Juno News - Is Canada’s independence at risk？

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm and welcome to The Candice Malcolm Show. We have a great show lined up for

00:00:12.480 you today. Thank you so much for tuning in. It's great to have the live audience. We started doing

00:00:16.640 the show live every weekday at 11 a.m. You can catch us on X and on YouTube. If you're watching

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00:00:40.340 enjoy the work that we do here at The Candice Moncombe Show, please consider leaving us a

00:00:43.960 five-star review. Again, it really helps with our reach. We're trying to grow the channel. We're

00:00:47.860 trying to grow the show to reach as many Canadians as possible because folks, times are too important.

00:00:53.020 we are facing a crisis in Canada with an election coming up. And it really concerns me. I'll be

00:00:59.240 completely honest, completely frank. It concerns me to see the Liberals rising in the polls. It

00:01:03.800 concerns me to see Canadians say that they would rather have Mark Carney negotiate with Donald

00:01:08.500 Trump as opposed to Pierre Polyev. I don't want Canadians to be fooled. I don't want them to be

00:01:13.520 tricked into voting for the Liberals again and giving us another four years similar to the last

00:01:19.440 nine years. I don't know that Canada could withstand it. I don't want that future for

00:01:23.360 myself, for my family, and certainly not for my children. I think it's so important that we get

00:01:27.840 our message out, that we give Canadians the facts and the truth. And that is what we aim to do here

00:01:32.560 at the Candace Malcolm Show. You know, it is a bit rich to hear from these liberals, to hear from

00:01:36.380 people like Justin Trudeau, who now all of a sudden says that the threat from Donald Trump

00:01:40.380 is literal, that we're literally supposed to believe that he wants to invade Canada, that he

00:01:45.160 wants to annex us, he wants us to become the 51st state, and he wants to take over our minerals, 0.83

00:01:49.980 which is what Justin Trudeau said to a group of economic leaders in Toronto on Friday. I don't

00:01:55.520 think that's going to happen. I don't think that anyone should take Trump literally. I think we

00:01:59.180 should take him seriously, but not literally, as Peter Thiel told us about how to deal with

00:02:03.540 Donald Trump. He said that all the way back in 2016. He said, take the man seriously, but not

00:02:07.740 always literally, not literally. So the 51st state stuff, yes, he's saying it, but it's a negotiating

00:02:12.980 stick. It's not a real threat. Trudeau wants you to believe it's a real threat because the more

00:02:18.600 the media talk about that, the more that Canadians worry about that and fret over that, the more

00:02:23.120 likely it is that they will see that the Liberals are the one that can save them. The Liberals would

00:02:27.560 rather talk about anything other than the record, anything other than the last nine years and what

00:02:31.620 Justin Trudeau's post-national vision for Canada has done to our country. Don't let them get away

00:02:36.760 from it. Don't let them get away with it. Don't fall for the trap. The election needs to be fought

00:02:41.880 on the issues, on liberal policies, and it needs to be a referendum on Justin Trudeau. Don't let

00:02:47.640 them make it about Donald Trump. Now, I've got Hamish Marshall joining the show a little bit

00:02:52.520 later on. We're going to talk about all the polls. Hamish is an excellent pollster, as you know,

00:02:56.480 and a frequent guest to the Candace Malcolm Show. But my first guest warns that Canada's 0.99

00:03:02.160 independence isn't at risk by the Americans. He says that our independence has already been

00:03:06.540 taken away from us in many ways with regards to what has happened with China in our country.

00:03:11.460 And this is such an important point. So I'm so pleased today to be joined by Dan Knight.

00:03:16.340 Dan is a founder of the Opposition News Network, host of the Opposition with Dan Knight podcast.

00:03:22.240 Bring him back on the screen there. Dan, thank you so much for joining the podcast from your car out on the West Coast.

00:03:27.820 I appreciate you joining us today.

00:03:30.980 I do some of my best work out of my car there, Candace. How are you doing today?

00:03:34.400 You know, I used to do some work out of my car before I had a designated office in my house because, you know,

00:03:39.680 you have little kids running around especially for mom it's impossible to get work done and so the

00:03:43.920 car was always a place i could sneak away to but uh yeah great great to have you uh with us i want

00:03:49.200 to talk about your recent piece in subsect that you published on saturday i couldn't agree more

00:03:52.960 with this piece called economic enough talk polyev it's time to fight for canada's economic

00:03:59.360 independence and so i think you came to the same conclusion that i did dan which was that it wasn't

00:04:04.720 really a hot mic moment on Friday. It was all a manufactured scheme to try to change the channel,

00:04:11.160 try to get Canadians to stop talking about the economic reality in the country and instead to

00:04:16.180 fret and worry about Donald Trump because that's better for the Liberal Party.

00:04:21.240 Well, it seems like the Liberal Party focuses on Trump and it's not just the Liberal Party,

00:04:26.260 Candace. Let's be clear, it's the mainstream media. They like to gobble up anything

00:04:29.280 that trump says and regurgitated i mean for one it's probably because they're lazy and they can't

00:04:35.120 afford to actually do real news so that's and that's another that's another topic we could

00:04:40.520 write about but having said that anytime trump says something um the liberals and we've watched

00:04:45.140 this for the last you know year and a half play out every time trump says something the concern

00:04:51.100 or the liberal bases you know they regurgitate it and they they paint um donald trump as the

00:04:56.460 boogeyman. They've gone out of their way to alienate them. They've come out of their wood

00:05:02.460 box with their hatchets and saying that this guy is terrible for, you know, America. You know,

00:05:07.120 Justin Trudeau just recently, as soon as Donald Trump was, you know, he got the election,

00:05:13.820 he took a shot at him. He said this was the moment that America could have

00:05:17.600 hired or not hired, but elected a female president. I mean, this is coming off the 0.99

00:05:22.940 the time when or uh donald trump was campaigning off tariffs so does that very does sound smart

00:05:31.460 to you candace that you would you'd antagonize donald trump right before he's inaugurated i

00:05:36.920 don't think so so obviously you know the liberal base is trying to manufacture a crisis and they've

00:05:42.640 done it and i think a lot of canadians have a right to be afraid i mean look at the audio

00:05:47.580 manufacturing sector in ottawa you know trump's going after that he's saying that we need to

00:05:51.740 bring those jobs back to Detroit.

00:05:53.400 And I think a lot of people are afraid for their jobs.

00:05:55.940 And I mean, that's fair.

00:05:57.760 But I think this is a crisis that the Liberals have created.

00:06:00.480 They should have not chosen to antagonize the incoming president.

00:06:05.540 And what's the result of that?

00:06:08.100 You know, they now have everyone worried about their jobs.

00:06:11.960 If you take what the recent polling is suggesting is that they're up.

00:06:16.120 I find that hard to believe considering that they've manufactured this crisis

00:06:19.680 and they're the this crisis is they're they're doing so it it beholdens me that that the liberals

00:06:29.420 are not in charge of what they're doing like they're not they're they manufacture this and

00:06:33.060 like you know let's take the recent u.s canada summit um last weekend with uh with um the liberals

00:06:41.220 they went in and you know obviously they're they're talking to their um you know the business

00:06:46.700 sector, you know, I saw the heads from tech, which is part of the mining sector, the coal sector here

00:06:52.420 in Canada, they were there. And, you know, Justin Trudeau kind of went in and said that we need to

00:06:57.240 be, you know, we need to hold hands with the Americans that were one of their best business

00:07:00.900 allies. And, you know, kind of preempted the next moment, which was, you know, his mic was on. And

00:07:09.420 he said, you know, America wants to have us as their 51st state. And I know, obviously, I think

00:07:14.360 that, you know, Donald Trump is trolling. I mean, you look at the polling over in the US, and it's

00:07:18.680 not that having Canada is not very popular, especially amongst the red states, because I

00:07:23.300 think that they would know what that would mean if we were annexed. But I don't think it's a very

00:07:28.420 popular, popular stunt. If you go look at what he did with Panama, he said that we're going to annex 0.85

00:07:33.400 Panama if you don't get rid of the Chinese influence over in Panama. And what did Panama do?

00:07:39.340 they basically turned tail and said no belt or silk belt and road initiative here and they've

00:07:45.380 turned the face i think that's exactly what they're trying to do here in canada if you look

00:07:49.420 at the fentanyl that's coming in here from that's being manufactured in canada it might not be being

00:07:54.880 imported candace it might not be being imported but it's definitely being made here if you look

00:07:59.460 at just last month we had a fentanyl uh super lab that was busted just after uh trump announced that

00:08:05.940 he might be doing tariffs. It kind of shows you that there is a level of manufacturing. And I

00:08:11.080 mean, I'll take you back about 15 years ago, Candice, that in Canada, we were making, I don't

00:08:17.080 think, remember that there was this famous thing, drug being made in Canada, it was called BC Bud,

00:08:21.860 and we were exporting it by the billions of dollars to California. So we've since, I mean,

00:08:29.480 Obviously, the drug manufacturing has come down for BC Bud, but let's be clear, the black market didn't just go away.

00:08:39.080 They just changed products.

00:08:40.980 So it's hard for me to believe that they've simply just abandoned their product or their, you know, excuse me.

00:08:53.700 it makes me it doesn't make me believe that they've actually switched gears or they've just

00:08:58.220 like stopped making selling exports to um the us they've just switched products so yeah like the

00:09:04.960 drug dealers are still drug dealing they're just doing it differently now because there's a lot

00:09:09.320 more profit it seems and you know we had uh sam cooper on the program last week and he talked

00:09:14.160 about how just because they're not seizing it at the border doesn't mean that it's not crossing a

00:09:18.380 lot of the hard drugs that get exported from canada go through the ports where less than one

00:09:23.360 percent of containers are actually checked. So a big part of the reason why, you know, the fake

00:09:28.080 news story that was going around that Canada has like only 46 grams of drugs or 42, 46 pounds of

00:09:34.160 fentanyl that was seized at the border. And it's like less than half a percent compared to the

00:09:38.900 other percent that all goes from Mexico. That's fake news because the reality is that Canada

00:09:44.640 exports mostly, the drug dealers have found ways, loopholes to export our drugs through ports,

00:09:49.540 which we don't check. So I agree, like Canada has so many problems and it's kind of sad and

00:09:54.480 embarrassing that it takes an American president to point these out. If I were advising Pierre

00:09:59.140 Polyev or, you know, if I was running in elected politics, I would make that the priority. Like

00:10:04.940 from the moment that Trump mentioned it, or heck from 10 years ago, when we saw these problems

00:10:09.180 manifesting, I would, I would say, you know, Canada is a serious country. We have to do things

00:10:13.800 to improve our own sovereignty and independence. Getting like, how about cracking down on

00:10:19.440 Chinese interference? How about getting rid of these so-called Chinese police stations that 1.00

00:10:24.020 operate in Canada? How about stopping the illegal flow of immigration, the illegal flow of goods,

00:10:28.380 the number of people on terrorist watch lists that are in Canada? It's unbelievable how much

00:10:33.080 disarray and disorder there is in Canada under this liberal rule and under Justin Trudeau.

00:10:37.960 I think we really need to get our own house in order. And all of this howling and complaining

00:10:42.400 about Donald Trump, the thing that I loved about your Substack piece that you put out, Dan,

00:10:46.600 is that you said, look, the liberals allowed us to be sold out already to China. It's already

00:10:54.820 happened. And they did it because it benefits them electorally. It's always benefited them.

00:11:00.040 I mean, just an example from this week, right? We saw that Chrystia Freeland's campaign was being 0.96

00:11:06.640 smeared on WeChat. And immediately, the Democratic Institutions Ministry and the government

00:11:14.060 it, alerted it, sounded the alarm, acted concerned, pointed it out. Everybody condemned it. It's like,

00:11:21.100 why is it happening? When it happens to a liberal, it's a big deal. We know that it was happening to

00:11:25.720 the Conservatives, against the Conservatives in the 2021 campaign. That's been proven now that

00:11:31.120 there was a coordinated Chinese campaign against Aaron O'Toole that actually led to him probably

00:11:36.100 losing in several key swing ridings in Canada. And at the time, the government just allowed it

00:11:43.100 to happen. Of course, they allow it to happen when it benefits the liberals. And that's why 0.93

00:11:46.980 the problems in our country run so incredibly deep. Well, I mean, to talk a little bit about

00:11:54.860 the liberals, we have to look at who's governing them. I mean, you'd have to have integrity to

00:12:00.800 actually challenge this. You'd have to have integrity. So let's look at the track record

00:12:06.560 of this liberal government, SNC-Lavalin. I mean, it was the canary in the coal mine. And how we as

00:12:11.480 electorate how we let this pass is mind-boggling we had a government ready to throw their first

00:12:18.920 female attorney general under the bus for what to save his political hide i mean and then we've had 1.00

00:12:25.000 scandal after scandal after that so it would take a government that had integrity to actually

00:12:29.160 challenge these things and obviously this government doesn't have any integrity

00:12:32.360 you know as as i was saying in my sub stack you know what if what do we had it wasn't until sam

00:12:37.400 cooper reported it that we actually found out that we had chinese interference in our inner democracy 1.00

00:12:44.360 what did we find from that from the hogue inquiry well there was police stations um what what did

00:12:48.920 what did the liberal government do there candace when we found out about the the police stations

00:12:53.640 well minister blair and it was reported in the hogue hogue inquiry that he sat on the warrant

00:12:59.560 it he sat on it he he you know he didn't do his jobs i think that this is a minute like if we

00:13:06.520 look at this cabinet and they'd like to come read off the teleprompter and that's it you know we can

00:13:11.480 talk about we can talk about the media speak coming from the liberal government and you know

00:13:17.560 we've listened to melanie jolie say you know we we spent millions of dollars on this penthouse

00:13:23.480 during while we have in in new york which there's a committee um on and we've listened to her and

00:13:30.840 said we need we need to have this this this million dollar penthouse we need to put our

00:13:35.480 our you know our diplomats in there so that they can talk to the leaders so that we can

00:13:40.680 um you know we can push our narrative to the us and what did we find out from black locks today 0.99

00:13:46.600 or not today yesterday that we're paying lobbyists um to the tune of 85 000 per month there candace

00:13:54.360 so what does that tell you it tells you either that penthouse that we spent hundreds of millions

00:13:59.400 of dollars on was worth it or we actually have to pay 85 000 a month for lobbyists in dc so wait a

00:14:07.480 second we have we have that let's show that graphic sean so this is from holly doan of black

00:14:11.560 locks reporting monday february 10th and the documents reveal that federal agency pays washington

00:14:17.240 lobbyists 85 000 a month to manage outreach to government officials so canadian taxpayers

00:14:26.600 paying lobbyists in washington dc 85 grand a month to manage the outreach to government officials

00:14:34.200 i mean of course the liberals will find a way to enrich lobbyists and consultants and that's

00:14:39.480 just like what they do but you know you see danielle smith show up in washington completely 1.00

00:14:44.840 you know on her own just a hotel conference room and just book meeting after meeting after meeting 0.95

00:14:49.480 after meeting with senators uh republican insiders staffers anyone who will meet with her and she

00:14:55.560 just does that on her own whereas you have the libs uh and melanie jolie figuring out a way to 1.00

00:15:01.320 enrich lobbyists and pay them 85 grand a month so unbelievable anyway i'll let you continue

00:15:09.320 ridiculous so i mean it's not even it's not even about um enriching the lobbyists it's just the

00:15:13.800 fact that like this government is just so unaccountable they i think the biggest the 0.87

00:15:17.880 biggest thing i have this that i'm most troubled with is that we've prorogued parliament in the

00:15:23.640 middle of the trump the trump threat so you know let's be clear if this was a conservative

00:15:28.760 government we would be hearing about it every day on on the media they'd be like why are we

00:15:34.360 why are we not having committees why are we not having meetings right now canada is on autopilot

00:15:41.160 we don't have a functioning government we can't have committee meetings i know that justin trudeau

00:15:45.640 promised 1.5 billion dollars for the border but let's be clear he can't pass that um there's no

00:15:50.840 committee meetings there's no budgets we can't pass any laws right now so we don't have a

00:15:56.360 functioning government and the fact that they they're they're they're talking about it they're

00:16:00.840 promising all of these these promises to donald trump well it's just it's just empty speak and

00:16:06.760 we're not hearing about that and that's the most the saddest thing as a taxpayer as a citizen if

00:16:12.120 you believe in democracy this is just this is just i don't know how you you're not infuriated by this

00:16:19.240 because let's be clear we don't we're not able to challenge donald trump effectively um right now we

00:16:26.280 have you know the liberal circus their caucus the swamp they're going in and they're doing these

00:16:32.280 um these summits and why are they doing that summit well they're not able to be challenged

00:16:35.720 by the opposition and you know and i i feel that you know they've taken a lot of what

00:16:41.960 pier poliev has said looks like they're they're coming they're walking back a lot of their

00:16:46.200 unpopular positions. You know, Steven Gilbo, who has probably made it his career about a carbon tax

00:16:54.560 is now they're, they're walking back on it. They're saying, well, no, maybe he's a little

00:16:58.940 bit right. Maybe we should adopt that policy. You know, we talk about Pierre Polyev saying like,

00:17:04.220 we need to take GST off housing. Well, what are the, what are the, what are the liberals considering

00:17:08.420 next taking off um gst off housing like it just seems like if if pure polyev um brand if his if

00:17:16.580 his policies are so popular why are we putting the liberals in like it's almost a filter it's

00:17:21.940 almost ridiculous that that we actually have to have the opposition come up with these these

00:17:26.260 policies that are against what's what the liberals are putting out there and that we actually have to 0.70

00:17:30.820 have them regurgitate it like it's their idea it is just ridiculous so yeah and let's talk about

00:17:36.340 You can take that as a win for the Conservatives, that their ideas have sort of won the day, and both sides now agree with them.

00:17:41.620 Although I wouldn't trust the Liberals if they were to win the next election, that they would fall through on any of these things,

00:17:47.100 because I don't think that the Liberals have proven that they can be trustworthy.

00:17:49.680 But, Dan, you've been critical of Pierre Polyev as well in all of this, and criticized his response.

00:17:55.520 You wrote on Substack that he has the right words but the wrong approach.

00:18:00.020 You were critical of his interview that he did with Brian Lilly last week,

00:18:02.880 And you said that Canada needs a real plan for real economic independence.

00:18:06.460 Why don't you walk us through that?

00:18:08.660 Well, I like, you know, I mean, Pierre Polyev has got a lot of good words.

00:18:12.660 They're very pretty.

00:18:13.480 You know, they're the right words.

00:18:14.980 Let's be clear on that.

00:18:15.780 They're, you know, he said that, you know, we need to be in Parliament and that we need to, you know, be active.

00:18:24.580 And that, you know, he rightfully pointed out that the Liberal Party has handcuffed us to the U.S.

00:18:32.220 They canceled Energy East, Northern Gateway. They made us dependent on the U.S. and it's based on their ideology of coal is bad. 0.70

00:18:45.380 And one thing that really bugs me about the ideology, the liberal ideology, is that we don't put carbon tax on imports into Canada.

00:18:55.380 There is no carbon tax import. So what does that mean for Canadians?

00:18:59.820 well it just means that we're not really we're not really net zero and what we're doing is it's

00:19:05.100 kind of a shell game we have carb we have three cups our carbons right here and this is canada

00:19:11.420 that's our center cup and all we do is we shell it over to china and so all of our manufacturing is

00:19:17.100 now dependent on china they don't have our our um our labor laws they don't have our 0.86

00:19:25.500 our economic or excuse me our environmental standards so we have we really brought down

00:19:31.780 our net zero and absolutely not you know they have we export coals by the millions of tons

00:19:38.640 per month to china so that they can make steel so you know peer polyab is right to to call that out

00:19:46.400 that you know the liberals have crippled us but in my opinion i think a lot a lot of the problem

00:19:52.360 with what the conservatives are saying is that they're coming off a little too soft and and

00:19:58.360 they're being a little bit too kind of they're playing a little bit too much defense they're

00:20:03.560 letting the liberals control the narrative and what do i mean by that well we had this hot hot

00:20:08.840 mic moment with justin trudeau at this u.s canada economic summit where his mic was uh on and

00:20:15.880 And somehow this, this, this audio, it was a fake hot mic. Cause he was on stage. Right. And then

00:20:22.980 he told the media to leave the room. Everyone plug your ears. I'm going to say something

00:20:25.860 right now to a room full of like 500 people. And then the media kind of jumped right into it

00:20:30.920 because first of all, it's a, it's good clickbait. Uh, but second of all, you know, that's what they

00:20:36.200 really want to talk about. They don't want to talk about the economy. They don't want to talk

00:20:38.500 about Trudeau's record. What they really want to talk about is orange man, bad Trump's going to come

00:20:43.000 conquer us and we need to like give it our all and fight for canada so you know let's let's talk

00:20:49.480 about that a little bit and what the bad messaging is is is he rightfully called that out but what's

00:20:54.440 his plan let's be clear it's it's i think i think what canadians want right now candace candace is

00:20:58.680 that they they don't want talking points they want an impassioned leader you know why why is daniel

00:21:03.320 smith so popular well she she's authentic you know why is donald trump so popular i mean in my opinion

00:21:11.480 he comes off is authentic like a lot of his what the mainstream media comes off and they regurgitate

00:21:17.240 to the um the public is his like his his his authenticity and i think that that's what what

00:21:24.040 people really do appreciate whether you like him or not he's authentic he's he's shooting off the

00:21:28.040 cuff this is what i think and there's no there's no peer groups there's no polling groups behind

00:21:35.560 it this is just how he feels and i think what most people believe is that they feel that too

00:21:40.440 And I think that the problem with the Conservative Party right now is that they're coming too much off of these polling groups.

00:21:46.400 They're not, you know, you look at Pierre Polyev about, you know, glasses, Pierre Polyev, Pierre, excuse me, Pierre Polyev pre-bronzer.

00:21:58.580 He was a little bit more feisty. He was a little bit more of a pit bull.

00:22:01.800 And then they rebranded him. I think it was last summer they rebranded him.

00:22:05.400 And now he's got bronzer on. He doesn't wear his glasses. His hairdo looks good.

00:22:09.320 you know he's a little bit more palpable for the canadian public but at the same point time

00:22:14.120 a lot of his grit that i really that really brought me towards him has been kind of

00:22:19.540 a little less so you know is he is he still challenged the media absolutely i love you know

00:22:24.040 i think most canadians appreciate that but i think the problem is is that what canadians want

00:22:29.180 and especially those people that are that jobs are threatened in ottawa is that they want a little

00:22:34.140 bit more of a a plan you know what what what what should Pierre Polyev's plan be well you know if I

00:22:40.920 was in that position I mean and I'm unfiltered unfortunately so maybe I wouldn't be the best

00:22:44.840 politician but I think that what Canadians want is they want to hear someone say like look you know

00:22:49.060 if Stellantis which had an 18 billion dollar tax break by the the BC liberal or not the BC liberals

00:22:55.680 the federal liberals they just pulled out their their plan they're going back to Detroit or Utah

00:23:00.920 wherever um to appease trump if i was the opposition leader i'd be saying good let them go

00:23:07.640 because you know what lng japan wants or japan wants our gas let's let them take our gas we'll

00:23:15.160 make a business case but i want auto plants made in canada i'd be starts i'd start like that rough

00:23:20.280 that rough conversation or that rough gritty bombastic not bombastic but i think that that's

00:23:27.080 what canadians want is they want to hear that we that their leaders have their back they don't want

00:23:31.480 slogans they want to hear that hey you know raw logs are being made in bc and we're shipping them

00:23:37.320 out to we're shipping them out to china well enough of that we have log manufacturers we have planers

00:23:43.240 we have um uh you know high production logging facilities out in bc we're going to start cutting

00:23:50.440 we're going to make a higher percentage of that those logs to be cut in bc we're going to bring

00:23:55.240 those jobs back to bc and the same can be said for the auto manufacturing out in ottawa if jeep

00:24:02.840 ford chevy does not want to do business here in canada then let them leave but guess what you're

00:24:07.640 not able to sell cars here there is no business case to be made for those companies that want to

00:24:12.440 leave their auto manufacturing for canada we're going to bring in mercedes we're going to bring

00:24:17.400 in a honda hyundai we're going to bring in these audio manufacturers and we're going to subsidize

00:24:21.960 them because we're going to bring in those jobs and i know there's going to be a few people out

00:24:25.560 there that say they hear me say subsidize and they're like why are we going to be subsidizing

00:24:30.600 let's be clear there candace we have to because on a global market everyone is subsidizing some

00:24:36.600 sort of industry and we've looked at like what the liberal track record is they had to prompt they had

00:24:40.840 to give um stellantis the kitchen sink to build a battery plan here so we have to be a little 0.97

00:24:47.000 realistic when it comes to that that we actually have to be competitive on the world stage

00:24:51.720 so in my opinion i think that what what canadians want to hear is they want to hear a message but

00:24:55.960 they also want to hear a hard message i i don't know if i'm i'm i'm wrong on that but based on

00:25:01.240 the feedback from that that article i think a lot of canadians agree with me well you just have a

00:25:06.040 comprehensive plan that i think you've thought it through at a lot more depth in detail than many

00:25:10.680 others so i recommend that everyone go over to dan knight's subject check out his piece because

00:25:14.600 every word of it i i was nodding along and like getting fired up listening to it reading it i want

00:25:19.400 I want to get through the news because there's some news developing today that we like to get to on the show.

00:25:24.380 So we learned, first of all, that Trump has promised 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, including from Canada.

00:25:32.500 So this is not just for Canada. It's for all imports into the United States on those products, kind of tied to what you were talking about there, Dan.

00:25:39.040 So here is a clip from him heading home from the Super Bowl from New Orleans, explaining his new tariff.

00:25:46.860 We'll also be announcing steel tariffs on Monday.

00:25:51.400 On this?

00:25:52.240 Tomorrow?

00:25:53.440 Monday, yeah, tomorrow.

00:25:54.980 What countries will those go on?

00:25:56.360 Everybody.

00:25:57.180 Steel.

00:25:57.740 Including Canada and Mexico.

00:25:58.960 Yeah.

00:25:59.500 Any steel coming into the United States is going to have a 25% tariff.

00:26:04.480 What about aluminum, sir?

00:26:05.720 Aluminum, too.

00:26:09.000 Into effect right away by Trump.

00:26:12.280 Responding to that, we had Ontario Premier Doug Ford,

00:26:15.120 who's running his own election, Ontario, he reacted on X by saying this, this is the next

00:26:21.220 four years, shifting goalposts, constant chaos, putting our economy at risk. I'm asking the people

00:26:26.660 for a strong, stable four-year mandate that outlasts the Trump administration to do whatever

00:26:30.980 it takes to always be ready to protect Ontario. I think a lot of people, you know, people who don't

00:26:38.440 even really like Doug Ford that much as a premier appreciate the way that he's been talking throughout

00:26:43.840 this. And kind of really, I think he speaks to the people in a similar way that Trump does.

00:26:50.620 And he kind of understands that, you know, you're talking about how conservatives are always a little

00:26:54.680 bit too rehearsed and too concerned about what's happening in the polls. I see Ford being a bit

00:26:59.140 more authentic. Meanwhile, we had Pierre Polyev up in Iqaluit yesterday. We showed the clips. I love

00:27:04.460 the imagery of anyone going up to the North. It's so beautiful up there. And I really do hope that

00:27:09.580 the conservatives are serious about this pledge to develop the North. I think that's one thing

00:27:12.920 that Canada has been shamefully inadequate in doing is building up the North. Look, I lived in

00:27:18.520 Edmonton for years. Canadians know how to build infrastructure and build cities in incredibly

00:27:23.220 frigid, cold temperatures. So if we can do it in Edmonton, why can't we build a big city up North?

00:27:28.320 I really think that Canada needs to do a lot more to build infrastructure, to develop the North,

00:27:33.120 get people to move up there, pay people to move up there. I don't care, but we need to develop that

00:27:37.200 in order to assert more sovereignty in the North.

00:27:40.100 So Polyev was up there

00:27:41.360 and he was asked about these tariffs from Donald Trump.

00:27:44.640 And he promised again to impose our own retaliatory tariffs

00:27:49.040 on American steel and aluminum imports.

00:27:51.980 Let's play that clip.

00:27:53.480 He has threatened to bring in tariffs

00:27:55.200 on our steel and aluminum.

00:27:56.940 We will retaliate in kind with matching tariffs

00:28:00.040 on American aluminum and steel,

00:28:02.400 all of the proceeds of which will be given back

00:28:04.980 to our steel and aluminum industry, and any surplus will be given in tax relief for our people.

00:28:12.300 And at the same time as Poliev was announcing his own intention to impose tariffs on steel

00:28:18.680 and aluminum, he also dug up this clip of Mark Carney just two weeks ago, or less than two weeks

00:28:24.100 ago, January 31st. Mark Carney saying the opposite thing, which is that he wants to put a price on

00:28:31.420 pollution for steel makers, he wants to tax them even more. So Polyev talking about tariffing,

00:28:38.560 so taxing imports, so taxing other people's steel, whereas Karnia is talking about taxing

00:28:44.580 our own steel made in Canada. Let's play that clip.

00:28:48.120 Then secondly, what we're going to do is make sure not that the government pays,

00:28:53.060 not that we as taxpayers pay, but the large polluters pay. And so what happens...

00:28:58.740 Does that not ultimately trickle down?

00:29:00.660 No, because what the big companies are producing, by and large, are not products that we are consuming.

00:29:07.760 There's some element of that, but by and large, you know, a steel company, how much steel are you using these days, Todd?

00:29:14.020 I mean, not as much, not as much of a use.

00:29:17.120 So kind of a bumbling answer there, but you can see that he's saying that, oh, the big polluters will pay, right, and then the consumers won't see that at all.

00:29:24.240 uh you know for a guy that's run the uh central banks there he doesn't really seem to understand

00:29:28.640 some basic economics um so you know here we see another trade war unfolding we had justin trudeau

00:29:34.720 out in paris frolicking around with emmanuel macron he was asked about these tariffs and he

00:29:39.360 says they are unacceptable and that canada's response will be firm and clear let's play that

00:29:44.000 clip we will be working with the american administration over the coming weeks to

00:29:49.360 to highlight the negative impacts on Americans and Canadians of these unacceptable tariffs.

00:29:56.980 We will also be working with our international partners and friends.

00:30:01.700 And if it comes to that, our response, of course, will be firm and clear.

00:30:08.400 So, Dan, if you could just give me a quick response there to the latest tariff back and forth that we're seeing.

00:30:14.060 i think mark carney is uh is quite funny for saying that he's going to tax uh our industry

00:30:22.060 especially when he's built his company berkshire has built pipelines in brazil so it's i could

00:30:29.540 probably talk about it for about half an hour i think that it's uh it's incredible that we have

00:30:33.340 a prime minister in paris when we have an economic trade war uh it's funny to me that we have uh a

00:30:40.940 banker, an unelected banker talking about carbon taxes when our parliamentary budget officer has

00:30:46.720 already gone and reported. This is a nonpartisan entity there, Candace, has said that it adds

00:30:55.900 inflation to, or the carbon tax adds inflation. It's passed down to the consumer. Tiff Macklin

00:31:03.060 has gone on BOC, the Bank of Canada, when he was doing his press releases and said, yes, it adds

00:31:10.160 to, um, the consumer price index. So it's, it's funny to me that we have, uh, two, uh, out of

00:31:18.100 touch politicians, uh, talking about, uh, about something that it's just, it's such a grift.

00:31:25.720 It's, it's, it's unbelievable to me, Candace. I have no words for it. It's, I think most people

00:31:30.320 here would agree with me that, that the government is very out of touch. Um, we, you know, the reason

00:31:38.040 that Mark Carney doesn't. I think we're done with the carbon taxes. I don't think that that's

00:31:42.100 going to be a debate in Canada anymore. We're so done with it that the Liberals aren't even going

00:31:45.400 to defend it. I don't think the Conservatives are going to be able to run on that as a campaign

00:31:49.980 issue because Canadians are basically in agreement. So we hear people like Mark Carney. It's like the

00:31:54.600 exact wrong approach. Dan, I got to leave it at that because we've got a lot more to get on the

00:31:59.040 show, but I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining the program. I'll have to have

00:32:01.820 you back on again in the future. Candace, thank you so much for having me. You guys do great work

00:32:07.300 at True North. And thanks for having me. All right. Okay. Have a great day, Dan. All right.

00:32:12.640 I want to talk about Pierre Polyev because one of the things we had Stockwell, or sorry, we had

00:32:17.460 Preston Manning on the show on Friday and, you know, talking about Canada can be a little bit

00:32:22.140 depressing these days, especially if you're more on the conservative side, because you see so many

00:32:26.860 of the great things about our country have collapsed and fallen apart. One of the things

00:32:30.500 that was really, I thought was so optimistic in talking to Preston was his call for action at the

00:32:36.600 end. He said, you know, I said, what can Canadians do? He said, fly the flag, fly the flag, show pride

00:32:42.260 in your Canadian country and heritage. You know, go buy a flag and go fly the flag. He said one of

00:32:48.480 the things he admires about Americans is that they do fly the flag. Even, you know, I have family

00:32:53.260 members that live in very liberal California, and they fly the American flag, even though they're

00:32:58.480 liberals on the left. They still love America, right? And they fly the flag, and Canadians don't 1.00

00:33:02.840 do that as much. So I was, I was heartwarmed to hear Preston Manning talking about that. I think

00:33:08.040 it's a great message. And lo and behold, it opened my X this morning and I saw a conservative leader

00:33:13.000 Pierre Polyev making a similar plea, encouraging Canadians to go out, purchase a flag and fly the

00:33:19.820 Maple Leaf. Let's play that clip. This Saturday is in fact flag day. So I'm encouraging everyone,

00:33:26.560 regardless of your political allegiance to go out, get yourself a flag, big or small,

00:33:31.540 Put it on a flagpole in front of your home or through your window or in any other way that you can show our colors.

00:33:39.500 We're very proud of this country. We'll never be the 51st state.

00:33:43.440 We will always be a strong, self-reliant, sovereign country.

00:33:48.120 So let's show that message by raising the flag.

00:34:01.540 Beautiful, beautiful video there. Canada first. Gotta love that. And here is Pierre

00:34:08.080 Pagliau's post on X this morning. And he simply says, raise the flag. What a great message.

00:34:15.460 Okay. And I want to bring in Hamish Marshall to the conversation. The audience knows Hamish.

00:34:20.540 Hamish is a partner at One Persuades, which is a government relations and strategy firm

00:34:24.280 in Ontario, but we all know him as a pollster. So he served as Andrew Scheer's campaign manager

00:34:30.120 for the Conservatives in 2019. Prior to that, he was manager of strategic planning in Stephen

00:34:36.200 Harper's successful 2008 election. And of course, he worked with us at True North during the 2021

00:34:42.280 election as our in-house pollster. So Hamish, welcome to the program. Great to be here, Candace.

00:34:47.840 Okay, so I've been dying to talk to you about this, Hamish, because we've been seeing so much

00:34:51.640 of it, and I don't know if it's real or not. But what we are seeing is that the Liberals are making

00:34:56.460 a comeback federally. And that, you know, if an election happens this spring, the Liberals might

00:35:02.620 do a lot better than we once thought. So let's just start with Ontario. So according to recent

00:35:09.200 polling in Ontario, it shows that the Liberals are actually up, if we can show this graphic.

00:35:15.240 The Liberals are at 43% versus 39% for the Conservatives. Let's just start right there,

00:35:21.460 Hamish, how can this be possible? How can people in Ontario still have faith in the Liberals after

00:35:27.020 the last nine years? And is this accurate? Is this going to hold for an election?

00:35:31.820 Well, it turns out Justin Trudeau was really, really unpopular. And people really didn't like

00:35:36.940 him. And he was dragging down the Liberal numbers. I think we all intuitively knew that.

00:35:41.820 And the relief of Justin Trudeau being gone is certainly opening people's eyes to the possibility

00:35:48.580 of voting liberal again i i think these numbers are probably a bit high um especially in ontario

00:35:54.500 uh we've seen other pollsters come in with certainly a liberal uh increase but i don't

00:35:58.900 i don't know if it's quite as much as that um the thing that's happening is that we often see this

00:36:04.100 in leadership races that when um somebody's being unpopular is being replaced with somebody new

00:36:10.900 when people ask who are you voting for they then imagine when it hasn't been decided they then

00:36:17.060 imagine their dream liberal leader. So right now, if you ask someone who you're voting for,

00:36:21.900 they're thinking of liberals, especially someone who wants to vote liberal, they're thinking of

00:36:26.000 their dream liberal leader. The problem is, whether it's Mark Carney or Christopher Freeland

00:36:29.680 or any of the other people running, none of them are these ideal candidates in reality.

00:36:35.060 So what we often see in this situation is that when a leader actually gets chosen,

00:36:40.320 people say, hold on, that person? He's not as good as the person I was imagining in my mind.

00:36:46.060 and we see the numbers drift down a bit as well.

00:36:49.040 But I think we shouldn't expect them to go back down to as far as they were

00:36:51.880 because Trudeau was very, very, very unpopular.

00:36:54.820 Well, it kind of reminds me, I mean, there are some parallels to the states, right?

00:36:58.000 Like we had Joe Biden, very, very unpopular president,

00:37:01.520 not just because of his advanced age, but his policies.

00:37:05.120 His policies were radical hard left

00:37:06.920 and they created a very unaffordable standard of living in the United States.

00:37:10.980 And even when he got replaced, you know, at the end of the day,

00:37:14.200 I think Americans were voting no to the woke agenda, to inflation, to the left-wing policies

00:37:19.120 that got them into that mess. I imagine the same thing will happen in Canada, but I'm worried when

00:37:25.740 I see numbers like this, especially in Ontario, I really don't understand how 43% of people in

00:37:32.460 Ontario can still be willing to vote for the Liberals, given the reality that we live in,

00:37:38.640 And, you know, how bad and dangerous their policies have been, you know, not just in terms of how hard left and woke they are, but the actual pocketbook issues, how expensive things is, the cost of groceries, the cost of gas, all of that kind of thing.

00:37:53.000 Do you think that's factoring in or do you think people are just saying, you know, hopefully the next person's better than Trudeau, so we'll give them a shot?

00:38:00.120 I think that's a large part of it.

00:38:01.420 I think there's some of the Trump tariff war sneaking in.

00:38:06.440 But I think that realistically, whomever the new leader is, once Canadians figure out that they're not going to govern in a way that's been infinitely different from Trudeau, and that will be the Conservatives' job during the campaign and in the time leading up to it, is to persuade, remind, show Canadians that these people are not going to be different in a meaningful way.

00:38:24.200 I think we're going to see their numbers drag back down again.

00:38:28.620 Well, OK, so here is another recent seat count from 338 Canada, which is a polling aggregator on X.

00:38:36.580 Let's show this seat projection. So this still shows the Conservatives way ahead.

00:38:40.760 It has the Conservatives getting anywhere between 170 all the way up to 237 seats,

00:38:46.720 where the Liberals sort of max out at 116 and can get as low as 53.

00:38:51.720 So just the trend, right? The trend is going up for the Libs and down for the Conservatives,

00:38:57.160 which, you know, I think that height, that peak, like you said, Justin Trudeau was so unpopular,

00:39:03.640 but it can't feel good for Conservatives to see, you know, Canadians potentially abandoning them

00:39:09.720 and losing that really strong majority that it seemed like they were headed towards.

00:39:15.240 Yeah, but I don't, when we saw polls, the Conservatives are up to 47, 48 percent of the

00:39:18.840 votes. I don't, most people I talk to in Conservative land never really believed that

00:39:25.400 those numbers were really realistic so you know settling moving down and settling into something

00:39:30.280 in the low 40s which is still be a massive accomplishment right justin trudeau didn't

00:39:34.840 even get 40 in 2015 with his majority stephen harper didn't get 40 with his majority in

00:39:40.440 2011 ending up at 42 or something would still be the largest majority we've seen in this country 0.98

00:39:45.960 since uh probably actually almost certainly this century wow okay so this is what the latest ipsos

00:39:51.480 poll had this was from thursday february 6th and it shows an eight point swing but to your point

00:39:57.720 conservatives are still at 45 down five points libs up to 28 um up eight points but like you said

00:40:04.640 still in solid um drury territory so i think pierre polyev would take that it's just that the

00:40:10.300 trend is happening the wrong direction and you're talking you mentioned that now that trump is

00:40:14.660 entering into the question of whether or not um you know pierre polyev has set it up that he thinks

00:40:20.520 that this election will be fought on carbon taxes and on cost of living and on pocketbook issues,

00:40:25.180 I think that the media and the press and certainly the liberals would much rather be talking about

00:40:29.040 Donald Trump and turning it into a referendum on Trump, turning it into kind of an existential

00:40:33.700 crisis for Canada, like this next prime minister's sole job is going to be negotiating tariffs and

00:40:38.940 not just tariffs, because Trump actually is serious about annexing us, according to Justin

00:40:43.000 Trudeau. That's what he said at a closed door event on Friday, that Trump is serious about

00:40:48.160 annex in Canada, that he wants our minerals. And when that is the ballot box question facing

00:40:53.540 Canadians, it actually looks even worse for Pierre Polyev. So here is another nanos poll

00:40:59.220 that was conducted at the end of January. And it found that 40% of Canadians believe that Mark

00:41:05.000 Carney was the most qualified leader to negotiate with Donald Trump and his administration. 26%

00:41:12.620 said that they consider Mr. Poliev to be the best qualified for that role.

00:41:17.920 I want to play a clip.

00:41:18.560 This is Nick Nanos talking on CTV over the weekend, sorry, on Sunday.

00:41:24.640 He says that Donald Trump will be the ballot box question,

00:41:27.980 and I guess that would be really good for Mark Carney.

00:41:30.480 Let's play that clip.

00:41:31.900 I guess the question I have for you, Nick,

00:41:33.780 is you also did some polling on how Canadians view who is best suited to handle Trump.

00:41:39.420 How much do you think that does end up being the ballot box question,

00:41:43.180 and how much does that depend on timing?

00:41:45.100 Well, I think it probably will be the ballot box question in the next federal election

00:41:49.200 because the thing is that for Canadians, they know that our relationship with the U.S. is critical.

00:41:54.180 And I think, who knows, maybe people in the next election are not going to vote for a party that they like,

00:41:59.680 might not vote for a leader that they trust or whatever,

00:42:02.100 but they just might vote for whoever they think might be best able to manage that situation.

00:42:07.180 The next liberal leader will be...

00:42:09.060 So what do you think of that, Hamish?

00:42:11.500 I mean, he's heavily implying that Canadians are going to vote on this issue

00:42:14.800 and that Mark Carney will win on this issue.

00:42:16.960 Well, look, what we've certainly seen in the last three or four weeks

00:42:20.440 is that the, you know, elite media and the Laurentian consensus

00:42:25.800 is utterly fixated on trying to change the ballot question

00:42:29.300 away from what it's been for so long,

00:42:31.080 which reflects so badly on them and how they've been running the country.

00:42:34.180 They're desperate to change it to something about Trump.

00:42:36.700 And I think this is more evidence of that.

00:42:38.080 I mean, Mr. Yannis' comment at the end of saying, well, people might vote for somebody they don't like because they care about this more.

00:42:44.300 Or they, you know, they're not going to vote based on their actual, you know, experience with life getting more expensive because this issue is more important to them.

00:42:55.140 You know, I find that very, very hard to believe.

00:42:58.040 I mean, of course, there'll be somebody in Canada who falls into that category.

00:43:01.260 We've got, you know, 30 million people eligible to vote.

00:43:03.340 But the fact of the matter is, is that, you know, people in very few cases, you know, one of the things that people say, oh, the economy matters.

00:43:10.200 When people vote in the economy, it's rarely the economy as a big sort of amorphous blob.

00:43:16.000 When they think about the economy, think of their own situation, right?

00:43:18.940 And whether this policy or this leader is going to make their lives better.

00:43:22.980 It's actually a deeply personal thing.

00:43:24.680 And I think this is going to be the same again.

00:43:28.180 You know, they can try to change the channel away from people being worried about the cost of living.

00:43:33.340 but the numbers out there thus far when you look at what issues people are worried about it is

00:43:39.180 overwhelmingly it is still people worry about health care but they're also still worried an

00:43:43.340 awful lot about cost of living uh and inflation and they are um there's a rising number of people

00:43:49.740 who are worried about the trump tariffs but it's not the dominant issue the way these people every

00:43:53.180 all these you know elite commentators seem to want to uh project it to be uh so i'm not convinced

00:44:00.140 that what they all might all wish it to be,

00:44:03.120 I'm not convinced it's coming true yet.

00:44:05.040 Well, I hope you're right.

00:44:06.020 What do you think about the so-called hot mic moment

00:44:08.840 that Justin Trudeau had last week?

00:44:10.640 I don't think it was a real hot mic moment

00:44:11.980 because I think it was all very deliberate

00:44:13.380 and he wanted the media to talk about it

00:44:15.400 as if it was an accident.

00:44:16.620 But he said that Trump is serious about annexing Canada

00:44:19.340 and he thinks that Trump wants our minerals.

00:44:22.260 Do you take that thought seriously?

00:44:24.460 I mean, I think it's a way of framing this debate.

00:44:29.600 I think it's an effective way of framing this debate.

00:44:32.300 And if the vote comes down to, you know, if the Liberals, the campaign the Liberals want to run is, we will keep Canada as an independent country and Pierre Polio supports being Canada the 51st state.

00:44:44.040 That's the campaign they want.

00:44:46.880 I don't believe it's the campaign they're going to get.

00:44:49.520 And I think it, I think it strains credibility to believe that they are, it is what they are going to get.

00:44:55.840 because the fact of the matter is, is that maybe that's the sort of campaign they could have

00:44:59.920 produced 20 or 30 years ago. But the way the media has been, the media landscape has been

00:45:05.320 shattered, having a whole bunch of people, like more people are going to see that clip of CTV

00:45:09.820 that you just showed of that chat on this YouTube broadcast than actually saw it live, like for

00:45:17.100 sure. Like the elite consensus doesn't have the ability to project their message on Canadians the

00:45:22.960 way it once did. And if their view of the world was the one that was dominant, you never would

00:45:29.660 have seen Mr. Polio's rise the way you saw it because he wouldn't be able to tap into something

00:45:35.460 because it wouldn't have existed. And so I'm deeply skeptical of the sort of top-down imposed

00:45:41.600 narratives that we used to see and are really an artifact of the 20th century.

00:45:47.940 I think you're right. I think one of the reasons it's really interesting that sort of the younger

00:45:51.860 you are now the more likely you are to support conservatives which is kind of a flipped notion

00:45:56.100 like i think you know hamish when we were growing up all the young people were liberal uh you and

00:46:00.260 i were probably the odd ones out being more conservative uh but now it's like young people

00:46:04.500 are conservative i think it's because pierre polyev is speaking directly to them uh his social

00:46:09.140 media uh dwarfs all the social media from the traditional legacy media so he's found a way to

00:46:14.740 cut through it all and speak directly to canadians and i think young people in particular are

00:46:20.180 listening and hearing that I want to get your take on this clip because Pierre Polyev was on

00:46:24.900 with Toronto Sun's Brian Lilly and this was a headline that came out was that Pierre Polyev

00:46:30.420 takes Trump's threat seriously. I kind of saw this as him falling into the trap of talking about what

00:46:36.180 the Liberals want to talk about which is the Trump threat and him saying no no I take it seriously

00:46:40.660 too. Let's play that clip. Well I've always taken it seriously and I've always clearly

00:46:45.780 and consistently condemned it canada will never be the 51st state we will be a strong

00:46:51.220 independent sovereign country when i'm prime minister that's exactly why it's so unfortunate

00:46:58.420 that the carney trudeau liberals have made us so weak and reliant on the americans their radical

00:47:04.340 tax increases have driven a half trillion dollars into the american economy

00:47:08.980 out of Canada, including many of Mr. Carney's own investments.

00:47:17.140 What do you think of that? Look, I think he has to talk about it to some extent,

00:47:21.380 because it is something that, you know, he's going to be pushed on. And he has to make sure

00:47:26.500 that the liberal attack on him as, you know, secretly being in favor of this, or whatever

00:47:31.860 they're going to get to, is simply not credible. I mean, there's going to be a certain portion of

00:47:37.620 the you know deranged left that believe that everybody uh who's ever you know put on a blue

00:47:43.540 shirt believes that the the candidate should join the united states uh but uh he has to make sure

00:47:49.940 he's being completely unequivocal around that be very very clear about that i think that clip was

00:47:54.580 it was decent from that perspective but it's clearly not what he wants what he wants to spend

00:47:58.340 most of his time talking about and he will keep talking about the things that that canadians want

00:48:03.140 here? I think this is kind of a decent issue for the liberals as a wedge issue, because Canadian 1.00

00:48:08.380 conservatives are themselves divided on Trump, right? Like half of the people that are in our

00:48:13.320 audience love Trump and are like cheering him on everything he does. They're like, yes, we need to

00:48:18.140 do this next, excited about him. And then the other half are kind of like deeply bothered and

00:48:24.140 disturbed by his rhetoric and some of the things he said in the past. And so and then obviously,

00:48:28.900 the broader Canadian public is even more negative on Trump. So I think that the liberals want to

00:48:35.080 paint, you're right, that they want to paint Pierre as being sympathetic to Trump. And it's

00:48:39.060 harder for Poliev to talk about Trump, because half, like I said, half of his audience loves

00:48:44.780 Trump, and probably half of them hate him. What do you think? Yeah, no, I think it's certainly

00:48:48.740 difficult. You know, yeah, I mean, Trump obviously rubs a lot of a lot of people even like what he's

00:48:55.100 doing the way he does it rubs a lot of people the wrong way, and especially here in Canada.

00:49:01.060 So yeah, Pierre has to certainly walk that tightrope. But I think him just simply standing up

00:49:07.940 and focusing on the issue of Canadian sovereignty is a very, very, very key message. And especially

00:49:16.080 because he got into it a little bit in his message there, and some of the other things he's been

00:49:19.380 saying, I think he can make the case quite persuasively that the Liberals have actually

00:49:23.340 mean terrible on this. And the Liberal record is actually, to his point, has made Canada weaker

00:49:27.640 and given the Americans more influence. And so I think the Liberals should be a little careful

00:49:34.000 what they wish for. Yeah. Is this debate better than a straight cost of living debate for them?

00:49:38.800 Absolutely. But is it risk free for them? Not at all. Well, and so just further that,

00:49:43.820 Pierre Polyev was up in the Arctic in Nunavut yesterday on Monday, making his Canada first

00:49:50.200 plan announcement. I just love the imagery here. So I'm going to show you a clip of Pierre Polyev

00:49:54.740 announcing his Canada first plan, saying what he would do. And obviously, one of the main things

00:49:58.680 that the liberals have done is absolutely neglect our military and underfunded. You know, the idea

00:50:04.100 that we don't spend 2% of GDP on, you know, as a part of our commitment to NATO is a huge liberal

00:50:09.880 failure. So it gives Pierre a great opportunity. Let's play this clip. We need to become self-reliant

00:50:14.900 and protect our interests and our sovereignty.

00:50:18.440 That's why I'm announcing today part of my Canada First plan

00:50:23.800 to take back control of the Canadian Arctic.

00:50:26.980 One, we will double the size of the first patrol group of the Canadian Rangers

00:50:33.100 from 2,000 to 4,000 Rangers.

00:50:36.020 Two, we will acquire two additional polar icebreakers for the Royal Canadian Navy.

00:50:46.540 Three, the Canada First Plan of the Conservative government will build Canada's first permanent Arctic military base since the Cold War.

00:50:59.800 It will be CFB Iqaluit right here in this community.

00:51:06.980 So I'm all for that. So just to recap, his plan has three planks. He says, first, he's going to

00:51:12.180 double the size of the Canadian Rangers up in the north. He's going to second, acquire two additional

00:51:16.680 polar icebreakers for the Navy, and three, build a permanent Arctic military base called CFAB

00:51:22.620 Iqaluit. So I love this idea of developing the north. I think this is great. And I thought that

00:51:27.820 Pierre doing that was fantastic. And just to tie it back to the idea of, you know, so many

00:51:32.540 conservatives want to see conservatives in Canada doing what Trump is doing. I was excited by this

00:51:37.560 clip. So he was asked how he was going to pay for this. And here is what Pierre Polyev had to say.

00:51:43.220 All of these improvements will be funded by dramatically cutting foreign aid,

00:51:48.880 most of which, or a lot of which, goes to dictators, terrorists, and global bureaucracies.

00:51:54.320 We've got enough problems at home. We've got our own backyard to protect. We can't be sending

00:51:59.360 billions of dollars to other places, often much of it is wasted and stolen and swallowed up by

00:52:06.160 bureaucracies that act against our interests. I'm 100% here for that. I have my own petition,

00:52:12.880 folks. If you haven't signed it already, head on over to CandiceMalcolm.com and send a message,

00:52:17.220 defund foreign aid. I loved what Pierre was saying. I want to continue to push this message.

00:52:22.740 I think that every Canadian deserves to have our money being spent in Canada and not on these

00:52:27.400 disastrous, wasteful foreign aid program. So again, go sign our petition to defund foreign aid.

00:52:32.800 And Hamish, what was your takeaway from all of that? Well, it's fantastic. I mean, he's laying

00:52:36.840 out a, you know, clear, tangible things to actually protect or actions to actually protect

00:52:41.520 Canadian sovereignty, and not just rhetoric. And that's my point is that the liberals can

00:52:48.620 talk about this, these topics now, and try to make the case that they're the ones who can stand up

00:52:53.520 to the americans but they're not going to get a clean fight on this they're not going to be it's

00:52:58.300 not an easy win for them um that that paulio's got lots to say on this and he said some i think

00:53:02.760 good and exciting things foreign aid i remember i haven't gone through it in a few years i remember

00:53:06.560 a few years ago i went through the whole foreign aid budget in quite a bit of detail and what blew

00:53:11.180 me away wasn't just the dictatorships we were sending money to china which was seemed like an

00:53:15.300 idiotic thing to do uh but it wasn't just the the dictatorships we're also sending money to a lot

00:53:20.460 places that we would consider pretty developed there was lots of places in the caribbean that 0.99

00:53:24.460 were significant tourism destinations that were getting money from canada uh and and yet there

00:53:30.060 was you know shockingly little money going to some of the poorest countries in the world where

00:53:34.060 development money might actually uh could potentially do some good if it wasn't getting

00:53:38.140 stolen and managed properly i also spent some time overseas uh you know around the development

00:53:42.940 community and the amount of money that gets misappropriated is truly wild so you know i i

00:53:48.860 I think cracking down on this and spending it in an intelligent way

00:53:51.780 and using that money to protect our own sovereignty makes a lot of sense.

00:53:55.280 A hundred percent.

00:53:56.240 Okay, I want to talk to you a little bit about the date of the election,

00:53:58.400 because last time we were on the show,

00:53:59.760 we walked through a theory that was circulating online

00:54:02.440 that there's a possibility that the Liberals could implant Mark Carney

00:54:06.500 as their leader and then not call an election.

00:54:08.440 They could strike a deal with Jagmeet Singh, delay the election,

00:54:11.240 maybe get rid of that Elections Canada Act that calls for an auction

00:54:14.420 every four years and push it to five.

00:54:16.260 who were talking about potentially an October, 2026 election. Well, a lot has changed in the

00:54:20.780 last few weeks since you were on Hamish, because now I'm hearing the exact opposite. I posted this

00:54:24.920 on X over the weekend, that there's a rumor circulating that Mark Carney is going to call

00:54:29.160 an election himself after he wins the liberal leadership race. And I said, I'm guessing polls

00:54:34.580 like this are a motivating factor. And it linked to a poll that showed that he was actually gaining

00:54:39.080 and ahead. There's been other people who apparently have heard this. So I want to play a clip.

00:54:44.080 This is CTV's Vassie Capellos and Stephanie Levitz, also both suggesting that Carney himself may pull the plug and we may be going straight into an election.

00:54:52.440 Let's play that clip.

00:54:53.900 The next liberal leader will be elected on March the 9th, may choose to take Canadians to the polls right away.

00:54:59.960 Matt, I hear from people in and around the Carney campaign that they would go early, right?

00:55:04.480 Very soon thereafter.

00:55:07.360 So what do you think of this new rumor?

00:55:09.680 Well, I think there's a world of difference between what Ms. Capello says right there at the end,

00:55:14.860 where she says, go right away or very soon thereafter. Look, realistically,

00:55:21.800 Mark Carney becomes a leader of the Liberals on the 9th of March. He's probably not going to be

00:55:27.640 sworn in. The fastest they can swear him in is probably five or six days. He's got to pick a

00:55:33.020 cabinet. He's got to move staff around. There's a whole bunch of things he's going to have to do.

00:55:36.800 and then he's going to want to present some sort of vision you know going and having an election

00:55:43.280 immediately like instantly when Canadians still don't really know who he is and he hasn't presented

00:55:49.020 a the temptation for liberals to want to present some sort of a throne speech

00:55:55.100 or some sort of budget or something will be overwhelming

00:55:58.240 the other thing I would say is having been involved in leadership campaigns

00:56:03.280 and being involved at provincial and federal level,

00:56:07.620 the highest level of these decisions.

00:56:11.780 The desire, like, there's a lot of talk,

00:56:14.740 but I guarantee none of these decisions have been made today.

00:56:18.080 You know, and until they're going to want to get them sworn in

00:56:21.800 and they're going to say, well, what are the polls now that he's prime minister?

00:56:24.060 What do we want to see?

00:56:25.460 Although they're not going to call the election based on a poll

00:56:27.760 that's two weeks old back from the leadership.

00:56:29.860 They're going to say, well, now that he's been sworn in,

00:56:31.200 what are people going to see?

00:56:32.020 What are the policies we can run on? Very, very, very quickly, they're going to be running into that House of Commons coming back on the 24th of March and the possibility of a non-confidence vote.

00:56:49.420 And it'll come down to the NDP again. But I still think the most likely date for an election is the 12th of May and that the government will be defeated at some point in the last four or five days of March.

00:56:58.000 Okay, well, Jagmeet Singh himself chimed in. So he was speaking at a press conference yesterday in Windsor, Ontario, and he told reporters that he would work with the Liberals to fight back against Trump's tariffs threats. So implying that he wouldn't pull the plug right away. And that also, he may end up pulling the plug. Let's play that clip.

00:57:17.580 What will your government prioritize?

00:57:20.700 Bringing down the Trudeau government to get to an election sooner or finding a way to work together to fight against Donald Trump with some real meaningful measures?

00:57:32.040 Well, I mean, we could do that right now.

00:57:34.660 And I want to make this very clear.

00:57:36.060 And we've called for Parliament to be recalled because it can happen right now.

00:57:41.460 We could have Parliament back in session right now.

00:57:44.120 And then the government prioritizes which bills come forward.

00:57:47.640 So if they're serious about a package of supports to help us fight back against Donald Trump

00:57:53.400 and to support workers, they could prioritize that and put that before the House as the first

00:57:57.320 thing we vote on. And of course, at a time when we're threatened by a trade war, a war that we

00:58:02.280 did not want to start, but one that we have to fight back, then we will, I can't imagine any

00:58:07.160 opposition leader opposing measures to fight back against Donald Trump and to support workers.

00:58:13.400 So that's not what he said in December when he said he would pull the plug no matter what, whoever's leading the party. Obviously, we've had a change from Jagmeet Singh. Can't be trusted. He will change his position over and over and over again for whatever suits him. But I just I wonder about like whether Mark Carney would be better off taking the lead and calling the election himself as opposed to leaving it to Jagmeet Singh to decide his fate.

00:58:36.420 yeah i mean he could do that but as i said i he the timing is such that there will be confidence

00:58:43.860 votes before the end of march and i don't think that you know the only scenario i can see is that

00:58:52.780 carney would come back with a throne speech on the 24th of march have a budget that would be

00:58:58.220 introduced on the 25th or 26th and then instantly drop the writ in which case we're going to be in

00:59:03.380 the same scenario, whether he was defeated, you know, in a vote around that time or a day or two

00:59:07.880 later anyway. So I don't think we're going to be in an election substantially earlier than we'd

00:59:12.020 been talking about. But maybe there's a deal with Singh. I mean, Singh seems to specialize in making

00:59:17.420 deals that are bad for Singh. The NDP are down in the polls as well. They seem to have drifted

00:59:21.980 from 20-ish percent down to 16, I think we saw in that Ipsos poll. So that certainly would be a

00:59:29.420 decrease for them that they were not going to be happy about. So maybe the answer for them is

00:59:33.340 they're going to see if they can wait longer and see if the bloom comes off Carney. But, you know,

00:59:37.700 the NDP to do a deal with an international banker like Carney, you think it would go against

00:59:42.640 everything they stand for. But as I said, Singh's specialty is making deals that are terrible for

00:59:47.540 Singh. So we'll see where we end up. Well, it is very interesting because I can't imagine Jagmeet

00:59:54.000 Singh triggering an election when he's that down in the polls. It's a good observation that a lot

00:59:58.300 of the bounce that we've seen from the Liberals have actually been at the expense of the NDP

01:00:01.540 and not the Conservatives. But I really do think that the parallel to the United States was that

01:00:08.460 they kind of kept Kamala Harris hidden from view for the first month. She was the nominee. I remember

01:00:14.600 Ben Shapiro had a clock every day of how long she'd been the nominee without doing a national

01:00:18.580 interview. And I think it was over 30 days that she went without talking to anyone. And it wasn't

01:00:23.500 until people really started to hear her and see her that they decided that they didn't like her

01:00:27.440 and that they didn't want her to be candidate, might be better off for Mark Carney to remain hidden

01:00:31.500 and remain just sort of, you know, he looks like a prime minister and he looks like he's got a lot

01:00:36.100 of experience and he seems like he's capable without actually hearing from him. So I guess

01:00:40.960 we'll have to have you on again next month and we can go through the next scenario as well.

01:00:46.180 Hamish, before we go, I did want to talk to you quickly about Ontario because there's also an

01:00:50.300 election going on in Ontario and it seems like the progressive Conservatives are looking like

01:00:55.880 they're going to win very easily. So the latest polls have them up at 45% and the Liberals down

01:01:02.360 at 26%. It doesn't look like it's going to be particularly close. Although interestingly,

01:01:07.620 according to Nano's poll, 52% of Ontarians disagree with Doug Ford's decision to call an

01:01:13.380 early election. So people aren't happy that they have to go to the polls, but I don't think that

01:01:19.060 they're necessarily going to take it out on Doug Ford. So what do you make of that?

01:01:23.300 Well, I think it's a perfect example of the difference between what people think about something and whether it's an issue they care about.

01:01:30.300 Yeah, people don't like the idea of an early election, but in this case, they don't really care about it.

01:01:34.040 You know, it doesn't matter. The fact that they don't like it seems to have no impact on their likelihood to vote for Premier Ford and his team.

01:01:42.080 They're up effectively four points from the last election.

01:01:46.140 The Liberals stayed about the same, the NDP are down.

01:01:49.880 That's the other thing, by the way, that we'll be weighing on Mr. Singh's mind is the NDP part.

01:01:56.120 The NDP is very, very, very federally and provincially integrated.

01:02:00.600 And all their activists, you know, the NDP is desperately right now trying to hold on to their official opposition status in Ontario.

01:02:07.120 They're spending a lot of time and money and burning people out.

01:02:09.520 And then the idea of wanting to have another federal election, you know, almost immediately thereafter is going to be something that they're not too excited about.

01:02:18.880 I would think. But, you know, the forward PCs certainly look like they're on track.

01:02:24.800 Nothing seems to have changed. We're now a good couple of weeks into the campaign.

01:02:28.280 Nothing seems to be moving at the moment. The interesting thing is that, you know,

01:02:33.620 the NDP are dropping a bunch and what that does, how that plays to the seat count can be very

01:02:37.920 interesting. If the Liberal votes are reasonably concentrated in certain places, if Crombie has

01:02:43.600 personal popularity in Mississauga, she could actually win, even though she gets the same 0.90

01:02:47.880 percentage of the vote as the Liberals did in the last provincial election. She could win a bunch

01:02:51.140 more seats, perhaps mainly at the expense of the NDP. But on the whole, if the PCs are up four or

01:02:57.540 five points, we could expect them to win a bigger majority. And what do you think the ballot box

01:03:02.640 question is in Ontario? Like what is the motivating thing that people, is it a referendum on Doug

01:03:06.960 Ford in his time in office? Is it something to do with Trump? Is it a broader question of

01:03:11.300 Conservatives versus Liberals? Or what do you think is motivating people? I think it's very,

01:03:15.320 very very it's a very broad and very boring uh is it time for a change and the answer from

01:03:22.600 more than enough people to re-elect the government is yeah things are pretty good things are fine

01:03:28.200 and i think there's some convention that whatever people vote for in ontario they'll vote opposite

01:03:33.000 for the opposite uh federally so when there's a strong conservative leader in in queens park in

01:03:37.880 ontario uh more likely to vote liberal federally do you think there's anything to that for this

01:03:42.200 i mean it never it doesn't always line up perfectly um a variety of reasons it is it

01:03:49.160 has lined up at various points in the past i think it's one of those things that that that

01:03:53.960 it's one of those patterns that doesn't actually really mean anything um you know people in ontario

01:03:58.600 uh still want a change at the federal level from everything i've been seeing uh and i think that's

01:04:03.320 what we can expect uh whenever the federal election rolls around interesting all right

01:04:08.200 well hamish i really appreciate your time today thank you for all your insights and

01:04:11.240 and I look forward to having you back on the program again soon.

01:04:13.680 My pleasure.

01:04:15.240 All right. Thank you so much.

01:04:16.640 I'm Candice Malcolm. This is The Candice Malcolm Show.

01:04:18.440 We'll be back again tomorrow with all the news.

01:04:20.080 Thank you, and God bless.

Juno News - February 11, 2025

Is Canada’s independence at risk？

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