AS180: Anti-Science In Canada

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking, this is episode 180. Joining me right now is someone going by the name of Krakus, which I got to say is kind of funny to me, but maybe it's just because he's a Canadian. Let's face it. How are you doing Krakus?

0:00:49 Krakus: I am doing great. We're on day three of the Thanksgiving bender over here, so I'm a little bit hungover, a little bit tired, but other than that, everything's good.

0:00:58 Thomas: So do you, are you guys celebrating murdering a bunch of natives or is that just how we do it?

0:01:04 Krakus: Actually, if this is something you'd want to get into later, Canadians

0:01:07 Thomas: Might not be a bad idea.

0:01:10 Krakus: Actually have a really troubled history with what we call First Nations peoples. So I guess what is colloquially called Indians or Native Americans. And we had this thing called residential school system which was um created and funded by the government but this was run by the Catholic and Anglican church and essentially it uh would abduct not abduct but take children away from their parents, move them hundreds of kilometers away so they couldn't run away home and try to uh what's the polite way of saying this, they said something like effective of basically you know beat, yeah try to try to get the native out of the native, um, So they would not allow them to use their own language, they would force them this

0:01:46 Thomas: Sort of brainwash him or something like get him. Oh, Geez. And this was in the late 1990s? So it's really bad. No, I'm just kidding.

0:01:57 Krakus: Is up to, the honestly it was up to 90s. This is not a, not a joke, yet the last school it

0:02:00 Thomas: Really? Oh, my gosh, why do we why do we get such a hard time when here we have Canada, just sneakily no one notices, they're still doing horrible stuff into the 90s. I tell you, no.

0:02:15 Krakus: Was brutal, but I mean that's not why I came on the show, but I'd be glad to talk about that a bit from what I know well

0:02:19 Thomas: Yeah. It is an interesting topic, not why, not why you're on the show, but but it's it's It's fascinating because our bigger one, I'd say, is Columbus Day. I mean, Thanksgiving can still be sort of, I don't know, amicable. It's not. But Columbus Day is the one where I have a feeling that's going away pretty soon. I don't know if you know anything about that, but exactly.

0:02:39 Krakus: We know that he was a genocidal maniac, uh, zip.

0:02:41 Thomas: I bet you that holiday is going away. I betcha anything. It's every year there's more and more about how like, look, why are we celebrating this? And I think that's more in line with the genocidal kind of things you were talking about. And I doubt it'll be celebrated much longer. But as you said, not the reason you're here, though. An interesting, one of the many interesting differences between, or similarities between the U.S. and Canada. Maybe here to talk about some more. Now, we always get a bad rap, it seems like, for the conservative, the religious right right here, sort of the conservative nuts. I know I have some Republican atheist listeners. That's not who I'm talking about. I'm not talking about every Republican. I am talking about the very Jesus-centric Republican right here.

0:03:30 Thomas: We get a hard time for that here in America, and probably deserved. But it sounds like from your emails, there's something going on in Canada Canada that's maybe similar. And I'm very curious to hear about this because being an American, I of course know nothing about Canada except that I love hockey. Yeah.

0:03:50 Krakus: Hockey. Maple syrup, poutine.

0:03:53 Thomas: So if you don't mind, well, first let's hear a little bit about you and kind of your background, if you Don't Mind.

0:03:53 Krakus: Yes. So uh, I got a BSc in biology and biochemistry back over a decade ago, and then I went directly into graduate school, um, where I started molecular biology. I was initially working uh with transgenic mice, uh, so we would design genetically engineered mice that had mutations in particular genes in order order to understand how they functioned in terms of acquiring breast cancer and developing them as models for therapeutics. I then took a bit of a break. I actually did some stuff with visual arts and music. And then I eventually came back to do my PhD, shifted focus a bit and went into the field of gene expression. So essentially looking at using for globally interrogating essentially the entire genome to see what differences occur in particular kinds of cancer cells.

0:04:47 Thomas: Now that is, that sounds really frigging cool. I got to say that, that, and you sound like a very very well-rounded person. So I'm, I'm really excited to talk to you. And, uh, is that what you're currently working on or were you going on before I interrupted to say you're become

0:04:56 Krakus: Well, Thank you. Uh, Well, I actually took some other time off to do some courses in, uh, pardon?

0:05:04 Thomas: President or, oh, to become president or something to run?

0:05:07 Krakus: Yeah. I, I wish that were the case, uh, president, Canada, because we got one of those as you know.

0:05:13 Thomas: Oh yeah. What is, what is it? What do you have over there? Oh, yeah. A prince? No, a

0:05:13 Krakus: Yep. Well, Technically the head of state is the governor general, but he or, or she has no power, uh, because they're appointed by the prime minister, who's the de facto head of state, yeah, so the prime minster is actually the, the head of state for all intents and purposes. Yeah, actually I've been kind of bumming around the last two years, I've been looking for full-time work, um, because when I started my PhD, the lab in which I was working, um, had about a dozen people. We had techs, we had graduate students, we had postdocs. And basically due to the funding situation, by the time I graduated, we had two graduate students and a couple of undergrads. That lab now is basically running on a skeleton crew of just undergrids and a few graduate students. The lab went down from two rooms to one. And this is not unfamiliar. There's a couple other labs in the university where I worked that basically have gone down from a dozen or a couple dozen people to five or fewer, or they're sitting completely idle because there's no funds to do research.

0:05:24 Thomas: Prime minister. Got it.

0:06:12 Krakus: So they're paying these profs $150,000 a year basically to supervise an empty room, um, so I mean that's essentially why I decided to come on the show today, because, um, as your Canadian listeners will know, there's an election on October 19th, and I think it's probably one of the most important elections in the generation.

0:06:29 Thomas: Yeah. And is that, that funding, just to clarify a few minor details, I assume because you mentioned the election, everything, that that's mainly government funding that has been cut, or I mean, because obviously there's private universities, right? It's just, or do you have no private universities, so

0:06:45 Krakus: Well actually our system works differently from yours, um, it's sort of we do, but it's, it's kind of backwards because at, um, in the States your private universities, like your Yales and your Harvard's, are the shining stars of the, the university system, um, with this it's actually the publicly funded universities. So in Canada we have about five, maybe I don't know, probably between five and ten universities that are, uh, ranked amongst the top 100 in the world, and they're all publicly funded, um, all the privately funded universities or colleges, most of them are actually unaccredited because they don't pass the accreditation, um, standards, um, but they tend to be religious for the most part. Well,

0:07:28 Thomas: That, that makes it even more important. I mean, that, that sounds like government funding for the sciences is even more importance there than it would be here, not that it's not important here. So wow, that, that is a really big issue.

0:07:40 Krakus: Yes and no, because the, in the United States, and I know, uh, friends who have done postdocs there and have gone to even become profs, and actually the major, major sources of funding still tend to be, uh, government funding. So things like the National Institute of Health, uh, for example, funds a lot of health research in the U.S., right? So we have a similar body, something called CIHR, which is the Canadian Institute for Health Research, research, but basically in the last 10 years, uh, funding for that has decreased by about 40 percent, and the funds that do remain actually have to be matched by private funds, or rather they're preferentially ranked. So if you know anything about basic science, the problem is, is that basic science is kind of blue sky research, a lot of the research that goes on tends not to have an end game, like you don't really know what the application is, because the application might be 10, 20, 30 years down the line.

0:08:31 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:32 Krakus: And so to try to get a corporate partner, it's very, very hard to do because they want, you know, something next quarter or next year at the, at the latest, right?

0:08:43 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's always a problem with science, and it's something even, even I would, you know, somewhat, I have a pretty favorable view of capitalism. I, I think, that's one role where the government really can have a good impact and is, and is a very necessary function because, as you just said, I mean, so much of science, how do you know what, there may be no benefit or you may think there's going to be no benefit and there's a giant benefit and you just can't know. And it's sort of like, you Feynman. Sort of like Richard Feynmann. I remember reading one of his books and he talked about how I, he wasn't thriving where he was when he got, I think it was one of his first positions he got. And he said that the way he tells it, when he really started thriving and succeeding was when he just stopped trying to produce something for someone else and just started thinking about like, what am I curious about?

And one day he just mapped out all this crazy science and math about how the light was shining through this like chandelier certain ways or something like that. It's been a while since I read it, but the sort, the larger theme was he was just doing science for the sake of science, and he had no idea what it was going to be. And that sort of, it's almost a creative process, and it led him to some pretty amazing stuff.

0:09:15 Krakus: Richard Feynman. Yeah, yeah.

0:10:06 Thomas: But I mean, you really, like you said, how do you sell that to a corporation to, you know, back you or something? There's no way. Way and

0:10:13 Krakus: I mean, probably I could give you two examples. I think of Einstein, I mean relativity, both his papers on general and special relativity, somebody came out, you know, in the early 1900s, no application at all, and from that you got lasers, we got microwaves, we got nuclear reactors

0:10:29 Thomas: To this day it's useless information. Oh wait, no, it's like everything basically. Everything

0:10:30 Krakus: Yeah Exactly, transistors the photoelectric effect, which is uh yeah everything and

0:10:37 Thomas: GPS just like everything everything uses it, like yeah, that's crazy.

0:10:42 Krakus: Uh, similarly, you know, I often talk about something called polymerase chain reaction, which is a ubiquitous technique used in biochemistry and molecular biology, but it's also been commercialized very heavily, it's used in everything from diagnostics to to generating long nucleotide chains for various other applications. And it's only possible in the way we have it now because of a particular enzyme that was isolated from a bacterium called Thermus aquaticus that came from Yellowstone National Park, from the geysers that can withstand really, really high temperatures. And you can imagine the people who funded this in the first place are thinking, why do we even care about these?

0:11:20 Thomas: Wow.

0:11:20 Krakus: But this is a multi-billion dollar industry now, and modern medicine would not exist without it, yeah.

0:11:25 Thomas: That's really cool, I kind of want to, I want to read more about that because that's one that I, I'm not familiar with, and I wonder if uh, if someone like yourself is far more uh, you know, has a more intimate knowledge of science and biology, like that's that's something that maybe maybe your common podcaster like me hasn't heard of, but that's fascinating and a really good example.

0:11:45 Krakus: I mean, yeah, obviously you or your listeners can google PCR and just look into it, but it's it's incredibly important, uh, you know, another one is a green fluorescence protein that was isolated from uh, fluorescent jellyfish, and same thing, I mean you're thinking the people

0:11:59 Thomas: And that was a guy just messing around with jellyfish, like sadistically. It wasn't even, no, I'm just kidding.

0:12:00 Krakus: Yeah Yeah, he had a bit of a fetish.

0:12:06 Thomas: He was just poking a jellyfish with a stick.

0:12:06 Krakus: Right, uh, but again, I mean, that's uh, three people recently, on last year, two years ago, just got the Nobel Prize because GFP and all the other type of fluorescent proteins that have been reverse engineered from it, again, are used ubiquitously in all aspects of biomedical research, and there are so few things that you could do without it, um, you know, that it's essentially indispensable now, yeah.

0:12:31 Thomas: Wow. That is really cool. So what has been the, I don't know, official excuse for the cut in funding? Do you know the story behind that? And is it, I mean, is it related to the crash? You know, is it, what's the reasoning?

0:12:50 Krakus: Sure, um, actually, you know, if I may, I'd like to give a couple of examples of what we're dealing with, so um, the Conservative Party of Canada, which is kind of um, an amalgam now of this kind of grassroots movement called Reform Party from the 90s, um, that kind of hijacked what was called the Progressive Conservative Party, you'd probably never hear that in the United States, uh, but um, they kind of took in the really right wing direction, supposedly they're fiscal conservatives, that's probably why their excuses are there, but um, you know, the the kind of cuts that they started to do, they didn't start with the funding agencies like I was just talking about, they started with sort of individual incidents, so they closed something, for example, called the, well, first they got rid of the science advisor as soon that got elected back in 2006.

0:12:53 Thomas: Oh, sure, sure.

0:13:35 Krakus: But then they got rid of something called the National Roundtable for the Environment and Economy, which was this multidisciplinary group of stakeholders that would advise the government. And they were nonpartisan. Just got ridof them. They closed something called the Experimental Lakes Area. Now, you might not be familiar with this, but you're probably familiar with the treaty between Canada and the U.S. from the 1980s that curbed emissions of sulfur, SO4, into the atmosphere to prevent acid rain.

0:14:03 Thomas: Hmm.

0:14:04 Krakus: And this area is an area of lakes, several dozen of them in Northern Ontario, where they would just dump stuff basically into these lakes To see how the lakes would respond. And they identified acid rain back in the 60s and 70s. And they also identified phosphates as being an issue for eutrophication of lakes, which is what's contributing to dead zone. So this is a very important international research area. They tried to shut it down. Thankfully, it got saved by the provinces. Um, they got rid of something called the, or they defunded the Polar Environmental Atmospheric Research Lab, presumably because their climate changed and they don't want any research into that.

Oh, Yeah, do we ever. Uh, they canceled something called long-form census, so essentially municipalities and businesses don't have any information on specific information on demographics. And it's basically created, um, these what they call statistical ghost towns. Approximately 20 percent of the population is not accounted for. No one knows who they are and where they are, What they're doing. Um, it affects disproportionately people who are obviously on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale as well, right? Because they tend to be hard to count, uh, for, because they tend be transient.

0:14:15 Thomas: Oh, wow.

0:14:45 Thomas: You have those too, huh?

0:15:09 Thomas: Wow.

0:15:20 Thomas: Is that sort of, sort of like gerrymandering in a way? Like, are they doing that for some political gain or is it?

0:15:27 Krakus: I Think they are. Um, the rationale was that the census was intrusive, but they passed a whole bunch of spy laws after that, so they can spy on your emails and things like this, so that doesn't seem to be the reason. But I think the reason is, again, the troubled nature between the Canadian government and First Nations. I think it was basically a method to statistically eliminate them from the census, if you know what I mean. So if you don't have to count problems, the problems don't exist, right?

0:16:00 Krakus: So, you know, other troubling things started to happen. They started to close down a number of libraries, in particular, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. But they also closed down ones at Environment Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency, Citizenship and Immigration, Human Resources and Skills Development, the Library Archives of Canada, Natural Resources Canada. Canada. And the reason for this was ostensibly because they were going from paper only to, well, not paper only, but, you know, trying to digitize all these papers and convert them to digital format.

But the librarians weren't consulted. Neither were the scientists. And essentially they took in these outside companies on contract who just kind of started getting rid of things willy-nilly. Now, a lot of this can be replaced because a lot of the journals that exist, um, you can find or you can buy, but there's a class of literature called gray literature, and gray literature is stuff that doesn't get published. So let's just say the government commissions you to do a census on cod stocks in Atlantic Canada or salmon on the west coast. Well, you're not only counting the fish, you're also taking a bunch of other data at the same time, water salinity, maybe, you know, toxin levels and things like this.

These don't often to make it, make it into the final report, but they're important benchmarks, right? Let's say you want to know how contaminated a river is today compared to 30 years ago. Well, if you got rid of the gray literature, you don't know how it contaminated was 30 years go.

0:17:24 Thomas: Yeah, so it's like if no one specifically studied that, but you were using kind of just other reports that happen to include that data. Is that what you're saying? Hmm.

0:17:25 Krakus: Exactly. So there was one scientist, and I don't remember his name, but essentially saying that one of the studies he published about 10 years ago was using data from about 30 or 40 years ago. But these were all incidental data that were collected as part of different projects. Right now, now that that literature is gone, he can't replicate that. And this is important because you guys have heard of the oil sands in northern Alberta, right? Oh, well, you've heard, you've heard of Keystone Excel, right?

0:17:34 Thomas: Oh, Wow. I haven't, so, but I'm an ignoramus, so, uh, Is this a pipeline or something? Oh,

0:18:01 Krakus: The pipeline, so it's a pipeline that the Republicans want to push through, and the conservatives here in Canada, and it's essentially, um, piping this oil. It's, it's not correct to call oil. It's actually called something called bitumen, which is like a, a sludge. It doesn't flow, so you actually have to dilute it with other refined petrochemicals. But it's probably the nastiest source of hydrocarbons on the planet, and we're ripping up, like, well, the problem is, is, is that source actually? Because in order to extract it, like, one barrel of bitumen requires something like 40 or 50 barrels of water in order to process, and, um, the area

0:18:07 Thomas: Right, right, right. Oh, right. Well, shouldn't you be pro piping it over to us then? Come on, we're taking it off your hands, and I don't

0:18:42 Krakus: Yeah,

0:18:42 Thomas: Know about you, but we don't have any water. So I don't know how you're doing.

0:18:45 Krakus: I heard that Your house is still on fire, apparently.

0:18:46 Thomas: Yeah. It's, it's pretty droughty over here. It's a little, yeah, it's a lil dry.

0:18:53 Krakus: Yeah, well, maybe we can pipe some water from here, we'll do that. We got, we got three million lakes in Canada, so, um, actually, this total surface, I just calculated this yesterday, the total surface area of all the lakes in Canada is equal to one quarter of the entire United States, including Alaska.

0:18:55 Thomas: Yeah, that would be nice Wow, really?

0:19:09 Krakus: Yeah, so we got lots of water, so

0:19:09 Thomas: Geez all right. Well. I know where I'm going once we once I get real thirsty over here without any water

0:19:15 Krakus: Most of them are at freezing or slightly above. Just keep that in mind, so

0:19:19 Thomas: I'll figure it out. I'll find a way you

0:19:21 Krakus: These, uh, these expansive oil sands, which you can actually see on Google Maps if you go, um, to like northern Alberta near, uh, near Fort McMurray. Incredibly dirty sources of oil, and the problem is, is that the, you know, environmental groups are saying, look, you know, we don't know how much this is contaminating the local waterways. The local waterways already have a certain degree of contamination because this stuff is at the surface, right? It's not underground. But the government says, oh, well, you know, that the contamination levels are essentially the same as they were prior to us extracting the oil, except the only issue is, is that the base the baseline levels are gone.

0:19:52 Thomas: Don't because the gray data's gone. Yeah

0:19:54 Krakus: Yeah, well,

0:19:55 Thomas: Man man. This is, this is sounding conspiracy-esque. I mean, that is, that's, that seems like very, maybe the difference between your right-wing nutjobs and ours is yours sound like smarter. Like that's a pretty diabolical plan if you ask me, but so you can't tell very easily how, how wacko they are. Is that what you're saying?

0:20:12 Krakus: Well, in part it's, um, yeah, the fact is they don't wear their religion on the sleeve like your Sarah Palins and your mission your Michelle Obachman's. Yeah. You can't gauge because the whack-o-meter isn't, you know, on display. You know, you'd have to do it rectally or something.

0:20:26 Thomas: Can I ask you? Okay. Yeah. I'll try to put that that in the constitution real quick, just a quick test for office. Can I ask you how, give me an idea and not so much the pipeline thing, because I do think that's pretty well known. I have read a thing or two about that, but it's been a while actually. I feel like it's not in the news for us recently, probably because of Republican debates and gun control issues and all that. That's been the forefront. But give me an idea, separate from that issue, how visible are all these cuts? Because it sounds like you are someone who really pays attention to this, who's really going to know what's going on. How visible is this to the rest of Canada up there?

0:20:33 Krakus: It's it's not, and that's, that's the main problem. First of all, it's not really in the news. I, I mean, I sent you an article from Maclean's, which is kind of like our time, you know, documenting the closing of the libraries. There's been dozens of articles in various newspapers about this. But I mean, most Canadians, like Americans, just care if they have a job, they care if their taxes are low, and all that kind of stuff.

0:21:33 Thomas: Do they do the thing where you want to be able to have a beer with whoever you're electing? Do you do that that thing? Or do we just do that?

0:21:40 Krakus: Yeah, but that was like prior to the Conservatives being elected, because they controlled their message and their exposure of their PM very, very closely. So it's not really like all, like all the, uh, rallies right now. Um, if you want to go to the Liberal Party rally or a New Democratic Party rally, you just show up. But if you want to the, uh, Conservative convention, like, they, you know, they frisk you, and you have to be on the list, and, you know, you have bomb-sniffing dogs to, uh, make sure they, they don't allow the journalists to ask more than five questions. The questions have to be submitted ahead of time. It's, it's, it's really authoritarian. It's, it's crazy. Yeah, well,

0:22:14 Thomas: That is crazy. I need to hear Canada being made fun of more for this. That's what I want. I hear us being made fan of constantly. Come on, world, make fun of Canada a little bit more and then I'll know more about these issues.

0:22:30 Krakus: I think it disappears on the American radar because you guys have your own problems, but I mean, if you look internationally, if you go to, I

0:22:34 Thomas: Yeah. But also, I mean, from the rest of the world, like I don't I don'T hear, you know, I always hear when you mention the U.S. Is it just the U.S. is more visible, so we're more, you know, got the microscope?

0:22:44 Krakus: Think so, yeah, you're a huge economy. You know, if you looked, if you looks at the United States, then, you know, they bomb you kind of thing, so I'm jesting, but, you know, that seems to be the main thing. But no, if you looking international media, like the British Broadcasting Corporation, for example, I mean, you can see a lot of stuff about this, um, Some of the scandals, like our senate scandals, have been international news, um, not to the same degree as like Rob Ford, but you know they, they have hit the international news shelves.

Yeah, so most uh normal Canadians don't see this, um, and the government's towing the line saying actually we haven't cut funding, you know, we've actually increased funding over these years, which is, um, decidedly untrue, because if you look at the OECD numbers, um, you know, the funding in the last, last 10 years has gone from 2.1% GDP down to about 1.7%, whereas the OECD is around like 2.5%. The U.S., you guys are around like 2.7%. So you guys were actually doing a decent job funding, but the way the government calculates it with their figures from the Department of Finance,

0:22:47 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, okay.

0:23:48 Krakus: They include things like direct direct investment into industrial processes that they consider R&D, which is kind of mislabeling it as research funds. You know what I mean? Like if you buy extra robots for a GM plant in Oshawa here in Canada, that's not exactly research and development, but they're sort of counting it that way. So they also said that they've been putting a lot more money into translational research. So that's research that goes from the lab bench to the marketplace, but the amount of funds that they've put into it's like pushing on a string, you know what I mean? Like the you can't figure out what an innovation is needed ahead of time, like it has to be come across surreptitiously. Yes, you can make a better widget, but that's an efficiency process that basically the the private sector should be doing on its own, but the private sectors not going to invest into blue sky research, right? So that's, you know, where I think the funding should be going. But yeah, you're right. Most Canadians don't care, unfortunately.

0:23:58 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

0:24:49 Thomas: Can you refresh me on the timeline again? Is everything you've been talking about the last, what, 10, 15 years?

0:24:56 Krakus: So the Conservatives got elected in 2006, the first time. They've had three successive governments. The first two were minority governments. So unlike you guys, because you guys have a two-party system, so one guy is always going to get 50% plus one, right? Because we have essentially, I don't want to say a three-party system. It's actually more complicated than that.

But there are basically three national parties, um, one conservative, two left the center, but actually in recent years, I mean, the Liberal Party used to be the centrists and the NDP were kind of the democratic socialists, pretty hard left, uh, but now they've kind of both coalesced in the middle, which is part of the problem because they uh kind of don't differ a lot ideologically, so it's kind of hard to know who to vote for, um, but the the thing is the Conservatives just got their majority government back in 2011, and when I say majority, actually the the they got elected to a majority but with only about 30 of the vote because of the way our first past the post system works here, so if you can imagine if you have, you know, if you

0:25:12 Thomas: Right.

0:25:59 Krakus: Haven't electoral district where you're sending a member to Parliament, um, if you only have two candidates, someone's obviously going to get 50 or more, right? But a three-party system, you could have each of them get 33, but the guy who gets 34 compared to the other two will win that riding. So, um, you know, it's a plurality of votes, it's not a majority of votes, um, a lot of countries around the world, like Australia, um, have got around the system by the the transferal or preferential balloting system, so there's no scenario where a candidate gets fewer than 50 of the votes to win.

0:26:14 Thomas: Huh.

0:26:32 Thomas: Is that one where you, like, rank them? Yeah.

0:26:33 Krakus: Yes. That's like the ranking balance. Yeah, so

0:26:36 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I remember I talked to Noah and Heath about different voting systems and it sounded like ours was one of the worst, but I'm going to go ahead and enter in yours as maybe worse than ours. We'll see.

0:26:47 Krakus: Well, actually, your system would work the same as ours if you had more than two parties. Yeah.

0:26:51 Thomas: Oh, right. Yeah. It makes sense. We, we do, but they're just the third party, whatever the third party is, is so minuscule that you don't, right?

0:26:53 Krakus: So Yeah. See, we ours is more complicated by the fact that in most of Canada it's basically the three, the you know, CPC, the NDP, and the LPC, but, uh, in Quebec you also have something called the Block, which are a separatist party, but also in the rest of Canada you have, uh, the Greens, and the Greens consistently pull anywhere between five and ten percent, uh, so they have the chance to make huge upsets because they tend to suck away votes from the other progressive parties.

0:27:23 Thomas: Yeah. They just spoil the election for somebody.

0:27:23 Krakus: Yeah. Which is Unfortunate, because I mean, I would consider myself mostly aligned with their particular ideologies, other than their idiotic stance on GMOs and nuclear energy, but I mean, that's a whole other conversation to be had.

0:27:25 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:27:37 Thomas: I, I, that's, that's a, that's a huge pet peeve of mine. I can't believe that. But so it's all in the last 10 years that you think this has really been happening. I mean, is there, what do you think the reason for that is? I mean was there really never a time before that that conservatives had that much control or was their philosophy different?

0:27:56 Krakus: Look, Today's Conservatives are different. I mean, uh, as I mentioned to you before, the the previous, we used to flop between the Liberals and, um, the the Progressive Conservative Party up until the mid-90s, when the Reform Party, which was was basically a populist right-wing, socially conservative, but also fiscally kind of conservative party, came in and they started spoiling things for the right wing. They fused with the Progressive Conservatives, but by and large, it was mostly the Reform Party. Prior to that, the conservatives were very pro-science. Back in the 1980s, for example, they were the ones who, Brian Mulroney, the prime minister at the time, negotiated with Ronald Reagan to reduce SO4 emissions in order to reduce acid rain, for example. So they were, you know, very pro-environment, they're pro-science. They're the ones who introduced the National Roundtable on the Environment Economy.

0:27:58 Thomas: Right.

0:28:47 Krakus: Under the Liberals, actually, that followed, like more or less contemporaneous with Slick Willie on your side, that's Bill Clinton in case you didn't know.

0:28:55 Thomas: I was going to say, yeah, I knew who you were talking about. But

0:28:59 Krakus: So They're in the 90s because their deficits, that's a just balloon to, you know, huge numbers, uh, the Liberal Party actually brought the whole thing under control and we had, like, eight consecutive surpluses, we reduced our national debt, but it was necessary to reduce all government and science funding did suffer during the 90s, um, but it wasn't like it was all around, do you know what I mean, like It wasn't targeted.

0:29:19 Thomas: Yeah yeah.

0:29:20 Krakus: It wasn't like, oh, we're going to put our heads in the sand and we're gonna defund you. Know climate research for for example?

0:29:24 Thomas: Do you think the the maybe yeah Do you think climate change is that sort of, I'm not sure what to call it, I want to call a movement, but I guess visibility, like, do you think that's a part of it, like that brought out the denial in these certain people, and then and that caused them to focus more on targeting science research. Oh,

0:29:44 Krakus: Yeah, I certainly think so. I think there's an ideological reason. It started to show up early on. For instance, the Minister of Science, they eventually got rid of that position, but the Minister for Science was a guy named Gary Goodyear, who is a chiropractor and a creationist. And the Minister to the Environment Was A A guy named Joe Oliver who was a climate change denier, um, Stockwell Day, who was a prominent cabinet minister, was a young Earth creationist, Kelly Leach is the Minister for Women's Affairs, is anti-choice, so, like, kind of early on there are these cracks showing up, they could say wait a second, this isn't my dad's conservative party, this seems to be stacked with a particular kind of, you know, people, and our prime minister in fact belongs to something called the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, and they're dominionists, which means they believe in the dominion of man over nature, and they're also millenarians, so they believe in the Second Coming, and, uh, they're super pro-Israel, because they think that Israel's, you know, the, uh...

0:30:04 Thomas: God. Oh, man. Say no more. Say no more. That's already...

0:30:55 Krakus: Lynch...

0:30:55 Thomas: That's where the second coming is going to happen, maybe.

0:30:57 Krakus: Exactly, yeah, it's the whole lynchpin to the Second coming. They've gone so far as to say anybody who criticizes the Israeli government in Canada is an anti-Semite. Like, that's, like Stephen Harper, our Prime Minister, said that Like, where people could hear him, you know?

0:30:57 Thomas: Yeah.

0:31:12 Thomas: Yeah, there is a little bit of that here. But I don't... Yeah, I don't know. It's weird because there actually also are some anti-Semites that also criticize Israel maybe in a slightly racist way. But uh, that is a fine line and I certainly

0:31:28 Krakus: Well, yeah, but if you're talking about foreign policy or your internal policy or relationships with Palestine, like, I'm not, you know, like I understand the whole right to self-determination. You want to do what's best for, you know, your particular creed or tribe. I get that, but it's, and anyway, you know, I don't know enough about the Middle East to be able to discuss that intelligently.

0:31:28 Thomas: Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and and definitely for for a leader of a country to say any uh criticism of of another country would be anti-Semitic is definitely not right. I mean, that that that suggests as though they could do no wrong, you know, like nothing they do.

0:31:59 Krakus: Yeah, it's like suggesting that when the Russians invaded Crimea, and I said, well, you You know, the Russians invaded Crimea, it was unjustified, and it was a territory grab that all of a sudden I'd be anti-Russian. I mean, not against the state, but anti-russians themselves, which is preposterous, has nothing to do with one's nationality or language spoken or religion. It's one's position against a particular policy of a Country, you know, we saw, we saw these cracks showing up.

Um, and Stephen Harper admitted, like I said, to being part of the Christian and Missionary Lives Church that has all these particular things, but they also, have adhered to this uh doctrine that was espoused by a prominent evangelical from the U.S. who I don't remember now, um, but it's called Evangelical Climate Skepticism, and has seven points, and the first is disdain for the environmental movement, a distrust for main mainstream science, uh distrust of mainstream media, loyalty to the party, libertarian economics as God's will, misunderstanding of God's sovereignty, meaning that God won't allow humanity ruin creation, and unreconstructed dominion theology, meaning that God causing humans to subdue and rule creation. So this is the church that he goes to, and this is what the church

0:32:11 Thomas: Yeah.

0:32:25 Thomas: That Really?

0:33:16 Krakus: Believes.

0:33:16 Thomas: Sounds point for Point, like the entire Republican Party already here. Like, pretty much. That's, that's amazing. And it's, and it's incredibly harmful because almost every one of those points is not only like, it's not only wrong, but it's like the opposite of right. You know what I mean? Like it's it's only wrong. It's like actively going against what's right. If you know what, I mean.

0:33:17 Krakus: Yeah. It's Proactively. Like When you don't believe in evidence, I mean, that's Where Do you go from there, right? It's

0:33:39 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, well, and if you I mean, if you have a belief that God's going to make everything OK, like how can you how can based on that. I mean, that's just absurd. Really is the problem. And I think in this country, I'm not too terribly informed on what the origin of that kind of... It seems like a newer thing, but it seems like it really has been in relation to climate change becoming more visible. It's just this active denial that there could possibly be anything that God, you know, that God would allow that to happen. You know, it's just this response of there's no way. So we're just, that must be wrong. Whatever you're saying, that whatever study you're citing or, you Know, thousands of studies.

0:34:26 Krakus: All it's A baloney, yeah.

0:34:27 Thomas: Yeah, it must be wrong.

0:34:28 Krakus: Well, Here it gets worse because it becomes vindictive and petty. For example, a couple years ago the government announced that the Canada Revenue Agency, so our tax agency, was going to start auditing charities because they were concerned that charities were doing um political works. They're only allowed to to devote 10% of the resources to political works or something like that. Well, guess who they started targeting first. There was things like the Sierra Club, you know, the WWF, the World Wildlife Federation, not the, you know, not the wrestlers. Oh,

0:35:03 Thomas: I was going to say, that's a great charity. I don't want the WWE or WWF audited. They are doing the Lord's work. Or

0:35:04 Krakus: Yeah. So So they started auditing all these uh all these environmental charities, and critics were saying, saying, "Wait a second, wait a second, what's going on?" Like, what about something like the Fraser Institute, which is, you know, hard right wing, uh, pro government, uh, pro, you know, yeah, no kidding.

0:35:25 Thomas: What about just every church? Do you guys have that problem?

0:35:29 Krakus: Yeah, of course we do. I mean, it's, it doesn't it's unbelievable that they can, they're essentially running a business and not being taxed on it. It's, you know, we don't have the same issue with the kind of mega churches to the same degree that you guys do, you know, these, uh Creflo Dollar types and all that, like that's not as prominent here, but you still do have that issue.

0:35:47 Krakus: Um, but yeah, so they, they deliberately went after environmental um charities and a couple of them have lost their charitable status. Uh, Joe Oliver, who is now our minister of finance, at that time was the minister of environment. He said that environmentalists are terrorists, like, he again he said that, where microphones were on, you know, like this was not a um, you know, thing. So it's it's quite unbelievable how petty and vindictive um they've gotten over recent years, but it's also extended to things like race relations over here now. Like we've, um, during this election, um, all the racists started coming out of the woodwork.

0:35:30 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. It's coming. It was good. Good to see him. Yeah,

0:36:29 Krakus: And uh this has actually been exacerbated by the government because um they decided in the middle of an election they were going to introduce a ban on the niqab and The niqab is the head. Oh.

0:36:39 Thomas: Well, that's what I talked to Ina about. Yeah a few months. It has been a few month. It is been maybe like five months, I am going to guess, but I have a horrible concept of time.

0:36:43 Krakus: Right. When Was this? I'm trying to, well, I guess, um, that might have been percolating because of the situation in Quebec, um, their secular charter, but this is a national level thing, and it happens.

You know, the conservatives were losing, um, they were actually trailing to the two progressive parties, and they hired this guy called Linton Crosby, who was this right-wing nut job out of a la Rupert Murdoch, who's actually from Australia, and he's engineered a couple of conservative wins in Australia and most recently in the UK as well, with David Cameron, and also with Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, and he's like the master of wedge politics and race baiting, like that's, you know, how Boris Johnson and David Cameron, when it was the whole, oh the Muslims are coming and they're going to take over your country thing, and they, as soon as Linton Crosby showed up here, noticed, okay, you're losing, what wedge can we use, and that became it.

They said no, citizenship ceremony, is a woman cannot wear her niqab during her oath, which is moot because prior to taking the oath, she, she actually has to go to a room, sign documents and testify to a person that she is who she is. And, you know, she's going to become a Canadian citizen and she has to do it without a face covering, you know, to like another woman, for example. Right.

0:38:01 Thomas: Yeah no, and I remember that, and Ina was still against it, so that would be an interesting debate, but it is a weird thing. I don't know. It's it does sound like when you're doing it for the sake of race baiting or, you know, to try to get a few points in the polls because you're losing. Like it definitely definitely a little bit fishy and a littlebit. I don' know.

0:38:24 Krakus: Yeah, I think That's it. I mean, that's a that's a discussion that can be had. I'm certainly not a fan of face coverings just generally because I think, I mean. That's how we communicate between each other. But also, you know, it in certainly in some circles has been said that this has been a sign of oppression, but the point is is that, you know, there are more important things to talk about, and literally over the entire history of Canadian citizenship ceremonies this has happened twice.

0:38:50 Krakus: There have been few incidents like this is not, no, it's it's not at all like the fact that, um, there are something like 1100 outstanding cases of missing and murdered Aboriginal or Indigenous women in Canada, uh, and no one's doing anything about it, um, is, you know, a travesty in terms of women's rights, and that's how they've been promoting this, uh, in Canada, saying, oh, you know, well, you know, this is a women's rights issue. It's like, well, you know, the proponents on the other side say, you know, women can wear what they want, I mean, that's part of the Charter, and in fact this went to the to the Supreme Court and the conservatives just lost the ban, so they can't, they can't actually enforce it anymore, but this just goes to show that, I mean, they have a complete disdain for the, uh, for the legal system as well, like, of a number of different, um, laws that they've passed, you know, about half of them didn't pass muster Supreme Court because they were considered against the Charter Rights and Freedoms.

0:38:50 Thomas: Yeah, it's not a big deal in the scheme of things. Sounds like. Right.

0:39:46 Thomas: Which is that what Ben Franklin and them wrote or.

0:39:50 Krakus: No, this is the Canadian charter that actually it was no, we don't have that one, uh,

0:39:51 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Wait, so they didn't write yours. Oh. I'm sure it's fine, though. It's pretty good. You know, I'm sure it's OK.

0:40:01 Krakus: Yeah, I can't pull it up right now, but yeah, if I did, this is is pretty good. That's because your constitution, actually, that is actually, honestly, I mean, there are some things about your constitution that are fantastic, your freedom of speech is is you know, second to none.

0:40:02 Thomas: Just teasing. So, yeah, and that.

0:40:15 Thomas: Yeah. Where should we go from here? I mean, it, it does sound like a dire problem. It sounds like the, you mentioned the election is the 19th, right? Does this show any signs of changing? I mean, yeah,

0:40:28 Krakus: I think, I think, okay, well, the thing is the progressive parties have all pledged to restore funding, and, you know, they've, they haven't really put in their platforms concrete things to specifically address some of the things that I've been discussing, um, you know, like the defunding of of basic research in general, like a 40 percent, you know, decrease over 10 years is pretty dramatic, I doubt anyone's going to institute that overnight, but the other issue is, too, like a lot of the, like, I have a, I'm not gonna read the whole thing, uh, but I've got a list of 160-odd separate research projects and or facilities that have been either decommissioned.

0:41:10 Thomas: I only read your top 145 of them.

0:41:14 Krakus: Well, can I mention a few?

0:41:16 Thomas: Yeah, no, definitely.

0:41:18 Krakus: I mean, because I did mention the Experimental Lakes Area, also the Polar Environmental Atmospheric Research Laboratory, something called the Species at Risk Program, which basically, you know, if you put your head in the sand about what species are at risk, you don't have to take any measures to protect them, right? Right. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries that I mentioned, about a dozen conservation protection offices, about a dozen water pollution research labs, the Clean Energy Fund, the First Nations Statistical Institute. So, again, underlying that relationship between our First Nations and Canadian government. If you don't know who's in trouble, you don't have to address it. Something called the MRI Research Institute in Biodiagnostics. And interestingly, um, one, there's something called the Brockfield Institute that was named after a Canadian Noble Prize winner, and basically a lot of the research that was done there, um, and a lot of researchers that were trained went on to go, um, work on, on other things. Among them was, um, a guy who this year won the Noble Prize for physics, um, his name was Arthur McDonald who did it, uh, researching neutrinos.

0:41:31 Thomas: Yeah yeah.

0:42:18 Krakus: And, um, the government's been all over this, they've been saying things like, oh, you know, it's fantastic, this demonstrates, you know, how awesome our science research program is. This work was done in 2001, so five years before the conservatives got elected. And more than that, the defunding of the Brockhouse Institute will basically mean that the scientists that are doing this neutrino preservatory stuff aren't going to be trained for future generations to do this. Um, so the importance is, is that even if, if the progressive parties get elected, a lot of the infrastructure is not going to be there because places are being mothballed or programs are being shut down. And by doing that, the initiation energy and the amount of money that you need to get these things up and rolling again is going to be prohibitively high, which is why I think this is so insidious, because it's not only defunding science, it's deliberately trying to destroy the infrastructure and trying to destroyed the data, like I said, with the closing of the libraries. So that science cannot go forward

0:42:29 Thomas: Yeah.

0:43:15 Thomas: Yeah. It's like scorched, scorched earth kind of, you know, it's like they're, they're not, even if they recover, like you say, I mean, it'S, itS so badly damaged that it'S not just a question of, Oh, plug that back in real quick.

0:43:18 Krakus: Yeah exactly, yeah, and that's, you're, you're totally right, that's a, that's a good analogy, you're salting the earth so nothing can grow there, you know, for 10 generations or whatever it is. Um, but I mean, I think the, what we have to do as Canadians, at least as progressive Canadans who are interested in in promoting science pardon what can you do as a Canadian, well, actually, no, you're not allowed to, uh, say anything about our election, because actually that's against the law, um, but, um, something called strategic voting is probably the most important thing one can do. Um, so there are a number of writings, um, sorry, they're like your electoral districts, uh, in Canada that are swing writings, basically, where, uh, one, one progressive party has much better chance of defeating the Conservatives versus the other one.

And so in order to, um, to get an idea for that, you can go to a website called Vote Together.ca, also Lead Now.ca, um, and in order, order to find out which are swing writings, there's a website called 308.ca, which collates all the polls. So, you know, they adjust the polling data on an ongoing basis. And there's also another website called Too Close to Call, which actually, they collate the polling data, but they also make projections based on certain statistical models.

0:43:47 Thomas: Yeah, what can I do as a Canadian? Tell me. What Yeah. Darn it.

0:44:44 Krakus: So you can go to those sites in order to see your best alternative might be either to vote for for the NDP, the New Democrats or the Liberal Party of Canada in order to oust the Conservatives. If you want to learn more about what's been going on to science, you can Google something called the Canadian War on Science. That'll take you to the website of John Dupuy, who's been cataloging all these individual incidents. I think I sent that to you in one of my emails.

0:45:09 Thomas: Oh, good. Actually, I was just going to say, first off, I I was going to ask you all these things. So you're, you're too smart for me. You're already doing it on your own. And secondly, yeah, maybe shoot me a list of these. I wrote down a couple of them, but then you said like eight of them. So, so shoot me list and I'll put them in the notes for people. But it does sound cool. The one thing that your system has that ours doesn't is if I want to, you know, affect politics where I am, I have no chance. It doesn't, I could vote for for like, you know, town crier or something, or like some meaningless local thing. But it sounds like at least your guys' voting is like a game of risk or something. You get to figure out like, okay, you get to move little, you Know, plastic men around and see like, okay, if we go over here and vote these guys out, then maybe that'll do something.

0:45:23 Krakus: Yeah, I can do that.

0:45:55 Krakus: Yeah, but what was your voter turnout the last presidential election? Do you remember?

0:45:58 Thomas: Oh my gosh. I it's, it's I know as a a percentage, it's, I want to say it's like 40% of people. I don't know if that, oh,

0:46:07 Krakus: Yeah, I think we were in the 60s, but the particular sad part, the 18 to 25 demographic, I think fewer than 30% voted or something. And had they all voted, they probably would have defeated, got

0:46:17 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. That's pretty low. Got to rock the vote, man. That's the, yeah, that that's going back to slick Willie.

0:46:24 Krakus: To rock the vote. Yeah, they would have defended the Conservatives. I

0:46:26 Thomas: That'S what, that'S what he did. It's, um, yeah. ThatS sad. And I think it'll, uh, it'll only get worse until they figure out voting on the internet, because there really is no reason and that you shouldn't just be able to vote on the internet instantly.

0:46:40 Krakus: I mean, you guys have that weird, like each state has its own system, like with the hanging chads and all that business. Ours is very easy. We like, honestly, for me to vote in the provincial or federal election, it's like a five minute process. I go in, I show my ID, and then, um, you know, show

0:46:44 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, show your ID. That's, that's funny, because for us, that's like a really contentious issue. And that's actually a conservative thing. Like they, they want to have to show ID because, and liberals will allege it's because they want fewer, you know, minorities to vote and stuff like that. But it's funny that you, you said that, sorry, it just made me laugh because it's, if, if you say that here, that's like, oh my god, how could you make someone show ID, that is just Yeah. That's weird, yeah.

0:47:20 Krakus: Idea. Yeah, I know, it's, it's proposed Well, actually, um, you brought this up, there is something, so there's a number of pieces of legislation that were, uh, announced, that one of them was something called the Fair Elections Act, which is basically, um, legislation designed to make voting more difficult, so it's just, why they call it the Fair Elections Act, um, and essentially that's what it is, it puts more onerous ID, um, requirements, previously used to get this card, a voter identification card, and that was sufficient, now you need to bring that plus you need to bring ID with your current address on it. But I mean, the, the idea behind that being is that, um, so now that we have a fixed election date, because we never used to have that before in Canadian history, um, but now that we have fixed election dates and it's set, you know, mid-October, uh, it's difficult for, like, university and college students to

0:47:37 Thomas: Yeah sounds like a good name right

0:48:10 Krakus: Get all the ID they need, right, um, and so I think it's, it's a deliberate effort to disenfranchise youth. Well

0:48:11 Thomas: Right yeah well it seems Like it's had some effect, like you said about the voter turnout for 18 to 25, definitely seems like, uh oh

0:48:23 Krakus: That was, that was last election, so that didn't count for this one, yeah.

0:48:25 Thomas: So that's before these Changes

0:48:26 Krakus: Yeah but the other thing that they've done too is the, uh, commissioner of elections who would investigate electoral fraud, and I should, I should probably mention, most Canadians know this, but in the three elections that the conservatives have won, they've been convicted of fraud in every single one, um, like on a local level, like not globally, there's something called the in and out scandal, there was a, uh, one guy went to jail because of his, uh, campaign limits, like he exceeded them because we have capped campaign limits here, um, another guy was, was getting services for free and not declaring them to, to the revenue agency, um, and we had something called a robocall scandal, which was directing voters to other polling locations

0:48:26 Thomas: Even happened. Oh, okay, wow.

0:48:43 Thomas: Right I

0:49:10 Krakus: That didn't exist. Yeah and the guy went to jail for that, um, so you know it's A mess, it's not fun.

0:49:10 Thomas: Like The wrong ones, yeah, oh man. You guys are a mess, I'll just say, wow. You know, you've made me feel a little bit better about the U.S., just a little bit, and I mean, overall I feel incredibly bad about the world, I feel incredibly pessimistic about both our countries, but I feel a little bit better about ours, just relatively, just, just because yeah

0:49:37 Krakus: Well if it makes you feel even better, the thing is, um, prominent Republican strategists have been advising the conservative government, and things like, um, that Christian missionary alliance church have strong ties to the U.S., um, a university called Trinity Western

0:49:38 Thomas: Oh I bet they sound really, uh, really simpatico, that's for sure, yeah.

0:49:53 Krakus: Yeah So we've actually had, uh, people have called it the Americanization of Canadian politics, I mean, for better for worse, um, but there seems to be a strong, strong influence, um, you know, with what's going on from south of the border, from the quote-unquote moral majority, like the Jerry Falwells and all that

0:50:13 Thomas: You guys ought to build a wall. I think that's, I think that's what you need to do, it stop letting these republicans in.

0:50:17 Krakus: Oh I, I've heard people say that, I'm not, I'm not kidding.

0:50:25 Thomas: Wow that's Funny, yeah, well the problem is, like, we have airplanes now, we'll just jump over that. We got ways. We'll figure it out. Don't you worry.

0:50:32 Krakus: Oh Dude, we get, we get like two and a half airplanes, so yeah, it's just no way that we can withstand the American invasion. Believe you me, so

0:50:38 Thomas: Yeah. Oh man. Um, and, uh, wow. It does sound like you guys have the same thing where maybe the niqab issue was something like this, where the border is a good example. You mentioned, I think, before we were recording that you watched some of the Republican debates here, right? Yeah, we have this cool thing that I've always hated politics. So I have honestly just barely started paying attention to politics like within the last year. So, I'm not, as you can maybe have guessed, I am not too terribly informed on this kind of stuff because I've found it so frustrating that it's just not, I don't know. It almost feels not worth it. And like I said, there's nothing I can do. I can try to spread certain ideas if I want, but there's nothing voting-wise I can Do.

0:51:27 Thomas: My state is my state. They're going to vote for whoever they vote for. But one thing I've noticed in trying to start to pay attention is how ridiculous it is, the issues that they end up talking about in these primaries have nothing to do with anything that really, really goes on once anyone's elected president. It's, it's insane. I don't know if you have that same phenomenon.

0:51:51 Krakus: You wouldn't even believe it, like, um, you know, there are important issues relating to, obviously, taxation, um, to things like, uh, what's been happening with the veterans affairs offices, like military procurement, things that are going to take years to fix and that are, you know, important issues, uh, one of the, the big ones, obviously, is the economy, um, we did okay during the big downturn back in '08, '09 because our banking system, actually, the IMF just ranked it as the, the most stable in the world. But that was not because of the conservatives, who wanted to actually deregulate it, under the liberals it was, you know, because this was a liberal policy that existed prior to, uh, and they managed to withstand that shock, but we really haven't recovered to the same degree that the United States has, like our Our growth is flat. It's basically, you know, at 0%. And a lot of it has to do with austerity, you know, the continuous cutting of, you know, expenditures and also giving you these ridiculous boutique tax cuts that have nothing to do with anything that basically only benefit the top 10% of the income

0:52:20 Thomas: Oh, you're telling me they're

0:52:52 Krakus: Makers.

0:52:52 Thomas: Not trickling down?

0:52:54 Krakus: Oh, no, not trickling down at all.

0:52:55 Thomas: Hmm. I'll just wait. It'll trickle down. You'll, you'll feel a little, you'd feel a mist. It will.

0:53:01 Krakus: Scrawny Ronnie wasn't right about the trickle-down economics.

0:53:03 Thomas: Oh is that, is that? You got all these, you Canadians and your nicknames for, no.

0:53:08 Krakus: Hey, Do you know what we call our dollar here? The loony. Oh.

0:53:11 Thomas: Oh yeah, yeah, okay. I shouldn't have said no. I should have said I bet I will know as soon as I hear it, but I don't remember. Again, again, I have an active kind of blocking of any Canada-related knowledge. I don't know why. No. But that is such an annoying thing. And I don't know.

0:53:13 Krakus: Okay. Oh.

0:53:27 Krakus: Sorry, can I just finish that thought? Like, I, um, and so there was another thing that came on the heels of this Nikov thing, something called the, uh, Cult Culturally Barbaric Practices Act that was enacted, which is whatever, and basically it was legislation designed to ban quote-unquote culturally barbarous practices, which is obviously sounds like a trigger, um, but you know, these things were like forced marriages, polygamy, uh, female genital mutilation, nothing about male genital mutilation because apparently it's a cultural thing here, um, that's not considered barbaric, but, uh, you know, it's against this exist, you

0:53:27 Thomas: Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah.

0:54:04 Thomas: Yeah,

0:54:05 Krakus: Know what I mean, like, it's

0:54:05 Thomas: That' s kind of weird. I was going to say, like, that sounds fine because those are all bad things, but I would assume that the laws should cover them.

0:54:06 Krakus: Yeah, and and so they announced, you know, a couple weeks ago that they're creating this hot line, this tip line, where you can rat out your neighbors if they're performing any of these acts, and it was like a buddy of mine said, oh yeah, I can't sleep at night because it's so bright outside because there's always someone burning a widow in the other apartment next door, like, it's it's preposterous. I mean, we have the police, we have 9-1-1, these things can be reported. I mean, it doesn't, you don't require a snitch line. Yeah,

0:54:38 Thomas: Yeah, previously private, like like, execution ceremonies when unreported. No one, everyone thought, like, if only there was some law, you know, there's only some recourse for the witch burning that's going on. But nope, can't stop it.

0:54:53 Krakus: So this has been, you know, another red herring that's been tossed out there, and as soon as they introduced it, everyone's talking about it, no one's talking about important issues, you know, that are going to affect you in your pocketbook, or down the line, or, you know, whether your kids are going to be able to afford to go to university 10 or 15 years from now. They're talking about these ridiculous how-to-rat-out-your-neighbor scenarios.

0:55:13 Thomas: All right. Brass tacks. How much Benghazi talk is there in Canada? Oh, okay. Well, you escaped that one then.

0:55:18 Krakus: Zero. Yeah.

0:55:21 Thomas: What about email, you now, issues or anything like that?

0:55:21 Krakus: Uh, yeah, actually, a little bit, but relating to something else, because, um, there was a scandal where, uh, one of our senators, by the way, our senators are appointed, not elected, which creates a whole other headache, and it's another whole snafu we got to deal with here, but one of our senators, um, was, is, being is actually charged with bribery. He's in court right now, and, uh, or, sorry, accepting a bribe, and he accepted a bribe from the prime minister's chief of staff who cut him a check for 90 grand. Um, and the prime minster alleges that, um, you know, this, he had no knowledge of this, but the reality is is that there's like no paper trail because all these, these emails don't exist. They're basically, um, yeah.

0:55:25 Thomas: Oh, Okay.

0:56:08 Thomas: But this sounds like something that actually is an issue. Okay. I was referring Referring to our fake issue.

0:56:12 Krakus: Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know about the I know, you're referring to the Clinton uh, but yeah, I, I don't, I mean, that there could be real consequences from that too, like, who knows, there could have been confidential things, but our prime minister is very good about not leaving a paper trail behind or an electronic trail of any sorts, so, you know, it, but the fact that his entire staff, the entire, basically the entire prime minister's office, knew what was going on, that this money was going to be transferred. In addition to that, there are two senators who had explicit knowledge of this happening as well. It just boggles the mind that our prime minister, who's known for being authoritarian and controlling the message and controlling every aspect of how the government runs, wouldn't know a detail like this. It's just unbelievable.

0:56:15 Thomas: Yeah.

0:56:56 Thomas: Yeah, well, all right. I is I think maybe we should wrap up. Are you are you satisfied? Is there anything else you need to get off your chest?

0:57:07 Krakus: No, I don't want to go into the bowels of hysteria or anything like that, so we'll leave it at that. Try to leave it as factual as we can.

0:57:14 Thomas: I am. I'm happy to maybe do it again sometime if there's another pending or, you know, important thing that comes up that you want to talk about. I definitely encourage people. I do have some Some Canadian listeners, you know, not a majority, not even a large minority, but I do have them. So I would encourage them to go to the websites that you referenced and look in the show notes, which will hopefully contain them as well, for where to go. And thanks. It was a pleasure talking to you. You really sound like you know your stuff. And isn't that refreshing to have someone who knows what they're talking about on this show?

0:57:14 Krakus: Oh, you have great guests on.

0:57:56 Thomas: All right well uh thanks for joining us and I'll talk to you again soon no

0:58:00 Krakus: Well, thanks for giving me the opportunity, Thomas.

0:58:02 Thomas: Problem All right, well, that's it for this week. Like I said, I think pretty good bang for your buck there. We're hitting toward an hour, so I better close this up. Just want to thank my new patron, Nathaniel, and I probably thanked Jimmy Miles last week, but just in case I didn't, Jimmy Miles as well, and just everyone who pledges. Thank you so much. It is very much appreciated. Let me also thank my top patrons, Zemu Zinu, Adrian Borschoff, Michael, Jonathan Moyet, Jay Aldenwalt, Bangs, Naughty Bits, Peter Skelton Brian Gearford, Dale Matt Garrett and Samantha, thank you guys very very kindly from the bottom of my heart, you can also support the show if you want to, patreon.com/atheist, you know, pledge a dollar, you won't notice it, but it means a lot, supports the show you love and can. As I said on T and the B this week, even if you don't support my show, support someone's thing on Patreon.

0:59:23 Thomas: It's a great site. I won't do the spiel again, but I don't know. I was just thinking about it and it's really cool that you get to actually give money to who you want. You know, it doesn't go to some company, some corporation that's behind it, some, you know, publishing, production, corporate. It just goes straight to the person that you like. So I think it's a really cool thing. Anyway, thanks as always to all my supporters and I'll see you next week. Week.