Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where I Met Pierre Trudeau

00:00:00.000 class is in session how you doing guys it's unlearn 16 classes in session once again so

00:00:09.300 this week you just get me all by myself you know what I've learned this week before I go into the

00:00:15.180 story that I want to start this entire podcast with I've learned that I should never use a cheese

00:00:23.760 grater or any kind of peeling device i think we should all know our limits that maybe that's

00:00:30.460 another story for another time but i'm telling you right now i'm gonna have to hire somebody

00:00:35.460 completely new to do this for me because it's too much blood loss all right guys this podcast

00:00:42.600 is going to air tuesday morning now for those of in canada you know what happens on monday night

00:00:50.260 Monday, September 20th, we elect a new government and subsequently a new prime minister in Canada.

00:00:57.120 So today, I want to talk a little bit about leadership.

00:01:01.640 I'm going to take a guess right now.

00:01:03.340 Just so we all know, I'm taking a guess right now.

00:01:05.800 The election has not happened.

00:01:07.080 I'm calling a liberal minority government.

00:01:09.640 I like to put that out there.

00:01:11.580 That's not what this podcast is about.

00:01:12.900 It's actually not about the government we choose.

00:01:15.580 It's about the leadership we are so desperately in need of.

00:01:20.260 And to start this story, I'm going to tell you a story about when I was, ooh, I want

00:01:26.740 to say seven, maybe a little bit older, could have been, well, it could have been six to

00:01:32.360 eight, let's say in that range.

00:01:34.420 I was with my mom and I was at Canada's Wonderland.

00:01:38.640 And again, for Americans who don't know what that is, think of it as our version of Six

00:01:43.020 Flags.

00:01:46.160 Loved Canada's Wonderland as a kid, always went with my mom.

00:01:49.040 my mom went on every single ride with me all of that but when i was little just like everybody

00:01:53.920 else i wasn't allowed to go on the cool rides right i was restricted due to my height due to

00:01:59.200 my size i felt very controlled and so what did i end up doing well you end up waiting in the exit

00:02:05.600 line for people like let's say my uncles to get off the cool rides so my uncles go on the mind

00:02:12.080 buster again for those who don't know the mind buster it's this old rickety wooden roller coaster

00:02:18.000 that literally feels like it might fall apart at any given moment in the ride.

00:02:22.900 I think that's what gives it its appeal.

00:02:25.540 And I'm waiting in the end of the line.

00:02:28.540 I'm watching my uncles on the ride.

00:02:30.060 I'm jealous as all get out.

00:02:32.220 And as I'm standing there, my mom's standing with me,

00:02:35.700 off in the distance, she sees a gentleman walking towards us

00:02:41.100 with two children with him,

00:02:43.560 obviously sized enough to be getting off the mind buster a little taller than I was I guess

00:02:48.520 and he's about let's say I don't know a solid 20 feet away so 20 feet in the distance I'm standing 0.90

00:02:56.780 there beside my mom grumpy and bitter about not being on the ride and my mom looks up and

00:03:01.740 she grabs my hand and says Joanna Joanna that's our prime minister and I look at her like as if

00:03:11.180 I care. Is he in charge of the mind buster? Can I now get on the ride? But here's where the story

00:03:16.000 gets interesting. From 20 feet away, that's our prime minister, she says, Pierre Trudeau.

00:03:23.840 And he hears this, obviously, and he walks directly up to us, security to his side.

00:03:33.040 And instead of putting his hand out and saying hello to my mom, instead of trying to sway that

00:03:39.820 vote in some way shape or form he does it in a different way he's still swaying votes come on

00:03:44.460 guys he is a politician but before even looking at my mom before even acknowledging my mom

00:03:50.960 he bends down gets on one knee puts out his hand and says nice to meet you Joanna and shakes my

00:03:59.280 hand I shook his hand I mean sure I didn't know who he was but fantastic I shake his hand my mom

00:04:07.320 looks down at this interaction and I'm pretty sure Pierre thought that vote is in the bag

00:04:13.620 but he didn't have my mom's vote just for reference my mom wasn't a huge Trudeau fan

00:04:19.660 but when I tell that story and when my mom tells me that story I'm a fan I'm a fan of a couple

00:04:28.160 things I'm a fan of the fact that he could hear us or he was aware of us 20 feet away I'm also a

00:04:36.180 fan of the fact that he being a relative like a very intelligent person knows probably he wasn't

00:04:44.620 going to win my mom over with a handshake to her but he might he just might win it over by focusing

00:04:51.920 on her kid first and he doesn't just need he doesn't just lean over and shake my hand he puts

00:04:58.940 his knee right on that grubby dirty canada's wonderland floor and shakes my hand and gives

00:05:05.400 me a bit of time in that interaction I often think about that and then as I got older you know

00:05:11.980 stories of Pierre Trudeau back in the day and I'll tell you a couple on on this on this podcast

00:05:19.420 he always emulated a level of confidence and a level of authenticity now does that mean he

00:05:31.080 already he always did the right thing oh good god of course not absolutely not and i could list off

00:05:37.760 a bunch of reasons why what i didn't agree with them especially when it came to a lot of our

00:05:41.940 indigenous peoples but did you know that when he spoke he was saying what he actually thought

00:05:51.260 guys i've watched back footage after footage after footage and i believe him

00:05:55.680 A lot of other people don't know this. So one of probably the most famous stories of Pierre Trudeau, outside of meeting me when I was little, because I'm sure that stuck with him through his life, was him dealing with Canada's one and only really or significant domestic terrorism issue.

00:06:16.780 So back in the 70s, we had a group called the FLQ and the FLQ was fixated on separation of Quebec from the rest of Canada. And in order to push their agenda, they placed bombs inside mailboxes in a relatively affluent and predominantly English speaking part of Quebec.

00:06:40.620 And they thought if these people, if these affluent English people got scared enough, they'd leave Quebec.

00:06:49.120 And if they left Quebec, then the rest of Quebec, the rest of the French-speaking Quebec, could vote together and vote to separate from the rest of Canada.

00:06:58.960 Now, these bombs in mailboxes didn't work very well.

00:07:02.580 There were injuries, but nobody died.

00:07:05.460 and at this point they escalated and they escalated by kidnapping two political officials

00:07:12.240 a trade commissioner and a member of parliament one of these officials actually um dies we don't

00:07:21.060 know if it was purposefully but he was locked in the trunk of a car i'm assuming suffocates and

00:07:25.920 dies and it's at this point pierre trudeau and the federal government decide to militarize

00:07:33.600 Quebec. In the United States, it's called martial law, and in Canada, it's called the War Measures

00:07:39.400 Act. So he militarizes Quebec. He allows troops on the streets. He arrests without cause, without

00:07:47.940 warrant, without any due process. Many, many French-speaking men between the ages, I believe,

00:07:56.400 of 18 to 34. And as he's doing this, he's in Ottawa, still running parliament, and he steps

00:08:05.920 out of Ottawa. And I guess back in the day, it was quite easy or a little bit easier for a

00:08:10.480 newspaper reporter or a television reporter to catch him on the way out. And as he's coming out,

00:08:18.320 a reporter catches him and says something to the effect of, Mr. Trudeau, do you believe

00:08:25.900 that you can just walk over everybody else's civil rights and militarize our streets and take away

00:08:32.400 all of our freedoms that Canada holds so dear just to find these terrorist threats that you

00:08:40.960 you know you think are so incredibly important is it really you really think you can get away

00:08:46.500 with something like that and without skipping a beat and please look up the footage if you have

00:08:51.060 a minute because it is brilliant without skipping a beat trudeau smirks and says just watch me

00:08:58.240 now look we could have a whole other podcast discussing about whether he should or shouldn't

00:09:04.980 have done that just to wrap up the end of the story he finds the flq he arrests who he needs

00:09:09.900 to arrest crisis averted so you know the whole does the ends justify the means that's a whole

00:09:15.760 other podcasts. That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about leadership.

00:09:21.580 I'm talking about the kind of person that can look in the media and say, just watch me.

00:09:27.880 Now, I've been obviously a teacher for quite some time. And recently, I've really been watching

00:09:34.880 our political system. You know, we've had Trump in the United States, we've had some interesting

00:09:40.820 people into canada both federally and provincially across the country and i'm looking at these people

00:09:48.180 and i think what we're all waiting for what we're all begging for is a leader

00:09:55.620 and i'm really unsure or unclear about why we can't find one

00:10:03.460 i think that trump for example sorry mentioning his name a couple times now

00:10:10.820 I think he gave the illusion of saying what was on his mind.

00:10:14.560 I think he gave the illusion of authenticity.

00:10:16.800 Now, this kind of authenticity was filled with so much bigotry

00:10:21.820 and just horrific, horrific pieces of media and media tech.

00:10:28.840 I mean, I can't describe, and I'm not going to go back into his political history,

00:10:32.800 about the things in which he said and got away with, and he said with pride.

00:10:36.280 And I think in the absence of great leadership, we will look for anybody we deem authentic in any way, shape, or form.

00:10:49.960 We did it in Canada. We've done it in Ontario with different leaders.

00:10:54.000 We've done it with the mayor of Toronto. We've done it with the premier of Ontario.

00:10:57.180 we have these predominantly men who stand up and say the most bigoted things in some capacity

00:11:06.080 sometimes classist sometimes racist sometimes sexist and all of a sudden they're a man of the

00:11:12.480 people right i'm still convinced to this day that a lot of trump's tweets that were misspelled and

00:11:18.400 grammatically incorrect were purposefully done they were purposefully done so that the average

00:11:24.960 person sitting in the United States goes, ah, that guy's just like me. He doesn't care about

00:11:31.320 how you use they or they are. I think that he can understand me. He understands who I am,

00:11:38.900 where I'm coming from. There's no pretense. I think Trump faked that authenticity incredibly

00:11:46.300 well. And a lot of our politicians try. But what worries me is in the absence of true leadership,

00:11:54.040 true authenticity coming from a place of justice and social equity and rule of law we are starved

00:12:01.460 for anybody that seems as though they're not controlled by a party or a media outlet or a

00:12:09.580 sponsor or an advertiser and I think we get wound up in accepting the bare minimum of leadership

00:12:19.460 because we think that they haven't been bought and sold

00:12:22.960 and paid for in the grand scheme of things.

00:12:27.760 I think the fight to find somebody who actually has great ideas

00:12:35.880 that they will stand behind is incredibly difficult.

00:12:41.960 So that leads me to my next quote,

00:12:44.000 which is probably one of my most favorite historical and political quotes, I guess.

00:12:49.460 and it was by Abraham Lincoln. It's not going to be for the reasons you guys think.

00:12:54.540 So Lincoln once said, I'd like to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.

00:13:02.600 I think about that quote a lot. Um, I think about it cause it makes, it truly infuriates me.

00:13:09.260 I know a lot of people are like, who's your favorite, uh, your favorite president of all

00:13:14.160 time, and pretty much 90% of people say Lincoln, I would not, for different reasons than most.

00:13:21.320 But that quote really, really sticks with me, and I feel as though that's the quote

00:13:25.880 that has broken politics. And by the way, it's just as much our fault as it is theirs.

00:13:33.020 Number one, we want to believe that a leader can do great things and cost no money.

00:13:42.220 We want to think a leader can change the world in which we live

00:13:46.280 and we aren't going to have to suffer or to give up anything that we already have.

00:13:55.540 But what we've realized, or what you should be realizing,

00:13:58.920 is that every time a leader promises something for nothing, we are disappointed.

00:14:04.300 Guys, that's just as much our fault as it is theirs.

00:14:06.720 so i'd like to have god on my side but i must have kentucky what does that mean

00:14:13.180 well it means that most politicians if not all politicians are going to be pragmatic

00:14:20.000 before they are moral they are going to do what they need to do to get a job done but maybe not

00:14:29.060 the right job done for two reasons number one because nothing's going to get done if they don't

00:14:34.860 make compromise in number two and here's a real kicker they want to stay in office

00:14:39.800 we've ceased to think of anything and i don't know if we ever did that occurs in the long term

00:14:50.060 we talk about things like the environment um and we we discuss them as though within a four or five

00:14:58.140 year term any politician from any party is going to be able to make significant change

00:15:04.620 let me be the one to tell you it's not going to happen of course it's not going to happen

00:15:11.000 but we want something especially if you're going to cost us money we want to see change now it's

00:15:17.500 that instant gratification thing we're not looking for a leader we're looking for somebody who is

00:15:24.260 going to placate us now. And that's incredibly problematic. And again, I want to point out,

00:15:31.040 that's not just the fault of politicians. Most great things to change are going to take years

00:15:38.840 to actually make that impact. And I like to say all the time, we can either pay now

00:15:45.560 or we can pay later, right? People talk all the time about the ways in which we

00:15:52.500 fund politicians and the ways in which we pour money into different things going on

00:15:57.840 into our country right now, but we are only thinking about a quick return.

00:16:05.080 We're not thinking about pouring money into education. So in the next 20 years,

00:16:11.240 we see a significant change in the kind of individuals who are critical thinkers and world

00:16:17.780 changes. We need to see it now. We need to see it within your term or guess what? We're not giving

00:16:22.820 you another shot at it, right? So you have guys like Trump come into power and they bring things

00:16:30.140 instantaneously, right? I think he brought coal mining back for the love of Pete. He brings it

00:16:37.160 back instantaneously, but what does that serve? It's a, it's an instant gratification. Look what

00:16:44.780 I did, but where's the long term? Where's the sustainability? Where's the country that I

00:16:50.760 actually want to build? Where's the more intelligent, forward-thinking nation that has to

00:16:56.940 know we have to be converting our resources into renewable energy sources? We want to know what's

00:17:06.280 quick. We want to know what's easy. And we constantly are shocked by why we don't get great

00:17:14.060 leaders. Well, guys, we're not allowing them to be great. We're ensuring they're not great

00:17:20.800 by making them come up with solutions that only take four years. And I think that now more than

00:17:28.280 ever, we need to start looking at underlying principles of individuals rather than just

00:17:34.380 simply, how much tax are you taking out of my pocket? Where's the money going to go?

00:17:38.660 And how quickly can I see a return on my money that you're spending?

00:17:44.060 That's not the way building a nation works. And it's about time a leader said so. Give me one

00:17:52.560 minute and I'll be right back. All right. So what is, what makes a great leader? Authenticity is

00:17:59.860 key. Absolutely. Authenticity is key. I think we are, we need, we are, we are looking for somebody

00:18:05.740 to stand us, look us in the face and say, guys, if you want more, if you want more social services,

00:18:12.940 if you want more equity in this world, in this country, it's going to cost you money.

00:18:20.820 Wouldn't you love, and again, in the United States and in Canada, I'm sure all over the world,

00:18:27.260 wouldn't you respect somebody that says, guys, we're going to fix the environment,

00:18:31.900 but it's going to cost us a lot of money and it is going to change our economy. And at some point,

00:18:39.420 The economy is going to have to take a significant hit as we change from this type of environmental regulation to this.

00:18:50.140 Are we ready to respect that kind of honesty and authenticity?

00:18:55.660 Or do we still want the guy that says, don't worry, nothing in the economy is going to change.

00:19:01.360 Everybody's going to keep working.

00:19:03.220 Nobody has to go back to school.

00:19:05.120 No major infrastructure needs to be adjusted.

00:19:08.440 we're just going to plow through and everything's going to be perfect? Is that what we're looking

00:19:12.620 for? Guys, deep down, I don't care who you are. I don't care what your background is,

00:19:18.780 where your family's from. Deep down, you got to know that that's not true.

00:19:23.520 And I also want for my leaders, I also want them to be honest about who they are. Now,

00:19:30.660 I'm not talking about who they're married to and if they've ever cheated on their wife or

00:19:36.120 husband or how many dogs they have. Look, these aren't the things that speak to who they are.

00:19:43.820 I'm tired of getting all wound up in that. I want to know who they are and where they stand

00:19:50.100 on major issues. I did a 20 second or sorry, a 20 question TikTok not too long ago on things I

00:19:57.840 would like to ask the leaders running in the Canadian system. And a lot of people are like,

00:20:02.120 Joanna why are you bothering? I'm going to take this opportunity to explain a couple to them like

00:20:06.400 why are you bothering talking about capital punishment? Canada I mean I know in the states

00:20:11.840 it's still an issue but Canada I mean it's been it's been illegal forever so what's the point?

00:20:17.740 Why do we need to know what that individual thinks? I'll tell you why. Because the way that somebody

00:20:23.040 looks at punishment the way somebody conceptualizes how we handle our criminals is going to go way

00:20:32.100 a past simple capital punishment or not? Do you believe our system is fair? Do you believe it's

00:20:40.500 just? If you believe that, please cite some examples. And if you believe it's not just,

00:20:48.020 if it's not fair, I'm going to put racist and sexist over here for a minute. Let's deal with

00:20:55.460 the biggest problem. I don't know if it's the biggest problem, but in my opinion, a significant

00:20:59.900 limitation to our justice system is money. He or she who can buy the most lawyers, the

00:21:10.200 best, a table full of lawyers is going to have a much greater probability of getting

00:21:17.340 off whatever, you know, whatever crime that possibly has been committed. You know, we

00:21:24.240 look at civil rights legislation, not, sorry, civil legislation, not civil rights, but

00:21:29.260 civil legislation, contract law. Party A sues party B. We know that whoever can put the most

00:21:35.340 money on one side of that equation tends to win. How is that just? How can we build any society?

00:21:43.740 How can a leader stand beside a system? And we don't talk about these things, by the way,

00:21:48.020 because we're so busy arguing about another 3% on our taxes, because we're not talking about

00:21:52.700 the real issues. This kind of criminal justice or lack there of justice is the fundamental

00:22:02.440 building block of the way the whole society is going to be run. And I'm not just talking about,

00:22:07.780 you know, some people not going, like going to prison or going for too long or being wrongly

00:22:13.220 identified and wrongly accused and therefore incarcerated. I'm talking about all the people

00:22:18.980 that don't go to jail i'm talking about all the people that don't ever pay their price and they

00:22:25.380 get away with it time and time and time again and they do that by how much money they have on that

00:22:30.980 table i want to know if my politician if my leader believes that capital punishment that the death

00:22:40.520 penalty is an actual deterrent why well because that's how the law is going to be set up

00:22:48.380 every law after that do you believe that these harsh laws is what actually changes crime

00:22:57.520 in this country because i promise you it doesn't but if you believe that i want to hear about it

00:23:03.400 that's who they are and and if we know those a couple of these fundamental i'm only going to

00:23:09.420 talk about a few these fundamental aspects of who they are and how they view the world

00:23:14.200 then you know what we're going to recognize how they're going to deal with circumstance a b and c

00:23:19.820 because let's be honest no politician can run under the auspice that they're going to know

00:23:25.400 every single thing that's going to come at them and the way they're going to deal with it

00:23:29.040 is the constitution important to them is the supreme court and the legitimacy of the supreme

00:23:36.300 court important to them. All of that matters, right? So we need to start looking at the bigger

00:23:44.380 picture. I think the more narrowly focused we get and the more, what are you going to do with my

00:23:52.600 $10,000 we get, we lose sight of the fact that big, huge world events are in constant competition

00:24:02.080 with what any politician wants to do.

00:24:04.440 Look at COVID, for crying out loud.

00:24:06.200 We couldn't have seen this COVID a mile away.

00:24:09.400 You have the president of any country,

00:24:11.380 the prime minister of any country,

00:24:13.720 scrambling to figure out who am I in this circumstance?

00:24:18.920 How do I spend the money?

00:24:19.980 How do I take care of my citizens?

00:24:22.540 All of that could have been sort of shaped and seen

00:24:28.180 if we knew some of their fundamental character.

00:24:30.620 not promised us the earth moon and stars with little to no tax you know increase whatsoever

00:24:38.220 so i think about that i also think about the way that our politicians reflect on education

00:24:44.960 how much money are you willing to put into it what's a fair class size how do you view private

00:24:53.100 and public education how do i create let's assume for a minute i know it's a huge assumption but

00:24:59.380 Let's assume for a minute, I want to create the best and the brightest I possibly can.

00:25:04.860 Do we have a system that can do that?

00:25:07.560 Are we funding it enough to do that?

00:25:10.240 If there's 40 kids in a grade six classroom, how much education is going on there?

00:25:17.080 These are big questions.

00:25:19.420 And again, if a politician can sit there and say, you know what, 40 grade sixes are perfectly

00:25:23.780 fine. 0.93

00:25:24.320 That's legitimate.

00:25:25.120 That's what we're going to roll with.

00:25:26.220 then i need to know that's where he or she stands you know i also think about things like mental

00:25:33.480 health and health care in the united states and in canada if i hear one more politician

00:25:38.420 one more politician talk about mental health as though it's this you know uh catch-all phrase that

00:25:46.760 we just we they throw it out there and say i really care about mental health your mental

00:25:51.040 health matters to me, but nobody does a thing. I want to know what you're going to do. I want to

00:25:57.340 know how much it matters. Money-wise, how much does it matter? Children's welfare matters? Great.

00:26:04.960 How much are you going to pay social workers? How much of an education are they going to have? What 0.84

00:26:08.920 are their dockets going to look like? How much of their case files are they going to have to have?

00:26:12.460 all of these are foundational questions i know in the united states there's been a lot

00:26:21.200 a lot about abortion rights or a lack thereof a lot about governments trying to skirt the issue

00:26:28.760 and everybody in canada looks down at places like texas and florida and oh gosh we love to make

00:26:35.360 judgments right yet we have political parties here who are trying to subtly and softly find

00:26:44.920 ways around it find ways around constitutional and supreme court rulings in order at the very 0.88

00:26:53.420 least to make it more difficult if not impossible for women to access that level of health care

00:26:59.900 and again i'm not asking you if you're pro-life or pro-choice that's a different debate for

00:27:05.340 a different podcast, although it would be a good one. I want to know where my leaders stand. I want

00:27:13.880 to know what kind of laws will they allow to be manipulated. And that's why those things are

00:27:20.480 incredibly important to me. And I think we see them happen time and time and time again.

00:27:27.540 You know, and in Texas, that's all they're trying to do. They're trying to bypass the law. They're

00:27:32.340 trying to figure out a way to get around Roe v. Wade so that women within Texas, within other

00:27:40.380 parts of the United States, cannot gain access to that health care without directly challenging

00:27:47.620 Roe v. Wade because they know that the Supreme Court, even a Republican Supreme Court, and by

00:27:52.500 the way, Republican Supreme Courts have consistently upheld Roe v. Wade, can't make any statements

00:27:58.640 about it. Now, I think Texas will be overturned, but that's not the point. That's not the point

00:28:04.860 because it's that kind of legislation and pushing for that kind of legislation

00:28:10.320 that shows what a government official's character is, where their values lie,

00:28:15.940 where their morals lie. I'd like to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.

00:28:21.220 that's the kind of statement where if you're willing to do that if that's how you're going

00:28:30.600 to run politics if that's how you're going to run the government we are always going to be left

00:28:36.200 with leaders who don't lead who react with leaders that are too afraid to do what's right

00:28:43.360 because they're too busy trying to do what we expect or what what you know makes us happy in

00:28:50.400 that time. And we've seen this with COVID. We've seen leader after leader. Guys, every doctor

00:28:58.440 on this planet, scientists from across the world have told us what we need to do. And what are we

00:29:04.740 doing? We're sidestepping it. Because getting reelected is much more important than keeping

00:29:11.700 people safe during a pandemic. That's not leadership. You don't always like what a leader

00:29:17.960 does, you know, but a true leader, A, you know where they stand and B, they're not, they're not

00:29:25.480 afraid to take those steps. They're not afraid to be unpopular. Some people ask me who my favorite

00:29:33.060 leader in Canada is. And guys, we've had a lot of doozies. Don't get me wrong. And probably one of

00:29:38.200 my favorites is a guy named John Diefenbaker. And most people don't even know of anything about him

00:29:43.060 as prime minister. There's two reasons this gentleman is impressive to me. Number one,

00:29:47.320 he stood against apartheid when nobody else cared to. In the 1960s, Diefenbaker stood against

00:29:55.180 apartheid in South Africa. Let's recognize for the fact that apartheid didn't end until 1994.

00:30:03.920 In the 1960s, Diefenbaker also passed a federal Bill of Rights for Canada. For those who don't

00:30:11.800 know Canadian history and the way that we were, we didn't have a Bill of Rights. We didn't even

00:30:16.660 have our own constitution our legitimate constitution till 1982 we followed what

00:30:21.480 britain said but this bill of rights talked about the rights of not to be discriminated

00:30:27.620 based on your religion your sex your race these are huge concepts that as an individual he was

00:30:36.200 a leader i promise you levels of sexism and racism and religious discrimination abounded then

00:30:42.560 by our political leaders and by our public you know i think a lot of people get confused at

00:30:50.120 what democracy actually is and as this airs tuesday morning we'll have found out how we

00:30:56.900 voted in canada and a lot of people just think it's voting what's a democracy well you go out

00:31:02.700 and you vote because it's like 10 of a democracy 10 there's lots of countries where there's

00:31:10.600 elections um and there's no democracy big aspect of democracy has to be the fact it's integral

00:31:20.220 that we have a written constitution based on the rule of law that is highly enforced

00:31:27.600 that isn't we don't sway to the popular opinion of the day i believe that jefferson thought that

00:31:37.460 every, I want to say 15 years, he believed the constitution should be rewritten. He believed

00:31:44.300 that societies change, they alter, our values change, you know, the very nature of who we are

00:31:52.040 adjusts and we shouldn't be held to such staunch traditional beliefs that were written in 1776

00:31:58.840 or in Canada's case even 1982 we get better we get smarter you know and I think that as a leader

00:32:09.440 you have to be ready to lead for that kind of change rather than benefit from the old niches

00:32:17.060 of power that you can that you can rely on I also think it's a problem to promise the world with

00:32:23.720 It's not like I'm sitting here saying we don't need any economic plan.

00:32:27.980 The heck with money.

00:32:29.920 We'll just print more.

00:32:31.480 Nobody's saying that.

00:32:33.160 There needs to be a viable way to build that.

00:32:36.140 But I think there's two kinds of people in this world.

00:32:38.960 And unfortunately, there's more of one than the other.

00:32:42.740 I think there are people, leaders and citizens alike,

00:32:46.600 who believe that the first thing we have to establish,

00:32:50.140 The very first thing is a just, equitable society.

00:32:56.340 And I'm going to explain the difference between equality and equity in a second.

00:32:59.860 And if we create that just and equitable society, then, and only then, can we build a strong, sustainable, legitimate economy.

00:33:11.820 And then there's the other people.

00:33:13.480 The other people, you can tell by my deep side what side of the fence I sit on.

00:33:17.120 But then there's the other people who believe economy comes first.

00:33:20.140 that making money comes first that when we have enough money society will become just

00:33:28.760 i've never heard such a wrong statement in my entire life and i think history has proven

00:33:35.440 that the latter is impossible absolutely impossible whatever your foundation is that

00:33:44.900 is what it's going that that is the house you're going to build so if i'm looking to build an

00:33:50.740 economy and i'm looking to make money because that's what that's what an economy is especially

00:33:56.100 in a capitalist system how do we all make money and i get that and i get why that's important

00:34:02.500 but if i'm not doing it under the basis of equality and equity and rule of law

00:34:09.300 the system will always be unjust and if the system's unjust it will always be challenged

00:34:13.860 and it will all be always be weak fragmented and ready to crumble and nobody wants to live in that

00:34:20.020 system but if you were to base a system and let me let me define this really quickly if you were

00:34:26.440 to base a system on equity not equality i think a lot of people you know i'm going to get so many

00:34:31.420 comments under here joanna's such a communist i don't hate marxism but communism is not what i'm

00:34:37.160 preaching here. Equality would mean everybody is treated exactly the same. I think that's asinine.

00:34:44.500 I've been a teacher for a very long time. You can't treat everybody the same. People have 0.95

00:34:49.240 different passions and different ways of getting at knowledge and different ways of changing the

00:34:54.980 world. And if we treated them all the same and judged them all exactly the same, we would have

00:35:01.160 a very limited society at our disposal. You know, you can have a student who knows everything

00:35:10.020 about political science, but you ask them to sit down and write it down on a piece of paper

00:35:17.300 and the translation gets lost and they get frustrated. Maybe their fine motor skills

00:35:23.900 are problematic. Maybe just their head to paper sometimes doesn't quite translate into what we

00:35:30.320 think it needs to translate into. And they sit down and they try to write that paper. They try

00:35:35.480 to write that test and they get a 50 or they get a 60 and they go about their day. But if I pulled

00:35:41.660 that same kid aside and I sat them down and I asked them to explain it, I asked them what the

00:35:49.280 theories were. I asked them about the application and they can hold court for an hour explaining

00:35:56.300 cause and effect and interpretation and this theorist and this theorist and this is how it

00:36:01.360 plays out in the real world. What guys, what did I just lose there? Because the kid that got 60

00:36:09.060 will walk away from that class and never take it again. But the kid that was given another way to

00:36:14.560 relay the information is going to feel empowered and, and forget them feeling empowered. I just

00:36:20.180 got better for it. They walk away with a 90 and guess what? Now they're a part of the political

00:36:27.240 system. Now they're a part of the economic system. Now they're a part of the social system where

00:36:31.980 their actual ideas can change the world. You know, the less equity we give this planet and people

00:36:40.640 around us, be selfish about it. I say to people all the time, listen, racism, sexism, homophobia,

00:36:49.300 religious whatever classism whatever kind of ism that is restricting you from actually hearing

00:36:56.520 somebody's idea or giving somebody else a shot you're limiting your world and you are limiting

00:37:05.140 any progress we could have because of them everything gets crappier it's again be selfish

00:37:13.860 worry about you want the best we want to live in the world with the best scientific advancements

00:37:19.780 the best political advancements we all want to live in a world where we feel safe and we feel

00:37:25.760 empowered and we feel like we have a role and sort of an authentic way of living we want that

00:37:31.620 everybody wants that and the more we stop somebody else's or the more we allow other

00:37:38.220 peoples to be halted or minimized or squashed, the worse our world gets. You know, we could have

00:37:47.400 cured cancer by now had we let certain people that we didn't deem appropriate or good enough

00:37:55.440 or intelligent enough into fields of science and research. We would have given them different ways

00:38:01.520 to test rather than sitting down and writing an mcat what if what if all of our structure about

00:38:09.600 the what how and when and why we're applying it to these individuals what if that structure has

00:38:16.240 actually gotten our way and obviously that structure comes from top down which is why i

00:38:21.120 talk about the system that has to be built based on that feeling of equity and actual rule of law

00:38:27.280 when you allow money to buy your way into something or out of something,

00:38:30.840 when you allow, you know, that person's sex to be more important than that person

00:38:35.780 or the way they dress or the way they wear their hair in order to dictate who they are

00:38:40.760 and the chances they're going to get, we've limited our whole world.

00:38:48.460 And so I'm waiting for a leader.

00:38:51.100 I'm begging for a leader that's willing to say that.

00:38:54.940 you know that's truly willing to say could you imagine a leader of any country

00:39:01.540 in their inaugural speech get up there and say we don't live in a great country

00:39:08.540 we live in an okay we live in a good country you want us to compare us to other countries sure

00:39:14.240 we're doing better i love canada i have no i people are gonna be like oh she's i i love the

00:39:20.340 country in which I live. But make no mistake, if we want to become better, we have to, we don't

00:39:27.560 just admit and say, oh, sorry about that. There has to be restitution. And it's not just about

00:39:33.880 restitution for that group of people, whether it's indigenous people in Canada, whether it's

00:39:40.320 the lower classes in Canada or women or whatever. It's not just about restitution to the people that

00:39:46.300 we have committed damage against. It's about changing the fundamental structures so we build

00:39:52.460 something just and equitable from the ground up. And then, guys, the economy will take care of

00:39:59.120 itself because we'll build something that makes sense. It doesn't make sense. Look, I'm not even

00:40:05.440 going to begin to pretend as though I'm an expert on oil refineries and natural gas and petroleum

00:40:12.160 products and plastics and I'm not. Here's what I know. They're finite resources. They will at some

00:40:22.340 point completely and utterly run out. Here's what I also know. They're doing horrific damage to our

00:40:30.860 environment. Again, I don't need to prove global warming here to say it's not good. In Toronto,

00:40:37.580 I think last year there was something like 20 days in the summer that city employees weren't

00:40:43.240 actually supposed to go out and work because the air quality index was so horrible, right?

00:40:52.180 So these are the times where I think we need to search for people who are willing to have

00:40:59.320 real authentic conversations about who they are, what they believe, who they're going to

00:41:07.020 surround themselves with and the long, long-term plan of implementing fundamental change to a

00:41:15.840 system that was not built to be equitable. That was never the point of the system.

00:41:23.820 Everybody wants to make money. Everybody wants to be profitable, but it was never to be equitable.

00:41:28.400 it was never it was never to be just fundamentally just or we wouldn't have had slavery we we wouldn't

00:41:39.240 have broken every contract we ever signed with the indigenous people the fundamental guiding

00:41:44.440 principle was to make money and take over land so we need a leader that does better but guys 1.00

00:41:51.520 here's the bottom line and here's the hard part we have to understand that that leader

00:41:57.760 that that individual if a person has the the self-awareness and the strength to stand up in

00:42:05.440 front of a nation or a city council or a provincial legislature or a or a state legislature and say

00:42:12.360 these things you have to have to take a step back and understand change is going to be slow

00:42:20.820 and it's not going to be easy and it's going to cost everybody money you just have to decide

00:42:27.400 do you want to pay now or do you want to pay later do you want to protect our kids now or

00:42:33.740 deal with the criminal justice system later do you want to have health actually matter mental

00:42:39.520 health mattering now or do you want to deal with addiction later when do you want to pay because

00:42:45.840 i promise you're going to do you want to fix our environment and change the nature of the basis of

00:42:52.180 where we derive our energy from or do you want to wait until it is done and we have to suffer such

00:43:00.640 irrevocable trauma in order to transition do you want to pay now or do you want to pay later

00:43:08.460 you choose dismissed

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - September 21, 2021

The One Where I Met Pierre Trudeau

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