Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where We Admit - 'If You Have To Explain It, You Have Already Lost'

00:00:00.000 class is in session hey everybody and welcome to unlearn 16 class is in session today i have

00:00:09.300 an amazing guest a political guest now one that we're not going to agree i don't think all the

00:00:14.120 time mr dan harris how you doing sir i'm doing great and thanks for having me on uh on twitter

00:00:23.040 and on the podcast and you know keep coming up with things to say and things to add and

00:00:27.760 you know you can't ever cover everything on a topic there's always more to add on uh so hopefully

00:00:34.580 we can deal with a few of those uh today and uh i'm sure we will agree on a lot of things but uh

00:00:41.200 you know disagreement is good and whenever you're wrong you get to learn something yeah and that's

00:00:46.780 you know i wish i i know that we mostly sit on the same side of the aisle here for most of the

00:00:51.400 issues. Having said that, I wish more intellectually driven, intelligent individuals from both sides of

00:01:00.280 that aisle sit down and have discussions more often rather than sitting themselves in an echo

00:01:04.400 chat. I have reached out time and time again to different people from different parts of the

00:01:09.580 political spectrum. But I just think it's, I don't know if they feel as though they don't want to be

00:01:16.440 on my platform because then that's giving me light and they don't want to do that, or they don't want

00:01:21.380 to maybe have a gotcha moment, or they don't want to, you know, at the end of the day, be seen as

00:01:28.280 being wrong on something. And so they just, you know, avoid it altogether. Being wrong is a sign

00:01:33.420 of weakness, right? Oh, yeah, of course. Especially in politics. Well, there we go. And I also feel

00:01:39.440 as though, and I want to get to how you got into politics in your career a little bit and where

00:01:43.440 you started from. I also feel as though the more that we minimize the nuance of every single

00:01:52.100 conversation, the more that we actually destroy the thing we're speaking about. I don't know of

00:01:58.940 an issue of a topic that doesn't have a whole host of shades of gray. There are some extreme

00:02:07.260 topic sure but for the most part any big political economic social decision is going to have huge

00:02:14.300 shades of gray and if we can't talk about them it doesn't make any sense to me that we're even

00:02:19.020 bothering saying anything so why don't you tell us how you got into politics what your career has

00:02:23.740 been like how you started and then you know we'll just sort of go from there uh well i mean i i grew

00:02:29.420 up in a politicized family uh my dad has always been involved in politics uh in his local riding

00:02:35.500 association, also with the NDP. But then when I was in high school, a guy named Mike Harris got

00:02:42.740 elected as premier. And already being politicized, I was very well aware of what was coming.

00:02:50.400 And so at that point, the day after Bob Ray lost government, I went into a defeated NDP campaign

00:02:56.760 headquarters and I said, sign me up. And I was 15 at the time. And my little bit of rebellion

00:03:02.160 and against parenthood was to actually get involved in a different area than my dad was

00:03:06.840 involved in. So he had always stayed involved in Scarborough Southwest, which was where he grew up

00:03:12.260 at the time we lived in East York. So I was like, I'm going to get involved in the York East

00:03:16.460 Writing Association. And then after signing up my membership, this was in June, I went to my first

00:03:23.620 executive meeting at the end of August. And I'm walking in there as a 15 year old with a bandana

00:03:28.580 on my head and I've got you know loose jeans and I've got a chain hanging down and I walk into the

00:03:33.800 room and I'm like yeah I don't look like anybody else here right but the writing association was

00:03:39.520 unlike many still a relatively young group for the most part uh there was lots of diversity

00:03:46.760 not of color but of sexual orientation and uh of of other backgrounds uh and ironically enough

00:03:55.000 the new leader of the ontario ndp marit styles was a member of that riding executive back then

00:04:01.540 it was before her and her partner even had kids and i mean their kids are in university now right

00:04:06.480 so things you know that's how i first got started uh but then i mean the days of protests that

00:04:12.480 happened the education strikes the opsu strike my dad actually got beat up by the cops during the

00:04:17.500 opsu strike and that went all the way to a public inquiry on police brutality uh of course the cop

00:04:23.600 was exonerated and he later became the uh highest ranking uh officer black officer of the opp

00:04:31.060 i'm sure you know the fact that he was willing to whack him and stack him uh had no bearing on his

00:04:38.000 uh elevation within the force right um so yeah there there was that and uh then i you know kept

00:04:45.960 getting involved i found out there was a youth wing to the party i got involved in that found

00:04:50.180 there was a youth wing of the federal party got involved with that started going to conventions

00:04:54.820 uh being part of all all the activism and uh that took me all the way to 2000 when uh my dad's

00:05:02.500 riding association scarborough southwest said you know what we're looking to try something different

00:05:07.300 uh would you be interested in running for us in the federal election and at that point i was 21

00:05:11.620 years old i was just mind blown uh that anybody actually would think i would be a good representative

00:05:17.620 at that point i thought you know many years down the road when i'm in my 40s like i am now

00:05:22.660 you know that'll be the kind of time that i maybe take that step if i want to right but yeah got

00:05:28.420 started young and then by 21 i ran for the first time i loved the experience and i realized i knew

00:05:36.180 just as much as the 15 year old who had been there for 20 years like i'm gonna go back to that and

00:05:43.700 you know he wasn't schooling me in the least yeah that's that's fantastic so how long did you stay

00:05:49.780 in politics and then i'm going to come back to a little bit because i know that i have a lot of

00:05:54.020 american listeners so as we're talking about the ndp or as we're talking about mike harris and what

00:06:00.060 goes on in ontario and premierships i'm going to break that down for in one second but what

00:06:04.920 so you're you started when you're 21 how long did you stay i i can certainly try to when i'm talking

00:06:10.500 add in the u.s equivalencies sure so yeah i mean i i was the candidate federally so that was uh

00:06:17.760 equivalent to running for congress at the age of 21 and uh i ran again at the age of 24 26 uh then

00:06:26.880 i was asked to run for municipally city council by none other than jack layton in 2006 yeah uh and

00:06:34.500 so I ran twice that year and then I took the 08 election off and came back in 2011 when the orange

00:06:41.880 wave happened and I got elected and sat as a member of parliament so that's equivalent to a

00:06:48.380 congressman for the next four and a half years until Justin Trudeau and the big liberal wave

00:06:53.640 just washed us all the way right but I mean that was an incredible caucus because we had 30 we had

00:07:01.420 20 MPs that were under the age of 35 when they were elected and that's never happened before

00:07:07.980 and 75 percent of them were women yeah that's never happened before either right so just to

00:07:14.100 give a for my American listeners just to give you a scope okay so we have a federal government very

00:07:20.200 similar to the U.S. federal government in the sense that we have two houses we have a house of

00:07:25.740 commons which is as similar to your house of representatives we also have a senate similar

00:07:30.900 to your Senate. Now, here's where it differs. Our House of Commons is elected with the Prime

00:07:36.660 Minister who sits in the House of Commons. He is not separate from the legislative body.

00:07:41.040 He's elected a member just as same as everyone else.

00:07:43.440 Just like everybody else. Our Senate is geographically representative, just like

00:07:48.940 yours is in the United States, a little differently geographically representative.

00:07:52.880 But the difference with ours is they get appointed, heaven help me, for life. So a lot of people have

00:08:00.440 a big big sort of democratic issue they take a very big democratic issue with that as do i um

00:08:07.640 and the way that it works if you get a majority for the most part if you get a majority in the

00:08:13.480 house of commons if your party has the majority and your your leader of your party your political

00:08:19.480 party has won his or her seat they become the prime minister and their party pretty much let's

00:08:25.640 be perfectly honest does what they want and here's where our system is very different in the united

00:08:31.000 states there's not any real significant checks and balances other than the constitution and the

00:08:38.200 supreme court but within the legislative body itself if you have a majority it's going to be

00:08:44.280 a pretty good run in the sense of what you can do with your power as prime minister controlling the

00:08:51.480 house um very different from from the united states and when he speaks about when dan's speaking

00:08:58.200 about the ndp party that is our most socialist party so we have three major political parties

00:09:04.680 i'm not going to get into the other ones we have the conservatives that to be honest economically

00:09:11.160 legislatively very similar to a lot of democrats not left-leading democrats but some democrats in

00:09:16.520 in the states corporate democrats exactly we we have we currently have a new seemingly a new

00:09:23.700 incarnation of the conservative party which is much more similar or parroted of let's say a ron

00:09:32.100 de santis um conservative on some notes and we the liberal party that sits in between the ndp that's

00:09:42.300 more socialist, more social justice. Now in Canada, the NDP party, our socialist party,

00:09:48.120 has never formed federal government. The NDP has formed many provincial governments. And as Dan

00:09:56.300 was just speaking about, when he got into politics, it was just at the tail end of Bob

00:10:02.520 Bray, who is an NDP, who was an NDP leader, he then switched to liberal. He won.

00:10:11.440 He's currently a rep at the UN.

00:10:13.960 At the UN. He won and got a majority in Ontario and led Ontario. Now, unfortunately, he led us

00:10:22.480 right around the exact same time in the early 90s of one of the worst recessions.

00:10:27.980 It was definitely the booby prize.

00:10:30.120 Right. It was. It was. And then he had to make some very hard decisions that people got very angry with. But in retrospect, you kind of go, OK, they weren't so bad. His choices weren't so bad because the guy that followed him, which I want to talk about right now, because I think he's very much involved in politics today.

00:10:50.100 I think he's very much on the shoulder of Pierre Polyev, who is our conservative leader on a federal level. His idea of politics, his idea of sort of conservatism, not just fine fiscally. We used to have a lot of fiscal conservatives in Canada, right? They talk about the money, but they still have a fondness and a recognition for the need of social justice.

00:11:15.340 whereas mike harris might have crumpled a lot of that up chucked it out the window right and then

00:11:24.740 and then following like similarly following a guy like stephen harper so when mike harris came in

00:11:32.720 you were in high school i was in grade 10 yeah you were in grade 10 i would have been i'm just

00:11:39.920 a bit of ahead of you. I would have been in university at the time. It's very cool that

00:11:45.880 you have criticized that young. What was your vibe? Maybe give a little bit, we can give a bit

00:11:52.520 of what goes on with Mike Harris. Well, Mike Harris takes control of Ontario. His whole goal

00:11:57.200 is money. And his nickname, not to ruin the end of the story, was Mike the Knife.

00:12:02.040 so so what was your he takes power after bob ray and by the way a lot of social like social

00:12:11.720 democrats like a lot of union supporters ndp supporters they went full swing after mike

00:12:18.060 harris meaning they voted for for him they voted for uh uh the ndp and when the ndp to them really

00:12:28.140 dropped the ball they went full swing to mike harris which is crazy this is sometimes what can

00:12:34.560 happen when you don't follow through on your promises absolutely and you know bob ray and

00:12:41.180 the ndp government i mean you can talk about all the economic situations but they were elected

00:12:45.100 on really two things one public auto insurance and two like you know this is the workers party

00:12:52.540 and this is the party that's going to be there to defend workers and whatever you want to say

00:12:57.960 of the the social contract that followed uh it did not respect collective agreements and they

00:13:04.640 perhaps did not do a very good job of negotiating with the unions to make sure that the unions would

00:13:10.880 at least not call for their heads afterwards exactly and that's exactly what happened and

00:13:16.980 they went full tilt and i mean mike harris came in at the perfect time because federally at that

00:13:24.320 point you had the federal liberal government which just slashed 25 billion dollars from transfer

00:13:29.760 payments in health care and education and mike the knife comes in and he's got all the excuse in the

00:13:35.520 world he needs to cut and slash everywhere uh so where the social contract you know wasn't great

00:13:42.880 but it saved 40 000 jobs during the recession that's 40 000 public sector workers that still

00:13:48.860 have a family supporting job and salary can go still go spend money uh mike harris gets in and

00:13:54.880 they're all gone and i mean he he should can 20 000 nurses let me let let's be clear with this

00:14:01.560 talking about the social contract what what he's talking about i'm just going to minimize it a

00:14:05.400 little bit when that recession hit when the federal government cut that much money from

00:14:10.620 transfer payments so the way it works in canada and similar to some degree in the united states

00:14:15.300 our income tax goes to the federal government the federal government then redistributes it

00:14:20.700 equitably not equally to what you've put in equitably to make sure that wealthier provinces

00:14:26.000 make sure that all provinces have let's say a basic style and a basic level of health care

00:14:32.640 a basic level of education they get a certain amount of money so everybody provinces can

00:14:37.000 maintain a similar level of services to the rich provinces that's exactly and then when the federal

00:14:42.060 government cuts those transfer payments, which nobody, by the way, ever really holds their feet

00:14:48.340 over the irons for, let's be honest. It's kind of like they get cut and then we blame the provincial

00:14:52.580 governments. So when they cut the money, then the provincial governments get to decide, okay,

00:14:57.580 now what do we do? Do we spend less? Do we cut? Do we make cuts? Or do we raise provincial taxes?

00:15:05.080 Nothing is going to be, nothing's going to be good in that scenario, right? Nobody's going to

00:15:10.820 be happy with anything they have to do. And since they can't just point the finger and say, well,

00:15:15.140 they gave us less money. They try to figure out new and exciting ways to handle that. Now,

00:15:19.440 Bob Ray came up with something called, that was nicknamed the Bob Ray days. Here's what that

00:15:23.840 meant. 12 days of the year, if you were a public service unionized employee for the government,

00:15:33.380 whatever level it is. So we're talking nurses, teachers, firefighters, police, everybody.

00:15:37.540 if you worked for the government you took off 12 unpaid vacation days per year one day you lost

00:15:48.220 one day a month of pay now what that did just like dan said it stopped people from getting

00:15:55.060 fired it kept services up it kept all of those things going and even though everybody had to 0.77

00:16:02.700 tighten their belts and it sucked. And yes, the unions were incredibly angry about it.

00:16:08.200 It didn't change the foundational structure of our social services. But when Mike Harris got in

00:16:15.100 and everybody was so angry with what Bob Ray did and how he had the audacity to make us take a

00:16:23.000 month, a day, a month off. Mike Harris came in and this guy shut everything down. He amalgamated

00:16:33.300 things. He shut down hospitals. He, I mean, he canceled, oh God, to the point where he cut back

00:16:43.120 workers so much that it ended up creating the circumstances for Walkerton, which was this

00:16:49.740 incredibly horrific water treatment crisis where people died because they didn't have enough people

00:16:56.800 checking the water supplies and making sure they were clean and all of that kind of stuff

00:17:00.500 cut cut cut cut i.e mike the knife um you know my mom was directly impacted at that point because

00:17:09.600 she was working at a hospital which was called wellesley hospital at the time and wellesley

00:17:13.800 Hospital was at, let's say, not the nicest areas of Toronto, and it served a very particular

00:17:20.340 demographic, okay? So it served, my mom worked there for the better part of her career, but it

00:17:25.320 served a lot of lower socioeconomic class. It served a significant aspect of the prostitution, 1.00

00:17:33.480 you know, sex trade workers within the area. First transgendered surgeries were going on at

00:17:40.860 um wellesley it's also where women's college hospital was was in there and there you get

00:17:47.640 your first gender bit there we go and at that point they had to make a decision because of

00:17:54.320 what gets shut wellesley hospital st mike's well guys i i don't need to be you know a fortune

00:18:04.760 teller to understand how that was going to play out. And my mom then transferred to St. Mike's,

00:18:12.020 but we all know the limitations, let's say, of a hospital like St. Mike's, which was still

00:18:17.620 overseen and final decisions made by the Pope. There's still a person at St. Mike's who talks

00:18:24.440 directly to the Pope. So for example, St. Mike's doesn't perform abortions. For example, St. Mike's

00:18:29.880 back in that day wouldn't even come close to gender giving gender affirming care so you had

00:18:36.220 all of these limitations for two downtown core hospitals and the one they chose to close

00:18:43.220 you know obviously for very very political and social reasons not economic because wellesley

00:18:50.360 was on a different parcel of land wellesley could have become a huge hospital oh absolutely

00:18:55.680 Whereas St. Mike, anybody knows it, is right beside the Eaton Centre. So it has no place to grow,

00:19:01.520 quite literally. The one the one other thing St. Mike's has going for it is it's really become and

00:19:08.400 was at the time becoming the main trauma centre. It's where all the air ambulances go and you know

00:19:14.560 we we even had like a kid in East York who was stabbed two blocks away from East General

00:19:20.720 and died en route to St. Mike's.

00:19:24.380 Right.

00:19:25.260 You know, I mean, you have stuff like that going on

00:19:27.400 when things get a little too concentrated.

00:19:30.100 And that's exactly what happened under Mike Harris.

00:19:32.700 You know, you have all these extra services available in places

00:19:35.680 and they all get concentrated into one.

00:19:37.520 Certain places, exactly.

00:19:39.320 You get hospitals now, and this is what he tried to do.

00:19:42.940 And it's all about, I think it's a kind of a cultural shift

00:19:47.480 and it's a bad one.

00:19:48.420 And I don't think this is just a conservative issue. I think that it's a cultural shift to watch people become more narrowly focused and specialty oriented in a hospital or in a school to the detriment of everything else.

00:20:04.680 But when you have that, and I need a neurologist, but I've had an accident in Durham, what the heck?

00:20:13.740 So I get airlifted, treated, whatever, but that time where I've said this is the only place where we have specialists anymore because it's more cost efficient, you start to have huge, huge problems.

00:20:28.520 And we've seen this time again. When we say my issue with the Wellesley and St. Mike's thing

00:20:34.900 isn't even about concentration. It's about if you're going to get rid of one hospital in a

00:20:39.560 downtown core, you could have very easily transferred all of their expertise for trauma

00:20:45.980 to Wellesley very easily. But you couldn't transfer abortion care. You weren't allowed

00:20:53.760 transfer gender affirming care you weren't allowed to have people for example sex trade workers

00:21:01.760 shift to this particular hospital that had such a catholic underpinning we that wasn't allowed

00:21:09.540 so all of those people really were sort of more incredibly marginalized and left out of that mix

00:21:17.980 which i again people don't already worry just push them out further way out further absolutely

00:21:24.860 so as mike harris stepped in you you know but as he started you you started seeing what go on in

00:21:32.300 schools because i saw it at the tail end right so mike harris like last year my stuff it started um

00:21:39.740 the the funding to school started to gradually recede uh well they and i mean the contract

00:21:46.700 negotiations were coming up and the first thing the government wanted to do is of course you know

00:21:52.100 holds hold the line on salaries and give teachers more responsibilities uh and it's a conversation

00:21:58.900 that still happens to this day uh you know extracurriculars the extracurriculars right

00:22:05.520 uh which i mean teachers basically do for free and then they wanted to mandate that all the

00:22:12.520 teachers have to do a certain amount for no money yeah for no money your salary

00:22:17.940 you're contractedly no under the unions we're going to hold your salary that you're contracted

00:22:23.620 and and you're expected to perform a b and c we're going to add d e and f but we're going to hold

00:22:30.760 your salary what and no increase in prep time either you've got more work to do but you don't

00:22:36.560 get more prep time to do it so and does that make sense because then class counts are going up

00:22:44.680 uh what happened in our school the first thing was for we basically had an entire year of work

00:22:49.720 to rule yeah because the schools weren't ready like the teachers unions weren't ready to go out

00:22:55.680 at that point uh and go out on strike and then uh you know we ended up in that situation in 2017

00:23:02.040 where you actually had a province-wide wildcat strike by teachers where, you know, that was

00:23:09.080 technically an illegal strike that they were all off for two whole weeks because everything came

00:23:14.620 to a head at that point. And, you know, I mean, my school was at the other end of town from where

00:23:21.180 I live, but, you know, growing up in that workers and politicized household, I made sure to go up

00:23:29.120 and support the teachers on the picket line uh and then i also was down in queens park it was

00:23:34.000 actually the only time i met a couple of teachers because since i was in such a small school some of

00:23:39.080 the courses i took were actually done remotely oh wow with remote teachers it was on this network

00:23:45.000 for the french schools and you know we're sitting in front of a computer with an old school stylus

00:23:49.760 tablet uh and then that teacher's sitting in another school and there's like five kids here

00:23:54.920 five kids here five kids here uh so yeah the only time i actually met those teachers was

00:24:00.040 on the lawn in front of queen's park right i hope it helped my grades but i don't know

00:24:05.000 should have it's worth an easy 10 percent my book uh i'm gonna get so many comments because of that

00:24:12.260 um how joanna gives marks for being political um so as all of this joanna gives marks for being

00:24:19.780 supported yes i do joanna gives marks for kids who agree with her um i think that all of this stuff

00:24:28.260 though it's interesting because we talk about it in a vacuum sometimes but i think it's all

00:24:34.740 very much led to where we are now and and to not um hide anything or mislead anybody make no

00:24:42.980 mistake. You had Mike the Knife, then you had a liberal government in Ontario, two different

00:24:50.660 liberal leaderships, ending with Kathleen Wynne and Kathleen Wynne, who I have had on my podcast,

00:24:57.140 incredibly intelligent, amazing individual that I was blown away by because my impression of her

00:25:05.140 when she was a leader of Ontario was not great. It was not great. And one of my biggest issues,

00:25:10.660 And again, for those who don't understand how strikes work, the way that it works with a union, you vote, you have a strike mandate, you are then said to be in a legal position to go on strike, then you can go on strike.

00:25:22.740 The only people that cannot go on full strikes in Ontario, or I'm assuming Canada, are industries or workers that are deemed essential, for example.

00:25:37.680 Police, firefighters, nurses cannot go on strike.

00:25:42.120 Ambulance, right?

00:25:43.220 Because, makes sense, they would have a hell of a lot of power if the cop said, we're done for the day until you give us what they want.

00:25:52.100 That would be an undue level of power on the side of a union, right?

00:25:57.580 They could put down everything.

00:25:58.640 And far too detrimental to society at large.

00:26:01.720 If there's no nurses, there's no doctors, there's no ambulances, people are dying in the streets.

00:26:06.200 People die, right?

00:26:07.420 And from what I understand, that is the line of an essential service, okay?

00:26:13.240 So fast forward to our teachers going on strike.

00:26:16.920 They are not an essential service.

00:26:20.100 service however they under Kathleen Wynne were legislated back to work so technically what

00:26:30.460 Kathleen Wynne did is she sat down in the house in the house and voted to force those teachers

00:26:37.060 back to work otherwise there would be penalty now did she force them back to work yes was it 0.93

00:26:44.080 constitutionally uh like illegal absolutely eventually they said yes it was she doesn't

00:26:50.400 she shouldn't have had that power well and the the bill the bill that they passed in order to

00:26:55.020 remove those powers from teachers uh is like that's what was found unconstitutional all that

00:27:00.960 you know that was what 2014 2015 in that time frame and then what 2023 my dad just got his

00:27:10.280 check last week oh his retroactive he's been retired since 2015 that's insane at least he got

00:27:20.480 the check i mean it's absurd that all of this you know takes eight nine years uh before the money's

00:27:27.800 actually doled out when you know you're in that need at that time well and as and as everybody

00:27:33.440 that's following ontario politics i mean i do like to complain about the states but we had a very

00:27:38.520 similar issue go on very recently with Doug Ford, who is now the Conservative Premier

00:27:44.480 of Ontario, just like your governors, Conservative Premier. And this gentleman,

00:27:52.500 that was hard. I think that got caught right here. He, when EAs and support staff workers

00:28:00.960 were in a position to strike because they had a strike mandate, meaning they hadn't had a

00:28:08.380 raise in X amount of years. They like just the lowest paid worker in our educational system was

00:28:13.860 about to go on strike. And they've just been two years through the pandemic. COVID, everything.

00:28:20.100 Bob Ray says, we're not negotiating. And I'm going to use something called the notwithstanding clause,

00:28:26.140 which he evoked. And the notwithstanding clause in Canada might be the most asinine piece of 0.96

00:28:32.600 legislation that was shoved into our constitution that stipulates

00:28:35.560 if a province can point to and i don't i still don't know how he did this with this

00:28:43.120 particular legislation there is a cultural or unique issue within the province that

00:28:52.620 needs to override the constitution in order to maintain the province can use this piece of

00:29:00.860 legislation to supersede the constitution so for example the charter of rights and freedoms

00:29:06.800 which is our version the united states of our bill of rights let's say so you're allowed to

00:29:13.720 override it where has this been used well it's been used in the idea of catholic schools

00:29:20.100 right catholic schools can um historically have been discriminatory in many different ways

00:29:29.580 particularly focused on um you know gay employees uh students but you used to be able to this is

00:29:38.940 insane you the catholic schools could fire a teacher for being pregnant without being married 0.99

00:29:49.340 completely within they were allowed to supersede the constitution for that ridiculous 0.97

00:29:54.860 other people that have used this has been alberta surrounding their natural resources

00:29:59.260 they've used the notwithstanding clause a little bit quebec quebec has used it

00:30:03.980 in order to discriminate against multiple religions and they will say it's to protect

00:30:10.620 french catholic cultural norms right oh but they they don't say catholic because now it's all about

00:30:19.340 it's all about you know the state without religion but who's in the majority in quebec

00:30:25.420 all these people who have that same religion all for them it's like oh but you know all you have to 0.50

00:30:30.460 do is hide your cross and you know like that's fine but somebody wearing a scarf that's a problem

00:30:37.500 yeah i'll give you an example uh dan speaking about uh quebec passed a law that basically

00:30:42.620 stipulated that any government employee could not wear a religious symbol to work now for most

00:30:49.260 christians actually for all i don't know anyone all you need to do is take the saint you wear

00:30:55.100 around your neck or the cross and slip it underneath your shirt and you're good to go to work.

00:31:00.520 If you are Jewish, a Jewish man wearing a kippah, if you are Islamic wearing a hijab, if you are

00:31:07.340 sick and you are wearing a turban, all of those things, according to the Quebec government,

00:31:14.100 you could not wear it because it showed a religious affiliation. Now, this is where the

00:31:20.520 law seems equitable, but is not, sorry, seems equal, but not equitable. Because Quebec lawmakers

00:31:27.180 knew full and well that that law would do nothing, would serve as a zero detriment

00:31:34.980 to any Canadian in Quebec who was Christian. Nothing. It would do nothing to how they had

00:31:43.380 to go to work every day. However, the real target that they were focused on, because

00:31:49.440 i don't think it was to be honest i i if they could have got around the kippah and just let

00:31:54.360 them i i think they would have i think their real target and it's been very relatively systematic

00:31:59.140 in quebec was islamophobia i think was to get rid of women being allowed to wear

00:32:05.280 um hijabs or burqas or whatever that they wore for their faith i think that was and they say

00:32:11.720 it's because those are discriminatory and they hold women down there you go uh which of course

00:32:17.780 if it's somebody else forcing them to do that yeah sure but if it's them of their own choice

00:32:23.620 and you know like single women like there was a teacher that ended up being fired uh just outside 1.00

00:32:28.900 of gatineau uh because you know she'd been hired before it went into effect uh and then later she

00:32:35.660 was told well you've got to get rid of it or you're gone right and you know there's a teacher

00:32:39.920 shortage in quebec of course there is and by the way teachers get paid horrifically in quebec so

00:32:46.700 uh when when i think about being i had a friend who was a teacher in quebec for a long time and

00:32:51.700 then she moved to ontario and i think when she compares about what she got paid there it's just

00:32:56.420 it's absolutely horrific um i when i went to teachers in quebec get paid a hell of a lot

00:33:02.740 better than people in the u.s do too oh yeah for context you're still miles above if i was a u.s

00:33:10.180 teacher I'd be. I don't even know what I would do. I sometimes think, what would it be like

00:33:16.960 if I was in Florida right now? Like for me, right? I know the kind of ruckus I would cause. I'm

00:33:24.500 curious on how long I could last. But I also have the mentality of causing that kind of ruckus

00:33:30.300 and not being painfully aware, because I've had the luxury of living here, not being painfully

00:33:37.280 aware of, for example, the state, anybody in the state can now have a permitless conceal

00:33:44.020 and carry.

00:33:45.320 I don't think, my big mouth has never really thought about stepping into it and getting

00:33:50.940 me, you know, into a very, very violent scenario.

00:33:56.160 But Dan, I don't think I'd last about 37 seconds down there.

00:33:59.820 I'm not sure I would either.

00:34:01.340 And I mean, I'm just going back to yesterday in the Walmart parking lot.

00:34:04.920 uh there was a guy we were parked next to the cart corral and my four-year-old's in the cart

00:34:09.840 and I'm putting the groceries into the the trunk and a guy goes past and then just rifles the cart

00:34:16.400 into the cart corral and my son turns so as he's walking away he goes cuckoo mister and the guy

00:34:23.360 turns right he's like you're terrible is what my four-year-old told to this grown man after he made

00:34:29.060 a big mess in the car corral and I'm just like oh my god but like does that get you shot in Florida

00:34:35.100 I don't know listen I don't know I I know that when and I would love to lead this in because

00:34:42.200 I'd like your opinion about what while we're in deep in education I'd like your opinion about

00:34:45.660 what's going on in the York um catholic board right now um because when you rile up a population

00:34:54.360 When you not only make it acceptable for the level of discrimination and hatred to fester, when you make it your goal, when you hold it up as almost your, and I'm not condemning Christians here, please understand, but your biblical responsibility, that's how the manipulation of Christianity rolls out by some.

00:35:18.340 When you hold it up as such and you point the finger and you say, it's them.

00:35:24.660 It's their fault.

00:35:26.760 They're the ones, by the way, who are coming after your kids. 1.00

00:35:30.820 Holy crap. 0.98

00:35:32.760 Now you've created the perfect little stoked fire that all you need is one ignition, one spark. 0.98

00:35:42.740 And the whole thing is one.

00:35:45.120 Yes, one, right?

00:35:47.100 one person to say, okay, if this is, if they're coming after my kids, Ron DeSantis has said

00:35:54.800 they're coming after my, Ron DeSantis is trying to take down a cartoon mouse. And it seems funny

00:36:02.480 to us because I'm like, what a moron. I hope the mouse crushes you. But what I forget is he's 1.00

00:36:07.740 creating such a horrifically divided hateful and subsequently violent society in a state

00:36:17.300 where he's actually now taken away most forms of education for anybody to get any actual

00:36:22.700 information in their head that is freaking terrifying it's not off the internet well yeah

00:36:28.780 and that's what you hope for right but then you watch like let's let's be perfectly honest

00:36:34.420 us, like you and I, might go to the internet and might try to use it for very, very political,

00:36:43.260 very intellectually driven. But most people, and please don't think I'm out of this loop,

00:36:49.400 most people do a handful of things on the internet. And it's not fact checking random

00:36:55.020 140 character tweets. It is making TikToks. It is watching a TV show. It is talking to

00:37:03.320 the same social circle that I talk to every day, but through photos or through video or through a

00:37:09.660 couple of tweets, right? And so the notion that a 12, 13, 14, 15-year-old kid is supposed to

00:37:17.740 not have the access to ideas and intellectual banter at their school, that they're going to

00:37:27.480 go home and look it up on the internet and find out how de santa's was like now i have hope for

00:37:33.400 that but that's not how most of us spend our time right no and i mean most of us you know we we have

00:37:40.520 to be exposed to new ideas to get interested in them in order to go and explore them and and to

00:37:45.880 flesh them out and if you're not allowed to learn or to hear about these things uh then you're you're

00:37:52.520 not going to get to know them and i mean i can go right back to my my very first intro into

00:37:57.800 politics when i walked into that uh house a couple blocks over from my place and into that writing

00:38:03.680 association or the electoral district association meeting and you know what like i was 15 but like

00:38:08.880 i went to a french catholic school going into there this was the first time i was exposed to

00:38:14.240 people in the lgbt community it was the first time i was exposed to somebody who had hiv

00:38:19.560 uh you know it was the first time i'd really seen you know that larger world and then when i started

00:38:27.800 going to other meetings and going like wow there's a lot of different people out here and

00:38:31.660 you know everybody's got their own thing we all have things that tie us back together

00:38:35.840 uh but you know everybody has their thing that they need dealt with and that's different from

00:38:41.440 what other people need being able to to see all that you see a bigger picture uh and it's you

00:38:48.380 when you also put a human face on these things there you go I mean seeing a

00:38:53.660 person with HIV like okay yeah before that all I'd heard was all the scary 0.88

00:38:57.920 crap and then I meet this guy who's just like everybody else you know except he

00:39:05.180 he has what at that point was a terrible terminal disease and yeah when I was a 0.99

00:39:12.740 kid again Wellesley was the place right if you had HIV or if you had AIDS that's

00:39:17.060 where you went and i remember because it was at the height like in the early 90s if you're old

00:39:23.380 enough to walk down this road with me in the early 90s um people were terrified of being in the same

00:39:30.740 room of hugging that person of let alone kissing them like nothing you just terrified and my mom

00:39:38.340 was a nurse even though in the early 90s we were getting they were getting more and more information

00:39:43.060 I spent a lot of my childhood at that hospital. And my mom was very, was very aware and very

00:39:50.960 scared of like, if I contract this, what about my daughter, right? Like, again, so much of it not

00:39:56.960 known. And I remember as a kid, one of my most like, really formed memories, and it would have

00:40:03.560 been in the late 80s. So when it was even less discussed, because it would have been before high

00:40:08.280 school. I remember going into her floor, which was general surge. And I remember looking through a

00:40:13.860 window, like a room, but like the window cut out of a door that was shut. And this gentleman who

00:40:21.160 was sitting there, who obviously had lesions on visible lesions. They're particularly connected

00:40:28.580 to having full blown AIDS, lesions on his face. And nobody would go in there except doctors and

00:40:36.720 nurses that were quite literally in full hazmat gear, like straight out of outbreak. Nobody would

00:40:43.400 touch him. He couldn't have family. He never had friends, nothing. And as a kid, I know that now.

00:40:51.600 I mean, I know that now, but as a kid, I didn't. But I'm telling you, I can feel in my chest today

00:40:57.460 how i felt looking at him and how isolated and terrified and how alone he was in that moment

00:41:07.680 and it breaks my and all of that was a little bit of science because we hadn't quite cut up but a

00:41:13.520 hell of a lot of social you know ostracization and damnation early 90s want to know why no one's

00:41:22.760 looking up for a cure for HIV? Because the powers that be, the people that were able to control

00:41:28.640 funding would say, well, it's a gay guy disease. It's a disease rampant among the undesirables. 1.00

00:41:37.660 Yeah, they deserve it. Sounds very, very Hindu untouchables, right? They deserve it. This is 1.00

00:41:43.400 their lifestyle, what led to that, you know, and then all of a sudden straight people started

00:41:47.580 getting it and holy shit did the waves of money and research roll in but unfortunately what we did 0.67

00:41:54.940 as soon as it's a white guy's problem then the money comes out and but we left it for almost 0.95

00:42:00.620 10 years without some serious funding when you do that with a new virus you disconnect the

00:42:06.540 beginning of the virus with how you can find treatment for you know but i'll never forget

00:42:12.780 that guy i i and i must have been well i would have been maybe 10 around that age like maybe

00:42:19.420 around 85 maybe 10 to 12 like in and around there um but as we're talking about education

00:42:26.700 we've had some local states the only place with a problem when it comes to bigots and when it comes

00:42:33.180 to homophobic and transphobic insanity uh in the and i've tried to do this tick tock a couple times

00:42:41.820 and every time i try i get too angry and i swear and i have to delete it um in the york which is a

00:42:48.780 region of toronto in the york catholic school board they just had a debate i you know what

00:42:54.700 i'm talking about here right they just had a debate about whether or not they should raise

00:42:59.020 the pride flag first of all for the love of god and i don't i didn't mean to use that the same

00:43:04.220 sense as the catholic church but i think it is appropriate what are we debating it's 2023 we

00:43:11.980 this debate was over 15 years ago or should have been and and by the way the pope the pope has

00:43:19.980 said go have a good time you're not going to hell like the pope has said leave the people alone in

00:43:26.620 all intents and purposes right the pope the guy that they're supposed to listen to now i don't

00:43:31.820 listen to them but that's what they're supposed to listen to and so a bunch of parents went to

00:43:35.900 this meeting and lost their ever loving minds and started getting aggressive and and very very

00:43:44.940 violent in their words towards the board towards students children that were there

00:43:53.260 they were just getting you know and screaming whatever as well as like you're going to hell

00:43:58.780 the devil all of these things um and i i don't know what they've decided um but what how do you

00:44:10.700 if it was you what would how would you handle this because i know how i'd handle it oh there

00:44:15.660 there's many different ways in which i can imagine myself handling them from from very positive to

00:44:21.260 very negative uh but i think the one that keeps going through my mind is uh a question i would

00:44:27.660 like to ask a lot of these people which is why are you trying to do god's job for them right

00:44:35.740 god is the only one who's supposed to judge so why are you out here trying to do god's job

00:44:42.620 so you leave them alone let god do what god's supposed to do and god will judge them and you

00:44:50.940 in the end and we'll find who is wanting and who is not right so if you really believe like

00:44:57.820 let god do their job and i i and i'm using them and there because i don't want to assign a gender

00:45:04.220 to god not because i'm saying god is transgender if there is something that's all powerful all 0.70

00:45:11.660 knowing all controlling on omnipotent it stands to reason it would be all of them you think 0.58

00:45:16.940 omnipotent yeah it's everything come on now or it's alanis morissette one of the two

00:45:24.300 i still love dogma and uh i recently saw a little uh uh clip uh of kevin's uh kevin smith talking

00:45:32.540 about george carlin and being in that movie and the buddy jesus buddy jesus i have a buddy jesus

00:45:39.340 actually in my uh i i think i might have seen that in one of the older videos at some point

00:45:45.340 here's what I would do. And this is the TikTok I've been trying to get out, but I haven't been

00:45:50.300 able to. I would stop. If I were, let's say you have the York District School Board over here, 0.58

00:45:59.520 okay? Catholic. You have vitriolic, asinine parents over here, screaming obscenities and 1.00

00:46:09.060 eternal damnation. And then you have what I consider to probably be the mass majority 1.00

00:46:16.480 of parents, of teachers, of students who are either a part of the LGBTQ plus community or

00:46:24.920 serious allies. Because I do believe that the community of the intelligent, moral,

00:46:33.100 accepting, diverse, and equitable groups. I think we outnumber the idiots 10 to 1. 1.00

00:46:40.540 So here's the deal. Let's stop asking. Why? Why? Honest to God, stop giving a crap. 1.00

00:46:51.240 If I was a parent, if I was a teen, if I was a teacher in that board, 0.99

00:46:55.640 stop having the fight about a flag. By the way, I don't give a crap about, put up your flag, 0.98

00:47:02.020 don't care because that to me that is not the point you want to know what the point is every 0.98

00:47:08.360 day as a teacher stand in front of your class and make a statement right after you right after you

00:47:13.360 make the statement on the announcements talking about this land was the initial bay that whole

00:47:18.920 thing right after that unceded territory you say to your class or you have read over the

00:47:24.900 announcements. At this school, we accept and we support all identities and all people from all

00:47:34.060 walks of life, no matter where you stand and who you are. Say that every day. Screw the flag.

00:47:41.140 They can't stop you from saying that. If you're a parent in a Catholic board and you're upset with

00:47:45.860 this crap, amazing. Put flags out of your core windows every time you drop your kid off. 0.99

00:47:51.460 if you're a teenager and you support it cool every chance you get where every color under

00:47:58.400 the rainbow into that school to let the bigots know they are in the minority they don't have

00:48:05.400 a hope in hell they can chirp all they want at board meetings but they've lost

00:48:10.540 that's what i would do stop asking right stop fighting about

00:48:17.720 fly i mean it is it is a way to not have to deal with other issues um and yeah i mean we keep

00:48:28.180 having this and i i know on one of the recent episodes you talked a little bit about the sex

00:48:33.560 ed curriculum oh god and i mean that's one that obviously was provincial uh it bugged me to no

00:48:40.680 end that the liberals decided to you know push it in a drawer until after the election

00:48:45.540 uh but i get why they did it because there were some very strong views on it uh but federally

00:48:52.040 when i was going knocking on doors and i was hearing about it constantly and i'm just you

00:48:57.720 know i'm not going to hold the provincial government's water for them i'm like oh that's

00:49:01.420 that's their bailiwick and you know there should have been more consultation that's about all i

00:49:05.420 would say about it right right right but like my goodness i mean that they've gotten rid of it now

00:49:11.240 and we're going back to the 90s again you know 1998 that's two times before the internet really

00:49:17.160 you know we're not though you know it's interesting and i didn't i didn't know this

00:49:21.180 until heaven forbid it was handed to me um i had to teach grade seven and eight gym this year

00:49:25.640 heaven freaking helped me and a part of the grade seven and eight curriculum

00:49:29.560 is talking about again heaven help me internet pornography

00:49:34.920 how do you do that I don't want to everybody's like stop pushing listen I don't want to talk

00:49:42.780 about it that Doug Ford nobody's talking about this it is in the curriculum guidelines go look

00:49:49.900 them up if you're in Ontario do I think it's important absolutely I do to talk about it

00:49:54.380 because it's at the touch of their screen for crying out loud and the more that we pretend as

00:49:59.580 though, kids are only going to learn from their parents. Dude, you can't put your head any deeper

00:50:04.860 in that sand, right? So I have to talk about it. And that's still in the curriculum. That's where

00:50:10.860 they're learning. My dad's sex ed was to call me down. And then I'd come down into the living room

00:50:17.360 and there'd be some weird show on that was about body and health. And he'd walk out of the room.

00:50:22.900 And I'm just like, yeah, has it evolved that much since then? For all those families that

00:50:28.860 have problems with a flag definitely not uh generationally speaking i mean you know our my 0.98

00:50:35.620 kids are six and four and they already know that you know some women have penises and some men 0.96

00:50:42.180 don't that's all they need to know they just need to know the body the kids are like this okay and 0.93

00:50:48.580 they go on their day whatever affects nobody in any way shape or form but the reality is and this 0.97

00:50:54.060 is the funny part about kathleen wins and the liberals um you know uh sex curriculum sex

00:51:00.200 education curriculum a lot of people a first of all have no idea what was in it because they've

00:51:05.300 never looked at it they assume that you're sitting kindergarten kids and teaching about intercourse

00:51:08.780 that wasn't and because she herself was from the lgbt community they they already saw it as evil 0.96

00:51:15.680 it was a lesbian agenda first of all at least no one's getting pregnant it's just just a joke

00:51:22.920 everybody calm down um but uh nobody nobody was talking about the really important part of that

00:51:32.920 curriculum which i think i i couldn't even i can't even emphasize how important this should be

00:51:40.360 which was you talk to young kids about naming exactly about naming their body parts about

00:51:47.000 being comfortable with their body parts that's it that's all we're talking about here we're not

00:51:51.320 coming up with names like who who you know and dingleberry or whatever the hell you people are

00:51:56.280 calling it you come up with real names you don't skip those parts of the body when you're naming

00:52:00.440 them you talk about consent not just consent if you're in a relationship but you know what's

00:52:09.480 important to talk to a little kid about their own bodies their power over their own bodies their

00:52:17.080 um ability to say no i do not want to hug grandma i do not want to kiss on the cheek

00:52:24.360 auntie or uncle i do not want you to touch me how dare we not have that in the curriculum

00:52:32.440 how dare we because all you're doing is setting up for some horrific and usually yes the call is

00:52:39.800 coming from inside the house some horrific human being to take advantage of the secrecy

00:52:47.400 of the lack of education and the lack of awareness that that kid has control over the nature of it

00:52:57.240 the shame there it is disgusting anybody that stands against that i'd like it i'd like the

00:53:05.160 whoever to come investigate what's going on in your house why would i ever want my kid to ever

00:53:11.560 feel as though they have to do anything with their bodies that they don't want why why would i want

00:53:17.640 that unless right unless if i was honest to god i if i ran provincially it would almost be my it

00:53:29.480 would almost be my number one educational priority um the one the the issue of the the sex ed

00:53:36.520 curriculum came you know bumped up against one of the classic problems in politics uh and one

00:53:43.240 one of the very well used phrases uh like within political circles is uh when you're explaining

00:53:49.560 you're losing when you have to sit and explain an issue when you have to spend time elaborating on

00:53:55.240 something when it's not easily digestible in five words or less you're losing and i mean i go back

00:54:03.320 the perfect example i use with this is 2015 and the issue of marijuana so there was a federal

00:54:09.560 election and the three parties had very distinct points and platforms on it you but what it boiled

00:54:18.440 down to was you had conservatives saying just say no you had liberals saying legalize it and then

00:54:26.060 you had the NDP that actually had the right approach which is we've got to decriminalize

00:54:32.000 it now in order to make sure that nobody is going to jail and having lives ruined any more about this

00:54:37.960 while we sit together and committee and see experts and do everything and we create this

00:54:43.960 path to legalization that makes sense for everybody well but that's not legalize it or

00:54:49.640 just say no whatever you want I love that sex ed curriculum like sex ed it was like yes the kids

00:54:57.220 need to identify their body parts and know them and be comfortable with them so that they're

00:55:02.140 comfortable coming and telling you if somebody touched them and you know they need to know

00:55:07.460 respect boundaries they need to know about consent so that they know that their bodies

00:55:12.040 is a special place you know last week yeah but like last week one of my kids you know kids do

00:55:19.780 all kinds of different things right and one of my kids like I was bent over and I was playing with

00:55:24.840 one of them and the other kid you know smacked my butt and I just got a little bit upset and my

00:55:30.120 four-year-old was like oh what's wrong daddy did did she touch an intimate part and I'm just like 0.93

00:55:37.160 like the kid knows and it's like it wasn't a big deal i just didn't appreciate it he's four

00:55:45.460 and he just turned four a few weeks ago that's it isn't that amazing so can you say i know we're

00:55:52.360 gonna wrap it up can you say that last thing you said again if you have to explain it i if you have

00:55:58.500 to explain then you're losing this is our politics that's that's one of the biggest problems that's

00:56:05.220 the flaw in the political system period if you have to that's why when the right predominantly

00:56:12.820 simplifies issues down to hate and finger pointing and scapegoating they've won they've won because

00:56:19.860 people already want to agree with them and they've come up with a very simplistic way of dealing with

00:56:24.100 it even though it's completely and utterly false and vapid of any real um protective or useful

00:56:32.100 pieces of legislation right the political community right the political lies that work on

00:56:38.900 people are the ones that already feed into perceptions that people feel and the NDP suffers

00:56:45.560 from a big one on this respect there is a perception out there that conservatives are

00:56:51.000 good on the economy and that the NDP is bad on the economy we just think about it differently

00:56:57.580 And when I was a member of parliament and, you know, I'm sitting in a meeting with people from the Business Development Bank of Canada, which is, you know, an agency that goes out to put money in the hands of businesses to make money.

00:57:11.900 You know, they sat there with me and we were talking about the economy and they're like, yeah, you know, the conservatives always overplay their hand on their economic knowledge and New Democrats always underplay our hand on economic knowledge.

00:57:23.720 uh and so yeah like that's one of the big things i see is like my party needs to

00:57:30.360 win the economic arguments if we're going to ever form that federal government

00:57:35.380 and don't spend time on it if you're going to be honest about the economy and this is what

00:57:41.220 no political party i've ever really heard say the amount of the economy and economic um control you

00:57:49.280 have has been so incredibly minimized and globalized over the past let's say 30 years

00:57:58.080 that you have to accept as a leader of a country even if you have the majority you only have

00:58:05.360 a certain amount of control into how you're going to react to changes in nafta how you're going to

00:58:12.800 react to global energy crises how you're going to react to putin invading ukraine and the idea that 0.92

00:58:21.040 because we're a country we have some sort of sovereignty over our economic order is asinine

00:58:28.560 it does not exist anymore and you know what's been the single biggest driver of that diminishment of

00:58:36.320 government autonomy and independence and the ability to actually have that impact

00:58:41.040 conservatives it well it's conservatives but it's also liberals with the ratchet effect

00:58:46.080 which would be the democrats in the u.s corporate taxes in canada are half of what they were in the

00:58:52.400 1990s yeah so now all that money has gone into corporate hands and has gone into excessive

00:59:02.480 profits and has gone into more shareholders and more buying of the economy and at least here we

00:59:09.680 have some pretty strict rules with respect to campaign financing and no union and corporate

00:59:15.260 contributions, unlike the U.S., which is basically legalized bribery. Right. You know, the influence

00:59:21.780 peddling is on a much smaller scale here, but it's still businesses and the well-heeled that

00:59:28.980 have greater access because, you know, they're able to focus on things beyond putting food on

00:59:34.360 a table and a roof overheads and paying for school absolutely i think that's all most families

00:59:40.320 to deal with right well i think we'll need a whole other podcast for this absolutely but i think what

00:59:45.160 we need to start dealing with rather than talking about capitalism in opposition to communism because

00:59:51.540 it's always like when you criticize capitalism you're automatically sitting at the table with

00:59:55.460 Stalin. We need a space and a mentality and a form to criticize what we're in right now. And by the

01:00:05.060 way, guys, I don't think it's capitalism. I don't know if we've ever had any clear... Capitalism

01:00:10.860 demands high levels of competition amongst many different competitors. When you have Rogers in

01:00:18.380 canada and walmart in the united states and google and these monstrosities of global corporations

01:00:28.220 worth hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars you no longer have fair competition

01:00:34.300 which is what is the basis even if you like capitalism is all it is the basis of capitalism

01:00:40.300 why are they accepting all these monopolies well because it's the end game yeah it's the end of

01:00:46.380 the stage it is the end is the end game right the end game is there's going to be a winner at some

01:00:51.500 point you wanted to be the winner i wanted to make the best t-shirts at some point my company i want

01:00:56.540 i want a winner as soon as you have a winner guess what we're all screwed we're screwed because that

01:01:01.740 winner can now set whatever it is they want to set some people be like well we used to have a

01:01:06.060 monopoly no we didn't rockefellers owned all of the steel and all of the oil what

01:01:15.980 standard oil rockefeller steel rockefeller when you own those two companies you owned the united

01:01:22.940 states between them the carnegies the morgans and the rockefellers those three families

01:01:30.380 guys three families at the height of what people would say is a capitalistic heaven

01:01:36.060 They had everything.

01:01:37.960 Until the Depression, that is.

01:01:39.860 It was only in their benevolence.

01:01:41.800 Still the Depression.

01:01:42.920 But how much did the Depression really hurt them when in actuality they could give away things like Central Park as a gift to New York?

01:01:51.320 Right?

01:01:51.900 Because they had tangible things. 0.96

01:01:53.940 The Depression is only affecting people that base their lives on non-tangibles, on the money they have in their bank account that went to crap.

01:02:01.420 Whereas the Rockefellers still said, don't worry.

01:02:03.220 We still have all the oil.

01:02:04.500 we still have all the steel we still have our 18 houses and our farms and our whatever

01:02:10.300 but there is the problem and i know we're going to lead look if you guys liked our conversation

01:02:15.240 let's we'll we'll lead it right into part two as soon as uh as soon as dan would like to come back

01:02:20.800 oh man there there are so many things that we didn't touch on that we could you know recently

01:02:25.160 you talked about uh borden secondary and the incredible programs that used to exist there

01:02:30.580 It's so sad.

01:02:31.520 It makes me so sad.

01:02:32.560 I actually, because one of the things I did, we didn't get into my job history, but as a teenager for five years, I worked in childcare.

01:02:40.500 And I actually worked an entire summer up at Borden.

01:02:43.700 Amazing.

01:02:44.360 Running a summer camp for six daycares, which was a lot of fun.

01:02:48.600 And, you know, I didn't get to wear any of my fun hats.

01:02:54.320 Oh, I've seen your, I've seen your post.

01:02:57.700 It was like, which one do I wear?

01:02:59.460 because i've got a collection too and uh i like the container

01:03:10.740 that's a death star blue jay where the hell do you get that

01:03:15.140 every year they used to have one come out for my may the fourth and see i like that expos that

01:03:21.700 reminds me of the expos but in a philadelphia theme and then yeah the star wars uh i gotta

01:03:28.660 to get one of those obviously because yeah i was gonna ask you how do you transport your hats and

01:03:33.760 uh how do you store them because you keep them in good shape drawer so i store them all like this

01:03:39.380 like folded in my whatever but i have a pull-out drawer because i have this huge ikea wardrobe so

01:03:44.940 i have a pull-out drawer that i have two sort of lines of them and as i pull them out it holds like

01:03:50.000 25 and 25 nice well dan thank you so much for hanging out with me today i loved our conversation

01:03:57.680 I would love more of it.

01:03:58.880 Can you tell the people where they can find you if they want to hear more of

01:04:01.540 your brilliance?

01:04:02.860 Well,

01:04:03.360 I,

01:04:03.860 now that I no longer am verified on Twitter,

01:04:06.260 I didn't have to worry about changing my name anymore.

01:04:09.440 So I've actually changed it on Twitter.

01:04:11.380 I used to be Dan Harris NDP.

01:04:13.640 Now I'm Dan Harris can,

01:04:15.840 and that's on Instagram and Tik TOK.

01:04:18.920 I'm still blastnet for my gamers tag,

01:04:21.680 but those are the best places to find me.

01:04:24.560 And for all of my hats,

01:04:26.260 It would be hashtag. What hat is Dan wearing?

01:04:29.040 I like it. I like it.

01:04:31.060 And can you stick around for one second after I say goodbye to our listeners?

01:04:35.000 I have an off the air question for you. I don't, I don't want to blow that up on air,

01:04:39.200 but for everybody who's listening, thank you so much for sticking around,

01:04:43.220 listening, watching. I appreciate it.

01:04:45.800 I will see you next week, next Tuesday, same bat time, same bat station.

01:04:52.460 Have a good week guys.

01:04:54.520 Dismissed.

01:04:56.260 Thank you.

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - May 02, 2023

The One Where We Admit - 'If You Have To Explain It, You Have Already Lost'

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