Juno News - Carney： Fake Housing, Fake Trade, Fake Leadership

00:00:00.000 Hi, Juno News. Alexander Brown back for another episode of Not Sorry. I'm the director of the

00:00:08.580 National Citizens Coalition. I'm a host and an op-ed writer here. I'm a contributor to Project

00:00:15.380 Ontario. I work in campaigns, communications, and we have a great chat today with Greg Brady.

00:00:21.700 Greg is a longtime sports broadcaster, a news broadcaster. He's sort of a titan of drive time

00:00:29.860 in Ontario. He is run federally as a conservative candidate in Ajax of late. He has a good head on

00:00:35.760 his shoulders and a good heart and is a real advocate for open discourse, common sense.

00:00:40.800 And I was very thankful to have a lengthy chat with him because there's a lot to talk about.

00:00:45.100 We are seeing continued failures to launch and we want to be proven wrong. We want these next 10

00:00:50.720 years to start differently than the last 10 years. But if you're following along with what the liberals

00:00:55.900 are actually putting forth, we have a Build Canada Homes debacle where the government has

00:01:02.380 concocted and was found to have concocted this Potemkin village housing stunt. A Potemkin village

00:01:08.580 in politics and economics is a construction, literal or figurative, which is where the purpose

00:01:14.080 is to provide an external facade to a situation, to make people believe that it is better than it

00:01:19.240 actually is. This dates back to Gregory Potemkin, a field marshal and former lover of an empress who,

00:01:26.320 to impress her while she was traveling the Crimea, would build these fake villages like upriver

00:01:31.320 and then she'd pass and then they'd disassemble them and then they'd go build them further down 0.76

00:01:36.020 all to show off. And so a wonderful romantic gesture. But when it comes to a historic and ongoing

00:01:42.420 and generational housing crisis and an arguable Ponzi that has abandoned our working class and young

00:01:48.000 Canadians, that is not acceptable to be staging these external facades, these fakes, these fugazis. 0.92

00:01:56.620 Journalist Brian Pasifume of the Toronto Sun went to the site of this liberal housing announcement and

00:02:03.120 it had been all torn down. They practically salted the earth. And expanding off that, Carney was just in

00:02:10.780 Mexico. He they are touting that we have some major trade agreement with the Mexicans when we only both

00:02:18.400 countries sort of account for two percent of each other's imports and exports. And they were using

00:02:22.520 fake bags of wheat. We don't make these Canada bags of wheat that they presented. It's like these bags

00:02:31.600 look like that money sign that that bank robbers would steal in old timey movies. And so, you know,

00:02:36.760 when your housing plan looks like historic lies and your infrastructure projects are already in the

00:02:44.600 works and they're taking credit for that and we're getting stunts on our trade relationships, there's

00:02:49.440 there's there's reason to be deeply concerned here. And another reason to be deeply concerned,

00:02:54.840 as we all know, on Sunday, it was Sunday news dumped that the Carney government on behalf of Canada,

00:03:01.580 I don't remember voting for this. I'm not sure if you do as well. They are recognizing Palestine as a 1.00

00:03:07.560 state and all but endorsing that sort of strange bedfellows bedfellows union between the Western

00:03:15.260 far left and Middle Eastern hardliners. I think we can all be open it open and compassionate about the

00:03:22.480 situation there. But but to recognize the Palestinian state and ask Carney what then he would believe the

00:03:29.440 capital of the state to be and he would run in the other direction, risks further rewarding the

00:03:34.080 worst of behaviors inside Canada, emboldening an authority in Palestine that hasn't held elections 0.68

00:03:39.120 since 2008, as well as Hamas's brutal attacks and the continued holding of hostages. These are just a

00:03:46.160 snippet of what Greg Brady and I get into. And I hope you join us for this chat. Joining us now is the

00:03:51.100 renowned host of the top rated Toronto Today on AM 640, formerly of the Fan 590 and Detroit Morning Sports

00:03:57.700 Radio. He's called Super Bowls. He's a fierce advocate for common sense and, and building a

00:04:03.160 bridge through conversation. And he ran federally for the conservatives and Ajax in the past federal

00:04:08.040 election. Greg Brady joins the show. Thanks for being here, Greg. If thank you for having me,

00:04:13.440 first of all, and if we madlib some of that up, you could say I'm a fierce advocate for Super Bowl

00:04:17.580 halftime shows. Bring rock and roll back. When's the last time you saw an electric guitar

00:04:22.180 on stage at a Super Bowl? You just don't see it anymore. What happened?

00:04:26.280 I guess Prince, that incredible in the rain performance in Miami or Bruce Springsteen

00:04:31.640 sliding into camera. Now it's all just replacement level pop nonsense, right?

00:04:37.440 It's, it's a lot of that. Um, and maybe just maybe I'm still anticipating it'll be Taylor Swift

00:04:43.060 this year. That rumors kind of died down. They asked Roger Goodell that on the Today Show

00:04:47.020 in early September. I still think she, I still think she's going to do it. Um, so maybe we're,

00:04:53.340 uh, we'll go live. We'll go, we'll drop this, uh, chat before, you know, Goodell steals all of our,

00:05:00.580 our attention and makes us care a lot less about politics by debating what five songs Taylor Swift

00:05:05.300 will do and all the, and whether the chiefs will be there and all this, all the guests and everything.

00:05:08.360 You can actually see in the polls in America, like they stopped caring about certain domestic

00:05:12.820 issues. Once football season starts, the bread and circuses thing is real. So, uh, we could go

00:05:18.760 on forever. We, I can see why you're so good at, at, you know, burning three hours in the morning

00:05:23.400 on drive time, uh, three and a half, the other half hour. I'm very bad at burning. As many will

00:05:28.380 tell you, you got to pick which half hour I suck at burning. Oh, I I've been on all three of those

00:05:33.260 hours. And so I'm appreciative of it. And, and for folks who, who don't know, uh, I, in some ways

00:05:38.580 got my start doing this and, and getting to, uh, get to know the Juno audience more of late

00:05:43.820 because during COVID I would go on with Greg and he would let me kind of rant and rave

00:05:49.700 and we'd unpack some of the, the worst of those years and, and big government overreach.

00:05:54.200 And so it is cool for me to be on the other side of this now to, to have you on my show.

00:05:58.540 And so Greg, I'm, I'm grateful for that.

00:06:00.380 Greg. Well, just on that front. Yeah. Probably around. I want to say one of the first times you

00:06:05.380 came on was around, I wouldn't say it was a turn. Like I'm, uh, you know, by about late

00:06:11.160 September, early October 21, when we've had vaccines accessible for several months.

00:06:17.600 And we had that real lousy spring where we were the only jurisdiction with a golf course

00:06:22.620 is closed by the premier and seniors that were told, Hey, go get two shots and you can

00:06:27.580 hang out together again. And then month after month went by and they couldn't hang out together.

00:06:32.380 Um, and funerals weren't normal and weddings were normal and all that stuff.

00:06:35.380 So, so by the time I'm, I'm building up this, uh, irritation to go, what are some of the

00:06:42.140 benchmarks statistically we need? What's the data we need to see? What are the off ramps

00:06:46.320 since we're doing every single thing being asked to, to be honest, mostly by the provincial

00:06:51.780 government. I know the convoy, the federal government, um, that was a big thing. Of course

00:06:56.500 it was in February 22, but most of the mandates and requirements that affected our lives in Ontario

00:07:02.460 were almost uniquely provincial. There was really nothing municipal. Um, sometimes we wanted the

00:07:07.580 mayors to shout a little bit louder, but you were one of, you were a really strong voice in the fall

00:07:11.700 when Omicron came along and people are realizing, ah, I don't like getting sick, but I also haven't

00:07:18.660 gotten sick in 18 months. And now I've been hit by this new Omicron bug and I'm doing much better than

00:07:24.060 someone 14 months ago who had Delta, who didn't have a vaccine or 18 months ago when the original

00:07:30.220 strain was by. And there were really some, obviously some harrowing health stories. So, um, you and a

00:07:35.360 few others, uh, started coming on. We stopped using a lot of guests that we were using going, go get

00:07:41.060 that shot. It'll all work out. Cause then they would never explain to me like, yeah, you said we

00:07:45.640 needed to do ABC and D. So why now do we need to do EFG and H? That was a, that was a big thing. So I made

00:07:51.840 a turn and, and guests like you kind of, um, you know, I think in, uh, enhanced a lot of the better

00:07:58.200 conversations we started having about, about balance and nuance and trade-offs and give and take.

00:08:04.600 And that's so often lacking in the media sphere in this occasionally to me, this uncomfortable

00:08:10.920 relationship between government and media where you see some official party line and some comms

00:08:16.620 varnish. Like I'm a comms guy. I'm the director of the national citizens coalition. I write columns for

00:08:21.440 the papers that have me publications like the hub. Uh, I get to talk to these great people at

00:08:26.000 Juneau here now. And I noticed during COVID pretty early on, and it wasn't that I didn't want to,

00:08:32.100 I didn't want everyone to get sick. I didn't want to kill grandma. I, I, I don't know why we punished

00:08:36.220 the whole country for its failure to warehouse the elderly and why, you know, Quebec would put in a 0.95

00:08:41.840 curfew because they had a terrible situation in long-term care. I don't see how those two things

00:08:45.980 ever connected, but it was just, I noticed spin and I noticed political spin fairly early. And then

00:08:52.820 I had a hard time forgetting that. And so, so much of what folks like me do now is when we notice the

00:09:01.180 nonsense, we, we almost think of those COVID years. We go like, I know that you're, you're gaslighting

00:09:07.060 us a little bit. And one thing that I can think of right now that connects to that is you just went

00:09:11.820 into this on your show, the orchestrated Sunday news dump of Canada's acknowledgement of the state

00:09:18.500 of Palestine and an authority that hasn't held a democratic election in almost 20 years.

00:09:24.620 I have great sympathy for the humanitarian toll, but surely though, this is emboldening hostage takers,

00:09:32.020 the weekly protests in our Canadian streets, the threats to our Jewish communities. Is it not? 1.00

00:09:37.040 Yeah. Uh, I was dropped dead shocked by it. I think we all had anticipated a, uh, early week

00:09:45.160 United Nations, uh, general assembly session where, where, uh, the prime minister, Mark Carney gets up

00:09:50.380 and says, uh, as I announced in the summer with these conditions, with consultation with, uh, members

00:09:58.260 of cabinet, foreign affairs minister, you name it. Uh, this is what we would declare. Were we to see

00:10:06.120 again, back to conditions, ABC and D Hamas, Hamas must, must not be involved in any elections going

00:10:13.020 forward. The Palestinian authority has to enact some kind of, uh, authority over Hamas. They've

00:10:19.040 done anything, but for the longest time, then you get into a scenario where you say, not only should

00:10:24.180 the hostages be returned. Um, there's a lot of other subtle things that we'd all like to see get

00:10:29.680 worked out. But we're, when I hear people talk about Alex, a two state solution right now,

00:10:35.140 I just don't think they've thought it through. And it's very clear to me. They've never, they've

00:10:39.780 never taken a university course on this. They haven't read a lot of books. They haven't watched

00:10:43.420 a lot of really nuanced documentaries and, and similar to what we were talking about, even with

00:10:48.460 the pandemic, this is not a binary issue here. And it's maddening. It gets presented as that. Um,

00:10:55.080 it's, it's sort of like when you're seven and you're like, um, you know, your, your favorite

00:11:00.500 hockey player is this, and it just can't be anybody else. And you have to pick one of the

00:11:04.800 two, either you like this player or hate that player like this band or hate that band.

00:11:08.820 And there is simply no room in the vocabulary for, well, are you pro Palestinian or not?

00:11:14.660 Are you pro Israel or are you not? Because there's so many layers to it. I've, I've spoken

00:11:19.820 in the last 36 hours. I get why MPs right now don't want to go on the record from the liberal

00:11:25.180 party. And I actually have empathy because I think two things, one, many of them were blindsided by

00:11:30.500 Carney doing this over the weekend. And as I'm saying, I hereby declare, should say Canada declares

00:11:37.220 the recognition of a state of Palestine. None of them had, uh, none of the ones I talked to anyway,

00:11:43.680 of the three said, I had an inkling this might happen, or we kind of got warned. This might happen

00:11:49.180 on the previous Friday and they would have. So there's the snap surprise. I'm doing this anyway.

00:11:54.820 Regardless of the conditions being met here. But then there's also the second layer to this,

00:11:59.340 which is there are people who are adamant that, um, that for a long time now, since the war began,

00:12:07.660 um, Israel has been too aggressive. Israel hasn't been proportionate. Israel is clearly got voices in 0.86

00:12:14.840 the cabinet with Benjamin Netanyahu, a problematic leader for sure among some. Um, and certainly so in

00:12:22.240 the Jewish community, there are people that have told me, Greg, I would have absolutely, I'm, I'm

00:12:27.140 advocating for, you know, us to have an arms embargo against Israel. I'm advocating for us to, 0.99

00:12:33.100 to rent, to ratchet it up and put more pressure on Israel, but I would never vote to declare for a 0.90

00:12:38.920 state of Palestine under these conditions. And, and when Hamas still has a presence there. Um, so it's, 0.80

00:12:45.940 it's weird because again, we've got all these sort of all these binary choices and I'm hearing from

00:12:51.340 people go who I think are almost too aggressive in the language about Israel. And, and, you know,

00:12:57.880 there is room for fair criticism to talk about things that if there would be on all sides, um, there would

00:13:03.100 be for when America goes into Afghanistan in 2001, certainly into Iraq in 2003. But what they don't have

00:13:10.440 time for is, uh, a gesture that is, um, that they got, that they got kind of pulled on them in, in

00:13:16.300 kind of a snap motion and that they absolutely didn't get to talk about as a cabinet, even Justin

00:13:21.880 Trudeau, even Doug Ford, I promise you weigh in. They almost do it to a fault to how will this get

00:13:30.400 perceived by the public? What will the cabinet think? What's kind of the reverb reaction? And I don't,

00:13:36.200 Mark Carney is pretty new to politics, although not dealing with politicians.

00:13:39.460 I can't believe some of the reaction I'm hearing going, um, this is still a party and we still have

00:13:46.060 to have a little bit of a vibe that, that there's room for open discussion and debate about these

00:13:51.180 issues and they're not seeing it. And I think that's really worrisome. Yeah, it's concerning

00:13:56.240 because it speaks to, I think the, the shallowness of the understanding of the issues like we saw

00:14:02.460 in years previous. And we were promised that we were going to be the adults now and above all this

00:14:06.660 and, and all kinds of better through even making this Sunday news dumped statement,

00:14:11.760 which to me in itself speaks to a kind of political cowardice, which we are, we are used

00:14:16.480 to certainly, uh, as Ontarians and certainly coming out of the last few years is, is, is this

00:14:22.060 what the questions that then stem from this, which is okay. So we're Canada. I, I don't recall

00:14:28.620 approving this or this being a campaign issue, but Canada now, uh, you know, uh, has called for

00:14:34.200 that, you know, that Palestine is, is a state has legitimized that what's the capital of Palestine.

00:14:39.020 Like it's the, this can just go all the way down. And then like, so what are we expanding? Like a

00:14:44.680 listed terrorist entities? Like, what do we start to leave on the table? And that this has been so

00:14:48.940 haphazardly put together. I know that there are people inside of, of liberal caucus who are blindsided

00:14:57.100 by this. I, I think of guys like Anthony house father who have so often had to sort of debase

00:15:03.200 themselves. Uh, and it's not, I don't believe that to be their fault where they're trying to have this

00:15:07.680 both ways and they're being pushed and pulled in other directions. But this to me points to,

00:15:12.540 this looks a whole lot like the last 10 years where it's, it's, it's virtue signaling. It's,

00:15:18.400 it's empty gestures. It is, it is, you know, true tweets that, that welcome the world and,

00:15:25.120 and, and all these like haphazard thoughts on, on, uh, Melanie Jolie saying, you know,

00:15:30.540 don't you understand the demographics in my writing? It's like, I thought we were supposed

00:15:34.160 to be a little bit more measured here. Yeah. There's a lot, you got it. There's a lot of

00:15:37.860 quiet part out loud. Um, I won't defend everything in Trudeau's first four and a half years, but I do

00:15:45.200 think it's a tone of, uh, of, of after the 19 election and it was only a minority government.

00:15:51.420 I think things, I think the sand started to shift a little bit and obviously Trudeau had to be more

00:15:56.020 on his toes and he kind of in 15, I think, I really think he got in in 2015. And again,

00:16:01.860 it's a zero sum game. So you have to give full credit to the liberals to recognizing the moment,

00:16:06.740 recognizing this is the right guy, the right time, the right communication. He's interesting to people.

00:16:12.400 Everybody knows who he is. It's name recognition. It's facial recognition. They didn't have that with

00:16:16.340 Michael Knatchev. They sure didn't have it with Stefan Dion. So when he comes in with a, with a

00:16:21.780 bunch of, it was kind of like, you know, the first day of school, like you're looking around at a new

00:16:26.100 school, you're looking around at all the new kids and Trudeau's looking going, I'm going to need some

00:16:30.820 help here because I think the, the people that know Justin Trudeau the best will tell you within

00:16:36.140 the first 10 minutes of talking to you, um, he was early on able to recognize what he didn't know.

00:16:41.700 He knew he was a little bit of a, um, it's not fair to say an intellectual lightweight,

00:16:47.600 but certainly for geopolitics, that wasn't something that he had dove into as a kid,

00:16:52.580 studied in university, really new. I mean, I'm sure there's some osmosis when your dad is prime

00:16:58.020 minister, similar to my colleague, uh, Ben Mulroney with it with, you know, his late father,

00:17:02.700 Brian, of course, that's going to seep into your system, but, but the muscle memory took a while to

00:17:07.480 flex in. Then to your point by 19, we're looking at ostracizing key members of cabinet. Um, you know,

00:17:14.900 again, the accusation from Jody Wilson Rabel, the former cabinet minister is he asked me to lie. I

00:17:19.980 wasn't going to do that. He pushes Selena Cesar Chavan out, uh, who was his parliamentary assistant, 1.00

00:17:24.880 Dr. Jane Philpott was a really smart person. Um, and I'll give the Ford government credit, 0.56

00:17:29.420 pretty smart to hire her to try and help with the, uh, the house fire that healthcare is in Ontario, 1.00

00:17:35.020 which I'm sure we can get to in a bit. So I, I look and I go, I think Trudeau was leaning on

00:17:39.980 people in the first five or six years. There came a point, Alex, when I think he thought now I've got

00:17:45.120 it and, and I don't need to, to keep the, uh, the circle as wide. Mark Carney's been prime minister

00:17:51.080 elected anyway for four and a half months. If we don't count the lead up, uh, after winning the

00:17:55.620 leadership and calling the snap election, that's really unusual ground after 18 weeks to, to,

00:18:01.540 you know, uh, move on, on a thing like I'm going to declare Palestine a state myself.

00:18:07.440 And you can always see, you can always tell also by the social media responses. Um, I mentioned this

00:18:12.840 on the show and I mentioned this on the weekend when, when leaders aren't, aren't really reflected

00:18:18.060 and someone, you know, kind of retweets above them and says, this is great. And here's why I think this

00:18:22.700 is great for the people of my writing, or I support this. Sometimes it's a, it's just a simple retweet.

00:18:26.960 Sometimes it's, it's writing a couple of sentences on top of it. There's a lot of people who have

00:18:32.300 been harsh critics of Israel who just let this pass yesterday and didn't want to touch it and

00:18:37.860 didn't want to be seen as, as endorsing it. You and I famously were both critical of Ontario

00:18:43.660 liberal leader, Steven Del Duca, who's turned into a much better mayor and Vaughn than a probably

00:18:47.620 you and I expected. And B maybe anybody could have anticipated for, for speaking out and being

00:18:53.100 vocal on a lot of important issues. But when he tweeted, I'm going to make kindergarten vaccinations

00:18:58.500 mandatory in the fall of 22, I will tell you there wasn't a single liberal candidate, including a

00:19:04.100 couple of doctors and pediatricians that backed him on that publicly. And so I think it's telling

00:19:09.060 that we're four and a half months into Kearney and not a lot of people were just whistling past the

00:19:13.660 graveyard when he, when he made the statement on Sunday. It's true. And that Del Duca call is still

00:19:18.580 absolutely mind blowing. Like the, for all the, the Ford criticism that they justifiably receive,

00:19:24.680 you had a guy running on dangerous medical advice, like dangerous medical advice, like, like you can

00:19:31.880 get forward on all kinds of things on being a weathervane on, on people pleasing on no harsh

00:19:36.720 decisions until there's an overwhelming amount of polling support. That was, that was hard to wrap

00:19:42.020 our heads around. And, and I was thankful for those conversations and hearing, hearing the way,

00:19:47.140 you know, you're expanding on politics. Now it's, it's funny to me that I think of a piece that you

00:19:52.840 wrote in the hub coming out of the election where you, you put in this piece in May, you only wanted

00:19:57.300 to do three things in your adult life, be a sports broadcaster and talk show host, be a news broadcaster,

00:20:02.980 talk show host, and be a politician. We can't have everything in life. Uh, with those first two goals

00:20:08.020 already accomplished, you know, you attempted, you attempted that triple crown. And so why would you

00:20:13.220 want to do that to yourself? You know, add on, add on the, the, the, the, the political side and,

00:20:18.300 and what did you learn while you were running for office? Well, I'll tell you, I loved every second

00:20:23.680 of it. Um, I have no regrets about it. I love putting myself out there. You're already out in

00:20:28.740 the public environment. And especially to your point, as we talk about the pandemic, uh, I get into

00:20:34.440 news talk probably six months before the pandemic starts. Um, cruising along for a little while,

00:20:39.660 the full-time morning show comes on September of 21, still in the midst of COVID, you kind of

00:20:45.300 really move past COVID. And then a year later, uh, October 7th happens in 2023. So for a lot of

00:20:51.600 these years, you're talking about issues. Once you recognize that you won't make everybody happy,

00:20:56.280 um, and, and that your skin is about as thick as it can get, it's a remarkable feeling and it's

00:21:03.160 remarkably freeing. Um, I like a lot of what the party system provides. And I think what I was looking

00:21:08.780 for is as opposed to, of course you work with a team in the morning to put the show together

00:21:12.900 on six 40 Toronto, but I love the idea of, of working with a team on policy. Um, and you can

00:21:21.260 imagine when I first started pursuing this, there was, um, there were a couple different pursuits at,

00:21:26.700 at the, at the two different levels of government. Um, this is the one I settled on. Uh, and it's one

00:21:33.700 of those things where I think people would recognize I'm not a life. I went to one of the

00:21:39.340 meetings actually. And someone's like, are you a lifelong conservative? And I looked at the

00:21:42.700 lovely older woman and I'm like, I'm not lifelong anything. I'm not even, I'm not even a, you know,

00:21:47.760 a lifelong dad or husband, or like, I've just done nothing my whole life. That's been exactly the

00:21:53.080 same. So no, but I saw an opportunity with the leader in Pierre Polyef with some of the policies,

00:22:00.320 I think we wanted to correct. And I saw a lot of moral clarity with the conservatives.

00:22:05.120 And I also felt confident that if I disagreed with something that I'd be able to at least behind

00:22:10.980 closed doors, which is what you should do to create a unified presence, speak your mind and go,

00:22:15.840 maybe I'm misunderstanding this. Is it this? Or is it that I wouldn't, people said, well,

00:22:21.520 now you're a quote unquote conservative. I'm like, not so sure. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have been able

00:22:26.920 to run for Doug Ford, whether the Ford government would have me as a totally different

00:22:30.280 story. I've been very critical of them on the radio, but I would also make the point that I

00:22:34.540 really saw principles and I didn't see any red flags of, of, uh, dysfunction of lack of character,

00:22:43.760 of hearing something going, now you shouldn't talk that way about this group or speak this way about

00:22:48.620 that group or make that inference or that stereotype. I know it's, it's, you know, what's the conservative

00:22:54.560 cabinet about a hundred or, uh, about 140 members. The liberals are about 161. How would you ever get

00:23:00.780 140, 160 strong-willed people to all agree on all the same things all the time? You can't, and you

00:23:06.320 don't. But I thought that was going to be a good home for me. Um, and I really thought I had something

00:23:12.660 to contribute as well to, to, um, to Ajax where I live and go, well, they've had the same liberal MP

00:23:18.260 for a bunch of years. He's won six of the last seven elections. Maybe I'm the one that can track him

00:23:23.860 down and beat him. Now, as it turned out, Mark Holland didn't run and they parachuted Jennifer

00:23:29.760 McKelvey, who was a Toronto city councilor out here since 2018. Um, and that, that provided a

00:23:37.760 challenge because I'll tell you that Mark Carney was this unknown to Canada in a way with, with a,

00:23:43.940 with a stellar resume. You don't keep getting these opportunities without bringing something to the,

00:23:48.560 to the central bank table or the economic table. Of course not. But I also was running against a very

00:23:53.620 unknown candidate. And when you're a known candidate, there's pluses and minuses. Someone

00:23:58.960 could listen to my show and go, Oh, I like when he does this. Don't like when he does that. Like

00:24:02.880 this guest. Don't like that guest. McKelvey was like the, you know, uh, um, uh, just a giant

00:24:07.860 question mark over the face and people could, I guess, look at Toronto and I'd go, what do you think?

00:24:13.140 And I'd go, well, she voted with John Tory on everything. And then Olivia Chow got in and she voted

00:24:18.000 with Olivia Chow on everything. Like I saw get along, uh, get along, go along to get along person 0.94

00:24:23.300 and I thought I could win. So, um, I'm, I'm long, I'm short story longing this, but I thought I could

00:24:30.340 make the biggest difference to my community. Um, I felt strongly I could go back on radio and still

00:24:35.960 present myself with, with how I feel when I go to sleep at night, which is authentic and credible

00:24:40.780 and willing to be critical of all ideas and willing to praise all ideas. Um, when I see things I like.

00:24:46.860 Yeah. And I think you would have been successful in that. Uh, and Jennifer in some ways did, 1.00

00:24:53.480 you know, prove to be a challenge and, and, and Carney changed the equation, but

00:24:57.400 you were also like, we all know what happened with, with elbows up to some extent. We all see that,

00:25:03.520 that much of that rhetoric has proven to be temporary and hollow. What was it like being suddenly inside

00:25:09.760 and elbows up sort of campaign trail shift and suddenly having to deal with a kind of social

00:25:16.340 contagion and external forces when we should have been, let's say, keeping a better focus on the

00:25:21.240 domestic on both overthrowing the baby out with the bathwater. Yeah. I don't, I, I don't think

00:25:28.000 there's a liberal MP, uh, who will look you in the eye now and go, we are still in government because

00:25:34.820 not only did Donald Trump win the U S presidential election and, and win it solidly as well, but then he

00:25:41.040 turned his sites to Canada. And there was a lot of rhetorical, uh, a lot of rhetorical threats.

00:25:47.100 Um, a lot of the, the, you know, stuff I, I knew would never transpire. I mean, again, I,

00:25:53.000 I, you know, what do I know? I've only ever lived in, in two countries, Canada, the United States,

00:25:56.920 but has he, has he invaded Greenland yet? Is that a thing? Is that not really? Are we wait? It's been

00:26:01.600 seven months. I don't think they, is that war still happening? So the point being is I, I saw a lot,

00:26:06.940 you hear a lot of people say, watch what Trump does, forget what he says. And some of that ends

00:26:12.040 up being true, but it's remarkable. I, uh, look, I know there's criticism of the, uh, of the CPC

00:26:18.360 from, um, you know, you, you should, the reason I wanted to do this too. And the reason that I think

00:26:24.400 I've taken so much to wanting to, you know, admit when I don't get things right is from a sports

00:26:30.520 perspective. What I noticed in sports is you go, you have to go out there after a press conference when

00:26:35.660 your NFL team loses 42 to three, and you got to explain what happened and what went terribly

00:26:41.300 wrong. And you don't just get to come out after you win. And you don't get to tell people that I

00:26:46.220 know you think we lost 42 to three. It was actually 31, 28 and we won. And politicians love doing that.

00:26:52.720 That's there's not many ways to spin, uh, uh, you know, a, a terrible failure on, uh, on a football

00:26:59.000 field or on a hockey rink into something that, that is some kind of moral victory politics. It seems to

00:27:04.320 happen all the time. So I thought, well, that's easy for me to spot. I've enjoyed being able to

00:27:09.940 call that out on all sides of the political equation. And, and I know to avoid that. I know

00:27:15.840 how much that drives me crazy. And I see that as, uh, as unhelpful to the democratic process and

00:27:21.160 hypocritical. So when I'd be knocking on doors, I attempted to prevent, present as very authentic.

00:27:27.980 And I thought there was a real massive connection. I saw the generational divide.

00:27:32.080 You're talking to 18 to 34 year olds. People be like, let me just go get my daughter. She's 0.99

00:27:36.700 sleeping downstairs. Oh, is she visiting? No, she lives here. She's 31. Oh, here's my son. He's 28.

00:27:42.900 Here's my other son is 26. They'd want to say hi to you. He sent out 300 resumes.

00:27:48.300 Exactly. Yeah. That, and that was obviously before the, uh, the summer of almost no part-time work,

00:27:53.420 but you could kind of see the warning signs all, all there. So, um, but, but to your point on the

00:27:58.860 contagion front, you'd speak on the porch to what, what on paper are really smart people,

00:28:05.840 educated people with good jobs and in good neighborhoods. This is a wonderful place to

00:28:10.020 live in Ajax. It's got its warts, uh, but I don't want to live anywhere else. And to be honest,

00:28:14.360 I've told the party this, if they asked me to run anywhere else, I would have done it. I only wanted

00:28:18.700 to run where I live and where I've raised my kids and, and where I think I know the community

00:28:22.760 in the community kind of knows me. So, but you talk to these 64, 66 year old people on the doorstep

00:28:29.160 and they would stare at you and tell you that Donald Trump was planning to invade our country

00:28:35.120 like military militarily. They really believe that. And it doesn't help when a prime minister is,

00:28:41.260 is moving up the rhetoric and talking about wants our land. He wants our water. Our relationship as

00:28:46.380 we know it is now over and similar break us, break us. So he can own wants to break us. So he can own

00:28:51.720 us. Exactly. So, um, how, I don't know how you defend against that. If you, if someone's going,

00:28:58.580 well, I think aliens are going to, uh, come down someday from another planet and there'll be a zombie

00:29:03.200 apocalypse. That's a really hard thing to talk people out of if they really believe it. And it

00:29:08.360 was happening in real time politically. Yeah. That burden of proof is, is impossible to establish,

00:29:13.180 right? Like it's, yeah. So it's, uh, it's, I think there's, I don't know if you spot it. I, I sense a

00:29:19.760 little buyer's remorse. It hasn't been terribly long. Um, but I also think nobody runs the same

00:29:25.760 campaign twice with the same ideas and all the same personnel. So I don't think if the conservatives

00:29:30.660 change up this or change up that or shift a few candidates around or change some, some, uh, shadow

00:29:36.500 cabinet portfolios before the next election, that it's some admission of a giant failure. As I said,

00:29:41.860 if, if Trump doesn't win, the conservatives win, if Trump doesn't, a solid majority, if Trump doesn't

00:29:48.780 threaten Canada, it's at least a small majority, but there's no other mathematical equation that

00:29:54.460 anyone had on the books until Trump started doing this. And then if a percentage of people don't take

00:29:58.920 those threats so seriously, when it, it wasn't that it wasn't deeply obnoxious and inappropriate

00:30:05.520 during our election cycle, but have we not read his books? Have we not watched him on television

00:30:10.780 all these years? Like this is, this is a version of, you know, Darvo, which is this sort of rhetorical

00:30:17.420 way of, of winning an argument where you deny attack, reverse victimize other it's sometimes what

00:30:23.900 you get when you criticize the government. And so more on this carny start before I let you go,

00:30:29.100 I mean, and to put you on the spot a little bit, I, you're a concerned dad. We can, we can all see the,

00:30:33.740 the sort of these concerning and ongoing trends. I think of unemployment, whether it's cost of living,

00:30:38.900 housing. So that seems to go well for seemingly everyone, not at the tippy top or on the dole.

00:30:44.340 We've got Potemkin villages for housing announcement announcements, which, which Brian Pasifume

00:30:49.220 did some great reporting on. I think Ben Mulroney was, was on your show talking about this. We've got

00:30:54.900 fake bags of wheat being used in these Mexican pressers, pumping up our trade relationship with

00:31:00.440 a country as if it isn't just 2% of each other's imports and exports. So where else would you say the

00:31:06.040 federal government is lacking to start? And do you have any optimism that they're truly

00:31:10.760 meaning to correct for the last decade? Yeah, it's tricky because I know the instant

00:31:17.400 instinct is to treat this all like a sport. And we team, we cheer for a red team, a blue team,

00:31:22.820 a yellow team, a green team. Well, that's your background too. You're a great sport.

00:31:24.920 It is, but it's funny because a lot of people didn't like me on 590 because I'd be like,

00:31:31.020 Hey, do you think the Leafs are going to win the cup this year? And I'd go,

00:31:33.380 no, do you want the 11 reasons why? Um, and people that you, you don't want them to win.

00:31:38.040 And I'm like, no, you asked me if I think they're going to, and that's a different question.

00:31:42.320 So it's tricky because I, I want to have some optimism. I can find good and bad in every single

00:31:49.120 prime minister and every single us president and, and every single, you know, I could talk

00:31:53.420 to somebody for 20 minutes and I go, I really liked this characteristic about you. And if someone

00:31:57.300 said, no, but give me the real thing, what do I need to work on? I could probably find something,

00:32:00.660 but I look at, at Carney and I go, the concern I have is what we talked about at the beginning,

00:32:06.420 that he's not involving his cabinet and caucus. He's doing what he wants to do when he wants to

00:32:11.860 do it. And to your point, there's more a swell of professionalism about that, but then it becomes

00:32:16.900 more a private company with a CEO, or it becomes a hedge fund with a, uh, with a president. And that's

00:32:23.740 not what democracy is supposed to be. Democracy is supposed to be, I'm an MP. I know there's a bunch of us.

00:32:29.460 Give me 10 minutes at some time in the next couple of weeks. Let me tell you what my concern is with

00:32:33.900 one of our policies. And you tell me if I'm crazy or if we're on the right, uh, if we're on the right

00:32:38.460 or wrong page here, that's what I expect a relationship between a prime minister, uh, and

00:32:43.320 an MP, uh, to, to be, and it's so unique, right? It's not president and Senator or president and

00:32:48.620 Congresswoman because it's the, those, those departments are meant to be so separate. You're on the

00:32:53.460 team. He, he or she is your leader. What I'm spotting from the liberal government is this is

00:32:59.420 a lot of carny. This is a lot of carny following a lot of things that are happening in Europe

00:33:03.680 and not necessarily doing what's best for Canada. That said, um, you, you, you just can't,

00:33:11.260 you can't sleep at night. If you want it to be a miserable failure, I don't want a dollar to be

00:33:16.600 60 cents. I don't want her unemployment to be 12%. I worry about these things. 0.73

00:33:20.980 I'm a, I'm a fan of being proved wrong on this. Like I, I write about the start. I write about how

00:33:25.780 talk is cheap. You can point to the things they're not actually doing, but for goodness

00:33:29.960 sake, like I can't afford a home. You know, we've been saving up for years and years. Like

00:33:34.020 you've got, you've got young kids. Like it's, we, you go out and you actually talk to people

00:33:39.820 who, who, who don't think there's going to be an invasion when you're, when you're talking

00:33:43.220 to them on their doors and like, they are really hurting and, and they're, you know, not

00:33:48.380 doing a great job of dispelling concerns that they are running this maybe like a Brookfield.

00:33:52.340 Like there's a report today that they're circling Mark Wiseman of BlackRock, who's an advisor

00:33:58.200 for the century initiative, which many in this audience would know is, is kind of just part

00:34:02.480 of this disaster and this low wage sort of caste replacement system that's hurting unemployment 0.97

00:34:07.280 or, or I don't recall them campaigning on what they want to do to the notwithstanding

00:34:13.620 clause. You know, there, there's a potential identity crisis right there. And so, so prove

00:34:18.340 us wrong, please. Like, I, I very much hope to be, you know, I very much hope to be concerned

00:34:23.480 over, over nothing here. And, and I appreciate your insights and, and where can folks hear

00:34:29.080 more of you, read more from you during the week?

00:34:31.700 Yeah. Toronto today with Greg Brady is on six 40 Toronto, and you can get us on the

00:34:36.020 I heart, uh, I heart radio, Canada app. It's five 30 to 9.00 AM live and everything goes,

00:34:41.480 uh, on every single spot, uh, podcast platform, Spotify and, and Apple, uh, and Amazon and the

00:34:48.080 like. And, uh, you know, people ask me if, if I will run again, I mean, that's, that's

00:34:53.580 not necessarily in the cards. I sure wouldn't rule it out. I loved it so much. The, the big

00:34:58.460 thing, Alex, is I think we, we get caught in these bubbles too, where I would tell you

00:35:02.180 98.5% of the conversations I had at the door were amazing. They were, they were respectful.

00:35:09.540 They were like, I'm going this way because of this. I'm going that way because of that.

00:35:13.080 And I love that because they've at least, they might be lying to get you off the porch

00:35:17.260 so they can go finish dinner, but they are at least engaging with you. No doors slammed

00:35:22.320 very little, very little. You're this, you're that things that I felt like, no, that's not

00:35:27.140 a fair characterization of me, the party, anything else. So, um, I, I have hope that there are way

00:35:34.240 more people out there when you get, uh, get off social media and you get out into the

00:35:39.140 world that just want to live their lives. I saw that a lot with the, with the Gaza conflict. 0.77

00:35:43.620 I saw people who are Jewish people who are Muslim and the, and they're like, Oh, I think 0.99

00:35:47.660 this about this conflict, but what I see in downtown Toronto with what I see on the streets,

00:35:52.620 it's her, it's horrifying. So that I like that gave me such renewal of hope. Cause as you

00:35:57.380 know, uh, radio broadcasting, doing what you do, you, you kind of, you, the extremes make

00:36:03.020 a lot of noise and we can't help, but get swallowed up and pay attention to them sometimes.

00:36:06.700 So you have me on anytime. Uh, I'll have you back on, uh, on our show as well on the

00:36:11.820 air. And I really enjoyed the conversation. Yeah. Please return the favor. You're a champion

00:36:16.100 of discourse. Thank you for being a man in the arena and, and, and talking to people. Cause

00:36:20.060 we know the internet is not real life. And, and thankfully there are, there are men like

00:36:24.080 Greg Brady. Thanks for joining us. Anytime. Juno news. Did you like this chat? Take advantage

00:36:31.080 of my discount code. That's junonews.com slash not. Sorry for 20% off. And I'll see you next

00:36:36.640 week.

Juno News - September 23, 2025

Carney： Fake Housing, Fake Trade, Fake Leadership

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