Why I Run

 

Last evening, at an all-candidates meeting, someone asked for the transcript of my opening speech. And so I reproduce it here. Not exactly as I spoke it, but as I meant to speak it; I had to abbreviate for time.

Unaccustomed as I am to speaking to live people these days instead of on Zoom…

I watched the leaders’ debate from North Bay a couple of evenings ago.

Why did it remind me of professional wrestling?

Did anyone else see that? Was it just me?

Was any of that real?

Down to business.

Why is New Blue for you?

I expect some of you have never heard of it. 

New Blue is a broad coalition of conservatives and liberals; or libertarians, as they are sometimes called these days; but really, liberals.

Blue for conservatives, like the old Quebec Parti Bleu, 

Gold for liberals, like the Liberal Democrats in the UK.

We believe in equality and human rights. We believe in parliamentary democracy.

I hope at least some of you will be surprised. 

Don’t we all support that? 

Don’t all parties support that?

New Blue grew because a bunch of us think they no longer do. 

We think the PC party is no longer conservative. 

The Liberal party is no longer liberal. 

The NDP no longer cares about the working class. 

They have abandoned it all for a new idol, sometimes called Critical Theory, or postmodernism, or cultural Marxism. It is all the same, or each is a tentacle of the same thing.

It is what is behind all you hear these days about pulling down statues, renaming universities, calling Canada racist, and trying to silence open discussion and dissent.

Critical Theory makes three claims: 

that race is essential to a person’s identity;

that there is no objective truth; 

and that all social relations are about power.

Believing that race is the core of one’s identity is racism. 

Believing there is no objective truth is insanity.

Believing that all social interactions are about power ends in a war of all against all to the last person standing—who will be the most ruthless and most powerful. 

If there is no truth, the only way to deal with someone who disagrees with you is to silence them.

I did not especially want to run for public office. I’m busy as a college instructor, editor, and writer, now managing my own online academy. I’m a husband and a father. I wish I could spend time with my family. But these are not ordinary times. These are the times that try men’s souls, and in such times one has a civic duty.

 I run because no one else was running for New Blue here in Beaches-East York. If I did not run, there was no one to vote for.

I have lived in Toronto on and off since 1982, but also in other countries: the Philippines, South Korea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia---and in Wuhan China back in 1992. 

I swear I had nothing to do with the coronavirus. 

This has given me some perspective on what we have here in Ontario, and what we could lose. 

I am a past president of the Editors’ Association of Canada, a past director of the Book and Periodical Council of Canada, and advised on the establishment of the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing.

More importantly, I have two kids, Francis and Maryanne. They and their mother are currently trapped in the Philippines by the pandemic and the mandates. They have been trapped there for three years. I am missing their adolescence, and they are missing their studies.

I run for them and for their future. And for all our children.