The Ben Mulroney Show - Best of the Week Part 4 - Eric Kam, Mercedes Stephenson, Christopher Dummitt

Episode Date: June 15, 2025

Best of the Week Part 4 - Eric Kam, Mercedes Stephenson, Christopher Dummitt Guests: Eric Kam, Mercedes Stephenson, Demetrios Nicolaides, Christopher Dummitt 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

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And look, the issues that face this country as it relates to our economy, growing it, is it shrinking? How do we make it better? They are myriad. And so to break down those questions from so many different angles, focusing on so many different stories, we're joined by a great friend of the show, Dr. Eric Kam, economics professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. Eric, thank you so much for joining us. Benedict, it's always a pleasure, but that sounds like a big task to break down.

Well, there's lots to get to. Donald Trump says he's got a deal with China done on rare earth minerals that helps them with their semiconductor business and helps them with all sorts of things. And as of right now, China seems to have a stranglehold on that market. And so the United States really does need this deal.

However, Canada has an opportunity to sort of horn in on that by developing the ring of fire and I got a wonder how you see those dynamics playing out. Well let's hope that a deal comes soon. I know that the party in Ottawa is very busy bragging about their elbows up but while they they're busy bragging, they don't realize that they're playing with fire. Forget the ring of fire. The United States, Ben, it's our largest trading partner. You're talking about over a trillion dollars a year going back and forth. You can't even pretend to untangle that economic integration and supply chain level of job creation based on that level of international trade,

energy security, stable market access, and we can go on and on forgetting even about the border. The reality is, is that while everybody can talk tough against Trump and the United States, a small open economy like Canada can't exist without a large open economy like the United States when its proximity is so close. I mean, you know that 90% of Canadians live within an hour and a half from the American

border. So all of this talk talking tough is wonderful, but it's meaningless at the end of the day. If we don't get a deal done and China, as Donald Trump once said, eats our lunch, the World Bank has released its data and it's signaling that the global economy is on track for its weakest decade since the 1960s. And the story that I'm reading is blaming a lot of this on Donald Trump's unnecessary trade war. However, he's only been in office for six months.

So I have to think that there are other, there are other factors that have contributed to the weakness of the global economy. Yeah. there are other factors that have contributed to the weakness of the global economy. Yeah, I'm getting a little tired of everybody pointing to Donald Trump and his tariffs. You know, it's getting ridiculous. That's one factor. Yeah, he's not helping things, but he didn't. He's not. He's not. There's no way in six months he could be leading to the weakest economy in 10 weeks, not over the course of 10 years. No, you're right. You're right. The reality is that our slumping economic growth is because of many, many things, tariffs being one of them. But when

you talk about things like our slowdown in productivity, the demographic headwinds in this country, thanks to immigration, the massively high levels of debt, both at the government level and at the personal level, household level, persistent inflation that now they're getting control, but it was out of control during COVID, energy supply shocks, declining investment, declining trade volume. The reality has been we could do hours of this topic. Our economy is stagnant. Our macro indicators are stagnant. And nobody seems to want to address the fact that all of our big problems are bigger than we can handle if all we think we

can do is lower interest rates because they don't do anything but stimulate short-term consumption. And none of our problems on the table are because of consumption. Well, I have to assume, Eric, that a lot of our problems would improve if the Canadian economy and the Canadian worker became more productive. I remember months ago, I guess it was last summer, when Pierre Pollyet was riding very high in the polls, he put out a video on Twitter, which was seen over a million times,

demonstrating that upon the election of Justin Trudeau, the Canadian economy decoupled itself from the American economy, where we used to keep pace with them on productivity, and all of a sudden a chasm grew and became increasingly wide over the course of the 10 years under Justin Trudeau. Now the CEO of CIBC, Victor Dodig,

was at a conference hosted by the Globe and Mail where he says that Canada needs to be on a wartime footing to attack that problem of productivity. Well, and he's exactly right. The reality is that this country is woeful in its recent record in things like technology and innovation. We don't invest in automation. We're not investing in AI or modern machinery. Research and development just isn't happening right now. We should be promoting digital transformation across sectors. And we're not. And by the way, again, where Kearney promised things like improved access to quality education, vocational training, retraining for people that have had sectoral shifts in their jobs.

And I haven't seen any of it then. So to be fair, he's been there six weeks. Like, yeah. And he has, he's had a lot of fun. Yeah. No, I get it. Listen, you know, listen, you know, I'm critical. You know, I'm critical. I, I, you know, I'm critical, but there's only so much a government can do

in a 24 hour period. And, and what I've been reporting on, on this show is he's been busy. I completely agree that this is something that needs to be tackled, but I am going to give him a little more time on that file. Well, I'm glad that you think he's busy. I'm glad that he has things that are keeping him occupied, but I think there should be nothing more occupying for the leader of this nation than our infrastructure and our business efficiency are so recessed and so heading downward

that our productivity level is off the scale. We are no matter what number you put after and our business efficiency are so recessed, they're so heading downward, that our productivity level is off the scale. We are, no matter what number you put after, G-BEN, G7, G20, I don't care, we are last in productivity growth. That means we're last in supply side growth and last in economic growth. This is the same party, nine and a half years.

It's time to put up or shut up. Well, Eric, I will say one thing. I have been surprised, given what we know about how if Canada could finally stop making pronouncements about AI and actually start taking a lead on investing in AI and incorporating it into all aspects, all sectors of the economy, then things would change rather quickly. And we have for for the very first time, a federal minister of artificial intelligence in Evan Solomon. And to be fair, I haven't heard a lot from him yet. So it may be time for him.

And he's a communicator like no other, given his time in media. You would think that, given what you just said about AI, maybe it's time for the government to show us what they're doing on that front by putting him front and center. Well, just another minister that has nothing to say. I think he's an artificial minister with an artificial portfolio, to be honest with you. And you know, it's incredible, Ben, that this AI was effectively started by Jeffrey Hinton at the University of Toronto.

And yet we've managed to parlay that into nothing other than giving that technology to the rest of the world to run with it. And isn't that what Canada does best? It takes what it has, even in our ground, and says, sorry, we're not open for business right now. We'll be a buyer instead of a seller. It makes my head spin. Well, I hate to end on another sort of downer, but you gotta take the world as it is, not as you want it to be. And the numbers out of Ontario housing starts are dismal. The fact that we're at our lowest level of housing starts in the first quarter of this year, since 2009. Why can't we get this right?

This country has bungled this for a long time and they seem to not understand what the key drivers are of the decline. We have incredibly high construction costs when it comes to labor and materials. We have crazy affordability issues. I said that housing affordability is one of the top three problems in this country, but they keep lowering rates and making it worse. Again, you can look at the negativity of trade, but I don't think it affects this that much, but I do think you have to go back to supply chain delays

and global uncertainty that started in the pandemic and continue today. And beside the fact, let's go back to what we said about where Canadians want to live. I hear people saying there's lots of land in Canada, but you know, Ben, are you going to start going on a housing building? Mode three four hours away from urban centers. How are people expected to get to work every day? We are caught between high demand for housing and low supply of housing and really low

drivers when it comes to assisting the housing industry and our housing industry as I Did a lecture last week on this topic and they asked is the housing crisis in Canada going to get better? And my answer was no, not for a very long time. So when you say not for a very long time, what do you mean? Like, are we talking two years, three years, five years? No, 10 or 15 years, we just don't have the availability of land. I keep hearing people say, you know, they looked at this new Carney had a number. He said, well, we're going to push housing starts to I forget the exact number, but it was like 10 or 20 houses less than the previous prime minister said. And we weren't a third

from that number. So they're dreaming in technicolor about all these new builds on land that doesn't exist. All right, Eric Kamel, maybe next week, what we'll do is we'll find some happy stories. We'll find some there's got to be some happy economic news out out there and we'll wade into those waters with you. But in the meantime, have a great week my friend. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show and I want to thank you for joining us wherever we may find you. You may be listening to us on the radio, on the Chorus Radio Network, or on a streaming app like the iHeart Radio streaming app,

or possibly in podcast form. You can find us on your favorite podcast platform and now you can find us on YouTube. So we say thank you and we really appreciate your time. We appreciate your input. We appreciate your passion and we appreciate you helping us build the Ben Mulroney show each and every day. Our new Minister of Public Safety, Gary Anandasangari is not having a great few weeks. A few weeks ago, he was grilled in committee over his depth of knowledge or rather lack of depth of knowledge on a series of questions that should be standard knowledge for somebody in his capacity. He

weathered that storm. And now there is news by Mercedes Stevenson, who is the Global News Ottawa bureau chief, also the host of the network's flagship National Political Affairs program, the West Block, that he's had to recuse himself from files on two terrorist groups. So to discuss this, please welcome to the show for the very first time and hopefully not the last, Mercedes Stevenson. Mercedes, thank you for joining us. Hey, Ben. Thanks so much for having me. Okay, so what have you learned about our public safety minister and why he's had to recuse himself. So we started digging into this file about three or four weeks

ago, when we were aware of some of the things that the minister had said or done in the past, including if you remember the MV Sunsea or the ocean lady, two ships of illegal migrants that arrived on Canada's west coast way back in 2009, 2010. Those ships had connections to the Tamil Tigers, which is a listed terrorist group in Canada. And the minister at the time was a lawyer who represented and advised some of those on the ship.

And he had argued that everyone on the ship should be entitled to be able to make a refugee claim and stay in Canada, even if they had connections to the Tamil Tigers. So that had been on our radar screen sort of throughout his political career. And so when he became the public safety minister, we started to wonder, is there potentially an issue here with the Tamil Tigers? And we started asking questions, we pushed for weeks. We finally got an answer last week saying that the minister was not involved in anything to do with the Tamil community. And we thought that's odd phrasing, the Tamil community. Like that's a very big group of people.

Yeah, that's quite broad. And I've never heard of a minister who can't engage with their own community before. Yeah. But they insisted that was it. We kept pushing and we got a statement this week revealing it's not the Tamil community. It's a listed terrorist organization, the Tamil Tigers, based out of Sri Lanka and their Canadian front group, which is also a listed terrorist organization. And so based on that, we went, wow, we have a public safety minister who can't deal with two listed terror organizations. And we don't know why. We don't know if it's a perceived conflict of interest, if there is a real conflict of interest. We do know some of his past work

around the one group in particular, but we're not able to say if that's the reason why. And the minister has not answered our many repeat questions as to why this screen is in place. So it's the first time since I've been in Ottawa, I've ever seen anything like this

with a public safety minister. And it's raising a lot of questions. And also so far, the prime minister's office has been ignoring us for weeks. Well, we continually ask why this person was appointed to the public safety profile. If you knew that they might have a perceived or conflict of interest, whichever one it is,

with two terror verbs in Canada. Well, and not for nothing, but a perceived conflict is as bad as an actual conflict. If people don't believe that something is right, it doesn't matter if it is, they have to have a belief that the person is on solid ground. And so that is what it is. But, you know, given the fact that we are engaged in really robust negotiations with Americans who are skeptical about how serious we are about public safety, about the border, about issues that matter to them, I have no doubt that they're keeping an eye

on something like this. And the rubber's gonna meet the road at some point. Yeah, and then the other issue around Mr. Anandasangari is that he had been a big proponent of those who came to Canada and crossed the border, claimed refugee status by just showing up. So there's a bit of a credibility issue there, which I asked him about actually in a press conference last week.

I said, do you think you have a credibility issue when you argue that people that did that should be able to stay here legitimately? And you know what? That is a legitimate argument to make. Lots of people people hold that belief but the issue becomes when you're now the public safety minister saying i'm going to close the borders to anybody who's trying to come here and just land on our soil and claim it like it's there's a pretty clear hypocrisy there yeah and he essentially defended his record and said that he has a long history of working with with migrants and refugees but he did not sort of find a way to explain how that makes what he

is saying and doing now less hypocritical from his previous beliefs I was told by somebody very close to him he was shocked when he got the public safety file he had not asked for it he did not know what was in this legislation that was coming yeah and so now he's just kind of out there defending it in this very awkward position. Well, you know, when you say that, it makes more sense as to what I saw in committee last week when the Conservatives were grilling him over some pretty basic information that any public safety minister should have and knowledge that that minister should have and the fact

that he didn't have it. Now that makes more sense that he was not expecting this file and probably didn't want it. So congratulations on that scoop. I know you're going to keep the pressure on so that we as Canadians get the answers we deserve. But you actually, I mean, it's a good week when you get a scoop like that. You've got a second one, and this I think is going to be a really surprising, and the

knock-on effects of your reporting will be felt throughout the G7 summit next week, that Indian agents had Jagmeet Singh under close surveillance. What does, I mean, break this down, what does this mean? Yeah, so this is another story that, uh, Stu Bell, my colleague and I started digging on. I got a tip from a national security source that this threat had now abated, so it was sort of safe to talk about it, right? They don't want to talk about an active threat on someone because it could get them or their family killed. But I was told that Jagmeet Singh was put under 24 seven

extraordinary police protection. We're not talking like one police officer. We're talking like tactical teams level police protection and airport level security to get into his home. Um, and that this meant there was some sort of very serious threat of his life, which he was notified of. He was not told who or what it was. What we have been able to find out since that time is that the Canadian government

discovered Mr Singh was being surveilled by somebody who had acted as an agent of India in the past. This level of surveillance was very detailed. We are not talking like showed up at public events and watched him we're talking his day-to-day activities and his schedule and part of why that's concerning is it reflects the pattern that we saw of another Canadian who was assassinated in BC in 2023 there was a tracker placed on that

individual's car they started looking at his daily activities. And we also learned that this person who was having him tracked is connected to organized crime and a particular organized crime group that the Indian government has used in the past to carry out violence. Well, Mercedes, I mean, the implications for this as Modi has been invited by our prime minister to the G7,

already before this reporting, this was a controversial pick and a controversial choice by our prime minister. And if you're saying that our government, it was aware that there could be ties between the Modi government and this threat to somebody who was running in the last federal election, I think it is incumbent upon the government

to provide us far more answers than we've gotten as to why he's coming, what the subject matter is going to be that is discussed, and why despite this story that you've given us, he's still being invited as a guest of honor. And there's a lot of frustration in the national security community around thesis of the RCMP that he has been invited And you know there's a lot of frustration in the national security community around

the RCMP that he has been invited because the government of India is still not cooperating in that investigation into the murder in BC into a number of other alleged violent crimes or assassination attempts. And now it elevates it to another level obviously what's happening to anyone is terrible but the suggestions about potential foreign interference and the questions that it raises, when we're talking about a federal party leader in Canada, it's sort of a very different level of discussion at this point. Oh, absolutely.

And my heart goes out to Jagmeet Singh, his entire family. Nobody should live with that cloud, that threat over them. I'm very glad to see that he's gotten to the other side of it in safety. And Mercedes Stevenson, I want to thank you for joining us on The Ben Mulroney Show. And thank you for this incredible reporting on two fronts. We really do appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me, Ben. Wow, I really do hope that the press keeps the pressure on on both of those two stories, vital to us as we move forward with this new government, what it's gonna look like, what their priorities are,

what their values are. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. If you are a parent like me with your kids in a public school system somewhere in this country, then you may be wrestling with the uncomfortable feeling that school boards that should be focused on supporting teachers and educating kids are straying from their core mission and are taking on increasingly political and wedge issue

policies that have nothing to do with what I just described. And I know for a fact, speaking as somebody living in the City of Toronto, I'm feeling that about the Toronto District School Board. And we don't have to delve into that right now, but just know that increasingly around this country, there's a sense that there's a mission that's been adopted in a lot of school boards that hasn't been discussed and it hasn't been vetted by parents. And we are feeling like we are losing a little bit of control over what's happening to our kids in those schools.

Well, something similar is happening in the province of Alberta, where new rules are going to see the province itself screening sex education resources before they hit classrooms. Obviously, with something like that, there will be pushback. So to discuss this in depth, we're joined by Demetrios Nikolaidis, the Minister of Education and Child Care in Alberta. Minister, welcome back to the show.

Thank you so much for having me back. So tell me what changed in the province that had you and your government say, we have to do something different. We have to take charge. We have to inject ourselves into this conversation. Well we've we heard a lot of questions and complaints from parents and other individuals who just want to have a greater understanding of what's being presented to kids and who has the final check when it comes to third party presenters, what kind of material are

they bringing into schools and you know there's been a number of questionable topics or material that's been presented and shown and we received a lot of different communication from parents from across the province and so we thought that we would need to take a closer look at the rules that we have and make sure that we are just providing a little bit more oversight when it comes to sensitive topics and subjects such as human reproduction, sexual health, sex education, gender identity, and human sexuality. So for those specific areas, we will be reviewing the credentials of presenters, the material that they intend to use and making sure we

just have a little bit more oversight. Is it because you have heard stories that, like I just said, in my experience here in the province of Ontario, there seems to be a mission, mission creep, if you will, inside the Toronto district school board, for example, doing things that they didn't use to do and taking positions that they didn't use to do and taking positions there seems to be a mission, mission creep, if you will, inside the Toronto District School Board, for example,

doing things that they didn't used to do and taking positions that they didn't used to take. And parents are saying, wait, well, hold on a second. My kid is not, test scores are not going up. So maybe you focus on that first before you start doing these other things. Are you hearing anecdotally from parents that teachers or school boards are taking liberties

with the curriculum that they didn't used to take? I do hear a lot of that concern from parents, you know, on a number of different subjects and topics. I do hear that concern from parents quite regularly. They're concerned that maybe some school divisions are focusing a little bit more on social issues rather than on academic matters and issues. So I do regularly hear that concern from parents. And we, you know, I know our school divisions and our teachers and other staff put a lot of work and effort into making sure our kids have the very best. And I think if we can just make sure that we're focused on those top priorities, we

can make sure our kids excel. Are you looking to sort of level set with these school boards to ensure that, you know, you can eventually move out of this file and let them do what they need to do? Is it about sort of reestablishing ground rules with them saying, listen, let's get back to what you used to do, because it seems like what you're doing now, you've taken on more than what we expected or anticipated. Yeah, you know, I'm not a big fan of government being too involved in, you know, operational level details. I don't think that that's very effective when you have government trying to run things.

But so I think that government has an important role to play when it comes to oversight, when it comes to making sure that priorities are aligned and of course set the general policy direction. That's the whole reason that we elect governments is to set the direction. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm hoping that we can just have some clearer rules, clearer direction, new standards,

and then of course have our school boards operate within those parameters. So what do you say that obviously there is pushback and pushback from what I would say would be sort of predictable sources. You've got advocates from the LGBTQ community saying this is a conservative government coming in and imposing their value set writ large across the school system, denying and possibly dehumanizing and excluding members of a community that they don't necessarily align with. What do you say to that? Yeah, I would say that, you know,

it has nothing to do with that. So is there a place in the public school curriculum for discussions on same-sex marriage and the queer community? Absolutely. We have a very robust sex education curriculum that explores these different topics and works to give students a comprehensive understanding

of these issues and questions and topics. And that's done through the sex education curriculum. So I'm very confident that our curriculum helps to address and approach these issues in the right ways. We have legislation that permits the establishment of gay straight alliances in schools and that cannot be interfered with. There's a legal requirement that they be established if requested by students. So we again just want to make sure that when it comes to third party presenters, we understand exactly who they are, what kind of credentials do they have to be able to come into a school

and speak about gender identity or human reproduction or whatever it is. And that we've had a chance to look at the material that they plan to hand out to students or make available to students and make sure that it's appropriate for the age of students that they'll be talking to. Minister, the last time we spoke was a few weeks ago when the controversy over certain types of books in school libraries reared its head, and your government was taking a leadership role on making sure that age-appropriate material was

only available to the right kids, and certain books that were deemed unacceptable were taken out of the schools. Where are you on that file? We're moving ahead. I've asked some of our school boards for a little bit more information as to how some of these books may have ended up in their libraries, just to give me an overview of some of their current processes so we can get a better understanding. We had a survey open to the public, parents, teachers, and a wider audience. We received a significant number of responses. So my team is working to go through the data and analyze the results and present that to me, which I'll very soon make available publicly. And within by the end of the month, early July, we should have new new standards in

place for the upcoming school year. Have you been able to facilitate conversation with those who may have pushed back or disapproved of your decision? Has there been a dialogue there? Because I'm a firm believer that the best way to get to a place where more people can agree is having those conversations. Have you been having conversations with people on the other side of the fence? I haven't been having direct conversations, but my door is open. So if there's there's anyone who wants to reach out, I know a couple of organizations,

the Canadian Libraries Association, for example, has reached out and they wanted to chat. And I think we're meeting next week here. So happy to connect. I have been having a lot of conversations through media, a lot of different interviews. I was on a national radio show on Sunday. So certainly trying to make myself available to talk with anyone who has any questions.

Well, Minister, I wanna thank you for joining us and giving us the update from Alberta on the education file. There are very few issues as important as the education of our young people in this country. And like I said, the more honest conversations that we can have about these things, the better off we will be.

So I appreciate your time today. I wish you the very best. Thanks so much, Fili, all the best. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us. All right, here's my take. North America has been asleep at the switch for a very long time and while we slept, our institutions of higher learning were co-opted and turned into a

hotbed of, I don't know, programming our youth to adopt militant left-leaning perspectives on the world and the result of which we saw explode across college campuses in North America after October 7th, 2023. Here to discuss exactly what's happened on our campuses and how we in Canada can learn lessons from what's going on south of the border. We're joined by Christopher Dummett, professor of Canadian history at Trent University and a columnist for the National Post, as well as the host of a YouTube channel with the best name I've heard all week.

Well, that didn't suck. Welcome Christopher, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me on the show. So yeah, listen, there are so many threads to pull out as to what ails sort of our universities and college campuses across North America. We saw it play out in Congress with the testimony of the university presidents who could not say,

who could not come to the defense of their Jewish students. We see it, we saw it play out in terms of the protest that we could not get under control. We see it now with the class action lawsuit that's being pursued in Canada against McGill University on behalf of Jewish students who felt that they weren't safe. And so, yeah, there is a lot at play here. So where would you like to start?

Well, I guess you put a good list of all those things there. I think I'd start by saying, we guess you've got you put a good list of all those things there. I think I'd start by saying we should look at the United States and think that's not where we want to go. You know, because what you have is the you know, the Trump administration treating universities as essentially political enemies and but going after not just the politicized aspects of universities, but really the whole, you know, the whole funding structure. And, and as much as that seems like a terrible idea, if you like universities, but really the whole funding structure. And as much as that seems like a terrible idea, if you like universities, you can understand it in part

because the universities or large chunks of them have, as you said, presented themselves as kind of political activists. So- And I have to admit, I have to admit Christopher, like that is sort of where my position is. When I watched what was happening south of the border, I started getting very upset on behalf of the Jewish students,

on behalf of just students who just wanted to get by and get an education as well. You didn't have to be Jewish to feel that your university wasn't doing what you signed up, what you were paying them good money to do, which was give you an education. And I had, I thought to myself, a great thing would be, you know, anybody who felt

that they had given their money to their alma mater, sometimes to the tune of millions of dollars, I thought they could make a case at suing the university for misuse of funds. I didn't give you that money to turn an entire generation to anti-Semites. I want my money back with interest. So that was a, I took a very aggressive position.

So I just wanted you to know where my head was at. And I get, and I'm quite sympathetic personally to that decision. It's a matter of how you then save the universities themselves. I mean, there's the question, do you want to just burn it all down? And I can understand the impulse of some people who might want to do that, right? But if you actually want to save higher education in the U. US, but more importantly in Canada, what do you do? And I think what's so amazing is you have to realize what happens when institutions become, you know, politically homogeneous and the way in which that shapes people's actions and the way in which they don't even think

about the kinds of things we're saying, how they are political. You know, my own union has made statements on the Israeli conflict, which are just, you know, hyper political and I've got no choice, but they can continue to pay union dues. And so it's a wave. Can we in Canada figure out a way to kind of broaden viewpoint diversity and in one hand, and then also make the politicized normal, right? Make, make the decisions that universities are making all the time

that are very political, but many in the university don't see as political. Can we grow that awareness ahead of time before we lead to the situation that we have in the United States? Well, Christopher, could you make the argument that maybe what needs to happen is an example needs to be set with one university

so that the other ones can then self-regulate? In other words, like, all right, we're gonna hit hit you really, we're going to hit this one university hard with a hammer, and we're going to break it, and it'll get rebuilt eventually. It's Harvard, right? It's got more money than they know what to do with. But we're going to break that and strike fear into the other universities that have been stubborn and stagnant and refusing to acknowledge the ills that they have allowed

to propagate within their halls and within their academia and within their student body. That's definitely what's happening in the United States. We're definitely going after Harvard to do that. I would rather see Canadian universities or Canadian federal government, for example, to take all our research funding and say, all this focus we're putting on certain kinds of diversity,

we need to focus on political diversity up and down the system. And that will kind of that will what that will do is it will create the viewpoint diversity within the institutions. And then they can fix themselves. You know, really, you don't really want a, you know, a federal government, a provincial government hammering down on on universities, which, which should ideally be able to regulate themselves, although I agree at the moment

they're not doing a very good job of it. But Christopher, to even get a university that has been so militant and so politicized, to even consider changing the language that they use. I mean, this, I mean, we're still living in a world of, identity politics is alive and well in a world of identity politics is alive and well on a lot of college campuses where there are certain jobs that are only

open to queer First Nations and so on. And white people need not apply. I mean, to get them to see that that in and of itself poses a challenge is like trying to turn the Titanic in the face of the iceberg. And and and I just I wonder whether you know it's it's it's naive of us to assume that they will be able to self-regulate given the echo chamber that they've been in for so long. Yeah I agree I think there needs some external pressure. I mean I mean I did some with some colleagues

and surveys of professors a few years ago. And we found that actually the illiberal progressives, they're not the majority. They're about a third of professors. And then there's another big chunk, which was sort of like on the center left and they're open and they get swayed. And so what we have to do is focus on the, I think the majority of professors who don't want to be illiberal, but need some pressure to draw them back in the other direction. Yeah, I think a lot of pressure does need to be put on them because again, they're able

to hold these mutually contradictory ideas in their head. On one hand, they say silence is violence and words are violence and words make people feel unsafe. And on the other hand, they're more than willing to allow a certain type of person to throw out some of the most violent rhetoric around, and that's free speech. And I just don't see them, and these are well-educated people.

And without that external pressure, I don't see them changing their minds. Unless it hits them where it hurts, which is the bottom line of the university, I don't see them changing their ways. But I wanna get back to what you were saying. Talk to me about the what you were saying. Talk to me about the thrust of your argument.

How do we avoid the dumpster fire of de-woking in Canada? The dumpster fire of de-woking. Well, I think there's different ways you could do it. You could hit them in the pocketbook and sort of say, you've got to take viewpoint diversity seriously. So you're hiring to meet these diversity quotas. You have to have political viewpoint as one of the prerequisites. And then the other thing is you have to be aware, you know, you can look at job ads right

now. It's pretty common in universities to put job ads and require candidates to put diversity statements, which aren't really what, you know, many people might think of diversity statements of being n discriminatory. They're basically asking candidates to go along with a particular radical politicized version of diversity, and they're making them a hand in statements and then be assessed on getting a job as to whether you you agree with this political belief system. It's absolutely astounding. And that needs to end ASAP. Yeah, and I just I keep coming back to it

that unless somebody on the outside forces them. And look, Donald Trump is the agent of that in the United States. He is, and he's probably the wrong guy to do it, but he's not necessarily wrong in the outcome that he wants, I think, which is what you just said. I mean, I remember a time where you'd go to university, it would be the violent collision of ideas, but just ideas, right? And it was, there was respect and you know,

you tested your ideas against somebody else who felt equally passionate about their side. And the best argument won. And that is not what's happening. And if we could get back to that, then, then we get back to a place where everybody feels safe on campus because your opinions are not, do not determine whether or not you are a danger to somebody else or not Until we get back to that place The I think that there there's a lot of liability on these college campuses, but Christopher dumb dumb it I want to thank you very much for joining us It's a great article and even better conversation that we've had today, and I wish you the very best also

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