The video discusses the impact of recent policies introduced by Smith that focus on individual rights and freedoms, specifically criticizing vaccine mandates and the use of force in policy implementation. There is a discussion about the consequences of applying force and its effect on public trust, emphasizing that even if policy measures work, the loss of public trust due to authoritarian tactics is detrimental and undermines institutions' credibility. These issues highlight broader themes of government overreach and the need to protect citizens' autonomy.
The conversation also explores how freedom of speech is seen as being threatened within regulated professions. The professional regulatory boards in Canada have seized significant power, leading to professionals feeling restricted in expressing their honest opinions on certain matters. This development is perceived to impact the effectiveness of critical institutions as professionals, such as psychologists, find themselves bound by mandates that potentially conflict with their expertise and judgment.
Main takeaways from the video:
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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:
1. intrinsic [ɪnˈtrɪnsɪk] - (adjective) - Belonging naturally; essential. - Synonyms: (inherent, innate, fundamental)
Because we have intrinsic human dignity.
2. proclivity [prəˈklɪvɪti] - (noun) - A tendency to choose or do something regularly; an inclination or predisposition toward a particular thing. - Synonyms: (tendency, inclination, propensity)
And this is probably a conservative proclivity.
3. cascading [kæˈskeɪdɪŋ] - (adjective) - Arranged in a series or sequence, often causing a chain reaction. - Synonyms: (sequential, successive, flowing)
And so there are cascading consequences of that...
4. diluting [daɪˈluːtɪŋ] - (verb) - Making something weaker in force, content, or value. - Synonyms: (weakening, diminishing, reducing)
...but diluting the trust that people have in the institutions...
5. barbaric [bɑːrˈbærɪk] - (adjective) - Savagely cruel; exceedingly brutal. - Synonyms: (savage, cruel, brutal)
It's absolutely barbaric.
6. scandalous [ˈskændələs] - (adjective) - Causing general public outrage by a perceived offense against morality or law. - Synonyms: (outrageous, shocking, disgraceful)
I seriously can't think of anything more scandalous...than that that's occurred within the psychological community.
7. analgesic [ˌænəlˈdʒiːzɪk] - (noun) - A drug that relieves pain. - Synonyms: (painkiller, anesthetic, medication)
The probability that you can produce a pharmacological compound that's analgesic and not addictive is very low.
8. evinced [ɪˈvɪnst] - (verb) - Revealed the presence of (a quality or feeling); indicated clearly. - Synonyms: (manifested, demonstrated, showed)
Certainly no one assumed that...they evinced skepticism about the coverage.
9. co-opted [koʊˈɒptɪd] - (verb) - To take control of something for one’s own purposes. - Synonyms: (appropriated, usurped, annexed)
...we saw every single institution in the medical world be co opted by this.
10. psychopharmacologically [ˌsaɪkoʊˌfɑːrməkəˈlɑːdʒɪkəli] - (adverb) - In a way that relates to the study of the effects of drugs on mood, sensation, thinking, and behavior. - Synonyms: (drug-based, medicinally, therapeutically)
...if you're directly affecting the systems that cause pain, psychopharmacologically you're going to be using compounds...
How Is Canada the Epicenter of the Opioid Crisis? - Dan Williams
So this Bill of Rights is meant to be a reflection on the reality of those rights. And you could quote anyone from Locke to Pope Leo XIII in Reno Novarum and you could talk about how rights and the rights of man predate the state. They pre exist the state. And that's the nature of how rights work. And so now Smith and your government have fortified, for example, people's rights to bodily autonomy, integrity.
So if I understood correctly, this is probably the most media relevant portion of the transformation that Smith is introducing. She's forbidding vaccine mandates. Yeah, I would say, in effect forbidding vaccine mandates. That's right. Because there is, I would articulate it saying that because we have intrinsic human dignity. Right. That means that with that dignity, when we're in possession of our faculties, when we can reasonably make our own decisions when it comes to healthcare, we ought to. Right.
You know, the Aussies are starting to apologize for the vaccine mandates at the state level. Yeah, that happened this week. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Well, the problem is, I think, and this is probably a conservative proclivity, but we could have a discussion about that if your policy, maybe there's an exception for criminals, let's say that to begin with, there's an exception for people who just will not play fair no matter what. Generally speaking, if your policy requires force, it's badly constituted.
And so the vaccine policies required force. And so they weren't invitational and they should have been invitational. And so that was a big mistake. And there are cascading consequences of that that are independent of whether or not the vaccines worked or whether they produced side effects. Independent of the vaccine debate per se, is that public trust in public health has plummeted.
And the reason for that is that if you use force, even for the good, if you use force, people aren't going to trust you. They're going to wonder what the hell you're up to, and rightly so. And so even if the vaccine program worked, and I don't think, I don't think there's a shred of evidence for that, by the way, but I think you could have a debate about that. I think it's indisputable that the use of force has counter consequences.
So, for example, there's way more skepticism about vaccines in general, and perhaps some of that is warranted. I mean, Robert Kennedy is certainly pushing that idea, but diluting the trust that people have in the institutions that had protected them for a long time is a very bad idea.
So now Smith has also reduced the power of the regulatory boards, the colleges, the Professional colleges, for example. And so that's welcome news to someone like me, of course, because I'm still in danger of being re educated if the Ontario College of Psychologists and Behavior Analysts can ever get their act together, which is highly improbable given their previous behavior.
But she's increased the protection for freedom of speech. I mean, the Supreme Court in Canada basically decided in my case that as far as I can tell, my interpretation of their ruling or their refusal to hear my appeal was something approximating the professional regulatory boards can do anything they want that's reasonable. I don't know who determines that precisely, and the charter be damned.
And so that seems to me to be a very bad idea given that one in five Canadians are in a regulated profession. And I know, I've talked to many, many people who are in regulated professions and they are terrified to speak. And this is really bad. Like, it's really bad.
So among psychologists, for example, you're basically mandated if a parent brings in an adolescent who's having gender dysphoria trouble, real or socially constructed, let's say, you are mandated to affirm their choices. And I can't, I seriously can't think of anything more scandalous than that that's occurred within the psychological community and the medical community in the last hundred years. It's absolutely barbaric.
But no one is brave enough, virtually no one's brave enough to buck the tide. And it's not surprising, you know, because the consequences of telling the truth, this means that your psychologists, the ones that are actually genuinely educated and competent, and the same goes for physicians, they're mandated to lie to you about your children.
They're mandated, for example, to swallow the lie that if you don't allow your child to transform themselves surgically into the sex they hypothetically are, that their suicide risk will be elevated, which is a complete bloody lie. There's not a shred of evidence for that and there's plenty of evidence for the reverse.
So, so let's say you stood up against that and you were reported to your college. What's the consequences are going to be? First, scandal, second, tremendous expense. Because if there's a complaint against you, it's basically a legal case and it's very expensive to litigate and it takes forever. They've been chasing me for 10 years, right?
It's cost me more than half a million dollars to fight them off so far, as ineffectively as I've managed. And so, and then if you lose your license or even if the scandal falls on you because Once there's a decision against you from the college, that's part of the public record and a little bit hard on you if you're trying to advertise your services.
Let's say it's not surprising that physicians and psychologists and engineers and social workers and teachers won't say what they think. And then we're in a situation where professionals, the professionals you rely on in a crisis can't say what they think when you need them to. That is not good. That's seriously not good.
And Canadians are seriously asleep at the wheel. And you know, it's a weird thing because. How old are you? 37. Okay, so I'm a lot older than you. 30 years. Well, you know, the Canada that I grew up in, all of the institutions were fundamentally trustworthy and trusted. All of them? All of them.
The education system, K to 12, the. The higher education system, the court system, the three party political system, the media. The media, yeah. CBC. I watched CBC all the time when I was a kid. Well, there were only two channels, you know, and so.
And by and large, although it had a liberal tilt, I would say no one presumed that CBC was bending the truth or advocating for the government. Certainly no one assumed that to the point where they evinced skepticism about the coverage. I mean, we had a country that functioned extremely well, kind of without that showy entrepreneurial flair that the Americans have, which is really something to admire and emulate.
Canada was a much more moderate place, a much more middle class place, but fundamentally rock solid. And even the debates between the political parties were never. Everybody sort of stayed in their lane and we knew where the political party stood. And I don't know what the hell's happened in the last 15 years, but like that time seems to me to be it's seriously over and God only knows what's going to replace it.
I think what's happened is the institutions have fundamentally failed at their roles. And this is true of every institution you mentioned. And a good case to look at would be the file around addiction. And it's something, a good segue for us to get into.
Yeah, good. Good is if you look at the United States and Canada, we're uniquely positioned as the epicenter of the worldwide opioid addiction crisis. It really is here. And it's because of the failure of institutions. And you could tell this story all the way through, starting with 1995 when the FDA in the United States approved, and I think an insane decision, oxycodone with big Pharma.
And they said that this would be good for public health. They said that there aren't risks of addiction. It's incredibly low. Oxycodone is twice as powerful as heroin, street heroin. Right.
It's also the case, by the way, and everyone who's listening should know this, that the probability that you can produce a pharmacological compound that's analgesic and not addictive is very low. Right. Because the, the mechanism of action of analgesic medications is the same mechanism that produces drug related reward. And so it's very difficult to separate those.
Now you get anti inflammatories can reduce pain by indirect mechanisms. But if you're directly affecting the systems that cause pain, psychopharmacologically you're going to be using compounds that have a high addiction potential.
Even cocaine, which isn't generally used as an analgesic, has analgesic properties because of its psychomotor stimulant properties. And it's seriously abuse. What would you eliciting and dependency eliciting? So you know the pharmaceutical companies were lying with regards to the opiates on the most fundamental biological grounds imaginable.
That's right. And it was very well known. I mean what you're describing is not new science. No, no, this is well established. Well yes, the addiction properties for well longer than that even maybe, but the actual pharmacology at the neurological level, that's been pretty well established since I would say it's probably 50 years at the molecular level.
And so what happened was the reason it went the way it did was not because of new science, not because of evidence. The mass opioid pandemic that we saw was because of marketing fundamentally and large amounts of dollars that were being traded transactionally. And we saw our regulatory bodies, our colleges or the oversight bodies for physicians, we saw our medical schools, we saw every single institution in the medical world be co opted by this and so easily as well.
Now we should explain just so everybody knows about these colleges, because the terminology is confusing because people typically think of a college as a university. But there are professional colleges and professional colleges are organizations of professionals within a given profession, say engineers or physicians or psychologists. And they're tasked with the responsibility of being self governing and the self governing bodies at least somewhat self governing and self regulating.
And those bodies are tasked with the regulation of their professionals so that the public is well served. And I would also say no one heard anything about regulatory colleges. That's only become an issue in the last 10 years. They operated fundamentally as administrative boards behind the scenes with no politics, no media coverage.
They basically dealt with professionals who had complaints levied against them, justified or not, by members of the general public, and dealt with that in the appropriate administrative manner. Now they're completely politicized.
REGULATORY BOARDS, FREE SPEECH, PUBLIC TRUST, GOVERNMENT POLICY, EDUCATION, ENTREPRENEURSHIP, JORDAN B PETERSON