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Episode 2 - "Kerry Diotte sue us bitch"
61 Plays5 years ago
Is conservative MP Kerry Diotte a racist? You'll have to listen to find out. Bashir Mohamed and Avnish Nanda guest co-host with Duncan Kinney. We also chat about the state of play in Alberta's painfully white media and how bad they are at talking about racism, how white supremacists use free speech arguments with a clueless media and we wonder out loud why conservative MP Michael Cooper just happened to have the manifesto of the Christchurch shooter in his pocket.
Further reading
Kerry Diotte + racist Twitter search
Gypsy immigrants should get a job first. Column by Diotte in 1997
Edmonton MP threatens legal action against Twitter users accusing him of having links to well-known racistThe moral cowardice of Canadian media is leaving racism unchallenged
Everyone's Canada Scott Moe and the Confederate flagRecommended
Transcript
Introduction to SLAP Suits
00:00:10
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording from a dimly lit basement here in Treaty 6 territory, and today we're talking about the latest trend from shitty Alberta-based conservative politicians. Slap suits. What are they? How do you fight them? Why are they so effective? How did you get in here? You're not my dad.
00:00:28
Speaker
Today, to discuss the issue, we have two incredible guest co-hosts. First up is Avanish Nanda, a civil rights lawyer who runs a boutique law firm here in Edmonton, as well as Vancouver. He sues governments. We've also got Bashir Mohammed, a writer, researcher, and historian who is excellent at pulling up amazing stories of anti-black racism and black history here in Alberta.
Bashir's Legal Aspirations and SLAP Suit Explanation
00:00:49
Speaker
And Bashir, I think you just recently wrote your LSAT as well. So you're kind of like on your way to lawyer town. Ah, yeah. I find out in a few weeks if I did well enough.
00:00:56
Speaker
And is it like the worst thing ever? Like how you're describing it? Well, yeah, I had my first nightmare, um, like a few nights ago, but I watched when they see us and I realized that that lawyer wrote the all set. So she, if she did well, then I can do well too. All right. All right. I'm not, I'm not worried about it. I'm not worried. Okay. So I mentioned slap lawsuits in the intro. I have niche as the only kind of law talking guy here in the room. Can you help explain what a slap suit is?
00:01:21
Speaker
Sure, a SLAP suit stands for strategic litigation or lawsuit against public participation. It's a lawsuit that's intended to intimidate or silence critics engaged in otherwise legitimate public expression or advocacy because the person who's subject to that advocacy or public expression doesn't like what's being said.
00:01:40
Speaker
So it's just a way to stifle dissent, stifle criticism. And it does so by putting someone through a lawsuit, which is incredibly resource intensive, both in time and money. And the hope is that the person being sued who usually doesn't have much resources will just give up, doesn't have the money to continue to sustain the lawsuit. So the specifics of the case are kind
Power Dynamics in SLAP Suits
00:02:04
Speaker
of irrelevant. It's the actual lawsuit is the actual punishment, right? Yeah, going through the motions.
00:02:09
Speaker
And so who are the kind of like people or groups who typically file SLAP suits?
00:02:13
Speaker
It's usually in Canada, it has been large corporations, moneyed interests against rich white guys. If you want to say that, yeah, for sure. It has been, I've seen it in more like a kind of diverse context, but it's definitely a situation where one party has more power and privilege over people who tend to not engage in the legal system and get overwhelmed by what they're facing.
00:02:39
Speaker
Fair enough, okay, that's an excellent kind of explanation of Slapsu.
The Diot-Goldie Controversy and Racism Allegations
00:02:42
Speaker
So that brings us to Kerry Diot. Kerry Diot is a former Edmonton Sun columnist, a city councilor here in Edmonton, a failed mayoral candidate, and now a conservative Edmonton MP. Diot is a bit of a problematic character and I have some history with him, some personal history with him. He once got drunk on Maine and called Progress Alberta fake news and warned that we should be afraid, very afraid.
00:03:08
Speaker
But at this stage of kind of Diot's career as a kind of conservative backbench MP, he's like the perfect smooth-brained example of a guy who can go out there and regurgitate some talking points, but he doesn't have any real power as an MP. He's not on the front bench. He's not important. But he is willing to say all sorts of terrible things about illegals or how supervised consumption sites are destroying communities.
00:03:31
Speaker
But that kind of brings us to why we're here, what we're talking about. Back in February 2017, Kerry Deott posted a tweet with a picture of him and Faith Goldie with the following words. Great chat with at Faith Goldie at the Manning Center conference. Thanks for making the media great again. At the Rebel TV, hashtag Canadian Polly, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:03:53
Speaker
This photo and tweet with Faith Goldie took place less than a month after the massacre in Quebec City, the largest and kind of one of the most deadliest mass shootings in Canadian history. And Faith Goldie's coverage, quote, unquote, coverage of this
00:04:15
Speaker
Of this tragedy of this massacre was in no uncertain terms racist Bashira could kind of walk us through what that what faith Goldie had done just a month prior to Carry you out taking that picture with her. Yeah, so to give some context while the shooting was happening I'm sure you're on Twitter following how everything was unfolding and
00:04:36
Speaker
Some things were misreported. For example, it was reported that it was a shooting done by two people. One of them was the actual shooter. And then the other person that was misreported was somebody who was actually going, was at the mosque. So they had a Muslim name, and that name spread. And Faith Goldie, Lauren Southern, and a bunch of those other people ran with that, and they said it was a false flag. So right after the shooting, they put out a newsletter, actually fundraising, and saying that we need to get to the bottom of the story.
00:05:04
Speaker
So that's kind of how that coverage unfolded. The reason why I guess they wanted to frame it as a false flag was because they felt that this attack was meant to gain sympathy for Muslims in Canada. So that's just kind of a brief overview of that coverage. It was a very clever plot by a Muslim to massacre a bunch of other Muslims in order to make people feel bad about Muslims getting shot.
00:05:27
Speaker
For sure. To give more context, during this time too, she was really pushing the great replacement myth. She had videos about white genocide and all that stuff. Yeah, like the white genocide, white replacement theory, which as we learned eventually in the trial, like animated his actions, like were one of the big reasons why he went out there and shot a bunch of people. Yeah. There's that interrogation video where he's saying that I wanted to protect people. I wanted to keep people safe.
00:05:50
Speaker
So he was heavily motivated by that stuff. Okay so this tweet with Faith Goldie and Kerry Dia comes out and I'm sure it gets a lot of comment at the time. I'm sure you probably commented on it at the time. But it kind of sat dormant for a while until 2018 where it kind of flared back up again and Kerry Dia took a picture with some student union president and kind of flared up and the issue of him
00:06:14
Speaker
being a racist, and you kind of framing Kerry DeOt as a racist in no uncertain terms, both based on his taking a picture with Faith Golding, not deleting it, not commenting on it all, as well as his past actions, that kind of comes back out again. So why, again, in 2018, did you come back out with reposting that picture and calling out Kerry DeOt as a racist?
00:06:32
Speaker
Yeah, well, I used to go to the U of A. I know that student, senior president. And yeah, well, Kerry Dyot has just been kind of shitty in general. He hasn't acknowledged that photo. He still hasn't acknowledged it besides liking tweets of people who are critiquing the people who are critiquing him. So a bunch of other young people, like students, people who just graduated were commenting that.
00:06:56
Speaker
And, you know, it's Twitter, and I don't like Kerry Dyott, and I really wanted him to own up to it. So I tweeted that. Soon after, though, all those people who tweeted that he's a racist and myself got letters from Arthur Hamilton saying that we should take down the tweets. Otherwise, they're going to launch a legal action. So you call out Kerry Dyott as a racist. You get these, you know, legal letters from Kerry Dyott and his fancy Tory lawyer. That's when Evnish comes into the picture, right?
00:07:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think I DM'd you right after it. And then you told me that it was actually the conservative party's main lawyer, and that kind of freaked me out a bit. And I Googled his name and there was a Globe and Mail article about him and the first sentence talked about him driving his Jaguar. So then at that moment I got kind of mad because I didn't want this guy to
00:07:46
Speaker
I don't know, it just seemed really arrogant. And at the end of the letter, he even said, govern yourself accordingly. So personally, I was kind of pissed off. So I reached out to you and yeah, you wrote a pretty strong response. Yeah. And, uh, you know, I think this particular case, um, you know, in all times, uh, where Bashir, um, you know, raises questions about a politician's conduct or our history, uh, it's there always researched. There's, there's a, um,
00:08:13
Speaker
There's a legitimate basis for the words of Rashidul describe someone by, in this case, carried as being as racist. And in this case, I felt that this was pure intimidation. This was an attempt to silence Bashir from engaging in legitimate criticism of a public official, a public official who has a history of being a strenuous free speech advocate,
00:08:41
Speaker
Oh, I have a tweet here. Freedom of speech is one of the most fundamental freedoms. That is why we conservatives will always defend it. Also, March 23rd, 2017, a month after his picture with Faith Goldie, free speech is sacred in hashtag Canada. That's why I voted against M103.
00:09:01
Speaker
There's a litany of examples in Kariyat's days as being a journalist or as a politician where he's said stuff, he's taken stands that have clearly would make a reasonable person ask the question or make the allegation that he is racist. And that's what Bashir was doing. And I think it was, um,
00:09:22
Speaker
strong on Bashir's part to not back down. And I don't think many are in a situation because many others were targeted as well, like Mr. Kerry Diot and they just didn't have the resources or the capacity to deal with this. But fortunately Bashir did and stopped Kerry Diot and his tracks. So let's get into it. So like why exactly is Kerry Diot a racist? Walk me through it Bashir.
00:09:41
Speaker
Well, I mean, I guess some context. Before he was a politician, he was a journalist or a columnist, I guess. And there was some questionable things he has written before. So for example, there's this article he wrote on the Edmonton Sun that said gypsy immigrants should get a job first. And the article itself is just
00:10:03
Speaker
extremely racist. Let's see, so quoted from it, what if a race of cannibals from some unpronounceable country cry discrimination because other folks in that nation tried to get them to give up their flesh-eating ways?
00:10:19
Speaker
This is he's comparing these people to gypsies. Yes. Yeah, and he Yeah, and he wrote this so I guess this is one example but but the main thing honestly is that tweet like the tweet saying
00:10:34
Speaker
I forget the caption, right? Make Canada's media great again. That's a clear endorsement of Faith Goldie. Who's a white supremacist? She's a white nationalist. She's been on white nationalists' podcasts. She's pushed white nationalist conspiracy theories.
00:10:52
Speaker
And she said one of the worst shootings in Canadian history was a false flag. Him endorsing her and refusing to condemn her, in my opinion, purely makes him a racist. There's no, any other person could just send out a tweet or even delete the tweet. That tweet's still up. It's like he's still proud of it. So I guess if you take all that into account, that's why, in my opinion, Kerry DeOt's a racist. And he can sue me if he wants.
00:11:17
Speaker
Well, and then Faith Goldie has like, I mean, if maybe you weren't paying attention, maybe you weren't up to date on who your like kind of latest shithead rebel media kind of personalities were, but like post this picture, Faith Goldie has become like an unapologetic and extremely like out and proud white supremacist, right? She got fired from the rebel. She recited the 14 words like on a podcast. She like appeared on a Neo-Nazi like Daily Stormer podcast. She like, you can go down the list of like,
00:11:45
Speaker
All of these reasons to disavow taking a picture with Faith Goldie, right and so I mean it kind of boggles the mind that he thought he could like try and sue people into silence when like people called him a racist about this but
Media's Role in Racism and Ideological Narratives
00:12:00
Speaker
I mean, but it's not just like this picture with Faith Goldy. You've got the gypsy immigrants thing. I mean, I am, I'm not actually Terry Kerry Diot's constituent, but I get his mailers because whatever. That's the way postal codes work. But like he's got a post on his own blog, May 4th, 2018, illegal border crossers hurt law abiding would be immigrants, where he refers to people over and over and over again, people who are seeking asylum as illegals or illegal.
00:12:24
Speaker
Again, you don't get to do that and not be called a racist. People aren't illegal, and people who are seeking asylum are not in fact doing anything illegal.
00:12:41
Speaker
like we're students like some of them have like 60 followers on Twitter like I don't under like you know there was a clear intent to stifle the criticism and not you know any legitimate attempt to repair his reputation here and I think this is a long-standing tactic among no conservative party members and supporters in this province at least I know
00:13:04
Speaker
And right after, actually, we went through his Twitter account to see his likes. And yeah, like stuff from Lauren Southern, Paul Joseph Watts, like the guy from Infor Wars. Prison Planet. Yeah.
00:13:15
Speaker
We love our cops, I law enforcement. Have you seen the video? All right, well, maybe we'll shove it in here. Okay, so, I mean, I think you're, I mean, you're a guy, you have a bit of a platform, you have a bit of a following, but at the end of the day, you're just like a guy on Twitter. Like people who have actual platforms, people, his former colleagues in the media, the media itself, essentially didn't challenge this at all. And I think this speaks to like a broader theme and trend within kind of Canadian media, which is that like,
00:13:46
Speaker
What's the joke from like walking eagle like? Reporter bursts into flame after word racism published without air quotes like like like I mean it's a joke and walking eagle does great work, but like that it that seems to be literally true and Like the you remember the Andre Demis piece in the claims about the like the moral cowardice of Canadian media is leaving racism and challenge like I think that there's a
00:14:10
Speaker
There's a part from there that I want to kind of draw out and to use as a discussion point, and it's like, here it is from the piece. The people behind the bylines and headlines in Alberta's media class are, as with the rest of the country, very white. They carry with them the sensibilities that often insulate white supremacy, even if inadvertently.
00:14:27
Speaker
That is, of course, when they aren't outright mainstreaming white supremacist smear campaigns against refugees in European countries, as talk radio host and former Wildrose party leader Danielle Smith recently did during a segment on her program. This is an endless source of frustration for the communities of color in the province and across Canada as we are perpetually dragged back into the same naive and uncomplicated conversations about racism, even as our communities increasingly come under attack.
00:14:52
Speaker
And that kind of quote, I mean I think it applies to Alberta media. Like Alberta media, we just went through a provincial election here in Alberta where like white replacement theory, we talked about it a shit ton and the media like did not want to talk about it. Or they said it was controversial comments with quotes around it. And like the inability of the media to kind of identify and call out white replacement theory as
00:15:18
Speaker
Like literally the the ideology of of of the killers like the Christchurch killer Like was all about white replacement theory this Bissonnet guy though the mosque shooter in Quebec like white replacement theory Like this is this is a political project and an ideology that kills people kills people who are brown kills people who are Muslim and they are literally getting shot to death in their places of worship and we have a media that is like
00:15:47
Speaker
And I'm curious about you, Avneesh. I mean, you had a lot of things to say about the kind of Canadian media coverage during the last provincial election.
00:15:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And to be fair, there are a lot of people I've spoke to kind of online and behind the scenes in newsrooms in this city and province that I think understand and do a good job and to give voices to people like us who have critiques. Bill Ma, the journal in particular, you know, ran an op-ed that I wrote and, you know, he was very
00:16:20
Speaker
There's a bunch of people who, some of the CBC Edmonton staff, did a good job of kind of contextualizing, having diverse voices on, calling out stuff.
00:16:32
Speaker
I think there is a broader issue when you, sorry, the Starr Bureau in Calgary, Edmonton did a fantastic job too. But there's a broader issue, I think, where your newsroom doesn't reflect the population it serves. And I know this has been discussed to various extents across this country, but I think this last election in Alberta really crystallized it for a lot of people where I remember that I wrote this kind of response to Cailin Ford and
00:16:59
Speaker
I got emails and messages from people all over this province, kind of similarly situated, people of color, children of immigrants, immigrants themselves, who said, you know, what you conveyed here reflected my views on this. And these are people who are from across the political spectrum.
00:17:19
Speaker
I feel like that shouldn't be maybe the job of a like one off freelance kind of, um, contributor. Um, that should always be reflected in the newspapers or the, um, publications of the day in the staff. We're there all of every day after day doing that work. Right.
00:17:38
Speaker
Yeah. And they're afraid of, um, like, you know, fully condemning, uh, people like Caitlin Ford. Um, like they, I guess the way it's currently set up, they feel like they have to give them equal air time. Like Daniel Smith ran, what was it? 45 minutes or accepting an interview with Caitlin Ford where she didn't really challenge her. And on some point she actually agreed with her on. And I think like a random listener who doesn't know about great replacement theory, you know, they have
Conservative SLAP Suits and Free Speech Suppression
00:18:06
Speaker
this person out. He's not being challenged.
00:18:08
Speaker
One and I know Keelan Ford was it was definitely all about the like free speech argument, too Yeah, right when she wrote a blog post Where she like tries to like? Put a context around everything but then she ends up just defending like the great replacement theory in it and saying it's a legitimate Like thing we needed a beta or whatever
00:18:27
Speaker
Like you remember that, right? I do the Apologia, but like, I think in the wake of that, like one thing I really liked is that there were some people who had like power in this media landscape who kind of, you know, a loud voice like Ryan, just remember, I remember he had Bashir on and he, I think he tried so hard to have Bashir or someone of color who's critical of getting forward to what was going on on to discuss it. And, um,
00:18:51
Speaker
Maybe it's a Calgary thing because I felt like at least the chorus network down there or even the Herald They were much more reluctant to have call things out or to have diverse voices on and maybe that's a like a split between the cities I'm not calling out Calgary, but I'm just saying no Calgary's media is bad You don't have to like the Calgary the Calgary Herald newsroom is is is trash
00:19:13
Speaker
Well, a producer, like base in Cal Group with that company reached out to me soon after the Danielle interview and he told me, like I said it when I worked the interview because I had to go somewhere else. And he was kind of frustrated and he said, yeah, we're just trying to clean up her mess. So you could tell they're scrambling. I don't think what they did worked, whatever they did. Yeah, that happened. I mean, it,
00:19:37
Speaker
I mean, it still comes back to, but these people, like Caitlin Ford, et cetera, Faith Gould, they continually come back to this kind of free speech argument, right? And I do want to bring this up because the reason why white supremacists continually talk about free speech is because they don't want to talk about their actual fucking ideas. If you get down to what white supremacists actually want, what organized white supremacy actually wants, they want the genocide and deportation of all non-white people from North America.
00:20:03
Speaker
And that's not something that even like polite liberals can countenance, right? That's not something that like you're like, even Danielle Smith can be like, that would get her dander up. She would not have that on her show, but she would love to have a discussion about, about her, that person's right to say that. And this is a long standing trope and a long standing tactic used by organized white supremacy to not talk about their ideas, but to talk about free speech. I know you've done a bunch of research on this, like, especially the Alberta context.
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, like in Edmonton, J.J. Maloney, who was the leader of the Alberta Cline, who had their office on Jasper, he held rallies, and there's a photo of one of them, I think from 1931 or 1932, and it says, Maloney Free Speech Special. In addition, their newspaper, The Liberator, which they said had a circulation of 250,000.
00:20:53
Speaker
on there's a photo of a clan meeting and everyone there is holding up copies of the newspaper the liberator or their i guess their newspaper and the headline reads free speech is upheld so this has always been their tactic it's it's always a cover for this type of stuff like when you hear people
00:21:09
Speaker
Described as free speech activist in 2019 that usually means they're defending white supremacist or whatever like Shepherd for example the the the ta like she's always framed as a free speech activist But if you look at what she actually says like she tweets about the lack of white babies in Mississauga too many children named Mohammed
00:21:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I mean the context of free speech is like in free speech on the left is the one that's under attack or even just like civil society, right? Like you were served a slap a slap suit by Kerry Deott as words as you know half a dozen other private citizens You know, we have this public inquiry going on in Alberta right now That's going to be investigating, you know on Albertan activities anyone who's ever said boo about the oil patch being bad They can expect to get hauled in front of this thing and and what like we have no idea what the kind of context or the frame of reference for that inquiry is
00:22:00
Speaker
But you don't see, but like the free speech discourse is monopolized by like, by right wingers and people ultimately who are upholding kind of white supremacy. Yeah. Like, you know, I've, I've helped out, um, like in the legal context, um, people who have said things that, uh, like, you know, I certainly don't agree with and I've helped people who like, you know, their free speech expression has been stifled through a variety of different contexts. But you know, one thing I really want to break down here is that,
00:22:30
Speaker
They say that's a level playing field, that your speech, their speech, it'll battle out and the winner will prevail. But that comes from a place where there's equal footing, that the privilege and power of these respective groups are equal.
00:22:46
Speaker
In this context, when you talk about race, diversity, white supremacy, there is no equal playing field. And you have often situations where these free speech defenders come from a place of extreme power and privilege. They have status, they have resources to get their message across. And those people who are targeted, often people of color, people from immigrant communities,
00:23:11
Speaker
don't have the same during the capacity to even engage in the same level of discourse so you know fundamentally that that's a flaw um but you know i've been seeing a lot more of these kind of free speech cases in the defamation contest in in the election context in um in street protest context and i'm kind of
00:23:32
Speaker
I am concerned the way in which certain members on the right have conflated, like you said, it's not a question of free speech or free speech absolutism. My speech is okay, yours is not okay. So we can like ban the Citadel or we can condemn the Citadel, take away public funding if they don't want to hold
00:23:53
Speaker
a particular speaker or host a particular speaker like Jordan Pearson when, you know, that's the Citadel's free speech. You know, if Jordan's Pearson go on a soapbox and say all this anti-trans stuff, why can't the Citadel say, I don't want you speaking to us because of your anti-trans stuff? That's, you know, that should be the model. That should be what we're trying to achieve. But a lot of these activists are really only concerned about speech they agree with.
00:24:16
Speaker
All right, so let's bring this back to kind of carry the odds so You two get together and you Essentially formulate a response and essentially come at me bro. You're a racist is that is that is that a fair Analysis of what you sent the letter you sent back to carry the yeah
00:24:32
Speaker
I would say no. You didn't write that out. I'm crunching it down here, Abnish. Abnish wrote the legal response, but a part of the reason why I posted it publicly soon after was to show that
00:24:48
Speaker
Like I understand that by you doing that, you understand that you can probably steamroll me. But thankfully I do have like a small following on Twitter. So because of that, I think I was able to scare him a little bit too. By showing that if you do take this to court, you're going to have to sit there and explain all these things. And you're going to be raked over the coals over your past tweets, your past likes, all this stuff. And I'm not sure politically he would want that.
00:25:14
Speaker
So for me, I guess that was kind of the rationale doing it publicly. Like posting that response publicly, but also the letter. But so you, you and Avnish get together, you write a letter and you say, uh, I still believe you're a racist. I'm not going to back down. You can, you can see it. We'll see you in court essentially. Right. And Kerry Diat does what?
00:25:34
Speaker
Nothing, I heard nothing back, did you? No, I heard nothing to date. So essentially you stood up to the bully and then the bully backed out. However, he did go after the gateway. So the gateway is the University of Alberta student paper and they wrote a couple articles about this. One article recapped everything that happened, another article was an opinion piece calling the odd out.
00:25:53
Speaker
And yeah, I think it lasted a few months. I don't know if they did a statement of defense, but they ended up putting out a statement. Apologizing and retracting. Yeah, I don't think it ever got to court, but there was an apology and a retraction. And Kerry Diod was crying about it. And again, in his statement about it, did mention how much of a defender of free speech he is suing a student newspaper for calling him out. I mean, just to reiterate one more time, Kerry Diod is a racist.
00:26:22
Speaker
Yeah, Kerry Diot's a racist. I'll say that a million times. And Bashir's done a good job, again, explaining why, like in detailed, you know, past statements of Kerry Diot and such, so. Of course. I know you're a lawyer of nation. We did just spend the past 25 minutes talking about why Kerry Diot is a racist. Kerry Diot is a racist. If you want to see us, go ahead.
00:26:42
Speaker
Okay, so that's Kerry Diot. I mean, I think it's worthwhile to kind of talk about the other kind of conservative politician who is engaging in a slap suit or has at least kind of started one, and that's Michael Cooper.
SLAP Suits in Politics: Cooper's Case
00:26:55
Speaker
He's an MP for St. Albert and Northern Edmonton. Michael Cooper, I don't know if you've ever seen him. I don't like commenting on people's opinions or appearances.
00:27:02
Speaker
But like, there's something about his face that just screams like untrustworthiness and like, ugh, like lifelong campus conservative. Like you can tell he's a campus conservative just by looking at him. This is a guy who started wearing a suit to fucking junior high. I guarantee you he had a briefcase in fucking undergrad. I don't know, did you even go, did you go to law school with him?
00:27:24
Speaker
No, no, he's way more senior and he went to different laws. Okay, okay, okay. But I just have a fundamental distaste for campus conservatives. As a person, and you're in your early 20s, late teens, you're like, hmm, the conservative political movement, that's the one for me. And you're either a sociopath or a careerist and you're just looking for a job. And I just have, they make my skin drop.
00:27:52
Speaker
Michael Cooper is an MP, Edmonton, St. Albert. He was on the Justice Committee. And at this Justice Committee, they were interviewing Faisal Khan Suri, who is the well-known anti-racism, anti-Islamophobia activist here in Edmonton. He runs an organization called AMPAC, the Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council. And essentially, Faisal Khan Suri was just laying out his experience with Islamophobia and racism.
00:28:20
Speaker
its connections to the conservative political movement, like the yellow vest. I can't remember the exact references that Faisal brought up, but it was essentially like making that kind of case. And that wasn't his entire speech, but he definitely like obliquely referenced it. And Michael Cooper responds by reading
00:28:38
Speaker
the name of the Christchurch shooter in New Zealand out loud and reading a part of his manifesto about the great replacement theory that he somehow had in his pocket you know like I just walk around with that stuff totally not totally normal something a totally normal person does and now and then there was a bit of a kerfuffle about that and there was a very weak tea apology and
00:29:05
Speaker
And I think he was removed from the Justice Committee, which was like done in its work in like a week or something anyways before breaking for the election. It was a total interest year had an opportunity to like actually say like, no, this isn't cool. And he fucking didn't. But now there's a story out from earlier this month or I think June of Cooper threatening to sue the Hill Times over a column that essentially reported the details of the incident.
00:29:28
Speaker
I have to ask you, do we see this as a trend? Do we see conservative politicians just suing people who say things about them that they don't like, that is distasteful to them? I think especially now when the federal movement in Canada has become, I don't want to say,
00:29:46
Speaker
how they've become so comfortable with white supremacists or people with very questionable views within their organizations. For example, I think their campaign director is Hamish Marshall. Hamish Marshall, yeah. He was a founding director of Rebel Media, for example. Steven Taylor, he used to be Sheer's digital person. I don't know if he's still involved in the campaign, but he was
00:30:11
Speaker
Senior conservative operative. He was huge in starting a pretty racist form on Reddit. I think because there's so much closeness between the two, the easiest way for them to push that away is through legal action. For example, I wrote a thing on Steven Taylor.
00:30:33
Speaker
Of course, in his response, he alluded to legal action. I think that's just the easiest tool they have. A part of it may be resources. They have the money and time to do this. You can't swing a cat around without hitting a conservative lawyer. The conservative movement is full of fucking lawyers. I think this is just an effective strategy for them and they realize it's worked.
00:30:53
Speaker
I've heard that even prior to, right now I see a lot and I see a lot in a variety of different contexts, from party members to operatives to politicians. But I also see, I've talked to other lawyers and just activists, they say that it's been a trend for the last decade, particularly under the Stephen Harper approach, the reform approach at least, when they were consolidating power.
00:31:19
Speaker
They threatened a lot. I remember there was that theater group in Toronto was doing a retrospective or a performance or a play on Stephen Harper's life or Stephen Harper, and they faced a lawsuit if they, you know, ostensibly performed a piece of fiction on the Prime Minister. How does that like jive with, you know, the representation that this is the party of free speech, this is the party of civil liberties? Free speech and sacred.
00:31:48
Speaker
Yeah, but not when it's criticizing me. Okay, I mean, I think that's it when it comes to like conservative slap suits and kind of slap happy Tories.
The Need for Anti-SLAP Legislation
00:31:58
Speaker
You know, there are sections of Canada with good anti-slap legislation, BC and Ontario both have pretty solid legislation from what I am led to believe, what I read online. Unfortunately, we don't live in either of those provinces, but you know,
00:32:14
Speaker
I think they are important, it's an important legislative tool that essentially allows a judge to like, say, get the fuck out of here. At the outset, yeah. So you don't waste all this time and money, you kind of go at the beginning and figure out if it's slapped or not, and if it's not, it's gone. Is this in the public interest? Yes, no, if it is, get the fuck out. And there's even the possibility of like, of judgments against for bringing forward kind of like nuisance, so that as a way to like discourage that type of action.
00:32:42
Speaker
But I think that's kind of it for that part of the show. Now I want to get into Sundries. This is the part of the show where we have kind of shorter, quick hits where, you know, we can talk about something that's just come up and you bring up a recent news item or piece of culture, a thing that you want people
Political Controversies and Multicultural Initiatives
00:32:56
Speaker
to know about. Bashir, what do you got?
00:32:57
Speaker
I think it was today or yesterday, Premier Scott Mo tweeted out a photo of a vehicle and the vehicle had a Confederate flag on the roof. I think it was a fundraiser for a mental health agency in Saskatchewan. That agency later tweeted out that they didn't know anything about this. I'm pretty sure the tweets still up, but yeah, everyone roasted him on Twitter for it.
00:33:19
Speaker
So there's a Confederate flag on this like old-timey, like is it the General Lee from Dukes of Hazzard? Yeah, and people were commenting, you know, it's tradition, it's like celebrating, you know, people who live in rural communities. You know, Southern Saskatchewan, when they succeeded from Northern Saskatchewan, from Union, right? Yeah, it's wild. I mean, you see Confederate flags, stickers and flags around Alberta, and it is... Very common. I mean, it is, it's very common, and it's like,
00:33:44
Speaker
You don't even have the excuse of like the South, which I mean, which is, again, is a terribly racist excuse because the South was a like the South and secession was an explicitly racist white supremacist project. But like you live in fucking Canada. Yeah. Like there's it is only exists as a racist symbol in Canada. There's there's no history with it. That is not explicitly about owning people as slaves.
00:34:05
Speaker
Yeah. Usually when you dig deeper, people defend it more honestly. They say it was about rebellion. But then when you go a little bit deeper, that's when they get on car for more like, oh, nope. It's free speech, whatever. Okay. What do you got, Avish? I have one. I got to plug something that I'm working on a project and that gets kind enough to let me do this. It's a project called Everyone's Canada. Go to the website, everyonescannada.ca.
00:34:29
Speaker
kind of a project to, I think we're kind of in this, not unprecedented, but a unique time where multicultural pluralism, a sense of Canada that, or aspirational sense of Canada, where it doesn't matter what you look like, what you believe in, where you come from, you have a place here. I think that's under, maybe not threat, but suspicion among the mainstream, among certain parties, among certain groups,
00:34:55
Speaker
And I think this election coming up is going to deal with race in a way that maybe we saw on preview in the other election, but I don't think that this country is ready for just by the virtue of Jagmeet Singh in Quebec, just by the virtue of the secularism building in Quebec. And I don't think our media is able to have the nuanced, informed, and engaged conversations they need to have. So we're trying to fill that in civil society.
00:35:21
Speaker
So you're working on this project. It's called Everyone's Canada. Stuff is coming out soon in the context of the federal election. Yeah, and beyond. I think this is a long-term project. And is there a website people could go to right now or just stuff's on the way? Yeah, Everyone's Canada.ca, also our Instagram, all social, Everyone's Canada. Give it a look if you're interested. Awesome.
00:35:38
Speaker
Alright, I got two kind of quick hits. I just want to say solidarity with the 170 new unionized workers who work at the Sheraton Suites in Eau Claire. Unifor just recently unionized that hotel. That gives us a grand total of I think four unionized hotels in Calgary. Really great win, fantastic work. I am trying to
00:36:00
Speaker
Am working to try and get the organizer and potentially some workers on for that from that newly organized shop because I think it's an interesting story to tell the other thing is that I have been a busy bee I've been sending out foips to this government and
Criticism of Jason Kenney and Conclusion
00:36:16
Speaker
I recently got a FOIP back. It was a real quick hit, just like, what the hell is going on with Jason Kenney's calendar? I FOIPed the FOIP stands for Freedom of Information request. It's a way to get information out of the government that they don't want to give you. I FOIPed Jason Kenney's calendar, essentially from May 23rd to May 26th, which was kind of the peak of the fires in northern Alberta. Not only was it the peak of the fires, but Jason Kenney decided at this kind of critical time.
00:36:39
Speaker
to head to Ontario. And he had a bunch of meetings on Bay Street with a bunch of kind of like financiers, Canada pension plan, private equity ghouls, various like Bay Street folks. And then he didn't come back until Sunday night, but there was some Bay Street meetings that were redacted. And he's like, these secret meetings are on Bay Street. He won't tell us who they are while Alberta burns. So I filed an appeal to try and get out who he was meeting with then. And then all this stuff,
00:37:09
Speaker
So we don't know, so you can't get from his calendar where he was on the Sunday, but we know from social media that Jason Kenney was actually campaigning in Brampton for a federal conservative candidate. And I mean, expect more of this. I think at the end of the day, Jason Kenney is going to spend the next three months not governing Alberta, but traveling around the country campaigning for the federal conservatives. And it's really fucking gross. And I would much rather have a premier that actually does his job, but Jason Kenney doesn't seem to want to do it.
00:37:40
Speaker
I think that's it for this episode of The Progress Report. If you like this show, please take a minute to leave a five-star review, of course, and a generous blurb. This really helps us pick up new subscribers, lets people know what the show is all about. If you have any notes, thoughts, or comments that you think I need to hear, I'm on Twitter, at Duncan Kinney, and by email, at DuncanK at ProgressAlberta.ca. I can't always respond, but I guarantee that I will read what you send me.
00:38:03
Speaker
Bashir, what's the best way for people to find you online? Do you have anything to plug? Anything coming up? I know just Twitter at Bashir Mohammed. Okay. Avneesh. Yeah. Uh, uh, at Avneesh Nanda. That's long, but you'll find it. All right. Well, thank you so much for this, uh, this great conversation. I'm really happy to have you here. Thanks to cosmic Fama communist for the amazing theme and goodbye.