Decapitating John A. Macdonald
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Summary
Coming up, Sir John A. Macdonald is the latest victim of the mob, also, People's Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier on where the PPC goes from here. The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.
Transcript
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This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Coming up, Sir John A. Macdonald is the latest victim of the mob.
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Also, People's Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier on where the PPC goes from here.
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Hello and welcome to another edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show,
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regardless of political persuasion, affiliation, ideological outlook,
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decapitating the statue of a former Prime Minister,
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decapitating any statue, would be seen as heretical to a country,
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There was a time when everyone of all party stripes would deplore
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this and say well hang on our history is shared our history is something that unites us and not
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divides us well that would be true up until a certain point in time it's certainly not true
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in 2020 the statue of canada's first prime minister sir john a mcdonald felled by the mob
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in montreal and as the statue hits the ground with a thud sir john a mcdonald's head a head
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that, not the statue head anyway, but the actual head of John A. Macdonald, concocted a lot of the
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very foundation of this country, against tremendous odds, goes and rolls away. Now this is not new,
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although Canada has been somewhat insulated from the scourge of statue deplinthing that's been going
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on around the United States, particularly in the South, in the last few years, but especially the
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last few months, but we've still had it here. And oftentimes John A. Macdonald is the one that
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everyone's ire is directed to, despite how devoid of history hating Sir John A. Macdonald truly is.
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And I'm going to talk about some of the historic aspects of this that the mob certainly is not
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aware of, but also the fact that even if you accept that he is, to use the lingo of 2020,
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a problematic character, de-plinthing these statues, decapitating the statues,
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that is not going to achieve anything. So this now happens in Montreal and the fact that it
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happened in Montreal is actually an interesting one because Quebec at the best of times is not
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exactly a fan of Confederation or of the British Empire or of Sir John A. Macdonald but even so
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in the province of Quebec, one of the cornerstones of Canadian Confederation, the statue of Sir John
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A. MacDonald stood for more than a century, in fact 125 years until this past weekend. And if
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you listen to what the people in the Quebec government said about it, again, people that
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are French nationalists, they are not exactly fans of the Brits. There's no love lost between
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Franco-nationalists in Quebec and the British Empire. But you look at what
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Francois Legault, the Premier of Quebec, had to say about it. His tweet here,
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which translated English means, whatever one might think of John A. Macdonald,
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destroying a monument in this way is unacceptable. We must fight racism, but
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trashing parts of our history is not the answer. Vandalism has no place in our
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democracy and the statue must be restored. One of Francois Legault's colleagues Martin Koskinen
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has said that the statue must be restored. These acts of provocation cannot be tolerated
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in a democracy. This is important coming from the province of Quebec. It's important coming from
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Legault and I value that not because I have a tremendous amount of respect for what he says
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on a lot of other things, which I do and don't, depending on the topic. But because when the
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people who are exactly the people that should be skeptical and critical of Sir John A. Macdonald's
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legacy are saying, yes, that statue should remain up. It's a part of our history. People across the
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country should be listening. And sensible people are. This is one of these areas where the mob is
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a loud and angry minority that is at odds with what the general population thinks. But right now,
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the minority position is the one that everyone is capitulating to. The minority position is the
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one that everyone is elevating and holding up as being this bastion of virtue and this beacon
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of virtuousness when that is so far from the truth. But right now you look at what happened.
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Police were on site. It takes time, believe it or not, not that I've ever taken down a statue,
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but I've seen videos of it. It takes time to climb up, to get on the statue, to put the straps
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around it to get the people there to start doing the whole heave-ho it takes time to do that and
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you may think okay you're in downtown montreal i've actually been to that statue i've seen it
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before i've been to the location where this happened and you think okay that would take
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a bit of time to get to the point where that is happening surely police must have been on site
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they were police decided to stand by and watch police decided as a piece of history as a piece
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of art was being taken down to just stand by and look and do who knows what. Now, were they
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following orders? Did they not know? I have no idea and I don't particularly care, but police
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at some level made the decision to not get involved, thus endorsing that this is apparently
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the way you do things in a free and civilized society in 2020. Now, the condemnations from a
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lot of people have been swift, but not all. And Aaron O'Toole, the leader of the Conservative
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Party of Canada as of last week. He's spoken up and has said that this is just unacceptable.
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Canada wouldn't exist without Sir John A. Macdonald. Canada is a great country and one we
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should be proud of. We will not build a better future by defacing our past. O'Toole said
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politicians need to grow a backbone to stand up for the country. You look at Jason Kenney,
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who's always been a stalwart defender of protecting and preserving Canada's history.
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He had actually put a thread out on Twitter saying that the mob has torn down and defaced the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald.
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This vandalism of our history and heroes must stop.
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And interestingly, he actually went further to say this isn't just defending history.
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Kenny, if you look at the Twitter thread, was educating people about John A. Macdonald's legacy.
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and he said he was an immigrant who suffered unimaginable personal trauma throughout his life
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which he overcame to forge an enormous country out of divided factions. It's right to debate his
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legacy and life but it is wrong to allow roving bands of thugs to vandalize our history with
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impunity. If the city of Montreal decides not to put it back up he has said that he is going to
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make sure it happens on the grounds of the Alberta legislature. So again Jason Kenney is saying listen
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if Montreal is not taking it we will although I hope from Francois Legault's comments that Montreal
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will heed the call of the people who have a bit of sense around the country and put it back up to
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its rightful place and protect it when the mob tries to go after it again because we know this
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is not going to end. And if you look at the whole nature of this if you decide you're going to filter
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a 2020 social justice lens and apply that to every single historic figure, no one, absolutely no one
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passes the test. For example, not, I think it was 60 yards away, there's a statue of Wilfrid Laurier,
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I believe. Certainly we have statues of all of these figures. And if you want, you can look
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through their greatest hits and find quotes of theirs that might make you a little bit squeamish
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or might make things a little bit awkward if you were to put them into a 2020 political discourse.
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but you cannot expect the heroes of the past, and I don't use that word lightly, to have the
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sensibilities of the present. And if you do, you are actually anti-history because you don't realize
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that history is about the time and place in which things happened and the context in which things
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happened. And the fact is, well, John A. MacDonald's position on, let's use Indigenous issues, which
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seems to be the cornerstone of the criticism of him, his position on Indigenous issues
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might not match up with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission position of today.
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But his position was actually progressive for the era.
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And in fact, John A. Macdonald got significant pushback from his colleagues and from his contemporaries
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because of how he was trying to move things forward.
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He actually wanted a better future and better presence in Canada for the Indigenous population.
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and that's very different and now people would say oh well you know it doesn't matter because
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it's not the standard of today well who does have the standard today name one person in history
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that has the standard of 2020 in fact even the people who pushed for progress the people who
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pushed the envelope the people who were renegades often held regressive views on other things
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let's take for example an NDP hero and the reason I bring this up is because I got into I don't want
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say it's a Twitter argument because he didn't respond, but I had a, I put a tweet out rather,
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we'll say, when Charlie Angus, who is an NDP member of Parliament, had put forward a tweet
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quoting John A. MacDonald and specifically quoting an aspect of John A. MacDonald's existence that is
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what raises the ire of the Indigenous activists today. And the line is, I have reason to believe
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that the Indian agents are doing all they can by refusing food until the Indians are on the verge
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of starvation to reduce the expense. John A. Macdonald, 1882. And that's important because
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it actually came in a discussion where if you look at the follow-up, John A. Macdonald's line
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was actually fairly progressive. He was criticized, believe it or not, for not doing enough to starve
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out Indians. And that was the rationale at the time that, oh, well, if we just tell them that
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government's going to protect them, they're not going to do anything. And McDonald was actually
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pushing against that, which is why knowledge of history is so important. So in response to Charlie
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Angus's tweet, I included a tweet from a hero of the NDP, Tommy Douglas, the founder of Medicare
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in Canada, the founder of the modern NDP. And he had said in 1968, we ought to recognize homosexuality
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for what it is. It's a mental illness. It's a psychiatric condition. Roll that clip.
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If ever we needed in this country to adopt a new attitude to homosexuality, this is the time.
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Instead of treating it as a crime and driving it underground, we ought to recognize it for what it is.
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It's a mental illness. It's a psychiatric condition, which ought to be treated sympathetically,
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which ought to be treated by psychiatrists and social workers.
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Now, Tommy Douglas holds a view that if you were to say that in any political context today, you'd be vilified.
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In the NDP, you'd certainly be persona non grata.
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yet still that was the belief held by Tommy Douglas. Now does that mean we should cancel
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Tommy Douglas? No. Does that mean we should not honor Tommy Douglas and honor his legacy and all
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that stuff? No. Now if we could cancel certain things that his health care plan has done for
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the country maybe that would be a good idea but that's a different dialogue. We don't. We look at
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him in the context of his era and when I posted this a couple of people said oh well hang on.
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he was responding to the wisdom of the day, which said that homosexuality should be seen as criminal.
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To which I say that proves the point, that his view, which may have been progressive of the era,
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was still regressive by today's standards. So do we say no more Tommy Douglas? No. We say,
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all right, this is the context through which we view that quote, this is how we understand him,
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and we honor the good things while learning from the bad things and that's what history is all
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about and you can actually still have your historic heroes even if they aren't perfect
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on every single aspect of their existence by the lens that we view things through today
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that's the whole point of it history is about growth it is about evolution and it is about
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progress. And when people say that taking down statues is not an attack on history, they are
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absolutely wrong because they are trying to obliterate the very meaning and the very essence
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of history, which is one that requires us to learn from the past and to celebrate the good parts of
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the past and to understand how we as a country and how we as a society got to the place we are in
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now. And you can't do that if you don't respect or recognize the people who championed that and
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spearheaded that, of which in a national context, Sir John A. Macdonald is the most notable.
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Remember, confederation was not a given. The Canada we know today was not a given.
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Macdonald had to fight for it. He could have easily just packed up and gone back to the United
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Kingdom, but he didn't. He fought for it. And even at times when it seemed like the Canadian existence
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was hanging by a thread held together with you know paper and duct tape he pursued he persisted
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and the Canada we have today exists because of John A. Macdonald the problem with that is that
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a lot of these hordes of activists and the angry mobbers they hate Canada they hate the Canada
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that exists today they hate the Canada that's existed for the last 153 years they hate every
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part of Canada so you can't really appeal to them by that sense of well hang on the country we have
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today is because of him because they hate that so then the question is what are you wanting to build
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and this is the point that I raised when the first round of riots was going on around the United
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States a couple of months back I said okay you want to take down you want to dismantle you want
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to destroy fine what is it you want to build they can tell you all the things they hate about the
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country. They can tell you all the things they hate about the history, all the things they hate
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about this statue and that statue, but they can't actually tell you the country they want to build
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and how they plan to build it. They can't tell you how they're going to be a founding mother,
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founding father, or founding, you know, a gender non-binary leader. They can't tell you because
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they don't know. They are not in the building business. They are not in the creation business.
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They are not in the peacemaking business. They are in the business of destruction.
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And yes, it is a rebuke of everything that made this country what it is today.
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A country which has the freedom for angry hordes of mobs to roam the streets.
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That's the part of Canada that they failed to acknowledge
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that their right to be deadbeats, their right to be destroyers,
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the fact that they were not gunned down as they would in the Soviet Union
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if they were taking down a statue as they would in Iraq
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if they were taking down a statue or Iran or North Korea.
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which was founded by the people that they claim to deplore.
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You have to prove that you are willing to stand up for your history.
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You have to prove that you are willing to defend your history,
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defend your historic figures and do what Jason Kenney and Aaron O'Toole and all of these other
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people including Francois Legault are doing and standing up for that part of Canada and telling
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them that if you knock it down we will build it up we will still reinforce it we will protect it
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and we will arrest the people that take it down. You know it's funny when you talk about the
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destroyers these are not strong people. The one most amusing part of the video which made me sad
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in so many ways was right after the statue falls the head comes off and one of the protesters goes
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and tries to pick up the head and this little just weak beta male and I say this realizing I'm not
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exactly the paragon of masculinity just can't even pick up the head admittedly it would be very heavy
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and he misjudged it but maybe that's the great metaphor they misjudge their own strength he goes
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he can't picks up the head so instead he just throws his hands in the air celebrates and walks
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away because all right well I can't pick up the head like it's the head of Jebediah Springfield
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but okay at least I can just take down the statue by pulling a cord with a bunch of people as
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individuals if you take them away from the mob as individuals these people are meaningless and
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feckless and pathetic as a mob they are still feckless and pathetic and meaningless but they
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have the illusion of power which is what needs to be taken away from them you know I had to ask over
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the weekend. Where on earth was Justin Trudeau in all of this? Because here's a guy who has never
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hesitated to jump in on the social justice bandwagon causes in the past, even in some cases
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jumping in to comment on something that ended up being a hoax. I'm thinking mainly of that time in
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Toronto that a young girl claimed her hijab was ripped off by someone and that ended up being
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just a fake hate crime. Justin Trudeau has always jumped in on these things whenever he can grandstand
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and virtue signal. But when the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald was decapitated in Montreal,
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he was nowhere to be found until he was asked about it by a reporter on Monday morning. And
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this morning, he actually gave what I thought was a reasonably decent statement. It was less
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equivocal than I thought it would be. Let's roll that clip. Like the mayor of Montreal,
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like a minister, Stephen Guilbeault, our minister of heritage, I was deeply disappointed by the
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I understand the impatience, the frustration of Canadians who faced systemic discrimination
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and racism throughout their lives, and they're concerned that we act quickly on that.
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And they're impatience, because I myself am impatient.
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We need to move forward quickly and in the right ways on countering systemic discrimination,
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But we are a country of laws and we are a country that needs to respect those laws even
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Those kinds of acts of vandalism are not advancing the path towards greater justice and
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Now we've seen following that people on either sides of the spectrum trying to use these
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elements as a way of furthering debates, I'm more interested in using the real frustrations
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that people have as motivations to continue to make the big changes necessary.
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We have an awful lot to do as a country and part of it needs to have a clear eye towards
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the past and mistakes made by previous generations of people who built this country.
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But our focus needs to be on how we improve things today and for the days to come for
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all canadians and that means tackling systemic discrimination everywhere it exists taking
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significant measures to make sure that canadians are safe and aren't facing extra barriers that are
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inherently unfair we have a lot of work to do but choices like this to rely on vandalism to
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advance causes is not going to help anyone move forward the right way so what i like about that
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is he condemns it as an act of vandalism so he doesn't mince words about that he says it's not
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helping anyone but when he talks about understanding the frustration and how he's impatient as well
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again i go back to something i mentioned months ago you are the system you can't be protesting
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the system that you are a part of what are you doing about it i mean the people that are impatient
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waiting for government to act on x y and z are waiting for you prime minister to act so if you're
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impatient, well great, you've got a government right now. I'm sure that a lot of the parties
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would back you if you said you wanted to fix whatever the grievance was. But what this reveals
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is that the grievance is not always all that clear. When the initial Black Lives Matter protest
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happened this year, so this wave of them, it was pretty clear. It was in response to the George
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Floyd killing. It was in response to a lot of the systemic racism they claim exists in every
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department. And even that was not entirely clear. And this is why, what do you think of systemic
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racism became such a question that was asked by media to pretty much any and every politician.
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Aaron O'Toole got hit with it on Sunday night when he did an interview on Global News' West
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Block, and he didn't take the bait. He didn't say, yes, I think systemic racism is real. He said,
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no, because when you use that term, you're actually maligning a lot of good people that
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are not racist and are not part of anything wrong with Canada. But to go back to Trudeau's statement,
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so he talks about the act of vandalism and he says, you know, we need to find better ways and
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we need to, you know, do all of this stuff. And then he starts talking about mistakes made in
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past generations. So even then there isn't a celebration, let alone a defense of John A.
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McDonald. And I wish that Trudeau in his comment, while condemning the act of vandalism, which I'm
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glad he did. I wish he would actually honor John A. MacDonald because the point of it is that when
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he comes out and says, well, you know, listen, I get all of your issues, but I don't think that's
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the way you should express them. He's not dealing with the root of the problem. And the root of the
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problem, as I've mentioned over the course of the show to this point, is the people who are devoid
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of history and historic knowledge and historic understanding who are doing this because they
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think that John A. Macdonald is a villain of history rather than a hero of history. And for
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a guy who occupies the role of Prime Minister of Canada, a role that so few people in this country's
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history have had, it would be nice if he could actually celebrate his predecessor, the one who
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made his role today possible, Sir John A. Macdonald. And I know it sounds like I'm splitting hairs here
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and I'm not trying to just nitpick on every single thing Justin Trudeau says, because as I noted,
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I am actually happy that he condemned the vandalism.
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and he wasn't to the extent that I thought he would.
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not just say this isn't the way to go about it.
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okay, but he agrees that Johnny McDonald is problematic.
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And then that leads itself to all of the other things,
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the slippery slope argument of turning this name
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of the prime minister's office from the Langevin bloc
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that the attacks and the vandalism are based on,
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And you can find there are issues in Canada today
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that need to be dealt with while also recognizing that John A. Macdonald is not someone who should
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be vilified for that. That is the whole point of history and that is the whole point of its future
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counterpart progress. So fight for this if you have any pride in your country or its history
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or history itself because if you don't there will be nothing left to fight for before long.
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We'll be back in a moment. More of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
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well it's been a little over two years since maxim bernier left the conservative party of
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canada to chart his own path as leader of the people's party of canada since that we've had
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an election and also a conservative leadership race and there has been no doubt there's been
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no second guessing. Monsieur Bernier said at a press conference after Aaron O'Toole was elected
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Conservative leader, he has no regrets and he's more confident than ever that he made the right
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choice. He joins me on the line now. Maxime, good to talk to you again. Thanks very much for coming
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on today. Thank you, Andrew. I appreciate it. When you first left to form the PPC, a lot of people
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thought it was going to be a flash in the pan that eventually everyone would see the error of their
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ways. You'd be welcomed back into the fold. That's not happening. And it seems like, especially from
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your press conference last week and other developments that have happened in the PPC
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and the CPC, like you're actually moving further and further away from that idea of reuniting the
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parties like they did in 2013 or 2003 rather. First of all, I must say that, you know, I'm a real
00:25:12.700
conservative. And if you look at our platform and the platform of the Conservative Party of Canada,
00:25:18.320
There's a huge difference. So, yes, you're right. After the leadership contest, Aaron O'Toole won. But I'm looking at what he said and what the Conservative Party of Canada said during the last campaign.
00:25:32.620
And, you know, I was very disappointed, and I think a lot of conservatives will be disappointed
00:25:38.300
also, because in his first speech early Monday morning, he said that his goal was to reach
00:25:50.080
So that party is now a central-left political party, and Erin O'Toole is a real red Tory.
00:25:57.620
establishment wanted that they have a red tori as a leader a progressive conservative and i was
00:26:04.660
disappointed because you know we had a very important crisis in this country if you look at
00:26:10.740
the western alienation and uh o'toole didn't say anything about that uh and he is not ready to fix
00:26:19.220
the equalization formula to be less generous and the formula that would be fair for everybody
00:26:24.820
is for the Paris Accord with more taxes, more regulations.
00:26:29.520
So the goal of the Conservatives right now with Aaron O'Toole
00:26:40.260
And that's why I think a lot of Conservatives would be disappointed.
00:26:44.020
Hang on though, Maxime, I've got to ask you about that.
00:26:48.060
because when I hear you say that you don't like that Aaron O'Toole
00:26:51.600
is trying to reach out to Liberal voters or NDP voters.
00:26:55.580
In 2018, I think it was, you had said to Mercedes Stevenson on Global,
00:27:00.020
and I have the story in front of me right here,
00:27:02.020
we want to attract people from other parties also like the NDP.
00:27:06.660
So how is that any different than what you're saying is evidence of centrism
00:27:10.560
or of diluting conservative values in Erin O'Toole?
00:27:17.540
we're the only party who is doing politics that doing politics differently no pandering you know
00:27:23.940
errone utour did pender to the cartel of dairy producer to be uh to be the the leader of the
00:27:30.100
conservative party it's okay that's the way to do politics we don't do that we'll do that we're
00:27:35.380
doing politics by principles we try to uh have policies that would be good for all canadians
00:27:41.380
and not focusing on special interest group so yes i want more people to support the ppc
00:27:47.140
but i want people who come to support us because they like our ideas they share our ideas that's
00:27:52.580
the most important if they don't like what we are saying i'm telling them stay at home or vote for
00:27:57.860
another for another party like the conservative or the liberals so we don't do any any pandering to
00:28:05.220
have their votes but the conservatives that is in their dna they are doing that their goal is to be
00:28:12.020
in government but you know i was a conservative we had a majority government in 2011 and what is
00:28:18.900
the legacy of stephen hopper tell me andrew what is his legacy nothing he tried to reunite the
00:28:25.940
right and he was successful but after that because you know he governed like a centrist and a liberal
00:28:33.860
political party we were not able to win in 2015 but there's no legacy i'm not in politics to be
00:28:41.220
in government just to be in government i'm in politics to have real debates about the the
00:28:46.180
important challenges that we are having in this country that other political parties like the
00:28:51.140
liberal and the conservatives won't speak about you know that's i think that's a huge difference
00:28:57.300
between us and the traditional established political parties you know even with as you say
00:29:04.180
going after the center the conservatives have trouble winning elections and and certainly
00:29:08.500
majority elections seem harder and harder to come by are there enough people in the country that
00:29:14.660
share the ppc's values to deliver a ppc government i mean last time i know you're a new party and
00:29:19.940
you've talked about how it took the green party 30 years to accomplish what you did in a couple
00:29:24.340
years but simply put when you look at demographics are there enough people in the country that can
00:29:29.700
vote in alignment with the values that your party is standing up for i think so but answering your
00:29:35.540
question, you know, I'm very realistic. I won't be prime minister after the next election,
00:29:42.740
but, you know, my goal is to be elected with a couple of our candidates and we can change
00:29:49.220
things if we are in Ottawa, when we'll be in Ottawa. Look at the Reform Party. They were
00:29:55.140
not in government, but they pushed the Chrétien and Martin government to balance the budget.
00:30:01.540
that was a principal official opposition. And they were able to change the debate in our society
00:30:08.980
without being in government. And look at the green. They have only two members of parliament,
00:30:15.380
but all the established political parties, like the liberal and the conservative,
00:30:20.180
have a huge green platform. So we can say that they want the debate. We need to be out there.
00:30:26.580
we need our ideas to be discussed and that's what i'm doing and you know if when we'll be elected
00:30:33.140
when i'll be elected we will be able to speak loudly and and pushing the debates uh toward
00:30:40.660
more freedom and a smaller government that's our goal at the end but i hope a day i'll be prime
00:30:45.780
minister but i'm realistic that it won't be after the next election so you just have to speak about
00:30:51.060
what you believe with passion and conviction and you have support look about the best example is
00:30:56.740
the cartel in supply management when i started to speak about that only five percent of the
00:31:01.940
population were on my side now if you do a survey maybe 35 45 percent of them will be on the side of
00:31:09.940
freedom so that's that's the way to do politics doing politics by conviction and utul you know
00:31:17.140
is just an opportunist politician like Trudeau and all the others.
00:31:22.740
Are there any circumstances under which you would be open to merging the PPC with the CPC?
00:31:29.960
And the reason I ask that is because obviously we had Derek Sloan and Lesley Lewis in the race,
00:31:35.040
and they seem to very much want to reach out to a lot of people that left for the PPC.
00:31:40.240
That was a part of the plan that they wanted to bring forward.
00:31:43.300
were they successful. And while they didn't win, they did have a significant chunk of the votes
00:31:48.820
and of the points. And we hope anyway, they're going to be included or incorporated in the party
00:31:53.360
moving forward. And I guess that's just making me think, would you ever even entertain a reunion
00:31:58.660
of these parties similar to the 2003 merger between the PC and the Alliance? No, no. First
00:32:05.400
of all, you know, I had 49% of the votes. I had the support of the members of the Conservative
00:32:12.160
party at the last leadership run. I didn't win, and that's okay. You know, I respect the democracy.
00:32:19.800
I didn't have the support of a lot of caucus members at that time. I think I had only five
00:32:24.600
MPs on 99 MPs that supported me as the candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party of
00:32:31.580
Canada. But look at the score that they had. It's less than 49%. With 49% of the votes,
00:32:39.940
i was not able to influence the establishment of the conservative party at that time that's why i
00:32:45.860
left the party that was i said this party is just there to be in government and they they don't have
00:32:51.460
any uh philosophy or principles and they they don't want to do have the real debates about the
00:32:58.420
challenges that we're having in this country so i left i said the party is morally and intellectually
00:33:03.860
corrupt and i still believe that so what i'm telling to leslie and derek they will be they
00:33:10.900
will fight inside the party for their ideas to be adopted but i doubt because o'too his goal is to be
00:33:18.260
in government and to be in government he will need to have more support downtown toronto downtown
00:33:22.820
montreal downtown vancouver and he he has to be a central uh left political party and that's that's
00:33:30.100
his goal. So these people will be disappointed. So my offer to them today and to their supporters
00:33:35.860
is to come with us. We won't do any compromise. We are the real conservative principle
00:33:43.200
alternative to the old establishment politicians. When you look at your decision to leave when you
00:33:52.980
did, a lot of people have put forward the thought that if you hung around, if you stuck around and
00:33:58.160
and ran in the 2019 election as a conservative MP you would be an MP right now but also you would
00:34:04.400
probably be the leader of the conservative party right now once Andrew Scheer had stepped down you
00:34:09.360
would have been a very clear front runner do you think that's true no I don't think so because
00:34:15.360
first of all you know remember on 99 MP I had only five MPs who supported me at that time
00:34:22.800
including myself. So, you know, winning the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada,
00:34:31.340
it would have been very difficult for me to put forward our ideas because I didn't have the
00:34:37.400
support of the caucus. And look what happened to Stockwell Day when he was the leader of the
00:34:45.580
Canadian Alliance. He didn't have the support of his caucus. So my answer to that is no, I took
00:34:51.560
the right decision at that time, and I'm very happy. We're building something, like you said
00:34:55.900
in the beginning. It took 20 years and six elections for the Green Party to have more
00:35:00.160
than 1.6% of the votes. We are the only party that didn't have any deficit at the end of
00:35:06.900
the last campaign. We have a surplus in bank. We are raising money. People like our ideas.
00:35:12.680
And I will travel across the country to meet our people and rebuild the party to be ready
00:35:17.400
for the next election we'll have 338 candidates in every riding at the next election so we will
00:35:25.880
be there and we will be able to elect a couple of our candidates and that's the way to change
00:35:31.880
politics in canada i tried inside the conservative party of canada for a long time and i was not
00:35:38.600
successful because their philosophy is not is not a real conservative philosophy you know
00:35:45.480
They want to tell you what you want to hear without challenging the statu quo.
00:35:51.080
They're afraid to start challenging the statu quo.
00:35:53.860
So that's not my way of doing politics, and I think we have a great future.
00:36:00.440
Yes, I won't be prime minister after the next election, but I hope I'll be prime minister a day.
00:36:06.960
One of the things that I've noticed about the work that you've been doing after the election,
00:36:13.440
I know the PPC is starting Campus Club, so doing a lot of things to really shift the cultural discussion out in the real world, not necessarily in the political process.
00:36:23.560
And I'm wondering if you think that is almost more important right now, to start selling these values in the media, in alternative media, out in the world, and then hope that downstream of that, people will start to vote along with those values.
00:36:38.200
absolutely andrew you're right what we will say at the next election will ask people to vote for
00:36:44.600
what they believe in not to vote against something to vote for their values and that's why we need to
00:36:50.360
be out there that's why you know i wanted to start the tour across the country in february but
00:36:56.200
because of kobe 19 i was not able to do that and i will start that this fall but we use social media
00:37:03.080
i'm very pleased that i have this opportunity to do an interview with you uh i did a press
00:37:07.800
conference in ottawa monday i think it was well covered by the traditional mainstream media and
00:37:14.120
i need to travel across the country and in the campuses also you're right to speak about freedom
00:37:19.720
to speak about you know in this society you need to debate ideas and we don't debate ideas anymore
00:37:25.800
um and so we have to start and i'll start doing that again with the young people in university
00:37:34.760
campuses and before chamber of commerce i will do some some speeches in from chamber of commerce
00:37:42.120
across the country so that's the goal we need to be our biggest challenge andrew is about maybe
00:37:48.680
80 percent of the population don't know that we exist when they know that we exist and and they're
00:37:54.280
listening to our ideas you know we are fighting for the western civilization values we are fighting
00:37:59.640
for fewer immigrants we are fighting for uh keeping our identity we are fighting for putting
00:38:05.560
canada first and all that it is not a slogan it is not a buzzword it is our reality i ask people
00:38:13.400
to go and see on our platform at people's party of canada.ca they'll be able to read that we're
00:38:18.840
the only party who said we need to have a moratorium on immigration right now because the
00:38:23.560
official unemployment rate, it's about 13%. But you and I know that the real unemployment rate,
00:38:29.640
it must be about 18%. So it's not time to have 350,000 newcomers every year when you have an
00:38:37.560
unemployment rate so high like that. We are asking for a moratorium. What was the position on the
00:38:43.720
RNO2 on that? The statu quo. The statu quo on immigration, the statu quo on the equalization
00:38:51.320
formula the statu quo on pipelines he doesn't want to use the constitution to impose and i'm
00:38:57.560
using the word impose to impose the pipelines on provinces that don't want a pipeline that's
00:39:04.520
important it's under the federal jurisdiction he's not talking about that with with erin utul it
00:39:10.840
would be the same thing like andrew shea with a new face and they won't have the courage to speak
00:39:15.800
about that. And the Western alienation will be worse than it is right now. So I think we have
00:39:21.680
a great future and, you know, I'm looking forward for that. Going into the 2019 election, you had
00:39:28.960
momentum. The party was new. No one knew what it was going to become. You had just been a sitting
00:39:34.020
member of parliament. Going into the next election, whenever it is, how do you build on what you did
00:39:39.880
in 2019 and not just kind of dissipate basically because that was when you had the momentum and
00:39:46.380
that was when a lot of people were really interested in wondering what the first
00:39:50.440
result was going to be how do you build going forward but you know we must admit that the
00:39:56.300
result my personal result of the election I wasn't elected with 28 percent of the vote
00:40:01.840
I was disappointed and a lot of our supporters also but you know it's part of the political life
00:40:12.720
Now we are about 4% in the pool and the Green Party is at 6%.
00:40:17.120
So we just need to be out there and speak about what we believe.
00:40:32.980
If you don't have any money, you won't be able to do advertising
00:40:37.680
So that's very encouraging that our people are still donated to us and they're very generous.
00:40:44.240
So that being said, the same momentum right now, you know, it's not there.
00:40:54.260
But early before the election, and I think in a couple of months, people will look at politics a little bit closer, right?
00:41:03.760
That's why, you know, our challenge is to be out there, speak to social media and traditional media.
00:41:10.360
That's why I started the Max Bernier Show on the YouTube channel.
00:41:14.360
It's a YouTube People's Party of Canada slash official YouTube channel.
00:41:19.000
I'm doing some interviews, but also I'm doing I'm very active and speaking about what is it, what is important for this country.
00:41:34.980
Maxime Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada.
00:41:43.080
and all of you who have tuned in to today's show.