The Ben Mulroney Show - How Canadian universities can avoid the American dumpster fire of de-woking

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Guests and Topics: -New rules see province screening sex education resources before they hit classrooms with Guest: Demetrios Nicolaides, Alberta minister of Education and Childcare -How Canadian universities can avoid the American dumpster fire of de-woking with Guest: Christopher Dummitt, Professor of Canadian history at Trent University, Columnist for the National Post, host of the YouTube channel “Well, That Didn't Suck!” -BC Ferries sails off with China as NDP flies buy-local flag with Guest: Rob Shaw, B.C. legislative journalist who writes for Glacier Media and reports for CHEK-TV 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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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 gonna 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 that we just have a little bit more oversight. But is it, Minister, is it because you've heard stories that, like I just said, you know, in my experience here in the province of Ontario, there seems to have, 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, the 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 those top priorities, we can make 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. 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. 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 is there a place in the public school curriculum for discussions on same sex marriage and, you know, the the queer community? Absolutely. You know, 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 you know 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 in certain books that were deemed unacceptable were taken out of the schools.

Where are you on that file? We're, we're, 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 by the end of the month, early July, we should have 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, you know, 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 want to 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 the more honest conversations that we can have about these things, the better off we will be. So I appreciate your your time today I wish you the very best thanks so much for the agree 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 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 the, we saw it play out in terms of the protests 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 there is a lot, there's a lot at play here. So where

would you like to start? Well, I 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 Trump administration treating universities as essentially political enemies, but going after not just the politicized aspects of 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 what you're here to do. And I have to admit, I have to admit, Christopher, 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 thought to myself, a great thing would be 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'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 wanna just burn it all down? And I can understand the impulse of some people who might wanna do that, right? But if you actually wanna save higher education in the 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 politically homogenous 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 you're saying, how they are political. My own union has made statements on the Israeli conflict, which are just hyper-political and I've got no choice, but they can continue to pay union dues. And so it's a way of, 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, 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 going to 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 gonna 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 if I'd rather see Canadian universities or Canadian federal government, for example, you know, to take all our research funding and say, you know, all this focus

we're putting on certain kinds of diversity, we need to focus on political diversity up and down the system. And, and that will kind of that will what that will do is it will create viewpoint diversity within the institutions. And then they can fix themselves. You don't 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 I've, but Christopher, 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, we're still living 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 I wonder whether 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 did some, with some colleagues, some 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 is 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, I think the majority of professors

who don't want to be illiberal, but, 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 want to get back to 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. 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 a... As one of the prerequisites, yeah. And then the other thing is you have to be aware, like 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 non-discriminatory. They're basically asking candidates to go along with a particular radical politicized version of diversity, and they're making them hand in statements and then be assessed on getting a job as to whether you agree with this political belief system. It's absolutely astounding and that needs to end ASAP. Yeah, and I just 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 there was respect, and you tested your ideas against somebody else who felt equally passionate about their side, 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. I think that there there's a lot of liability on these college campuses. But Christopher Dummond, 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, I love the name of your YouTube channel. Oh, check it out. Thanks.

Okay, take care. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And Donald Trump has forced a paradigm shift across Canada where we are in a moment where we are patriotic, we are prideful, we want to build a one Canadian economy, we want to tear down interprovincial trade barriers, we want to buy Canadian, it's elbows up. And that works very well in theory. But if your goal as a provincial leader, a municipal leaders, a federal

leader is to get value for the taxpayer, what happens if the best deal doesn't come from a Canadian firm? What if the best deal comes from a strategic enemy like China or in the or sometimes like the United States? Well, in the case of what's happening in British Columbia, the rubber has met the road. The challenge is here. It's now being discussed. It's now being reported rather that BC ferries, a part of the BC government has signed a multi-billion dollar deal with a Chinese government firm to build four major new vessels. So to discuss this, we're going to talk to the guy who wrote the story himself, Rob Shaw. He's a BC legislative journalist who writes for Glacier Meteor and reports for CHEK TV. Rob, welcome to the show. Hi, Ben. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, this is a problem that is being encountered across the country, isn't it? If we're living in a world where we want to buy

local and Chris Eby, your, your, not Chris Eby, David Eby, your, your premier is, has been talking about buy local. How does he square this purchase with that initiative? Yeah, it's a very convenient thing for politicians these days to wrap themselves in the flag and, and to talk about growing the national economy. But sometimes the best deal, as you put it, comes from places you'd rather not deal with. And that is part of the problem that BC Ferries has faced out here. There were no Canadian bidders to build these four new ships. And it's a chicken and egg scenario that this province has been dealing with for decades.

An inability to create a shipbuilding industry and then no one around to build on ships when we need them for our ferry system. And that's come home to roost here. And so the only bidders really to compete with China were in Europe. BC Ferries is building some ships in Romania right now, previously Poland and Germany, and they felt they got a better deal in China and they're willing to take the political risk of announcing that so that's the debate over here right now. Yeah and look it's one thing if you buy ferries from the

United States it's another if you buy them from China that detained the you know two Canadians for spying in 2018 kept them under lock and key and terrible conditions for years you know we also have the tariffs that they've been levying on our canola industry. I mean, this is not a positive influence in Canada, and they've been a nuisance and a net negative in a lot of ways. And so to reward them with a multi-billion dollar contract at this time, I think it probably requires a little bit

of explanation from the EB government. And I get it, by the way. I understand, like, you want to go get value for the taxpayer. You don't want to waste money. You don't have to waste. It's true. I mean, what the EB government is saying out here is that they, what happened like 20 years ago is BC ferries landed itself in a big scandal trying to build local ships and the ships didn't do well and they had to be sold for pennies on the dollar yeah and so politicians promised to take their sticky little fingers off the ferry system they made it a private company with one shell shareholder which is the provincial government so what the politicians out here are saying is was well, it's a private company.

If they want to contract with China, go ahead. We're not going to do it as a provincial government. It's kind of like the one step removed false argument of it. But you're right, this is a state owned Chinese shipyard that is essentially a contract with the Chinese government at a time when they are, you know, helping to arm Russia in the fight against Ukraine at a time when our premier out here is talking about money laundering concerns involving Chinese organized crime,

talking about the precursors of fentanyl chemicals that are being imported in. He's talked about all sorts of concerns, foreign interference in elections. The other thing that the BC government out here has prided itself on is it spends more to build projects to also help grow trades. So it spends four to seven percent extra when it's building a bridge or a highway or a hospital so that it can help indigenous people and women advance in trades. And it views public money as having a social good when you spend it. And that's part of the problem they have in explaining this Chinese deal. Rob Shaw, do we know how much better the Chinese deal was versus the next competitor on the list?

According to BC Ferries, and they haven't put these numbers out officially, but it was around twice the price to go to Europe. So there's significant savings. They also feel that the shipyard in China is a better overall value. I think the worst job in the world coming up pretty soon is going to be the BC Ferries inspectors who get sent to China to inspect these ships and have to tell the Chinese government, well actually we're not going to pay you until you fix X, Y and Z.

They're going to be lucky if they're allowed to leave the country. Yeah, I mean we laugh but it's not out of the realm of the possible. No, no there's a warning from the federal government on their website that if you do business in China right now, the normal laws do not apply, that you could be detained for any reason. So that, you know, BC Ferries here is talking about better value, better deal, better shipyard, but I'm not sure. It depends on your definition of better country with human rights abuses and forced labor. Well, that's where I was going to go next. I mean, could it be that this is such a good deal

because forced labor was used in the manufacturing of these ferries? I mean, if you don't have to pay anybody to build these things, you're going to be able to produce it at a lower cost. Yeah, well, BC Ferry says they've investigated that and that's not the case. This shipyard has built ferries for Europe

and including one for the East Coast as well and that they say that they are not using that kind of the troublesome labor and that they'll have inspectors there you know on on the ground to make sure that nothing is done wrong but it's a that's one of the first questions is, are you undercutting your competition because of your awful conditions? And at the end of the day, there's probably something to that argument, but B.C. Ferry says they've been assured no.

And Rob, this to me is sort of symptomatic of the problem when you build policy or you put out a vision for the future that is based on emotion and it's based on an emotional reaction in a moment, right? This idea that it's elbows up and it's Canada first and Canada strong. That's not based on facts on the ground. That's based on an emotional reaction to something that happened to us. And it ignores the reality that China is British Columbia's second largest trading partner. And for

a while, we didn't talk about that. Because it was more convenient to pretend that, you know, we can artificially create a national economy out of emotion, as you put it. And so it's the reality of how we do business. And I guess that reality is kind of the shine is coming off the idea that you can buy local all the time and you don't have to deal with the consequences of it. And I think that's it. I mean, listen, there's nothing wrong with wanting to buy local and saying like, when possible, do it. It's the sort of the leveraging, the leveraging of that patriotism for political gain and then having to realize that situationally, it doesn't apply, then it's really not a policy.

Then all it was was an attempt to project strength and possibly gain votes, and that's pretty cynical. And we see some national polling from Angus Reed today that is talking about what they call the post Trump tariff tumble, where some premieres like David Eby have dropped seven points, because people have kind of got tired of being scared about the tariff issue. And they're going back to concerns. Why is my hospital er overwhelmed? Why are my streets in disorder from the

drug crisis? Right? Why can't I buy a home?" And you see David Eby drop seven points there. And so, yeah, at some point, that argument just kind of tilts back into reality. And perhaps that is the calculation from BC Ferries that there is also the idea that maybe we defrost relations with China. The Prime Minister spoke to the Chinese Premier last week. The Premier cited joint communique saying, let's try to get out from under the seafood tariffs that China has put on us. Perhaps that BC Ferries benefits from years of very construction when we actually have a better relationship with China by 2029 when these things arrive here in the province. So who knows there as well. All right, Rob Shaw.

We really appreciate you joining us on the show and wish you the best this week. Thank you so much for joining us. Okay. Take care. Are you ready for a life-changing opportunity? BC Cancer is actively hiring for all healthcare roles across all its regional centers in beautiful British Columbia. Join a dedicated team committed to ending cancer for good.

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