In this episode of Mountain Standard Time, host Nathan Ghida is joined by National Firearms Association President Sheldon Clare to discuss the destruction of Canadian history, including the removal of statues and the burning of historic buildings across the country, and the question of where do we go from here?
00:14:19.200And the tendency, of course, in some historical teaching
00:14:22.920is to look at things and glorify them.
00:14:26.460And that's probably not the wisest approach either.
00:14:29.920I think you have to present history warts and all.
00:14:32.580And I think you have to say, well, you know,
00:14:34.720this is what happened, but what we need to look at is why.
00:14:39.840why did it happen why were these decisions made in this particular way and what does that mean
00:14:45.920now what's the significance of it and i remember my old high school teacher keith gordon going
00:14:51.120going on about so what this happened so what what does that mean now and what does that mean for
00:14:58.480tomorrow and i think we are really leaving behind the significance of things that have happened and
00:15:05.280Or we're judging them poorly, or some people are judging them poorly in making decisions about ripping down monuments and statues and doing things like burning down churches, if that's what the origin of those particular incidents was.
00:15:21.780perhaps something that we could start off on a little bit here trying to give some context to
00:15:27.940it seems like a lot of people really do believe or rather have been led to believe that basically
00:15:34.640sir john a mcdonald and a bunch of his is you know co-conspirators essentially built the
00:15:40.620residential schools themselves laid the brick and mortar themselves as they you know cackled about1.00
00:15:45.320how they were going to destroy the aboriginal people that that is kind of the caricature that's
00:15:50.280being painted in people's minds today.
00:16:07.200who was involved with the White Canada Forever Movement.
00:16:10.000And that's a problematic aspect of Canadian history,
00:16:13.820which you don't see talked about very much.
00:16:16.320And there certainly was a desire for assimilation, but there's also had it with its desire to provide education.
00:16:25.120And I think the thing that we need to understand is really up until around the 1840s, education was not a thing for people except in a narrow religious setting or for the elites in society.
00:16:37.380They would get an education and it would not be something for the average person to get.
00:16:42.080You know, the average person maybe had very limited access to education and was involved in a highly agrarian society.
00:16:50.840And as society became more urban and more industrialized, different skills were needed in order to have participation in that society.
00:16:59.660And I think Aboriginal peoples were one of the first to recognize that they needed additional skills in order to develop a better relationship and understanding of this rapidly changing society.
00:17:12.540I mean, they were seeing it change much more rapidly than many others.
00:17:16.300And this is the reason that in many cases there were calls for education up to the age of 16 for everybody.
00:17:26.940And the fact of the matter was that Aboriginal peoples were regarded as wards of the federal government, not the provincial government.
00:17:36.260Education is a provincial responsibility, as we know, in the British North America Act.
00:17:40.720And the federal power was responsible for Native peoples under the Indian Act, except for the North.
00:17:49.200The Inuit and peoples up there were not included in this particular concept for quite some time.
00:18:03.340Now, as governments are, you're inefficient about some things, so what ended up happening
00:18:08.940with the craft, industrial, and then residential schools from 1920 was they tried to establish
00:18:16.580central areas which they could bring people to, because they couldn't afford to put schools
00:18:23.300in every reserve and some some reserves were very very small some some of the bands were quite tiny
00:18:29.220and it just had it was very practically difficult to do that and they looked at the options for how
00:18:35.220they could best deliver education i mean johnny mcdonald was one who wanted native people to have
00:18:40.260the vote and and worked hard to to get that done and comments that have been published and are are
00:18:48.740made they're in context and out of context about you know the the common one you hear is about
00:18:54.420taking the the native out of the child is one of the one of the comments that you see thrown out
00:18:59.940with its modern view and modern context but i think at the time this was the the intent is
00:19:07.460the big thing to look at and you hear the word genocide rather i don't think there is an intent
00:19:12.420of genocide in this at all i think that the intent was to provide an education to best
00:19:18.980get people to be able to fully participate in this new industrialized society.
00:19:25.220And that's a difficult point of history for people to wrap their minds around.
00:19:31.380It's not an easy time, it's not an easy circumstance, and it was executed very badly in many respects.
00:19:38.580I mean, the structure of the English boarding school, which was the model for
00:19:43.380many of the residential schools was such that you lived in a large dormitory type room with many
00:19:52.000people sleeping in the same room, like a barracks. And this is an ideal circumstance to spread1.00
00:19:59.820disease. So when you're looking at child mortality rates, particularly amongst Aboriginal
00:20:06.640populations that ranged from about 23% to 27%. That's one in four kids are going to die in that
00:20:15.460time because of lack of ability to have medical treatment, bad water, injuries that don't have
00:20:21.360the ability to provide antibiotics to treat, infection, all of those sorts of things.
00:20:27.220So it is not a surprise to see that there are large numbers of kids who die at those times
00:20:32.720and even die while they're at residential schools or whether they're still at the reserve.
00:20:36.640I mean, only about a third of Native children actually ever went to a residential school in the time of the residential school era.
00:20:43.760And from the late mid-50s forward, about equal numbers of Native and Native Aboriginal children were going to public school as well as residential schools.
00:27:39.760And one of the things I teach is local history at the local college.
00:27:43.480And it seemed to me that it would be worthwhile to know a better, more complete picture of
00:27:49.640the history rather than a sanitized or abbreviated version, which would otherwise be the case.
00:27:58.780So, but we couldn't get access to this.
00:28:01.140Shortly after the access to information requests were made, the bodies were reinterred within Indian Reserve No. 1, the cemetery in Claytonay Memorial Park.
00:28:14.400So, you know, that was done very quickly.
00:28:17.260But there was a report produced by the anthropologists involved, and that report has been kept secret.
00:28:23.000And that's what we wanted was that report and the information it contained about these people.
00:28:28.700We were told that we couldn't have this information because it would affect ongoing treaty negotiations, which subsequently to us being told that the treaty negotiations unfortunately collapsed.
00:28:39.820Then we were told that releasing the report would damage relationships between the First Nations community there and the provincial government.
00:28:48.820And that made me want the information even more because, well, why would it damage those relationships?
00:28:55.660Would it damage them because of a lack of trust, as was argued by one of the participants?
00:29:02.040Or would it damage them because the information doesn't fit the narrative that is being provided as the truth?
00:29:07.880So, you know, it's an ongoing effort to try to get this information.
00:29:11.580And I look at the sad state of finding this collection of graves in Kamloops of these children who died probably while they were attending the residential school and were interred there.
00:29:33.660You know, we have a lot of speculation.
00:29:35.820We have a lot of anger, emotion that covers this, but we don't have the facts.
00:29:42.420And when we don't have this, this creates speculation.
00:29:45.860And social media nowadays is a huge source for building a narrative when one doesn't exist.
00:29:52.300And when you see that narrative being constructed, you're not necessarily getting, well, you're probably not getting an actual accurate history.
00:30:03.360So what you see is a form of emotion-based history that really lacks context, lacks the necessary resources.
00:30:16.460And you need a multidisciplinary approach to this.
00:30:19.420You need to have the First Nations oral histories considered.
00:30:22.720You need to have the anthropology considered with the science.
00:30:27.040And you need to look at the historical records, many of which now that the Oblates put together1.00
00:30:32.480when they were looking after the residential schools are held by the Royal BC Museum
00:30:36.260and the excellent archivists they have there.
00:30:38.940But it's not something like you can just go to a file and pull it out and say, oh, here it is.
00:30:42.620These are boxes and boxes of materials that go back over 100 years.
00:30:48.200This is a major project, and an archivist isn't just going to let anybody walk in there and go willy-nilly through it and mix things up and all of that.
00:30:54.660That would destroy the historical record.
00:30:56.200It has to be handled with discipline, care, and respect in order to properly provide the best picture of the information that we can so we can build that rope with its tendrils and fibers and strands.
00:31:14.820I mean, I've been called a racist and bigot for being critical of comments, attacking various individuals who had some involvements with these things.
00:31:25.520And I'm looking at this and I'm going, well, you know, you don't have any evidence.
00:31:28.480And, you know, we're all about the evidence, the what happened, the why, and so on, so we can get the full picture.
00:31:34.520And if we're denied access to information, we don't get the full picture.
00:35:39.660What's going to happen in this fall election?
00:35:43.240Well, this fall election is going to be a very interesting one.
00:35:46.360I said that about every election I've ever heard coming down the pipe.
00:35:49.120I mean, as you know, I'm very interested in the firearms rights aspect of this.
00:35:54.220And our association, the National Firearms Association, has been very busy in carrying out lobbying activities.
00:36:03.160We've been very, very busy with making sure our message is heard both on international as well as domestic forums.
00:36:11.420We've made presentations and representations to the United Nations on the Arms Trade Treaty and the Program of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons.
00:36:18.100And we're also continuing to inform and persuade members of parliament, members of the Senate, and political staffers as to the merits of our particular positions.
00:36:29.300So we're working hard to make sure we're ready.
00:36:33.620And one of the things we're doing in that regard is we are once again registering as a third party
00:36:39.200and we're beginning a major pre-writ effort to inform and persuade people
00:36:48.000with regards to the merits of making sure that this particular government gets chucked out.
00:36:54.460And there are lots of people out there who are angry at this government.
00:36:57.720I think that some focus on that would be helpful.
00:37:01.520But the problem is for the opposition is that there is a very large divergence of opinion about what the best alternatives are to that government.
00:37:11.960There are people who are angry at the Conservatives for various reasons.
00:37:23.860You have the smaller, though aggressive groups like the PPC out there.
00:37:31.700The Green Party has got some issues going on with itself.
00:37:36.500And the advantage Trudeau has is he at least seems to have a relatively cohesive, although I don't like it very much, but they have a fairly cohesive group behind them.
00:37:50.140And it does not bode well if you're going to attack that.
00:37:53.860So being unified in attack of the Liberals in order to ensure their defeat in this election
00:38:01.380is going to be critical and you have to get behind one and push for that victory and then work to
00:38:07.620make sure that that victor is supportive of your particular agenda. And I know social
00:38:12.500conservatives right now are very angry with their options. I know that firearms owners are very
00:38:18.900concerned about their options. I know that fiscal conservatives are pulling their hair out0.91
00:38:23.140because they're seeing money spending processes that are going to only lead to economic disaster.
00:38:30.980It's a tough time. It's a tough, tough time. I like Pamela Jones-Kenney's comment.
00:38:37.460I think one of our biggest problems is our mainstream media being biased.
00:38:40.820Well, I think our biggest problem is our mainstream media seems to be bought and paid for.
00:38:46.340That's a significant problem. It's why groups like the Western Standard are able to
00:38:50.340and work hard to get their message out in an alternative format, as they have.
00:39:03.220And, of course, we appreciate that compliment.
00:39:06.180It is an ongoing debate as to what will happen in that narrative in that upcoming federal election.
00:39:13.780A lot of people would like those policies to be about real brick and mortar issues.
00:39:20.340people are feeling a lot of pains for the pandemic people are feeling very worried about inflation
00:39:24.420the cost of housing in this country has become ridiculous for things that are not they can't be
00:39:30.100what they're valued at it's impossible it's not possible for houses to be worth that much that
00:39:34.100were constructed long ago out of materials that are inferior to today's materials so the question
00:39:40.100becomes very quickly as we look at poverty as we look at affordability as we look at the economy
00:39:45.380who is going to chart a course for that or are we going to get stuck with another kind of
00:39:48.980political correctness campaign on either side of the aisle conservative or liberal
00:39:53.620and the real issues aren't going to get addressed well i think what you're going to end up seeing
00:39:58.720is that we're going to have runaway inflation at some point and we cannot carry a national debt
00:40:05.460the size that we are carrying based upon the deficits we are occurring every year
00:40:10.820and the spending of this current government has gotten to such a level that it is simply
00:40:16.780not sustainable. At the same time, we're crying for various social programs to be well-funded
00:40:23.040and looked after. We are far beyond the capacity of this country to pay for those programs.
00:40:30.140And that is the rare of the rubber is going to hit the road, so to speak, and we are going to
00:40:35.620have an economic collapse. That is what's going to happen. And how that economic collapse looks
00:40:42.600is going to be highly dependent on government,
00:40:45.300it's going to be highly dependent on the private sector,
00:40:47.560and it's going to be dependent on the willingness of Canadians
00:43:24.020That path includes a need for that party to look very closely at marginal ridings and do better in those marginal ridings.
00:43:36.200There's something like 30 ridings where the percentages are very, very close.
00:43:40.580And if there is a surge of support for conservatives in those ridings, they can flip.
00:43:45.380So the wild cards in this are what happens with the Bloc in Quebec and what happens with the PPC in some of these marginal ridings.
00:43:55.320Because what did happen in the last federal election is the PPC managed to garner enough votes, which very likely would have gone to conservative candidates.
00:44:06.060Not in all cases, that's for sure. But enough would have gone probably to conservative supporters in order to swing that vote.
00:44:15.380The big danger for the Conservatives is that people stay home.
00:44:20.180And I think that that is going to be their biggest challenge, to get out the vote,
00:44:24.900because when they have been perceived, whether rightly or wrongly, as engaging in politics,
00:44:31.380which are alienating some of the so-called solid elements of their base, that tends to mean people
00:44:38.340stay home. And we saw that in the Kim Campbell election where Conservative voters stayed home
00:44:42.820in droves back in 92 or so. And we've seen it in other examples in elections where voters for
00:44:51.700particular parties felt they had nothing to vote for because voting against something is not
00:44:57.060sufficient. You have to have something to support in order to make sure you're going to make that
00:48:17.520I've talked to people who are angry at me.
00:48:19.400I've talked to people who agree with me.
00:48:20.960And I find that all of it makes me learn a little something.
00:48:24.120And I believe that there are an awful lot of people out there who would stand up and vote for clearly articulated positions that may not appear to be popular, but would very much appeal to a broader unwashed who have not voted in a while, who would if they thought that they were being given some strong options for leadership, who would get out there and sort out some of the challenges we're seeing in our society.
00:48:49.660some of which we talked about earlier.
00:48:52.100And I mean, from my perspective in the National Firearms Association,
00:48:56.100I know there are an awful lot of gun owners out there
00:48:58.200who are not happy with any of the major parties
00:49:00.520in the terms of their firearms policies
00:49:02.320because we want to see fundamental repeal of the Firearms Act
00:49:06.320and we want to see a getting away from this mistreatment of firearms owners
00:49:12.640and this assumption of guilt that is put on them right from the basis.
00:49:16.260The whole licensing scheme, registration of firearms,
00:49:19.120None of that has anything to do with preventing bad people from making bad choices.
00:49:23.960And we need to get back to a regime where we are able to trust the greater mass of the people to do the right thing most of the time.
00:54:12.020The aftermath of the terrible discovery in Kamloops, my heart has been filled with hope watching Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians come together to mourn the victims of residential schools.
00:54:21.500We must ensure future generations of Canadians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, won't be held back by the divisions of the past.
00:54:28.560So I personally think those are some really solid comments.
00:54:32.840And we do need to be honest about what's happening in these issues.
00:57:38.660but we're going to get into these fundamental questions around the social contract and just
00:57:42.460the day-to-day life that you live so the entire reason why we have police is so that we don't
00:57:49.320have vigilantism like that's where it all starts right so the reason that we don't all just
00:57:54.820challenge each other to duels every day or when some kid you know steals a bike out of my backyard
00:58:00.600i don't immediately go and and you know burn his house down in which case you know his dad comes
00:58:05.960back and destroys my home and my cabin out of the lake. And then I go and destroy his entire
00:58:10.300neighborhood. That's vigilantism, right? All it does is escalate. And so this is the reason why
00:58:16.660we have police. We have police in order to ensure that the law and order of a place is capped.
00:58:25.260Because if you take the law into your own hands, it's very easy to get carried away.
00:58:29.620Who wouldn't want to visit more pain upon someone that had caused them pain? Who wouldn't want to
00:58:34.540enforce their will and and have have the you know the the malcontents and the fiends brought to
00:58:41.760justice that's that's just a statement of fact that's human nature so vigilantism is not a path
00:58:48.740forward it's it's a ever lowering uh expectations and and a race to the bottom as people get more
00:58:55.660and more violent with each other in order to stop the violence so that's that's the other irony to
00:59:00.720it too right so that the reason people are getting more violent against one another is a kind of it's
00:59:06.940a it's a one-up mission ship to see what amount of pain the other person will endure and if that
00:59:11.880person finally says uncle right and says and and and and relents and submits then you have peace
00:59:18.920again and we have to understand that this is kind of the basic principle of warfare as well right
00:59:22.660warfare is a laboratory i believe uh victor davis hansen says and and the simple fact of the matter
00:59:28.980is that that war is a place where two two contests or a single contest is held between two nations
00:59:36.440or more and we see who is stronger right now we could have figured that out probably by doing the
00:59:41.240math beforehand but instead of doing that we allow people to die and that's very sad and we shouldn't
00:59:46.200do that but again vigilantism is not the answer violence isn't the answer that's a very dangerous
00:59:52.460dangerous road to go and essentially the only violence that really goes anywhere is revolutionary
00:59:57.640violence, because ultimately to win the argument, especially if you're fighting
01:00:01.180institutions in the state, your violence basically has to carry on to the point
01:00:05.700where you're in charge. And that's the great danger of violence as well, is it's ego.
01:00:09.240It always is about me being in control, dominating you, and
01:00:13.220eventually you have to submit to me. That's kind of the problem with violence.
01:00:17.300So coming back to what's going on here with the burning of the churches down south
01:00:20.740in the lower, not the lower mainland actually, in the southern interior
01:00:25.140of british columbia which i believe is kamloops diocese um i wonder if the perpetrators will ever
01:00:31.940be caught and i mean even though it's obvious that the fires were coordinated they happened
01:00:37.360simultaneously and they happened on a day that is that is significant to indigenous people
01:00:45.740throughout canada they could have been started by someone who's you know had nothing to do with
01:00:50.100that let's be clear they could they could easily be a false flag operation somebody could be
01:00:55.140basically trying to stir up resentment against First Nations people by doing this.
01:00:59.720There's no question that we need to investigate and understand what's happening.
01:01:03.580I think actually the reverend made a good point there.
01:01:06.160And for those of you who don't understand the nomenclature,
01:01:10.480so in the Catholic faith, a father is a reverend,
01:01:16.100and then the father in charge of the fathers, the vicar general, is most reverend.
01:01:21.960and then for a bishop it's his excellency and then for a cardinal i believe it's his eminence
01:01:27.560and finally it's uh your holiness so those are the titles so coming back to what the reverend was
01:01:33.960saying he he was smart to state he was going to keep an open mind because who knows who did the
01:01:41.960deed who knows it's hard to know we're going to have to investigate uh to know who exactly
01:01:47.840perpetrated this act because it could very easily be a false operation however operating from kind
01:01:54.520of the general assumption that it makes sense that someone upset about the residential school
01:01:59.740discovery was responsible for perpetrating this act of vandalism and and destruction wanted
01:02:07.460destruction of property and indeed of holy property property that belonged to a people
01:02:14.540for their worship. Quite the crime, you know, quite the crime. The kind of thing where if it
01:02:19.640happened to any other kind of denomination, it would be deemed a hate crime. But because the
01:02:25.360Catholic Church, for good or ill, is actually not identified with any one ethnicity, it is a global
01:02:30.140church and always has been, right from its inception, you know, the moment that Christ
01:02:35.400gave them the Holy Spirit, there isn't a way to turn that into a hate crime. You could hate the
01:02:40.240church, I suppose, and call that a hate crime, but you can't call it a hate crime the same way
01:02:44.460against, as you could against other faiths, because those faiths are rather ethnocentric,
01:02:50.120and they're rather, they're rather undiverse ethnically. Homogeneous is the word I'm looking0.51
01:02:55.720for. Here we have Pamela weighing back into this question. The lack of history being taught plus1.00
01:03:02.400the media centralization of issues leads to division of vigilantism. That is, that's bang on.
01:03:07.160I think, I think Pamela is exactly right. And that's kind of where I was going to next here. So thank you for segueing that for me, Pamela. It is indeed exactly what's going on. So if you're, if you're gaslighting people, if you're pumping people up, if you're giving people all sorts of false understandings of things, you are in deep, deep trouble, right?
01:03:28.600So if you're sitting there and you're thinking about how the media puts things today, how much of it is based in false outrage, how much of it is about attention-grabbing and headline-grabbing, how much of it into social media spins completely out of control, and it goes both ways.
01:03:47.000I'm not trying to say even that it's always the conspiracy theorists.
01:03:50.100I think a lot of the state-sanctioned story and narrative is often completely, completely out of whack, completely untrue.
01:04:05.480And we can't allow, state media or not, or somebody blogging from their basement or not, we can't allow that to dictate the narrative.
01:04:16.240We must always search for evidence. We must always look for the truth. And then we must follow the truth because the truth is the only way to an ordered liberty and a better world for all.
01:04:55.240passing and not passing i had never heard i make a small side here i'd never heard the term passing
01:05:02.360used in canada until i went to manitoba uh i was working in manitoba last year i know anybody's
01:05:09.560been watching this show pretty consistently has heard that before mentioned probably about once
01:05:13.240a week i was and i mentioned it because it was a pretty significant journey i i had to leave my
01:05:19.140home i'd been up there once before but i had to leave my home leave my community leave my family
01:05:23.720go up into the great white north and and basically for six months straight because i didn't leave i
01:05:30.220didn't leave i didn't go back to thompson either i lived in churchill for six months straight
01:05:34.100and uh i just i just fought my corner and did my best and i got to see some really cool sites and
01:05:41.740i got to be a part of some really cool projects but it is a long way from the rest of civilization
01:05:45.980and it was a that was that was an experience um very formative but while i was in manitoba
01:05:53.020One of the words that I had never really encountered before in British Columbia was was the word passing.
01:05:58.840So passing as so passing is white, passing is black, passing is something.
01:06:03.800So usually that's used to refer to somebody passing for the majority population or a non-ethnic.
01:06:11.760I guess it could be used in another way because because of my complexion.
01:06:16.320So my background is both both First Nations as well as as probably some Mediterranean from from my father's side.
01:06:22.860I was adopted and my mother, my father were not the most stable relationship to put that
01:06:27.760as politely as possible. Ergo, ipso facto, who knows, who knows what's up with my dad these days,
01:06:35.160biological dad, I mean, I've never met my biological mother. But the point that I'm
01:06:39.100trying to drive home here is that I could also pass for many things. There are some people who
01:06:44.060think that I'm ethnically white, that just a darker, darker colored white person that has0.99
01:06:51.280happened part mostly that's because of the way i talk i don't talk with any kind of ethnic accent
01:06:56.880except for being from northern canada because there are times where i kind of growl my g's kind
01:07:01.380of change and and i i say things just different i don't say minutes to finance like i'm on cbc
01:07:06.520because i'm not on cbc and then and then i mean i've been accused of being all sorts of things
01:07:11.760well accused i've i've i've been approached by many different people in their native tongue
01:07:15.740trying to talk to me as if I belong to their people which I don't and so so passing can have0.81
01:07:22.200a positive aspect as well but while I was in Manitoba I just remember hearing it and it kind
01:07:27.640of sounded like in Manitoba this was a this was a difficult thing that that there was still so
01:07:34.860much tension between the aboriginal population and the non-aboriginal population that that
01:07:42.840within their circles there really were people having to basically declare whether or not they
01:07:48.260looked like and we're going to use this word because again it's on the status card and when
01:07:52.360you change the status card i'll change the word an indian right so there's people who looked like
01:07:57.380indians and there are people who didn't right and and they needed to make a distinction about that
01:08:02.340whereas you know in bc i don't think we make as much distinction about that we in bc i think there
01:08:07.900is just so much mix between uh different ethnicities that there are people i've met people
01:08:13.780right you know they're blonde haired and they're blue eyed but they are status uh a status aboriginal0.98
01:08:18.660in this country why because because they have the blood and that's all that matters and it's
01:08:24.320very interesting that that's how easy it is so in in manitoba it it seemed a bit more tensionist
01:08:30.680to put it politely i'm not trying to throw manitoba on the bus it just that's definitely
01:08:34.820seemed like unlike British Columbia, it was just a bit more, it was still stuck in a different
01:08:41.140time, a little bit less, a little bit less along the way as we are today here in British Columbia
01:08:47.300when it came to this question of Aboriginal versus non-Aboriginal. But now, of course,0.90
01:08:53.380we've made this discovery in BC. So apparently BC isn't that advanced. I mean, BC is having
01:08:58.540literal vigilantism, people literally going into the night and burning down places of worship
01:09:06.980in order to represent their anger towards the Catholic Church and what transpired
01:09:11.900at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. And there's a piece of me that can empathize with that
01:09:19.460in a purely your pain is understandable and your reaction makes sense. I'm glad that nobody got
01:09:28.160murdered i'm glad that nobody got hurt inadvertently by this arson uh that happened but still
01:09:35.120we really do have to ask ourselves is that the way forward uh and i'm saying this to the people
01:09:41.000who committed this this this act this crime i'm saying it to them directly i understand it could
01:09:48.300be a false flag operation i understand that literal race baiters could have done this in
01:09:54.420order to try and stir up resentment between the aboriginal and non-aboriginal population anew
01:09:59.380i'm very aware of that so besides besides the obvious assumption we're simply going to say to
01:10:06.360whomever was was in charge here and whoever was doing this stuff you know this is literally
01:10:15.020playing with fire um you know you're playing with fire great metaphor great pun uh because people
01:10:22.560are fragile they're very fragile they can easily snap into violence we've all seen it happen we've
01:10:28.160seen people at cost seen that we've seen somebody who we never even thought had that in them that
01:10:32.740kind of temper and all of a sudden we see them come down on something because there's been a
01:10:37.200fundamental trespass against their person their property their sense of security their sense of
01:10:41.080safety their sense of dignity this is not new we all know that this happens go go try go scrape
01:10:47.660somebody's car in a parking lot go scrape a little old lady's car in a parking lot and tell me1.00
01:10:52.300that the lady just goes like oh bless your heart dear and moves on that's not what's going to1.00
01:10:57.240happen you're going to get an earful and you deserve an earful you've made a terrible mistake
01:11:01.880what are we going on about what we're focusing on here is that if you if you the person who burned
01:11:09.060down this church is listening right now you need to understand you're playing a very dangerous game
01:11:12.600and you're playing a dangerous game precisely because not just vigilanteism but deeper than
01:11:17.300that deeper than that there is a fundamental a fundamental change of the world one little stone
01:11:26.840into a pool creates ripples and i i think that's exactly what's going on here some burned down
01:11:34.380churches that that that sounds like nothing to some people sounds like nothing but it means
01:11:41.660something to religious people and it means something even more acutely to religious people
01:11:45.840in those neighborhoods, including, for that matter, even non-religious people, even people
01:11:51.280perhaps who had suffered at the hands of the church with regards to the residential school
01:11:57.100system. But, and I mean, somebody who did indirectly was Ellis Ross, who was just reading
01:12:02.360his piece there. You cannot fix what happened in the past by burning down the present. It can't be
01:12:09.960done. And the danger is that now you're creating a new offense in the present, a new tension,
01:12:14.600a new a new spark for violence and you are in serious danger of of pushing that snowball down
01:12:27.740a hill and having that you know snowball become a a big big base of a of a snowman sort of size
01:12:34.460snowball and turn finally into like you know the indiana jones gigantic boulder coming down to
01:12:39.700crush somebody you cannot you cannot conceive of just how dangerous a game you're playing
01:12:46.260when you light those churches on fire you've made a fundamental trespass a fundamental mistake
01:12:51.380and there will be consequences there will be a full investigation but also especially if somebody
01:12:56.760really does bump into somebody else or if there are more attacks planned on churches i i can tell
01:13:03.100you there's going to be people watching those churches i can tell you they're going to be
01:13:06.000people that are going to be ready and the next time around it might turn into a bit of a physical
01:13:10.520altercation and and that's the danger that's the danger vigilantism vandalism vengeance it all
01:13:18.080comes to the same violence and violence is not the answer because only violence can solve violence
01:13:26.000and so it has to escalate to a point where somebody chooses to say you know what this is too painful
01:13:30.920for me i submit and i surrender and and what kind of reconciliation is that that's not reconciliation
01:13:37.560that's wrong we're going to pivot now a little bit to uh the questions that are being
01:13:44.760that are being kind of asked a few different things so one of the places where we're having
01:13:50.760some interesting discussion of course and unfortunately we can't get into the epic times
01:13:55.400right now um or maybe we can let's just see here maybe they'll give me a way in
01:14:04.040uh they won't that's okay but um no producer is going to rescue us so we'll just ramble here for
01:14:15.020a little while the producer rescues us but ultimately ultimately the problem becomes that
01:14:21.840As we look at that situation down south when it came to the churches, the deeper issue at the moment is, of course, also the question of what we're going to do with these statues.
01:14:34.640You cannot build a world where statues are being removed all over the place.
01:14:46.420And that's something that Stuart Parker will tell us a little bit more about on Thursday.
01:14:49.380And he told us a little about this last Thursday. Statues don't last forever. And it is true that depending on who's in charge, statues do move. But then that actually creates a situation where do we want society to move in the way that it's moving?
01:15:07.940so if the only reason why uh a statue would be changed or moved or removed or its head changed
01:15:15.320literally there were screw top heads at one point i think stewart explained that to me once back in
01:15:19.640the day it was too expensive to be building statues all the time so what you did was you
01:15:23.160just removed the emperor's head and put the new emperor's head on because of course you're only
01:15:28.480i mean that was the only person you needed to be on the statue so you didn't have to make a
01:15:32.480whole statue every time that's very interesting i didn't know that until stewart told me that
01:15:36.240And I think that we need to be careful about this, that history does change. Things are not going to stay the same forever.
01:15:46.140If there is a valid criticism, actually, of the boomers, it is that they're trying to keep us in the revolutionary 60s, the kind of bizarre moments of the 70s, both the Jesus movements and the non-Jesus movements, and then the kind of reconciliation and climax that was the 80s.0.52
01:16:06.060it depends on what day of the week it is
01:16:09.320but either we're still in the 60s, the 70s
01:25:15.540our colonial experience. When the settlers came, when the non-Aboriginal people came and began to
01:25:23.280settle this country, there were slaves because their cultures allowed for slaves at the time.0.98
01:25:30.300Now, something that we need to be clear about is that having slaves is actually extremely expensive.
01:25:38.300And so one of the problems was in Canada, or one of the benefits of Canada being so cold and harsh,
01:25:44.380It isn't even the Ohio Valley, not that it couldn't get cold back then in the 18th century, but it wasn't even Maine. It wasn't even New York, which gets to be deadly humid in the summer at times. Certainly Washington does, which isn't far away.
01:25:58.080the the issue of is the issue of of canada and slavery is is a it is a very very short story
01:26:09.940because it did not pay to have slaves in canada it didn't pay because it was so cold the environment
01:26:16.320was so harsh and so you couldn't have massive plantations where slave labor would pay would1.00
01:26:22.200would pay slave labor would pay that's that is the nature of slave labor it doesn't matter what0.99
01:26:27.180kind of labor you have whether you're even paying the people you in order for if you have a large
01:26:31.260workforce the large workforce which is extremely expensive to maintain regardless of whether it's
01:26:35.660slaves or not is is that's an objective fact one of the reasons why we talk about people being
01:26:41.160wage slaves because not only does there a huge amount of of cost put upon them in their daily
01:26:47.320lives and and how they commute and that sort of thing that's terrible but at the same time even
01:26:52.580with that the and the consumer economy that we've built there's still oligarchs and capitalists that0.58
01:26:58.440are trying to automate everything and why is that well because workforces are expensive it costs
01:27:02.660money to have a workforce so the point is that it's expensive to keep massive amounts of people
01:27:09.040employed or not at rest or at work it's expensive to feed them it's expensive to house them
01:27:14.040and what happens is in canada it just wasn't practical to continue slavery it just wasn't
01:27:20.680You couldn't make it pay, unlike Virginia, unlike Georgia, unlike Florida, unlike the Caribbean and the Southern Americas, where, again, things just grow.
01:27:29.940You know, you plant a tomato yesterday, you get tomatoes in a week.
01:27:37.840Southern Ontario has some tobacco farms and, of course, some wineries now.
01:27:41.720And I'm sure that we have lots of migrant workers throughout, of course, British Columbia and everything else.
01:27:46.000I remain convinced that migrant work is a dangerous game to play, because while we might need temporary workers, it's very dangerous that we don't allow workers to organize and have rights. That's very dangerous, and it's not fair to them. It's not fair for them to not have rights. They have rights.
01:28:05.140It doesn't matter whether they're working for a day
01:28:06.780or they're working for 100 years, they have rights.
01:28:09.920And they should find, there should be an equitable way
01:28:13.140of ensuring that their rights are protected.
01:30:51.300So we didn't do it. And it was a totally different story for us. And that's good. I'm glad that we didn't have the same experience. But why then would we have a Juneteenth holiday or celebration or day of remembrance when it's not our story?
01:31:08.980And I think that's ultimately the really dangerous thing about the time we're in.
01:31:12.440If you forget your history or denigrate it to the point where nobody will listen to it or do anything about it,
01:31:17.180then you get into a really, really, really, really, really dangerous situation
01:31:21.440where anybody can impose your history on you and change your memories, basically.
01:31:26.280So now all of us think that we kind of, people say they vote for the prime minister.
01:31:30.380They don't vote for the prime minister.
01:31:31.620They vote for a member of parliament because we watch too much American TV
01:31:34.300and we think to ourselves that we vote for our prime minister the same way they vote for the president.
01:31:57.280Or anybody who is from Canada that is part of a group of people of African descent who have been here a long time and possibly have their roots back to slavery.0.81
01:34:55.180for me. And maybe we can take this to the comments a little bit. I'm going to punt this from the
01:34:59.380stream here. Let's take this to the comments a little bit. I want to hear your guys' honest
01:35:03.740opinion about something, because I'm going to write on it, and I'm struggling to understand
01:35:08.140what to do about it. And it all ties in again with this question of history and identitarianism
01:35:13.100and the removing of statues and everything else. So here's an interesting question. I don't know
01:35:17.020how many people listening right now and watching consider themselves sovereignists, which is to say
01:35:23.200They want Western Canada or just BC or just Alberta or just a BC and Alberta or the trifecta plus Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, BC and Manitoba becoming a country or finding some way essentially to tell Ottawa to stuff it and never listen to Ottawa ever again.
01:35:42.880I don't know how many people watching this stream are on that page in some form, from situational sovereignty to outright, let's create a totally different country.
01:35:57.740So some of the most vocal anti-Canadian people are left wing and are woke and are trying to destroy Canada Day and get it canceled and change things about Canada and fundamentally delegitimize the Canadian state.
01:36:12.880so there's that okay then there's our situation as if well our i i'm again i'm ambivalent about
01:36:24.800sovereignty but i'm here and i'm the host of the show and this is a sovereignish show channel
01:36:29.600no cancel culture station thing called the western standard and i'm happy to be here so
01:36:35.280so our narrative over here around sovereignty is that this is the only way for western canadians
01:36:41.320to get their say. And then over there, they're like, well, I mean, we don't even care about
01:36:45.960Western or Eastern or North or South Canadians. We're like, no, Canada itself is a crime. So
01:36:50.540that's the left-wing position, using my left hand. And the right-wing, well, more kind of
01:36:56.460nationalist perspective and sovereignist perspective, because mostly right-wingers
01:37:02.060side of the sovereignist movement. There's some left-wingers as well, Aaron Eckman being a
01:37:05.160noticeable example um it these these people want a better canada and they want a they they want to
01:37:16.740get or get rid of canada and create a new a new world where kind of the things they think of that
01:37:21.420are probably properly canadian or good canadian things around freedom and liberty and that sort
01:37:26.000of step can be preserved because ottawa has become tyrannical so that's so there's two different
01:37:31.320things here one of them is saying canada is an illegitimate place that should never have existed
01:37:35.640and the other one is that canada had some good ideas in it but those got ruined basically by
01:37:44.680pierre trudeau so trudeau senior and then his son trudeau jr and then all the prime really in a
01:37:50.860sense every prime minister from the second world war onwards except for dieffen baker sometimes
01:37:56.060harper depending on where you're counting from and even mulrooney when he was just well when
01:38:00.460Mulroney was being what he was I mean Mulroney was like a less you know a more chaste version
01:38:05.720of kind of Bill Clinton for us Canadians not because not well not just because of the face
01:38:09.940and the chin and everything else that was going on with Mulroney but more in the sense of of just
01:38:15.820like he was just smooth he was smooth he was Mr. Smooth that was the thing about Mulroney is they
01:38:19.840just seemed to be very smooth it's very polished very well put together because of his because he
01:38:23.860came for money right he came for money and he'd run some things and so so he was very smooth and
01:38:28.020i think that was the thing about bill clinton bill clinton was very smooth yes that's the way
01:38:31.860he got people to vote for he's just smooth he was just silk right and that's how he got away
01:38:36.220with everything got away with but coming back to this question of what what should we do here so
01:38:43.960if canada has been fundamentally ruined by the decisions made from basically mckenzie king to
01:38:49.760drudeau the second and with a couple of of people trying to do the right thing once or twice
01:53:09.000That was, you know, because they just didn't have the security that we have today.
01:53:13.040And so, I mean, this isn't a condone, condoning violence and any of that stuff and shaking hands
01:53:21.440with the devil or joining with terrorists and activists.
01:53:23.420I don't want that either. What I'm simply stating, though, for the record, is that if you want to look at history, history is going to tell you pretty quickly that some pretty ardent resistance, which some might have called terrorism at the time, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter is another way it's said.
01:53:46.500And this is not condoning that. But it's just again, it comes back to this problem. The examples we have in history, there's only a few, you know, velvet revolutions and velvet separations. One of them is Czechoslovakia at the end of the Cold War. When the Soviet Union is breaking up, Czechoslovakia breaks into totally agree basically where the borders are supposed to be. I think a couple of people moved. I don't know if they bothered. Like, I don't think Czechoslovakia have a particularly strong ethnic difference.
01:54:15.960I'd have to be shown how that's different.
01:54:18.660And further to that, I don't think Czechs and Slovaks, you know, bothered fighting each other about this stuff.
01:54:40.620And that happened in one or two other places throughout history.
01:54:43.100But the problem is that most of the time, what happens is what happened in Ireland with England and what happened in Yugoslavia, the former Yugoslavia, which became, of course, Bosnia, the absolute massacres that happened in Bosnia.
01:55:01.780I don't want to join hands with people who seem okay with burning churches either, because I'm guessing that some of the same kind of element is there.
01:55:08.920I'm not okay with people who want to topple statues.
01:55:11.220I'm not okay with people rummaging through, through, you know, other people's purses by force and or attacking their businesses.
01:55:20.920I think all that's really, really dangerous and really, really wrong.
01:55:24.460And I think the French Revolution, in a sense, was probably the result of people like, like Sheldon over here explaining how upset he is.
01:55:33.560But people with legitimate grievances joining hands with people who had illegitimate grievances and wanted to go places that weren't possible.
01:55:41.220so i don't know i don't know it's a hard question uh we're going to leave it there for now you've
01:55:49.480had my email up here for a little while that's ngita at western standard online do send me your
01:55:54.580thoughts and suggestions for the show uh and i want to say thank you so much for tuning in today
01:55:59.120we're thankful to have sheldon on and we're thankful to kind of talk to everybody about
01:56:03.340everything and i'm just very i'm very thankful for uh for everyone's attention and for everyone's
01:56:09.340help throughout this show so why don't you guys have a great uh rest of your morning or afternoon
01:56:14.660and we'll see you again bright and early tomorrow 9 a.m pacific 10 a.m mountain