Full Comment - Pierre Poilievre says his freedom fight includes truckers

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00:00:30.000 Hello, I'm Anthony Fury.

00:00:37.000 Thank you for joining us for the latest episode of Full Comet.

00:00:39.620 It has been a tumultuous time in Canadian news, politics, and COVID-19 developments,

00:00:44.600 often in a very intertwined way.

00:00:47.100 And one of the political fallouts from all of this is that a Conservative leadership race has begun

00:00:51.740 after the Conservative caucus voted former leader Erin O'Toole out.

00:00:56.040 The first person to declare their candidacy is Conservative MP

00:00:58.980 for the writing of Carlton, Pierre Polyev.

00:01:01.480 Pierre joins us now.

00:01:03.020 Hey, Pierre.

00:01:03.400 Welcome to the show.

00:01:04.620 Great to be with you, Anthony.

00:01:06.120 Yeah.

00:01:06.340 Thanks so much for joining us.

00:01:07.460 Right out of the gate, I got to ask.

00:01:08.960 You're running for Conservative leader.

00:01:10.220 In your video there where you announced your candidacy, you actually said, I'm running for

00:01:13.820 Prime Minister.

00:01:14.760 Tell me, why do you want to be Conservative leader now?

00:01:17.360 Why do you want to be Prime Minister?

00:01:18.500 I want to be Prime Minister.

00:01:21.460 Well, I'll start again.

00:01:22.800 I want to be Conservative leader so that I can be Prime Minister, and I want to be Prime Minister

00:01:26.620 so that I can give people back control of their lives by making Canada the freest place on Earth.

00:01:31.980 And have we lost control of our lives recently?

00:01:35.600 Yes.

00:01:36.520 In countless ways.

00:01:39.120 Let's start with non-COVID examples.

00:01:44.160 It's the vast majority of Canadians under 30 can't afford a house because socialist local 0.92

00:01:51.920 politicians block construction to limit supply, and socialist federal politicians are printing

00:01:57.940 money like crazy to inflate demand, so prices have ballooned for something the average Canadian

00:02:04.980 simply cannot afford.

00:02:06.500 So in the country with among the biggest landmass on Earth, people don't have the freedom to

00:02:11.400 own a home.

00:02:11.820 Immigrants are blocked by bureaucratic gatekeepers from working in the very professions for which

00:02:22.780 they were trained, are qualified, and are needed.

00:02:26.780 First Nations face governmental obstacles to developing their own resources.

00:02:34.380 Folks on disability who want to get a job and earn their way out of poverty lose 80 cents

00:02:40.780 on the dollar to clawbacks and taxes, keeping them permanently trapped below the poverty line.

00:02:47.260 Small businesses drowned in restrictions and red tape.

00:02:51.060 And I haven't even gotten to all of the government overreach from COVID, where the businesses have

00:02:57.880 been perpetually shut down, people's bodily autonomy has been violated.

00:03:01.600 And, of course, the government has taken advantage of all of that to try and censor the Internet.

00:03:09.480 So in countless ways, government is taking control of people's lives away from them and putting it in the

00:03:14.920 hands of politicians and elites.

00:03:17.520 And that's exactly what I want to reverse.

00:03:20.160 I want to unleash free enterprise so small businesses can start up and spend more time

00:03:24.280 serving customers and hiring workers.

00:03:27.320 I want to reduce taxes so people keep more of their paychecks.

00:03:32.760 I intend to incentivize provinces to speed up recognition of the immigrant credentials

00:03:37.980 so newcomers work in the professions for which they are trained,

00:03:41.860 give First Nations control over their own land so they can welcome resource development

00:03:46.540 and harvest their own land to escape from poverty.

00:03:51.840 I'm going to make government smaller to make citizens bigger and make Canada the freest country on earth.

00:03:59.280 I want to pick up on a number of those structural moments, more sort of long-term issues coming up in a few minutes.

00:04:05.400 But first, I want to talk about the COVID situation we're at right now in Canada,

00:04:09.560 talking about overbearing, overreaching COVID rules.

00:04:12.340 A lot of people taking to the streets, some of them in protests, others with their trucks,

00:04:16.900 saying, end all mandates now.

00:04:19.260 Basically, end the COVID rules.

00:04:20.940 Let people exercise free choice moving forward.

00:04:24.100 Do we now, at this point, at the beginning of February, do we need to end COVID rules?

00:04:28.820 Do we need to end mandates across Canada?

00:04:31.620 Yes.

00:04:33.000 Just peel them all back?

00:04:34.560 Yeah.

00:04:34.760 Look, there's some room from small, common sense guidelines to keep people safe.

00:04:40.660 But, you know, for example, I don't have a problem having a small piece of cloth on my face

00:04:48.580 when I'm in a small, enclosed area with a very large number of people.

00:04:53.220 But beyond that, I think we should just leave it to people's common sense to behave responsibly.

00:04:59.800 You know, I don't think we should force people to be vaccinated.

00:05:02.720 I don't think we should limit how businesses operate.

00:05:05.560 I think we can allow people to go back into coffee shops and restaurants,

00:05:11.400 trust them to wash their hands and avoid any excessively risky behavior

00:05:18.540 based on their own personal common sense,

00:05:20.960 rather than a bossy Leviathan state that goes around telling everybody what they can and can't do.

00:05:28.760 What do you make of the truckers' convoy that first made its way to Ottawa, well, two weeks ago now?

00:05:35.520 People who had earnest grievances about what's going on.

00:05:38.600 I know they've been complaining about the situation for some time.

00:05:41.600 The truckers' convoy began as a very particular grievance against the vaccine mandate for truckers,

00:05:46.320 and it's expanded to be more a symbol, I think, of people of all walks of life

00:05:50.640 who have various different frustrations with different elements of the COVID rules.

00:05:54.520 It's certainly taken the city of Ottawa by, I don't know if surprise is the right term,

00:05:59.860 but people use a lot of terms like under siege and occupation.

00:06:02.400 I mean, how should we think about this situation right now?

00:06:04.860 All these people speaking up very firmly, unapologetically, saying,

00:06:08.680 look, we're not going away, we're not going to stop protesting until these overbearing rules go away.

00:06:13.740 I'm proud of the truckers, and I stand with them.

00:06:16.180 And they have reached a breaking point after two years of massive government overreach

00:06:23.960 of a prime minister who insults and degrades anyone who disagrees with his heavy-handed approach.

00:06:32.900 Canadians have finally had it, and they're speaking up.

00:06:36.280 They're not putting up with it anymore.

00:06:37.840 It's his fault, though.

00:06:38.780 Let's be honest.

00:06:39.460 If Canadians are being inconvenienced or are in any way suffering from these protests,

00:06:46.620 it is because Justin Trudeau made these protests happen,

00:06:50.100 and his intransigence is keeping the protests going.

00:06:53.880 One of the things that's remarkable is that the vaccine mandate for truckers only came about in January 2022.

00:07:00.300 It's not something that was brought in right when vaccines were made available,

00:07:03.240 back when I think there was more unified opinion that,

00:07:05.740 OK, COVID's a really serious issue here, we've got to bring all these rules in.

00:07:10.540 It was almost brought in right when other jurisdictions were getting rid of the rules,

00:07:15.160 but instead Trudeau decided to layer them on.

00:07:17.460 Was it even necessary to get to this point?

00:07:19.380 No. I mean, there's no science backing this up.

00:07:21.420 Even when Teresa Tam, the chief medical officer of the Trudeau government, was asked,

00:07:26.880 give us the evidence that mandating vaccines on individuals who spend 22 hours a day all by themselves in a truck

00:07:39.960 would do any good for public health.

00:07:42.580 She couldn't provide any.

00:07:44.220 And in fact, she didn't even really endorse the mandate at all.

00:07:47.740 So it sounded, it looked to me like Trudeau imposed this trucker mandate as a vindictive wedge strategy

00:07:58.000 to divide Canadians and demonize an apparently unpopular minority of unvaccinated people

00:08:06.340 to his own political advantage.

00:08:08.340 But now it's blown up in his face from a political point of view.

00:08:12.580 He is backed into a corner where he's defending an utterly irrational and unscientific decision

00:08:20.040 only because he doesn't want to be seen backing down to the protests that he provoked in the first place.

00:08:28.780 So he has gotten himself into an impossible political situation.

00:08:33.080 And unfortunately, the rest of the country is held hostage by his unwillingness to do the right thing,

00:08:41.060 admit he was wrong and lift these mandates.

00:08:44.000 What would you do differently if you were in this position right now, if you were in Trudeau's position?

00:08:48.440 I'd lift the mandates.

00:08:51.640 And I know there are a number of observers saying, well, that sets a precedent because that says that

00:08:55.600 anybody who comes to the nation's capital, anyone who comes to Ottawa, they just need to set up a blockade,

00:09:01.840 bring their vehicles or whatever they're doing, and they're going to get what they want.

00:09:05.500 So they're concerned that this creates some sort of a moral hazard to encourage this subsequent behavior.

00:09:09.540 What do you say in response to the people saying that?

00:09:12.180 Well, are those people really saying we should keep in place an unscientific and nonsensical mandate

00:09:18.680 just out of spite against protesters?

00:09:23.600 If we really want to get, why don't we do the right thing and at the same time put an end to the protests?

00:09:30.520 Right.

00:09:30.680 Now, I've heard a lot of people say the Conservative Party, it's the party of law and order that usually

00:09:36.660 doesn't have too much tolerance for this sort of stuff because I guess there are a number of rules

00:09:42.000 that are being broken right now by this convoy situation in Ottawa.

00:09:45.380 How do you respond to those accusations?

00:09:47.280 Well, I've always said I believe that you can fight for your own freedom, but your freedom stops where mine begins.

00:09:56.960 And so I encourage the truckers to follow the law, behave responsibly, don't inhibit the freedom movement of other people.

00:10:06.340 But at the same time, the vast majority of truckers and their supporters have been peaceful, law-abiding, joyful, decent, patriotic people,

00:10:17.540 despite the dishonest propaganda of the liberal press gallery on Parliament Hill.

00:10:27.680 So you think the press gallery plays a big role in it?

00:10:30.820 It's not just Justin Trudeau.

00:10:31.900 I know he did his tweet where he accused the protesters of being Islamophobic and transphobic and six or seven other accusations in there.

00:10:38.720 But you would add the press gallery and the broader media landscape into the mix?

00:10:44.420 Yeah, because I've, listen, yesterday, they say, so the entire city is shut down.

00:10:49.280 Yesterday, I went to Parliament Hill.

00:10:50.960 It took me an extra minute and a half to get to work from the suburbs of Ottawa.

00:10:57.680 You know, there are, the vast majority of the protesters are just peaceful, law-abiding.

00:11:06.660 They're walking around with Canadian flags draped over their sole shoulders.

00:11:10.180 They are multiracial.

00:11:12.020 They are very young.

00:11:13.840 They come in all shapes and sizes.

00:11:16.480 And none of that is reflected in the torqued media coverage that the press gallery has put forward.

00:11:26.000 And I think they obviously have an agenda, which is to demonize, once again, the same way they demonized people who didn't get vaccinated.

00:11:34.280 Now they're demonizing anybody who protests the mandates.

00:11:38.500 And, you know, the good news is that I think the press gallery is just losing earlobes and eyeballs. 0.98

00:11:43.900 People are looking for other forms of information because they're recognizing that what they're seeing from the mainstream media is mostly garbage.

00:11:53.920 Which I was, yesterday, I stopped on my way home to get some food at the local shawarma shop. 0.97

00:11:59.620 And a young Muslim gentleman came out.

00:12:02.700 He said, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

00:12:04.640 So I went downtown and saw the protests.

00:12:06.800 And I thought they were kind, generous, lawful, and peaceful people.

00:12:11.840 And it was nothing like what I saw in the media.

00:12:15.060 And I think increasingly Canadians are seeing the difference between what the media tells them and what's actually true.

00:12:21.940 And that is allowing, I think that will allow other media voices to garner more audience.

00:12:27.140 Now we have seen this, I guess, quantified a little bit in various surveys and studies out there.

00:12:32.960 There's something called the Edelman Trust Barometer that they do every year.

00:12:35.780 There's another organization that recently put out a survey looking at trust in our institutions and finding that it has really dropped quite a lot from 2020 to 2022 now.

00:12:47.000 Now, just, you know, double-digit drops in terms of trust for politicians in general, for government, for public health officials.

00:12:53.860 I believe the media was in there as well.

00:12:55.640 And really low trust levels.

00:12:57.640 It seems like we have a problem right now with, I don't know if the term legitimacy of our institutions is the right way to frame it.

00:13:06.300 Well, how would you frame it?

00:13:07.480 How would you describe this phenomenon?

00:13:08.940 Well, I think the elites have misled Canadians.

00:13:17.260 And as a result, Canadians are questioning the honesty of what they're hearing from the elites.

00:13:25.680 And the elites can get angry and say that they are entitled to be trusted.

00:13:32.620 But nobody's entitled to force someone else to trust them.

00:13:37.760 Trust is earned.

00:13:40.760 And when the media reports dishonestly about events, when they act as basically a large part of the liberal press gallery on Parliament Hill is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the PMO.

00:13:55.620 And when everyday people see the difference between the real facts and what's reported, it is understandable that they're going to turn their trust to other voices.

00:14:06.260 And then that's what we're seeing.

00:14:08.080 Give me a specific example, because I got to stand up a bit for my colleagues here.

00:14:12.560 I was very briefly in the Parliamentary Press Gallery a number of years ago.

00:14:15.280 I haven't lived in Ottawa for quite some time here.

00:14:17.340 What specifically do you mean?

00:14:19.040 There's no doubt that there's pack journalism, that there's kind of narratives that people are very nervous to deviate from.

00:14:24.760 There's a lot of sort of follower stuff going on instead of leading in terms of covering a story in a different way.

00:14:30.220 But what do you mean when you say they're mouthpieces for the PMO?

00:14:32.660 Well, I'll give you two examples.

00:14:34.540 So just the other day, John Baird, who's supporting my campaign for prime minister, went on Global News.

00:14:42.540 And Mercedes Stevenson said that I was misleading Canadians by saying that Trudeau's government had raised taxes.

00:14:52.300 Baird pointed out that, in fact, payroll taxes went up on January 1st.

00:14:57.420 And she said, oh, yes, well, that was a scheduled increase.

00:15:00.660 Well, it's still a tax increase.

00:15:03.100 I never said that Trudeau's tax increases were unscheduled.

00:15:07.300 I said they were tax increases.

00:15:08.940 But she tried to slip in that falsehood to discredit me. 0.99

00:15:13.940 That's just one example.

00:15:15.080 Another example is CBC suggested that the truckers were instigated by Russian actors.

00:15:27.280 And she provided no evidence of that.

00:15:29.260 I mean, if she has evidence of that, she should say so.

00:15:33.000 But for her to just lob that out there on national television with no proof is, one, an example of state media attacking its own citizens.

00:15:45.340 And two, makes the CBC look like it's spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories.

00:15:55.140 What does this mean, then, for the fabric of our democracy, all the things that you have said?

00:16:01.560 Because there's going to be, obviously, great disagreement among some people about what you've just said here.

00:16:06.480 But what does it mean when you can have – and I see this.

00:16:10.260 I see this in people I correspond with.

00:16:12.480 I see this in my own life in terms of just the people I know, neighbors and friends.

00:16:16.280 That depending on where you get your news from, you're increasingly seeing the world in completely different ways right now.

00:16:25.000 And I think that is almost exacerbating some of the frictions and tensions out there.

00:16:31.260 Well, it is unfortunate.

00:16:32.940 And it would be nice if the press gallery had some balance and then everybody could tune into it.

00:16:39.660 But what they seem to want is a world where we all are obliged to read their reporting, even though it's completely one-sided and liberal.

00:16:51.660 You know, there was a time when, you know, many, many years ago when Canadians could open a newspaper, read a news story, and have no idea what the politics of the author were.

00:17:02.060 That time, definitely when it comes to the press gallery on Parliament Hill, that time is now gone.

00:17:06.740 And now it could come back, and maybe some of the liberal journalists and their publications will come to the view that they need to be more objective in order to regain the lost confidence of Canadians.

00:17:25.160 I think that would be good for democracy.

00:17:27.300 And if they did that, I would applaud them.

00:17:30.420 So you're not just saying this as someone who's a media critic and observer of the media scene.

00:17:34.040 And you're saying this as someone who's just announced you're running to be the next prime minister, to be the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

00:17:40.160 One of the ways that I guess you would go about being successful in that is talking to Canadians through some of these media outlets.

00:17:46.040 There's many other ways, of course, now to talk to individuals.

00:17:48.640 And I think everyone in the media landscape is well aware that more and more people are getting their information from alternative media, that CBC ratings are declining every year.

00:17:56.680 But still, there are millions of people who do still almost exclusively access their news through those conduits.

00:18:02.540 So how do you navigate that, given what you've just said, that you feel you're likely not to get a fair shake through them?

00:18:09.000 Go directly to Canadians. 0.98

00:18:12.120 Like social media?

00:18:13.080 That's a lot of views, 6 million views.

00:18:43.080 Well, you can look at the analytics online.

00:18:45.180 Check out my Twitter, my Facebook, Instagram, YouTube.

00:18:48.800 The numbers are all public.

00:18:50.760 So we talk about Canadians being divided in terms of the media issues, which brings us, I think, to a bigger issue the nation faces now.

00:18:58.700 Or at least a lot of people say the nation faces this issue.

00:19:01.120 Justin Trudeau's playing it up in some ways, downplaying it in other ways.

00:19:04.580 The notion of a divided Canada.

00:19:07.120 Pierre Pali, would you say that Canada is divided right now?

00:19:10.380 And if so, what is the remedy?

00:19:11.620 Well, Canada has never been so divided as it is now six years into the Trudeau government.

00:19:19.140 He has pitted east against west.

00:19:22.480 He has tried to divide Canadians on the basis of race and gender.

00:19:28.400 We shouldn't be terribly surprised, given the prime minister's own ugly racist history,

00:19:34.020 that he would be such a divisive figure in that way.

00:19:37.220 He has divided Canadians along vaccine status.

00:19:43.740 He insults and name calls people who have legitimate questions about his COVID policies.

00:19:51.680 And we see families have been torn asunder by the resulting climate that he has created.

00:20:02.420 But that is unfortunate, but we can turn it around.

00:20:07.800 We can unite through freedom.

00:20:09.420 We can restore our freedoms in this country, give people back control of their lives,

00:20:15.180 send out the message that every Canadian is welcome in the Canadian family,

00:20:21.000 and unleash individual opportunities so everybody feels like they have a stake in the future.

00:20:27.620 That's how we turn the corner on this thing and reunite our country, which I will do as prime minister.

00:20:33.620 We'll be back in just a moment with more full comment after this.

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00:21:50.220 You're richer than you think.

00:21:53.780 Pierre Pauly, have you said every Canadian is welcome?

00:21:56.520 That that is the issue, that is what needs to be said, sort of moving forward, dealing

00:22:01.680 with the unity issues.

00:22:02.620 Talking about your run for leader of Conservative Party of Canada.

00:22:07.400 Every Canadian is welcome.

00:22:08.460 What does that mean in the context of running for the leadership?

00:22:12.320 Because it's a big blue tent, and we often hear conversations about all these disparate

00:22:15.780 voices coming together.

00:22:16.900 Economic conservative, social conservative, libertarian.

00:22:19.640 Definitely a lot of people with frustrations from Western regions, Western caucus members.

00:22:25.180 How do you look at the conservative big blue tent and all those perhaps disparate voices?

00:22:32.640 I look at the single principle that unites them all.

00:22:36.380 Which is?

00:22:37.620 Freedom.

00:22:39.540 Freedom.

00:22:40.920 Social conservatives want the freedom to raise their families with biblical or other traditional

00:22:47.160 values.

00:22:48.920 Some people of different faiths would like to raise their families with their traditional

00:22:55.480 values, whether they're Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, or otherwise.

00:23:01.780 They want the freedom to teach their kids their own values, to espouse their faith in their

00:23:08.880 own fora, and to be free from government interfering with any of that.

00:23:17.500 They should have the freedom to do that.

00:23:20.300 I stood up for the freedom of social conservative charities that Prime Minister Trudeau attacked

00:23:25.360 when they wouldn't support his view on abortion, and that he tried to take away their summer

00:23:31.520 jobs.

00:23:31.980 I oppose that because I believe people should have the freedom to believe what they want.

00:23:36.480 And fiscal conservatives want economic freedom, the freedom to work hard, share the fruits

00:23:43.400 of your labor with your family and your neighbors, rather than having it confiscated by the government,

00:23:48.300 to start a business which focuses on paying wages and serving customers rather than filling

00:23:53.140 out paperwork for government.

00:23:55.400 They want the freedom for First Nations to harvest their own resources, the freedom for immigrants 0.90

00:24:01.000 to work in the professions for which they are qualified and needed, rather than being blocked

00:24:07.300 by government gatekeepers.

00:24:10.720 Red Tories want to see the freedom for gays and lesbians and women to live their own lives

00:24:18.380 and make their own personal decisions without any government interference.

00:24:23.000 And Quebec nationalists, frankly, want the freedom to make their own decisions in their own

00:24:33.420 jurisdiction without interference from an overbearing federal government in Ottawa.

00:24:39.000 So the single unifying principle that pulls all conservatives together, regardless of which

00:24:46.000 part of the coalition they come from, is freedom.

00:24:49.640 And I just want to clarify, when you said Quebec nationalist, you're not meaning the same

00:24:54.440 thing as Quebec separatists there.

00:24:56.000 You're saying that there's room for Quebec nationalists in your party, and you encourage

00:24:59.600 that?

00:25:01.020 Well, yeah, there always has been.

00:25:02.460 I mean, separatist is a different word than nationalist.

00:25:06.380 Separatists want to create their own separate country.

00:25:10.520 Obviously, that is not going to happen.

00:25:12.700 I am a federalist.

00:25:13.920 I believe in one Canada, which includes Quebec.

00:25:16.400 But people who have an affinity to the Quebec nation, which is recognized by Canada's parliament,

00:25:23.900 have a place in the Conservative Party.

00:25:25.980 As Prime Minister Harper put it, in a motion which I voted for, Quebec is a nation within

00:25:32.580 a united Canada.

00:25:34.480 And we believe in a small federal government within a decentralized federation where provinces,

00:25:43.860 including Quebec, have the autonomy to make more decisions within their jurisdiction.

00:25:49.160 Now, you've basically just said, OK, everybody welcome in the big blue tent.

00:25:51.960 You want to bring everyone together.

00:25:53.220 Although I've heard a lot of complaints from various people in Conservative Party grassroots

00:25:57.200 and federal conservative, different provincial parties who say, you know what?

00:26:00.560 A person talks a big game during a leadership race, and then when they become the leader,

00:26:05.420 when they're running in the general election, we find things look a little different.

00:26:08.120 And there were complaints about Aaron O'Toole in that regard.

00:26:10.660 He said quite firmly that he was against cancel culture when he was running for leader last

00:26:15.540 time.

00:26:16.140 Then we saw a little bit of canceling going on.

00:26:18.340 A couple of candidates pulled from their writings.

00:26:20.940 People felt like there was a bit of a bait and switch in terms of that approach.

00:26:25.140 Is everything that you're going to be saying as leader, is that something that people can

00:26:29.380 take to the bank later on?

00:26:31.240 Or, you know, what do you say to people who go, Pierre, are you going to walk this stuff

00:26:35.280 back later?

00:26:37.100 Well, I'm running on things that I can stay true to before and after the leadership race.

00:26:44.940 So what you're seeing now is what you're going to see after I become leader and after I become

00:26:51.460 prime minister.

00:26:52.020 A couple more questions about the big tent idea.

00:26:55.480 I've heard some people already say that while they feel you were already coming out of the

00:26:59.420 gate very strong, I've heard the phrase coronation being bandied about.

00:27:02.760 There is still the idea that perhaps you're a conservative conservative and some people

00:27:06.980 would like to see a progressive conservative enter the fray.

00:27:10.100 Someone such as Peter McKay or I saw my post-media columnist colleague Tasha Carradine said

00:27:15.160 that she was kicking the tires considering a bid.

00:27:18.520 What do you make of that dichotomy, the split between a progressive conservative and

00:27:22.360 then, well, and then you?

00:27:25.640 I don't follow those labels.

00:27:27.940 I believe in maximizing the freedom of the Canadian people, putting them back in control 0.96

00:27:36.340 of their own lives, making them the authors of their own stories.

00:27:39.900 That, to me, is what conservatism is about.

00:27:43.620 And I believe every wing of the party can rally around that unifying principle.

00:27:49.780 There's one label, though, that we got to accept because it's a legitimate label.

00:27:54.680 It's a formal political party.

00:27:56.040 It got 5% of the vote in the 2021 election.

00:28:00.120 The PPC, Maxime Bernier's party, 850,000 votes.

00:28:04.300 Like I said, 5% of the vote, double what the Green Party got.

00:28:07.680 As you know, Maxime Bernier almost became conservative leader up against Andrew Scheer.

00:28:11.820 He just narrowly lost.

00:28:13.520 And that's a lot of votes, 850,000 votes.

00:28:16.540 Do we need to unite the right in Canada?

00:28:19.220 I'm not going to talk about left and right because I don't think it's actually a good

00:28:26.540 way to describe the electorate.

00:28:28.180 The electorate is multidimensional and it isn't on a linear spectrum, despite what we

00:28:35.400 learn in school.

00:28:36.960 But what I will say is this.

00:28:38.880 There are a lot of People's Party supporters who stood up and spoke up because of legitimate

00:28:47.220 frustrations that they've experienced, particularly since the government's overreach during the

00:28:53.260 pandemic.

00:28:53.640 And I approach these people with total humility to listen to their concerns.

00:29:02.280 They are decent people.

00:29:03.420 I met them on the doorstep in my riding.

00:29:05.520 They are decent, honorable people who want control of their own lives.

00:29:10.600 What they will get from Pierre Polyev as a prime minister who will make them, once again, masters

00:29:17.600 of their own fate and authors of their own story.

00:29:22.080 There's going to be a lot of people listening in who like a lot of the things you've said,

00:29:26.580 a lot of people listening in who don't necessarily agree with everything you've said.

00:29:30.260 Lots of swing voters out there.

00:29:31.920 And I don't just mean, obviously, in the leadership race, people swing between different candidates,

00:29:35.620 but in the general election as well, should you, when the leadership, go on to be prime

00:29:39.400 minister?

00:29:39.820 What is your message to all those individuals out there?

00:29:43.480 Well, look, I just think that we have to, I don't think that a lot of the, the political

00:29:52.900 class appreciate the way that the working class people have been flattened in this country 1.00

00:30:00.040 over the last several years.

00:30:02.400 You know, like I went to a trailer park that's about five minutes from my house when I was

00:30:07.600 campaigning in the election.

00:30:08.660 I met a young couple, they work at a quarry and they make a hundred grand between them

00:30:14.720 and they have calculated that they will never be able to leave the trailer and own their

00:30:20.480 own home because it now costs seven, $800,000 to buy a property.

00:30:29.180 That is astonishing in a country like Canada, which has the 10th biggest landmass per capita

00:30:35.500 in the world, second biggest raw landmass on earth.

00:30:39.620 We have more land than where there's no one than we do where there's anyone.

00:30:43.620 And yet we have 33, 34 year old people with decent jobs who've done exactly what they, we

00:30:50.480 told them they should do, who now are, are faced the prospect of being permanent tenants to

00:30:57.900 corporate and multi-millionaire landlords with no hope of ever escaping and building their

00:31:06.260 own personal equity.

00:31:07.960 This is going to be the single biggest contributor to inequality and class divisions in this country.

00:31:16.720 And the way we do it is we undo that problem is to unleash the private sector to build more

00:31:24.160 housing, get the government side of the way and let builders build and stop creating all

00:31:29.900 of this easy cash to inflate housing prices.

00:31:32.640 In other words, we need to start building houses and stop printing money.

00:31:37.800 And that's one of going to be one of the key freedoms that I will champion throughout the

00:31:42.240 leadership race and as prime minister.

00:31:43.840 Lots of tensions out there, lots of headaches, frustrations, bad headlines about, to your

00:31:48.900 point, rising cost of living.

00:31:50.120 But are you ultimately optimistic that things can be turned around?

00:31:54.860 Absolutely.

00:31:57.140 This country was founded on our ancient liberties that go back hundreds of years.

00:32:03.720 We've had governments, we've had terrible governments in years gone by, most notably the

00:32:08.900 first Trudeau.

00:32:09.580 And yet we turned it around and we replaced those governments and undid their policies, unleashed

00:32:16.400 free enterprise so Canadians could, workers could earn more, businesses could hire more

00:32:24.540 and we could build more.

00:32:26.960 We created a country where three or four hundred thousand people a year want to come as a beacon

00:32:34.100 of freedom.

00:32:35.860 All of this is possible again with a new government and a prime minister determined to put Canadians

00:32:44.660 back in charge of their own lives and to make the country the freest on earth.

00:32:50.320 Pierre Polyev, it's been an interesting conversation.

00:32:52.380 Thanks so much for joining us today.

00:32:54.240 Excellent.

00:32:54.640 Great to be with you.

00:32:55.840 All the best.

00:32:57.060 Thank you.

00:32:58.100 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:32:59.900 I'm Anthony Fury.

00:33:01.600 This episode was produced by Andre Proulx, with theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:33:05.580 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:33:08.060 You can subscribe to Full Comment on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, and Amazon Music.

00:33:13.080 You can listen through the app or your Alexa-enabled devices.

00:33:15.900 You can help us by giving us a rating or a review, and by telling your friends about us.

00:33:19.680 Thanks for listening.

Full Comment - February 14, 2022

Pierre Poilievre says his freedom fight includes truckers

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