Western Standard - Nihilism, reform, or revolution？ Young men in 2025

00:00:00.000 So, in a couple of minutes, actually, I'll just get right into it, because why waste any time?

00:00:06.180 So, as Margaret Thatcher would say, it is a sin to waste time.

00:00:11.080 So, right now, I'm really pleased to introduce a dear friend of the movement, one of its, I think, brightest lights.

00:00:21.640 He was a lawyer, a journalist.

00:00:25.520 He did a lot of work on radio, I know, in Ontario.

00:00:28.600 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.

00:00:46.840 And then, of course, was recently re-elected for Bowmanville, Oshawa North.

00:00:50.500 So, I'm really, really pleased to welcome my friend and a great champion of the movement, Mr. Jamil Giovanni.

00:00:58.600 All righty.

00:01:06.340 Good morning, everybody.

00:01:07.260 Thank you, Adam, for the kind introduction.

00:01:09.360 And thank you to the Canada's Strong and Free Network for inviting me here today.

00:01:12.900 I bring greetings from the wonderful people of Bowmanville, Oshawa North.

00:01:16.080 And, yeah, I'm very excited to talk about the future of our country today.

00:01:21.500 We'll be joined on stage by Derek shortly.

00:01:25.400 But I do want to share some thoughts on the future of conservative politics in our country.

00:01:30.800 This is a topic I've spent a lot of time thinking about long before I became an MP.

00:01:35.120 I actually, seven years ago, wrote a book about the challenges facing young men.

00:01:41.080 And seven years later, now as a member of parliament, I am compelled to point out that a lot of the

00:01:48.000 problems that I wrote about seven years ago have actually gotten worse and that young men in our

00:01:53.600 country are actually in a much tougher position than they were when I first started looking into

00:01:59.180 this topic.

00:02:00.260 Things are getting more troublesome.

00:02:02.500 And I think this is an important place to discuss this issue because I do believe that there are

00:02:08.820 some very serious ideological flaws in the Liberal Party of Canada, in liberal institutions, and in

00:02:17.020 yes, that is true.

00:02:21.160 And I do not believe liberal politicians are going to rise to the occasion and fight for our young men.

00:02:27.760 And I do believe that it is a responsibility of conservatives to take on that mantle.

00:02:32.460 So I want to begin by first outlining the problem because it is very rare to see in mainstream political

00:02:40.420 discourse people talk about this.

00:02:43.260 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

00:02:51.040 clear on, from a statistical standpoint, what young men are experiencing in this country today.

00:02:56.800 So I'm going to go through some data from StatsCan, very exciting stuff.

00:03:01.140 I'm sure you're excited to hear the numbers, but I do think it's important.

00:03:05.080 In 2024, 71% of apparent opioid toxicity deaths were men, 71%.

00:03:13.420 Among older teens who committed suicide, 70% were boys, and that's according to the SFU Children's Policy

00:03:22.280 Center.

00:03:23.280 In 2023, among the people who were living in homeless shelters, 67% were men.

00:03:31.760 Since 2016, the homicide rate where men and boys are victims has gone up 20%.

00:03:38.480 The most recent unemployment statistics from May of this year showed that the unemployment rate

00:03:46.820 among young men was 22%, which is the highest in well over 10 years.

00:03:52.600 And nationally, prior to COVID, about 14% of boys were dropping out of high school and not

00:04:00.020 graduating.

00:04:00.640 That number, I am certain, has gotten worse, but StatsCan has not published that data since

00:04:06.560 COVID occurred.

00:04:08.300 Now, I think it would be important to ask, you know, what is the sort of institutional apparatus

00:04:13.040 that we have in government to even start to identify a strategy to respond to numbers like

00:04:19.780 that?

00:04:20.040 And I mean, the reality is that there is a Minister of Women and Gender Equality in Ottawa.

00:04:26.540 There is an entire department with that name.

00:04:30.220 There is no such minister responsible for talking about these particular issues as it pertains

00:04:34.960 to young men.

00:04:36.400 And I think that's where the conservative movement has an important place.

00:04:41.780 And I'd like to clarify, because as a person who sort of had these conversations in the public

00:04:45.760 square before, I know that people can sometimes get quite uncomfortable when you start to talk

00:04:50.840 about young men as a distinct group with distinct needs and challenges.

00:04:55.620 I encountered this same discomfort when I first wrote my book seven years ago.

00:05:01.580 But I have no intention of downplaying any problems, real issues that young women face.

00:05:07.960 I have no intention of downplaying any of the challenges that all people face.

00:05:12.100 My objective really is to simply highlight that our young men are being overlooked, marginalized.

00:05:17.840 Many of them feel forgotten.

00:05:19.820 And there is an institutional failure to respond to that feeling.

00:05:23.660 Young men are screaming silently in our country right now because very few institutions are willing 1.00

00:05:28.740 to hear them.

00:05:30.800 So with all of these statistics available, you know, I think it's important to ask, well,

00:05:36.820 why doesn't this register politically?

00:05:39.060 Why doesn't this register in policymaking circles?

00:05:41.380 Why isn't there a task force or initiative or all the other things that governments like

00:05:46.080 to do to demonstrate to the public that they're taking a problem seriously?

00:05:51.140 And this is where I think it's important to really highlight where liberal politics is

00:05:56.520 failing and liberal ideology is failing.

00:05:59.340 The first part that I'd like to point out off the top is that liberal ideology and liberal

00:06:06.360 politics is committed to a particular way of looking at gender that I think is makes it 1.00

00:06:12.560 difficult to even raise the issue.

00:06:15.060 When you separate gender from sex and you make the conversation about gender something

00:06:21.200 that is many Canadians would feel they need a PhD to even engage when you make it something

00:06:26.740 so complicated that it cannot be straightforward discussion about analysis and solutions, you

00:06:32.940 wind up creating a scenario where a lot of people in power would rather spend their time

00:06:37.740 trying to figure out who a young man is than how to help him.

00:06:40.380 And that's sad and frustrating.

00:06:44.980 The second problem we have is that liberal governance, and when I say liberal, I don't

00:06:50.360 even just mean in a partisan sense, I mean in an ideological sense, because this is something

00:06:54.340 true at all levels of government in many places across the country, has absorbed a certain

00:06:58.660 hierarchy of victimhood where the average working class and middle class man is at the bottom.

00:07:03.760 Now that hierarchy of victimhood is sometimes called DEI, and it goes by a variety of names

00:07:10.120 that sound very nice and compassionate.

00:07:12.980 But the reality is that DEI has been very successful at advancing the careers of a very small number

00:07:19.320 of people to get on corporate boards of directors or to join university faculties, and it has been

00:07:25.660 objectively a failure in addressing many of the very serious social ills in our country.

00:07:30.940 There are many institutions in Canada right now where if I gave them those statistics that

00:07:42.260 I just read to you, they would first want to know what color those young men are before

00:07:47.540 they would start to care.

00:07:49.280 And I think that is abhorrent.

00:07:53.280 And a third serious problem with liberal governance is related to immigration. 0.95

00:08:00.720 So we have embraced in this country, through 10 years of liberals running the federal government,

00:08:06.580 an economic and immigration philosophy that devalues young men in the labor force.

00:08:13.280 This is going to sound harsh, but I think it needs to be said.

00:08:17.980 At the cost of increasing youth unemployment to levels we have not seen in a very, very long

00:08:23.960 time, liberals have opened Canada's borders to enable an unprecedented level of immigration,

00:08:29.160 including a variety of temporary worker programs.

00:08:32.960 This approach to managing our economy means that businesses and governments can effectively

00:08:37.700 abandon responsibility for Canadian youth.

00:08:42.260 Because if our youth are ill-prepared for the jobs that are available or unwilling to work

00:08:47.380 those jobs after the wage is being offered, businesses and governments can simply fill those

00:08:52.160 roles by bringing people in from elsewhere instead of investing in or training or caring about

00:08:59.800 why those young people aren't filling those jobs in the first place.

00:09:04.600 They have decoupled the health of our economy from the health of our young people in doing so.

00:09:11.880 And practically speaking, that means young men are not treated as essential to the future

00:09:16.800 of the Canadian economy.

00:09:19.740 If Canada's labor supply is unlimited by opening borders up to the entire world.

00:09:26.220 Liberal economic philosophy has left young men on the outside of the labor force and the

00:09:32.400 metrics that have been typically used to measure our economy, like GDP for example, do not reflect

00:09:37.680 the quality of life of young Canadians.

00:09:41.120 This is really important to emphasize, I believe, because I think in a healthy society, it would

00:09:47.180 be one where you care about the future of where your country is going and that you're actively

00:09:53.120 measuring your success as a government or as stewards of an economy based on how young people

00:10:00.280 are being prepared for the future.

00:10:02.600 But basic things like home ownership statistics, for example, make it obvious that young people

00:10:07.340 are struggling to get ahead.

00:10:10.020 And there is very little sense of urgency around this.

00:10:12.980 It is not regarded as the crisis that it should be.

00:10:16.040 And it is my contention is that it is in part explained by the decoupling of our economy

00:10:21.940 from our young people.

00:10:23.980 So I will give you a practical example of what I mean.

00:10:27.660 Something that I believe in a healthy society would be a controversy, something that everyone

00:10:32.220 in this room would be aware of, something that we would be talking about, there would

00:10:35.220 be news reports on, it would be a big deal.

00:10:38.900 And yet it's not.

00:10:41.980 So in my home province of Ontario, I know the Premier of Ontario was here a couple months

00:10:46.840 ago for Stampede.

00:10:48.840 And I'm sure he didn't talk to you about any of this stuff or anything serious.

00:10:51.900 I think he came here to eat your pancakes probably.

00:10:55.580 But Doug Ford is funding a special program at George Brown College to train 50 students

00:11:06.160 to become building code officials.

00:11:09.840 Sounds like an okay idea.

00:11:11.920 The program is free, which is code for taxpayers are paying for it.

00:11:17.960 But it is, and I'm going to quote, only available to newcomers or immigrants with a background

00:11:24.420 or education in construction, engineering or other related fields.

00:11:29.080 Now when I say that this is the kind of thing that should be a controversy, what I mean is

00:11:32.720 that when you're in an environment where 22% of young Canadian men don't have jobs and

00:11:40.020 you are funding training programs that deliberately exclude them from getting an opportunity, it should 0.99

00:11:47.900 be outrageous.

00:11:50.420 It should be outrageous to do this generally, but certainly with those unemployment numbers

00:11:54.740 happening at the same time.

00:11:57.200 And at an institutional level, nobody really seems to care about this.

00:11:59.940 It's not offensive the way that I think it should be.

00:12:03.420 I'm offended by that.

00:12:04.740 Yeah, I am.

00:12:06.540 I'm offended by that.

00:12:09.420 For Doug Ford and politicians like him, like the carny liberals, for example, this is normal,

00:12:19.880 right?

00:12:20.880 It's a normal course of business.

00:12:24.980 The alarm that I'm trying to ring about young men is alarm they could have and should have 1.00

00:12:29.040 heard long ago, but they are just frankly not concerned.

00:12:33.280 They would rather, you know, pour a bottle of Crown Royal on the ground so the media will

00:12:37.360 call them a patriot.

00:12:40.160 But there is a substantive difference in what we think patriotism means, right?

00:12:44.840 Like I believe that patriotism is caring for the young people of this country and putting

00:12:48.880 their needs at the forefront.

00:12:51.800 They don't.

00:12:58.180 So with this context in mind, I think it's very important that we have a national conversation

00:13:02.720 about the struggles that young men are facing.

00:13:05.560 I think we need to hold politicians and governments accountable to doing something about these crises

00:13:10.620 that are affecting the next generation of Canadians.

00:13:13.800 And I think the first step is ensuring that we are having a serious and honest discussion

00:13:17.800 about what's happening to our brothers, our sons, our neighbors, and our friends.

00:13:24.860 There's a forward thinking dimension to this that I think is also worth pointing out, which

00:13:29.680 is that there is massive disruption on the forefront.

00:13:33.940 You know, AI technology is going to change a lot of industries, it's going to change a lot

00:13:38.440 of jobs.

00:13:41.240 And I think that we have to be cognizant of what that's going to do to people who are already

00:13:44.960 having a tough time in our economy.

00:13:48.400 There are indications that the youth unemployment number is in part a result of AI eliminating

00:13:54.720 a series of entry level positions across the economy that ordinarily would have been filled

00:14:00.760 by university graduates, particularly male university graduates.

00:14:06.720 And I think it's imperative to ask, what exactly are we doing with this technology and what function

00:14:12.720 are we expecting it to serve in our society?

00:14:16.980 If we are going to be comfortable with AI being used to eliminate jobs that would otherwise have

00:14:21.460 gone to young people, I think that has to feel like a choice we are making. 0.94

00:14:27.520 And if the people who are in power are going to make that choice, then they should be held

00:14:31.360 accountable for that choice.

00:14:33.820 The idea that technology is a passive thing that just happens to us and we react to it

00:14:39.780 and we have no role to play in deciding how it would be implemented or whose life it would

00:14:43.960 affect, I think that is a falsehood.

00:14:47.140 We are in charge.

00:14:48.480 We make policies, we make decisions.

00:14:51.120 And I think we need to ask ourselves if the purpose of AI would be to augment the jobs that

00:14:55.880 are already in the economy or not.

00:14:59.760 And if there is going to be disruption that leads to more unemployment, do we have a plan

00:15:04.220 for the young men who are now going to find themselves outside of the workforce?

00:15:08.920 Should these young men be studying something different in school?

00:15:11.520 And if so, what should they study?

00:15:12.980 And who is going to actually tell them that?

00:15:17.180 My friend Sam Duncan wrote an essay for the Hub recently about some of these questions and

00:15:21.900 he argues, in my view, rather persuasively, that AI has a tremendous potential to benefit

00:15:28.860 Canadian workers if we focus on it as a tool to boost productivity.

00:15:34.460 And in that case, that would also need to be a deliberate conscious decision that we make.

00:15:39.700 But my primary point here is to say that we have a decision to make with this disruption

00:15:47.180 of whether we are going to prioritize the interests of young men and young people at large, or if

00:15:52.260 we are going to continue down a path where young Canadians are pushed at the back of the line

00:15:57.140 and expected to not be listened to or their interests to be served.

00:16:03.120 And I think that conversation, we're probably late in starting it, but it's one that needs

00:16:07.320 to happen.

00:16:08.320 So I'll close today, because I do want to welcome Derek to the stage, but I will close

00:16:14.740 by just wanting to kind of leave on a point of optimism.

00:16:18.420 I believe optimism is a requirement.

00:16:22.700 One of my biggest concerns, and I wrote about this seven years ago, is that in response to

00:16:26.840 what I've described to you today, young men are going to take note of how slow our institutions

00:16:34.180 are to react, how little their experiences are being reflected in what they're seeing

00:16:38.900 around them, and they are going to opt to simply check out.

00:16:43.700 My worry is that many young men will feel hopeless to make the effort to get ahead, that they will

00:16:50.260 play video games instead of studying or working, they will watch porn instead of starting a family,

00:16:56.540 they will become increasingly isolated, and the world will never get to know how amazing

00:17:00.760 they could be.

00:17:04.700 So to anyone who might feel that way, any young man who might hear my words, I want to reiterate

00:17:11.200 that our country needs you.

00:17:14.460 The future of our country depends on you taking control of your future, living up to your potential.

00:17:21.040 We need you to get an education, we need you to start businesses, we need you to have families,

00:17:25.000 we need you to buy a home, you are the hustlers and the strivers, the dreamers and the builders

00:17:31.600 who have always shaped Canada and will continue to do so.

00:17:36.620 And I am a member of parliament precisely because I believe in you.

00:17:43.240 I believe in the young people of this country and I believe they are worth investing in, they

00:17:47.160 are worth prioritizing and they are worth empowering.

00:17:49.760 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

00:18:13.940 voice to these issues and to put young men in a stronger position to articulate what

00:18:20.160 they are experiencing and the changes that they believe are necessary for them to live

00:18:24.120 up to their potential.

00:18:25.740 I invite anyone who wants to be part of that conversation to work with us, to support us,

00:18:30.540 try to change the lack of responsiveness among our institutions today to these problems,

00:18:36.840 to help us with this undertaking and visit our new website, restorethenorth.ca.

00:18:44.440 Thank you very much.

00:18:49.440 I think it was a very prescient message you shared there that we are just not hearing

00:19:08.040 in a constructive way from most elected officials.

00:19:11.040 How old are you right now?

00:19:13.040 37.

00:19:14.040 37.

00:19:15.040 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?

00:19:29.640 I'm Derek Fildebrandt, I'm a publisher of the Western Standard.

00:19:35.640 Thank you.

00:19:36.640 I was elected as a pretty young guy when I got into politics, 29, I was by far the youngest

00:19:46.380 member of the Wild Rose Caucus.

00:19:47.820 I'm used to being the young guy in the room and I tried hard not to be the token young guy.

00:19:54.980 But I think there is a, this is one of, I think, going to develop to be one of the defining issues

00:20:03.860 of our time.

00:20:08.400 You touched on a lot of it, I want to maybe suss it out a bit more here.

00:20:13.260 We'll just start maybe on the electoral level when we get, maybe then we'll get a bit deeper.

00:20:19.540 In the most recent US presidential election, young men skewed strongly for Trump.

00:20:25.140 Now there's very often, normally been some gender divide at least.

00:20:31.740 You know, males skew right, females skew left, obviously with a lot of exceptions to that,

00:20:39.780 but in the aggregate.

00:20:41.640 So we saw it in the United States, particularly among young people.

00:20:44.860 You know, if you remember white dudes for Harris was amongst the, the Democrats at least started

00:20:52.100 to recognize they had a problem at least.

00:20:53.960 They just did it pretty terribly how they went about it.

00:20:57.520 We saw in the most recent federal election in Germany, the AFD Alternative for Deutschland,

00:21:03.100 kind of the insurgent right party.

00:21:06.140 Young men skewed hard to the AFD.

00:21:10.940 Young women skewed hard to Die Linke, which means in German, the left.

00:21:16.800 And it's that party, you know, like, I pretty casually call everybody a commie.

00:21:21.360 But these guys are the actual commies.

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?

00:21:38.700 There's a lot of issues facing young women.

00:21:41.500 Some of them are similar or even the same, but some are different.

00:21:46.080 And this is manifesting itself in a partisan and an electoral way.

00:21:50.740 What do you think is driving that divide?

00:21:52.740 Yeah.

00:21:53.740 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

00:22:06.180 have their interests in mind.

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 0.99

00:22:19.360 of women might feel like the, you know, right-wing political parties are not offering solutions 1.00

00:22:23.840 to things they care about.

00:22:25.040 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

00:22:34.360 in the solutions being offered.

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.

00:22:45.720 I think they're not sold on the solutions being provided.

00:22:50.180 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.

00:23:03.460 I think that's how you win elections.

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

00:23:17.640 even hostility.

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

00:23:29.780 how high on the pyramid of victimhood you are.

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.

00:23:44.340 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.

00:23:53.140 The ultimate goal is to be, to liberate oneself, to achieve a personal freedom, freedom for

00:23:58.880 your own society.

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,

00:24:14.620 it begins even in elementary school, I think.

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

00:24:27.200 the bad groups.

00:24:28.200 And if you are constantly told and reinforced that you are the oppressor, I mean, that can't

00:24:37.260 help but colour things.

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

00:25:17.160 itself over the next decade?

00:25:19.160 Yeah.

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

00:25:32.820 a real problem, right?

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

00:26:04.220 human being.

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,

00:26:47.340 because we are offering something different.

00:26:50.020 The status quo is not working.

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,

00:27:21.340 everybody sounds the exact same.

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

00:27:29.240 men who are frustrated with the status quo.

00:27:31.840 And I think that's a strength that we have.

00:27:33.520 But we also then have a responsibility to follow through on that, right?

00:27:37.080 It cannot just be a rhetorical difference.

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 0.85

00:28:36.780 of some kind.

00:28:37.780 And now, the backlash to that, you know, is driving the political right across the Western

00:28:47.280 civilization right now.

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

00:29:04.840 to settle the score, almost.

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

00:29:26.960 instead of have a home.

00:29:29.880 You know, they'll collect welfare rather than work. 0.99

00:29:32.060 They could take the direction of nihilism and accepting a loss of sense of personal individual

00:29:38.180 agency.

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

00:30:05.580 some others I'm not including.

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?

00:30:34.180 Yeah, it's a great question.

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,

00:30:54.940 you will get ahead.

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

00:31:36.600 will get ahead.

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

00:31:51.300 up and do require some fixing.

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

00:32:31.000 being held back.

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

00:33:48.680 their circumstances.

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

00:34:07.940 radicalizing.

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.

00:34:26.460 We have had a decade of totally open borders.

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.

00:34:43.780 You could at least make a case for it.

00:34:47.440 You know, all right.

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. 0.88

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.

00:35:36.980 Sorry, Italians. 1.00

00:35:39.840 But actually, good on you.

00:35:41.840 You're richer than Canada.

00:35:42.840 I'm not sure if that's because Italy did anything right, or just because Canada's done

00:35:45.140 everything wrong at the same time.

00:35:46.680 Where's Tristan Hopper?

00:35:47.680 I think he's got something about that.

00:35:51.840 You know, we've seen, in a remarkably short period of time, just what our communities look

00:35:57.420 like change before our eyes.

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

00:36:20.440 radically, right in front of us.

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.

00:36:32.460 It can't be fixed anymore.

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.

00:36:43.060 That we're in some kind of sunset.

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

00:36:53.860 kind of disappear.

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.

00:37:06.060 Yeah, so I'm not an optimist.

00:37:10.880 So I don't know, you're in elected politics, you have to believe things can maybe be fixed,

00:37:18.480 but I don't know.

00:37:21.900 Is there much to that?

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

00:37:47.880 from the Harvard faculty.

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.

00:38:19.580 They're not on social media.

00:38:21.900 Journalists don't interview them.

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

00:38:47.280 their shoulders.

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.

00:39:24.000 It's not our people. 0.93

00:39:25.140 It's not necessarily even our culture.

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

00:39:45.120 world though.

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. 0.96

00:39:53.800 It's pretty broad.

00:39:55.200 Now a lot of these institutions have the same kind of ideological capture in them.

00:40:00.700 They have a lot of the same problems.

00:40:02.580 So perhaps so.

00:40:04.680 But it is not a uniquely Canadian problem.

00:40:07.260 We've even got it here in Alberta to a large extent, just maybe less so than other parts

00:40:10.920 of Canada.

00:40:11.920 But I guess I come back to it again.

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

00:40:33.440 democracy.

00:40:36.400 Best case scenario, you get to start the work in four years from now.

00:40:42.400 Best case scenario.

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

00:40:51.640 this around?

00:40:53.640 I know I'm Mr. Sunshine this morning.

00:40:56.380 Yeah.

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.

00:41:33.380 And that it's always worth trying.

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

00:41:44.180 need you to try.

00:41:45.260 And I hope you do.

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.

00:41:55.580 Or maybe that's a fair headline.

00:42:00.460 Okay.

00:42:01.460 Well, I want to continue to move in the direction of where this is going socially and politically

00:42:11.020 with young men.

00:42:13.100 Maybe focusing on the online right.

00:42:17.860 You know, you referenced William F. Buckley, you know, one of the pillars of the modern

00:42:23.080 conservative movement.

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.

00:43:11.040 These ideas are becoming more mainstream.

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

00:43:28.800 about this guy a year ago.

00:43:30.260 I never even heard of him. 0.99

00:43:32.140 Now you scroll for five minutes, it's going to come up and it's some crazy shit. 0.96

00:43:38.820 But I think a lot of people, they might not even agree with anything he's saying. 0.97

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

00:44:04.540 now taboos.

00:44:05.540 We call you a phobe of this or an ist or ism of that. 1.00

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

00:44:27.400 young men?

00:44:28.400 Yeah.

00:44:29.400 Yeah.

00:44:30.400 Okay.

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 0.77

00:45:01.580 white people for their misfortunes.

00:45:06.340 What we're seeing now is that same strategy be employed to appeal to disenfranchised young 0.96

00:45:13.360 white men.

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?

00:45:27.880 But the playbook is the same.

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.

00:45:43.840 Louis Farrakhan failed.

00:45:46.160 You don't really hear about him anymore.

00:45:47.900 His organization doesn't exist the same way.

00:45:51.620 And partly why, not the only reason, but partly why he failed is that black people started 1.00

00:45:58.000 doing better in society.

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

00:46:35.060 get ahead.

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

00:46:55.220 can escape those circumstances.

00:46:58.560 And people are just losing faith in that.

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

00:47:09.560 doing something.

00:47:11.440 But it is toxic and it gets you nowhere.

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,

00:47:41.260 they can't move up.

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.

00:48:27.940 We have no social clubs anymore.

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.

00:48:47.960 We've lost sense of meaning between people.

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

00:49:17.380 across the broader West.

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.

00:49:38.560 I guess the scary question is the flip side.

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?

00:49:58.660 Yeah.

00:49:59.660 I think that you nailed it.

00:50:00.660 That is a very important question.

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

00:50:29.060 on a regular basis.

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.

00:50:40.160 It's just, I mean, it's inevitable.

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

00:50:57.900 of people coming in.

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.

00:51:20.920 And but this is why it's important.

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

00:51:40.740 in one direction or another.

00:51:42.400 Like all of these things are how you shape and manufacture the, you know, the quality

00:51:49.100 of life for people.

00:51:50.960 And we have been, frankly, like collectively in this country asleep at the wheel for a long

00:51:56.460 time.

00:51:58.220 So the questions about downward social mobility are real.

00:52:01.780 I do think they can be fixed.

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

00:52:13.600 in new people entering the country.

00:52:17.780 All right.

00:52:22.780 Let's switch gears a bit.

00:52:25.180 I think to a lot of people who are not hardcore political watchers, you were introduced to

00:52:32.700 the country on election night.

00:52:35.720 You know where I'm going.

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.

00:53:04.000 Maybe there's some Doug fans in here.

00:53:06.140 No, I said no.

00:53:09.180 I think it's going to be less so.

00:53:12.580 The idea of conservatism has got a bit more of a home field advantage here in Sel in Alberta

00:53:18.180 than Doug Ford would be.

00:53:21.180 You know, I'm pretty familiar with kind of the weird factionalism of Ontario conservatism.

00:53:28.180 We have our own factionalism here in Alberta.

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.

00:55:20.080 OK, so let me explain what I mean.

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.

00:56:27.080 I don't want to speak for other people.

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.

00:58:48.060 I don't respect you.

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.

00:58:56.060 That was the point.

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.

00:59:07.060 All right.

00:59:08.060 Thank you, Jamil.

00:59:09.060 Thank you.

Western Standard - September 07, 2025

Nihilism, reform, or revolution？ Young men in 2025

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