John Bolton - January 31, 2026


Great Speech Pierre... But A Major Lost Opportunity & Why It Doesn't Matter


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

191.17271

Word count

1,747

Sentence count

149

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Pierre Polyev's speech at the Conservative Party of Canada convention in Calgary, Alberta on Thursday night was a lot of fun to watch. I think there is a lot to be learned from it and I hope you do as well.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hi, it's John and welcome to the channel. It is 8.37 p.m. Friday, January the 30th. Hope
00:00:09.200 you're having a great Friday evening and a great start to your weekend as well. And I
00:00:12.860 do not have the big blue mug of coffee tonight. It's too late for coffee, okay? But I have
00:00:17.680 a cup of tea. Thanks for tuning into the channel tonight. And I think I might save you a little
00:00:23.520 bit of time here if you didn't watch Pierre Polyev's speech at the Conservative Convention
00:00:28.020 here in Calgary this evening. Now, I'm not going to address his leadership review. That's
00:00:33.060 happening right now. And I'm not really going to talk about it a whole lot unless it's not
00:00:37.620 very favorable for him. So maybe tomorrow morning I will address it. But it depends on how things
00:00:43.080 go for Pierre tonight. I watched it on the Western Standard YouTube channel because I wanted to
00:00:48.560 follow along with some of the comments. Polyev's channel was really busy tonight on YouTube.
00:00:53.580 Same with CPAC. A lot of trolls from the Liberal Party on the Western Standard site, which I found
00:00:59.120 fascinating. There were a couple of things that really, really popped up to me. One in particular,
00:01:05.840 a group of people he didn't address tonight that he desperately needs to vote for him if he ever wants
00:01:10.840 to become the prime minister. Another thing that he did talk about quite a bit, I think more than
00:01:15.880 anything else, was the independence movement here in Alberta. And I do have a final conclusion,
00:01:20.860 which I'll get to in just a moment. Okay, so right off the top, it was great. Very limited French.
00:01:26.020 Thumbs up there. Very well presented. I think he's a great speaker. He presents well. It was well
00:01:32.000 received. Very similar and familiar is what I typed onto my tablet. A lot of stump speech in his address.
00:01:40.140 You know, if you were to go back and look at the speeches he did during the election campaign,
00:01:44.100 if you went back to the speeches he's been doing since he became the leader of the Conservative Party,
00:01:48.440 a lot of the same stuff in there. He was critical of the Liberals. He did provide some solutions.
00:01:53.760 But again, he did forget to address something, which I'll get to in a moment. He was critical
00:01:58.120 of Carney, suggesting that he hasn't accomplished much since he showed up a year ago. I added on here,
00:02:03.660 he hasn't really done anything since he became PM on April the 28th. He spoke of the young people
00:02:09.420 in the Conservative Party and more people are conservative. More young people are conservative
00:02:14.860 these days. And he saw a lot of those people at the convention here in Calgary. And he spoke of
00:02:19.440 his love for Calgary as well, because he is from here after all. He briefly addressed Donald Trump.
00:02:25.040 It was a little bit of a theme through this speech. He did say that we have to put Canada first,
00:02:29.800 which was quite popular for people on the Western Standard website. He said we need to fight the
00:02:35.220 American tariffs. And he was willing to work with Carney to reduce those tariffs. He said every,
00:02:40.520 he's used this before, everything in Canada should be dirt cheap because we have the most
00:02:45.060 dirt, which is an old standby for him, which is a pretty good line. And anytime you quote Ronald
00:02:50.900 Reagan, I think you're doing all right, because he's one of the most quotable presidents or people,
00:02:54.840 I think, in history. The great communicator, they called him. He used the old one,
00:02:59.280 government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases. If it moves, tax it. If it
00:03:03.620 keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. He's used that many times before.
00:03:08.940 And he was referring to the Liberal Party when he talked about that. He talked about the military
00:03:14.720 with more recruitment and support for veterans. He spoke about the Arctic and how we need to be
00:03:20.600 stronger there. He wanted to develop our natural resources to create new jobs. He used, Lincoln did
00:03:27.340 a speech way back during the Civil War called A House Divided. That was his House Divided speech,
00:03:32.780 which has some biblical meaning as well. He said a house divided cannot stand. He addressed the
00:03:37.980 separatist movements here in Alberta and in Quebec as well. And he pointed out that it's generally
00:03:43.720 the liberals in power when these movements start to grow, which he thought was rather interesting.
00:03:49.500 And then he appealed directly to independence movements in Alberta and in Quebec. And he said
00:03:54.960 this, and I quote this, I wrote this down verbatim. You will again have a country that respects your
00:04:01.200 autonomy, is proud of your industries, unites us around our common identity and history,
00:04:07.000 a country that will afford you the hopeful future that you have earned. And then, so unquote,
00:04:13.620 and then people yelled, please don't go. The people in the crowd were yelling, please don't go,
00:04:18.280 please don't go. So he did talk about that quite a bit and probably the most lengthy part of his speech
00:04:25.000 tonight. He said we should celebrate our history because we don't do that anymore. In fact, we're quite
00:04:29.480 critical of our history and we teach our kids this in school. He said we're the greatest country
00:04:33.780 because of the people who came here and sacrificed before us. He said immigration needs to be capped.
00:04:40.080 He spoke of integration for people who come here. He said we will no longer allow foreign conflicts 1.00
00:04:46.000 to spill onto our streets. Leave your differences at the door. And then he talked about ending
00:04:51.320 anti-Semitism and standing with Jews, the only religious group he spoke about tonight in his speech.
00:04:58.000 He spoke of crime and he brought up that thing that that police officer in Toronto said,
00:05:03.980 you know, leave your keys at the door to make it easier and safer for them to steal your car.
00:05:08.100 He talked about liberals basically being soft on crime. He said he wanted to bring in a castle law
00:05:13.500 so you can protect yourself against home invaders. And he said he would protect firearms owners and
00:05:19.220 stop the liberal gun grab, which goes over very well here in Alberta. He said there'd be no censorship
00:05:24.700 of Bible verses, address the drug problems, the deaths from drugs, and that they wanted to treat
00:05:30.740 drug abuse. He said hope was the theme of the convention, which is very interesting.
00:05:36.240 And then in a very touching moment, I've said here on my channel many times before,
00:05:41.000 I admire Pierre Polyev. I think he's a great speaker. But I always say he's a good family man.
00:05:46.780 And I think that's important. He got choked up talking about his autistic daughter speaking
00:05:52.480 for the first time. It's a very touching moment. And if you try to find any part of this speech,
00:05:57.860 check that out. He also talks about his son being away from his son. He misses him while he's away.
00:06:04.280 Very touching moment. And he says, why does he keep going? People keep asking him,
00:06:09.820 why does he keep going? He's away from his family so much. He says, when you start something,
00:06:14.940 you never give up. A great message to pass along. He spoke of the volunteers with the
00:06:19.940 Conservative Party who never give up. And so he wouldn't give up. He spoke of people who built
00:06:24.780 the country who didn't give up and soldiers in trenches that didn't give up. So very, very strong
00:06:30.540 there. He said, we stand united and the best is yet to come. So that's kind of what he said this
00:06:36.880 evening. Now, who didn't he address? I think there was an opportunity lost here. He spoke of the
00:06:43.580 young people in the party, but he didn't address the baby boomers. These are the people that voted
00:06:50.920 in droves for Mark Carney and the liberals regarding Donald Trump. He didn't address them
00:06:56.400 directly. And I think he needed to do that. And I think he had an opportunity to do that when he
00:07:02.180 was talking of young people in the Conservative movement. And he talked a little bit, I didn't
00:07:06.680 mention it here, but he talked about people being able to afford homes. And he talked about food lines.
00:07:11.500 And he talked about all those things that you heard in those speeches during the election.
00:07:14.920 But when he was talking about young people not being able to afford homes, he needed to direct
00:07:20.840 his message to baby boomers and parents of children who can no longer afford homes. These people 0.93
00:07:27.980 abandoned their children and their grandchildren during the election campaign prior to April 28th and the
00:07:35.260 big vote. This was a lost opportunity. Talk to them. Ask them why they're not supporting their young
00:07:42.760 people. They're abandoning their kids and their grandchildren. That was a lost opportunity as far
00:07:47.660 as I'm concerned. And it was one of the things that really stood out to me throughout this speech. I
00:07:51.880 was waiting for it. It never happened. Now, here is my conclusion. I am an independence-minded
00:07:58.680 Albertan. Nothing Pierre Paulyev said here can change my mind, although Paulyev pleaded with us
00:08:04.440 to stay, seeming to think that if a Conservative government gets into power, these independence
00:08:10.920 movements will die. But that's not the case anymore. Things aren't like that anymore, Pierre, because this
00:08:15.560 is what was coming to mind while I was watching this speech. And he was pleading with people
00:08:20.200 in the independence movement here and in Quebec as well. I wrote down, nice try, Pierre, but there's
00:08:28.680 always another Liberal government around the corner. That's what I was thinking throughout this speech.
00:08:35.220 Great speech. Great message. Well done. Well received. He'll likely survive his leadership review.
00:08:42.500 He'll lead the party into the next election. But it doesn't matter to me who is in power out East.
00:08:47.460 I want an independent Alberta. It always comes back to that. Thanks very much. I appreciate you
00:08:53.140 watching. Just a quick recap of what Paulyev said. Of course, lots of places to see it online. Watch
00:08:59.460 for yourself. But that's what I got from Paulyev's speech tonight. If you like the video, give it a
00:09:03.740 thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel. Ring the bell for notifications. I'll see you in the next one.