00:04:34.080Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned that because one of the things that the liberals do, and it's a very smart move politically, is they, whenever they're putting something that restricts gun ownership for law-abiding gun owners, they also put all these things that are uncontroversial in there as well so that people can look and like, I mean, for example, in Bill C-21, they talk about the border, I'd say not nearly in as strong enough terms as they should.
00:04:55.340They talk about domestic violence. They talk about the firearm situations of people that may be at risk of violence for others, what they call red flag laws. And in a lot of cases, I mean, let's talk about red flag laws here, because when you look at the way the liberals frame this, you'd say, well, yeah, I want absolutely there to be the ability to take guns away from people that pose a risk to others. But that already exists.
00:05:18.340Yes. Yeah, of course. So that already exists. I mean, you and I both know I'm a handgun owner. I'm an AR-15 owner. I own all kinds of guns. If something was to happen here and my husband was to call the police or the RCMP or the Canadian Firearms Program and say, hey, Tracy Wilson is being violent with me. I'm in danger. She's a violent person. You know exactly what that's going to look like.
00:05:41.680it's an ERT response at my door, my door being kicked in, my guns being seized, you know, seize
00:05:47.680them now, ask questions later. And of course, I'd have to fight to get them back. All of that
00:05:52.400already exists in Canada. And, you know, in an emergency, a crisis situation, of course,
00:05:58.640you've got 911. Like this is, this is literally existing framework that, that we've already got
00:06:05.020in Canada. And StatsCan data shows us that less than 1% of all domestic calls even have a firearm
00:06:13.080present at the address, let alone used or threatened. Can you say that again? StatsCan
00:06:18.380data shows us that less than 1% of all domestic violence calls in Canada even have a firearm
00:06:24.680present at the address, let alone used or threatened. Yeah, so it's solving a problem
00:06:30.460that simply doesn't exist. Yeah. And I think all of this is ultimately padding for what the
00:06:35.800liberals really want to do, which is the handgun ban. And we know from 2020, and I explored this
00:06:42.040extensively in the documentary series we put out last year, Assaulted, the Order and Council,
00:06:47.660an overnight ban on some 1,500 types of firearms, which they later expanded a couple of years later.
00:06:53.400To this day, the promised buyback program hasn't materialized. So people like me, like you,
00:06:58.500and like dozens and hundreds and hundreds of gun business owners that we spoke to and that
00:07:03.540also are just sitting on this, unable to do anything with it. This is different. They're
00:07:08.100proposing this through legislation, which means that it still has to go through the proper channels,
00:07:12.340which means it's still legal in Canada if you're licensed to go out and buy a handgun right now.
00:07:17.240So, I mean, I don't want them to be more aggressive with it, but it does strike me as odd that on one
00:07:22.460hand is this pressing threat that is causing carnage in the streets, but on the other hand,
00:07:26.820not so pressing that we don't have the benefit of time for people to go out and buy more as they
00:07:31.580are in droves right now. Yeah, well, that's it. I mean, like, look, if this was a crisis,
00:07:37.900if this was something that Canada absolutely needed for public safety measures, if this was
00:07:43.200a credible public safety policy, then he would have tried to do the same thing he did with the
00:07:48.880May 2020 gun ban. It would just be like, hey, that's it. You know, we don't need handguns in
00:07:53.000this country we're coming around them up and that's the end of it but of course as you know
00:07:57.020we've got the 2020 gun ban tied up in federal court it's not going the way they thought it would go0.64
00:08:02.880um the majority of our case is based on the fact that they've used an oic which circumvents
00:08:08.840democracy totally avoids the entire parliamentary process and uh so yeah so they they've taken a
00:08:15.560different route with this which of course uh gives us time to fight it gives us time to stretch it
00:08:20.580out um suggest amendments to it in the house of commons and the senate and see where we go from
00:08:26.540here but in the meantime yeah go shopping you you mentioned one very compelling stat i want to play
00:08:32.760a clip for you tracy of something justin trudeau said this morning about how the criticism of this
00:08:39.320is all coming from a place of misinformation your message be to um firearms groups that are saying
00:08:46.360you know this handgun ban continues to just target lawful gun owners and you
00:08:50.680know it's you know similar criticism to other gun legislation saying it's not
00:08:53.560going to target people that are breaking the law anyways. I think people need to
00:08:56.680be careful about misinformation and disinformation in this. We've explicitly
00:09:01.060and specifically not targeted law-abiding firearms owners because those
00:09:06.520who currently own and operate handguns safely and store them safely are not at
00:09:11.380at all targeted by this legislation. We're simply saying that we are freezing the market and in the
00:09:17.400future it'll not be possible to buy, sell, transfer or import handguns in Canada. There have been too
00:09:23.400many tragedies. Canadians need to see safer communities and this is a comprehensive multi-step
00:09:29.940path towards that. So I mean the relevant part of that law-abiding gun owners are not targeted by
00:09:37.800this yet as i understand it and you can correct me if i'm wrong tracy once this bill passes
00:09:42.920if i go to a gun store i will not be able to buy a handgun which strikes me as targeting a
00:09:48.040law-abiding gun owner so am i missing something here no in fact this legislation solely targets
00:09:54.120legal gun owners and here's the other thing andrew like i'm a middle-aged mom and a grandma
00:09:58.840you know i i do a lot of sports shooting maybe i decide i'm not going to do that anymore i'm
00:10:03.080not really into it i haven't been out to the range in over a year myself let's say i decide i want to
00:10:08.920sell my handguns i want to move on to something else i'm just not interested in it anymore
00:10:13.080i can't so now not only can you not buy anymore but you're forced to keep the ones you've got
00:10:19.000at the same time if i say okay fine i'll keep them i take them to to my deathbed then what
00:10:24.840my family is going to be forced to turn them over to the police for destruction or have them
00:10:29.960deactivated those are the options zero compensation and i mean i've got thousands of dollars of
00:10:34.920handguns here right so yeah i i think he he missed an opportunity to really be a hero here
00:10:42.200he he gave away a really important self-own at the very beginning of his press conference
00:10:47.800when he said you know for seven years we've enacted all these measures all this gun control
00:10:53.000including the may 2020 gun ban and yet gun crime continues to rise in this country
00:10:57.960well doesn't that tell you that what you're doing isn't being it's not effective it's not working
00:11:04.220and his that's a cell phone right so his response to his own issue is to enact more of it you know
00:11:12.060that he missed the opportunity here he could have said you know what we're going to get tough on
00:11:16.360criminals we're going to get tough on the border we're going to reduce smuggling we're going to
00:11:23.360invest in at-risk communities, initiatives for kids to keep them out of gangs. We're going to
00:11:29.240do a whole slew of really important measures. And that's how we're going to keep Canadians safe.
00:11:35.460The reason he doesn't do it is it takes more than one short election cycle to show positive change.
00:11:40.820If we talk about the longer term aspect of this, if handguns are going to be essentially closed
00:11:46.740off, that market's going to be closed off, plus a huge amount of semi-automatic rifles were caught
00:11:52.760up in the order and council in May 2020. Does this look, I mean, how I predict this is going,
00:12:00.160and you may have a different perspective, is that they're basically trying to phase out
00:12:03.560the restricted category of firearms. So for people that don't know, you've got your non-restricted,
00:12:08.440your hunting rifles and so on, your restricteds, which are handguns and some long guns,
00:12:13.240and then you've got your prohibiteds, which for all intents and purposes are the ones you can't
00:12:16.900get. And it seems like that restricted category is getting very, very small now.
00:12:20.900Yeah, well, that's exactly it. And you know what happens when that restricted category gets smaller and obsolete is so do gun ranges. You know, we've got 4,600 gun ranges across this country. A lot of them are community owned. Some of them are privately owned. You've got an entire industry that contributes $8.2 billion to the Canadian GDP. That is basically, literally just got cut in half, if not more.
00:12:49.660in the last two years under the Trudeau regime.
00:17:32.920The fewer the guns in our communities, the safer everyone will be.
00:17:43.620You know, ultimately, the math isn't that simple, because the fewer the legal guns, the less safe, or at least no difference in safety, the society and community is. But again, facts don't matter on this issue, just rhetoric.
00:17:56.960I want to turn back to Ontario politics, which we're focusing a fair bit more on in the last couple of weeks, because the Ontario election is coming up on Thursday. Yesterday, we had New Blue leader Jim Carahalios on to talk about the new blueprint, which is his party's platform.
00:18:12.600And we want to cover all the bases here and speak to the conservative movement more broadly.
00:18:17.160So today we invited back Derek Sloan, leader of the Ontario Party, and he joins me now.
00:19:29.560but I think our reach is much broader than that.
00:19:32.820You know, our view of conscience doesn't, you know,
00:19:35.720doesn't necessarily go down to a strict religious
00:19:37.800or moral issue, we're saying we don't want people to be forced to do things that they don't want to
00:19:42.720do. The vaccine, for example, to me is not a religious issue. I know for some people it is.
00:19:48.700For me, it's an issue of personal health autonomy, personal health freedom to choose
00:19:52.780what gets put into your body and what doesn't. So I think a lot of what we're saying here is we
00:19:58.540don't want the government telling people what to do. And we don't want the government penalizing
00:20:03.260people for not doing things that they really, really don't want to do.
00:20:09.320One of the things that we've seen, obviously, in the last two and a bit years now in politics
00:20:14.400is that COVID has overwhelmed everything.
00:20:16.680We've seen it very much reshape politics.
00:20:19.240The traditional left-right axis has changed a bit as well on this.
00:20:23.120We hope, and I mean, obviously, it's not a given that we will put these issues behind
00:20:27.060us and be able to move on to other things in society.
00:20:30.240So let me ask you, because I know you do have a platform that has things beyond COVID and beyond vaccine mandates on, what do you see from an Ontario Party perspective as being the top issues moving forward?
00:20:42.420Yeah, so just to summarize, I think that, again, the freedom issues, the government surveillance issues are very important.
00:20:48.500So we did a petition against the digital ID that's promoted by the World Economic Forum and others.
00:20:55.280We think that a digital ID and expanding government surveillance is a very bad idea.
00:21:00.900There's all kinds of other discussion about collection of biometric data and other forms of tracking people, carbon footprint trackers.
00:21:10.560We want to make sure that the government is not in the business of tracking its citizens, of controlling its citizens.
00:21:15.800We saw what happened after the tracker convoy where people had bank accounts shut down, licenses revoked, property taken.
00:21:22.940And we want to make sure that the government does not have the ability to do that.
00:21:26.640And when you have a digital ID paired with perhaps a digital currency in the future, it's very easy to turn the light switch off on people that are doing things that the government doesn't like.
00:21:37.080These are very much important issues, and I don't want to undercut them, but do you feel they are the ones that are front and center for the province as a whole?
00:21:44.240Or do you feel that people are more motivated by things like affordability, taxes, the carbon tax, cost of living issues in general?
00:21:51.280So cost of living is certainly front and center. And I mentioned the government surveillance aspect is one of the things. Cost of living is a major issue. And of course, we have a plan to deal with the housing market as best as we can here in Ontario. One thing we've proposed is a complete ban of foreign purchasing. That's something that I proposed when I was running for leader of the Conservative Party.
00:22:13.200We know the Liberals have actually finally said they were going to do the same thing, but we don't trust them to implement it in the right way or in a timely fashion.
00:22:21.120That's one thing we want to do with respect to housing.
00:22:23.680As far as the gasoline prices, we've proposed taking off PST and the Ontario gas tax, which would lower the price of fuel about 20 cents based on current prices.
00:22:34.120But we're also looking into the future.
00:22:35.700We would like to propose an energy corridor between here and Alberta.
00:22:39.860Obviously, that would require other provinces, even the federal government to be involved with that.
00:22:44.780But we want to make sure that we, you know, once and for all cement a movement forward to make Canada or at least a good chunk of it energy independent and, you know, get prices down and make sure that we're using our own products here in Canada.
00:22:57.440Yeah, I mean, right now we're seeing a global energy crisis.
00:23:00.500And a lot of this, I think, has been led by the Russia issue, if you're talking about European companies, European countries.
00:23:06.700But in Canada, this has been an ongoing challenge where you have provinces that are anti-energy, that stymie a development of the energy sector.
00:23:14.960And the result of it is an increased reliance on foreign oil.
00:23:18.320But how do you, I mean, just look at the federal government right now.
00:23:21.100How do you, if you were the premier of Ontario, move forward on this when you have a federal government that is so hostile to that agenda?
00:23:29.760And so you'll note that I said between here and Alberta, which, you know, right now, all of those governments would be friendly, I think, to, you know, increased energy infrastructure.
00:23:38.520You're right. We're fighting against the federal government.
00:23:41.180I think, though, the liberals, as much as their agenda points them in one direction, if enough people are clamoring for something, they eventually will have to, you know, do something if it makes sense.
00:23:50.440So we want we're not going to wait for them to do that.
00:23:52.820we're going to make sure that we have a proposal. Maybe we get the other provinces on board as well
00:23:57.000and, you know, propose it and get the public to buy into it as well. But I think there's a lot
00:24:01.500of things we can do. I mean, even strategic oil reserves is something that, you know, our province
00:24:06.280has never done. Our country doesn't really do. There's a lot of things that we can do to cushion
00:24:10.220ourselves against shocks that can and will come. Just when we're talking about Ontario's place
00:24:16.520outside of Ontario and just in the country and in the world, there was a radio ad of yours that I
00:24:21.560heard a couple of times and I don't have the clip to play, but you talk and I have the transcript
00:24:25.620here in front of me that Doug Ford answers to the World Economic Forum, to the United Nations and
00:24:32.120to the World Health Organization, but never to you. And you say, I'm Derek Sloan, leader of the
00:24:37.080Ontario Party, and I will never allow the globalists to rule Ontario. Vote down globalism,
00:24:42.800vote for the Ontario Party. There are a lot of people online right now listening that are
00:24:47.580probably like yeah that's great and rah rah rah but do you think that is a message that resonates
00:24:52.080with Ontarians more broadly if you're talking about expanding the base expanding your support
00:24:56.520beyond those who are already on side yeah so surprisingly we've you know we've done some
00:25:01.180broad-based issues polling and believe it or not some of these uh you know world economic digital
00:25:05.900digital id issues poll very high poll poll as high as some of any other issues that we've been
00:25:11.180fighting on. So, you know, that's a surprise to me. I mean, you know, now, do they know every
00:25:18.140detail as much as perhaps some of your listeners do? Probably not. But this idea about, you know,
00:25:23.960being tracked and, you know, international organizations does actually hit a nerve.
00:25:28.560Of course, our party is, you know, talking about other things, you know, indoctrination in the
00:25:32.280school system, you know, general affordability, all of these kinds of things. But, you know,
00:25:37.140that particular issue actually does have a very strong uh appeal to men to to many people here in
00:25:43.340this province so let's move to health care which i think is perennially one of the big issues
00:25:49.660in ontario and oftentimes whenever a politician is approaching this they only want to tiptoe
00:25:55.860around it they'll admit that it's broken but no one actually does a solution and i think one of
00:26:00.240the biggest things ontario needs is uh to have private alternatives which is like the kiss of
00:26:05.540death to campaigns, or at least conventional wisdom says it is. You have it like on your
00:26:09.780website in big, bold letters that you want private alternatives in healthcare. So what would that
00:26:13.840actually look like? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, you know what, there's various ways to go
00:26:18.040about it. What we did say is that we would permit private organizations to build hospitals and
00:26:23.380provide other services. We've also said that people would be permitted to have supplemental
00:26:28.340private health insurance if they choose to do it. You know, out of the OECD countries, Canada spends
00:26:34.540pretty much the most per capita on healthcare. And we have poor outcomes compared to many other
00:26:39.360countries. One thing that pretty much every other country that scores well on that list does
00:26:44.040is have private alternatives like what we're talking about here. So that's something that
00:26:49.540obviously we could flesh out further and there's different ways to talk about it. But that's one
00:26:54.440major thing that we basically have to look into doing. Another, of course, is again, I think
00:27:00.780you know people always talk about you know uh uh credential equivalency from you know people that
00:27:06.060come here and are trained and they're not able to work in the field that they're they're trained in
00:27:10.380i think that's important i mean anecdotally i know about seven or eight people in my rough sphere
00:27:16.060here that are going to medical school in other countries and then working in other countries
00:27:21.260as doctors these are canadians who who wanted to go to school in canada they couldn't make it in
00:27:25.740so i think there's something to be said about increasing spots at our medical schools but we
00:27:29.820We have to do a major change here in the system and allowing private alternatives while maintaining the public system as well, like they do in many European countries, I think is critical to that.
00:27:40.400I don't know how much of the interview with Tracy Wilson you caught before you came on the show, but generally we were talking about the bill that Justin Trudeau introduced yesterday on handguns, trying to ban ownership and new purchase of them.
00:27:54.080And obviously, you were in federal politics, so I know you know the firearms file somewhat.
00:27:58.320But is there a way that a province can flex a little bit of muscle on this?
00:28:02.980I know Alberta has tried by appointing its own chief firearms officer.
00:28:07.100Is that something you would want to do in Ontario and anything else you could do on firearms?
00:28:13.160I mean, you know, we've bandied about different ideas.
00:28:15.860And one idea I've had, and frankly, I haven't fleshed it out enough, but I think there would be a way for a province to potentially classify,
00:28:22.860classify a special category of peace officers that would not really be keeping the law per se,
00:28:29.200but could be enabled to still own handguns. So for example, if the government bans handguns
00:28:34.880completely, the government could potentially say, hey, you know, all you guys who had a
00:28:39.460restricted license, you know, up until two days ago when it was banned, hypothetically,
00:28:43.440if that happens, well, now you're a class C peace officer, and we need to make sure that you,
00:28:48.620have a handgun in storage at your home in case we need reservists in the police force or something
00:28:55.120like this. I feel like there is a way to get around this. Again, that's just an idea that's
00:29:00.580been percolating in my head, but I feel that there are ways. I just want to make sure I
00:29:04.560understand. So basically turning Ontario gun owners into like a standing militia of sorts?
00:29:10.100Well, I wouldn't call it a militia. I would call it peace officers. And again,
00:29:13.860we could use a similar vetting system as was already in place. But if the government were
00:29:19.480to get to a spot where they were just banning handguns completely or anything like this,
00:29:25.360I think there is some provincial jurisdiction to enable ownership to still happen.
00:29:31.020So one thing that I would bring up, and I asked this to Jim Carajalios, your opponent in the
00:29:36.640New Blue yesterday. We know that smaller parties that are upstarts have a significant hurdle ahead
00:29:43.340them if they want to win seats certainly to win a large enough number of seats to form a government
00:29:48.220or wield influence would you as the leader of one of these upstart parties support electoral reform
00:29:54.220that would i mean like for example like ontarians voted on in 2007 mixed member proportional that
00:29:59.020would actually give some proportional representation so that smaller parties like yours can have some
00:30:04.460more influence you know that's a really good question i i've always been a fan of first
00:30:09.180past the post. And, you know, I understand the appeal to some of these other forms of voting as
00:30:15.180well. You know, at this point, obviously, being in a smaller party, there is more appeal to it.
00:30:21.640I frankly think that, you know, a party like ours or a movement like ours, as it grows, could win
00:30:27.960anyways down the line. So I understand that the proportional system might allow for some early
00:30:33.920gains, but it would also work against actually forming a government. I mean, when you have
00:30:38.560these kinds of, the more proportional it is, the lesser odds are of actually forming, you know,
00:30:43.720say a majority government, for example. So I think there's pros and cons to it. It's not an
00:30:49.080axe that our party particularly grinds, but, you know, you're right, it is a way to get in the door
00:30:53.580a little bit easier. We'll leave that up to the parties in power. You know, again, there's pros
00:30:59.360and cons to that whole debate. And of course, you would have, you know, if you went 100%
00:31:04.720proportional. You'd have, you know, a hundred different choices at the ballot. You'd have,
00:31:08.760you know, the seniors party and the, this party and the, that party. So, um, it may not be quite
00:31:13.980as advantageous as some people say, but I'm, you know, I'm, I'm agnostic about it.
00:31:18.860Obviously we don't know what the exact breakdown of seats is going to be on, on Thursday. If we
00:31:23.880did, we could make a lot of money on the betting market. But, uh, if you were in a situation where
00:31:28.040the Ontario party had a couple of seats in the legislature, maybe held the balance of power at
00:31:33.020the very least held enough of a block to have some influence. What are the deal breakers? What are
00:31:38.480the things that you would absolutely not compromise on and the issues where you think you might be
00:31:43.180able to work with other parties? Yeah, well, some of the things that we've been very clear on from
00:31:48.400the beginning. So we're against a digital ID. We're against mandates and passports and things
00:31:55.600like this. We're against indoctrination in our school system. So anything that would be promoting,
00:32:00.760you know for example critical race theory or or you know age inappropriate sex education uh or
00:32:06.600you know digital ids digital currencies these things are very you know very much a fabric of
00:32:11.320who we are um you know i think obviously we're in favor of you know balanced budgets and that kind
00:32:17.080of thing but uh when it comes to uh more you know issues about you know should a road go here or
00:32:22.760there uh you know exactly how much money should go into the health care system i mean obviously we
00:32:26.680can be a bit flexible but i mean you know our voters voted on us because of the policies that
00:32:31.880we have and we're going to make sure that we stick uh stick to those uh and frankly there's only a
00:32:37.320few of us in parliament in the light in the provincial parliament there we've been elected
00:32:42.040to kind of be a thorn in the side of the governing of the governing parties so i mean obviously we're
00:32:46.680not uh there just to be protesters but we're there to you know to stick to our values as well
00:32:52.800Derek Sloan, leader of the Ontario Party.
00:32:55.060I know you got an election coming up in a couple of days,
00:32:57.160so I appreciate you taking the time to come back.
00:33:20.500So now we have to do it. And I apologize to like PEI and New Brunswick people. I haven't done too, too much on your politics yet. But if you have an election coming up and you've got some people you want us to talk to, do let us know. That's the problem. I mean, you can't do it in like a 50 state context if we're in the US. We're like, you know, today we do Wyoming and tomorrow we do Idaho and Wednesday we do California and all that.
00:33:41.080But what we are going to do on this show is try to talk about the conservative movement and the freedom movement, which has been, I think, very much subjected to a bit of a resurgence or some might say just an initial surgence, to coin a word, in the last couple of years.
00:33:55.560And COVID has done that. COVID has. And I restate this again. COVID has reshaped dramatically the political fault lines in this country. And it's changed so that conservatives can't just rely, as they so often do, on pocketbook issues.
00:34:11.440And this was one of my big criticisms of Aaron O'Toole is that he wanted to be like a 1980s, 1990s conservative leader in the 2020s, which doesn't exactly work because the complexities of the voters are a lot more varied than they were when cost of living and balanced budgets were the top issues.
00:34:31.340Don't get me wrong. These are important issues now. We have an inflation crisis. Gas is over
00:34:36.020two bucks a liter. I think pretty much anywhere in Eastern or Western Canada, like West Coast
00:34:41.220Canada. And I know Alberta, you guys get some cheaper gas. So ha ha ha Ontario, right? But
00:34:46.040ultimately what we're looking at right now is one of many crises. And you can't just be the
00:34:53.260chief auditor or the chief bookkeeper and expect to govern with a national coalition. And that's
00:34:59.280what conservatives do that irks me so much. They assume that you have to just retreat to economic
00:35:04.640issues and not talk about anything else. And that's the way you're going to win. And let's
00:35:08.560face it, voters see through it. It just doesn't work. You've got to have answers to a number of
00:35:13.160other questions that come up, to free speech questions, to civil liberties questions, to
00:35:17.380conscience questions, to general liberty, to hope, to national unity, to faith, not necessarily
00:35:24.080religious faith, although sometimes. And voters want more than just, yeah, I'd like to balance
00:35:30.260the budget and here's some tax credits. Because if that's all they wanted, the Conservatives
00:35:34.720would have won every single election. The fact that they've lost several in a row would suggest
00:35:38.580maybe, just maybe, that is not cutting it. So that's a message to anyone seeking provincial
00:35:43.920or federal, or heck, even municipal leadership in this country. That'll do it. We've got to wrap
00:35:49.060things up here. My thanks to all of you for tuning into the program. We'll have more of
00:35:53.220The Andrew Lawton Show later in the week. Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.
00:35:58.640For listening to The Andrew Lawton Show, support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.