Juno News - Fmr. Liberal MP General Andrew Leslie on Justin Trudeau's RESIGNATION

00:00:00.000 All right, joining us now on The Faulkner Show is General The Honourable Andrew Leslie,

00:00:07.680 the former Chief Whip of the Government of Justin Trudeau from 2015 to 2019 and the former Liberal

00:00:13.840 MP for the riding of Orleans. Before entering politics, General Leslie was a decorated veteran

00:00:19.100 and commander of the Canadian Army from 2006 to 2010. General, thank you so much for joining us.

00:00:25.620 The big news today, of course, is Justin Trudeau's resignation announcement. You know Justin

00:00:30.780 Trudeau, you worked with him personally. What do you think is going through his mind today as he

00:00:35.760 made that announcement? Well, we're certainly not close now. I left him for some very good reasons

00:00:44.680 in 2019. I will point out, no matter what's going through his mind right now, I really wish that at

00:00:53.560 the top of his mind would be Canada and the looming impact of negotiations with President-designate

00:01:02.820 Trump on tariffs, trade, border security, defense and security. So here we have a prime minister

00:01:11.820 whose popularity is amongst historical lows, who has decided to essentially stop the machinery of

00:01:20.400 the government from working for three months. But he's going to maintain his position as leadership.

00:01:28.560 And he'll be initiating the negotiations with then President Trump starting in about 15 or 16 days.

00:01:36.080 Meanwhile, his juniors, his cabinet ministers, will all be off vying to compete to replace him.

00:01:44.480 So who's the strong, capable, knowledgeable team that represents Canada's interests that

00:01:52.960 arguably the single most important and economically fragile time we've had with the United States

00:02:00.240 in a living memory? And if that was not his first consideration, then shame on him.

00:02:08.400 Let's go through this upcoming negotiation with Donald Trump, just how important this will be

00:02:17.120 for the future of the country. Do you feel as though Donald Trump looks at the announcement today

00:02:22.480 as a personal victory and as a victory for his incoming administration, essentially being able to take out

00:02:28.640 a prime minister who they see as someone standing perhaps in their way when it comes to

00:02:33.280 the incoming administration's foreign policy? I don't think Mr. Trudeau had that much attention from

00:02:43.920 President-elect Trump's team. And I don't think they see it as victory per se because he's still around.

00:02:51.520 But Donald Trump's team are transactional in nature. A lot of them are very senior business leaders

00:02:57.920 or very experienced politicians. And when they see weakness, or nations that project weakness,

00:03:05.120 or fragility or instability or chaos, they'll probably try and get a better deal out of it.

00:03:12.960 So in my opinion, what the current Prime Minister of Canada has just done has not helped us in the slightest.

00:03:21.600 Before entering government, you were assisting the Liberal Party and Trudeau and being an advisor on

00:03:27.280 foreign policy. So you are closely aware of what Justin Trudeau's foreign policy was entering government.

00:03:36.960 How would you define Justin Trudeau's outlook on the world and his foreign policy?

00:03:44.080 I think his foreign policy will be remembered essentially as naive. I think he had great ambitions

00:03:51.920 to operate on the international stage, but a variety of interlocutors from his own team. And of course,

00:04:00.800 his efforts ended up more often than not in embarrassment in terms of losing credibility for

00:04:09.120 our nation. So I think overall, his tenure as 10 years on the international stage will be seen not as a

00:04:16.560 great success. And if anything, a significant amount of failures. Do you think he sees it that way? Or do you

00:04:23.200 think perhaps that he feels satisfied with his job as Prime Minister now that it's all coming to an end?

00:04:30.560 People change. His power changes people especially quickly. And in his case, he's been in power for 10

00:04:37.840 years. I think ever increasingly, he's been in a bubble, an echo chamber of those who

00:04:43.520 tell him all that he might wish he hoped to hear all the time. And the results, I think,

00:04:48.640 speak for themselves. A leader who is largely out of touch, who has certainly misread the United States,

00:04:55.520 our greatest friend and largest trading partner, who has misplayed his hand on several very, very

00:05:02.720 important international venues, be it dealing with leaders of large governments, or leaders of

00:05:09.200 coalitions are responding to the concerns of NATO members who criticized and are criticizing Canada

00:05:15.280 for their lack of defense spending, failing to take the hint of the current government of the United

00:05:22.000 States, President Biden and his vice president about border security, the United States concerns over

00:05:28.880 drugs coming from Canada down to the United States, about security risks appearing on their northern

00:05:34.720 border, to which they've allocated no new fresh resources. Now they've made promises over the

00:05:40.560 recent weeks, but nothing's actually happened. So his legacy will probably be in his own mind as

00:05:47.280 good as he might make it. But to the rest of us, I think his standing in the national polls short of

00:05:54.320 quite to what the rest of Canada thinks.

00:05:55.600 And so with that, with the idea that there will be a new Liberal leader, and that process will commence

00:06:02.480 shortly, who do you think will lead the party? And who do you want to lead the party? Perhaps those are two

00:06:09.520 different answers, but maybe we'll start with who you would like to see become the next leader of the Liberal

00:06:14.800 Party.

00:06:15.120 Well, after 10 years of producing the results that the Prime Minister has produced for Canada, and of course,

00:06:25.440 depending on your point of view, some people probably think he did a great job. I happen to think he hasn't.

00:06:32.480 There are many millions of Canadians who think the same way that I do.

00:06:36.880 So I would argue deep down in the interim, it probably doesn't matter who leads the Liberal Party,

00:06:43.040 just so long as it's not Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. And I'll explain why.

00:06:48.000 It's because it's time for a change after 10 years,

00:06:52.080 and the vast majority of Canadians are telling all of us, you, myself, Mr. Trudeau,

00:06:58.800 that the change is now. So really, deep down, it doesn't matter, which is why it's so painful

00:07:05.760 to see that Prime Minister Trudeau chose this prorogation issue. He selected that, he recommended

00:07:12.880 to the Governor General, it's been approved. And now, at a time when we need a functioning government

00:07:17.840 most, there's no tools to draw on, especially when all the senior leaders will be off trying to

00:07:24.800 replace him, they're chasing his job. So all the experience of the public service of the sitting

00:07:31.840 Parliament will not be available. So it's essentially going to be a one man show with Mr. Trudeau in

00:07:39.360 Washington. How's that going to go over? Well, it's certainly going to be very interesting to watch.

00:07:45.920 You were, you were involved in the government in the early days of the majority government mandate.

00:07:52.480 I want to ask you, in that time, what were some of the accomplishments that the government can look

00:07:59.440 back on and say, that was something we can remember as a positive? Because so much of the coverage today

00:08:05.040 and over the next few weeks will be negative, and not for not for bad reasons. There's plenty of

00:08:10.720 negativity, and plenty of negative angles to cover this story. But I want to ask you, what were some of

00:08:16.080 those accomplishments that Canadians can look back on with this government?

00:08:21.280 I would think they had a, they had ambitions about the environment, which they started.

00:08:28.720 Unfortunately, Canada's emissions have grown over the last 10 years, carbon emissions, but they started

00:08:36.400 a process. They went too far in many cases and made it too expensive too quickly. And they didn't do a

00:08:42.080 good job of explaining why they were doing it in terms of the intricacies. I also note that there's

00:08:47.920 a variety of municipal or provincial programs in which they dipped down and started to meddle in those

00:08:55.120 waters, specifically pharma care, assistance to Medicare, dental care, which, as you know,

00:09:01.040 in the division of responsibilities and charter documents, that's the province's responsibility.

00:09:07.200 Nonetheless, that's where they like to play. And in that context,

00:09:10.800 they probably did some good there in terms of social development and pensions for the agent.

00:09:16.640 But I think their gallop to the left was very, very precipitous. Don't forget they ran originally

00:09:22.240 in 2014, 2015 as a centrist liberals. Right after they were elected, they went to the left of the NDP.

00:09:30.720 And I think we're seeing some of the results of that in terms of Canada status in the world,

00:09:35.440 our trade deficits, how the list goes on and on. So I won't bore you all with the detail you know already.

00:09:44.080 Let's look ahead now to what some of these major foreign policy challenges are going to be for

00:09:50.560 a new Canadian government. Of course, we understand that there are situations all over the world, but

00:09:55.920 when it comes to Canada's role in those situations in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and perhaps in other

00:10:03.120 areas. What do you think Canada should do now to put itself back in what I consider to be put the

00:10:10.560 country back in its rightful place of the hierarchy of nations? Well, I agree with you there. I think the

00:10:15.680 first thing that has to happen, we have to rebuild ourselves. We have to rebuild ourselves, not only in

00:10:20.800 terms of a nation, but it takes pride in its accomplishments, pride in its past, pride in those

00:10:26.720 activities that the men who win them in uniform and do and do on our behalf, not only in national

00:10:32.000 defense, but in the policing forces and border security. Then we have to pay much closer attention

00:10:38.000 to what's going on with their biggest friend and trading partner. They've made it pretty clear

00:10:43.040 that they want our borders a lot tighter than they've ever been in the past because unpleasant people

00:10:48.000 are coming in from their north, Canada, into their country, staying and causing mischief. 0.97

00:10:54.240 As well, narcotics are flowing in from Canada to the United States. There's some trade issues that

00:11:00.560 are looming large. There's the potential of tariffs, of which President-elect Trump has spoken many times.

00:11:07.920 After a while, you tend to believe that he's actually going to do it, and I think he will,

00:11:12.480 which means we're going to have to have robust teams ready to respond to the detail because it's

00:11:18.560 in the detail where we sort of drew to a draw in the last NAFTA discussion with the United States,

00:11:25.520 of which I was a member. I had to speak to 33 state governors visiting a whole bunch of states with

00:11:33.200 information on how many Canadian businesses, who they were, how much money flowed into the United States

00:11:40.720 from Canada that helped sell and close the deal. And of course, defense and security.

00:11:47.440 The United States is increasingly serious and angry at us for failing. They call us laggards in defense

00:11:53.520 spending. And by the way, you'll hear a lot of nonsensical numbers from existing Liberal cabinet

00:11:59.280 ministers about how much we've increased defense spending. Here are some facts. Between 2015 to 2024,

00:12:07.840 if you look at the defense budget, it has gone up, but it has not kept pace with inflation.

00:12:14.560 So that means that every dollar D&D spends in the equivalency is less than that which they had

00:12:21.360 in 2015. Our equipment really hasn't been touched at all in terms of replacement. There's a whole bunch

00:12:27.600 of vague promises of future stuff arriving, but we don't have it. And the need is now. Meanwhile,

00:12:33.760 internationally, we have predators on the prowl. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, I could go on.

00:12:42.400 So Canada has to do more in terms of international commitments and at what cost?

00:12:48.160 Meanwhile, the public service has grown by 42%, which far outstrips the increase in the number of

00:12:54.960 Canadians who've come, of course, rely on the public service to provide them with social assistance.

00:13:00.800 So there's some tough work ahead. I haven't really touched yet the enormous debt that Minister Freeland

00:13:11.440 cheerfully grew to unprecedented levels, wherein during her tenure, more debt was added to Canada's

00:13:19.840 or taken away from Canada's piggy bank than in the entirety of our cumulative history.

00:13:26.560 And that's going to take many years to pay down and pay off while tough decisions are being made on

00:13:31.280 reinvestment. So the next government has has a lot of work to do, a lot of a lot of really important

00:13:38.880 work to do. And all Canadians are going to have to pull together on that.

00:13:42.240 General, I have to ask you about the state of the Canadian Armed Forces. We know that there is an

00:13:48.080 attrition crisis, a morale crisis and a really a real difficulty at recruiting young members to join the

00:13:57.040 forces. You've played significant leadership roles in the military. I want to ask you what you think

00:14:02.800 it'll take to get the military back to a position where it is a capable fighting force and it is, again,

00:14:10.400 feared by the enemy. I would argue that though there are problems across the Canadian Armed Forces,

00:14:18.320 almost none of them are the making of the actual Canadian Forces. The way that the government supports

00:14:25.760 their armed forces is through money. And if there's not enough money to hire troops, that's how you end

00:14:32.880 up being 16,000 short. An interesting fact is that last year in 2023, 70,000 Canadians applied to join,

00:14:41.760 but only 5,000 made it through the recruiting process because it took too long to do the medicals,

00:14:47.280 it took too long to get them physically fit, it took them long to get the boots, the uniforms,

00:14:51.760 the capacity to train. All that boils down to money and leadership. And so the three things that the

00:14:59.280 government of Canada has not provided to the armed forces is leadership in terms of political and

00:15:06.560 public service leadership to actually solve problems. The second thing they haven't provided is enough

00:15:12.640 money to replace old equipment, to allow them to train, to have adequate quarters they can live in,

00:15:18.400 to get new vehicles, new ships, a new aircraft. And the last thing is tender loving care. You can track

00:15:27.680 a prime minister's interest by where he spends his or her time. How many times did this prime minister

00:15:36.080 visit an army base in his 10 years? How many times did he visit an air force base? Now, if you go to

00:15:44.400 Halifax or you go out to the west coast, it's pretty easy to visit a naval base, but just add up how many

00:15:50.800 specific times they actually went to visit large armed forces bases. Now you compare that with the public

00:16:00.400 records available on the British, the French, or the American. I think you'll find it to be interesting

00:16:07.120 reading. Interesting indeed. Well, General, thank you so much for joining us and giving us your insight as

00:16:13.920 someone who worked alongside Justin Trudeau at one point, who was there at the decision-making table

00:16:20.320 for some very important moments in recent history. We really appreciate the time. Thank you once again,

00:16:25.840 General, for joining us. Thank you, Harrison. Great work.

00:16:38.320 Thank you.

00:16:40.320 He was STAWED

Juno News - January 07, 2025

Fmr. Liberal MP General Andrew Leslie on Justin Trudeau's RESIGNATION

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