CBC’s framing of Alberta’s separatist leanings—backed by a November 4 Ezra Levant Show clip featuring Katie Simpson and Premier Jason Kenney—dismisses economic grievances like $4.5B pipeline purchases and NCANA’s U.S. relocation as "overly emotional" or "based on a lie," despite Angus Reid polling showing half of Westerners support separatism due to carbon taxes, regulatory abuse, and stalled projects. Author Mark Milke’s The Victim Cult critiques CBC Indigenous for amplifying dysfunction over success stories like Chief Clarence Louie’s Asoyus band or Ellis Ross’s energy partnerships, while comparing it to harmful cycles of blame seen in Germany post-WWI or modern identity politics. The broader implication: CBC’s narrative ignores real solutions—like pipeline expansions or tax repeals—while fueling division by dismissing legitimate concerns as irrational. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I do something that you may find a little bit abusive.
I play extended clips from a CBC show at you and I apologize in advance, but I do so only as an example of the kind of gross anti-Alberta ooze that emanates from the CBC.
I normally would not inflict it on you.
I quote from, I show you clips from a CBC panel and I read to you from just a super gross CBC essay that they published about Alberta.
Unbelievable.
And I'll leave you to listen to it.
You'll hear my conclusion at the end.
Before I get out of the way, let me invite you to become a premium subscriber of Rebel News.
Go to premium.rebelnews.com.
It gives you the video version.
And especially today, when I show you a bunch of clips of a video, I think it really adds to the experience.
I know a lot of people watch podcasts when they're just driving or on transit or something, but I encourage you to get a premium subscription.
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All right, here's the book.
Tonight, Trudeau's CBC state broadcaster looks at Western alienation and says it's either foolish, overly emotional, or based on a lie.
It's November 4th and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Justin Trudeau has been on holiday for pretty much two weeks straight.
He's back out in Tofino surfing again.
I mean, there's nothing for him to bother talking about, is there?
I mean, sure.
Hundreds of layoffs at Husky Energy in Calgary.
Another Western energy company named Citadel just up and left Canada for the U.S.
The energy giant NCanada once the largest Canadian company of any kind, by the way.
It just announced that it's moving its head office to the U.S.
No big deal.
Well, Trudeau's busy surfing some gnarly waves, dude.
I mean, he'll get back to things when he needs to, dude.
In the meantime, his surrogates at the CBC have been dispatched to handle the Westerners who are getting a bit restless.
I caught this clip online.
It's a CBC reporter named Katie Simpson.
Literally not a single Liberal member of parliament was willing to speak to the N Cana move in the United States.
So Katie Simpson and the CBC stepped up to fill the void.
It's how you get ahead at the CBC.
I mean, she still has a ways to go to catch up to Rosemary Barton, who literally sued the Conservative Party mid-campaign.
Oh, but she's trying.
So Katie Simpson had Jason Kenney, the Premier of Alberta, on her show, and it was quite something.
Now, take a look.
I'm not going to show you all of the exchange.
I'm not actually going to show you most of Kenny's answers, though they were actually pretty good.
Because my point today is to show you the CBC and by extension, the media party, and their approach to Western issues.
That's my purpose today.
Kenny's answers were pretty good.
But watch this from the CBC.
Take a look.
An NCANA CEO who has since said, since the decision announcing that they are going to shift their headquarters to the United States, they're rebranding.
He has said publicly that he is adamant the political climate has nothing to do with the decision to move its headquarters and to rebrand.
Is the CEO lying?
What a bizarre question.
In fact, Simpson herself is the liar.
The world price of oil is the world price.
I mean, we Canadians do get a little bit less than the world price because of the pipeline bottleneck, sometimes a lot less, but the world price is the world price.
The North American price of gas is pretty much the same, pretty much, on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, but NCANA knows its future is in the U.S. because they're not being attacked down there every day in the United States.
The U.S. has a fraction of our oil reserves, and we have a lot of gas too.
But they're drilling and fracking and mining it down there as fast as they can.
They're not only the world's largest producer now, they're net exporter, competing against us in Canada, actually.
And Canada's not dumb.
They know which side of the border they want to be on.
Everything from taxes to regulations to just not being attacked.
Here's the founder of NCANA, Gwen Morgan, helping the slow kids at the CBC.
This is about moving to where you're not being demonized and taxed and attacked.
But back to Katie Simpson of the CBC.
I mean, you know that Trudeau loves oil and gas.
I mean, this is her argument.
Trudeau loves oil and gas.
He doesn't hate it because, because get this.
Now, you said in an interview with the Globe and Mail that this is not just about in Canada, it's about the broader decline of the Canadian energy industry.
And I'm going to quote something that you said, which I think is a deliberate policy of the Trudeau government.
Now, why specifically say that when the Trudeau government bought a pipeline?
Well, they bought a pipeline after having killed two pipelines.
But they didn't kill the pipelines.
If you're talking about Energy East, they didn't kill that.
That was a decision made because of regulatory.
But I'll let you finish your answer.
That Badabadi, that Elmer Fudd moment was gorgeous.
Yeah, the government bought an existing 70-year-old pipeline called Transmountain.
It wasn't actually for sale, by the way.
It wasn't in jeopardy of being shut down or anything.
It has been quietly pumping away for three generations now.
Trudeau bought it, paying about a billion dollars more than it was worth just to shut up the company that owned it, Kinder Morgan.
Because, of course, they have this massive plan to expand the pipeline, twin it.
And that's being delayed and delayed and delayed.
And after the Liberals killed Northern Gateway and killed Energy East, killing this would be shocking to any remaining investors in the country.
So Kinder Morgan was about to throw in the towel, as had other pipeline companies like Energy East when Trudeau changed the rules and delayed them.
And if this last pipeline would be abandoned, that would be a reputational disaster for Canada.
So Trudeau spent $4.5 billion overpaying massively for an old pipeline just to pay off the company so they didn't squawk about their proposed new pipeline not getting built.
It wasn't really for sale, the old pipeline.
It was just a way to send them $1.2 billion in hunch money to get them out of Canada so they wouldn't make a scene.
It allowed Trudeau to claim to the oil patch that he was very interested in building the pipeline.
Sure, I am, but not to actually have to build it, to preserve some liberal seats in BC or whatever the election plan was.
Not one foot of that pipeline expansion, that twinning, has happened, despite the $4.5 billion payment.
That was just for the existing pipeline.
Not one foot of the new pipe has been bought.
How could it be?
It needs another $7, $8, $9, $10 billion anyway.
One last question for Kenny from Katie Simpson.
Do you think that taking this line of attack against the Trudeau Liberal government is only stoking those frustrations of people in Alberta, people in Saskatchewan as well?
Is this line of attack against liberals stoking those sentiments of separatism in the West?
Yeah, don't you see?
Standing up for the oil patch, acknowledging its grievances, that's stoking Western separatism.
No, sister, the West has been stoked.
Carbon taxes on its key industry, three pipelines shut down, Energy East, Northern Gateway, and the Transmountain Expansion.
The daily abuse.
Angus Reed's polling shows that half of all Westerners are interested in leaving.
They're not necessarily there yet.
Maybe not quite half of them, but in each province, they're strongly or moderately in favor up to even in Manitoba, 36% think so.
So they're interested in separatism.
Kenny's not stoking anything.
Getting a pipeline built, as Kenny wants to happen, scrapping the carbon tax as Kenny wants to happen, that would actually de-stoke separatism.
But that ain't happening.
That ain't happening.
Anyways, with Kenny off the line, Simpson could get back to her Alberta bashing without any pushback.
She started by talking to her kind of Westerner, a left-wing activist professor from Winnipeg.
Get a load of this.
Well, I think definitely it's a two-way street here.
Alberta's been for a very long period of time been benefiting economically off the mere geographical location in which they live.
Is that why Alberta is wealthy?
Just dumb luck.
They just happen to be sitting on some oil and gas.
No hard work, no technology, no risk-taking, no ingenuity, just happen to be on.
Yeah, the CBC likes that kind of Westerner.
But here's the icing on the cake.
CBC went to their Western Canada specialist, a liberal journalist in Montreal named Martin Patricken.
Listen to this.
Let's have a listen to what Premier Jason Kenney had to say earlier on the show when I asked him about his claim that there is a deliberate policy in play to shut down the oil sands.
Prime Minister Trudeau himself said he wants to phase out the oil sands, and much of the senior political staff in their government worked for organizations in the past that were explicitly committed to landlocking Canadian energy.
So yes, I do think that it is ultimately their intention to, as to quote the Prime Minister, phase out the oil sands.
So, okay, I heard, I think I heard Negan, I heard you react to that.
What do you make of what, or Martio was Marty?
I would react to that.
Martio, it sounded like a Marty scratch.
That was a Marty.
Marty, can I get your way in on our, what do you make of what Mr. Premier Kenny had to say there?
Stephen Harper intimated the exact same thing in saying that the majority of the oil sands have to stay in the ground in order for Canada to make any sort of dent in its carbon emissions.
Also, to say that Justin Trudeau, it's absurd that to say that Justin Trudeau has an active policy to landlock Alberta oil is a demonstrable lie.
They're literally building or twinning a pipeline right now to get more of that oil to the coast.
There's this break in logic with this guy.
And if we can talk about in Canada for a second, several business realities.
Business goes where business is.
In Canada is more invested in natural gas than it is in oil sands.
And Canada has more active acreage in terms of fracking in the United States than it does in Canada.
By moving to the United States, they have access, as Marie said, to that capital in the United States.
They also go and basically benefit from the very boom that is depressing demand for oil, pardon me, for natural gas, for Canadian source natural gas right now.
So the idea that they're doing this out of spite, out of anything else, it's a plain business decision.
But, you know, in politics, as in journalism, three is a trend.
And as Marie said again, you know, Quebec, sorry, Alberta, like Quebec, has this visceral attachment to its things.
And Kenny's building a billy puppet of it.
He's using that and he's saying this absolute patently absurd stuff about the Trudeau government not wanting to landlock Alberta oil to mark political.
This guy is, it's patently absurd.
It doesn't make any sense.
Kenny is so absurd.
I mean, it's absurd to say Trudeau is against oil and gas, isn't it?
I mean, it's absurd to say Trudeau wants to phase out the oil sands.
That's absurd.
I've said time and time again, and you're all tired of hearing me say it, you can't make a choice between what's good for the environment and what's good for the economy.
We can't shut down the oil sands tomorrow.
We need to phase them out.
We need to manage the transition off of our dependence on fossil fuels.
It's absurd to say Trudeau wants to phase out the oil sands.
Who would say that?
And you heard the Alberta expert from Montreal, the pipeline is literally being built right now.
You heard him say that.
Really?
Really?
Because every few months, liberals say, oh, hey, guys, we're just any moment now.
We're just a little bit more.
We're going to totally build that pipeline.
You bet we will.
I mean, every few months they make the same announcement that they're going to start building it any minute now.
I mean, $4.5 billion, you bet.
It never is.
It hasn't been.
It won't be built.
Not as long as Gerald Buck is in charge, you know.
The anti-oil staffer in Trudeau's office.
We think that the oil sands have been expanded too rapidly without a serious plan for environmental remediation in the first place.
So that's why we don't think it's up to us to decide whether there should be another route for a pipeline.
Because the real alternative is not an alternative route.
It's an alternative economy.
Yeah, no, but Patrick Hann can't believe how absurd and plain old stupid a Kenny in Alberta is.
I mean, the pipeline's being built literally right now.
That's what his sources in downtown Montreal bars tell him.
Yeah.
Lest you think this is just one kooky show in the CBC.
I want to show you an op-ed that the CBC ran online this weekend by that happy fellow there, Raymond Critsch.
Alberta, I get it.
You're mad.
We've been here before and we're here to help.
That's the headline.
Let me read a bit.
But first, here's a pro tip.
When someone says, we're from the CBC and we're here to help, that's the time to hang on to your wallet, guys.
Alberta's Mad Attack00:08:37
This is such an infuriating and gross op-ed I'm going to read you.
It makes Martin Patrick Hann look well-informed and calm.
Let me read some of it to him.
Sounds like you guys are pretty mad over there.
I get it.
And as your friend, hi guys, I've let you, I'll let you vent for a minute.
Actually says, I've let you vent for a minute.
Now we need to talk.
I get that you're all pretty pissed off that most of the rest of the country didn't vote conservative in the federal election.
Is that why Alberta is mad?
Because Montreal and Toronto didn't vote conservative.
Is that why they're mad?
Or is Alberta mad because Trudeau and his liberals have killed three pipelines?
Is taxing Canadian oil producers but exempting U.S. and OPEC oil imports from the carbon tax.
I've literally never heard anyone say, I'm going to separate because Montreal isn't voting conservative.
That's not a thing.
Let me read some more.
I hear that, but here's why that happened.
Ironically, it's probably because I'm a Newfoundlander that I get it.
First, most of us have been paying attention to the science for a long time now, and we're convinced that climate change is real, man-made, and potentially catastrophic.
You know, he's an up-talk.
So for a party to act like it's not happening seems a little odd.
Hey guys, take it from me because I'm a friend and an expert.
I mean, a liberal lawyer from Newfoundland who would possibly know more about science than him.
Hey guys, it's catastrophic.
So much so that the oil sands have to be shut down.
Not Newfoundland's offshore oil, mind you.
No, no, no.
And no tanker ships will be banned off the East Coast.
Just export tankers off the West Coast, mind you.
But take it from me, a liberal in Newfoundland.
Guys, sorry, but we just have to say, you got to shut down your industry.
I mean, science says so, okay?
Oh, and the child actor says so.
How dare you?
Guys, it's settled.
I'll read some more.
Second, like most guys, I'm a guy.
I've got plenty of friends who are women, I swear I do.
And a few friends who are gay, lesbian, or transgender.
You know I'm not lying.
They're pretty shocked about what's been happening in the States.
Some are terrified it could happen here.
And Andrew Scheer gives them no comfort from that fear.
Quite frankly, he scares the crap out of them.
Well, what exactly has Donald Trump banned abortion or something?
I wasn't looking.
In any event, is that why Western separatism is on fire?
Because of transgenderism or feminism or abortion?
I don't think I'm particularly outing anybody, but if we're comparing, I don't know, who's more gay or gay-friendly, I think Calgary's going to beat St. John's.
Alberta's had two women premieres to Newfoundland's one.
I could go through the list like that, I guess, but it's ridiculous because that's insane and has nothing to do with Western alienation.
And this ain't a friend of Alberta commiserating.
This is concern trolling.
This is someone telling Alberta that they're actually bigoted and racist and transphobic and sexist and by the way, stupid and dinosaurish when it comes to science.
This is a long-winded insult, this column, posing as friendship.
I love you guys, but you're stupid bigots.
And science says so.
It's a smear.
It's a lie.
It's bizarre.
I'll hazard a bet that this author, Raymond Critsch, hasn't spent a week in Alberta in his whole life.
All right, let me read some more.
Third, this obsession with tax cuts has got to stop.
It's getting to be a fetish.
Guys.
What are you talking about?
The fact that Westerners don't want to pay a carbon tax, that's not a fetish.
That's just not wanting to be taxed with another kind of a GST attacks on everything, especially a tax designed especially to go after Alberta.
It's not a fetish, you weirdo.
Here's the biggest, bizarrest lie in the whole piece.
My father, a fisherman, was the same age I am now, 39, when the COD Motorium happened in 1992.
40,000 people working in an industry on which our identity was built.
We're out of work overnight because of an environmental problem.
Sure, from where we sat, it didn't look like the cod stocks were gone.
My family's inshore fishing operation in St. John's had seen record catches in the previous years.
That said, the science was clear, and doing nothing about it was no longer an option.
So he's comparing running out of fish, as in the resource is gone, which everyone lamented.
Everyone in the country lamented.
Everyone wished they would come back.
And some steps have been taken to try and bring it back.
He's comparing overfishing with the deliberate, willful decision to kill the oil industry in its prime.
Because the science is clear, guys.
What science?
Every day, 100 million barrels of oil will be bought and sold, whether it's bought from OPEC or America or Russia or from Canada.
It is being bought and sold every day.
What is the clear science on shutting down the oil sands and buying oil instead from America or OPEC?
Does the science say that's no longer an option?
So this is about science, eh?
Hey, Alberta, I'm sorry you don't like the way you're being abused, but take it from a leading scientist at the CBC.
Science says you have to lose your jobs.
And I know, buddy, but you'll get over your rage.
Now come give me a hug because I really like you and I really respect you.
And now I'm going to talk down to you a little bit more.
So I understand that you're scared and that fear is making you angry.
I don't blame you.
That said, we can't pretend climate change isn't real anymore.
And we can't sit back and not do whatever we can to stop it, guys.
That's going to hit you first and hardest.
It sucks to be you guys.
Oh, man.
Don't worry.
We need to support you guys while you start to transition away from the boom days of oil and into whatever, you know, whatever kind of economy comes next.
May not be pretty, but, you know, it sucks to be you, but you won't be going through it alone.
I'll be here, guys.
Hey, you're getting mad.
Good.
Let it all out.
No, you're not mad at me and how rude and stupid and ill-informed and insulting and condescending I am.
No, no.
You're not mad that the CBC takes your taxes and spends it on idiots abusing Alberta like that.
No, no, guys.
You're really mad because you're scared.
And you're scared because of science.
But the science says you have to pay taxes to change the weather.
Don't you know that's what science says?
Science says so.
I love you guys.
Sorry, it's going to be tough for you.
So we'll support you guys.
You'll transition away from your jobs.
All right.
His work's done now.
What a good ally he is.
Yeah, if I didn't know any better, I'd say the CBC isn't actually working for Trudeau anymore.
I'd say they're working for the Western separatists.
Because anyone who watched that CBC show or read that CBC article would be angrier than ever.
Stay with us for more welcome back.
Well, as I tell you from time to time, there are so few books these days, especially in Canada, with a freedom orientation or a conservative orientation that if we ever detect one, boy, we want to tell you about it.
And I've got just the book for you today.
The Victim Cult Narrative00:13:47
It's called the Victim Cult, How the Culture of Blame Hurts Everyone and Wrecks Civilizations.
And it is written by Mark Milke, who is a scholar and an activist and a successful author.
And I'm delighted to have him join us now via Skype from here in Calgary.
Am I right, Mark?
I am.
Thanks for having me on.
It's great to see you.
Congratulations on the new book.
You've written a lot of great books from the taxpayer's point of view in the past.
Tell me about the victim cult.
What's it about?
Well, we all know someone who thinks like a victim, right?
And they may have been legitimately hurt at some point in their life, or you may encounter someone who's faking it.
But either way, the question is, what do you do with that, right?
And the danger is that you dwell on the past.
But think about victims.
I mean, friends, family, people with that psyche, that mentality where they're always looking to the past, not the future, blaming the past for what's happening now, sometimes not taking responsibility, but then multiply that by millions of people.
That's when it becomes dangerous.
It's irritating on a personal level when people engage in kind of a victim psyche themselves.
They may harm their own lives if they can't get out of a rut that they're in.
And again, they may legitimately have been harmed at some point, and I wouldn't downplay that.
But if they don't get past that, and if it's a society with millions of people think of themselves as victims, then you've got a real problem.
And that's where the wrecking civilization aspect of the victim cult comes in.
Now, are you talking about people who regard themselves as a victim by reason of race or sex or sexual orientation?
Or what do you mean by en masse?
Do you mean people?
It can be those.
It can be something else.
So, for example, a couple of chapters or the introductory chapter in the book, I look at what I call mild, moderate, and murderous victim cults.
But let's start with the mild.
American college students, for example, and some in Canada.
Some of the most privileged people in history, though, they often don't know it because they don't know their history.
So, for example, four years ago, we're just past Halloween.
Four years ago, just before Halloween at Yale, there was an email sent out by the administration at Yale saying, be really careful about the costumes you wear this Halloween, right?
Don't wear a blackface.
Our prime minister missed that one.
Don't wear this and that sort of costume.
Well, some of the students are irritated because this is treating them like children.
And they write to one of their masters at Silliman College, which is where some of them live at Yale.
And the professor agrees with them, sends out an email, actually trying to compliment Yale students and saying, I think you're grown-ups.
I think you know what to dress like.
But she gets into a cultural appropriation issues, tries to think through it honestly with students in an email.
This thing blows up.
A lot of students are offended at Yale.
There's a thousand people that march one day around Halloween at Yale four years ago to protest her email and cultural appropriation.
One-fifth of the undergraduate body.
They think of themselves as potential victims of cultural appropriation.
And they're at one of the most elite schools in America.
They're either rich now or they're about to be rich, but they're culturally powerful, but they love that was their Halloween costume.
They were dressing up as victims when, in fact, they're the privileged.
I guess that was their form of Halloween right there, Mark.
Right.
Exactly.
And that's an example of fake victimhood.
And I give other examples of that, both in Canada and the United States.
But then you get into, you know, people that have been harmed.
And how do you think through that, right?
So Japanese Americans were harmed.
They were interned during the war.
I think we were right to compensate them, as governments did in the 1950s and again in the 1980s.
But there are victim cults that go viral.
And this is the dangerous part.
So for example, when I did the research, this book took about eight years from the beginning to end.
I started to do some research, and you see this victim psyche throughout history.
So most people are aware, I think, if they have any historical literacy, of the Germans and what happened after 1933 in Adolf Hitler.
And they know, for example, the awful evil race theories, the pseudoscience that he got into, and how Germany got into that.
What they don't know is that Germans thought of themselves as victims long before Adolf Hitler came along, long before World War I and the Versailles Treaty.
Germans thought of themselves as victims at least back to the early 1800s.
And the interesting thing is they were.
They were victims of the French.
The French had occupied parts of Germany in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
Now, after the Germans eject the French from German lands, the problem is that Germans trying to recreate some sort of national identity can't get out of this notion that they're victims.
So they think of themselves still as victims of the French.
They think of themselves as victims of Jews.
They think of themselves as victims of English liberals.
They think of themselves, and I take language from Occupy, you know, that could have been taken from Occupy Wall Street.
Germans in the 1800s think of themselves as victims of capitalists.
So this goes on for more than a century.
And of course, Adolf Hitler capitalizes on this in his rise to power in 1933 and beyond.
And Germany is a great example, a tragic example, a horrific example of a population that becomes enamored with thinking themselves of victims and refusing to learn from cultures outside of themselves.
Well, let's talk about Canada in 2019, because I know that in the United States, in the Democratic primaries, the question of reparations for African Americans, it's a real question, and different candidates are giving their opinions on it.
And I like to think that, well, in Canada, we were part of the British Empire, which banned slavery, banned the slave trade, and then later actually sent the Royal Navy out to stop the slave ships.
So if anything, we were part of the good guys fighting against slavery before it was cool, hundreds of years ago.
So we don't have the same history as the United States and their slave economy.
I'm not saying there was never any slavery in Canada, but certainly not the institutionalized en masse slavery of America.
But I see some of the reactions to American slavery, like Black Lives Matter.
They're being imported into Canada, even though we don't have that same history.
And I don't think we ever had significant Jim Crow laws.
It just wasn't a big thing.
But I think there's so much money and political power and cool associated with the victim cult that we're importing it from places where maybe it was real to places like Canada where it shouldn't be a thing.
Well, precisely.
And this is part of the problem is people will reach back and blame present circumstances for what happened 100 or 200 or 300 years ago or even 1,000 years ago.
But the question of reparations for slavery is an interesting one in the United States.
And I quote Thomas Sowell and others.
And you look at the issue.
And Thomas Sowell says, look, black American families were quite together is the best way to put it in the 1930s, began to disintegrate in the 1970s, 1980s.
And he says you can't blame the breakdown, for example, of the black American family on slavery because they were, you know, black Americans are doing, in terms of family structure, okay in the 1930s, 1940s, way up until the 1970s.
In the case of Canada, you're right.
There's been sort of this import of that sort of thinking or that the importation of that kind of politics.
But you also see it in indigenous circles, right, where there's a call for compensation, that sort of thing or restitution.
Now, the problem with this is people don't connect the dots.
If they look back and say what happened 50 years ago or 100 years ago is why I am in my position today, they make sometimes the wrong link.
And in fact, the inspiration for the book came from this, where I saw First Nations leaders, some, not all, but First Nations leaders time and again make the wrong link.
So they look back 50 years or 150 years or 300 years and say the reason my particular reserve is poor today is because of that.
No, there's a more current reason.
It has to do with the geography.
As I try and explain in the victim cult, if you look at geography, for example, most First Nations reserves in the country are in the middle of nowhere or in the north or both.
And they're not close to educational opportunities.
They're not close to income opportunities.
And therefore, that's why you find poverty on reserves.
That's why you find the average Aboriginal income in Canada is lower than others.
But the moment you go away from reserves and you do a comparison, an apple-to-apple comparison, which I do in the victim cult, I look at those young Aboriginals ages 25 to 34, compare them to other young Canadians ages 25 to 34.
And guess what?
If you have a degree, if you have a diploma, you earn as much as any other Canadian, as an Aboriginal Canadian.
Why?
Because you're probably not in reserve.
You're likely in an urban center.
And you have the same access to education and income and other opportunities as other Canadians.
And so there is this notion that we should be compensating for what happened 50 or 100 years ago.
And I say, well, no, because you're not your ancestor for one thing.
You're not the person who lived 50 years ago or 100 years ago who did experience gross discrimination and prejudice and what I call in the book apartheid.
But that's gone.
It really is.
There isn't institutional discrimination today against First Nations.
What there is, in fact, is sometimes race and gender quotas and other type quotas that favor certain groups.
So in fact, we've tried, rightly or wrongly, in the case of quotas and other sort of programs, we've tried to correct for the past.
But today, the problem for Aboriginal Canadians is not institutionalized racism.
You might meet an occasional racist in your personal life, but there's no institutionalized racism.
It's been abolished decades ago.
The problem is still reserves in the middle of nowhere.
And when people look back and try and blame the past too often, they actually miss the link.
And what that means, tragically, is they won't look for the real cause of their problems today.
Or in some cases, in other examples, they won't take responsibility for their own lives and their own choices.
You know, I used to follow a department of the CBC called CBC Aboriginal.
It's now called CBC Indigenous, because I was interested in those stories.
I'm originally from the West.
I have an interest in entrepreneurial Indian bands like Chief Clarence Louie was one of my favorite interviews of all time.
You got 600 plus First Nations.
Some of them are doing some amazing things.
I started following CBC Aboriginal, and I had to stop because it was nothing but highlighting bad news, sickness, crime, dysfunction, suicide, welfare.
It was, you know, frankly, if someone were racist and were trying to make Aboriginal people look awful, I'm not sure how different it would be from the CBC Aboriginal feed, which, and you know, I used to do searches.
I should do these again.
I checked how many times Chief Clarence Louie of the Asoyus, one of the most successful, wealthy bands in Canada, employs so many people, including non-Aboriginals.
I compared how many times his name, Chief Clarence Louie, was published in mainstream newspapers compared to the chief from Attawapiscat, the dysfunctional Indian band in northern Ontario that had a crisis.
Teresa Spence was her name.
It's almost like the entire establishment prefers aboriginal folks to be victims, to be poor, to be begging for help, as opposed to the heroes who don't get any ink or air time.
It's almost like they have no time for Indians who can live without the government or some other.
I found it very depressing.
This is from the CBC, which claims to be pro-aboriginal.
Well, it contradicts the narrative, I guess, and the assumption.
Again, the assumption is often that because of past wrongs, that explains today.
Well, it doesn't, actually.
So I grew up near Kelowna.
Same thing as you mentioned about Clarence Louie.
The West Bank First Nation has always been kind of entrepreneurial and capitalist.
The fellow who wrote my book, Ellis Ross, now a politician, but he started with his Heisla First Nation as an elected counselor.
And I met Ross this past spring.
And it was interesting because, again, the book, the inspiration for the book came from looking at some First Nations leaders who keep repeating the same mistakes, keep blaming the past, not learning from Clarence Louie at Nasuyas, not learning from Ellis Ross.
Well, I heard Ellis Ross speak at an event here in Calgary, and he basically said, listen, I don't think like a victim.
Some tragic things have happened, including to his reserve historically, before, you know, before the reforms of the last couple of decades, especially.
So there's no doubt that people in his First Nation historically were victimized.
But what he figured out very quickly, he could be angry, and he could want to take revenge, and that was his first impulse, he said.
And he writes this in the victim cult and the foreword.
But Ellis says, I had to figure out, okay, but how are we going to move forward?
And what he figured out was, we're on a coast, we can work with natural gas companies, we can get LNG off the shore here, and we can make a lot of money doing so by working with the energy sector.
And so Ellis Ross wrote the foreword for me.
Hidden Racism in Canada00:11:23
And in fact, he was told, and he tells this story in the forward in the victim cult, that when he was on council at Heis of First Nation, some of his fellow counselors said, in effect, you should take advantage of the fact that your parents went to residential school.
And Ellis said, no, I'm not going to do that because in their case, they told me, he said, in the speech last spring where he gave this in Calgary, Ellis Ross says, look, they have a different view of residential schools.
And so when I heard him speak, I said, I thought, you know, Ellis, you're probably the perfect guy to write this.
And he agrees with me that there's a real danger in getting stuck because some people were victims of residential schools.
But he thinks there's a real danger in making that causal for everything else.
And he said to his fellow counselors, and he writes this in the forward in the victim cult, I'm responsible for my life.
My problems were not the result of residential schools.
They were a result of my own choices, which he changed.
And what I love about that is it shows that you have human agency.
And I think the danger in the victim cult for a lot of people, again, even if they truly have been victimized, I'm not denying that that happens and it happens every day.
The danger for people is they then become stuck and they think their problems are always someone else's fault and that they have no choices and that they can't move forward.
I mean, if you are racist, that's the best way to trap people.
Tell them that they have no choices, that they can only be what others tell them to be.
One of the things I do in the victim cult near the end of the book is I look at the example of early Asian, East Asian immigration to Canada and the United States.
And what you find is there is horrific discrimination against Chinese Canadians, Chinese Americans, Japanese Canadians, Japanese Americans.
But what I do in the book is I look at how they dealt with that.
They didn't accept discrimination and prejudice.
They fought back.
They went to court.
They tried to talk to politicians whenever they could.
Early Chinese Americans, early Japanese Canadians, they fought back.
So that was number one.
Number two, they also said, look, we're going to do what we can to have a life despite the discrimination and prejudice from white Americans.
I specifically look at California and the United States.
But early Asian Americans fight back.
They also try and be entrepreneurial, and they are.
The other thing they do is they constantly aim for integration.
They don't give into the racist.
And today you hear all sorts of people saying, what we need is a pure culture, pure Aboriginal culture, or pure culture X, and that's what will save us.
Don't use my culture.
Don't appropriate my culture.
Early Asian immigrants to the United States and Canada had the opposite view, which is we want to integrate because that's where success is.
And lastly, what I found with early Chinese and Japanese Americans, because the statistics were available, you look back as early as the 1920s and the 1930s, and you find Japanese and Chinese Americans, their children attending high school and college and graduating at rates higher than white Americans.
And this is happening in the 1920s when really discrimination and prejudice against Asian Americans is at its peak.
So what's the lesson?
The lesson is that, look, you don't have to accept being a victim and you don't have to just, you know, and I'm not saying don't fight back.
I'm saying do fight back if you're a victim.
But for heaven's sake, don't allow someone else to circumscribe your life or the tragic things that have happened to stop you from moving forward.
And Asian Americans are a great positive example, as are the early examples here in Canada, Japanese and Chinese immigrants, you know, 1850 onwards, who said, we want a different life.
And frankly, both groups made Canada and the United States live up to our ideals, right?
Life and the pursuit of happiness in the case of the United States, but a just society and good government in the case of Canada.
You know, a lot of the victim mentality, and I would closely connect it to the racism industry, the victim industry and the racism industry, I think is Marxism transposed on other things, not just the, you know, the owners versus the workers.
I think, I mean, this isn't my own theory.
This is how it's explicitly taught, that the Marxist lens is you've got whites at the top, minorities underneath, straights at the top, gays underneath, men at the top, women underneath.
Like they're trying to apply that class structure to other identities and trying to get you to think of yourself as I'm not a person, I'm a right-handed, blue-eyed, green-eyed, you know, to break you down into irrelevant characteristics.
And the trouble with that is it forces you to become either a victim or a bully, and no one wants to be a bully.
And I think it's an attempt to gin up trouble where none exists.
Just as I think that today's working class is the wealthiest in history, I think in Canada especially, minorities of every sort are doing better than ever in history.
And in some measures, and you identified some are even ahead of the old stock population.
I know, for example, women are a majority of university students, especially in medicine.
I don't know the stats for visible minorities, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's at least at par with the population.
Maybe even more.
We see in places like California, the government's actually discriminating against Asian kids to keep them out.
that suggests to me that they're doing very well.
I think the whole thing is an industry.
I'm drawn to something.
Sure, go ahead.
In one of my chapters, I actually look at this notion of, okay, is Canada sort of inherently institutionally racist?
Well, a lot of the laws against institutionalized racism and even discrimination on gender, you know, were changed in the 1950s in the case of Ontario.
There's laws that begin to be passed that say you cannot discriminate at the workplace.
You cannot discriminate in rental accommodation based on your skin color, for example.
This starts in the 1950s.
And I think part of the problem with the victim cults today and the identity politics movement, which identified in kind of this class, this class warfare now overlaid onto identity politics is that people don't know their history.
And they don't know that actually institutional discrimination began to be wiped away in the 1950s and 1960s.
But even, despite that, now 70 years ago, in the case of the 1950s almost, I mean, you do see evidence of success of groups.
I mean, for example, in 1980, I look at the Canadian census data.
And in 1981, Korean Americans, sorry, Korean Canadians make about 13% less than old stock Canadians, right?
Japanese Americans make 13, Japanese Canadians rather, make 13% more than mainstream Canadians.
Now, this is really odd.
I mean, are we discriminating against as a society Korean Canadians in 1981 because their average pay is 13% lower?
If Canada is like a haven of the nastiest type of bigots from around the world, how does that explain how Japanese Canadians, who were heavily discriminated against just decades before, now earn more than the average Canadian, 13% more as of 1981?
So the data doesn't often support what people think, but somehow there's this institutional hidden racism in Canada.
And that really comes from, again, this identity politics movement, the notion of white privilege.
I point out, you know, one of the interesting things, and I write about in one of the chapters in the victim cult, is I'm in Hong Kong in 2013.
And what do I hear from people who are really not European in origin or British, right?
They're mostly from China proper, but of course emigrated to Hong Kong over the last 150 years or ancestors had always lived there.
I was told in 2013 by politicians and civil servants and business people, there were three things we want to keep.
The rule of law, including the British legal code, are anti-corruption efforts because they were comparing it to China, to Beijing, to the corruption and business and courts and politics in China.
And they wanted to keep capitalism.
Here was a non-European culture saying, we understand what makes people successful.
It's capitalism.
It's the rule of law, a British legacy, right?
And yet we deal with kind of people who think they're victims of the British still in Canada a century later.
I mean, it's kind of crazy, Ezra.
We're talking with Mark Milke.
He's the author of The Victim Cult, How the Culture of Blame Hurts Everyone and Wrecks Civilizations.
Mark, you mentioned Thomas Sowell at the beginning of our conversation, and I think it was also him who said that reparations are paying money to people who themselves didn't suffer and from people who themselves didn't do anything wrong.
He said it much more elegantly than that.
And that's the thing.
You mentioned the stats from 30, 40 years ago.
You mentioned anti-discrimination laws from the 60s and the 50s.
Canada was 95% white back then.
Old stock, I mean, there's Aboriginal folks, but it was extremely white.
And that goes to my point about we didn't have slavery-like America.
So if you have people in Canada today who are minorities, many of them are first-generation immigrants, they weren't discriminated against by Canadians.
And by the way, newcomers to Canada now didn't discriminate against Canadians themselves.
I really think we're importing fake solutions from other countries.
Well, and fake problems.
Yeah, no, and fake problems.
I mean, there was a degree of slavery in Canada in the late 1700s, early 1800s, but it actually was attacked by the governor of the day, imitating William Wilberforce in the United Kingdom, who was raging against slavery early on in the late 1700s, early 1800s.
He's a famous British parliamentarian who led the charge against slavery in Great Britain in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
And the early governors of Canada, long before Confederation, picked up on that and began to push back, as did some judges in the late 19th and early late 18th and early 19th centuries.
So the notion, yeah, there is this, again, this imitation of U.S. politics.
Now, the problem, though, with compensation arguments, I'm not against all compensation.
As I write in the book, I think liberal democracies do, on occasion, compensate people, right?
I mean, you can go to court, for example, if your property is stolen by government and say, that's not fair.
I want it back or I want compensation.
That's reasonable.
So the question is, who's getting compensated?
I would say, you know, if you've been harmed by the state or someone else, or your family has, maybe your parents, maybe even your grandparents.
But if you go back much further than that, I think it's a real stretch.
And that's kind of the problem with compensation arguments for slavery 200 years ago or for maybe what the British did in 1860 in Canada.
Racist and prejudice, and you know, as terrible as some policies were in 1860 in this country.
Yeah, but theoretically, you could have a claim against the Russians from which I came in 1903.
After a while, it's ridiculous.
Remembering Solzhenitsyn's Warning00:04:54
Well, let me ask you, how's your book being received?
Because you have an ally.
You mentioned the Aboriginal man who wrote the foreword for you and we talked about other folks who are abandoning the victim mentality.
How is your book being received?
Has it been denounced by the victim industry or are they open-minded to it?
Well, we'll see.
It's just been released.
But I can tell you that I've had several editors on the book when I worked with my literary agent, but also the editors on the book near the end.
I didn't know any of them.
One in particular, for example, was from Lethbridge originally, now lives in Toronto, works for my literary agent.
And she was initially skeptical of the book.
And she thought, well, is this just kind of a rant?
Are you blaming the victim?
And as she read through it, she wrote me a very nice note and said, Mark, you know, your arguments are very persuasive.
Another editor said, you know, look, this is strong stuff.
I mean, you're attacking a tough issue, but your compassion comes through.
I think they understood that what I was pointing at was, listen, something Alexander Solzhenhitson said, and I quote it in the introductory part of the victim cult.
It's really easy for all of us, no matter our background, no matter our ethnicity, like my grandparents suffered.
You know, I mean, your ethnicity or your background rather, as Jewish, I think most people know.
I mean, there's no shortage of victims in the Jewish community.
And I mean, legitimate, like harmed people, obviously, to put not too fine a point on it, to understate it.
So there's no shortage of victims around the world.
But what people who I think have read my book thus far, the feedback I get is they get that there's a need to say, yes, we recognize some people are harmed.
But again, don't get stuck there because then you're your own worst enemy.
Then you're letting the racists and you're letting the bullies of history win.
So don't get stuck there.
And Alexander Solzhenitsyn also made a very key point that I quote in the introductory part of the book, which is, and Alexander Solzhenhitson, for your viewers that don't know him, was a Soviet dissident, fought against communism, was put in a gulag in the Second World War because they didn't agree with communism anymore, but had light bulb moments.
And one of them was a lot of the people around him thought, if only we got rid of those other people who are evil.
And Solzhenitsyn says, be very careful.
The dividing line between good and evil is in our hearts, and you got to be really careful.
And the problem is, even when you're victimized, and I portrayed the Hutus, for example, in Rwanda, victimized by the minority Tutsis earlier in the 20th century, they come to power.
What do they do?
They victimize the Tutsis.
It leads to a genocide in 1994.
Why?
Because they thought the problem was in other hearts.
And it's important to recognize that good and evil is in all of our hearts.
And just because one has been victimized, but especially if one hasn't been, you got to be really careful not to blame someone else, but perhaps take responsibility for your own choices and believe that you have choices, even if you've been victimized.
I mean, it's a difficult thing to grasp for people.
They're a tough pill to swallow.
But I think Solzhenitsyn was right.
And I think there's some optimism in that.
And I give the story, if I may, at the end of the book of my grandmother, who was transported around Central Europe, starting right around World War I, never got to school, never learned how to read, eventually made her way to Canada in 1927, marries my grandfather, the man who became my grandfather several years later.
They had some tough, tough things happen in the 1920s and 1930s, but I never remember, I was in Kelowna growing up, they were alive for the first 20 years of my life.
I never remember my grandfather or my grandmother complaining about the land they lost, the family members they lost, including my grandmother's sisters, two of them.
But they brought the best from the old country.
I remember them planting fruit trees and flowers, which they would have remembered from Ukraine, where my grandmother grew up, and Poland, where my grandfather grew up.
And I remember that for all of their lives.
They brought beauty into Canada, and it was really terrific.
They didn't think like victims, even though they were.
Well, that's a great note to end on, Mark.
And I hope this book takes off.
I hope it is read by those who are tempted to take, I don't even, I'm not even going to call it the easy way.
It's maybe the morally easy way to say all the bad things done to me were done by someone else and let me blame someone.
I hope your book's a hit.
It's great to talk to you about it.
It's called The Victim Cult.
I think we're going to put this whole interview on YouTube and we'll email it to our subscribers because I think they'll want to see a book like this standing athwart all the other books that propose victimology.
It sounds like yours is an antidote.
Congratulations to you, my friend.
Thank you.
All right, there we have it.
Mark Milke is an author and I encourage you to check it out.
The link below this video takes you directly to the Amazon page where you can get a copy of the book.
Victim Cult Antidote00:02:32
The e-book Kindle version is $9.99 and the print version, which is 316 substantial pages, is $2,895.
Stay with us.
More ahead on the road.
On the monologue Friday about the Canadian military participating at a Chinese sports competition and Chinese military vets starting an association here in Canada, Robert writes, soldiers of the People's Separation Army have taken an oath to China.
I don't think it expires on their retirement from the military.
These people should not be admitted to Canada for residence or citizenship.
Well, you're sounding positively like you have a Canadian identity.
Who let you in here?
Yeah.
Do you think Trudeau is going to stand up for a Canadian identity at all, let alone against China?
Edward writes, Trudeau's record of secret relations with China should be of concern to not only Canadians, but all of our allies.
Yeah, I don't know if you saw over the weekend, Susan Rice, the disgraced former national security advisor to Barack Obama.
She said to Canada, if you go with Huawei, that's the Chinese telecom company, to build your 5G networks in Canada, it will basically let the Chinese intelligence services listen into everything and control and interfere with everything.
And that will put Canada in jeopardy in terms of maintaining its preferred security relationship with our other allies called the five eyes, you know, U.S., UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
I don't think Trudeau cared.
I think Trudeau would actually welcome joining the Chinese circle of influence.
I really think he would.
I know that sounds crazy, but show me a single action he's taken to the contrary.
On my interview with Gary McHale, Jen writes, I'm so glad you featured and interviewed Gary McHale.
This is a brave and eager attempt to make Canadian voices heard, and we should all be grateful to him having the courage to do this on our behalf.
Well, we sent our friend David Menzies down to the court in Ottawa today, so I look forward to his report.
Look, it's a long shot, and Gary McHale is not a lawyer himself.
Private prosecutions are designed for citizens to go to court directly or with a private lawyer.
The odds are against it, but I thought it was worth interviewing him, and we'll have David's full report later.
I actually don't know the result of things, even as I record this.