Juno News - Liberals won't say how much Volkswagen battery plant is costing us

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:05.200 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:14.880 And welcome to you all.

00:00:16.740 This is Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, the Andrew Lawton Show, here on True North.

00:00:22.060 It is Wednesday, March 15th, 2023.

00:00:25.840 Hope you are having a wonderful day.

00:00:27.760 It is the latter end of the midway point through the week.

00:00:32.220 So if you are a Monday to Friday worker, you've just crossed over the threshold and it's all,

00:00:38.760 I don't know if it's downhill, I can't say it's all downhill from here.

00:00:41.320 This is like the big old confusion because downhill implies that it gets worse.

00:00:45.380 But if I say uphill, that implies it's harder.

00:00:47.900 So I will say it hopefully only gets easier for you or you've just like procrastinated

00:00:52.640 all the week's work to Friday and now you have to condense five days of labor into one.

00:00:57.540 I didn't actually realize it until we were having a heck of a time trying to find guests for yesterday's show

00:01:02.740 that this was March break, because March break only matters when you are a child or have children.

00:01:09.560 And despite how I act on some occasions, some people may think I am not a child and I do not have children,

00:01:14.320 so I had no idea that it was March break.

00:01:16.060 So if you are enjoying March break right now with your family,

00:01:19.120 I hope you are going to really get the most out of it before getting back into the real world in a few days' time.

00:01:25.620 Maybe you don't want the week to end, so ignore that whole Wednesday, hump day, uphill, downhill thing.

00:01:31.720 Lots to talk about today.

00:01:33.140 Going to delve into local politics, but I think there's a national flavor to it very shortly

00:01:38.600 with the latest news out of Oxford, a Conservative stronghold with an upcoming by-election.

00:01:45.060 And the Conservatives have disqualified one of the nomination candidates,

00:01:48.900 and there is a little bit of a suspicion about why, and it has something to do with his beliefs.

00:01:53.640 So that's going to be coming up with Scott Hayward from the group right now.

00:01:58.200 Another local story that I think is national in nature is not far from me.

00:02:02.820 I'm in London, Ontario.

00:02:04.360 And this week we learned that in St. Thomas, which is just a town about, I don't know,

00:02:09.060 30, 25, 30 minutes south of me, they are getting a giant 600 hectare Volkswagen electric vehicle

00:02:16.600 battery plant.

00:02:17.740 Now this sounds exciting.

00:02:18.960 It's a big employer for the city.

00:02:20.280 There used to be in Talbotville, which is just outside of St. Thomas, you're getting all of the southwestern Ontario geography today, a giant Ford plant.

00:02:29.220 They made the Crown Vicks there, and at a certain point, they shut down that plant and left a lot of people who had skills in the automotive industry out of work.

00:02:37.960 So from a St. Thomas perspective, from a southern Ontario perspective, this is great news.

00:02:43.340 Investment, development, it's a new plant, it's electric vehicles of the future.

00:02:47.440 but you look a little bit further through it and you kind of wonder

00:02:50.840 all right how is this coming to fruition is this Volkswagen looking around and saying you know we

00:02:57.360 really think this is the place that makes the most business sense because it's affordable land

00:03:03.380 there's a labor pool or is it that they were paid to come here now this is where we get into the

00:03:09.780 nitty-gritty of this and I want to let Francois Philippe Champagne the industry minister have the

00:03:15.260 first word on this because he won't actually say how much the federal government spent to bring

00:03:21.360 Volkswagen to St. Thomas, Ontario. In addition to what you laid out, I'm going to ask you very

00:03:28.660 bluntly, Minister. Did you have to cut them a check and how big of one? Well, listen, you always

00:03:34.580 have to be part of the, I always say government have to be part of the equation when you come to

00:03:38.220 these large investments. You mentioned the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States.

00:03:42.840 you will recall that in the thought economic statement we said that uh we intend to to level

00:03:47.880 the playing field that we would be selective um so obviously government have to be a part of the

00:03:53.160 equation and i appreciate all those points and i'm certainly not trying to take away from them

00:03:57.560 but it's a really long-winded way of not not answering minister that the original question

00:04:01.480 i posed am i to interpret from your answer that the federal government did invest did cut the

00:04:07.080 company a check and again i'm going to ask on behalf of canadians i'm not saying the investment

00:04:11.480 isn't a worthwhile one but how significant is it how big is the size of the check you had to cut

00:04:15.800 so i'll answer very clearly your question canada uh had to be part of the equation and i'm not

00:04:21.720 going to go into the details because we have discussions with many others so discussions

00:04:25.640 are commercially sensitive but as always vashi will recall we always we always make that

00:04:31.560 information public in due course i i like how he prefaces i'm prefaces that with i'm going to be as

00:04:41.240 clear as I can before saying nothing at all except for we had to be quote part of the equation. So

00:04:48.080 we know that this is a big deal here, billions of dollars. This is the first North American

00:04:54.040 electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant Volkswagen has. We look into some reporting

00:04:59.740 that's been done outside of Canada, specifically in the Financial Times. There was a report in

00:05:05.000 the Financial Times that said Volkswagen was putting plans for a European battery plant on

00:05:10.460 hold because it could get nearly 15 billion dollars in subsidies for a north american plant

00:05:17.340 now it sounds like they might have been talking about this one given that it is the first and so

00:05:22.580 far only north american plant and it's meant to serve an international market here so we're talking

00:05:28.280 about billions billions with a b that is being given probably by the provincial government as

00:05:35.160 well this is not just a federal government issue to build this plant banking on electric vehicles

00:05:40.700 being the future and as Vashi says maybe it is a good investment maybe there's going to be an ROI

00:05:46.040 maybe it will generate all that and more but this to my view looks like smells like sounds like

00:05:53.120 corporate welfare and if the business case were there why does government need to in

00:05:57.640 Minister Champagne's words be a part of the equation joining me on the line now is

00:06:02.480 at Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, Philip Cross, formerly with Statistics Canada,

00:06:07.300 now in the evil, scary private sector. I appreciate you joining me, Philip. Good to

00:06:12.120 talk to you again. Thanks for having me back, Andrew.

00:06:14.860 So let's talk first off about, I think, the landscape here. We know that manufacturing

00:06:19.420 has been in decline. The automotive sector has been just pummeled in recent years. There are

00:06:25.080 a number of reasons for that, economic, trade-related, and so on. I mean, in southwestern

00:06:29.840 Ontario, it's particularly acute. And I never like to poo-poo something that will employ my

00:06:34.880 neighbours, my friends, people, and my family. But you have to look at the bigger picture here.

00:06:39.440 And this is, I mean, corporate welfare. There's no other way to put it, right?

00:06:43.820 No, and particularly when you're talking about $15 billion, we've moved to a whole different

00:06:47.520 level. I mean, we've seen this is an industry that is chronically dependent on government-first

00:06:52.820 subsidies. But typically, you know, when it's GM and Toyota and Ford and so on, it's a billion

00:06:58.940 hear a billion there um but you know 15 billion is just off the scale uh it makes you wonder if

00:07:06.380 there if there is a sound business case for this and the the addiction of this industry to subsidies

00:07:12.620 contrasts with other industries you can look at high tech and you know they're based in california

00:07:18.460 you know that's where apple and google and uh everybody is and then up to up the road you have

00:07:24.540 Microsoft in Seattle. They moved there because they want to be as far away from Washington as

00:07:29.420 possible. Bill Gates said he deliberately put Microsoft in Seattle because he didn't want

00:07:35.340 anything to do with with Washington politics. He wanted to be away from all that. That to me is

00:07:42.700 that's the kind of industry you want here. You don't want an industry here where they're only

00:07:47.260 here because you bribed them. But it's a sad comment in Canadian business environment that

00:07:53.420 that the only way we can get investment in this country is to bribe people to come here.

00:07:57.580 I mean, it's staggering that investment has fallen 17% since 2014 in this country.

00:08:03.620 We have a real problem attracting business here,

00:08:06.960 and it appears the only way we can get businesses here is if we give them ever larger amounts of money.

00:08:13.220 Yeah, I read one article that was talking about a plant that's being built in Windsor by Stellantis,

00:08:20.740 which is double the size of this one that's being talked about in st thomas and it's valued at five

00:08:26.960 billion dollars now i mean obviously different costs come from different places but but if you

00:08:31.160 can build something for twice the size at five billion dollars and we're talking about potentially

00:08:35.360 15 billion dollars in subsidies we're not just talking about bankrolling the entire construction

00:08:40.380 of this plant but also its operations for i don't know how many years and at this point i don't even

00:08:45.520 think you can say volkswagen is doing it this is just a canadian government factory with a

00:08:50.040 Volkswagen logo on it? Yeah. Well, it's a little worrisome, too, that Volkswagen doesn't have any

00:08:54.800 history in this country. It's not like Toyota, Honda, GM, Ford that have deep roots here,

00:09:00.940 that obviously came here. They have workers that have been here and trained for a long period of

00:09:05.580 time. So it makes you think at the first downturn in the auto industry, and the auto industry

00:09:09.560 always has downturns, the first plant Volkswagen is going to close is going to be this one,

00:09:14.880 since they don't have any real business case reasons to be here in the first place.

00:09:21.440 So the other problem is, and I've seen the academics at the University of Windsor point out

00:09:28.340 that it's very likely that a lot of these auto investments would have been made anyways.

00:09:32.640 That firms decide ahead of time, okay, we're going to put a plant here.

00:09:36.340 Let's see how much money we can extract from government.

00:09:39.320 And that's just become part of the game.

00:09:42.200 Although as a new arrival, I must say, Volkswagen, as I say, has mastered this game in a way that nobody else has.

00:09:48.400 Yeah, they've learned the game very well.

00:09:50.060 But let me actually push back on that point a little bit, Philip, because I wonder if one of the problems here is that because this is the rules of the game now,

00:09:57.640 and this is basically how things work, if the only way to get investment from one of these companies is to just throw money at them.

00:10:05.660 Like I remember a few years ago when Amazon was doing this Amazon 2.0 and building the second headquarters, they turned it into a contest almost.

00:10:14.480 They basically opened it up to a public bidding thing and said, you know, governments just come and tell us what you're going to give us to set up shop there.

00:10:21.080 Right. And it's very funny you should mention that because just in the last week, Amazon announced the suspension of work on this new headquarters that we were all dying to get.

00:10:32.100 Including Ontario. Ontario was putting together a multi-billion dollar bid.

00:10:36.040 No, and Toronto was one of the supposed 20 finalists, although you knew that Amazon was never going to leave the U.S.

00:10:42.740 But, you know, and that's what makes you worried that, you know, corporations can take all these subsidies and there's no guarantees that the plants will stay open, how long they'll be open.

00:10:54.040 As I say, I think it's a little worrisome that Volkswagen in particular doesn't have any traditional roots here in the Ontario economy.

00:11:01.740 And it makes you wonder how deep their commitment is here in the first place.

00:11:08.100 The dollars and cents of it here.

00:11:10.040 And again, obviously, we don't have the specifics, which I think is in and of itself noteworthy.

00:11:14.440 Because oftentimes when governments are handing out big giant checks, they want to be telling everyone and bragging and shouting from the rooftops about we're investing this much.

00:11:22.340 So the fact that they're not doing that suggests that even there might be a bit of embarrassment about it.

00:11:26.780 Yeah. And remember, too, this long-term strategy of the Ontario and the federal governments of subsidizing auto plants. In the long term, it hasn't stopped a long-term shift in this industry, which is increasingly to Mexico, a certain amount staying in the U.S. and a declining proportion in Canada.

00:11:47.840 The Canadian auto industry's share of North American production is in long-term decline.

00:11:52.580 So, you know, we shouldn't trumpet this as a winning strategy.

00:11:56.100 If anything, we're just, you know, slowing or minimizing the losses here.

00:12:01.060 Instead, a better strategy would be to focus on making our economy and our industry so competitive that firms will want to be here.

00:12:09.920 Because of the hospitable business environment.

00:12:14.780 Because of well-trained workers.

00:12:16.280 because we have good infrastructure.

00:12:18.660 These are the reasons why you want industry to hear.

00:12:22.020 It's why the high-tech industry moved to the West Coast, as I mentioned earlier.

00:12:27.760 These are the ways to attract investment.

00:12:31.560 I may be wrong about this,

00:12:33.440 but it strikes me that there may be an ideological component here

00:12:36.660 given what they're manufacturing here.

00:12:38.700 This isn't just a garden-variety widget factory.

00:12:41.400 It's not even a car factory.

00:12:42.720 It's an electric vehicle battery factory.

00:12:44.700 And we know that government, this particular government has been very, very much focused on climate initiatives, on green tech and all of that. And I think that when you start letting these things cloud your economic judgment, you're not making economically sound decisions.

00:12:59.700 uh very much so i couldn't agree more i'm glad you brought that up it was a point i wanted to

00:13:04.820 make that this really does seem to fit the um uh um the ideology of this government but as usual

00:13:13.540 with this government too you know the facts in the ground don't really support it i think most

00:13:17.780 people would would agree that electric vehicles aren't that much better for the environment than

00:13:23.300 than internal combustion engine vehicles uh that this is really a lot of greenwashing i mean the

00:13:29.300 life cycle of manufacturing a battery is is insane for uh for emissions for environmental harm all

00:13:34.980 of that yeah yeah so i mean if you were really committed to reducing emissions you would want

00:13:41.060 people to just drive in less to change their lifestyle but of course you know no government

00:13:47.060 will mention that because the mention the minute you start telling people you're going to have to

00:13:51.380 live in downtown in small homes you're not going to be able to travel much you can forget about

00:13:55.940 flying around the world, immediately you're going to lose the next election and you're going to lose

00:14:00.200 badly. So instead, what we do is, yeah, we subsidize firms, we tell them to build electric

00:14:07.680 battery vehicles, and, you know, we pretend the problem's solved.

00:14:15.780 To make a business case for this amount of money, I mean, if you could, and I'm kind of of the mind

00:14:21.480 that I don't think it can be made, but if you were the government that has to come out and sell this

00:14:25.660 when that dollar figure eventually comes out, how do you at all demonstrate that ROI?

00:14:30.080 I mean, I'm looking here, $15 billion divided by $50,000, a reasonable annual salary amounts

00:14:37.120 to 300,000 years of full-time work.

00:14:40.940 Like, I feel you could probably generate more employment by just giving people the $15 billion

00:14:45.400 in St. Thomas.

00:14:47.560 Yeah, or I mean, there's all kinds of demands on the government for money these days.

00:14:52.960 I mean, just look at health care.

00:14:54.120 you know we could use a lot of money that would create it's very labor intensive that would create

00:14:59.080 a lot of jobs um you know at the same time the government's been being very cheap in in supporting

00:15:05.540 ukraine uh you know the americans give right to checks to ukraine for billions here and billions

00:15:11.720 there and we hand out 10 and 20 million here and there and um you know there's a lot of different

00:15:18.840 you would think there's a lot of more useful ways of spending 15 billion dollars than building one

00:15:25.720 electric battery plant no matter where it is so there's an argument here i think that if

00:15:32.280 a bank wouldn't give that money why should a government do you think that's fair do you think

00:15:36.840 there is a rule for government to invest to use their word in a way that isn't as focused on

00:15:42.600 business case well the auto industry seems to be the exception i mean that seems to be an industry

00:15:48.200 that as i say is just so completely addicted to subsidies and they've made the case so well and

00:15:54.920 they don't forget bombardier you're they're feeling left out of that analysis um but you

00:15:59.480 know it's it's uh it seems to be the that industry is the worst uh and i i i don't know at this point

00:16:07.400 if we're going to be able to stop it but we should at least start capping the subsidies

00:16:11.960 uh at some point you know i thought we had international trade agreements that were going

00:16:16.280 to stop this kind of nonsense amongst other things i i should mention i mean you look at how the

00:16:21.080 americans complain about subsidies in the lumber industry and yet when it comes to the auto

00:16:26.360 industry it's you know everybody subsidizes everyone and nobody makes a free trade complaint

00:16:31.560 about it so um you know you would think at some point somebody's gonna to blow the whistle on this

00:16:38.760 but the point you raise about bank loans is a very valid one uh why if if the business case is so

00:16:45.480 compelling then why don't firms just do this on their own and um you know i i suspect you know

00:16:53.960 these academics in windsor are right that if we just stop subsidizing i don't think the industry

00:16:59.320 would disappear tomorrow i don't think it would pull up roots it has deep roots it has a lot of

00:17:04.680 traditions and a lot of workers and links established with suppliers in southwestern

00:17:11.880 Ontario, it's not going to wreck that overnight. So, but you know, it's just a matter of no

00:17:18.600 government is brave enough to be the first to say no. Yeah, very well said. Philip Cross from the

00:17:25.660 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Always a pleasure. Thanks for coming on today. Thank you. Thank you.

00:17:30.900 I would add to that as well. I mean, one of the challenges is that subsidies delay necessary

00:17:37.020 industrial, I don't want to use industrial revolution in a grand sense, but they delay

00:17:41.840 revolution within industry. There's a better way of putting it. Because if you are being propped

00:17:46.840 up by subsidies, you have no reason to look inward and say, hey, maybe something we're doing isn't

00:17:52.140 right. Maybe something we're doing needs to change. And in this particular case, I mean,

00:17:57.720 electric vehicle manufacturing is probably one of the biggest rackets because the consumers are not

00:18:03.940 there. Governments are there, but consumers are not there. Consumers are being told every day

00:18:08.720 how great electric vehicles are. And some people want them. Some people try them out. Some people

00:18:13.420 rave about them. One thing that Tesla has done, which I think is tremendous, is they've made

00:18:19.160 electric vehicles cool. It used to be an electric vehicle was a Prius or a Nissan Leaf, where there's

00:18:25.360 no way to look cool. In fact, you look the opposite of cool driving a Prius or a Nissan Leaf. But

00:18:30.520 what's happened with Tesla is they've actually revolutionized people's relationship with

00:18:35.520 electric cars. But does Tesla exist the way it does now without governments heaping billions

00:18:42.780 and billions of dollars to subsidize consumer purchase of them? If you looked back when Ontario,

00:18:48.360 and I don't have the numbers handy because I wasn't going to talk about this, but back when

00:18:52.160 the Wynn Liberals were in power in Ontario, they were putting millions towards luxury electric

00:18:58.780 vehicles because it was the luxury cars that people were buying and they were getting each

00:19:03.840 on each one of these like tens of thousands of dollars I think it was off the purchase price

00:19:09.660 just to buy one of these things so you looking like a badass with your Tesla whatever the model

00:19:14.860 was was subsidized by Kathleen Wynne and all of that is I think part and parcel of why this is an

00:19:23.040 industry that lives on subsidy and the people that talk about this in ideological terms

00:19:28.300 are very inauthentic.

00:19:30.480 I don't have the clip handy,

00:19:31.760 but when we were covering the World Economic Forum

00:19:34.320 a few weeks back in Switzerland, in Davos,

00:19:37.000 there was this one mining executive

00:19:39.300 that was on this panel.

00:19:40.640 I think his name was Andrew Forrest.

00:19:42.440 I can't remember the name of the company,

00:19:43.640 but a mining executive on this panel talking about,

00:19:46.320 oh yeah, we need to switch to electric.

00:19:48.100 We need to get off of this.

00:19:49.360 And, you know, mining, as I said at the time,

00:19:52.380 is one of the most resource intensive industries

00:19:55.480 in the world.

00:19:56.840 mining, oil and gas, forestry

00:19:58.960 these are like the big three evil companies

00:20:00.980 the only one that could possibly be worse than them

00:20:03.500 to the left is the tobacco industry

00:20:05.360 but even the tobacco industry

00:20:06.620 is the definition I guess of green

00:20:09.040 so the industry that is probably

00:20:12.100 one of the most vilified mining

00:20:13.740 and here's this mining executive saying

00:20:15.460 we need to transition away from oil and gas

00:20:17.780 and you say well that seems a bit odd

00:20:19.220 until you look at all the mining that his company did

00:20:21.640 and you find that oh they're on the cutting edge

00:20:23.620 of lithium mining

00:20:24.800 the lithium that is going to be needed when we are putting batteries in everything

00:20:30.180 and when the world is to be a battery-powered world. 0.99

00:20:34.640 So all of this is often from people who do not believe the crap they are selling. 0.96

00:20:41.740 And I would talk about this in terms of Volkswagen. 0.99

00:20:45.340 I mean, Volkswagen, I don't blame them for this

00:20:48.260 because they've actually come hat in hand to government in Canada and in Ontario.

00:20:53.100 Doug Ford is, like I said, not squeaky clean in this, I'm almost certain.

00:20:58.040 And these governments have given them to the tune of $15 billion.

00:21:02.780 Like, 15 billion.

00:21:05.580 Like Philip was saying a few moments ago, Philip Cross,

00:21:08.340 when there's a $1 billion investment, people get a little bit uncomfortable with it.

00:21:14.360 When there's a $2 billion investment, people get really uncomfortable.

00:21:17.480 We're talking about here $15 billion in subsidies.

00:21:20.920 This will pay for the plant.

00:21:22.420 it will pay for the staff of the plant it will pay for espresso machines at the plant it will

00:21:27.040 pay for this whole operation for several years to the point where i'm wondering what on earth it is

00:21:32.600 volkswagen is even putting forward here what on earth is volkswagen even shelly go because right

00:21:38.120 now it seems like this is an entirely canadian initiative an entirely canadian prospect where

00:21:45.740 the private sector is not even having to pony up any money and this is a subsidy driven industry

00:21:52.460 right now that Canadians bear the brunt of Canadian taxpayers have to bear the brunt of

00:21:57.360 and and just to again play this clip here that well this is I think another clip of the same

00:22:01.180 interview of Philippe Francois Champagne not acknowledging the price tag

00:22:07.900 and I can appreciate the commercial sensitivity and you're dealing with a company on this but

00:22:15.000 But there is going to be an announcement at some point on how much money we're actually investing, right?

00:22:19.880 Just for transparency.

00:22:20.620 As always.

00:22:21.380 So when can we expect to hear that, sir?

00:22:23.720 Well, in due course, because, like I said, we are having discussion with a number of players in the ecosystem.

00:22:29.720 And for now, this is commercially sensitive.

00:22:32.100 But as always, David, we always disclose that these informations in due course.

00:22:38.020 And Canadians will have a chance to see that.

00:22:40.340 okay sorry i made a mistake there different interview same talking points but but these

00:22:50.680 are the magic words in due course we'll find out how much the government spent on this in due

00:22:55.140 course and by that time it will probably be after the next election when conveniently the number

00:23:01.140 will have less utility than it does now so uh you know what was that old ronald reagan line about

00:23:07.420 you know governments i'm going to get it wrong so i won't even bother but it was the line about if

00:23:11.260 it stops if it moves regulate if it moves tax it if it stops moving subsidize it if it keeps moving

00:23:16.920 again regulate it or something to that effect but it's basically that the circle of life is

00:23:21.640 subsidization and regulation and nowhere does government say hey hands off this let the private

00:23:27.860 sector do its best let the private sector do its work and then we move on from there i want to shift

00:23:34.160 gears here to a different topic one that is not actually all that far from the storied plant in

00:23:41.640 St. Thomas Ontario this is in Oxford County which again is just like what I don't know 30 minutes

00:23:47.540 down the road from yours truly here although my hands are clean in this I don't live in Oxford

00:23:51.960 County I'm not a voting member of the Conservative Party or anything like that but there is a

00:23:57.300 nomination battle going on right now for a by-election Dave McKenzie the longtime Conservative

00:24:03.400 MP, retired from his seat in February just over a month ago, and now there are a bunch

00:24:10.300 of Conservatives vying to replace him as the Conservative candidate, which in Oxford County

00:24:15.240 is pretty much a sure bet that you're going to be elected as the Member of Parliament.

00:24:21.060 It's pretty much a sure thing that whomever wins the nomination will be the next Conservative

00:24:26.140 MP in Oxford.

00:24:27.760 And it's been quite hotly contested.

00:24:30.400 Arpan Kanna, who is a Brampton lawyer, formerly Ontario co-chair for Pierre Polyev, he's running.

00:24:36.700 And you have Rick Roth, a Toronto political strategist who's there.

00:24:40.240 You have Deb Tate, who is the daughter of Dave McKenzie, the recently retired MP.

00:24:46.400 And then you have Garrett, or had, up until last night, Garrett Van Dorlen.

00:24:51.200 Now, I've met Garrett because I've interviewed many conservatives in my career,

00:24:58.440 and he worked with Lesley Lewis on her leadership bid.

00:25:01.260 He's right now working in the office of a conservative member of parliament.

00:25:04.960 He's been involved in conservative politics, but he's from Otterville, which is in Oxford County.

00:25:10.840 And Garrett Van Dorland is pro-life.

00:25:13.480 If you look at, I probably should have pulled it up on the screen here,

00:25:16.860 but on his website, he talks about faith, he talks about family, he talks about freedom.

00:25:21.200 Those things are not really compatible with the government of Canada today, but they are certainly compatible or are supposed to be with the conservative movement in this country.

00:25:31.560 But last night, Gerrit Van Dorland was disqualified by the Conservative Party of Canada's National Candidate Selection Committee.

00:25:40.140 And I'm going to give you what the party says is the reason for the disqualification.

00:25:46.040 And you can read the full story on this over at tnc.news.

00:25:49.040 But what the Conservative Party said, and I'm quoting directly from a statement I got from their spokesperson,

00:25:56.900 is that Garrett Van Dorland, a nomination applicant in Oxford, was disqualified from standing in a nomination race

00:26:03.240 by the party's National Candidate Selection Committee due to a failure to comply with the obligation to disclose

00:26:09.820 required information during the candidate application process.

00:26:14.200 The recommendation to disqualify this individual was first made by the local candidate nomination committee.

00:26:20.720 And just by way of reference, candidate nominees have to provide to the party a list of all current and former social media accounts and websites,

00:26:29.180 a copy of any deleted or publicly inaccessible social media or other online content,

00:26:35.620 and a copy of all articles, media coverage, quotes, interviews that relate to the candidate.

00:26:40.500 And I just want to give you some perspective here, because I've been a candidate.

00:26:44.660 I ran in 2018 unsuccessfully for the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.

00:26:50.580 And in doing so, I had to go through this application process, and it was insane what

00:26:55.640 they asked for.

00:26:56.400 They actually asked for a full export of my Facebook account, of all social media accounts.

00:27:02.540 Now, if you don't know what you're doing, and you just go into Facebook and click the

00:27:06.520 export button what you don't actually realize is that you're not only giving an archive of

00:27:10.620 everything you've ever posted and everyone who's ever commented on it and all of your comments

00:27:14.840 you're also giving the party an archive of your direct messages your private correspondence which

00:27:21.020 is no different than handing over a copy of your email inbox and your text message history so

00:27:26.700 people don't realize they're handing that over when i was doing my uh form i actually went in

00:27:31.920 and I removed the direct messages from the zip file that I was giving them because I happen to

00:27:37.760 know how to do that. But other people are handing over everything which lets you be I think incredibly

00:27:43.280 susceptible to blackmail from your own party if they feel like it down the road. The federal

00:27:47.680 conservative application is even larger and more comprehensive than the provincial application that

00:27:53.200 I had to deal with. The party did not specify what details he didn't give them so we reserve

00:28:00.080 judgment on that. But Scott Hayward says it's not about this. It is about his pro-life belief.

00:28:06.980 Scott Hayward is the co-founder of Right Now, which I should disclose, as I have on the show

00:28:11.960 before, was an organization that supported my candidacy in 2018. But that doesn't color

00:28:16.900 my approach. I've been an open supporter of them before and since, irrespective of that.

00:28:22.080 Scott Hayward joins me on the line now. Scott, good to have you back. Thanks for coming on today.

00:28:27.020 Yeah, thanks for having me, Andrew. Really appreciate it.

00:28:28.900 So why do you think, first and foremost, that this was about Garrett's pro-life beliefs?

00:28:34.460 Well, I think it's a combination of a couple of things.

00:28:36.580 Like, I think that does play a role in it, Garrett's strong pro-life beliefs.

00:28:41.620 But I also think that in the riding, there are, and I don't know if you reviewed this already, so I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself,

00:28:47.600 but there are four contestants that are contesting for the Conservative Party of Canada nomination in Oxford for the upcoming by-election,

00:28:55.400 since Dave McKenzie announced that he's no longer running for re-election

00:28:59.160 and has since resigned the seat.

00:29:00.920 So in that by-election, or pardon me, in this nomination for that by-election,

00:29:05.880 there is a candidate, Arpan Khanna, who is favoured by the party leader

00:29:11.920 and those around the party leader, which is, you know, fine to a certain extent.

00:29:17.520 But I think what was happening, Andrew, is that Garrett,

00:29:21.960 having actually been born and raised in the riding,

00:29:23.900 um having been involved in uh with the eda in the riding for a number of years i mean his family's

00:29:29.520 been there for a number of years uh he sold a boatload of memberships uh from what i talked

00:29:35.440 to people in the riding we're talking about close to 50 percent of the memberships either were

00:29:40.440 purchased for garrett or they were already members and they're identified as garrett van

00:29:44.540 dorlin supporters so when you're talking about let me just i know you're not talking about specific

00:29:48.540 numbers but let me just jump in there because because this is uh conceivably a period where

00:29:53.200 people who signed up to vote in the leadership race would still be members so you're saying even

00:29:57.700 with that his numbers are close to half of the riding membership numbers that's correct yeah so

00:30:03.380 the the the closure date of the nomination was at the end of February so you would have a number

00:30:10.180 of people in the riding who purchased a membership in February 2022 to support a number of candidates

00:30:17.100 including Pierre Polyev and those memberships even though they would expire at the end of February

00:30:22.800 because the closure happened before the end of February,

00:30:25.300 they would be eligible to vote.

00:30:26.440 So you're talking about just under 6,000 members of the party

00:30:31.700 eligible to vote in the riding, which is kind of a crazy high number.

00:30:35.360 You're talking about 6% of the population of the riding.

00:30:38.660 You're probably talking, you know, like Calgary West numbers.

00:30:41.580 Yeah, exactly.

00:30:42.340 You know, you're talking about something of like 12, 15% of those

00:30:46.340 who are eligible to vote in an election are members of the riding.

00:30:49.000 So it's a huge number.

00:30:50.560 And from what I've talked to different people on the riding,

00:30:52.800 in the riding, it sounds like Garrett has about half of them, just under half. So, you know,

00:30:57.640 when you're talking about four candidates running for a nomination, and one of the four has 50%,

00:31:01.820 which is well over the 25% that he's split up evenly. I mean, you're talking about pretty

00:31:06.400 close to first ballot victory. So I think that does play a big role into it. In addition to the

00:31:12.120 fact that that he is pro-life. But I think that's more of a secondary role than than the fact that

00:31:17.860 there is a favored candidate by the leader who is a good candidate for the record. Like Arpan Khanna

00:31:24.340 is someone we supported when he ran as a candidate in Brampton, where he's from, in the 2019 general

00:31:30.760 federal election. So I don't think anyone has a problem with Arpan. I think what people have a

00:31:34.880 problem with, both in the running and across the country, is the heavy-handed tactics that we're

00:31:38.980 currently seeing by the party that were supposed to go away with the removal of Aaron O'Toole as

00:31:44.180 leader, have now reared their ugly head again with Pierre as a leader. So I think a lot of people

00:31:49.320 would like to see that cleaned up. So from my perspective, at least, Andrew, I think those

00:31:53.760 are the two reasons. Number one being there is a favorite candidate. And number two, I do think

00:31:57.740 that there are people in the party who don't necessarily share Garrett's strong pro-life

00:32:05.300 beliefs. Yeah, you know, the thing about nominations is that oftentimes they're very

00:32:12.400 dirty they're very messy uh it's infighting which is never good in a party and i'd say worse than

00:32:18.080 leaderships in a way just because sometimes there's so little scrutiny on them but the challenge that

00:32:22.840 i've always had with them and i have a very personal history with this because i was standing

00:32:27.020 for nomination i was confident i was going to win the nomination and then doug ford appointed me

00:32:31.880 which made things very difficult for me for the riding for the other candidate uh and you know

00:32:36.680 there were reasons that the party didn't want him but it's much easier if the party just comes out

00:32:40.780 and says that when they don't want a candidate.

00:32:43.160 And, you know, I look at what's happening here

00:32:44.760 and obviously I don't have the specifics of this,

00:32:47.880 but, you know, when they're saying not completing,

00:32:49.960 when you want, when you have an application

00:32:52.400 as detailed as these applications are,

00:32:55.160 it almost strikes me as designed to fail

00:32:58.260 because you know that if you really want to get rid of someone,

00:33:01.540 you can probably find something in the 50 pages

00:33:03.860 where they missed the comma or something.

00:33:06.000 Like you could probably find something if you look for it.

00:33:09.060 Yeah, and it's interesting.

00:33:10.040 So I've spoken of members of the National Council who I've been in touch with about this issue for about a week now when it came to our attention.

00:33:18.440 And it seems like that the party has not shared with members of the National Council, at least as since we're recording this, the details of what that nondisclosure was.

00:33:30.320 Are we talking the fact that Garrett had an entire social media account that he deleted or a website that he deleted that he hasn't disclosed?

00:33:38.860 given that that's a question in the 50 plus page candidate application uh for the conservative

00:33:44.160 party of candidate which frankly is not a bad question to ask but i don't how are you supposed

00:33:49.260 to give copies of stuff you've deleted i mean i deleted it for a reason i didn't keep the copy i

00:33:53.420 mean that so that that in and of itself is i think a bit of a flaw in it but fair enough to

00:33:57.700 acknowledge the existence of this but we're talking like an entire website you've deleted

00:34:02.020 or whatever i think that's an issue or are we talking about you know a facebook or a comment

00:34:07.040 that garrett made on a post you know back in 2010 and three weeks later he thought well you know

00:34:12.000 that's kind of a not very terrible post i'm gonna or comments i'm gonna delete that comment are we

00:34:16.560 talking about something like that no one knows right what one one is reasonable right to not

00:34:22.080 one is reasonable for a candidate to be disqualified if they don't disclose something

00:34:25.520 as big as i had this entire website and i deleted it and i didn't tell you about it versus you know

00:34:30.320 there was this comment i had up for three weeks on a facebook post you know 15 years ago and i

00:34:35.360 I can't remember because it's 15 years ago and I deleted it.

00:34:37.640 So what are we talking about here?

00:34:39.340 No one seems to know, which suggests to me that they don't really have anything.

00:34:44.880 Otherwise, that would probably be shared.

00:34:46.960 Another national councillor told me that the party had told them that it's not so much what the content of any of the deleted stuff is,

00:34:57.020 because we all have stuff that we've deleted online, whether it be tweets or Facebook comments or posts or whatever.

00:35:02.020 I think very few of us who have been online for over 10 years, and maybe we're aging ourselves, Andrew, won't have something that they do.

00:35:09.860 My internet baggage beats yours any day of the week, Scott.

00:35:12.640 I think CBC can tell you that, too.

00:35:14.260 Yeah, exactly, right?

00:35:16.380 So the National Council kind of told me, well, if the content doesn't matter, then why do we care?

00:35:23.180 And if it's not that big of a deal, is it reasonable that he forgot this, or is it unreasonable?

00:35:28.980 And those are the questions that are left unanswered, even by two national councillors, again, which strongly suggests to me that there's nothing there.

00:35:36.060 Now, it's interesting that you mentioned, Andrew, when you were running for your provincial nomination in London West of, I believe, for the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.

00:35:43.920 And I think and I agree with you that you were well on your way to win that nomination.

00:35:49.060 And then all of a sudden you were appointed by the now premier, Doug Ford.

00:35:52.760 You know, I think that does a lot of candidates, even yourself, a disservice because it runs a lot of people the wrong way.

00:35:58.320 And it's interesting because I don't know if you've talked about this on your show yet or not, but Arpan himself has come out and said, well, Garrett should be reinstated.

00:36:07.380 And he sent a public letter to the National Council because the appeals could be heard over the weekend that Garrett should be reinstated.

00:36:13.680 And Rick Roth, who is another candidate running in the nomination, has said the same thing as well.

00:36:18.160 So, you know, if you are a candidate that is, you know, in a position to win with Garrett gone, you're probably not going to say anything, right? Because you're going to win the nomination with him gone. But like I said, I think Arpan is a good candidate, is a good person. And so I'm glad that he stated that.

00:36:41.160 And, you know, if Garrett thinks that he should run and RPAN thinks he should run and Rick Roth thinks he should run and members of the party think he should run and members of caucus think he should run, then I would certainly hope that members of National Council and the leader and those around the leader would also share that view.

00:36:57.100 You know, and just going back to the fundamental principles here, and I know people's eyes make glaze over when you start talking about, you know, what's in the party constitution.

00:37:04.060 But like, in all honesty, you get the outcome you want or you get the process you want.

00:37:08.260 If you want open and fair and transparent nominations, then have them.

00:37:11.540 If you want preferred candidates, which is an entirely legitimate approach to building a party.

00:37:16.380 I think it's entirely legitimate if the leader says, no, no, no, we need to put a certain type of candidate forward in each riding, then be transparent about that and don't go through the whole charade.

00:37:26.000 And nothing bothers me more.

00:37:27.860 And this was like Patrick Brown 101, where you say we're going to be the party of grassroots, the party of democracy.

00:37:32.680 But then every nomination is somehow manipulated to have the outcome that Patrick Brown wants.

00:37:38.260 Yeah, I would agree with you on that, to a certain extent. I think if there's an attempt to amend the Constitution of the Conservative Party of Canada to state that X number of ridings or in a by-election and outside of general, we're going to be appointing candidates as opposed to allowing the nomination process to go forward, I don't think that'll be very popular with a lot of supporters of the party.

00:38:01.700 But that proves the point, though, because the party has decided that open nominations are important.

00:38:07.160 in theory in practice something else completely and again i i go back like you know we're early

00:38:14.620 days into pierre polyos leadership and i think that there's um a lot of positive changes that

00:38:19.820 have been made in in relation to the previous leader and i think a lot of people would agree

00:38:23.860 with that uh but this is the type of stuff that led to the end of the leadership of baron o'toole

00:38:29.180 and i think a lot of people don't really want to see that happen with pierre i mean even if he

00:38:34.000 didn't vote for Pierre as number one. I didn't. I voted him number two. Lesnar was number one for

00:38:38.160 me. You know, we in the Conservative Party of Canada, they have gone through what, three

00:38:43.220 leadership races in five years or something like that. I don't think people are really interested

00:38:46.840 in doing that again. But it's stuff like this that inevitably kind of leads it down that road.

00:38:52.340 And so I hope those kind of close to him are learning this lesson today and throughout the

00:38:56.560 rest of the week. And I hope National Council does accept the appeal of Garrett and reverse

00:39:01.860 the decision that let's not go down this road anymore, because it isn't in the nature of the

00:39:06.720 party, like you were saying, if there was a move to amend the Constitution of the party to allow

00:39:11.200 for appointments, I think there would be a big uproar, whether those people are pro-life or

00:39:15.520 pro-abortion, or whether they are libertarians, or, you know, fiscal hawks, or foreign policy

00:39:23.320 hawks, or whatever the case might be, whatever type of conservative they are, I think we can

00:39:27.020 all probably agree, even red Tories, I would say, I think we can all probably agree, like,

00:39:31.080 all the way around, people just want to have an open, fair nomination process. Now, that being

00:39:35.500 said, I think a lot of people would also agree that there should be some sort of mechanism in

00:39:40.280 place to have disqualifications when necessary. Sometimes there are people who want to run for

00:39:46.420 public office who have done things in the past that are just extraordinarily problematic.

00:39:51.920 And that, you know, political parties are, at the end of the day, private clubs,

00:39:56.320 but at the same time they establish rules of the need to to apply even handedly so yeah a party

00:40:03.080 should have the right to disqualify you know a lifelong liberal who just sees an opportunity to

00:40:07.620 co-opt a nomination for sure but but but these things should be done in the most i'd say narrow

00:40:12.680 way possible while keeping with what the grassroots want and i mean in some ways i might even say let

00:40:18.600 the liberal run because the members would reject them exactly that's a whole can of worms yeah

00:40:22.600 Exactly, right? Like, I think there's a lot of reasonable people within the Conservative Party of Canada that makes up its ranks and files in the members, right? And I think we've seen the reasonableness of party members, you know, in the last three leadership races, I would argue, right?

00:40:38.460 Right. And I think that there is a self-regulation mechanism there to to be had.

00:40:44.780 Right. And I think that the process of disqualification is something in an extreme.

00:40:49.080 You know, a problematic past might be someone who has a heinous sexual crime that they've committed in the past or something like that.

00:40:56.260 Where it's just it's just, you know, very, very inappropriate to to have a candidate like that.

00:41:01.060 But that's not what we're talking about here. Right.

00:41:03.100 We don't even know what we're talking about here because they won't tell us.

00:41:06.400 And in fact, Andrew, you have more information than the candidate himself.

00:41:10.220 The party gave you more information about the reason why he was disqualified, as little

00:41:13.840 information as was provided to you, than Garrett himself from when I spoke to him earlier

00:41:18.240 today.

00:41:19.040 So that's also interesting to me that the party is communicating with members of the

00:41:23.920 media more than they are with their own members and their own contestants.

00:41:28.340 I mean, it'd be very interesting, Andrew, if you were charged with a crime and you went

00:41:34.260 to appeal it and you had no evidence presented to you as to why they charged you with that

00:41:39.800 particular crime. And that's what we're experiencing here. So, you know, again,

00:41:43.940 these are things that we saw in the past under a previous leader in the pretty, pretty recent past.

00:41:48.960 And, you know, hopefully the lesson is learned here today in this week. And this is something

00:41:53.100 that can be reversed and something that we don't see again going forward.

00:41:56.700 Scott Hayward of Right Now, thanks very much for coming on today.

00:41:59.980 Thanks, Andrew. Really appreciate it.

00:42:01.120 Thank you. Just on that last point, I should say, I got into this weird, I don't know if it's a Twitter fight, because I was sort of just doing it haphazardly while I was doing other things. But a Twitter exchange, I broke my rule and I engaged with an anonymous Twitter account. So I beg forgiveness of the standards I've set for myself.

00:42:18.240 But someone who was taking aim at the fact that I, in the headline of the article I wrote about this for True North, said that a pro-life candidate was disqualified.

00:42:26.820 And I quoted Scott Hayward, a comment that he made earlier today, saying that he thinks he was targeted because of his pro-life beliefs.

00:42:33.200 And I included at the time that the party had not given any reason, which they hadn't.

00:42:38.440 And then I published the story.

00:42:39.640 And then, you know, like 30 minutes later, the party gives me a reason.

00:42:42.860 I include that in the story as I told them I would.

00:42:45.860 And then this person was like fighting with me

00:42:47.740 about misrepresenting

00:42:49.000 because he wasn't disqualified for being pro-life.

00:42:51.200 I never said the party said he was disqualified

00:42:53.080 for being pro-life.

00:42:54.240 I said he's a pro-life candidate who was disqualified,

00:42:57.280 which I think is very much the case.

00:42:59.320 And I appreciate Scott taking a bit of a nuanced view here

00:43:02.340 that he also appeared to be a front runner

00:43:04.760 when the party may have its own preferred candidate.

00:43:07.700 And look, I worked with Arpan many years ago in Ottawa.

00:43:11.220 I like Arpan a lot.

00:43:12.880 This is not about him.

00:43:14.560 In fact, Arpan is probably one of the most,

00:43:16.920 I mean, except for Garrett, who was disqualified,

00:43:19.460 Arpan is one of the most disadvantaged right now

00:43:21.540 because he now looks like he's being given

00:43:24.460 this invisible hand pushing him across the finish line.

00:43:28.000 If he was going to win, let him win.

00:43:29.600 And that's it.

00:43:30.160 Have a fair fight.

00:43:31.280 And that's what Arpan has called for.

00:43:33.100 It's what Garrett's called for.

00:43:34.280 It's what Rick Roth called for.

00:43:37.440 And I was just thinking Deb Tate,

00:43:39.040 who's Dave McKenzie's daughter.

00:43:40.620 I don't know if she's called for it.

00:43:41.760 I looked for her on Twitter

00:43:42.520 and I couldn't find her on Twitter.

00:43:43.600 So maybe she has or has not.

00:43:45.520 But nevertheless, there is always going to be more to nomination battles.

00:43:50.360 We'll cover that as the show progresses in the week ahead.

00:43:54.120 Just on our closing note here, I have to end with an update to the great quest for a special rapporteur on China's interference in Canadian elections.

00:44:04.520 I would like it noted that I lost because I predicted it was going to be Beijing Bev herself, Beverly McLaughlin.

00:44:11.000 It is not Beijing Bev. It is David Johnston. So David Johnston, the former governor general, who was also the, by the way, the commissioner of the, what was it called? The, I forget the name of it. The Leadership Debates, was it the Leadership Debates Commission? Yeah.

00:44:27.580 He was the leadership debates commissioner who made the decision to ban True North and Rebel from covering the debate.

00:44:34.600 So that is the eminent Canadian who's now the special rapporteur on interference in Canadian elections by China.

00:44:41.760 David Johnston did decide to accredit Xinhua, which is the Chinese state media agency, to the debate.

00:44:48.240 I'm not saying that's connected to this.

00:44:49.960 I just have a little bit of a bone to pick with David Johnston.

00:44:53.020 But for all of you who had David Johnston in the pool, you win the fully loaded electric Volkswagen that will be rolling off the line near St. Thomas in just a couple of years time.

00:45:03.560 So congratulations. You can pick it up at reception.

00:45:05.840 That does it for me for today.

00:45:07.340 We will be back with Fake News Friday in just two days time and then more of The Andrew Lawton Show next week.

00:45:12.540 Thank you. God bless and good day to you all.

00:45:16.780 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:45:18.860 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - March 15, 2023

Liberals won't say how much Volkswagen battery plant is costing us

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