Juno News - June 02, 2022


Canada advocate Faytene Grasseschi on tour to get more people involved with internal politics

Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Jagmeet Singh Fetine Grzeski Harper Fetine
The untold stories of Canada’s lockdowns Legacy media promotes leftist protesters while smearing conservative ones

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

200.54

Word count

1,540

Sentence count

104


Summary

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

Faitin Grzeski is a Christian talk show host and the Director of the For My Canada Foundation, a political group dedicated to engaging young people in the political process. In this episode, Faitin talks about her journey into politics and how she hopes to make a difference.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So I'm here at the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference,
00:00:03.960 which was formerly known as the Manning Networking Conference with Faitin Grzeski.
00:00:08.420 She is a Christian talk show host and the director of the For My Canada Foundation, a political group.
00:00:15.540 So first of all, Faitin, I guess maybe we can elaborate on that.
00:00:18.880 For those who maybe don't know you, can you just explain a bit more in detail the work that you do?
00:00:23.000 Yeah, absolutely. Well, I am a patriot, Eli.
00:00:25.780 I just I love this nation. I love Canada.
00:00:28.060 I love what has made Canada great, which is our freedoms and just good people getting involved in the making and shaping of it.
00:00:34.700 So it was actually when I was about your age or maybe even a bit younger,
00:00:38.340 I started to lead teams of young people to the Parliament of Canada to meet with members of Parliament and senators.
00:00:43.720 That was 2006, right when the Harper era kind of started.
00:00:47.340 And so we've led 17 delegations to Parliament over the years
00:00:51.220 and have had over a thousand sit down meetings with members of Parliament and senators.
00:00:54.560 So you kind of catch the political bug, you know, when you're talking politics all the time.
00:00:59.200 And three years ago, ironically, right before everything got shut down with COVID,
00:01:04.320 I just felt this leading to get involved into broadcast.
00:01:07.400 So we have a weekly show speaking to the issue, shaping the nation and primarily on broadcast on eight networks.
00:01:14.280 And every week we tackle something else. And it's an honour to be sitting here chatting with you right now.
00:01:19.920 Absolutely. And your show is amazing. I mean, I've had the opportunity to be on it.
00:01:23.700 And it's really gives us a different perspective from what the legacy media has to offer, I find.
00:01:29.100 So I was going to ask you, why did you decide to come out to the Canada Strong and Free Conference this weekend?
00:01:35.220 Oh, well, I think it's important to get in a room with, number one, people that have a love for Canada,
00:01:40.980 where ideas are being thrown out, where you can hear different perspectives, different angles,
00:01:46.140 different innovative thought patterns, you know.
00:01:48.960 And obviously I wanted to be here for the debate, you know, last night.
00:01:52.100 So we're filming this on Friday morning.
00:01:54.640 And the debate was pretty eye-opening, pretty electric, pretty feisty.
00:01:58.640 But I'm actually in the midst of a national tour right now.
00:02:02.960 So we just kind of coordinated things so that I could be here this weekend.
00:02:06.280 We're going to do one of our tour stops tonight in Ottawa.
00:02:08.800 That's awesome. Well, how about we talk about your tour?
00:02:10.620 So I know you've been wanting to engage more people in the political process.
00:02:14.600 And you said so far you've been successful at that.
00:02:16.620 So can you just explain to me what exactly you're trying to accomplish in your tour
00:02:21.720 and some of the statistics that we talked about off camera?
00:02:24.120 Yeah, absolutely.
00:02:24.940 Well, you know, Eli, this presentation that I put together, it's called the Engage National Transformation Presentation.
00:02:32.200 And basically what I've done is I dove into what happened statistically in the last two major leadership races
00:02:37.360 with the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party.
00:02:39.200 So that would be 2013 and 2020 for the Conservatives.
00:02:43.280 And what happened in the last federal election that enabled Jagmeet Singh and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
00:02:49.540 to have the authority to form a coalition that would effectively give them a majority right up until 2025.
00:02:55.600 And what I found, Eli, was actually stunning, even to myself.
00:02:59.220 I've been at this for two decades now.
00:03:01.500 But when I realized after crunching the numbers at 0.2 percent in both the Liberal leadership race in 2013
00:03:08.580 and the Conservative race in 2020, it was 0.2 percent of Canadians engaging by buying a membership,
00:03:16.320 getting involved in the leadership election process.
00:03:18.500 0.2 percent of Canadians determined the choices that Canadians would have on the ballot for Prime Minister.
00:03:25.820 I was actually shocked.
00:03:27.820 I was really shocked.
00:03:29.000 And then when I did the same number crunching about the 2021 election,
00:03:32.180 I found that 0.05 percent of Canadians, which equates 21,900 votes,
00:03:38.520 really are the votes that determined that Jagmeet Singh and Justin Trudeau would have the power to do what they're currently doing.
00:03:45.320 So these are shockingly small numbers.
00:03:48.960 And when I put it together in a presentation, Eli, and I'm bringing this to Canadians who, you know,
00:03:54.200 who love our nation, who care about our nation and who are concerned about our nation
00:03:58.740 and are asking the question, like, what can we possibly do?
00:04:02.600 You know, when we're seeing the malfunction of our democracy on a regular basis,
00:04:06.000 it feels like people are losing hope that they actually have the power to affect change.
00:04:10.960 So what I'm seeing, Eli, is that this presentation is actually just showing the data through the data,
00:04:17.400 inspiring hope, and then obviously the current action point, you know,
00:04:20.620 is that we're in the midst of a leadership race right now.
00:04:22.540 So people have a tangible way that they can respond to this information by getting involved,
00:04:27.640 buying a membership, getting ready to vote for the September 10th election.
00:04:32.360 So you said 0.2 percent.
00:04:34.420 That is, indeed, when I first saw that, I was astounded.
00:04:38.440 Yeah.
00:04:39.600 So how do you think we can increase that?
00:04:42.260 Because, for example, in the United States, they have primaries,
00:04:44.540 and a lot of Americans will vote in their primaries.
00:04:47.680 So do you think maybe that part of that work would be to maybe make memberships free,
00:04:52.900 or do you think that in the way you're doing it could be a way to increase that
00:04:56.060 to a number that's, you know, more than 0.2 percent?
00:04:59.540 Yeah, I think it's all about education, just civic education.
00:05:03.060 Like, I know for myself, I am pretty much completely self-taught in this domain.
00:05:07.240 You know, my dad was an NHL hockey player.
00:05:08.840 I was raised by farmers.
00:05:10.280 I was raised by upstanding community builders and Canadian citizens.
00:05:13.700 But I personally can never remember anyone kind of sitting down and really saying,
00:05:18.620 okay, this is the process of how you get involved with shaping the future of your nation
00:05:23.040 just through grassroots civic involvement right at the local level.
00:05:26.400 I think a lot of people just don't know.
00:05:27.960 Like, when I ran for office spontaneously the fall of 2020,
00:05:31.700 they opened up the nominations.
00:05:33.040 I put my name forward because there was only one other person on the ballot,
00:05:36.620 and that person didn't really represent my views or values.
00:05:39.320 I thought, what the heck?
00:05:40.080 Ready, fire, aim.
00:05:40.700 I'll throw my name forward.
00:05:41.420 But what I found, Eli, is that most of the people even in my sphere,
00:05:46.200 the people that I was just meeting in the community at that time,
00:05:48.920 didn't even know that they could have a voice in the nomination process.
00:05:52.700 I think a lot of times people don't get involved.
00:05:54.220 That number's so low just because they don't know.
00:05:57.540 They don't understand the semantics of the process.
00:06:00.720 They understand general election, but they don't necessarily understand leadership race.
00:06:04.680 The average Canadian, not people like you who this is your passion, you know?
00:06:09.000 For sure.
00:06:09.660 And I get what you mean.
00:06:10.540 I mean, before getting this job, I used to work as a campaign manager,
00:06:13.860 and we had to sell memberships.
00:06:15.540 And yeah, like, in what's considered a strong riding,
00:06:19.720 if you sell 1,000 membership, it's considered a lot.
00:06:22.160 But there are tens and tens of thousands of electorates in each riding.
00:06:25.340 Oh, yeah.
00:06:25.920 Right?
00:06:26.460 It's 1,000.
00:06:26.980 So I get what you mean there.
00:06:28.600 Well, even in the riding that I ran in, the population was 80,000.
00:06:32.140 And when I got in the race, there were only 300 members.
00:06:36.380 And I was like, there's only 300 people that are going to potentially decide for 80,000 people
00:06:41.060 the names that are going to be on the ballot.
00:06:42.700 And so I'm really hoping that with this tour, number one,
00:06:46.220 that the data, the information, it's pure gold.
00:06:50.260 It's just good data.
00:06:52.180 But secondly, that it will help open people's eyes,
00:06:54.400 put a desire in people's hearts to kind of get in the game and be a part.
00:06:58.140 Because this room here, this room is full of great people, of good people.
00:07:01.860 But there are so many good people in Canada that aren't in this room
00:07:05.500 and don't even know that this room exists.
00:07:07.040 Right.
00:07:07.440 You're right about that.
00:07:08.340 Well, Fetine, thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
00:07:11.920 We've always appreciated the work that you do.
00:07:14.400 And I wish you the best of luck with your newest initiative and your tour and your activism.
00:07:19.120 Thanks, Eli.
00:07:20.260 I hope you'll check it out.
00:07:21.220 If I can say the website for the tour.
00:07:23.340 Absolutely, go ahead.
00:07:23.680 Yeah, so if people want to check us out in terms of what we're doing across Canada,
00:07:27.100 we're going to be going right through to Victoria Island,
00:07:30.000 back to Newfoundland, Labrador as well, and kind of everywhere in between.
00:07:33.040 The website is messageforcanada.ca, all spelled out messageforcanada.ca.
00:07:39.060 Thank you so much, True North, for having me.