In this episode of The Andrew Lawton Show, host Andrew Lawton is joined by reporter David Menzies at the Liberal caucus retreat in London, Ontario, to talk about the dangers of wearing masks to a press conference, and why it's time to get your masks ready.
00:01:00.000welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true
00:01:20.440i was just watching justin trudeau's press conference in the city of london ontario on
00:01:32.780housing which is like probably five minutes from here but i can't go there because the liberals
00:01:38.560have decided they do not want independent media asking justin trudeau questions that may be more
00:01:43.740challenging than what he's used to welcome to the andrew lawton show uh before we begin i think it
00:01:49.880is important for us to share this little public service announcement from Canada's top doctor.
00:01:55.500Just as a follow-up, I'm sorry to cut you off, but I just wanted to take note. You're all masking,
00:02:00.380which is lovely to see, of course, but most government ministers are not now. Most MPs are
00:02:05.200not. Most people on the street are not masking. Is there any specific guidance on that going forward
00:02:10.760at this point? Yes, Theresa Tam. So it is a layer of protection. We hope people have developed the
00:02:19.000habit to be able to use masks as needed during the respiratory virus season, not just for COVID,
00:02:24.020but for all the other respiratory pathogens that will be transmitted around this time. So
00:02:30.740I do think now is the time to get your masks ready if you don't already have them.
00:02:37.120In our own particular context, we certainly in our area, there's been an uptick in some of the
00:02:43.880COVID-19 indicators. For me personally, there have been cases around, you know, even my work
00:02:52.560colleagues. So that's one of the reasons why we are wearing masks today.
00:02:59.640Ooh, get your masks ready. I found this old Air Canada one that was like buried at the bottom of
00:03:05.720my desk. So I'm going to get it ready for how I'm going to use it for the foreseeable future.
00:03:10.700there ready take that this is I think hilarious and by the way the emperor's new clothes we talk
00:03:18.780about all the time when the world leaders are just expecting everyone to go along with this
00:03:23.720thing and not speak out to the obvious but in this case no one's even pretending to go along
00:03:28.320with it like you see the top doctor and her colleagues up there with their masks doing like
00:03:33.940the press conference thing of like we will leave the mask because you can't like understand anyone
00:03:38.360And then, like, you go to this press conference I'm watching that Justin Trudeau is doing right now.
00:03:42.960Now, admittedly, they're outside, but no one's even bothering.
00:03:46.540So maybe David Menzies from Rebel should, like, just run around the Liberal caucus retreat in London, Ontario,
00:03:52.140and say, oh, why aren't you following the advice of Canada's top doctor?
00:03:56.520Why aren't you trusting the science? Why aren't you trusting the experts?
00:03:59.860But a little bit of a deviation from what I really have to talk about today,
00:04:04.300which is the fact that I am here and not just not far away from here where the Liberals are convening for their caucus retreat.
00:04:13.400Now, you may not have known this. The Liberals had their cabinet retreat in Prince Edward Island or on Prince Edward.
00:04:18.780I always want to say in referring to a province, but people in PEI prefer you to say you're on PEI.
00:04:24.100So the Liberals were on PEI for their cabinet retreat a couple of weeks back.
00:04:28.460And now the entire Liberal caucus is convening in London, Ontario, which is supposed to be ahead of the return of members of Parliament to the House of Commons next week.
00:04:39.300Now, the Liberals have had a caucus retreat in London before.
00:04:42.040The last time was in 2015 when I was graced with an interview with Justin Trudeau in which I asked him some questions that ended up making headlines when he effectively said that he didn't think the Canadian Armed Forces could do much good overseas in Afghanistan.
00:04:57.720but in the end what was interesting about this particular caucus retreat is that there was no
00:05:02.880place for independent media in fact I did what I was supposed to do I reached out to the prime
00:05:08.820minister's office for accreditation ahead of time and it's a three-day retreat they never heard back
00:05:13.980I thought okay maybe they're just a little bit too busy to preoccupied with all of their plain
00:05:19.240woes in India so I had a little bit of skepticism as you may have heard in the show yesterday but
00:05:25.260After I finished, I went right to the convention center where the Liberal Caucus retreat is being held,
00:06:46.940I had a very nice conversation with him.
00:06:49.080and he didn't seem to know who I was, which was probably working in my favor, and he had asked me
00:06:55.620what happened. I said, I registered. No one responded. Normally, if you're denied accreditation
00:07:01.060to something, you will have the courtesy of a rejection that will tell you why you were
00:07:05.800accredited. In this case, the Prime Minister's office gave us no information, no communication
00:07:10.840whatsoever. I sent numerous emails. I called their media relations hotline. I emailed Justin
00:07:16.780Trudeau's senior press secretary directly. No response whatsoever. And all of these people
00:07:22.500that were being phoned at the media registration table, no one would give a name and no one would
00:07:28.200give a reason. They just said, you are not allowed. You're not on the list. You're not
00:07:32.680accredited. So as it stands, I have been banned from covering not only the Liberal caucus retreat
00:07:39.000run and funded by taxpayer dollars by the government of Canada, but I have been banned
00:07:45.140from covering a retreat in my own city. Now, this also means I was not permitted to attend a press
00:07:51.320conference that Justin Trudeau is holding right now on housing. He's speaking at great length
00:07:56.520about how great the mayor of London is and all the great things that Justin Trudeau and the
00:08:00.300Liberals are doing in London, Ontario. But a journalist who happens to live in London that
00:08:05.260isn't one of their chosen folks is not permitted to go. Now, I had to tune out at the beginning
00:08:11.240of this show here, my colleague who's watching that just sent me a message to say that a student
00:08:16.140journalist got a question. Now I'm all for student journalism and people being able to cut their
00:08:21.260teeth, but it is a little suspect when, not to toot my own horn, well I guess I am tooting my
00:08:26.240horn a little bit, but someone who has over, well if I'm really being technical, 13 years experience
00:08:31.720in media, who has interviewed Justin Trudeau before, who has attended Justin Trudeau press
00:08:37.540conferences before and the sky has not fallen. I'm not allowed to be there. It is not a question
00:08:44.060of, oh, you missed the registration cutoff. This is the Liberal government making a very clear and
00:08:49.860determined and very concerted effort to exclude a certain type of media from their events. Now,
00:08:58.040people are saying on Twitter, are you surprised? Truth be told, yes and no. This is not the first
00:09:03.200time this has happened, you may recall in the 2019 election, we had a heck of a time getting
00:09:08.340access to the Liberals events. We went to one of theirs, and by we, I mean I, I showed up with a
00:09:14.100bag hoping we could go on the Liberal plane and we'd pay our way like every other outlet who has
00:09:19.000to be on the plane or chooses to be on the plane does. And they just said, you are not coming. And
00:09:24.480at one point they had police remove me from what was a public event. I wasn't even there at that
00:09:29.060point in the media line. I was just there as a member of the public, and I was removed. They
00:09:34.120apologized for that, but never reversed course on their standing decision to not accredit True North
00:09:39.800to liberal campaign events. That was the Liberal Party of Canada. Now, you may say it sends a very
00:09:46.680bad message, and it's very problematic, but the Liberal Party of Canada is a private organization
00:09:52.920in terms of what the law requires of it. It can decide what to do with its own events. It is an
00:09:58.660organization that has the prerogative like, you know, Joe's Chicken Shack does to decide who gets
00:10:04.000in and who doesn't. The Liberal Caucus retreat is a partisan event, yes, but it is a government
00:10:11.220event. It is the Prime Minister's office, an organ of the executive branch of government in Canada
00:10:16.220that is running this, which means there is a legal obligation to respect charter rights, of which
00:10:22.380freedom of the press is a very important one, falling under freedom of expression.
00:10:27.780And if you look at government obligations on press freedom, they're very different than private obligations, which really don't exist in that sense.
00:10:35.700Government obligations have to comply with the Charter.
00:10:38.620And in 2019, True North was also banned from covering the leaders' debates that were taking place, which were run by a national consortium, a national council, a bureaucracy that had been established that denied True North and denied rebel accreditation.
00:10:53.800Now, we took that to federal court and we won an injunction, which gave us accreditation to cover the debate. And we asked Justin Trudeau questions, we asked Jagmeet Singh questions, and it was very important that we were there.
00:11:07.920And in 2021, we were prepared to do it again.
00:11:10.540But in this particular case, the Leaders Debates Commission folded preemptively, accredited
00:16:35.860So let's first off talk about what it is you were setting out to analyze here, because we know that home values just based on any number of criteria are going up in cost.
00:16:47.480We know that people, especially young people, are being essentially priced out of the market here.
00:16:52.440You've touched on an aspect that I don't hear discussed in the housing context as much as it is here.
00:16:57.320what I'm looking at is a detail that's buried in the federal government's emission reduction plan
00:17:04.100which was published last year I got some attention the plan got some attention at the time but a
00:17:10.160little detail is buried in it which is a requirement for new homes as of 2025 to be 61 percent more
00:17:19.220energy efficient and by 2030 65 percent more energy efficient and commercial buildings have
00:17:24.640to be 59% more energy efficient. And I just couldn't believe that that is in the report
00:17:31.980and that there was no discussion around it. Is it even possible? And this is more energy
00:17:37.740efficient compared to 2019. So if you looked at houses built in 1919, I don't think we're 65%
00:17:45.340more energy efficient than houses built in 1919, but maybe we could get there. But 2019 houses in
00:17:51.960Canada are already very energy efficient where they're insulated, double glazed windows, all
00:17:56.640that stuff. So we're already very energy efficient. And they're now saying, basically, you have to
00:18:01.800build houses that don't use any energy and how on earth people are supposed to heat their house
00:18:06.680and light their house and all the rest of it. So I did some looking into potential cost estimates
00:18:14.560here. I looked at information from the Canadian Home Builders Association. They put some numbers
00:18:18.800out and my estimate is and i think it's probably a bit optimistic but it'll raise the cost of
00:18:25.760building a new home in canada by about 8.3 percent and so that on a national average basis is over
00:18:33.680fifty thousand per uh per house and that in turn is going to have some negative economic impacts
00:18:39.920reduce gdp but it'll also really hit the construction industry hard i think we'll see
00:18:46.080output and employment falling in the construction sector, which is the opposite of what we need.
00:18:51.260We need a lot more people working in the home building sector. I think it's important to note
00:18:57.460for the audience, just to be absolutely clear, we're talking about new houses here. So that is
00:19:02.100particularly interesting when I look at, you know, in a new house, if you're going to make something
00:19:06.020even more energy efficient, like, are we talking about a different grade of windows? Are we talking
00:19:10.520about a different grade of insulation. I mean, where is that money going to meet this very
00:19:16.480aggressive efficiency target? Yeah. And unfortunately, a lot of people who are
00:19:21.920real advocates for an aggressive energy efficiency agenda, they always assume that
00:19:27.480no matter how rigid you set these targets, people always benefit from them because you save money
00:19:33.260on the energy down the road. People already have the option of increasing the energy efficiency of
00:19:39.060their homes and people do but only up to a point after that it's not worth it you don't really get
00:19:45.840the payoff from it or you might just rather spend your money on something else this kind of
00:19:50.660regulation it's going to if it even again if it's even possible and there's nothing in there about
00:19:57.120how this could even be done but if it's possible to build new homes that are 65 percent more energy
00:20:03.580efficient than they were in 2019 it means you have to throw a lot of money at this one aspect
00:20:10.060of a house and people it's a waste of money for most people i should add one other thing and that
00:20:17.100is right now it's on new houses but there is discussion in the the building codes circle
00:20:25.820about adding these requirements on existing houses so anytime you go to do a renovation now
00:20:32.060you may be required if the new rules come in you may be required to hit even more ambitious targets
00:20:38.220so um just because you own a house now doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be safe from
00:20:43.740this crazy agenda is that is that a wood stove i i see in the background uh on yours because i
00:20:49.820mean that's very energy efficient but that raises other issues from the government so i mean that's
00:20:54.060the that is the irony if people are using these alternative sources that makes other problems the
00:20:59.420the regulators would say that's a natural gas powered stove and uh you know those are in the
00:21:05.100crosshairs of regulators as well um i think you may have to have a wood stove in your house because
00:21:12.780i don't know how else you're going to heat it if uh if these rules come through um but in in the
00:21:18.940case you mentioned that um you hadn't heard any discussion of this aspect of the issue and i agree
00:21:23.980this is something it's there in the report it's not prominent but it's such a crazy number like
00:21:29.580a 65 improvement in energy efficiency with no guidance about how that's going to happen and no
00:21:35.500calculation of how much it will cost or whether it's worth it to put it in perspective the like
00:21:41.020it doesn't reduce greenhouse gas emissions very much but per ton of emission reductions it's 50
00:21:47.820times more expensive than the carbon tax. So if you think the carbon tax is taking a chunk out of
00:21:54.140people's living standards, this kind of regulation is even more expensive. It really accomplishes
00:22:00.240very little, and it does so at an incredibly high cost. Well, and I would also point out here,
00:22:07.220and you have a section in the report that talks about deadweight losses, which is to say when
00:22:11.760firms are essentially passing on to consumers, these increase in construction costs. And the
00:22:17.460one thing here is that if we're baking this in, it's not even where a lot of consumers have the
00:22:23.140option to do this. You know, because a lot of the energy efficiency proposals that we've seen in the
00:22:28.220past, you could make some sort of a business case for it. Admittedly, often those rely on tax credits
00:22:33.420and subsidies. But, you know, if something's going to save you money, you'll do it. At this point,
00:22:36.940we're talking about installations in homes that go well above what you could ever hope to gain
00:22:43.260from these efficiencies supposedly yeah there's a large literature in the economics field
00:22:50.060looking at these kinds of energy efficiency regulations and in economics people have tended to
00:22:57.100be fairly pessimistic that these are worth it that governments typically way overestimate the value
00:23:03.340of these energy efficiency mandates but when people have gone afterwards and looked at okay
00:23:09.980how much did this house actually save from having to redo all its windows the answer is it's a
00:23:15.900negative rate of return oftentimes people never recover the upfront investment which means the
00:23:21.660homeowners were justified in not doing it voluntarily so then if you force them to do it
00:23:28.060you haven't made them better off you make them worse off and in this case it's a i think we
00:23:32.460can guarantee a hundred percent this kind of regulation will make people much worse off
00:23:36.460and and i'm it's written in the title of the report wrong move but it's also at the wrong time
00:23:42.180i mean of all the terrible times to add eight percent to the cost of building a home
00:23:50.420now when we already have a crisis of affordability and housing it's absolutely baffling to me
00:23:57.700now looking at the regional breakdown here you say it's a national average of just shy of 55 000
00:24:04.020In BC, 78,000 is the average cost increase in Ontario, where you and I are 71,800. On the low
00:24:12.740end, you've got New Brunswick, 22,000, Newfoundland, 22,000. Is that disparity just because of the
00:24:21.400general average cost of homes, or are there other regional specific factors that are making things
00:24:27.180a little bit less aggressive in the prairies in Atlantic Canada here and more in BC and Ontario?
00:24:33.300um so that particular calculation is just based on the regional variation in the
00:24:37.380in the cost of building homes uh the estimated cost of building homes uh there are also regional
00:24:43.220disparities in in terms of the macroeconomic impact um but uh in the case of ontario and bc
00:24:52.100just because of the way the market's gone this is the most expensive place to build
00:24:56.020new homes and um so that's why since it's a cost percentage estimate that's why that number comes
00:25:03.700out over 70 000 here and in other places it's under 25 000. what we hear i mean even about
00:25:10.340oh i don't know when was it 30 minutes ago justin trudeau in london ontario speaking about housing
00:25:14.980uses the line which is not entirely inaccurate which is that there is not just one lever that
00:25:20.820government can pull that's going to solve the housing crisis but i'm struck by what you pointed
00:25:26.340out about how wildly disproportionate this increase in cost is compared to even the carbon tax alone
00:25:33.220if you were to pull one this would be a pretty good one to pull well i think if if they were
00:25:40.660serious about wanting to get the cost of housing down what they should do is say uh forget that
00:25:48.020part of the emission reduction plan like just scratch it out we're not going to go ahead with
00:25:52.180it and the other uh rumored changes to building codes on the energy efficiency front they're all
00:25:59.380on pause that's easy it's no cost to them doesn't really have any emission consequences but it does
00:26:07.460mean that those cost increases won't happen the fact that this government is not able to
00:26:14.740walk away from any of its climate policies, because that's their top priority, I think
00:26:21.600gives you an idea more generally of whether they're going to be successful in addressing
00:26:26.100the housing crisis generally. I just don't think it's yet a priority for them.
00:26:32.520You mentioned in the report as well, as sort of a hint at perhaps some future research you
00:26:37.840might do on this, or something that might be taken up elsewhere, that it furthers that
00:26:42.100disparity in generation as well, because, you know, the older generation, they already have
00:26:47.240their homes. They've not required necessarily a new home. And that's not to say they won't buy a
00:26:51.880new home, but younger people that are entering the housing market that have to wait for new homes to
00:26:56.440be built to enter and to have a house, they're the ones that bear this burden. So it really furthers
00:27:01.000what has already been a pretty significant and I'd say very relevant gap in just, I don't like
00:27:07.380using the word equity because of the political implications of it, but basically in the access
00:27:11.540to the housing market i'll say yeah there um there are some disturbing um distributional aspects to
00:27:18.500this kind of policy because you're right i mean someone like me i own my home um and so i'm not
00:27:25.940really affected by this unless i i hope to sell this and buy a new build but um
00:27:34.260this uh this just adds to the burden of the younger generation and also to the families
00:27:40.500who are trying to support them in that first home purchase and it also negatively affects
00:27:47.060it people are working in the construction sector but i i do think there's a distributional aspect
00:27:51.940to this which is is really disturbing just that it's out of people at the lower end of their
00:27:58.340income earning stage and people who are currently out of the housing market that want to get in
00:28:04.420and they're the ones that will be most negatively affected the one thing about the carbon tax is you
00:28:10.180you can sort of draw a line and say where that money is going and who benefits from it. And I'm
00:28:14.840curious with this, who's benefiting from this? I mean, all this money that's being spent on these
00:28:20.460houses, is it people that are in the green energy sector that are making the money off this?
00:28:26.540Yep. It's the people that have home energy efficiency gadgets for sale, because they're
00:28:35.980in a position now where they sell lots of stuff but they don't sell everything they'd like to
00:28:42.100sell because customers look at it and say well that costs way too much and I'm not interested
00:28:46.520in buying it I'd rather spend my money on something else thank you very much and now
00:28:50.720the government's going to say you have to buy it so it um people in that sector uh will benefit
00:28:58.800because all of a sudden they have a captive market and people have no choice they have to
00:29:03.500spend the money on, whether it's insulation or heat pumps or window systems, lighting systems.
00:29:13.580You have to buy certain types now that you might have preferred not to buy.
00:29:18.480So that group benefits. Everybody else loses. I've never built a new house before, but I've
00:29:24.800done renovations and fixed things. And there's nothing more infuriating than needing to spend
00:29:29.820money on something that you don't want, but you need that will derive, you know, value. It's like,
00:29:34.460you know, replacing a deck or replacing a concrete slab because it's like, you know, the money you're
00:29:38.900going to invest in your house. I'd love to invest in expanding the kitchen, building an addition,
00:29:43.580putting in something that I like. And that's the problem here is that these are either going to
00:29:47.780completely price people out of having a new home altogether, or, you know, that $50,000 national
00:29:54.060average that they have to spend on these energy things is going to come at the expense of square
00:29:59.100footage say that they might have wanted or needed sure yeah it might be an extra bedroom that you
00:30:04.640needed that you can't have or it can be an upgrade to the kitchen again it's it's the issue is
00:30:11.640people have their own preferences of what they want to spend their money on and some of that
00:30:17.440includes energy efficiency and the comfort of having a home that's not drafty and that sort
00:30:21.860of thing so they already spend money on that but everybody's got a certain point where they say
00:30:26.360okay, that's enough of that, but I also want a pool in the backyard.
00:30:31.620And this is taking away all those options.
00:30:34.580It's forcing people to spend a great deal of money on one particular thing
00:30:38.540that is way past the point of marginal benefit for people.
00:30:43.600Professor Ross McKittrick, the report is called
00:30:46.280Wrong Move at the Wrong Time, Economic Impacts of the New Federal Building Energy Efficiency Mandates.
00:30:51.640That came out this week from the Fraser Institute.
00:30:54.240Ross, always a pleasure. Thanks for coming on.
00:30:56.360thanks andrew my pleasure thank you i speaking of housing i felt bad i have like this boring
00:31:00.920gray background ross was like living in a place that i couldn't have designed a better set then
00:31:05.000so uh this is the problem this is the housing market inequality in in effect there it is quite
00:31:10.760baffling and you know justin trudeau was asked a question by one reporter this morning or i guess
00:31:15.400it was this afternoon of you know do you want house prices to go down and even that which is
00:31:19.160a simple question he's like well uh they they can't go up okay do you want them to freeze do
00:31:46.360But the result of this is a complete crisis.
00:31:49.560I've had a request to reignite the water heater debate.
00:31:51.820No, I'm not reigniting the water heater debate, although I will say that I guess renting a water heater is one way of, you know, saving like a couple thousand dollars up front.
00:32:00.080But in the end, you'll you'll lose money.
00:32:02.060So why don't you just rent everything, rent the windows, rent the rent the whole house?
00:32:31.940So as Sean reminds me, it's all the own nothing and be happy approach in real time.
00:32:36.640You know, it's sort of a joke, but there's some truth to it.
00:32:38.800Because right now you have generations of people that have been raised with the expectation that they just give up on housing ambitions and that they rent.
00:32:46.760And the great thing about renting is that if you don't know what you want, if you are kind of at a transitional point in your life, you have an option that wouldn't be necessarily prudent to buy in.
00:32:57.100But the downside is that your money is enriching someone else.
00:33:00.380You are building up someone else's asset.
00:33:03.020And this is the whole point here is that now people buying a new house, building a new house are enriching these green energy companies that have just put their finger in the wind and realized that this is the climate.
00:33:14.240And, you know, be very, very interesting to see exactly what discussions went on between government and people in this sector when they were drafting these regulations.
00:33:23.760I think that's a question that I should look into as well.
00:33:27.580We are winding down our time together.
00:33:29.840If you're just tuning in, we spoke earlier about how I've been summarily banned from covering the Liberal Party's caucus retreat in London.
00:33:37.240But it's not actually a Liberal Party event.
00:33:40.040It is a conservative conference that was a partisan thing in Quebec City.
00:34:02.720I mean, it is about me, but it's not about me.
00:34:04.420It's about me in this particular context.
00:34:06.140but it is a story that could affect anyone and should be just as easily attracting ire of people
00:34:13.100when it happens, because what the Liberals are doing right now is picking and choosing. We are
00:34:18.360going to wrap things up very shortly, but this week I have been sharing with you some of my
00:34:23.720footage from Quebec City. We sat down with a number of folks, including Andrew Scheer and
00:34:28.460Roman Babber. We played those earlier this week. Also caught up with Melissa Lansman, who is the
00:34:33.600deputy leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. Sitting down at the Conservative Party of Canada
00:34:39.780Quebec City Convention with the Conservatives deputy leader, Thornhill MP Melissa Lansman.
00:34:44.720Melissa, good to talk to you. Nice to see you. Let's talk about the enthusiasm here because
00:34:49.380oftentimes when a party's in opposition there can be a bit of a pall over things and in this
00:34:54.680particular case it's a party that's lost the last three elections but that's not the vibe that
00:34:59.780you're picking up in this room here certainly not the vibe and with you know with thousands of
00:35:03.800delegates from across the country every single riding uh represented in beautiful uh quebec city
00:35:09.820that doesn't hurt with uh with nice weather um the vibe here is electric uh people are excited
00:35:16.420uh look i it's not lost on you the the the poll numbers look good and that has an effect on people
00:35:22.240it means that all of the work that all of these folks do every single day on the ground in their
00:35:28.240ridings is resonating and the message that we've been on track with for a number of years and
00:35:35.180particularly in the last year is resonating with Canadians. Do you think it's that the
00:35:39.860Conservative message under Pierre Polyev has kind of shifted to one that's resonating with more
00:35:45.140Canadians or do you think it's that the climate in Canada and the circumstances in Canada have
00:35:49.460changed to catch up with where Conservatives are? Look realistically I think it's both but we have
00:35:54.380You know, we've got a leader who is nonstop every single day in a different corner of the country, oftentimes with with his wife, who is who is often talked about as the as the not so secret secret weapon.
00:36:08.420But he's talking about what Canadians are actually talking about.
00:36:11.680And what we see is a prime minister who isn't, a prime minister who is off at the G20, an environment minister who would raise the carbon tax here and then run off to China, a bloc leader who's fighting for sovereignty in Europe somewhere.
00:36:33.000And we finally have a leader that after a year in power is speaking to the very chaos in this country.
00:36:40.420you're obviously an mp in the gta and in thornhill and i'm curious where because you've obviously
00:36:46.200been on campaigns before so you know the strategic aspect of this uh you've done it better than a lot
00:36:51.140of mps have because you've been on both sides of this and i'm curious where you think the road to
00:36:55.140victory is because in 2011 stephen harper won a majority by just cleaning house in the the gta but
00:37:01.580not really breaking through in quebec and i know in 2021 we saw the conservatives try to do both
00:37:06.760gta and quebec neither really were like where is that path and you can't say all 338 no i i i i
00:37:12.760although that would be nice um look i i think the coalition um it looks a little bit the country
00:37:18.320looks different than when stephen harper was a prime minister by the way a great prime minister
00:37:22.560uh and that 2011 victory um was was like an outstanding uh uh victory for conservatives
00:37:29.660one that we didn't probably see coming until into the campaign.
00:37:34.760So the tide turned within the campaign.
00:37:37.820I think this coalition looks different.
00:37:39.560And I think that no matter who you are, no matter what walk of life you're from,
00:37:44.700no matter if you came to this country five days ago, five years ago, 500 years ago,
00:37:50.840there is a spot for you in the Conservative Party.
00:37:54.480And because the country looks different, the coalition looks different.
00:37:56.980So southwestern Ontario, the 905 certainly, the greater Vancouver area, all of these are targets.
00:38:06.100What is it that you would like to champion personally under a conservative government?
00:38:10.040And I'm not asking you to pick your cabinet spot if you had one, but going in there,
00:38:13.860what are the issues that you really personally see yourself as being to bring outside of an opposition role
00:38:19.720and in a government role if that's where the tide takes you?
00:38:22.000Look, if the tide takes us there and we're lucky enough,
00:38:24.280And we're going to do the work every single day to try to get there.
00:38:27.900But there are so many things to fix in this country.
00:38:31.400Attracting investment back to this country is certainly one of them.
00:38:34.960Our role on the world stage, fixing our very broken bureaucracies, our services to Canadians,
00:38:43.300and getting back on track, on a fiscal track, a path to balance, and making life more affordable for Canadians.
00:38:49.820So there's no shortage of areas to fix and no shortage of areas that will really have an impact on people's everyday lives that I'm interested in.