Juno News - Call to FIX Canada as Parliament Resumes

00:00:00.000 Parliament is back. The House has resumed, for all the good and bad that entails. Welcome back

00:00:10.560 to Not Sorry here on Juneau News. I'm Alexander Brown, Director of the National Citizens Coalition.

00:00:16.240 I'm a writer, I'm a campaigner, a contributor to Project Ontario. And we've got a lot to talk

00:00:23.120 about this week. We're happy to be joined by Peter Coleman, the President of the National

00:00:27.440 Citizens Coalition. There's so much to unpack on the NCC side of the fence and their call to fix

00:00:34.960 Canada. And right off the top of the show, I'm not sure if you've seen this clip making the rounds.

00:00:41.360 As a younger person who can't afford a home, I find it particularly insulting. Here's Mark Carney's

00:00:48.080 understanding of the Canadian housing crisis. You know, young Canadians are doing everything right.

00:00:54.800 They're studying hard, finding a job, saving up. Yet for too many of them, rent is unaffordable. And

00:01:03.280 home ownership feels entirely out of reach. Across the country, it takes nearly four years for first

00:01:10.560 time home buyers to save for a down payment. And a market such as Toronto and Vancouver even longer.

00:01:15.840 Just four years. I do not know when this study, I believe this was a government study,

00:01:24.640 what type of professionals they were speaking with, if they were just maybe professional class,

00:01:31.840 Ottawa six-figure consultant types. To pull you back behind the curtain, I'm in my mid-30s.

00:01:38.480 I've been building up that down payment for far more than 10 years. Try a decade. In the polling,

00:01:45.280 a super majority of young Canadians feel that housing is unattainable and now only for the rich.

00:01:52.160 And Carney's answer with this Build Canada Homes debacle is $13 billion of investment, read your tax

00:02:00.880 dollars to build the kind of Soviet-style garden shed that you never envisioned would be your only

00:02:09.760 housing option. They're proudly claiming they're building 4,000 of these garden sheds and more

00:02:16.960 forever rentals and touting that as some great success when we know that the more important housing fix

00:02:24.800 would be getting out of the way, lowering building costs, cutting back red tape, policing and fixing

00:02:32.320 immigration. We have 4.9 million temporary visas meant to expire. And Dr. Michael Bonner and I,

00:02:39.520 who joined me last weekend on the show, went into this again on The Hub. And in further detail,

00:02:46.000 this is a program riddled with abuse and exploitation and fraud and is on a much larger

00:02:52.000 scale than previously acknowledged. That's your housing fix. It's letting people build homes.

00:02:58.240 It's not, here's your shoe box. Here's your dog crate condo. Oh, kids, it probably only takes you

00:03:04.240 four years to save up for a down payment. It doesn't. Most people, most young people aren't even attempting

00:03:09.920 to save up for one anymore. That is not because they are spending their money on avocado toast. That is

00:03:15.440 because it is a nightmare to them. It isn't even a dream. It's not a possibility. And so we saw this

00:03:23.200 massively misleading start on this Build Canada Homes front, just as we've seen a massively misleading

00:03:30.240 major projects false start, where a real reality check for this major projects office is that

00:03:36.720 these programs that are being fast tracked are already on the fast track. These are projects that

00:03:42.160 were 50, 60, 70% completed that didn't even need this extra little push from the government,

00:03:48.720 and they're claiming it as some kind of major victory. It is purely symbolic. It is cynical.

00:03:55.200 It is frustrating. Again, we're going back to projects being hampered by red tape and we're not

00:04:02.880 getting rid of anti-resource legislation, things that the government could do today to actually help

00:04:07.760 build these energy projects. And so then it's no wonder then that organizations like the National

00:04:14.160 Citizens Coalition, where I'm the director, are calling on an urgent fix Canada. This is the campaign,

00:04:21.680 this urgent call to fix Canada, to notice that there's been a lot of talk and a lot of lip service,

00:04:28.080 but very little action on these key files from building energy to immigration to whatever the heck

00:04:34.880 Sean Frazier is doing on the crime and chaos portfolio, which is, sadly, that file is starting

00:04:41.760 like his last two files where he was generationally inept. And so we're going to talk to Peter Coleman

00:04:46.800 here, longtime president of the NCC. We're going to talk about the third-party, independent, small-c push

00:04:54.320 to hold government to account, to fix the cultural rot and get back to the Canada that we were 0.98

00:05:00.320 before this last decade. Join us for the chat. National Citizens Coalition President Peter Coleman

00:05:07.440 joins the show. Peter, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me on. It's great to see you.

00:05:12.720 Great to see you too. The House has resumed. Parliament is back. The same old frustrations

00:05:19.440 linger for many voters, for National Citizens Coalition supporters. You are in the news,

00:05:26.160 as long along with the coalition, with this call to fix Canada, with the new campaign from the NCC.

00:05:33.760 Great coverage this weekend in the Toronto Sun from Brian Pasifume. Tell me a little bit about

00:05:39.360 the campaign and tell me, you know, how you're feeling, you know, about this start for the Kearney

00:05:44.640 Liberals. I think the thing, Alex, is the country deserves so much better than we had in the last 10

00:05:49.520 years under Trudeau. And we need to get there. Young and old are looking for the country to move forward

00:05:57.600 in a positive way, you know, to sell our resources to market and to stop the shenanigans of, you know,

00:06:04.160 there's no demand for liquefied natural gas, there's no demand for oil. It seems right now the rest of the

00:06:09.120 world is passing us by and we're seeing us in bystander. We're behind in every file. And, you know, as an

00:06:14.960 organization, we like good policy. We like good politicians. I don't really personally care,

00:06:20.480 nor is the organization, about who's in power. We want them to do a good job. And anybody that

00:06:25.440 doesn't have blinders on knows we've been going down the wrong path for 10 years. And there's been,

00:06:29.680 there's been stop signs and the Liberal governments refuse to listen to them now.

00:06:33.760 And now they're grudgingly being forced to do it. But their actions don't speak very well right now.

00:06:38.400 And we want action, no more talk. Like if there was a gold medal for communications and talking,

00:06:43.920 Karni would win it. If there's a gold medal for doing nothing, Karni would win that right now, too.

00:06:48.560 So we want him to succeed. The country needs the prime minister to lead and to do a good job.

00:06:54.960 We need signs of that right now we're not seeing. So that's where the genesis of Fix Canada campaign

00:06:58.720 came from. I feel the same. And I am, of course, close to the campaign. I wrote the darn thing. And I

00:07:06.320 worked with you to put some great ads together with terrific consultants and to get that out to

00:07:12.480 tens of thousands of NCC supporters where the organization is reaching millions of people per

00:07:16.880 month. But the talk has been, you know, encouraging. It is nice to hear these words. But then,

00:07:24.960 you know, we're six months in. You also last week issued a failing grade, you know, for the start to

00:07:31.120 the Karni government, which was in media as well, where you sort of went down, you know, whether it

00:07:35.840 was jobs, elbows up, immigration, the economy, that we're still spinning our wheels. And the

00:07:43.600 National Citizens Coalition is a is a small C conservative organization. It does not wear

00:07:49.840 a blue suit. It does not work for the leader's office. It does not work for the party. It is

00:07:55.600 it is a founding conservative nonprofit small C advocacy group started by my grandfather back in

00:08:03.040 the 1960s during Trudeau the senior and the and the early nightmares there that were

00:08:08.880 were only bound to get worse decades later. And so when you look around the political landscape

00:08:15.440 and you're not afraid to perhaps criticize conservatives who wouldn't be doing a great

00:08:22.320 job either. Who who comes to mind as a conservative right now that is really succeeding to you? And

00:08:28.720 then who might come to mind as a conservative who who better is expected of? Well, you know, CBC and

00:08:36.480 Andrew Cohen, those acolytes would say I'm crazy. But Daniel Smith comes to mind for me. She cares about

00:08:42.560 her people. She cares about her province. She cares about the country. She's doing what she can to move

00:08:46.720 things forward. Alberta has been treated very poorly by the federal government for 10 years. We have

00:08:52.160 the resources in Alberta to sell that are provincial jurisdiction to sell. And it's time those things

00:08:58.080 got to market. Scott Moe has done a good job. But I think Danielle Smith's taken some undue heat. I

00:09:02.480 think she's done a really good job of having the pulse of what's going on with Trump stuff to the

00:09:07.520 border. She seems to be getting along with Carney, but Carney's got a show for her that while the hard 0.89

00:09:14.960 work and all the elbow grease she's put forward, something's going to happen. The other side of the

00:09:19.600 coin is the premier of my province of Ontario. I just think he's doing a horrible job on so many

00:09:25.520 fronts. He's all he's all bluster and talk. And it's just all these files out just seem to be going. I

00:09:34.080 mean, crime is bad. Immigration is bad. The budgets are bad. The common sense is lacking. And, you know, Doug Ford,

00:09:43.520 you would think as a conservative organization, we would support. We've got a Project Ontario campaign

00:09:47.600 that's taking dead eye and dead aim at Doug Ford for the poor job he's doing. So, Daniel Smith's on

00:09:53.280 the good side. Doug Ford's on the bad side. And Carney's getting enough because I don't see,

00:09:58.560 I'm an actions result guy. I want to see results. I don't care what your talk is. I've been around

00:10:03.840 this game for a long time. I knew your grandfather growing up as a young kid. I have great respect for

00:10:09.840 what he started and what he's done. We take a lot of shots and arrows from the media and people

00:10:14.400 that think we're far right wing. We're the common sense voice of this country. And the country needs

00:10:20.240 more of us, not less. Kind of you to say, I certainly agree on the common sense front. I think of that

00:10:29.040 Ontario effort, for example, with the Project Ontario that we're collaborating on and with, and then the

00:10:36.640 the NCC's campaign, Ontarians for Responsible Government, and recently besmirched as some far

00:10:44.000 right radicals in this sort of flippant comment from the Premier of Ontario in front of press. And

00:10:51.040 behind the scenes, we all know current politicians, past politicians, top campaigners, leading

00:10:57.920 businessmen who are deeply frustrated by what has been going on at Queen's Park, by what is viewed as a

00:11:03.360 continuation of the Wynn McGinty years when it started off with so much more promise. And so it

00:11:09.040 is, in juxtaposition, it is incredibly encouraging to see Danielle Smith continue to fight through

00:11:17.680 often just downright slander and defamation. She was labeled a traitor in the early days of Elbows Up.

00:11:25.680 And look how good a job she's doing. Look how prescient some of her beliefs have proven themselves to be.

00:11:31.680 And so on the conservative side of things, you and I have had discussions about this in regards to

00:11:37.520 the federal leadership. And you, again, not blindly loyal, but no one here is, we're not wearing the

00:11:46.080 jersey. What would be your sort of frank assessment of the Polyev leadership and where you think that

00:11:56.320 they should per chance pivot to or adjust for? Look, I think the conservatives made historical

00:12:03.040 gains. When you win union seats in in Windsor, the NDP just gave up the middle class. Jack Layton will

00:12:10.480 be rolling in his grave for how much Jack McSing's damage done to his party. Yeah, there's a party of

00:12:16.000 the party of the teacher's lounge now. Yeah. When you see that, it's very encouraging to see the increase in

00:12:21.840 the number of seats, the depth and the breadth of 41% of the voting, uh, was, was a very good thing

00:12:28.560 too. The issue for me with Polyev is like things change in politics, like a day's a long time.

00:12:34.640 Sometimes in politics, he has to pivot to and put a team out. It can't be Polyev anymore all the time. 1.00

00:12:42.320 It has to be a whole team because you look behind Carney, the people around him,

00:12:47.520 Sean Fraser, horrible job, every portfolio he had, and he gets promoted to the big one now. But

00:12:53.440 Polyev has to show the people he's listened, he's heard. Some people were uncomfortable with his,

00:12:59.600 his personality. Uh, they liked his policies. And I think people can change. I think people

00:13:05.680 have the ability to change and he needs to show to that 5% of the population that said,

00:13:11.280 I'm going to vote for Mr. Elvilsup, which is a joke in the first place. But that 5% of that vote

00:13:16.240 that turned is what turned the election. And it might just be the people that say, I just didn't like

00:13:22.240 him. And in politics, that kind of matters sometimes. I mean, as much as I despise Justin Trudeau,

00:13:28.080 he was a great retail campaigner. He was really good on the trail. Something Carney has zero of.

00:13:34.080 He comes across as a stuffy banker, but Trudeau was really good at that. Polyev is getting better,

00:13:40.720 but I think the party needs to show them as it's a party of much more than just him to be successful.

00:13:45.600 I've talked to people around the party, former senior people in the party. They all like the push

00:13:51.120 he has with the younger generation because the younger generation, your generation wants action.

00:13:56.000 They want stuff to get done. The older generation of boomers that, for some reason,

00:14:00.000 is stuck with Carney's nonsense about how he can handle Trump. They're not going to change their

00:14:06.480 minds ever. The 5% that Polyev needs to get over the top next election is there for the taking.

00:14:14.480 And we're going to push him hard too, Alex. We're not letting him off the hook too in this

00:14:17.760 conversation either, because as much as we give Carney an F and all the things, the jury's out for me and

00:14:22.880 Pauli of how he's going to handle the House of Commons starting today. We'll see and we're ready

00:14:27.840 to react accordingly. I think that's a fair comment in regards to the pugnacity of the

00:14:37.600 official opposition leader. An incredibly gifted orator, whip-smart, maybe the greatest House of

00:14:44.640 Commons speaker that I can recall in the modern era. Perhaps the one person in Canada I wouldn't want to be in a

00:14:52.560 debate with. It'd be like swimming with a great white shark. But there is, whether we like it or not,

00:15:01.120 a Canadian sensibility that can be arguably a little precious and a little delicate, or it can be

00:15:10.080 rattled by flippancy or a little bit too much vim and vigor. And there needs to be maybe less of a

00:15:19.120 wartime energy to those communications, which I believe is, is understandable. And I say that as

00:15:24.720 someone who can be pugnacious myself and punchy and flippant. And I sometimes get in trouble for it,

00:15:30.160 not with you, but with other people. And so there, I do believe that.

00:15:33.520 You know what you're doing, Alex?

00:15:34.400 Oh, thanks. That's, that's, you know, I'm going to take advantage of that and then some, but

00:15:40.640 it's a, even I can see that from conversations in and outside of the party, from just, you know,

00:15:47.520 the average person on the street, that there was this sort of default to decorum. The liberals,

00:15:53.200 of course, had the unique luck that they, they extorted to the nth degree to rally around the flag,

00:16:01.600 but that they, but that Carney appeared stately. But now we're seeing stately has been,

00:16:06.880 you know, a snail's pace in, in, in terms of deliverables. We, we, this major projects office

00:16:13.200 is just, has just taken credit for things that were already well underway past 50%.

00:16:19.680 None of them are oil pipelines. We're, we're seeing slow starts on, on any attempt on crime and chaos.

00:16:25.600 We had innocent people being shot up and killed all summer long. And Sean Frazier, you know,

00:16:30.160 couldn't get on a flight to Ottawa. And so there's, there is fertile ground there to both offer

00:16:35.440 constructive criticism, but to then call for a fix to Canada to, to throw, to, you know,

00:16:42.000 throw the organization's heft and messaging behind, you know, let's be productive and get things done.

00:16:47.200 Because I, I personally, do I want conservatives to win in this country? Yes. But I am open to being

00:16:56.560 proven wrong about my concerns about the federal liberals. I just want things to get better right now

00:17:03.360 for young people, for folks who feel unsafe, for this country to look more cohesive and, and,

00:17:08.880 you know, like it used to as recently as 2015. Yeah. Well, let me give it a perfect example,

00:17:13.680 a campaign that we're involved with, Alex, and you've done great work on is the immigration file.

00:17:18.240 Sean Frazier, who is now our justice minister, who was her housing minister, was at Gong Show there,

00:17:23.600 Gong Show and housing, Gong Show and immigration, now is your justice minister.

00:17:28.320 So I'll probably get in trouble for saying, but the very same people he's letting the country,

00:17:31.920 some of them are doing bad stuff. It's just the reality that's going on. We have too many people

00:17:36.240 coming into the country that our healthcare system can't handle, our housing system can't handle. 1.00

00:17:41.040 I'm a chartered accountant by, by training. Before I joined the NCC, I spent 20 years in different

00:17:45.760 financial jobs, public companies, not public companies. I think right now I could do a better job

00:17:51.920 than a lot of people in the, in the liberal government, as far as the finances. I mean,

00:17:56.480 show us what the immigration file has done. Show us what the cost has been. Show us the hits on

00:18:01.200 healthcare and immigration. Show us the hits on crime. Show us how much we're spending.

00:18:06.000 But what do we get? House of Commons has only sat for how many days? It's coming back. We're not

00:18:10.960 getting a budget now. I hear until maybe November. And he has this BS talk about, you know, investments

00:18:16.800 versus deficits and austerity and whatever. If you were a really strong leader in Kearney,

00:18:22.560 you wouldn't have taken the summer off, Alex. These issues are pressing. I mean, these issues

00:18:27.760 are pressing for the country. There are people that are working for Stelco and steel companies

00:18:31.920 that are suffering. The canola companies, the canola farmers are suffering and all the downstream

00:18:37.440 people that benefit from that. And what have we done? It's a lot of talk. It's like, well,

00:18:42.080 we can't rely on the US anymore. Well, does anybody with a brain in their head think we're going to

00:18:46.480 take our 70% of our business with the US and move it to Europe anytime soon? Only the elbows

00:18:52.560 up naive crowd that supported Kearney will at all costs. Anybody with any intelligence knows Alex,

00:18:57.680 that's a mug's game. Trump won't be there forever. We have to work with our American partners,

00:19:03.840 get the best deal that we can, and move forward. And I just want to see some encouraging signs, Alex,

00:19:10.800 that we're getting there. In the immigration file, a smart person would say, we're shutting off

00:19:16.160 immigration for six months. Nobody's coming in. People can come in and work in the agriculture 0.99

00:19:21.520 area for the temporary foreign workers because those jobs are hard to replace. I get that.

00:19:25.680 But you can't tell me that people can't replace these jobs for the most part in Canada right now.

00:19:31.200 And we need that when our population is growing faster than we can sustain with healthcare and

00:19:35.920 immigration causing it, healthcare storage because of immigration, housing, real shortages.

00:19:42.080 Maybe you would just say, let's put the brakes on this. Don't go and say, well,

00:19:45.760 we slowed it down by 75%. Stop it. And then six months later, come back to the people and say,

00:19:51.120 you know what? We moved too fast. We should have slowed down. We didn't, but we're going to fix it.

00:19:56.480 And give people stats, Alex, if the average person like you, I can say,

00:20:00.720 he's making some progress. But I don't know, maybe you'll see that faster than I will. But

00:20:05.440 I've seen none of that so far. No, we've just, we've seen lip service. And I think of what you

00:20:10.880 were just saying about immigration. And you're not going to get in trouble with me for saying that.

00:20:16.960 You know my work well enough by now and the campaign's impact. But their solution to that

00:20:23.040 immigration issue so far has just been this, this build Canadian housing accelerator, which they

00:20:30.880 proudly trumpeted yesterday and promises to spend $13 billion to build 4,000 Soviet garden sheds.

00:20:40.480 That is, and more purpose-built rentals. That is not a solution to a generational housing crisis.

00:20:46.320 That is not a solution to getting families in homes they actually own so they can even 0.98

00:20:52.160 create a family and not just live this, this dog crate condo existence. And there is no greater

00:20:58.720 solution than sending home 4.9 million expiring temporary visas and returning to the immigration

00:21:07.360 standard of Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney. Yeah. The other thing too, is if you really,

00:21:13.360 as a country, if you want to take care of the people that need help, and we all agree that

00:21:17.440 there's people that are struggling in this country, you have to create the wealth first.

00:21:21.040 Yeah. So you've got to sell the resources. We have all the resources the world wants,

00:21:24.400 whether it's potash or canola oil or... I thought there was no business case for that.

00:21:28.960 Yeah. LNG, everybody's going crazy selling this stuff and they've been asking the liberals to do it

00:21:33.760 forever. If Carney's the world traveler and thinks he's as smart as he is, he should know two things.

00:21:38.400 If we want to get our share of the greenhouse gas, 1.6% of the world's greenhouse gases down to a lower

00:21:44.960 number, start shipping LNG across the world. Ship it to India, ship it to China, ship it to Europe.

00:21:52.720 Get rid of our reliance on Russia. Stop spending money in Ukraine that we don't know how much money 0.72

00:21:58.400 we spent there. We haven't seen a budget, so we don't know how it comes in November. Is it $120

00:22:03.520 billion deficit? Is it $150? You can explain by saying, oh, it's all investment. It's just investment.

00:22:09.840 Why don't we sell our resources? We'd have so much money. We could take care of our housing

00:22:14.720 problem in a reasonable, prudent way, to your point, not by building these shacks and calling 0.99

00:22:20.560 them housing better. It's just hard to fathom that that's really a win-win policy, but sell our

00:22:27.840 resources. Give us a plan. I'd be the first guy, to be honest, that would support Carney and say,

00:22:32.160 you know what? You're doing a darn good job. If I come back on your show sometime down the road,

00:22:37.360 six months from now, I'd love to be able to say it, but I just don't see the early signs right now

00:22:43.120 that we're there. I hope I'm wrong. When he does a good job, I'm going to say, you've done a good job.

00:22:50.560 Prove us wrong, folks. I very much feel the same. Peter Coleman, thank you for your stewardship

00:22:55.600 and your leadership with the National Citizens Coalition. Thank you for joining the show today

00:23:00.480 and for more on the Fix Canada campaign, folks are welcome to go to nationalcitizens.ca

00:23:06.080 slash fixcanada. Thank you, Peter. Thanks, Alex, for having me on.

00:23:09.920 Did you like the edition of the show? Go to junonews.com slash not sorry. Subscribe today for 20% off.

00:23:16.720 Thanks for being here and I'll see you next week.

Juno News - September 16, 2025

Call to FIX Canada as Parliament Resumes

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