Front Burner - The verbal ambush of Chrystia Freeland and political anger in Canada

Episode Date: August 31, 2022

On Friday, a man in Grande Prairie, Alta., accosted Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and swore at her repeatedly as she entered the city hall building. A video of the incident, posted online, shows the man yelling at Freeland, calling her a "f--king bitch" and a traitor, and following her in close proximity as she boards an elevator. RCMP say they are investigating the altercation, which has provoked widespread condemnation from across the political spectrum. And it’s also sparked broader conversations about the increasing sense of danger many politicians are feeling of late when interacting with the public — particularly in an era when the spread of conspiracy theories and disinformation are on the rise. It’s also raising questions about the line between when yelling at a politician is a dangerous or destructive act — and when it’s an expression of a healthy democracy. Today, we break it all down with Aaron Wherry, a senior writer with CBC’s Parliament Hill bureau.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. A note before we begin here, you're about to hear some coarse language. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Great, that's Chrystia. Chrystia. The man's interaction with Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is pretty short, less than 20 seconds. Freeland's entering City Hall in Grand

Prairie, Alberta and walking towards the elevator when this man, Elliot McDavid, approaches her, yelling profanities. About halfway through the video, McDavid, who looks at least a foot taller than Freeland, enters the frame and gets closer to her as she boards the elevator. Then the doors close and Freeland goes on her way. But the video has clearly struck a nerve, prompting many politicians to not only condemn the interaction, but talk about threats and harassment they've received themselves. Of course, yelling at politicians isn't a new thing. People have been doing it for eons.

But I want to talk today about why these interactions feel different these days. So my colleague Erin Wherry is here to discuss that and talk about how we got here and what we could lose in the process. here and what we could lose in the process. Hey, Aaron, thank you very much for being here. Glad to be here. Let's spend a bit more time here talking about what happened with Krista Freeland. We described the video in the intro, but can you tell me a bit about what the fallout has been and how we've seen politicians across the spectrum really react to it? Yeah, so I guess, I mean, you don't want to say there are necessarily good things about an incident like this, but it has been somewhat

heartening to see, you know, really categorical condemnation across the political spectrum, right? Like, you know, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, a couple of people who have not always agreed with the federal liberal government came out and absolutely condemned this. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said the harassment was, quote, reprehensible, while the prime minister said such threats have no place in Canada. We need to call this out and take a united stance against it. Politicians denounced the attack and posted messages of support for Freeland, including several high-level Conservatives.

We have to put an end to it and demand that everybody treat other Canadians with respect when we debate political ideas. So, you know, that has kind of been one part of it. The other part of it is that there's a discussion, a renewed discussion about the safety of cabinet ministers, the safety of politicians, and how that needs to be dealt with or changed in the future. And then I think there's a discussion to MPs, a lot of MPs across the aisle, conservatives, liberals, have talked about the harassment they receive, the, you know, sort of belligerence they're faced with. And, you know, that raises, I think, a secondary concern, which is, you know, if harassment of politicians and public officials becomes commonplace, you're going to have a harder time recruiting people to serve in politics. You're going to have people, more people leaving

politics. And that's, you know, ultimately going to be a negative for the whole system. And so, you know, the condemnation is good, but there's lots more that has to be kind of handled here to get us back to a place where this kind of harassment isn't normalized. This, obviously, though, isn't the first time a Canadian politician has been yelled at by a citizen or by a voter. And can you give me some other examples of that happening over the years? Can you give me some other examples of that happening over the years? Yeah. So, I mean, look, since the dawn of democracy, people have periodically raised their voices and politicians have always dealt with, you know, voters who are unhappy. And, you know, from individual voters approaching them or protests in the streets. or protests in the streets.

The difference, I think, in this case, for one thing, is that we've had now sort of a series of these incidents where MPs or others have been targeted for harassment or, you know, really kind of threatening language and treatment. You know, Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, federal NDP leader in Peterborough a couple months ago was harassed. You turn your back on the people! Suddenly, a provincial campaign visit by the party's federal leader turned chaotic. Go fuck yourself!

Sparking concern about his safety and now a police investigation. A restaurant in Prince Edward Island that the prime minister visited was harassed and subject to online abuse. So there's getting to be kind of a series of these events now happening where public officials are out in public. And, you know, they're not just facing some criticism or some unhappy voters, but they're, you know, they're being harassed and threatened in a way that really crosses some lines. But how is it different from what we've seen in the past? So like, I've seen photos of protesters holding signs accusing Brian Mulroney of treason over the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. In 1992, I don't know if you remember this, like, furious crowd in Newfoundland shouted at Fisheries Minister John Crosby over the cod moratorium.

That's the best you can do, buddy. You should get out of it right now. This was John Crosby's reception. More than 350 fishermen and plant workers. This situation is not our fault, Mr. Crosby. This situation is not our fault. No, Crosby. This situation is not our... And it's not my fault either. No, it's the government's mismanagement.

It's mismanagement. In 2015, demonstrators in Vancouver beat and burned an effigy of Stephen Harper riding an oil tank. It was a loud, vocal, no-holds-barred protest with the aim of the anger clear. I remember yesterday when you and I were talking about doing this episode, you brought up this example of this little old lady yelling at Brian Mulroney over a pension issue, right?

Yeah. So, you know, look, we should be clear that there has been protests in the past that we should look at as probably crossing some lines. But, you know, that example of Brian Mulroney and the little old lady in the 80s is a goodroney's government was proposing to amend old age security and this upset people. And Brian Mulroney one day was out, you know, speaking to people on Parliament Hill. And this woman comes up to him and gets in his face and says, you know, you lied. I was made to vote for you. And then goodbye, Charlie Brown. And so goodbye, Charlie Brown becomes this kind of shorthand for unfortunate moments for politicians when they come into contact with voters. And, you know, the rest of the story is that the government after this interaction, which gets

played all over the news, the government feels forced to back down and they retract the proposal. But it's important to kind of look at that moment and say, what's different here? And so first of all, like on a just a very simple level, she didn't call him the sort of things that the individual called Christa Freeland. And her concerns were based on a real thing, right? Like a real change in policy. And from what we know so far of what happened with Christia Freeland, the man who came up to her was worried about some, you know, pretty irrational things about like the World Economic Forum being in a big conspiracy and vaccines killing children and, you know, a fertilizer ban and sort of all these things that aren't real or rational.

And, you know, so you never want to say that anger in politics is a bad thing necessarily, because there can be anger at real injustice. There can be anger directed at real policies. There can be anger directed at real policies, and that anger can often lead to productive change, good change. But when it's anger that's chasing after kind of make-believe things, when you're looking at other politicians and other interests and other people, other Canadians as enemies, you know, this is getting you into pretty dangerous territory. And, you know, the context of this too, you have to remember is that, you know, yes, we've had obviously protests that have gone, that have arguably were over the top or went too far, but in the past, but in this moment, when democracy seems to be kind of fragile, and we're worried about the kind of corrosive forces

that are kind of eroding democracy, it's harder to sort of dismiss this and say, well, it was just one bad incident. We can sort of just carry on. Voters have to ask themselves some bigger questions about where our politics is going. I know this is going to be like a little bit of a sidebar, but I just don't want to leave this hanging there because I think for a lot of our listeners,

they're probably familiar with some of these conspiracy theories you were talking about, the World Economic Forum, which we've done a whole episode on. But you mentioned this conspiracy theory swirling around fertilizer. And can you just tell me what that is before we kind of get back to our main conversation? Yeah, I would recommend to listeners to look up a piece that our colleague Jonathan Monpetit wrote about this. But in short, what has happened here is the federal Liberal government has put out proposals for reducing emissions from agriculture and misinformation and bad faith political actors have twisted this into some kind of ban on fertilizer that, you know, would be pursued for some kind of nefarious purpose. And it has caught on as this

new threat that needs to be dealt with. When, again, the only thing to deal with here in reality is a proposal that the Liberal government has put out that has said, you know, we need to reduce emissions from agriculture by 30 percent. So how should we do that? like, say, about the World Economic Forum or about the pandemic, have also been espoused by people connected to violent extremism, like the militant Diagonal movement. Border crossing clears, organizers trying to distance themselves from what could have been. Police alleging connection to an organized group said to have a willingness to use force against police

if any attempts were made to disrupt the blockade. Diagon is a group that, you know, it started off as almost a joke, but has become kind of a quasi-militia with individuals engaged in weapons training, basically based on an imaginary country that extends from Alaska to Florida. Or like Corey Hurin, who breached the gates of Rideau Hall while heavily armed. This is in no way to suggest that everyone who believes

in conspiracy theories about the WEF or COVID has violent intentions or is like sympathetic to the far right. Of course, that's not the case. Just that potentially that overlap and beliefs might make incidents like this seem more scary than they once would have been. Yeah, I think the context has changed a lot.

You know, the reason that things are taken differently now, I think, in addition to some of these extremist movements being out there, is that the context of populism, of the January 6th storming of the Capitol in the United States, has cast these things in a different light where, you know, we're not just necessarily talking about kind of over-the-top, overblown rhetoric. We're talking about things that could lead to real damage to democracy and to the sort of institutions that a country needs to govern itself. So when an incident like what happens with Christia Freeland occurs, you know, in addition to the kind of conversation that has to be had about, you know, how this sort of harassment gets normalized and, you know, personal security and these kind of very practical issues, you

also have to kind of deal with, okay, is this indicative of something going on in our politics, and where exactly are things headed? I'm going to go. angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income?

That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, there's now discussion over their security. I think it might have been a bit surprising for some people to realize that the deputy prime minister didn't actually have a security detail with her. I wonder if you could talk a bit about the role that that lack of security plays in how Canadian politicians have typically interacted with the public. Yeah, I think, you know, people would say at this, I mean, obviously, it looks now like a vulnerability. But I think in general,

if you look back on it, you'd say, it's kind of a good thing that our politicians aren't surrounded by, you know, small armies of security guards everywhere they go. You know, our politicians have, in Canada Canada have always been fairly accessible. Parliament Hill has always been pretty accessible. You can just walk up to it. You can walk into a constituency office and ask for a meeting with your MP. You might see them walking around in the community. That kind of accessibility and lack of fear has kind of, I don't know if it's been a hallmark of Canadian politics, but when you look at how it is in, for instance, the United States, it seems like a big difference.

But the bargain there is that they won't get hurt if they don't have security. And if it looks like they do have, they are under threat, then there's going to be more security. And, you know, I think some have even talked about this in the wake of Christopher Freeland's encounter, which And, you know, I think some have even talked about this in the wake of Christopher Freeland's encounter, which is, you know, we could lose something if our politicians are all surrounded by security and there's tons of security around Parliament Hill and our politicians aren't as accessible to us. If we're talking about some of the reasons why we got here, I know it's incredibly complex, of course, the internet, social media, the people who propagate conspiracy theories, this all clearly contributes to the problems that we're talking about here. But do politicians also have a responsibility in terms of how they interact with these conspiracy theories? Yeah, I think there's a responsibility on a couple levels. One is they have a responsibility

not to feed these conspiracy theories and encourage these conspiracy theories. And then I think the other part is, you know, you can't, it's always hard to say that any individual's actions can be traced to a politician's rhetoric. But when you have moments like this, it's not a bad thing if we all take a step back and say, are our politics angrier than they need to be? Are we setting things up in a way where this kind of anger that erodes democracy, that breaks down trust, that makes us look at people we disagree with as enemies? You know, are our politicians and the media and everyone else creating an atmosphere for these kinds of feelings and this kind of anger? When there are real concerns, is that anger being

directed towards, you know, real solutions? You know, are we addressing what people are actually upset about? Let's talk about maybe some examples of both of those pieces that are playing out here. Like, so are you seeing Canadian politicians either flirting with these conspiracy theories or conversely batting them down? Yeah. So in an interview earlier this year with the house on CBC radio, Aaron O'Toole talked about how he has had people come to him and, you know, present these kind of irrational conspiracy theories that they've heard on the Internet and that he tries to correct them. I had a recent maple fest in my riding in Bowmanville and people are coming up to me with things they're reading on social media, conspiracies and ideas and frustration. What I try and do is say, OK, let's sort through that, because what you're seeing is not correct. Whoever wins...

That's obviously private discussions he's had. You probably need to see that more publicly. You need to see politicians doing that more publicly. On the flip side, I think you are seeing politicians tacitly encourage these ideas. You have politicians like Pierre Polyev, the federal conservative leadership candidate, Daniel Smith, the UCP leadership candidate in Alberta, who are, you know, touting the World Economic Forum

as a boogeyman that has to be opposed. They're maybe not saying exactly, oh, there's a sinister plot here, but they, you know, Pierre Polyev has said, I will never allow my ministers to go to the World Economic Forum. If any of my ministers want to go to that big, fancy conference of billionaires with the World Economic Forum in Davos, they better make it a one-way ticket because they won't be asking me back. Well, that's, you know, why bother making that commitment? The same thing with, you know, Pierre Polly and others have tweeted about a quote unquote fertilizer ban, which again, doesn't exist. So yeah, we're seeing politicians kind of brush up against these conspiracy theories that, you know, they just don't need to do that. Yeah. And on that second piece on questions over whether politics are kind of needlessly divisive. You and I have talked before about that interview that Trudeau did in French,

where he said anti-vaxxers were often racist and misogynist. This was something that made a lot of people really angry at him. I remember being in Ottawa at the trucker convoy protest and people brought this up a lot. What role, if any, do you think politicians have to like about unacceptable views, he was trying to speak to a very kind of it's fair to ask whether the way he handled it was more divisive than necessary and uh whether it's you know led to more anger than needs to be out there you know i'm not i'm not trying i would never say that like what happened to christopher freeland or what happens to trudeau or what's happened to other politicians was brought on necessarily by government policy or like i don't want to get into victim blaming but the prime

minister on a larger scale of the prime minister and the government's role is to try to unify people as best as possible and bring as many people as possible together and however popular some of those positions were uh you know however many people got vaccinated, you do have to flip the story around and ask, well, OK, but how many people were alienated by those policies? How many people were angered by the comments? And did it have larger effects that need to be dealt with now? Is there more the prime minister could be doing to unify Canadians? to be dealt with now? Is there more the prime minister could be doing to unify Canadians? You know, that's in times when we used to worry more about national unity, people used to say the biggest responsibility of the prime minister is to hold the country together. And as much as the sort of, you know, separatist ideas are maybe not as front and center as they used to be,

there's still something to be said there for, is the prime minister doing enough to bring the country together and deal with anger that's out there? just before we end erin uh i know this is something we've kind of been talking about throughout this conversation but i i just want to put some emphasis on it um here that like we're talking about how unsettling these interactions are but but i just i think it's probably worth saying again that that people are allowed to be very angry at the people who have enormous power over their lives and to express it. And I think a lot of people would say sometimes rude ways, right? Like this is also part of democracy, whether it be that little old lady who called Mulroney Charlie Brown,

indigenous activists interrupting Trudeau to protest inaction in Grassy Narrows. Like, if you oppose vaccine mandates, you're pissed off about inflation. Like, of course, it is your right to give a politician a piece of your mind. Like, you know, we want to live in a society where maybe we can and should yell at politicians sometimes absolutely like being upset about policy being upset about injustice uh disagreeing with politicians this is all part of democracy and uh politicians exposing themselves to uh people who disagree with them and having to have that conversation, you know, should be something that can happen and that helps kind of hold a democracy

together. But we do have to, I think, be able to distinguish between justifiable and rational anger and the kind of destructive anger that, if it just continues in perpetuity, starts to eat away at things and starts to kind of undermine the institutions. And so I think part of, you know, what can come out of what's happened in the last little while is an ability to recognize when anger has moved from, you know, a reasonable amount of disagreement and, you know, something that can be channeled into solutions and something that is really kind of impossible to bargain with and is just going to kind of lead you in kind of a downward spiral of anger and resentment. Aaron, thank you, as always. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. So before we go today, after we recorded this interview, the RCMP announced that it is investigating the verbal attack on Freeland. A spokesperson told the CBC that if the threshold for criminal charges met, RCMP or local police may lay charges in the case. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.