Juno News - Did the Liberals RIG the leadership vote？

00:00:00.000 I'm pleased to be joined for most of the show today by our friend Chris Simms.

00:00:07.640 Chris is the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:00:11.460 Hi, Chris. Thanks so much for joining us today.

00:00:13.600 Good morning, Candice. Thanks for having me.

00:00:15.460 Well, I want to just take a minute to plug a new piece of work that we have done over at Juno News.

00:00:21.280 So if we head on over to Juno News, you will see that we have done a deep dive.

00:00:24.880 We've done our own bit of investigative journalism into the new Prime Minister, Mark Carney.

00:00:31.100 We have a clip of that documentary that I would like to play for you now.

00:00:36.780 How well do we know Canada's new Prime Minister, Mark Carney?

00:00:40.660 Pretty well, right?

00:00:41.740 He's the high-profile former governor of the Bank of Canada,

00:00:44.680 who then jet-set it across the pond to become the first-ever Canadian-born governor of the Bank of England.

00:00:51.060 He's a mainstay in global power circles,

00:00:53.400 serving the leadership role in the World Economic Forum,

00:00:56.120 acting as the Special Envoy for Climate Change and Finance at the United Nations,

00:01:00.940 sitting on the board of a number of non-profits promoting the net-zero approach and the urgent need for climate change,

00:01:07.700 and he's a wealthy and successful banker.

00:01:10.200 Until recently, he was the chairman of one of Canada's largest companies, Brookfield Asset Management,

00:01:15.500 which describes itself as a leading global investment firm with over $1 trillion in assets under management.

00:01:23.400 So, very excited to be releasing that.

00:01:26.120 We went through many of the claims that Mark Carney has made that he has been contradicted on.

00:01:30.940 And frankly, Chris, we did the job that the legacy media refuses to do, which is just dig into it.

00:01:37.120 Dig into the claims.

00:01:38.120 Try to figure out what the truth is when it comes to the things that we're told about Mark Carney.

00:01:43.580 And we've been told so many things that have just turned out not to be true.

00:01:46.860 So, we spent a bunch of time and effort putting that together.

00:01:50.060 And if you'd like to see the entire documentary, please head on over to JunoNews.com.

00:01:54.220 It is available at this point exclusively to our subscribers.

00:01:58.300 And we think it's incredibly important that Canadians get this message.

00:02:03.180 So, as everybody saw on Sunday night, Mark Carney was selected as leader of the Liberal Party,

00:02:08.460 which means that he will succeed Justin Trudeau and become our next Prime Minister.

00:02:14.300 We still don't even know when he's going to be signed in.

00:02:16.780 So, at this point, he is just the Prime Minister-designate.

00:02:20.540 But I want to talk a little bit about that leadership vote on Sunday night, Chris,

00:02:25.580 because there were a couple of things that just doesn't really add up to me when it comes to what happened.

00:02:32.300 And so, first, I want to point, let's just do a comparison between the Liberals and the Conservatives.

00:02:36.940 So, first thing, we were told that the convention that the Liberals held on Sunday evening in Ottawa

00:02:45.660 had fewer than 2,000 people in attendance.

00:02:49.020 Compare that to Pierre Polyev, who did a rally in London, Ontario, a much smaller city.

00:02:54.300 And this is just a rally.

00:02:55.660 And there were an estimated 2,500 attendees.

00:02:59.260 This is according to Juneau News.

00:03:01.500 And so, just even the idea that they are electing, selecting a new leader for the Liberal Party,

00:03:08.540 and there are a few people that just go to, like, your run-of-the-mill Pierre Polyev rally

00:03:15.500 that's not even during a campaign.

00:03:17.340 You know, you had two former Prime Ministers in attendance in Ottawa,

00:03:21.420 and they couldn't even pull out a crowd of more than 2,000 people.

00:03:25.020 And then, when it comes to the number of people who voted.

00:03:27.420 So, we had been told that there were 400,000 registered Liberals that were going to be voting in this race.

00:03:34.780 And remember that, in order to be a Liberal member, you don't have to pay any money.

00:03:39.100 Unlike in the Conservative Party, you do have to pay.

00:03:41.500 For the Liberals, you don't even have to be a citizen of Canada, which, to me, is just so outrageous.

00:03:45.260 And you can, they open membership to anybody over the age of 14.

00:03:49.900 So, you could have a 14-year-old who is a foreign national and not a Canadian,

00:03:55.100 who didn't pay any money, has nothing invested, and you could go ahead and you could vote.

00:03:59.740 So, we were told that was 400,000.

00:04:01.820 And yet, the party said that 151,000 people voted in the race.

00:04:07.500 Interestingly, they said that 163,000 people successfully went through the authentication process.

00:04:15.660 So, out of 400,000, only 163, it seems, could be confirmed to be real people.

00:04:22.780 And of those, only 151% voted.

00:04:25.980 So, the Liberals are running around today saying that 93% of their party voted in this race.

00:04:32.620 But only if you take that smaller number.

00:04:35.180 And 163,000 people, I mean, that seems kind of like a lot.

00:04:39.900 But in the world of politics, I mean, that is significantly smaller than the Conservative Party.

00:04:45.660 The Conservative Party had 417,000 people vote in their leadership race.

00:04:51.100 I mean, 160,000 people, that's fewer than the number of people who receive emails from me,

00:04:56.860 like on my email list.

00:04:57.740 And I'm sure it's the same with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:05:00.780 Not a very large percentage of Canadians.

00:05:03.260 And so we're told, sure, Mark Carney got 80, 85%, I believe, of the vote.

00:05:07.980 But again, that's of that smaller number.

00:05:11.900 This isn't any kind of a resounding mandate from Canadians.

00:05:16.700 And it raises so many questions, Chris, about the authenticity or how secure this process is.

00:05:23.980 If 400,000 people were on the list and only 150,000 of them actually voted, what happened to the others?

00:05:31.100 And why weren't their votes counted?

00:05:32.460 What do you make of all this?

00:05:33.500 Well, it's a great question, Candice.

00:05:35.740 And I saw some of the voter breakdowns.

00:05:37.820 I'll get to that in a second on regionalism and where they were voting from.

00:05:41.420 I thought that was pretty interesting.

00:05:43.260 But you're right.

00:05:43.900 I did find it a really small number of people.

00:05:46.220 Like, for example, the Taxpayers Federation, when we send out a survey or something to our supporters,

00:05:50.780 it goes to around 250,000 people.

00:05:53.900 And that's just one advocacy group.

00:05:56.220 So that's not including Fraser Institute or any other group.

00:05:59.180 That's just the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:06:01.500 And so to have that small group of Canadians now selected the prime minister, prime minister

00:06:07.580 designate, he hasn't been sworn in yet, is really quite eye opening.

00:06:11.260 I found it interesting on where these folks apparently were voting from.

00:06:16.620 And so apparently they were voting largely from, say, downtown Toronto, downtown Ottawa,

00:06:23.660 really kind of hyper urban places, but not the more what you would call kind of the working class,

00:06:30.140 middle income, newer Canadian areas.

00:06:34.140 So, for example, my uncle actually works in London as a security guard near the soup kitchen there,

00:06:40.060 which unfortunately, by the way, is getting flooded with people.

00:06:43.820 Record numbers of people are going to the food bank in the soup kitchen there.

00:06:46.700 He sees it there every day.

00:06:48.060 Lots of people struggling.

00:06:49.500 Down the street is where that Pierre Poly of Raleigh was being held.

00:06:53.180 So I found that very interesting that I was hearing numbers everywhere between 2,500

00:06:57.580 and 3,000 people at the Pierre Poly of Raleigh, yet in downtown Ottawa, where they're selecting

00:07:03.340 a new prime minister of Canada, kind of a big deal for that.

00:07:06.940 Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, if that's your party,

00:07:10.140 that seems like a pretty big deal.

00:07:11.820 And they were able to only pull in a smaller crowd.

00:07:14.220 And it was a smaller crowd, even apparently, according to the CBC, saying this is a smaller crowd.

00:07:20.220 So I found it really telling that the issues of affordability and people just being broke,

00:07:27.660 broke, mattered more if you take a look at the tea leaves and the data sets

00:07:32.700 than the glitz and glamour that was going on in Ottawa.

00:07:36.060 Well, it's just it's so remarkable.

00:07:37.900 You know, you think that the Liberal Party, they have been in power for the last nine years.

00:07:43.100 Like you said, they're selecting their new prime minister.

00:07:45.260 They had Jean Chrétien. They had Justin Trudeau. They had kind of like a stellar lineup if you're

00:07:50.540 a Liberal and you're excited. Like imagine if there was an event that had Stephen Harper speaking,

00:07:55.820 that had Pierre Poly of Raleigh speaking, like had all the big players in the conservative movement.

00:08:01.900 I'm telling you, there'd be tens of thousands of people in attendance for that.

00:08:06.460 And again, I just find it really worrying and concerning that so many people who had signed up

00:08:12.460 to vote in the Liberal leadership race didn't get to vote. And I'll tell you, Chris, like my inbox was

00:08:17.660 filled with concerned Liberals who had been turned away. I received many of these sort of tips of

00:08:23.740 people who had registered, who are Liberals, who wanted to vote, and some kind of trivial discrepancy

00:08:31.020 meant that they were blocked. Like, you know, an example would be like, if you go by Dan,

00:08:36.620 but your name's Daniel. And so, you know, when you registered, you wrote Dan, but then the idea that you

00:08:41.820 tried to produce said, Daniel, and they just wouldn't let you vote. And, you know, when that

00:08:46.460 happens on scale, I mean, we had the Globe and Mail pointing out that only 40% of the registered

00:08:54.300 Liberals voted, which means that 60% were rejected. I mean, how can you walk around and say that Mark

00:09:01.340 Carney has this huge mandate, even from within the Liberal Party, when 60% of the people who wanted to vote

00:09:09.260 were somehow found to be illegitimate and not able to vote. To me, that is so suspicious. And

00:09:16.620 it's so alarming. I hope that someone is able to uncover we're talking to we're talking about a

00:09:22.300 whistleblower later in the show, who has done some undercover journalism to expose flaws in the Ontario

00:09:28.220 voting system. But I would really like to see what is happening with the Liberals because that is a huge

00:09:34.620 percentage of people who were unable to vote. And again, just for context, because we keep hearing

00:09:39.820 that 85% of Liberals voted for Mark Carney and only 62% of Conservatives voted for Pierre Polyev back in

00:09:45.980 2022, and he became leader. And yet everybody said that Pierre Polyev had like a resounding victory.

00:09:51.660 But if you just look at the numbers, 132,000 people voted for Mark Carney, whereas 295,000

00:10:01.580 voted for Pierre Polyev. And so more Canadians, twice as many Canadians, in fact, cast their vote

00:10:11.020 in the in a leadership race for Pierre Polyev. And, you know, I have a hard time really believing

00:10:18.140 that Mark Carney has any kind of a mandate. I wanted to stay with the Sunday night event, because there

00:10:23.260 was a couple of things that were really kind of resounding to me. One of it was that Mark Carney

00:10:30.220 pledged that he would get rid of the capital gains tax and get rid of the carbon tax. So I imagine

00:10:34.460 you folks over the Canadian Tax Affairs Federation were giving yourselves a little pat on the back

00:10:38.460 because you were the ones that were really leading the campaign against these disastrous taxes. And so

00:10:43.820 the fact that both parties kind of are in agreement about that is good. One thing that I really noted

00:10:48.780 was that when Mark Carney announced to the Liberal audience that he was getting rid of carbon tax,

00:10:53.660 the place like erupted in cheers. And it just seems so ironic to me that like the Liberals,

00:10:58.860 who for the last 10 years have been pushing this green agenda, saying that the planet is on fire,

00:11:04.220 and that we have to tax ourselves and shut down our industry in order to save the planet. And,

00:11:08.940 you know, the key policy of Prime Minister Trudeau had been this carbon tax, which was also championed

00:11:14.940 and demanded for by Mark Carney in the background. And here you had the entire Liberal Convention

00:11:20.540 applauding, like erupting in cheers over the fact that they were getting rid of it. So,

00:11:25.340 well, from a taxpayer's perspective, what do you think of all that? So many points there. Very briefly,

00:11:29.660 just touching back on the issue between mandates. I will point out that Pierre Polyev has been a

00:11:36.620 Member of Parliament since he was in his early to mid 20s. And he was then the opposition leader. However,

00:11:43.420 with Mark Carney, this is the first time that someone with zero Parliament Hill experience, so has not been a

00:11:50.300 Member of Parliament, has not been a Senator, has not been a Cabinet Minister, is now going to be

00:11:55.500 catapulted directly, do not pass go, do not pass, you know, collect $200, all the way into the seat of

00:12:01.500 the PMO. So yes, John Turner had taken a turn out of Parliament, and then he was put back in. There are

00:12:06.780 a few earlier Prime Ministers that kind of fall under that. But they had been Senators before, or they had

00:12:12.060 been Cabinet Ministers before, or even Prime Ministers previously, before they became Prime Minister again.

00:12:17.100 This is the first time that somebody, you know, off the street, so to speak, has is now becoming

00:12:22.780 Prime Minister. And so I think that is why there's more scrutiny from across the board. It's been

00:12:28.220 mainstream media and independent media going, this is pretty interesting. So I think it's the severity,

00:12:33.500 the level of power that is giving more scrutiny to this mandate, whether or not he has one.

00:12:39.020 To the issue of the carbon tax, we were happy to hear Mark Carney say he's going to scrap the carbon tax,

00:12:46.300 but he said that, this is the catch. He said that in a leak through his leadership team early on,

00:12:53.660 and that soaked up all the headlines. It was like that ShamWow commercial with the blanket. It just

00:12:58.300 sucked up all the headlines. Mark Carney, ding dong, the witch is dead, they're getting rid of the carbon 0.95

00:13:02.540 tax. But then the devil's in the details. Then he made his announcement in Halifax, and said he's going

00:13:08.140 to immediately remove the consumer carbon tax. So what does that mean? And then later on in Kelowna,

00:13:14.700 he changed it again. And he said he's not going to axe the tax. The crowd laughed at that idea,

00:13:20.060 which really got my dander up, Candace. And then he said he's going to change the carbon tax. So face

00:13:26.540 value, at least the one thing Carney should do right now, like today, is tell the cabinet ministers,

00:13:32.860 hey, put in a request through, you know, order in council, get rid of the carbon tax now. And they can

00:13:39.020 do that without parliament sitting. They can change the amount collected by the carbon tax in their

00:13:43.980 orders to zero. So that's the very least he can do now. Because right now Canadians are still paying

00:13:50.220 this thing. And it's set to go up April 1st. To give you an idea, the average, not a huge mansion

00:13:56.060 with an indoor swimming pool and three big personal cars, the way Trudeau used to say, the average Alberta

00:14:01.340 household is going to be out 440 bucks this year, just for heating their home. So Carney should do the

00:14:08.220 right thing today, Candace, and make that carbon tax rate go down to zero. That's for now. But you're

00:14:15.420 right. He's been in the background pushing for carbon taxes, basically his entire professional life,

00:14:21.740 his entire political career, like it's all through this book. I know that your folks there at Juneau and

00:14:27.260 True North did a lot of work on this. I know Cosman did a big deep dive on this. It's the keystone

00:14:33.180 to his worldview. Carbon taxes are a keystone to Mark Carney's worldview. So for him to turn away from

00:14:40.300 it is like a vegan suddenly eating steak. That is a big deal. So we're going to take him at his word

00:14:46.620 right now and push him to get rid of the consumer carbon tax. So at least it's off of everybody's heat

00:14:51.660 bills and off the price at the pump between now and April 1st. Then we're going to see what's going to

00:14:56.780 happen during the election. Well, I would say it's not quite like a vegan eating steak because he

00:15:01.660 hasn't actually eaten it yet. It's like a vegan ordering steak and whether or not they'll actually

00:15:05.900 eat it because I mean, it's like, yeah, everything that he believes, everything that he's built his

00:15:11.420 career upon this whole net zero approach that has been devastating in the UK. And you now have UK

00:15:16.700 officials coming out saying, Canada, be careful with this guy. He was a disaster in the UK. Former

00:15:21.900 Prime Minister Liz Trust said that financial columnist Matthew Liu also had a column saying the

00:15:27.260 same thing. Yeah, he's going to get rid of the consumer facing one, but the devil's in the details.

00:15:33.100 And just the fact that the liberal audience was cheering over that, I think it's really just all

00:15:38.300 about crass politics because Mark Carney is just a continuation of Justin Trudeau. What we've seen is

00:15:46.460 kind of a remarkable bait and switch. Justin Trudeau, greatly unpopular, tanked in popularity,

00:15:53.020 has done so much damage to the Canadian economy, to Canadian unity, to our sense of country,

00:15:57.980 to our safety, just the list goes on and on. He's unpopular. So he taps his economic advisor

00:16:05.100 to come out and take over. And he admits so much. So Mark Carney was in Parliament yesterday,

00:16:11.020 talking to the reporters for the first time. He said that he just finished a meeting with

00:16:15.180 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and that the transition will be seamless and quick. Of

00:16:19.100 course it is, because they have the same views, they have the same position, they have the same

00:16:22.780 staff, right? It's literally just, it's just a switch. Let's play Mark Carney in his own words,

00:16:27.500 admitting all of this. I just had a long meeting with the Prime Minister. We discussed the most

00:16:33.660 important issues for our country, obviously, including Canada and US relations, issues of national

00:16:40.300 security. And yes, the transition between the Prime Minister and myself, that transition will be

00:16:48.700 seamless. And it will be quick. He was even kind of smirking about that, like, of course,

00:16:55.980 it'll be quick and seamless, because it's the same. It's the same thing. Yes. What do you think?

00:17:01.500 Yes. So parties have not changed. Power hasn't really changed. This is just a transition from one party

00:17:08.300 leader within the Liberals to the other party leader. I can't help but kind of smile, because

00:17:13.260 I've worked on Parliament Hill. I worked there for, like, probably around 20 years, give or take.

00:17:18.140 And to see Mark Carney there standing in the foyer, I'm wondering if Dominic LeBlanc was his MP buddy that

00:17:24.220 helped him through security and got the wand and everything, just like somebody would if you're

00:17:28.460 taking a tour of the building. Because again, he is not a member of Parliament. But in this, you know,

00:17:34.220 we have an interesting system in the Westminster system. Technically, you don't need to be a member

00:17:39.180 of Parliament to be a member of Cabinet. And the Prime Minister is the first Cabinet Minister chosen

00:17:46.780 by and accepted by the Crown. So this is up to King Charles III and through his representative,

00:17:53.260 Mary Simon, the Governor General, to then swear him in to Cabinet and have him be the Prime Minister.

00:17:59.660 I found it really interesting that there's this strange kind of Jekyll and Hyde approach to him

00:18:05.100 being changey and new. Meanwhile, everybody who's followed politics knows that he's been right in

00:18:12.140 there advising these folks. In fact, folks might remember, just before this dust-up started,

00:18:17.980 when Chrystia Freeland, the narrative goes, says she didn't want to run a 60-something billion dollar 0.99

00:18:24.780 deficit. She only wanted to run a 40-billion dollar deficit. Who was going to replace her? Mark Carney.

00:18:32.540 Like, everybody on the Hill knew that he was going to be the person to replace her as Finance Minister

00:18:37.740 once outgoing Trudeau Prime Minister was getting rid of her. So to have it now being played as if he's

00:18:44.300 the new guy but he's also the old guy, it's kind of mind-bending. What really gets me is, again,

00:18:50.140 he's on the record so many times, Candace. This wasn't just a one-off comment that somebody said

00:18:54.940 at a party or a bar or something. He has written literally a book on this stuff. He got his undergrad

00:19:02.620 at Harvard. He got his PhD at Oxford. He takes a global view to this stuff. On the front of his book,

00:19:09.340 it's literally the planet with scaffolding around it. He's going to fix the whole of the Earth for us.

00:19:15.420 Candace. What got me, Candace, is that throughout this book, he talks about carbon taxes. He talks

00:19:21.420 about things like power plants and our hot water tanks being stranded assets in the future because

00:19:29.340 he wants to switch it all over to wind and solar. He talks about leaving more than 80% of oil and gas

00:19:35.980 in the ground. This is not something I'm digging up from him from the 80s. He just published this thing

00:19:41.340 just after the lockdowns. I'm really hoping that some of those journalists who are there standing

00:19:47.260 in front of him in the parliamentary press gallery stick a mic in his face and get him to answer these

00:19:52.220 questions. The entire thing is just so staged that it almost feels like we're living out an Orwell novel

00:19:59.660 because we were told on January 6th that Justin Trudeau was resigning because of internal conflicts in

00:20:05.020 the party and that he just couldn't manage being prime minister with these fractures. Presumably

00:20:10.540 talking about Chrystia Freeland, exactly what you were saying, that he was trying to kick her out.

00:20:14.140 She said it in interviews that he said, come deliver the fall economic update and then I'm

00:20:19.580 going to fire you the next day and I'm going to replace you with Mark Carney. Right? And she said,

00:20:23.020 I'm not going to do that. Not great people management. That's just not good people management.

00:20:25.820 Yeah. I'm going to pull the plug. And it's funny that you said, fiscal restraint in this

00:20:29.740 government is I'm only willing to do $40 billion in deficits, not 60. 60 is too far, but 40. I'm okay

00:20:36.060 with that. And then they turn around and they say, oh, look, 85% of our members support Mark Carney,

00:20:41.740 pay no attention to the 60% that mysteriously vanished and didn't get a chance to vote.

00:20:46.220 And then to your point that this is just the same government, Mark Carney announced yesterday they

00:20:50.220 had appointed Marco Mendicino as his chief of staff. Of course, Marco Mendicino was Justin Trudeau's

00:20:56.540 immigration minister among many other positions that he held. So same crew, same people, same

00:21:03.420 insiders. I want to go to this photo because I mentioned this on our live stream the other night

00:21:08.940 that if you would ask me at any point in the last nine years, how I would be feeling and what I would

00:21:13.020 be saying the night that Justin Trudeau got removed from office, like his last day at Prime Minister,

00:21:17.740 I would have assumed that I would be in good spirits and optimistic and happy about the future of

00:21:21.500 Canada. And yet I feel the exact opposite. I feel like filled with dread and just worrying about the

00:21:27.420 future of our country. Justin Trudeau on his way out is sort of making a mockery of all Canadians as

00:21:32.860 he tends to do. This is a great photo that you actually sent to me that was taken by a rotors

00:21:37.500 photographer of Justin Trudeau carrying a chair, his own chair, out of the House of Commons. I guess this is

00:21:44.540 one of the traditions of our parliamentary system or our Westminster democracy. And I don't know if we can

00:21:49.740 zoom in on that face, Sean, but Justin Trudeau, always the entertainer, always the jester,

00:21:57.340 you know, elect a clown, get a circus, sticking his tongue out. What do you make of this as the image

00:22:07.260 of Canada's democracy in our Westminster system? Well, it's truly an iconic photo and kudos to Carlos

00:22:13.980 Osorio, who snapped that photo, like you said, for Reuters. Just even if I remove, you know, my feelings

00:22:20.540 about it. If you look at it again, the photographer uses these tiny little windows up in the upstairs

00:22:28.300 hallway looking down into the House of Commons. And the photographer uses the window frame to frame.

00:22:34.380 Put the photo back up on the screen here. It's really quite something if you look at it. Like if we

00:22:38.940 still had his look at this, if we still had printed history books or encyclopedias, this would be in

00:22:44.540 one of them. Because you look at the artistry where the photographer is using the natural window frame,

00:22:50.220 his foot is still in the air. So it's an action shot. Like it's just an outstanding photo. Now,

00:22:56.060 if you look at the subject matter, you're right, I was doing a little contest on my own social media

00:23:00.700 saying what should we name this of the budget will balance itself or I doubled the national debt.

00:23:06.780 I thought maybe the Miley Cyrus song, I came in like a wrecking ball might be more suitable because

00:23:12.700 his tongue is hanging out. And this is just fiscal issues. Again, like I'm not exaggerating. That man's

00:23:18.300 government did double the national debt. That is the same guy who kept on cranking up carbon taxes on us.

00:23:25.660 And when reporters dared ask him about it, he simply said, well, the only people that really feel the cost of

00:23:31.980 the carbon tax Candace are people in gigantic mansions with an indoor swimming pool and three

00:23:37.340 big personal cars. You could not have said, let them eat cake louder. And so this guy's record is a

00:23:44.140 disaster, an absolute fiscal dumpster fire. And I know other issues are with that gentleman and that

00:23:51.660 there's other people that are upset with him about other issues, but from a fiscal standpoint, just an

00:23:56.300 absolute disaster. And so, yeah, that, that photo tells a thousand words, doesn't it? I want to move

00:24:02.780 on to talk about the latest with regards to our American neighbors. And I thought a good segue to

00:24:08.300 this was to go back to Sunday night and see a clip of our former prime minister, Jean Chrétien, who I

00:24:13.820 have a lot of time for these days. I think that he's much more sensible than the run of the mill liberal,

00:24:18.860 but I thought this joke was absolutely just such poor taste and really again, pouring gasoline on the fire.

00:24:24.460 So here is a clip of former prime minister, Jean Chrétien, joking about burning down the White

00:24:30.140 House. Let's play that clip. During the war of 1812, Americans through came to what is known

00:24:39.420 Canada on a mission of conquest. They were defeated by Colonel de Salabelle in what is now Quebec

00:24:48.620 and by leaders like the great indigenous chief Tecumseh. And I don't know, apparently some burned the

00:24:56.940 White House at that time. But I'm told to do it.

00:25:04.620 But I'm told to do it. So some say someone burned the White House back then. Sure, that is true. During 1.00

00:25:11.500 the war of 1812, that happens as a historical fact. In fact, the American national anthem is written by

00:25:16.620 someone who observed this. And that is what he's talking about. The rockets, red glare bombs bursting

00:25:20.940 in air. That was the British, the Canadians engaging in a war. Is that really the best thing to mention and

00:25:28.780 to joke about? Again, you could hear the auditorium burst in applause when he said that we burned the

00:25:33.340 White House down and then kind of saying, you know, they told me to do it, like told you to do it,

00:25:37.980 to say it or told you to do it again, like burn the White House down again. You know, part of it is a

00:25:42.860 language barrier, perhaps. But, you know, given the backdrop of President Trump and the back and forth

00:25:48.460 that we're having, we're still in the middle of a tit for tat with war. I want with a trade war. I want to

00:25:54.140 just quickly, Chris, before I get your reaction, just the latest is that Premier Ford in Ontario

00:26:02.540 said that Ontario will slap the 25% levy on US-bound electricity. So he's going to go through with that,

00:26:08.380 even though we had heard that President Trump was pausing most of the tariffs due to the NAFTA or the

00:26:13.580 USMCA agreement. And in response, President Trump on Monday was quite angry about it. So I want to read

00:26:20.380 a Truth Social post that he put up. He said, despite the fact that Canada is charging the US

00:26:26.380 from 250 to 390% tariffs on many of our fawn products, Ontario just announced a 25% surcharge

00:26:32.780 on electricity, of all things. And you're not even allowed to do that. Because our tariffs are

00:26:37.900 reciprocal, we'll just get it all back on April 2nd. Canada is a tariff abuser and always has been,

00:26:44.540 but the United States is not going to be subsidizing Canada any longer. We don't need your

00:26:49.900 cars, we don't need your lumber, we don't need your energy. And very soon you will find out Make

00:26:54.220 America Great Again with three exclamation points. So it seems to me that Doug Ford is just making

00:27:00.940 everything worse. And again, those clips of people like Jean Chrétien, they circulate, the Americans

00:27:06.940 see them, they know that Canadians are mocking them and joking about burning down their White House at

00:27:11.820 the convention where they're naming the new Prime Minister. I mean, it's not a good look. What do you

00:27:16.380 do you think it's not a great look? And years in radio and of listening to former Prime Minister

00:27:21.420 Chrétien, I think what he said was, I'm too old to do it, not told to do it. So maybe even a little

00:27:28.300 bit more gasoline dumped on the fire, like I'm too old to do it now. You guys can do it. Yeah.

00:27:34.460 So I'll just take off my CTF hat for a second here. In more of a radio host mode, I've interviewed,

00:27:41.740 like, probably 1000s of people from literally every place like a Prime Minister, and people

00:27:47.260 literally locked in prison. You really need to kind of deescalate a situation when they're trying to get

00:27:54.140 a point across, or you're trying to truly be heard, or have someone else feel they're being heard. So

00:27:59.740 usually the rule is deescalate, find common ground, and work towards a solution. Those three things work

00:28:08.140 well in most arguments. This just seems to be dumping more gas on it. And the sad thing is,

00:28:15.340 is that it's always the normal working people, Candace, that bear the brunt of this. There's

00:28:21.420 there's a famous picture of a chessboard where it shows pawns and knights and rooks all lying down,

00:28:27.020 bloodied on the battlefield of ideas or an actual battlefield, and the king and queen of both sets,

00:28:32.620 the black and the white, over on the side having dinner. Right? And it just always feels like it's

00:28:38.300 the average working person, the small business person, the beef farmer, that person, the oil,

00:28:43.820 the oil patch worker, that is going to get kicked over this sort of stuff. Now, as far as whether or

00:28:49.980 not to slap, you know, extra export tariffs on power, I don't know, I'm of two minds of that, because I

00:28:56.220 recently heard listening to our former colleague, Brian Lilly, talk about this, and he's our former

00:29:01.980 Sun News colleague, and he talked about this on some podcasts on Sunday, probably on yours as well,

00:29:07.340 where he pointed out that that's the only thing that really got a lot of attention

00:29:12.140 in the States of like, hey, I'm going to make your power costs more smarten up.

00:29:17.180 Is that wise? I don't know. It's a really great question. What I'm worried about is that if we do

00:29:22.940 reciprocal tit for tat tariffs, so to speak, all that is, is a tax on imports. It's just a tax.

00:29:30.140 It just means that we're tying our own shoelaces together and punching ourselves in the face before

00:29:35.180 we get into a fight with somebody who's much stronger and much bigger than us. And I'm really

00:29:39.580 worried that it's going to be oil, oil and gas workers here in Alberta, that it's eventually going

00:29:44.940 to be a farmer or producer across the prairie, that it's going to be that auto worker in Ontario,

00:29:50.540 that's going to be out of a job. And that's a real thing. That's just not a tally on a spreadsheet.

00:29:55.980 That is someone's home. That is someone's ability to buy food for their kids. And so I really am

00:30:01.660 hoping that some of these leaders kind of pull some of the lemon out of this and really work on

00:30:08.140 getting a deal. Like for example, Alberta Premier Daniel Smith has been down there pleading and doing

00:30:14.860 a charm offensive and really trying to engage with these folks, including US President Donald Trump.

00:30:19.260 She went to Mar-a-Lago. She's trying to deal directly with governors saying, hi, do you really

00:30:24.380 want 35 cents more per gallon for gasoline? Because that's what's going to happen. That's smart. And last

00:30:30.060 I heard, she's actually heading down to Florida. She's going to be speaking with the Daily Wire, Ben

00:30:35.100 Shapiro and the whole lot of them. That's good because Trump listens to that media. That's like going on

00:30:41.980 Fox News on a bit of steroids. So it's smart to get that message out there. I'm concerned though,

00:30:47.980 if they just keep heaping heated rhetoric on up here, that it's just going to make the bear angrier.

00:30:54.380 Well, to stick with Daniel Smith, I mean, it's interesting because Premier Doug Ford sort of

00:30:58.220 seems like a bull in a China shop. Like sometimes I see him going on Fox News and he's making a really 0.91

00:31:02.300 compelling case, say like, let's build a better relationship. He calls it Can-Am. Let's like

00:31:07.100 further integrate our markets and have more freedom. And that's great. That's good Ford. And then there's

00:31:11.420 the other side, which is like, okay, let's dump our chest and we're going to really make you

00:31:16.220 hurt Americans. And the reality is that they are a much bigger market. They can make us hurt a lot 0.95

00:31:21.180 more. And so to bring it back to Daniel Smith, we had Premier Ford yesterday at a press conference

00:31:27.340 calling on Premier Daniel Smith of Alberta to add an export tax on Alberta oil. So he wants

00:31:33.020 Daniel Smith and the province of Alberta to follow their path by taxing natural resources. Let's play that

00:31:39.100 clip. We have to remember the 4.3 million barrels of oil that's coming from Alberta. As Premier Smith

00:31:48.060 said on our comments, I think over the last couple of days, she has the trump card. Well,

00:31:53.180 a message to Premier Smith, one day, I think you might have to use that trump card and give approval for

00:32:01.100 an export tax. Because you want to talk about a trump card, that will instantly change the game.

00:32:10.460 Instantly change the game. Well, Smith, to her credit, basically instantly shot this down. So 1.00

00:32:15.980 writing on X and responding to Premier Ford, she said, let me be clear, Alberta will never agree to

00:32:21.740 such an absurd and self-destructive idea, among other things. Now, not only would it be self-destructive

00:32:28.780 for Alberta in an era where the federal government has done everything it can, Chris, to hit Alberta,

00:32:36.540 to prevent Alberta from reaching its true potential and landlocking its oil. But also,

00:32:44.380 Ontario gets its oil via a pipeline that goes through the United States. So just on its face,

00:32:50.540 this is so absurd for the Premier of Ontario to be telling the Premier of Alberta to put a tax on oil

00:32:56.220 when that is the oil that goes through the United States and back up through Line 9 up into Sarnia

00:33:02.140 and across Ontario. It's just so absurd. Good for Daniel Smith to knock that one down. What do you

00:33:07.420 think? Yeah. As an Albertan and as somebody who keeps an eye on how much money the energy sector

00:33:13.260 pulls in here, the oil patch pulls in here, when he says things like that, it makes my scalp crawl.

00:33:18.940 Like, no, no, you cannot do that. And it's almost, it's good to look at kind of the economy of scale

00:33:25.180 here and what we're talking about. So if Ford, for example, is trying to put some pressure on the

00:33:31.660 administration in the White House through, say, the auto sector, talking around that issue is smart

00:33:38.460 because we know that that auto sector between Michigan and Ontario is so integrated that a vehicle,

00:33:46.540 from start to finish with all of its components and parts might have crossed that Windsor Bridge like

00:33:52.860 15 times. It's just, it's basically the same organism, the auto sector back forth, back forth. So

00:34:01.100 Ford would be wise to try to hammer out, help hammer out a new deal with Trump using the auto sector

00:34:08.380 kind of as a vehicle, pardon my metaphor. So, but it's a smaller portion of the Ontario economy

00:34:16.380 than say the oil patch, oil and gas is here for Alberta. And exactly to your point, thanks to the

00:34:23.740 federal government dragging its feet and strangling our resource projects and our pipelines, Alberta

00:34:30.460 really has only one customer. Yes, we have one pipeline that goes out to the west coast, but we don't

00:34:36.220 have the international market access to be able to say, Oh, that's fine. We'll just sell elsewhere.

00:34:42.300 No, we've been told we can't do that for the past 10 years. And that is why we sell at a discount

00:34:48.540 down to the United States. Now, there are some intricacies there where there are some refineries,

00:34:53.340 especially in the Northern United States that have adapted to our form of oil sands, bitumen.

00:34:59.020 They would have to retool a bit if they were suddenly trying to find other markets. But frankly,

00:35:04.220 they get oil from other places too. It'd be easier for the Americans to decide to get oil

00:35:09.580 from other places too. If we started messing around heaven forbid with an export tax on our

00:35:15.420 energy. And so that's why you see Danielle Smith saying like hell will freeze over before that 1.00

00:35:21.100 happens. And that is definitely the smart thing for her to say. Chris Sims, thank you so much.

00:35:25.820 It's always a pleasure to have you on the show. Great to see you today. And thanks for your time.

00:35:28.860 Thanks, Candice. That was a clip from my daily show, The Candice Malcolm Show,

00:35:33.020 where we discuss news, politics, and culture from a uniquely Canadian and common sense perspective.

00:35:38.620 To catch full episodes, we record them and air them every day at 11 AM Eastern time.

00:35:43.340 Head on over to our website, junonews.com.

Juno News - March 11, 2025

Did the Liberals RIG the leadership vote？

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