Juno News - Former Liberal MP says Trudeau has DESTROYED party brand (Ft. Dan McTeague)

00:00:00.000 Justin Trudeau will be spending his Christmas holidays reflecting on his future and whether

00:00:06.060 he should stay on as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Christmas truly is the season of hope

00:00:12.420 and optimism. Joining me today to discuss is former Liberal MP Dan McTagg. I'm Rachel Parker

00:00:19.000 and you're watching The Rachel Parker Show.

00:00:30.000 Hey everyone, welcome back to The Rachel Parker Show and Merry Christmas Eve. I am very impressed.

00:00:44.760 You guys are obviously my most dedicated and diligent fans if you are spending Christmas Eve

00:00:51.280 day watching the latest episode of The Rachel Parker Show. So thank you very much all for your

00:00:57.620 support over the year. Today we are going to be talking to former Liberal MP Dan McTagg about his

00:01:03.360 thoughts on what went down in Ottawa last week, obviously with Christy Freeland resigning and

00:01:09.740 knifing Trudeau in the back on her way out. Dan, thank you so much for being here today. I just

00:01:15.920 super quickly want to get, if you just have to sum it up in a few sentences, what are your thoughts

00:01:21.320 on what happened in Ottawa with the Liberal Party of Canada last week?

00:01:25.340 Well, they finally stepped on a landmine and has left the Prime Minister and the caucus in a complete

00:01:32.580 tizzy. I think it's clear that the end is near. If not for Trudeau, it is over. What really matters

00:01:39.000 now is whether the Liberal caucus will have enough members of Parliament who will actually not show up

00:01:43.260 the next non-confident vote or whether Jagmeet Singh will turn his back again and renounce what he says

00:01:50.320 one week with his desire to maintain and stay in power as long as possible. I think for the Liberal

00:01:56.160 Party, the damage isn't just about what happens in the next election where it's going to be slaughtered.

00:02:01.260 It looks like it's going to probably have the effect on the Liberal Party for a generation to come.

00:02:05.240 A lot of people will not vote for that party again, especially when they start to see the telling

00:02:08.340 details of the carnage that has been brought about by having reckless and irresponsible and

00:02:14.580 inexperienced people running the country.

00:02:16.500 So it sounds like you're saying there is no path forward for Justin Trudeau. He cannot continue. We

00:02:22.740 won't see him again when the House returns.

00:02:25.860 None whatsoever, Rachel. I mean, if he does show up, it's pretty clear to me that he won't have much

00:02:30.900 time left. There continues to be no business done in the House until the Liberals come clean with their

00:02:37.140 $400-plus million green STD slush fund, production of papers. I know about that because I had done when I

00:02:45.220 was a Liberal member of Parliament in the Harper government and they produced it. They have to.

00:02:48.980 You're required to do that. That shows the supremacy of Parliament. But I think for Justin Trudeau,

00:02:54.500 the question now is how many weeks between what happened last week when it came to

00:03:03.460 Chrysia Freeland resigning and being able to say, you make a graceful exit. I doubt he can do that at

00:03:08.260 this point. The damage is done and we're too far deep into this that he can extricate himself from what

00:03:13.380 has been very bad public policy and very bad acting in this period of time.

00:03:17.940 When we talk about what you said about the Liberal Party has been essentially wrecked for a

00:03:22.820 generation, Justin Trudeau not being able to have a graceful exit. Do you think, at what point do you

00:03:29.700 think would have been better for him to step down to keep the Liberal Party intact? Because it sounds

00:03:34.420 like that's no longer possible. We're too far gone at this point. So when should he have stepped down?

00:03:38.900 Summer of 2023, when the polls start to show a pretty significant surge for the Conservative Party

00:03:45.940 and a precipitous drop for the Liberal Party, NDP is the same as well. I think that would have been

00:03:52.100 the writing on the wall for him. But for whatever reason, he can't understand the possibility that he's

00:03:58.660 being rejected or that the King, the Emperor has no clothes. Whatever the case may be, he stayed in far

00:04:04.340 too long. The damage now for the past year, almost a year and a half, has been such that it was at

00:04:10.260 first a 10% decrease, then the 15%, now 20%, even 25% gap between the Conservative Party and the Liberal

00:04:17.540 Party. And the most telling part of this, I'm going to talk to my own children, and they're not children

00:04:22.580 anymore, they're young adults, who see that their future has been compromised by very bad public policy.

00:04:26.740 And for that reason, they will never ever support that party again, that brand, given that it could bring

00:04:31.940 about that kind of public policy, and is determined, you're likely to bring it back, should they have

00:04:36.980 that opportunity. I see the Liberal Party merging with the NDP. And I think the Liberal Party's time,

00:04:42.020 as the real party in my time, as it was before me, is over and done with for the foreseeable future.

00:04:48.100 Yeah, it's really interesting to hear you talk about the Liberal Party in these terms, obviously,

00:04:52.020 being a former Liberal MP yourself, you were a Liberal MP from 1993, which by the way, was four years

00:04:58.180 before I was born. I was born in 1997. So I am the oldest generation of the Zoomers, and very proud

00:05:04.420 to be so. And then you exited politics in 2011, which I was still quite young at the time, just

00:05:09.700 entering high school, just starting to pay attention to what was going on, especially in Ontario, where

00:05:14.980 you had Kathleen Wynne, she created a lot of problems with hydro. That was when I started to pay

00:05:20.580 attention to politics. Actually, the story I always tell is that the Avondale, which in Ontario,

00:05:26.660 is a convenience store, which was essentially the local candy store closest to my house,

00:05:31.380 walking distance from my home, actually closed because it could no longer afford to pay its bills

00:05:36.660 as hydro prices, which is what we have in Ontario, went up. And that was for me, that was really the

00:05:41.860 nail in the coffin. I said, Okay, we got to do something about these Liberals. And that was really

00:05:46.500 the thing that made me pay attention to politics was the local candy store in my neighbourhood closing.

00:05:51.860 But you've obviously, you know, you're you've spoken, you seem to think very little of

00:05:55.540 Justin Jo. Was there ever a point when you did support him?

00:05:58.660 I think at the outset, there was some promise that he could perhaps turn the things around for the

00:06:03.220 party. I had no expectations of the Liberal Party coming back to power. I thought going from third

00:06:07.220 to second would be quite a significant step forward for the party as it began to rebuild. But it was about

00:06:12.900 2015, 2016, when I was working at GasBuddy and doing a lot of my work in the United States that I

00:06:17.780 realised that what was happening in Canada was far more serious than concerns Americans have with energy

00:06:23.780 prices. It was that we had a party that was no longer listening or connected to interests of

00:06:28.580 ordinary Canadians and was prepared to heap on green policies through the so-called net zero programs

00:06:36.740 that now we see are in full bloom. But at a time, it was four or five cents a litre. No one paid a lot

00:06:41.700 of attention to it. I saw this display coming a long time. And what gave me that instruction was that

00:06:46.980 for the longest time in the Liberal Party, I was the consumer critic. I was the fellow who carried consumer

00:06:50.900 issues, not just with energy, but also with food. I did a massive study on the grocery concentration.

00:06:57.140 I went after the Competition Act. And I didn't, there were no holds barred. There was a different

00:07:01.300 parliament where we could actually talk to each other, even though we may not have the same partisan

00:07:04.900 backgrounds. We did have a means of communication. And I was very successful in getting a lot of my

00:07:08.980 points across at the time. What I recognised is that this Liberal Party was more of a cult.

00:07:14.260 It was, the narrative was you could think only a certain way, you could only challenge a certain

00:07:19.060 way. And while the prime minister kept saying, well, my members of parliament are free to do

00:07:22.260 what they want, say that's baloney. He handpicked them so that they wouldn't have different positions

00:07:27.220 or different ideas and what he had put forward. And of course, the discipline has been extraordinarily

00:07:32.580 stringent, a discipline that no longer makes the role of the member of parliament one of being able

00:07:37.460 to represent your constituents. Bottom line, the Liberal Party detached itself from common concerns

00:07:43.860 that people would ordinarily have in favour of things like, you know, politics of diversity, equity,

00:07:51.060 inclusion, ESG, you know, politics that really have nothing to do with the dynamic and the diversity

00:07:59.140 of the country. And I think created a scenario where it was us versus them and created significant social

00:08:04.820 and political divisions of this country, the likes of which I've ever seen, the likes of which your country

00:08:08.260 wasn't able to survive in the past. You've touched on this a little bit already, but I want to ask you,

00:08:13.460 if the Liberal brand is destroyed for a generation, where are those boats going to go?

00:08:19.860 Well, look, they're going for the Conservative Party first and foremost. I think most people are

00:08:23.940 realistic about this and saying we cannot afford to have more social left-wing experimentation. And

00:08:30.740 with that, the green catastrophism and alarmism that goes with it, which is nothing more than just

00:08:36.020 green grit for folks who come out there and espouse their nonsense. We have to do something about the

00:08:41.780 foundations and the charities out there that are giving money to these organizations. We have to

00:08:46.420 look at the fact the federal government gave $2 billion to green municipal funds, something that

00:08:51.460 Paul Martin started way back in my time wasn't meant to, you know, have municipalities start to pick up

00:08:56.500 the green agenda. We have now, I think, a very clear path ahead in which we are going to have to

00:09:01.860 look at Canadians from the perspective of middle-of-the-road consensus building. There's a word you don't hear in

00:09:07.060 politics these days and certainly you don't hear in the Liberal Party trying to find the genius where

00:09:11.620 Canadians are at and have them more included in public policy decisions rather than engineering

00:09:16.180 elections during a so-called pandemic, engineering elections in which you offer to buy people and

00:09:22.660 unfortunately turn a lot of people into parasites, mooches, because the only thing they want is give 0.99

00:09:27.140 me some free stuff and I might vote for you. That doesn't work anymore. Not when you have a government

00:09:30.980 that's ran up the the tap which we have a massive multi-trillion dollar deficit, a debt of which

00:09:37.780 we have, you know, nearly 62 billion bucks in deficits. These are things that have alarmed the

00:09:42.660 Liberals of my time. Jean-Cretzel doing everything they could to ensure that the country's financial

00:09:48.580 future looked a lot brighter, including the sustainability of social programs. So I think for the

00:09:52.420 Conservatives, there's an opportunity to get back to the centre. It's sure if they ain't conservative, they can

00:09:56.900 behave a lot like the Liberals were in the 1990s. Obviously last week Chrystia Freeland tendered 0.96

00:10:03.140 her resignation, did so in a way that seemed to knife Trudeau in the back. She seemed to be doing

00:10:08.980 her best to preserve her own political career and certainly we're hearing that she has leadership 0.85

00:10:14.420 ambitions, that she was intentional in distancing herself from the Prime Minister so that she would not

00:10:19.460 be pulled down with his unpopularity. Obviously last week there was also the Liberal Party of Canada

00:10:24.180 Christmas party and we heard that Chrystia Freeland showed up with more supporters than Trudeau,

00:10:28.340 that the lineup for photos with Chrystia was longer than the lineup for photos of Trudeau.

00:10:33.380 You know Chrystia Freeland to me, she seems really completely tied in with the failings of the Trudeau 0.98

00:10:39.060 government. I think it'll be difficult for her to distance herself from Trudeau to Canadians writ large,

00:10:44.660 maybe not the Liberal Party. If she, you know, if she proceeds with intentions to run for the Liberal

00:10:49.380 Party leadership, do you think that she has what it takes to become a Prime Minister of Canada in the

00:10:54.260 future? Definitely not. She's tainted not just with the Trudeau agenda, she went along with it. 0.93

00:11:00.180 She ushered other, you know, very capable cabinet ministers out of office, not just cabinet ministers,

00:11:05.220 but also women cabinet ministers. You know, we all know Jody Wilson-Raybould, we know about Jane 1.00

00:11:09.460 Philpott. She greased the rails and was very much a part of this, which is what a real problem for this

00:11:15.140 Liberal caucus and its ministers is that they're seen as being part of the reason the party has

00:11:21.140 fallen apart. They gave Trudeau the standing platform on which he could continue his stuff.

00:11:27.700 And so I don't see any of them being successful. I think it'll be an outsider that takes over the 0.98

00:11:32.100 Liberal Party. And ultimately, as I said, the Liberal Party may very well be relegated to a position it

00:11:37.780 hasn't been very familiar with, at least in this century, being one of the most successful political

00:11:41.860 organizations in the world up until very recently. It's likely that the Liberal Party will cease to

00:11:48.020 function for a period of time in which the, you know, the totality of the damage has been done,

00:11:52.740 the lack of credibility, the concern about corruption and bad behavior and overspending,

00:11:58.980 as well as ethical breaches left and right by its ministers. I mean, I don't think we understand

00:12:04.500 exactly what's happened yet because the government's been able to keep these all

00:12:07.300 hampered down and frozen. What's going to happen in the new government is that these things will now be

00:12:11.460 allowed to, you know, to the light of day while campaigns to say, yeah, we've already made our

00:12:15.380 decision, let's move on. No, I think this is the extent to which this government has misbehaved,

00:12:19.940 miscalculated the public and taken their role in institutions and abused those roles. I think

00:12:28.100 it's going to leave not only the opportunity for the next few years to shift through the damage that's

00:12:32.580 been done, but also to ensure that that party in its current form, the cult that I believe it is,

00:12:38.020 remains in the penalty box and never seen for quite a few elections away. I won't have to worry

00:12:42.980 about that when I'm 80 years of age and the Liberal Party reconstitutes back to the center of the

00:12:46.740 political spectrum. When you talk about the fact that the Liberal Party will need to rebuild and the

00:12:52.660 party in its current form will be done away with this entirely, one of the issues that I've had,

00:12:57.620 obviously I got my start as a reporter in the mainstream media, I've now moved to independent media,

00:13:01.940 over, you know, me over here at True North, we've got very little access with the Liberal Party,

00:13:08.500 they're not too keen to speak with us, rarely agree to do interviews with us, if at all.

00:13:12.980 If this party does indeed rebuild, as you predict it will, how do you see the opportunities for new

00:13:18.820 media? How can we bridge that gap between new media and the Liberal Party so that we have a working

00:13:23.860 relationship, a functioning, adult, healthy, professional relationship once again? Or I would

00:13:28.420 actually for the first time. Well, let me get out of the business of politics and talk about my own

00:13:33.300 experience with energy. You know, there was a time where what day wouldn't go by where I wasn't doing

00:13:36.900 20 or 30 interviews on energy prices that are important to Canadians. I'm lucky to have five

00:13:41.940 or six now. And that's because mainstream media, the legacy media has completely gone the same

00:13:46.740 direction for no and forgotten the very people that want to watch, listen, or read their work. If it's not

00:13:51.860 relevant to the bottom line for Canadians, chances are you're going to make yourself as irrelevant as the

00:13:58.100 federal Liberal Party is going to be in the next federal election. And as I said, for some time

00:14:01.540 to come. So I use my own experience of saying, you know, here, there's something in terms of energy

00:14:06.340 prices, all the things that we predicted that people thought were very terrible, especially the

00:14:10.020 media said, No, no, we don't. We don't talk about that. Well, you have to talk about inflation being the

00:14:14.820 result of higher energy prices. And when you put a carbon tax and other measures that weaken the

00:14:19.620 Canadian dollar, it adds not only the price of everything we consume in this country, it diminishes the

00:14:24.820 value of the Canadian dollar, which erodes the purchasing power. The fact that many, like

00:14:29.060 basically media, have refused to understand that and think, well, you're not being, you know,

00:14:33.220 you're not being trendy, or not being liberal, you're not being with the times. I mean, shows the

00:14:37.620 extent to which they have divorced themselves from from reality. That's why I think new media is,

00:14:42.980 in fact, going to be the standard media going forward. And those who did not follow this, especially

00:14:46.740 with the government being forced now to say, Hey, we can't spend a billion bucks throwing money or

00:14:51.060 whatever amount at failed journalism, we're going to have to look at a new brand, you're going to

00:14:56.340 sink or swim. And unfortunately, that kind of circumstance, those who've said, well,

00:15:00.100 we can still do the woke agenda that the Prime Minister's cultural identity and political,

00:15:04.580 you know, nonsense, if they believe they can go down that road, good luck,

00:15:08.100 try to get the funding for it. That was a different matter.

00:15:10.820 Well, I certainly hope you are correct in your predictions, a that the Liberal Party brand will

00:15:16.900 need to completely change what we're seeing now the call will be done away with and also

00:15:21.220 that new media will become the standard in the future. Dan, thank you so much for your insight

00:15:25.220 today. Great to be here. Merry Christmas to you and Happy New Year to all your viewers.

00:15:30.020 Thanks so much. That was Dan McTague, a former Liberal MP, giving us his take on what's gone

00:15:35.220 wrong with the Liberal Party, what we can expect to see in the future. Okay, everyone, that wraps it up

00:15:40.900 for the Rachel Parker Show for today. We won't have an episode tomorrow because it is Christmas Day. I hope that

00:15:46.260 you guys will be enjoying your turkey or your ham with family or friends or whoever you want to

00:15:51.620 celebrate with. I hope that you guys have a very Merry Christmas. God bless you all. I will see you

00:15:57.780 just before the end of the year.

Juno News - December 24, 2024

Former Liberal MP says Trudeau has DESTROYED party brand (Ft. Dan McTeague)

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