Eh, I see this guy around and hear his speeches now and then. I don’t really find his speaking points all that convincing, and some are not quite the ‘win’ that gets depicted.
Like saying we all support DEI is nice and all, but he acts like he doesn’t even know what it is or why there are a lot of guys (typically) who are pissed off about it. Like I’m an older millennial, who has memories of being explicitly denied employment with the government because I didn’t “Identify as an equity employment group” – which is defined as any non-male or non-caucasian person (so no cis white guys were allowed to get past round 1 of the application for the jobs I was applying for). I was also asked, and stupidly/naively agreed, to step aside for scholarships/bursaries so that women could win the awards and pad my highschools stats - something that meant I had to work all through university, while those awards went to 1%er women who were too busy vacationing in their summer homes to even bother going to the award ceremonies. Our government literally releases a report about hitting its DEI hiring and promotion quotas – it’s less about finding the best person for a position, and more about determining the minimum requirements, and then shortlisting people based on race. It’s not a meritocracy once implemented, even though its proponents like to claim as such. And from a white guys perspective, seeing a bunch of women and minorities in power, who block you from getting a job / benefits because there are… too many white guys who have privilege… ain’t gonna leave a positive perspective on the thing. Like imagine if everyone you interacted with was a white guy, and when you tried to work with them, they said “Nah man, too many women / minorities work here, go somewhere else” – that’d feel like blatant discrimination, but when the races are reversed its celebrated as DEI.
There’re very real, historical issues that some of us have with these programs and the way they’re implemented. Similar story for being ‘woke’, and how adherence to some ‘woke’ principles means denying science/evidence – Canada implementing legislation that makes it criminal to discuss non-scientific/subjective-based things, like blind adherence to a narrative about history, is an easy example. Rich old white guys pretending like its not an issue, aren’t speaking to the “young” (under 50) disenfranchised male voters who’ve been negatively impacted by it on a personal level. Charlie/the left acting like it’s “Support DEI or else you don’t support Canada!” is nonsense. Politicians / white guys like Charlie, who did well and avoided all the negative stuff about these sorts of programs, aren’t great spokespeople – let’s see some guys who have lived through the negatives of DEI up there supporting it, guys who’ve lost job opportunities / career paths due to its implementation and their gender/race, doubt you’ll find too many who’d cheer it on.
The liberals will likely win this round, but its more because of anti-american sentiment, than a sudden embracing of this sort of nonsense – sorta like ford riding a patriotic wave back into office, despite his policies / history. If the left/progressives don’t pay attention to these sorts of concerns, things’ll just fester. Asking men to vote against their interests didn’t work in the USA. Some areas in the states have realised this and are trying to do better – NBC just had a piece highlighting whitmer and moore attempting to build more programs to support young men. Let’s hope it doesn’t take similar circumstances for the Canadian left to do better.
*just adding another example, cause its blatant: the HPV vaccine. I was part of the first wave of kids where they ONLY vaccinated girls. Decades later, health officials are all “shocked” that rates of HPV related illnesses is far far higher amongst men… the group they didn’t bother to vaccinate. Totally equitable and fair treatment, giving one gender a vaccine and letting the others just die. Very woke.
You might want to do some research on your last “blatant” example. It really degrades the rest of your arguments and highlights the ignorance that guides most anti-DEI sentiment.
Semi fair, removed.
Based on Canada’s own posting, the HPV vaccine was made available to women in 2008. It was later made available to boys in 2017, based on what I referenced obliquely in terms of scientists going “Oh my, boys have higher rates!”. So it still fits.
The case from my childhood was more muddle, admittedly – a different vaccine (Hep B) – I admittedly don’t keep a close tab on these things. It does make more sense, as part of a regular health check screening to do with a foreign partner I had started dating, my doc recommended I get a Hep B vaccine prior to getting intimate. Elementary school, early 90s, fits with Canadas vaccine schedules and with the adult vaccine top up.
i assume your complaint is that only girls got the HPV vaccine to start with… i’m not sure you understand the reasoning for that… the primary concern with HPV is that it led to cervical cancer… since only AFAB people…… have a cervix…. the vaccine didn’t protect against that risk and thus wasn’t a good initial investment given the stated goals
The article literally has a Canadian medical professional stating that it was discriminatory against men. That the decision to provide it only to women was based on cost, and on relying on studies that ignored mens situations.
They literally changed it a decade later, acknowledging that it had been a discriminatory against men.
I don’t see what you’re arguing at this point. It’s literally documented in the history of how this vaccine has been provided to the public.
the story is the exact same the world over:
it was entirely based on cost of course… that’s a no shit moment… public health is all about cost. it’s not cheap (about $1000 for the full course in australia), and the goal was to stop cervical cancer. it got changed a decade later because the stats came in about efficacy and they were higher than expected, and herd immunity was looking important
you’re straight up definitively wrong mate
The article literally has a health professional admitting that the studies used to justify just giving it to women, and the practice of just providing it to women, were sexist / behind the times in terms of equity. There were studies showing it impacted male health, even back in 2007, that were ignored for purposes of policy / vaccine distribution. The gov basically said HPV = cervix (even though science said otherwise, outside of focused cervical cancer studies), and used that to justify only providing medical care to women. That’s gender based discrimination. Even the notion of ‘herd immunity’, based on just vaccinating women, completely ignored the case of gay men: the 2007 studies included information on penile/anal cancers, as well as mouth/neck cancers, resulting from HPV: they knew it impacted more than “just” cervical cancers/illnesses. Here’s one of them: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK321770/ . That one, you can even see they explicitly highlight gay men as being a group that requires more data – as its a group that had been ignored.
Further, science/politicians “realising the mistake” and making corrections later, doesn’t change that it was gender discrimination. Crash test dummies were, for a long time, just based on male body types. Regulations / governments were ok with this. More recently, scientists realised women body shapes would behave differently in collisions, so they started including those in the mix. That doesn’t change the fact that the historic use of ‘just’ male body crash test dummies, is an example of gender based discrimination against women. There are tons of similar examples, where the male case was preferenced in studies, and legislation/regulations were built around those biased views. Science iteratively figuring out its own biases is part of the process, but it doesn’t absolve past wrongs - especially once those biases are used to justify the distribution of public funds to aid a specific niche group, at the expense of other groups.
If you want to absolve the sexist stuff in the HPV vaccine distribution, from my perspective you’re using the same sort of reasoning that would absolve a lot of the past wrongs perpetuated while ‘science’ figured out the racial/gender stuff, as well as governments preferencing male-cases by simply ignoring other views. And the same “well, it was done like that everywhere” comment would also still apply. I don’t see why you’d treat this case differently, unless you had some sort of inherent bias against thinking of men as potential victims of discrimination… Even as the scientific community turned their back on guys with dick cancer.
*Adding a note, because I don’t think I’m ‘reaching you’ with the comments about there literally being a health professional saying “It was an equity issue to deny this treatment to boys”: ie. “It’s not just ‘me’ (some rando online) saying this, but here’s a quote from a verifiable health professional supporting what I said”. I’ve provided my take on the subject, and I’ve provided a quote from a health professional supporting my position. You’re not providing anything to support your view point, you haven’t cited anything despite demanding that I cite sources. You’re not discussing this topic with an open mind, nor are you demanding any rigor / scrutiny in terms of your own viewpoints. Because of this, I’m going to stop bothering to respond to you at this point, if you post more. I have laid out a fairly straight forward position on gov vaccine patterns with HPV, and it syncs up with my memory of vaccines in grade school and being denied access to the Heb B vaccine (without paying). I’ve provided source material to support my position, citing both vaccine docs from the cdc, journalist articles from reputable news agencies (cbc), and studies from national health archives. You’ve contributed basically nothing, except insults and dismissive crap. Good luck out there.
So you removed the argument, then defend it, again with no sources?
Yeah, this is typical of the men I know who cry victim.
Take some time to reflect man.
Eh? O… k… here?
There’s your source for the HPV vaccine being available to girls in 2008, and only made available to boys in 2017 A doc straight from the BC CDC website.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/hpv-vaccine-the-growing-campaign-for-including-boys-1.3127916
There’s a CBC article showing that there was a growing campaign to try and include boys in the HPV vaccine around 2015. They literally quote David Brennan, an associate professor at the Faculty of Social Work at UT, saying “I know our health ministry is committed to equity and I believe that we’re a little bit behind the times in terms of addressing this equitable health issue for boys and men”. So you literally had health care professionals calling out the gender-based discrimination that had lasted for about a decade. Some provinces started including boys as early as 2013 – others waited till later.
Providing you internet sources in regards to my specific case from the 90s is more difficult, because there was… barely… an internet at that time. It wasn’t common for schools to communicate via email, or for govt to post information online. I did have an explicit chat with my mom at the time, who was annoyed that I couldn’t get the shot because I was a boy – and we couldn’t afford to get it privately at the time, so I was not covered until much later in life. Apologies if I didn’t remember the specific vaccine from when I was a kid, but your response and open antagonism is unwarranted. Especially given that a quick google search, brought up those above links, and support my overall statements. I removed the specific example, as explaining the differences between vaccines / time lines, was going to be overly onerous, and would’ve muddled the rest of the items I’d listed – and as it was a later point that got added, it made sense to just clip it. It’s not some “cry victim” thing where I turn tail and run when you challenge my stance. As I’ve hopefully demonstrated by responding to your comment here.
I’m really not following you anymore.
I wasn’t dismissing the fact that (in Ontario anyways) the HPV vaccine was rolled out for girls and not boys. I’m trying to get you to use your brain and think about “why” that would be.
Because if you think some board of doctors and scientists in the late 90’s was like “you know what, fuck men, let’s give this vaccine only to women, that will level the playing field.” Then I don’t know what to tell you.
They literally detail it as a cost thing in some of the reference material i linked. Protecting men’s health wasn’t worth the cost in the eyes of the government. I’m pretty sure that’s not a gender-neutral medical opinion, but rather an ideological/political decision layered on top. They further clarify that the studies used to support women-only treatment, only looked at women’s HPV related issues – ie. “We looked at just cervix/ovarian cancers, and based on that we’re just providing this to girls”. Basing medical policy decisions on biased studies is not a neutral ‘board of doctors wanting the best for all patients regardless of gender’ type of move. Here’s a quote from that university prof that sums it up, from the linked CBC article (my emphasis added):
“Many of the studies that have been done that have looked at cost-effectiveness regarding HPV vaccination coverage for boys have not taken into account cancers related to anal, penile and oral cancers. Most of those studies have been conducted around cervical cancers.”
Sorta like how if the USA says they don’t want to support trans/womens rights initiatives, because it’s too costly, it’s viewed as anti-woman/ideologically motivated. Even if they have some doctors that say “Yes, given our budget, we can’t cover women’s health needs”, it’d still be discriminatory. And if they conducted studies that only looked at the ‘men’ situation, and issued policy excluding women as a result of those biased studies, you’d justifiably call the policy/process discriminatory.
I don’t see your point as an issue with anything I’ve stated.
Some points I understand your frustration, but now if you flip sides and see that that happens to women and minorities all the time, for decades past and even now.
Imagine being a woman of colour that is interested in a typically male field, she would not stand a chance, while the good old boys go for a boat ride and beer to solidify a hire.
DEI might be a poor implementation of a good thing, and occasionally screw a white dude. Hopefully we have a more low level system one day where all people have access to care, training and funds so everyone gets a shot by merit.
Some points I understand your frustration, but now if you flip sides and see that that happens to women and minorities all the time, for decades past and even now.
Are you saying wampus is totally okay to suffer because someone else did? That sounds like vengeance.
Or because someone else victimized someone else? That sounds like collective punishment.
Or that he should be happy to be barred from a vaccine when it was suitable for him based on genetic makeup?
You seemed to be saying “change one intrinsic attribute and it if feels wrong, then it is” except then you kinda lost the plot.
You are fishing for words that aren’t there. Move on troll
No woman in my age range that I’ve encountered in real life has stories of being denied employment due to their race/gender – unless they’ve immigrated from another country. Many men in my friend circles do. I’ve literally seen women government regulators say to industry “I can’t work with these people”, and excuse almost every male from a board of directors.
I don’t deny that women were treated poorly in generations past when it came to the labour force. My point is that for the current generation that’s coming up, it has been almost completely flipped. The gender imbalance in the federal public service, is now more lopsided in favour of women, than it was in favour of men in the 1980s when this sort of legislation first came in. We reached relative ‘parity’ around 2000 – two decades, a whole generation of people, and we’re still preferencing women as though they’re this poor downtrodden minority, and we just watched that imbalance get more and more out of whack. But there’s no talk of relaxing those pro-woman hiring policies amongst politicians, let alone enacting pro-male hiring campaigns to sort out the “new” imbalance/reality. Just an authoritarian, discussion killing mantra of “Canada is DEI!!”.
DEI and woke stuff is not inherently Canadian. Framing the current issues and political issues with the states, as being “Canada is woke and DEI! And the states hates us for it!” is not helping things.
Activist groups that fought for equality, never thought to disband after equality was achieved. Current higher education enrollment is heavily skewed female now. Gender identity shouldn’t be made a hiring criteria.
It’s not just that. There’s another way to look at these groups…
Something like feminist equality pushes are basically advocating for women’s rights/equality in areas that are advantageous to women. It makes perfect sense that they don’t advocate for something like equality in terms of life expectancy, or male access to traditionally female occupations, because it’s outside the scope of their mandate. They are not advocating for equality/egalitarian goals, they are advocating specifically to gain benefits (or remove impediments) for their niche group. They don’t totally hide this bias, they put it front and centre in most cases, but the public ‘reads’ it as pushing for equality because of marketing and the inability to question the narrative without being labelled as a misogynistic arse, basically. It’s not just feminist pushes, special interest rights movements in general are not about egalitarian goals / equality, but are explicitly about providing advantages to their special interest groups.
If you remove all the negatives from one side of an equation, without touching the other side, you don’t end up with equality.
That might be survivor bias no? The employed people you talk to in your age range are employed, you aren’t hearing from the person that is moving somewhere else because of lack of job.
As a white dude that has been privvy to conservative male bosses, I have heard direct statements of :
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we won’t hire HER because she might get pregnant
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we won’t hire HER because she won’t know about mechanical things (even though resume was from a tool shop)
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he didn’t get hired because he was black, he was the best candidate, but the owner doesn’t like black people (owner was Asian)
“Lived experience” counts for other groups, why would you think it shouldn’t count for us? Plus, surprisingly perhaps, I have a bunch of friends that I don’t work with, where we discuss this stuff. Part of growing up local (though most of my friends from hs are minority folks, technically). I’ve not lilypadded much, so four of my five bosses historically have been women – the majority of most management in those orgs, women.
While I wouldn’t question your lived experiences, my own, and that of people around me in real life who I generally trust more than a rando online, support my viewpoint. This also includes a few managers in the federal government, who are pissed off with the demographic hoops they need to jump through for hiring/promoting people. Like there’ll be suitable local candidates, but the gov forces them to appoint people from the other side of the country to meet the racial quota.
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Very good/strong speech, but usual US programming infecting Canadian minds apply. The specific “democratic values” identity is actually problematic, but will address last.
I went to NATO meeting and all of our allies were silent when asked to support Canada.
Trump, in his antagonism of all allies, has successfully made them more divided with Russia and China. Especially Canada, even to Mexico. Cowering individually is surely a losing strategy for all, but increased divisiveness with Russia and China whether or not it is collective, is definitely a losing path. Internalizing US enemies as our own, is US mind control and US sycophancy. Divisiveness against US enemies is self destructive, and direct treasonous assistance to US pressure against us. We need closer relations with countries who do not cower to US. Europe approach/reaction is loser joke.
Trump wants Arctic to gift it to Putin
It is offensively stupid to believe that Trump/US empire doesn’t want domination of Canada purely for US empire benefits. Going full Tropic Thunder on blaming Russia for it, leads to idiocy that war on Russia must be the solution, as if that wasn’t US empire objective all along to make us a proxy. Russia does not need our Arctic resources, and if they do, they will pay us for access. They will not be invading Canada, ever.
Golden billion democracy, democratic values, is the ultimate value
Democracy in US is no protection from Oligarchy and Zionist supremacim. An additional factor in US allied democracies is US colonial control over those democracies. Our wonderful democracy doesn’t prevent extreme divisiveness lately, and it is a direct result of unsustainability, and the oligarch forces that want profits a few extra years over sustainability. Collective stupidity, or acceptance that world/country/master ally is unsustainable, is a big factor, and I assure you that war on Russia and China is no solution.
Good/humanist national governance comes without our major divisive and evil flaws. Economic pluralism where affording a family is possible, where sustainability of education and healthcare can be hoped, Sexual and marriage freedom is pluralism too, and a notably appreciated Canadian freedom/value. Language and cultural freedom is pluralism, also a Canadian value. Canada’s labelling of apartheid ethnostates who have suspended elections as “wonderful democracies” is simply political distortion of pluralism/humanist values. Gender/identity supremacism is not pluralism.
China and Russia have economic pluralism. Syria had some sexual pluralism. The freedom to be divisive, destructive, and treasonous representative of a colonial power should stop being considered a utopian value.
When you say “Zionist supremacim”, what exactly do you mean, buddy? Like, very very very precisely.
Also, am I right to understand that you consider …Putin’s Russia a country that we need to develop closer ties to? Like, this place?
Zionism has only considered colonialism in its quest for Palestinian land. Not purchases. The line for supremacism could be drawn there, or it could be set at refusal to stop colononialism and peace with Palestinians, or could be set at current genocidal levels.
What I meant by it specifically, is the pure zionist allegiance of all US elected politicians to Israel whatever its current agenda is. Zionist first rule over US, that extends to US first rule over Canada.
Russia a country that we need to develop closer ties to?
Instead of measuring a country by how much divisiveness they put up with, measure it in terms of corruption and submission to foreign powers. The danger for Canada is isolation based on “fantasy values purity” that never existed, and were always US projections to better control us.
Going full Tropic Thunder on
Is that leveraging the “I’m the dude playing the dude” bit? If so, brilliant.
In fact, this entire comment is excellent.
I love Charlie Angus, I’m proud he’s from northern Ontario (I love Cobalt & the tri-towns)
Canada is lucky to have Mr. Angus in this time.
It’s unfortunate that this is going to be his last term (although I don’t blame him for wanting to retire).
I just saw this, and I’m fired up! We need more of this energy, every day.
Man, Charlie Angus has really been the man of moment here. He’s doing the same speech all over this country, seen it in a bunch of places. I know that sounds like a criticism - how can he be genuine when he’s repeating himself and refining the message? Isn’t that just a stump speech?
But it’s not. First of all, anyone who knows Charlie Angus’ record knows this isn’t new territory for him.
Second, the reason this feels so genuine is because it’s how WE feel. We aren’t being told what to think, we’re having our feelings put into words right in front of us.
And finally, these lines aren’t stupid slogans or focus group tested pablum. These are things I’ve heard other Canadians say to each other, things I’ve said, way before any political leader was saying it. He’s speaking in plain and easy language, in the exact terms Canadians think about this.
Populism and patriotism are heady, dangerous drugs. So quickly, they can pour over into mob-mentality, anti-intellectualism and nationalism. We have to be careful, and we have to be smart. But right now, man, I am riding this high. Elbows up!
I appreciate that he also takes time to focus on a positive message. Democracy, diversity, all that. Populist movements that celebrate diversity are just not that scary to me.
Elbows up.
Oh fuck yes.
This guy gets it.
I hope this goes viral. It really is incredible.
