493. The Brutal Shadow of Equity In Canada | Celina Caesar-Chavannes AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

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Episode: 493. The Brutal Shadow of Equity In Canada | Celina Caesar-Chavannes

Author: Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
Duration: 01:28:27

Episode Shownotes

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with entrepreneur, author, and prior member of Justin Trudeau’s administration, Celina Caesar-Chavannes. They discuss her time in the Canadian government, the Prime Minister’s modus operandi, the use of tokenism over substantive contribution, and why she ultimately decided to resign. Celina Caesar-Chavannes is a dynamic

leader with an impressive track record across business, politics, and advocacy. Currently completing her PhD in Neuroscience, Celina’s research focuses on how cognitive and emotional processes intersect to influence leadership, decision-making, and self-actualization. She translates these insights into practical strategies for Cognitive Optimized Inclusive Leadership (COIL) - a program she designed to help individuals and organizations harness the power of their brain for authentic leadership, fostering deeper self-awareness, well-being, and transformation. Her leadership programs emphasize the importance of integrating neuroscience into leadership development to build more inclusive, empathetic, and effective leaders. This episode was filmed on October 8th, 2024 | Links | For Celina Caesar-Chavannes: On X https://x.com/iamcelinacc?lang=en “Can You Hear Me Now?: How I Found My Voice and Learned to Live with Passion and Purpose” (Book) https://www.amazon.com/Can-You-Hear-Me-Now/dp/0735279594

Summary

In episode 493 of The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, Celina Caesar-Chavannes discusses her experiences in Canadian politics under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, focusing on the themes of tokenism, leadership, and equity. She reflects on the challenges faced by women in politics, her transition from aspiring neurosurgeon to entrepreneur, and the psychological toll of feeling marginalized. Her resignation highlights the superficial nature of political representation and her desire for a genuine commitment to meaningful contributions in leadership roles. This episode sheds light on the complexities of political dynamics and the importance of authentic representation.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (493. The Brutal Shadow of Equity In Canada | Celina Caesar-Chavannes) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:07 Speaker_00
And during that time, his administration, his government has been plagued by a number of scandals, some greater and some lesser.

00:00:32 Speaker_00
One of the more unreported scandals has to do with the sequential departure of some of the more powerful and opinionated figures in his cabinet and his government, including many of the women that he so triumphantly appointed to his cabinet.

00:00:48 Speaker_00
What would you say? founded on the idea of equity in 2015. I've reached out to many of the people who've abandoned his ship, you might say, on the liberal side to talk, to find out what it was like working with Justin, with Prime Minister Trudeau.

00:01:08 Speaker_00
Generally, they've refused to talk to me. Not impolitely or anything like that, but it just hasn't been successful.

00:01:15 Speaker_00
But today it was successful because I got to talk to Selina Caesar-Chavannes, who was elected in the riding of Whitby in 2015, who left her own business, divested herself of her own business to do so, and then was appointed parliamentary secretary.

00:01:34 Speaker_00
And she told us what it was like. She worked very closely with Trudeau, or in principle very closely.

00:01:42 Speaker_00
The story is much more complicated than that, for about four years, until she decided that, to put it bluntly, she'd had more than enough, as you will discover if you

00:01:53 Speaker_00
attend to this podcast, which I would highly recommend, particularly if you're Canadian. It is devastating, really. It's a shocking interview, I would say. It's an emotional interview. She's very articulate. She's very careful.

00:02:11 Speaker_00
She's very forthright and revealing, much more so than I might have expected. And the picture she paints is Not a pretty one. Seriously, not a pretty one.

00:02:24 Speaker_00
And everyone who has the opportunity should listen to this if they're citizens in Canada, because you need to know just exactly who it is that's running the show. So join us and find out.

00:02:41 Speaker_00
So, Selena, we'll start, I think, by just giving people an overview, if you would, about what role you played with the Trudeau Liberals, and expand on that, if you would, a bit, so that people who are listening from other countries have a more comprehensive idea of how the Canadian federal system works, the electoral system.

00:03:02 Speaker_01
Yeah, so I was elected in 2015, and I should say before that, the member of parliament in which my writing or my jurisdiction, my town is, passed away. He was a former federal minister, really well-liked individual. So in 2014, that happened.

00:03:23 Speaker_01
And as you would run in any other election, a by-election was triggered at that time, and I lost the by-election. When that happened, of course, the next time to run was the general election.

00:03:38 Speaker_01
And a general election in Canada runs pretty much as any other democracy. You are voting for the person in your riding. You're not like the United States where you vote directly for the prime minister or directly for the president.

00:03:52 Speaker_01
You vote for the person in your particular jurisdiction. And in 2015, I ran again for the liberals and I won that election.

00:04:02 Speaker_01
So I was a member of parliament for my town of Whitby that I've lived in for over a dozen years, and then immediately was appointed to parliamentary secretary to the prime minister. And basically the parliamentary secretary is

00:04:18 Speaker_01
I would say like the right hand of the prime minister. If the prime minister goes left, you go right. He goes north, you go south. And it's really a tag team role when you're appointed to that position.

00:04:29 Speaker_00
So what had attracted you first to political life and then more specifically, why did you decide to stand for office under the rubric of the Liberals rather? So for everyone watching and listening, Canada really has

00:04:43 Speaker_00
For all intents and purposes, three main political parties. There's Liberals, who usually govern Canada, and they're a centrist party. You have the Conservatives, they're a center-right party.

00:04:53 Speaker_00
And you have the New Democrats, and they're a center-left party. There's some fringe parties, but we'll leave them out of this discussion, including the Separatists.

00:05:05 Speaker_00
So you decided to run for the Liberals and of course they're in power most of the time in Canada and are currently under the leadership of Justin Trudeau. What attracted you to the Liberals and perhaps to Mr. Trudeau as well?

00:05:20 Speaker_01
So I'll answer the last question first. Really, coming to Canada, being from a Caribbean background, we tended to vote a lot liberal. My parents voted liberal. I've always voted liberal. So it was really more an affinity toward a party that had

00:05:38 Speaker_01
welcomed people from the Caribbean into Canada. It was really an affinity towards a leader who at the time was very dynamic. But I would say that getting involved in politics was for a different sort of reasoning.

00:05:55 Speaker_01
At the time before entering in, I was running Canada's first ever national population study or epidemiology study on neurological conditions.

00:06:04 Speaker_01
And what some of your viewers or listeners might not know is that oftentimes, even in Canada, with the social safety net of health care, there are some challenges around people being able to access that healthcare system in a fair manner.

00:06:22 Speaker_01
And what we were finding with that national study, people who were looking after their loved ones with Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's, or even epilepsy or Rett syndrome on the lower end of the age continuum, they were having significant challenges looking after their loved ones.

00:06:37 Speaker_01
They would have to either divorce their partner if they were making too high of an income, they'd have to divorce so that their income would drop.

00:06:45 Speaker_01
and their partner could get services, or they'd have to move from province to province to be able to get the drugs covered under a particular provincial or for the US statewide formulary. And I just thought that that was unacceptable in a G7 country.

00:07:03 Speaker_01
and wanted to get into politics, particularly to deal with those issues, to have a national brain strategy and a national senior strategy. And I thought at the time, the best way to do that was through a liberal government.

00:07:16 Speaker_01
I knew that the prime minister, well, the leader at the time was very much in favor of science, of healthcare. But

00:07:27 Speaker_01
To be honest, the study that I was running across the country was a $15 million investment from the previous government, the Harper government. So I could have gone either way, but my affinity was more towards the liberals at the time.

00:07:41 Speaker_01
And I thought that we'd be able to get a national brain strategy and a national senior strategy in place.

00:07:47 Speaker_00
So now you became parliamentary secretary. How soon after you won the 2015 election?

00:07:55 Speaker_01
within a couple months. So by December of 2015, I was appointed. And had you had any previous political experience at that point? Absolutely, absolutely none. I was, I didn't even take a political science course, to be honest with you.

00:08:10 Speaker_01
No political background.

00:08:12 Speaker_00
So was it a shock to find yourself in that job?

00:08:17 Speaker_01
I think the first shock came when I actually won the election. I knew that I'd be able to win. I was out knocking doors. I knew sort of the machinery behind running. And so as my, because I lost the by-election, my counterpart was obviously in Ottawa.

00:08:34 Speaker_01
I took advantage of that, knocked on 40,000 doors in Whitby to be able to win the general election. But it was a shock to win that because the writing or the place that I lived, was very conservative. The provincial counterpart was conservative.

00:08:49 Speaker_01
The former federal minister was conservative. And so it's like a Republican sort of hotspot. And so I was very shocked to win that election. But I knew people trusted me at the door.

00:09:04 Speaker_01
And when they said, you know, Selena, when you get in there, politics is going to change you. I look back, I look them dead in the eye and I said, watch me. I will make sure that I stay true to who I am.

00:09:14 Speaker_01
So the first shock was actually getting in the door. Becoming parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, not necessarily a shock to me. I knew I had, although I didn't have the political experience, I knew I had the smarts to do it.

00:09:28 Speaker_01
I knew that I had the capability. And because of the by-election, the prime minister had been in Whitby at least four times. So we had developed a relationship. So it wasn't like it was coming out of left field.

00:09:40 Speaker_01
I knew that if he needed someone on the ground listening, being attuned to not just what's happening in Whitby or across the country, but those particular nuances that maybe his experience didn't lend him the ability to understand, I knew that having me as a parliamentary secretary will fill that gap quite well.

00:09:59 Speaker_01
So that wasn't a shock for me.

00:10:02 Speaker_00
Okay, okay, so it was more winning the election. So can you fill people in with regard to your background in general?

00:10:10 Speaker_00
So you said you had run a large study, and how old were you when you ran for office in Whitby, and what was your educational and experiential background prior to running? I'm just trying to place you in everyone's imagination.

00:10:25 Speaker_01
Yes, so I was 41 when I ran. And my background, I have a Bachelor of Science in Human Biology from the University of Toronto.

00:10:37 Speaker_01
I have two MBAs, one in Healthcare Management and the other Executive MBA from Rotman School of Management, again at the University of Toronto.

00:10:48 Speaker_01
really ran a very successful research-based healthcare management firm running pharmaceutical clinical trials, adjudication processes for research firms, and mainly around neurological conditions.

00:11:05 Speaker_01
So most of my career in business was running research, but particularly around the brain.

00:11:13 Speaker_00
Was that a private company that was doing that research? How was that structured?

00:11:17 Speaker_01
Absolutely.

00:11:18 Speaker_01
It was a private company that was running it, and so I'd get contracts with pharmaceutical companies or with non-profits, you know, like working with Parkinson's Society Canada or Alzheimer's Society, helping them run their adjudication processes.

00:11:34 Speaker_01
or partnering with the government of Canada in that last large study that I did running their national epidemiology study.

00:11:41 Speaker_01
So it was a private firm that I ran for over 10 years, award-winning firm, and did that quite successfully for the time, but it was really focused on the first love of my life, which was the brain.

00:11:54 Speaker_00
Okay, so that, and that was your company? And how did you go about, okay, well, that's a difficult thing to manage, to found and run a private company that's research-focused. So, tell me a little bit more about that. How did you have the idea?

00:12:09 Speaker_00
And actually, how did you manage that on the business side? Because that's, it seems to me that that's a rare thing to do. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

00:12:19 Speaker_01
So, tell me about that. So very rare, so I'll have to go back a little bit for your listeners because I think this is important.

00:12:26 Speaker_01
I finished my undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, first in my family to attend university, immigrated from Grenada when I was two years old, and really lost myself at university.

00:12:37 Speaker_01
Graduated high school, top of my class, 99 average, but lost myself in university. It took me six years to finish a three-year degree. graduated with a 1.58 GPA.

00:12:48 Speaker_01
Jordan, if you can imagine how hard you have to work outside of school to get a 1.58 in school. I was wanting to be a neural surgeon. Obviously, you can't apply to medical school with a 1.58 GPA and was lost for two years.

00:13:06 Speaker_01
I ended up working as a forklift operator in a factory for a couple of years, and then I realized, you know what, the university gave me the piece of paper, and they didn't put my GPA on it.

00:13:19 Speaker_01
So I went back, I did an undergraduate research course, fourth year course, ended up getting an A in that, fell in love with research.

00:13:26 Speaker_01
working on nutrition and Alzheimer's disease, and then just started to work my way up, worked at the TANS Neuroscience Building as a research coordinator. And then I decided, well, you know, I could be a research manager.

00:13:39 Speaker_01
Let me do my MBA, become a research manager, and see what happens with that. And of course, the juxtaposition with that is you can't get the research management job if you don't have enough experience, and you can't get the experience without the job.

00:13:54 Speaker_01
By that time, I had two kids. We were living in this red-down basement apartment, basically dumpster diving for our furniture. And I realized that life wasn't going to keep me down that way.

00:14:08 Speaker_01
So I started a company because I knew working in research that the most valuable asset to any of the principal investigators I was working with was a good, solid research coordinator.

00:14:21 Speaker_01
So I decided that maybe I could use that as a launchpad, as a freelance research coordinator.

00:14:27 Speaker_01
And I started that for a little while until the first pharmaceutical company called me and said, we have a clinical trial for a pediatric epilepsy clinical trial. Can you find us some principal investigators?

00:14:41 Speaker_01
And of course, when you're down and out and you're trying your best to get your family out of a situation, the first thing that I said was, absolutely.

00:14:51 Speaker_01
But finding a pediatric neuropsychologist to run a clinical trial in Toronto was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. But with grit and determination, I found three of them for that company.

00:15:05 Speaker_01
And the first paycheck I got with that, with Resolve Research Solutions, which was the name of my company, was a down payment to my first home. I'm a hustler. You know, I know how to work hard. I really studied with that MBA.

00:15:21 Speaker_01
use that MBA to create the blueprint for a company that ended up being very successful.

00:15:26 Speaker_01
And I think finding a niche market of being able to be a site management organization for pharmaceutical companies, probably one of the first in Canada, was something that was unheard of.

00:15:39 Speaker_01
And it happened to be something that I knew how to do very well because I knew while I didn't know everything about the brain at the time, I knew how to run a successful business.

00:15:49 Speaker_01
And that's something that my principal investigators didn't know how to do. They knew how to see patients. They knew how to run the trial, but they didn't know the business of the trial. And I handled that for them.

00:15:59 Speaker_00
And when did you start that business?

00:16:01 Speaker_01
I started in 2005.

00:16:05 Speaker_00
Okay, so by the time you won your seat, you'd run a successful business, a successful and growing business for 10 years.

00:16:14 Speaker_01
For about 10 years, yeah.

00:16:15 Speaker_00
How successful did it become?

00:16:18 Speaker_01
Oh, it was actually pretty good, not to boast, but I won the Black Business and Professional Association Harry Joe Merort Award for Young Entrepreneur, and in 2012 won the Toronto Board of Trade Entrepreneur of the Year Award with the company.

00:16:36 Speaker_01
It grew quite successfully to the point where I was running or co-chairing with the Public Health Agency of Canada National Epidemiology Studies.

00:16:46 Speaker_01
I think the success may have been measured in sort of dollars and cents, but I think the impact that I had within the industry, focusing on research, focusing on a market where oftentimes you don't see people like me running, you don't see women in that particular field.

00:17:04 Speaker_01
I was doing it and doing it successfully and having impact, not just for the physicians that I work with, but for the patients that we serve that were walking through the door.

00:17:13 Speaker_00
So what did you do with your business once you ran for office?

00:17:18 Speaker_01
Yeah.

00:17:18 Speaker_00
Yeah.

00:17:19 Speaker_01
So as parliamentary secretary to a prime minister, you have to, well, some of us had to divest.

00:17:25 Speaker_01
Some of us didn't divest from everything, but I was naive enough to follow the rules, and I divested from the company and really had to start from scratch once I left politics again.

00:17:38 Speaker_00
OK, well, let's dive into that then. Tell me the story of your experience as parliamentary secretary and tell everyone what you learned and what happened. How long did you serve under Trudeau in the government?

00:17:57 Speaker_01
Four years. Not even four years, because in March of 2019, I stepped out of the liberal fold and sat as an independent towards the end. Even though I had a few months left, I stepped down.

00:18:12 Speaker_01
But for about three and a half years, I stayed within the liberal fold.

00:18:16 Speaker_00
Okay, well, then why don't you just start at the beginning. Just start at the beginning and tell me exactly what happened.

00:18:23 Speaker_01
Yeah, so, I mean, it's a very interesting story because at the beginning, of course, I think with a lot of Canadians, we had a majority, went from, you know, a couple dozen seats in the legislature to over 180 seats, a majority government.

00:18:41 Speaker_01
There was a lot of excitement, very much sunny ways, really excited about having that change of government within Canada. And it was an exciting time. It was an exciting time to be appointed parliamentary secretary.

00:18:55 Speaker_01
It was an exciting time to be a member of parliament. I knew I'd be able to represent the people that I served very well. But of course, being a business person, I wanted to also make sure that I was holding myself accountable.

00:19:08 Speaker_01
So as parliamentary secretaries, as we've discussed before, I really wanted to make sure we had a national brain strategy, because I knew the research for every dollar you invest in brain research, you get a $4 return, either with savings of people's lives, helping people to be able to return to work, often caregivers,

00:19:27 Speaker_01
There was a four to one return. So I really wanted a national brain strategy.

00:19:31 Speaker_01
And I wanted to take care of the people that I knew were hurting the most, often women who are caregivers for people who are really struggling with neurological diseases or neurodegenerative conditions. So that for me was critically important.

00:19:44 Speaker_01
I drew up the plans with timelines and milestones and accountability metrics. I presented this framework in on, I think, January of 2016. really hoping that it will work out. And I heard nothing for a little while. Presented it to who?

00:20:01 Speaker_01
I presented it to PMO. So to, within the prime minister's office, his chief counsel would have been Jerry Butz and Katie Telford at the time. So I presented it to them. And to be honest, I'm not quite sure if the prime minister ever saw it.

00:20:18 Speaker_01
So I can't be certain of that. Although I was his parliamentary secretary, there was very, very little interaction, which people might think, I thought you said if he goes left, you go right.

00:20:30 Speaker_01
Well, that is normally the case, but there wasn't a lot of interaction with the prime minister at the time. And right from the beginning, I thought this is awfully strange. for me to have very little interaction.

00:20:45 Speaker_01
If you are able to witness Canadian politics or any political system, you'll see that there is a question period here. We have a House of Commons in which we debate materials.

00:20:56 Speaker_01
At question period, we get up and we answer questions to the Canadian public, to our counterparts on the official opposition on the other side. And I was told that I was not allowed to speak during question period, which I also found quite strange.

00:21:13 Speaker_01
I wasn't allowed to speak to media. And it just started rubbing me the wrong way. And so I just continued because I'm new.

00:21:25 Speaker_01
And for people who are listening, and I'm not sure if this is going to bear weight, but to me, it bared a lot of weight, knowing that during the 42nd Parliament, between 2015 and 2019, I was the only Black female elected in the 42nd Canadian Parliament.

00:21:43 Speaker_01
So with that understanding, I kind of kept myself very straight and narrow. I wasn't going to complain too much. I wasn't going to make too much noise about things because I was the only one there, and I didn't want to ruffle feathers.

00:21:59 Speaker_01
But as it kept going, I kept thinking, something is just not right. I was invited to, of course, you get a new government, invited to the White House state dinner, which was very exciting, I thought, last year of the Obama administration.

00:22:16 Speaker_01
But I wasn't invited to dinner. I was just invited to go. And that rubbed me the wrong way, and a number of different things that happened on that trip.

00:22:27 Speaker_01
The second time that I was invited to attend anything on behalf of the prime minister was the opening of the National African American Museum. in Washington, and that was exciting. You know, I was sitting behind Oprah.

00:22:46 Speaker_01
I mean, who wouldn't love that, right? But it was still, there was something that was not right. And then the last event, so I was invited to three international events.

00:22:57 Speaker_01
Again, for your listeners, as a parliamentary secretary to a minister, I am parliamentary secretary to the first minister, the prime minister. If he goes left, you go right.

00:23:09 Speaker_01
And if you can remember that 2016 term, the first term of Justin Trudeau, he was doing a lot of international travel. He was doing a lot of across country, across the world. I had three international trips.

00:23:22 Speaker_01
The last one was the inauguration of President Akufo-Addo in Ghana. And when I was invited to that, I started to do the mental math in my head, where I was invited to the state dinner, but not invited to eat.

00:23:36 Speaker_01
I was invited to the African American Museum, and I was invited to Ghana. Three events that were really black focused. And at that point I said, yeah, I'm done. And I resigned as parliamentary secretary.

00:23:55 Speaker_00
Okay, let's walk through that. Let's go back to 2015. Justin Trudeau was invited by the mavens of the Liberal Party at the end of the—correct me if I've got any of this wrong, by the way—at the end of the Harper term.

00:24:12 Speaker_00
Harper had been running the country for a substantial period of time, and it's pretty typical for Canadians to throw out whoever's in charge on about a 10-year basis. And so many Canadians felt that it was time for change.

00:24:27 Speaker_00
The Liberal Party was in some degree of disarray, and the powers that be went to Justin Trudeau. And I had some real trouble with that right at the beginning. And so, I'd kind of like your opinion about that.

00:24:38 Speaker_00
I'm not a fan of Mr. Trudeau, and so I may have a very biased perspective, but I'd like to at least be accurate in my suppositions. My sense was that He had no right to put himself forward in a fundamental ethical sense. He had no right.

00:24:54 Speaker_00
He did as a Canadian, obviously. Because the only thing that Justin had going for him, apart from his attractiveness and his charm, which are both obvious, I would say, he had an extremely famous name.

00:25:07 Speaker_00
But I didn't think that he had the experience or the education. to dare to take on a role like that.

00:25:15 Speaker_00
And then I, you know, I was, I was thinking, well, that's a bit harsh, because the liberals did want someone who had name brand recognition, and fair enough.

00:25:23 Speaker_00
And he could have come to office and surrounded himself with real experts and learned like mad, carefully, and perhaps had he had the ability, became a stellar leader over some period of time. Although I didn't see much evidence of that either.

00:25:38 Speaker_00
And then he came out with this Sunny Ways campaign, and I think that really did capitalize on his charm and very effectively. And there was an optimistic mood in Canada at that point with regard to the possibilities of the new leadership.

00:25:53 Speaker_00
swept up and that was reminiscent to me. I was quite young when his father first came to power, but there was a wave of Trudeau mania across the country because Pierre Trudeau, senior, obviously, was very charismatic and had that

00:26:11 Speaker_00
celebrity-like effect on the Canadian public that his son did. Okay, so now that's 2015 and Trudeau comes to power and everybody's looking forward to having that happen. That's when you become parliamentary secretary. Now, you had a

00:26:26 Speaker_00
let's say, a detailed plan for something that was quite practical and quite novel on the neuroscience side, let's say, and you produced a plan and you put it forward to Jerry Butz and you mentioned someone else at that point. Katie Telford.

00:26:42 Speaker_00
Right, right. And as far as you could tell, that was rejected out of hand, and you don't believe, perhaps, that it even got to Trudeau's desk. And although you were parliamentary secretary, you didn't have a close relationship with him.

00:26:56 Speaker_00
And so, apparently, you weren't even in a position to ask him whether or not he had seen this plan that you had spent some time detailing. Now, I think it would be useful to outline for us

00:27:08 Speaker_00
what the role of a parliamentary secretary is, and what it was that you expected that didn't happen, and whether or not your expectations were actually realistic.

00:27:18 Speaker_00
And you said, you know, you were disinclined to complain, and you laid out the reasons for that.

00:27:22 Speaker_00
So what's the typical, as far as you understand, how are the relations between a prime minister and his parliamentary secretary generally managed, and what is that role generally?

00:27:34 Speaker_01
So, typically what happens, and you could check the record because I tend not to say things that don't have receipts, is that a parliamentary secretary, especially to the prime minister, is sworn into privy council and has access to a breadth and depth of information that allows them to carry out their duties in a way that is

00:27:57 Speaker_01
fundamental to being able to have these meetings with individuals that are on high level or high level securities. Although I had the security screenings from CRA, RCMP, CSIS, that was all done, but wasn't able to have those meetings.

00:28:15 Speaker_01
when I looked at other relationships with the finance minister, Bill Morneau, and Francois-Philippe Champagne, who was his parliamentary secretary, very close, very much constantly having conversations, constantly involved in the policy development, constantly involved in stakeholder engagement and relationships.

00:28:34 Speaker_01
So there's no gaps between what that minister is doing and what that parliamentary secretary is doing. There has to be a tight relationship.

00:28:45 Speaker_01
And as a first minister, as prime minister with the parliamentary secretary, there has to be an even tighter gap. Because if there's any kind of ripples or spaces in between the other ministries, we need to be aware of that.

00:28:59 Speaker_01
We need to run a tight ship. We have a lot to do on the agenda. So making sure that you have someone that's not only competent, but has their ears to the ground, they know what is happening, is what I thought would be the relationship that I had.

00:29:14 Speaker_01
And I would say that maybe, I don't want to mislead anyone, maybe it was my fault that that relationship didn't go as well. The first meeting that I had with the prime minister was in December of 2015.

00:29:29 Speaker_01
And of course, everybody remembers that during that first administration, he had a 50-50 cabinet, and he came out and said, you know, that this is the cabinet because it's 2015.

00:29:41 Speaker_01
not because the people had merit, not because, you know, I have an excellent lineup. He said it's because it's 2015.

00:29:48 Speaker_01
It was very disenfranchising, and I think it was very much flippant for someone who was a leader of a G7 country to just say, because it's 2015.

00:29:57 Speaker_00
Let me dive into that for a second, if you don't mind. Well, because that also struck me really hard. You know, I spent a lot of time assessing the research literature on hiring and determining how you do that if you hire purely on merit, let's say.

00:30:16 Speaker_00
And merit is defined in relationship to the evidence you have that the people you're attempting to hire actually have the ability to do what that specific job requires. And there are various ways of determining that merit.

00:30:29 Speaker_00
You do a job analysis to find out what the job actually entails, and then you go through the person's history, and you see if they have the experience and the raw ability.

00:30:38 Speaker_00
Okay, so now when Trudeau announced that 50-50 cabinet, because it was 2015, I thought something quite similar to what you thought. I thought, first, hey, that's pretty damn flippant.

00:30:48 Speaker_00
And I thought, second, you've done something there that's really not good, because only 25% of the members of the House of Commons were female, and that means you've reduced your applicant pool a priori by half.

00:31:02 Speaker_00
And so there's no way that you pulled the most, statistically speaking, purely, there's no possible way that you screened and pulled in the most qualified people into your cabinet. And you did that for show.

00:31:14 Speaker_00
And so, well, if you cut your applicant pool by half on arbitrary grounds, there might be other reasons to select people. But, okay, but you had reasons as well. They might not have been the same as mine. You had reasons for being irritated by that.

00:31:28 Speaker_00
Delve more for me, if you would, into why it put your teeth on edge.

00:31:33 Speaker_01
Certainly, and I won't speak to sort of the skills of the individuals. I think he had a very competent cabinet around him.

00:31:41 Speaker_01
The thing that really struck me with the, because it's 2015, is because it was so flippant, because it was so, it made it seem like it was arbitrary, and it made it seem, as you said, for show. And so I went into that meeting saying to him,

00:32:02 Speaker_01
That look, I understand what my role here, I understand I'm the only one that looks like me. But what I said and I quote is, if I'm here to fill any gender or racial gap within your cabinet, I don't want this role.

00:32:17 Speaker_00
Yeah, well, that's one of the dangers. That is absolutely one of the dangers of gender and ethnicity selection, let's say. Like, I saw this at the universities all the time. I think it's a terrible thing to have happen around

00:32:33 Speaker_00
people who are from a minority background who are truly qualified because it's hard on them because they don't know why they're selected and it's hard on everybody else because they don't know why they're selected and so that's not fun.

00:32:45 Speaker_01
It's not fun and putting that forward right at the beginning I wanted to put him on notice that I am smart I'm more than capable so

00:32:57 Speaker_01
Use me for a particular role that you might have within this position as parliamentary secretary, but don't for a second think that I would be a token throughout your entire administration.

00:33:09 Speaker_01
That was the notice that I was putting him under with saying those words. And so after I said that, he said, you know what, Selena, do you trust my judgment? dude, I met you like five minutes ago. So I said, no, I don't trust your judgment.

00:33:28 Speaker_01
I have no reason to. I've been married to my partner for 17 years. I hardly trust his judgment most days. But I mean, I have to build a relationship with someone. I'm not going to lie to you and say that I trust your judgment.

00:33:41 Speaker_01
And I realized at that moment that the tension in the room got a little awkward.

00:33:48 Speaker_00
Why it's okay. Let's take that apart because okay, so yeah you let's take that apart doing well for sure on this well for sure so look you you had some reason to Be apprehensive to two reasons, right? The first reason you do you lined out one is is

00:34:06 Speaker_00
because of the statements that Trudeau made about the composition of his cabinet and how he made that. And then second, because you were the only black woman in the entire House of Commons.

00:34:16 Speaker_00
And so, the combination of those two things made it reasonable for you to wonder just what was going on and to make a statement.

00:34:23 Speaker_00
Now, if I was going to play the devil's advocate, I'd say, you know, maybe, and I'm not saying that this is right, but I, because I really do want to go into this. So, I want to do it in the most, in the harshest way possible, so we get it straight.

00:34:38 Speaker_00
You know, you might say, and I think you kind of alluded to this, given that you said that perhaps you put your foot forward wrong the first meeting. You know, you might say if you were thinking about it strategically, you would have

00:34:50 Speaker_00
had a calm and somewhat contentless first meeting and just got to know each other a little bit before you put your foot down, so to speak, about the role you were going to play. But maybe not, too.

00:35:03 Speaker_00
Maybe the right thing to do was to make your case right off the bat. There's no way I can tell. But you said that, but you were inclined to do that.

00:35:10 Speaker_00
And then you said that when you did it, the atmosphere in the room wasn't perhaps what you might have hoped for. So tell me what you saw. And he asked you to trust him, which is also, that's something you remember. And it's an event worthy of note.

00:35:28 Speaker_00
Because the question is, what did he mean? Because you don't know him. Now, did he mean you should just trust him because he's Justin Trudeau and he's the Prime Minister of Canada?

00:35:37 Speaker_00
Or did he mean that you should start out by trusting someone if you're employed by them in a new role? Like, I don't know. What did you think?

00:35:45 Speaker_01
Yeah, you know, I'm not even sure that question is warranted on the first day. Like, do you trust my judgment on the first day? I mean, I know that your platform was built by a number of different people. It wasn't just you.

00:35:58 Speaker_01
Why are you even asking that question? And why are you asking that question of me? Do you think we could work together? Do you think we could achieve the objectives of our platform?

00:36:07 Speaker_01
Do you think that we're going to do right by Canadians with this particular mandate? Ask me those questions. I don't really care about your particular mandate. And it really speaks to ego and it really speaks to a

00:36:21 Speaker_01
a particular sense of awareness or lack thereof that was pretty evident right from the beginning.

00:36:28 Speaker_01
And if we think about this, this whole episode, me being in politics, has driven me into the PhD work that I'm doing right now on motivated cognition and understanding what motivates people, you know, their self-appraisal, their self-enhancement, their self-verification.

00:36:45 Speaker_01
It was really in that moment seeing that Everything that needed to align for Justin Trudeau at that moment needed to feed into his feelings or his motivation on self, what he felt about himself.

00:37:01 Speaker_01
And I came in and within that first 15 minutes of a meeting said, no. I'm not just going to arbitrarily fall into what you deem to be your methodology around your self-enhancement. That is not my role. My role is to represent the people of Ripley.

00:37:21 Speaker_01
My role is to make sure that we execute a mandate. And I didn't know that at the time. But it really spoke to the fact- Didn't know what?

00:37:30 Speaker_01
I didn't know at the time that probably that that wasn't the best move to make because I assumed that Addis' parliamentary secretary, as his right-hand person, that he would have wanted someone who was going to be honest.

00:37:46 Speaker_01
And I don't think that's what he wanted. He wanted someone to confirm a bias that he felt about himself or a lack of self-esteem that he felt about himself by saying, yes, I trust your judgment, Justin.

00:37:58 Speaker_01
I don't know you, but I'm going to say yes, I trust you.

00:38:00 Speaker_00
I could play that game.

00:38:02 Speaker_01
I didn't want to.

00:38:03 Speaker_00
Okay, so that's what alerted you, let's say, is that you, if I got, tell me if I've got this right, you felt that his query about whether or not you trusted him was an attempt to

00:38:22 Speaker_00
insist that you on no evidence, because you didn't know him, make the presumption that he was competent and that he would lead your relationship in the appropriate direction. Now, you laid out a bunch of other questions that he could have asked you.

00:38:39 Speaker_00
which were more other-focused, right? They were more focused on service to Canadians. Now, you read a lot into that, I mean, which you just laid out. It sounds to me like you were surprised, let's say, that the conversation became about him.

00:38:54 Speaker_00
And it sounds to me that you weren't disabused of that suspicion as things progressed. Now, you've also laid out for us already

00:39:04 Speaker_00
the fact that you were trotted out, so to speak, at three international events, and they were all international events that you associated with you being put on display as a consequence of your ethnicity, and perhaps your gender.

00:39:18 Speaker_00
Is that a reasonable representation of what you said? That's reasonable. Okay, now. It's not a reasonable representation. It is what happened. Okay, fine, fine. I just want to make sure that I'm not misrepresenting this. Okay, now.

00:39:30 Speaker_00
And so, what happened to you was that you didn't

00:39:34 Speaker_00
establish a working relationship on a day-to-day basis with the man you were supposed to be walking arm-in-arm with, let's say, and you would have expected as parliamentary secretary, given that it was a key role, that you'd be in constant communication.

00:39:48 Speaker_00
How often did you, in fact, speak with Prime Minister Trudeau?

00:39:53 Speaker_01
I would say it was a handful of times. I haven't, I didn't count it, but it wasn't, and it was a handful of times and of very little substance. There wasn't, we didn't have any substantial meetings where we were talking about policy or anything else.

00:40:06 Speaker_01
It was kind of in passing. Yes.

00:40:10 Speaker_00
So, you didn't have any meetings that were substantive. How long was the first meeting?

00:40:16 Speaker_01
The first meeting was maybe about half an hour. You know what? I stand corrected. The other meeting that I had with the prime minister was in August of 2016. And in August of 2016, I brought to him a couple of things.

00:40:29 Speaker_01
And I remember this because I didn't have another meeting until... I didn't hear anything about it until 2018.

00:40:36 Speaker_01
So in August of 2016, I came to him and I said, at the time, the United Nations had declared the international decade of people of African descent between 2014 and 2024. We were two years in. I brought that to the prime minister.

00:40:52 Speaker_01
I said, look, we should probably recognize this. The UN has brought it forward. I think it would be a good idea. He said to me, Selina, what do you want to do? I said, That's not up to me to decide what I should do for all Canadians of African descent.

00:41:08 Speaker_01
That's unfair.

00:41:09 Speaker_01
We should actually do this properly, understand some of the concerns, understand some of the issues that they're having, and then actually recognize this international decade in a way that makes sense, in a way that is actually genuine to our mission and mandate as a government.

00:41:27 Speaker_01
And so that meeting ended. And I didn't hear anything for a year. And then on January 31st of 2018, I was invited to the foyer of the House of Commons. And again, paraded in front, Selina, you have to be there on this day.

00:41:48 Speaker_01
And I'm saying like, what's going on? And he comes out. And I hear that we're announcing Canada's recognition of the International Decade of People of African Descent. And my heart breaks because I realized, then I start doing my homework.

00:42:10 Speaker_01
And I realized that over the last year, there have been dozens of meetings about this issue that I have been purposely not invited to. And again, and I'm not trying to make an excuse for bad behavior, but I understand the person that I am.

00:42:32 Speaker_01
I'm a person who will... fight for and advocate for people that I know don't have the privileges that I have, that don't have the luxuries that I have.

00:42:46 Speaker_01
I understand the power that I have as someone who could be elected or someone who has the ear of the prime minister.

00:42:55 Speaker_01
At the same time, to be so disenfranchised from an individual because I am outspoken, because I advocate, because I put the people that I serve ahead of me, because I'm not willing to just take some garbage that you decide to put forward as policy and not interrogate it.

00:43:17 Speaker_01
That is not my role, it is not my job. And from that moment, I knew that within that particular party, within that system, I actually thought that staying in there would have killed me before it actually did anything else.

00:43:34 Speaker_01
It made me really feel like I had to become smaller and smaller, and it wasn't who I was

00:43:43 Speaker_00
Let's walk through this. OK, so you got elected. That was quite unlikely. You had had a successful business career, and you were in somewhat of a unique position in the House of Commons. And so you had every reason to assume that.

00:43:56 Speaker_00
well, that you had quite a stellar opportunity and a heavy responsibility in front of you.

00:44:02 Speaker_00
And you had a meeting with Prime Minister Trudeau, and it wasn't very long, and you said some things about the kind of role that you were hoping you'd play, and the fact that you weren't particularly interested in playing a token role, let's say, and that didn't go in a stellar manner, and he made some reference to his own

00:44:24 Speaker_00
what would you say, wishes in that regard? And then from as far as I can tell, you were essentially sidelined. So let me ask you some questions.

00:44:33 Speaker_00
And then you said that the fact of that sidelining and the fact that it was done in a relatively, what would you say, in a manner that didn't really involve you in the least, it was done What would I say?

00:44:46 Speaker_00
You're sidelined so effectively that you're not even involved in the fact of your own isolation. And so you said that had relatively severe psychological consequences for you.

00:44:58 Speaker_00
You just alluded to that, you know, and that you felt that you were being diminished with regards to your, what is it exactly? Your confidence in your professional capacity? What effect did that have on you?

00:45:13 Speaker_01
That's a very good question because in the initial, in the outset, it did. It really diminished my confidence in myself. It really made me worry about whether or not I was good enough, I was worthy enough for the job.

00:45:34 Speaker_01
And to be honest, I want to be very transparent with your listeners. During 2016, I had what is classically termed a nervous breakdown. I was institutionalized for four days. My depression was absolutely the worst it has ever been. It was very hard.

00:45:54 Speaker_01
However, what that announcement in 2018 did on January 30th Parading me out to be at an announcement where you have intentionally sidelined me for over a year, it did something to my confidence that

00:46:15 Speaker_01
I don't quite know how to explain, and I'm not sure it did something to my confidence. It did something to my resolve to really start to use this role to advocate for people. And I said to my partner at the time, I said, the gloves are coming off.

00:46:32 Speaker_01
they're going to get rid of me either way, I might as well go out, you know, if they're going to talk about me anyway, I might as well give them something to talk about.

00:46:42 Speaker_00
And so let, let, let me, let me walk, let me walk through that. Okay. So because I, well, it's, it's a complicated story. I mean, so, What you've told us so far is that you spent 10 years building up an unlikely business.

00:46:57 Speaker_00
And so that's a difficult matter. And that's a real indication of competence because you're working at the intersection of two diverse fields and no one else is doing it. And you managed to build it from scratch and make it successful.

00:47:09 Speaker_00
So that's hard and unlikely. And then it goes for 10 years, so you're able to sustain that. Then you ran for office and you won, which was unlikely. And then you had to sideline your business, right? So that's a big deal.

00:47:21 Speaker_00
So you sacrificed a lot in order to take that position. And then you get a pretty decent promotion right off the bat, right? And so then you're thinking something like, well, this is going pretty well. And look at all the opportunities in front of me.

00:47:37 Speaker_00
And then all of a sudden, you find that That's all for show, and that the real activity has nothing to do with you at all, and you're not included in the discussions at all.

00:47:48 Speaker_00
And so, okay, and so I'm curious, okay, so I'm curious about the effect of that as far as, these are very personal questions, so forgive me, but this is important, because it's actually key to why I was interested in talking to you to begin with, because I knew something like this had happened, and I wanted to find out what it was.

00:48:05 Speaker_00
Okay, so now that had quite a devastating effect on you. Right. That's that's what you laid out now. And so what what was that?

00:48:14 Speaker_00
Was that was that disappointment in the fact that you had strived very hard to make yourself an entirely credible and able person and that the opportunities that that sort of person would have had, in fact, presented themselves to you, but then proved to be illusory because someone was playing a public relations game?

00:48:35 Speaker_00
Like, is that what's going on? Is that what you discovered? Or is there something about that I've got wrong?

00:48:41 Speaker_01
Yeah, no, I think you got it absolutely right. I think that the... And again, looking at the literature around this post-appointment, looking at how tokenism can be very disenfranchising, how it can be very dehumanizing.

00:49:03 Speaker_01
At the time, for me, I just couldn't reconcile in my head the fact that I knew I was smart, the fact that I knew I could do this job, the fact that I knew if he put me in front of any audience, anywhere, at any time, I'd read my briefs.

00:49:19 Speaker_01
I learned French in a matter of months. Like, this is not an easy role for someone who is hyper-visible. I am hyper-visible. If I do not show up one day, you're going to scan the room and go, where's the black girl at?

00:49:34 Speaker_01
Like, you're going to know I'm not there. So I have to be 100% on my game all the time. And I couldn't reconcile the fact that I am 100% ready for this. I'm not allowed to speak to media. I'm not allowed to speak in the house.

00:49:49 Speaker_01
I'm not being sent anywhere. And what kind of trick does that play on your mind? How does that...

00:49:56 Speaker_01
If we want to call it social identity threat, or we want to call it any other of the terms that we use in cognitive research, what does that do to the mind of a person when they know that the only thing that they're there for is like, oh my God, look at this, I'm Black.

00:50:11 Speaker_01
And oh my God, look at these, I'm a woman.

00:50:16 Speaker_00
Well, it's worse. It's actually worse than that, I think. I think it's worse than that psychologically because you're actually put in a really hard place.

00:50:23 Speaker_00
So, because there's an element here that we haven't explored, you see, because you had to make a choice when you were evaluating what happened to you.

00:50:31 Speaker_00
So, one of the things you could have thought and should have thought if you were reasonably self-critical was maybe you got off on the wrong foot, you know, and set yourself up for that. Now, we already went through that, so I won't... Sure.

00:50:43 Speaker_00
So, I won't... You know, you want to assess whatever role you had in the failure of this relationship to get kindled.

00:50:49 Speaker_00
But the other thing you had to understand here that is also a crisis of faith is that you're dealing with someone who's the elected leader of a major country. Now he's either the real thing or he's not.

00:51:02 Speaker_00
And if he's not the real thing, that's a real problem. If he's someone who's just acting out his role. And so now you're in a position where you have to decide whether there's something wrong with you, and there might be, who knows, right?

00:51:13 Speaker_00
And that you're not up to scratch for the role and you're being sidelined because of your incompetence.

00:51:19 Speaker_00
Or you have to decide that there's something seriously rotten behind the stage at the wonderful world of Oz, and whether the people pulling the strings behind the scenes are just not exactly who they should be.

00:51:32 Speaker_00
And if you already put faith in the Liberal Party, you said that you were entranced at least to the same degree that other Canadians were by the possibility that Justin Trudeau brought to the stage. Okay, so now you had two hard problems to deal with.

00:51:45 Speaker_00
There's either something seriously wrong with you, Or there's something not only seriously wrong with him, but with the whole bloody charade. And so, it's not surprising that that would pull you apart.

00:51:58 Speaker_00
Because either one of those being true is not good.

00:52:02 Speaker_01
Either one of those being true is not good. And I felt that intimately for three years. And when I made the decision in September 2018 that I said, you know what? I am not dying here.

00:52:20 Speaker_01
It came to the point where I actually kept saying to myself, I am not dying here. This cognitive dissonance that exists internally compared to my external reality is so bizarre to me that when I started to question my own abilities, I mean,

00:52:45 Speaker_01
I know exactly what I'm capable of. I didn't get to parliamentary secretary of a prime minister as a woman, as a black woman, as whatever identity you want to call me because I'm stupid. I didn't get there because I don't have grit.

00:53:02 Speaker_01
I didn't get there because I'm not tenacious. I got there because I have all those things and then some. And that's not being boastful or anything, that's just reality. You don't get to navigate these systems like that.

00:53:14 Speaker_00
How long did it take you to figure that out? Okay, so you had this crisis, you said, and it really knocked you for a loop. How long did it take you to convince yourself that those things that you now know to be true, how long did it take you?

00:53:28 Speaker_00
to convince yourself that you weren't the, what would you say, you weren't the problem here, let's say. And how did you manage to convince yourself of that? Well, that's a hard thing to do.

00:53:39 Speaker_00
And obviously, you're going to have to do that to crawl out of the hole that you were in. What process did you go through to regain your confidence? And then tell us what happened.

00:53:50 Speaker_01
So let me go back to the by-election, because I told you I lost the by-election, right? And I did the exact same thing that I did at the by-election as I did in 2017. And I figured out why I lost. Self-awareness is a heck of a thing.

00:54:09 Speaker_01
You have to figure out how you got yourself into whatever position that you're in. Not what Justin Trudeau did, not what anybody else did.

00:54:15 Speaker_01
What did you do, Selena, to lose that election or to get into this position where you're having such a hard time that you're hospitalized for four days?

00:54:25 Speaker_01
And so I really had to regain, to shift my thinking and just remember actually who I was and remember the why I was there and the how I got there, which I think people often forget in these kinds of circumstances because I could have stayed beating myself up and then exited politics and nobody would have been the wiser.

00:54:47 Speaker_01
But I remembered how I got there and why I was there, and both of those reasons had to do with the people that I served.

00:54:53 Speaker_01
I got there because the people that I served in Whitby elected me and put their faith in me, and I was there to make sure that I didn't let them down.

00:55:01 Speaker_01
And so with those two things in mind, I realized that my boss probably wasn't the person that they thought was my boss, Trudeau. That wasn't my boss. My boss were the people of Whitby.

00:55:14 Speaker_01
And then with that switch in mind, it became very easy to not placate to the puppet master behind the wall at Oz. It became very easy for me to stay true to the people that I served, and it wasn't him.

00:55:30 Speaker_00
Okay, so two questions, then we'll go in two directions from that. The first question is, who is running the show, as far as you're concerned, in the Trudeau government, or who was then?

00:55:42 Speaker_00
And maybe it's Trudeau, but maybe it isn't, and so I'm curious about that. I mean, I've heard from other people that I've talked to that he is markedly absent during discussions of ideational significance, let's say.

00:55:56 Speaker_00
He's not particularly interested in policy. He's not interested in the details of governing. Now, I don't know that to be true, and so that's part of the reason I wanted to talk to you.

00:56:05 Speaker_00
And then I also want to know, once you realized who you were actually responsible to, You know, which is a very good realization, right, in a democratic system to remember that.

00:56:16 Speaker_00
And I can understand perfectly well why you would have forgotten that, given the glamour and glitter around the in the dawning days and your relative inexperience.

00:56:24 Speaker_00
OK, so then once you came to that realization, what changed and how did you what changed? What did you start doing differently and what happened? So let's do the first thing first.

00:56:35 Speaker_00
Who who is running the show or who was running the show as far as you're concerned? And what did that what did that mean?

00:56:42 Speaker_01
Yeah. So as far as running the show, I think most people would remember, Canadians will remember that when Harper was prime minister, that people kept saying that, you know, the prime minister's office was really centralized.

00:56:55 Speaker_01
All decisions were made there. Nothing changed with Trudeau. It was the central office. It was his principal secretaries, Jerry Buds, Katie Telford, that were primarily running the show. And I don't think I'm the only one that would say this.

00:57:10 Speaker_01
I would think that Bill Morneau left, said the same thing. Others have left and said the same thing. So this is not a Selena-ized perspective. This is something that I witnessed and I think is actually true. When it comes to, you know,

00:57:26 Speaker_01
After the incident with Jody Wilson-Raybould, when Jerry Butt stepped down, I thought he was the only adult in the room. And when he stepped down, it became very apparent that things were going to get a lot worse before it got a lot better.

00:57:40 Speaker_01
And we could talk about that later. What happened after I made that recognition was I did things completely differently.

00:57:55 Speaker_01
And I got into, I still kept getting into a lot of trouble for things, but at this point, I was doing it for the right reasons, not getting in good trouble.

00:58:04 Speaker_01
And oftentimes you'd be given a speech and said, here, read the speech, say what's on the speech, and don't deviate. And I'd say, forget it. I'm not saying what's on this speech. This speech has nothing to do with the people of Whitby.

00:58:18 Speaker_01
It has nothing to do with the people that I serve. Tell me the three things that you want me to say that are really important. I'll say those, but I need to make sure that I'm representing Whitby. So I'd write my own speeches.

00:58:29 Speaker_01
I'd make sure I'd say them in French and English because I didn't want anybody to knock me for it.

00:58:33 Speaker_01
And I really made sure that I wasn't doing the cookie cutter politician move where you'd see one person sends out a tweet and everybody's tweet looks exactly the same. That wasn't me.

00:58:47 Speaker_01
I was very clear to make sure that the people of Whitby knew that I was serving them. And if I couldn't tweak the messaging, I posted nothing. And then I think towards the end, towards especially March of 2019, I just decided that

00:59:12 Speaker_01
I was not going to let the actions of one person dictate how I left government. And I was not going to let Justin Trudeau continue to be presenting himself as this sunny ways, great, politician when I knew that he was the emperor with no clothes on.

00:59:41 Speaker_00
So what did you do about that? Like, you had some famous blow-ups as you departed from the political scene. Now, this is reminiscent. You mentioned Bill Morneau and Judy Waste and Greybull.

00:59:52 Speaker_00
So you're, you're, I mean, part, another of the reasons that I wanted to talk to you is because, you know, three establishes a pattern and there seems to be very close affinity.

01:00:02 Speaker_00
And maybe I'm wrong about that, but from the outside close affinity between what happened with Morneau and what happened with Rabo and what happened with you and that's three.

01:00:11 Speaker_00
And so maybe you could let everybody who's watching and listening know about these other people that departed and why you think that happened. And then also tell us,

01:00:22 Speaker_00
when you decided to speak in your own voice again, given that you weren't given the opportunity to speak as the press secretary anyways.

01:00:29 Speaker_00
So tell me, tell us what happened with Bill Morneau and Judy Wilson-Raybould, and then also what happened to you when you started to reclaim your territory, let's say.

01:00:40 Speaker_01
Yes, yes. So it didn't start with us, though. I want to be very clear. Leona Aleslev left way before.

01:00:48 Speaker_01
Decorated military person who decided to leave and cross the floor to the conservatives really early in our mandate because she was so disenfranchised with the prime ministers. Other people left.

01:01:00 Speaker_01
After we left, Eva Nesef also left because of the bullying that she received within the party. So There was a few people, so it's not just a three.

01:01:09 Speaker_01
By the time Jane Philpott, decorated medical professional, left, we were way beyond threes at that point. So yeah, so there were quite a few. And I would say for me, I didn't have to have a public blow up with the Prime Minister.

01:01:29 Speaker_01
When I told him that I was leaving in early March of 2019, I was very clear for all of the reasons that we discussed before, feeling tokenized, not getting the support of the Prime Minister, just being very much marginalized within a liberal, which makes me so

01:01:50 Speaker_01
It's so upsetting because it's one thing to say, you know, you did some missteps, but I felt duped by a party that I really thought understood what it meant to be center, understood what it meant to have equity and justice, what it meant to have those things, and to be disenfranchised by them because I wanted more for the people that I serve was disenfranchising for me.

01:02:18 Speaker_01
Yes, it was. That is the word. Thank you very much. That is actually the word, betrayal. And so I called the prime minister and I said, look, I'm not running again. I didn't even have to give him recess. I'm not running again. It's four years.

01:02:35 Speaker_01
I'm not getting a pension. I'm not getting anything. I just don't want to do this. First, he said, well, that was the same day that Jody Wilson-Raybould had stepped down. He couldn't have two women of color leave at the same day. That's what he told you?

01:02:54 Speaker_01
Really? Like, dude, that's not my problem.

01:02:56 Speaker_00
That was his first response to your... Yes. Okay, so that... No, I'm going to play psychologist here for a minute, okay? Because that's really not... That's seriously not good. Right? Because if he was a wise man, and if he was a mature man,

01:03:14 Speaker_00
He would have understood that you divested yourself of your business, your life took quite a turn, and that even if you two didn't get along, the fact that you'd been in government for only four years and you were leaving without running for re-election, without a pension, meant you were going back to square one in many ways.

01:03:33 Speaker_00
And so the first thing he should have said, even if he would have been somewhat truly self-aware and and still putting his own interests first, he should have at least had the bloody sense to act as if he cared about what you were telling him.

01:03:48 Speaker_00
The fact that his first response was, I'm dead serious about that, like even if he was faking it, You know, even if he was a wise faker, the first thing he should have done was said something like, well, you know, I know we've had our differences.

01:04:02 Speaker_00
I really appreciate your service. You put an awful lot on the line for this. It's really unfortunate it didn't work out. Is there anything I can do for you to make your departure more straightforward?

01:04:13 Speaker_00
I wish we could have worked together more sincerely, right? Definitely, definitely. And then if he was a genuine human being, so to speak, that would have actually bothered him.

01:04:22 Speaker_00
But the fact that he came out and said, I can't afford to have two women of color leave me the same day. Like, all that means is that every single thing that you regarded as a betrayal was in fact a betrayal. Absolutely. That's absolutely inexcusable.

01:04:40 Speaker_00
But wait, there's more.

01:04:41 Speaker_01
That's not all he said. That was the first thing he said. So I said, you know, Justin, perhaps if not today or tomorrow or at some point in the future, you'll understand the level of sacrifice that I've made to be in this role.

01:05:00 Speaker_01
And I repeated it again, not today or tomorrow, but someday, I hope you understand the level of sacrifice. And then he was not happy with that. He said, oh my God, oh my God, Selena, I can't believe that you're talking about my privilege.

01:05:25 Speaker_01
I was like, what, what? He said, you know, he started talking about the fact that he had had death threats too. And in my mind I'm going, but you have an RCMP detail. When me and my kids had death threats, I didn't have anybody, right?

01:05:45 Speaker_01
So there's a lot of stuff missing from this story, Jordan, that I'm not putting out. But he went on and on and how I needed to appreciate him because he came to the writing during the by-election and how I should be grateful to him.

01:06:01 Speaker_01
And I just was like, oh, hell no. And I said a few choice words to him after that because I lost it at that point. And, uh, yeah. What did you say? What did you say?

01:06:20 Speaker_00
Oh, I said bad words. Well, you can tone it down. What were you conveying? Put it that way.

01:06:29 Speaker_01
I was conveying that I wanted him to know who did he think he was speaking to. Like, I'm not a child. I'm not someone that he could just reprimand. I'm not

01:06:44 Speaker_01
I'm a colleague and as a person in a professional capacity, if he had went off the way he did with me on someone else, he would have been taken straight to HR. And that doesn't happen because he has parliamentary privilege. And so he's

01:07:05 Speaker_01
able to get away with those kinds of things. And I wanted to make him darn sure that he was not going to get away with it with me. And I knew that he called on the prime minister's line.

01:07:16 Speaker_01
And so I know that whatever I'm saying that happened in this exchange is recorded somewhere. So I told him, absolutely not. You are never going to speak to me like that again. At the same time though, Jordan, that would have stayed completely quiet.

01:07:34 Speaker_01
I would have never mentioned that I had that phone call with the prime minister ever until the issue with Jody Wilson-Raybould came up. And go through that.

01:07:46 Speaker_01
Yes, and so Jody Wilson-Raybould, for those who don't know, was the first Indigenous Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, decorated lawyer, really really, really admirable, smart person.

01:08:05 Speaker_01
When you talk about merit, absolutely has the merit for the job. Now, whether or not you like what she did within the context of this situation is irrelevant to me.

01:08:16 Speaker_01
The fact that the prime minister's office pressured her to do something that she knew would get her possibly disbarred, and that the ethics commissioner found the prime minister in breach

01:08:32 Speaker_01
of and actually wrong for pressuring her to allow this company to pressure her and doing something with this company is quite telling. So she was actually in the right by not taking the pressure or advice of the prime minister.

01:08:52 Speaker_01
But that's not the point. The point is, is that after this all happened with Jodi, Jodi stepped down. She was being pressured to do something that she knew was unethical, was wrong by legal standards. She said she wasn't going to do it.

01:09:07 Speaker_01
She stepped down, she was demoted first, then she stepped down as Minister of Justice and Attorney General, and then she was thrown out of the party. her and Jane Philpott.

01:09:18 Speaker_01
Jane Philpott, again, decorated a medical doctor who was the Minister of Health, the President of the Treasury Board, and another ministry within our government.

01:09:29 Speaker_01
The Prime Minister, after that, decided that he was going to go on national television and apologize to Canadians for the kerfuffle that was happening within his government. And he said the words of,

01:09:43 Speaker_01
And I'm going to misquote here so we can look up the words at some point, but he said, I want Canadians to know that my office door is open and it is available for anyone to come in and that I treat everyone with basically kindness and respect in sunny ways.

01:10:04 Speaker_01
And I listened to that and I said, absolutely not. I had the first phone call with him in which he rakes me over the coals for not appreciating him. Although I had sacrificed just as much as he did and did exactly what he did to get to his position.

01:10:24 Speaker_01
I ran, I was elected, he just had a different title. We both worked hard, but I needed to appreciate him for whatever reason, rake me over the coals for that.

01:10:34 Speaker_01
And then the second time I went to him, I went after that meeting and I said, I was going to go to him and say, look, we both said things we didn't mean on that phone call. let's try to be adults here. That's correct.

01:10:51 Speaker_01
The last vocal, I went to him after that. And you know, just like I'm sitting across from you now said, let's be adults here. We said some things we didn't mean, let's move it along. The level of contempt and almost hatred that he approached me with,

01:11:16 Speaker_01
I have never felt more scared in my life to be in a room with someone. And I knew that that happens.

01:11:24 Speaker_00
Have you ever heard of wounded narcissism? Oh, no, I have not. Is that a term that rings a bell? No. Well, beware of it. Seriously. So okay, that's a hell of a thing to say. Seriously, that's quite a thing to say, that you were afraid.

01:11:43 Speaker_00
Okay, so I want to know why. Why were you afraid? That's a whole different level of anything that you've revealed so far, right? The worst thing that you've really revealed so far is the

01:11:57 Speaker_00
last conversation that you had with him where you both lost your temper and exchanged some harsh words, right? And there was all this strangeness surrounding Raybo and Morneau at that time, too.

01:12:07 Speaker_00
But now you go there in an attempt to... What would you say? I wouldn't say sniff over the waters, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. That's right. Put some putty on it or something. Right, right, right.

01:12:19 Speaker_00
Well, I mean, people get upset and they say things that are emotional, and they can have a calm discussion about it and set things moderately right so they can go ahead.

01:12:28 Speaker_00
But you said that there was a terrible tension in the room that you associated with both contempt, and that's not good. Contempt is a very, very dangerous emotion.

01:12:39 Speaker_00
So, married couples going for counseling who roll their eyes at one another have about a 99% chance of being divorced in the next year. Contempt is not good. And contempt plus hatred, that's seriously not good.

01:12:53 Speaker_00
And contempt, hatred, plus fear in the target, that's really not good. Okay, so now tell me exactly what transpired in that meeting and why you had that reaction.

01:13:06 Speaker_01
There was nothing that there was no words. It was a glare. It was this reddening of the face. It was this the exhalation of his voice and I stood there and I was alone in the room because it was after caucus. I didn't want anybody else to know that.

01:13:22 Speaker_01
to hear the conversation. So I waited in line, because after caucus meetings, everybody goes up and wants him to sign stuff and talk and blah, blah, blah. I waited to the end. There was nobody else in the room.

01:13:34 Speaker_01
And this exchange happened with, and I said, you know what, Justin, I'm really, and I was stopped in my tracks with the glare, the huff. And then he got up out of his seat and he just like stormed out of the room.

01:13:51 Speaker_01
And I froze because at that moment, I knew that this person actually could make or break the rest of my life. And I was petrified. of what could happen next, how it could happen. I didn't know what he would do, right?

01:14:12 Speaker_01
You have a name like Trudeau and you decide to blacklist Selena from ever working in Canada again, that could happen like that. It's me versus him. And I realized I had no ground to stand on. And so I went back to the chamber.

01:14:30 Speaker_01
I sat there for a little while. just petrified. I didn't know what to do. He came in just before, and this was witnessed by everybody in the House of Commons. He came in. I was sitting down at my seat.

01:14:46 Speaker_01
He came in, crouched behind me, and said, not even an attempt to say, hey, get a page, get Selena into the back room. I have something to say to her. Not come and stand in front of me. Crouched behind me and said, hey, I'm sorry.

01:15:06 Speaker_01
And I turned around and I'm like, there were no words to express that kind of cowardice. There was no words to express how, I don't even know what to, I don't know what words to put on that behavior because I just got up and I left and I could not,

01:15:35 Speaker_01
I couldn't, it was one of the lowest points for me. I went immediately, I called my psychiatrist and I said, I think I'm gonna have another breakdown. I need a session. I'm in trouble. I'm actually in trouble here.

01:15:53 Speaker_01
And even talking about it now, I just wish I was stronger. I just wish I didn't let someone.

01:16:09 Speaker_00
You have to understand, you have to understand, that this wasn't, this is not only your response to a personal situation.

01:16:17 Speaker_00
You have to keep, you have to take that in mind when you're, keep that in mind when you're assessing your own emotional response. Like, at one level, you're having a very unpleasant conversation with another person.

01:16:29 Speaker_00
At another level, you are having a rough time with the leader of a very powerful country. Right. So, so, you know, you, I wouldn't, I wouldn't go out of my way to question your emotional reaction.

01:16:45 Speaker_00
You know, I don't think that your response saying that, no, no, I don't think so. I know. I don't think so. I think that there's, there's more, there's many more things happening here than the merely personal.

01:16:58 Speaker_00
And, you know, you're asking yourself to respond without devastating emotion to a situation that's bearing at least three dimensions of severe and unexpected stress on you simultaneously. That's a lot. I think it's too much to ask.

01:17:15 Speaker_00
I think it's too much to ask, really. If it was just a colleague or even just an employer, that's one thing. But you didn't just have a colleague or an employer.

01:17:30 Speaker_00
You were having an exchange with a man who has an incredibly powerful familial name and who's the prime minister of a country, a big country, right?

01:17:41 Speaker_00
Yeah, so it's not surprising to me that you had the response that you had, just for whatever that's worth. So let me ask you a question about this story, too.

01:17:50 Speaker_00
You know, one of the things that really struck me, and that is indicative of something seriously rotten in Canada, and I mean seriously rotten, is that these six people that you described as fleeing the ship, let's say, for similar reasons, and many of them, perhaps all of them, stellar people,

01:18:12 Speaker_00
Have you had an opportunity to sit down with anybody from the legacy media in Canada, the radically government subsidized legacy media, I might add, and actually have a chance to walk through what happened?

01:18:26 Speaker_00
Because you'd think that the media would be interested in this. If it only happened once, well, you ignore it. Three times I said, that's the pattern. You said, it's not three, Dr. Peterson, it's not three, it's six or more.

01:18:39 Speaker_00
So, to what degree has this pattern been communicated? This pattern of interaction between Trudeau and his people being communicated by the legacy media in Canada?

01:18:56 Speaker_01
So let me just close the loop on this story because I want to say how it ended and then I'll go into media.

01:19:03 Speaker_01
How it ends is, so he goes in, he gives this big apology, tells people that he has this open office, that he's welcoming and nice to everybody. And at that moment, I'm thinking in my head, I'm at home, I am having like the worst few days ever.

01:19:22 Speaker_01
And I'm holding my phone, and I start to type, that is absolutely not true. Do you remember our last two interactions? And I pause before I send on the Twitter message, because I know the feeling that I had in that last meeting.

01:19:43 Speaker_01
I know that he can make or break whatever happens to me after. And I start to press send and I'm like, no way, there's no way I could do this because I will never work another day in Canada again.

01:19:56 Speaker_01
And then I also think to myself, if I don't press send and I allow this person to just get away with this behavior, I will never be able to look myself in the mirror. I'll never be able to look my daughters in the face.

01:20:10 Speaker_01
I'll never be able to look my son in the face. And so I press send and I say to myself, that's it. I'm done. And which brings us to your next question around the media, which is a really valid one.

01:20:30 Speaker_00
Was that the right choice? Was that the right choice that you made? And why?

01:20:35 Speaker_01
Because it may not have been the right. Yeah.

01:20:38 Speaker_00
Well, you said you had the practical reality of your life on the one hand, and it's not exactly self-esteem. I don't know exactly how to characterize it. You characterized it in relationship to your children, right?

01:20:51 Speaker_00
You said that if you didn't push send, that you, what, you would have failed to be the sort of person that they needed you to be? It's something like that.

01:21:00 Speaker_01
Well, it would have been... Not necessarily that. I wouldn't have been able to look myself in the mirror, because it means that because you hold the name Trudeau, that you're... that you are above somebody standing up to you, you're above.

01:21:15 Speaker_01
You know, me standing up for someone that I know is Jody Wilson-Raybould, who I know did the right thing. I'm just going to stay quiet because your name is Trudeau and you could do something to me. Absolutely not. I have rebounded.

01:21:31 Speaker_01
I have survived a lot more worse events than that. So I could rebound. But was it the right decision, to be honest with you? For a year after leaving politics, I could not find a job. I applied and applied and applied and could not.

01:21:53 Speaker_01
And that's not to say woe is me or anything, but just the reality of the situation. Because, you know, I'd call up some of my colleagues, like Roger Kuzner. I called Roger. I said, Roger, what are you doing now? He said, oh, I'm working.

01:22:05 Speaker_01
I said, oh, well, where'd you apply? He said, you don't apply Selena, if you're in government, they just scoop you up in a GR firm. And I thought, oh, okay. Again, I think the point, no, no scooping, no scooping here.

01:22:23 Speaker_01
But I think the point of it is that, If you're not willing to stand for something, and this is where it really came to head for me, if you're not willing to stand for something, you'll fall for anything.

01:22:35 Speaker_01
And it didn't matter to me that his name was Trudeau. It didn't matter. What mattered was that you are railroading an individual. Like her or hate her, I do not care how you feel about Jodi Wilson-Raybould. What happened to her was wrong.

01:22:53 Speaker_01
And she needed people on her side that would say, You're absolutely right. What I found very interesting was that we had gone through a Me Too movement during that government, those four years.

01:23:06 Speaker_01
And every one of my colleagues, Trudeau, hashtag Me Too, believe her when she says she's bullied, believe her with this, believe her with that. I found it was so interesting to believe her when it was convenient and leave Jodi when it was not.

01:23:20 Speaker_01
And I was not about to leave her for anybody, I didn't care what his name was. It wasn't necessarily to me about whether or not I'd work in Canada again.

01:23:29 Speaker_01
It was whether or not I'd be able to look myself in the eye and look my kids in the eye and say I did the right thing, even when I knew it was the hardest thing to do. And I'll end this part with this.

01:23:43 Speaker_01
I don't know if you've read Clayton Christensen's essay, How Will You Measure Your Life? And for your readers, your listeners, read this article. It talks about, you know, your ability to stand by your values and principles.

01:23:59 Speaker_01
He says, stand by your principles 100% of the time. If you stand by your values and principle 98% of the time, you'll regret where you end up because you're doing a marginal cost analysis.

01:24:11 Speaker_01
You know, if I cheat just this one time, if I don't stand up for my friend just one time, it's fine. No, it's not. You either do it 100% of the time or you don't do it at all. And for me, it was the 100% or not at all.

01:24:25 Speaker_01
And at this point, I was so far gone. I had experienced all that I experienced and I stayed very, very quiet. But on this issue, it was

01:24:38 Speaker_01
beholden for me to stand up because that was the opportunity that I had to say, no, you cannot continue to behave in this way as a leader of a G7 country and expect to just get away with it with no consequence.

01:24:58 Speaker_01
And to your question about media, I think that the consequence still eluded him. He still evaded the consequence because the consequences ended up falling more on myself as someone who dared to stand up against the Prime Minister.

01:25:18 Speaker_01
I've been told that, you know, speaking on media is not, they won't allow it because, you know, you don't really like Trudeau. It's not that I don't like him. I just think he lacks the self-awareness to be a G7 leader.

01:25:39 Speaker_01
But I mean, I'll have a beer with the guy. He's not the barista at the coffee shop. He's a G7 leader. I'm not supposed to hold him to account because He's Trudeau, and so I've been removed from media.

01:25:56 Speaker_01
Some media, I should say, some of them still keep me on, but the Canadian media has still managed to glorify this individual and not hold him to account the way that I think he should be.

01:26:11 Speaker_00
All right, Selina, I'm going to stop there. That's a very good place to stop. We're pretty much at the point we should stop. For everybody watching and listening, I'm going to continue this conversation. We haven't talked about Selina's book.

01:26:23 Speaker_00
Will you tell everybody the title of your book and when it was published?

01:26:26 Speaker_01
It's called Can You Hear Me Now? It was published in 2021, Penguin Random House. And it really, it's not just about my political time in politics. It really goes through my whole life and gives the readers a sense as to why

01:26:42 Speaker_01
I'm an advocate, why I'm so strong in what I do and what I say, and why I hold fast to my principles 100% of the time. I know what it's like to feel hurt. I know what it's like to feel disenfranchised.

01:26:55 Speaker_01
I know what pain feels like, and I don't want other people to feel the same. So I wrote a book explaining all of my Ups, downs, highs and lows.

01:27:05 Speaker_00
We'll talk more about that book on the Daily Wire side, and also we'll delve a little bit more well into the issues that we discussed on this side of the discussion.

01:27:16 Speaker_00
I want to find out how you did get back on your feet after that year of searching for work, after you had resigned as the Prime Minister's Secretary. For everybody watching and listening, join us on the Daily Wire side.

01:27:32 Speaker_00
Thank you very much for agreeing to do this interview today and for walking us through that relatively unpleasant and personal recounting of what was quite the demanding three to five year period.

01:27:47 Speaker_00
I'm very much looking forward to finishing up the story on the Daily Wire side because I want to find out, you know, how things did go. after your job search and how you put yourself back together.

01:27:59 Speaker_00
And thank you very much for letting everybody know about your experiences. I think people will find it extremely interesting. I certainly did. And I'm very pleased that I know the rest of the story. So thank you very much.

01:28:14 Speaker_01
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.