9: The Rise of the Trolligarchy in Canada and the US with Vass Bednar

Hi, I’m Jesse Hirsh and we’re here for the Redtory podcast with my friend Alan Greg.

And today, in front of our rabid AI audience that is clapping in a feverish manner so that the algorithm favors us, it’s Vas Bednar, one of Canada’s foremost policy enablers, engagers, educators, hackers, authors.

I could go on and on and on as I was thinking about how I introduce you without introducing you, because that’s a new tradition we have here on Redtory.

The fact that you are still not part of the PMO or the Privy Council office here federally, I think is an indictment of the talent development process that our federal government has. That is a very rigging endorsement to start with. But that’s nice.

You know, normally we start the show as a current affairs, a new show, sort of throwing to our host or our guest and saying, what are you paying attention to? And Vass, the other way I might introduce you is you tend to be very connected to what’s happening from at least a policy perspective.

So what are you paying attention to? What’s kind of got your eye lately?

Okay, there are two things I’m paying attention to right now. One is more kind of flow floaty in the Internet that I’d actually love to speak with you about because you always help me make sense of things.

And the second is kind of more concrete and happening before our very eyes. I will also say that I was invited to join Team Trudeau before they had won the election.

Actually, I think it’s like a tough, tough time in the world to talk.

About other things, but roll them up together so that I can pick and choose how I respond to them.

Okay, well, the more concrete thing that I’m very interested in from a policy perspective, because I think it’s sort of subversive and delicious and somewhat silly, is this newish entity called Build Canada, Right, which is insists to be neither think tank nor lobby group, but is, you know, putting forward to their credit, putting ideas out there from entrepreneurs in this leadership vacuum in a very fragile time for Canada. And I’m totally fascinated by it. I’m trying to make sure that I’m.

I’m trying to make sure that I’m not sort, sort of a hater around it because of course, you know, I never resent when there are more kind of ideas in Canada’s ecosystem. If anything, I think the country is.

Like, help me and some of our, our listeners give us a little bit more background. I haven’t even heard of Bill. Sure.

Okay, perfect. So in like November, December, I sort of started to smell the quote, unquote broligarchy coming to Canada, right?

We had a lot of performative kind of social media participation from mainly led by executives at Shopify, tagging the Prime Minister, shitting on the Prime Minister, you know, really aggressively disregarding things that the government was doing.

And through reporting from the Logic, which is an independent media publisher that covers Canada’s innovation economy, we’ve since learned that, you know, the, the tweets and the trolling sort of became a group chat which has culminated in, I’ll say, this website, right, or this blog that publishes short policy briefs that are, I feel like I’m doing an ad now for it. But they, they publish basically short policy briefs, Alan, on you know, a variety of ideas.

But those ideas come from entrepreneurs themselves, right?

So maybe a group that has felt disenfranchised or pissed off by the proposal to increase the capital gains tax and a sort of filling space very assertively, but you know, it’s volunteer based, which does give it a kind of veneer of altruism. And it’s, it’s, it’s not forever.

Which is sort of fascinating too in the sense that I, I say it’s subversive because I think policy change and policy work is this grind, right? And it’s process driven and it’s, it’s, you need to be really patient. But it’s also kind of a knife fight at times, right?

And you’re, you’re bringing the public along with you. So it’s a business backed advocacy group.

Policy advocacy group, no dollars, no dollars, no dollars.

And I think that’s to Vass point, that’s where on the one hand it presents itself as this earnest, you know, intervention in Canadian policy, but on the other hand it’s not entirely clear as to who’s backing it, what’s going on, what their larger agenda is, because they both have the resources to say, hey, there’s nothing backing this, but on the other, have the attention capabilities that it is in the social media discourse at least.

And I want to bring another angle into this because Pierre Poliev just did a one on one interview with one of the spouses of the people we’re talking about on their podcast where he Completely denigrated the entire Canadian media journalism world. But it’s tied to the same group of people who are advancing this kind of policy vision. Build Canada.

But they’re not doing it in, to Vass’s point, the traditional policy manner, the traditional kind of advocacy manner. Go ahead.

At the same time, it is kind of transparent. Right.

And Alan, you sort of ask who’s backing it, and there may not be dollars behind it, but I think, again, it is provocative to sort of say, we’re volunteers. It also sort of suggests our time is the most valuable thing that we could possibly give to Canada.

So for me, it kind of begs the question, like, hey, guys. And it’s mostly guys, where have you been? Right. Like, where have you been?

And all these other windows of opportunity to put great ideas forward again. At the same time, we need it now.

And if it is going to be a kind of echo of the Department of Government Efficiency, and they’re kind of slashing indiscriminate, cruel, malicious cuts that we’re seeing in the U.S. you know, is this. Is this a better version or is this a dressed up version? And I think that remains to be seen in Canada.

Are we getting a preview of what are we getting a kind of entrepreneur washing of perspectives that a new government that leans more, that is conservative, will take up? Yeah, that. That remains to be seen. And that feels kind of open and interesting to think about for me.

So that is something I’m like, you know, scrolling through and staring at.

And I think you hit the.

You hit it right on the nose in part, because the big and, you know, policy washing, I think, is a good way to think about it, but reputation washing as well, that Trump would not have come to power if it wasn’t for a big part of corporate America saying, it’s okay, we got this, right? He’s just talking loud. He’s not actually gonna do half the things he says.

And the Build Canada guys are kind of the same thing for Poliev in that it allows him to sort of do this sort of maga, like, really angry, while they provide the credibility of, look, here’s how we’re gonna make sure that Canada gets through this period.

And I guess I’m watching it because, you know, the nomenclature of building Canada, I think, is uniting. Right. We all want Canada to be better, but I think that looks so different for different people.

And if making Canada better is actually a big argument for deregulation. Right. And removing guardrails and minimizing government, you know, you’re. You you start to lose me and some of my thinking.

I think the lack of humility is interesting, right?

This group is not going to Canada’s very vibrant civic technology, civic technologist community and saying, hey, we want to do, we’re going to send some of our best engineers, we’re going to do tours of duty. We want to improve digital public infrastructure. Holy Toledo. Like, what are you up against? How can we help? Like, let’s do this.

Let’s make, let’s make government work better. We don’t want to outsource. We don’t want you to spend bajillions of dollars on external consultants that are overcharging you.

Like, let’s like, you know, make sure we’re really capacitating the state. That’s not the conversation we’re having. It could be, it could be part of it, but I guess that’s why I’m kind of fascinated by it, Alan.

And then the other part of me is like, oh, throwing ideas randomly out in the universe on the Internet, like, why didn’t I think of that? And we’ve all thought of that. Like every, you know, that kind of micro thought leadership pollination of the ecosystem is kind of always happening.

So I’m sort of charmed that we’re dressing it up as something that’s new, right? Or different. And at the same time it is.

Well.

And part of what’s different that I want to point out is that these particular individuals have a lot of attentional power right at a moment where like X, AKA Twitter is for a lot of people, no longer an option. These are the ones who ideologically and algorithmically are dominating X. Like when they post something to X, it reaches a big audience.

So they are leveraging the position they have in the changed social media environment to, as you point out, enter the policy environment when for the most part they’ve been ignoring it, right? When for the most part they haven’t been engaging in some of the policy debates that have existed under the Trudeau government.

But, but now they see an opportunity and they’re jumping in. Alan, you, you look like you wanted to jump in.

Well, having confessed, I know nothing about this. Forgive me if what I.

Which is perfect. It’s perfect. I like that.

I, I just listening to you, I wonder whether these bros have ever listened to Polyev. Polyev has made it very, very clear he’s got no interest in lobbying from the business community.

He’s got no interest in the business communities whining and crabbing that he knows fully well that Blue collar workers are absolute source of his victory base. Without them, that he’s lost. And he said he’s told the business community, you know, you got something to say, tell it to the public.

And with the public supports you, then I’ll support you. But until the public supports you, I don’t want to hear you do not come to my office.

Well, there’s, I mean, another radical element of, like the group says, it’s not lobbying, but again, putting ideas kind of out there. It is done transparently. Right. And I give them a ton of credit for that.

And I think we are used to members of the business community, probably some of the most elite members, either hiding behind particular groups in Canada or, you know, lobbying behind closed doors in ways that are a bit more mysterious to us, despite their lobbying registration.

That’s why I wanted to ask you.

What?

Why would they say this is more viable than the Canada Business Council or the Canadian Chamber of Commerce or the Ontario Board of Trade? Why wouldn’t they go through those kind of vehicles to. To get their point?

Maybe some of their firms have. I mean, Shopify is sort of unique in that they take on their own lobbying.

They don’t seem to outsource it both to groups that they’re a member of, at least in Canada. Right. Their CEO.

It’s worth pointing out, unlike most of the Canadian tech sector, Shopify was based in Ottawa, started in Ottawa and has a lot of connections in Ottawa.

Yeah.

So they probably felt that they could do government relations on their own. And they have. But it’s also. It’s also why I mentioned that Poliev was on this podcast hosted by one of their spouses.

Because while you’re correct, Alan, that he’s putting forward this rhetoric and it may be in his own mind sincere that he’ have lobbying. There’s social relationships here, the way social relationships make a lot of politics.

That is certainly happening here in terms of the same way that Musk and Trump get along and enjoy hanging out. Trump tolerates the guy’s kid in his office.

I feel that there’s a cultural analogy here in terms of a similar cultural vibe where they see themselves as anti establishment. Well, they see themselves as standing up to the kind of centrist Canadian stuff. Go ahead, Vas.

I’m glad you’re mentioning culture because I think if we just look at Shopify, there are a bunch of kind of recent headlines from the firm outside of their amazing growth in the last quarter that are increasingly making the company sort of feel out of step with Canadian values. Right. Or maybe Canadian values have changed.

So today or the day where we’re chatting together, the Logic reported that the, that Shopify has cut their black and indigenous entrepreneurs programs. You know, at the Super Bowl, Kanye west ran an ad for a T shirt with a swastika on it that was powered by Shopify’s digital infrastructure. Right.

They power a lot of, you know, E commerce online.

It’s worth saying. It’s not that Kanye could have picked any platform.

He picked Shopify because he knew that they would defend him that any other E commerce site in the world in response to A, the traffic, a Super bowl ad, and B, that you’re just selling a swastika shirt. Any other platform would have said, no, sorry, not us. But he knew that Shopify would have his back.

I mean, I can’t speak to that, but they briefly did until they, they took it down. Took down his store with the rationalization that he seemed to be engaging in fraud, that he wasn’t actually selling the T shirts. But going back to.

But they didn’t object to the speech and that imagery.

No, they didn’t. They didn’t. And that’s just kind of a bigger platform regulation question or freedom, you know, freedom of speech.

But it, that felt like another area of divergence between the US and Canada and back to tolerance and values and this moment maybe of more economic nationalism where we’re, despite all our issues with corporate concentration and our lack of choice, we are, you know, rediscovering and elevating and cherishing firms that build things mostly in Canada. Right. Or, you know, that final stage production in Canada.

And I think that sets the bar a little bit higher for Shopify, especially if that group wants to be leading this rally for a better Canada, if what they’re doing at their company feels really out of step with what a better Canada could look like. Again, it’s interesting.

So I’m watching it, I’m watching it, I’m thinking about it, I’m admiring, I’m sort of confused and perplexed and ultimately charmed.

Yeah, well, and that’s where I acknowledge your sense of conflict, that on the one hand, you welcome when people are talking about policy, you welcome when people are getting into the policy environment.

But as I mentioned, I feel that there’s a similar dynamic where no one voted for Musk and I’m not sure people would, but he gives a policy credibility to the Trump administration. Cuz it makes it feel like, oh well, they understand technology, they understand AI, they understand space and green energy.

Something Right, Yeah.

Right. Now, you said there was a second thing that you sort of came in terms of what you were paying attention to that was a little less serious.

Unless that was the less serious one.

No, this is the way more fun one. This is like all I want to talk about with you. And like, Alan, I hope you like it too. I’m nervous to tell you. I don’t know.

I’ve become quite interested in how the advice economy has shifted. Right. So one, I think there’s this very interesting trend, and maybe it’s generational and maybe it’s Google’s search.

The fault of Google search bar, where it’s like the. There’s an idea that there’s a correct answer for everything. And that idea is very dangerous. Okay. And I’m not disputing, like capital F facts.

I just mean problem solving, strategizing, emotional things, friendships.

And it strikes me that advice has gone to something that used to be a bit more professional, even if it was kind of advice columnists and magazines, to something that’s more performative. Right. A sport. Entertainment threads like in Reddit, am I the asshole? Am I overreacting?

Seem to really prompt quite polarizing, knee jerk, you know, brunch, confessional stories. It’s like, end that friendship writes very rough. Like, break, break it off with him.

And it feels like it’s so much more about microcosms than us holding up a mirror to ourselves and sort of situations. Um, and it extends to ChatGPT, right? I’ve heard of, like, young people using ChatGPT to be like, does this T shirt match these pants?

And I’m like, you’re young and you’re hot and it’s fashion and like, just put your pants on and go. But I feel nervous. I feel interested in the anxiety that it can produce, which sort of perpetuates asking and appealing to others.

And why are we going, why are we more comfortable with strangers on the Internet? Like, outsourcing our emotional labor. Crowdsourcing our emotional labor.

Like, the literature shows that we are now far less likely to take our personal problems to the people we love and cherish the most. So the people we have the most trusting, loving, supportive relationships with, families, lovers, partners, best friends.

We are now less likely to say, you know, I had this conflict at work, I’m not sure what to do, etc. We are. We go to the Internet. I don’t know that it’s necessarily a good thing. I don’t know that it’s necessarily a bad thing that needs judgment.

But, like, you must have noticed this. Do you ever post on those Reddit forums or tell people that they’re an asshole? So if you have to ask.

Hold on. The last. The last. Of course I tell people they’re an asshole. That’s what I live for. This is the Larry David school of Judaism. I digress.

I just want to thank you, Vass, for going to our podcast and asking me for advice. To your point there, that was very meta view. I think the through line here is algorithmic authority.

To your point about ChatGPT and to your point about search, right? We’re losing nuance.

People think there’s an answer to everything, and if they’re too afraid to ask the algorithm, they want to ask the crowd, because if they feel that the crowd gives them the consensus and the reason I say algorithmic authority. And Alan, you know statistics way better than I would, so I’m curious to hear what you think.

But I think this is all about the statistical mean, because that’s what algorithms do, right? They get rid of all the outliers and they find the real common dominant trend.

And they present that as if it, to your point, is the capital F fact, where this is what everyone should do, rather than saying, well, if you have anxiety, this is your choice, or if you’re really hungry. It’s all contextual, it’s all situational.

And to your other point, the trust part, that people are turning to strangers to trust rather than the people they know that. Also connected to algorithmic authority is our growing awareness of cognitive bias. Right? Because our new media literacy is. We’re not just.

Media literacy of every newspaper has an agenda which people get. Now, our media literacy is. Well, everyone has cognitive biases, and they may not have that language.

They may not be able to say it in the way that we are, but they know their mom is biased when they say to their mom, how do I look? Right? And they know that I mean, not my mom, but. But you know what I mean, right?

The way that they’re nerd friends, if you go, hey, should I buy Bitcoin? Their nerd friends can be like, yeah, yeah, Bitcoin, you need Bitcoin.

So I think we are unconsciously already kind of anticipating that cognitive bias and trying to go to the group, but all we’re getting is the statistical mean. All we’re getting is the average and not actually the particulars of our situation. Because to your point, it’s not just like therapy people.

So there’s ChatGPT, which is OpenAI’s version, and then the biggest competitor is this one called Claude, which is put out by a company called Anthropic. And Anthropic is basically all the dissidents from OpenAI, like all the people who are at OpenAI who hate Sam Altman.

A year ago, year and a half ago, they said, fuck it, we’re going to start our own. And that’s Anthropic. And their chatbot, Claude, has, like, there are so many people in Silicon Valley who use it as their therapist.

And it is remarkable how deep into therapy they get with this chatbot, which is really just them talking with themselves in a structured manner. But it’s not a friend, it’s not a therapist, it’s not someone they should trust. It’s this software. And I know others. Yeah.

And I know others who are doing that for, like, chronic illness. Right. Or symptoms, or because they trust that more than they would a doctor.

And again, I think this is a larger extension of the death of expertise argument that we’ve been hearing for a long time. But to your question, I think we’re in new territory. And one last thing I’ll say, and Alan, I’d love for you to weigh in on this.

At the very least, help Vas and I babbling about this to try to focus it a little more, but Threads, So Threads is a meta, AKA Facebook’s Twitter clone. So they created Threads when Twitter was really dying. And Threads is tied to Instagram, but like its name, it’s about Threads.

So it has a different algorithm. And to your point, it’s almost always advice stuff. It’s almost always like, what should I do to deal with the stains from my dog on the carpet?

Or how should I clear snow in the snowstorm?

And those are the posts that perform better than anything else, partly because Threads doesn’t allow for posting of any news in Canada because of the Facebook news ban.

But I think to go back to the algorithm, people know that if they offer answers, especially if they offer answers assertively and authoritatively, as if they know and all their friends will back them, that gets them likes, it gets them attention, it gets them followers. Right. So it reinforces this kind of culture of crowdsourcing, even though I think it’s a kind of stupidity of the crowds. Often, but not always, Alan.

It just feels really lazy. Yeah. Alan, would you ever ask to solve a personal problem for you?

Possibly. I mean, I’ve read Dale Carnegie’s book and I really like Tony Robbins. They offer advice to the difference.

Just listening to you is a question of authority. I go to Dale Carnegie or Tony Robbins because he’s an expert in offering advice.

If I’m looking to an, as Jesse suggests, an algorithm for advice that probably will, you know, is actually programmed to feed my biases because it knows what I’ve been asking in all kinds of other platforms and venues, then I’m just in a very toxic feedback loop.

I mean, it’s very interesting to me that people would seek advice from something that was non authoritative in a way that we would traditionally define authority because authority is traditionally defined based on knowledge, on reputation, on third party endorsement, all of these other things to say, you know, I should go to Alan Greg to figure out how to figure my corporate reputation because he’s really good at what he does as opposed to something that is, you know, completely anonymous, that has got no authority externally other than we are part of this new digital world. So it’s.

I could see why you’d be interested in it because it strikes me as something that isn’t so much a function of the digital world as human nature. Well, and why am I seeking advice in a very different way than people have in the past?

You’re reminding me of my good old buddy Marshall McLuhan, who he sort of described that we would be moving in or returning to an oral culture in which people, rather than go and look for the answer that’s written down, look for the answer that people are speaking to. And so what you reminded me of, Alan, was the authority of the chorus, right?

Where people are looking for the chorus, they’re not looking for the people who have knowledge, they’re looking for the answer that the most amount of people give, right? And they’re going out to look to the chorus rather than the philosopher, rather than the merchant, rather than all the characters.

They want the group identity, they want the chorus to give them the answer.

Because the answer that is repeated the most is the answer that they will believe rather than, to your point, the one that has the best knowledge or the best reputation or maybe even the best position. And it does kind of evoke this idea that we’ve come into this oral culture. So, Vass, let me pivot this back to policy. You mentioned earlier.

I think quite legitimately that the policy process tends to be a grind, that if you’re interested in getting something like legislation passed, it’s a very long process with a lot of compromise, a lot of parties, a lot of engagement, impeachment. What if we took what we just described? So what if the government, as Alan pointed out with Poliev Saying, I’m not going to deal with lobbying.

If you want an idea to be popular, put it out and if it’s popular, then we’ll see it. What if he just said the same thing? Okay, I’m not going to ask the experts on what we should do.

I’m going to ask the Internet, hey, Internet, what should we do about the capital gains tax or whatever the policy may be?

Do you see a time in which what we are describing in terms of people’s personal perspective starts spilling over into the policy development process so that it becomes much more of the statistical mean rather than the nuances that are necessary for legislation?

Don’t people sort of do this kind of tacitly through public opinion polling? Right. Isn’t that where we get closer to that? You and I have talked about this like Spice Girls model of policymaking.

Tell me what you want, what you really, really want and then we, we go and do it and we kind of want to do safe things.

We don’ ascribe to the idea that we have government to do hard things or to sell us on kind of complicated trade offs or initial kind of policies that won’t be palatable. I think that government is still like as policy people policy adjacent thinkers. We can be really, really bad at listening, right?

Like I think real listening is not just outsourcing or looking for keywords or doing social media sentiment analysis.

Real listening is also being able to see a viral Reddit post and kind of quickly couch it in regulatory realities and be like, oh, people are, am I allowed to say, say that word? Sorry?

Yes, please.

You know, talking about surveillance at the workplace in a very particular way and oh, there’s a, there’s a gap here. Like we actually don’t have a backstop because you mentioned trust earlier. And so much of this is about trust, right?

If, if we don’t trust that the state has our backs in certain instances that feel like they’re a part of our everyday, then we’re not going to have the confidence that the state has our backs to quote unquote, build Canada or support entrepreneurs or really take up arms in this, you know, economic warfare through tariffs.

Yes, I can imagine, I can imagine a forum where, you know, people, I imagine many political actors are in these ecosystems in particular ways participating and kind of listening and understanding.

People think that brings us back to the prologar because part of what in the states, the power of the broligarchs is they have access to the digital platforms and they can see what public sentiment is. Right? They have access to those algorithmic crystal balls that may not be accurate, but do fuel what people want, what they really, really want.

And I think while the same isn’t true in Canada because we don’t have the same digital infrastructure, let me kind of pivot that, but still keep the through line. Part of what we’ve been talking about here on Redtory, part of our kind of mandate is to expand the policy overton window, right?

Like how come so much of policy, especially establishment policy, is kind of irrelevant for most people, especially working class people. And it feels like the Trump administration has come to power, is maintaining its kind of position in power. Cuz they got some radical policies.

And where I certainly don’t agree with those radical policies, I think there is a need to diversify the policy discussion, the policy debate.

And where I react negatively to the Build Canada people is I look at them and I’m just like, they just want more wealth concentration when I think wealth redistribution is the policy we should be talking about.

So a rambling question to say, Vass, what are your thoughts on how we make the policy environment more diverse, more interesting, more engaging so that like the Spice Girls, people really want to be part of the policy process?

How do we make it more engaging so that people want to be part of it?

I mean, I don’t know, I’m comfortable looking at you and saying, you know, I don’t, I don’t know, maybe, maybe public policy stuff isn’t supposed to be that fun all the time.

I do notice more and more, you know, video short form, video commentary ecosystems that I’m not a part of, that I ignore where rich conversations are happening, where minds are being changed. You know, we’ve mentioned President Trump and we’ve mentioned members, you know, entrepreneurs, tech, tech guys, tech people.

And another element of Trump’s rise or winning that last election was support from non traditional media, online influencers, content creators. Right.

And we don’t have, I don’t even think, like I don’t feel oriented to who comparable influencers are in a Canadian context, what they’re saying, who they’re supporting, what they’re supporting and how they can build consensus for maybe, maybe ideas that are refreshing, like maybe ideas that are great. You mentioned broligarchy. There’s this other term that a woman writing for the Atlantic Coin. So I’m into all these like portmanteaus of the moment.

It’s troll lagarchy, this idea of, you know, antagonizing government, making people feel kind of confused. And there was an account back to things I watch. I guess I’m like in my own bubble.

There was an account called Canada Spends, which is now being absorbed as part of or revealed to be, you know, part of Build Canada. And it just sort of presents context, less snapshots of government spending. Right.

With the very obvious explicit overtone of government is wasteful and does stupid stuff. Right. We should do less of it. And I, I think everyone’s here for, like, how do we make government work better? Is there waste?

Where can we kind of be more effective with our dollars? But to me, it’s a troll, right? It’s unhelpful. But it does seem to be very fun and engaging for people. They’re learning.

But on that point. And this may have to be something you unpack for Alan. So, Alan, you let me know as to whether you’re familiar about what I’m talking about.

But Ontario Proud and Canada Proud are two meme centric organizations. They’re largely Facebook groups. And on a political level, partly on a policy level, they are the trolligarchy, to use that phrase.

Because in the back of my head, I’m thinking we may title this episode the Canadian Trolligarchy and see what kind of engagement we get off that. But to what extent is policy and politics just becoming a meme battle? And it doesn’t have to be a meme battle of images.

It could be a meme battle of pithy takes and smackdowns. But again, where I think you’re partly disingenuous is you find policy fun. Like you policy. Cause to you, it’s a lot of fun.

It’s not a fun moment. It’s not a fun moment. It’s hard to be playful and cheeky right now. I just, I’m personally finding that.

But do you think this trolligate, both as a phrase, but also as a kind of political methodology which we are seeing here in Canada? Do you see that? Are you seeing the kind of through line there or am I stretch trying to stretch a point?

Well, I’m seeing a through line of a disdain for the role of the state in our everyday lives. Right. There was a viral tweet. I’m sorry, Alan. That I’m coming across as like the most online girly of all time.

I actually do read a lot of books and I’m like, quite serious in other ways.

You don’t need to be self conscious. Please continue.

I mean, I’m just like, aware. Generally aware. Somewhat viral tweet. That said, name one thing that Canada does better than the US And I thought about replying, right.

I was busy eating lots of pasta with cheese, trying to feel better about the tariffs coming forward. And I was like, okay, child care, parental leave, our health care system, for better or for worse.

Even though, you know, the wheels are starting to come off our post. Secondary system being more affordable, more accessible, Parental leave, pharmacare, early steps, dental care for those who need it the most.

And it struck me that it’s actually not that hard to become the 51st state.

We don’t have to do anything with our borders, but if we start to simply mirror the policy ecosystem, if we view the kind of softer things that Canada gets mostly right as things that are nice to have, not a need to have or not a good use of our dollars because we’re more in this Elon Musk ification of bootstrap yourself, you know, you’re on your own. Minimize the role of government in our everyday lives. Then we’re not really Canadian anymore. We are a 51st state. Right.

Because we’re just mirroring that environment. And like, that’s not fun to think about either. Sorry.

No, but your honesty, I think, matches a lot of the folks who are listening right now. But as your friend, I do feel compelled to try to make an effort to turn this around before. Before we end the episode.

Only because, again, I think part of our mandate here on Redtory is to try to find a counter to what feels like to bring it back to our language of the tech bros. A technological determinism.

Because that’s what’s so dangerous about the language they use is they make it seem like, oh, the technology is gonna do this. So government needs to get in line when we believe the opposite. That policy can do anything. Policy can respond to all sorts of social problems.

And that is the function of the state. That’s the role of the state.

So how do we, and you’re largely nonpartisan, but how do we as people who believe in democracy, believe in the role of public policy? How can we shift that conversation around so people can start going, oh, yeah, there is a role for the state, There is a value in public policy.

And that’s why we need democracy and not oligarchy or trolligarchy, as I think is a good phrase.

You know, I think there’s a lot of really interesting grassroots stuff happening in Canada right now prompted by the tariffs. And that is something that, you know, these glimmers of encouragement, right.

People rapidly prototype typing apps to help us buy Canadian, you know, this hour has 22 minutes. They were the fastest. They Put up a very, I thought, funny sketch about what it feels like to grocery shop in a tariff war.

They did that faster than Amazon put forward their, you know how to shop. Canada Shopify, changing their app to help you discover things.

So what came first was everyday people kind of rallying, helping each other, building things, but also Canadians having a laugh. And to me, to pick up on Alan pointing out that PR has very clearly said, you know, bring me.

Bring me great ideas, sure, but bring me great ideas that have support that people are behind. These are the ways, and these are the places that we are getting behind things.

I just also don’t want us to be reduced to, you know, from citizen to consumers. Right. Like, I am very. I keep using the word charmed. I’ve. I have to examine that.

But, like, this idea that we can save the economy and also save some money at the same time, I find, like, very fantastic. But, yes, policy change, policy conversations can be fun. Maybe memes are part of it. Right. Maybe merch is part of it.

It was Flag Day over the weekend in Canada, and what I shared is something that one of my new Internet friends who I met when we were writing the Big Fix, made. It’s a flag. He calls it corporate Canada, and it’s the largest companies in Canada, their logos superimposed on a Canadian flag.

And he says, this is Canada. And that’s kind of a troll, too, right? That’s kind of provocative, especially when the pendulum is swinging for us to be like, can you.

What are those Canadian companies I can shop from again and kind of make those switches? So that feels fun and kind of tasty in spite of it all. So I hope that’s something that seems fun if not funny.

Well, I think it lightens the mood.

Alan, let me kind of ask you for the historical perspective here, because the Canadian economy, correct me if I’m wrong, has always been consolidated. It’s always had issues in terms of like the quote, unquote, branch plant economy. To what extent is this economic nationalism performative?

Or do you think there’s legs to it in terms of it, you know, not just translating into policy, but lasting kind of public sentiment?

Well, we’ve talked about this before. I mean, Canadian identity is very strong.

It may be built on the periphery of how we differ from America, referred to as the narcissism of small differences. We look into the mirror of America and define ourselves in terms of what we don’t see, but basically, it’s the same face.

Yeah.

There. Having said that, I mean, we revel in Those, those differences. If America is warlike, we are peaceful. If they are intolerant, we are open minded.

So I don’t see any huge threat at a cultural level at all other than the obvious ones that have been there forever in terms of the economy. And the economy, you know, it’s got all kinds of problems.

I mean the branch plant is something that’s as, you know, as old as mortgage foreclosures and hatred of railroads.

You know, in fact, there’s an argument that we had a stronger steel industry and a stronger mining industry that was Canadian owned in the past than we, than we have right now. But you know, in listening to the two of you, because I say I’m not in the same space you are at all.

I mean, it strikes me that all this talk about, you know, can these different devices, can these different avenues be used to construct and create public policy that is both more enlightened but also is more supported by the population and the population for whom the population says right on, that’s something that we should get behind and that’s something that we should do. I gave a speech a number of years ago called the Assault on Reason.

We’re looking at the Harper budget cuts and systematically against individuals who are in the scientific community. I don’t mean that just guys in lab coats in, in labs with their, their beakers. I mean it’s Parks Canada and all of these.

And you’re seeing the same thing in, in America right now. It’s not just the inspector generals who hold executive authority to in, in check. It’s evidence.

And the extent to which you could be asking these kinds of AI tools for advice, but is empirical device and building stronger cases, the kind of cases that scientists would, would bring the census offers so that there isn’t any room for debate, there isn’t room for disagreement because the evidence is so irrefutable because of the authority of the algorithm, then then maybe there’s something good there, not just something to be, to be feared that we should, that the people who, who are creative thinkers. How do we harness this shit in such a way as to achieve those two ends? More enlightened public policy that is more supported by the public.

I mean, I agree with the challenge. The two obstacles there is one, the AI can and will hallucinate. So you have to be the empiricist. You can’t allow the AI to be the empiricist.

Although to your point, the AI can enable the empiricist to work at scale in a way that was not previously possible.

We’ve talked about that too. But, you know, so let’s say, say I really need an affordable housing policy. We haven’t had one.

I mean, why would you not use the technology that’s available to really build a seamless argument about why you need affordable housing, what that looks like, how you pay for it, how you get it on stream by using databases that are available that have the answers to all those questions, but it’s never been.

This is different though. Yes, databases and numbers for sure. But I think there’s like an incompatibility in some of the through lines that we’re talking about. Right.

People offloading and outsourcing and defaulting to others and not having confidence and critical thinking and feeling uncertain is actually the opposite of being entrepreneurial and interesting and like divergent with your thinking because going.

Off the database and they’re offering bullshit as answers.

But the other, there’s, there’s two, two other caveats here.

We are assuming that we have access to those quote unquote databases, because that was my point about the power of the brologarchy rather than the trolligarchy, is they have all the data and a lot of the data is proprietary. A lot of the data exists in industry.

That’s as a tangent why the AI industry is running afoul of everyone, because they stole the data to build their systems and build their models. But for us as advocates, we still need access to that data to verify.

But the other point to your assumption, and this is something I think we should absolutely interrogate in future episodes. I don’t think there’s such a thing anymore as an airtight case. And climate change is the great example.

And Jim Hogan we have booked as a guest the data and empiricism around climate change is 100% right.

They have built the most resounding case you can imagine that not only is climate change real, but that fossil fuel is driving climate change and the American government, it’s their official policy to deny it and their supporters like, it’s remarkable the rabid nature in which they will defend the idea that climate change is a communist plot, that it’s a hallucination. So to your point about the assault on reason, science is only getting us so far and it’s only Getting us with the people who believe in science.

The larger meta problem is we are rapidly, on a daily basis, losing people from reason and from science, and we need to be addressing that if, if we’re going to come back to this.

We are, but they are still in the smallest of minorities. Do not make, you know, an assumption that because you find these things, that this is a mass.

I, I agree with the minority part. It’s the influence.

You ask people today what’s the most important problem facing the country today? And climate change is not offered as a top of mind. You said, how does climate change compared to that? Is it as important?

Not as important, but still a very important problem. Et cetera, et cetera. 85% of Canadians will say it’s an important problem. You say, who’s most able to make a significant change to that?

Is it government? Is it industry and business, or is it consumers and citizens? Overwhelmingly, they say government.

So the notion that people don’t believe in science, that they’ve turned their back on government, quite frankly, is bullshit.

No, I agree, but my point is the political discourse. There are no politicians running for office today who are promoting what Avi Lewis was suggesting, which is the policies that match the science.

And this is my point, that we are in a political environment in which to the original notion of the advice economy, no one’s asking the scientists what to do. No one’s actually going to the evidence and asking them what to do. I wish they would. I’d vote for a party that did that.

But even the NDP right now are not aligning their climate change policies with the climate science. And that’s why I feel to bring it back to kind of where this thread came.

How do we fix the policy process so that within the policy process we are getting to Alan’s point, a debate around affordable housing and solutions around affordable housing that like. To Alan, to your point about methodology, the ccpa, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

I bet you that if they were to use AI the way that I’m currently using AI, they could knock it right out of the park with an affordable housing strategy. Why they’re not doing that is a question we should ask them here on the podcast.

But why are we presenting AI as like a source of obvious policy solutions that we should just be doing?

No, not solutions, methodology.

Why are we ascribing to this? Okay, sorry.

I say it because, and this is a separate conversation to your point, Vass, and if you want to get into it for a few moments, we can before we end. But if not, we can have you back and get into it. I think AI allows us to do more with less.

I think it allows cash strapped advocacy organizations, community organizations, to operate at a level that you used to have to be the Fraser Institute, that you used to have to be the CD Howe Institute because they had more resources, they had more money, they could write the reports, they could be a player in the policy debates. That to use the CCPA as an example, historically, they got to pick their battles.

They have to decide, okay, we’re going to do CEO pay every year and we’re going to do an alternate budget every year.

But to Alan’s point, because we have been talking about this on Red Tory, AI can allow you to cover more bases with less staff, to do more empirical work, more policy work, without having to have the kind of resources that historically you would need. And I’m saying this as a podcaster and as a media guy that I’m currently putting out more output than I would have ever been possible.

And it’s because I’m using these tools to help organize my ideas, to help keep tabs on files on policy ideas. So that’s where I think Alan’s coming from. Go ahead.

I’m interested in VAs offering again, if not AI, what kind of tools should we be using to develop that kind of public policy that everyone seems to agree would be a worthy goal?

I mean, we have lots of agreement in Canada on things we should do or should have done 14 years ago, like reducing interpretational trade barriers. I don’t need a computer program to tell me that there are some benefits to it.

I think the more interesting question that we’re all welcome to ask a computer program about is, what took us so long? Why did they persist? Where did they come from? And is it real? Like, is this promise going to be that much more than a very brief sugar high? Right.

Like, people bring up this example with interprovincial trade barriers.

It’s quite funny and it sticks in my mind too that, you know, toilet seats in Alberta, say, on a construction site, have a different kind of regulatory size than, say, somewhere else. And it’s funny. It’s like, well, that doesn’t make sense. We should eliminate that. Sure, obviously.

But doesn’t follow to me that once the toilet seats are the same size, that Canada is going to, you know, unleash some secret productivity that we haven’t figured out.

So, yes, as part of a research strategy background briefing, I guess I’m just, I’m so weary of presenting, you know, hey, what should Canada do to improve its competitiveness? Appealing. Appealing to that. Appealing to a prompt instead of also other elements.

But it can be part of thinking, for sure, and it can be quite, quite stimulating.

But on something like inter provincial trade, which you’re right, we’ve been. I’ve heard this conversation going on for 30 years now.

And, and the thing that’s ridiculous about it is that everyone agrees that it’s a bad thing and we should fix it. But the example is not the toilet seats because they don’t cross provincial boundaries. It’s the truck that has lumber on it.

And in Alberta it says the lumber must be stacked 20ft by 10ft by 8ft. In B.C. it says the lumber must be stacked 26ft by 7ft by 2ft.

And the truck that’s going across the border is not allowed to go across in one or the other, so he doesn’t go across. And so that we have no trade of timber and lumber across. That’s myopia and short termism. That’s all it is.

And also, quite frankly, a lack of coercion on the part of the federal government to say this is intolerable. You know, we are transferring billions and billions and billions of dollars to you through health care, interpersonal transfers, equalization.

And that’s not going to happen unless we fix this right now before that happens.

And in my.

Maybe I’m old school, but I still believe parliament can allow dogs to vote. The government of Quebec said to Amazon, you don’t want to have union workers in your shops. You’d rather have a decentralized distribution system.

Guess what? Fuck off. Get out of our province. They have the power to do that and they should be doing that.

But this is my point, that power has been delegitimized and that’s a mistake. And the extent to which in my lifetime there has not been a federal government that conveyed itself with strength.

It’s always been conveying itself with, hey, let’s get along. Hey, come on, everybody. It’s always been, in my view, a very weak, a very conciliatory federal government.

There hasn’t been anyone like, in my view, and I’m too young to remember it was fuck around and find out the first Trudeau who had the ethos of that strong federal government.

But at the same time, Vas, I do want to push back because you’re correct to assume that when I say AI, I mean chatting with AI versus I never chat with AI. I use AI because I assume that AI can’t think for itself. So what I.

To use Alan’s point about housing affordability, I wouldn’t use AI to give me the strategy or the ideas. I would use AI to prove my hypothesis, to test my hypothesis.

And I would start with the kind of hypothesis that’s really radical, like, for example, maybe affordable housing should be owned by municipalities or by public agencies rather than provided by the public. And then I could use that to show how the state can get a better interest rate and the state can amortize those costs and the state can get better.

Like, again, what AI does is either calculate right in terms of a big huge calculator or it allows you to manage data.

Because the other example, nudge, nudge, Alan, is I’m waiting for Alan to send me, in theory, his contacts file, which will be exported in a totally useless, garbled form.

And I will give that to ChatGPT and say ChatGPT, I want you to strip out the email addresses, correlate them with the names, and if there’s organizational affiliation, prioritize it based on XYZ and it’ll do all that for me.

So it can do software, it can do technical tasks that previously I’d have to figure out how to use Excel or I’d have to find some numbers, but no one’s using it that way because they all think, to the point of the advice economy, that AI will do the thinking for them and it can’t, and it never will. But it can do the number crunching for us, it can do a lot of the research legwork for us.

And that’s something I think most people aren’t really seeing the opportunity for. And that was really what I was trying to get at.

But to the point of the legitimacy of the state and the extent to which the state is still seen as a public good that can be used to help all of us.

I’m worried that the pandemic and the right wing backlash against the pandemic, especially the free money that was given out to everybody, which sustained me, and I’m absolutely grateful for it, that that’s part of what’s fueling this delegitimization of the state.

And since I do want to wrap this discussion, because I can only handle about an hour, even though I love chatting with you, Vass, it’s always a pleasure. What are your thoughts on how we reverse that?

Because you do, I know, believe in the legitimacy of public policy, the legitimacy of the state as a response to all sorts of concerns that a society has. Do you have any sense do you have any intuition, any hope, any wild, crazy ideas on how we kind of reverse that trend?

I think we have to use our culture of very small, narrow thinking to our advantage and kind of really be aggressive about those snack size everyday, modest but meaningful policy interventions that make a difference in people’s everyday lives as a vehicle to sort of rebuild trust. One very super small thing that I, I do think is, has a lot of power is, you know, France made shrinkflation outright illegal.

That if you put something on a shelf for the same price or higher, where you’ve intentionally decreased not, you know, you know, you’ve decreased the volume, you, they will enforce against this because. And I just find that so aligned with people’s sort of sense of what’s appropriate, right.

That sense of morality kind of when you’re shopping and we try to talk about moonshots, we talk about these zombie ideas in terms of how to remake markets and make them more effective. And I think the interprovincial trade bearers are one of those. Right. It’s kind of, it’s a legacy, it’s a part of our history.

They’ve proven very sticky. Maybe they’re not sexy enough.

Maybe now’s their moment where we’re going to sort of tear them down and in a way that’s hopefully wonderful and hopefully doesn’t go to the lowest common denominator in terms of how we were regulating. That’s a, maybe a whole, a whole other conversation.

But that’s where I get excited because I do think this mysterious thing called innovation that I’m sure tech entrepreneurs, you know, would agree with is kind of gets you excited. Can come from smaller, smaller changes again that are, that are meaningful. So hopefully that hypes you up. Yeah, and thank you for having me.

Well, and Alan, I do gotta ask you only because the topic’s hot. Do you have any thoughts on how we could legitimize the role of the state?

Cause this is where, and we didn’t really talk about generational differences, which is a topic vast that you’re also interested in talk about. But Alan, I do worry that younger generations do not at all see the legitimate role of the state.

Do you have any thoughts on how we could reverse that?

Well, yeah, but they’re all kind of utopian. I mean, the fact of the matter is you said your entire life you’ve never seen boldness out of government.

Well, guess where that’s got them to a point where people say government really can’t do anything. They’re really not that that, that, that, that, that important.

And, you know, I said one time that, you know, if Burger King wanted to get market share from McDonald’s, it would say those guys have botulism. And if McDonald’s wanted to get it back from Burger King, he said, they go, those guys got E. Coli. And they don’t do that.

They don’t do that because they notice it would destroy the category. No one would eat hamburgers anymore, ever.

But in the political process, we seem to have forgotten that maxim is that, you know, there’s far more to be gained by actually cooperating and make. And demonstrating that you can get things done.

Yeah.

To your benefit than there is by this kind of combative, performative, polarizing, slogan jamming.

And, and, but it, but it’s, it is another topic, because the problem is vicious is because as long as that’s there, we, we, we fail to attract the people who would be the most able to make that kind of difference and again, attract people who say, you know, either this is the best job I could ever get in my life, I could never get a job as good as a member of Parliament, or the idle rich. I made my money. Now I want to be the minister of finance. And neither one is the kind of person we should be attracted to public office.

I mean, quite frankly, Vass, you’re the exact type of person I would like to see attracted to public office. I mean, if, If Dave Beidi were to start the West End Phoenix political party, would you run as a candidate?

Do you ever see yourself running for public office?

Do I ever see myself running? I’m not sure. For women, it’s usually a third act. And I have a very small little boy who’s just arriving now.

No, I, There are, I think, other ways to be powerful and interesting in, in policy land. I’m not sure it has to be through being a politician. Yeah, we’ll see. Terrible answer.

You touched on grassroots, and that’s something that Jesse and I really want to start getting into in a little bit more, find out, you know, people who are out there, you know, on the ground, in the community who are doing things, who normally don’t have a platform or a big voice. What’s happening in the United Church right now, you know, what’s. What’s happening in the ymca?

Well, I’m telling you, there’s all kinds of incredibly exciting things happening there.

And if organizations like, you know, the union movement says we should be partnering with the YMCA and with the United Church to build affordable housing, you know, then I think you get the population that’s getting getting excited about the prospect of innovation as you talked about, that there really are solutions out there that I don’t have to ask some meme for advice on what kind of pants I should wear. That’s a pretty sorry and sad state of affairs.

Although to be clear, it’s more that the meme tells you what to do before you even thought that you need the advice and it circumvents the critical thinking as a whole. Where. Where can our listeners learn more about you, Vass? Where. Where can you be found online?

Even though I know the answer to that could be a very long sadly.

Sadly I am on Twitter still hideous, hideous blue sky. I think I’m Vasbi there. I host the Lately podcast for the Globe and Mail.

I write a monthly column on on tech and public policy that you can click on there.

I do write to the comments to people, so that goes against everyone’s good advice, but I like to think that if someone takes the time to share their thoughts on something I’ve written that they will get a comment back from Capital V, Capital B, Vassbender. Anyway, oh, and Regs to Riches. But I haven’t been writing it for a while, so.

And briefly explain to Alan the the meaning of the brand Regs to Riches because I think it’s brilliant.

Oh, Rags to Riches is a. Is a play on Rags to riches. But that from you know that smart regulations help everyone.

So like it’s kind of that one simple trick to help the economy and it’s just a fun place to think.

About policy stuff and a good place to go.

Right on.

Yeah, thanks.

Well, thanks Vas. This has been another fantastic episode of Red Tori. Thanks to Alan, thanks to Vass, thanks to all of you who are listening.

We’ll be back in a couple of days. I think we’re talking to a senior research specialist at intel about deep fakes.

So another potentially AI heavy conversation and thanks to everyone from the MAGA world commenting on our Trump videos telling us how stupid we are. That helps the algorithm and it helps us get to a larger audience. So thank you very much. Until then, thanks and take care everybody. Bye.