The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben discovers a large-scale banning of books that is flying under the radar

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Guests and Topics: -The Canadian patriotism we’re seeing is fake—here’s how to make it real with Guest: Harrison Lowman, Managing Editor at the Hub, and Host of the Full Press Podcast -Book Banning in Canada Is Quiet, Systemic, and More Effective than Ever with Guest: Ira Wells, Writer, Academic If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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With partial shares from TD Direct Investing, you can own less than one full share, so expensive stocks are within reach. Learn more at td.com slash partial shares. TD, ready for you. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us on the Chorus Radio Network, as well as in podcast form, wherever you find us, we say thank you.

So Justin Trudeau is seemingly on his way out. It's a long goodbye, certainly a long goodbye, as we await the Liberal Party's drama and selecting a new leader. It looks like it's gonna be Mark Carney on Sunday. And if all goes according to what we think is the plan, Mark Carney will become Prime Minister. But until then, the leader of this nation

is Justin Trudeau. And a lot of Justin Trudeau news over the past couple of days. You'll remember that on January 6th, no, not January 6th, you'll remember that months ago he prorogued Parliament and requested from Mary Simon, the Governor General, to prorogue Parliament which wiped the legislative slate clean, pausing the business of the House of Commons and the Senate at a time, in my opinion, at a time where we desperately needed that House to be open. But that is not the subject of this little rant. But a number of citizens took issue with that, saying at this critical time, we needed the House of

Commons to be open. And so they took the federal government to court for that move. Well, a decision was ruled yesterday by the federal court chief, Paul Crampton, who said the courts indeed have a role to play in reviewing the advice as the advice that Mary Simon gave or that Trudeau gave to Mary Simon. And it is important that it be exercised to maintain public confidence in the institutions of government. However, and this is the decision that was handed down, the federal court chief ruled that the applicants failed to demonstrate that Justin Trudeau exceeded the limits established by the written constitution, unwritten constitutional principles,

or any other legal limits. And with that, the challenge died on the vine. And look, I like when situations like this occur. I like when things get tested in court. That's the system we have. I don't think everything should be challenged, and just because you don't like a decision from the government doesn't mean you should get tested in court. That's the system we have. The, I don't think everything should be challenged and just because you don't like a decision from the government doesn't mean you should take them to court. But in this case, the citizens exercise their constitutional right to seek redress to the courts. The courts heard

the challenge and they ruled on the side of the government. End of story as far as I'm concerned. That's it, okay? And good on the citizens for taking that avenue, good on the government for winning their case. But you would think that with parliament not sitting, the government's ability to spend money would be circumscribed to a certain extent. I mean, at least I thought that. It shows how little I know, I guess. I just assumed if parliament isn't sitting, the parliament, the government can't spend money. Am I the only one who thought this?

I guess not. I guess it shows I hadn't thought long and hard about it. But it turns out that if a government really wants to spend money, they can. And boy, does the Trudeau government want to spend money. I'm being a little cheeky here, by the way. I'll tell you what I mean. They announced $37 billion in child care deals with 11 provinces and territories. So in the days before he's set to leave office, he announced the agreements that total almost $37 billion that will extend the federal child care program until 2031. And look, I actually, believe it or not, believe that a child care program is a great idea.

I don't think that every expenditure by a government should be called an investment. I get really tired of hearing that. Sometimes a cost is just a cost. Sometimes a government program is just a suck on the taxpayer. But I do believe that if you give parents a childcare option that is affordable,

they will avail themselves of it, and they will have more freedom to do their jobs, to spend more time at the office, to then make more money, to build their business and therefore pay taxes. And in that way, the knock-on effect is more revenue coming in than we spend on childcare. I unfortunately think that this government has spent so much money in so many

different places that we don't have the money to spend on this. I wish we did. This sounds like a good program to me. I'm behind it not just in principle but not just in theory but in practice. However, this is the wrong government to be spending this money because they've spent everything else. They've spent so much money. We don't have, I don't know where we're going to find the money to pay for this. I genuinely don't know. And then the next government that comes in when they have to make cuts is going to look like the bad guy for cutting child care. Nobody wants to cut child care, but we're going to, the next next government is gonna have to deal with the hangover of the party that's been the last nine years.

Anyway, that's what our prime minister has been doing. He's also been sort of, I guess, reintroducing himself to Canadians because I didn't know that our prime minister stood so solidly and steadfast against anti-Semitism. But apparently he condemns anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is on the rise, particularly since Hamas's brutal, barbaric terrorist

attack of October 7th. Holocaust denialism is on the rise. Violent extremism is on the rise. What we, what you, are experiencing is not normal. Anti-Semites singing the praises of Hamas and Hezbollah while waving their flags in the streets of our cities is not normal. Jewish students being shouted down in their classrooms and campuses for simply expressing their identity, their opinions, their beliefs is not normal. That entire clip makes my blood boil. First of all, the condescension, the solemn nature of his tone, the enunciation of Hamas and Hezbollah. I'm sorry, sir, you don't get a pass for your failure to lead on this file over the past

year and a half. When you say anti-Semitism is on the rise, I say it has already risen and you were nowhere to be found. When schools were being shot up, you were nowhere to be found. When schools were being shot up, you were absent. When people were asking you to denounce anti-semitism, you lumped it in with all other forms of hate so you could hedge, so you could protect yourself, so you could insulate yourself against the Hamas mobs that come for anyone who takes issue with them. And now that you

have nothing left to lose, because you are on your way out the door, you are trying to reframe and rewrite history. We will not forget, sir. We will not forget that you sent Melanie Jolie out to speak to Muslim groups, and then you had Anthony Housefather, your Jewish MP, say the exact opposite to Jewish groups.

We will not forget how you said that your government would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu were he to set foot in Canada for war crimes. Let's put the cherry on top with the last thing he said. Synagogues and Jewish day schools being attacked and firebombed by cowards in the night is not normal. The increasingly common deafening indifference toward or even rationalization of rising anti-Semitism is not normal. The term Zionist increasingly being tossed around as a pejorative, in spite of the fact that it simply means believing in the right of Jewish people, like all people, to determine

their own future, is not normal. No one in Canada should ever be afraid to call themselves a Zionist. I am a Zionist. Speaking slowly doesn't make it so. Had you given this speech a year and a half ago I would be patting you on the back calling you a leader. Calling you someone of moral clarity. A leader with courage. You have none of those things sir. This it would have been better for you to say nothing. This reeks of opportunism and you should

be ashamed that you ever spoke those words. You know, when I was in Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics, I sensed a patriotism I'd never sensed before. And I actually remember saying to somebody, I think this is the way Americans feel all the time. There was something palpable and positive and optimistic in the air. And I just want to live in that feeling forever. And I kind of forgot about that feeling until recently with the rise of this new version of patriotism

that we felt since Donald Trump has taken aim at Canada. But it's felt different this time. There's been something different about this rise in patriotism. And I saw an article by Harrison Lowman of The Hub that said, It's felt different this time. There's been something different about this rise in patriotism. And I saw an article by Harrison Lohman of The Hub. It said, the Canadian patriotism we're seeing is fake. Here's how to make it real. I thought, okay, here's somebody who probably gets what I'm throwing down.

Let's talk about it. So let's welcome to the show the managing editor at The Hub and host of the full press podcast Harrison Lohman. Thank you so much for joining us. Hi there, Ben. Hello fellow Patriots. So what do you make of the patriotism that we're feeling today?

Why do you label it fake? I just worry it's a facade, Ben. Like since December, we've seen the number of Canadians who say they have a deep emotional attachment to Canada grow 10%. But I wonder if it's like wafer thin, right? Like I wonder if they're like your Christian friends who say, you know, I'm Christian, but they only go to the church for Easter or Christmas.

Yeah. Like when the chips are down, they're going to fold. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the PMs came together during flag day last month and they put out a statement, the ones that are still alive. Canada is the best country in the world.

It's worth celebrating and fighting for. But as you know, Ben being at Vancouver, it's very in the world. It's worth celebrating and fighting for. But as you know, Ben, being at Vancouver, it's very easy to celebrate. It's very hard to fight for something. It's much more difficult. Well, yeah, I mean, if you asked most Canadians, would they, I know this is the extreme, but it's worth asking, would you die for this country?

Would you suit up if there was an, not just an existential financial economic threat, like what we're experiencing with Donald Trump, but if somebody actually truly came for Canada, what would you do? And I don't know that the numbers would be that high. Well, our defense minister said a little while back that the Canadian Armed Forces failure to recruit people, he called it a death spiral.

So I think that gives you a sense of people who'd be willing to lay their life on the line for Canada. Yeah. Well, I think a part of it also is the there's been a complete lack of investment in our military and so a lot of people aren't seeing a fulfilling career in the military were they given the opportunity. But yeah, I find when patriotism is a reaction to something, it's it's not patriotism. Like it's, patriotism should be living in your heart all the time. Exactly, exactly. And I want to harness this moment.

I'm not saying it's all bad. I'm not trying to like wag my fingers at people as much as I feel like as a, you know, I've been a patron for many years. I kind of feel like saying, welcome to the party. Nice of you to join. Yeah. Here are the drinks or drinks over here.

Let's take advantage of this moment and turn this temporary feeling into something more permanent. And you actually lay out sort of some suggestions on how we can make that real. Yeah, so, you know, you shouldn't be doing it when it's fashionable. You should be doing it when it's hard, right?

So what does it actually look like? It looks like active citizenship. It looks like duty and responsibility as opposed to, you know, asking what the government can do for you. It looks like shoveling your neighbor's driveway after work. It looks like cleaning up our litter strewn streets that are the result of Canadians not caring.

It looks like, you know, passing on traditions to Canadians, visiting the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day. It looks like, I don't know, starting like a national youth service that, you know, wraps its arm around this, the second biggest country in the world, whether it be in indigenous First Nations, different provinces, territories, et cetera.

It's about like, you know, looking up from your phone, abandoning self-help mantras and actually doing something for a community. I say this as a boy scout leader, Ben. Oh, gotcha, there you go. But I also think a part of it, I mean, something that could unite us is learning all of our history and celebrating the parts worth celebrating and mourning the parts where we failed. I mean, I think learning it all

and not canceling parts of it is important as well. I think so. I think so. And yeah, that doesn't mean abandon the bad stuff. It means taking it all in and trying to make the country the best version it can possibly be. You can be a patriot and still think that the country is broken in many ways or needs improvement. But then you need to say the next part of that sentence, which is like, okay, and let's fix it. And let's, you know, talk to my neighbors about fixing it. Let's do something about it. Yeah, listen, my baseline is that Canada has been a net positive in the world, full stop. But find me one country that hasn't done bad. Find me one country that hasn't hurt its people

or hurt others or picked the wrong side at some point. You're not going to find one. They don't exist. But Canada acquits itself positively versus the rest of the world. And that is something to celebrate, full stop. Now, you also bring up something about possibly having a sort of a youth engagement program where people from one part of the country, kids from one part of a country have to go work in another part of the country. Didn't we have that in Katimovic? We did, we did. I was looking into that, Ben. I don't think it was what it once was. Yeah. It was actually a program that our current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau played a big role in.

Well, if I'm not, I believe his dad started it. I think my dad canceled it because I don't think we had any money. And I think it was brought back either under Chrétien, I think it was brought back under Chrétien. And then I don't know where it went. It's still got a website. Okay.

I agree. It needs some life blown into it. Like, you know, as well as I, you'd visit different parts of this country. It feels like you're in a different country. Yeah. Talk to a Newfoundlander, talk to an Albertan on the other side of the country. And they're speaking the same language, but it sounds a lot different. Yeah, no, we need programs that are bringing these folks together that gives Canadians

a taste of the, you know, the various regions of this country, you know, different from, you know, maybe them going to have a Euro trip as much as I love my Euro trip. Yeah. No, I think you're right. I think if we had a program like that, that was apolitical and was designed specifically to foster understanding between regions. And so people from Toronto go live and work in rural Alberta for six months, and then they spend six months in the BC Interior. I think, and that was multiplied over millions of kids over the course of decades.

I think that that would vastly transform this country in a positive way. I only learned how much people hated Toronto and Ontario when I went to university and met people who weren't from here. And I began to understand why they did that. You know, some of these views are understandable. I just want to bed and give your listeners a sense of like how, you know, what an uphill battle this is.

Um, I say this stuff because I think the ties that bind this country are pretty darn loose. Yeah. Um, I saw a video of a man being stabbed repeatedly in Vancouver, only to have someone videotape that. Another man continued to join his coffee. He bled out on the street. I see the election before last in Ontario, the lowest showing of voters in the history of the country. I'm looking at a historic decline in volunteers being described by people within that community. And then, you know, you see death to Canada being chanted at

our streets and evidence of our flag being burned. Like this does not paint a pretty picture. And we need to push back against this. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, the chance of death to Canada, I have, if it's me, if I'm the one in charge, all of those people are arrested. That is against the law. It is against the law and those laws need to be enforced. And I think we have to turn the page on this willingness to show how compassionate we are to and how tolerant we are to the intolerant.

Like I don't, that era has to end for this country to be the fullest expression of itself. I would just say that people who are defending the folks saying death to Canada, that there's some merit to that. The question of these people is like, okay, what's the next step that person is going to take to then kill Canada? You have no place in our society if you're saying this sort of stuff. Well, listen, Harrison Lohman, I want to thank you so much for putting this out there. I think it's an optimistic and bold vision.

And I think hopefully it'll find legs and it'll go beyond the page and into some sort of actual manifesting. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Have a great weekend. Thanks so much, Ben. You too.

I want to welcome back to the show, writer and academic Ira Wells. He wrote a piece in the walrus.ca about book banning in Canada. And every time I hear that, I wonder what the perspective is going to be. Is it going to be book banning? Because there's book banning, there are people on the left that want to ban books. There are people on the right that want to ban books.

I personally think the more information that is out there, the better. And I think I'm smart enough to understand which books I want to read, which ones I don't want to read. And so to discuss this, because Ira's got a, the title is Book Banning in Canada is Quiet, Systemic, and More Effective than Ever. Ira, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. So what do you mean? What, what, bring, give me some context here. What are we talking about? Yeah, sure. So I think when many of us hear about book banning, we're familiar with the stories that you might,

you know, you might have heard about in Florida or places in the US South where, and this is a serious issue where anything with like a gay character, a queer character, it's branded as LGBTQ indoctrination or as child porn and it's getting pulled from the shelves by these parents' rights organizations. They've got names like Moms for Liberty and No Left Turn and that's you know that's something we need to keep an eye on but it's also happening closer to home right so one of the stories that I tell it's actually adapted from a book called On Book Manning and one of the stories I tell is much closer to home is in Peel region which is Mississauga essentially where

in 2023 schools in that region liquidated up to 50% of the books in their libraries. They decided that they weren't affirming the identities of the children. They weren't up to the standards of equity. So they decided that anything that was published more than 15 years ago was right to be pulled. And then because they deemed this material... Hold on. You're saying that a school board took an action to get rid of

almost half the books in its library because they quote unquote didn't affirm the kids' identities? That's right. Okay. That's okay. Two quick facts about this. One is that they eventually settled on this 15-year window where they said that anything that was published more than 15 years ago is ripe for removal. And then the second thing then is that they said that because this material is harmful that they can't even be donated. It can't even be given to families

in need or jurisdictions where they could use this stuff. So they box it off and send it off for disposal. Oh, they could have just burnt them. Burning books seems right on brand for these people. This is insane. Where's the accountability at the school board level? Because this to me is so offensive. You know, I want my kids to grow up to be critical thinkers. And the only way they can be critical thinkers is if they exist in an arena where they will be pummeled by ideas and concepts that are foreign to them,

that make them uncomfortable, that push them to put forth better, stronger ideas and arguments. And that can't happen if the litmus test for the literature that they're reading is that they feel seen and they identify with the characters and they are not offended. This is terrible on every level. Well, Ben, what I find so interesting about this is that you've, you know, you've got the far right sort of evangelical version where they're trying to pull the, you know, pull the the LGBTQ books off the shelves. And then you've got the progressive version that we saw in Ontario, where they're pulling the quote unquote classics off the shelves. And in both cases, what the what the rationale is, is we need to save the children from harm. So they have the same rationale and they have the same solution, which is to pull these books from shelves and to censor and ban them.

But how are kids gonna learn about slavery if they don't have books that talked about slavery and that weren't written in the time of slaves? How are they gonna learn about difficult times in our history if we are afraid to teach them about the history that was written by the people at the time? Well, and so one of the the first students who kind of blew the whistle on this she was a student of of Japanese descent and she said I want to be able to learn about

Japanese internment in Canada if you're you know making it so that there's only the last 15 years of books on the shelves or or for example you're weeding and this is the word that they use weeding they weeded Anne Frank in the name of equity, which is this sort of mind blowing. What happened to this school board? Please tell me that we don't live in a world where this went without countenance. Well as far as I know, they issued a kind of non-committal, that they were ordered to stop. And they sort of said, well, maybe we'll stop as long as the books are doing all the things that we want them to do, and as long as we're sure that they are affirming the identities of

children and blah, blah, blah, blah. So I think it's just continuing. I don't think it will happen quite so out in the open next time, or it might not be quite so blatant. But the point is this, and it's just a dovetail on what you just said that both of these groups think that they are saving children from harm by pulling these books from the libraries but the point that I try to make in on book banning is that you're actually introducing new sources of harm, right? You're harming children by depriving them of information, by depriving them of narratives that might have enriched them, you're whitewashing history, you're You're harming children by depriving them of information, by depriving them of narratives

that might have enriched them. You're whitewashing history. You're teaching them that when they're confronted with something that's upsetting, that the solution is to ban it. And that's like a terrible thing to teach them. We've been railing against snowplow parents for years about how they, you know, we've been bubble wrapping kids by giving them participation medals. And to know that this is happening academically as well, like I said, in the one place where you want your kids

to learn to live in discomfort because it's out of that discomfort that better arguments and better ideas are formed. You have to challenge kids. You gotta put stuff in front of them that is difficult to swallow so that they can learn to take on more difficult things in the future. This is asinine.

This is dereliction of duty. And frankly, I struggle to understand how people ascended to a position of power in an arena where they're supposed to be teaching our kids and building better citizens. Yeah. And I look, I mean, I'm the anti censorship. You know, I wrote the book on this. I do. I understand the desire to have diverse libraries and I'm fully behind that, but that does not require censorship. It does not require book banning. And I think we also need to realize that the kids need exposure to otherness. Some kids read because they just want an imaginative escape. They don't need their identity affirmed 24-7. Some kids just want to see, they need that fantasy that's liberating for them.

So I think we need to listen to kids when they say they read for different reasons. But the point you made a second ago is actually pretty profound, right? Like, how do we know what truth is? How do we know what happened in history? Like, we have to be able to test our ideas against their opposites.

And your free speech is not just so that you can speak your mind, it's also so I can hear you. That's the foundation of our democracy, the foundation of liberalism. And it's really disorienting and frightening to see people giving up on that. I remember the very first moment I had what I believe to be an independent thought in high school. It was the first time I said, Oh my God, I just came up with something on my own. And now I want to test it against my teacher. And he and I went back and forth. And that began a lifelong love

of studying and learning about history. And that wouldn't have happened if I wasn't being challenged by ideas. And the fact that there's an entire school board that seems hell bent on creating these milk toast bubble wrapped kids who don't know what a difficult conversation is because we want them to be seen. I had no point in my life did I ever expect to be seen in the literature I was reading. It was nice if I did but it wasn't an expectation or a bar that had to be cleared before I could read the book. Yeah, we shouldn't we should not be encouraging children to, to see themselves as sort of fragile vessels that will be shattered if they encounter traumatic ideas, right? This is a really, really

demeaning idea to inculcate in children, children need to test their ideas against, against, you know, things that might challenge them. And this but this really then speaks to a form of social sort of coercion. Yeah, it's not just about it's not just about the books. It's about like the thinking and the thought control and the sort of social coercion. Ira, we're gonna leave it there. But the article is called Book Banning in Canada is quiet, systemic and more effective than ever. The author is Ira Wells, and you can find it on the walrus.ca. Thank you very much, my friend. Thanks for having me, business.

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