In this episode, Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poutine joins me to talk about the impact of Venezuelan oil on Canada's energy supply, and the need for a new pipeline to the Pacific Ocean to carry Venezuelan crude to the US Gulf Coast.
00:06:25.280In fact, ideally, we'd have another two pipelines with each having a million barrels a day.
00:06:31.260So, and as to the B.C. government, it's irrelevant.
00:06:35.940Like, sure, we should always have phone calls and conversations and meetings with premiers.
00:06:41.760But the Constitution is deadly clear on this.
00:06:45.180The federal government has the exclusive legal and constitutional authority to approve a pipeline.
00:06:51.040Section 9210 says that the provinces do not have the ability to block interprovincial projects.
00:06:57.400And the courts, by the way, this is not my interpretation, the courts ruled on this, on the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
00:07:04.300As for First Nations, they deserve to be consulted, but they do not have a veto power.
00:07:09.100That, too, is the finding of our courts.
00:07:12.160The final decision rests with one man, literally one man, and that is the prime minister of Canada.
00:07:20.020Because under Section 9210 of the Constitution and under Bill C-5, the decision is the federal government and the head of that government, which is Mark Carney.
00:07:31.200So we don't need to make more excuses.
00:07:33.060We don't need to blame First Nations or premiers.
00:07:35.580There's one guy in the way, and his name is Mark Carney.
00:07:40.660I'd like to read part of your op-ed in today's National Post.
00:07:45.680We don't have time for politics, paperwork, and bureaucratic busywork.
00:07:50.540And given this liberal government's November 2016 decision to kill a nearly identical project, which Carney later testified was the right decision,
00:08:00.520and given that present-day liberal members of parliament continue to publicly oppose the project,
00:08:06.360we should doubt whether the prime minister is serious about getting it done.
00:08:11.380And based on his recent quotes, I think that's true.
00:08:16.260It just doesn't sound like he has any urgency at all, that he doesn't see Venezuelan crude as any kind of threat.
00:08:23.020And perhaps he's looking at the existing infrastructure that we have in place to process, to send the oil down.
00:08:29.600You know, he says we're a stable provider up here.
00:08:32.940You know, obviously they're not the same weather issues that they would have to deal with if they were bringing it over by tanker.
00:09:37.180We have a prior route through the Northern Gateway project that was proposed and approved before this liberal government killed it.
00:09:46.320So all of the excuses need to be put aside.
00:09:50.420And what I called for yesterday is for the prime minister to commit that within two months of receiving Danielle Smith's application,
00:09:56.140he should approve it so that we can get building.
00:09:58.780On the Venezuelan front, once again, some of the media has expressed alarm at your unqualified support for the raid that led to the arrest of Mr. Maduro.
00:10:12.700Do you have any thoughts about their, I don't know, minor hissy fit over this?
00:10:18.600Well, that was a liberal commentator at CTV who used to, I think she was a former liberal staffer.
00:10:24.900I find it ironic that a liberal staffer at CTV would oppose getting rid of Maduro when her own government has said that Maduro is not the legitimate president.
00:10:37.640I mean, the liberal government here in Canada has recognized that Maduro lost the last election to Edmundo Gonzalez and Maria Carino Machado.
00:10:48.240So he was governing without legitimacy, not to mention the countless crimes that he has committed in jailing political prisoners, jailing political opponents, killing enemies,
00:11:02.180plunging the country into the most impoverished nation in all of the Americas, sponsoring drug lords, backing,
00:11:12.120allowing Hezbollah and other terrorist groups to use the country as a staging ground, which threatens our hemisphere.
00:11:21.120The fact that he was moved and removed in a, frankly, a surgical incision, not through a large scale violent invasion of the whole country,
00:11:32.860but a surgical incision that allowed him to be taken without any harm done to the civilian population is a positive development.
00:11:43.880And now he will be given due process in American courts where charges were laid, I think it was by the district attorney of New York, a democratic state.
00:11:57.120But in the meantime, my hope is that we will quickly hand the keys to Edmundo Gonzalez,
00:12:06.220who is the rightful and democratically elected president, along with his partner, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Carina Machado.
00:12:14.820And that soon after that, there will be renewed elections.
00:12:17.880I expect that Machado would run as the leading contender and she would win and she would bring democracy, freedom, free enterprise and prosperity to the people of that country.
00:12:29.480With the brief time we've got left, I just want you to hit a couple of other points on the political front.
00:12:34.680We have Chrystia Freeland with one foot in Canada's parliament and the other foot in Ukraine.
00:12:38.640We've got the Liberals stepping up their efforts to poach Conservative MPs in order to try and gain that majority that they so desperately want.
00:12:52.280Yes, Mark Carney's trying to manipulate himself a majority that Canadians voted against so that he can concentrate even more power and money in his hands.
00:13:01.700I think it would be very costly to Canadians if he were allowed to have a majority.
00:13:06.640He would use that power and the political impunity to raise taxes even more and increase the cost of living for Canadians who can't afford to pay their bills.
00:13:19.700But he needs a majority to do that because if he brings in an unpopular tax increase to fund his out-of-control spending now,
00:13:26.920he risks going into a quick election and being thrown out for that reason.
00:13:32.540So he's trying to lock down unquestioned power that Canadians voted against so that he can massively expand the power, the cost and control of his government.
00:13:45.180We need to respect the will of the people, which was a minority government.
00:13:49.020And the Canadians, people need to have a choice as to whether they are ready for a change so they can afford homes, afford food, and afford to have hope again in the next election.
00:14:04.240And the Chrystia Freeland situation, she seems to be in a conflict of interest here.
00:14:11.040Yeah, look, frankly, I think it's ridiculous that she would work for a foreign government while she's a Canadian member of Parliament.
00:14:16.880Beyond that, Mark Carney has enormous conflicts of interest that no one seems to be willing to talk about.
00:14:23.500You know, he is heavily invested in Brookfield.
00:14:26.680He's heavily invested in offshore tax havens.
00:14:31.060His company has been called the biggest tax dodger in Canada.
00:14:35.100He stands to profit from all the subsidies his government is giving to batteries, to the carbon capture projects, to modular housing, and all these other things that Canadian taxpayers are forced to fund to profit his bottom line.
00:14:55.160So I find it hard to, I'm kind of surprised that there was such a backlash against Freeland, even though it's deserved, given that Carney's conflicts are so much bigger than hers.
00:15:06.520And we're going to try to, we're going to be holding him accountable for that, because we need a prime minister who's actually working for the Canadian people, not patting his pockets.
00:15:13.720Yeah, Paulie, thank you so much for coming on the show.