Kroeger College adjunct professor Allan Gregg, chair of Harris/Decima, opened the academic year and the university’s new River building with a public address titled “Nineteen Eighty-Four in 2012: the assault on reason.” The speech decried what he sees as a recent turn in Canadian and American political culture in which evidence and reason have been supplanted by ideology as the basis for public policy, while governments mask their agendas behind double-speak. The trend is not confined to the political right, he argued, but has been aggresively pursued in Canada by the Harper Conservatives.
The speech has been widely received in political circles, the subject of coverage in the Toronto Star, the Hill Times, iPolitics and elsewhere. It has generated more than 70,000 hits on Allan Gregg’s website: www.allangregg.com It will shortly be available through CPAC’s Video on Demand.
Following the address, Mr. Gregg was joined in conversation with Carleton professors William Cross, Bell Chair in Canadian Parliamentary Democracy, Susan Phillips, director of the School of Public Policy and Administration, and Stephen Saideman, Paterson Chair in the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. Prof. Susan Harada of the School of Journalism and Communication moderated the discussion.