Juno News - Ep. 4 ｜ Spencer Fernando ｜ Press Freedom, China and the future of the CPC

00:00:00.000 One of the basic ideas of a free and democratic society is the government is held accountable in large part by the media.

00:00:06.760 So if the government gets to control what the media is and who's in the media, then that's not really free media, right?

00:00:12.480 Is Canada heading down an authoritarian path?

00:00:15.360 We know that Justin Trudeau admires China. He said so himself.

00:00:19.120 The level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship.

00:00:28.640 But how deep does that relationship go?

00:00:32.180 Trudeau is willing to defend China, even amidst their egregious behavior in covering up and lying about the coronavirus.

00:00:39.340 Trudeau's health minister has praised China on multiple occasions, and his foreign minister refused to name Taiwan, even when asked directly about Taiwanese aid to Canada.

00:00:50.060 Perhaps worst of all, Trudeau is slowly creeping Canada towards a government-owned, government-managed, and government-controlled media landscape, just like in communist, autocratic China.

00:01:02.160 I cover all of this and more with my guest today, Spencer Fernando.

00:01:05.600 Spencer is an independent journalist and has built one of the fastest-growing political websites in Canada.

00:01:11.640 His news and opinion site, spencerfernando.com, strips the news of its left liberal bias and provides facts and insightful analysis for his conservative-minded audience.

00:01:22.240 Spencer credits his success to his ability to tell the truth to Canadians and his willingness to bring insight to issues the establishment media and what he calls corrupt elites prefer to hide, spin, or ignore.

00:01:34.700 In my conversation today with Spencer, we discuss how China is taking advantage of Canada, how they are corrupting our weak leadership, and what needs to happen post-COVID-19.

00:01:45.800 We also discuss what conservatives need to do to build a stronger civil society, to combat leftist ideas and politicians, and for the Conservative Party of Canada to win again.

00:02:04.700 Hey, well, Spencer Fernando, thank you so much for joining us. It's great to have you on the show. How's it going?

00:02:12.860 Oh, not too bad. Yourself?

00:02:14.260 I like your setup. I love the patriotic Canadian flag drape, but I don't know if that's hiding something like intentionally or if that's just...

00:02:21.800 We'll leave that to people's imagination.

00:02:23.080 Great. Well, Spencer, before we get into sort of more of the depth of the conversation we'll have today, I wanted to just ask you about what your background is, where you came from,

00:02:33.640 because I just sort of all of a sudden noticed you on the scene, on social media. You have your own website, which provides really factual, very quick, updated news stories and sort of opinion pieces about Canadian federal politics.

00:02:46.740 But what were you doing before that, and what led you to launching your own website?

00:02:51.880 Well, I've been involved in politics for a while with various political parties, and I always got into trouble because I was a little too opinionated and maybe independent-minded.

00:03:01.800 You know, that's not often not what they want in partisan environments.

00:03:05.800 So I ran into a fair amount of trouble within political parties and then just got to the point where, you know, I said, you know, I may as well just write my own stuff, share my own opinions, see if people like it.

00:03:16.080 And then it turns out a lot of people did, and it's worked out pretty well.

00:03:19.480 Yeah, I find that there's such a demand for conservative news and opinion.

00:03:24.340 And I think you kind of have to walk a fine line.

00:03:27.980 Some people say, well, you know, news should be objective.

00:03:30.240 It shouldn't be coming from any political persuasion or opinion.

00:03:33.400 But the reality is that most of the news in Canada is written from a left-wing liberal perspective.

00:03:39.500 Just, you know, the quotes that they choose to include, the spin that they put, the headline that they choose,

00:03:44.500 even just, you know, who they choose to include quotes from, it's all coming from a basic liberal bias.

00:03:51.000 And so I feel like what your site provides is sort of a flip side of that.

00:03:56.040 What kind of brought you into that journalism world aside from just, you know, not wanting to be muzzled by a political party?

00:04:03.760 Well, I had worked for both the Manitoba and the newspaper, the University of Manitoba, and then the UNITER for a while at the University of Winnipeg.

00:04:12.960 So that was a good experience, both just for understanding journalism, but also for learning about the way it works.

00:04:18.200 And one thing you see is, you know, a lot of the people who work there, they're nice people.

00:04:22.220 They feel like they're objective.

00:04:23.460 You know, they're good human beings, and that's fine.

00:04:25.220 But they tend to be left-wing people, so it's just, it's the numbers game, right?

00:04:29.940 You know, I'd say eight, at least eight out of ten of people who go into the media, they're left-wing people.

00:04:34.740 That's their bias.

00:04:35.780 And people can't really shut their bias down.

00:04:37.980 They might think they do, but it still comes out, as you say, who they cover, what they say, the way they write things.

00:04:43.360 So being able to see kind of the people who end up being the media later on and seeing that at an early point

00:04:50.100 really gives a good perspective on the reason the media is the way it is today.

00:04:54.260 And they're able to mask it very well because they go work for an official institution like CBC or CTV.

00:05:00.340 And a lot of people look at that and say, oh, that's just the media.

00:05:02.520 They must be unbiased.

00:05:03.660 And they see a more right-wing or what looks like a more right-wing outlet and say, oh, it's just unbiased media versus really biased media.

00:05:11.860 So I think having that experience and seeing the kind of people that went into media does help kind of, you know, show what the big problem is now.

00:05:20.580 Why do you think that is, Spencer?

00:05:22.440 Why do you think so many left-wing people are drawn to the art of politics?

00:05:27.140 And what can we do perhaps to encourage more young conservatives who are trying to choose a career path or who are trying to figure out, you know, should I go into politics?

00:05:36.600 Should I, you know, how can we kind of encourage more young people who, again, not necessarily big C partisan conservatives,

00:05:43.660 just people who have sort of a basic understanding of the importance of tradition and institutions, the rule of law,

00:05:52.000 people who defer more to, you know, wanting to go down the traditional path as opposed to jumping on every new progressive trend.

00:06:00.240 How do you think we can flip that?

00:06:02.460 Or do you think it's just a foregone thing that left-wing people will go into the media?

00:06:06.640 Well, I think it would have to be done outside the university system.

00:06:10.000 I mean, like universities tend to be left-wing environments in the first place.

00:06:14.540 So, and then there's, you know, you, if you're, there were some conservatives like myself and others who would go into the media,

00:06:20.360 but a lot would just leave, right, because you go in, almost everyone else is left-wing, you see the bias already.

00:06:25.540 It can be a tough environment.

00:06:26.840 So I think creating, it would have to be done within the private sector, creating kind of journalism schools, more conservative journalism schools,

00:06:34.800 however you want to call it, but, you know, being honest about, yes, there is somewhat of a bias in this institution,

00:06:39.740 and that's because there's a bias in the establishment media.

00:06:42.100 It needs to be pushed back against.

00:06:43.340 So I think there'd have to be really just an effort by people who, you know, have resources to start funding some of these things.

00:06:51.160 And I'm sure we'll get to it later, but that's one of the big problems I see with the conservative party is that they have so much fundraising.

00:06:57.800 They get so much money, and yet they seem to just constantly complain, oh, the media is unbiased instead of really doing anything about it.

00:07:03.500 So I'm sure we'll get to that later.

00:07:05.800 Yeah, we can.

00:07:06.720 And one of the things, I mean, I have the same experience as you, Spencer.

00:07:09.680 I have a lot of friends from university that went down the journalism path, and, you know, almost unanimously, they're all lefties.

00:07:17.820 Back then, they were sort of more open about it, and now they pretend to be more objective.

00:07:22.240 But even, I have a couple friends, I'll tell you, that back in the day, back in university and when we were younger,

00:07:29.000 they were sort of ardent libertarians or pretty right-wing conservatives.

00:07:32.020 And now, after a decade in the media, in the mainstream media, they basically turned into, like, Trump derangement lefties.

00:07:40.940 And it's interesting to watch how that can happen.

00:07:44.000 But I almost wondered that just the environments of those media companies either turns you against conservatism or, you know, that's a calculated bet,

00:07:54.400 that in order to get ahead and in order to get promoted and in order to get into a good position in media, you have to be left-wing.

00:08:01.880 So I think the problem could even go deeper.

00:08:05.380 But I do like the idea of having some kind of a framework in the private sector to promote young journalists who do come from more of that conservative persuasion.

00:08:13.620 And we're going to talk about that because one of the things I really want to get into with you in this interview is looking at the media landscape in Canada

00:08:20.000 and how independent outlets like yourself and, like, us over at True North, how we are.

00:08:25.180 But before we get into that, you know, I think it's important during these lockdowns and, you know, we've all been stuck inside for over two months now

00:08:33.380 and watching this, you know, deadly virus sweep through our country and kill thousands of our fellow Canadians,

00:08:39.600 but then also seeing our economy completely get locked down, absolute, you know, crackdown on basic rights and freedoms in this country

00:08:47.440 without even a meaningful debate.

00:08:49.260 So I just want to get your take, Spencer, on, you know, what do you make of these lockdowns?

00:08:54.420 Do you think that the Trudeau government has done what they've had to do?

00:08:57.220 Do you think that they've done anything that you would consider to be good and right?

00:09:02.180 Or do you maintain a very critical position on them?

00:09:05.240 And also, what do you think the world is going to look like at the end of all this?

00:09:08.840 Do you think it's going to be going back to the same old?

00:09:10.880 Or do you think there'll be a meaningfully different world post-coronavirus?

00:09:15.720 Well, I think with the lockdowns, it basically became something that was necessary because of the failure at the border.

00:09:21.740 If you look at Taiwan, for example, Taiwan never really imposed a big nationwide lockdown.

00:09:25.780 They've had, I think, what, 99 deaths or 99 cases, some extremely low number, and it's basically gone in Taiwan.

00:09:32.800 And that's because they shut the border down early.

00:09:34.660 Australia and New Zealand also have not had to be as harsh.

00:09:38.720 And it's very interesting.

00:09:39.500 If you look, the countries that have done the best are the countries that are most connected to China because they know not to believe China.

00:09:45.300 And they know not to believe anyone, any institution who's tied to China.

00:09:48.780 So the lockdown in Canada, basically, because the border wasn't taken care of, because there wasn't screening at the airport, basically became the only option.

00:09:57.900 And now I think a lot of politicians across the spectrum, I think the big fear for them now is if they lift it too soon, they'll be accused of, oh, you let people die.

00:10:08.860 If you lift it too late, then, oh, you destroyed the economy.

00:10:12.200 So I think they're all kind of looking at each other and trying to avoid blame by just kind of copying each other and not being the first to do something.

00:10:19.200 So, again, we wouldn't have needed lockdowns if the border was stronger, if they had actually done what they said they would with airport screening.

00:10:25.620 Of course, we know they didn't.

00:10:26.700 The provinces had to send people to take care of that.

00:10:29.520 So I think Trudeau certainly failed at the border, and that led the virus into the country.

00:10:34.140 And then that left the only choice is a lockdown for people.

00:10:38.200 It's interesting that you compare Canada to a number of other countries internationally, like Taiwan and Australia, because I feel like what happens so much in Canada is that the media commentators and the sort of politicians and elites, they always compare Canada to the U.S.

00:10:56.100 So they look at, in this case, you know, look at what Trump has done.

00:10:59.540 And as far as reopening, they say, oh, it's mostly these Republican-led governors in these southern states, and look at how reckless it is.

00:11:07.080 But we don't look at, like, hey, the fact that Germany also reopened their economy and they haven't seen a huge surge in coronavirus cases or a second wave.

00:11:16.020 And, you know, you look at Sweden, who, again, you know, a lot of people on the left will look to Sweden as a model for their social welfare state.

00:11:25.200 But yet when it came to coronavirus, they completely ignored the recommendations of the World Health Organization.

00:11:31.460 And now the World Health Organization is actually applauding them, saying that they took the right approach by sort of empowering citizens to do the right thing and allowing businesses to adapt to the situation.

00:11:42.460 So it's interesting that we're in this paralysis right now where nobody wants to reopen out of fear of being the one premier or, you know, the government that said reopen only to see a second wave.

00:11:53.520 But, you know, there is sort of imperial data out there.

00:11:57.220 There's sort of a live experiment of all these different countries doing different things.

00:12:01.320 And we can kind of say, OK, you know, things didn't look so bad when they reopened.

00:12:07.020 So do you think that then the government is dragging its heels on reopening?

00:12:12.280 If you were advising the prime minister right now, would you tell him to reopen or would you be cautious?

00:12:19.020 Well, first I'd tell him to resign.

00:12:20.840 But if we're just pretending it's regular advice, I would say you leave it to the provinces.

00:12:25.920 The provinces know best what's going on.

00:12:27.800 I mean, because it's, I mean, Manitoba, I think we had two or three days in a row with just one new case or zero cases.

00:12:33.460 And in Quebec, it's still very bad in some parts.

00:12:36.800 So there's no one size fits all solution.

00:12:38.900 Then, of course, with provinces, the issue has to be interprovincial travel, right?

00:12:42.180 If one province does well, another province does terrible.

00:12:44.780 And then people are traveling back and forth, obviously you're going to have a problem.

00:12:48.020 But I would leave it to the provinces.

00:12:49.560 I think if you look every step of the way, the federal government has really failed for the most part.

00:12:53.240 Provinces have stepped up and done a good job.

00:12:54.980 But the federal government hasn't done a good job.

00:12:57.380 So I would say just decentralize things and let the provinces make their own choices.

00:13:01.300 Well, I'm really glad you made that point because I haven't had the latest numbers.

00:13:05.420 So this is just as of May 14th, before the long weekend.

00:13:09.400 So the numbers are a bit outdated, but more or less they're correct.

00:13:12.440 So in Canada, we have the total number of deaths, 5,472.

00:13:17.280 Again, like you said, the bulk of that is in Quebec, where there has been 3,351 deaths, 40,000 cases.

00:13:24.320 I'm in Toronto and Ontario, similarly high numbers, 21,500 confirmed cases with 1,798 deaths.

00:13:33.400 Now for you, Spencer, you're in Winnipeg.

00:13:36.620 So when you look at the Manitoba numbers, throughout this entire pandemic and crisis,

00:13:43.380 you've had 289 cases in Manitoba and seven deaths, seven deaths.

00:13:48.660 So just as a citizen living in a place where you've really not been impacted by the virus itself,

00:13:57.880 but the actual lockdowns have caused, I'm sure, all kinds of economic hardship,

00:14:02.780 particularly for small business owners and for hourly workers who work in hospitality.

00:14:08.700 I mean, how does that feel?

00:14:09.520 I just can't imagine having such small numbers and really having the disease not impacting your community,

00:14:15.640 and yet you still have all the repercussions as if you were living in New York City or Montreal or Toronto

00:14:21.020 or places where there were, you know, there is a legitimate fear where I live that if I take my family out

00:14:25.820 and we get too close to someone else that we could get the virus.

00:14:28.800 But I can't imagine that that would be a realistic concern for you in Winnipeg.

00:14:32.960 Yeah, well, I mean, in some ways it's a bit of a timing issue because we saw on the coast it got very bad

00:14:39.960 and before many people even came into Manitoba, there was a lockdown.

00:14:44.120 So it's always kind of the chicken or the egg thing, right?

00:14:46.140 I mean, is it not a problem in Manitoba because the lockdown happened early

00:14:50.120 or is the lockdown not necessary because it's not a problem at all?

00:14:53.420 I still think erring on the side of caution was for governments at the beginning

00:14:56.660 when they didn't really know what was going on.

00:14:58.360 I'm sure there would have been more cases in Manitoba if we just pretended,

00:15:01.320 oh, there's no threat, there's no issue.

00:15:03.300 Because it does just take one person, right?

00:15:05.240 One person affects another person, then it starts spreading like wildfire.

00:15:08.760 But I think that's going to be the question now is how do you open up parts of the country

00:15:12.440 when other parts are still closed down?

00:15:14.120 And because the economy in Canada is connected, right?

00:15:16.800 So if much of the U.S. is locked down, if much of Canada is locked down,

00:15:20.760 then sure, Manitoba can open up, but the economy is still going to be hit.

00:15:24.180 It's the same in Taiwan.

00:15:25.320 Taiwan had no official government lockdowns, but they still had massive economic damage

00:15:29.500 because a lot of people were just choosing to stay inside anyway.

00:15:31.800 So there's kind of an aspect where, yes, the government has done damage, obviously, with the lockdowns,

00:15:37.840 but I don't think a lot of people would be fine, like I used to say in Toronto,

00:15:41.780 if the government just lifted the lockdown today.

00:15:43.760 It's not like the economy would just recover instantly.

00:15:45.800 A lot of people would say, well, I still don't trust what's going on.

00:15:48.240 I'm going to stay inside.

00:15:49.080 So I think everyone's kind of trying to fumble their way through it and figure out the best way to go.

00:15:54.380 But, you know, it's still quite unknown at this point.

00:15:57.500 See, I would rather them fumble their way through it, Spencer, and say, you know, we're going to reopen.

00:16:02.560 But again, it's up to the judgment of each and every Canadian

00:16:04.960 because that at least recognizes our sort of individual responsibility and, you know, dignity as humans to say,

00:16:11.880 OK, it's up to me to make that decision.

00:16:14.180 And I know many people who are the people who are the loudest people complaining that they don't want to reopen.

00:16:20.040 You know, those people are more than more than welcome to just stay at home.

00:16:23.440 No one's forcing them to go out and go out back into their lives and go out and about like they used to,

00:16:28.240 especially with the federal government so willing to extend these emergency benefit payments

00:16:32.960 that those don't seem like they're drying up anytime soon.

00:16:35.500 So I find it a strange argument for people who are so dead set on remaining closed because, again, it's still up to them.

00:16:42.000 They can still choose, especially since we know that elderly people are the biggest victims.

00:16:47.280 You know, they could still choose to remain socially distanced from elderly grandparents.

00:16:51.660 They could still choose not to put their children back in school or daycare.

00:16:55.200 It's ultimately up to individuals, even if the feds announced that they wanted to reopen.

00:17:00.840 So, Spencer, what do you think the world's going to look like at the end of these lockdowns?

00:17:04.500 Do you think we're going to just go back to exactly how life was in February 2020?

00:17:09.560 Or do you think when these lockdowns end, it will be met with a new world of sort of different norms,

00:17:15.460 different ideas around traveling and commuting and all that kind of stuff?

00:17:20.740 Yeah, I think it's going to be different, especially because I think, as you say,

00:17:23.740 what's going to have to happen is the lockdowns do need to be lifted at some point and people make their own choices.

00:17:29.180 Obviously, we've learned a lot about the virus, so people are armed with a lot more knowledge now.

00:17:32.700 But there's going to be a gap between when the lockdown comes down and when there's a vaccine.

00:17:37.260 If there is a vaccine, it could be a year, two years, three, who knows?

00:17:41.360 So society is going to have to change somewhat.

00:17:43.540 I think a lot of people are just going to make their own decisions.

00:17:45.760 You know, restaurants are going to say if people even are fine going back to restaurants,

00:17:49.000 it's going to be limited seating, spaced out seating.

00:17:52.500 Air travel is going to change somewhat.

00:17:54.100 I think, forget one airline in the States says they're going to be at 66% capacity when they get back to, you know, full steam, whatever it is.

00:18:03.360 So that'll be a big change.

00:18:05.440 People will be more socially distanced.

00:18:06.960 A lot of events I don't think will come back for quite a long time.

00:18:09.840 I can't imagine stadiums filled with people watching, you know, football, arenas full of people watching hockey.

00:18:15.520 So I think that'll be a big change.

00:18:17.940 But I think it's going to be kind of a trial and error process.

00:18:20.500 And I think one way social media is helpful is we can all see what's happening in every jurisdiction.

00:18:24.600 People can share videos, share their own experience.

00:18:27.200 We're all kind of learning from each other.

00:18:28.680 So we may see here's a practice that works good in one place that opened up.

00:18:32.380 Here's something that went bad in another place.

00:18:34.500 And we'll just kind of, you know, as I said, fumble our way through it.

00:18:37.220 Well, and hopefully we can provide enough shame on local bylaw officers and local police who are doing absurd things like issuing tickets to a family that was rollerblading in a parking lot or a mom that was holding her baby for too long in a public park.

00:18:53.040 I was out in the park near my house yesterday.

00:18:56.380 And the city of Toronto guys were there picking up all the picnic tables.

00:19:01.240 I guess picnic tables pose some kind of a risk against Canadians.

00:19:05.860 So we can't have picnic tables out in the park.

00:19:09.380 I guess you're trying to just discourage people from going to the park.

00:19:13.280 But it seemed like a little bit mean-spirited.

00:19:16.040 And I would even say borderline fascist for the government officials to come in and, you know, take away places for people to sit in the park.

00:19:24.720 It seems a little bit over the top.

00:19:26.740 Well, I hope you're right about the social media helping us guide through it.

00:19:30.500 But I think one of the other big issues, Spencer, to come out of the coronavirus lockdown is the future of our relationship with China.

00:19:38.400 I know you've been hammering away on this point on your website and in pieces for the post-millennial.

00:19:43.960 What do you think Canada's relationship with China looks like when this pandemic is over?

00:19:47.360 Well, it should look like almost non-existent.

00:19:52.300 You know, I think if we, you know, we've got to realize there's different kinds of trade, right?

00:19:56.300 If you're trading for luxury products, say you're shipping a car overseas, that's not really a huge problem, you know, because your economy is not going to be destroyed if all of a sudden you can't ship luxury products.

00:20:06.560 But if you're talking about, you know, personal protective equipment, you know, energy, telecom infrastructure, military infrastructure, that's the kind of stuff you cannot be dependent on a foreign country for, especially a country like China that just simply is ideologically opposed to Canada, very hostile government with the Chinese Communist Party.

00:20:26.760 So the relationship should be very much, you know, reduced, all, you know, all dependence we have on them, I think, should be eliminated to the greatest extent possible.

00:20:38.060 You can't do that instantly, but you can take real steps to do it right away.

00:20:42.220 And, you know, we're going to have to look back and say, OK, well, who are the countries we can trust?

00:20:46.220 You know, the United States, Australia, the UK, New Zealand, much of Europe, countries that have the same basic values as we do.

00:20:53.360 That's who we need to trade with and have a relationship with, you know, Taiwan, India, countries that still have some similarities to us.

00:20:59.760 But just being dependent on China is just not acceptable.

00:21:02.580 Look at what's happening in Australia right now.

00:21:04.680 They're pretty tame.

00:21:05.960 They said, you know, there needs to be an investigation of China when this is all over.

00:21:09.260 And China is now shutting down a bunch of imports.

00:21:11.480 They're basically saying, hey, if you if you keep pushing for an investigation, Australia, we're going to destroy your economy.

00:21:16.840 So how can you think it's it's smart to make yourself dependent on a country that the second you do one thing they get a little bit offended by?

00:21:24.800 They try to destroy you.

00:21:25.980 So the relationship should be really nonexistent.

00:21:28.720 But I wouldn't be shocked if Trudeau tries to go in a very different direction.

00:21:33.080 Well, speaking of Trudeau, I mean, it almost seems like the rest of the world is is wising up to China.

00:21:38.300 Like you said, Australia, I think Australia made a very strategic error over the last decade or so in massively expanding their trade.

00:21:45.640 Now, Australia doesn't have the luxury that Canada does and that our neighbour is the world's biggest economy and 350 million consumers just right there.

00:21:54.920 So Canada is lucky in that we still maintain our largest trading partnership with the United States.

00:22:00.960 Australia has taken a bit of a gamble to rely heavily on China.

00:22:04.640 And I think that they are paying for that.

00:22:05.820 But, you know, you still see leadership and sort of a backbone from Australia and saying enough is enough in the United States under Trump.

00:22:14.100 We've definitely seen sort of a big resurgence in standing up to China and trying to hold China to account with Trump.

00:22:23.320 But under Trudeau, we still see this appeasement, even even with all the information that we now know about the coronavirus and sort of early days with the Chinese government lying about it being transmissible, you know, with with their data constantly changing.

00:22:38.880 We had Trudeau's health minister saying that there's no reason not to trust China's data.

00:22:42.860 Well, like a couple of days later, China went and changed their own data.

00:22:46.420 So they don't even trust their own data.

00:22:47.840 But Trudeau does.

00:22:48.980 And then and then you had a couple of weeks later, Patty Haju saying that she praised China not for its not for its response now, but for its early response.

00:22:56.640 Well, Spencer, I know you're watching it closely.

00:22:58.660 In the early days, they were kidnapping whistleblowers, arresting scientists, disappearing journalists.

00:23:04.680 The crackdown on human rights is just absolutely appalling.

00:23:07.700 So why is it that we have a federal government in Canada with Trudeau that that's so willing and so eager to carry water for China?

00:23:16.560 Why why why do we have this strange relationship where the rest of the world is moving away from this bad actor and this adversarial communist regime and Canada's just not really catching on to that and continues to to prop up and appease this government?

00:23:31.760 Why is that?

00:23:33.220 You know, there's also the vaccine, right?

00:23:34.820 I mean, they've decided of all countries to partner with on a vaccine, we'll partner with China, which a bit of an odd decision given what's taking place.

00:23:42.480 You know, I think there's a lot of questions about it.

00:23:44.080 And the question has to be I think there needs to be an investigation.

00:23:47.660 That's what I talked to Ezra about before.

00:23:51.000 And we need to know, you know, are some people, you know, are they compromised or they bought off?

00:23:55.700 Or if that's not the case, are they just idiots?

00:23:58.140 Because really, that's what they've got to be.

00:23:59.540 Right. So I think there's some people who it's like anything that's not Western, they find interesting.

00:24:06.400 Right. And I think that's kind of part of the attitude problem with some of the people in the liberal government.

00:24:11.360 It's like, oh, if it's not the States or Europe or the UK, then it must be great.

00:24:15.540 It's so exotic and interesting. Right.

00:24:18.020 And you can see that a bit with the way they respond to Trump.

00:24:20.100 So Trump will tweet something, you know, say about Islam and they'll get really offended.

00:24:23.680 Like, this is a disgrace. This is fascism. Right.

00:24:26.180 And then just silence on China having a million Muslim people in concentration camps.

00:24:30.240 It's like, oh, no, no, that's not really our problem.

00:24:32.480 So this idea that China gets to get away with everything and be held to a different standard is just absurd.

00:24:38.320 And, you know, the point you mentioned about Australia, it's very interesting.

00:24:41.000 Australia is showing much more courage versus China than we are in Canada, despite the fact that Australia has almost everything to lose by it.

00:24:48.620 And Canada, if we got, you know, it would be tough if we got cut off from trade with China just completely.

00:24:54.960 Right. Just say today, China said no more trade.

00:24:57.760 But our economy would still survive. I mean, most of our trade is either internal or with the United States.

00:25:03.740 Australia, a very different position. So we're acting, our country's really because of Trudeau acting like cowards and just bowing down to China constantly.

00:25:11.180 And we don't even have much to lose by being cut off from China, whereas Australia with everything to lose is being a lot more courageous.

00:25:17.140 So I think at some point, you know, Canadians should start getting embarrassed by this.

00:25:21.040 I mean, you look at the polls. People obviously don't like China. They don't trust China.

00:25:25.220 And, you know, look at our history. We've been a country that stands up for freedom, stands up for democracy, stands up for the rule of law.

00:25:31.340 And to give in to China and just rule over for them is kind of a disgrace to everything we're supposed to stand for.

00:25:36.200 Well, I'll just make one caveat in Canada's history.

00:25:40.140 We have been a country that stands up for freedom and democracy, unless there's a prime minister with the last name Trudeau.

00:25:46.460 Because I know that Justin Trudeau's father, Pierre, also had a strange affinity for countries like Cuba and their communist dictatorship.

00:25:53.860 So perhaps Trudeau is carrying on that legacy.

00:25:56.260 You mentioned a conversation that you're having with Ezra. You're talking about Ezra Levant over at the Rebel Media.

00:26:01.920 And I watched that interview that you did with him.

00:26:04.380 And it was interesting because it was pointed out that there a story from 10 years ago, I did an investigation, found that there was about a thousand spies, known Chinese spies in Canada.

00:26:15.660 They were mainly focused on corporate espionage and these kind of things.

00:26:19.980 But, you know, that is that is a really surprising, startling number that I don't think that Canadians are aware of.

00:26:27.080 And, you know, again, that number is 10 years dated.

00:26:30.500 So is there any is there any idea of whether China has, you know, a surveillance or an intelligence presence in Canada?

00:26:39.600 I'm sure they do. You don't have to watch a lot of spy movies to know that that is the reality for for these adversaries.

00:26:45.660 I mean, you know, I think that there's a lot of material regimes like Iran and China, they still play that game.

00:26:49.240 But do you think that there's any concern that perhaps part of the reason why Trudeau and the liberal government is so willing to play ball with China is because somewhere somewhere along the line, someone's someone's compromised?

00:27:01.400 That's sort of the conversation you're having with Ezra.

00:27:04.240 Why don't you shine some light on that?

00:27:07.200 Yeah, I think I mean, the question is, we don't know.

00:27:09.020 Right. And when you see very odd behavior that doesn't really make sense, you need to investigate it.

00:27:15.000 Right. And when it comes from your government.

00:27:16.980 So I think that's why we need to have an investigation, a very strong investigation and get to the bottom of it.

00:27:22.180 So either some people are compromised or they're just, as I said before, they're just idiots or useful idiots, as the communists would call them.

00:27:28.760 But I think if you look, you know, at the problem, I mean, yeah, what, 10 years ago, they thought there might be a thousand agents.

00:27:36.820 I'm sure it's way more now.

00:27:38.380 I mean, Xi Jinping has dramatically escalated all their espionage efforts in their attempt to control other countries.

00:27:44.680 Canada would be seen by China as a foothold right next to the United States.

00:27:47.980 Right. So there's a big strategic issue there.

00:27:49.740 We have a lot of resources that they would love to control.

00:27:52.820 Big problem there.

00:27:53.980 And I think about one third of all foreign students from China are in Canada, in the whole world.

00:27:59.120 One third are in Canada.

00:28:01.180 So we know that they try the whole united front thing.

00:28:03.820 And there's a lot of Chinese Canadians who are saying to the government, look, we need you to stand up for us.

00:28:07.480 We have a serious problem.

00:28:08.560 They basically get pressure from both sides because you have the Chinese Communist Party will threaten, even people in Canada will threaten them if they criticize China, will threaten their families still living in China.

00:28:20.480 And then they get no support from the government who just rolls over for China.

00:28:23.540 So basically they're getting totally screwed over.

00:28:26.220 And they're saying, look, we need the government to call out this united front.

00:28:29.060 We need them to expose it and stand up for people in the country.

00:28:31.880 And so far, Trudeau refuses to do so.

00:28:33.980 So, you know, again, you know, I, you know, I wouldn't be shocked if he's not bought off at all.

00:28:38.920 But he's just an idiot, you know, like his father, very, you know, every communist he came across, he somehow loved.

00:28:44.640 But that's why we need to investigate.

00:28:46.500 We need to know whether these people are just fools or whether something more sinister is happening.

00:28:50.480 And it's an absolutely essential point that you raised there about how the people who are really, you know, really left in a terrible situation and abandoned by their government are Canadians who fled China.

00:29:02.580 Canadians who left China, either this generation or the last.

00:29:06.920 I remember when the Hong Kong protesters were happening.

00:29:09.620 Like I grew up in Vancouver.

00:29:10.900 There's a very large presence of Chinese immigrants and members of Chinese diaspora that live there.

00:29:16.680 And when when the protests were happening, it almost seemed like a part of the civil war that was happening across the world ended up in Vancouver and in Richmond, suburbs of Vancouver, in schools and communities.

00:29:29.960 You saw these really sort of arrogant pro-China counter protesters.

00:29:35.800 So you'd have the the pro-democracy, pro-Hong Kong guys, you know, outside the Chinese consulate in Vancouver.

00:29:42.440 And then all of a sudden these thugs would would show up in their fancy sports cars blaring out the Chinese national anthem, trying to drown out the protesters and waving the Chinese flag and pushing pro-pro-communist propaganda here in Canada.

00:29:55.120 And, you know, I think the idea for so many Canadians, you kind of think, look, people who move to Canada, they do it because they love our values and they want to participate in our democracy and they believe in the foundations of Canada.

00:30:08.820 And then when you see people behaving that way and it went far beyond that, there were some stories about, you know, bullying and threats and aggression at high schools.

00:30:18.340 There was one pro Hong Kong protester or activist who was at a high school in Richmond and someone posted a threat on his locker that basically said that the Chinese government was watching him and so on.

00:30:31.280 And you kind of go, wow, this is happening in our own backyard.

00:30:35.420 And that was right out in the open. These people were not afraid at all to show where their affinity really lied.

00:30:41.460 And so I really feel for Chinese Canadians or Canadians of Chinese ethnic origin who want to fight back and want to stand up against their government and their former government, I should say.

00:30:53.340 And to see the true government kind of ignore the problems and try to promote this friendship is is really disturbing.

00:31:01.720 What do you think of that?

00:31:02.640 Yeah. And I think, you know, authoritarians are obviously emboldened by weakness.

00:31:08.460 And that's there seems to be sometimes just a lack of understanding of basic human nature by the Trudeau government.

00:31:13.520 It's like so someone bullies you and you give them what they want.

00:31:16.360 What lesson have you just taught them? Well, bullying works. Right.

00:31:18.980 So, you know, they take two Canadians, they kidnap two Canadians and then we we keep being nice to them.

00:31:25.480 We say we want to trade more with them. We partner on a vaccine with them.

00:31:29.920 We never criticize them. So what lesson are they learning?

00:31:32.420 The worse they treat Canada, the more they get what they want.

00:31:35.960 So that just makes it more dangerous for the rest of us.

00:31:38.640 If you look at history, every time an authoritarian really people stand up against them, that's that's what authoritarians are afraid of.

00:31:45.620 Right. They use fear to keep everyone quiet and silent.

00:31:48.540 And that's what they're trying to do to Canada.

00:31:50.460 So they're trying to do to Australia and Europe, you know, pressuring them to change their their statements or their reports on the virus.

00:31:56.580 So I think we need to be a lot tougher.

00:31:58.620 And I think for a certain subset of Canadians, there's kind of this pathological niceness like, oh, we're the nice country.

00:32:04.400 You can be nice and still be strong at the same time.

00:32:07.240 But a lot of people seem to assume niceness means we never stand up for anything.

00:32:11.220 We never criticize anybody. We never take a stand.

00:32:14.420 And I think China just looks at that and says, you know, here's a country that looks weak and we can take advantage of them, get a bunch of resources, you know, get military information and have a foothold right next to the United States, who obviously China is trying to supplant as the most powerful country.

00:32:27.460 So I think we need to wake up to basic human nature and realize that if we keep giving in to China, it's just going to get worse and worse for us.

00:32:33.640 Absolutely. And I think that the sort of pathological niceness that Canadians have has unfortunately been mixed up in this weird stew of identity politics and sort of left wing, you know, the accusations, like even just the conversation that we're having and talking about those, the concern that you might have with pro communist protesters showing up at a rally.

00:32:57.640 At a rally, a lot of Canadians who might not have the sophistication or might just not understand the issues, they might take a step back and say, wow, that's racist.

00:33:06.540 You can't criticize China. And you have China kind of pushing that narrative as well, that if you were to take up safeguards or, you know, the point that you made earlier in the interview about how part of the problem for Canada was that we just didn't lock down travel, we didn't lock down our borders.

00:33:21.860 Well, at the time in January, when Donald Trump announced a ban of fights from from China, he was routinely written off as being racist and xenophobic.

00:33:31.100 And it was the Chinese government that was pushing that message that that this all kind of comes down to prejudice.

00:33:36.660 There was a German newspaper that suggested that that China pay reparations to Europe for for the destruction taken by Corona 19.

00:33:45.300 And the Chinese government responded again, saying that they were promoting prejudice against ethnically Chinese people.

00:33:51.100 So they they manipulate our sensibilities in the West and the sort of woke culture that's happening of pushing identity politics and division.

00:33:59.400 They play off that. I think it's a bit more sophisticated than most Canadians even imagine.

00:34:06.340 What do you think?

00:34:07.960 Yeah, well, if you look, it's not just, you know, that a lot of people in the country think that way.

00:34:12.440 It's that the people at the top think that way.

00:34:14.500 I mean, remember, as I'm sure, you know, well, when the virus was first starting to become a clear threat and people said, oh, why don't you shut the border down?

00:34:23.120 You know, maybe don't let flights in from China.

00:34:25.220 People said and like people at the top like Teresa Tam, Paddy Haidu, Justin Trudeau, then John Tory in Toronto said, oh, the real threat is stigma.

00:34:34.360 Stigma is more dangerous than the virus.

00:34:36.240 I'm sure you had told that to all the people who've died and have lost family members that stigma was a bigger threat than the virus.

00:34:41.540 So this is where, again, we wouldn't have needed all these lockdowns.

00:34:45.860 We wouldn't have had as much damage as we've had if these people just had basic common sense, which is, OK, you know what?

00:34:52.340 If there's one country where a very deadly virus is originating from, it actually makes sense to be a little concerned about letting people in from that country.

00:35:00.760 It's not like the people all of a sudden, oh, they're racist all of a sudden because they're worried about China.

00:35:05.140 No, they were worried about China because a lot of people in China were dying of a deadly virus.

00:35:08.980 So it's another problem where you see a lot on the left kind of this push against basic human instinct almost, right?

00:35:15.640 Like the threat response, like, OK, people are sick in a country.

00:35:18.960 Don't let them into this country.

00:35:20.420 And they say, oh, no, you can't think that way.

00:35:22.260 That's racist.

00:35:22.860 That's prejudiced.

00:35:23.800 It's kind of ignoring the basic human instincts that keep people alive.

00:35:27.240 And we've seen the consequence of that.

00:35:29.000 Yeah, we're all sort of walking on eggshells, or at least the leaders, the left wing leaders of our country would rather walk around on eggshells than do the hard news thing.

00:35:39.780 I'm glad you mentioned Theresa Tam because I think there's been a bit of a divide in Canada.

00:35:44.980 I mean, so we'll kind of jump to it.

00:35:47.540 You know, we're in the middle of a conservative leadership race.

00:35:50.180 And one of the conservative candidates, Derek Sloan, kind of came out with this rant saying, you know, the job of the top health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, has been terrible.

00:36:01.900 She's incompetent.

00:36:03.360 She's been relying on information from the World Health Organization, which seems to be compromised from China.

00:36:08.080 She's got to go.

00:36:09.940 And the reaction from the mainstream media and from elites and even members of his own party, other conservatives, have sort of denounced this line of reasoning as being racist and saying, you know, just because because Theresa Tam is ethnically Chinese, and I think she was born in Hong Kong, you know, to question her loyalty and ask whether she's loyal to Canada or China is obviously racist.

00:36:34.540 Whereas other people might say, well, look, she's a top health officer of the country.

00:36:40.220 She's made all kinds of terrible recommendations.

00:36:42.440 She recommended closing, keeping the borders open at a time when places like Taiwan were closing the border.

00:36:49.060 She first recommended against wearing masks, even though we now know that masks drastically reduce the chance of getting coronavirus when you're out and about.

00:36:57.760 And then she reversed on that.

00:36:59.000 I mean, you could you could you could realistically just look at her performance and say she's incompetent.

00:37:03.940 She's got to go.

00:37:04.880 But then you have this ward of people who are just saying, you know, this line of reasoning is completely unacceptable.

00:37:09.840 So what did you make of that whole debacle?

00:37:12.720 And do you think do you think Sloan is right or do you think that he is he is not being sensitive enough here?

00:37:17.840 Well, I think he wouldn't have had any trouble if he had simply said, who are Theresa Tam, Patty Hyde, who are Justin Trudeau working for?

00:37:23.980 Are they working for Canada or China?

00:37:25.580 The fact that he just said Theresa Tam makes it easy for people to play the racism.

00:37:30.860 I don't think he's racist at all.

00:37:31.940 I don't think it was a racist comment, but it makes it easier for people to say that.

00:37:35.320 Right. So he could have just mentioned all of them and raise those questions because they're really all to blame.

00:37:39.180 They all made serious mistakes when it comes to the advice that was given.

00:37:42.940 I mean, I've said this before.

00:37:45.180 There were random people on Twitter giving much more sensible advice than we got from, you know, the chief public health officer and from Trudeau and from Patty Hyde.

00:37:54.020 You know, they listen to the WHO and you see these things where they say, oh, we're going to be combating misinformation on Twitter.

00:38:00.700 Only only official information on the coronavirus will be acceptable.

00:38:04.780 Well, so would that be when the WHO said not to wear masks or when they said to wear masks, when they said border controls wouldn't work or they do work now?

00:38:12.700 No, I mean, they've kept changing their story.

00:38:15.120 And one thing that Theresa Tam said that really concerned me, and this was a few months ago when it wasn't really in Canada, she said Canada can't really act differently than the rest of the world or will be called to account, which shows that her main concern was political.

00:38:29.760 It was how is Canada going to be?

00:38:31.040 Are we going to be criticized by the WHO or international institutions going to be upset?

00:38:36.420 And, you know, her job is not to worry about politics.

00:38:38.440 Her job is to worry about health, you know.

00:38:40.920 So if you look at the numbers and say, here's a very controversial move.

00:38:44.220 We're going to shut down the borders and we're going to save thousands of lives and people will be upset about it.

00:38:49.680 Well, then you take that recommendation to the prime minister.

00:38:51.680 And if Trudeau goes against it, then it's on him.

00:38:53.400 But for the chief public health officer and for also Patty Hajdu to say, talking about racism and stigma and prejudice, that's not their job.

00:39:02.480 That's not their purview.

00:39:03.520 It's someone else's job to talk about that.

00:39:05.460 Their job is to worry about the health of the country.

00:39:07.880 And at the critical moment when, you know, one or two days makes a huge difference, they were focused on the wrong thing.

00:39:13.900 Political correctness, you know, people's feelings, sensitivity, as opposed to protecting the country.

00:39:19.440 I completely agree.

00:39:20.600 I think Patty Hajdu was constantly talking about sort of politicized ideas, even from the very beginning when her recommendations said not to close the border.

00:39:29.180 Part of her rationale was that she didn't want a stigma created against Chinese, ethnically Chinese people living in Canada or Canadians.

00:39:37.340 And again, that's not a health advice.

00:39:39.280 That's that's a sociology analysis that says, you know, for someone else.

00:39:43.960 I think you're right.

00:39:45.100 But Spencer, just to take it back to the conservative leadership race.

00:39:49.300 You know, you had Sloan make those comments.

00:39:52.000 And I think you could fairly say, look, if you're going to talk about these issues, you've got to do it carefully.

00:39:56.760 You've got to make sure that you're choosing your words carefully and that you're not accidentally questioning her loyalty to two countries.

00:40:05.460 But, yeah, you're making it more broad about the federal government's response.

00:40:08.840 But what did you make the idea that so many conservatives who are in the race, including or not in the race, but, you know, other conservative MPs, the interim leader, they weren't willing to defend Sloan or at least even explain his line of reasoning and sort of talk about why that was legitimate.

00:40:24.740 But so many were willing to sort of jump on the left-wing mob of sort of cancel culture to say, yes, this person who represents a large part of our party and, you know, is fairly popular among the party base.

00:40:37.820 Yeah, he's he's racist.

00:40:38.940 Like, how do we find ourselves in the situation where conservatives don't stand up for conservatives?

00:40:43.140 Yeah, well, I think, I mean, it seems there's been some reports of kind of the Ontario caucus trying to kick him out.

00:40:51.480 And apparently Aaron O'Toole was the only one who voted against removing or voted against making him apologize or something.

00:40:57.740 So it looks like at least internally Aaron O'Toole showed at least a little bit of backbone.

00:41:02.740 I know some of the leadership candidates didn't criticize, but, yeah, Scheer did and some of the other MPs.

00:41:07.580 And it's what I just don't get is how they not figured out, like, one of the most basic political moves, which is just to pivot and, like, redirect what people are talking about.

00:41:16.020 Like, it makes no sense.

00:41:17.700 So multiple stories came out about a week later about how the Ontario caucus wanted to remove him.

00:41:23.280 Almost everyone in the country had forgotten about that story already.

00:41:25.820 So they brought it back up into the media.

00:41:28.460 I don't know why they don't just respond when someone says, OK, Andrew Scheer, what do you think about Derek Sloan's comments?

00:41:34.640 You know, is he a racist? Should he resign? And said, I'm glad to answer that question when Justin Trudeau and Patty Hajdu apologize for insinuating that Canadians who wanted border controls were racist until putting those border controls in a few weeks later, when in many ways it was too late.

00:41:48.820 So when they when they apologize for that, we'll discuss another issue.

00:41:51.940 So the media would get upset about it, but it would direct attention towards what people should be talking about, which is the failure of the Trudeau government.

00:41:58.820 So they seem to constantly fall for the trap of, oh, the media is really upset about something.

00:42:04.460 The liberals are really upset. We better apologize and we better win over the media.

00:42:08.100 But they never do. It's like Lucy with the football, right?

00:42:10.480 Every time. Oh, maybe the media will like us this time.

00:42:12.760 Oh, no, we've got to do something else. Oh, next time they'll like us.

00:42:15.680 And it never works for them.

00:42:17.280 So I think they need to get a lot tougher and start, you know, pushing back and pivoting to other issues.

00:42:21.760 Absolutely. And we know that the media's favorite job is not holding the government that actually has power and control over our lives and power of government.

00:42:31.620 They don't the media doesn't like holding the liberals to account.

00:42:33.820 They love holding the opposition, conservative and backbench MPs to account.

00:42:37.980 I don't think that's going to change. But out of the out of the four main candidates.

00:42:42.100 So at this point we have four major or four four candidates left standing with Peter McKay, Aaron O'Toole, Derek Sloan and Leslie Lewis.

00:42:49.840 Do you see in any of those four the potential of someone who can do what you just described, stand up to the mainstream media, kind of say, look, I don't care what the liberal narrative in the mainstream media is.

00:43:02.580 I care about Canadians. Do you see that ability in any of the four?

00:43:07.620 You know, I think Aaron O'Toole and Leslie Lewis to me are the most interesting for Leslie Lewis.

00:43:12.460 I think she would just be a surprise to a lot of liberals. They wouldn't know how to use the same attacks.

00:43:16.480 Right. Oh, the conservatives are they they hate women and people of minority.

00:43:20.360 Oh, wait, no, we can't really say it. Right. So the left would have a lot of trouble with that.

00:43:24.800 I think regardless of what happens, she should definitely have a prominent role in the party going forward.

00:43:29.020 And she's she's actually brought forward a lot of interesting ideas, kind of more populist ideas, which I think is a direction the conservatives need to move into.

00:43:35.300 I think with Aaron O'Toole, he's been his approach has been pretty tough.

00:43:40.040 If you look at a lot of his videos and tweets, the question is, if he wins, will he continue that or kind of go to a more soft approach?

00:43:46.580 But he also served in the military. So I think having someone who's clearly demonstrated patriotism and serving the country would be a nice change politically as well.

00:43:53.560 So we'll see. I mean, a lot depends on their advisers, too. Right.

00:43:57.860 I mean, I think Scheer got some terrible advice in the last election, still seems to be getting some terrible advice now.

00:44:04.040 And, you know, we'll see if we'll see if that happens again.

00:44:07.980 It's a shame that, you know, our politics is so contrived now that it comes down to, you know, the advice of advisers and not really the character and personality of the leaders themselves.

00:44:18.160 So I want to get to Les Lewis in a minute. But for Aaron O'Toole, I mean, a lot of what he's saying sounds good to me.

00:44:25.720 He sounds, you know, strong and sort of putting forth this idea that he's a true blue conservative and that, you know, he's going to maintain this record once he becomes leader.

00:44:35.780 So if he does, some people are accusing him of sort of painting himself as a more hardcore right winger in this in this in this election selection or this candidate selection process where he didn't really do that last time.

00:44:49.280 And he's sort of trying to say, no, no, my positions are the same.

00:44:52.820 Do you think he's genuine? Do you think if he wins, we're going to get a lot of the policies that that he's proposing?

00:44:59.480 Or do you think it'll be something more like a bait and switch? Because I did feel like with Andrew Scheer, he was proposing some pretty solid things when he was running for leader.

00:45:07.340 He was talking about free speech on campus. He was talking about, you know, defunding the CBC and all kinds of stuff.

00:45:14.400 And then when he became leader, he sort of became this timid, manipulate, like managed, manipulated by his his advisers.

00:45:21.260 He didn't seem genuine and authentic. Do you think that's the path we're headed down if Aaron O'Toole is elected or do you think he's more genuine?

00:45:27.260 Well, I mean, I hesitate to say any politician is really genuine.

00:45:32.060 I mean, they're all calculating. They in many ways, they all got there by calculating their way to positions of power in the first place.

00:45:39.100 Some are genuine to a different degree, obviously, some more than others.

00:45:42.580 But I think a lot will depend on, you know, people like yourself, people like myself holding him accountable.

00:45:47.980 Right. So like and this is where, you know, the problem with the lack of what the conservative is not really embracing independent media is that they paint themselves into a corner where to win the leadership race, you have to be very conservative.

00:46:00.400 But then they feel to win the election, you have to appease the media. Right.

00:46:03.880 So I think the real question is, you know, will people like us hold him accountable?

00:46:09.640 And I think if O'Toole gets in, say he gets in and he starts backtracking on all the stuff he talked about, but then he gets a furious backlash from conservatives and from independent media that might push him back in more of the direction he campaigned on.

00:46:22.480 So I think a lot of it's still up in the air. You know, politicians do what they have to do to try to win.

00:46:26.960 They try to gauge where public opinion is, where their party base is.

00:46:30.700 And, you know, it depends how much pressure they get and how much pressure they feel to actually live up to what they they said they were going to do.

00:46:37.220 And how about Peter McKay? Do you think that I mean, he's sort of been ignoring independent media.

00:46:42.560 I know Aaron O'Toole was recently did an interview with True North's Andrew Lawton, but I don't think that Peter McKay is willing to go down that path.

00:46:50.540 So do you think we'll be in the same situation if Peter McKay is chosen leader? Do you think that he'll listen to independent media?

00:46:57.760 Well, it doesn't seem like it. I mean, if he's not willing to even talk to independent media during the campaign when he's trying to win over conservatives, I can't see him doing that much if he becomes the leader of the party.

00:47:07.700 And so I think, you know, there seems to be this calculation that, oh, they just need to try to go, as they say, to the center.

00:47:14.900 But the liberals keep moving the center, right?

00:47:16.740 I mean, the liberals are doing things now that would have been seen as far left four or five years ago.

00:47:21.600 And so the center has shifted.

00:47:22.940 So if you keep moving to the center, supposedly, then you just kind of do what the liberals want.

00:47:27.840 The other problem, yeah, if he's not willing to confront the, you know, or to talk to, you know, independent media, he's just going to get chewed up by the establishment media.

00:47:35.360 He's going to make the same mistake.

00:47:37.000 Oh, they'll like me. I'm a different kind of conservative.

00:47:39.260 They'll like me. This will go well this time.

00:47:40.760 And it never does. The thing I think conservatives have to realize is no matter who you are or how you campaign, they're going to call you an extreme far-right conservative.

00:47:50.000 They're going to paint Peter McKay as that, regardless of whether it's true or not.

00:47:53.240 So you may as well at least, you know, be true to the party base, expand the party base by, you know, convincing people that ideas are important.

00:48:00.680 And you have to fight back somewhat against the establishment media, just trying to give in to them all the time and hope they'll like you.

00:48:05.900 It hasn't worked out too well.

00:48:07.820 Right. It reminds me of Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president back in 2012, who, I mean, if you look at Mitt Romney today, he's seen as a squishy, flaky, sort of liberal Republican at the sort of far left end of the party who won't even vote in solidarity with Republicans a lot of the time.

00:48:24.600 And yet when he was the Republican nominee for president running against Barack Obama, they threw the same insults at him that they threw at Trump, calling him a fascist, calling him far right and dangerous and out of touch and all this stuff.

00:48:37.360 It's like, you know, it doesn't matter as long as you have that R before your name.

00:48:41.640 That's what they're going to call you.

00:48:42.920 And I think that conservatives would be wise to learn that the same phenomenon is at play here in Canada, if not worse.

00:48:48.820 You said earlier that you thought that Leslie Lewis was proposing some kind of exciting new populist proposals, and that was the direction that you think that the party should be moving in.

00:49:00.680 Can you give us some examples of what it means to be a populist and what kind of ideas you think the party should be embracing?

00:49:07.480 Yeah, well, I think, one, you know, the party's been very much kind of into this orthodoxy on trade, right?

00:49:12.840 Like more free trade is always good, and that included for a long time the idea of free trade with China, right, which I think the world has realized is a serious problem.

00:49:21.600 And you see, unfortunately, a lot of communities in Canada have been really broken apart.

00:49:25.200 A lot of good jobs have been taken away, replaced with either no jobs or, you know, jobs that are just way less secure, provide way less meaning for people.

00:49:35.380 And the countries become vulnerable.

00:49:36.880 So I think part of populism, or you could even talk about economic nationalism, is realizing that having a strong nation is important, which is something conservatives used to talk about.

00:49:45.980 It kind of shifted to, okay, it's all free market all the time, free trade with everybody, international institutions, which is not always compatible with, you know, a strong nation.

00:49:56.420 And there's a bit of a hypocrisy where, you know, you have conservatives talk about free trade with other countries, but we don't even have free trade within Canada, right, provinces.

00:50:04.080 There's still a lot of barriers.

00:50:06.040 So I think that's one thing they need to look at.

00:50:08.800 I think also if you look at the way the conservatives talk about finances, right, it's very interesting if you look at what both Donald Trump and Boris Johnson did when they got elected.

00:50:19.960 It's not exactly that they were big spenders, but they were not obsessed with the debt and deficit the way previous conservatives have been.

00:50:27.260 You know, they talked about spending on helping citizens.

00:50:29.980 They talked about, of course, not spending on illegal immigrants.

00:50:32.520 So that was one change, one thing they talked about, making citizenship have meaning.

00:50:38.080 Trump, I remember in one debate, he was talking about health care cuts with, I think, Rubio and Ted Cruz.

00:50:45.440 And Trump basically said, you know, call it what you want.

00:50:47.180 And they were starting to call him a socialist.

00:50:48.720 So they're like, oh, this isn't a Republican idea.

00:50:50.580 And he said, you know, call it what you want.

00:50:52.020 We're not going to let our citizens die on the streets, right?

00:50:54.100 So I think conservatives need to realize that a lot of people think the government has a duty to protect citizens and take care of citizens.

00:51:01.480 And they need to make that case a little bit better because they often seem like they're just out of touch.

00:51:05.420 I mean, Scheer's out there today not talking about China, but he's talking about the CERB, talking about fraudsters.

00:51:11.380 And I get the point he's trying to make, but to a lot of people it just looks like he's criticizing the idea of giving money away, right?

00:51:16.900 And, you know, it might be cynical, but if the conservatives are constantly seen as scolding the government and then Justin Trudeau is going around saying, oh, we're helping everybody, we're helping all our citizens get through this difficult time, Justin Trudeau is going to win that argument.

00:51:30.960 It might not be fair, might not be factually correct, but he's going to win that argument.

00:51:34.860 So I think they need to look at what some leaders have done in other countries, you know, whether it's, you know, it wouldn't be the same approach as Trump or Boris Johnson, but there are some ideas there, which is take care of your own citizens.

00:51:46.900 The nation has to be strong, you have to protect people.

00:51:50.020 And I think that people are also looking for a sense of community.

00:51:54.040 So this kind of, you know, free market, big corporation, endless free trade thing, it's not really that popular and it hasn't worked in some cases.

00:51:59.840 It works if we're trading with, say, the U.S. or the U.K., very different story.

00:52:04.900 Free trade there is quite good.

00:52:07.260 Free trade with China just means China says, OK, great, yeah, we'll partner with you.

00:52:11.380 But you have to let your company be 50 percent owned by China and you have to give all your intellectual property and then we're going to give billions of government support to copy your product and mass produce it.

00:52:20.420 Then we'll sell it back to you at a lower price because we can accept the loss and then your companies are out of business and you're buying all our stuff and you're dependent on us for personal protective equipment.

00:52:28.120 Oh, great, great deal.

00:52:29.840 So there needs to be a little bit more, I think, of an understanding that we need to have a strong country and that some of the economic orthodoxy that conservatives still seem, you know, tied to is not popular and really hasn't worked.

00:52:41.780 You raised just so many great points there, Spencer.

00:52:44.460 I feel like the international consensus, the Washington consensus of international institutions has been so corrupted just by the idea that initially sort of rules-based system post-World War II and sort of, you know, the world order that came out of that with the United Nations and all these other organizations was the idea that it was a coalition of like-minded liberal democracies that were creating these rules that were clearly understood so that we could better engage and get along with each other.

00:53:12.480 The, you know, the world trade organizations similarly had basically these principles of reciprocity and openness and transparency that relied on, you know, liberal, basically the idea that it would be a group of liberal democracies.

00:53:27.500 But we've opened it up to all of these, again, like you're describing kind of corrupt, manipulative, authoritarian governments that are willing to just absolutely change the playing field and change the rules.

00:53:40.180 So, it isn't really about the principles, the economic principles, which potentially could be sound.

00:53:45.320 It's like we've allowed ourselves to be manipulated.

00:53:47.660 And interestingly, it used to be conservative orthodoxy that promoted all of these ideas.

00:53:52.980 And now it's sort of become the liberal mainstream orthodoxy that, you know, big businesses and corporations and open trade and unlimited trade is the way to go.

00:54:04.460 And I feel like conservatives need to come up with an alternative, like you said, that focus on communities and families and making sure that people just have good paying jobs.

00:54:14.720 What do you think the government can do to promote things like community and to make sure that, you know, small cities in Canada, small towns maintain the character of being able to provide good paying jobs to people sort of across the spectrum?

00:54:29.880 Not just, you know, the highly educated people who go into sort of the high-tech jobs, but everybody, you know, do you think that the government does have a role then in sort of fostering these smaller towns and fostering a sense of community?

00:54:44.540 And if so, how can they do that?

00:54:46.840 Well, I think they do.

00:54:47.540 And I think there's a few ways.

00:54:49.220 One would be tariffs.

00:54:51.600 And obviously, you can't put tariffs on everything.

00:54:53.200 But I think you'd look and say, here's some strategic sectors we want to build in Canada.

00:54:56.840 Things that we need, things that if they were cut off of foreign countries would cause a big problem, which means you have to build them at home.

00:55:02.960 So you say, okay, well, we're going to have to put some tariffs on products and use some of that tariff revenue to provide temporary support to get some businesses and companies running.

00:55:12.760 Another thing is immigration.

00:55:13.980 This is very interesting.

00:55:14.760 If you look at the left in the past, especially labor unions, they were not fans of massive immigration because they said, look, a certain amount of immigration can be helpful.

00:55:23.380 Canada does have a very low birth rate.

00:55:25.300 That's an issue the government should address as well.

00:55:28.340 If people had more money, there'd probably be more large families.

00:55:31.760 But immigration, some immigration is helpful and necessary.

00:55:34.480 And it's good that we bring people in.

00:55:36.860 But if you look at Canada's numbers, we're bringing in about one-third as many people as the United States.

00:55:41.400 The U.S. is already a high immigration country.

00:55:44.460 So with about one-tenth of the population, we're bringing in one-third as many people.

00:55:48.800 So that's a huge amount of people every year.

00:55:50.340 And when you do that, you often just dilute the labor market.

00:55:55.280 So it's great for big companies because you have a whole bunch of people with very little bargaining power.

00:55:59.840 So wages are low.

00:56:00.980 People are desperate.

00:56:01.740 They'll take whatever they can get.

00:56:03.840 But labor unions used to be against that.

00:56:05.680 They wanted to maximize the leverage of workers.

00:56:08.020 They wanted higher wages.

00:56:09.460 But now, as you see, especially with the NDP and Jagmeet Singh, they kind of move in a more woke direction, right?

00:56:13.840 So it's not even traditional labor politics anymore.

00:56:17.280 It's something quite strange.

00:56:20.080 But I think the government does have a role.

00:56:21.920 And another important thing is decentralization.

00:56:24.440 The government brings in a lot of tax revenue every year.

00:56:27.080 If that was given directly to municipalities and provinces, then they could make better decisions for themselves.

00:56:32.700 And you'd see more creativity as opposed to kind of this top-down, oh, yeah, we'll just decide everything from the top approach that really often doesn't work.

00:56:39.660 So I think the lesson is almost more – I don't know what to call it – but more of a national strategy when it comes to trading with other countries and saying these are some key resources.

00:56:50.200 These are companies and resources we need to protect.

00:56:53.580 But then at the local level, way more local freedom, more freedom for municipalities, more revenue for them, more freedom for provinces.

00:56:59.880 And I think that's really the mix we need to go towards, which, interestingly enough, is actually more the way the Canadian system was intended to be in the first place.

00:57:07.980 Yeah, I think that that's the right approach, that having sort of a weak federal government.

00:57:12.340 This is where Canada differs from the United States.

00:57:15.020 The U.S. has a strong federal government that has, you know, just so many powers and abilities and so many things in Canada that are managed by the local governments and the U.S. are managed by the federal government.

00:57:25.400 We're lucky in that we don't have that system of strong federal government, and I think we should – conservatives should advocate for what you're saying, which is more sort of local control.

00:57:34.780 One other question from what you were talking about there, you know, one of the justifications for mass immigration is that Canada has a declining birth rate.

00:57:42.500 And it seems, you know, that's the all-party consensus that, you know, we're just sort of going to live with the fact that Canadians aren't having as many kids.

00:57:50.620 We're not anywhere near replacement levels in terms of families.

00:57:54.020 And sort of – instead of trying to address that problem and do something about it, we're sort of resigned to, okay, we'll just sort of import millions of people from all over the world to make up for it.

00:58:05.700 Why doesn't the government try to do something more actively pro-family?

00:58:10.460 And if so, what kind of policies would you think would be the right way to go?

00:58:15.720 Yeah, well, I think part of it is political correctness.

00:58:17.560 I think for the liberals, the concern is if they started talking about pro-family measures that might be seen as, oh, that's too conservative or, oh, that's – well, you don't like immigrants or something?

00:58:27.200 Oh, why are you talking about that?

00:58:28.640 And for the conservatives, it's – you know, the issue is, oh, they'll be accused of being anti-immigrant if they want to help Canadians, right?

00:58:33.900 The irony, of course, is Canada is already an extremely diverse country.

00:58:36.840 So if you talk about helping Canadian citizens, you're talking about really helping all kinds of people.

00:58:40.700 So it's not like just one group anymore.

00:58:42.980 So I think some of the – you know, there's direct baby bonuses, you can call that, right?

00:58:47.560 Payment supports, those do tend to be popular, expensive obviously.

00:58:52.000 But a big part is the labor market, right?

00:58:54.040 I mean if you have a situation where all the jobs for young people are basically low security, no benefits, very low wages, it's tough for them to ever accumulate capital, buy a house, start a family.

00:59:07.240 And you just – it's the same problem.

00:59:08.720 Then you bring in more people, which then lowers their wages even further, and the problem keeps happening.

00:59:13.560 And so you see on the left politicians who seem – either they don't understand it or they just choose not to understand it, where they say, we're going to increase the minimum wage.

00:59:20.960 We mandate a higher minimum wage.

00:59:23.040 And then they keep bringing in hundreds of thousands of people.

00:59:25.560 So you're just going to get people fired in that case.

00:59:27.700 You're not actually going to increase wages.

00:59:29.180 It's just a lot of people lose their jobs.

00:59:30.580 So I think recognizing the relationship between wages, immigration – and yes, there's going to need to be some direct government support.

00:59:40.000 I mean if the government wants people to be able to afford bigger families, then there needs to be some support.

00:59:45.600 That's something both the conservatives and liberals have done in different ways, but they both did the same thing.

00:59:50.040 And it's pretty popular when they do it.

00:59:51.700 So they just have to accept that that might be the price of changing things.

00:59:55.560 Yeah, it's like they do it without acknowledging it.

00:59:58.220 Like I have lots of friends in the States that they're having kids right now and having babies.

01:00:03.340 And you compare the situation in the U.S. to Canada.

01:00:06.160 I mean like I think that the federal government in the U.S. mandates like something like six or eight weeks of maternity leave for mothers,

01:00:14.220 which is a wildly short period of time for a new mom to have to transition to going back to the workforce.

01:00:20.440 Whereas in Canada, you get up to a year and you can even defer and take 18 months.

01:00:25.200 You know, we have all of these Canadian family benefits, monthly checks for kids that the U.S. wouldn't even dream of having.

01:00:33.940 So those would be considered like left-wing ideas in the U.S. and in Canada.

01:00:38.200 We already have them.

01:00:39.280 So I feel like there is a lot of stuff that's already done, but I would agree that the government can and probably should,

01:00:45.900 especially conservatives, promote the idea of strong families and strong communities.

01:00:50.440 So, sir, before we wrap things up, I did want to spend some time talking to you about the local or the media landscape for independent media.

01:00:58.260 We talked about it a little earlier when we were talking about how, you know, independent media plays such an important role in holding conservatives to account.

01:01:05.200 But I think part of the problem is just that the playing field is so tilted against us.

01:01:10.920 When you look at sort of some of the recent initiatives of the Trudeau government, the huge government bailout,

01:01:16.240 the idea that, you know, the CBC gets more and more money and therefore more and more credibility.

01:01:21.900 During the press conferences, the daily press conferences Trudeau's been doing throughout the COVID-19 crisis,

01:01:27.780 the CBC has been called on to ask about 20 percent, 22 percent, something like that, of all questions asked.

01:01:33.320 So, you know, Trudeau's not even letting independent guys into the, have the ability to ask questions.

01:01:40.260 You know, the big guys are dominating it even more and more.

01:01:43.180 What do you think independent media can do to fight back?

01:01:46.040 And what do you think just more broadly, what is the role of independent media and independent journalists in Canada?

01:01:52.760 Well, I think a big part of the role is just to represent what, you know, most Canadians are actually thinking and feeling.

01:01:57.920 I think if you look at how the conversation on social media shifted, right?

01:02:02.200 So when it was being used by the liberals effectively, when it was being used by Barack Obama and the Democrats, it was great.

01:02:09.660 Social media, oh, it's democracy in action.

01:02:11.700 People are free to share their views.

01:02:13.560 And then when you had election results go against what the elites wanted, you know, Brexit and then Donald Trump.

01:02:18.560 Oh, social media is a real threat.

01:02:20.020 This is very dangerous.

01:02:21.000 We need to do something.

01:02:21.640 So it's not about them actually being afraid of social media per se.

01:02:25.020 It's just they're afraid of losing control over the information environment.

01:02:28.040 So you see the same thing.

01:02:29.760 Fewer and fewer people watch the CBC and they keep getting more and more money, which is interesting.

01:02:35.220 You know, newspapers that can't sell people that can't get any attention, they get more money from the government to keep pushing the same stuff.

01:02:42.280 People are saying they don't want it, but the government says, oh, you do want it.

01:02:44.760 You're going to pay for it whether you like it or not.

01:02:47.060 So I think for independent media, yeah, it's representing what people think.

01:02:51.580 If you just look at the engagement on Twitter, you know, what you'll get on your tweets, what I'll get on my tweets, you know, thousands of retweets in some cases.

01:02:58.200 And then you see, oh, official CBC reporter, 100,000 followers.

01:03:02.400 And then you tweet something, two retweets.

01:03:03.960 It's like, okay, there's no real actually engagement or support for that.

01:03:08.640 In terms of the landscape, it is somewhat threatening what the government's trying to do.

01:03:12.200 I think they're slowly, it's like the boiling the frog thing, right?

01:03:15.180 If they just banned it right away, people would go crazy.

01:03:17.920 But if they slowly kind of chip away at it and shut it down over time, make it just tougher and tougher, they hope they can shut it down.

01:03:24.420 I think that's what they're trying to do.

01:03:26.260 Well, I think that not enough attention has been shined on this.

01:03:29.460 And it's partially because, you know, we slipped into the coronavirus pandemic, which has taken over every aspect of media coverage.

01:03:36.960 And that's just sort of the dialogue that Canadians are having in public conversation.

01:03:40.940 But back in January of this year, Spence, you probably remember this, the government, what they had done was they commissioned a panel to look into the sort of the media landscape.

01:03:51.220 And we've heard Trudeau government talk about this a lot, that they want to sort of move into a more regulatory role for media to dispel fake news and to make sure that outlets are transparent and that the information they're providing is correct.

01:04:08.280 We're talking about this even with regards to coronavirus.

01:04:10.920 But anyway, back in January, there was a report that came out through the CRTC recommending changes to the Broadcasting Act.

01:04:21.200 The panel was led by an individual named Janet Yale.

01:04:24.880 And, I mean, if we go back to that report, it's just absolutely staggering, some of the recommendations.

01:04:30.220 I mean, so Orwellian, so authoritarian, so counter to Canadian democracy, just in terms of the idea of requiring media companies to have licenses through the government for all kinds of new regulations and rules governing who is and who isn't a journalist.

01:04:45.300 That shouldn't be the government's role to determine who is and who isn't a journalist who's holding them accountable.

01:04:51.980 I mean, you just simply have a situation where liberals would only choose other liberals to be journalists and then conservatives would come back and do the same thing.

01:05:00.560 I mean, this is this is a dangerous path and it hasn't gotten much attention, albeit the recommendations haven't been put into effect yet.

01:05:06.720 So perhaps when the government does announce legislation, there will be some uproar about this.

01:05:12.660 But privately, I hear from a lot of Canadians who are just very concerned and worried about the future of media, given the Trudeau government's willingness to introduce stuff like this and broaden the conversation to the fact that we're actually talking about whether or not the government should regulate who is and who isn't a journalist and what fees and what taxes and what regulations they should follow.

01:05:33.120 Do you find this to be a threat to democracy or do you think it's all overblown?

01:05:38.120 You know, I find it very concerning.

01:05:39.580 I mean, one of the basic ideas of a free and democratic society is the government is held accountable in large part by the media.

01:05:46.300 So if the government gets to control what the media is and who's in the media, then that's not really free media, right?

01:05:52.640 Or independent media.

01:05:53.640 So I think it's a big problem and I think it's, you know, back to the whole boil the frog thing.

01:05:58.740 I think what they're going to do is they'll just separate – they started talking about it and they got a huge backlash and then all this other stuff happened, obviously.

01:06:07.980 So I think what they'll do is they're just going to do it piece by piece, right?

01:06:10.820 They'll bring in one piece of legislation, put it in an omnibus bill, and then if they get some backlash, back off and then put it somewhere else.

01:06:17.340 So the bigger problem is not just the report but the fact that first they would commission it and then the fact that they didn't just outright say this is unacceptable in a free country, right?

01:06:25.580 This is obviously what they want to do and they just wait for their moment to get away with it.

01:06:30.380 So I think we all have to be very vigilant and we have to generate outrage if they do try to bring it up again because a country where the government controls the media, that's what you expect in China.

01:06:39.560 I mean that's exactly how China works, right?

01:06:41.540 China gets to decide who the media is.

01:06:44.840 I mean Xi Jinping will go into like a big broadcast center and will tell them what they should be reporting on.

01:06:51.480 So it's obvious like they work for him and it's not that way yet in Canada but any movement in that direction is something we need to fight against.

01:07:00.580 Well, it does sometimes feel that way, Spencer, especially – we've had a little glimpse into the media's chummy relationship with Justin Trudeau through these daily press conferences.

01:07:09.540 And I don't know if you recall but earlier when the Conservatives tried to introduce a plan to get back into Parliament, there were all kinds of just really negative news stories, nasty columns written by sort of the usual suspects over at the Toronto Star and other places sort of saying, wow, that's so reckless and so irresponsible to want to go back to question period.

01:07:28.880 You know, we're all just fine with this current arrangement, Trudeau does answer questions.

01:07:33.660 It's called his daily media briefings.

01:07:35.480 And Susan Delacour, the star, said, you know, questions are necessary but question period is not.

01:07:41.160 So saying, you know, the whole role of Parliament isn't even that necessary so long as Trudeau is being held to account by the media.

01:07:47.260 And then we learn that these media scrums are completely managed and manipulated by liberal partisan staffers in the PMO who, like I said, 21 percent of the time they're calling on the CBC if you go through.

01:08:01.760 Trudeau North did a report, Black Locks, which is another independent media outlet, did their own reports showing that, you know, I think the Toronto Sun, which is the paper I write for as well, which leans conservative.

01:08:12.260 It's sort of a conservative populist magazine or journal newspaper.

01:08:16.880 They only got four questions.

01:08:18.360 You know, the CBC got like 180 questions.

01:08:20.240 So the PMO is already determining who gets to ask questions.

01:08:26.200 And you see it in the way that stories are written about.

01:08:29.520 You remember over Easter, Justin Trudeau broke some social distancing laws and went to Quebec after telling Canadians not to go to their cottages.

01:08:36.980 And he crossed a boundary that was actually closed.

01:08:39.860 Canadians couldn't get in their cars and drive.

01:08:41.660 But I guess when the prime minister's motorcade pulled up, they opened the barriers and let him on through.

01:08:46.900 But the big story from the CBC that weekend was that Andrew Scheer got on a private plane with his family.

01:08:52.560 And the whole the whole report was question after question after question for Andrew Scheer, which every question seemed to have a reasonable explanation.

01:08:59.580 And then at the very bottom, like the last very last sentence, it said, you know, Trudeau was also getting slack.

01:09:06.220 But he said he was following the guidelines and he wasn't breaking any rules.

01:09:10.880 And then there was no there was no investigation.

01:09:12.700 There was no follow up.

01:09:13.680 There were no questions about what rules he may have hypothetically broken.

01:09:17.620 So it's just such a black and black and white night and day difference between the way that the media question the opposition compared to Trudeau.

01:09:25.260 So I fear that we are already at that position.

01:09:27.680 You know, he's not as brazen as the Chinese communist government.

01:09:31.120 But, you know, the same stuff is happening behind the scenes and Canadians just aren't aware of it.

01:09:36.960 But, you know, again, what can independent media do to kind of tilt the playing field a little more in our favor?

01:09:44.960 And this is where it may sound strange to people, but I think some of the blame for this, obviously, the liberals for the most part.

01:09:50.940 But I think the Conservative Party has made some mistakes here.

01:09:53.860 For one, they raise tens of millions of dollars every year.

01:09:56.900 So why have they not yet built up a massive social media platform?

01:10:01.100 Right.

01:10:01.620 Why?

01:10:02.000 I mean, they often get ratioed on their tweets.

01:10:04.740 So they have a lot of people following them who don't support them.

01:10:07.920 They're not obviously reading the room.

01:10:09.900 Right.

01:10:10.040 You see a lot of the recent tweets are not going well.

01:10:13.480 How have they not paid someone to figure that out for them?

01:10:16.620 How have they not reached out to independent?

01:10:18.160 So Andrew Scheel do a press conference, as you say.

01:10:20.500 He gets a bunch of unfair questions.

01:10:21.980 Right.

01:10:22.880 So why wasn't the rebel invited to the press conference?

01:10:25.040 Why wasn't True North invited to the press conference?

01:10:27.700 You know, send someone, send me there, send somebody there.

01:10:30.240 Right.

01:10:30.960 Just you don't even have to shut out the establishment media.

01:10:33.960 But you just dilute it.

01:10:35.580 So you bring in 10 independent media organizations and you split the questions between them and the establishment media.

01:10:42.340 And then the press gallery would say, oh, no, this is unfair.

01:10:44.460 The press gallery gets to decide.

01:10:46.720 You can't legally stop someone from walking into a room and asking the opposition leader, in this case, questions.

01:10:52.580 And if they try to do that, then you turn it back on the media and say, so how come you guys are okay with Zinghua news run by communist China?

01:11:01.960 Well, are you okay with them being in the parliamentary press gallery?

01:11:05.200 Right.

01:11:05.360 But True North isn't or the rebel isn't or all these Canadian run organizations are not.

01:11:11.540 So I think that's a question you need to force the media to answer.

01:11:14.180 And the concertos really need to realize, look, there's already a group of people, a growing group of people, independent media in the country, who are much more willing to give them a fair shake, to listen to them, have millions of people combined who watch and listen and read their reports.

01:11:28.380 Why are you ignoring them?

01:11:29.500 Just make them a part of the media.

01:11:31.440 And the irony is the more they do that, then so, yeah, the concertos do that.

01:11:35.580 And then the establishment media will go crazy and will write a bunch of articles about why this is unacceptable.

01:11:40.720 Right.

01:11:41.360 But in writing all those articles, they'll print the name of all these new organizations and a bunch of people who've never heard of them will see it for the first time and say, oh, maybe I'll check this out.

01:11:48.900 So just by making them fight against each other, you'll get more attention for independent media.

01:11:54.060 So I don't know why the conservatives haven't really figured that out yet.

01:11:57.740 My concern is they're just going to think, oh, you know, this time is going to be different.

01:12:02.180 This time will win over the media.

01:12:03.480 And if you look objectively, and I know a lot of conservatives may not like to hear it, but the conservatives have won one majority of government in, what, the last 20 years?

01:12:13.920 And the one they won it was when they were running around the country giving out huge checks to people.

01:12:18.340 Everyone forgets in the 2011 election, I think the budget deficit was about $50 or $40 billion.

01:12:25.180 They were doing all those things.

01:12:27.200 They'd go to a community center, an arena with a novelty check, government economic action plan, $50 million, right?

01:12:35.360 So the one election, they won big.

01:12:37.460 They were giving out money to everybody.

01:12:39.240 And so that's – the media likes covering that, right?

01:12:41.240 It makes it easy to get attention.

01:12:42.440 The two – the next two elections, they talked about balancing the budget and the debt and all that stuff, and they lost.

01:12:49.680 So the conservatives, I think they misread the 2011 election and thought, oh, we figured out how to win over the media.

01:12:56.100 We figured out how to win over Canadians.

01:12:58.120 And they assumed it was some sort of mandate for all their ideas, and then they got smoked the next two times.

01:13:02.200 So they keep refighting the same election without building a media infrastructure in between, and then they find themselves in the same problem as, okay, our base wants us to do this.

01:13:11.640 But if we do this, the media gets upset, so we'll try to appease the media.

01:13:15.340 But the media will never be happy because we can never go as far left as the liberals or NDP, and they just kind of get screwed over all over the place.

01:13:21.460 And I feel they're going to make that same mistake again by saying, oh, independent media, oh, it's not too big right now.

01:13:26.760 We'll just go to the big networks and the big newspapers without realizing that there's millions of people who are reading independent media in Canada.

01:13:34.700 And if they can appeal to that audience and enlarge that audience, they can really give themselves a big boost when they face the next election.

01:13:41.700 Or they'll just have to get screwed over by the media again, and maybe they'll learn it next election cycle.

01:13:45.720 So we'll see.

01:13:46.220 Well, I hope you're right, and I hope that the conservatives are listening and that they do take on some of those tips that you gave.

01:13:52.580 I mean, True North does go to Andrew Scheer's press conference if we get a question or two in, but I would agree that I would love to see Scheer stand up to the Parliamentary Press Gallery,

01:14:00.460 which really is just a group of left-wing thugs that are protectionists and that don't want to expand the power that they have.

01:14:09.100 And so, you know, you have a situation like in the last election where True North wanted to participate in the leaders' debates,

01:14:14.960 and we literally had to take them to court, and we won.

01:14:17.720 A judge agreed that what they were doing in blocking True North and the rebel was completely arbitrary.

01:14:24.380 And for that reason, let us in.

01:14:26.360 I think one of the big problems I see is that the conservatives still go to the mainstream media,

01:14:32.320 and not even just the mainstream media, the left-wing media, the Star, the CBC, when they have news, when they have stories.

01:14:38.400 That's who they leak their stories to.

01:14:39.900 That's who, you know, they talk to insiders about what different campaigns are working on.

01:14:44.360 And I feel like there's a group of people in Canada that are sort of these conservative insider elites that live in downtown Toronto,

01:14:51.880 that, you know, they're former staffers for various federal and provincial governments on the right,

01:14:57.700 but essentially, you know, in their own lives are cosmopolitan leftists.

01:15:02.880 And, you know, they're the ones that are kind of driving it because they're friends with the lobbyists and the journalists,

01:15:08.240 and they kind of go out and have martinis together.

01:15:12.200 And they're the reason that independent media get ignored because, you know,

01:15:16.400 they're leaking the stories to the Star because it's their friends that work at the Star.

01:15:19.760 And I wish that there was sort of more of a populist revival within the party.

01:15:24.140 And so, you know, again, I'm not really seeing it out of any of these candidates other than maybe, like you said,

01:15:30.600 Leslyn Lewis, who is a bit of an outsider.

01:15:33.200 Perhaps even if she doesn't want the leadership, she'll run and become a member of parliament

01:15:37.200 and inject some of that populist spirit into the party because it's so needed.

01:15:42.080 All right, Spencer, well, before we wrap up here, we have a program at True North where club members,

01:15:48.060 people who donate to True North on a monthly basis, get special access, insider access.

01:15:52.320 If you're interested in joining one of these True North clubs, you can head on over to tnc.news.clubs.

01:15:58.880 And basically, they get, you know, they get special access and they get to ask questions.

01:16:02.880 So we had a couple of questions for you from our club members.

01:16:06.520 The first one comes from David in Coburn.

01:16:08.620 He says, Spencer, who do you think should win the CPC leadership election?

01:16:14.160 Who do I think should win or will win?

01:16:16.000 Should. Who should win?

01:16:17.120 Yeah, I'd have to say it's between Aaron O'Toole and Leslyn Lewis for me.

01:16:23.820 I think they would both bring something new, either military service or someone who I think represents, you know,

01:16:29.660 a more diverse leader for the party, something the left would have a tough time attacking.

01:16:35.240 And she brings some interesting ideas, Leslyn Lewis.

01:16:38.000 So I think should.

01:16:39.960 Yeah, one of the two.

01:16:41.380 I don't think.

01:16:42.540 I think Derek Sloan would get decimated in much of the country.

01:16:46.260 His brand is severely damaged.

01:16:48.060 He hasn't figured out.

01:16:48.760 I mean, it's unfair to call him a racist, certainly, but he hasn't figured out a strategic way to talk about things,

01:16:53.940 which is a bit of a problem for him.

01:16:56.200 And Peter McKay, I think, you know, this idea that he's super electable, I just don't see that.

01:17:00.600 I think the conservative base will be demoralized if he pulls out a narrow win,

01:17:04.600 because I think that's the only option.

01:17:05.800 His support has declined a lot.

01:17:08.440 And if you look at his social media game, it's been horrendous.

01:17:11.760 I mean, just I don't even know what they're doing there.

01:17:14.460 And he's going to get attacked as a far-right wing guy anyway.

01:17:16.960 So you're going to have, he's going to get attacked as far-right.

01:17:19.200 The party base will be demoralized.

01:17:21.500 And the communications will be pretty bad.

01:17:24.040 So, you know, maybe there'll be some sort of surprise, but that's kind of how I see it.

01:17:28.160 Yeah, I think that the calculation behind Peter McKay is totally wrong.

01:17:31.260 The idea that, hey, look, the conservatives already have all of Western Canada locked down.

01:17:35.500 They're going to get every seat in Alberta no matter what.

01:17:37.700 So they might as well get a guy from the East that could appeal and win some seats over there.

01:17:41.220 I think that calculation is wrong, because I worry that under a Peter McKay leader who brings a party back to the center, back to the left,

01:17:50.500 you'll lose support from so many people out West that you might even see a split in the party or a new party pop up.

01:17:57.380 That's just my two cents.

01:17:59.020 Next question comes from Janet.

01:18:00.460 Canada has seen a number of cases of fake outrage and cancel culture.

01:18:04.880 It seems like almost an everyday occurrence now.

01:18:08.060 The latest example was Bryan Adams.

01:18:10.440 Why do you think this is happening and what can Canadians do to stop it?

01:18:15.000 Well, I think a big part of it is how left-wing the media is, right?

01:18:18.060 So you have someone like Bryan Adams, what he said.

01:18:20.540 And I wrote an article saying, look, if you're outraged about something, you should be outraged at China, not at Bryan Adams.

01:18:25.540 I think the vast majority of people would not be upset with what he said, but you have a small group of people on Twitter who are either close friends with or are the same people as who are in most media organizations.

01:18:37.960 So they see 50 tweets of angry people, and then boom, all the articles.

01:18:41.920 Oh, outrage.

01:18:42.680 Canadians enraged at Bryan Adams, right?

01:18:45.020 And then it becomes a self-perpetuating thing, right?

01:18:47.580 People read articles saying how outraged everyone is, so people think, yeah, I'm also outraged now.

01:18:51.940 This is crazy.

01:18:52.540 So I think that's a big part of it, and again, stronger independent media pushes back against that.

01:18:57.960 You saw more of a fight than you usually do, people pushing back, just like with Don Cherry.

01:19:02.960 A lot of people who attacked him, there was a lot of a backlash to the attack on him, and it wasn't enough, obviously, to save his job.

01:19:11.040 But it does show that I think independent media represents what just regular common-sense Canadians are thinking.

01:19:17.020 And a lot of people are tired with this whole cancel culture bullshit, and they want to push back against it.

01:19:23.720 It's not at the point, right?

01:19:24.780 I mean, we still see – what's that terrible show?

01:19:29.340 The Talk?

01:19:30.120 Is that the one where –

01:19:31.960 Oh, I think The Social is what you're talking about.

01:19:33.940 The Social, oh, yes.

01:19:34.640 The Canadian knockoff version of The View.

01:19:37.400 Yeah, so The Social, I mean, they – one of them said a whole bunch of terrible things.

01:19:41.940 Didn't lose her job.

01:19:43.020 Don Cherry does lose his job.

01:19:44.880 So there's still – you see with the establishment media, because it's, I think, owned by CTV, there still is obviously some bias in there and a double standard.

01:19:52.940 But that's starting to shift, at least on social media.

01:19:54.920 People push back, and they realize that it makes no sense.

01:19:58.340 They realize there's a double standard, and they fight back against it.

01:20:01.420 So I think the more independent media grows, the more there's going to be a pushback to all the cancel culture stuff.

01:20:08.020 Absolutely.

01:20:08.540 It seems like, you know, Brian Adams just probably isn't a super savvy guy that spends all his time on social media.

01:20:13.900 So when he went to express his outrageous situation, it didn't come off as crisply as if you were, you know, a liberal politician who had someone vetting it.

01:20:24.440 All right, final question here, Spencer.

01:20:26.400 This comes from Adam.

01:20:27.840 In Hamilton, he says, Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives seem like they're kind of in a tough spot right now as the official opposition, or at least they get a ton of heat from the media.

01:20:37.740 I know here in Ontario, the NDP have been relatively quiet, whereas the Conservatives seem pretty aggressive.

01:20:44.740 What do you think of the official opposition?

01:20:47.540 Should they be nice and join Team Canada, or should they continue to try to hold the government accountable?

01:20:54.460 I think they need to pick their battles.

01:20:56.560 So they voted for the CERB, the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, which, if you look at the polls, is extremely popular.

01:21:03.140 I mean, people are seeing economic damage like we've never seen before, and so to have the government supporting people is popular.

01:21:10.500 And, again, the Conservatives voted for the program.

01:21:13.580 So it's very easy for them to say, yeah, we stand with the government on providing support to Canadians during this difficult time.

01:21:19.060 We're going to make sure you get the support you need.

01:21:20.800 And then just stop talking about it.

01:21:22.300 Just leave that for a few months, right?

01:21:25.400 But then on other issues like the border, like on China, that's an issue where they should keep attacking, right?

01:21:30.780 So there's different issues.

01:21:31.540 It's not a one-size-fits-all approach.

01:21:33.620 But if you have, what, 86% of Canadians saying they don't trust China, only 14% with a positive opinion, people don't want more trade with China, people want Huawei banned.

01:21:43.340 These are all areas where the Conservatives can be more popular than the Liberals, and they should keep talking about it.

01:21:48.860 So they need to pick their battles.

01:21:50.600 You can talk about the border as well and the need for strong borders, which, again, feeds into what Conservatives have been saying.

01:21:55.380 And what a lot of people are realizing is, yes, a nation needs borders, especially when there's a pandemic flowing in from other countries.

01:22:02.800 So, yeah, I think Team Canada is about providing support to Canadians.

01:22:06.140 So, yes, absolutely, we're on Team Canada when it comes to supporting Canadians in this difficult time.

01:22:11.060 And we'll always do that and then just stop talking about it because that's all you need to say.

01:22:15.020 But then on other issues like the border or China, yeah, keep talking because there is important stuff to be said there.

01:22:19.740 Well, I think that the Conservatives would be very wise to listen to some of the advice that you're giving, Spencer.

01:22:26.360 And, you know, we really appreciate your time and your insight.

01:22:28.760 I think that, you know, we've talked about so many important issues.

01:22:32.660 And, again, I hope that some people who are running the Conservative Party are listening.

01:22:37.220 And I hope that some of your ideas and suggestions about independent media come to fruition.

01:22:43.240 So, Spencer Fernandos, thank you so much for joining the Candace Malcolm Show and the True North Speaker Series.

01:22:47.920 And we hope to talk to you again.

01:22:48.940 It was great talking to you.

Juno News - May 19, 2020

Ep. 4 ｜ Spencer Fernando ｜ Press Freedom, China and the future of the CPC

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