Zeitgeist

It’s about intimidation and shaming until Peterson kowtows to the left wing activists pressuring the College to beat up Peterson, who is standing up against cowardice.

The problem is that only the US is equipped to defend Canada. Independence has a price. I don’t mean pretend independence; I mean real independence. I’m not sure Canadians would be willing to pay that price. I wouldn’t because I trust the US to do a better job running Canada than Ottawa right now, sadly.

If a legal name change has taken place and there’s no single use bathroom option, then there has to be a washroom for trans people to use. The question being debated is whether they should be able to use the expressed gender bathroom instead of the biological gender bathroom. That decision will rest on the prevailing political views in any given jurisdiction. Many people see a conflict of various rights: i.e. trans vs. women or trans versus religious or trans versus science, depending on which scientific or pseudoscientific articles you like.

The advisory just proves that Canada is a radical left land of identity politics lunatics.

Or, I can let the climate suckers do that and emigrate to a country that doesn’t care. See the problem?

I don’t expect drastic lowering of emissions for decades because the tech required isn’t available yet and no one will accept lower living standards to “fight climate change”, especially if other countries aren’t making similar sacrifices. Global emissions will probably increase annually for decades. It will require migration and adaptation. Canada will be a net beneficiary of this. Polar bears lose. Inuit mariners win. Until the tech that could really make a difference is widely and cheaply available, we can make small incremental improvements in how we live to lower emissions and we can adapt. I know it sounds a bit harsh, but doomsaying and worry accomplish nothing. Explore your interests and try to hold on to your comforts and freedom until the climate gestapo make you stay home and live a virtual life on Meta. The Earth will always adapt. Cockroaches can survive global nuclear wars. It’s humans we have to protect. We can adapt. Hopefully we don’t have to leave Earth.

People bet in the hope of making money. Raising the cost of living isn’t the answer to solving climate change. It does make us poorer and hurts businesses. I think tax breaks for green investments can help, but ultimately it’s innovation that will get us there. We need carrots, not sticks.

The rich countries have the solutions, but adding taxes to essential energy and transportation needs (carbon taxes) for individuals and businesses does little but make us poorer. Basically we all pay more and accept lower living standards because the current “green” options can’t meet our needs and are too expensive. Phase in a requirement that new roof systems incorporate solar, provide tax credits for roof retrofits, improving insulation, and incorporating technologies like deep water cooling and geothermal when large developments are planned. Gradually replace coal with small nuclear or hydro where coal is still burning. Carbon capture is improving too. Don’t make driving unaffordable through taxation or ban conveniences like disposable bags when green options become available. That’s the point of our policy, to innovate our way to lower emissions without lowering living standards. We also need much more widely available, faster rail transportation. Growth should be coming through innovation and productivity, not adding millions of people without the necessary infrastructure and efficient services and social adjustment. We’re actively destroying our quality of life, raising the cost of living, and raising emissions. We’re also shifting all dirty energy, manufacturing and jobs to Asia, where environmental standards are lower and production is cheaper. We’re not working smarter. The private sector must be leveraged. High living standards bring research and innovation. Poverty does the opposite.

World population is set to decline significantly as the Boomers die off, a more educated urban population has fewer kids, and sperm counts continue to drop. Without immigration almost all western countries would have a negative birth rate. The same will happen in developing countries as they become developed. The 2050’s are the Big Crunch.

Canada’s population is very spread out, our winter heating needs are brutal, and natural resource development is our bread and butter. Canada is not reducing emissions and bringing in hundreds of thousands of immigrants per year at the same time. Canada cannot reduce emissions without expanding rapid rail options, expanding nuclear or hydro power, and reducing immigration levels. Ever. Carbon taxes do nothing basically because everyone needs energy and there simply aren’t affordable “green” transportation and power options. Adding them through tax breaks and/or subsidies won’t make much difference. Only a technological revolution and code changes to how we build and produce on a mass scale, along with the measures I already mentioned (lower immigration, better transit options, and more large scale non-emitting power production) will make substantial change. However, we barely make a dent in global emissions compared to China and India. Also, what is the impact of our population to land mass ratio? That matters too. So much depends on the data collected and the questions you ask. I think we should try to lower emissions, but not through unproven means if the costs are high. High living standards bring better education and technology, leading to greater efficiency, productivity, and greener ways to do everything.

It’s a good article. It doesn’t assume that parents won’t support their kids. Quite the opposite. The bottom line is that kids should be supported without an agenda. I do think, however, that treating kids as if they don’t have a gender, as the Ottawa board has done, adds confusion rather than reduces it. I think we have to respect the norms in our treatment of students as their biological genders until a student comes forward with or appears to be suffering because of a different gender expression. At that point, listen and be supportive, and if new names and pronouns are requested, involve parents unless there’s reason to worry about abuse. Teaching that people with different sexual orientations or gender expressions should be treated with respect is important, but I think that must be part of general anti-bullying messaging without getting into discussion of sexuality or sexual identity, at least in elementary schools. We have always had Tomboys and androgynous kids. If a child with parental knowledge chooses different pronouns/names, we have always had nicknames. They can be used. I’m not sure that deadnaming should be banned unless a formal name change takes place. Some people don’t recognize transgender as a real sex change, which is why it may be best to have a third trans category, which would resolve the sports issue. It might mean adding more single use washrooms. I’m not sure it’s necessary after a formal sex change, but elementary school doesn’t seem like the age when sex changes should be happening except in the most exceptional circumstances. Again, more to learn. People shouldn’t be punished for questioning policies on either side of the debate. Policies that alienate people and families for their beliefs are generally bad.

Yes we should build those reactors but please don’t be silly by thinking any of those countries are going to take climate action advice from us. Our emissions continue to climb with our carbon taxes and immigration. China won’t change its standards for us. The US won’t match our existence tax.

You make good points. I’m sure much more study is necessary. People who genuinely feel like another gender should indeed be heard and supported. The question is, what does support mean? I don’t doubt that in highly exceptional cases it’s worth the risks to someone to make the decision to transition, but is a child equipped to make such a life-altering decision? I’m not talking about obvious exceptions like hermaphrodites. What is the age? I don’t think it’s elementary school, and obviously parents will be involved in important medical decisions pertaining to their children, certainly under 16, perhaps 18. I don’t think we know enough yet. I don’t pretend to be an expert. You clearly know more than me about the subject. I do see important reasons for caution with kids.

Most cases of dysphoria pass by the time kids reach adulthood, so the likelihood that life changing treatment could be regretted later on is high. Surgery and/or hormone therapy isn’t the only answer to dysphoria. What’s more, an educational approach that makes it appear as though transitioning isn’t a big deal and that gender can be chosen without regard to biological gender is reckless and dangerous. Keep it out of schools unless a student comes forward expressing dysphoria. Kids should be heard and told that if they want the school to use pronouns, that parents should be part of the conversation unless there’s concern about parental abuse. Let kids figure out their bodies and adjust to the natural hormonal changes that are hard enough without inserting a choose your gender instruction kit.

I said before that Smith’s woke detractors got it wrong. She is woke. This has been the problem for several years now. There’s no alternative to the radical left activists who have taken over all mainstream parties. Canada doesn’t respect the rights of families to have healthy family lives. One must support state-funded assisted death, free hard drugs, and treatments to transition confused kids to other genders in order to have acceptable views. If you don’t, you’re an alt right victim of American misinformation. Trudeau told Muslims this with a straight face.

No. You don’t get to erase religious rights and women’s rights to placate the rainbow end of the political spectrum. How about this: Gender ideology is discriminatory against scientists, women, men, and many religious people?

Bad analogue. Peterson said nothing radical. His views are worthy as opinions. Are you suggesting that engineers and psychologists not be allowed to run for political office, raise their children with particular perspectives, or make comments as social commentators? That’s a very controlling and fascistic view of how much power and control professional bodies and governments should have over people who are members of a profession. Why not tell teachers they can’t vote or refuse patients from getting second opinions from doctors? We used to understand and celebrate the fact that many people in or out of a profession have a range of views. Peterson didn’t advise any patients to do anything out of keeping with psychological approaches. In fact, he wasn’t officially “disciplined”. Some people who don’t like his views complained and got what they wanted, this absurd, Kafkaesque reeducation. It’s infantilizing. Let’s be honest, this is about public shaming. You love it because you don’t like Peterson. This is shadenfreude.

You exemplify the anti-free speech cancel culture that Canada has become under the radical left goofs you defend.

Dysphoria is a psychological condition. You’re offside on the gender debate. Schools must stop confusing and promoting the mutilation of kids. Hopefully any dubious hormone treatments and surgery for kids are banned in Canada. My bigger hope is that gender ideology and curriculum on sexual lifestyle choices are banned from elementary schools across Canada. The provincial and federal governments have done terrible damage already. I imagine the lawsuits will start piling up. Hopefully the public will start to vote out woke trustees and politicians. What a total disaster.

I don’t know what happened to our society of open debate and free thinking. It’s really sad. Organizations are leaning on codes of conduct and citing Human Rights to shut down debate and cancel people. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-tyranny-of-the-bureaucracy-and-the-weaponization-of-codes-of-conduct/wcm/aa62fa2e-538e-48db-9cc4-b47a0903d322/amp/

If the Dippers were smart they’d bail on the coalition government before the public becomes so furious that the NDP are buried for a generation.

The victim narrative is exactly what’s holding back so many Indigenous. Dependency and resentment are taught and incentivized.

No one had easy answers about how to address the fact of people who lived very differently and under harsher conditions than the settlers who began to crowd out the open territories with plots and roads and trains. For the first 250 years of mostly European settlement, the land seemed infinite. Public education was one resolution. The reserve system was another one. The first was mostly assimilative. The second was mostly about preserving native ways of life. Neither has been very successful. Yet no one would deny the value of a good education in the languages of mainstream society. Meanwhile more settlers are coming today than ever before, all in the name of “progress”. I think we need to change our notions of progress.

You’re simply wrong. Unmarked graves can be unmarked for many reasons that have nothing to do with covering up facts. There have been countless epidemics from typhoid to tuberculosis that resulted in multiple burials. People may not like the fact that if children from remote small communities wanted to attend school they would have to live at the school, a fact that remains today for some Indigenous run high schools (that still have higher rates of alcohol abuse and suicide than national averages). Abuses took place at all schools, more in residential ones. The world was a harder place. My grandparents told many stories of what would today be called abuse in schools. There were many problems with the residential school system, yet thousands of Indigenous parents freely chose it. They were pushed by progressives as providing literacy to the illiterate and helping Indigenous. I’m not interested in whitewashing any of it, but I am interested in facts. You may not like Black because of his success in business and some controversy around him being made a Lord in Britain or getting in trouble for allegedly shredding documents. He is an excellent writer and he has done some very important journalism.

I’d say they were too late with the vaccines, too restrictive and harsh with mandates, and too reckless with over-spending.