Juno News - Justin Trudeau blunders his way through another India trip

00:00:00.000 Transcribed by ESO, translated by —

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:20.420 north hello and welcome to you all no i wasn't like playing angry birds over there i was checking

00:01:32.880 trudeau's flight i was trying to see if i could like find where he is right now because you may

00:01:37.680 recall justin trudeau was like grounded in india because there was some mechanical issue on the

00:01:43.400 plane and somehow despite being in like the country that has more tech support than anywhere

00:01:47.040 else in the world, they couldn't fix it. So they had to delay their return to Canada for basically

00:01:53.860 two days. They only left this morning. Now that is Tuesday morning, India time. They're flying,

00:02:00.200 I believe, to my own city right now of London, Ontario, where the plane will touch down and

00:02:06.340 Justin Trudeau will address the Liberal caucus tomorrow. Now, here's the thing that's interesting.

00:02:11.540 And you can tell that Trudeau really, really, really doesn't like the Indian government right

00:02:15.660 now. India offered a plane. This was a story my producer, Sean, found from India where the Indian

00:02:23.800 government had said to Trudeau, we will give you a plane. Like that's how eager they were to get

00:02:28.900 the government of Canada out of India. They're like, just give, give him Modi's plane, just like

00:02:33.460 fly him out of there. Uh, you know, maybe you just open the door over the Atlantic and just,

00:02:38.120 you know, shove them. I think, I think it's, yeah, you go east to west, right? They wouldn't go over

00:02:41.920 the Pacific. Anyway, I've never flown to Delhi. I think they go Atlantic. But that is basically

00:02:47.280 what's happening. The India government, I mean, yes, it's a, you know, they're a charitable,

00:02:50.920 hospitable people, but I don't think they were being charitable and hospitable. I just think

00:02:54.460 they didn't want Justin Trudeau and, you know, the Canadian delegation hold up in some New Delhi

00:02:59.200 hotel for an extra couple of days. But all of that is to say, Justin Trudeau will be returning

00:03:04.820 to Canada any minute now, and he will be addressing the Liberal Caucus retreat, which is in my city.

00:03:11.620 Now, here's the thing. I have applied for accreditation to cover the Liberal Caucus retreat.

00:03:17.140 Now, whether or not I really want to spend days in my hometown hobnobbing with Liberal members of Parliament is a different discussion entirely.

00:03:24.820 But I do think it would be good to have the opportunity to chat with a bunch of the ministers in particular who are part of the Liberal Caucus,

00:03:31.780 especially after covering the Conservative Convention in Quebec City.

00:03:35.920 I have asked the Liberal Party for accreditation, and they said, no, no, no, you've got to talk to the PMO.

00:03:40.920 So I said, okay. I've emailed the PMO probably about four times. I've emailed Justin Trudeau's

00:03:46.260 senior press secretary. I don't think she was stranded on the tarmac in India. I think she is

00:03:51.020 in Canada and no one has responded. So actually right after I get off air today, I'm just going

00:03:58.300 to go down there. I heard from another journalist that had gone to the caucus retreat today, which

00:04:03.140 is when it officially starts. They said you can get accreditation on site. Now I may change my

00:04:08.300 shirt. I realize I look like a Liberal campaign aide in this shirt. It's like a shiny blue

00:04:14.040 golf shirt. So I don't want it to look like I'm trying too hard to fit in. So I'll put on

00:04:18.640 something else. Maybe I'll wear orange. The NDP have to be pretty popular to the Liberals right

00:04:23.220 now. But I'll head on down there and see if we can get accredited on site. And this is, I think,

00:04:28.240 particularly interesting because the Liberals were very indignant when the Conservatives,

00:04:33.140 wrongly, I would say, denied accreditation to several people to cover the conservative

00:04:38.520 convention. Tasha Carradine, a columnist with the National Post, was denied. Nora Loretto,

00:04:44.000 Loretto, I don't know her name, Laura, Laura Stalin, I don't know. She likes the communist 0.81

00:04:50.140 Nora, but nevertheless, she was there with a media outlet that did not get accreditation

00:04:55.360 from the conservatives, and I thought that was short-sighted on the part of the conservatives.

00:04:59.320 But the Liberals were very indignant. You may recall Pablo Rodriguez and Stephen Gilbeau sniping from outside the convention about how they didn't like that they were not allowed in.

00:05:09.940 And this is where we have to look very, very carefully at whether there are just different rules in the Liberals' eyes for themselves than there are for others.

00:05:18.520 And I think they pretty much are looking that way.

00:05:21.380 But to go back to India for a moment, Justin Trudeau's being stranded in India is really just the feather in the cap on an already embarrassing, blundery trip.

00:05:32.800 Now, you may have seen some of the headlines here.

00:05:34.980 Justin Trudeau pulled away.

00:05:36.700 I don't like the analysis of handshakes, but he like pulled away, apparently, from Modi when they were doing the big greeting arriving for the G20 summit and made for a little awkward encounter.

00:05:47.240 Do you remember when all the media was like going over and over and over about analyzing Justin Trudeau's handshake with Donald Trump and like, oh, he did, you know, he grabbed the shoulder and he stood firm and he held his own.

00:05:58.360 And now it's with Modi. He's pulled away from the handshake.

00:06:01.280 Well, Modi apparently didn't like this too much, nor did he like the positions that Justin Trudeau took in support or at least in sympathy to Kalistan separatists, which are a very real issue in India, as is in general some of the extremism you see from that.

00:06:18.300 And more importantly, you also have memories of Justin Trudeau's last official visit to India when he decided that instead of representing Canada as the head of government abroad, he would instead audition for some low-rent Bollywood film, complete with supplying his own costumes.

00:06:37.240 You can take a look at some of the highlights.

00:06:39.540 Oh, there we go.

00:06:40.500 Yes, Justin Trudeau.

00:06:42.140 Namaste.

00:06:42.700 He's actually, if you follow his eyes upwards, he's actually looking at the conservative poll

00:06:48.080 numbers, which are right now like miles and miles above him. So he's like looking up and praying

00:06:53.780 desperately that he'll be able to reach those things. But we, you know, maybe I should just

00:06:58.880 switch to an audio show. We'll leave that up for the whole time. You know what? It's a win. He

00:07:03.000 didn't put the makeup on his face. That is considered a win. This time, no costumes at all.

00:07:07.980 And I wondered if that might've been why the plane couldn't take off. Perhaps it was too

00:07:11.980 weighed down by all the costumes he decided not to, all the costumes he decided not to put on

00:07:17.540 because of memories of the last one. But one thing that's kind of interesting is India put out a

00:07:23.260 montage of Modi greeting all of the G20 dignitaries that were arriving, the heads of state and heads

00:07:30.780 of government from South Korea, Japan, Turkey, the United Kingdom. And let's just take a look

00:07:37.340 at that. See if you notice anything.

00:08:07.340 move.

00:08:12.980 This is bitterly because we want to be able to make a nature of everything else and ourselves.

00:08:40.420 Now, I can't say I agree with everything he said there,

00:09:08.240 mainly because I don't know anything he said,

00:09:10.220 But I can tell you that even as the video went on for another 30 to 40 seconds, nowhere in the video did I see Justin Trudeau anywhere, not even like in the background, not even like clearing the tables after the important folks had a meeting, nowhere.

00:09:25.880 And he actually greeted, Modi did, the Prime Minister of India, every single G20 leader present at this summit in that video, except for two.

00:09:36.540 One was Justin Trudeau and one was Emmanuel Macron.

00:09:39.640 Now, he was hugging a guy that I couldn't identify later that maybe was Macron.

00:09:45.040 I don't know.

00:09:45.700 But I'll say just in the interest of being conservative here, every G20 leader but two,

00:09:50.220 Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron featured.

00:09:52.360 He included, oh, I don't know, Erdogan from Turkey.

00:09:55.820 He had the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

00:09:58.160 He had Rishi Sunak from the UK.

00:10:00.620 He even had Joe Biden.

00:10:02.280 Joe Biden, who it like took him nine takes to probably find the guy with the outstretched

00:10:06.220 hand on the carpet.

00:10:07.080 it. He put that one in there, but not Justin Trudeau. Now, is it just because he didn't like

00:10:11.960 the caliber of the footage that Trudeau gave him when he like pulled away from the handshake? Or is

00:10:16.500 it because India wants to say to the world in a very subtle diplomatic way that it does not see

00:10:23.220 a relationship with Justin Trudeau as being either healthy or even present in the first place? And

00:10:29.380 of course, the comments that Justin Trudeau have made have not escaped the Indian media who,

00:10:34.420 I mean, Candace Malcolm, I recall the last time Trudeau was in India, was fielding requests like 24-7 from Indian media outlets that just wanted Canadians on to, you know, just make fun of Trudeau.

00:10:45.040 In this particular case, let me show you one clip that we saw from one presenter in India.

00:10:53.600 Obviously, Canada will always defend freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, freedom of peaceful protest.

00:11:01.200 That's something that's extremely important to us.

00:11:03.380 at the same time as we're always there to prevent violence, to push back against hatred.

00:11:10.300 I think on the issue of the community, it's important to remember that the actions of the few

00:11:16.420 do not represent the entire community or Canada.

00:11:20.120 Okay, so I'm going to now shed the diplomaties because when something manifestly insane takes place

00:11:27.360 in your face, there's no reason to be polite about it.

00:11:30.520 Justin Trudeau has just shown you the finger when it comes to Khalistan. 0.81

00:11:35.460 This man has just come after imposing an emergency in his country

00:11:40.100 to crack down on the freedom of expression and the right to peaceful protest

00:11:44.280 and has just talked about the freedom of expression and the rule of law and the right to protest.

00:11:50.620 Now the truth is Mr. Trudeau, like any good Punjabi, I have family in Canada

00:11:56.840 And I promise you, the nonsense that you're talking is emanating from sheer hubris.

00:12:06.020 A total disconnected view of the world where you think that we don't see what you're up to.

00:12:13.680 We don't understand what you're up to. 0.74

00:12:15.740 And you can continue behaving in a totally nonsensical fashion, talking nonsense.

00:12:21.840 nonsense i will say that like purely from a design perspective i get dizzy watching like the style

00:12:30.240 of the graphics there it's like everything and anything possible is on that screen but

00:12:34.080 if you listen to the words giving the middle finger manifestly insane uh hypocrisy these are

00:12:41.080 hubris these are the things that are being observed by at least one indian commentator that is on

00:12:46.400 News X, but we know from history, this is not an unfamiliar position to a lot of the Indian media

00:12:52.540 and by extension, the people of India. So what exactly is going on here? Why has this relationship,

00:12:58.700 which when Harper was prime minister, was quite a strong one between Canada and India,

00:13:03.200 soured and cooled so much? I want to bring into the show here, Professor Vivek Dehejia,

00:13:08.500 who is a professor with Carleton University and joins me now. Professor, good to talk to you.

00:13:13.820 thanks for coming on today. Hi, Andrew. Great to be on the show. So let's just first off talk

00:13:20.440 about whether this is something that we can squarely lay at Trudeau, because it seems like

00:13:25.100 there has been a night and day difference between the Canada-India relationship when Harper was there

00:13:30.020 versus when Trudeau was there. But has there been some context that's not related to this

00:13:35.100 change in power that I'm missing? Well, I think that is the crucial difference.

00:13:40.440 You know, Canada-India relations really reached a high point when Stephen Harper and Mr. Modi were, you know, both in power in their respective countries.

00:13:50.360 That was only about a year or so, I guess, of overlap.

00:13:54.120 But for various reasons, you know, and I've written about this, Harper and Modi had a real rapport.

00:14:01.380 They had a real camaraderie.

00:14:03.480 You know, they're both sort of grassroots conservatives.

00:14:06.420 They both had to sort of fight their way through the establishment to get to where they were.

00:14:11.600 And Harper also courted Modi assiduously.

00:14:14.900 Even when he was chief minister of Gujarat, he set up a trade office there.

00:14:19.840 So he did everything to signal to India and to Modi that Canada took India seriously and wanted to partner with India in an important way.

00:14:28.700 And we've gotten entirely the opposite signals from the current prime minister.

00:14:32.740 You know, he's always playing to the domestic diaspora.

00:14:38.320 Let's face it, Sikh Canadians have been loyal, liberal voters, and they are concentrated in key writings in greater Toronto and Vancouver.

00:14:47.000 So even though their total numbers may not seem large, they are consequential.

00:14:51.920 And I think it's just honestly, shamelessly playing to the diaspora votes back home, back here in Canada.

00:14:58.480 I know it's a very complicated issue to distill down into a generalization here, but when Trudeau is talking about, you know, what that presenter I played the clip from is sort of denouncing as his comments on Calistan, is that something that would be applicable to all Sikhs or is there a division in Canada on where they stand on that issue? 0.95

00:15:19.960 Oh, no, certainly there is. You know, no one would suggest, and I'm not suggesting that all Sikh Canadians, you know, support Khalistan. We don't really have any accurate data on this. Obviously, no one is going to fess up that, hey, I support, you know, India being broken up and having a separate state for Sikhs.

00:15:38.960 Sikhs. But we do know that there is at least a significant minority, a vocal minority of Sikh

00:15:45.720 extremists who are strong supporters of Khalistan. They took out a float, a big parade a few months

00:15:50.820 ago, which portrayed the killing of Mrs. Gandhi, the prime minister in 1984. She was assassinated

00:15:57.200 by two of her Sikh bodyguards. And that float appeared to, you know, I did not see that float,

00:16:03.860 but from all reports appeared to glorify that. It said revenge. There was a sign saying revenge

00:16:08.760 behind it. And that, you know, India did not take kindly to that. So, you know, the summit really

00:16:17.960 kind of summarized everything that's gone wrong, that Trudeau has prioritized domestic diaspora

00:16:24.600 politics. And he's not taking the big picture view, Andrew, I mean, India, look at the fact

00:16:30.200 that in the US, whatever, you know, Trump and Biden are different in 99% of the ways that,

00:16:36.680 you know they could be different but in one important way uh the turn towards india biden

00:16:42.520 has kept to the trump playbook uh biden uh although you know he's very much progressive

00:16:48.520 on the left and so on different from trump different from modi uh had a big state visit

00:16:54.040 for modi this past summer uh he spoke to congress for the second time sort of really you know gave

00:17:00.840 him the red carpet treatment um and you know in return trudeau uh skipping the leaders dinner was

00:17:08.200 was in very poor taste uh you know that honestly his presence there was so minuscule was so minor

00:17:16.440 that he ought to have just zoomed in you know but had a zoom call would have saved us all some some

00:17:22.120 some money as taxpayers and saved himself the grief of being stuck there on the ground you know

00:17:26.360 for two nights on the ground when he talks about you know the right to freedom of protest and again

00:17:32.280 that news x clip i found was quite interesting in bringing up the freedom convoy and just the

00:17:36.920 you know the way that you know indian people would look at justin trudeau's uh treatment of canadian

00:17:41.880 protesters in that and i i don't want to draw a false equivalence but but when he makes those

00:17:46.280 comments it is very much like he's meddling in india's domestic politics is it not well that's

00:17:53.880 how it was seen andrew in india the external affairs ministry was very stern saying look you

00:17:58.920 know we don't comment on your internal politics in canada please don't meddle uh with what what

00:18:05.320 they're doing and you know there is a certain irony so you know for the context uh there were

00:18:13.000 uh protesters uh jamming up the highways leading to delhi for almost a year you know for months on

00:18:19.080 and protesting farm reforms, which were, you know, would have been good for the economy.

00:18:25.640 And the government in India did not crack down on them. And in fact, they finally caved into some

00:18:31.800 of the farmers' demands. Now, these were mostly Sikh Punjabis. And so when, you know, India gets 0.99

00:18:40.720 this talking to from Trudeau, and then two years later, Trudeau cracks down hard using

00:18:47.900 draconian emergency powers, never used, you know, except by his father, except in wartime,

00:18:53.000 on peaceful protests after, what, two weeks or so, you know, in the nation's capital.

00:18:59.500 That contrast was very striking, and people didn't fail to see that difference, that he

00:19:05.080 was kind of preaching, you've got to reach out to the protesters, talk to them, something

00:19:10.360 that he didn't do himself.

00:19:11.600 So that was very dissonant and very jarring for lots of people.

00:19:15.780 I never want to, you know, let one person speak for an entire country. I mean, whenever Canadian

00:19:21.900 conservatives have seen, you know, people in the Indian press comment on Trudeau, they all love the

00:19:27.060 clips. And I mean, I don't know if that's an accurate representation of where Indian discourse

00:19:31.620 is. You know, for example, like someone in India could take a clip of my show and say, look at what

00:19:35.840 Canadians are saying. But, you know, as much as I would love to speak for the country, I don't. But

00:19:39.900 I'm curious in this case, how much those comments that we hear are speaking for a pretty broad

00:19:45.980 sentiment? Well, I think they are. And what's really sad here also, Andrew, is that Trudeau

00:19:53.000 actually had a very popular image in India when he came to power. You know, he was young, he was

00:19:57.640 charismatic. He seemed to really resonate with young people all over the world. He was in the

00:20:03.040 news you know he was sort of uh the new exciting kid on the block and so people were willing to

00:20:08.940 uh to embrace him you know as an interesting new canadian leader young and maybe bringing a fresh

00:20:14.720 approach but all of that really evaporated in 2018 with that disastrous visit i saw the the

00:20:19.920 package that you you started with which was really more like like a bollywood trunk show

00:20:24.360 than it was a state visit uh nothing was accomplished um and there was gaffe after gaffe

00:20:31.220 The last one that really put it off the rails was when a convicted Kalasani terrorist was invited to the official High Commissioner dinner, the private reception that Trudeau hosted and was photographed with Sophie and so on.

00:20:46.360 It was all very, very embarrassing for Canada, and the Indians, you know, did not take kindly to that, that someone like that got on the official guest list for the prime minister's private reception to close that week there.

00:21:02.100 It was really, really very embarrassing, and people did not, you know, fail to see that. 0.50

00:21:07.740 What message that sent?

00:21:09.640 Yeah. And I would also add, I mean, it's impossible to live up to the level of incompetence and blundering on that particular trip. I mean, this one has been a cakewalk compared to that, although, you know, throwing in airplane malfunctions was, you know, a nice little feather in the cap here.

00:21:25.220 But the one interesting aspect of this, and you mentioned the diaspora earlier, Canada and India are linked more than a lot of other countries in terms of population.

00:21:35.280 And, you know, for example, like I've talked to so many people that literally just live their lives between the two countries because they've got families there, people that are going to weddings back and forth.

00:21:45.100 If you've ever gotten on a plane at Pearson next to the flight that's going from Toronto to Delhi, you'll notice just how many people there are there that are very linked between these two countries.

00:21:54.420 And, you know, the one thing I've gotten the sense of is that a lot of Indian Canadians keep very close ties to India because they have family there.

00:22:03.340 Maybe they still have work commitments there. So these two countries should be getting along.

00:22:08.740 And I'm wondering what it would take to salvage that, because at this point, if there's not even a basic respect for the Canadian prime minister in India,

00:22:17.320 which it sounds like is the case, is this relationship literally on ice until there's a new government in Canada or a new government in India?

00:22:24.420 I'm afraid so. In fact, I don't think that really there's any way at this point, you know, we've gone from a deep freeze to the Arctic tundra here, you know, in terms of where we're at. And really, you know, as you put it correctly, you know, if Modi loses next year or Trudeau loses, you know, whenever, and there's a new prime minister at either end, you know, there could be sort of a chance to jumpstart Canada to India.

00:22:51.160 but really, it's completely stuck now. And again, it's really, really disappointing that

00:22:58.180 Trudeau's own foreign policy manifesto, this Indo-Pacific strategy, called for reaching out

00:23:05.080 to India. Now, you mentioned the diaspora, and I wanted to say one word about that, if I may,

00:23:08.720 Andrew. Please. You know, both the US and Canada have large Indian diasporas,

00:23:14.380 but there is a difference. This is something that people don't often always acknowledge.

00:23:19.520 There are major fissures, you know, major cleavages in the diaspora here in Canada, because there is a large percentage who are Sikh Canadians, as I say, you know, a small minority, but a small but vocal minority still harbor hopes of Khalistan, this independent homeland for the Sikhs that led to a spate of terrorism in India in the 80s, the killing of the prime minister.

00:23:49.520 And so unfortunately, that group of people is intrinsically going to be very, very negative towards India.

00:24:00.260 And I think that colors the diaspora relationship. 0.99

00:24:04.700 I mean, they go back and forth, but I don't think that all of them, I'm not talking about all of them,

00:24:09.000 but some of them don't like the Indian government for what they perceive as the crackdown on Sikhs in Punjab as they see it.

00:24:18.500 Whereas the American diaspora, Indo-Americans, for the most part, are really gung ho about what's going on back where, you know, back, back where they came from.

00:24:28.760 And so, for example, Biden or Trump or whoever doesn't have to play this game of, you know, I've got to say one thing to the Sikh diaspora back in Canada, say something else to Modi. 0.90

00:24:39.180 Their hands are much freer. 0.87

00:24:41.100 So it's hard to explain this.

00:24:45.000 You know, they aren't sort of monolithic blocks.

00:24:48.500 these diasporas. They're made up of lots of different groups of people with lots of different

00:24:52.160 views. And somehow, and for some reason, the diaspora in Canada has not really played the

00:24:59.980 role that it could have or it should have to really lead to a tighter embrace with India.

00:25:06.540 It's not happened. Is that not in some way a consequence of Canada, like the specific Canadian

00:25:13.040 interpretation of multiculturalism? Because it seems like in other contexts as well, we import

00:25:18.240 these cleavages and these issues that are not settled in the homelands but we add basically 1.00

00:25:23.660 another arena for these battles oh that's absolutely true uh i mean i mean so so indo-americans are

00:25:30.760 our first americans and then they came from india so there's a basic there's a basic unifying 0.89

00:25:36.880 factor there now of course they have major cleavages politically you know red versus blue

00:25:42.140 trump versus biden and so on but they're fundamentally all they all agree that we are

00:25:47.620 Americans first. And in Canada, there seems to be this fracturing, you know, given our

00:25:54.640 multicultural model, which certainly has its strengths, but it has led to a fragmenting

00:25:59.800 of a larger Canadian sense that people have. Look, I'm a Canadian. First, I'm here and I care

00:26:06.240 about what's going on where I was born, obviously, but let's not import those grievances from back

00:26:12.760 home because this is our home now. So let's focus on what we can do together here in Canada.

00:26:19.180 Last question, Vivek. India had offered a plane that apparently the Canadian government never

00:26:24.680 took them up on the offer on to help Trudeau get home. Do you think they were being hospitable or

00:26:28.760 do you think they wanted to get rid of him? I saw that news. I mean, maybe a bit of both. I mean,

00:26:34.680 I can understand why Trudeau didn't accept the offer. I'm sure they would have all kinds of

00:26:37.980 bugs on board to record the conversations uh so to know what he really thought uh of of what 1.00

00:26:44.380 happened in india but you know it's i guess it was sort of rubbing it in you know a g7 country

00:26:50.140 has a leader whose home he can't live in official residence you know unsafe to live in and your 0.51

00:26:55.740 plane doesn't take off i mean it's you know really for canada this is such you know such terrible pr

00:27:01.580 such terrible you know people see this stuff that yeah you this is what the prime minister of canada

00:27:07.180 his plane doesn't take off, and he's sort of basically camping out, you know, on the grounds

00:27:11.820 of Rideau Hall. Yeah, I should, I remember the indignation when Pierre Polyev, the Conservative

00:27:17.820 leader, said Canada is broken, and Justin Trudeau gets up there and says, you know, Canada is not

00:27:21.700 broken, just like everything in Canada, apparently even that he needs and uses is. Professor Vivek

00:27:27.200 Dehejia of Carleton University, great to have you on the show at last. Thanks so much for coming on

00:27:31.560 today. Thank you so much, Andrew. My pleasure. All right, thank you for that, Vivek. We'll have to get

00:27:35.800 you back on in the future. I know he's got to get off to a class, but we are very grateful to have

00:27:40.520 him and his insights here. And, you know, it's again, I can't say enough times when Justin

00:27:46.380 Trudeau was elected, that very smug two words, Canada's back. That was what we were being told,

00:27:53.400 that under Stephen Harper, we were the shame of the world. And under Justin Trudeau, Canada was

00:27:58.120 back. And then like two years later, he's like Bhangra dancing in India, Larry. I like how

00:28:03.660 Vivek referred to it, the Bollywood trunk show, which is quite something because, you know,

00:28:09.120 he wasn't doing it in a way that they were all saying, oh, wow, he wants to be just like us.

00:28:13.480 Look how cool he is. They're like, what the heck is he doing? And, you know, obviously,

00:28:17.900 politicians will wear various types of garb for reasons of respect. I mean, there are various

00:28:23.500 ceremonies when they go to gurdwaras or temples where someone may cover their head or put on a

00:28:28.840 particular type of clothing but no one was asking him to do what he did no one was put that picture

00:28:35.240 up again Sean no one was asking for this so that is basically where we are now that is oh he has

00:28:42.740 two you have two more Sean all right well you've been holding back on me put them up oh yeah we

00:28:47.080 got the whole family involved that was I mean apparently well I'm not going to say anything on

00:28:51.420 that but that was the whole family because again you can't just buy one outfit you've got to outfit

00:28:55.660 the whole clan on that. What else do we have? Oh, there we go as well. Yeah. So he brought enough

00:29:01.200 for multiple wardrobes. That I think is the most important part here, because that was when

00:29:05.280 we had learned not long after that the Liberal campaign had two planes instead of one plane.

00:29:10.620 And we could only surmise that the second one was just the wardrobe plane. So anyway,

00:29:15.760 we were at the Conservative Party of Canada convention in Quebec City over the weekend.

00:29:20.540 We did a deep dive into all the things that happened there yesterday. And one of the great

00:29:25.200 things was being able to sit down and talk to people that we normally have to have in a little

00:29:29.120 Zoom box on the screen here and seeing them in person. One of them was the former leader of the

00:29:35.200 Conservatives, still a Conservative MP, and now the House Leader for the Conservatives under Polly

00:29:40.460 F, Andrew Scheer. Joining me is a Conservative Member of Parliament and former Conservative

00:29:46.520 Leader, Andrew Scheer. Andrew, good to talk to you again. I mean, obviously, this is a pretty

00:29:51.700 rocky few years for the Conservative Party, one could say. You know, you go from

00:29:55.900 successive election losses in 2015, 2019, 2021, you were the leader for one of those periods.

00:30:03.700 The vibe here, though, is really different. I mean, it almost feels like an in-government vibe

00:30:08.720 from the crowd here. I mean, have you sensed this optimism before 2023?

00:30:14.560 This is an incredible atmosphere right now. And, you know, we try not to get too hung up in the

00:30:20.120 polls they they go up and down but uh the thing that is just so encouraging is when you look at

00:30:24.800 the number of people that have been coming out to conservative events every delegate i've spoken

00:30:29.040 to every riding president says you know when we do an event now we're getting people who have

00:30:33.080 never come out not just to a conservative party event but a political event in general so pierre's

00:30:38.320 message of attack uh tackling the cost of living crisis that justin trudeau has caused by bringing

00:30:43.580 inflation down lowering interest rates it's really speaking to the the hurt that people are feeling

00:30:47.520 in addition to the core principles, the Conservative principles that he has stood up for,

00:30:52.400 getting rid of the carbon tax, protecting individual freedom and free speech.

00:30:56.080 So there's a lot of reasons why people are enthusiastic and optimistic.

00:31:00.780 I mean, I was there in 2019 when you announced your platform,

00:31:03.980 and a lot of the things that the Conservative Party and the peer probably ever talking about now

00:31:07.800 are things that you were talking about as well.

00:31:10.560 I mean, affordability, balanced budgets.

00:31:12.440 And why is it that you think the message seems to be taking on this new life now

00:31:16.960 that hasn't always been the case.

00:31:18.800 Because the damage that Justin Trudeau is causing

00:31:21.400 has just gotten that much worse.

00:31:23.480 You know, in 2019, interest rates were lower.

00:31:26.120 Inflation was lower.

00:31:27.200 Now it's just crippling families.

00:31:29.760 I'm sure you know many friends who are counting down the months

00:31:33.160 to when they have to renew their mortgage.

00:31:35.100 If you've got friends who are on variable rates,

00:31:37.020 they're already experiencing that pain.

00:31:38.420 So I think the pain is just so much more pronounced.

00:31:42.660 Crime is way up.

00:31:43.900 And, you know, the scandals have piled up.

00:31:48.340 So just all the things that were there in 2019 are there again here in 2023, just times 10.

00:31:55.420 And, of course, one of the big changes between 2019 and 2023 has been COVID.

00:31:59.220 And if you look at a subset of that, the Freedom Convoy, which for Conservatives, I think, was a really big eye-opener.

00:32:06.120 And I've seen shades of that at the convention.

00:32:08.240 I mean, Anna Polyev in her remarks talked about truckers, which I think got a pretty big standing ovation.

00:32:14.080 We've had Pierre Polyev talk about that.

00:32:16.500 We've had also a resolution to amend the Constitution that was talking about freedom of association.

00:32:21.840 And I'm wondering what you take of the fact that that seems to have really embedded itself in the Conservative consciousness, that moment in Canada.

00:32:28.520 Yeah. Well, you know, Pierre spoke to this a little bit, too, where he talked about how past governments, whether they were liberal or conservative, would still stand up for fundamental freedoms.

00:32:38.940 I mean, we might disagree on what government policy should do or how it should be implemented, but that those basic human rights that we as Canadians enjoy, they're under attack in a way that they never have been before.

00:32:50.720 And, you know, what we saw when people came to Ottawa to stand up for their freedom,

00:32:53.940 to protect their freedom of choice, there were people from all walks of life,

00:32:58.240 from not just truckers, but there were a lot of small business owners.

00:33:02.020 There were a lot of people who had been fired or lost their job

00:33:04.280 because of a health care decision that they wanted to make for themselves.

00:33:08.280 So, you know, there's a lot of areas we can look at to say that Justin True is eroding our freedom.

00:33:14.220 We've got the Internet censorship bill, all kinds of things that he's doing to divide Canadians.

00:33:19.340 But that was maybe a moment where it kind of hit a catalyst moment or had a breaking point

00:33:24.940 and people decided to stand up and do something about it.

00:33:27.460 We're a ways past that now.

00:33:29.620 So now we're looking at, okay, how will a conservative government stand up for those freedoms?

00:33:34.960 So when I hear beer talk about things like repealing C-18, C-11,

00:33:40.060 making sure that there's freedom of speech on campus,

00:33:42.640 there's a lot of things that we could do on a go-forward basis

00:33:45.660 to make sure that our fundamental liberties are protected.

00:33:48.680 I know one of the things that you had proposed that I quite enjoyed in 2019 that I think conservatives should definitely make a point of is a law constraining governments to balance the budget.

00:33:59.660 Now, you look at the books now. I mean, something like that, you would need to have such a long runway to implement that because of how bad things are.

00:34:06.160 Is there a bit of concern on your part that if the Conservatives do win, and let's say there's a majority government or there's a four-year mandate, that it'll be so challenging to disentangle all that Trudeau has done over, by that time, eight or ten years in a four-year term, and that it'll be hard to meet those expectations that Canadians who are hurting may have?

00:34:25.480 Well, it's a great question because every month that goes by that Trudeau doesn't bring in a plan to constrain that government spending to eliminate those deficits over time is another month where real pain hits Canadians and has long-lasting consequences.

00:34:42.180 So there really is a sense of we're running out of time to fix this before it gets really bad.

00:34:48.200 You know, when Trudeau was promising that interest rates would stay low for a long time, that debt was consequence free, you know, we were calling him out on that saying, no, eventually the chickens come home to roost.

00:34:59.920 And now we're seeing that we're seeing that the terrible consequences of runaway inflation. 0.97

00:35:05.180 You know, a lot of this was when we were being told it was transitory, by the way, it's just going to be, you know, shit passing in the night. 0.89

00:35:11.180 And it's so frustrating to see these economists that work at banks or Bank of Canada officials themselves who are telling those false promises back then. 0.90

00:35:20.720 And they'll say, well, it's all kinds of factors.

00:35:24.100 You know, it's global supply.

00:35:25.360 Well, that's all nonsense.

00:35:27.680 The Bank of Canada printed hundreds of billions of dollars to buy government bonds to allow Trudeau to continue his massive spending.

00:35:36.760 That's why we're seeing inflation.

00:35:38.300 That's why Canadians are suffering through higher prices.

00:35:40.300 And that's also why now the Bank of Canada has to raise interest rates to make up for their mistakes in the past.

00:35:46.560 So what Pierre was talking about, Pierre was really the first voice with a large platform to warn Canadians about this.

00:35:54.720 Those same economists were poo-pooing him and saying, no, no, Justin Trudeau's right.

00:35:59.200 Well, Pierre was right.

00:36:00.900 And had we listened to that common sense plan, and we just kind of used our common sense thinking as a country.

00:36:06.080 You say, wait a second, you can't rack up the credit card forever without someday paying for it.

00:36:10.940 This mess wouldn't be as big as it is now.

00:36:13.100 So in answer to your question about timelines and how bad the situation will be,

00:36:17.060 yes, our concern is that if he keeps racking up these deficits, that inflation will just continue.

00:36:24.460 Interest rates will stay high.

00:36:25.860 That's going to cause all kinds of misery for Canadians,

00:36:28.240 whether it's their mortgage or small businesses trying to borrow money to expand higher.

00:36:33.300 So, yeah, it is very concerning.

00:36:34.880 But the good news is there's a lot of low-hanging fruit.

00:36:37.660 Liberal government put $35 billion into an infrastructure bank that hasn't built a single project.

00:36:44.300 They sent $250 million to the Asian Infrastructure Bank,

00:36:47.920 which is controlled by the communist regime in Beijing,

00:36:50.900 to build the roads and pipelines that Trudeau won't let get built here.

00:36:54.860 So, yes, it'll take some hard work,

00:36:56.860 but we know that there's some low-hanging fruit that the government's wasted money on

00:36:59.940 that hasn't actually benefited Canadians, and we can start there.

00:37:03.420 Yeah, I mean, it was interesting.

00:37:05.200 When Pierre Polyev was speaking in his speech last night about cutting waste,

00:37:10.100 Pablo Rodriguez came out and spoke to reporters

00:37:12.580 and said that Pierre Polyev was a Republican far-right speaker

00:37:17.240 who was talking about cuts.

00:37:18.880 And, I mean, I went and looked through the speech,

00:37:20.940 and he did talk about cuts,

00:37:21.920 but he's talking about cutting waste and not cutting programs.

00:37:24.040 But that message to the Liberals and, by extension, to the media

00:37:27.900 seems to always be a bit distorted.

00:37:29.720 So what is it that you would offer to Canadians that you would cut, that would save money, that wouldn't go after those things that they're kind of fear-mongered into thinking will go away, like the Liberals' prime of senior scare, for example?

00:37:42.780 Yeah. Well, you know, when you look at Pierre's speech, he talked about exactly this.

00:37:47.060 You know, we went through, there's something in Ottawa called the public accounts and the main estimates, and they happen in the parliamentary cycle, and the departments have to disclose all their spending.

00:37:56.260 And when you go through there in a fine-tooth comb, you realize this Liberal government has exploded the amount of money that is spent on consultants.

00:38:03.840 So we have a public service.

00:38:05.700 We have highly trained public service that have become experts in their areas of their portfolios.

00:38:12.140 And the government goes along and hires companies like McKinsey to give them advice.

00:38:16.040 Well, we believe that elected officials take advice from Canadians, and the highly trained professional public service should implement that.

00:38:22.840 We don't need hundreds of millions of dollars on consultants.

00:38:25.300 so we can do things like that.

00:38:26.820 The $54 million Arrivescan app,

00:38:29.600 such a waste of money.

00:38:31.520 Were there a few software programmers,

00:38:33.500 I think they came up with,

00:38:35.460 they determined that you could have come up

00:38:37.220 with that exact same app in a couple of weeks

00:38:39.700 for a few hundred thousand dollars.

00:38:41.700 When the government sends the signal to the departments

00:38:44.200 that they don't care about balanced budgets,

00:38:46.080 that they don't care about fiscal management,

00:38:49.120 waste happens.

00:38:49.880 It happens organically.

00:38:51.020 People aren't worried about missing a deadline

00:38:53.580 or over-ordering things for the office.

00:38:57.420 So just that sense of, hey, we've got a target to get back to balance budgets

00:39:00.880 in and of itself will help address some of the waste.

00:39:03.720 And anyone who's ever had the misfortune of going through ATIPS, as I have,

00:39:07.000 has seen that every March there always are these just like deluge of invoices

00:39:11.300 for every type of office furniture imaginable

00:39:13.540 because you've got all these bureaucrats that say,

00:39:15.100 oh my goodness, we were budgeted this much and we don't want to lose it next year,

00:39:18.220 so let's go on a spending spree.

00:39:19.760 And this is never, I mean, it's called March Madness,

00:39:21.400 but it's never actually been dealt with by governments.

00:39:24.880 They've just kept keeping this along.

00:39:27.160 Exactly.

00:39:27.900 And one of the things I like about Pierre's message on this fiscal management thing

00:39:32.360 is how he talks about a dollar-for-dollar rule,

00:39:34.940 where if a minister comes to the cabinet table with a great idea,

00:39:38.300 you know, we're going to do something, we're going to spend money here or do whatever,

00:39:41.680 he's got to show within his own department where he's going to find the savings for.

00:39:45.000 We're not going to ask Canadians to pay more taxes,

00:39:47.340 and we're not going to borrow more money to pay for these new types of ideas

00:39:50.860 that will naturally come along that in and of itself i believe will go a long way to ending

00:39:54.920 things like march madness because now the minister knows okay if i want to do this thing that i

00:39:59.060 believe in or if i want to go ahead with this program i've got to get my own department to

00:40:02.580 find the savings so there's a lot of things that just having that direction from the top

00:40:07.320 will help with and as i said some big ticket items canada infrastructure bank 35 billion dollars

00:40:12.620 cbc a billion dollars there 250 million dollars to the asian infrastructure bank there's some

00:40:18.480 big ticket items that we can get some you know early savings early on but then there's also just

00:40:23.260 that culture of prudent management that is completely missing from this liberal government

00:40:28.820 since you bring up cbc this is something that i think conservative members it's probably like

00:40:33.220 not the most relevant issue in terms of like impact on lives but it's probably one of the

00:40:38.220 ones that fires people up the most and we saw that during the leadership race and even now i've seen

00:40:42.300 defund the cbc t-shirts out and this is an issue i mean a billion dollars is not chump change and

00:40:47.520 When people look at that, that is actually a very real cost saving.

00:40:51.600 Is your position that how much of that is actually getting cut?

00:40:55.280 What percentage of that?

00:40:56.320 Because I know Pierre-Paul Yev has talked about saving a little bit for French language programming, for example.

00:41:01.000 Yeah, French language programming, some issues in northern locations where, you know, there's just a completely different set of circumstances.

00:41:07.280 When you look at CBC News in and of itself, it's a lot of money.

00:41:11.100 Big, expensive real estate in major downtown centers.

00:41:14.980 There's a lot of savings there.

00:41:16.120 and they also have an incredibly negative effect on organic canadian media uh you know when i when

00:41:23.080 i meet with publishers of local newspapers or even some of the bigger chains they talk about

00:41:27.580 how they're competing for ad dollars with the cbc who gets paid by taxpayers money so and even under

00:41:33.160 c18 they stand to be the big beneficiary of it yeah you know so so it's not just costing canadians

00:41:38.500 to put content that you know that they may or may not like they may or may not watch you know you

00:41:42.740 look at some of the viewership for CBC News is declining, but they're also scooping up some of

00:41:49.240 those precious ad dollars that are the lifeblood of local newspapers, local broadcasters. So it's

00:41:54.640 not just because we have a philosophical opposition to the state broadcaster and the government running

00:41:59.860 a news outlet. If you can imagine that, we have a situation here in a mature democracy like Canada

00:42:05.400 where the government runs a news outlet. It's not just because of philosophical reasons. There is

00:42:10.220 actually the practical impact it has on stifling that growth and that innovation in local broadcasters

00:42:15.480 in innovative news media like true north uh where there is that competition for subscriptions and for

00:42:21.880 ad revenue so let's get the government out of that let's get the government out of the way and let's

00:42:25.760 let that grow naturally and organically and let the free market decide you know people who enjoy

00:42:31.420 watching your show will continue to watch it and you'll have to find innovative ways to attract

00:42:34.940 new audience members as you do and you know let's let people like you compete well i appreciate that

00:42:40.920 and i'll just ask in closing here i mean one of the challenges for the conservative party has

00:42:44.660 always been that it has i'd say a broader coalition than a lot of other parties in canada and it has

00:42:49.820 i mean even just as far as the conservative base goes you have your social conservatives your

00:42:53.740 libertarians your republicans your monarchists your foreign policy folks and all of that and i

00:42:59.400 think it's sometimes a very tenuous coalition and i think after a loss the the fractures start to

00:43:04.400 show there a bit more. Pierre Polyev won the leadership on the first ballot by a pretty

00:43:09.160 significant margin. I think your leadership was 13 rounds, if I recall. It lasted a little bit

00:43:13.680 long. Aaron O'Toole, multiple rounds as well, albeit with a smaller field. So do you take from

00:43:19.360 that that the party is very unified and all of these factions are playing nicely, so to speak?

00:43:24.420 Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, just, yeah, I'm sure you have, but take a random sample of the people

00:43:29.680 who are here. You know, the people who are here at this convention, they represent an excellent

00:43:33.360 cross-section of the membership because each one of them had to get elected in their local riding

00:43:37.720 association to be a delegate so this is a great sample of the conservative movement across the

00:43:43.120 country and everyone's united you know we might disagree but the thing about pierre and the thing

00:43:48.120 that a good conservative leader will do to avoid that fracturing is stay true to those core

00:43:53.060 conservative principles you and i may disagree on something but if we agree on freedom of speech

00:43:57.900 then it doesn't bother me that you advocate for the thing that you believe in and we can rally

00:44:01.600 around that freedom of speech aspect of it and then we could have our say and have our debates

00:44:06.820 have a vote and live with the results we have a government like Justin Trudeau that divides and

00:44:10.680 demonizes people who disagree people who want to express themselves differently than what Justin

00:44:15.200 Trudeau approves of yeah then you then you do see that division and that's what we're seeing across

00:44:19.720 the country Justin Trudeau desperately wants to divide people to think about the divisions within

00:44:25.100 our society and demonize that people don't notice that they can't afford groceries last question if

00:44:29.820 you get in government are you going to the world economic forum not me actually not just me but

00:44:33.940 not anybody in a pure poly of government we believe that we should listen to canadians we

00:44:38.380 don't need to go to fancy soirees with with global billionaires uh we can go to the barbecues and the

00:44:44.660 lions clubs and the qantas club uh barbecue events to hear from canadians that's where we'll get our

00:44:50.060 common sense ideas to improve this country all right the barbecue in your local community not

00:44:54.280 Main Street in Davos. Andrew Scheer, thank you very much. Great. Thank you.

00:44:58.940 That was Conservative leader Andrew Scheer. Had to throw in the World Economic Forum question at

00:45:04.140 the end of it. I will say, by the way, with how defiant Polyev has been on that issue,

00:45:10.740 it's going to be very difficult for anyone in that government, if the Conservatives do win,

00:45:15.460 to weasel out and show up at Davos, because that's like as clear as it comes. Same as defund

00:45:20.120 the CBC. That is as clear as it gets. You can certainly talk about, oh, well, this French thing,

00:45:24.960 that French thing. But as we were talking about with Andrew Scheer, they're getting rid of CBC

00:45:28.540 news. That is a very clear cut promise. And it's one thing that I will be watching for,

00:45:33.720 because there are obviously three stages to this. There's Polyev, the leadership candidate,

00:45:38.000 Polyev, the leader, Polyev, the general election candidate. And then eventually one might say

00:45:43.900 Polyev, the prime minister. But you need to look out for any deviation that takes place along that

00:45:49.480 journey. So if, as with O'Toole, when the platform comes out, there's nothing about defunding the

00:45:54.400 CBC, you'd be like, whoa, hang on. And that's when we hold them to account as they deserve to be. So

00:45:59.840 glad to have the chance to sit down with Andrew Scheer and we'll have some more of those interviews

00:46:05.360 as the week proceeds. So as mentioned, I'm going to be off to the Liberal Caucus retreat, hoping

00:46:10.220 for the best, hoping for the opportunity to put some of your questions to them. That's going to

00:46:15.260 be on the show tomorrow but i'll also have some tweets about it this afternoon i suspect this is

00:46:19.800 the andrew lawton show here on true north thank you god bless and a good day to you all thanks

00:46:24.820 for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

00:46:45.260 We'll be right back.

00:47:15.260 We'll be right back.

Juno News - September 12, 2023

Justin Trudeau blunders his way through another India trip

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript