00:03:52.680Well, look, I mean, yes, yesterday was definitely a tough loss for us as Liberals.
00:03:58.760I mean, we certainly didn't expect to lose in Toronto St. Paul's.
00:04:03.080Start by congratulating Mr. Stewart on his win.
00:04:06.480He obviously worked very hard and thanking Leslie Church, our fantastic candidate, who ran an excellent campaign.
00:04:14.200But, you know, it was it was a message for us, certainly, that we need to do better, that we need to listen more closely to what the voters, not just in Toronto, St. Paul's, but right across the country are telling us.
00:04:27.900But no, I don't think it means that the prime minister needs to resign.
00:04:34.980Yeah, no, it hadn't actually occurred to anyone before now to listen, but that's Karina Gould's
00:04:40.180great promise. We're just going to listen. And Mark Miller decided to, he used some weird
00:04:46.180wrestling analogy at one point, but he decided the immigration minister, Mark Miller, to go on
00:04:51.480the offensive and take aim at Pierre Polyev when he was asked. Now, he used some dirty words here,
00:04:58.420so we had to bleep it for our delicate ears, but this was Mark Miller on Pierre Polyev this morning.
00:05:04.980How can the government appeal to voters who support Mr. Prodiev when members of the government, including yourself, have called them things like a snake oil salesman or, as you said earlier, a wrestling manager from the 80s?
00:05:16.960Look, I've been quite clear. I think the guy's a fake. We shouldn't focus too much on this guy.
00:05:22.960I think Canadians are smart. And as I've said, Canadians have pretty good bullet detectors and they know when they're being bulleted.
00:05:29.300And that's just the reality of things.
00:05:31.220i think over the course of the year people will realize that and and and i you know i trust you
00:05:37.060got to trust canadians they sent us a note they sent us a message on uh well earlier yesterday
00:05:43.700morning and that's a message that we can't ignore so yes uh yes we have someone that uh is peddling
00:05:54.340politics that we have not seen in canada in my lifetime but i don't think in the history of
00:05:59.460canada he's imported it from the south in his own style and it works for him so let it work for him
00:06:06.020let canadians be the judge we also have a job to govern over the next year and that means
00:06:10.500actually doing the work canadians are frustrated with us for their own reasons that have nothing
00:06:14.100to do with pierre polyev he's uh he's weaponizing that let's be clear about that but let's also talk
00:06:20.420about visions of canada i love my country i'm gonna fight for every inch of it he's a bs-er
00:06:25.780he's a snake oil salesman he's a wrestler wrestling manager from the 80s i'm sure that
00:06:30.660reference means something to someone but uh he says oh well you know canadians don't like that
00:06:35.300canadians aren't really fond of that we shouldn't even pay any attention to uh him mark miller said
00:06:40.580now let me first off say here that i think people should very very much pay attention and and they
00:06:47.140should pay attention so much that they might be interested in perhaps reading a biography that's
00:07:05.220So unlike what Mark Miller says there, Canadians are actually paying attention to him and do care what he has to say.
00:07:11.860The reason that the Conservatives did so well in Toronto St. Paul's on Monday is because, in part, they are not buying the Liberal doomsaying about Pierre Paulyev.
00:07:21.180They are not buying the Liberal attacks and smears about him.
00:07:24.420They're finding him at worst for the Liberals likable or at best just not as unlikable as the Liberals have been trying to pretend.
00:07:32.820But what's interesting here is that all of these MPs and ministers that have been coming out are saying the same thing.
00:07:38.120Yes, I have confidence. Yes, I have confidence. Yes, he's going to be great. It's awesome.
00:07:42.040I mean, no, of course he doesn't need to step down.
00:07:44.320Now, Ryan Turnbull, who's a backbench MP, had said that he'll, well, he's, he, he, let
00:07:50.900me just hear what he said in his words.
00:07:52.740It was a little bit more tepid than it was from Mark Miller.
00:07:56.980To follow up to that, since you mentioned the by-election last night, what does it say
00:08:02.680about your leader's ability to lead the party to a general election win next fall?
00:08:07.860Well, I think that's hard to predict, right?
00:08:10.120I mean, I think from my perspective, we've had a leader of the Liberal Party and the Government of Canada
00:08:18.600that's done an impeccable job for many years now, and it's hard for me to pronounce on his leadership ability.
00:08:28.420All I've seen is great leadership coming from him, from my perspective.
00:08:32.900And so, you know, I continue to support our Prime Minister,
00:08:35.900and I know that he'll have to re-evaluate
00:08:39.020and look at the results of last night by election
00:08:41.880and do some reflecting, but that's up to him.
00:12:04.560The utter deference to Justin Trudeau is only coming from federal Liberal MPs and Cabinet Ministers.
00:12:10.400other people in the broader liberal family are not all on team Trudeau in fact Bonnie Crombie
00:12:16.720who's the new leader of the Ontario Liberal Party and she is formerly a Liberal MP she served
00:12:22.500alongside Justin Trudeau and she was in federal politics before she became the mayor of Mississauga
00:12:27.460and now she's in provincial politics and I went to school with her son as a fun fact it was actually
00:12:32.840at a house party hosted by him so not everyone can be it was like a liberal conservative thing
00:12:37.740on campus everyone got along it was a simpler time but uh bonnie cry now i brought it adam alex
00:12:42.760crombie is going to get canceled now because uh you know people learned he was hanging out with
00:12:46.020me in university but anyway or maybe bonnie crombie will be canceled uh but anyway so bonnie
00:12:51.380crombie she was asked about the justin trudeau brand by a reporter colin de bello at queen's
00:12:57.900park and it was interesting how much distance she was trying to put between herself and justin
00:13:02.900Trudeau as a liberal. Do you think that at this point your personal support in Ontario would be
00:13:10.820better off if the prime minister was no longer the prime minister? You know I respect our prime
00:13:16.460minister. I've worked very closely with him. I'm not going to make any comment about our federal
00:13:20.960party. The progressive conservatives have already deployed commercials trying to paint Crombie as a
00:13:26.380Trudeau liberal. Oh the new Ontario liberal leader. Of course friends with Justin Trudeau. Crombie
00:13:32.660is hitting back i think the bigger friend is is is doug ford is the closer friend of justin trudeau
00:13:38.340you see them um in photographs and in meetings together uh quite often i probably speak to the
00:13:45.140prime minister less than once a year i love that the ontario election if it's called early is
00:13:50.900going to be like who knows justin trudeau better vote against that person so bonnie crombie is
00:13:55.700basically hanging up on justin trudeau just so she can say no no no doug ford's out there with him
00:14:00.340he's the Trudeau guy, not me. So if you're an Ontarian, I mean, you've heard Doug Ford do this
00:14:05.400at press conferences. Oh yeah, Chrystia Freeland's a real champ. She's a friend. She's a real champion.
00:14:10.080He says all sorts of nice things. We'll get back to the Jewish aspect of this, of Toronto St. Paul's
00:14:16.100a little bit later on in the show and how anti-Semitism did motivate a lot of votes
00:14:20.320towards the Conservatives that historically have not gone there. But I first want to talk about
00:14:24.800something that should be able to unite us all, which is our hatred of dissolving paper straws.
00:14:29.620I know the plastics ban is something that the federal court ruled was unconstitutional, but the Liberal government is still defending it.
00:14:37.880And in fact, this very week, the Liberals are defending it in the Federal Court of Appeal.
00:14:43.840Intervening on the anti-ban side of the equation is Christine Van Gein's group, the Canadian Constitution Foundation, where she is the litigation director.
00:14:53.320And she joins us now. Christine, always good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.
00:14:58.920Now, I mean, I'm just against like the ban on principle because I despise the stupid paper straws. You're actually taking an argument that is far more rooted in the Constitution than just, you know, your honor, the paper straws are crap. So what's the argument here?
00:15:12.160Yeah, I mean, so the case is about plastics. It's about this federal plastics ban. You know,
00:15:17.440as an organization, I don't feel especially strongly about the issue. I mean, I like sea
00:15:23.640turtles. I don't like paper straws. But what bothered me about this federal plastics ban
00:15:30.540isn't just that it isn't really the paper straws. It's a much bigger issue. It's that the federal
00:15:36.420government, the Trudeau government seems obsessed with trying to overregulate the lives of Canadians
00:15:42.140by meddling in provinces' businesses, contrary to our constitutional division of powers.
00:18:48.140she talked about how she wears contact lenses
00:18:51.660And these are quite different in nature from a plastic straw.
00:18:55.620And with the government, if they want to regulate some specific harm, for example, this this this issue that people are always bringing up of the plastic straws being stuck in sea turtles noses, that it's it's actually more about the shape and the the the way the plastic straws are disposed of than it is about the fact that they're made of plastic.
00:19:20.140Yeah, like a metal straw that would be reusable that, you know, got lodged in a sea turtle, I imagine, would be just as bad, if not worse.
00:19:26.300Yeah, so, I mean, what they need to do is actually show that there's potential harm, there's some level of harm that could justify putting plastics as an entire category of items onto the list of toxic substances.
00:19:43.100And we argued that it's just wildly expansive, that you can't just say something is harmful.
00:19:51.780You need to actually have some evidence that it's harmful and that this expansive approach
00:21:55.440It prevents the concentration of power
00:21:58.620within any single institution or level of government.
00:22:01.560And it creates these sort of laboratories of democracy across Canada where different jurisdictions can tailor different policy solutions and figure out what works best.
00:22:10.380And waste management has been under the scope of authority of provincial and municipal jurisdictions.
00:22:16.940And some provinces, some municipalities have decided to take one approach to plastics regulation or plastic recycling or waste management.
00:22:26.060And other provinces have taken different approaches.
00:22:28.220it's not for the federal government to come in then and use a sweeping authority to claim
00:22:34.580their ability to regulate every single type of plastic imaginable under the
00:22:41.620claim that it's a criminal law issue i'm always curious in why people advocate against their own
00:22:48.400self-interest and their own autonomy and and in this i'm looking at british columbia
00:22:53.120which as a province has said regardless of what happens with this case they're going to continue
00:22:58.040to regulate things at the provincial level they've got the right to do that yet they're in this case
00:23:02.780defending Ottawa's right like why are they as a province not seeing the concerns with this imagine
00:23:07.620if perhaps a conservative government that is more hostile to the agenda of the BC NDP government
00:23:12.980comes in and wants to trample into jurisdiction in a different direction I mean sometimes people
00:23:19.200intervene or make arguments on an outcome-based approach they just like a particular outcome
00:23:24.940It's really difficult to take a position like we do at the Canadian Constitution Foundation, where you need to think about the big picture, and not just your immediate self interest. So yes, British Columbia typically sides with more stringent environmental regulation. So if they're looking at it at an outcome based approach, then that's why they would argue this, but it isn't looking at the big picture.
00:23:52.440And I think if you think about this issue from the big picture perspective, there's all kinds of things that the federal government may use to or will try to claim are under the federal criminal law power in order to sweep in their ability to regulate.
00:24:09.080So it's widely assumed that Canada is going to uphold oil and gas emissions caps and the Clean Electricity Regulation, which are both currently in draft form, through the criminal law power under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
00:24:25.100There's concern that the federal government would try to regulate things like the electricity market or technology options using the criminal law power.
00:24:35.720And Ottawa would essentially, in this regard, become master of all environmental policy in our country.
00:24:41.680And when you think about it in a big picture like that, that may not be in British Columbia's best interest, even though siding with the federal government in this particular case may get them the outcome that they prefer.
00:24:56.240Well, we'll certainly keep an eye out for this. I know the wheels of justice tend to move quite slowly. Do you anticipate when a decision will be made, keeping in mind that it could very well go to the Supreme Court beyond that?
00:25:08.380Yeah, so typically we say in appeals, we expect a decision within six months.
00:25:14.460Sometimes it's sooner, sometimes it's longer.
00:25:16.880So that's the only guidance I can give you.
00:25:20.160Yeah, it'll come when it comes is basically the less polished answer there.
00:25:25.220Christine Van Gein, Litigation Director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation.
00:25:28.740Keep up the great work and thanks for coming on today.
00:25:32.920All right, thanks very much, Christine.
00:25:34.640I wanted to take a bit of a different spin on this.
00:25:37.180Obviously, the results of the Toronto St. Paul's by-election are well known by now.
00:25:41.900But there was mobilizing behind the scenes a campaign that even I had only peripherally been made aware of closer to the end of it.
00:25:49.760And it was a campaign to advocate in the riding at a riding level for Jews and allies of Jews to realize that, hey, anti-Semitism is a big problem and you need a political change to deal with that.
00:26:03.460that was a campaign called jewishally.ca, and it was the brainchild of a gentleman who's been a
00:26:10.920guest on this show a couple of times, Andrew Kirsch, who's a former CSIS intelligence officer,
00:26:16.140also author of the book I Was Never Here, which is a fantastic book, and you should go back and
00:26:21.440look at my long-form interview with Andrew. I think it was a couple of years back now when
00:26:25.400that book came out, and he had reached out to a longtime friend of mine, Stephen Taylor,
00:26:30.340who is a longtime conservative activist as well
00:26:55.600Andrew Kirsch and Stephen Taylor join me now.
00:26:58.140Andrew, Stephen, thank you so much for coming on today. Good to talk.
00:27:01.900Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Now, I'll start with you, Andrew, because you and I
00:27:06.620were candidates for the provincial election in 2018 at the same time. And I would have said at
00:27:12.400the beginning of the election that I had a much greater shot at getting elected than you because
00:27:16.120you were running in St. Paul's, which at the time was, you know, I'm curious about your sort of sense
00:27:21.940of what your chances of winning were going in. Of course, in the end, we both lost. So, you know,
00:27:26.480the joke is on me, but you've still very much stayed involved in this, I think. And especially
00:27:32.540now that you're out of CSIS, you've got the ability to be a lot more forceful and forthright
00:27:37.360about your political leanings, of course. But explain to me why you wanted to get involved in
00:27:42.960this campaign. Well, I'm born and raised in Toronto St. Paul's. I live in Toronto St. Paul's
00:27:48.640right now, raising my family here. So, and I ran in 2018. People said, you know, why Toronto St.
00:27:55.320calls because of that kind of long shot well that's that's where i live that's where i wanted
00:27:59.640to represent so i'm very familiar with how challenging uh a riding that it is i had to
00:28:06.440obviously take a step back from involvement formal involvement when we did this third party
00:28:11.800and really i wanted to organize around an issue that was important to me that had
00:28:17.560particular resonance in in the riding we toronto st paul's does have i think the fifth largest
00:28:22.040Jewish population, member of the Jewish community. And since October 7th, not just the events of
00:28:29.540October 7th, really the response since then, there's been growing, the Jewish community's
00:28:35.020been upset, disappointed by the response of the liberal government to rising anti-Semitism. I
00:28:42.380say that the Jewish community has diverse views on Israel, on the conduct of the current conflict,
00:28:48.560But we're very united in the concern about anti-Semitism, that there are protests coming through our neighborhood, that our Jewish day schools and synagogues are being shot at and firebombed.
00:28:59.360And so I kind of want to take a step back from the campaign to start this, to think of what a way to raise awareness of this issue in a riding where it was uniquely affected by it and had an opportunity in the by-election to raise awareness of it.
00:29:15.700And of course, this campaign takes the form of what's called Jewish Ally, the website's still online, jewishally.ca. How did you get involved, Stephen?
00:29:27.500Well, Andrew reached out in January and said, look, he wanted to obviously react to this
00:29:34.860rising anti-Semitism that, you know, we've all seen. And again, he, you know, he mentioned the
00:29:41.400violence in the community and, you know, by-election is a perfect time to register your
00:29:48.460distaste with how things are going and how the government is handling these affairs and its
00:29:55.840reaction to the rising anti-semitism and violence against the jewish community
00:29:59.920so he reached out and um i said let's let's build something that's first of all um positive it it
00:30:08.160kind of re reaffirms some hope within the community and and uh its friends so uh i pitched the idea
00:30:16.480jewishally.ca as a way to sort of uh rally uh the jewish community and its allies so you don't
00:30:25.440necessarily have to be jewish to uh support it uh but uh it is especially you know to support the
00:30:31.200jewish community and and allow its allies a venue to do so so i'll go back to you on on this andrew
00:30:38.400i mean your experience here is obviously based on you being very committed to toronto saint paul's
00:30:44.320is there an extrapolation that you could do or plan to do with this beyond because
00:30:49.280well not every riding is going to have the jewish population of toronto saint paul's
00:30:53.360the anti-Semitism issue is still pervasive very much across the country.
00:30:58.840Absolutely. You know, I think that the community was very upset, very mobilized by what we were
00:31:07.800seeing on our streets. And I think, not to be overly cynical, but, you know, the Jewish community
00:31:13.220is only a large community in a small number of ridings, and that there may have been a political
00:31:17.300calculation done by the government that, well, if we're very forceful in support of Israel,
00:31:22.140then maybe there are other ridings that we will upset where you know there are different communities
00:31:28.540who react differently so that's why i felt it was important for our community to have a voice and
00:31:34.460to be able to speak out about the issues that are important to us where you know unfortunately just
00:31:40.620by numbers that that might not always have the opportunity or might not always resonate or may
00:31:44.940not always find an audience so we need to be a little a little stronger uh together absolutely
00:31:50.700do i think that there unfortunately is a growing need for this not less and how that you know
00:31:56.700goes going forward i'm not sure but this issue still remains that we are seeing rising anti-semitism
00:32:03.900we are seeing on our streets we can debate the the criminal code definitions of hate but
00:32:09.340intimidation of this community of my community of our community in our neighborhoods it seems like
00:32:15.740daily if not at least weekly these these incidents are happening so until we see change we're gonna
00:32:21.180need all the voices out there calling for it now this isn't just uh you know a website with you
00:32:26.940know some lofty goals this was actually a campaign and third-party advertising can sometimes get a
00:32:33.100bit of a bad rap but it's a part of the democratic process and there are a bunch of rules governing
00:32:37.180how it's supposed to go about so i'll go to you steven because i know you've been in the trenches
00:32:41.100on a lot of political fights over the years.
00:32:42.860What were you tactically doing with this?
00:32:45.420And how do you think that you actually did move the needle in the riding?
00:32:50.180Yeah, well, being a by-election, we were quite limited by Elections Canada
00:32:54.060and sort of the scope of what we could do.
00:32:56.720I mean, if you're running a federal campaign,
00:32:59.180third parties have much larger budgets that they're allowed to spend.
00:33:03.000But I think in this by-election, Elections Canada had us at a cap