Context: The Confederation Report
Host: Steven R. Martins
Language: English
This is The Confederation Report, a weekly analysis of Canadian news and culture from a Biblical worldview.
Part I: What’s Wrong with Traditional Values? (00:29-03:21)
In today’s Canada, simply shifting from progressive ideology to traditional values is apparently enough to raise red flags of potential “radicalization”. How far from the truth that proves to be.
Part II: In Other News, Marx Strikes Again (3:21-6:04)
Marxism is alive and well on Canadian campuses, where calls for revolution and Leninist dictatorship are tolerated—while traditional, pro-family voices are cast out as extremist.
Part III: What is Cultural Marxism? (06:04-09:28)
Marxism didn’t die—it evolved into Cultural Marxism, an identity-obsessed, anti-Christian ideology that wages war on truth, family, and the created order under the guise of liberation.
Did You Know? (11:07-12:50)
During the Cold War, Canada stood firmly with the West as a founding member of NATO, playing a key role in resisting Soviet influence and defending democratic order against communist expansion.
Recommended Reading (10:36-12:09)
This week’s recommended resource is Karl Marx: The Roots of His Thought by Johan van der Hoeven—a direct, insightful lecture series that equips Christians to understand and dismantle Marx’s worldview through a biblical lens.
Event Reminder (12:09-12:26)
Join us November 14–15, 2025, in Welland, Ontario, for All Hail the King: Christ and Government with Douglas Wilson, Scott Masson, and Michael Wagner. Register now at cantaroinstitute.org/niagara2025 for early bird rates!
Transcript:
It’s Week 29 of 2025, and this is The Confederation Report, a weekly analysis of Canadian news and culture from a biblical worldview. Because Christ is Lord—over Canada, over culture, over all of life. My name is Steven R. Martins, and I serve as the director of the Cántaro Institute.
Part I: What’s Wrong with Traditional Values? (00:29-03:21)
We all knew Canada had gone woke—so woke, in fact, that the rest of the world points to us as the model. That’s not exactly something to be proud of. But just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does. This past week, an RCMP spokesperson suggested that if someone who used to affirm things like “equal gender rights”—read: the whole gender-fluid, non-binary ideology—and then suddenly starts embracing “traditional values,” that that could be a sign that they’re becoming an “extremist.” Excuse me? Since when did returning to common sense become a red flag? Is Pierre Poilievre an extremist? Is Jordan Peterson an extremist? Are all people who oppose the progressive, woke ideology extremists? Are we going to use that brush to paint people in such a deprecating way? You may as well extend that generalization to the whole Christian church. Wow.
Okay, you might think I’m exaggerating, but here’s the context: This was a CBC interview about an alleged militia setting up in Quebec. The RCMP had arrested four people and were warning the public about signs of radicalization. That’s when a Staff Sargeant made her comment about people changing their views—say, from affirming progressive talking points to holding traditional beliefs—as a possible indicator of extremism. Now, what caught most people’s attention wasn’t the potential violence or plotting, because the plans had been foiled according to the RCMP. No, what caught people’s attention was the comment about traditional values. And that really is the part that should concern us. Apparently, thinking differently now counts as “dangerous” behavior.
The backlash was immediate, and rightly so. The RCMP scrambled to clarify, saying they weren’t implying that traditional values are themselves extreme. They tried to walk it back, insisting the issue is with sudden behavioral changes and the potential use of violence. But the damage was already done. This was a PR nightmare. When someone from a national law enforcement agency casually lumps “traditional values” into a conversation about radicalization, it exposes a deeper problem in how institutions are beginning to define threats.
Let’s be real: holding to traditional moral values—things like the family, male and female, faith, order, and objective truth—does not make you an extremist. If anything, it’s the rejection of these foundations that’s fueling cultural confusion. But this is where we are. In a country where truth is relative and institutions have lost their anchor, even “common sense” becomes suspicious. The line between citizen and suspect is being redrawn, and it’s not by the conservative-minded.
Part II: In Other News, Marx Strikes Again (3:21-6:04)
In other news, it turns out Marxism isn’t dead—it’s just rebranded and recruiting on Canadian campuses. At Toronto Metropolitan University, a radical group operating under the banner of the Revolutionary Communist Party held a meeting calling for nothing less than a Soviet-style dictatorship in Canada. Yes, you read that right. These students and activists openly advocated for class warfare, violent revolution, and the complete dismantling of liberal democracy in favour of Leninist totalitarianism. I thought we buried the Soviet Union decades ago. Apparently, for some, the Cold War never ended—it just changed venues.
During the meeting, which True North recorded, members of the group demonized property owners as “inhuman capitalist beasts,” dismissed democracy as a tool of the elite, and promoted Lenin’s State and Revolution as their revolutionary playbook. Their goal? To be the most organized Marxist force ready to fill a vacuum after any Western societal collapse. One speaker even stressed that all forms of oppression, including racism, are inventions of capitalism—conveniently ignoring the blood-soaked legacies of every communist regime in modern history.
And here’s the irony: According to Juno News, this group was allowed to meet in a university building, despite not being an official campus club. Meanwhile, back in 2021, a conservative student group was kicked off the same campus for so-called “extremism.” So let me get this straight—if you call for the violent overthrow of democracy and the armed uprising of the proletariat, that’s tolerated. But if you advocate for family, freedom, and a market economy, you’re the extremist? Has the West lost its moral compass entirely?
Let’s not forget the historical record here. Lenin’s regime was responsible for the deaths of millions. His ideology laid the groundwork for unspeakable atrocities—famines, gulags, and mass executions—all in the name of the proletariat. And yet, here we are, in 2025, watching young Canadians praise his legacy as if it were some noble alternative to our current system. This isn’t just foolish—it’s dangerous. If we don’t start pushing back, hard, against this madness, we may find ourselves reliving the very horrors we once vowed never to repeat. How do we push back? Not according to the world’s playbook, but with our words, with our pens, with careful reasoning informed by Scriptural revelation.
Part III: What is Cultural Marxism? (6:04-9:28)
There’s more to report here though. Do you want to know why Marxism is still around? Certainly, the root cause is man’s sin—Marxism is steeped in envy, rebellion, and hostility toward God. But there’s another reason: it’s because Marxism didn’t disappear; it mutated. It found new life in what we now call Cultural Marxism. And this ideological shift explains much of the madness we’re seeing today in the West—woke ideology, identity politics, gender theory, and state-sanctioned speech codes. All of it flows downstream from the same polluted source.
The failure of economic Marxism is obvious. Just look at the ruin of Venezuela under Chávez and Maduro, or Cuba’s ongoing collapse—where at one point people were literally hunting stray dogs for food. The economic model simply doesn’t work. So what happened? Marxist thinkers like Gramsci and Marcuse realized that class warfare wouldn’t succeed in the West because the working class was actually content. So instead of scrapping Marxism, they reshaped it to appeal to Western ideals. They hijacked the language of liberty, freedom, and equality, and used it to dismantle the very foundations of Western society—family, church, private property, and objective truth.
Cultural Marxism replaced economics with identity. It claims that traditional norms and structures—like fatherhood, biblical morality, church authority, and even biology—are oppressive constructs that prevent mankind from reaching his “true self.” So it seeks to abolish them. How? Through endless class conflict: men vs. women, white vs. non-white, Christian vs. everyone else. But what they call oppression today isn’t slavery or abuse—it’s things like disagreement, disapproval, or unequal outcomes. Equality no longer means equal opportunity, it means forced equal results, which always requires coercion. Hence the push for state-imposed speech codes, compelled pronouns, and policies that reverse-discriminate in the name of justice.
Economic Marxism was evil because it stirred envy between classes and enthroned the state as god. But Cultural Marxism is worse—it invents countless new identities, pits them against one another, and calls that chaos “liberation.” It deifies self-expression, tears down creational boundaries, and wages war against the imago Dei. And make no mistake: there is nothing redeemable in it. Marxism, whether economic or cultural, is utterly incompatible with Christianity. It is a godless, lawless, destructive force. Marx was not a misunderstood economist—he was an enemy of God, an enemy of the family, and an enemy of the church. So Christian, don’t flirt with Marxism. Don’t try to synthesize it with Scripture. Root yourself in the Word, take every thought captive to Christ, and stand firm. We’re in a battle for the very structure of reality—and Christ, not Marx, is King.
Did You Know? (9:30-10:36)
The Cold War (1945–1991) was a global standoff between the capitalist West, led by the United States, and the communist East, dominated by the Soviet Union. Though it never erupted into direct warfare between the superpowers, the ideological struggle shaped international politics, military alliances, and cultural life for nearly half a century. Canada, firmly aligned with the Western bloc and sharing democratic values with the U.S. and Britain, played a key role in the efforts to contain Soviet influence.
In 1949, Canada became a founding member of NATO—its first peacetime military alliance—alongside eleven other nations. NATO’s core principle was simple but potent: an attack on one is an attack on all. In response, the Soviet Union formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955 with seven Eastern European satellite states, entrenching the divide between East and West. These rival alliances solidified the opposing camps of the Cold War, with Canada standing as a committed defender of Western democratic order.
Recommended Resource (10:36-12:09)
This week’s recommended resource is Karl Marx: The Roots of His Thought, a compelling collection of lectures delivered by Johan van der Hoeven at Calvin College in 1971. Capturing the energy and clarity of a classroom setting, this publication preserves the original lecture style—unpolished, direct, and rich with insight. Van der Hoeven walks readers through the central writings and philosophical influences of Karl Marx, offering a unique textual and analytical approach to understanding the man behind the ideology.
Far from a dry academic exercise, these lectures serve as a training ground for Christian minds to critically engage with Marx’s dialectical methods and ideological assumptions. Readers are invited to confront Marx’s worldview—not simply to know it, but to dismantle it through a biblical lens. This resource is ideal for anyone looking to dig deeper into the philosophical roots of Marxism while affirming the unshakable foundation of the Christian worldview.
Event Reminder (12:09-12:26)
Join us November 14–15, 2025, in Welland, Ontario, for All Hail the King: Christ and Government with Rev. Doug Wilson, Dr. Scott Masson, Dr. Michael Wagner, and myself. Register now at cantaroinstitute.org/niagara2025 for early bird rates!
Closing Words
Thanks for listening to The Confederation Report, this podcast is brought to you by the Cántaro Institute. Visit our website at cantaroinstitute.org for more information. For books to read on worldview, philosophy, and theology, visit our store at cantaroinstitute.store
We’ll meet again next week.
Documentation & Additional Reading
Fox News (Alexander Hall)
Canadian police official warns ‘traditional values’ may be sign a person is becoming ‘extremist’
Juno News (Clayton Demaine)
EXCLUSIVE: Communists call for Soviet style dictatorship and revolution on Toronto campus