you you would be a fiscal conservative at the same time and i learned the

01:34:44.940 hard way that a good portion of the gay community is actually quite quite conservative and a good

01:34:49.080 portion of lesbians that i've met are quite conservative fiscally conservative etc so i had

01:34:53.340 learn that lesson myself nobody else in the left seems to have really learned it which is quite

01:34:58.620 surprising to me and you're right guaranteed demographics and i think that's what the trump

01:35:04.540 uh second attempt showed when we saw the big swing in the black vote the working class vote

01:35:09.740 continuing to carry with him and and for that matter florida being carried by him right like

01:35:15.180 which which he wanted by a significant margin uh for the time a huge cuban american population in

01:35:22.460 florida there clearly clearly there was a place to resonate between the right and right-wing ideas

01:35:30.460 and right-wing populism and people who quote unquote shouldn't have been voting that way

01:35:35.580 you know i think chelsea handler everybody's favorite prophetess from netflix uh said to her 0.97

01:35:41.500 ex-boyfriend uh who we all remember as 50 cent uh don't forget you're black that's why you can't 0.68

01:35:47.180 vote for trump right right yeah and and i mean and that's the reason why prior to 2016 people

01:35:54.800 like me and probably people like you were saying not only is this guy going to take out hillary

01:35:58.720 clinton like he's he's uh sorry not only is he going to defeat all of his challengers in the

01:36:04.580 republican party but he's going to go on to win the election and it was absolutely clear that that

01:36:08.480 was that was coming down the pipe except to anybody in the professional managerial class

01:36:13.040 both on the left or the right because again the pmc you know transcends the political spectrum in

01:36:17.640 that regard uh but they didn't none of them saw it coming because they they don't they're from

01:36:23.180 my perspective they all have racist views which is and i it's probably more accurate to describe

01:36:28.240 them as identitarian views because they they reduce every single person especially these

01:36:32.960 these different designations of uh race etc that they they treat as like monolithic electorate so

01:36:39.280 You hear the Democrats talking about the black vote, the Latino vote, the gay vote, and this kind of thing.

01:36:43.840 And just the way they speak, it demonstrates without a doubt that they view these people as all the same because of the color of their skin or because of their religion.

01:36:54.040 And it's the reason why they can't predict the nuance that ends up electing somebody like Donald Trump.

01:36:59.520 But the rest of us can see it because we talk to people and we don't just sit in our office and issue decrees.

01:37:07.480 we go to the grocery store and we talk to our neighbors and we talk to people we work with.

01:37:12.840 And we know that the average lexicon employed by working people is not what you hear when you go

01:37:18.940 to a union meeting. It's not what you hear when you go to an HR meeting. And it's not even

01:37:24.000 necessarily what you hear when you're at work. And so that divide is absolutely growing. And

01:37:29.980 the question about when does it sort of cross the threshold into authoritarianism? Well,

01:37:35.940 you never know but what we do know is that when you get there it's too late it's absolutely too

01:37:42.220 late and so that's why you have to you have to fight against it always even if even in its

01:37:47.160 smallest iterations you have to you have to expose this stuff for what it is the malicious nature of

01:37:52.620 it and that's why i actually don't have any reservations about using words like racist to

01:37:58.320 describe identitarians because it is at its base level it's a racist discriminatory analysis and

01:38:05.200 it reduces people to uh to to far less than they really are the sum of their parts which of course

01:38:12.460 they are a greater greater than the sum of their parts uh as we kind of close up here aaron uh

01:38:18.400 what uh well sorry i interrupted you there no no no go ahead go ahead i just i i guess kind of

01:38:24.640 as we kind of dwell on this moment of of well we can call it cancellation we can call it not

01:38:28.920 cancellation and kind of seeing it in real time uh what what do you think your next steps are

01:38:34.900 here do you think that do you think that you're going to try and not even with regards to this

01:38:38.860 like you'll take your advice from your lawyers and and and just you know decide on those things

01:38:42.920 on your own but but but what are you what are you kind of thinking are the next ways you want

01:38:47.660 to organize in your community and help your community and move forward with with the community

01:38:52.020 well i i think um i'll probably continue doing some of the things that have landed me on on the

01:38:58.680 outs with the ndp which is to try to continually raise issues like you're doing as well that are

01:39:03.600 important to british colombians but more specifically important to northern and interior

01:39:09.900 british colombians um and i mean the uncomfortable part i think for the for a government like the

01:39:16.460 bcndp government is many of those issues represent tension between rural and urban ridings uh the

01:39:22.960 biggest issue that's coming up that i think is absolutely vital which i i think is probably you

01:39:26.980 know i've been very vocal on it and it's i think it's one where the bcndp is quite vulnerable

01:39:31.440 actually because they've sort of orchestrated in such a way is the issue of the electoral

01:39:36.360 boundaries commission undoubtedly releasing a recommendation to government when they do

01:39:41.000 that allows government to reduce the number of interior especially northern seats in the

01:39:47.500 legislature and increase the number of seats down in the lower mainland and i think again i think

01:39:52.860 for northerners in british columbia who are concerned about how little representation we

01:39:57.440 already have in the legislature uh doesn't matter what your political persuasion is we this is the

01:40:03.300 kind of issue we got to band together on and and make sure victoria knows that reducing our

01:40:07.440 representation in this government is is not on because you can't get to the point where you've

01:40:11.880 reduced our our level of representation to the point where it doesn't make any sense for us to

01:40:15.980 be here because there is that palpable desire to re-examine the the boundaries of the province

01:40:21.980 um and you know if your goal is to try to keep things together and i respect people whose goal

01:40:28.180 who have who have that goal despite my own proclivities uh reducing our representation is

01:40:33.640 not not going to take you any further down that path uh so i think those are the things we got

01:40:38.520 we have to continue to talk about i'm also very concerned about the um the frankly the finances

01:40:44.520 of the province i don't place all the blame on the bcndp we've just come through uh we've just

01:40:50.180 come through a difficult situation with COVID and everything that would make it almost impossible

01:40:54.940 for any government to run a balanced budget. And the Moody's report just came down, which is,

01:41:00.620 you know, flagging some concern over the finances of the province, but there's some hopeful

01:41:06.100 points in there. It's not all doom and gloom yet, but it looks like we won't be able to balance a

01:41:09.960 budget for the next seven to nine years, which is concerning, especially considering that so many

01:41:15.500 of the communities up here in the north we need help uh all you have to do is drive drive around

01:41:21.260 uh you know out west or out east and through the north to see if you have any understanding of what

01:41:26.420 the communities used to be like in the 70s and 80s etc uh if you haven't been up there in a while

01:41:30.620 it's it's a stark difference and the populations are down we've said this before so we have to keep

01:41:34.880 highlighting these things and we have to keep i think what you're doing which is so great is

01:41:38.640 providing a platform for northerners to be able to speak on these things that wouldn't otherwise

01:41:43.320 be available to them and in sort of a long form context as well so you can you can not just sort

01:41:48.440 of get a sound bite out but you can take these ideas and you can turn them over in your hand and

01:41:51.900 you can debate them and and find out that you know despite our political differences as northerners

01:41:57.600 we've got an enormous amount of commonality so that's what I'm excited to do and that's what I

01:42:02.200 had intended to do anyway which is part of the reason why I'd announced my departure from the

01:42:05.360 university because I don't want to take away through any controversy that I generate from

01:42:10.140 the amazing things that the university uh produces on a daily basis and so my intention was to sort

01:42:15.840 of you know back out quietly and and then continue to engage in the kind of discussions that that we

01:42:22.340 are uh but but you know the bcndp decided to try to tag me as a racist on the on the way out the

01:42:27.980 door so but again like i like i've said previously the people up here i've been up here for a while

01:42:32.140 people know me and and they know it's bs and and the support that i've received has been uh i didn't

01:42:38.240 predicted no it's amazing how people do show up uh and again that's something that is distinctive

01:42:44.480 about us in in the north and beyond hope as it were uh when compared to vancouver which is south

01:42:50.300 of hope i think that people don't understand that northern solidarity is a real thing uh and yes we

01:42:56.460 have some elements of of kind of the professional managerial class like it is down south and

01:43:01.340 they have some of the same sentiments but for the most part we're still lucky enough to have

01:43:05.700 a group of people here who want to be

01:43:08.080 in solidarity with one another and care about

01:43:10.180 Northern British Columbia first and the future

01:43:12.100 of Northern British Columbia and therefore

01:43:14.040 Western Canada and therefore

01:43:15.520 this nation.

01:43:18.660 But thank you so much

01:43:20.440 of course, Aaron. Again, it's always great

01:43:22.100 to have you on and it's always great to have you

01:43:24.120 explain in no uncertain terms

01:43:26.460 your nuanced position on a

01:43:28.140 variety of topics. But

01:43:29.840 I just wanted to say thank you. I know

01:43:32.000 it's been a harrowing couple of days

01:43:34.220 I wanted to say thank you as well when you were helping us move the studio in here.

01:43:37.460 That was wonderful.

01:43:38.260 Thank you so much.

01:43:39.520 And we'll figure out from here kind of some of the directions of what's going to happen here in Mountain Standard Time,

01:43:45.480 as well as our own show that we have elsewhere that's been on hiatus for a little while now.

01:43:50.780 And, yeah, we're going to start exploring those issues a little more deeply,

01:43:53.860 especially now that I guess you have both hands free from behind your back.

01:43:57.140 You're not exactly worried about getting dismissed.

01:44:00.340 That's already in the past.

01:44:01.520 it was the eventual plan anyway but it uh it got a bit of a bump in the timeline so

01:44:07.260 yeah i heard from the minister on friday i've got a bit more time on my hands than i had

01:44:10.480 previously thank you thank you thanks for having me on i really appreciate it of course and thank

01:44:17.040 you for being on it yeah it's been uh i mean it's an important it's an important point to bring up

01:44:26.620 right uh here we are uh at the end of these things living through real life cancel culture

01:44:33.180 that was aaron ekman uh former former uh chair of the unbc board of governors and uh we we discussed

01:44:43.580 a whole bunch of real things there as you listen but i think that we just need to re-emphasize for

01:44:48.340 a moment that cancel culture really happens it's real it's real uh and and it can happen in your

01:44:54.780 own little town. I mean, Prince George isn't

01:44:56.780 the center of anywhere for a lot of people

01:44:58.700 and yet, even here, the eyes

01:45:00.980 of identitarianism

01:45:02.800 and the wokeism and the supremacy of the state

01:45:05.020 especially from the provincial legislature

01:45:06.920 they had to dismiss

01:45:08.940 him. Because, why? Because, well

01:45:10.740 he wasn't carrying the narrative, he wasn't

01:45:12.660 swallowing the truth whole, as I believe the

01:45:14.720 Albertan was pointing out earlier

01:45:15.980 We're going to be closing out here pretty

01:45:18.820 quick, but I do owe our sponsor

01:45:21.020 an endorsement

01:45:22.980 here it's funny we we're going to do this at the beginning of the show but it just kind of just

01:45:27.160 kind of went by the wayside that's fine so that's the resistance coffee company um i i love coffee

01:45:33.920 i've actually reduced my coffee consumption quite a bit this year but i do love coffee and i love

01:45:37.540 good coffee and so the resistance coffee company makes good coffee you can order it online which

01:45:42.520 is i guess kind of the universal thing i we are located here in bc i'm 98 sure resistance coffee

01:45:48.620 company is based out of alberta somewhere but the point is that it's good coffee and if you need it

01:45:53.740 uh you can always order it online it'll be delivered to your door and that's kind of how

01:45:57.340 we're getting everything nowadays during the pandemic which hopefully is ending soon so we

01:46:02.220 don't have to deal with this pandemic anymore so again resistance coffee company we're thankful to

01:46:06.380 have them as a sponsor for the show and do support uh your local canadian coffee roasters

01:46:11.820 so we're going to kind of close out here on a couple of notes uh there's a few things here

01:46:18.000 uh we we had a bit of a time and i feel like i feel like i actually owe you the viewers and for

01:46:23.440 that matter uh anybody who also likes to pursue my column and peruse my column as it were a bit

01:46:28.700 a bit of a at least a mea culpa i don't know if i actually want to use the a word an apology

01:46:33.660 because honestly life just got busy but i think you guys deserve an explanation so the short

01:46:38.380 version is that between basically in the last month really really since about the middle of

01:46:43.780 may i had some really good moments up until the middle of may uh but but it got a little busy on

01:46:48.560 my end personally i i've as i mentioned before i recently got engaged and then the studio and i had

01:46:54.520 to move out of the place that i was currently in uh which is actually where the producer still lives

01:47:00.300 and we had to decamp from there in a matter of basically from the last show which was thursday

01:47:05.700 from thursday morning last uh till till this tuesday morning we were in a state of of utter

01:47:13.620 just get her done we had to get out of that house we had i had to unload every single thing i had

01:47:18.340 in there so all my life that was in that house had to get out of there some of it had to go back to

01:47:21.700 the family farm for storage some of it had to go to the new place some of it had to be put with

01:47:26.100 friends to say here this is yours for the time being and then the studio on top of that which

01:47:31.780 which was really like moving two households,

01:47:33.660 certainly one and a half households worth of stuff.

01:47:36.580 It was a lot.

01:47:37.620 And so I just want to say that if it seems like I'd been a bit preoccupied

01:47:40.800 and distracted lately, especially when it comes to the column,

01:47:43.620 which is not necessarily the freshest thing that's happened lately,

01:47:46.860 I'm hoping to get back on that horse very soon.

01:47:49.380 We've got the internet at the place now.

01:47:51.220 I can, you know, log on and start blogging again.

01:47:53.680 It's not blogging.

01:47:54.440 It's writing an opinion column.

01:47:55.340 But we use a website, web app that's like a blog,

01:47:59.760 and you lay things out in text and that sort of thing.

01:48:02.320 So I just, and I've never done that before

01:48:05.080 to tell you the truth.

01:48:05.800 I'm not a designer.

01:48:06.560 I'm not a web designer by anyone's stretch of the imagination.

01:48:08.480 But I just wanted to just say unequivocally

01:48:10.920 that if it seems like things were a little bit hairy

01:48:13.760 on my end, that's why.

01:48:15.900 It was a wonderful time.

01:48:18.340 I mean, I'm glad to be engaged.

01:48:19.720 I'm glad to be in my new place

01:48:21.060 where me and my future bride are gonna live one day,

01:48:23.640 et cetera, but it's been a bit of a time.

01:48:26.640 So I appreciate all of your patience.

01:48:28.400 I appreciate your support through that time and staying with us on this show while we're in flux.

01:48:34.900 And I think as a final point, I mean, my producer prefers to go unnamed, so we'll leave him so.

01:48:40.540 I mean, if you trace through every episode, you'll find hints of it here, there, and everywhere.

01:48:43.860 But the point is that my producer is my rock here.

01:48:50.060 Without him, this show doesn't happen.

01:48:52.620 So that was the other half of it, was making sure we'd be in a position where my producer would have a space to continue helping me produce this show.

01:48:59.720 I can't run this show by myself.

01:49:01.580 He also helps me locate guests.

01:49:03.820 And, of course, we have Aaron helping move stuff in here and being a contributor.

01:49:07.480 And we have, of course, the National Firearms Association to thank for letting us use their space.

01:49:13.460 So it's been a bit of a time.

01:49:15.620 It's been a bit all over the place.

01:49:17.320 So I'm just very thankful for everybody who's contributed along the way.

01:49:20.680 i'm very thankful for the encouragement that i've received from uh from my viewers we're going to

01:49:25.640 throw up the email again just in case anybody wants to send us an email around who they'd like

01:49:30.520 to have on the show and who who they'd suggest and any kind of suggestions for the show um and

01:49:36.440 we're gonna we're gonna work through that as best we can um we're hoping we're hoping of course

01:49:41.720 tomorrow we're going to be getting into the residential school question a little bit deeper

01:49:45.800 because we're going to have stuart parker on i'll double confirm with him but i want to just give

01:49:49.960 you guys the forewarning uh stuart parker's opinion on the residential school system is

01:49:54.680 to put it politely nuanced um very strongly left-wing on a lot of counts but a deep amount

01:50:00.760 of condemnation for how much left-wing governments as well have hurt aboriginal populations throughout

01:50:07.480 their entire history and including today so uh it's going to be a it's going to be a hard day

01:50:13.160 tomorrow there's going to be some opinions on here that are going to make people really upset

01:50:16.680 you feel free to vent at the comments please try to keep it polite don't don't swear if you can

01:50:21.800 um but we are going to get into it and it's going to be it's going to be a hard one because i mean

01:50:26.440 finding the the grave site of those children in kamloops i don't care what you what anybody's

01:50:33.080 vote is on it in the end like it's it's just a tragic thing like it doesn't matter how much

01:50:37.320 culpability you believe there's there nobody wants to find a grave site full of of children

01:50:42.760 who have passed on nobody wants that right and that's hard so we're going to be working through

01:50:46.920 all that but we need to face this issue this is the non-cancel station this is the station where

01:50:51.460 it doesn't matter where you were before who canceled you we're going to talk to you so

01:50:55.400 remember to suggest uh more people to bring on to the show thank you so much for watching and

01:51:00.560 tuning in we'll be on again tomorrow 9 a.m pacific 10 a.m mountain thank you so much for watching

01:51:06.060 have a great day

Western Standard - June 03, 2021

Mountain Standard Time - June 2, 2021

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