Juno News - Former Liberal MP on the difficult path ahead for the Liberal Party

00:00:00.000 You know, there won't be a Liberal Party vying for public attention or having a credible chance

00:00:06.680 of coming back as a government for several terms, which means another generation.

00:00:13.080 Joining us now on the Faulkner Show is longtime Liberal MP Dan McTeague, who served in the 90s

00:00:21.620 and early 2000s. Dan, thank you so much for joining us. The Liberal Party is now trying

00:00:27.980 to find a successor to Justin Trudeau. You were a longtime Liberal Party member. Who do you think

00:00:35.240 is going to come out on top? Well, I think for the shortness of the campaign, it's really down to

00:00:42.980 a group of just two, Freeland or Kearney. I don't see any others really making a valued effort at

00:00:50.760 trying to overcome and try to create a name for themselves. I mean, the party has clearly

00:00:55.600 indicated interest for both of those individuals. But frankly, I don't want to jump to any

00:01:02.780 conclusions. It probably doesn't matter. Either one is almost certainly going to lose the next

00:01:07.900 election. And the closer they have been to the Trudeau regime in terms of policymaking or advisory

00:01:14.080 or as ministers, as MPs, the worse it's going to be for them. And I think at this stage,

00:01:18.760 it's not about Justin Trudeau leaving that will suddenly get Canadians excited. It's that the party

00:01:23.800 has taken a serious hit to its brand by waiting so long and having stood behind this man,

00:01:30.140 Justin Trudeau, and all his bad policies, Foursquare.

00:01:33.980 So when you were a Liberal MP, the Liberal Party was always, up until that point, and really up until

00:01:40.840 the point of Justin Trudeau's leadership of the party, a centrist party, right? It was a party that

00:01:46.700 that had respected and understood the importance of fiscal responsibility. It didn't go ever too

00:01:53.240 far left. It didn't ever go too far right. It billed itself as a centrist governing party,

00:02:00.540 a pragmatic party. What happened to the party that you were a part of for so long?

00:02:05.700 The party of consensus disappeared after the significant defeat in 2011. Most members were

00:02:12.120 defeated, including myself, although just barely so. And what emerged from that was a recognition

00:02:18.560 that we needed several terms to rebuild. And of course, we've been out of power since 2006. So 2011

00:02:24.560 rolls along, we're out of power, and we wound up in third place behind the NDP, just ahead of the

00:02:30.220 bloc. And, you know, the Liberal Party got a quick fix. It got the name Trudeau. And as a result,

00:02:35.900 many people, you know, fondly remembering the good old days, if they could be seen as that,

00:02:40.700 depending where you are in the country, thought, well, this is a name. They liked the socks. They

00:02:46.440 liked the sobbing. They liked the selfies. And they went for it, not just once, not twice,

00:02:50.220 but three times. Not everybody, of course, but in declining numbers. So I suspect that what happens,

00:02:56.120 the Liberal Party didn't have a chance to redefine itself, reinvigorate its policy, reinvigorate its

00:03:01.680 organization. But it did have that magic. It had the name and the culture of personality prevailed.

00:03:08.200 It now appears that with that individual out of the way, not being popular, the party's back to

00:03:14.140 where it was in 2011. That's a rump of its former self and struggling to remain relevant, much less

00:03:22.200 account for the damage that's inflicted on Canada through recklessness, through poor policy decisions,

00:03:28.760 through virtue signaling. And to some extent, revelations, hints, very strong hints of what could

00:03:35.020 be political malfeasance, otherwise known as corruption on a number of fronts. So for the

00:03:39.820 party, it's a long, long road to getting back to where they were. And it certainly means that

00:03:45.920 it doesn't matter who the leader will be. As I said at the outset, it's not going to change,

00:03:49.800 I think, the public's perception that these people need a serious, long time out.

00:03:53.560 And so how long do you think that's going to be? It could be, it sounds as though you think it could

00:03:59.120 be several, several years, definitely more than two terms, I imagine.

00:04:05.200 Yeah, Harrison, I participated in a debate with three former, very good friends who I've known for

00:04:11.700 many years, Jack Siegel, Stephen LeDrew, former president of the party, longest serving president

00:04:17.340 of the party and Mark Keeley. I took the position that the Liberal Party as an entity will die.

00:04:23.540 There's already evidence that from a policy ideological perspective, it had done so.

00:04:28.400 The word consensus had completely disappeared. It became one of going after those who disagreed

00:04:34.940 and treating people as if those who would disagree are to be repudiated. I suggested that the idea

00:04:44.900 behind the party coming back to power or any way as a party anytime soon would be finished.

00:04:51.120 That lets me suggest that, you know, there won't be a Liberal Party vying for public attention or

00:04:58.860 having a credible chance of coming back as a government for several terms, which means another

00:05:03.700 generation. That could be 10 to 15 years down the road. Hard to say. At that point, I don't think

00:05:08.580 I'll be involved much with the political party. But the party I belong to for some 40 years

00:05:13.200 disappeared in 2013, 2014. And it's going to be a long time before it finds itself back to the

00:05:19.120 center. It appears as though Mark Carney is establishing himself as one of the frontrunners

00:05:25.720 here to take over the party. Are you talking with people inside of the party or have you or maybe you

00:05:33.260 haven't? But what are your instincts about Mark Carney? Is he a centrist, pragmatic capitalist?

00:05:39.700 Well, I think people are going to treat him as if, well, he's Governor of Bank of Canada.

00:05:46.820 Stephen Harper had appointed him. He later became the Governor of the Bank of England.

00:05:52.980 And those will, of course, be seen as very strong points for him. But his subsequent work, not just in

00:06:00.020 terms of working for, you know, for the company that Corner, I'm trying to think of the name, something

00:06:09.060 field, Brookfield. And of course, his work with the Glasgow Financial Assistance and towards our move

00:06:20.020 towards net zero G fans is certainly not going to help at a time in which I think many banks and

00:06:25.700 institutions are realizing maybe what's such a brilliant idea to choke off funding to organizations

00:06:32.580 that are responsible for supporting the Canadian economy in terms of revenues, in terms of economic

00:06:37.940 activity, something that in the 1990s and early 2000s, we as liberals understood as being extremely

00:06:44.020 important to getting the country's financial house in order. I think Mr Carney probably doesn't have

00:06:50.420 the common touch. I don't, that's not to take away from him, but he's too heavily invested. In fact,

00:06:55.540 he was an advisor, a significant advisor to Justin Trudeau on the green policies that I think are at the

00:07:00.660 heart of reducing, destroying affordability in Canada. That may be true of the rest of the world

00:07:05.300 and creating an era of a lack of prosperity for a lot of Canadians. And so there's a connection between

00:07:12.420 what Justin Trudeau did, apart from his own personalities, his own character and the policies

00:07:17.700 behind it, which Mark Carney had a very, very strong hand in advocating. So I don't think there's much

00:07:22.500 of a change as the famous band from the 1970s, 60s would have said, the who, meet the new boss, same as

00:07:29.140 the old boss. What made you want to be a liberal? Oh boy, that goes back to being a youngster in 1974,

00:07:40.340 12 years of age, licking envelopes and putting up a couple of posters to 78, working for Paul Cosgrove,

00:07:45.620 79, 80, 84, 88, finally running in 93 all the way to 2011. It was the sense of the party as always

00:07:56.340 struggling to find out where the average person was, the genius of the country, always putting

00:08:02.820 Canada first, putting the interests of Canadians region by region, where the priority was always 0.87

00:08:10.340 given to the idea of the whole, the centre. But also having a government that was committed

00:08:16.420 at the time, the constitutional fights, the fights to maintain unity in the country. I was fluently

00:08:23.300 bilingual, so it struck me that Quebec was prepared to take all its marbles and leave, leaving guys like 1.00

00:08:28.980 me who are French-Canadian outside of Quebec in a very odd position. The Liberal Party stood for consensus,

00:08:34.660 that is to try to find the middle ground while being mindful of a nation that is very much a

00:08:42.740 peaceful, peace-driven nation, but when the time came, willing to stand up and fight. And certainly

00:08:47.940 not a nation that was given to destroying opportunities for people or basically creating

00:08:51.940 an environment of individuals who, in my regards, have become mooches. Individuals who think that Canada

00:08:58.980 is all about what you can get out of it. There was a sense of urgency at the time for Liberal Party

00:09:04.180 was about giving and creating opportunities for people. And that wasn't just my time as a Member

00:09:08.980 of Parliament. It's also the same time of, let's you beat Pearson, where, you know, we rejected

00:09:14.500 socialism. We actually sought out a better social contract whereby people could create, invest,

00:09:20.820 and work, and there would be an opportunity for governments to help people better themselves and

00:09:25.780 so doing better the country. Those have all been lost to wokeism, to culture personality, as I

00:09:32.020 mentioned earlier, identity politics. You know, the whole idea that Canada would be a post-national

00:09:37.620 state as espoused by Justin Trudeau. Very dangerous comments for a country that came together under very

00:09:44.420 difficult circumstances. A neighbour of the South that was hostile, you know, the British influence in

00:09:50.980 Canada in terms of our institutions, but having to break away from that and to find our own way with two

00:09:55.620 cultures often warring at the centre of a nation. Those are the things that impressed me about the

00:09:59.540 Liberal Party is its ability to bring people together in the kind of way which many other

00:10:06.020 nations had experimented with and didn't do so well, not without war or, you know, internal strife.

00:10:11.460 We've managed to create consensus in this country and build, you know, a country, as you mentioned

00:10:17.380 earlier, a pragmatic approach to our problems and a way in which to use and harness our energies,

00:10:23.140 our resources, the goodness of what we produce to create a better standard of living, not just for

00:10:27.860 this generation, but for generations to come. I think a lot of that has been challenged and,

00:10:31.860 dare I say, even lost. Well, yeah, and it appears as though Justin Trudeau has taken the Liberal Party

00:10:37.540 in such a place that has no semblance of the old party that it had been for so long,

00:10:46.180 that kind of traditional governing party of Canada, that it's hard for many Canadians now to remember what

00:10:52.100 the Liberal Party was like before Justin Trudeau because of all the changes that he's made to the

00:10:56.820 party, to the position and to the country. I'm worried about this question having too long of

00:11:02.020 an answer, but we're going to ask it anyway. I have to ask you, you know, when you look back at

00:11:06.660 Justin Trudeau's time as Prime Minister, these nine years, what are some of the biggest failures you

00:11:12.980 think that he was responsible for that led the country to the place that it is now in?

00:11:18.020 Justin Trudeau I think it's taking for granted the financial position of the nation, taking for

00:11:23.620 granted those things which make it unique and prosperous. I don't just mean the energy sector,

00:11:28.340 but I think manufacturing. I think he's involved too heavily in ideologies that are extraordinarily

00:11:34.660 pernicious to Canada. Attacking our energy sector is ridiculous. Canada has, and as I mentioned for

00:11:40.500 several years, and very much president of the Canadians for Affordable Energy, if you start messing

00:11:45.140 around with the things that start to make prices and things much more difficult for people to make

00:11:50.660 ends meet, whether that be transportation, whether that be heating their homes or driving up the cost

00:11:55.220 of things like food because you impose, you know, ideologically driven ideas around climate that, you

00:12:01.060 know, somehow have to punish people because of the way in which they live without having the technology

00:12:05.940 to back it up. And then committing to things, this is the danger of committing to things that we don't

00:12:10.900 haven't developed yet, especially on the side of new technologies to replace oil and gas,

00:12:16.180 transportation to replace internal combustion engine. That's not working out very well, not

00:12:19.780 with a massive subsidy. So now it comes back to not having a better understanding of the fiscal nature,

00:12:27.380 the importance of ensuring that the country can afford the things that you want it to seek. And

00:12:33.540 there's nothing wrong with saying, hey, we want to have good social programs and a great standard of living

00:12:36.980 for everybody. But you have to incentivize those industries, those sectors which are doing very

00:12:42.420 well, whether that be agriculture, mining, whether that be energy sector, manufacturing,

00:12:46.260 I think all of those sectors have been severely challenged by a government that says there's no

00:12:51.620 business case for oil and gas, or maybe we just, you know, too bad manufacturing is leaving. We can,

00:12:57.140 you know, another factor, we can go and print money or we can, you know, advocate modern monetary

00:13:05.620 theories in which you can spend without, with abandon and without any due regard to who's going

00:13:09.940 to pay for it. I think it's, it's completely lost on the Trudeau liberals of this generation,

00:13:17.940 that the hard fought attempt to try to create some balance between our monetary and fiscal policy has

00:13:22.740 been lost. And as a result, Canadians are suffering. Nothing seems to have worked. These people have the

00:13:28.580 Midas touch and reverse everything they've attempted has wound up a foul. And as a result, I think more and

00:13:34.580 more and more people have become not just upset with this government, but upset with our institutions.

00:13:39.940 And I think the institutions that govern this country are also afraid, we need to get back to

00:13:45.380 where we were before, not hire a lot of civil servants to say that that our employment picture

00:13:50.260 looks very good in this country, while at the same time borrowing massively to maintain their standard

00:13:54.500 living. I have to ask you a foreign policy question, as you were the parliamentary secretary to

00:14:00.260 the foreign affairs minister. The situation with the United States now appears to be in a place that

00:14:07.220 it hasn't been for decades, if not even over 100 years, we now have a president that is relentlessly

00:14:14.420 taunting, not just the outgoing prime minister, but the country threatening to use economic force to

00:14:20.500 essentially annex this country. When you look at this situation through your experience, what do you

00:14:26.260 think Canada's response should be here? Well, I think it should be a forceful rejection with a plan

00:14:32.820 to respond. And the response can be positive and negative. We know how Donald Trump behaves. He's

00:14:41.220 experienced in this area. He's a deal maker. He sees weakness. He sees weakness with our institutions,

00:14:46.660 with our government, and certainly with the prime minister. Although we can't change that,

00:14:51.220 and he's now clinging to power for the next 77 days. It's a very critical time. I think the country

00:14:57.620 has to be prepared to respond in kind and to continue as Alberta's doing, for instance, which is

00:15:05.140 to remind the Trump administration and those around it that you can't do without Canadian heavy oil and

00:15:11.300 you can't do without natural gas. You're a country that produces 13 million barrels of oil. Much of that

00:15:16.420 can only produce gasoline. It can't produce diesel. How do you run your military? How do you run your mining?

00:15:20.900 How do you run your transportation sector? You need Canada as much as Canada needs you. It's a

00:15:25.460 symbiotic relationship. I think there's some people who are, you know, who are hawks on this and have

00:15:30.340 been very, very good. Again, Daniel Smith being an example. I don't think it was great for Doug Ford

00:15:34.820 at the beginning to start to threaten energy. Much of the energy we sell, by the way, in terms of

00:15:39.220 electricity to the United States is because we have spillover from green energy, which of course,

00:15:44.820 you know, it costs us, you know, a lot to produce and we get nothing for it by selling to the

00:15:48.900 Americans. But I think there's a way of responding to this and that's to also recognize there's some

00:15:53.540 things that Donald Trump is saying that actually makes sense. Getting electric vehicle mandates

00:15:57.780 means that we've basically committed about 50 billion dollars of money we don't need to spend now

00:16:01.940 because Americans won't have to buy electric vehicles. Some do, but they certainly won't be in

00:16:06.180 that kind of buying mood. So we should stick with what we have. I think we let this thing play out,

00:16:11.940 but we also have to have a, you know, a game strategy by the prime minister. If he's decided

00:16:16.340 he wants to resign, he doesn't have a game plan, then he ought to leave right now, decamp, send it

00:16:21.220 over to a temporary leader of the government so that they can have a strategy in place as opposed

00:16:27.700 to sort of just winging it, spending time on a, you know, on a ski hill somewhere, contemplating his

00:16:34.660 life. We don't need conversations. We need action. And I think we need a new prime minister and a new

00:16:39.540 cabinet and a new team to advocate for that. We don't have a lot of time, but I think we may very

00:16:44.660 well find ourselves in a very tough situation until that election takes place, my guess,

00:16:48.580 sometime around the first week of May. And you think Donald Trump is serious about the 25% tariff?

00:16:54.740 I think he's serious about illustrating that there's some problems that he wants addressed,

00:16:58.660 but if he does that, it's tit for tat. It's just as bad for Americans. I think there's probably about

00:17:04.020 20 to 25 states that would be affected as well adversely by Canada leveling back a similar tariff.

00:17:11.140 And, you know, what does this do? Is it touch off a war with other parts of the world? Would the

00:17:15.140 Americans now tariff everybody? If that's the case, access to their market may be one thing.

00:17:19.540 Americans have to be mindful of the fact they have massive debts. They're holding on to, what,

00:17:23.620 a six, seven, eight trillion dollar debt, although they are a reserve currency. You know,

00:17:29.220 you can walk tall and carry a big stick and tell the world what you think. But there comes a point

00:17:37.300 where I think we thought very similar of Mr. Trump and his comments about the last round of negotiations,

00:17:43.300 that there were going to be some real problems. There are problems. We have to take them very

00:17:46.420 seriously. But we also have to be in a position where we can remind President Trump and his

00:17:51.860 administration that without Canada, the greatest creating relationship in the world will dissolve.

00:17:56.740 And that's not in anyone's interest on either side of the border.

00:18:00.100 Well, we've covered a lot of ground and that's all the time we have. But Dan McTeague,

00:18:03.860 thank you very much for joining us on the show. We hope to have you back soon.

00:18:07.140 I'm looking forward to that. Thanks for having me, Harrison.

Juno News - January 09, 2025

Former Liberal MP on the difficult path ahead for the Liberal Party

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