A big weekend coming up for Canada s Tories gathering in Calgary for their convention. Delegates will decide whether Pierre Polyev gets on to stay as party leader. Some passengers aboard his flight to Calgary were surprised to see Polyev and his family in the economy section, rather than the high-flyers of the executive class. Canada s Public Safety Minister says the federal gun buyback program is off to a good start.
00:04:26.780Whether the country is or not is yet to be seen.
00:04:29.840Well, we may get an election this year.
00:04:32.420Yeah, we may put this to the test this spring.
00:04:35.000I wonder if that's one of the factors in people supporting Polly up because they think, well, we might have an election sooner like this spring than later.
00:04:44.280And who wants to go through that whole process of choosing a new leader and the rest of it?
00:04:49.940Is that a factor you think in the minds of some?
00:04:52.860Oh, I think so, because I think with Carney looking at a majority, we know very well he's been clear that he's looking for one.
00:04:59.500He's been trying to snag conservative MPs to cross the floor.
00:05:04.860He's had a little bit of luck doing that.
00:05:07.120But what better way to really get a mandate is to get it from the people.
00:05:10.340And I think if conservatives put their party into a leadership race at this time, it would be the perfect time for him to call an election and pounce on that opportunity.
00:05:21.640So, yeah, I think that does play into it.
00:05:25.100I personally, I think Pierre has been a great leader and he's been very solid on the firearms file, which is near and dear to my heart, of course.
00:05:33.720But whether or not that's palatable to the rest of Canadians, I think we'll see that put to the test this year.
00:05:41.160Well, speaking of the firearms issue, the minister, Gary Hernandez-Andre, I guess he's quarterbacking the gun buyback program.
00:05:50.460I mean, he says things are going fine, despite the fact that we've got provinces opting out, territories opting out, police forces opting out.
00:06:01.520They have a few on side, but not exactly a rousing note of endorsement for this program.
00:06:07.460That's right. So he ruled out a national program without national support.
00:06:13.240So it's one thing, you know, at this time, I know it was very upsetting to gun owners for them to open up the program nationally.
00:06:20.260But keep in mind, from a 40,000 foot view, all it is is a website.
00:06:25.020It's a registration website. That's all they've got.
00:06:27.160They've got no plan or ability to actually go around and confiscate these firearms.
00:06:33.560The provinces and police forces are stacking up against it, saying we're not touching this mess.
00:06:40.060So when push comes to shove and once the registration period closes, then what?
00:06:45.920Like, this is causing a big problem, excuse me, for the minister.
00:06:51.140And, you know, I think they that's why they usually put the most incompetent people on these files, because it's just an absolute dumpster fire.
00:07:00.880And of course, Big Gary hasn't done any favors.
00:07:04.240He admitted in his own words on that leaked audio that this is just a ploy to solicit votes from Quebec.
00:07:11.380And I guess we'll have to see how that plays out.
00:07:14.780But we've got a big rally in Quebec at the end of February on the 28th in front of the Quebec legislature.
00:07:20.260Of course, as you know, Quebec signed on to help them, but they are alone in that fight.
00:07:25.120So while every other province seems to be supporting its citizens, Quebec is lining up with the feds.
00:07:31.700Yeah, but there's a lot of your members, I'm sure, in Quebec, people who own firearms and want to continue owning them without any further harassment from the federal government.
00:07:40.480How do you account for what's going on in Quebec?
00:07:44.540I mean, imagine, it's one thing to have the federal government attacking you for something you've owned peacefully and without issue for decades, if not generations.
00:07:53.560But to have your provincial government hang you out to dry for a lousy $12 million paycheck is just, it's devastating to our members.
00:08:15.400I don't speak French very well, but I stand with the gun owners in Quebec because they don't deserve this treatment from both the federal government and the province.
00:08:24.060Yeah, I mean, they're also continuing to push this assault-style firearms narrative.
00:08:31.040I mean, these aren't military-grade rifles that we're talking about, but I guess they need the media on side.
00:08:36.760And so they use words that they think are going to get people's attention, maybe scared members of the public.
00:08:42.600But these are not assault rifles, are they?
00:08:46.620No, in fact, Ukraine, who is right now in the middle of a battle with Russia, as you know, originally Bill Blair had talked about sending these banned guns, once they're confiscated, sending them over there.
00:09:47.780I mean, what an insult to law-abiding gun owners.
00:09:51.400You know, there's 2.4 million licensed legal gun owners in Canada, and there's a couple of million in peaceful noncompliance possession of those firearms.
00:10:01.640But to suggest that it is people like me running around the streets of Toronto and Surrey committing these crimes is absolutely ridiculous.
00:10:44.520And interestingly enough, they have a three-quarter of a billion dollar budget for this.
00:10:49.320Yet only one-third of that is actually allocated to paying gun owners for their firearms that were banned through no fault of their own.
00:10:57.120So when you think about that, well, where's the other half a million dollars going?
00:11:00.400It's going to, or half a billion, sorry, it's going to the bureaucracy, right, the administration of this program, the payments that they're using to try and coerce provinces and law enforcement into doing their dirty work.
00:11:15.540So they're going to waste $500 million on bureaucracy and then shortchange the gun owners who do participate, which is why I am refusing to participate in any of this mess.
00:11:27.320And how about the rest of your membership?
00:11:31.740Well, the attitude is like a lot can change between now and October when the amnesty expires.
00:11:37.900Everyone's protected from it just the same.
00:11:40.500There is no need to rush and register those firearms because once you do, that's it for you.
00:11:46.320You know, we could find ourselves in an election.
00:11:48.680We could hear from the Supreme Court who we've applied to hear our case there.
00:11:53.180We are rolling out, you know, a giant national project in the coming weeks.
00:11:59.380And you never know, we've also been speaking to some of the premiers to put pressure on Mark Carney, which they're meeting in Ottawa as we speak, to drop this thing.
00:14:30.340What are your expectations going into this leadership review of your leader, Pierre Pollyov?
00:14:37.120Look, Pierre has my full support, and he has the support of our caucus and the overwhelming majority of Conservative supporters in this country.
00:14:45.720I expect we'll see a result this weekend that affirms that.
00:14:50.920The Liberals have been proving a lot of what we've warned that they would do with this mandate.
00:14:56.060And I think it's important to have a strong opposition holding them to account and pushing for improvements on policy where possible and proposing new policy.
00:15:17.300Well, anyone who used to watch my show exactly where you are right now knows I always hated predictions because there are so many things going in.
00:15:24.620But I think we're going to see a very clear mandate.
00:15:26.600And as I said, he has my full support.
00:15:29.040And this is just a formality that comes after any election in which we're not successful.
00:15:33.260So I think we need to take what happened in the campaign and make improvements where we need to.
00:15:41.880Now, one of the things that we were told by Tracy Wilson a few minutes ago is that she thinks that the fact that there could be an election this spring or possibly summer is a good reason to hold on to Pierre Polyev.
00:15:53.640I mean, who wants to go through a leadership convention right now and all that uncertainty?
00:15:59.100Better keep the guy you got in there and give him another shot.
00:16:02.560But what are your expectations in terms of an election?
00:16:05.320I mean, do you think that the Liberals, given some of the recent polling numbers that has them at 47 percent or has Carney at 47 percent, that they would like to engineer their own defeat in the House of Commons?
00:16:16.200Well, the Liberals were dangling an election in front of Canadians in the fall as leverage to try to get support for their budget.
00:16:23.660And now it's only the Liberals who are talking about an election now that we are in the spring.
00:16:28.280I think we are seeing in Prime Minister Mark Carney and his team, a team that has not done much, has not lived up to the promises they made to Canadians.
00:16:35.820And they're trying to point fingers everywhere but at themselves.
00:16:39.120And I think Canadians are seeing through that.
00:16:43.580We have a parliament in which all parties can work together on legislation that will do things Canadians want.
00:16:49.300And the Liberals are the ones that need to stop doing this with Canadians.
00:16:52.800Are you among those whom the Liberals pursued, dangled little goodies, hoping that you'll cross the floor or not?
00:17:00.800No, I was seeing all of my colleagues post about these overtures Liberals had made to them.
00:17:05.580And I was like marginally offended that no one had asked me.
00:17:08.560I have no interest in crossing, but, you know, it's nice to be liked.
00:17:11.640No, the Liberals have not asked me to cross the floor and it wouldn't matter because I have no interest in going anywhere.
00:17:16.560I'm very proud of where I am and the work that we're doing.
00:17:19.480Well, do you think that this leadership review, assuming it goes swimmingly for Pierre Polyev, will put all of that to bed?
00:17:26.840I think that the Liberals are trying to engineer a majority government that they did not win, that Canadians did not give them.
00:17:35.200And I think that's something that we need to be very, I think something we need to be very skeptical of.
00:17:39.960At the end of the day, when Canadians elect a government with a minority parliament, it's because Canadians did not want to give a complete blank check to that government.
00:17:48.260And I think that's a message the Liberals need to take to heart.
00:17:50.680And that's why they need to, it's their obligation to work with other parties to get their agenda passed.
00:17:55.980Now, there are a couple of bills where we've been very clear we will work with them.
00:17:59.860For example, on crime, you know, we believe very firmly in the idea that we need to fix the broken Liberal bail system.
00:18:06.060So we were very pleased to be able to get the Liberals finally to agree to let the Justice Committee study the bail bill the government has put forward, C-14.
00:18:14.100I say it doesn't go far enough, but at least it's something.
00:18:17.560We have another justice bill going towards a committee, I suspect, in the near future that deals with sentencing as well.
00:18:24.080Again, another example of where we stand willing to work with the government to improve legislation.
00:18:29.400But what we can't let the government do is start holding its own bills hostage, trying to craft a narrative that just doesn't exist.
00:18:35.820And that's what we've seen happen in the last little while, where the Liberals are the ones that have to stop obstructing their own legislative agenda.
00:18:43.020Yeah, well, the Liberal House leader came out recently and called on Pierre Polyev to allow his members to vote freely and support their bail.
00:18:52.800In other words, you know, don't get in the way.
00:18:54.500I mean, these guys have been in power for the last decade and things have gotten a lot worse since the Liberals won in 2015.
00:19:02.080But it is interesting from my vantage point that the two issues that they know Canadians really want to tackle, the affordability and crime, are just really something that they all of a sudden focus on.
00:19:14.960You know, we saw nothing, no movement at all on those files for months from the time they got in.
00:19:20.260And then all of a sudden, poof, you know, they push hard on this, at least in terms of the PR side of it.
00:19:26.560Does that make you think that that's another indicator that they really want to go?
00:19:30.840Well, look, I think that Canadians are expecting a parliament that's going to deliver results and, more importantly, a government that's going to deliver results.
00:19:38.860I mean, Mark Carney, during the campaign, made all sorts of promises that have not panned out.
00:19:42.680He said he was going to get a deal with the United States.
00:19:45.240He said he was going to navigate Canada through the economic crisis and through the trade war.
00:19:49.640He said he was going to end interprovincial trade barriers in Canada.
00:19:54.360And I'll give you a prime example of this.
00:19:56.540The Conservatives worked with the government back in the spring to pass Bill C-5, which was a bill that was supposed to unlock all of these major projects.
00:20:04.840It was a bill that was supposed to pave the way for there to be a pipeline in Canada.
00:20:08.580And in the time since this bill was passed, there has not been a single major project approved.
00:20:13.860The Prime Minister speaks out of both sides of his mouth when he's talking about pipelines.
00:20:17.940When he's in Alberta, he says one thing.
00:20:19.880When he's in BC or Quebec, he says another.
00:20:21.780And this is exactly the point that we're trying to raise here is that the government has to live up to the promises it's been making.
00:20:29.660Let's talk a little bit about the gun buyback program.
00:20:32.380The public safety minister said he thinks that the program is going well so far, despite a lot of opposition, not only from provinces and territories, but from various police services who say they don't want to take part.
00:20:47.780What does it tell you so far that, you know, a lot of people are kind of shying away?
00:20:52.520They want nothing to do with this thing.
00:20:53.980I mean, it suggests to me that there's not much appetite for what the government is doing.
00:20:58.580No, and it isn't just about resources.
00:21:01.940I've had all the police services of jurisdiction in my riding say that they will not participate in the federal liberal government's gun compensation scheme.
00:21:10.020You've had multiple provinces, as you know, Mark, say the same thing.
00:21:13.160And on one hand, they say it's not conducive to where they need to devote their spare, their sparse resources.
00:21:19.360They are actually more interested in tracking down people that are on bail because of how freely the liberal bail system gives this out to repeat criminals.
00:21:27.480But they also fundamentally know that it is not aligned with public safety objectives.
00:21:32.320Every single police officer and police chief I've spoken to has said the same thing, which is that law abiding gun owners are not the problem.
00:21:39.640And when I was with True North, I did a documentary to this effect about five years ago called Assaulted.
00:21:44.940And in it, we talked to law abiding gun owners, sports shooters, collectors, all of these people that have been that have been directly targeted by the liberal government's regulations and restrictions on this, but have no connection to the criminality that exists in Brampton and Surrey in I mean, even in London, where we have seen gun crime rise, but it is not connected at all to lawfully owned firearms.
00:22:08.580It's all coming back to organized crime and borders and border security is one of the biggest things we've been telling the government to get serious on for years and they haven't.
00:22:18.040So police are saying what they have been saying for years, which is that law abiding gun owners are not the problem and the liberals just are not listening.
00:22:25.940Let's talk a little bit about Bill C9 as well.
00:22:27.880You're doing a lot of work on that file.
00:22:38.060Yeah, C9 is a divisive and toxic bill.
00:22:40.740On the surface, it's the government's answer to hate, specifically hate we've seen against the Jewish community over the last two and a half years.
00:22:47.720But in reality, Bill C9, as it's worded, changes the definition of hate to lower the threshold, to make it easier for the state to prosecute people for their words.
00:23:08.460And that part's key, a religious belief or citing a religious text.
00:23:12.480And this is why people were so concerned when Mark Miller, who's now a liberal cabinet minister, was in committee saying that certain verses of scripture should be inherently illegal.
00:23:21.880Prosecutors should be able to charge people for citing them because he said they're clearly hateful.
00:23:26.240So I was speaking out as a member of the Justice Committee.
00:23:29.240I've been speaking to thousands and thousands of Canadians.
00:23:33.240Canadians of all faiths feel very targeted by this bill.
00:23:37.200We have, over the last few weeks, had Canadians in tens of thousands of numbers writing out and calling Liberal members of Parliament in particular.
00:23:45.480The Liberals have finally agreed to pause this and let us work on bail reform.
00:23:49.320Let us work on things that there is a far greater consensus on.
00:23:52.640They say right now they intend to bring C9 back in two weeks.
00:23:57.340We're trying to make sure that Canadians keep up the pressure and the Liberals pull this bill that Canadians clearly do not want and Canadians shouldn't want.