Did the Liberals RIG the leadership vote？
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Summary
On today's show, Candice chats with Chris Simms, the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, about the new Prime Minister, Mark Carney. They discuss his background, why he was chosen as the new leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and why only 93% of the party voted in the leadership race.
Transcript
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I'm pleased to be joined for most of the show today by our friend Chris Simms.
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Chris is the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
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Hi, Chris. Thanks so much for joining us today.
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Well, I want to just take a minute to plug a new piece of work that we have done over at Juno News.
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So if we head on over to Juno News, you will see that we have done a deep dive.
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We've done our own bit of investigative journalism into the new Prime Minister, Mark Carney.
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We have a clip of that documentary that I would like to play for you now.
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How well do we know Canada's new Prime Minister, Mark Carney?
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He's the high-profile former governor of the Bank of Canada,
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who then jet-set it across the pond to become the first-ever Canadian-born governor of the Bank of England.
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serving the leadership role in the World Economic Forum,
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acting as the Special Envoy for Climate Change and Finance at the United Nations,
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sitting on the board of a number of non-profits promoting the net-zero approach and the urgent need for climate change,
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Until recently, he was the chairman of one of Canada's largest companies, Brookfield Asset Management,
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which describes itself as a leading global investment firm with over $1 trillion in assets under management.
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We went through many of the claims that Mark Carney has made that he has been contradicted on.
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And frankly, Chris, we did the job that the legacy media refuses to do, which is just dig into it.
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Try to figure out what the truth is when it comes to the things that we're told about Mark Carney.
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And we've been told so many things that have just turned out not to be true.
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So, we spent a bunch of time and effort putting that together.
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And if you'd like to see the entire documentary, please head on over to JunoNews.com.
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It is available at this point exclusively to our subscribers.
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And we think it's incredibly important that Canadians get this message.
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So, as everybody saw on Sunday night, Mark Carney was selected as leader of the Liberal Party,
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which means that he will succeed Justin Trudeau and become our next Prime Minister.
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We still don't even know when he's going to be signed in.
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So, at this point, he is just the Prime Minister-designate.
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But I want to talk a little bit about that leadership vote on Sunday night, Chris,
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because there were a couple of things that just doesn't really add up to me when it comes to what happened.
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And so, first, I want to point, let's just do a comparison between the Liberals and the Conservatives.
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So, first thing, we were told that the convention that the Liberals held on Sunday evening in Ottawa
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Compare that to Pierre Polyev, who did a rally in London, Ontario, a much smaller city.
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And so, just even the idea that they are electing, selecting a new leader for the Liberal Party,
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and there are a few people that just go to, like, your run-of-the-mill Pierre Polyev rally
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You know, you had two former Prime Ministers in attendance in Ottawa,
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and they couldn't even pull out a crowd of more than 2,000 people.
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And then, when it comes to the number of people who voted.
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So, we had been told that there were 400,000 registered Liberals that were going to be voting in this race.
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And remember that, in order to be a Liberal member, you don't have to pay any money.
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Unlike in the Conservative Party, you do have to pay.
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For the Liberals, you don't even have to be a citizen of Canada, which, to me, is just so outrageous.
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And you can, they open membership to anybody over the age of 14.
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So, you could have a 14-year-old who is a foreign national and not a Canadian,
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who didn't pay any money, has nothing invested, and you could go ahead and you could vote.
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And yet, the party said that 151,000 people voted in the race.
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Interestingly, they said that 163,000 people successfully went through the authentication process.
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So, out of 400,000, only 163, it seems, could be confirmed to be real people.
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So, the Liberals are running around today saying that 93% of their party voted in this race.
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And 163,000 people, I mean, that seems kind of like a lot.
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But in the world of politics, I mean, that is significantly smaller than the Conservative Party.
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The Conservative Party had 417,000 people vote in their leadership race.
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I mean, 160,000 people, that's fewer than the number of people who receive emails from me,
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And I'm sure it's the same with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
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And so we're told, sure, Mark Carney got 80, 85%, I believe, of the vote.
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This isn't any kind of a resounding mandate from Canadians.
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And it raises so many questions, Chris, about the authenticity or how secure this process is.
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If 400,000 people were on the list and only 150,000 of them actually voted, what happened to the others?
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I'll get to that in a second on regionalism and where they were voting from.
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Like, for example, the Taxpayers Federation, when we send out a survey or something to our supporters,
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So that's not including Fraser Institute or any other group.
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And so to have that small group of Canadians now selected the prime minister, prime minister
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designate, he hasn't been sworn in yet, is really quite eye opening.
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I found it interesting on where these folks apparently were voting from.
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And so apparently they were voting largely from, say, downtown Toronto, downtown Ottawa,
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really kind of hyper urban places, but not the more what you would call kind of the working class,
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So, for example, my uncle actually works in London as a security guard near the soup kitchen there,
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which unfortunately, by the way, is getting flooded with people.
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Record numbers of people are going to the food bank in the soup kitchen there.
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Down the street is where that Pierre Poly of Raleigh was being held.
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So I found that very interesting that I was hearing numbers everywhere between 2,500
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and 3,000 people at the Pierre Poly of Raleigh, yet in downtown Ottawa, where they're selecting
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a new prime minister of Canada, kind of a big deal for that.
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Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, if that's your party,
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And they were able to only pull in a smaller crowd.
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And it was a smaller crowd, even apparently, according to the CBC, saying this is a smaller crowd.
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So I found it really telling that the issues of affordability and people just being broke,
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broke, mattered more if you take a look at the tea leaves and the data sets
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than the glitz and glamour that was going on in Ottawa.
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You know, you think that the Liberal Party, they have been in power for the last nine years.
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Like you said, they're selecting their new prime minister.
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They had Jean Chrétien. They had Justin Trudeau. They had kind of like a stellar lineup if you're
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a Liberal and you're excited. Like imagine if there was an event that had Stephen Harper speaking,
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that had Pierre Poly of Raleigh speaking, like had all the big players in the conservative movement.
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I'm telling you, there'd be tens of thousands of people in attendance for that.
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And again, I just find it really worrying and concerning that so many people who had signed up
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to vote in the Liberal leadership race didn't get to vote. And I'll tell you, Chris, like my inbox was
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filled with concerned Liberals who had been turned away. I received many of these sort of tips of
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people who had registered, who are Liberals, who wanted to vote, and some kind of trivial discrepancy
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meant that they were blocked. Like, you know, an example would be like, if you go by Dan,
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but your name's Daniel. And so, you know, when you registered, you wrote Dan, but then the idea that you
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tried to produce said, Daniel, and they just wouldn't let you vote. And, you know, when that
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happens on scale, I mean, we had the Globe and Mail pointing out that only 40% of the registered
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Liberals voted, which means that 60% were rejected. I mean, how can you walk around and say that Mark
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Carney has this huge mandate, even from within the Liberal Party, when 60% of the people who wanted to vote
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were somehow found to be illegitimate and not able to vote. To me, that is so suspicious. And
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it's so alarming. I hope that someone is able to uncover we're talking to we're talking about a
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whistleblower later in the show, who has done some undercover journalism to expose flaws in the Ontario
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voting system. But I would really like to see what is happening with the Liberals because that is a huge
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percentage of people who were unable to vote. And again, just for context, because we keep hearing
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that 85% of Liberals voted for Mark Carney and only 62% of Conservatives voted for Pierre Polyev back in
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2022, and he became leader. And yet everybody said that Pierre Polyev had like a resounding victory.
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But if you just look at the numbers, 132,000 people voted for Mark Carney, whereas 295,000
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voted for Pierre Polyev. And so more Canadians, twice as many Canadians, in fact, cast their vote
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in the in a leadership race for Pierre Polyev. And, you know, I have a hard time really believing
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that Mark Carney has any kind of a mandate. I wanted to stay with the Sunday night event, because there
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was a couple of things that were really kind of resounding to me. One of it was that Mark Carney
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pledged that he would get rid of the capital gains tax and get rid of the carbon tax. So I imagine
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you folks over the Canadian Tax Affairs Federation were giving yourselves a little pat on the back
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because you were the ones that were really leading the campaign against these disastrous taxes. And so
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the fact that both parties kind of are in agreement about that is good. One thing that I really noted
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was that when Mark Carney announced to the Liberal audience that he was getting rid of carbon tax,
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the place like erupted in cheers. And it just seems so ironic to me that like the Liberals,
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who for the last 10 years have been pushing this green agenda, saying that the planet is on fire,
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and that we have to tax ourselves and shut down our industry in order to save the planet. And,
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you know, the key policy of Prime Minister Trudeau had been this carbon tax, which was also championed
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and demanded for by Mark Carney in the background. And here you had the entire Liberal Convention
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applauding, like erupting in cheers over the fact that they were getting rid of it. So,
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well, from a taxpayer's perspective, what do you think of all that? So many points there. Very briefly,
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just touching back on the issue between mandates. I will point out that Pierre Polyev has been a
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Member of Parliament since he was in his early to mid 20s. And he was then the opposition leader. However,
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with Mark Carney, this is the first time that someone with zero Parliament Hill experience, so has not been a
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Member of Parliament, has not been a Senator, has not been a Cabinet Minister, is now going to be
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catapulted directly, do not pass go, do not pass, you know, collect $200, all the way into the seat of
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the PMO. So yes, John Turner had taken a turn out of Parliament, and then he was put back in. There are
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a few earlier Prime Ministers that kind of fall under that. But they had been Senators before, or they had
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been Cabinet Ministers before, or even Prime Ministers previously, before they became Prime Minister again.
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This is the first time that somebody, you know, off the street, so to speak, has is now becoming
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Prime Minister. And so I think that is why there's more scrutiny from across the board. It's been
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mainstream media and independent media going, this is pretty interesting. So I think it's the severity,
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the level of power that is giving more scrutiny to this mandate, whether or not he has one.
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To the issue of the carbon tax, we were happy to hear Mark Carney say he's going to scrap the carbon tax,
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but he said that, this is the catch. He said that in a leak through his leadership team early on,
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and that soaked up all the headlines. It was like that ShamWow commercial with the blanket. It just
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sucked up all the headlines. Mark Carney, ding dong, the witch is dead, they're getting rid of the carbon
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tax. But then the devil's in the details. Then he made his announcement in Halifax, and said he's going
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to immediately remove the consumer carbon tax. So what does that mean? And then later on in Kelowna,
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he changed it again. And he said he's not going to axe the tax. The crowd laughed at that idea,
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which really got my dander up, Candace. And then he said he's going to change the carbon tax. So face
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value, at least the one thing Carney should do right now, like today, is tell the cabinet ministers,
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hey, put in a request through, you know, order in council, get rid of the carbon tax now. And they can
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do that without parliament sitting. They can change the amount collected by the carbon tax in their
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orders to zero. So that's the very least he can do now. Because right now Canadians are still paying
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this thing. And it's set to go up April 1st. To give you an idea, the average, not a huge mansion
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with an indoor swimming pool and three big personal cars, the way Trudeau used to say, the average Alberta
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household is going to be out 440 bucks this year, just for heating their home. So Carney should do the
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right thing today, Candace, and make that carbon tax rate go down to zero. That's for now. But you're
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right. He's been in the background pushing for carbon taxes, basically his entire professional life,
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his entire political career, like it's all through this book. I know that your folks there at Juneau and
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True North did a lot of work on this. I know Cosman did a big deep dive on this. It's the keystone
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to his worldview. Carbon taxes are a keystone to Mark Carney's worldview. So for him to turn away from
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it is like a vegan suddenly eating steak. That is a big deal. So we're going to take him at his word
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right now and push him to get rid of the consumer carbon tax. So at least it's off of everybody's heat
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bills and off the price at the pump between now and April 1st. Then we're going to see what's going to
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happen during the election. Well, I would say it's not quite like a vegan eating steak because he
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hasn't actually eaten it yet. It's like a vegan ordering steak and whether or not they'll actually
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eat it because I mean, it's like, yeah, everything that he believes, everything that he's built his
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career upon this whole net zero approach that has been devastating in the UK. And you now have UK
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officials coming out saying, Canada, be careful with this guy. He was a disaster in the UK. Former
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Prime Minister Liz Trust said that financial columnist Matthew Liu also had a column saying the
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same thing. Yeah, he's going to get rid of the consumer facing one, but the devil's in the details.
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And just the fact that the liberal audience was cheering over that, I think it's really just all
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about crass politics because Mark Carney is just a continuation of Justin Trudeau. What we've seen is
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kind of a remarkable bait and switch. Justin Trudeau, greatly unpopular, tanked in popularity,
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has done so much damage to the Canadian economy, to Canadian unity, to our sense of country,
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to our safety, just the list goes on and on. He's unpopular. So he taps his economic advisor
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to come out and take over. And he admits so much. So Mark Carney was in Parliament yesterday,
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talking to the reporters for the first time. He said that he just finished a meeting with
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and that the transition will be seamless and quick. Of
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course it is, because they have the same views, they have the same position, they have the same
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staff, right? It's literally just, it's just a switch. Let's play Mark Carney in his own words,
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admitting all of this. I just had a long meeting with the Prime Minister. We discussed the most
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important issues for our country, obviously, including Canada and US relations, issues of national
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security. And yes, the transition between the Prime Minister and myself, that transition will be
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seamless. And it will be quick. He was even kind of smirking about that, like, of course,
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it'll be quick and seamless, because it's the same. It's the same thing. Yes. What do you think?
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Yes. So parties have not changed. Power hasn't really changed. This is just a transition from one party
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leader within the Liberals to the other party leader. I can't help but kind of smile, because
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I've worked on Parliament Hill. I worked there for, like, probably around 20 years, give or take.
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And to see Mark Carney there standing in the foyer, I'm wondering if Dominic LeBlanc was his MP buddy that
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helped him through security and got the wand and everything, just like somebody would if you're
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taking a tour of the building. Because again, he is not a member of Parliament. But in this, you know,
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we have an interesting system in the Westminster system. Technically, you don't need to be a member
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of Parliament to be a member of Cabinet. And the Prime Minister is the first Cabinet Minister chosen
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by and accepted by the Crown. So this is up to King Charles III and through his representative,
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Mary Simon, the Governor General, to then swear him in to Cabinet and have him be the Prime Minister.
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I found it really interesting that there's this strange kind of Jekyll and Hyde approach to him
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being changey and new. Meanwhile, everybody who's followed politics knows that he's been right in
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there advising these folks. In fact, folks might remember, just before this dust-up started,
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when Chrystia Freeland, the narrative goes, says she didn't want to run a 60-something billion dollar
0.99
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deficit. She only wanted to run a 40-billion dollar deficit. Who was going to replace her? Mark Carney.
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Like, everybody on the Hill knew that he was going to be the person to replace her as Finance Minister
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once outgoing Trudeau Prime Minister was getting rid of her. So to have it now being played as if he's
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the new guy but he's also the old guy, it's kind of mind-bending. What really gets me is, again,
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he's on the record so many times, Candace. This wasn't just a one-off comment that somebody said
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at a party or a bar or something. He has written literally a book on this stuff. He got his undergrad
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at Harvard. He got his PhD at Oxford. He takes a global view to this stuff. On the front of his book,
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it's literally the planet with scaffolding around it. He's going to fix the whole of the Earth for us.
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Candace. What got me, Candace, is that throughout this book, he talks about carbon taxes. He talks
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about things like power plants and our hot water tanks being stranded assets in the future because
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he wants to switch it all over to wind and solar. He talks about leaving more than 80% of oil and gas
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in the ground. This is not something I'm digging up from him from the 80s. He just published this thing
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just after the lockdowns. I'm really hoping that some of those journalists who are there standing
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in front of him in the parliamentary press gallery stick a mic in his face and get him to answer these
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questions. The entire thing is just so staged that it almost feels like we're living out an Orwell novel
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because we were told on January 6th that Justin Trudeau was resigning because of internal conflicts in
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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.
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She said it in interviews that he said, come deliver the fall economic update and then I'm
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going to fire you the next day and I'm going to replace you with Mark Carney. Right? And she said,
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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
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government is I'm only willing to do $40 billion in deficits, not 60. 60 is too far, but 40. I'm okay
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with that. And then they turn around and they say, oh, look, 85% of our members support Mark Carney,
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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
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immigration minister among many other positions that he held. So same crew, same people, same
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insiders. I want to go to this photo because I mentioned this on our live stream the other night
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that if you would ask me at any point in the last nine years, how I would be feeling and what I would
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be saying the night that Justin Trudeau got removed from office, like his last day at Prime Minister,
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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
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photographer of Justin Trudeau carrying a chair, his own chair, out of the House of Commons. I guess this is
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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So here is a clip of former prime minister, Jean Chrétien, joking about burning down the White
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House. Let's play that clip. During the war of 1812, Americans through came to what is known
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Canada on a mission of conquest. They were defeated by Colonel de Salabelle in what is now Quebec
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and by leaders like the great indigenous chief Tecumseh. And I don't know, apparently some burned the
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White House at that time. But I'm told to do it.
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But I'm told to do it. So some say someone burned the White House back then. Sure, that is true. During
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the war of 1812, that happens as a historical fact. In fact, the American national anthem is written by
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someone who observed this. And that is what he's talking about. The rockets, red glare bombs bursting
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in air. That was the British, the Canadians engaging in a war. Is that really the best thing to mention and
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to joke about? Again, you could hear the auditorium burst in applause when he said that we burned the
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White House down and then kind of saying, you know, they told me to do it, like told you to do it,
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to say it or told you to do it again, like burn the White House down again. You know, part of it is a
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language barrier, perhaps. But, you know, given the backdrop of President Trump and the back and forth
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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
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just quickly, Chris, before I get your reaction, just the latest is that Premier Ford in Ontario
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said that Ontario will slap the 25% levy on US-bound electricity. So he's going to go through with that,
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even though we had heard that President Trump was pausing most of the tariffs due to the NAFTA or the
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USMCA agreement. And in response, President Trump on Monday was quite angry about it. So I want to read
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a Truth Social post that he put up. He said, despite the fact that Canada is charging the US
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from 250 to 390% tariffs on many of our fawn products, Ontario just announced a 25% surcharge
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on electricity, of all things. And you're not even allowed to do that. Because our tariffs are
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reciprocal, we'll just get it all back on April 2nd. Canada is a tariff abuser and always has been,
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but the United States is not going to be subsidizing Canada any longer. We don't need your
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cars, we don't need your lumber, we don't need your energy. And very soon you will find out Make
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America Great Again with three exclamation points. So it seems to me that Doug Ford is just making
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everything worse. And again, those clips of people like Jean Chrétien, they circulate, the Americans
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see them, they know that Canadians are mocking them and joking about burning down their White House at
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the convention where they're naming the new Prime Minister. I mean, it's not a good look. What do you
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do you think it's not a great look? And years in radio and of listening to former Prime Minister
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Chrétien, I think what he said was, I'm too old to do it, not told to do it. So maybe even a little
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bit more gasoline dumped on the fire, like I'm too old to do it now. You guys can do it. Yeah.
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So I'll just take off my CTF hat for a second here. In more of a radio host mode, I've interviewed,
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like, probably 1000s of people from literally every place like a Prime Minister, and people
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literally locked in prison. You really need to kind of deescalate a situation when they're trying to get
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a point across, or you're trying to truly be heard, or have someone else feel they're being heard. So
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usually the rule is deescalate, find common ground, and work towards a solution. Those three things work
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well in most arguments. This just seems to be dumping more gas on it. And the sad thing is,
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is that it's always the normal working people, Candace, that bear the brunt of this. There's
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there's a famous picture of a chessboard where it shows pawns and knights and rooks all lying down,
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bloodied on the battlefield of ideas or an actual battlefield, and the king and queen of both sets,
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the black and the white, over on the side having dinner. Right? And it just always feels like it's
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the average working person, the small business person, the beef farmer, that person, the oil,
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the oil patch worker, that is going to get kicked over this sort of stuff. Now, as far as whether or
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not to slap, you know, extra export tariffs on power, I don't know, I'm of two minds of that, because I
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recently heard listening to our former colleague, Brian Lilly, talk about this, and he's our former
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Sun News colleague, and he talked about this on some podcasts on Sunday, probably on yours as well,
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where he pointed out that that's the only thing that really got a lot of attention
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in the States of like, hey, I'm going to make your power costs more smarten up.
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Is that wise? I don't know. It's a really great question. What I'm worried about is that if we do
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reciprocal tit for tat tariffs, so to speak, all that is, is a tax on imports. It's just a tax.
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It just means that we're tying our own shoelaces together and punching ourselves in the face before
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we get into a fight with somebody who's much stronger and much bigger than us. And I'm really
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worried that it's going to be oil, oil and gas workers here in Alberta, that it's eventually going
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to be a farmer or producer across the prairie, that it's going to be that auto worker in Ontario,
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that's going to be out of a job. And that's a real thing. That's just not a tally on a spreadsheet.
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That is someone's home. That is someone's ability to buy food for their kids. And so I really am
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hoping that some of these leaders kind of pull some of the lemon out of this and really work on
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getting a deal. Like for example, Alberta Premier Daniel Smith has been down there pleading and doing
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a charm offensive and really trying to engage with these folks, including US President Donald Trump.
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She went to Mar-a-Lago. She's trying to deal directly with governors saying, hi, do you really
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want 35 cents more per gallon for gasoline? Because that's what's going to happen. That's smart. And last
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I heard, she's actually heading down to Florida. She's going to be speaking with the Daily Wire, Ben
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Shapiro and the whole lot of them. That's good because Trump listens to that media. That's like going on
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Fox News on a bit of steroids. So it's smart to get that message out there. I'm concerned though,
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if they just keep heaping heated rhetoric on up here, that it's just going to make the bear angrier.
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Well, to stick with Daniel Smith, I mean, it's interesting because Premier Doug Ford sort of
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seems like a bull in a China shop. Like sometimes I see him going on Fox News and he's making a really
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compelling case, say like, let's build a better relationship. He calls it Can-Am. Let's like
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further integrate our markets and have more freedom. And that's great. That's good Ford. And then there's
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the other side, which is like, okay, let's dump our chest and we're going to really make you
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hurt Americans. And the reality is that they are a much bigger market. They can make us hurt a lot
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more. And so to bring it back to Daniel Smith, we had Premier Ford yesterday at a press conference
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calling on Premier Daniel Smith of Alberta to add an export tax on Alberta oil. So he wants
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Daniel Smith and the province of Alberta to follow their path by taxing natural resources. Let's play that
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clip. We have to remember the 4.3 million barrels of oil that's coming from Alberta. As Premier Smith
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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
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an export tax. Because you want to talk about a trump card, that will instantly change the game.
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Instantly change the game. Well, Smith, to her credit, basically instantly shot this down. So
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writing on X and responding to Premier Ford, she said, let me be clear, Alberta will never agree to
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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,
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Ontario gets its oil via a pipeline that goes through the United States. So just on its face,
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this is so absurd for the Premier of Ontario to be telling the Premier of Alberta to put a tax on oil
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when that is the oil that goes through the United States and back up through Line 9 up into Sarnia
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and across Ontario. It's just so absurd. Good for Daniel Smith to knock that one down. What do you
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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.
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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
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15 times. It's just, it's basically the same organism, the auto sector back forth, back forth. So
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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
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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
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happens. And that is definitely the smart thing for her to say. Chris Sims, thank you so much.
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It's always a pleasure to have you on the show. Great to see you today. And thanks for your time.
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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.