I'm starting to worry about Matt and Jen, and especially Matt. While what you say is true and insightful, you're also reaching new levels of cynicism and bitterness. Perhaps there is some burnout.
Meanwhile, since I am cynical as well, I am enjoying the comments very much. You are correctly painting a picture of a country that is not serious, but rather petty and squabbling. For my sins, I watched a meeting of the House of Commons committee on the status of women. The Conservatives, who are chairing the committee, called an emergency meeting on violence against women and girls. They called three witnesses, who painted a grim picture, and among many other factors, noted that offenders get away with light penalties that allow them to offend again. The cynic in me thought that this was one more way to attack the Liberal government for being soft on crime. Perhaps the Liberal committee members thought the same. At any rate, the first Liberal MP to speak, hijacked the agenda and tried to get the committee to vote on a motion endorsing abortion rights. Pandemonium broke out and the two women witnesses, one of whom had come home from California to testify, were totally ignored. They walked out in tears and demanded an apology, which they did not get.
Count me among the members of the subscriber base who are here for the inside baseball. To that end, allow me to commit to upgrading my subscription status to founding member if Jen actually goes on the mooted 78-tweet thread outing/shitting on Canadian mediots by name.
That said, upon hearing the final segment I think it was somewhat falsely advertised by Matt – I thought it was more focused on trashing the entity that is Canada rather than the media writ large. And it was awesome. For some time, this has not been a serious country; worse, it is now a sanctimonious country. Still worse, it is a sanctimonious country with absolutely no reason to be sanctimonious and many reasons to feel shame.
I could easily write a thousand words on this subject but the discussion about the 2% NATO contribution was/is particularly compelling. This discussion cries out for some John Mearsheimer realpolitik. (Don’t come at me – not a Mersheimer groupie but credit where credit is due.) Due to the presence of our southern neighbour there is zero chance that we will ever actually be invaded. Matt talked about incentives. What incentives flow from that fact? One obvious one is to contribute as little as possible to defence spending. To be clear, no country with any sense of honour would actually act upon this incentive. Canada though, has no hesitation in acting upon this incentive.
Jen (I think) asked, why did we agree to the 2%? Canada being Canada sees only two options here. Openly not agree and live with the consequences of that choice. Or, agree but just refuse to honour the commitment and live with the consequences that come from that choice. A tired but good strategy is to make grandiose commitments, bask in the plaudits that come with the announcement and then simply not follow through, confident in knowing that you can obfuscate/dissemble if ever called upon the carpet for your delinquency – gee, who does that sound like? I think that framing the choices in that way clearly explains why we “agreed” (cough) to the 2%.
Of course, eventually a day of reckoning will come. It always does for free riders. Indeed, maybe President Donald Trump will go after the free rider on his northern border sometime in the next couple of years. It won’t be pretty, no matter who does it – or when. The whining from Canada will be even uglier.
I am beginning to see Canada as a nation of freeloaders. It doesn't bode well for our future as a nation and as productive individuals just wanting to live their lives free from government interference.
As Jen does her best to point out, Parks Canada is a bit trapped when it comes to fire prevention and management, as they are certainly not managing a woodlot, but rather a complex ecological system. Critics out there calling them completely incompetent and outright ignoring the fire risks simply do not understand their conflicting mandates with our parks.
Here's a link to a 1995 periodical that contains numerous thoughtful articles on how Parks Canada viewed wildfire roughly 30 years ago, with particular emphasis on Alberta's mountain parks. It's worth a read - especially for Jen, given her own interest in the subject she expressed in her quite well balanced column, as well as her thoughts in this week's dispatch.
The foresters Jen interviewed for her article I do not doubt were and are sincere in their warnings to Parks Canada, but with all due respect to them and their perspectives on pine beetle kill and wildfire, their worldviews were most definitely shaped by their work history in BC and Alberta as men who viewed a forest as a harvestable, managed, and renewable resource, rather than the insanely complex ecosystem that Parks Canada has the responsibility to steward - the forest is SO MUCH more than just the trees. That's not intended as criticism, but rather as an obvious prism foresters view a forest system through. My main quibbles with many 'forester' recommendations are their views on pine beetles, inclusion of clearcutting as a management tool, and the lack of emphasis on prescribed fire as an ongoing mitigating strategy for the folly of our decades of fire suppression.
The missing piece in forest management over the past century and a bit IS fire - a near century of fire suppression has been disastrous. Fires have inevitably returned, as they simply cannot be suppressed forever, nor should they have been. Fires today are larger and more comprehensive and total in their destruction of a forest ecosystem due to sometimes decades of massive built-up fuel loads. Today's fires are not like the periodic renewal fires that started naturally or via the encouragement of our native peoples, they are more akin to paying off a decades-long overdue credit card with 20% compounded interest.
Pine beetles are an essential part of preparing the forest for cyclical fire renewal - not wildfire, but smaller, more frequent, less intense fires. They are native and doing EXACTLY what they are supposed to do - they are NOT an invasive species, at least not here in the west. Most foresters I have dealt with in my career view pine beetles as a pest and a scourge; that's honest given their view of trees as a harvestable resource.
The other complication with fires today are all the non-native invasive plants, insects, and diseases that immigrants from all over the world have brought with them, intentionally and unintentionally. These species arrive without the checks and balances that kept them in check in the lands they evolved in, and a small percentage of them (example: Bromus tectorum) are well adapted to fire, leading to more frequent fires (every 1-5 years) that crowd out native forest species that would otherwise recolonize after less frequent fires.
I agree with Jen's forester sources completely that selective logging and thinning (not clearcutting) was and is essential. I also agree with them (and Jen) that Parks Canada did not adequately mitigate the fire risk around Jasper, and they have an ongoing issue around Banff and other mountain park communities that simply must be addressed.
Prescribed fires simply must be one tool to protect our communities and infrastructure going forward. Difficult, and complex to plan and manage given people and all our stuff, but essential. Invasive species prevention and management MUST be a part of any prescribed fires (or unprescribed wildfires) if any healthy native forest system renewal is to be realized.
Our forests both within and outside our mountain parks eventually WILL burn - ALL of them - that is inevitable. How they burn, and what happens before and after they do, largely depends on what we are learning (or not) from the fires over the last few decades, as well as what archaeological and first nations perspectives on historic fires tell us.
> their worldviews were most definitely shaped by their work history in BC and Alberta as men who viewed a forest as a harvestable, managed, and renewable resource, rather than the insanely complex ecosystem that Parks Canada has the responsibility to steward - the forest is SO MUCH more than just the trees
With respect, foresters already know this. The Parks Canada woodlands people and the rest of the foresters all get their education from the same places.
That's fair, and I don't want to say that all foresters (or parks managers) have a monolithic perspective, but workplace culture and priorities do shift perspectives over time, in positive and not so positive ways on both sides.
The thing about working where I do is that I realize that our woodlands people _are _ environmentalists, as much or more so than anyone in Greenpeace and certainly more than the average “eco conscious” city dweller.
And when you think about it, of course that’s the case. People who take jobs that involve huge amounts of their time spent bushwacking through the forest in all kinds of weather, are obviously going to love nature. You just can’t handle that job if you don’t love nature.
Matt raises a good point that Jen's declaration that Twitter is over and she's so done with it does have the unblinking, trembling-handed vibe of a recovering alcoholic declaring that now that she's sober, she really can't remember why she ever enjoyed it, and can't understand why anybody's still on that patio having a cold one with the girls on a Friday afternoon when the much more wholesome meeting in the church basement is just around the corner.
There will be instant coffee and after that, a nature walk to identify and marvel at local bird species.
Jen and Matt would do well to stay on Twitter. It's one of the places to go to for political commentary and to share things that are banned on Facebook. Facebook's become rather useless for anything except reading and posting inane observations.
I think it ends up being a very different experience for different people. I have made actual friends on there and enjoy talking to them about the day's events, and my timeline is full of useful, interesting, funny posts.
That isn't everybody's experience, and when the experience is bad it seems to be very bad indeed.
2% GDP on defense spending is a bit arbitrary, but as Matt says, it’s a target Canada committed to. To the people who object to that target as arbitrary, I’d challenge them to come up with an alternative that’s grounded in an actual analysis of military requirements. Simply saying that military spending should be less is even more arbitrary than the NATO 2% target. Figure out the missions you want the military to do, then figure out what the force structure needs to be to perform those missions. I suspect the fact that Canada hasn’t had a serious discussion of military missions in decades is a significant factor in why Canadians don’t appreciate the need for defense spending.
Any politician congratulating themselves for only losing 30% of the town is proof of the complete abdication of responsibility among our political leaders.
No one thing causes a disaster. Think of a package of Swiss cheese. Most of the time, when you stack 5 layers on top, there are no holes. Once in a while, the holes line up. That's Jasper.
Banff, Lake Louise and who knows how many other towns, villages and cities are ripe for this same type of calamity as fire seasons get worse. Parks Canada wouldn't cut down a tree if their life depended on it, as they still haven't decided which is more important; aesthetics of structures. I have no expectation they'll figure it out anytime soon. But those leaders outside the parks better figure it out before Mother Nature does it for them.
Instead of climate change I would prefer climate evolution or earth's transformation. These words don't mean that humans can't try to help steer catastrophic developments. Thanks for your involvement I know it makes a difference.
While I don't always agree with Jen or Matt, I gotta state that the weekly podcasts and regular articles are insightful and valuable debate. Please keep it up.
I remember the Harper Conservatives getting pilloried for talking about the importance of embracing Canadian cultural values. One of the common responses was “What cultural values?” Well, one of those values is exactly what Matt cited: when we have political differences, we express them peacefully and don’t engage in violence. It’s not necessarily a value unique to Canada, but it’s also not a universal value.
Canada’s got a history of discrimination and intolerance, but the ethnic hatred and violence feels like a more recent import associated with the more open immigration policy that started in the ‘70s. Anglo-French enmity in Quebec pales compared to some of the ancient hatreds expressed between Serbs and Croats, Sikhs and Hindus, and Palestinians and Jews (more accurately, *towards* Jews.)
I think Matt’s correct that there’s probably nothing we can say that will persuade people to abandon these hatreds, so Canadian society simply must be vigilant and come down on perpetrators of violence relentlessly and consistently like a ton of bricks. The problem is there’s far too many politicians and others in positions of authority who lack the moral conviction to draw a line at violence regardless of whether they might sympathize with the broader cause.
I beg to differ and/or expand on your views. The cold civil war between Anglos and the French in all of Canada - not only the Quebec nation - continues to this day. I'm a Canadian mulatto - French name and an Anglo American culture and education - who has been told I don’t belong by both the Quebec French and the Canadian Anglos and because of my mixed heritage, not trusted by either side. Trudeau senior's accession to power was the start of culture wars against the Canadian Anglos as revenge by the Quebec French for some 200 years of perceived oppression by the English either directly or via a de facto Catholic theocracy. It started with dilution of the Anglo culture and values by the multiculturalism policy. Official bilingualism then led to senior supervisory positions in the Federal Government being designated bilingual and thus in practice by and large being reserved for French speakers. The latest instance was a decree by Trudeau junior that all Supreme Court justice appointments be limited to candidates who are fluent in both English and French - without a translator!
As a member of one of those groups listed, what I don't think Canadians understand is that those animosities started because of perceived, or otherwise, inequalities. One paid the bills, the other got the goods.
Canadians is going down this same path, but are afraid of studying it. You don't see surveys in Canada asking "do you want Alberta (or Quebec) to leave Canada?" or what have you. The Anglo arts community is mortified in examining it, you don't even see alt history fiction on it.
Here's a tip from someone who has first hand experience in witnessing how civil wars get started, it's always the economic crises that get things going. No one protests in the middle of the day when they have a good full time job.
Agree 100% Kićo you don’t protest if you’re too busy earning a living. And Canada’s First Nations got tired of being ignored, took up arms at Akwesasne and held off Canada’s pitiful army, scared the shit out of Quebec’s ruling elite (and Canada’s- same people) and now get recognition and mega bucks from the government. How long before other dispossessed groups - like young couples frozen out of the housing market by policies designed to preserve the wealth of entitled voter/homeowners - start rioting etc. There are lots more of these than truckers. And there aren’t nearly enough Redcoats and other uniformed people to suppress them regardless of how much the elites would like it to be so.
I'm convinced that it is only prevailing culture keeping things from getting more "France like." English Canada does not have a protest culture or a culture that pushes back against elites. It just doesn't. Cultures do change, but if I was a public safety administrator, violent protests across English Canada isn't on my radar. Look at the truckers, it was more cosplay of what they think a protest is, but without any of the actual pushing back.
Matt you referenced a column in The Globe by Jeff Simpson. Can’t find it for some reason (you didn’t mean Lawerence Martin by chance did you?). Could you include a link please in the weekly write up. Thanks
Ditto. I remember Jeffrey Simpson but I think he retired from The Globe and Mail quite a while ago. Lawrence Martin had a piece in that paper a couple of days ago entitled “Let’s stop bashing Canada’s defence spending”. Regardless, I agree with Matt that as a country we have a duty to keep our word, and I agree with Jen that we feel ashamed when we don’t (some of us do anyways).
I'm sure you both realize this, but there's a very simple reason why we haven't see an epidemic of drive by shootings and arsons of Russian bakeries, but we HAVE seen that for Jewish community centres of various kinds: anti-Jewish racism.
The anti-Jewish racist DOES think he's making his community better by harassing Jews. Jen Gerson doesn't see it that way because she's not a racist, but you can't say "you're not making things better" to the racist when the racist *knows* he's making things better by harassing the Jews. Not to go all Godwin, but the Nazis believed they were making their community better on Kristallnacht.
******
So why can't Canadian institutions deal with this?
The awkward fact about the current Jew-hatred in Canada is that it's tightly associated with a religion that has been infected with Jew-hatred since LONG before the modern state of Israel existed. And that religion is Islam.
Canadian politicians of all stripes would have the courage to denounce this and use the full force of the alw against it if it were anti-black racism tightly linked with long-standing anti-black racism in Christianity.
But it's not Christianity. It's Islam. And saying "Islam has a Jew hating racism problem" isn't something our institutions are capable of saying even though they would be perfectly capable of saying that if evangelical Christianity had a vocal wing with an equivalent view of black or indigenous people. (We certainly and quite rightly have no problem denouncing Christian church's involvement in residential schools.)
It's not *exclusively* Islam, there are certainly Jew haters outside of Islam and of course not all Muslims hate Jews. But the correlation is there and whether you blame it on wokeism or something else, Canadian institutions are trying desperately to pretend the problem doesn't exist.
Jen and MatT, this is one of your best pod casts that I have heard. It was well thought out, articulate and on point.
Blame Jasper on Climate Change or the lack of unicorns - point is we need to do something to stop it from happening again - NOW. How be we get rid ot the 42% increase in the number of civil servnats and take THAT money and use it to actually protect our forests.
2% was a committment not a gesture so lets get on with it. We need to support our military and actually act like a serious country instead of being self congratulatory on how nobel we are for simply virtue signalling to the world. The 'journalist' who feels that saying we will do something and then actually do it misses the point. It is time for Canada to move towards under promissing and over delivering on our committments to real issues not our new age liberal virtue signalling.
Damned if you don’t, damned if you do, pretty much sums up the position Parks Canada is in. Imagine the carrying on of the town councils and inhabitants if the feds gave the forest the hair cut it needs to actually protect the towns. The foreign tourists would stop coming, and I’m not sure even Albertans would want to gaze upon clearcuts and burned over areas. The local economies would crash, and who’s going to pay reparations for that?
I'm starting to worry about Matt and Jen, and especially Matt. While what you say is true and insightful, you're also reaching new levels of cynicism and bitterness. Perhaps there is some burnout.
Meanwhile, since I am cynical as well, I am enjoying the comments very much. You are correctly painting a picture of a country that is not serious, but rather petty and squabbling. For my sins, I watched a meeting of the House of Commons committee on the status of women. The Conservatives, who are chairing the committee, called an emergency meeting on violence against women and girls. They called three witnesses, who painted a grim picture, and among many other factors, noted that offenders get away with light penalties that allow them to offend again. The cynic in me thought that this was one more way to attack the Liberal government for being soft on crime. Perhaps the Liberal committee members thought the same. At any rate, the first Liberal MP to speak, hijacked the agenda and tried to get the committee to vote on a motion endorsing abortion rights. Pandemonium broke out and the two women witnesses, one of whom had come home from California to testify, were totally ignored. They walked out in tears and demanded an apology, which they did not get.
Appalling.
The world needs more Jen Gerson and Matt Gurney.
Very much so.
(I took out the comma.)
Count me among the members of the subscriber base who are here for the inside baseball. To that end, allow me to commit to upgrading my subscription status to founding member if Jen actually goes on the mooted 78-tweet thread outing/shitting on Canadian mediots by name.
That said, upon hearing the final segment I think it was somewhat falsely advertised by Matt – I thought it was more focused on trashing the entity that is Canada rather than the media writ large. And it was awesome. For some time, this has not been a serious country; worse, it is now a sanctimonious country. Still worse, it is a sanctimonious country with absolutely no reason to be sanctimonious and many reasons to feel shame.
I could easily write a thousand words on this subject but the discussion about the 2% NATO contribution was/is particularly compelling. This discussion cries out for some John Mearsheimer realpolitik. (Don’t come at me – not a Mersheimer groupie but credit where credit is due.) Due to the presence of our southern neighbour there is zero chance that we will ever actually be invaded. Matt talked about incentives. What incentives flow from that fact? One obvious one is to contribute as little as possible to defence spending. To be clear, no country with any sense of honour would actually act upon this incentive. Canada though, has no hesitation in acting upon this incentive.
Jen (I think) asked, why did we agree to the 2%? Canada being Canada sees only two options here. Openly not agree and live with the consequences of that choice. Or, agree but just refuse to honour the commitment and live with the consequences that come from that choice. A tired but good strategy is to make grandiose commitments, bask in the plaudits that come with the announcement and then simply not follow through, confident in knowing that you can obfuscate/dissemble if ever called upon the carpet for your delinquency – gee, who does that sound like? I think that framing the choices in that way clearly explains why we “agreed” (cough) to the 2%.
Of course, eventually a day of reckoning will come. It always does for free riders. Indeed, maybe President Donald Trump will go after the free rider on his northern border sometime in the next couple of years. It won’t be pretty, no matter who does it – or when. The whining from Canada will be even uglier.
I am beginning to see Canada as a nation of freeloaders. It doesn't bode well for our future as a nation and as productive individuals just wanting to live their lives free from government interference.
As Jen does her best to point out, Parks Canada is a bit trapped when it comes to fire prevention and management, as they are certainly not managing a woodlot, but rather a complex ecological system. Critics out there calling them completely incompetent and outright ignoring the fire risks simply do not understand their conflicting mandates with our parks.
Here's a link to a 1995 periodical that contains numerous thoughtful articles on how Parks Canada viewed wildfire roughly 30 years ago, with particular emphasis on Alberta's mountain parks. It's worth a read - especially for Jen, given her own interest in the subject she expressed in her quite well balanced column, as well as her thoughts in this week's dispatch.
http://parkscanadahistory.com/series/rl/R61-16-3-2E.pdf?fbclid=IwY2xjawEbDShleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWucBiZKDx5Y5-BNP6e0wyO93jFabP-25LJdPZpnhIv8AUo6PyZRSrgwig_aem_P4jSuCDhs2RfLqohsy51YQ
The foresters Jen interviewed for her article I do not doubt were and are sincere in their warnings to Parks Canada, but with all due respect to them and their perspectives on pine beetle kill and wildfire, their worldviews were most definitely shaped by their work history in BC and Alberta as men who viewed a forest as a harvestable, managed, and renewable resource, rather than the insanely complex ecosystem that Parks Canada has the responsibility to steward - the forest is SO MUCH more than just the trees. That's not intended as criticism, but rather as an obvious prism foresters view a forest system through. My main quibbles with many 'forester' recommendations are their views on pine beetles, inclusion of clearcutting as a management tool, and the lack of emphasis on prescribed fire as an ongoing mitigating strategy for the folly of our decades of fire suppression.
The missing piece in forest management over the past century and a bit IS fire - a near century of fire suppression has been disastrous. Fires have inevitably returned, as they simply cannot be suppressed forever, nor should they have been. Fires today are larger and more comprehensive and total in their destruction of a forest ecosystem due to sometimes decades of massive built-up fuel loads. Today's fires are not like the periodic renewal fires that started naturally or via the encouragement of our native peoples, they are more akin to paying off a decades-long overdue credit card with 20% compounded interest.
Pine beetles are an essential part of preparing the forest for cyclical fire renewal - not wildfire, but smaller, more frequent, less intense fires. They are native and doing EXACTLY what they are supposed to do - they are NOT an invasive species, at least not here in the west. Most foresters I have dealt with in my career view pine beetles as a pest and a scourge; that's honest given their view of trees as a harvestable resource.
The other complication with fires today are all the non-native invasive plants, insects, and diseases that immigrants from all over the world have brought with them, intentionally and unintentionally. These species arrive without the checks and balances that kept them in check in the lands they evolved in, and a small percentage of them (example: Bromus tectorum) are well adapted to fire, leading to more frequent fires (every 1-5 years) that crowd out native forest species that would otherwise recolonize after less frequent fires.
I agree with Jen's forester sources completely that selective logging and thinning (not clearcutting) was and is essential. I also agree with them (and Jen) that Parks Canada did not adequately mitigate the fire risk around Jasper, and they have an ongoing issue around Banff and other mountain park communities that simply must be addressed.
Prescribed fires simply must be one tool to protect our communities and infrastructure going forward. Difficult, and complex to plan and manage given people and all our stuff, but essential. Invasive species prevention and management MUST be a part of any prescribed fires (or unprescribed wildfires) if any healthy native forest system renewal is to be realized.
Our forests both within and outside our mountain parks eventually WILL burn - ALL of them - that is inevitable. How they burn, and what happens before and after they do, largely depends on what we are learning (or not) from the fires over the last few decades, as well as what archaeological and first nations perspectives on historic fires tell us.
The lessons are there. Will we heed them?
> their worldviews were most definitely shaped by their work history in BC and Alberta as men who viewed a forest as a harvestable, managed, and renewable resource, rather than the insanely complex ecosystem that Parks Canada has the responsibility to steward - the forest is SO MUCH more than just the trees
With respect, foresters already know this. The Parks Canada woodlands people and the rest of the foresters all get their education from the same places.
That's fair, and I don't want to say that all foresters (or parks managers) have a monolithic perspective, but workplace culture and priorities do shift perspectives over time, in positive and not so positive ways on both sides.
Cards on the table, I work for a forest company.
The thing about working where I do is that I realize that our woodlands people _are _ environmentalists, as much or more so than anyone in Greenpeace and certainly more than the average “eco conscious” city dweller.
And when you think about it, of course that’s the case. People who take jobs that involve huge amounts of their time spent bushwacking through the forest in all kinds of weather, are obviously going to love nature. You just can’t handle that job if you don’t love nature.
Matt raises a good point that Jen's declaration that Twitter is over and she's so done with it does have the unblinking, trembling-handed vibe of a recovering alcoholic declaring that now that she's sober, she really can't remember why she ever enjoyed it, and can't understand why anybody's still on that patio having a cold one with the girls on a Friday afternoon when the much more wholesome meeting in the church basement is just around the corner.
There will be instant coffee and after that, a nature walk to identify and marvel at local bird species.
Jen and Matt would do well to stay on Twitter. It's one of the places to go to for political commentary and to share things that are banned on Facebook. Facebook's become rather useless for anything except reading and posting inane observations.
I think it ends up being a very different experience for different people. I have made actual friends on there and enjoy talking to them about the day's events, and my timeline is full of useful, interesting, funny posts.
That isn't everybody's experience, and when the experience is bad it seems to be very bad indeed.
2% GDP on defense spending is a bit arbitrary, but as Matt says, it’s a target Canada committed to. To the people who object to that target as arbitrary, I’d challenge them to come up with an alternative that’s grounded in an actual analysis of military requirements. Simply saying that military spending should be less is even more arbitrary than the NATO 2% target. Figure out the missions you want the military to do, then figure out what the force structure needs to be to perform those missions. I suspect the fact that Canada hasn’t had a serious discussion of military missions in decades is a significant factor in why Canadians don’t appreciate the need for defense spending.
Any politician congratulating themselves for only losing 30% of the town is proof of the complete abdication of responsibility among our political leaders.
No one thing causes a disaster. Think of a package of Swiss cheese. Most of the time, when you stack 5 layers on top, there are no holes. Once in a while, the holes line up. That's Jasper.
Banff, Lake Louise and who knows how many other towns, villages and cities are ripe for this same type of calamity as fire seasons get worse. Parks Canada wouldn't cut down a tree if their life depended on it, as they still haven't decided which is more important; aesthetics of structures. I have no expectation they'll figure it out anytime soon. But those leaders outside the parks better figure it out before Mother Nature does it for them.
Instead of climate change I would prefer climate evolution or earth's transformation. These words don't mean that humans can't try to help steer catastrophic developments. Thanks for your involvement I know it makes a difference.
While I don't always agree with Jen or Matt, I gotta state that the weekly podcasts and regular articles are insightful and valuable debate. Please keep it up.
I remember the Harper Conservatives getting pilloried for talking about the importance of embracing Canadian cultural values. One of the common responses was “What cultural values?” Well, one of those values is exactly what Matt cited: when we have political differences, we express them peacefully and don’t engage in violence. It’s not necessarily a value unique to Canada, but it’s also not a universal value.
Canada’s got a history of discrimination and intolerance, but the ethnic hatred and violence feels like a more recent import associated with the more open immigration policy that started in the ‘70s. Anglo-French enmity in Quebec pales compared to some of the ancient hatreds expressed between Serbs and Croats, Sikhs and Hindus, and Palestinians and Jews (more accurately, *towards* Jews.)
I think Matt’s correct that there’s probably nothing we can say that will persuade people to abandon these hatreds, so Canadian society simply must be vigilant and come down on perpetrators of violence relentlessly and consistently like a ton of bricks. The problem is there’s far too many politicians and others in positions of authority who lack the moral conviction to draw a line at violence regardless of whether they might sympathize with the broader cause.
I beg to differ and/or expand on your views. The cold civil war between Anglos and the French in all of Canada - not only the Quebec nation - continues to this day. I'm a Canadian mulatto - French name and an Anglo American culture and education - who has been told I don’t belong by both the Quebec French and the Canadian Anglos and because of my mixed heritage, not trusted by either side. Trudeau senior's accession to power was the start of culture wars against the Canadian Anglos as revenge by the Quebec French for some 200 years of perceived oppression by the English either directly or via a de facto Catholic theocracy. It started with dilution of the Anglo culture and values by the multiculturalism policy. Official bilingualism then led to senior supervisory positions in the Federal Government being designated bilingual and thus in practice by and large being reserved for French speakers. The latest instance was a decree by Trudeau junior that all Supreme Court justice appointments be limited to candidates who are fluent in both English and French - without a translator!
As a member of one of those groups listed, what I don't think Canadians understand is that those animosities started because of perceived, or otherwise, inequalities. One paid the bills, the other got the goods.
Canadians is going down this same path, but are afraid of studying it. You don't see surveys in Canada asking "do you want Alberta (or Quebec) to leave Canada?" or what have you. The Anglo arts community is mortified in examining it, you don't even see alt history fiction on it.
Here's a tip from someone who has first hand experience in witnessing how civil wars get started, it's always the economic crises that get things going. No one protests in the middle of the day when they have a good full time job.
Agree 100% Kićo you don’t protest if you’re too busy earning a living. And Canada’s First Nations got tired of being ignored, took up arms at Akwesasne and held off Canada’s pitiful army, scared the shit out of Quebec’s ruling elite (and Canada’s- same people) and now get recognition and mega bucks from the government. How long before other dispossessed groups - like young couples frozen out of the housing market by policies designed to preserve the wealth of entitled voter/homeowners - start rioting etc. There are lots more of these than truckers. And there aren’t nearly enough Redcoats and other uniformed people to suppress them regardless of how much the elites would like it to be so.
I'm convinced that it is only prevailing culture keeping things from getting more "France like." English Canada does not have a protest culture or a culture that pushes back against elites. It just doesn't. Cultures do change, but if I was a public safety administrator, violent protests across English Canada isn't on my radar. Look at the truckers, it was more cosplay of what they think a protest is, but without any of the actual pushing back.
If you remind the political leaders sitting comfortably in the Gulf states that they are not safe it is an incentive to negotiate.
Matt you referenced a column in The Globe by Jeff Simpson. Can’t find it for some reason (you didn’t mean Lawerence Martin by chance did you?). Could you include a link please in the weekly write up. Thanks
Ditto. I remember Jeffrey Simpson but I think he retired from The Globe and Mail quite a while ago. Lawrence Martin had a piece in that paper a couple of days ago entitled “Let’s stop bashing Canada’s defence spending”. Regardless, I agree with Matt that as a country we have a duty to keep our word, and I agree with Jen that we feel ashamed when we don’t (some of us do anyways).
Drawing the line really means using the darn border.
I'm sure you both realize this, but there's a very simple reason why we haven't see an epidemic of drive by shootings and arsons of Russian bakeries, but we HAVE seen that for Jewish community centres of various kinds: anti-Jewish racism.
The anti-Jewish racist DOES think he's making his community better by harassing Jews. Jen Gerson doesn't see it that way because she's not a racist, but you can't say "you're not making things better" to the racist when the racist *knows* he's making things better by harassing the Jews. Not to go all Godwin, but the Nazis believed they were making their community better on Kristallnacht.
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So why can't Canadian institutions deal with this?
The awkward fact about the current Jew-hatred in Canada is that it's tightly associated with a religion that has been infected with Jew-hatred since LONG before the modern state of Israel existed. And that religion is Islam.
Canadian politicians of all stripes would have the courage to denounce this and use the full force of the alw against it if it were anti-black racism tightly linked with long-standing anti-black racism in Christianity.
But it's not Christianity. It's Islam. And saying "Islam has a Jew hating racism problem" isn't something our institutions are capable of saying even though they would be perfectly capable of saying that if evangelical Christianity had a vocal wing with an equivalent view of black or indigenous people. (We certainly and quite rightly have no problem denouncing Christian church's involvement in residential schools.)
It's not *exclusively* Islam, there are certainly Jew haters outside of Islam and of course not all Muslims hate Jews. But the correlation is there and whether you blame it on wokeism or something else, Canadian institutions are trying desperately to pretend the problem doesn't exist.
Jen and MatT, this is one of your best pod casts that I have heard. It was well thought out, articulate and on point.
Blame Jasper on Climate Change or the lack of unicorns - point is we need to do something to stop it from happening again - NOW. How be we get rid ot the 42% increase in the number of civil servnats and take THAT money and use it to actually protect our forests.
2% was a committment not a gesture so lets get on with it. We need to support our military and actually act like a serious country instead of being self congratulatory on how nobel we are for simply virtue signalling to the world. The 'journalist' who feels that saying we will do something and then actually do it misses the point. It is time for Canada to move towards under promissing and over delivering on our committments to real issues not our new age liberal virtue signalling.
Again, great job you two - more please!
Damned if you don’t, damned if you do, pretty much sums up the position Parks Canada is in. Imagine the carrying on of the town councils and inhabitants if the feds gave the forest the hair cut it needs to actually protect the towns. The foreign tourists would stop coming, and I’m not sure even Albertans would want to gaze upon clearcuts and burned over areas. The local economies would crash, and who’s going to pay reparations for that?