The Paikin Podcast - Carol Off: Canadian Patriotism, Sovereignty, and Moving Beyond America’s Shadow

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

Carol Off joins Steve to discuss her book, True Patriot Love: Reporting from the Frontlines of Canadian Sovereignty, how Canada has become a beacon for liberal democracy, the rising threat to our sovereignty, how we can find our own way beyond American dependence, and the free trade debate of the 1980s.They also discuss her childhood, Pierre Trudeau's decision to move ahead with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms without Quebec's signature, the Meech Lake Accord, the CBC's role in Canadian identity, criticisms of left-wing bias at the CBC, and her experiences reporting in Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, and Afghanistan.  Support us: patreon.com/thepaikinpodcast Follow The Paikin Podcast: YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/@ThePaikinPodcastSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/1OhwznCIUEA11lZGcNIM4h?si=b5d73bc7c3a041b7X: x.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKY: bsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.social Email us at: [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi, everybody. Steve Paken here. I'm sure almost everybody watching or listening to this knows Carol Off. Host of As It Happens on CBC Radio for a decade and a half, author of five books. And now with a new one out, which tracks her own life story along a kind of parallel track with Canada's own history, so much of which she has, of course, reported on herself. Carol Off, one-on-one, coming right up on the Paken podcast. I am delighted to welcome to our little venture here, Carol Off, the author of her latest book called True Patriot Love, Reporting from the Front Lines of Canadian Sovereignty.

And Carol, it's great to see you again. Where do we get you from today? Hello, Stephen. How are you? I'm marvelous. You in Toronto? I'm in Toronto. I'm at home. Yes, soon to be on the road with this book, but yeah, I'm here for now. That's a good thing. Publicity tours are rare these days, so if you're getting one, good for you.

I know. I want to start with what is arguably the biggest and saddest story in our country these days, and that is the appalling state of our relationship with the United States in general, and in particular with the current president of the United States. And to get us started, I'm going to read this from your book here. You write, Americans produce much of the best and the worst of everything, journalism, movies, even politicians. They suck all the air out of any room they occupy.

We often hate them, but we love their stuff. We admire many of them, but we don't want to be them. We talk about them, even as we rarely come up in their conversations. And when we do, it's usually not for our benefit. True words were never spoken. How are you personally? Let's start with this. How are you personally navigating your relationship with the United States these days?

I'm trying to see Americans as individuals. We can hear from them, people like Sarah Cox Richardson, whom I read. I was just recently doing an interview on stage with an author, American author, Jodi Pico, who her first thing she said when we began, she said, I just want to start saying, I'm sorry, we're all sorry. And so we hear that so much from Americans. But again, I also hear from Americans who say, look, you guys have to grow a thicker skin. He's just trolling you.

I don't take it so seriously. And I say, well, don't take it seriously. If you were told that you were going to be possibly invaded, that you were going to be taken over, you would just say, oh, that's just Donald talking. It's not that. We know that there are very deep histories to this. There's very deep channels that come into this moment. And this is just the most bald-faced and cruel way to do it.

But we've seen, we've been in this movie before, haven't we? How about travel to the U.S.? Have you cut down or cut out or what's your attitude to that? Cut out completely. You haven't gone? No. Not since when? Not since before this began.

I guess probably even COVID. I wasn't traveling. But no, definitely not since then. I mean, I didn't have a reason to go to the States until, but even in the recent time since the past two years. In fact, past year, I have just decided not to go at all. Okay, let's turn the magnifying glass around and look at us for a second, because you say Canada has not just a chance, but also an obligation to be a beacon of civil society and liberal

democracy in North America. And I presume you say that because our friends to the South are not being that right now. Why do you think we have this obligation to do that? Because we are a civic democracy. We are liberal democracy. and we all have a role to play in pulling our system of value, system of politics back from the brink. And I don't just think about the United States when I say that what we've seen in Europe, but we've seen recently in elections in Germany. We see an erosion of some really key values of constitutional democracies like our own.

And Canada is holding the line. And it's one of the few countries right now that is. That's why we're having this enormous. reaction from around the world of Go Canada, just recently reading a blog from a Brit who said, he said, I would kill to be a Canadian because they're seeing us stand up to what's going on in the States, not just to be standing up to the bully in the playground, but to stand up for values, stand up for things that matter to us and to them. And that's why I conclude that section by saying that when they come to their senses in the United States,

we can be there to remind them of their former selves. And I think that's a role that we're going to end up playing. Well, I confess, I did enjoy your book a great deal, which is why I'm going to throw yet another quote out here, because you had so many memorable things to say in it, and to amplify on what you just said, here's another quote. Something has happened in Canada that I haven't seen before you write, an utter rejection of that unhealthy dependence, a will to nationhood from a generation that wants to light its own flame, rather than be moths drawn to the American one.

I'm seeing an energy and self-assurance that was present only as a sketch, a vague outline in 1985. Keep going. What are you seeing, Carol? I would even finish that by saying that we can go back even earlier than that. I was just recently talking to Margaret Atwood, who was saying that she remembers this poll that came out in the 1960s where people, Canadians were asked, do you see key differences? Is Canada, the United States, are they different countries? And most people said, no, they're very similar. And then the next question was, do you want Canada to join the United States? And the answer was overwhelmingly, no.

So what there was in the 1960s, 70s, even 80s, was the 70s, was the 70s. that we didn't want to be Americans. We didn't want to join them, but we had no sense of who we were. What I have seen in the past year is this suddenly all the things that I have watched over the decades have coalesced into this sense of, yeah, now I get it. Now I know who we are. It takes a crisis often to do that, doesn't it? To really come to understand what matters, who we are and where we stand.

And I've seen that through, in all the iterations of this. moment through the free trade negotiations in 1980s, the moments of cultural nationalism. I saw it in the flag debates when I was very young. I've seen it over the generations of going to war, going into peacekeeping with the Americans at our side. And again, always the sense of, yeah, I don't really, I don't want to be them, but I don't know who we are. And that is what's fundamentally changed. We are very, very, we're becoming who we are and we have a certainty about that and why it matters. Now I want to throw a bit of a wild card at you here because there are plenty of people in our country still who do not agree with you. And I wonder whether you

take into account the fact that maybe a quarter of Canadians, maybe it's 20%, but it might be a quarter of Canadians, really don't like what this country turned into after a decade of Justin Trudeau was prime minister and many of them would be all too happy to join the United States. What do you say to them? I would have a lot of questions for them. about what it is you see the country is about, what is the Canada you belong to? If it's a Canada that is, would fit into the present United States,

not just any iteration of it, but the one we're now saying, if that's the Canada, you see, what is it that you value about Canada? Is it its constitution? Clearly not. Is it its rule of law? Is it, is its diversity?

Is it, it's immigration? Is it multiculturalism? Is it, it's bilingual? is it's in relationship with indigenous people, all of those things would probably evaporate if we were to join the United States at this particular time. And so I have to say, what is the country that you would like us to be? And that's the very important distinction I make in the book between patriotism and nationalism. There is a movement of nationalism, of ethnic nationalism in the United States that we don't share.

And I look to those 80% of Canadians who would probably join me in this and that we believe in being patriotic. We believe in a love of country that is based on an idea and not on an identity. And that's the key difference. So I would only have questions for them to try and understand what it is that they want Canada to be. And I would say to them that's not the Canada that I want. Well, let me follow up because I think the 20% would say, you don't love for freedom enough? You might like government intervention in our lives and our economy too much.

And that's where they want to draw a line. How about that? I'm not sure it is about freedom from their point of view. I think it's about identity and about that a need or a desire to return to or acquire some Canada, I don't believe ever really existed, some place where we had a kind of ethnic, uh, uh, uh, singular. where we were all of the same breed. We were all Europeans. I grew up in Winnipeg where it was really multi-ethnic, but it was multi-ethnically European.

And these are people who had just come from a war, immigrants who had come from a war that they were killing each other. And they came to Canada and lived together. Now there's a view that that age of those Europeans, those white Europeans who were very much the foundation of a certain era of this country, that we wanted to return to that. That was the sort of golden age.

Well, it wasn't. I was there. And we were still trying to figure out how to live together as Canadians. So I think that it goes over generations until we realize that we are all in this together and that the core of patriotism is to see that value

and that you can't really generate wealth. You can't really generate the kind of, country we want that takes care of each other, that has health care, that has good education, that has a future if we're going to adhere to something that is about anger and resentment of things that have changed that we don't want to have changed. I was going to get to this later, but since you've raised it now, yes, you do take us in the book back to your childhood in West Kildone and Winnipeg, very multicultural even back then in the way you described it. But the thing that fascinating,

me was that you referred to your neighborhood as a place where, you know, former Nazis lived on the same street as Holocaust survivors. How did that work exactly? I don't know if it did or not. I was a child, so I didn't know what was going on in the background. I was when I was writing that section describing that Winnipeg, I was trying to remember, trying to put myself in that time, and remembering what it was like to go to play with friends in their house

And I mean, one friend, their grandfather, who was very disturbed in many ways, he was just anxious and angry man. And the tattoo on the inside of his arm was just so apparent the number that was there. I didn't know what it meant until years later. That I knew the feelings of fear that sometimes you saw in the eyes of Jewish people who are living in the neighborhood when things got weird, you know, when you didn't know what a neighbor was about. But the same time, there was a chatting over back fences. There was an exchange of vegetables from their gardens. There was these moments, these breakthroughs where collectively these were people who just did not want to ever live in that hell again.

And so, yes, there were people that I look back now at thinking that person was undoubtedly a Nazi sympathizer. I can remember stuff in the house. But what happened is that our generation of kids, who grew up in the public school system. We went to the same schools. It was never talked about. It was never addressed.

We were just all in this together. And even though it seems like there isn't a huge difference between a German Catholic and a Ukrainian Orthodox, there had been just a few years earlier, huge differences in that. And so you have this ferment that came with the next generation. And I think that's the most important thing. We lived and went to school and played with each other.

And one of the things is that there were all these holidays. And so you got to sort of visit people on it. If you figured out all the holidays, if you got it all straight, all these different holidays, you could score on amazing cookies. I mean, they all had sweets, right? And if you knew how to play your Roman Catholic, your Catholic Christmas with your Orthodox Christmas and Easter, Wow, you could really, really do well in this world.

So that's what it was like. Well, don't forget the Judaism, which, of course, Judaism is, after all, a way of eating. Believe me, we ate really well. The haman-tashen was my favorite. There you go. We have been trying for nearly 160 years in this country to prevent the United States from exercising undue influence on us. And in yours and my lifetime, we have seen, for example, Pierre Trudeau introduce his third-way initiative. which tried to de-emphasize American involvement

and find other markets, other connections elsewhere. Didn't go anywhere. After, you know, certainly after Brian Maroonie and free trade, we find ourselves utterly dependent, at the moment anyway, on the American markets for our economic future. And now Mark Carney is giving it a go, trying to find new markets, new connections, new ways of doing things,

so we don't have to be so reliant on the U.S. What do you think his prospects are? This is a really important question. All your questions are important. Because this is something that we have to figure out is that if he's on the right course. Well, we'll soon find out, right? What's different, I think, is that I'm thinking that the captains of industry in this country may have sobered up a bit.

I think that they were really intoxicated by the idea that we could have this North American market, free market zone. And by virtue of that, we could make a lot of money. They didn't have to run their own head offices. They could be run into the states. We could be this whole branch plant economy that was developed because they just saw it as a business prospect. They didn't see that much else mattered.

And there wasn't a strong connection, as strong a connection to the country than that there is now. Well, it worked pretty well as long as there was somebody sane in the White House. Well, it didn't. It didn't. The erosion was profound. I mean, we were just, we were not, we didn't own our enterprises. We have become one of the G7 countries and even G20 were among the most unproductive.

We, we just, nothing was reinvested back into our technology, into our plants. Everything, all profits left the country. They, because they didn't need to invest in Canada. And often they would use it as a tax write off by, by whatever losses there were. That became an advantage to the taxation of the, of the home. plant, which was the home company, which was in the United States. So it was slowly eroding. It just imploded with Donald Trump and what he was blowing up this trade deal. But it was eroding. And many, many people, I mean, look at people like Mel Hurtig and the history, the litany of

people over the decades who said, this is really bad. This is going to bite us in the bum big time. Let's stop it. And we didn't. And so then we, and this. we were sitting ducks for what has happened with Donald Trump. And other presidents also made these kinds of threats. And we sort of patch things over and we moved on. But the thing that matters, I think the key to this, and what I watched with when Mark Carney walked away on that fateful Friday night in August when he said,

this is deal written in pencil, it was full of red lines and I'm walking away, was that there was a huge part of that was about culture. And I think that that's been, was so neglected in all the different rounds and iterations of this that it didn't matter that we had our own culture. It didn't matter that we had our own publishing. It didn't matter if we had our own movies. It didn't matter if we had our own television. We were perfectly happy to get that from the States.

And I think there has been this revelation that unless we have the means to tell each other our stories, unless we can do what you and I are doing here right now, unless we have some control over that and some funding for that, because we're representing. against the market that's 10 times our size, then we can't, if we can't have a conversation with each other, if we can't tell each other our stories, if we can't share ideas with each other, then we're doomed. And that was the biggest part of the erosion that I cover in this book, is that we were losing our cultural sovereignty. And I think that's what, there was clearly for me, a eureka moment for Mark Carney when, in the midst of that, when he saw what they wanted, that they wanted to make, just harmonize our digital reality, I think was the low line, and we just would erase the difference between Canada of the United States in a way that he

hadn't until that moment noticed was sneaking up. And that's what I think really matters the most here. There was one line in your book, and I must say I had a rather visceral reaction to it. And I don't know if you intended it to be inferred the way I did, but I'll tell you the line and you let me know, you wrote, how I learned to truly patriotically love this country. And my initial reaction to that was to say, you mean you haven't always truly patriotically loved this country? Did I take the wrong inference from that? No, you didn't. And the reason why is that I took it for granted. I didn't know what mattered. I didn't. I came home from

all my travels. I covered wars. I covered genocides, ethnic cleansing, things blowing up all over the place. And I could come home. I'd be so grateful to be home. But I didn't. know what I had. I didn't know why it mattered. And I, and I, and I thank Donald Trump for that moment when I realized what it is to truly patriotically live this country. And when I say, patriotism, which is something I, I thought was some kind of, you know, jingoism, something that, where you kind of see yourself as being superior to others or your country is, is special in a way, or it's kind of sentimental in a way that I just couldn't possibly be part of. of, I realize what it is to love, to have a civic love of your country, to love what it's about,

even as you see its flaws, not to dismiss it, not to see it as something to dismiss what we've done with treaties or with residential schools or what we may have done in wars, but to see it for what it really is and to say, I love this country. And I want to respect its laws. I want to support its minorities. I want to hold on to what matters and I want to question what is failed in it and push for those things to get better.

I want to take on that role of civic responsibility because the alternative I started and it wasn't just that I could see what it was to love this country. I began to understand what the alternatives were and I could see it in the United States. We have this enormous advantage right now to sit and watch this,

what's going on, this massive multi-car pile up on the side of the road, which is the United States, and we're rubber-necking like crazy trying to see it. Well, we put our eyes back on the road and see where we're going because this is our chance to avoid that car crash.

There's never been a time this far in advance when we could say, let's not do that. The people in Europe didn't see it coming in the wars that came up, the ends of empires, the First World War, and the the wars against the of the Nazi wars of the of the Second World War, we didn't, people didn't, they said they didn't see that coming.

They didn't, but we have an opportunity, we can't say that now. We can see what the possibilities are. We can see what the alternative is. And so I think it's my responsibility to step up, to say, I understand what I've got here, and I'm not going to let it go. I'm sure my whole life I've been going to football and hockey games and baseball games where they always play the national anthem before the game. But they never used to it, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra or the Canadian Opera Company or Stratford. And now they do before the performance begins.

What do you think of that? I think at first I didn't know what to think of it because again I had this concern about this kind of tribalism, this jingoism that somehow we were talking about ourselves in a puffed up way that were better than others. And now I've come to understand that it's not the case at all. I think the reason why the flag was co-opted by the convoy movement, why it was so successfully became their symbol for that period of time and represented their rage and their anger with the country, is because we had neglected it. We hadn't really cared about our symbols.

We hadn't cared about our story. We hadn't cared about our public broadcasting. We hadn't cared about their publishing companies are 95% owned by foreigners. We hadn't cared about that our television wasn't, didn't reflect us at all. We hadn't cared about any of those things. And so there were these wake-up calls. We've had all these wake-up calls to say, wait a second, that's my flag. I don't feel that that what they're saying about the flag, what they, what they're, and they're free to use it.

Anyone's free to use the flag. But I guess the 80% that you referred to earlier didn't take ownership of that. Hadn't take an ownership of their anthems, their symbols, their symbol. their values, their history, and histories they collect, because there's so many different histories that bring together this country. We had let it go because, well, what did it matter? We were okay, we were happy, we had health care. It's not about just simply having health care and having a strong economy.

It's about sharing these values, sharing what we care about each other, taking care of each other, recognizing what it is to be a citizen and have civic responsibilities because all that's being eroded. We don't have to talk about how social media is responsible for so much of it. It's a poisonous environment in social media. But we are in a moment in time

where we want to take back our ownership of these things and to appreciate them. And that's why I came to understand what it is to be truly patriotic. in love with Canada. Well, you've got a nice story about the flag, since you mentioned the flag, in the book, because, you know, we've only had a flag for six decades, right? And the flag that your grandfather fought under in World War I or your Uncle Bob fought under

in World War II was not the same flag we have today. That was the old Red Ensign. And I wonder, I mean, you refer to this, so let's go here. What would they have thought when Lester Pearson came to Winnipeg in 1964 to promote the idea of the new flag, which is the one, of course, we have now. I don't know. And that's what I was so curious about. You know, just so many times we think, oh, I wish our grandparents or our parents were

still alive, so we could ask them questions. But there's this amazing video of that moment when Lester Pearson decided he was going to introduce this idea that the time had come for Canada to have its own flag. And he was going to do it not just in Winnipeg, but he was going to do it at the, at the, the convention of veterans at the Legion, an annual convention where there are 2,000 men and women, mostly men, who had fought in those wars, and he introduced the idea that time has come to have our own flag and to say the Red Ensign and the Union Jack, God love them, but they are our history. This is modern Canada. We're moving on. And so when there's, they, they, they, they, they,

they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they're looking to see if I can see my relatives there. and because he was booed and he was heckled. But I was living as a kid, not very far from that in Winnipeg. And where I was from in West Kildonan, among the kids, this was, we were so excited about the idea of a new flag. Because not only did Pearson introduce this idea, he said there was going to be a national contest. And so Mrs. Barchuk, my grade four teacher, which everyone should have a Mrs. Barchuk somewhere in their childhood. But Mrs. Bartrick said, we're going to design the flag.

And we all sat down with our crayons. And we started making them. I think I mentioned that if we'd been honest in Winnipeg, we would have drawn a mosquito and a white background representing our two seasons. But we all had, and I don't know what I drew and where it went, because I'm sure it never went past the classroom walls. But we were all involved with that project of what it is. What was the symbol that would represent us?

and it came and then of course it went to to parliament and debates and it was just horrific it was the people were physically there was physical fights and there were people out on the the lawn in front of the parliament hill on one side screaming out belting out God save the king or queen I think at that point and then the other side oh Canada which wasn't even

our anthem for another few decades and yelling at it even other and fighting it and then what it took, the act of will it took to actually say, we're going to have our own flag and this is what it's going to be, was thrilling and fascinating when we first saw that flag go up on the mast in February of 1965, I think, and saw this thing unfurl and thinking, okay. And now we just, it's so ubiquitous, we take it for granted, we don't even think about it. But there was a time in my life when that flag, when that symbol went up, on our poll for the first time.

And we looked at it. And then we saw it in all kinds of aspects. We saw it on the, on the Canada arm going into outer space. And we saw it on the, that people were flying it at games, at hockey games. And we saw it, Terry Fox running across the country carrying it. We saw it covering the coffins, the soldiers who came back from Afghanistan. that we've seen that flag in so many ways that we just don't even, we need to own that flag and own what it represents. And so I wanted to write that chapter to say, yeah, there was a

moment of catharsis when we understood that we needed to have a symbol that represented all of us. And we'll be back right after this. As long as we're talking about the era of your youth, I want to ask a series of questions now because you reveal some stuff about yourself that I would have guessed and I you know I read did I read this right you as a teenager quit high school before graduating and hitchhiked across the country is that true well I wrote it I didn't lie yeah how old are you how old is I I guess I would have been 17 going on 18 yeah 17 okay no parent in their right mind would allow such a thing today how did you you get away with doing that? It was a very different time. And there was, we were, we were not

supervised. I come from a generation where it was wild. And the idea was we were just, we left the house in the morning as children. And if it all came back with all the better, there's seven children in my family. Other families had 12 children, 15 children, 18 children, God. I don't even know. So what are you saying? If you, if you lost one or two along the way, that was okay. There were Lots left. I'm guessing that was because we were we were we were parented with benign neglect basically and so but we my sister and I decided that we just needed to see the country and the trans Canada had just finally opened from coast to coast just shortly before that and so this is in the 70s and so hitchhiking was just the thing to do so we start hitchhiking

and we got as far as Winnipeg. But before my... Sir, you started where? You started hitching. Just outside, well, we had been up near campus casing for a whole other reason. Northern Ontario, okay. And Northern Ontario, and we started hitchhiking. Cranx Canada joined Chihuahua over to Winnipeg.

Did you get your parents' permission? No, they didn't know we were doing it. I mean, but nobody did, right? You just do have to. You know what? The interesting thing about it was that I've, since when I was writing the book, the research I did, learning that there were 50,000 young people who passed through Winnipeg in those few years when I was traveling, hitchhiking.

50,000, they estimated. There were, there were just tens of thousands of young people on the road with knapsacks, with flags on them, going through Europe, going through. going around the world. My brother went off to go around the world and ended up in Africa before he turned around and came back a year later. We were just doing that.

And then what happened is that there was this effort in the part of the Trudeau, the Pierre Trudeau government, to say, we're going to harness that energy. And it was, we were probably the only country in the world where there's a government that said, let's help them. And so the government actually started opening up

youth hostels. and having youth passes and Pierre Chudot turned up at a youth hostel in Jasper and said, you guys enjoy this. This is your best time. And they were, this is travel is important. I learned everything I know from traveling the world. And let's do that and learned about yourself. Learn about your country.

So they started making it easier to travel around Canada. People, there were write-ups in the New York Times about this remarkable thing that Canada was doing. was it encouraging as young people to see the country. And we did. And so I traveled. Eventually, we eventually got to British Columbia to Vancouver Island. And I just, it was formative, not just formative from seeing the geography and seeing the country, but formative in learning how other people live.

Because after that, I then hit the road to go to Montreal, where I lived for a while until I finally figured out, I've got to go back and finish high school. So I traveled all over the place, sometimes alone, sometimes with my sister. And I was probably crazy. And I would never let my granddaughters do this. But what it taught me was, again, I think that was the thing, I think the ferment or the foundation, the seed of my true patriot love is that I got to know a country at that point that I think that young people today are not getting a chance to learn about.

Did you ever go back and finish high school? I had to, yeah. By that point, I was married when I finished high school. And my husband said, I won't be married to a woman who has new education and cannot hammer a nail in straight. I still can't hammer a nail in straight. But I finished high school and then went on to university. Okay, you mentioned granddaughters. You didn't have a daughter, but you did have a son.

And I want to ask you about your son, Joel, because, and we'll go back to 1985 here, which you call an inflection point for Canada, but also one for you personally. Your son Joel was eight years old then, and you say you remember wondering if he would grow up to be Canadian or some version of American.

Okay, we're more than 40 years later, so what's the verdict? Oh, he's so strongly Canadian. He's so, I think that he, I don't think he, he travels all over the country, and we did. He and I, we would, I carried on that tradition.

of travel with him. We went to places. We cycled all over the place. We drove all over the place. We just spent all of our free time seeing Canada. And he still has that. He goes every year some crazy canoe trip someplace in Canada so we can see all the national parks in Canada before he dies. And, and, which is not for a long time, I hope. But he, but he's imparted that to his granddaughters. I have to say that his granddaughters, his daughter's, his daughter, My granddaughters have, they have learned about Canada themselves. I mean, I think there is, at least in the Toronto District School Board, there are places where they're learning more and more about Canada,

and they're learning it from a really good point of view. My granddaughters have a really strong understanding of what happened in residential schools, not the details of which I think are horrific. And one day they'll learn more about it. But orange shirt day is so important to them at their school. And these are moments. They all wear their orange shirts. They all talk about it because children have an instinct of understanding of fairness.

And they see what happened to, they said, no one should be taken from their parents. No child should be taken from their parents. That's just awful. And so they understand that something was wrong in this country. This country did things that were wrong that we had, that we tried to, the cultural genocide that's spoken of in the Truth in Reconciliation report is something they understand as having happened. And so this is again going back to this idea of civic patriotism,

that you can love a country and still understand that it's flawed. You can see the value of a country and still know that it has made mistakes that it needs to address, that you can understand that there were laws and treat. that were violated, but still know that there were laws and treaties and that we, relationships, understandings we had in, in, in, in, and we're foundational that have been abandoned and and ignored that that still exist. And so we're so far away from addressing and and redressing those failures, but we understand that they exist. And so you can love this country and still know that it's flawed. That's why I say that the most important aspect of what a Canadian is,

is that a Canadian can embrace contradiction. We can hold two ideas in our heads at the same time. We can know that we live in a great country that is also flawed. We can know that we have, that Johnny McDonald created, did an amazing thing at forging a country out of the northern part of this continent and at the same time know that he did it on the backs of people who already lived here. We can embrace both those ideas and try to find a way to blend them together. And I think that's the strength of Canada. We know that you cannot ignore that these things happen. But at the same time, you can love the country and with that knowledge.

And so I see my granddaughter's acquiring that. And I feel that I learned that in all those crazy travels across the country where I just saw so many things that didn't make sense. but heard so many different viewpoints. And I hope my granddaughters and their generation have an opportunity to know this country the way I did. So I worried about my son, going back to your questions, sorry, going that, I worried that during the free trade negotiations

that were introduced by Brian Maroney with Ronald Reagan, and that with the ensuing debate that was around that on cultural nationalism and which I use the word advisedively because I don't think it was nationalism. But I think that there was this fear at that time during the 1980s that we were about to lose the country, that we were, that we are where we were, we were just signing over our ability to control our economy, our industry, our culture, our society, our, our way of, of life. And we feared that at that time.

But not enough of us feared that because it was like, well, you know, we'll have cheaper vegetables and we'll, you know, maybe have condos in Florida. So all those things superseded what the core group feared, and I was part of that group. And it's come to be true to 40 years later that everything that Mark Carney is saying we now realize is wrong we need to fix began in 19. in the 1980, with the Shamrock summit when those,

when Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan sang when Irish eyes are smiling together on stage and began that summit that turned into the North American Free Trade Agreement, everything that happened on that stage of that moment we're now dealing with today. Well, I well remember during that leader's debate in 1988, John Turner, the then liberal leader,

saying with one signature of the pen, you know, you've erased the border and thrust us into a north-south vortex from which we will surely lose our sovereignty. And once you've lost the levers of your sovereignty, the country goes after that. 40 years later, or almost 40 years later, how does that prognostication look to you? It, you know, it came up, what he said described something that would seem cataclysmic and large and instant, which it never was, right? It was just the slow drip, drip, drip. It was a this, we evolved. into what we became, which was in the kind of, we just became dependent on the United States

in a way we didn't notice. It was just, it was such a slow, sleepy, lotus land drift toward this moment when we were just slapped across the face by a man who said, your country only exists at our behest. There's no reason why this line here, I couldn't erase this border in a second.

You should be the 50 first date, you know, Governor Carney, Governor Trudeau, all these things were, like, we woke up from this dream and realized, oh my God, how did we get here? What happened 40 years ago that brought us to this moment? And I think it was just that we had just drifted along, not realizing that we had sold the family store. One of the fun things I like to do when I have journalists on this show, who, journalists who for the most part have had to keep their personal opinions about political things to

themselves during their other parts of their career is asked them to actually share a little more than perhaps they've wanted to. And I tried this with Peter Mansbridge a number of times when I'd interview him every time a book would come out. And the guy was notoriously tight-lipped. He wouldn't tell me a damn thing. But I'm going to try with you anyway. So let's see how we do here. I'm inferring from the last two minutes of our conversation that had you a vote in 1988. you would have voted no to free trade, right? That's right. Okay.

You know, yes, yes, definitely, sir. Okay, let's keep going here. Should Pierre Trudeau have patriated the Constitution of the country with an amending, excuse me, with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms appended to it, without Quebec signature, as he did in 1982. Okay, there's a lot of phrases in there. Say it again? Should you well remember Pierre Trudeau leading the effort in the early 1980s to rebut

to repatriate our Constitution from the United Kingdom with an accompanying Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And that charter has been one of the most, I guess, admired aspects of what it means to be a Canadian for 44 years now. So my question is, given that Quebec didn't sign the Constitution, René LeVec did not sign it, should Trudeau have gone ahead and done it anyway? Well, he did, didn't he? But should he have? Anyway, well, I think given this hindsight is useless here because it was just so many things going on, as he stated, and it was true, that there was, if you're going to patriot the Constitution at that particular moment, there's no way Quebec would have signed on to anything that was short of, well, practically independence. And so Renni Leveque was not a team player in that sense.

And so if he wanted to do it at that particular time, he had to do it without Reni Lovac's signature. At the same time, if he had waited, we were already way past other countries in repatriating our Constitution in not being a dominion anymore. We didn't even really have. Our flag was just a few decades old. We didn't really establish the anthem at that point. And we needed to weigh to amend our constitution. We needed to have a charter of rights and freedoms that reflected our own values. All these things were really important.

And so I supported absolutely supported what he was attempting to do and what he accomplished. Had he waited any longer, well, he wouldn't have been in government. He was close to the end of his time. And I don't think anyone else would have picked it up. We'd still be in the same position. We are in many respects in the same position because Quebec still hasn't signed. And I think that in itself, the fact that Quebec has not ever signed onto the Constitution speaks volumes. In fact, it's a kind of symbol in itself that I respect. And I think it's like,

yeah, we're together, but you stand there. You're not going to sign on to this. And I think that that as a value in itself. Let me follow up. Eight years later, Brian Marrooney tried to do the same thing with the Meach Lake Constitutional Accord. Initially, he got everybody to sign on. But then, of course, with the three-year period for each province to ratify. Some provinces fell off, and in the end, it didn't happen. Should the Michelet Constitutional Accord, had you had a vote at the time? Would you have voted yes or no to it? I would have voted no, but you said everyone had ratified it.

Well, first of all, everyone being what, the premiers? Yeah. Everyone being in a room in the middle of the night talking to each other that didn't even allow their own personal aides and their advisors to be in the room with them. Remember how that was done. The roll of the dice that Brian Maruni launched in order to get that constitutional agreement among like-minded people. Same process John and McDonald used at Charlottetown in 1864 to get it done. To some extent, yeah.

But I think what we saw at this moment where we Canadians didn't want to live that anymore. We didn't want to. We saw what happened how it all came down to defeat was with Elijah Harper in the Manitoba legislature holding up an eagle feather and saying, And Clyde Wells in Newfoundland. Clyde Wells didn't even have to because it was defeated in Manitoba. And so Clyde was spared that. But this moment's when they said, no, you can't. What was wrong with the Meach Lake Accord wasn't necessarily its content.

It was its process. And the process was to do everything in the middle of the night with putting heavy pressure on, on premiers who were not allowed to consult anybody. As Clyde Well said over and over again, this is a constitutional amendment. by pressure cooker. This is by rolling the dice, by putting us into a room and locking the door and not letting us out until we agreed to it. I mean, there were stories of how Alberta Premier Don Getty

had actually tried to wrestle Clyde Wells as leaving the room. I mean, this is not how you rewrite your country's constitution. And so if that's the only way you can do it. And I would include Pierre Chudeau in this, in your analogy to John A. McDow. Donald, I think Canadians are really tired of executive federalism. I think we're tired of men having conversations and now women to some extent in the middle of the night among themselves

or in back rooms, we're working things out that we're not part of. And so I think what you saw in the next referendum that followed the defeat of Limitch Lake Accord in 1995 was it was defeated. And I think not just because Canadians didn't like the deal, it's because they were tired of having things kind of shoved down their throats of saying, this is what we've decided for you. They were not part of the process. Indigenous people were not part of the process. The Anglophone Quebecers were not part of it. Francophone Canadians are not part of it. Indigenous people certainly weren't part of it. And so we were all excluded from the room where 10, 11 men sat around and where there's no records, they made sure that there wasn't even

a note taker in the room to record how things were decided upon in order to get that agreement. That's not how Canadians want their country to be shaped. And I think that was a wholesale rejection of that process, not necessarily the initiative. One of my favorite parts of your book, and I'm going to take both of us back here, because in 1990, you and I both found ourselves covering the Meachley constitutional situation. I knew you were going to go here. Well, you know, you were doing it for the national CBC network, and I was doing it for the Ontario wing of CBC.

And look at you name names here. I got to give you a credit. Here we go. Here's a quote from the book. This is about the media coverage on CBC at the time. An element of it all that I found bewildering was that some CBC broadcasts and broadcasters had quite early on abandoned neutrality to become players in the drama. Peter Mansbridge and the host of CBCTV's The Journal Barbara Frum

seemed to assume that their job was to quote-unquote save Canada and that the only way to do it was to help pass the Meach Lake Constitutional Accord. Their angle was that Quebec had to agree to sign on right now or all hell would break loose. The country would crumble and then possibly get sold off piecemeal to the United States. Only the Meach Lake Accord could save us from that fate. there was no other available glue, even though Quebec Premier Robert Burasa himself had said at an earlier point that there was no rush. Okay, we're going to spend a little time here.

Okay, Carol, have you ever discussed your feelings about the coverage with Peter Mansbridge at any point? No. So if he reads this, he'll be finding out for the first time then that you had significant problems with the way CBC covered all of that. Oh, he'll know that I was among men. who did. That's all that he'll know. I was just a spear carrier like probably you were, right? We were just running around doing whatever we had to do in order to get people to save things. We've come a

long way. We still have a long way to go. And it was just, it was, as I say in the book, it was just embarrassing to have been part of that coverage because it was just, we didn't get anything. We didn't learn anything ever. But I think that this weird thing that it was somehow determined that CBC should be should help save the country and they started doing programming that was widely discussed and rejected by so many of us in the rank and file. Did I ever discuss it with Peter Mansbridge? No, we, I was I was such, such small potatoes. Okay, but how about other people at CBC? Did you ever share your views with the? Oh, absolutely. Completely absolutely. And some of them disagreed. And some of them thought that

was our job. I think I mentioned in one quote is that, I remember saying at some point to a colleague that we were in the middle of it, as I said, this is so stupid. And the other colleague said, I guess you don't love Canada. So there were a lot of people who, as I think, kind of drinking the Kool-Aid on this one and thinking that somehow we had a role to do that. And maybe they were right. I don't know. It just felt wrong to me because I think, well, I know you are classic journalist where our job is to get to the bottom. of things to find out what's going on.

And we couldn't. We couldn't find out because the doors were shut. And that was okay, a problem that all networks and all news agencies had. But you had this added element where they were producing, especially at the journal, we're producing programs that were talking about the, that it was the death of Canada. It was 11 men at the 11th hour, I think was one of the slogans and all this drama that made people fear for the future of the country in a way that I thought, well, we should be informing them, not terrifying them. And I think we failed to do that, utterly. Well, we're 36 years later from all of that. How respected, accepted, admired do you think

CBC English-language television news is these days? Among, in what context? By the Canadian public, by the people who either watch or don't watch, more importantly. I know there's a strong bond between Canadians and the network, even among young people who don't, who get it online mostly and pick it up in different podcasts. I think there's strong feeling that it needs to change. It needs to become, I think, a bit more courageous. I think it kind of loses its mojo. from time to time.

But I think it's still, from what I hear, people say, I hate the CBC, but then they say, did you hear what they said on CBC? That hasn't changed. That's always the case, you know,

this sort of love, hate relationship. So I think it's still really important. How it's regarded, but see, RADU is a very different animal, right? I mean, there's a different history. Where you spend so much time. And radio, it's different from television

where I spend, yeah, it's true. Radio is, radio, there's a kind of love affair with radio, that I think is earned and I hope we don't do anything to diminish that love that people have for radio but yeah, television in general

is traditional television traditional television news is really struggling if not dead and so we're having to reinvent how that works but I think radio is still strong podcasts are still strong and CBC is still producing that

and I just wish it would I want it to have a bit more courage, basically. Why doesn't it? Because it's getting hit from all directions, and I think it's lost its, because it's really hard to find you a raison d'est in the middle of all of this noise. And I think that it'll come. I think we'll rethink it.

There were various golden ages, and I write about some of them in this book where the CBC, to Canada just found its moment, found its voice, found its role in the world and role in the country. And then it sort of slides away and then rebuilds and rethinks. And I think that, I think with better leadership

and I think that's emerging in the CBC, that there are people with better vision of how things go. I think it can find that can ride again to something. I don't know what. It has to reinvent itself, as do all networks. But I think it It's never been properly funded.

I know people dispute this, but its mandate is not funded to the degree that it's supposed to in order to do what it's supposed to do. Other networks in like the BBC is well funded. Other public broadcasters around the world are well funded. Canada's is not for capita. And I think that it's not just a matter of throwing more money at the CBC, but giving it the role that it should have in playing in the civic responsibility that I've been talking about,

that we have to start seeing the role of the CBC as integral at a time when our newspapers are owned by Americans, by American hedge funds, where we're losing private net radio stations every day,

where local newspapers, local news coverage is disappearing, where we are just being overwhelmed by what is going on in what social media is taken over, that people get their news from the phone. We're up against so much. And how CBC and TVO and other public broadcasters in the world

and in Canada find their place, their role is crucial because there are so many forces working against having an independent voice and having people know about their own communities. And I warn people about this all the time when I'm traveling. that you say, okay, you know, I don't care about mainstream media. You guys are making it up all the time. You get it wrong. CBC gets it wrong.

I don't care. And then I ask where they get their information and they'll say, you know, from John Stewart or Oliver or from their favorite podcast. I said, where do you think they get their stuff from? They're not out. They're not out in the courtroom steps. They're not going to the press conferences. And they don't claim to be. They give all their credits at the bottom of the screen.

No one is, the news gathering is what's, we're losing in this country. And CBC's news gathering is crucial. The Toronto Stars, news gathering, the Globe and Mail, all these agencies that are gathering news, it's the reporters that we're losing. The people who actually will turn up at the event who will get the press release and then make the calls to get verified to get to do the investigations, to get to the bottom of things, to know what's going on in the country.

and your community, and not just to do like sort of investigative journalism, but just to report on local sports and what the school board is doing and if the water quality is safe in your community, we don't have that anymore

because we've lost our local news agencies and the local news gathering. And that's what I'd like to see Mark Carney's government invest in, not necessarily just the CBC, but in funding local news, local news gathering, local news adventures that are informing people at the grassroots level

about their own communities. I hear what you're saying, but, you know, if there's one complaint I hear most frequently from, I don't know, the circles that I hang out in, be that in Toronto, be that northern Ontario, be that when I travel to country, whatever, it's that the CBC in particular, but, you know, too many other media, legacy media outlets in general are frankly two left wing and that the reporters are too interventionist. And they have stopped kind of following the facts and that they have their own, quote, unquote, social justice warrior agendas that they want to pursue themselves. And they kind of don't really follow the rules that you and I, you know,

were trained to follow when we first started in this business. How much truth do you think there is to that? I don't know. I think that they are trying to figure out what their role is. And I think that we're going to go through a period where they're going to push boundaries. And sometimes I've so often been accused of being two right wing and that the CBC is in bed with the right. And not like the far right, but sort of never with, I think the Harper government was something that we were very critical of. But I think that we get accused from all sides, but yeah, probably more from the left than from, there were more left than right.

And I think that that happens a lot in journalism. I think that it's just you start to see things in a wider context and it tends to look very left. Whether or not there's an actual disposition in that direction, I think it falls to individuals. And I think it's all part of the process of trying to refine the role for our journalism and define what the voices and who we represent and how they get represented. It's very difficult. And it should be difficult. In a democracy, this should be difficult. If it wasn't difficult, we'd be living in a dictatorship.

I mean, it's not difficult to figure out how to report in Russia. It's not difficult to figure out how to report in North Korea, you know. Yeah, they tell you what to say. Exactly. And so it's difficult to figure out how to be a journalist and how to report in a democracy, in a true constitutional democracy. And I think that we're struggling in a very changing and dynamic environment to understand what our role is here.

I want to very delicately, but, Well, this was the most shocking part of the book, as far as I was concerned. And that was, I mean, you talk about a time at which you were a national affairs correspondent in Ottawa at a time when, obviously, there were very few women in the National Press Gallery. And as you were leaving a party one night, you say Senator Finley McDonald sexually assaulted you. and that you were urged by two male colleagues not to do anything about it. You know, you raised this in the book and to the extent that you feel comfortable amplifying on it here, can you tell us more about all of that? Well, the setting to amplify, I lay it out in the book,

and I've talked about it elsewhere. I've written about it. I just didn't name him before. I think what the only reason why I put it in the book is because I wanted to show what the environment was like in Ottawa at that time, that there was this sense of male privilege and that you could get away with things. And people were getting away with that. And the reason why these colleagues said, just don't report it, was because there had been a colleague, two women who had recently accused

Brian Maroni's press secretary didn't even accuse him. They just had said that this is, they had been, one of them had been, she explained more later that she had been actually sexually molested by his aid or his press attache. And Judy Morrison, who was the CBC at the house, was told she could get an interview with the prime minister, if she went on a date with the press secretary. So they had reported on this and they were humiliated.

They were laughed at. There were in the press gallery, they were teased. They were followed around by a lawyer that was finding out who they really were and what they were really up to and what kind of women they were. I mean, you have to understand that this stuff was going on a lot. It was at that particular age. And I wanted people to know that it wasn't very long ago when men were able to do things like that. And let's not forget that Donald Trump not very long ago said that it was perfectly fine to grab women by the pussy.

And yet he still gets elected to be the president after saying that. So it was kind of these were things like this is the kind of thing that goes on. And you girls just have to get along with it and move on. and stop being not stop whining both of those women who had this this this this this this altercation with the press that dasha eventually just were kind of hounded out of their drops so that was the warning that was that was like putting a like a spike on the hill and saying if you dare to sort of speak up against these things then this is what happens to you but I put that in the book because it was a setup for what happened in I

think in the Meach lake chapters Because this business of how men could just, were just sitting in back rooms deciding how the country was going to be governed and how we were going to get along as a nation was wrong. This was, again, back to the process was wrong and the attitude was wrong. And so I think that that had to change. And so I wanted to show the context for that in the most graphic way I could, which was to describe what had happened to me,

at that time when I just, my first job as a reporter. Were there any ramifications at all for Finley McDonald or for the Mulroney Press Secretary? None. No. Not certainly at Senator McDonald's because I took the advice and I never spoke of it until very recently, until I never mentioned it by name until this book. I told people what had happened.

And they said, yeah, well, you know, get used to it. In fact, I was told by, I told this to another female reporter. And she said, well, you just go along. Otherwise, you're not going to get interviews. And one of them said, passed on a message from a senior Mandarin I wanted to get an interview with. And he said, he'll give you the interview if you wear a short skirt. And it was just humiliating. I just, I was, I felt completely dirty and defeated by this.

but that's what you lived with. And women have been doing that for, it's not new to me. Nothing much happened to me, but a lot of women were really going through a bad time with this and still are. I wrote about this without mentioning Senator Vennel McDonald's name. I wrote about this during the beginning of Me Too.

And when women in Parliament were coming forward and saying that they were being harassed, and women in other political offices in Canada were saying, yeah, this, me too, this happened to me. And so I wrote a piece for the Globe and Mail about it at that time. And I had women who were senior women who were in government, cabinet ministers, who wrote to me and said, thank you so much.

This is still going on. And this would be now into the, well, into the 2000s. And so this is, this still happens. And this lack of respect for, women. We're seeing it in the United States right now with Donald Trump. This thinks he says to women, how he treats them, and people laugh and think it's okay. Then that's how you should talk to women, talk about them. This still goes on in the political world. And it's just, it's awful. Did you ever get a chance over the years to revisit this issue with those two colleagues who told you,

just ignore it? Just let it go. Yeah, I did. During the same time, during me too, I contacted both of them agreed, excuse me, both them agreed to go on as it happens with me and fill out the details. And there were many details I didn't know about what had happened at that time because they just both withdrew. They were treated so horribly and laughed at by their colleagues. And the one was a CP reporter at the time.

She was her first job. And it was really hard on her. And so they came on as it happens and just gave more details, which were even more horrific about what had happened to them. And not just by the hands of the press attach, but also by their own colleagues, by their own organizations, the way Judy Morrison was treated by the CBC, which was just to shun her because she had broken some code that she had was just kind of shuffled into a closet and told to be quiet. it was really distressing to know that these things had happened. Carol, you've been great with your time. I want to ask you just a couple of more things here. And I guess you've been all over the world

and you've been to some really desperately awful places. I wonder if after it's all said and done, you have been able to kind of categorize what the most God-forsaken place in the world you've ever been to was. Wow. There's just moments. A whole series of snapshots went through my mind of things everywhere from Afghanistan to Sudan to Somalia to Haiti. Don't forget Bosnia.

And Bosnia. Well, seeing mass graves being opened up, seeing a body of a woman half buried with, I just remember the color of her ski jacket, the elbow sticking. out of the earth as they dug her up. Bodies hanging on trees in, as a swollen rivers from spring receded and the corpses were there because of the ethnic cleansing.

I remember in Haiti. I just, it was just so awful in Haiti and I don't know. It still is decades later for people living there. Just what people have struggled with. And, yeah, I've seen it in so many places. I just see women and children when you ask that question. I see their needs. I see children chasing after aid trucks, picking up the grains of rice that fall and eating raw rice in order to get some nutrition. I mean, yeah, you see all these things. It's awful.

Last question. You dedicated this book to a man named Tashi Alfred Dugood, a human rights lawyer who died of a brain tumor, I think less than a year ago and he was only 34 years old. Why'd you do that. Because Tashi was an inspiration for me. I mean, he was such a dear man, so young, younger even than my own son. And he was the son of a very, very good friend, Naomi Do Good. And I just, I had learned so much from him. And he just had this way of being, he was a very, very good lawyer and human rights lawyer.

He could really see through things. At the same time, he had this compassion. and this understanding and this care for others. And that beautiful combination of having a really strong, firm mind and having a caring heart was so rare. And so he always inspired me. And to lose him at such a young age was so difficult for all of us. And so I could think of no other person who I wanted to dedicate a book about trying to be really strong.

and at the same time be emotional and to love something and yet to criticize it and to and to wish it to become better than a book about Canada and my love of the country than to dedicate it to a man who felt the same way. Nice. The name of your book is True Patriot Love reporting from the front lines of Canadian sovereignty. It has brought Carol off to the Paken podcast. we are so grateful for your time. Wish you much peace and love,

and we'll see everybody next time. Thank you, Stephen.