The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Members-Only Pod: Episode 26

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

This is a sample of the Munk Members-Only Podcast. The program provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. This edition of the Munk Member's only podcast explores three topics from the week that was: Canada celebrates its national birthday at moment when many Canadians are feeling decidedly unpatriotic – How was the tone of Canada Day different this year? What did we learn as a country from last twelve months of extraordinary events fueled by the pandemic?; Britain engages in gunboat diplomacy by sending a naval ship into contested waters in the Black Sea – Why are great power contesting control of the Black Sea? What are the risks of these types of events leading to an unintentional hostilities?; And Janice and Rudyard discuss this week's Munk Dialogue with Irshad Manji on how we can have productive conversations about difficult issues. To access the full length episode consider becoming a Munk Member. Membership is free. Simply log on to www.munkdebates.com/membership to register. Under your membership profile page you will find a link to listen to the full length editions of Munk Members Podcast. If you like what the Munk Debates is all about consider becoming a Supporting Member. For as little as $9.99 monthly you receive unlimited access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, monthly newsletter, ticketing privileges at our live and online events and a charitable tax receipt (for Canadian residents). To explore you Munk Membership options visit www.munkdebates.com/membership. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, Monk podcast listeners. The following is a sample of the Monk members-only podcast. To access the full-length edition of this episode and all of our regular Monk members-only podcasts, go to our website, www.W.Munk Debates.com and register for membership. Membership is free, and it's available for you right now at www.munkdebates.com. Hope you enjoy the program. Hello, Monk members. Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator. this, our weekly monk members-only podcast. This is the half-hour program where we dig into the big issues and ideas in the news the past week, provide you, hopefully, with some new analysis and

insights. As our guide, every week, we turn to Janice Gross Stein. She's the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs, an internationally acclaimed author and scholar, and she's all ours for the next half hour. Janice, great to be in dialogue with you today. Great to be here. with you, Richard, and of course, a day after Canada Day, that was like no other we've had in this country. Well, that's where I want to begin on this kind of post-Canada Day Friday edition of the Monk members' podcast. Talk about the year that was. Normally we do that around January 1st, the real new year, but this has been an important year from Canada. Maybe one of the most important ones in my lifetime. you might share that view too.

What do you reflect on after 12 months of the most kind of intense period of this pandemic pressing down on our country? What do we learn? What do we take away from this experience? If we look back at the whole year, the huge story was the pandemic and how Canadians across this country had their lives. literally shut down and changed as a result of it. When I look back at the ear, I am struck by how much we are 12 countries and three territories, but we are not a country in the way that we normally think about it. Because the provinces so shaped the way their residents experienced this pandemic.

the variation among the provinces, so huge and an almost impossible problem for the federal government to coordinate because health is a matter of provincial jurisdiction. And repeatedly, I ask myself over and over and over, are we a country or are we a federation of 15 provinces and territories that have a flag and a parliament and a parliament. Prime Minister, but that's about it, frankly. Great insight. I agree with that, Janice. You know, a couple of things that shocked me the last year was border control. So we had provinces repeating your, you know, charter rights, your fundamental rights of freedom of mobility on the basis of, you know, their determination of what public health controls they wanted in place.

and really not a word from the federal government on this. It does remind you that, you know, while our federal system helps Canada in many ways because we do have these strong regional identities and we all have to kind of figure out a way to live together, when these bigger crises come along, I think the question we have to ask ourselves, and there's some research to back this up is,

does federalism kill? Is federalism a number? net negative in a 21st century of bigger global challenges from climate to geopolitics to pandemics that are pressing down on nation states. And our federation is just more brittle, less capable of rising to those challenges. What do you think of that argument? I think there's a really important point there for Canadians to go to think hard about as we move forward, Roger, because the pandemic, believe it or not,

was relatively speaking far from the worst pandemic that we could have had. But it does give us a chance to think about next time. And the next time may not only be a pandemic. Climate change. You know, look at the intense heat that Western Canada and northwestern United States are going through, whether it's climate change or not. We have a lot more of it than we had a decade ago. Any kind of natural disaster,

so much of it is locally driven, locally determined. And that can be a strength, but it's not a strength when Nova Scotia puts up border controls that locks out New Brunswickers, which is what happened. Never mind all of Atlantic Canada being off limits to the rest of us, although it worked for Atlantic Canada. So border controls, buying vaccines out in the global market, buying PBE, you know, you need a national government to do that.

Provinces don't go out into the global market to buy the stuff that we need to manage a crisis. But it's a tough job for the federal government to buy everything and then say, okay, Roger, Premier Kensington Street, this is for you to distribute and you do it any way you want. and all I'll do is listen to you complain and wine about how I didn't get it done in a timely way, which is what the premiers did, frankly, all year long in this country. I don't think our structure was well designed to get us through this. I mean, some of the other big issues this year, obviously, that I've thought about it is mental illness and the extent to which the incredible isolation that so many people,

experience, especially what I hear from families with teens, younger children who are denied, in some cases in provinces such as Ontario, really months without socialization and the education, experience of their peers. I think that's going to be a major legacy. On a positive note, though, because we should talk about positive things too. I was really heart warmed in the last week to see the number of new small businesses that Canadians have created during the last year. There is a certain resiliency, a kind of entrepreneurial drive that kicks in a moment of adversity. So it's not that the cup is half empty, but maybe it's not half full either. You know, that's a very important story, the local response.

The local response, you know, the closer to the ground you were rugged, the better you did. And you see this with the small business. Believe it or not, believe it or not, this is an astonishing story. more restaurants opened across this country than close during the pandemic. They adapted on a dime. They delivered takeout food. They moved online. Yeah, they lost money, many of them,

and they're going to have to dig themselves out of a big hole. But the adaptability and the flexibility and the entrepreneurship that was across Canada as vulnerable sectors adopted was really impressive. We also have to talk, Rudyard, about shocking revelations that came of unmarked graves. Largely, we don't know yet because the forensics are not done, but clearly these graves are all adjacent to residential schools across this country. I think there's a moment of truth for Canadians. And we knew about abuse. We knew about really cruel and inhuman treatment,

meet it out to kids. But I don't think there's a parent across this country who when they heard that story that is breaking right now, didn't shudder and stop for a second and think, oh, my God, oh, my God, right? These could be children. that died prematurely as a result of the treatment they received. Or lack of the time of tuberculosis and other diseases that were kind of ravaging both indigenous

and non-indigenous populations. But I agree. There's something about the horror of it of just thinking about these young children, ill, dying, removed from their parents, and then being buried in these unmarked graves, you know, really, in a sense, what a powerful expression of their lack of worth to that society and to those institutions. So a real reckoning. My, you know, we just celebrated Canada. I guess, you know, I'm fully in support of a renewed focus on reconciliation. What I, what I regret a bit about is, is the subsequent conversation we've had around statues and, you know, canceling Canada Day. And what I feel is a kind of a

knee-jerk reaction. You know, I get it. It's an emotional moment. People kind of punching back and punching at national institutions and symbols. I just had a weird experience, though. Maybe you shared it too. This Canada Day, if I felt a bit like what maybe many Americans feel like, I felt the word Canada Day and supporting Canada Day had suddenly become a political act in a way that it had never been in this country in any previous, you know, July 1st. And to me, that had a kind of an American feel to it. Suddenly, if I said I was pro-Canada day, I was taking a political position in the same way that Americans, you know, say, yeah, raw, raw, USA, you know, we all know those chants at the Trump rallies. So it was just, I don't know, is it just me, Janice, or is it kind of something going on here?

I think there is something going on here, and I think you're absolutely right, that Canada Day was really a non-partisan kind of happy day party, and you had CBC and local bands and local parades and barbecues. And it was a day off from everything. That's really what it was. It was a day off from everything that would divide Canadians on a normal day, but you didn't do that on Canada Day. And there's no question.

This Canada day was politicized. That was unavoidable, given, frankly, the horror of what became so real, so personal to so many Canadians across the country. What was avoidable is this argument about whether you cancel it or not. I don't believe that indigenous communities want to cancel. They wanted as an opportunity to remember, to acknowledge, for the rest of the country to think hard about what happened in our history. And frankly, in my lifetime, Richard, there were residential schools. And yet I grew up in this country, studied Canadian history in high school and university. Was never taught about them.

Didn't know about them. So actually canceling it defeats the whole purpose. And I think that's the problem. Anytime people talk about canceling something or we give up the opportunity to learn anew, to think anew, and to reinvent it. So people who have candlelight vigils, frankly, were not canceling Canada or the day. They were saying, we're adding it here. there's a piece that you haven't paid attention to.

That's got to be part of what we do on Canada today. And it is a really important moment that we move beyond cancelling. And we think about what does reconciliation mean, but it doesn't mean canceling. It can't mean canceling. It's got to mean, how do we build this in as part of our history? What changes in our high school curriculums as a result of what we've learned this year? I mean, my final point in that is I endorse that, and I wish we'd extend that same sensibility to our discussion of, you know, statues.

Because we know that in the last couple of weeks, the statue of Egerton Ryerson was torn down in Toronto on Ryerson University campus. And right beside that statute, they had erected a plaque, I thought, quite sensibly, talking about his early involvement pre the residential school system as it was known as it was. established late in the 19th century, but he had been a early proponent of agricultural instruction for Aboriginal tribes and communities that he worked with, that he had learned their language, that they had given him an honorific of a, of a, you know, a legendary chief in their community near, near what is present-day Burlington. Anyway, all that history lost, statue torn down, you know, it's this bizarre erasure of the pass as if that's somehow going to make things better.

You've been listening to a sample of the Monk members-only podcast. To access the rest of the episode, consider becoming a member. Membership is free and available at www. Wunk Debates.com. Once you've joined as a member, go to your membership profile to access the rest of this episode and all of our Monk members podcast. Thanks for listening.