Western Standard - Tristin Hopper urges conservatives to fight back and ‘Don’t Be Canada’

00:00:00.000 Please join me in welcoming my good friend, Tristan Hopper, to the stage to talk about his book, Don't Be Canada.

00:00:06.820 And if you don't have a copy, please go out and buy one.

00:00:17.720 Thanks for inviting me to Canada's Strong and Free Network.

00:00:21.320 Everyone is better looking than I expected.

00:00:25.480 Except for the media table, particularly the Western Standard. 0.95

00:00:29.100 This is the part of the speech where it says, suck up to Alberta. 1.00

00:00:35.260 Daniel Smith kept talking about the hardworking pioneers and such like. 0.58

00:00:40.760 Half my family is Albertan and the pioneers on that side, she's definitely not talking about them.

00:00:46.340 I'm descended from people who didn't learn the language, immigrated, immediately went on welfare, 0.98

00:00:52.520 you know, got into a bunch of vexatious lawsuits.

00:00:55.000 So we're all fine now.

00:00:56.500 But anyway, the B.C. side was quite hardworking.

00:01:00.180 But I want to start with a quick review of the other speakers at this year's Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference.

00:01:07.280 Danielle Smith was once cast so deep into the political wilderness that when I visited Calgary on assignment 10 years ago,

00:01:13.900 some of the people in this room were heard to joke,

00:01:16.040 Danielle who, whenever her name was mentioned, well, now she's premier and you're not. 1.00

00:01:21.480 Jamil Javani started at the absolute rock bottom of the Canadian social hierarchy.

00:01:28.600 He was a talk radio host.

00:01:30.820 And yet, somehow he managed to shake off the stench of this regrettable and ignominious career path

00:01:36.160 and become the thought leader we know today.

00:01:39.380 Preston Manning did something I still think is impossible.

00:01:42.620 He took Canada's various warring factions of pissed off right wingers

00:01:46.300 and synthesized them into a moderately coherent political entity.

00:01:51.080 The British writer John Ronson wrote of Conrad Black that should he die,

00:01:55.060 his tombstone would read just his name and the dates of his existence.

00:01:59.680 Otto von Bismarck's tomb carried just the word Bismarck.

00:02:03.500 Napoleon just had the letter N.

00:02:05.160 But Lord Black would at least favor us with a forename on his grave marker,

00:02:09.860 even if it wasn't entirely necessary.

00:02:12.840 And then there's me.

00:02:14.660 I'm a 38-year-old divorced newspaper reporter who drives a 2006 Volkswagen Jetta with headliner issues,

00:02:22.280 and I literally work out of that Jetta because I don't want to pay the rent for a co-working space.

00:02:27.480 I charge my laptop by plugging it into a repurposed car battery that I keep on the passenger seat.

00:02:33.160 But you invited me because I wrote a book that very specifically details all the ways

00:02:40.920 in which Canada is not strong and free, at least right now.

00:02:45.860 The rough synopsis of the book, Don't Be Canada, available at all good booksellers

00:02:50.600 through Southern Linn House Publishing on Amazon.com and our audiobook drops next week,

00:02:55.520 is that in a contemporary political era defined by bad ideas,

00:03:00.060 Canada fell for these bad ideas harder than anyone else.

00:03:03.880 Gender ideology, harm reduction, assisted suicide, permanent real estate bubbles,

00:03:09.600 unsustainable immigration, justice systems that utterly refuse to appropriately punish violent crime. 0.98

00:03:16.740 Everywhere, at least in the West, fell for these a little bit,

00:03:20.420 but we Canadians took them, crushed them into a powder,

00:03:23.200 and snorted them off the diaper change table in a gas station change room.

00:03:27.220 We have an assisted suicide regime that is now the world's model of what not to do, 1.00

00:03:39.620 and that sentiment is shared on both the left and the right.

00:03:42.840 Here's a headline from the right-leaning Wall Street Journal. 0.98

00:03:45.880 Welcome to Canada, the doctor will kill you now. 0.51

00:03:49.600 And here's a headline from the very left-wing Jacobin. 0.99

00:03:52.260 The Canadian state is euthanizing its poor and disabled.

00:03:56.280 The principle of harm reduction as a response to drug addiction was invented in Europe,

00:04:01.060 specifically in Liverpool.

00:04:02.480 But we took it to such extremes that we're now doing things that would draw stairs

00:04:07.120 even in the most liberal hippie corners of Denmark or the Netherlands.

00:04:11.100 Nobody else handed free daily rations of recreational opioids to drug addicts

00:04:17.260 and then acted surprised when it resulted in a tidal wave of those same opioids hitting the black market.

00:04:23.820 Nobody else had public health officials calling for free government distribution of smokable fentanyl.

00:04:30.560 Nobody else had a court decision finding a constitutional right to shoot heroin on a playground

00:04:36.060 since asking a drug user to move to a different section of the park could cause them irreparable harm,

00:04:42.200 thus violating their Section 7 rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

00:04:48.620 The idea for Don't Be Canada came about because in my role at the National Post,

00:04:53.080 I make a point of reading what the world's media is writing about Canada.

00:04:56.720 When I started at the Post in 2011, international outlets either wrote nothing about us

00:05:02.040 or it would be some niche story about how if you wanted to run an effective points-based immigration system

00:05:08.520 or climb out of a sovereign debt crisis or organize efficient general elections

00:05:13.060 or if you wanted to shoot terrorists from really far away with a sniper rifle,

00:05:17.820 then Canada was your model of how to do it.

00:05:21.940 The international headlines we're making these days are not nearly as quaint.

00:05:25.980 We're now the world's nightmare scenario for real estate unaffordability.

00:05:29.480 We're the world leader in overdose deaths.

00:05:32.740 With Vancouver emerging as the world's centre for illicit fentanyl consumption,

00:05:36.920 the BBC called Canada the world capital for auto theft.

00:05:40.600 We're history's only country that declared itself guilty of an ongoing genocide.

00:05:45.680 And we're definitely the only country whose Prime Minister did so at a women's conference

00:05:50.520 and was met with applause and cheers.

00:05:53.140 We have the only military on Earth that mandates tampons in every men's washroom 0.81

00:05:57.640 and disciplines any service member who jokes about it.

00:06:01.900 A year ago, U.S. talk show host Bill Maher, a lifelong progressive,

00:06:05.960 recorded an entire segment about how the United States should actively do the opposite

00:06:10.400 of whatever Canada was up to.

00:06:12.740 There's only one problem with thinking everything's better in Canada.

00:06:16.280 It's not.

00:06:17.540 Not anymore, anyway, he said.

00:06:19.860 Now, why did this happen to us?

00:06:21.360 How did we go from one of the most boring, uneventful, peaceful, well-managed, 0.99

00:06:27.440 and socially cohesive countries on Earth into a petri dish of dumb ideas? 0.90

00:06:33.560 My grand unified theory is that an entire country decided to run absolutely everything 0.98

00:06:38.700 on the honour system and was surprised when this immediately sent everything to hell all 0.52

00:06:43.300 at once.

00:06:43.800 We'll run a criminal justice system that gives bail to everyone, and if you violate your

00:06:49.460 bail conditions, we'll just give you bail again.

00:06:52.100 We'll run an immigration system with little to no screening and with massive loopholes 0.95

00:06:56.280 we refuse to acknowledge or address.

00:06:58.600 We'll establish an entire legal framework based around the notion that your gender is 0.93

00:07:02.940 whatever you say it is and not give any thought whatsoever to how such a system could

00:07:07.800 possibly be abused.

00:07:08.880 We'll greenlight an assisted suicide regime with the fewest guardrails on Earth and even 0.99

00:07:15.120 boast about how we don't need any.

00:07:17.420 In Carter v. Canada, the Supreme Court decision that set the guidelines for legal medical assistance

00:07:22.360 in dying, justices casually dismissed the notion that such a system would ever yield

00:07:27.060 scandals or abuse.

00:07:28.640 This is a quote.

00:07:29.700 We should not lightly assume that the regulatory regime will function defectively.

00:07:33.720 We got the idea that this was the enlightened way to run a country.

00:07:39.600 We also lost any imagination for dysfunction.

00:07:42.760 We had it so good for so long that we forgot this wasn't the natural state of things.

00:07:48.660 This is my usual explanation for how housing became a disaster.

00:07:52.820 For 20 years, whenever a government at any level faced a decision with impacts on real

00:07:57.700 estate, they always took the route which made it a little harder to build and afford a home.

00:08:02.900 Maybe you want to put in a new building code mandating that bathrooms all need to have 1.00

00:08:07.700 reinforced walls just in case a handicapped resident wants to install a grab bar in future.

00:08:13.040 That's fine, but that's going to add a few hundred dollars to each unit and price out

00:08:17.060 just a few more homebuyers at the margin. 0.88

00:08:19.700 Maybe you want a greenbelt of undeveloped land surrounding the greater Toronto area.

00:08:23.980 Sure, but those tens of thousands of families who otherwise would have lived in a greenbelt

00:08:28.220 suburb are going to have to go somewhere else.

00:08:30.260 You do this kinds of stuff thousands of times and you ever so slowly take a country that

00:08:36.920 as recently as the 1980s had the world's best house population and you turn it into the

00:08:42.580 one place on earth where home prices are most divorced from income.

00:08:47.040 Now, is Canada done?

00:08:50.260 Is Canada finished?

00:08:52.500 Is Canada cooked?

00:08:53.740 I hear these sentiments often, often from Americans or Alberta separatists, looking at you, Alberta

00:09:00.620 separatists, or from older Canadians who can indulge in such catastrophizing because they 0.99

00:09:08.080 don't have to live here much longer, or at least they don't intend to.

00:09:10.560 But I and many other Canadians have nowhere else to go.

00:09:16.320 I checked, I'm not allowed to make Aaliyah to the part of Northern England where the hoppers 1.00

00:09:21.380 come from.

00:09:22.660 I've ideally got five more decades to be a Canadian.

00:09:25.460 I've got three children who have about nine more decades of being a Canadian.

00:09:28.780 I've got two parents I'm going to have to bury here.

00:09:30.980 This giant ship we call Canada holds everyone I love, everything I've built, and everything

00:09:36.760 I treasure, and it's why I take great offense when I see people drilling holes in its hull.

00:09:43.080 In just the past few years, I have seen levels of dysfunction that I thought existed only in

00:09:47.540 the developing world.

00:09:48.860 I have seen government overreach that seems pulled from the Soviet bloc.

00:09:53.100 I have seen hatreds unlike anything in our history.

00:09:56.160 I'm from Victoria, and I can say that if you go all the way back to its days as an HBC 1.00

00:10:02.340 fort, you're not going to find any outpouring of public hate quite as unhinged as the weekly

00:10:08.180 peons to Hamas that now monopolize the tourist district each Saturday with the help of a free 0.99

00:10:14.440 Victoria police escort.

00:10:15.560 And yet, after months of meticulously documenting all of Canada's problems, which are contained

00:10:28.500 in the eight-volume, Don't Be Canada, I can confidently say I would rather fix our problems

00:10:34.700 than the problems of any other country on Earth.

00:10:37.140 Because all of our major problems are fixable.

00:10:39.940 There are eight chapters in Don't Be Canada, and every single one details a massive, nation-ruining

00:10:45.840 problem that is fully within our power to stop, sometimes to a cartoonish degree.

00:10:51.540 We're not Taiwan or Ukraine, in which our worst problem is a heavily armed autocracy next 0.98

00:10:56.960 door who wants to kill us.

00:10:58.380 We're not Mexico or Lebanon, in which you have criminal and terrorist organizations deeply

00:11:03.080 embedded in the fabric of government.

00:11:04.780 Canada's problems are, we've been brought to our knees by a crime problem because we refuse

00:11:10.660 to jail the few hundred or so guys committing all the crimes.

00:11:14.800 We have the world's most unaffordable housing despite having more of the raw materials to

00:11:19.100 build homes than anywhere else on Earth.

00:11:21.660 It makes sense that Hong Kong has a housing shortage, but Canada, all we are is land and

00:11:28.220 trees and gypsum and copper and such.

00:11:38.100 We've got unsustainable immigration, despite the fact that we have tighter control of our 1.00

00:11:42.640 immigration than almost any other country on Earth.

00:11:44.960 There are no rubber boats of asylum seekers hitting our shores, no convoys streaming across

00:11:50.280 the border.

00:11:50.960 We did this entirely to ourselves.

00:11:53.060 And in acquainting myself with all the ways in which Canada is broken, it's highlighted

00:11:58.380 the enormity of what we stand to lose.

00:12:01.640 You've all seen things these days that you thought would never happen in Canada.

00:12:06.860 Scores of churches destroyed by arson.

00:12:09.620 Jewish sites regularly targeted by gunfire and firebombs.

00:12:14.020 Patients regularly dropping dead in hospital waiting rooms.

00:12:17.560 A miniature downtown east side in every single city large enough to support a junior hockey

00:12:23.180 team.

00:12:24.040 A crime horrifying enough that it once shocked the country for months now happens every few

00:12:29.340 days.

00:12:30.420 We now have governments and institutions ascribing different treatment for different people based

00:12:35.600 solely on their race.

00:12:37.360 Many of the people in this room have faced a government forum in just the last few years

00:12:41.140 that asked you what color you are.

00:12:42.960 However, these flamboyant betrayals of the Canadian promise have illustrated what the

00:12:48.020 Canadian promise was.

00:12:49.940 I used to roll my eyes at the idea that peace, order, and good government could ever be an

00:12:54.820 inspirational rallying cry for the Canadian project. 0.98

00:12:58.380 But with all three now in peril, I realize now that I was just an ungrateful bastard the 0.98

00:13:03.880 whole time. 0.95

00:13:07.740 So what's to be done?

00:13:08.860 After reading my book, people have often approached me expressing a feeling of helplessness.

00:13:14.740 They didn't know how deep the rot was and how many of the disturbing things they were

00:13:19.000 seeing on the news were expected symptoms of a broken system rather than wacky anomalies.

00:13:25.460 They picked up Don't Be Canada thinking that a shop teacher showing up to work in Oakville,

00:13:30.260 Ontario with cartoonishly large prosthetic breasts was the result of some bizarre regulatory 1.00

00:13:35.480 oversight rather than something that was welcomed and defended by authorities.

00:13:40.740 So why bother swimming against the tide, Tristan?

00:13:44.420 I'm just going to get investigated by my union if I object to DEI hiring policies at my university.

00:13:50.840 I'm just going to get banned from the local rec center if I suggest that they rent a bouncy

00:13:56.100 castle instead of hire a drag queen to read to children. 1.00

00:13:58.920 I'm just going to get arrested if I meet the home invader with a baseball bat instead of

00:14:04.280 the keys to my safe.

00:14:06.880 I see people expressing hopelessness even if the next election goes exactly the way they

00:14:12.840 want, as any attempt at reform is just going to get struck down by our increasingly politicized

00:14:18.220 court system.

00:14:19.120 They'll find some charter right to steal cars or they'll establish a free trade zone with

00:14:24.660 Gaza or whatever.

00:14:25.580 There's no point.

00:14:26.280 Defeatism is always unattractive, but particularly when you have so much on your side.

00:14:33.600 If there was ever a moment for so-called conservative ideas, it's right now.

00:14:38.880 On all the core ideas, the majority of Canadians are on your side, sometimes to a dramatic degree.

00:14:45.400 You've possibly heard the term 80-20 issue.

00:14:48.060 This is where a progressive institution or political party holds on with both hands to an

00:14:52.880 idea despite the fact that only about 20% of the population supports it, thus ceding the

00:14:58.060 other 80% to right-wing causes.

00:15:00.640 Canada has lots of 80-20 issues.

00:15:03.940 The idea that teachers should be required to secretly transition gender dysphoric children

00:15:08.760 against the wishes of their parents.

00:15:10.880 80-20.

00:15:11.840 The notion that light sentences and easy bail is the most effective way to address violent crime.

00:15:16.860 80-20.

00:15:18.580 The notion that newcomers to Canada shouldn't be expected to adhere to a common set of shared values.

00:15:25.460 80-20.

00:15:26.940 Meanwhile, there is now a whole latticework of heterodox institutions and voices that didn't

00:15:32.580 exist only a few years ago.

00:15:34.200 In the mid-2010s, if you were writing a news story about, say, safe injection sites, it

00:15:40.340 was virtually impossible to find a voice willing to speak critically against them.

00:15:45.300 Any health organization you called, any medical professor, would just back the party line that

00:15:50.400 the science supports this, safe injection saves lives and makes neighborhoods safer.

00:15:55.120 It was the same deal with many of the most radical components of gender identity as they 0.95

00:15:59.940 became entrenched in Canadian law.

00:16:01.420 Nine years ago, Bill C-16 enshrined gender expression as a protected category under the

00:16:06.800 Canadian Human Rights Act.

00:16:08.440 This came with a whole pile of unintended consequences, since you were extending federal

00:16:12.780 protections to the notion that a person is whatever gender they say they are.

00:16:16.980 And that's the end of the discussion.

00:16:19.180 But aside from a few gender-critical feminists, basically nobody at the time was willing to say 0.95

00:16:24.040 this.

00:16:24.840 This code of omerta is no longer the case.

00:16:28.000 You've got the Macdonald-Laurier Institute doing human's work.

00:16:30.840 On the extremes of gender ideology, including on the issue of women's sports, Alberta has

00:16:36.040 now pursued a path of treatment-based drug policy as a direct challenge to the policy of

00:16:40.960 harm reduction, uber alice, that is now present everywhere else.

00:16:45.180 When a Canadian is hammered for wrongthink by one of Canada's various kangaroo courts, be

00:16:50.580 it a human rights tribunal or an ideologically captured professional licensing body, they have

00:16:55.340 places to turn that didn't used to be available to them.

00:16:58.500 Like the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.

00:17:00.920 That's the group defending Amy Ham.

00:17:07.740 That's the group defending Amy Ham, the BC nurse, dragged through a legal odyssey for saying publicly

00:17:12.100 that there are only two sexes.

00:17:13.340 You've got allies for a strong Canada, the group that brought me here.

00:17:16.580 You've now got a whole archipelago of independent media that is shining light into places where

00:17:22.620 the mainstream media fears to tread.

00:17:24.680 Yes, you should read all this independent media after you've subscribed to the National Post

00:17:33.100 and perused all the various ads around it.

00:17:37.100 Remember when the entire country woke up to news that a Samadun demonstration in Vancouver

00:17:41.940 had concluded with a ritual burning of the Canadian flag and chants of death to Canada?

00:17:46.960 You didn't hear about that because of CBC.

00:17:49.520 You didn't hear about that because of CTV or even the great and mighty and benevolent post-media.

00:17:55.680 You only heard it because Jared Yeiger, lately of the Western Standard, was there with a camera.

00:18:09.360 Demographically, Canada is increasingly aligned towards reform.

00:18:13.240 Canada, by my read, is now the only Western country on earth in which the average 20-year-old

00:18:19.100 is now more likely to vote for a conservative option than the average 70-year-old.

00:18:23.660 That's basically never happened before.

00:18:28.860 You get moments in time in which you have a plurality of under 30 voters favoring a conservative option.

00:18:34.620 That's what happened in the electoral landslides won by Brian Mulroney or Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan.

00:18:39.660 But young people never vote conservative at higher rates than older people.

00:18:45.180 But that's exactly what's happening now.

00:18:47.540 To me, the most startling example of this phenomenon were the results of the 2025 civics high school election poll.

00:18:54.140 The Canadian electorate picked a liberal government.

00:18:57.840 The high schoolers picked a conservative one.

00:19:00.120 Which means...

00:19:01.640 I'm not used to being interrupted by clapping.

00:19:05.860 Usually it's just people quietly looking at me.

00:19:10.720 Which means if you'd only had teenagers voting in the most recent federal election,

00:19:14.800 Pierre Pellievre, that's how you pronounce his name, would be prime minister right now.

00:19:22.660 Now, why is this?

00:19:24.060 The normal pattern among young voters is that lacking life experience, they pine for some abstract utopia.

00:19:30.820 That's why you normally get disproportionate numbers of 20-something voters backing socialist or far-right options.

00:19:36.760 But in Canada, the abstract utopia is the world of 20 years ago.

00:19:42.080 I live in my hometown, and I know the windows that didn't used to have bars on them.

00:19:46.600 The alleyways that didn't used to be blockaded with barbed wire.

00:19:50.120 The parks that didn't have tent encampments in them.

00:19:52.800 Even for Gen Z-ers, who can't remember the 1990s, they keep finding artifacts and clues as to what once was.

00:20:02.000 They get their first real job and notice that every co-worker over 40 was able to buy a house on a normal salary.

00:20:07.900 While anybody younger is crammed into a $3,000 a month apartment with roommates.

00:20:13.020 In the forgotten corners of their school library, they can find outdated literature that instructs teenagers not to do drugs,

00:20:20.460 rather than simply ensure that their meth pipe is properly sanitized.

00:20:27.700 They can watch old newsreels about Expo 86 and wonder why it shows children being entertained by clowns and puppets instead of drag queens.

00:20:37.060 And you're finding a similar conservative tilt among recent immigrants.

00:20:44.380 We saw this in BC, where the most recent election featured the most populist conservative option since the Socreds. 0.93

00:20:51.260 And polls showed it doing way better among brown people than it did among white people.

00:20:56.700 Which makes sense.

00:20:57.680 People come to Canada for prosperity, freedom, and a life removed from the internecine BS of the old country.

00:21:05.920 Lately, we've failed our newcomers on all three.

00:21:09.540 Across Canada, in communities and minds who have never once thought of themselves as being conservative or right-wing or even particularly traditional,

00:21:18.120 there is a yearning for Canada to just smarten up and return to the way it used to be.

00:21:23.520 And it's in this climate that, possibly without realizing it, the Canadian right has suddenly become the standard-bearer for a whole swath of Canadian principles that have traditionally been the domain of progressives.

00:21:35.900 At least in my lifetime.

00:21:37.980 Conservatives are now the most conspicuous defenders of tolerance and pluralism.

00:21:42.340 The only side in Canada right now which believes that someone's immutable characteristics should be irrelevant to how they are treated by their neighbours and by their government.

00:21:52.320 Canada remains one of the only countries on Earth where it is a regular occurrence that two neighbours meet and exchange small talk,

00:21:58.780 without either one ever considering the fact that the two of them are different colours.

00:22:02.600 It's one of the only corners of planet Earth in which you can get cut off by someone a different race than you, 1.00

00:22:09.320 and you call him an a-hole without ever thinking of using a racial slur instead.

00:22:18.820 And precisely one side of the political spectrum wants this tolerant utopia to continue,

00:22:24.360 while the other side has made it very clear of their plan to regress into a Canada where different races access different public spaces,

00:22:31.020 different educational systems, and even different justice systems.

00:22:35.180 The right is now the side of gay liberation.

00:22:38.220 If you are a 13-year-old who feels confused about her sexuality and uncomfortable in her body,

00:22:43.440 there is one side pushing the idea that you need immediate clinical interventions.

00:22:47.860 And then there's another side, your side, who says,

00:22:50.960 don't worry about it, these are awkward years, and you're fine just the way you are, whatever happens.

00:22:55.420 If Canada had more Conservative mayors, I can also guarantee you that you'd be able to hold a Pride parade in this country

00:23:09.320 without it immediately being shut down by masked men screaming for Intifada.

00:23:15.560 So why should you defend and rebuild Canada rather than giving it up for dead? 0.97

00:23:20.160 Because a bunch of unhinged maniacs gave you a monopoly on the truth. 0.86

00:23:25.500 And if you don't defend and restore that truth, then someone else will.

00:23:29.500 Someone whose motives may not be as straightforward and pure as your own.

00:23:34.420 Also, you're Canadians. 0.99

00:23:36.460 You're going to let this country be consumed by dumb ideas 0.99

00:23:39.420 because you're afraid some activist lower court judge or politicized human rights tribunal 0.98

00:23:44.460 will get you in trouble if you don't comply?

00:23:46.820 Just beyond the walls of this building, it wasn't too long ago,

00:23:50.980 you had Galician immigrants arriving by train and then bursting into tears 0.99

00:23:55.440 at the sight of their isolated, undeveloped homesteads.

00:23:58.840 They'd been promised the last best west, and they got cold prairie.

00:24:03.260 But they stayed, and their great-great-great-grandchildren are probably in this room right now.

00:24:08.880 It was right in this region when you had Indigenous nations witnessing the overnight disappearance of the buffalo,

00:24:14.340 an event that plunged them into the worst famine in our recorded history,

00:24:18.660 forcing whole communities to suddenly grapple with how any of them were going to survive into the future.

00:24:24.080 110 years ago, Calgary had only just begun to take its current form

00:24:27.820 when seemingly all its young men were summed away to a great war from which many would never return.

00:24:32.920 And then those that came back saw the same thing happen to their sons 20 years later.

00:24:38.060 100 years ago, you had five women, all Albertans,

00:24:42.100 pushing against a seemingly unmovable Canadian political reality,

00:24:46.340 the one in which public life was for men only.

00:24:49.600 If the ghosts of all these people could be in the room with us right now,

00:24:53.380 are you seriously going to tell them that you had to abandon a better future for your children

00:24:58.200 because you were depressed that the last federal election didn't go your way?

00:25:03.200 It's a common rule among Alberta oilfield contractors that even in boom times,

00:25:08.020 you should plan your business as if oil is $50 or $60 a barrel.

00:25:12.320 It doesn't matter if oil is $90 or $100.

00:25:14.980 You set an arbitrarily low benchmark and plan your finances to still be sustainable

00:25:19.680 even if you can't get the prices you want.

00:25:22.620 Similarly, let's imagine that there will always be a liberal government for the rest of time.

00:25:28.200 The next prime minister is going to be Xavier Trudeau.

00:25:31.460 Stephen Gilbeau will eventually be appointed governor general.

00:25:35.020 Melanie Jolie is going to be on the $50 bill.

00:25:40.320 Even in this nightmare scenario, the $40 a barrel scenario,

00:25:44.520 there's still plenty you can do to reverse the decline and restore the Canadian promise.

00:25:49.740 My conclusion from writing Don't Be Canada was that while the current liberal government

00:25:54.020 certainly accelerated a lot of the decline,

00:25:56.780 they didn't invent any of the bad ideas they embraced.

00:26:00.760 Our hyper-liberalized assisted suicide regime can basically be pinned

00:26:04.760 on the relentless lobbying of one non-profit, dying with dignity.

00:26:08.960 The runaway train that is Canadian harm reduction was set in motion

00:26:12.180 by a dozen or so activist academics in the early 2000s.

00:26:16.340 A slow crawl of regulatory changes made at the local level

00:26:21.180 entrenched the principle of gender self-ID across Canada

00:26:25.000 before anybody had realized what was happening.

00:26:27.980 So if Canada was broken at the grassroots,

00:26:31.020 it can be restored at the grassroots.

00:26:33.880 Start asking your rec center and local library politely

00:26:37.680 why there's more progress pride flags in their lobby than Canadian flags.

00:26:42.160 If you go to a Lamaze class that starts by asking all the extremely pregnant women 1.00

00:26:47.860 their pronouns, don't just shrug.

00:26:50.400 Pack up, leave, and give your money to a Lamaze class that doesn't do that.

00:26:54.800 When someone on your local neighborhood forum goes off

00:26:57.940 about how Canada is systemically racist

00:27:00.240 or how safe injection makes neighborhoods safer,

00:27:03.440 don't just sigh and look the other way.

00:27:05.500 Explain as patiently and sympathetically as you can

00:27:08.700 why you think they're mistaken.

00:27:10.340 You're probably not going to convince them,

00:27:12.960 but other people will see what you're doing

00:27:14.800 and they won't feel so alone.

00:27:17.400 When a bunch of...

00:27:18.340 When a bunch of hippie geriatrics 0.80

00:27:26.720 want to parade through downtown

00:27:28.160 and keffias to call for a second holocaust 0.82

00:27:30.240 get twice as many geriatrics

00:27:32.400 to quietly block their path.

00:27:33.880 If you're angered by all the violent crimes committed by offenders

00:27:40.600 who were on bail or given early release,

00:27:43.080 start tracking and publicizing who's responsible.

00:27:46.260 Which judges, which prosecutors, which parole board members

00:27:49.320 participated in the early release of an offender

00:27:51.960 who used that freedom to hurt someone.

00:27:53.840 The information is all public

00:27:55.560 and setting up a website takes $40 in an afternoon.

00:27:58.500 Start restoring Canada's promise

00:28:00.960 by creating friction for the people

00:28:03.060 causing all the problems that I've detailed

00:28:04.660 and start noticing the people around you

00:28:07.180 who aren't falling for the bad ideas.

00:28:09.340 I can tell you that since writing Don't Be Canada,

00:28:11.420 I've been amazed at the multiplicity of people

00:28:14.180 it has prompted to get in touch with me.

00:28:16.380 Pink hair, aggressive piercings,

00:28:19.240 hardcore anarcho-cyclists,

00:28:21.880 you have more allies out there than you think.

00:28:24.200 They just don't consider themselves conservatives

00:28:27.280 and you'll scare them away

00:28:28.980 if your first interaction with them

00:28:30.620 is to thrust a Pierre Polyev pamphlet in their face.

00:28:36.220 I'll close with the maxim

00:28:37.720 that every safety regulation is written in blood.

00:28:41.860 When you're on your Air Canada or WestJet flight

00:28:44.060 heading home from this conference,

00:28:45.580 you may notice a smoke detector in the bathroom.

00:28:48.300 That smoke detector was first put there

00:28:50.300 as a result of new safety protocols

00:28:52.260 written in the wake of Air Canada flight 797,

00:28:55.740 a deadly 1983 aircraft fire

00:28:58.080 that killed folk singer Stan Rogers.

00:29:01.000 And just as that tragedy yielded safer aircraft,

00:29:04.260 I think decay can yield a greater country.

00:29:07.720 True greatness can only come

00:29:09.440 once a nation has glimpsed the abyss

00:29:11.540 and grappled with what they stand to lose

00:29:14.000 if they fail.

00:29:15.360 So I want you to imagine a future

00:29:17.420 in which a giant country

00:29:18.820 built atop oceans of natural resources

00:29:21.340 obviously has enough homes

00:29:23.620 and family doctors for everyone.

00:29:25.760 In which immigration is celebrated

00:29:27.840 because it is transparent and well-managed.

00:29:30.880 In which tolerance and pluralism thrive

00:29:33.120 precisely because we became intolerant

00:29:36.060 of the forces and ideologies

00:29:37.680 that seek to exploit it. 0.98

00:29:39.740 In which you've got all kinds of gay 1.00

00:29:41.820 and trans stuff going on, 0.56

00:29:43.660 but oh my God,

00:29:44.500 we don't have to hear about it all the time.

00:29:45.740 In which courts understand

00:29:52.920 that mercy for the guilty

00:29:54.160 is cruelty to the innocent.

00:29:56.220 In which governments never take prosperity

00:29:58.300 or high living standards for granted.

00:30:00.460 And when people ask you how it got that way,

00:30:03.120 you can tell them,

00:30:04.600 well, for a period there in the 2000s, 0.75

00:30:07.020 everything sucked all at once, 0.89

00:30:08.800 so we learned to get really good 0.91

00:30:10.280 at not sucking. 0.77

00:30:11.040 Thank you very much.

00:30:14.520 Thank you very much.

00:30:20.320 I have the distinct pleasure

00:30:33.740 of thanking Tristan

00:30:34.580 for speaking to us today.

00:30:35.980 If you would like to join the 80%

00:30:39.040 and do some of the things

00:30:41.380 that he suggested that we do to fight back,

00:30:43.900 I encourage you to check out

00:30:45.160 theallies.ca and sign up.

00:30:47.260 My job is to make it as easy as possible

00:30:49.260 for each and every one of you

00:30:50.240 and lots of other people

00:30:51.080 to fight back against this madness.

00:30:53.140 Thank you very much.

00:30:53.720 Thank you.

00:30:53.820 Thank you.

00:31:04.960 Thank you.

Western Standard - September 10, 2025

Tristin Hopper urges conservatives to fight back and ‘Don’t Be Canada’

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