If you’re singing the fake news blues, the federal government wants you to believe it has the answer.
My Loonie Politics column this week tackles the announcement made by a panel of cabinet ministers laying out how the Justin Trudeau’s government plans to safeguard this year’s federal election.
You can read the full column here if you’re a Loonie Politics subscriber. (If not, use promo code ‘Lawton’ for a discounted subscription.)
Here’s an excerpt:
Canada’s long-awaited answer to foreign interference in elections has arrived, but it seems to create an opening for domestic meddling — by the government itself.
With nine months to go until this year’s federal election, a team of ministers from Justin Trudeau’s cabinet announced this week a “sweeping series” of measures aimed to safeguard Canadian democracy.
Whether intentionally or unintentionally I don’t know, but a glaring question remains after the government reiterated its commitment to purging misinformation from social media sites: who decides what misinformation really is?
Facts are black and white, but interpretations of them aren’t always so clear, especially when politics is concerned.
Most people would agree social media companies should spike content posted by Russian bots falsely linking politicians with criminality. But what about content that isn’t as easy to parse?
Such as a claim that a carbon tax is nothing but a cash grab. Or a study critical of the government’s track record on economics. Or someone saying the Liberals have been dishonest about their balanced budget plans (or lack thereof.)
These all sound like critiques that fall within the boundaries of civilized debate, but they share something in common: all were called “fake news” by high-ranking government officials.
Bell Let’s Talk Day is once again upon us, wherein Bell puts money into mental health agencies in exchange for tweets, texts and Facebook posts.
While it’s first and foremost a fundraising campaign, it also serves as a great exercise in destigmatization by encouraging people to share their own experiences with mental illnesses, ranging from depression to schizophrenia.
When the first Bell Let’s Talk Day took place in 2011, I remember seeing posts from friends about situations I had no idea they’d gone through. It was similar to the #MeToo campaign in that respect.
People were sharing stories and getting immense support from friends and family. Money was being raised for a worthwhile cause. Alas, all good things must somehow be wrecked.
Within a few years, the story became about how Bell treats its employees, allegations of a workplace that lacks compassion for those in it with mental illness, criticisms that the campaign is all talk and no action.
I choose to look at the campaign at face value here. There’s nothing wrong with it, but we can’t be deceived into thinking the fight ends when Bell hands over its giant cheque.
For all those sharing their stories or supporting others who do, there are still people with significantly less enlightened views of mental health.
I wrote of one such example in this column published by Global News in July, 2017:
“You were suicidal? That makes you mentally ill! Why would anyone give you a microphone?”
That was among the first messages into my radio show this week after I made an off-handed reference to my 2010 suicide attempt.
I say off-handed because it’s hardly a revelation at this point, having written and spoken about my struggles with depression and suicide publicly for several years now.
While living with depression, I was always good at putting on my game face. So much so that when I was planning to end my life, I was so used to burying my true emotions that I never even considered opening up to those around me.
When I raise the issue now, the response is overwhelmingly positive — though not exclusively so, clearly.
From time to time, a callous soul emerges from such a dialogue, as was the case with the above message not-so-subtly telling me those with mental illness don’t deserve a platform in life.
As a talk show host, it’s not a work day if I’m not called a name or accused of being something bad, so I can take it. My concern comes from knowing that somewhere else, this is the reaction awaiting a vulnerable person who, for the first time in their life, reaches out to a friend, co-worker or relative for help.
The Canadian Mental Health Association estimates one in five Canadians will personally experience mental illness in their lifetime. So, if you know more than four people, you’ll cross paths with someone personally impacted by it, if you haven’t already.
For those doing the math, that’s 7.2 million people in the country facing this kind of judgment for no other reason than being sick.
I don’t want to sell short the successful efforts we’ve seen in Canada tackling and breaking down the mental illness stigma, but we can’t rest on our laurels now.
“Awareness” is not the problem.
There’s Bell Let’s Talk Day in January, Mental Health Week in May, September’s World Suicide Prevention Day, and Mental Illness Awareness Week in October, not to mention at least half a dozen diagnosis-specific awareness days and weeks. We’re so busy being aware collectively that we’re not confronting the issue in our own lives.
Virtually every month of the year has some sort of designation addressing mental illness, yet those individuals who speak out personally are routinely shot down. Cultural acceptance of mental illness won’t happen if we don’t tackle individual intolerance.
Just this week, a Michigan software developer posted a screenshot of her company’s chief executive officer’s response to her announcement that she was taking two days off to “focus on my mental health.”
Olark CEO Ben Congleton thanked her for helping to “cut through the stigma” by reminding people how sick days are just as important for mental health as they are for physical health.
Of course, some people responded with the concern that employees can abuse the system if this becomes acceptable. So what? What’s to stop people from feigning physical illness to get out of work now? What those raising this possibility are actually saying is that they don’t believe the struggles of workers with mental illness are legitimate.
That isn’t to say there aren’t those who conflate sadness with depression, or stress with anxiety, but experiencing mental illness is not a rarity, so it shouldn’t be treated as a fringe phenomenon.
While encouraging, the reality is that Congleton’s reply is not a typical one.
After sharing the nasty message I received, I heard from countless others who have similarly been chastized or mocked when they opened up.
One was a journalist who, after writing about her depression experience, was patronized by a reader who felt bad about criticizing the journalist because she was clearly so sensitive.
Don’t get me wrong — we’re crazy sometimes, but we’re not children.
An acquaintance who lives with schizophrenia — a disorder that affects one per cent of the population but is still widely misunderstood — told me he “can’t count the number of times” people have assumed he’s dangerous when they learn of his situation.
More commonly I heard from people who would love to speak out but just don’t want to deal with the backlash.
The irony is that I may be contributing to that apprehension in writing this, but I feel it’s important for people to know the realities of mental health discourse.
When I first told the world of my suicide attempt, it was after I’d made a commitment to myself to leverage my pain for bigger change. Meanies won’t stop that, but they will stop others from seeking help.
Mainstream media, pay attention. Well over two years since Donald Trump won the presidential election and the Left’s handwringing about how and why still hasn’t abated.
And no, the answer isn’t Russia, though you wouldn’t know that from watching most press coverage.
Former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, whose book Right Here, Right Now explores populism in great detail, answers the question in a video produced by Prager University.
“I did not expect Donald Trump to be elected president of the United States, but unlike most observers, I did think it was at least possible,” he said. “Why? Because I sensed, as Mr. Trump surely did, that the political landscape had shifted.”
Harper takes aim at the characterization of ordinary people as “deplorables” in distilling the western population to two main groups–the Anywheres and the Somewheres.
The Anywheres can live and work pretty much wherever in the world they choose, unimpacted by things like outsourcing and technological disruption. The Somewheres are your quintessential midwestern voters, tied to their communities and their jobs. They don’t have the luxury of picking up and moving to greener pastures when their communities and jobs cease to exist.
Even if one disagrees with the Somewheres’ views on immigration and economics, Harper said it’s imperative that leaders try to understand and offer solutions.
Those solutions, he says, lie in “tried and true conservative values.”
Canada’s new food guide has been published at last, to much fanfare from the media and nutrition industry.
There’s good reason to celebrate the content, as it’s based on science and not special interests.
But even if the advice in the guide checks out, the value of having a national food guide is still questionable. Does anyone look to it, or the government more broadly, for guidance on what to eat?
I tackle that in this week’s Loonie Politics column, subscribers can read here. If you aren’t a subscriber, use promo code “Lawton” for a discount.
An excerpt of this week’s piece follows:
The arrival of Canada’s new food guide raises one key question: who’s looking to the government for guidance on what to eat?
And how many millions of dollars were spent telling us what we already knew?
The much-ballyhooed guide differs starkly from what it’s replacing. Gone are specific daily portion recommendations, as is the breakdown of the four food groups on which most Canadians were raised.
I’m sure you can still picture the rainbow posters on a health class wall. Under the previous guide, most recently updated in 2007, an adult male was told to have eight to 10 fruit and vegetable servings each day, as well as eight grain servings, two dairy items and three portions of meat and alternatives.
Pretty much every diet expert alive says products like bread and bagels — promoted under the former guide as equals to rice and quinoa — should be consumed in moderation. Certainly not in almost the same numbers as vegetables.
The former guide also had canned fruits and fruit juices — often heavily processed and riddled with sugar — weighted equally to raw green vegetables.
If I consumed nothing but 1.25 litres of orange juice, eight slices of bread, a can of evaporated milk and six tablespoons of peanut butter in a day, I would be keeping with the topline standards of the guide.
Justin Trudeau once again employed his favorite trope by calling out “fear mongering” about Canada’s border security and immigration system.
It took a special kind of ignorance, considering only one day earlier Canada’s border protection agency exposed a network of cross-border migrant smugglers.
Hours before Trudeau’s remarks, two males in Kingston were arrested over what the RCMP call “national security” concerns. At least one of them is a Syrian refugee.
Though Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen, chief Trudeau advisor Gerald Butts, and Trudeau himself have all accused critics of “fear mongering” in recent months, this instance is perhaps the most tone deaf.
After a bit of chest thumping about his government’s resettlement of Syrian refugees, Trudeau made an unprompted pivot to the broader immigration discussion in Canada.
“There are people trying to create fears around the country around immigration…. The kind of fear-mongering, the kind of intolerance, the kind of misinformation that unfortunately is going on across the country and around the world is something that all of us have a responsibility to engage with in a positive and thoughtful way,” he said.
The “fear” about which is speaks is actually concern from large swaths of Canadians that there are people abusing the country’s immigration system, lawlessly traipsing across the border, and making false asylum claims. All of this is happening.
Trudeau should be more concerned with the problem itself than he is with those speaking up about it.
But his government wants to pretend there is no problem, that the border “crisis” is a right wing concoction.
Even so, on Wednesday the Canada Border Services Agency charged Olayinka Celestina Opaleye with allegedly smuggling 10 or more asylum claimants into Canada in exchange for compensation.
CBSA alleges Opaleye was operating as part of a “network of smugglers” utilizing Roxham Rd. in Quebec. If convicted, Opaleye could face a $1 million fine or life in prison.
The law understands the seriousness of illegal immigration more than Trudeau does.
This charge doesn’t reflect an isolated incident, either.
A Cornwall man was sentenced in 2017 for smuggling foreign nationals facing deportation from the United States into Canada for money. A Regina couple was sentenced last year for bringing nine illegal immigrants into Canada.
While illegal border crossing between Canada and the United States has always been an issue, American authorities say the smugglers are now more sophisticated and better organized than ever before.
In the United States, that means taking it more seriously. In Canada, it somehow means the opposite.
The charges against Opaleye prove what critics of the pipeline of illegal immigrants into Canada have been warning—that not all of the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who’ve come to Canada in the last two years have done so with pure intentions.
Located south of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Roxham Rd. is supposed to be a dead end street, but is now a de facto freeway for illegal immigrants.
As many as 96 per cent of illegal immigrants into Canada last year came in that way. Instead of stopping it, the CBSA has set up a processing centre on site to stream line asylum applications. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been known to help illegal immigrants with their luggage.
It makes the human smuggling business particularly easy when Canadian authorities are doing the heavy lifting (literally and figuratively). All the smugglers have to do is get people to the border and Trudeau’s government does the rest of the work.
What a great industry to be in. Cross-border human smuggling may well be the only growth area of Canada’s economy under Justin Trudeau.
The government may wish to whitewash the problem by calling it “irregular” immigration, but it’s illegal. That’s why a woman was charged with facilitating and organizing it.
Our border is seen as irrelevant and our immigration system is abused. Yet Trudeau says “fear mongering” is the real problem.
Andrew Lawton is a fellow at True North. You can support his and his colleagues’ work with a small monthly contribution by joining the Heritage Club.
