00:00:00.000The United States will put in place a 15% tariff, or tariffs, plural, on three sets of Canadian imports.
00:00:07.380We have to go forward, take the offense.
00:00:10.380We are an energy powerhouse, and we could dismantle the U.S. if we wanted to, if we all worked together.
00:00:17.200It's a complete misdirect if we allow ourselves to be distracted, if the conservative leadership becomes distracted
00:00:23.260by, you know, a few thousand or tens of thousands of mega North Trump enthusiasts in Canada.
00:00:34.060They need us to survive. Without us, there's no way they can survive.
00:00:39.380At this point in the game, I don't think it's possible for the conservatives to become more trustworthy on Trump.
00:00:47.120How about a little bit of humility for the provincial conservatives who actually, A, win elections, unlike the federal conservatives in the last four rounds, and B, who actually are responsible for the imperfect choices that you have to make while you are in government?
00:01:04.100the canada u.s relationship continues to sink as donald trump issues a fresh new set of tariffs
00:01:16.700on canada and canadian premiers start to dial up the rhetoric in return but how much of what we are
00:01:22.500seeing from our leaders is pure political theater or genuine negotiating strategy and where does
00:01:28.300this ongoing trade war leave conservative leader Pierre Polyev? And does the conservative party
00:01:33.640base have a patriotism problem? All of that and more on the next Ratioed panel. The Canadian
00:01:40.080government and big tech find new ways every day to shut down and silence conservative voices online.
00:01:46.360There's no longer this big moment when you get cancelled. It's done so quietly, behind your back
00:01:50.480by tweaking algorithms. The only way we can make sure you receive every episode of Ratioed is to
00:01:56.620make a free account at JunoNews.com. If you want early access to Ray Shared episodes as well as
00:02:02.620exclusive Juno News reporting, be sure to use my code JunoNews.com slash HarrisonReturn to get a
00:02:09.740discount on a Juno News subscription. As always, be sure to like this video, subscribe to the Juno
00:02:14.900News YouTube channel, and the comment question for the episode is this. Is Pierre Polyev doing
00:02:20.260enough to prevent being left behind in the conversation? Let me know what I'm saying in
00:02:24.520comments below and let's get into it all right joining me now is the former premier of alberta
00:02:29.080jason kenney and conservative strategist anthony koch thank you both for joining me
00:02:34.440good to be here so this week we heard from ontario premier doug ford after the latest u.s
00:02:41.800tariff threat about 50 percent tariffs on roughly 30 billion dollars worth of goods
00:02:47.160doug ford said we could quote dismantle the united states if we wanted to and that it's time for the
00:02:52.280the United States to feel the pain. We have to go forward, take the offense. We are an energy
00:02:58.460powerhouse and we could dismantle the U.S. if we wanted to, if we all work together. No matter if
00:03:05.860it's the electricity, and I'm not speaking for the other provinces, I'm going to be very clear.
00:03:10.460The potash, the oil, we're their number one customer in the world. They need to feel the pain
00:03:16.840rather than us constantly feeling the pain. Mr. Kenya, I want to start with you. If you were the
00:03:21.800premier of alberta today what would you say to doug ford uh in the halls of the latest first
00:03:27.440ministers meeting do you think that what ford is doing is helping canada actually i do uh perhaps
00:03:35.060counterintuitively believe that what he's doing is helping canada you know what i might actually
00:03:39.400say to him privately uh keep it up dougie um not because we're actually going to restrict
00:03:46.060energy exports. There's lots of reasons I can articulate why that's not feasible or
00:03:51.160in our interests. But I do think it is helpful to have a major voice in Canadian politics
00:03:57.840talking tough and reminding Americans generally, and the Trump administration in particular,
00:04:05.480that they do need us, contrary to what Trump always says about Canada.
00:04:09.800They need us desperately on a bunch of fronts, one of which is, as the source of two-thirds of
00:04:15.560their oil imports. So their energy security is hugely dependent on Canada. They consume about
00:04:23.38018 million barrels a day of oil, and about four of those come from Canada. Not easily replaceable,
00:04:29.440particularly heavy. So I think that Doug is playing a role here. The Premier Ford is playing
00:04:35.920a role. I would not be at all surprised if there is a kind of open understanding, a modus vivendi,
00:04:42.720a shared strategy between him and Prime Minister Carney on exactly this, which is a good cop,
00:04:49.340bad cop. Prime Minister has to be, for obvious reasons, fairly restrained in his communications
00:04:56.500and diplomatic response to provocations from the White House. But Premier Ford, less so.
00:05:05.580And so why not raise these issues? Why not remind the Americans that we actually do have some
00:05:09.520leverage here. I think that's it. Now, why it practically wouldn't work is, I'll tell you why.
00:05:15.880When you're producing oil, particularly in the oil sands, bear with me for just a moment, Harrison,
00:05:22.860it's big, thick, gooey underground deposits that we liquefy through the injection of enormous
00:05:30.020quantities of high pressure, high temperature steam, bring it to the surface, add some diluent,
00:05:36.040ship a bunch of it to the states. If you actually say we're stopping the shipment of 4 million,
00:05:41.460which is like 70% of what we produce, guess what? It backs up. We only have so much storage,
00:05:48.920and within a month or a few weeks, we would have to turn off the oil sands,
00:05:54.280SAGD projects at least, and you turn them off and they suffer permanent damage,
00:05:58.520tens of billions of dollars of capital damage. So it's not a temporary card that you can play.
00:06:02.940I don't know that Doug knows that or not, but I do know that we need someone in a senior role reminding the Americans that we actually do have some leverage and they actually are dependent on us, at least in some respects.
00:06:12.880So, Anthony, how much of what we're seeing from Doug Ford is political theater or actual strategy?
00:06:19.860And if it is strategy, do you think it's going to work?
00:06:24.160I think it's a combination of the two.
00:06:26.340I mean, I had a colorful tweet that came out a few days ago where I said that the bulk of this was about a significant portion of the Canadian electorate feeling the political equivalent of arousal every time the prime minister or one of the respective premiers or any Canadian political figure, for that matter, sort of does the pounding the chest anti-U.S. thing and rock and soccer.
00:06:48.300I'm like, again, a clip like you just quoted him saying that we could dismantle the United States of America makes a certain portion of the Canadian electorate feel really awesome about themselves.
00:07:03.600I'm inclined to agree somewhat with Jason's suggestion that this may be some sort of a tag team thing.
00:07:09.780The only pause that I'd have where that's concerned is the fact that, interestingly enough, when you compare this round of tariff threats to the first one, there does seem to be much less unison between the heads of government, both the provincial and the federal level, this time than there was the first time.
00:07:27.980So you see, for example, Madame Frechette, the new premier of Quebec, saying, yeah, I'm not really certain that this is the best way for us to go about these negotiations.
00:07:38.540Quebec has been hit quite hard with tariffs in the last little bit.
00:07:44.160And you're seeing, obviously, Scott Moe and Daniel Smith taking a much different tone than you'll see from sort of David Eby or Doug Ford or Wob Canoe.
00:07:53.500But I want to put on something as well, because I don't want to come across as being overly slaggard on Doug Ford or the Canadian side of things.
00:08:00.200I also think that it's important that we all recognize that Donald Trump deciding to reignite this issue at this point is also a form of political feeder.
00:08:08.540And I have no doubt that it's intimately connected to the fact that he is about to enter into the midterm cycle and is probably trying to use this as a great way to create a conflict,
00:08:19.780it, create a crisis, and then solve it, and be able to use that as something to put wind
00:08:25.800in his sails in the advance of midterms that are coming up this November.
00:08:34.020But I would not be surprised if over the course of the next two to three months, Canada and
00:08:40.320the United States do come to some form of an agreement so that Trump is able to posture
00:08:45.900as a dealmaker in advance of the midterm elections.
00:08:49.200But I do think this is largely theatrical in terms of Mr. Ford specifically and other politicians. People have seen, or at least they saw about a year and a half ago, that doing this sort of hardcore anti-America posturing, regardless of whether it works or not, is a very successful strategy from an electoral perspective.
00:09:08.500I think we can argue to a large extent that part of the reason that Pierre Polyab is not prime minister right now is that for any number of reasons, some of them logical, some I would deem illogical, but we won't get into that too much.
00:09:21.840He decided not to engage in that sort of behavior until it was probably too late and allowed the liberals to sort of take up the mantle of Captain Canada in a way that Doug Ford was able to do on his own in his general election context as well.
00:09:36.480and politics at play pardon yeah i want to get into pierre pauliev and his position and uh mr
00:09:42.560kenny i think from the cons from what i've been seeing from the conservatives they want to take
00:09:47.120a middle ground approach here criticize the u.s administration for the tariffs and rightfully
00:09:52.640criticize the liberal government for failures on negotiation um but it seems to be also a strategy
00:09:59.360that avoids offending the most amount of voters as possible if you take some middle ground approach
00:10:04.320you can try to weave your way through this but this seems to be a very difficult position to be
00:10:09.680in for an opposition conservative leader yeah what do you make of how the conservatives have
00:10:15.360positioned themselves so far and is it enough to get attention that they need
00:10:23.760no i i don't think that they've been speaking to the deep public anxiety um about the constant
00:10:31.600harassment, threats, belittlement, and economic attacks from President Trump and his administration.
00:10:37.960I think there was that critical period just when Prime Minister Carney took office, like literally
00:10:43.700that day, he signed that fake order in council scrapping the retail carbon tax. When I say fake,
00:10:50.440it was, I mean, they did, they implemented the policy, but it was theatrical. And I remember
00:10:58.060That was the same week that Donald Trump was in full attack mode on our economy.
00:11:05.560I think he had like five different tariff positions on Canada.
00:11:09.540He started at 75 percent, went to 25 percent and zero and back.1.00
00:11:14.600And so every morning, the vast majority of red-blooded Canadians, myself included, were getting out of bed thinking, what a jerk this guy is.0.99
00:11:24.160threatening to annex us, mocking our country, and attacking us and creating all this instability.0.99
00:11:33.680And meanwhile, that whole week, the Conservative Party of Canada's leadership were trying to
00:11:41.920petty fog over the carbon tax, including the industrial one, and it was only regulatory,
00:11:47.700not statutory, and they don't really mean it. They're going to revert back.
00:11:50.600In other words, they completely, and that kind of, I think that they missed the tone and the target. Now, I think part of the problem here, Harrison, is this. When you look at the polls, about 80% of Canadians are deeply, passionately upset about the Trump threats and attacks, and they want a vigorous response.
00:12:12.240Mark Carney wrote that to turning around the Liberals and forming a majority government.
00:12:17.080But that keeps 20% who are less agitated about all of this stuff from Washington.
00:12:25.960And if you think about it, assuming that 20% are all, there are people voters or accessible
00:12:31.100conservative voters, they are half the conservative base.
00:12:33.880I had the same problem in COVID in Alberta.
00:12:36.36080% of the province here thought that I was either too timid to impose restrictions,
00:12:42.240or I had them about right. About 20% were consistently opposed to restrictions or vaccines.
00:12:50.640But that 20% was a third of my base. The 20% federally is half of Pierre's base. So I think
00:12:57.200this may explain the reluctance to use language. And by the way, I think, look, the prime minister
00:13:05.440has a responsibility to be diplomatic. And I think in all things considered, he's actually
00:13:09.440been quite restrained. The same imperative does not apply to the opposition. I think they have a
00:13:16.740lot more room to skate. And here's the problem. I think too often, they sound like they're blaming
00:13:23.480the prime minister, the government, Canada, for these provocations and this disaster and
00:13:31.300bilateral relations, rather than the actual protagonist, who is Donald Trump. So I think
00:13:38.120And they've got more latitude, more skating room to point this out.
00:13:44.700And I think, you know, I think reluctantly there's been an effort to move in that direction, but it's been too little and too late to establish bona fides on that issue set.
00:13:56.060So, Anthony, what would you advise Pierre Polio to do right now?
00:14:01.960I want to address three things because one of them is true.
00:14:04.320I think one of them is a sort of common theme in Canadian politics that applies in this circumstance, but I also think applies to many others.
00:14:12.400I think it is the single greatest built-in advantage that the Liberal Party has and has continued to benefit from from a very long time, which I call it the intentions gap.
00:14:22.480OK, when liberals do things, people assume that their heart's in the right place.
00:14:27.700They're doing it for the right reason.
00:14:30.360Conservatives, no matter what position we take, people question our motives.
00:14:33.680So I'll give you two examples, and one of them, the final one, will actually be these negotiations.
00:14:42.800Conservatives come in, they make massive slashes to spending, and right away the conversation is about how we don't care about civil servants, we're firing people, we're crazed, people focused on austerity, we want to bleep people dry, insert whatever you want.
00:14:58.220When liberals come in and do the exact same policy, the same level of cut, doesn't happen too often, but it happens from time to time.
00:15:07.320People go, wow, well, clearly we needed those cuts because if the liberals are going to, it's the same policy implemented in many cases in the exact same way.
00:15:16.820But because it comes from them, people give them the benefit of the doubt.
00:15:19.920You see the same thing, for example, with private health care, right?
00:15:23.400Across Canada, health care systems falling apart at the seams in damn near every province.
00:15:28.200And one of the solutions that different provinces have found is increasing participation of the private sector in the administration and deliverance of health care models.
00:15:38.360We have some nefarious, big, evil corporate donors and big private sector interests that we're trying to get the money and it's a profit incentive.
00:15:46.880We're trying to Americanize the Canadian health care system.
00:15:49.780Liberals do it and people go, wow, well, if they think private sector involvement in healthcare would do something positive for us, it's probably true. And it's the same thing when it comes to our negotiations. Mark Carney can come back with a bad deal. And people will say, well, he probably got the best that he could have. Or, well, you know, I think he's probably got Canada's best interest at heart. So I'll agree with Jason in this sense. If you are overly critical of Mark Carney, and that's what we've been doing so far in terms of our messaging.
00:16:19.960Blasting him, calling him a bad negotiator.
00:16:22.980I myself have criticized him at points because it's hard to resist.
00:16:26.280But I do think that Mr. – you know, in French you say Mr. and Mrs. everybody sitting at home watching this blames Donald Trump for what's going on, is upset at him, does not blame the liberals for the situation that we find ourselves in.
00:16:42.200And does seem to feel like if we are overly aggressive, notwithstanding the fact that we're the official opposition, that people see it as us taking Trump's side, whether that's legitimate or whether that's not, that is the real public situation we go on right now.
00:16:57.180I actually think, and it's very uncomfortable, and it's not popular on our side of the woods right now, but we need to be, where appropriate, as cooperative as possible, and I think that we do need to adapt some form of a team candidate approach.
00:17:13.660It doesn't mean having to agree with every premier who blows themselves up, but I do think it needs to be clear.
00:17:18.460We need to make it articulated in a very clear manner to the Canadian public that we are all on the same team when it comes to aggression coming from the next.
00:17:26.660Just quickly, Anthony, I wanted to translate your Quebec expression, monsieur et mesdames tout le monde, into Albertan.
00:17:41.140If I could just say one nuance here on Anthony's comment, I don't think the Liberals have some kind of voodoo that they exercise with the Canadian electorate.
00:17:51.780In this case, I think Canadians, the vast majority of Canadians, would give any leader, any prime minister, enormous latitude in dealing with President Trump.
00:18:02.940So when I hear the conservative saying, oh, well, Mark Carney promised to solve all this a year ago and he was going to be the master negotiator.
00:18:10.740Look, people get it. They're not stupid. They know how we're dealing with a completely impulsive, totally unpredictable and very hostile counterparty who does not operate in good faith.0.99
00:18:21.780And they know that the Prime Minister has got to deal with that ever-changing context and a completely bizarre situation.
00:18:31.060So I think that for that reason, they're going to give any Prime Minister enormous latitude and be willing to accept a lot of disappointment.
00:18:40.200Like, for example, in the Gordie Howe Bridge.
00:18:41.960I hope the Prime Minister is learning.
00:18:43.620He lied about that, though. That was the bigger issue.
00:18:46.180And it's a shame that Canadians or that Conservatives seem to be on a tightrope in criticizing the Prime Minister.
00:18:54.620I'm not saying it's the wrong, I'm not saying it's not the right analysis.
00:18:58.360It's just that the reality is he does seem to be a poor negotiator at this current moment.
00:19:02.780And we did, you know, Canada does end up suffering the consequences for the bad Gordie Howe deal.
00:19:08.280But it goes to another point, which is even when Canada does concede, like we did on the bridge, like we did on the DST, we end up getting hit with tariffs anyway.
00:19:17.460So I want to ask you this, Jason, we're seeing a growing number, I think, of conservatives on the right who are so upset with the direction of the country.
00:19:27.880In many cases, they are right to be upset with the leadership that we have had.
00:19:31.500and they view the trade war that we have with the united states and blame it solely on the
00:19:38.400canadian government the blame canada team and we're seeing that more on the right i i'm curious
00:19:44.260what your response is to this really strange phenomenon in a way of siding with the united
00:19:50.320states against canada yeah well you know i speak out against this all the time uh i find it very
00:19:57.040disturbing. I do think it is, for those of us who spend any amount of time on social media,
00:20:02.920we get an exaggerated sense of it, because I think the very online, perennially aggrieved
00:20:08.520right-wing populist crowd on Twitter, on X, for example, are not an accurate reflection
00:20:18.780of the broader movement. I keep reminding my federal conservative friends that they lost
00:20:24.140election and they can only win the next election if they regain the trust of older white men who
00:20:33.200used to be the core electoral cohort for the conservative party, but who believe that the
00:20:41.120conservatives are not fit for purpose in fighting Trump. So it's a complete misdirect if we allow
00:20:48.360ourselves to be distracted, if the conservative leadership becomes distracted by, you know,
00:20:55.940a few thousand or tens of thousands of mega North Trump enthusiasts in Canada,
00:21:03.860as opposed to the hundreds of thousands or millions of older traditional conservative
00:21:10.720voters who we lost because we appeared to have surrendered the patriotism cart to the liberals
00:21:17.420in the last election. That needs to be regained. But I would say to these folks, have some
00:21:24.780self-respect. Frankly, it drives me to distraction to see these voices always instinctively,
00:21:31.980immediately blaming Canada. Look, yes, the Trudeau years were a disaster. Yes,
00:21:40.200Carney has not moved fast enough to undo that damage through deregulation, tax relief,
00:21:45.640fiscal responsibility, major projects, etc. Yes, there are no shortage of targets for the
00:21:51.940conservatives to focus on like those. But at the end of the day, surely we can all be united,
00:21:58.180especially the members of the movement and the country founded by John MacDonald,
00:22:04.960that we should not be a punching bag for an aggressive man who has attacked, belittled,
00:22:13.160and threatened this country now for the past 18 months. This is not hard to figure out. We can be
00:22:21.920for sensible conservative reforms in this country against liberal mismanagement, but not
00:22:29.960say that Canada is the cause of this disaster in our bilateral relationship, because we're not.
00:22:36.000Anthony, some of the people that we would consider to be more on the blame Canada side,
00:22:40.680if that's an accurate description for them, would counter that point by saying,
00:22:44.700if the conservatives accept the framing of the current political battle that we are in
00:22:50.560between the liberals and the conservatives, that this really does come down to how we approach
00:22:55.040the United States, they would say there's no possible way conservatives could ever
00:22:59.740convince voters that they're going to be more anti-American than liberals.
00:23:04.000yeah i mean so by the way i'm actually inclined to this position which is why i'm frustrated and
00:23:11.940you asked me earlier harrison you know what would you advise pierre paulia to do right now
00:23:18.080the unfortunate reality i think where i've landed i don't think i'm the only one is
00:23:23.540you should have taken certain people's advice back in january of 2025 before this became a
00:23:29.840ran away train because the reality is right now and the canadian public believes this but it wasn't
00:23:36.400always the case this is where i push back on some of those conservatives that you talk with the blame
00:23:40.740canada crowd uh is it probably too late right now yeah probably is where i push back is in saying
00:23:49.280that it wasn't always baked in that this was going to be the case i think because of how we we behaved
00:23:55.820in those first couple of months, and because people see our broader neck of the ideological
00:24:00.960Canadian political spectrum behaving the way that we've been behaving, people just don't trust us.
00:24:07.000Even if we were to come out and do the whole more anti-Trump than the liberal thing, they'd say
00:24:12.460someone got some polling and that's the only reason they're taking this, right? It's like when Pierre
00:24:17.080did his Canada First rally on February 15th. And again, I'm a PR guy, among other things.
00:24:22.200And one of the classic PR comments that any good PR person will tell their clients is figure out the position you're going to be forced to take and get there as fast as humanly possible.
00:24:34.320So I was among the people who had said that the conservatives were going to be forced to take that kind of posture, whether we liked it or not anyway.
00:25:10.380I do think that there's something to be said.
00:25:11.960Losing an issue 68-32 is not the same thing as losing at 60-40.
00:25:16.180so sometimes it's not just about winning an issue versus losing an issue it's about making sure that
00:25:20.920the margin by which you lose on it is narrow or not as large as it would be otherwise but i'll be
00:25:27.440honest with you harrison on this particular issue set i think it's really tough for us because
00:25:32.620your brand equity is the accumulation of every decision you've ever made in your life up until
00:25:38.600that point and the fact of the matter is where we are right now given how we behaved over the
00:25:43.480course of the last, you know, year and a half, I don't know if people will really buy it.
00:25:48.540Can I just say, Anthony, not a personal criticism, but you're speaking about this in, I think,
00:25:54.660somewhat cynical or somewhat clinical, shall I say, terms of a political comms guy or a campaign
00:26:02.360consultant. I want to put all of that aside and say, what's the right thing to do? I mean,
00:26:11.300got behind me here the poster john mcdonald poster from the 1872 campaign the old the flag the old
00:26:16.500policy the old man um the flying the red ensign that is the roots that's the history of canadian
00:26:23.140conservatism but he would have loved harper stephen harper when we were at the peak of of trump's
00:26:29.380threats on against our country stephen harper one of the great modern canadian prime modern
00:26:34.580canadian prime ministers of any party said at a uh private event for the canadian royal canadian
00:26:40.660and geographic society, that we should be prepared to pay any price, any price, including the
00:26:47.600impoverishment of our country, to defend our sovereignty. Why did he say that? Was he telegraphing
00:26:54.400something in a public event? No. Why did he say it? Because he actually believed it. That's what
00:27:00.000we conservatives are supposed to believe. Forget about 60-40, forget about branding, forget about
00:27:08.540all of that conventional political stuff. For most Canadians, they look at this as an existential
00:27:13.740issue. And we have not, as a party, been conveying that sense of authenticity and emotion.
00:27:21.200So I hear that. By the same token, my pushback would be, you know, it's great for the politician
00:27:26.260to stand up and say we should accept any cost. Go talk to the small business owner who's getting
00:27:31.500absolutely raked over the coals, okay, by the tariff regime, not only the tariffs that the
00:27:36.540Americans have implemented, but also are reaping the consequences of the retaliatory tariffs that
00:27:41.540Canada puts in place. And I'll take it into the second part. I do believe, I believe in national
00:27:46.740honor. I am a Canadian nationalist. I'm not one of these online mega people who sees myself as a
00:27:52.040representative of Donald Trump in Canada. And I think that any conservative who does is on a
00:27:57.260pathway to electoral oblivion and is also just like, it's wimpy. Don't cheer for the opposing
00:28:01.980team. But with a pushback, and I think this is the frustration that people like me are saying,
00:28:06.260and this is why I was clinical in my last answer, is because I'm recognizing the politics of the
00:28:11.880situation versus the reality of the situation in many cases as well. Are Donald Trump's economic
00:28:16.640threats damaging to the Canadian economy without a shadow of a doubt? Is it massively reshaping
00:28:21.460our national conversation? Yes. But I also found it, like you see, to protect our sovereignty.
00:28:27.120What does that mean? Is there anybody? OK, can we be adults here and also say that the odds of American Marines crossing the border or the United States actually doing anything to meaningfully try to annex Canada?
00:28:41.140It's a joke. People took it very seriously. But like, do we are we are we on in this conversation on this panel going to pretend that that's actually a real thing?
00:28:50.640that america under donald trump in any meaningful serious way wants to make canada the 51st state
00:28:57.460i don't i don't think it's going to happen that way but um i think the the criticism of the
00:29:05.200politics is is the important part here and how the party that's my position as well and so this
00:29:12.800though i think kind of leads us into into another avenue and that's just about the my concerns
00:29:18.620regarding the party itself and its overall electability um i think looking back now the
00:29:26.220merger of the creation of the cpc so far there has been one majority government um a lot of losing
00:29:34.200and so i'm wondering if if this party as it is right now is is in place and is capable of winning
00:29:41.920a national election because provincial conservative parties don't seem to have the same issue
00:29:48.380The party seems to be electable out west, but not so much in Ontario anymore.
00:29:53.360So I'm curious, Jason, what you think about the current state of the CPC as it is,
00:29:58.140if there are structural issues within the party that are preventing it from actually being able to govern.
00:30:04.260Well, I find it passing strange that the Federal Conservative Party seems to have made a habit out of criticizing explicitly or implicitly the decisions and leadership or direction of actual conservative provincial governments who actually win elections.
00:30:26.220I mean, this is much broader than the totally irresponsible, low-grade political war between Doug Ford's Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario and Pierre Paglia's Conservative Party of Canada, which in itself, totally unacceptable.
00:30:43.640I mean, look, I'm sure I agree with both of you guys and many conservatives in Ontario that in many respects, the government there has been a disappointment on a conservative policy matrix.
00:30:59.640But electorally, electorally, Premier Ford has won three majority governments in a row, wrecking the Ontario Liberal Party and sweeping the GTA, which is the key to winning federal elections.
00:31:15.920And to treat that with nothing but dismissiveness and aggression is massively counterproductive.
00:31:25.400But, I mean, you can see the federal conservatives were chirping at provincial governments for their administration of COVID.
00:31:31.680Do you think any provincial conservative government wanted to do any restrictions?
00:31:36.200But I'll tell you, when you're sitting there in Ottawa, you know, and the only thing you're responsible for running is your mouth and your Twitter account.
00:31:44.500It's a lot easier to lecture people who are actually running governments with libertarian slogans than it is when you're responsible for preventing a complete meltdown in the intensive care units with our healthcare scarcity.
00:32:01.920So we've done all of that lecturing. We've had federal conservatives criticizing the MOU between Alberta and Ottawa, which has been a hard-fought victory by a conservative government here in Alberta.
00:32:14.500cynicism uh and and uh bun tossing at the federal commitment to a pipeline again a huge win
00:32:24.120for the ucp government here in alberta um i mean picking fights with the leader of the pc party
00:32:31.400manitoba and and nova scotia and on it goes how about a little bit of humility for the provincial
00:32:37.560conservatives who actually a win elections unlike the federal conservatives in the last four rounds
00:32:43.340And B, who actually are responsible for the imperfect choices that you have to make while you are in government. I think all of that reflects a certain lack of maturity, which is part of the federal party right now, which is part of the reason why we lost the last vote.
00:33:00.320So, Anthony, what are your thoughts on that?
00:34:28.840And Harper got to govern the country for a decade with folks like, you know, like former Premier Kenney.
00:34:35.000And now the Liberals are back in again, and it's past that.
00:34:38.440We're about to pass that 13-year mark again, and it's starting to feel long.
00:34:42.360But I'm saying, notwithstanding the fact that that has tended to be the case in this country, regardless,
00:34:47.220I don't think there's something inherent about the modern Conservative Party as it's currently constituted that makes it a less effective political vehicle compared to others.
00:34:57.220There's a couple of criticisms that I would have, and I understand I'm going to get racked over the coals for this.
00:35:01.120I do think that in the context of Canadian politics at large, that Western Canada is mistreated, misunderstood, and that there's a lack of consideration from many of the more powerful sources, shall we say, in the Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa axis that sort of disregard and don't really care.
00:35:22.860That being said, within the context of the Conservative Party as an internal private organization,
00:35:29.140I think there is a disregard and lack of respect towards conservatives from the central and eastern parts of the country.
00:35:36.400And while I wish we could win majority governments in this country by winning every seat in Alberta,
00:35:41.940which we've done many times in the past,
00:35:43.600there does need to be a recognition of the way this country is constituted, where our population centers are,
00:35:49.200And that there needs to be greater consideration and care to, for example, winning in the greater Toronto area or even parts of Quebec or Atlantic Canada might be frustrating to hear.
00:36:00.000But the response to somebody like me saying, you know, the fact that we're capped at 10 seats in Quebec is kind of a problem from an electoral perspective, considering that, you know, there's as many seats in Quebec as there are in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta combined.
00:36:15.000okay it might even be a little bit more the response to that is not oh so you're saying
00:36:20.900we need to be fake conservatives to win so there's a little bit of that but i think the actual bigger
00:36:25.320problem because regionalism has always been a factor in canadian politics but i actually don't
00:36:30.100think it's the major one that afflicts our party right now okay i think the big one is our party
00:36:36.380was changed more than any political vehicle i'd say in north america uh by covid okay there was
00:36:43.700an influx of people who were either never political before or who were like Bernie Sanders
00:36:50.140types in the past. And now for any number of reasons, many of which I share, were upset by
00:36:56.480COVID policies and found themselves in a very anti-establishment mood. And the vehicle that
00:37:01.820they found most fitting for that sentiment was the Conservative Party of Canada. And now we find
00:37:08.040ourselves in a place like I just lived it in a in a leadership race. It was close, but not
00:37:12.840Withstanding that, you have this very loud, aggressive part of the conservative base that's very new to politics, doesn't really understand necessarily how it works all the time.
00:37:23.820That's not a problem. We want people to get involved. But there's a. The revolution is never allowed to end.
00:37:31.160OK, it is a constant rage against the machine. We don't really care about what happens the day after the revolution succeeds.
00:37:38.080We're not even particularly concerned about whether or not the revolution succeeds.
00:37:41.600We just want to be really angry, and we want to have a political vehicle that yells that anger back at us 24-7, 365,
00:37:49.220without really a care about what we're going to do to actually take government and change things.
00:37:54.360I think this is the point that Jason was making, too.
00:37:57.360And I have a lot of sympathy for the premiers that had to govern their provinces throughout COVID,
00:38:02.380which is campaigning is easy and governing is hard.
00:38:06.560And I think we have a generation, I'll say that there's a generation, like I said, of new conservatives, people who, I'll be honest, are not even particularly ideologically committed to anything, let alone conservative principles.
00:38:17.740They just know that they're angry and they want to express that anger.
00:38:20.680And our party is the best way that they've found so far.
00:38:23.120Yeah, but some of the RFK conservatives.