Candace Malcolm, founder of True North Media, discusses independent media, politics, drug decriminalization, and gender representation, advocating for nuanced discourse on Indian Residential Schools and debating the topic with Aaron Pete.
Candice Malcolm, an investigative journalist, best-selling author, and nationally syndicated Toronto Sun columnist, is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of True North. With a history of reporting from conflict zones and uncovering significant terrorist networks within Canada, her work has garnered global attention. A Vancouver, BC native, Candice holds two master's degrees and resides in Toronto with her family.
Candace Malcolm, founder of True North Media, discusses independent media, politics, drug decriminalization, and gender representation, advocating for nuanced discourse on Indian Residential Schools and debating the topic with Aaron Pete.
Candice Malcolm, an investigative journalist, best-selling author, and nationally syndicated Toronto Sun columnist, is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of True North. With a history of reporting from conflict zones and uncovering significant terrorist networks within Canada, her work has garnered global attention. A Vancouver, BC native, Candice holds two master's degrees and resides in Toronto with her family.
Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger than Me podcast. Here is your host, Aaron. Journalism is all about seeking the truth. I believe it's important to consume a variety of news sources to make sure that you're an informed citizen. I'm speaking with a seasoned journalist, author and the founder and editor-in-chief of True North Media. My guest today is Candace Melcombe. Candace, it is such a pleasure to sit down with you today. I've been looking forward to having this conversation because I think it's important to understand different perspectives. Would you mind first just briefly introducing yourself?
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, sure, aaron. First of all, thank you for having me. Thank you for following up, because I know you had wanted to have me on before and then things got busy for me, so I appreciate the tenacity of following up. And yeah, I'm Candace Melcombe. I'm a journalist. I am the founder of True North, which is a digital media company. We do podcasts, we do written news reports focused on Canadian politics, canadian culture and economics what else? I'm a mother. I have three little kids and actually one on the way, so soon we'll be a mother of four. I've been married for ten years and, yeah, I mean we can get into any aspect of my previous career, my life now and anything you want to talk about. Aaron, I'm totally game.
Aaron Pete:Brilliant. Would you mind taking me back? What made you interested in journalism?
Candice Malcolm:It's interesting. That's a good question. I kind of spent the early part of my career on the sort of intersection between journalism and politics. I was interested in politics more from an ideological or philosophical perspective. I liked reading and trying to understand the meaning of life and how we order society and why. And I can't say I was ever really overly partisan. I maybe interacted a little bit with partisan politics here and there. But what I liked more was the ideas behind it and why.
Candice Malcolm:And I think that that kind of led itself to telling stories, asking questions, wondering why, writing, and yeah, I kind of like stumbled my way into journalism and I kind of come from things from an outside perspective, I think, because I was never really like an insider with I didn't go to journalism school and I even partisan politics.
Candice Malcolm:I never really fit in with any one particular party and so it kind of makes sense that I went my own way and started my own media company, because I don't think that I really fit in anywhere else. I worked at several different media companies but I think I feel more at home just doing my own thing and I'm fortunate just because the way that the media landscape is shifting so much of news and information and media is now distributed independently. Like you don't need to be on the CBC to have a huge audience and talk to a lot of Canadians. You can just start a podcast, like you've done, and you find your audience that way. So I think I've been fortunate in many ways and the thing that I'm doing now is I absolutely love doing it. So I feel very blessed and very grateful to be in this position.
Aaron Pete:What values do you think underlie your approach to journalism that might be somewhat unique from people who've gone the traditional path?
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, I mean I obviously I think that the core, I think I think I hope that the core of what any journalist is doing is getting at the truth, trying to ask questions and solve mysteries and try to uncover the truth. That's that's sort of the North Star and that's that's what we're always aiming for and trying to get to. I think for me, I, just just being an outsider, I question sort of like basic assumptions, like the way that the way that things work, just because that's the way it works, doesn't mean that that's the right way to do it, or just because that's the convention or the tradition doesn't necessarily mean that that's the way it ought to go. So I, yeah, I think, maybe just being an outsider, look, I, I didn't really grow up being very political.
Candice Malcolm:I wasn't one of those kids that was like hardcore political when I was a teenager, like I was always kind of more like politically apathetic and came to politics a little later. I went to university without even knowing what I was going to study and then I didn't become. I became a political science major like halfway through my second year because I took some political science classes and I liked them. But yeah, politics was, was sort of new to me and and and I didn't, I didn't have like a political background, like a lot of other people that grow up in it, and so just you know, seeing it from an outside perspective, again like asking the basic questions, I think that that sort of led me on the path to always be questioning why and not just taking things at face value.
Aaron Pete:What issues did you see the interested you from a journalistic perspective? Was there standout problems our society was facing, our culture was facing, that stood out to you?
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, that's a good question. I mean it's funny because things, things change a lot but things are also always the same. I remember when I was like a teenager and just even just like seeing the amount of poverty, like I grew up in Vancouver and so like I would go to my parents, would take me to, like a hockey game I go to see a Kinnock game and we drive through like a bad neighborhood on the way leaving the hockey game and it was like unbelievable to me that the Lower East Side of Vancouver like existed, like it was. Like I looked at it and I just couldn't believe that, that, that that was what that was a state of things in my city, like a place where I lived pretty comfortably and almost, you know, very sheltered life. And then you see that there was like this absolutely horrific thing happening in your city, in your backyard, right, and it's like people are using drugs, they're out on the street, they're being left to die, basically, and no one cares. I mean that's that's the sort of like naive teenage perspective that I saw, and it's like why isn't this an emergency? Like why aren't we fixing this? Why aren't we taking all of those individual people and like rescuing them, basically like getting them out of that situation and helping them. And I mean you kind of like learn more about it and you're like, okay, it's not that simple, it's not that easy. You can't just like take a person and fix them. I mean, they obviously have a lot of trauma and a lot of reasons in their life that led them to be in that position.
Candice Malcolm:But but still, I think that maybe like the first time you become aware of social problems, it is kind of like to me there was like a sense of urgency, like we need to fix this, we need to act. And it's kind of sad when I think about it, because it's like you know, 20 years later and the problem has just gotten way worse. In fact it's sort of proliferated and it's everywhere now. It used to be like a very isolated little spot in Vancouver where you would see tent cities and prostitutes and open drug use and people just kind of turning a blind eye to it and walking by it like it's not happening, and now it's like, oh, that's normal, you see that in every city in Canada and even in small cities and so on Vancouver Island and you know, you're like in Courtney and as, and you see it there, and that I was never the case before.
Candice Malcolm:So in some ways, I think that our society is is losing, is losing these battles, like it's coming apart even more, and I think that there's still so much Aaron wrong in Canada that we need to address and in some ways, maybe we're like too complacent to actually fix these things.
Candice Malcolm:So I know your question was about, like journalism, the issues that inspired me, but I think that that that kind of explains it, like there's still so many things wrong with our country and there's problems that we need to address and fix.
Candice Malcolm:And if people aren't willing to like talk about it, focus on it, expose it, tell the stories about it, like report on it. And that's what we do at True North. We try to report on the stories that it other other other organizations are just not covering for whatever reason. Maybe it's because they have a political agenda or their focus is elsewhere, or it's too, it's too hard or too uncomfortable, or maybe they do cover it, but like on a more superficial level, whereas maybe we want to take a deeper dive and try to figure out, like what is happening here, why, what, what, what has changed, what's leading to this problem and let's like, let's like, try to figure out a way to to solve it or at least, at least mitigate it, and try to make the situation better for those people who are who are suffering through that.
Aaron Pete:That's actually a follow up question. I'll just ask do you think public policy is the way that we solve some of those very challenging problems that you're describing? Because for some it can seem like obvious. We need to have public policies, police like. There's lots of different public policies approaches we can take, and some say this is on the individual. They need to take the steps and we can't control the individual or force them to do things. Do you think public policy is a tool that we need to use to address some of these issues?
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, it's funny because I think when I was younger my answer would have been like much more libertarian. I always say, like you know what? Like that's a person's, that's, that's freedom, right? In some ways I think it's like extreme freedom, freedom taken to such an extreme extent. It's like if you want to waste your life and be on drugs and destroy your body that way, you know, be a prostitute or whatever, like that's your choice and the way that we can fix that would probably like the way.
Candice Malcolm:A better path towards solving some of these issues is not through the government, because the government is big and clunky and inefficient and impersonal and all the problems with the government. Like we should have a much more limited government, which is my general worldview and that's all true. Like I think that that on a personal level, like if you imagine someone who was a former drug addict, who's turned their life around and you know they probably have a personal story. They probably have a story about a friend that intervened, or family member or they met someone who inspired them, and it's always a personal story. It's never like, oh, I got clean because of the government. I mean, that's what I think right. But I think on a more fundamental level, erin.
Candice Malcolm:Like the problem is it's government, it's the laws, right, it's a solution might not be entirely public policy.
Candice Malcolm:I think a lot of it will have to come from civil society.
Candice Malcolm:But the fact that our laws allow this to happen, that we don't treat this like a criminal offense, that we are, as a society, okay with drug use and we endorse it, we subsidize it in some ways we give it away, like those are all tacit nods saying to individuals that this is a path you know it's not necessarily a good path, but it's a path Whereas you know, if you go to countries and you go to places where this is just not tolerated, it's not accepted, it's against the law Like you're not going to see fentanyl use in Singapore, right.
Candice Malcolm:You're not going to see people you know wasting life while using drugs in a country like Turkey, like it's just they just not allow, not allow, it's banned, right. And so I think that in some ways, our society we're too, we're too lenient and too relaxed and okay with with people doing things that are completely detrimental to themselves. So, yes, it there needs to be a legal framework to stop it. And then, as far as like, how can we improve things? I think that, yes, civil society has to do a lot of the heavy list, heavy lifting.
Aaron Pete:I'm taking you on a bit of a tangent, but I think this is such an interesting conversation. How do you feel about the comments? Because you could say condone. But I think of people like dr Gabor Matei who would say that we understand that we're becoming, we're creating space for these individuals to understand the pain and the trauma and the abuse that they've they've been through, and we're starting to understand that this is one of the ways in which they try and cope with this. And we don't have the same small town communities that we used to. Now we have millions of people in these cities and there's just not that human connection. When you do the studies in New York and People will see somebody on the ground Struggling. They just keep walking. Somebody else will help them out. That bystander effect takes over that. These are some of the problems we're facing. We're we're under, we're becoming a more understanding society. How do you think about those kind of arguments that I'm hearing more and more?
Candice Malcolm:Well, I mean, you can always find justifications and I have a lot of respect for Gabor Matei I think that's how you say his name. He agreed with them. Actually usually don't agree with him, but but Of course it's like if you live in a big city, like like, look at Canada. It's like, okay, what, what's your tax rate? I don't know, I pay like 50% of the money that I make to the government. So when it comes time to like what I have afterwards, am I gonna be like super generous and start donating like tons of money to like my church and like mental health Groups or even things that I believe in? It's like. It's like when you get that much away, you're kind of outsourcing the responsibility, right. Or like if you live in a big city, exactly like like someone's dying on the street and you're like, well, I gotta go, I gotta go get my kids, like I don't have time to deal with this person and their issues, whereas you know, if you've lived in a small community where it was like kin and family members and people whom you had Social bonds and kinship with you, you would not just step over them. So part of it is definitely like how we live and how we structured our society. I think a lot of it is when you have such a big, overbearing government, like. One of my biggest philosophical disagreements with people whom I respect on the political left is that they give like too much respect and Acceptance that government will solve these problems, Whereas I think that not only is a government incapable of solving the problems because it's inefficient and bloated and the incentives are all wrong, but you actually don't want to live in a society where you outsource that like. You want to live in a society where you take personal Responsibility. You take for responsibility for your community. You're connected in community. You know your neighbors. You you're gonna make sure that, like, not only am I responsible for making sure my kids are okay, but I'm responsible for making sure the kids in my community are okay. So if my neighbors away and I see one of her kids and something's happened, I'm gonna go help them because I know them right and and part of the problem living in like a big modern society is that you, you don't have those connections. So I don't.
Candice Malcolm:I don't know if I quite answer your question, but I think that, rather than saying like, oh, it's okay, I understand and I'm compassionate towards someone who turns to drugs to cope with their pain. I think it would be better for everyone if we just said no, that's not an option, you're not going to numb yourself through drugs and alcohol. That's. That's just not what we do in our society. You know, you can, you can deal with it through through other medical means, like go to therapy and, you know, start exercising and start having a healthy lifestyle and and we can like work through these things with your community, with your family, with your friends. But but saying like Okay as a society, like one of the things that we're okay with, is just like completely distrong your mind and your body With drugs because you've had a bad childhood.
Candice Malcolm:I don't think that that's like a compassionate approach to to to Helping people like, like, like that's not a good way to live and and I can say the same thing.
Candice Malcolm:I mean maybe, maybe I'm like Taking things too much in a tangent here, but it's the same thing with like how we eat in our diets, like a lot of the things that we eat.
Candice Malcolm:We just shouldn't eat a lot of the things that kids have access to. They just this you shouldn't eat highly processed food. It's really bad for you and it will kill you and it's like why don't we say these things? Why don't we teach each other these things like how come these like really kind of basic truths about Like our world that we live and we don't, we don't really like talk about?
Candice Malcolm:So I'm not just like singling out drugs that I think are bad. You know, the truth of the matter is like if you want to go drink and you numb yourself that way it's a free country go ahead. If you want to go do a bunch of drugs, I mean fine, but I don't think it's a good thing. I don't think that we should be saying, yeah, you know, this is just another life choice and and if that's how you cope, that's fine and it always legal, and oh, if you want some fentanyl here, we'll pay for it, we'll hand it out to, to addicts on the street like this. This is not the direction that I think a healthy society heads in.
Aaron Pete:I Really appreciate all of that breakdown and comparing it to food and stuff, because government, I would say, is always a process of incentives and disincentives, and how we structure that plays a significant role. And a lot of the movement we see is in regards to trying to be more understanding and accepting and at a at an individual person to person level. I agree with that sentiment, but as you move up the to the provincial and federal government, you can't apply those same rules because it's not going to have the same impact, because it's a scaling rule. Like you're, you're now applying something across a country in a different way. That it's not the same. When I show empathy to another person and I'm like, hey, you know what, you've fallen down, you've been abused. I understand that and I'm here to help you.
Aaron Pete:That's a different thing than the federal government instituting something that's going to have an impact, where they're not saying anything to the person. They're just creating an incentive or a disincentive, and that's a complex Issue that we have to grapple with and make sure that we steer the country and look at these incentives and what are we encouraging people to do and what does this policy say Beyond just being understanding, and what are the ramifications it's going to have, because I come from a criminology degree. We talk about these issues, and one of them is that when we did ban alcohol and we had an absolute prohibition, alcohol was some of the most concentrated moonshine was one of the most concentrated as a consequence. And so there are arguments that when we ban things outright or when we push society too far, that the extremes are Come about as well and that's the argument being made with fentanyl and legalizing some of the lower level drugs is because we don't want people to escalate and get the most extreme things. Have you heard? Those are arguments as well in regards to drug decriminalization.
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, it's interesting and I appreciate bringing that up because I think that one day, future criminologists will study this period 2024 and look at how, hey, when you legalize drugs like hard drugs, like heroin and crack and Fentanyl, it doesn't just like become a niche thing. That, that, that, that that is not that big of a problem. It's the opposite is that it concentrates. It's like if Vancouver and San Francisco are two cities in North America that completely allow all this stuff and Sometimes subsidize it, hand it out. City of Toronto does it too. Now You're gonna get more of it. You're gonna get more of it and there's a reason that there's more of these drug overdoses and there's more crime Concentrated in the areas where they're handing out the drugs, because people are coming.
Candice Malcolm:We're living through a social experiment right now and I don't think that the results are positive. I don't think that people would say look at your community. If you live in a, in a room is or in an urban area, do you think your neighborhood's gotten safer in the last five years? Do you feel safe walking your kids around and going to the park? I mean, almost everyone I know has stories about their kids. I literally finding needles in parks in our cities and it's like that's not really the one in the type of community that I want to live in. That's not the world that I want to live in, and so I Totally understand the idea of like prohibition. You know People are gonna find a way to bond drink. It's, it's ingrained in our culture and you know when. When there was prohibition, there's just a huge black market and it created a lot of other criminality. And you know the reality is that whatever, whatever there is that we have laws surrounding, there's going to be a black market for like like. That's just kind of like human nature. I guess there's always going to be that, those type of people who are willing to break the law to try to make more money or Whatever it is. But but when it comes to just saying okay, we're just gonna allow it because we'd rather have it available, at least we can regulate it and maybe we can make some money off of it by taxing it, at least in mindset in Ontario that, like you know, we have the LCBO, which is the government control liquor store. So you're buying liquor in Ontario, you're buying it through the government. Well, might as well make marijuana that way too, so we get some extra money in the, in the coffers, to spend on whatever we want to spend on. But but you know, on the flip side of that there's also the moral reason. Right, it's like.
Candice Malcolm:It's like Do you think it's a good idea that the 16 year olds can smoke pot and go by pot, like when I was growing up in high school? I went to high school, like I said, in BC. I was actually on Vancouver Island. For most of high school there's a lot of pot. There was a lot of kids smoking ponderdyes and that was back when it was illegal. I think it'd be interesting to compare.
Candice Malcolm:I think it's one of those things probably hard to study, because what kind of like 16 year olds going to admit that they're Smoking pot and doing drugs? But, but if, but, if there's more of that now that it's legal or if there's less? But generally speaking, I mean knowing what we know about marijuana and about drugs like, is it really, is it really a Positive thing that that our government is saying it's okay, because in some ways it's not like I mean, you can look up studies about the links between young males using marijuana and links to Schizophrenia and mental illness later life. We know that there's more mental illness now in our society than there's ever been before. Maybe that's just that we're doing a better job documenting it. Maybe it's a social media is driving us all crazy. He has something to do with drugs, I don't know.
Candice Malcolm:But I think that you know, just because we banned it before and it was bad, uh, doesn't mean that we should just like legalize it now and then it's going to be good. Because I don't necessarily. I don't see the evidence that our world is better, that our societies are better, their cities are safer, that young people are healthier, that that were that were a more, that that our society is functioning better than it was prior to legalization. I just, I just don't see that. Now, aaron, I'd be totally open and interested to hear your perspective, like if you, if you think that things have gone better since drugs have become decriminalized or legalized, maybe more readily available. I'm totally happy to hear the other side of the argument. I just, I just personally don't see it.
Aaron Pete:I think that's a very interesting question when I think about what's going on on the street level. There are serious concerns. I would say that I would rather see a society at scale Struggling with the use of marijuana than alcohol, because we know that alcohol is involved in 50 percent of crimes, and so I've always been a proponent of concerns with legalizing and allowing alcohol use, because it's part of violent crimes. It's 50 percent of all crimes, and so there are significant risks involved with, specifically, alcohol. And we do know that even a glass of wine, as much as it's touted on Regular tv, shows that a glass of wine can be good for your health. It actually isn't over the long term either, and so I think it that piece I would lean on freedom, people's right to choose the government legalizing it to me Doesn't mean that it's good or bad. It just means that you have the right to choose, just like a cup of coffee, whether or not you want to put that into your body, and circumstances dependent.
Aaron Pete:I think my big concern is that I'm seeing a Reduction in creativity. I feel like people used to be much more creative, and some of these substances have long been understood to contribute to people's creativity and creating masterful works of art that we just don't know how they get there. And you can say, well, maybe they could have gotten there without it. But Historically, when you look at some of the greatest musicians, the greatest artists, they were often using some sort of substance to really hone that skill, to really get into a form of flow state. So I think I do worry about the government ever deciding for the, the people they're supposed to serve, what they should be doing with their bodies. So that would be my broader concern.
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, I know, I think, I think I think I agree with you as well, like when it comes to, you know, you're talking before about the various levels of government and it's like what, what do you want from each level? Because once you get to the federal government, that's like making laws from a far off place. They don't really interact with you. So, like I'm opposed to like big national programs, like I don't think that there should be any kind of big national program. I think part of the problem with our healthcare is that it's too One size fits all and it's like these laws are very restrictive rather than allowing for companies to create a response to the needs in their communities, or individuals, or charities or whatever the government is. Like this is what you're going to have and and it doesn't. It just doesn't work. So, like, generally speaking, I think I think you're right. Maybe what I'm talking more about is like as a culture and as a society. You know the idea. I agree with you about alcohol and it's interesting because, like when I was growing up Again the same thing like everyone kind of drank alcohol and you go to university and you're really surrounded in this kind of like binge culture where, like heavy drinking is just totally normal and that's just what you do. And and Now I'm a bit older and I'm like thinking back to how unhealthy I was in university just in terms of like lack of sleep, lack of a healthy diet, but having alcohol is like it's not good for your brain, it's not good for your ability to function, and I think that's so much of of you know. We definitely are dealing with a massive issue when it comes to mental health problems, like, I think, self-reported. It's like half of the women out there believe that they have like depression or anxiety and it's like, well, you know, are you doing the basics right? Are you? Are you getting a good night's sleep? Are you? Are you sleeping at the same time every night? Are you eating a high, high protein, nutritious diet? Are you getting exercise or getting fresh air? Are you like Like kind of just like again, like very basic things, which, of course, I think you're.
Candice Malcolm:Probably your parents, your grandparents, saw you when you were a little kid, but it's almost like we've taken these things for granted and we believe all kinds of crazy things and now, all of a sudden, we live in this world where we Stare at our screens and we don't have a lot of inner, like human interaction. You know there's other questions that I don't think our political Class would be willing to touch, but it's like Look at the birth rate in our, in our society, look at how few people are having children and it's like it's so alarming. It's like it's like this is a catastrophe. This is like an end of civilization concern. When you have each generation, like half of what it was like at the natural replacement level for a society is like 2.1, and you know the birth rate in korea Is like 1.1. Like like that literally means that each society, each generation, will be half the size of the previous one. Forget about what that will do for all of our government Entitlement schemes. I think in Canada it's it's it's not quite so bad, it's still pretty bad. I think it's like 1.5, you know. Forget about how bad it'll be for All of our you know pensions and our ability to pay for government and our ability to pay for holiday.
Candice Malcolm:But like what do they do to like people, to like individuals? Like not having you know the thing that has fulfilled you know your life for so many generations? It's like, what do you do? You have kids right and you raise those kids and then those kids have kids and they raise those kids. It's like that's like used to be like a central feature of life.
Candice Malcolm:And now it's like I meet some people that just don't have kids, don't want kids, no interest, and that's that. And they've decided and it's like you know this is. This is a big shift and a big concern and I mean, yeah, sure you can just have a huge, massive immigration program where you let in a million people a year and then you know, your community starts to change and people who you know, people come with different values and they might not be Canadian, they might not care that much about Canada, but they're here in Canada and like it. Just, it just changes things, like everything's different, and I think that that's something that we don't, we don't talk about at all. I think. I think it's a problem, I think it's a concern that people don't want to have kids anymore.
Aaron Pete:You, we will get to your two books, because I think that that will be a great place to kind of discuss those issues further. But would you mind telling me about starting true north, what was the impetus behind that?
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, sure. So let's see, I I've done a lot of things like in my career, so I kind of started more on like the academic think type, think tank side. I worked at the Fraser Institute, I went down and did a fellowship in Washington DC where I worked at a think tank and I like that idea of Promoting public policy through an organization, and so then I had a little bit of experience working in government. I went and worked for the Harper government in 2011 and Didn't work out for me like I wasn't suited to be a partisan or a political, but it was great to work in parliament and have experience. Anyway, I left and I started writing a column for the Toronto Sun and I worked at Sun News Network and I got like my kind of media TV experience and started writing and I really I really liked writing in the Toronto Sun.
Candice Malcolm:One of the things I would do is I break stories about immigration and about terrorism, about national security, and I decided to start kind of like a think tank focused on these issues, because there wasn't really anyone in Canada doing it and I, you know, I wanted to have my own organization, very entrepreneurial, and I want to do my own thing, and what I thought that thing was was going to be like an immigration think tank where we provided like Papers advocating or explaining good immigration policies, like sound immigration policy. And I did that at the same time as I was continued right in the Toronto Sun and what I found like as an entrepreneur, you kind of have to go where your audience is right and we know where your customer is if you're selling something. But For me it was like the people who liked to north and we're supporting it. We're like you know, the thing that we like the most about what you do is your journalism. Like the academic think tank stuff is like we'll take it or leave it. But when you break a story in the Toronto Sun or you have a big news story, that's like going all over Twitter, that's what we like. And so I kind of pivoted and I was like, okay, I like doing that too. That's fun for me and that's like.
Candice Malcolm:You know, you live in this world where, once you start doing research and you start doing access to information, you start breaking stories. It's like a floodgate, right, it's like, it's like a couple trickles and it's hard work, hard work and then all of a sudden it's like, yeah, everything you touch is like people are sending you stuff, people are calling you, mps are giving you stuff like and and, and it just became like I had like so much stuff that I wanted to write about and I couldn't fit it all in the Toronto Sun, so I just basically started a website, hire some people to help me, and we had like instantly had an audience, had people willing to fund it, and it was just like exciting. It was like we're doing journalism that no one else in Canada is doing.
Candice Malcolm:A lot of the legacy media Feel uncomfortable talking about immigration, so they're not really willing to touch it. But it's like I got a lot of problems here. There's people that are coming in that shouldn't be. There's bad people in the country. We're going to be like unafraid and we're just going to write about it and talk about it, and then it kind of snowballed. So it was like well, immigration is too narrow, right, it's like there's so many other stories too and there's so many other concerns that we have for cultural and our society. Let's just broaden it and it's just continue to grow like like I think we've been doing it to since 2016, 2016, 2016, 2017, no, 2016, yeah, 2016 and I would say we pivoted towards journalism.
Candice Malcolm:Like 2018 and like every year, it's like growing, doubling, and now we're getting more into podcasting and Obviously we have to evolve because so much of our distribution social media are huge, huge audience and, like our brand butter was Facebook. And then, all of a sudden, the Trudeau government created a law that Facebook didn't like and they just completely cut off all news. So it was like almost like we had to start again. It's like, you know, we have all these like hundreds of thousands of people on Facebook that are watching our content every day and all of a sudden now it's like Band, like no content, you can't see anything. And same with Instagram. So we had to kind of pivot now more towards like YouTube Rumble and podcasts like Spotify.
Candice Malcolm:So, yeah, that's a fun thing about being an entrepreneur and having a business is, you know, there's never a dull moment and you always have to be on your toes. It's like have a strategy for like what are we going to do when this fails or what are we going to do when this dies? And I think one of the one of the things that we've been able to do is just build up a Pretty loyal audience of people who like, like our stories and they kind of go wherever we go. Like you know, during COVID, one of the things that happened was we started writing about people who Were being fired from their jobs for not getting vaccinated or People who were getting really sick from the vaccine, and and just stories that for some reason, the media, the legacy media, the mainstream media I don't call them a mainstream media because I don't think they're very mainstream anymore I think they're kind of almost fringe and niche, like such a small percentage of Canadians get their news from the cbc these days, but it's like you know, they just didn't want to talk about it.
Candice Malcolm:They didn't want to talk, they didn't want to talk about stories that were impacting so many people across the country.
Candice Malcolm:And we were hearing the stories and we wanted to tell them, and so we started reporting on that, we started reporting on the freedom convoy and we just really kind of like double their audience during that period and picked up a whole bunch of people who who had never followed us before, and and it's kind of cool how you stumble upon an audience and then and then you learn from them, right, because if you're, if you're paying attention.
Candice Malcolm:You're reading your emails and you're reading your dms on twitter and you're reading your replies and kind of engaging with these people. We do a lot of events too, so it's great to meet people and get get out there in person. Uh, you know, they'll tell you what the issues that they feel are important in the country that are again being ignored by Legacy media. I I have a lot of critiques of the legacy media, but at the end of the day, I'm kind of grateful that they are the way they are, because it's crazy opportunities, uh, for someone like me probably someone like you too to just carve out your own niche, uh product and tell your own stories and not have to be like part of that but actually supplement it and provide a service to the so many Canadians who don't feel represented by whatever is happening over there.
Aaron Pete:Out of curiosity. You've described something and I think there's a few different angles to it. One of the concerns I regularly have for people who start their own thing is what's called audience capture, because as you try and figure out what your audience wants, you can get into the realm, like I can see when I post a podcast what people click for, and I'm always cognizant. I need to continue to do what I love, what I enjoy, the topics. They might not get the most views, but I need to continue to enjoy the process and have the conversations that might not get all the views but that nourish me and my intellect and my curiosity.
Aaron Pete:How do you make sure that you keep that balance? Because, on the one hand, you do need to have that grassroots approach where people are coming to you with the story you might not know about and they're like, hey, this thing's going on in my community. It's really getting me mad, and you're like, okay, maybe this is a story, but on the other hand, as you start to see, this is what clicks and views, this is what's getting more and more engagement and making sure that you don't just chase wherever the new topic is. That's getting that engagement. How do you find that balance?
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, that's a good problem to think about, because I know there's a lot of YouTubers that I know that they get a big account and then they have to kind of continue to do really click-baity things to get the views and they feel like they're kind of compromising. It's always a struggle, right. It's like sometimes there'll be an issue that will come up where I will just disagree with where my whole audience is. I don't know. Maybe like I'm trying to think of an example, or at least perceive it that way. Right, when the whole October 7th Israel thing happened, to me that's like a 9-11 level attack on an ally. And it's very clear to me I spent time in Israel, I've spent time in Palestine, I've spent a lot of time on the issue and I realize that not all my viewers will have that same perspective as I do, right, so maybe a lot of them will just not take it from the same perspective as I do. And then you read the comments, you know like, oh, people don't like that, they're calling me like a shill for Israel or whatever. And it's like, oh, you're already funded by Jews or whatever. And like sometimes you just have to ignore that right. And then sometimes you have to say, okay, you know, true North is a Canadian company and our focus needs to be on Canada. There always has to be a Canada angle. So, as much as like I would love to do like 10 podcasts in a row on Israel. It's like that's not what our audience comes to us for, so let's talk more about, like how it impacts Canada. Let's talk about these protests. Let's like bring it home right.
Candice Malcolm:So I don't think that's necessarily like changing your opinion, but there's been times in the past too, like I'll give you another example like when Donald Trump first came on the scene, I didn't like him at all, I was not interested in him and I thought that he was a snake of the salesman, basically. And I noticed that my audience did like him. Right, they did. And it almost made me like pause, because I think part of the reason that Trump became so successful in the United States is because he was tapping into something deeper and that the people in the sort of elite institutions and the mainstream positions couldn't see it. They didn't understand it and they initially just judged it as like very negative and wrote him off and called him all kinds of names, and that was part of what fueled him, because people were very like no, we take this person seriously, because he's talking about things that really matter to us and rather than just like your knee-jerk reaction, like he's a bigot and he's a, he's an evil, fascist, sort of it's like, well, why don't we take a minute to try to understand, like, why he's popular and why he won an election and who are these people that are supporting him and that process? Just trying to understand that is good, because then you, you understand a different element of your society, rather than just saying these people are full of hate and they're evil and they're wrong and I don't like them. Like now, let's try to understand, like, what it is that's motivating them and why they have come to this point where they're electing a person like this. That's so outside the realm of normal sort of political world.
Candice Malcolm:So I think it's good to take cues from your audience and listen.
Candice Malcolm:At the same time, you know you do it for yourself, right, and it's your job and it's your life, so you don't want to take positions that you don't believe in, you don't agree with. Like, like I said off the top, like our guiding principle is truth, right, so you want to find the truth. But I do think it's important to kind of keep an open mind and listen to your audience, like if everyone's everyone, if every single comment, your comment section, is saying one thing. You know they're all really concerned about the WF. Well, I think the WF is a joke and it's not. I don't take it that seriously, but they really care about it. So let's spend some time digging into it and understanding why they're so worked up about it, and then you realize that there is something there that is worth looking at and criticizing. So I am still sort of a big advocate of just sort of listening to the audience and finding out what it is that they want and seeing if there's anything there. Basically, Interesting.
Aaron Pete:One of the other challenges I'd say we've had since 2015 is so many of our metrics of where we say we are on the political spectrum has shifted. I do feel like people, if they listen or if I talk to them, they talk to me like I'm a conservative, but I would say that I am, and have always been, a liberal. But what it means to be a liberal in 2024 is a completely different thing than when I started becoming interested in the political process and what issues are and how to think about them. I do believe in social programs. I do believe that they play a role. I think they can absolutely go too far.
Aaron Pete:When I think about, specifically, serb and its impact, I look at the people who are most negatively impacted when government rolls out a lot of money are the people in poverty over the long term, because when inflation hits, they're the first to be impacted by inflation and start to see those negative impacts. So at the front end, we feel like we've benefited and over the next two to three years we experienced the consequences. So I have perspectives on these issues where I would say I lean more liberal. But I feel like that definition has changed and I'm just wondering from your perspective, where would you say you lie on that political spectrum and where does True North lie from your perspective?
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, it's interesting. I used to sort of play the game of like I'm the original liberal and the liberals aren't liberal, because I fundamentally believe in freedom from government. I don't think that government should be a core force in your life. I think that the most important institution, society, is a family, and that things should be taught by your parents, not by school systems. And I think I've kind of let that go because I don't think liberty in and of itself is enough. I think that you need to have morals and values and traditions to guide you, to build a strong society and to stabilize you. So I mean one of my rules of thumb if I have a problem or I don't know how to solve an issue, I think of I wonder what my grandparents would have done, or I wonder what my great grandparents would have done, and kind of like go back to the wisdom of the people who built the life that I am so lucky to enjoy. So, as far as the political spectrum, I mean, yeah, I'm more concerned. I don't agree with conservatives all the time, but definitely skeptical of the government, skeptical of big government programs, very, very, very skeptical of our current premise, for who I don't have a lot of respect for and don't take him very seriously at all. I think he's a very serious person and he's doing great harm to the country. And as far as true north goes, like I think that again back when I started it, we were kind of more like a conservative news outlet, like conservative opinion, conservative ideas. I don't think that you can really have like conservative news or liberal news, but we were doing the news that the liberal media wasn't doing and most journalists in Canada are liberals, like Big L liberals, almost all of them. The only ones that aren't are the ones that are NDP. And so the fact that there's a sort of void in the legacy media, that there aren't conservative voices, even in the national posts is run by liberal or people that are like mildly conservative but they apologize for their conservatism and they're embarrassed by it and they concede every issue to the liberals.
Candice Malcolm:But I think that, like I said during COVID, a lot of the people who came to us were not necessarily the ones that were identifying as conservatives. There were people that just felt excluded and left out and left behind. I think the Trucker Convoy was a great example of that. A lot of people that were going to Ottawa and protesting were not political people and they probably wouldn't have thought of themselves as conservatives. They just thought of themselves as outsiders, and I think one of the things we're trying to do at True North is use labels less and try to just appeal to people based on the content and the stories and let our work kind of speak for itself.
Candice Malcolm:So, but I think, generally speaking, the things that our society needs are more tradition, more order, more things that fall on the conservative side and away from the sort of like totally free libertine, like everything on a moral perspective and then on a kind of government perspective. I think that that basically, the liberals think that all we need is more government. That government can solve every single problem in our life and we just need the will to convince the people to basically concede, give away their individual power so that the government can step in and do more like free, like we're going to be in charge of grocery store distribution and you're going to have cheaper price of the grocery stores, and we're going to be in charge of healthcare, we're going to be in charge of dental programs, like taking away all of the things on the market side of the economy and turning them into government. I think that's like the last thing we need is more government. We need less government. We need government to get out of the way and so many aspects or so many things that prevent people from running a business or having a good life. It's like when we talk about cost of living all the time, it's like well, maybe if the government didn't take half your money, you'd have a little more money, right? Maybe if they didn't completely control the housing supply and how many houses are built and how a house can be built Like.
Candice Malcolm:My brother has a business where he kind of like a storage business and he has a bunch of facilities in East Vancouver and it's like the craziest thing. He'll buy a building or lease a building and try to get it, try to get the zoning change so that he can do what he wants, and it'll take like three years, four years, and he'll have beer crafts coming in and engineers coming in to try to like tell him he has to make changes. His ability is like why don't we just let businesses be businesses? Why don't people start businesses? Why do we have to have all these beer crafts like meddling in in every aspect? There's a reason why our economy is not growing. There's a reason why it's really expensive it's because we just have way too much government. So that's a very long answer, but basically I think that people who want less government tend to be more conservative.
Aaron Pete:Right. Would you mind telling us about two of your books Losing True North Justin Trudeau's Assault on Canadian Citizenship, and no Border Justin Trudeau's Assault on Canadian Border Security.
Candice Malcolm:Sure, yeah. Well, first I'll tell you about. My first book was Generation Screwed, and I wrote that just about millennials and how the math doesn't work for us. And then I wrote this book like 15 years ago now, maybe 10 years, no, 12 years ago now. And you know I should talk about more because so much of what I wrote about has come true and is coming true for us and it's like everything's stuck against us and we just give way too much control and power and money to the government is a disaster. So that kind of helped me get my calm in the Toronto Sun. That kind of launched my career writing. So I'm thankful for that opportunity. And then, losing True North, I wrote that book.
Candice Malcolm:It's actually an interesting story. My husband and I got married. We bought a townhouse together in downtown Toronto and this was in 2013. And then almost right away he started a business and his business took him to California and so he kind of like up and moved and took this opportunity and there was a while where I just didn't know what I was going to do. I was working at a TV station, I was writing for the Toronto Sun, I had a very like kind of Toronto based life and then he was over in the Silicon Valley and he was doing really cool things and he was having all these amazing opportunities and he was like living his kind of dream of what he wanted to do. But you know, we were a newlywed couple that was living in two different countries, on two different coasts, and so there was about like a six-month period where we were just apart and I didn't know exactly what for my career, like where I was going to live, and so I just, you know, I didn't have a. I had, I think, but free time.
Candice Malcolm:So I wrote, I wrote a book and it was just when Justin Trudeau was first selected and I didn't like the things that he was saying about immigration and I didn't feel like he was being held accountable in any meaningful way and I was had a lot of concerns. I was doing a lot of reporting on a lot of the problems that came to a Syrian refugee policy, and so I just wrote a book about what I thought Canada needed in an immigration policy and that kind of helped launch True North, the first iteration, when it was a think tank, and it was incredibly well sold, like the book sold tens of thousands of copies, like it made us a lot of money and we self-published it. So it was. It was like a huge, a huge okay, there's a big audience for this. This is a great way to like kind of entrepreneurial, like writing my own book on the side and using that as a way to make some money. And the concepts were really what people wanted to hear and it was fresh because no one was writing about it. So that was that kind of helped me launch True North.
Candice Malcolm:And then the reason I wrote Nologa was just kind of a follow-up or sorry, no logo, no border was a follow-up because it was like two or three years into Justin Trudeau's prime ministership and all of a sudden Canada was dealing with this crazy problem of illegal immigration, which has never been a problem in Canada before, and I kind of analyzed the laws that he had changed, the way that he was enforcing the border, what was happening in Roxham Road. I went down to Roxham Road in upstate New York, on the border near Montreal in Quebec, and saw it from my own eyes, interviewed people, documented what I saw and kind of wrote the follow-up of. Like you know, canada is not a country that should have to deal with this problem of not knowing who's coming and going from our country, and a lot of these people aren't the kind of people that we would allow. They would be inadmissible. So what's the point of having immigration laws and having rules about who can come and go if you're not enforcing them? And that was a time it is interesting.
Candice Malcolm:I really should write another book, because the problem has just absolutely proliferated post -COVID, like kind of went away during COVID and so it's like, if you look at the number of illegal immigration, apprehensions or people coming in, just kind of completely disappeared in 2020, 2021. And now it's like back and higher than ever over the last two years. So, yes, it's interesting. It's one of those topics that not a lot of people write about. You don't really hear about it in the news, but people are really interested. Like when you write about it, your stuff will go viral and like people will buy your book and people will read your essays and people watch your videos because they're interested, they're like what is happening. And yeah, you find kind of like interesting to see the kind of people who are interested in that kind of story, because it might not be the same as your normal audience again.
Aaron Pete:So I have to ask do you attribute intent to Mr Trudeau? Do you think that some of these policies are just mistaken, that he just makes a bad call? Do you think that there's a plan? By like? What do you attribute when you look at the policies that you disagree with? Like he comes into office early on. Do you think he knows the consequences of his actions? Do you think he knows the mistakes or the fallout that's going to occur? Do you think that he's a thoughtful person? You mentioned earlier that you don't really respect him. Do you think you could you sit down with him and you really try and understand his philosophy? What's going on behind the scenes? Where do you think you get in that conversation?
Candice Malcolm:No, I don't think there's any point in talking to him. I don't think there's any point in listening to him. I don't think that anything he says is true or thoughtful or sincere. I think that he's like he's an actor playing a role and he fundamentally he's not a thoughtful person. I think he kind of has like the knee-jerk liberal reaction to everything and he's manga about it.
Candice Malcolm:So he thinks that he's smarter than you and he thinks that he's better than you because he has his enlightened left-wing views and he has this like French pedigree and and really he doesn't have a lot of respect for the Canadian people. When I hear him talk, I just think he's full of it, that he's just he's delivering talking points. I mean, if you've ever seen the guy in the House of Commons when conservatives are trying to hold him accountable and you see how he will say the exact same words over and over and over again? I don't know if you've ever seen this, but he's done this in the House of Commons from the time he got elected, where there will be pressing him on a scandal and he will literally just say the exact same thing over and over and over again. He'll do it to the media as well. It's so disrespectful.
Aaron Pete:I mean it's fair to say that Pierre does the exact same thing, bring it home Like he's got his slogans and his lines just as much as Mr Trudeau does, and Mr Trudeau's in power, so he should be held accountable and he should try and answer questions. But politicians in general are bad for coming out with lines and not having a conversation like we're having, where we kind of get into the issues and try and have a meaningful conversation.
Candice Malcolm:Fair, yes, conservative, sorry. Politicians are like I would never be a politician because I can't do that. I can't just lie and say the same thing over and over again and I don't like that. Sometimes I'll have a debate with a friend or with my husband over, you know, whether Pierre Polly of is a force for good for the things that we believe in, and sometimes it's disheartening because you'll have to say something and you're like I don't know if he agrees with that or if he's just saying that because he's a politician and he has to say that. And then I completely agree that they do that and that they all have their talking points and that they're. They have their slogans and that's part of the game.
Candice Malcolm:But what I'm talking about and maybe you've not seen this phenomenon is that they will ask Justin Trudeau the same question 14 times in House of Commons and he will literally say the exact same thing. He will say the exact same 20 words in response. It doesn't matter what, the way they ask the question. Let's reframe it, let's ask it a different way and he'll be like like many Canadians, I spent the Christmas holiday with friends and it's like well, do you think it's right that you went to Jamaica and that you did this. Was it out of touch, justin Trudeau? Like many Canadians, I spent Christmas holiday with friends and it's like and he'll do it over and, over and over again. It's like are you kidding me? Are you serious? Like this is how you're going to engage in a conversation. I've never seen a politician, any stripe, any party, any country. I've never seen them show that level of disrespect, where they won't engage, they won't actually listen to the question, they won't even come up with a slightly different variation of a way to say it. They will literally just say the exact same thing until you shut up and move on to the next topic. And I think that that shows such a level of disrespect to the person asking the question, whether it's a reporter or an opposition parliamentarian, and, deeper, it shows such a level of disrespect to the Canadian public. And maybe you don't see it because they'll just clip him. And if you just see the clip, they're like oh well, whatever he answered the question, it's like no, he really didn't. Right and and and. Like you know, trying politicians play a role and he doesn't want to say anything that will get him into trouble and he holds a party line and he has all the people around him terrified and no one speaks out, no one criticizes him, and if they ever do, it becomes a big scandal. Like, oh my gosh, this liberal MP said this thing. And like let's all hold that liberal MP to account. How dare you criticize the prime minister? And then let's move on.
Candice Malcolm:It's like you know the amount of disrespect that you showed to so many different groups of Canadians over the years and like, no, I never, I, never, I never expect a level of accountability from Trudeau. I don't think he's capable of it. When I hear him on TV or I hear him on the radio, I, I, I, I baffled. The Canadians take him seriously, seriously. I, I just I think that he is one of the most arrogant, superficial people that I've ever had the experience of interacting with and I think he's been like a long time. Look, I've known, I've known the guy for a long time. He was a, he was actually a teacher at my brother's high school when we were teenagers and I had the exact same opinion of him back then when I was a teenager. Like I thought he was a superficial snake and like he hasn't changed. So it's like, yeah, that's who he is. He kind of looks like a movie star and he came to power with these like grandiose ideological ideas about how Canada could be better. And people bought into that dream and that idea and he was always kind of like shoving the celebrity part down our face.
Candice Malcolm:Like why do you have 50% women in your cabinet? Because it's 2015. Like that's not an answer, right, it's like we're trying to wonder, we're wondering like why did you elevate a lot of these women that don't only have experience, but just because they checked a box or they? You know it looks good to have 50% women, 50% men and a lot of people just soon over that, like oh, it's progress, oh, it's amazing. You know, there's a lot of us that are just sort of more skeptical about that. Like no, we live in a meritocracy and if 20, 22% of your MPs are women but then you're making 50% of the cabinet, that means you're promoting a lot of people superficially, not based on their experience, but just based on their gender. Is that really the best way to organize a government?
Candice Malcolm:And he never really had to answer for that. The result was that he had a lot of very incompetent female cabinet ministers who failed, who went up in smoke. He threw them under the bus and they're long gone now and it's like he only ever get the credit for that. He never had to be held accountable because the people around him not just like his own staff and his own people, but, you know, the liberal establishment around him, the media that were just so moved by him and so touched by him and loved the idea of a feminist prime minister. They just accepted it and went along with it and it's like you know, now it's been eight years and a lot of people can see through it and they're like, well, they're not really that feminist.
Candice Malcolm:Like, look at the way they keep throwing female cabinet ministers under the bus and completely disrespecting them and look at all the hypocrisy around their policy when it comes to you know, they say that they again, they're feminists and that everything they do leads to feminism, but then they also refuse to say women, like one of their MPs was giving a speech in the House of Commons about people who are men, straight and people who have babies, people who are pregnant. It's like they won't even say the worst woman. It's such a far. So again, I mean we could spend a lot of time analyzing Justin Trudeau and his personality, but I just think he's one of the worst people to ever lead a country.
Aaron Pete:The only part that I want to push back on a little bit is the whole. The reason I asked the question was because I actually think it would be incredibly interesting to see a person like yourself sit down with him. I saw, I watched all of the interviews he did with CBC CTV, like the various pundits that did it around the Christmas season, and I thought they did a good job. I think they did do some pushback on like hey, look at the economy. Hey, look at the likelihood of getting housing. Hey, look at these issues. How do you feel?
Aaron Pete:And I agree with you no, sincerity in the answer. No, hey, you know what? Maybe we could have gotten started on housing sooner. Hey, maybe we should have done A, b or C better. Maybe we made some mistakes we could do better. None of that. Maybe it would be so interesting to see a person like yourself, who's really able to dive into the issues, sit down with him and watch him perhaps blunder that interview or just see him put under a fire, where all of those people are maybe worried about growing within their organization, they're worried about coming across as professional, they're worried about not pushing too hard. A person like yourself sitting down, I just feel like as a as a viewer, I'd be very interested in someone who has all of this deep analysis, who's written two books on his immigration work. Sit down with him and really just try and get an answer beyond the superficial. And he might not give that, but that would even be more fascinating to me, to see that kind of back and forth.
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, and look back in back when Justin Trudeau first came on to the political scene as liberal leader, I tried, I tried to interview him. I reached out, I asked for interviews when I worked at Sun News sometimes not me personally, but some of my colleagues would have to like follow him in an event and try to ask him questions, but he's never been one to take questions from opposition minded people. He would never sit down with someone. I mean and I you know I don't want to sound like too jaded and cynical, like I would never even bother talking to him. Yeah, if they called me up and they were like, hey, candice, do you want to interview the Prime Minister? I'd be like, yes, I'd get on a plane like in a few hours and I would go in and I would interview him and it would be great, I would appreciate the opportunity, but I don't think he would ever do it. And I'll give you an example In the 2019 election, we tried to put a journalist, a true North journalist, onto the liberal campaign to be embedded.
Candice Malcolm:So during an election, media companies can pay money. Have a journalist that goes along on the campaign trail with a party, so you pay like $20,000 and they get to go on the plane or they get to go on the bus and they get all the access to go to every event and they cover the campaign that way. And it was like the first time I ever. I mean, true North was pretty new at that point, but the people that I had working for me were established legacy media means for media, journalists, people who had experience working at global and post media and all these like and true to this people just said like, absolutely not, you're not allowed, you're not allowed at our events and we'll kick you out and we'll have the police and like you can't come.
Candice Malcolm:And I got in my car and I drove to Hamilton to meet with his press secretary because I was like what do you mean? We can't come cover the event. We're journalists and this is Canada, it's free country. Like let us in. He just kind of gave us like a sneaky, smarmy answer like well, you know, you guys are conservative or whatever. And it's like you know what you let. You let a journalist from, like the national observer, which is a very known left wing. Oh, you let them on. Like what's the difference? Why can't you let someone who's more like on the political right and they didn't have a good answer and it just became pretty evident to me that they didn't have respect for journalists unless they were willing to throw the party line, like I said, like are you worried about that at all with Pierre Polyev?
Aaron Pete:because he has been pretty against doing things uniquely in the very opposite direction with more smaller organizations that are willing to interview him, but he has not been as interested in doing the, I would say, maybe a legacy media approach and he's been kind of accused of the same thing, but just almost in the exact reverse.
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, I think it's a taste of the remodest and I'm not going to sit here and just demand like principle all around. I think that the way that the contempt that the legacy media has for conservatives not just conservative politicians, but conservative people, conservative outlets like the way that they treat the rebel news, like they'll go to press conference and the Trudeau thugs will kick out the rebel reporter and the rest of journalists will just be like oh good, okay, good, it's like you know you don't have some fundamental principle where you believe in journalism for a democracy. You don't care, you're like well, they're a rebel, I don't care about that. I feel like I'm not going to turn around all of a sudden.
Aaron Pete:But you're doing the same thing in the reverse.
Candice Malcolm:Yeah Well they.
Aaron Pete:You're playing the same thing in reverse, which is just going to perpetuate the same problem.
Candice Malcolm:No, I'm saying that for like 40 years, the mainstream media has shown derision and has absolutely ruined the lives of so many conservative politicians by just being absolutely cruel and like tormenting them. And for a conservative politician to finally stand up to those people in the media who have a tremendous amount of power, right, like that whole thing. When Pierre Polyev smacked down that Canadian press reporter and just said you know what you're saying isn't true, I said this what you're saying is wrong, stop trying to drum up a scandal. And everyone made it like a huge deal, like, oh, this is a person of power going after someone smaller than them. It's like, no, these politicians wielded sorry, these reporters wield the great deal of power and they use that power to smear conservatives, and we see it during every single election. And so if you finally have a politician on the conservative side willing to stand up and just say no, actually you're wrong, what you're saying is lying, you're not true, like this is fake, I'm going to, I'm going to stand up to you and I'm going to say that, like I think all the power to that politician, like Canadians can judge them and view them how they will. And obviously I think journalism is an important foundation of a democracy and of a free society. But from my perspective, erin, I've watched like liberals manipulate this process, manipulate the media for so long and use it as a tool. A part of the liberal party.
Candice Malcolm:Like next time there's an election, watch it, follow it, see how, whatever the liberal talking point of the day, the mainstream media turns into the narrative of that day. Like, oh, we're all going to attack Andrew Scheer now because he said he was an accountant, but he actually had this different qualification that means that he wasn't a full accountant. We're going to spend four days of the campaign drilling in on whether Andrew Scheer was actually an accountant. It's like, is that really the issue that Canadians care about? That's going to impact like the country. Instead of like talking about the millions of scandals surrounding the liberal government, the media obsesses over whether Andrew Scheer, what his Catholic beliefs are around, sin. Like we're going to focus on that. It's like whatever the liberals want, the mainstream media will just like pounce on that.
Candice Malcolm:And we're getting to a point now where people just don't trust the media. They don't want that. They don't like it. The media has less power now than they've ever had. There's a lot.
Candice Malcolm:There's so many podcasts out there that get just as many, if not more, views than the CBC, and so it's like, at the end of the day, it's up to Pierre Polly of which podcasts he wants to do. If he wants to be disrespectful to the CBC and say, look, if I win, I'm not going to fund you guys anymore. I mean, that's just prerogative right. That's the politician he can do that Canadians can judge him and say, well, I don't like the fact that he's mean to the CBC so I'm not going to vote for him. But for every Canadian that makes that judgment call, there might be another Canadian that says you know what I like the fact that Pierre Polly of went on a two hour podcast with Jordan Peterson and had a real conversation in a down to earth way and talked about things that were broader than just talking points in politics. They had a conversation about life and meaning and philosophy and a lot of people will really appreciate it. They'll get a lot more from an in-depth sit down conversation with Polly of than they will with these end of year interviews that you're talking about.
Candice Malcolm:That are like 10 minutes, highly scripted. You could tell exactly what's going to happen before they're written. They all ask the same questions. They all focus on the same topics that are probably not the same topics that you're talking about with your family around the dinner table, about what really matters in your community, but the media have decided that those are the important questions, and they're all based on Trudeau's agenda. They're all based on the things that he wants to talk about, and that's the way it goes.
Candice Malcolm:I think landscape is changing and so, just to go back to I know you're trying to push me in and get me to admit that somehow there's a contradiction between the fact that Trudeau is being disrespectful to the mainstream or, sorry, that Polly of is being disrespectful to the mainstream media in the same way that Trudeau was disrespectful to the alternative or the independent media.
Candice Malcolm:It's like, well, one of these groups has all the power, right? The legacy media is incredibly powerful and so the fact that Polly of is threatening that power that's part of Polly, of his political brand, right? It's like I'm going to go after these gatekeepers. There's like a handful of people in society that have a lot of power and I don't think that's right, so I'm going to go after them, I'm going to challenge them. He obviously still does interviews with them, like he's still there, he's talking to them, he's not completely ignoring them, he's not having them arrested the same way that Trudeau is having Andrew Lawton arrested, my journalist he said David Menzee's arrested like 10 times over at the rebel. Like I think there's a difference in kind between what's happening and I mean I don't know if you want to keep talking about this, we can, but I just I think it's good that Pierre is pushing back against legacy media.
Aaron Pete:Sorry, I apologize. I'm not trying to encourage any sort of contradiction. What I guess my perspective is more that when I think of I watched that Jordan Peterson, pierre Polly of video with great excitement because I was interested in what was going to come out of that and I think, if you agree with everything, that they think that was a good interview my frustration is the thing I actually admire about Pierre is he's willing to take it to people. He's been described as a bulldog. He's been described as somebody who's willing to take it to people, yet he doesn't do that and I would want to see him go into the fire, do a long form CBC interview with the exact organization he wants to take away and discuss defunding the CBC with a CBC journalist about how that process would look and why he's warranted and doing that, and bringing their best reporter, bringing in the person with all the statistics and let him go toe to toe with the best of them. And I don't say that because I get. If you look at it through a conservative, liberal lens, you would have this. Well, 40 years the conservatives had this happen to them because of the liberals. I personally don't care about that. What I want to see in an ideal Canada is that my leader is the person who's willing to speak with anyone about anything and stand by their principles no matter what, and seeing Pierre repeat some of the same things in the reverse is just frustrating, because it feels like that's going to be a liberal talking point. That's the CBC's talking point now. Oh, he's not willing to do that, and so Justin Trudeau is encouraged to do exactly what he's doing, because Pierre is doing the exact thing in the opposite direction.
Aaron Pete:And I, just when I put my ballot in, I have the same concerns as you when I think about did he say that? Did he mean it? Is he changing his look because he wants to? Is he doing it for the votes? Is that? Is that what we want to see Like? I get very idealistic when I start thinking about politics that I just want the best person, the most admirable individual, to lead our country and to go and sit down in conversations, and when I see him choosing to do this, I get, from a political perspective, how it might gain support. But personally, I just want to see that person be admirable and go into the exact situations he's put Justin Trudeau in, grilling him about how he approached the S&C, lavalin scandal and all of those things. I want him to be able to take that back and go hey, I can dish it out, but I can take it too. And that's the only fear that I have around this whole concept around how he's not doing those interviews. I would just see that as personally admirable.
Candice Malcolm:Well, like, okay, there's a video that went viral that he was out in Kelowna, I think, and he was on an Apple or a chart and he was getting we're talking about Pure Poly of here. You know, there was a reporter that was like you know, you're taking a page from the Trump playbook and he's like what are you talking about? What playbook, what page? Right, and it's like we do see those interviews, we see those advertisements, that's not a real hard like.
Aaron Pete:that's not you If you sat down with Justin Trudeau pushing him. This is a guy who clearly knew nothing, like the ones that go viral, for Pierre are thoughtless, like morons asking a question that they don't actually understand. Asking it it's not the best of the creme de la creme asking him a tough question, being able to really dissect it and break it down. I watch a lot of the UFC and Dana White does the same thing. He'll interview somebody and somebody will ask some thoughtless question about his thoughts on LGBTQ people and he'll give like a smirky answer that goes viral but it's not actually like a thoughtful like okay, break down, how would we do this with the CBC? Or how are we going to cut that red tape? Really break it down.
Aaron Pete:For me, like he doesn't do that same where it's like with somebody who disagrees with him really going through it. Those are easy clickbait kind of videos that I like. I think it's kind of cool to see somebody eating an apple, destroying somebody, but it's not in depth. I just saw Ben Shapiro do an interview with Destiny and it was like a thoughtful, thorough interview where they disagreed on some things and that's. I don't think those easy ones, where it's eating an apple, are examples of him being truly grilled by somebody.
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, but, like the point that we were talking about earlier is that he's not willing to do the interviews, but I think he is willing, like the fact that we see him at press conferences getting scrummed by the media. I mean, those are that's who they're sending right, those who the media organizations are sending those to. So if they can come up with a better journalist, that can come. I mean, if you have someone in mind that you say, like there's a really smart liberal journalist out there who has a podcast, who's like really thought things through, I want to see that person interview. Pierre Polly of like I don't know Pierre that well. I've interviewed him a few times on my show and let me tell you, when I have him on my show, I don't ask him easy questions. I really push him on the things that I disagree with him on and then I give him a platform to talk about the things that I think that he's doing a good job with. So it's not necessarily an adversarial interview but it's an in-depth interview. You know he was on my show. I think we talked for over an hour and I think that that's something that I really like about Pierre. Previous conservative leaders haven't done that with me. I don't think a lot of politicians feel comfortable. Pierre is unique in that way, but I'll just give you an example Erin, the previous leader of the conservative party, erin O'Toole.
Candice Malcolm:He did a podcast with the CBC, did like a 20 minute interview and there was a section where they were talking about defunding and Erin O'Toole talked about why he believed that the CBC was beyond its mandate and that it shouldn't get the funding. And the CBC edited that out. They cut it out. So they put the interview on their website, but they cut out that five minute part. Like we're not dealing with an honest actor here. We're not dealing with like, like, like. If I watched this interview that we're doing right now and I think it's like deceptively edited, I would be like really surprised because I'd be like that's like a low thing to do, right, you just assume you're doing a podcast, you're interviewing an interview, they're gonna put it all up and I think they do.
Aaron Pete:It's all gonna be up, I promise.
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, exactly, I know, because that's like how normal people operate. I mean like normal people just do what they say they're gonna do and they try to be good, honorable people. And the fact that the CBC did that I'm not saying it was the journalist who conducted the interviews for all. It was probably some editor or some executive or some person that was like nope, that's not part of our programming and we're not gonna allow that rationale to be out there. We don't want to be a platform for someone who's going to say that we shouldn't get this money and so they just cut it out and it's like, well, when you're doing that, you're not really doing things in the interest of the public anymore. You're doing things in the interest of the CBC. And I think that you know you say like, oh, I don't care about the 40 year history of them being unfair to conservatives. It's like, well, that's fine, but there are certain things that have happened that lead to you being skeptical or you being cynical or you saying you know, I'm not gonna sit down with the CBC because I know you guys and I know what you're gonna do, and I'm not speaking for Pierre. I think that he should do as many interviews as possible and that he should, you know, try to put himself out there in a way that Canadians can see that he's different than Trudeau, in that he's not just like a superficial career politician, that he has some substance and he's thought things through and that he will do a good job. And that's part of what he's out there doing right now. It's like a two year job interview, right? He's auditioning for the role of prime minister and Canadians have a lot of time to look at him and decide whether or not he has the character and he has the traits that we want to lead.
Candice Malcolm:I think that we're at a point where a lot of people are just completely exhausted with Trudeau. I can't imagine Trudeau going forward. So you know, it's good that we have an alternative. I don't think he's perfect. There's a lot of things I disagree with him on, but I think that when it comes to his style and his combativeness and his willingness to, you know, tell someone that they're wrong, that's almost like unique in Canada, because we're in a polite society and we're so timid and usually it's all about conventions and politeness and you don't see a politician doing that. You never saw the previous leader, aaron O'Toole, or Aaron Andrew Scheer before him, or even really Stephen Harper. You didn't see them really calling. You know, calling us bait, us bait, whereas you know Pierre is doing that, and it's sort of refreshing from my perspective.
Aaron Pete:I agree this interview is going longer because your answers are so thoughtful and, like, I find it so interesting to get your perspectives on things, and you're saying a lot of the things that I agree with, so it's very interesting to get this. The last topic that I do want to cover, and it's a sensitive one, so I want to be careful on how I approach this, but I think one of the responsibilities of journalists is to cover topics that are uncomfortable, that aren't always popular, that people don't always want to hear, but I think they need to be done sensitively, understanding context. One of the areas that True North has covered is Indian residential schools and what's gone on, and some op-eds have been going in, and so I'm just wondering about the coverage of those topics, what your thoughts are on that and how we kind of have this conversation.
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, sure, I appreciate it and it's definitely a sensitive topic, just because I think that there's like an elephant in the room and there's a problem in our society when it comes to how Canada has, historically and systematically I don't want to say dealt with but the relationship that they have with the native people in Canada, people who were here before the Europeans came, the Brits came and developed a country, and I think that there's like a much, much, much deeper problem with the way that our government has created. Like there's a broad problem and we can get into that for sure. But when it comes to the issue of residential schools and the unmarked grave story that came out, look again, I'm a journalist and I treat things with like a great deal of skepticism. I pay close attention to the news, so I read the news every day, I read every outlet, basically like front to cover, front to back. I like to see what's out there.
Candice Malcolm:And so when the story first broke of the 215 unmarked graves that were discovered in Kamloops, I read the story like 25 times and, as a journalist, I went to the original source. It's like it was a CBC story and I'm like where is this coming from? Because the story didn't make sense to me the way I read it. It was basically like this tribe put out a press release and this is what the press release claims and there was no deeper questioning about it. It was just like this happened, this is what they said. And here we go. And so I went and I read the original press release and I tried to figure out, like what evidence do they have? Like they're coming out and they're saying that they discovered 215 bodies, basically, and they're saying that their children as young as two. But like what is the evidence here? Like what prompted this press release? Like why is it? And it's like, okay, they use something called ground penetrating radar and they found disturbances, approximately 215 disturbances. And so I'm just trying to like make sense of the story.
Candice Malcolm:And then all of a sudden I start looking at like the international reaction and the national reaction in Canada and it was like it was just so mismatched. It was like I was like am I losing my sense of sanity here? Because I started looking into sort of talking to other professors who understood this ground penetrating radar and what it is and what it does. The purpose of the technology is to discover abandoned like oil wells so that they can reclaim them. So it's a really rudimentary technology. Anyway, all of a sudden the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and CNN are saying that can't commit genocide and that there's mass graves and there's hundreds of children discovered and the bodies were exhumed, and that they have evidence and proof. And it's like, well, that's not what the First Nations saying. The First Nation is just saying that they have preliminary evidence and there's no report yet and the report is coming out like in six months.
Candice Malcolm:So it just seemed to me that there was like a total mismatch between the information that we had that was confirmed, and the narrative and the story. And then all of a sudden you had all this contrition and all these grieving people and I think that's what came from like the broader issue, the deeper issue in Canada, of like how Canada has had the relationship that it's had with the native people of this land, that basically Canadians just feel really bad about the situation and they're willing to accept anything, anything that said like okay, your government was evil, this program was awful, it was basically concentration camps and you committed genocide, and it's like that accusation is not backed up by history, by records, by any previous truth and reconciliation commission or any data that we have out there. But Canadians are kind of like willing to accept it because they just feel awful about our history and what's happening. And I just I just thought, okay, it's important to correct the record and have the truth out there. Like there were no bodies that were discovered Maybe there will be, but like there's no. There's no missing children, there's no.
Candice Malcolm:If there were children that were murdered at residential schools, we would know about it, we would have their names, who would have their records, who would have their birth records, and so the whole story just kind of got taken away. And so, you know, at first we were super like, careful and sensitive and I understand that's a very sensitive topic. I also just think it's bad for people to believe something that's not true. It's not a good thing for First Nations children to grow up in Canada believing that they were the victim of a genocide. If it's not true, believe that they were sent off to schools to get murdered and that, like, priests and teachers were killing children and then burying them in the middle of the night. Like that story is just so, it's wild, it's so and it's so emotionally driven.
Candice Malcolm:And you know, if there's evidence of it, it turns out that that is what happened and we should know that and that should be part of our recorded history. But, like one news report in the middle of the summer with an accusation in a press release, doesn't change like all of the recorded history that we have. And so you know, like I said at first, we just wrote a story here and there questioning like well, this is what we know so far, this is what's been verified. There's no mass graves, right, there's no bodies that have been uncovered. There's been new excavations.
Candice Malcolm:And then, after we started writing that, we attracted some sort of like more academic people, like university professors, historians, people who really knew the issue deeply, and we just published a book called Grave Error, which is a compilation of essays from these professors who sort of look at the records, the records of enrollment in these schools. They look at the number of children who did sadly die during their time at residential schools, the cause of death, the reason that you know we have the records. It's not like it's just like a big black hole mystery, like we know how many kids were died at school, we know their cause of death. And, yeah, just looking at the actual policy of residential schools, like, for instance, it was never compulsory, it was never mandatory At most maybe a quarter of First Nations children who ever went to these schools. So just sort of bringing some facts into the story.
Candice Malcolm:And I obviously want to preface this all, erin, by saying that obviously there's a problem in Canada.
Candice Malcolm:Like I grew up in Vancouver and went to high school in Campbell River and there's a couple of native reserves in Campbell River and you know, it was kind of shocking to me to see how like different it was that there was like a high school where like half the kids lived in Campbell River and the other half lived on native reserves and then they came into Campbell River.
Candice Malcolm:Like the difference between the native reserves and the kids that lived in Campbell River, like it. Just it still strikes me as odd that we have this kind of like segregated system and I think that there's a lot of problems in it and I think that the Canadian government made a lot of mistakes along the way. I mean the conversation we were having earlier about how government creates more problems and it solves more government problems and more social programs, and social programs usually don't actually help the people that they intend to help, they actually hurt them. This is all kind of like part of my criticism of having a big, strong federal government, a big liberal government, but when it comes to that story of the unmarked graves, just frankly isn't true.
Aaron Pete:To pull this back, though. A lack of evidence is an evidence itself and, to the point of like, the impact of that story it and the 215 has resulted in a significant amount of funding, and I'm in the Stolo territory and our area has received funding to do that research, to go through the areas where they believe there may be unmarked graves, so there could be more information coming as a consequence of a story that might not have been aired exactly, accurately to your point. But there may be benefits for the communities because if nobody knew, there wouldn't be a lot of funding to look into this. Now, because it's a national conversation, there's funding available to do the research we need to do.
Candice Malcolm:But do you think? I mean, I'm sorry, are you gonna find something Like there's funding in your area to try to find bodies of kids that may have been killed in these residential schools? Like, do you have the names of the kids that are missing? Like, what kids are you looking for?
Aaron Pete:The concern that I would have is when you point to records and the individual, rodney Clifton, who wrote the article, was like, well, why isn't there any chief in council who've come forward with requests? Well, like I'm on council for my community, we are two years behind on our audits. We're trying to figure out how to address our housing issues. Like we are not sitting in a room like, hey, what should we draft a BCR, a band council resolution, about? Today we are working to address so many issues and we're treated like a municipality with very little funding. And so when he made that comment it was like maybe you don't understand how band councils work, but most of the time we're behind and overwhelmed with all the problems that we're trying to deal with. And so to the point of like which kids we're talking about over a hundred years.
Aaron Pete:So certainly some of those records A could be falsified. B, not everybody may have been documented. And C, if a child did pass away, the fact that they could falsify those records or not have documented some people coming into those schools to begin with would be some of the problems with the claims that there's no evidence for these children and so many of the parents again being a sensitive topic, they had no faith that anybody would care. There was a well understanding, even locally, that if the Indian agent said something you did it, and if you didn't you had a problem. We have spots in the lower mainland where indigenous people were hanged, and so the power imbalance during that period would not have led people to rush in and go.
Aaron Pete:Oh, I'm sure journalists care about what our circumstances are. For so many Canadians they had no idea Indian residential schools even existed and that's now being taught. But to think that anybody cared about these problems 50 years ago, 100 years ago, is kind of foolhardy. So when I saw that it was like, well, maybe we're not putting ourselves into the context of what those times may have had on people.
Candice Malcolm:But you're conflating times too, right? Like when you're talking about how there were first nations or natives that were hung in the lower mainland, like I'm sure. I mean, do you know the dates that happened? My guess is it was in the 1800s. Like when we're talking about residential schools most of them opened like inner war period, like we're talking about like the 30s to the 60s, right, or maybe the 20s to the 60s. First of all, the 20s were a time when the Spanish plague was killed. A quarter of the globe population, right. Like the average one in four children were surviving to the age of 18, right. So like people just died a lot more frequently back then. But To which?
Aaron Pete:people celebrated Joseph Trutch within our region. He said the extinction of indigenous people will come at the consequence of many of these diseases, so they're not a problem to worry about, which is why he downsized Indian reserves, which Douglas gave anticipatory reserves to. So the kind of overall ethos during that period was that all these people are gonna die anyway, so we don't have to worry about them. So it wasn't like there was a lot of love for indigenous people during some of the periods we're talking about.
Candice Malcolm:Well, okay, so I was talking about in an entire population, not just first nations. Like everyone was dying from the black plague, right, people were dying, and I'm sure you can find awful quotes because it was a different time when people had different views. I'm sure you could find quotes from first nations saying awful horrible racist things about white people too, and you can find awful horrible quotes about white people Like I don't think that the two sides had the best relations back then, and I think that-, but one had all the power and one had none of the power.
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, there's definitely like regrettable circumstances.
Candice Malcolm:But, aaron, I'm talking about like the fact that there's claims that there were hundreds of children that were murdered in these schools but that we don't know the names of those kids, like we don't know who they are.
Candice Malcolm:Like I mean, I'm saying this as a mother, like if I send my kids off to school and they don't come home, like I'm not just gonna say like, oh well, oh well, no one cares anyway, so I'm just gonna, I'm not gonna talk about it, I'm just gonna go along Like if something happens to your children, you're gonna let it know, even if it's just in your community. Like you're gonna have a record that your child died at a school. Like, even if it's just that you keep that record in your community. Maybe you don't go tell the white sheriff down the street because you don't trust him. But the idea that there's just all of these children that were murdered by nuns and priests and teachers, like you say, like a lack of an evidence is an evidence. That's a pretty, that's one of the worst accusations that you can level against another human being.
Aaron Pete:But it's not against a mass scale, it's against a broader system. Right, it's not one. I'm not saying this guy was responsible, which, to your point, would be incredibly disrespectful. It's that the system would have caused these deaths, these people working within the system. I actually have a lot of sympathy for the individuals who worked with them. We do know that many of the people who wanted to work in Indian residential schools over the past 100 years were not the most well-intentioned individuals, that going up into the middle of nowhere and working with kids was not something many people wanted to do, and some of them had perverse incentives, dark incentives and harmful ideas on what they would be able to do if they ran.
Candice Malcolm:So like a bunch of, so the government recruited a bunch of murderers to go off and like kill kids, like. I just am trying to understand the accusation because, again, like because we're writing well, this is a super controversial topic. I've heard from a lot of Canadians. I really respect what you're saying and I'm happy to continue this conversation as long as you want, cause I think I can learn from you in this instance, cause you're a lot more connected to it than I. But I've heard from people who say, you know, there was an Indian residential school in my community and they got more money than the public schools or the Catholic schools and they had more resources and they had better teachers and they had nicer buildings. And I've talked to people who were graduates of these residential schools and they say that it changed their life and it made them on a better path towards succeeding in a modern economy.
Candice Malcolm:So like there's two sides to it, right, it's like I'm sure a lot of people went to school and had a miserable experience and they were homesick and they were sad. A lot of people really wanted their children to attend these schools because they saw it as an opportunity for betterment. Like I said, the schools weren't compulsory, they weren't mandatory, they weren't going and scooping people up from their house, despite there's a sort of a thought that that was happening, that the Canadian police were going door to door and scooping kids up and taking them to these schools. That's a myth, as far as I can understand. People wanted the schools and sure, like in any environment, there's gonna be an abuse of power. There was abuse and there was horrible, unspeakable abuse and it's tragic and anyone who was involved in that should be held accountable. There's a reason we got rid of this program. It obviously failed. It didn't work, although some people did benefit from it.
Aaron Pete:But fair to say that churches have had a system to protect their own, not just with indigenous people, but there's documentaries about how they've moved people around to avoid the exact accountability that you're describing.
Candice Malcolm:What? What church is?
Aaron Pete:there, there's man off the top of my head. There's a Netflix documentary called like mother Something, and she was a nun and she worked within the system and in the. Us. Okay and that she was murdered and that a few of her colleagues were murdered and that the priest they have Documentation that he was committing these atrocities. They have documentation that church is new and that they were deliberately moving him around. I can't remember the name of the documentary off the top of my head, but like this is a controversial that this has happened.
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, I think that that there's been abuses in power and, and they used to happen at churches and, and now they happen in other places. I just think, I just think we should be careful about clinging and jumping to this narrative like I mean, for you as a I don't know, your, your first, your native, your first nations, yes.
Aaron Pete:Yeah, from the Chihuahua first nation.
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, okay, sorry, I don't want to like miss label you because I in Kemble River, all my friends who are native, they would call themselves native or I'm fine with that term.
Aaron Pete:I'm also against the, the political correct nature of like I don't care you.
Candice Malcolm:I just don't want to like offend you or be Like if it were my community and all of a sudden they were like hey, candace, like my family's English and British and we've been in Canada for 300 years. If all of a sudden they told me, like you know, you were the victim of this, like horrific atrocity that may or may not have happened and you're a victim like I For my community, I wouldn't want to walk around with that mantle of I'm a victim. And one of the things I noticed when the first one, the unmarked grave story came out and I questioned it, we're like people were really angry and attacking me. A lot of them were first nations people, native people, who just were like FU, you stupid idiot, shut up, you'd try to kill us. You, you know your settler, you're a legitimate here like just really nasty stuff. And I and I saw the pain that they had and and I felt for them. It's like they're told that they're a victim. They're told that the society that they live in tried to systematically Eliminate them like genocide, that murder them, mass murder them, that that that kids in schools, like their parents and grandparents, would go to school and get murdered. Like how are you setting these kids up to be successful citizens in a society like like. I Forget about like verifying facts and how many kids died and whether it happened or whether it didn't happen, but it's like if, like this, this narrative that's being pushed, telling little kids, little first nations kids, that their country tried to kill them and that Canada is an illegitimate Settler state and that you want to have the land back. So you're gonna like get these awful white people off the land and give it all back and have this like utopian idea that someday you'll go back to like living freely in the forests with like Mother Nature and Having this like beautiful life. Like that's just never gonna happen, right, and it's such a bad message to tell little kids like.
Candice Malcolm:I think that the messages surrounding first nations should be much more Empowering. Like we should talk about how, like incredible it is that these people lived off the land, and how they were warriors and how they fought for their kin, and how the men were strong and they took care of their families, and how the women like Raised children and in these communities like like I want the stories around Canadian first nations to be like positive Triumphant stories of victory and instead what I see in the media is just like these sad, sad stories of like, okay, let's pull up, let's, let's, let's interview a guy who's like, who's like brother committed suicide or residential school, and like this is gonna be the face of first nations. He's drug addicted and he's he's, he's got alcoholism and it's like the people that they're holding up. It's like that's just such a sad message to be sending to a community and I just think you can do better than that. Like I don't want that message that Canada committed genocide, which is not. The records don't show that. Like I have yet to see a government policy that says let's just murder them all, let's kill them all and here's how we're gonna do it. Like like that's just not part of our history. I don't think that we should write it in. And I mean as far as. As far as mistreatment of First nations people, residential schools yes, that's very well documented. It's also well documented that a lot of the experiences were positive, right, so, so, so, overall, bad system gone. Why we don't do it anymore, right? At the same time, let's not like invent things about the history that probably didn't happen, just for the sake of like getting some more money for your band so that you can do some research that may or may not lead to anything like.
Candice Malcolm:From my knowledge, there's been a handful of excavations carried out in first nations communities across Canada Costs millions of dollars to the Canadian taxpayers. No human remains have been found, none, no human remains. So the places where people believe that there could be bodies buried, the few places where they allow them to exhume the bodies, there's nothing there and it's like eventually they're gonna find something. Sure, eventually you're gonna find a body. I mean, it's a big country and there are people living here and people die. But you know, some of the news stories are and that came out afterwards. It was like, you know, there's a place that where they found 715 unmarked graves in a community in Saskatchewan and then someone came forward and said, well, that's a graveyard, that's a known graveyard and it's not just a graveyard for the residential schools, it's not just a graveyard for the First Nation, it's a community graveyard that includes the bodies of both, like white Canadians and First Nations.
Candice Malcolm:So why are we pretending that that's the same thing and adding it to this tally of oh, these are all the dead children, when, when, really, what we're just talking about is like an abandoned graveyard, right and again, it's like it goes to the narrative because people just see the headline mass graves found, lots of dead kids, kids were killed, genocide happened and that's the message that they take away and and it's just from my perspective Creating so much division, so much hatred, so much like contrition and sadness. Like you see, they have this National Day of a child, wherever more is orange was walk around with a feeling of like existential dread. Like I hate my country, I hate Canada, I hate what we did. We're so awful we murdered all these kids and it's like that's such a bad governing ethos, like that's such a bad thing to think about your country, even though the history of the entire world is full of awful Events and wars and people murdering each other. Like that's like the history of the entire civilization of mankind.
Candice Malcolm:You know, canada should be a story of like triumph. It's like look at this amazing society that we built. We had built it through different groups coming together. We had the French, the English, the Scottish, the First Nations. They came up with these treaties, they, they built a civilization in a completely barren, like frozen tundra place that no one else in the world wanted and we've created this amazing society that's so rich and so abundant and so well educated. And let's be the future and like people from all over the world want to come here let's build. Let's be like a tech innovative hub. Let's like be home to like the most successful people, the freest people, like strong communities, growing birthrate. Like like let's, let's, let's find like a positive message that we can all rally around. Be like, yes, I love Canada. They made a ton of mistakes and I hated that residential school program, but look where we are together now. We're rich. And like we're solving all these problems for curing cancer and like you know, ai is being developed here and Bitcoin or whatever. Like we're doing blockchain. It just like Canada could have this like really exciting, youthful, energetic future.
Candice Malcolm:But instead it's like the things that we choose to focus on. It's like, alright, let's, let's spend like another year talking about, like how horrible things were in 1930 and it's like horrible thing that may or may not have happened. It's like, okay, alright, if that's what you want to talk about, fine, but that's like. That's just not like an inspiring thing that I think that we should dwell on, waste our time. I think it's important again why we publish that book.
Candice Malcolm:Grave error is it? Just try to correct the record and and you could read grave error Maybe. Maybe read it and then come on my podcast and we'll have a debate about it, because it sounds like you know, you, you you see things at different perspective, in a different way, and it's possible to have a blind spot. I'm missing it, and that there is a real reason why we should be spending all this money Trying to excavate and see what we find. I mean, I'm hoping that possibility, but what? What I didn't like was like the mass, the gloom and the message that we're sending to kids that Canada commits genocide and we kill kids and that we tried to kill First Nations people, which I don't believe is true.
Aaron Pete:There is a lot there. First, let me say I have a lot of admiration for you for being willing to share and talk about this issue, because I can sympathize that. It's a very difficult issue and you're likely not in the majority of people and so it can be challenging to do those types of things. And I'm sorry that people had such a negative response to you bringing this information about, because initially my reaction was like oh no, like you're going there. But then I really thought about the value of journalism and it's to have these honest conversations. People aren't always gonna love the story, but the story needs to be told in different perspectives and Analysis and information needs to come about. Just because something sensitive doesn't mean that it shouldn't be covered like every other story. We should be respectful and kind and generous and maybe Give deference where deference is needed. But we need to have an honest conversation and that's why I was excited to kind of have this conversation, not because I think I'm all right and you're all wrong or you're all right and I'm all wrong, but because this is a complicated topic. It's about history and we have to be able to have tough Conversations about history to your own point.
Aaron Pete:I do think that, working as a native court worker assisting indigenous people through the legal system, their whole philosophy right now is I'm a victim, the world has been terrible to me, they've been terrible to my parents, they've been terrible to my grandparents and I've never been given a fair shot. Some of those, I think, are warranted. I think a lot of those claims that the world has not been fair to them and their parents and their grandparents, and they've Experienced atrocities and intergenerational traumas, real. I think all of that's valid. The problem is you have to wake up tomorrow morning and make your own decisions and you can't just, every time a problem arises, say that it's somebody else's fault and you're not gonna take responsibility. It's why I'm a huge admirer of Jordan Peterson is because he says you can come up with all the things that why your life sucks and why it's not fair, but you still have to wake up tomorrow morning and make your bad and live your life and try to improve things for people. So maybe there's less suffering, maybe the world's a better place in the grand scheme of things.
Aaron Pete:I do think that I support the research going on right now because, if ever, if there's one grave, if there's one I don't know grave. I want to know about it and so I'd be willing to invest that money. It's not really my money, but I'd be willing to support those initiatives to get the final answer and if if there isn't evidence, then we can have closure on the issue. But I think it's important that we make sure that we we know the answer to a question like that in order to have peace. Just like if you're looking into the Holocaust and those histories. You want to have definitive answers to some of these questions.
Aaron Pete:But, candice, I have a great admiration for the work you do. I have a lot of respect for the challenges you face Bringing nuanced perspectives to complex issues and it's why we've gone so much longer than a usual podcast Does is because I actually really like how you think about things and when you walk through an issue. I don't think we get enough of that. I think it's really admirable the way you break things down and and find ways to connect things, and I'm just I'm honored to have been able to share the time with you and to be able to learn from you, because I think you put a lot of work into making sure that you understand issues before you report on them, and I just find that work so, so valuable.
Candice Malcolm:Well, I appreciate that. Can I just ask one question then, just to go back to? I know? I know it's been a long time. I don't know if you have to go, because you asked me if I had any time. I have to pick up my kids from school and I have an hour or something, but Okay, so, so so you say that you, you want to, you want to do the Excavations and you want to spend the money on the research to find closure.
Candice Malcolm:Right, it's, you're either going to find something and and then, and then we can talk about that and address it and Properly mourn or whatever, or we'll find closure. Do you think that if they do, like, at what point, with excavations and and research and like, like, is it going to take a decade? Is it going to take 50 years, like, like, will there actually be closure if you can't find what it is that you think you're looking for? And then the second question is Like, say, the price tag for that is like a hundred million dollars or five hundred million dollars or a billion dollars or five billion dollars, like, at what point?
Candice Malcolm:Do you think that maybe the money would be better spent, like on social programs or on education programs around scholarships, like like, do you worry that this isn't perhaps the best use of public money? Because he says not your money, it's not my money. But I just wonder, like, if, if I were to say, okay, we're gonna earmark five billion dollars for unmarked grave research over the next ten years, and, and and I came to you, I said, aaron, would you rather that five billion dollars go towards like scholarships, or maybe go towards like building statues of native heroes across like Canada, or like helping you know, like kind of again to my positive message, like helping tell positive stories of warriors that did incredible things for First Nations, like like you know, it's a trade-off everything in government's trade-off, so do you think that that five billion dollars would be well spent on that research?
Aaron Pete:to the first question, I would say they've already identified specific sites, so there's no real risk of Having like this, like we're researching everywhere and the oceans and and anywhere that kind of comes up. I think this is already say specifics from what I'm hearing within. Like some of the researchers who are doing things here, they've already identified spots that they're looking and we should get news within the next six months to a year.
Candice Malcolm:Like you would? Would you find closure like if they came back? Because because there was just a Excavation that got finished a couple months ago and they found nothing, yeah, so so is that? Is that closure, is it?
Aaron Pete:done, we're not gonna.
Candice Malcolm:We're not gonna worry about that anymore. We're not gonna tell our kids that they were kids. We're not gonna tell our community their kids murdered at that site anymore because they didn't find it. So it's done.
Aaron Pete:I think that's closure. Okay, I think whether or not people want to report to your own point, whether or not the CBC wants to write that story, I don't know I think you'll be willing to write that story, which is again why I think the work you do and the work your team does is valuable, because some people that's not gonna get a lot of clicks, that's not gonna get a lot of views and it's not gonna go along with the narrative we have. To the point you made a while back, I do think that the, the rate of Indian residential schools were as diverse as the the population we have today. I know for a fact that I know elders who have been to the residential schools here and I know that they weren't glossy, great places. They I know people who have said I'm not gonna tell you what I went through, I'll tell you this little thing, but I'm not telling you the meat of it. I know that they tried to destroy our language. I know that they tried to destroy a culture. I've spoken to those people and so I do think that, to your point, we need the good and the bad. I don't want to just see indigenous people struggling on the streets and hearing about how they're over represented in in the criminal justice system, how they're over represented in drug use, how they're over represented in like Sexual exploitation. I don't want just that story. That's why I interview chiefs, elders, experts, community leaders, people who are making a difference, because I think we need both of those pieces. I need to understand the horrible things that happen so they don't happen again, and I also need to understand the good things and the people who are pioneering, like chief Clarence Louis, who's trying to bring economic development to his community. I think you need that balance and I do.
Aaron Pete:To your second question about funding. I think you can do that with most things you can go. Do we want to fund the dentistry program? Or could we get a better health care system and have more doctors in our city? Like we can do that with anything. I just support the fact that, whether or not it's private institutions funding the research or if it's government programs, I'm open to where the money comes from. But I do think that that's a worthwhile thing, because many families that I know of and many of the chiefs I've interviewed have this looming question who was lost, what was lost and how do we come to peace with that. And how do we get truth and reconciliation If we don't have the truth? Please, please, covered properly.
Candice Malcolm:Because one of the things that I thought interesting I interviewed one of the authors for the book gray there and they basically described it. Like you know, we did the truth and reconciliation Commission. That was like 10 years ago and during that process they came up with a list of all the names of the children that they believed were killed and died at residential schools. And they had that list and it wasn't a very big list, it was like a couple of hundred names, right, and so that was kind of not dealt with but addressed and it came up and we had that and then and then and then now it's coming up again, but the numbers are like much, much, much higher and so it's like okay. So we tried to deal with it.
Candice Malcolm:We did have this discussion, we had this community, like it was raised, and I mean I think it's unfortunate many Canadians don't learn about residential schools. I learned about that in when I was in high school. That was part of the school curriculum. But then I went to university in Edmonton and I know that some of my friends didn't know about it, like they'd never heard about, they never learned about it. So I think I think it's good that everybody's learning about it.
Candice Malcolm:I don't think that nobody was learning about it back then, because I did, but but now more people, like I would say, almost every Canadian Probably now knows that there was a residential school program and that that it wasn't a very well-won program and that there was a lot of, you know, horrific things that happened at that school. But it's like you know, are we gonna have to continue like? Is every generation, every decade, is something like this gonna come up and we're gonna have to like, like, like, go through it again? Maybe, maybe this is part of our history and what we have to do to have that reconciliation, but at a certain point I just don't know that's productive. Anyway, I know, I know we had a long conversation.
Aaron Pete:I'm not all, but yeah, the only thing I'll add is to your point about the 40 years of the, the conservatives getting the bad treatment. I mean, like you can go to the missing and murdered women's inquiry, the truth and reconciliation. We haven't had a hundred years of going through these issues. We're at maybe two or three years of real, solid research and understanding. So I don't think we're at the point where we need to go Whoa, whoa, whoa. We've we've done enough and we've done our part. We can put a close to the end of this book because a lot of the people are still alive today, but I do.
Aaron Pete:I do have to wrap, unfortunately, this interview up. I think it leaves the door open. I'd love to speak with you again because I think again you bring really good perspectives. I have no disagreement with the, the value of the information that you're bringing in and the importance of having that different perspective, and I think other people are afraid to talk about this. So I find again, that work very admirable. Would you mind telling people how they can connect with true north and you on social media?
Candice Malcolm:Yeah, sure, and I appreciate I. You know the way that we have uncomfortable conversations is just like this. It's like maybe this conversation will inspire more people to have these kinds of conversations in their own lives, and so I really commend you and applaud you for the work you're doing. Yeah, I'm Candice Malcolm. You can find me on Twitter. I'm on there and our website is TNCNews. True north and got a podcast. I'm done a couple times a week and I, for a long time, I wrote a column in the Toronto Sun, but I'm not doing that anymore, so my work is exclusively now at true north. So Connect with me that way and I really, really appreciate. I think you're brilliant young guy and you've got a great, tremendous future ahead of you. So I appreciate you, I appreciate getting connected with you and meeting you and I really appreciate the interview the honor is all mine.
Aaron Pete:As I said, I think so many of the topics you cover aren't being heard about in other Platforms and I always go to your videos on what's going on in Parliament, on what questions are being asked, on whether or not it's fair, and so I have. I'm a follower, I'm a fan of your work and I think the work that you're doing is really valuable to bring about an enlightened and informed society. So thank you again for sharing your time.
Candice Malcolm:Okay, all right, aaron, take care all the best.