Nihilism, reform, or revolution？ Young men in 2025
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Summary
Jamil Gagni, MP for Bowmanville-Oshawa North, joins me to talk about the challenges facing young men and the need for conservative politics to address them. We discuss the challenges young men are facing and why conservative politics is the best place to start the conversation.
Transcript
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So, in a couple of minutes, actually, I'll just get right into it, because why waste any time?
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So, as Margaret Thatcher would say, it is a sin to waste time.
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So, right now, I'm really pleased to introduce a dear friend of the movement, one of its, I think, brightest lights.
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He did a lot of work on radio, I know, in Ontario.
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And, of course, he ran this organization for a little while before he decided, I think, rightly, to go and run for parliament, first in a by-election, at the end of, in mid-2023, I think it was, for Oshawa.
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And then, of course, was recently re-elected for Bowmanville, Oshawa North.
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So, I'm really, really pleased to welcome my friend and a great champion of the movement, Mr. Jamil Giovanni.
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And thank you to the Canada's Strong and Free Network for inviting me here today.
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I bring greetings from the wonderful people of Bowmanville, Oshawa North.
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And, yeah, I'm very excited to talk about the future of our country today.
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But I do want to share some thoughts on the future of conservative politics in our country.
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This is a topic I've spent a lot of time thinking about long before I became an MP.
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I actually, seven years ago, wrote a book about the challenges facing young men.
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And seven years later, now as a member of parliament, I am compelled to point out that a lot of the
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problems that I wrote about seven years ago have actually gotten worse and that young men in our
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country are actually in a much tougher position than they were when I first started looking into
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And I think this is an important place to discuss this issue because I do believe that there are
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some very serious ideological flaws in the Liberal Party of Canada, in liberal institutions, and in
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And I do not believe liberal politicians are going to rise to the occasion and fight for our young men.
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And I do believe that it is a responsibility of conservatives to take on that mantle.
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So I want to begin by first outlining the problem because it is very rare to see in mainstream political
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So I do want to kind of paint the picture a bit for you of what is going on, not just anecdotally, but to be very
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clear on, from a statistical standpoint, what young men are experiencing in this country today.
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So I'm going to go through some data from StatsCan, very exciting stuff.
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I'm sure you're excited to hear the numbers, but I do think it's important.
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In 2024, 71% of apparent opioid toxicity deaths were men, 71%.
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Among older teens who committed suicide, 70% were boys, and that's according to the SFU Children's Policy
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In 2023, among the people who were living in homeless shelters, 67% were men.
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Since 2016, the homicide rate where men and boys are victims has gone up 20%.
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The most recent unemployment statistics from May of this year showed that the unemployment rate
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among young men was 22%, which is the highest in well over 10 years.
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And nationally, prior to COVID, about 14% of boys were dropping out of high school and not
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That number, I am certain, has gotten worse, but StatsCan has not published that data since
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Now, I think it would be important to ask, you know, what is the sort of institutional apparatus
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that we have in government to even start to identify a strategy to respond to numbers like
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And I mean, the reality is that there is a Minister of Women and Gender Equality in Ottawa.
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There is no such minister responsible for talking about these particular issues as it pertains
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And I think that's where the conservative movement has an important place.
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And I'd like to clarify, because as a person who sort of had these conversations in the public
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square before, I know that people can sometimes get quite uncomfortable when you start to talk
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about young men as a distinct group with distinct needs and challenges.
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I encountered this same discomfort when I first wrote my book seven years ago.
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But I have no intention of downplaying any problems, real issues that young women face.
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I have no intention of downplaying any of the challenges that all people face.
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My objective really is to simply highlight that our young men are being overlooked, marginalized.
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And there is an institutional failure to respond to that feeling.
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Young men are screaming silently in our country right now because very few institutions are willing
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So with all of these statistics available, you know, I think it's important to ask, well,
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Why doesn't this register in policymaking circles?
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Why isn't there a task force or initiative or all the other things that governments like
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to do to demonstrate to the public that they're taking a problem seriously?
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And this is where I think it's important to really highlight where liberal politics is
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The first part that I'd like to point out off the top is that liberal ideology and liberal
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politics is committed to a particular way of looking at gender that I think is makes it
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When you separate gender from sex and you make the conversation about gender something
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that is many Canadians would feel they need a PhD to even engage when you make it something
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so complicated that it cannot be straightforward discussion about analysis and solutions, you
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wind up creating a scenario where a lot of people in power would rather spend their time
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trying to figure out who a young man is than how to help him.
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The second problem we have is that liberal governance, and when I say liberal, I don't
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even just mean in a partisan sense, I mean in an ideological sense, because this is something
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true at all levels of government in many places across the country, has absorbed a certain
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hierarchy of victimhood where the average working class and middle class man is at the bottom.
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Now that hierarchy of victimhood is sometimes called DEI, and it goes by a variety of names
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But the reality is that DEI has been very successful at advancing the careers of a very small number
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of people to get on corporate boards of directors or to join university faculties, and it has been
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objectively a failure in addressing many of the very serious social ills in our country.
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There are many institutions in Canada right now where if I gave them those statistics that
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I just read to you, they would first want to know what color those young men are before
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And a third serious problem with liberal governance is related to immigration.
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So we have embraced in this country, through 10 years of liberals running the federal government,
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an economic and immigration philosophy that devalues young men in the labor force.
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This is going to sound harsh, but I think it needs to be said.
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At the cost of increasing youth unemployment to levels we have not seen in a very, very long
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time, liberals have opened Canada's borders to enable an unprecedented level of immigration,
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including a variety of temporary worker programs.
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This approach to managing our economy means that businesses and governments can effectively
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Because if our youth are ill-prepared for the jobs that are available or unwilling to work
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those jobs after the wage is being offered, businesses and governments can simply fill those
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roles by bringing people in from elsewhere instead of investing in or training or caring about
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why those young people aren't filling those jobs in the first place.
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They have decoupled the health of our economy from the health of our young people in doing so.
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And practically speaking, that means young men are not treated as essential to the future
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If Canada's labor supply is unlimited by opening borders up to the entire world.
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Liberal economic philosophy has left young men on the outside of the labor force and the
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metrics that have been typically used to measure our economy, like GDP for example, do not reflect
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This is really important to emphasize, I believe, because I think in a healthy society, it would
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be one where you care about the future of where your country is going and that you're actively
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measuring your success as a government or as stewards of an economy based on how young people
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But basic things like home ownership statistics, for example, make it obvious that young people
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And there is very little sense of urgency around this.
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It is not regarded as the crisis that it should be.
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And it is my contention is that it is in part explained by the decoupling of our economy
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So I will give you a practical example of what I mean.
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Something that I believe in a healthy society would be a controversy, something that everyone
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in this room would be aware of, something that we would be talking about, there would
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So in my home province of Ontario, I know the Premier of Ontario was here a couple months
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And I'm sure he didn't talk to you about any of this stuff or anything serious.
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I think he came here to eat your pancakes probably.
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But Doug Ford is funding a special program at George Brown College to train 50 students
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The program is free, which is code for taxpayers are paying for it.
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But it is, and I'm going to quote, only available to newcomers or immigrants with a background
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or education in construction, engineering or other related fields.
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Now when I say that this is the kind of thing that should be a controversy, what I mean is
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that when you're in an environment where 22% of young Canadian men don't have jobs and
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you are funding training programs that deliberately exclude them from getting an opportunity, it should
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It should be outrageous to do this generally, but certainly with those unemployment numbers
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And at an institutional level, nobody really seems to care about this.
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It's not offensive the way that I think it should be.
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For Doug Ford and politicians like him, like the carny liberals, for example, this is normal,
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The alarm that I'm trying to ring about young men is alarm they could have and should have
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heard long ago, but they are just frankly not concerned.
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They would rather, you know, pour a bottle of Crown Royal on the ground so the media will
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But there is a substantive difference in what we think patriotism means, right?
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Like I believe that patriotism is caring for the young people of this country and putting
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So with this context in mind, I think it's very important that we have a national conversation
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I think we need to hold politicians and governments accountable to doing something about these crises
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that are affecting the next generation of Canadians.
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And I think the first step is ensuring that we are having a serious and honest discussion
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about what's happening to our brothers, our sons, our neighbors, and our friends.
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There's a forward thinking dimension to this that I think is also worth pointing out, which
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is that there is massive disruption on the forefront.
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You know, AI technology is going to change a lot of industries, it's going to change a lot
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And I think that we have to be cognizant of what that's going to do to people who are already
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There are indications that the youth unemployment number is in part a result of AI eliminating
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a series of entry level positions across the economy that ordinarily would have been filled
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by university graduates, particularly male university graduates.
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And I think it's imperative to ask, what exactly are we doing with this technology and what function
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If we are going to be comfortable with AI being used to eliminate jobs that would otherwise have
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gone to young people, I think that has to feel like a choice we are making.
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And if the people who are in power are going to make that choice, then they should be held
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The idea that technology is a passive thing that just happens to us and we react to it
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and we have no role to play in deciding how it would be implemented or whose life it would
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And I think we need to ask ourselves if the purpose of AI would be to augment the jobs that
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And if there is going to be disruption that leads to more unemployment, do we have a plan
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for the young men who are now going to find themselves outside of the workforce?
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Should these young men be studying something different in school?
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My friend Sam Duncan wrote an essay for the Hub recently about some of these questions and
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he argues, in my view, rather persuasively, that AI has a tremendous potential to benefit
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Canadian workers if we focus on it as a tool to boost productivity.
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And in that case, that would also need to be a deliberate conscious decision that we make.
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But my primary point here is to say that we have a decision to make with this disruption
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of whether we are going to prioritize the interests of young men and young people at large, or if
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we are going to continue down a path where young Canadians are pushed at the back of the line
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and expected to not be listened to or their interests to be served.
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And I think that conversation, we're probably late in starting it, but it's one that needs
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So I'll close today, because I do want to welcome Derek to the stage, but I will close
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by just wanting to kind of leave on a point of optimism.
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One of my biggest concerns, and I wrote about this seven years ago, is that in response to
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what I've described to you today, young men are going to take note of how slow our institutions
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are to react, how little their experiences are being reflected in what they're seeing
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around them, and they are going to opt to simply check out.
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My worry is that many young men will feel hopeless to make the effort to get ahead, that they will
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play video games instead of studying or working, they will watch porn instead of starting a family,
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they will become increasingly isolated, and the world will never get to know how amazing
00:17:04.700
So to anyone who might feel that way, any young man who might hear my words, I want to reiterate
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The future of our country depends on you taking control of your future, living up to your potential.
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We need you to get an education, we need you to start businesses, we need you to have families,
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we need you to buy a home, you are the hustlers and the strivers, the dreamers and the builders
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who have always shaped Canada and will continue to do so.
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And I am a member of parliament precisely because I believe in you.
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I believe in the young people of this country and I believe they are worth investing in, they
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are worth prioritizing and they are worth empowering.
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So we are, my team in Bowmanville, Oshawa North is launching a project, a national project
00:18:06.980
to try to elevate and prioritize the issues that young men are facing, to bring greater
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voice to these issues and to put young men in a stronger position to articulate what
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they are experiencing and the changes that they believe are necessary for them to live
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I invite anyone who wants to be part of that conversation to work with us, to support us,
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try to change the lack of responsiveness among our institutions today to these problems,
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to help us with this undertaking and visit our new website, restorethenorth.ca.
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I think it was a very prescient message you shared there that we are just not hearing
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in a constructive way from most elected officials.
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I'm turning 40 in just a little over a month and it's finally dawned, I'm used to being
00:19:20.040
like the young guy in the room when I was, who are you?
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I'm Derek Fildebrandt, I'm a publisher of the Western Standard.
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I was elected as a pretty young guy when I got into politics, 29, I was by far the youngest
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I'm used to being the young guy in the room and I tried hard not to be the token young guy.
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But I think there is a, this is one of, I think, going to develop to be one of the defining issues
00:20:08.400
You touched on a lot of it, I want to maybe suss it out a bit more here.
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We'll just start maybe on the electoral level when we get, maybe then we'll get a bit deeper.
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In the most recent US presidential election, young men skewed strongly for Trump.
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Now there's very often, normally been some gender divide at least.
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You know, males skew right, females skew left, obviously with a lot of exceptions to that,
00:20:41.640
So we saw it in the United States, particularly among young people.
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You know, if you remember white dudes for Harris was amongst the, the Democrats at least started
00:20:53.960
They just did it pretty terribly how they went about it.
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We saw in the most recent federal election in Germany, the AFD Alternative for Deutschland,
00:21:10.940
Young women skewed hard to Die Linke, which means in German, the left.
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And it's that party, you know, like, I pretty casually call everybody a commie.
00:21:24.320
They're actually a formal successor party to the East German Communist Party.
00:21:28.700
So people, what do you think is causing the electoral and partisan divergence among young men and young women?
00:21:41.500
Some of them are similar or even the same, but some are different.
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And this is manifesting itself in a partisan and an electoral way.
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I mean, generally speaking, I think the average person votes because they believe rightly or
00:22:00.920
wrongly that a particular political party or a particular political leader is going to
00:22:08.320
And I think when you look at the divergence in voting habits between young men and young
00:22:13.960
women in some of these studies, what I sort of interpret that as is evidence that a lot
00:22:19.360
of women might feel like the, you know, right-wing political parties are not offering solutions
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And a lot of young men would feel the same way about left-wing political parties.
00:22:29.540
I also think, though, that like the real core problem, though, is a lack of confidence
00:22:36.480
So I don't think a man or woman or any person is going to say, I think you have a solution
00:22:43.160
to my problem, but I'm voting for someone else anyway.
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I think they're not sold on the solutions being provided.
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And you know, in my job, I think that's sort of our responsibility is how do we figure out
00:22:53.860
how to convince people that, you know, conservative ideas, conservative policies would actually
00:23:00.020
lead to a better quality of life for as many people as possible.
00:23:04.760
And I think that's also what our, what our task is.
00:23:10.500
I think one of the common themes of what you talked about is neglect, neglect and perhaps
00:23:19.140
You talked about the hierarchy of victimhood, you know, without getting into it, it's almost
00:23:24.940
like, you know, there's a point card you add up and how many points you have determines
00:23:32.400
And we as a, as a society, a broad Western civilization have begun, have for some time
00:23:37.000
now, fetishized victimhood, that you want to be a victim.
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And that seems to be antithetical, I think, to the founding values of Western civilization
00:23:48.520
is even if you are a victim, you fight to not be a victim.
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The ultimate goal is to be, to liberate oneself, to achieve a personal freedom, freedom for
00:23:59.880
But the fetishization of victimhood, I think, has led to these destructive outcomes.
00:24:05.880
And I think for young men in particular, you know, they sit through high school, or geez,
00:24:16.920
But then, you know, you get to universities and they're just constantly bombarded with,
00:24:21.260
here are the victims and therefore the good groups and here are the oppressors, therefore
00:24:28.200
And if you are constantly told and reinforced that you are the oppressor, I mean, that can't
00:24:42.760
How do you think that is driving the psyche of young men in our society right now who have
00:24:48.720
been told constantly that you're an oppressor and you're victimizing some other group, yet
00:24:54.200
they're looking at their own circumstances, they're unemployed or they're underemployed,
00:24:59.240
they're living at home, they have no prospect of home ownership, you know, the dating world
00:25:05.140
is changing in strange ways that are not good for most men.
00:25:11.380
You know, that's, how is that connect, creating, how is that disconnect, I think, going to manifest
00:25:20.160
Well, I think this is something that everybody can relate to, which is imagine, you know,
00:25:24.160
you have a problem and you go to someone to try to explain it and they tell you, well,
00:25:28.800
because of what you look like or where your parents come from, your problem isn't actually
00:25:34.980
Like you're calling an airline company to say that you canceled my flight and I need it
00:25:39.660
to be rescheduled and they tell you, what colour are you?
00:25:44.060
And if you're not the right colour, then actually, you don't need a new flight, right?
00:25:48.000
I mean, it's a very personal thing that everyone can relate to, the idea that you are somehow
00:25:53.840
being, your perspective, your concerns are being watered down and undermined by virtue
00:25:59.560
of things that have nothing to do with decisions you've made or things that you've done as a
00:26:04.640
And I think that's how a lot of young men in particular feel, which is that they are
00:26:10.240
going through a series of challenges in our economy and our culture and feeling that by
00:26:16.460
raising those concerns, they are actually being further marginalised and dismissed because
00:26:22.600
by virtue of even speaking about it, they are now somehow committing a new offence, right?
00:26:27.780
So I think that it puts a lot of people in a very unsustainable position, culturally.
00:26:36.780
And in response, you're going to see people get frustrated and look for alternatives.
00:26:41.940
The pull that, you know, conservatives have had for young men is in large part, I think,
00:26:52.140
And there is, you know, in Canada and a lot of Western democracies, there is very little
00:26:56.640
daylight between a lot of the political options being provided.
00:27:00.980
And so when you're looking at your, you know, the series of ideas being presented to you to
00:27:05.840
solve your problems, whether some of the things I mentioned, you know, opioids, unemployment,
00:27:10.440
education, all of these different things, and everybody sounds the same.
00:27:15.560
Your teachers, your professors, the stuff you've been told to read, the mainstream media,
00:27:23.120
You want to feel like something new is possible.
00:27:25.660
And that is where conservatives have been able to offer an alternative to a lot of young
00:27:33.520
But we also then have a responsibility to follow through on that, right?
00:27:40.060
It has to be that we are taking the time to put the effort in to actually solve your problems,
00:27:45.580
and not take for granted the people who are coming to us and asking us to listen to them
00:27:50.820
and work with them in favor of chasing some mythical, you know, voter or stakeholder or
00:27:56.700
constituent that might not even be there in the first place.
00:28:00.000
So I think a lot of this, there's an incredible backlash taking place.
00:28:07.640
And it's not just among young men, it's society at large, you know, we could see on some social
00:28:15.580
issues where the progressivist left overreached itself so far.
00:28:21.180
And now there's backlash, you know, you think of, you know, transgender ideology, five years
00:28:29.080
ago, if you said anything at all, you'd be pilloried as a, you know, an ism or a phobe
00:28:37.780
And now, the backlash to that, you know, is driving the political right across the Western
00:28:48.620
But I think it's particularly strong with young men.
00:28:53.720
That overreach is, I think, developed, it has developed into a sense of rage of a need
00:29:07.960
And this can go in a few different directions, potentially, it can go in the direction of
00:29:12.860
nihilism, a loss of sense of agency that you can't do anything about it.
00:29:18.360
And I'm therefore, as you said, going to just check out, they're not going to work, they're
00:29:23.700
going to watch porn instead of having a family, they're going to live with their parents forever
00:29:29.880
You know, they'll collect welfare rather than work.
00:29:32.060
They could take the direction of nihilism and accepting a loss of sense of personal individual
00:29:40.500
It could manifest itself in a fairly mainstream conservative direction where they, you know,
00:29:47.520
they vote for parties that might move things in their direction.
00:29:51.920
But I think it also has a potential to go in a more radical direction that we're seeing.
00:29:56.060
And that a lot of that's maybe driven by some of the new online right.
00:30:01.380
Which direction, broadly speaking, it's for some people, there's all three paths, maybe
00:30:07.620
Where do you think it's likely to go out of those three broad paths?
00:30:12.180
I can take a guess at which I think you would hope it goes down.
00:30:16.020
But how is it that you would want to see, say, the Conservative Party of Canada, the conservative
00:30:22.820
movement more broadly, try to drive them down the mainstream conservative political path rather
00:30:27.480
than checking out in the direction of nihilism or radicalizing in the other direction?
00:30:36.680
So, you know, I think any of us here who are familiar with, you know, kind of the evolution
00:30:41.620
of conservative politics over a prolonged period of time, you know, we have typically taken
00:30:47.360
the position of emphasizing personal responsibility, personal autonomy, work hard, make good choices,
00:30:56.440
And as the economy has gotten tougher for people, as social mobility has become more and more
00:31:01.880
difficult, as the cost of a house has become more unreachable for people, the sort of traditional
00:31:08.320
message of, well, just work hard, and it's kind of on your shoulders, you figure it out,
00:31:13.840
it's frankly just tougher to deliver, in part because it's less reflective of the reality
00:31:19.060
that a lot of young Canadians are growing up in.
00:31:22.380
And I think in an ideal world, that is the balance we want to get back to, where the economy
00:31:27.660
works well enough, where society works well enough, where institutions work well enough,
00:31:31.640
where we have the confidence that we can say, if you work hard and make good choices, you
00:31:38.080
That is what an ideal society looks like, in my view.
00:31:41.120
And that is the position that, you know, conservative politics has been in for most of my lifetime.
00:31:46.280
The challenge right now is that we have now environmental and structural issues that have sort of piled
00:31:54.140
Or I think we can say with confidence to a young person, you're in a country where working
00:31:58.960
hard is going to be enough to get you a good quality of life.
00:32:02.240
That is just not true right now, and we need to make that true again.
00:32:05.980
Until that is true again, I do think we have to be concerned about some of the things you
00:32:10.400
mentioned as far as, you know, people giving up.
00:32:13.840
Equally, we also have to be concerned with people becoming overly consumed with resentment.
00:32:18.800
This is a very toxic response that lots of people can have to feeling that life is unfair,
00:32:27.080
the opportunities aren't available, they're not able to get ahead, they feel like they're
00:32:33.320
And when resentment breeds in that kind of environment, that is where you do see things
00:32:37.140
like, you know, extremism, racism, people starting to feel that it is warranted to blame groups
00:32:46.460
of people instead of individuals or, you know, and the new right, as you sort of described
00:32:52.640
it online, I mean, you will see lots of that out there, right?
00:32:56.500
People who are trying to teach our young men to be resentful, to engage in tribal politics,
00:33:02.000
to be hateful, as a way to feel like they can respond to their circumstances.
00:33:07.560
And you know, we have to be able to show that there is a constructive way to be, to be unhappy
00:33:13.180
and frustrated, but that things can get better.
00:33:16.720
And I think that's, that's the task in front of us.
00:33:19.400
I don't say this as if it is easy, I certainly don't say this as if I have that all figured
00:33:24.480
out and I can just sort of lay out for you a plan for how to deal with it.
00:33:29.060
And I think that is ultimately what we're trying to solve for right now.
00:33:32.780
And if we can keep young people feeling that there is hope, that to be involved, to feel
00:33:38.420
like there is some relationship between the effort they put in and outcomes getting better,
00:33:44.780
then I think we can steer them away from some of the more destructive ways of reacting to
00:33:50.060
I think there's going to be, you know, people are going to go in those three streams, nihilism,
00:34:03.060
checking out, some going in the mainstream direction, hoping for change, and then others
00:34:09.060
I think there's going to be more of the first and last option than we would expect.
00:34:18.380
Because I think a lot of us think things are too far gone to actually be fixed.
00:34:30.840
And even before that, you know, the conservative immigration policy, it was relatively, relatively
00:34:37.840
open borders policy, but it was better, it was justifiable.
00:34:53.940
Our debt, especially cumulative federal, provincial, municipal debt, our national debt is never,
00:35:01.420
there's no prospect of ever paying it back, except Alberta, because we're Alberta.
00:35:06.560
But we, you know, our per capita GDP is now lower than Italy.
00:35:14.600
Now, this might be anti-Italianism on my part, but I've always drawn the line at, between
00:35:20.360
first and second world, at, are you richer or poorer than Italy?
00:35:23.760
If you were Italy or poorer, you're first world.
00:35:26.180
And if you're one country poorer than Italy, you're now second world.
00:35:30.320
Canada, by my old definition, is technically the richest second world country in the world.
00:35:42.840
I'm not sure if that's because Italy did anything right, or just because Canada's done
00:35:51.840
You know, we've seen, in a remarkably short period of time, just what our communities look
00:36:00.960
I work in the Western Standards offices in downtown Calgary.
00:36:05.060
There are drug zombies everywhere, broken, crushed souls.
00:36:14.160
The demographic makeup has changed, not slowly and with integration and assimilation, but
00:36:23.460
And so I think there's a sense, even among, if I can include myself in this group, more
00:36:28.220
rational and clear-minded of us, that things are too broken.
00:36:35.520
That we're really just kind of on borrowed time.
00:36:38.840
That this is the sunset of Western, not just Canada, but of Western civilization.
00:36:46.880
The term used in the news business is managed decline.
00:36:49.940
And that we're just going to enjoy it for as long as we can, and we'll eventually just
00:36:54.940
That there's no long-term sense of continuity, even for our civilization anymore, and we're
00:37:01.220
just going to enjoy the ride for the, we're going to ride on the fumes while it lasts.
00:37:10.880
So I don't know, you're in elected politics, you have to believe things can maybe be fixed,
00:37:23.320
And if so, I, you know, I think that's going to increase the pull of those who want to check
00:37:28.340
out on one side or those who want to radicalize on the other.
00:37:32.660
William Buckley used to tell this joke that he felt if he picked 20 random names from the
00:37:40.340
phone book, he would find 20 better people suited to run his country than picking 20 names
00:37:50.940
And I am inclined to kind of look at it that way.
00:37:59.000
And what I mean by that is that, you know, in my job, I have the privilege of being able
00:38:04.420
to talk to a lot of Canadians who you just, most people never get the chance to meet, right?
00:38:09.960
They're busy, you know, working and then they're home and they're cooking dinner for their family
00:38:13.660
and they're taking their kid to soccer practice and they don't come to, you know, public events.
00:38:23.000
They just, their perspective would never really be accounted for.
00:38:26.460
And it's probably the best part of my job, to be honest, is that I get to hear from those
00:38:30.720
Canadians and I get to knock on their door and have a conversation.
00:38:34.760
And I think part of my optimism, a lot of it comes from those interactions, which is that
00:38:39.100
I do believe that the average Canadian is a highly capable person with a good head on
00:38:48.780
And I think our institutions don't reflect our people.
00:38:52.480
So the challenge I feel every day is how do we get that to line up better, right?
00:38:57.440
How do we get to feel that like the sensible Canadian is actually the person making decisions
00:39:03.500
that affect large swaths of our population from a policy perspective?
00:39:10.340
And I don't have the kind of magic answer to that.
00:39:14.260
But I do think because I think the people are there, it makes me feel a little bit more
00:39:19.480
optimistic that we have more of an institutional problem than a country problem.
00:39:27.400
It's the institutions that serve us that have failed.
00:39:30.200
And those institutions, I think, can be reformed.
00:39:35.900
I'd be inclined more to agree if this wasn't an endemic problem right across the Western
00:39:46.120
I mean, this is not a uniquely Canadian problem.
00:39:48.700
The Americans have it, the Brits, the French, the Germans.
00:39:55.200
Now a lot of these institutions have the same kind of ideological capture in them.
00:40:07.260
We've even got it here in Alberta to a large extent, just maybe less so than other parts
00:40:15.260
Like in the last federal election, I already thought it was probably kind of too late to
00:40:23.760
save Canada, to save our very privileged position in the world as a safe, stable, prosperous liberal
00:40:36.400
Best case scenario, you get to start the work in four years from now.
00:40:46.700
If it's not too late now, will it not be too late four years from now to be able to turn
00:40:57.380
Well, I mean, I can speak for me personally on this, and this is obviously a complicated
00:41:03.160
thing in terms of how do you decide to be optimistic about the future of our country.
00:41:10.820
Everyone's going to kind of have a different perspective on that.
00:41:13.700
You know, I believe in God, and I'm a Christian.
00:41:17.580
And I, you know, my faith comes in part from, you know, believing that unlikely things happen,
00:41:27.860
that good things happen in spite of tremendous adversity.
00:41:35.440
And so that would be my message to someone who maybe feels the way you do is like, I'm
00:41:39.700
not going to fight with you on this, but I am going to say I think we need you and we
00:41:46.260
Well, since I'm in the media, I'm going to take you out of context.
00:41:51.080
I'll take you out of context and say that the only thing that will save Canada is a miracle.
00:42:01.460
Well, I want to continue to move in the direction of where this is going socially and politically
00:42:17.860
You know, you referenced William F. Buckley, you know, one of the pillars of the modern
00:42:26.060
You know, the weekly standard in its day was largely able, it played such a dominant role
00:42:31.980
among the intelligentsia of the conservative movement that it could put fences around and
00:42:38.240
say, this is acceptable within the broader coalition and outside here be dragons.
00:42:43.860
I don't think any, there's any institution, media or otherwise, that is able to do so
00:42:50.080
now in a decentralized media environment where social media platforms have, I think generally
00:42:57.620
for better, been de-censored and are able to speak more freely.
00:43:02.720
But that means you're going to see more fringe voices come in.
00:43:06.200
And the fringe is, I'm not sure we can call it that fringe anymore.
00:43:13.980
People might not necessarily agree with actually even what they're listening to, but they like
00:43:18.000
the edginess of it, that like, it's the forbidden fruit that they get to eat.
00:43:24.760
You know, before we came up here, we talked about like Nick Fuentes, I didn't even know
00:43:32.140
Now you scroll for five minutes, it's going to come up and it's some crazy shit.
00:43:38.820
But I think a lot of people, they might not even agree with anything he's saying.
00:43:43.000
But he's, you know, guys like him are breaking taboos that, you know, an entire generation
00:43:49.320
was brought up saying, you can't say this, you can't even think it in any way for very
00:43:54.540
mainstream things like, you know, just basic liberal democratic principles that were considered
00:44:05.540
We call you a phobe of this or an ist or ism of that.
00:44:09.900
And so there's a taboo breaking in this that I think is alluring to a lot of people.
00:44:14.720
And it could go one of several ways, but, you know, where do you think this is going
00:44:20.860
with the influence of the new really, really hard or extreme right and its influence on
00:44:31.400
So some of you might remember sort of the political dynamics around race in the like late 80s,
00:44:38.400
early 90s, where you had figures like Louis Farrakhan, for example, emerge and gain significant
00:44:46.720
followings by saying to mostly black men who were frustrated with their circumstances, couldn't
00:44:55.400
get ahead, dealing with a whole host of problems in their communities, that they needed to blame
00:45:06.340
What we're seeing now is that same strategy be employed to appeal to disenfranchised young
00:45:14.360
And instead of Farrakhan telling a black man to blame white people, it's now someone like
00:45:21.480
Nick Fuentes telling young white men on Rumble to blame the Jewish community, right?
00:45:29.780
And I think that's kind of the story of extremism is people encouraging resentment toward a particular
00:45:37.360
group to help explain why your life is the way that it is when you're unhappy.
00:45:51.620
And partly why, not the only reason, but partly why he failed is that black people started
00:46:00.140
There were more opportunities, not only to get an education, but also to get a job.
00:46:07.540
There was better assimilation, integration of different cultures.
00:46:10.740
We started to move in a direction where race no longer was a predictor of your social outcomes
00:46:15.880
in the same way that it was in the 80s and the early 90s when Farrakhan was at his peak.
00:46:22.060
And I think that's probably how we defeat the likes of Nick Fuentes also, is that we actually
00:46:28.340
have to stop giving him the same type of audience by making people feel like there is a way to
00:46:36.520
The problem of social mobility is, in my view, one of the biggest things that we really have
00:46:43.200
to wrap our heads around, which is that the integrity of your society is in many ways based
00:46:48.820
on the idea that there's enough of a meritocracy that people born into difficult circumstances
00:47:00.240
And when they lose faith in that, there will be, you know, weirdos on the internet who
00:47:04.360
want them to hate a certain religious group or racial group as a way to feel like they're
00:47:13.800
And I think that there's a lot of, like, history we can point to of that going badly, obviously.
00:47:19.480
But there's also history we can point to of that being defeated.
00:47:22.160
And I think that's what we should be trying to do.
00:47:31.960
One of the drivers of political change is often when a feeling of social mobility, you
00:47:36.720
know, when, you know, the American dream, as it were, feels out of reach for people,
00:47:42.580
That often results in fairly significant political change.
00:47:46.540
and often comes when people believe that social mobility is potentially downwards.
00:47:53.600
That people could fall out of the middle classes into the lower classes.
00:47:58.440
Or even from upper classes into middle classes.
00:48:00.920
And I think that is something that is defining our era right now.
00:48:05.940
Is that for the first time we have a generation that is likely to have in the aggregate a lower
00:48:12.980
standard of living and lower overall happiness in the outcomes of their life by the key metrics
00:48:20.680
of having a good family, you know, family life, social clubs.
00:48:31.880
You know, maybe some people with grayish hair and here still play bridge with their friends.
00:48:39.060
But we don't have social clubs in any meaningful sense anymore.
00:48:42.860
We don't have social networks, at least in person.
00:48:51.040
But our overall standard of living, major measurements of happiness in life, for the first time, possibly
00:48:59.740
since the industrial revolution, are likely to be lower than that of our parents.
00:49:06.700
And so I think there's a real fear of downward social mobility.
00:49:11.280
And I think that creates potentially revolutionary circumstances, not just in Canada again, but
00:49:21.280
And, you know, so you said, you know, the way, you know, organizations like the guy you're
00:49:26.440
mentioning with the Black Power movement was marginalized in the late 80s, early 90s, was
00:49:32.460
by creating a sense of upward social mobility among black Americans.
00:49:42.560
What if we can't reestablish the sense of upward social mobility among young men again?
00:49:50.560
If they see in their real life circumstances that the social mobility in our society is downward?
00:50:02.160
And this is one of the reasons why I am grateful that the conversation about immigration policy
00:50:08.760
has become more mainstream now than it was even six or 12 months ago.
00:50:15.920
And I do hope that it continues to move in a constructive direction because this is precisely
00:50:22.260
where I think these questions of what the future looks like, we are affecting this question
00:50:30.640
If you are in an environment where opportunity is more scarce and yet you're bringing in more
00:50:34.520
people and you're growing your population, it is a recipe for downward social mobility.
00:50:43.520
And I will be honest with you, I am very frustrated that it has taken this long for, you know, mainstream
00:50:51.440
political discourse to acknowledge that we are hurting our country with such a high volume
00:51:00.140
It is, it should have been a logical, easy thing to talk about.
00:51:05.160
And yet in part because of the sort of desire to make immigration a question of race, people
00:51:11.000
sort of, they were so afraid to engage that it got so bad to where it is now before we
00:51:17.420
started to have like a serious debate about the topic.
00:51:23.700
Like we have to think about opportunity as a scarce resource because it is one.
00:51:30.380
And that every decision we make about how many people come into the country, how those opportunities
00:51:34.760
are distributed, what social programs exist to incentivize opportunities being distributed
00:51:42.400
Like all of these things are how you shape and manufacture the, you know, the quality
00:51:50.960
And we have been, frankly, like collectively in this country asleep at the wheel for a long
00:51:58.220
So the questions about downward social mobility are real.
00:52:03.520
It's a question of whether we have the fortitude to do it.
00:52:07.980
But I think that, you know, one very natural place to start on that would be massive reduction
00:52:25.180
I think to a lot of people who are not hardcore political watchers, you were introduced to
00:52:39.280
I had some of my reporters in the back there, I got one from Ontario, Jeremy Borg.
00:52:44.900
He said, you got to ask Jamal about his election night teardown Doug Ford.
00:52:51.500
So I want to ask you about your good friend Dougie.
00:52:58.440
In Ontario, conservative audience might be a bit more split on the matter.
00:53:12.580
The idea of conservatism has got a bit more of a home field advantage here in Sel in Alberta
00:53:21.180
You know, I'm pretty familiar with kind of the weird factionalism of Ontario conservatism.
00:53:32.080
But in Ontario, it's mirroring in many ways kind of the split that eventually emerged between the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party and the Conservative Party of Canada, where the Conservative Party of Canada was actually more conservative than the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party.
00:53:50.680
My sincere apologies to the good ones who were in the PC party fighting the good fight at that time.
00:53:55.280
But, you know, you had Thomas Lukasik and Alison Redford fighting against Stephen Harper, Kenny and these guys.
00:54:03.280
How serious does that split between, say, the Ford PCs and the poly of federal Conservatives?
00:54:15.880
Does it pose any major threat to the viability of the Conservative Party, particularly in Ontario, which one has to win if it's to have any chance of forming a majority government?
00:54:27.880
Yeah, so first off, I am a proud Ontario boy, so I feel the need to defend my province a little bit here and point out that Pierre Pauly have got one million more votes in Ontario than Doug Ford did.
00:54:45.880
Yeah, so it wasn't enough for us to win as many seats as we wanted, of course.
00:54:55.080
But people did show up for Pierre in Ontario in a way that I think we can be proud of.
00:55:01.080
And, yeah, it's interesting you point this out.
00:55:05.080
So I don't know a ton about the divide you're talking about between the Alberta PCs and the Federal Party at that time.
00:55:11.080
But I would say this is less of an ideological problem and more of a what is the point of politics problem.
00:55:23.080
I don't think Doug Ford or the people in his administration believe they have an ideology.
00:55:32.080
I don't believe they have come to a rational conclusion that there's a better way to be a Conservative than what I or you would say.
00:55:42.080
In fact, I'm not even sure they would be capable of having a conversation about Conservative ideas or principles.
00:55:51.080
What I think is more of the issue is there are people who think the goal of politics is to have power and maintain power for as long as possible at whatever cost is required to pay.
00:56:06.080
And there are people who want to do politics because they believe in certain values or ideas or changes that they would like to create.
00:56:15.080
And to me, that is the difference in Ontario between a lot of the people who are, you know, who are our candidates and myself.
00:56:28.080
So I'll say that's the difference between me and the difference between Doug Ford.
00:56:34.080
It's weird when you talk to someone as you might if you spend time with people in the current incarnation of Ford Nation.
00:56:45.080
And you and they think that because someone put a good poll out for them that you're supposed to be happy.
00:56:53.080
Like, oh, you got a good poll. I guess that's good.
00:56:59.080
And not to diminish the fact that that's a reality of our business, like we need to get public support.
00:57:05.080
But if you're popular, but you're not doing good things, why am I supposed to be happy about that?
00:57:12.080
And to be perfectly honest, I also question, you know, whether the negative effect of that is producing more cynicism among our people.
00:57:26.080
Right. If people think politicians don't believe in anything and they're not going to do anything and regardless of what color your jersey is, you're going to have the same approach to big, important issues.
00:57:36.080
Then you're making a lot of people feel like politics isn't even worth getting involved in in the first place.
00:57:41.080
You're making a lot of people feel like making the time to vote is not worth it in the first place.
00:57:46.080
And that is my biggest concern among anything as it relates to Doug Ford is that that is what he's doing to our people in Ontario and ventures to do to our people across the nation.
00:57:58.080
And I think if he had his way. So that that is what bothers me.
00:58:02.080
And why I was so amped up on election night is because for weeks and weeks I had been seeing volunteers putting their effort in to trying to help with the
00:58:16.060
to win this federal election, kids who've never voted before, you know, single moms making time after her shift to come and knock on doors, people who are giving everything they had.
00:58:27.060
And when they would open up their phones and see stories of the so-called conservative premier of Ontario trashing what we were doing, they felt discouraged.
00:58:39.060
And they deserve someone to speak up for them and tell this guy, I don't care about how, you know, about your, your theatrics and your stunts.
00:58:50.060
And I'm going to point it out because I don't like what you're doing to the people who are trying to fight for a better country.
00:58:57.060
All right. Well, we're only one minute over time. So I think that's a good time for a mic drop.