In Conversation with David Frum: A law school's Gaza war controversy & Conservative poll numbers

[Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to HUB dialogues I'm your host Sean spear editor at large at the Hub I'm honored to be back in conversation with David from for another installment of our bi-weekly video and podcast series on the key issues concerning Canadian policy and politics in today's conversation we'll discuss ongoing agitation on University campuses over the war in Gaza and the case for and against second chances for the young people involved we'll also cover if time permits new polling that shows the Canadian conservatives far ahead of the trau government as the parliament gets set to break for the summer David thanks is always for joining us thank you I I wanted to discuss campus agitation with you David because over the weekend you had a thoughtful response on Twitter to some excellent reporting in the globan mail about student-led campaigns against Israel at Toronto metropolitan University formerly ryis University on October 20th even before Israel had commenced its military response to the terrorism attacks of of October 7th something like half of the student body signed a petition that rejected his existence as a country in and of itself what is happening at that particular law school and University ities more generally to produce such a radical culture well I should begin by declaring something of an interest in this matter um early in June I spoke not at not to Toronto metropolitan University but in a building owned by Toronto metropolitan University for an event on um Democratic renewal um the the um event had been publicized and quite a number of the faculty and Junior faculty and I think some students at Toronto metropolitan University uh signed a letter saying I shouldn't be invited and that effort should be made to stop me from speaking um now as it happened um nothing came of this um the event went forward without any kind of disturbance at all without even um anyone showing up to to register a complaint the hall was F Phill and everyone was polite and we had a a worth worthwhile exchange at least um I hope people thought so so uh I but i' I've seen this close up I I've seen both what it means and what it doesn't mean Toronto metropolitan University is very much a commuter School um it doesn't it has a it has a cluster of buildings near together but it doesn't have that kind of Campus effect so um it it may be that kind of participation in events is a little muted but still for the two or three weeks before I spoke I did have to wonder was there going to be um trouble was there going to be possibly violence was someone going to try to assault me in some way I had I had to think about those things and that's not something um I'm used to thinking about in at a Canadian University in other places I might think about it but not there um and so when this story this latest story broke I I had my own experience somewhat in mind um and also of course the experiences at American colleges which have been so much more disruptive than anything that's happened again one thing that strikes me about the reporting is that a bunch of the student signatories to the petition admit that their action was mostly careless they they weren't hard hardcore ideologues they were following the crown some admitted to not even reading its substance this is consistent with campus protests elsewhere where one gets a sense David that there's a small hardcore minority and then a large number of what you might describe as ignorant followers what do you think explains that Dynamic why is it so popular to Target Israel in these institutions well um there was a length so what happened at tmu um as you say this letter was produced on October 20th it was circulated on social media um it caused a big uproar some um law firms that had been planning to offer interviews on campus withdrew the provincial government took action um and the the statement was pretty offensive uh you know it it denied it it referred to the so-called state of Israel denied that Israel was a state at all um and while it had some kind of lip service condemnation of the Hamas atrocities um it mostly devoted its effort to justifying that you had to see these atrocities as the result of someone else's fault so if someone commits a crime and I spend most of my effort explaining how the crime was really the victim's fault um then I I I'm not necessarily denying the crime but I'm certainly condoning and excusing and justifying the crime and that's that's what the statement did um there was an uproar people were surprised on campus by the Uproar and they felt very wounded and hurt and the university then commissioned uh this big 200 plus page inquiry by a former Chief justi of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court um which was highly exculpatory of the students portrayed the students as victims of unfairness by others um and uh suggested that those people would condemn the statement Were Somehow doing something just as bad as those people had excused all these Hamas crimes so what what's going on here um well part of look tmu is a very new law school um and it has focused very much on what you might call non-traditional law school students people who might in other circumstances not have qualified for law school at all or not have thought about going it I mean the excuse I signed the document without reading it is not something you want to hear from a future attorney like what what do you mean you signed a document without reading it the client sign can sign a document without reading it but the client trusts the attorney to read the document that's what attorneys do if you don't like reading you're not going to be a good lawyer and the doc document was only three pages long and pretty Lively compared to the kind of stuff it's not like an S Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure form you know where the eyes can understandably blur um but I would say the most alarming excuse of all the excuses um provided by the students was quoted by the Chief Justice and one that really I think is an alarm belt is many of them said well the reason we signed was that what this report said accorded with things we had been taught about indigenous perspectives on Canada and when we said that Israel was only a so-called State we were repeating something we'd heard in class where our own professors often refer to Canada as so-called Canada I didn't know that that was going on but it makes sense I mean that that what they have done is they have taken a framework that was invented to describe North America and applied it to Israel now in the North American context this framework is used to put it bluntly to shake down taxpayers for money uh it's not used to justify terrorism but what you see when it's applied to Israel where it is used to justify terrorism that this this framework which is in Canada used to shake down taxpayers for money could be used to justify terrorism and I think all Canadians should ask if you have professors paid for by the taxpayer who are teaching ideas that their students here as justifications for terrorism and murder um even if that so far that that justification is only applied to a foreign country you have to ask what are you incubating I mean you are incubating on your own campuses an ideology that would justify the murder of Canadians too yeah and I I would just say in parenthesis that of course um virtually all of our postsecondary institutions in Canada are publicly funded um so this type of education and curriculum is being done uh ostensibly in our name uh with with our tax dollars another way and though in which we all directly or indirectly contribute to that kind of climate David is the the growing tendency for uh land acknowledgements at all major cultural and sports activities you know we're watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs on our televisions and of course each game in Edmonton and Vancouver and elsewhere starts with an elaborate land acknowledgement many of us can tell ourselves that this is symbolic and rather meaningless um but in the context of this petition and the ideas that are animating it do we need to ask ourselves harder questions about whether we're indirectly inadvertently contributing to this s settler settler Colonial philosophy or ideology that is behind a a a lot of this radicalism well Canada is of course a settler colonial state of course it is um that uh that's why and everything you like about Canada was brought there by those settlers and those colonialists they brought the technology they brought the ideas of liberalism if you like Canada you owe a debt of thanks to those settlers and those Colonial ists um and that's why these in they're renaming Ryerson or dund Square renaming Ryerson University that's why these renamings are such subversive acts in a country with a weak self-concept a country that when we were growing up especially when I was growing up at the high day of Canadian nationalism it was always worrying about Canadians not having a sense of their own history the Canadians knew Daniel Boone but didn't know ederton Ryerson and so a great effort was made to highlight these Builders of Canada and to and the Builders of the good and fair and decent society that Canada is and now they're all being defamed and and it has implications one of the things that was said um after October 7th after these terrible atrocities and mass murder Mass rape um hostage taking cruelty of every kinds um the most Savage and Vicious Kind of actions that people who would excuse it say did you think decolonization was about Vibes thank you thank you did you did you think it was about Vibes it's not about Vibes and so far candidates about shakedowns um but if the shakedowns ever stop working this is this is a framework that will just that justifies terrorism um the to return to the petition it it as you alluded earlier David wasn't without consequence uh law firms canceled interviews or withdrew job offers for some of the signatories there's reports in the glob and mail story that that that we've discussed already of donors pulling funding we've seen similar developments for law students in law schools in the United States uh this has been framed by some as a free speech issue but you disagree why yeah look um I think the I think the students had the right to sign these petitions and say these things um I am more impressed of the 70 or so people signed but half had the courage to sign under their own names and half were cowards and signed under pseudonyms so I I I have absolutely zero respect or someone who would commit their commit themselves through you know uh if you're going to be a coward be you know then just be a proper coward and just don't sign anything but the idea of of of hiding behind the screen that's I mean I sign what I write I think we all should stand behind if these are if you believe something and you enough to say it in public you should put your name to it um uh so they had the right to say this and I I to the extent that the university that investigated them for saying this I think that is that is wrong um that there should be no investig you sign it you sign it these are words these are not obstru they're not obstructing access to campus buildings the things we've seen in the United States they were not doing any of those um you can say what you want whe especially whether you're a university student or not um but other people who exist and sometimes it's hard on the University campus to they also have rights and um and they have a right to say I condemn this they have another right which is the law allows ows you to State your support to a foreign terrorist organization or should allow you to say that but it doesn't allow you to deliver support to a for if you want to write a check to Hamas um or if you want to write if you write a check to a Hamas front group um the organs of State Should I think Will and certainly should take a look at you because that's that's material support to a terrorist organization now one of the things that if I'm a law firm I'm going to wonder about this I got this person here who has declared support to a terrorist group I have to wonder when I pay them a salary might they write a check to that group or to a front Organization for that group I mean could I be implicated in material support for a terrorist organization could my firm be implicated at a minimum that'll be embarrassing at a maximum it could expose us to some liability so um when you have people declaring their views other people of course have a right to react to those views I mean you don't have a right to declare your views and if everyone say no matter how repellent the view is no matter how indicative this view is that you might get our Law Firm into real meaningful legal trouble certainly it might deliver this law fir real meaningful embarrassment that I have to disregard all of that and I can't use your words as a statement about who you are and the kind of person you'd be and how you'd be in the law firm what happens when you come to the law firm uh to a modern law firm with all the concerns about sexual harassment and you say I've signed a letter defending rape what you defend rape oh only of Jewish rape no and not not of and not not my partners here no not only Israeli Jewish women I certainly wouldn't endorse the rape of my female Partners here at our Toronto Law Firm that would be you know they you know um the women in this Law Firm take a dim view of raping anybody interestingly the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General has adopted a similar position tmu law students need to sign an attestation that they didn't sign the petition to work there in your tweets David you reckoned with the differences between public and private employers and similarly came down on the side that Canadian governments shouldn't hire those who endorse hos terrorism for national security reasons what's your argument there look Canada has a genuine problem not only in the Palestinian context but seeks and others of um uh support groups for foreign terrorist organizations this has been Aon we've talked about this before on this podcast a chronic problem candada there are people in Canada fundraising for toml terrorism seik terrorism Palestinian terrorism uh various kinds of uh Middle Eastern other kinds of Middle Eastern terrorism that's a real issue um and Canadian governments have not always been effective about that but at least that when they're ineffective they're ineffective because of reasons that come from State policy at the top that the prime minister or whoever it is has said let's go easy on this but given that record you would also be worried well wait a moment are we hiring people who might be in some way supportive of these foreign terrorist organizations um that's a it's a real problem for candada it's not a theoretical regard it's not a theoretical concern it's a real problem and so uh one of the things you'd wonder about in the Attorney General's office is Gee we hire people saying I am in sympathy with terrorist actions when we have to track a terrorist front group when we have to track terrorist funding are we going to be able to count on you to do your job or are you somehow committed to people who are regarded as enemies of um Canadian interests as defined by Canadian law it raises a a bigger point because the letter because the letter was signed anonymously some firms were disinclined to hire any student from tmu since there's no way to know who actually signed it the consequences in other words has been borne in some ways by the full student body not merely the radicals uh but I digress I I I want to ask about Redemption um this is go please go ahead because tmu has opened its doors in September of 2020 um it's a very new project and it's not getting if if people have a choice of law schools tmu is probably not going to be Choice number one um so and tmu has declared that its mission is to be a non-traditional law school to do things in different ways so you're already asking law firms or anyone or governments or anyone who might hire your graduates so you know cast cast your mind a little more broadly um redefine redefine Talent a little more generously um don't worry so much about things like college grades and elsat scores I mean be open to different kinds of experience okay okay you're sure this isn't going to get us into any kind of trouble if we if we Bend our rules for your graduates no no except for that declared support for a foreign terrorist organization part uh other than that no you won't be embarrassed I mean the law we're doing you a favor being here in the first place to to that point I I want to ask about Redemption uh one lawyer is cited in the story saying that these students have carried out quote professional suicide they won't get law jobs as we discussed or become judges or whatever it it it prompts the question how should we think about Second Chances what are the conditions in your mind to permit someone to come back from the fringes I am a huge believer in second chances and in one of my follow-up tweets I told a story of a man named David ifan who had been a student Pro in the 1960s against the Vietnam War and he went really far he traveled to North Vietnam where he did broadcasts for North Vietnam State Radio in defense of North Vietnamese goals while those forces were in combat with the United States and even in the 1960s and 70s that got you into a lot of trouble anyway he he later rethought and emerg as actually a pretty conventional liberal Democrat close to Bill Clinton and um Bill Clinton put him up for a job and and Senator John McCain who had been a prisoner of war in North Vietnam who had been the target of many of these kinds of Psych morale destroying um messages uh raised objections uh as he would and said you're gonna have someone did this u in a government job and ifan sought out mckain and told him how the story of how he had re regretted what he had said and rethought it and they became intimate friends an Ian died tragically or Liv of cancer and McCain spoke at his funeral there I always I believe there always has to be a way back for you know all but the you know not the Ians of this world but like like for people who made normal kinds of mistakes but the first step is you have to want the way back you have to seek it so if one of the people signed the tmu letter at an interval of some months or years says you know that wasn't right I I regret it um and they have a statement about that then I I'd hear it and I think the world should take it seriously but just as you have to sign your name to the original mistake so you have to provide some explanation of the rethinking um and it can't just be oh I never knew I'd be nominated for a judgeship now I I'd like the judgeship please you you need you need an explanation especially in the law you make your living with words and reasons make your living with arguments so uh you when you do the original wrong thing I I think you'd have some you should have read it you should you should have thought about it and then you should sign your own proper name and not hide and if you then correctly rethink and recant you owe the world an explanation of that too um and if you do uh then I think there has to be a way back there should always be a way back uh I want to wrap up uh David on some new polling concerning Canadian politics uh the federal Parliament will soon break for the summer with the conservatives having something like a 20-point lead and the Liberals is low as they've been in something like 10 years uh the trau government's latest attempt to create a political wedge by taxing capital gains at a higher rate has seemingly failed with just over a year until the next election do you think the Liberals can turn it around or or is this now unsalvageable um they're dealing with some pretty objective realities um and the reality is and we've talked about this before Canada came out of the last global economic crisis one of the best performing economies um in in among the among its peer Nations so in 2013 and 14 after the Great Recession of 2008 2009 Canadians could say look obviously not without problems um you know we are it's not as if that the Great Recession didn't happen but we can look around and see we're doing better uh than our American counterparts we're certainly doing better than our British or Continental European counterparts um so whoever's in charge is doing something right um so I'm going to vote for the incumbant and at the federal and provincial level conser ative liberal and NDP incumbents did well in the elections of the 2010s uh Canada is coming out of the pandemic crisis along with Great Britain the worst performing economy among the peer among its peers and you know there are many explanations of why that's so but can a voters int to say the people in charge obviously have not handled this well certainly not as well as the Americans have and not as well as as many other peer countries have done and so that's a hard thing for a government to work around that Canadians could just see that uh whoever was in charge in 2014 was doing better than their American counterparts and whoever is in charge in 2024 is doing worse than their American counterparts and Canadians evaluate that way um the war in Gaza has been a big challenge for the government it's an issue David that shoots right through the liberal caucus you've been critical at times of the prime minister's handling of the issue including how it's come to manifest itself in Canada itself so what do you think to what extent do you think it contributes to a perception of a government and disarray yeah well the the war in Gaza is obviously pretty remote I should think from the concerns of most Canadians um uh that there are some who feel very strongly and for whom it will even be a voting issue but I would imagine for most Canadians even if they have an opinion about it it's probably not a primary voting issue but what it does consolidate is this that the the Justin trudo government's approach to it has been like a bobblehead nodding here nodding there nodding here nodding there and transparently driven by the need to stay out of trouble and and transparently without a plan without thinking well if we want when we do the bobble head on this side that'll create the equal and opposite reaction on the other side so when we do the bobble head over there the people on the and they're like racing back and forth and they can't think for five minutes well what if we have just one consistent bobblehead move like and stick with thatc and it's just a reminder of it's just a proof of fecklessness of a constant desire to please no strategic plan no ability to think five minutes ahead uh no ability to anticipate problems and a voter might think well if you can't with something that is as remote from Canadian concerns as the war in Gaza if you can't think ahead five minutes there how do you think five minutes ahead in the middle of all the crises of the post-pandemic economy I mean that is there a plan there and so it just it goes to a sense of not being equal to the task and um which I think is the Judgment the Canadians have come to about Justin trau personally and his government General uh we've previously talked about what the conservatives should be doing in opposition in light of those Trends you've discouraged the idea that the party ought to begin to outline a policy a concrete policy agenda instead focus on Prosecuting the case against the government and preparing for the federal election whenever it comes are there any changes to your advice at at this point what I've always said about that is in a parliamentary system in a Westminster system governments lose oppositions don't win and election governments lose on issues that are present in the election year so don't and so I think the mistake that the conservatives have made over the past few years is they keep chasing things was it going to be and they and was it going to be vacines was it going to be the High Cost of Living they never quite they were guessing and they were committing themselves to and those commitments um if the government were collapsing less radically uh those commitments would be costly like if you commit to cryptocurrency when cryptocurrencies are looking good um then there's all this record of you praising cryptocurrencies when everyone thinks well that was stupid how who could ever have believed in that um so you shouldn't have done that but now as you get close now it's time to prepare for the election and for government um and so one way you prepare for the election for government is with candidates recruitment um I mean if it's going to be if if the issue in Canadian politics right now is the cost of housing um followed by just the general sense of candidates not performing well coming out of the pandemic then you want to have candidates who are responsive to that um so you recruit them and then you have to give them and the way you recruit people like that if they're going to be people of weight and talent is by making it clear that they're going to have some say over what the policy is like it's not just going to be a pmo government you know you're going to recruit people with major experience in these areas um they're they're going to have have some say so you begin I think this is now the time to start planning for the election candidate Recruitment and the beginning of serious speeches and even maybe party manifestos on what are the issues of going to be the issues at election time don't do that work in 201 18 19 20 21 but do do that work in 2024 and 2025 um specifically housing how are you going to you know what what is a conservative plan for building more housing going to be like as we've often said here um Canada is growing through immigration and that means the the issue with immigration and housing is you don't get a lot of time to prepare like when you have a baby boom you have 25 years to build enough houses for those babies they they don't need an apartment right away you admit you admit an immigrant to Canada that immigrant needs an apartment right away uh and so uh that they instantly add to the demand for housing in a way that babies don't so uh you Canada needs to build a lot of these choices whether they were wise or unwise they've been made uh these people are now Canadians or they have status in Canada they need a place to live how are you going to build hundreds of thousands of housing units in the term of the next government final question David if you'll permit me um it seems me that one of the biggest vulnerability potential vulnerabilities for the conservatives in Pier PV is is the perceived association with Donald Trump uh and the Liberals no doubt will do everything that they can in the coming months to um to connect the two as we enter the US presidential cycle what if anything can the conservatives do to distinguish themselves from the the political uh identity of of of Donald Trump and and a kind of trumpy in politics well this is a case where the government is making the mistake that I warned the conservatives about because guess who what guess what question is going to be resolved by the time Canadians vote in 2025 um what who's president of the United States so yeah you can win the morning today by scoring point off the conservatives because some of them are a little trumpy but come 2025 either Trump will be gone he'll He he'll be he'll be a loser and probably on his way to prison and then it won't matter whether people are a little trumpy or not because they have lots of time to regroup um or he'll be president in which case you know as a Canadian you might say look little as we like them you have to deal with them um and then maybe being trumpy is good uh so it's just that strikes me as actually a very that's about um strateg tacticians and Communications people overriding the Strategic the main thing you need to be thinking about uh in a Westminster system is we have a rende with the voters on date X it does no good to score points 18 months 24 months 36 months in advance especially because Canadians are so weakly attached to political parties so even if they say oh yeah we you know great Point uh they look a little trumpy we hate Trump trump will be gone one way or Trump will be sorry the Trump decision will be over one way or another and either he'll be gone or he'll be president and then you'll have to deal with them uh great great insight there David is there is uh every time we speak uh thank you for joining me and I look forward to catching up in a couple of weeks thank you byebye

Channel: The Hub Canada

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Length: 29min 11sec (1751 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2024