Juno News - February 09, 2025


Preston Manningļ¼š Trumpā€™s ā€œ51 stateā€ comments should be treated as a joke


Episode Stats

Length

43 minutes

Words per Minute

166.93442

Word Count

7,274

Sentence Count

385


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Okay, let's get to the big interview. I recorded this earlier with Preston Manning. And for those
00:00:06.560 of you who don't know, Preston Manning is the founder and leader of the Reform Party,
00:00:10.860 which was active in Canada from 1987 to 2000. He represented the constituency of Calgary Southwest
00:00:17.700 in the House of Commons from 1993 until 2002. He served as the leader of the opposition
00:00:24.140 from 1997 to 2000. And then he founded the Manning Foundation for Democratic Education.
00:00:31.500 He's really just an absolutely incredible leader in Canada. We have so much that we can
00:00:36.220 learn from him. And even, you know, in his retirement, he's still active in government.
00:00:40.780 He recently chaired the review of Alberta's COVID-19 response and the National Citizens
00:00:47.120 Inquiry. Did an incredible job. We get to all of it. This is really a wonderful interview. We talk
00:00:52.100 about North America, about Trump. We talk about energy security and national security,
00:00:56.580 the things that Canada needs to do if we're a serious country, if we wanted to take seriously
00:01:01.540 our sovereignty and our independence. These are the things we need to do. And then later in the
00:01:06.160 interview, we talk about the COVID response, how it diminished trust in institutions, and what
00:01:11.880 Preston thinks that Canadians can do to fight back and to restore faith in our institutions. It's a great
00:01:17.240 interview. And it was really my pleasure to conduct it. So without further delay, I will show you this
00:01:23.240 interview now with myself and Preston Menn. Preston, thank you so much for joining the podcast.
00:01:31.560 Yes, good to talk to you.
00:01:33.720 It's great. Great to see you. And really looking forward to this conversation. So first of all,
00:01:38.200 let's start with Donald Trump and the tariffs that he threatened, and then reversed. So, you know,
00:01:44.760 right off the top, what is your takeaway on all of this?
00:01:47.480 Well, I think it's necessary to go back to square one. What was the first instance in which he linked,
00:01:55.800 even mentioned tariffs on Canada and Mexico? This goes back to November 2019, when he was
00:02:04.120 president the first time. And he mentioned tariffs as a threat to try to get Canada and Mexico to be
00:02:12.760 serious about stopping the illegal movement of people and drugs across the border into the United
00:02:20.840 States from Canada and Mexico. That was what the threat was linked to. So it seems to me the starting
00:02:28.280 point, and Premier Smith has made this point over and over again, would be to tighten up the border and
00:02:34.920 stop illegal movement of drugs and people across that border from Canada or anything connected with it.
00:02:42.120 And if the Prime Minister and the Premiers are getting together, the first thing on their agenda
00:02:46.840 should not be talking about tariffs. It should be talking, here's what we are going to do,
00:02:52.440 here's what we are doing to stop that illegal movement of drugs and people. And I think this
00:03:00.760 business of getting off onto the tariff thing, when it was the illegal movement of drugs and people,
00:03:06.280 it was the thing that triggered this, is a big mistake.
00:03:10.680 Well, certainly. And I mean, we saw everybody jump into action. So going back to last Saturday,
00:03:15.880 when Trump came out and said, yes, it's going to be a 25% tariff, 10% on energy, which I think you can
00:03:22.600 credit that to Danielle Smith and the advocacy diplomacy that she did, that oil was only going to be
00:03:28.360 10%. Everything else was 25%. Trudeau instantly jumped in and said that they were going to retaliate
00:03:34.760 with our own 25%. Now, luckily, we avoided all that, or at least for now, because Trump did just say
00:03:39.880 that it's a 30-day pause and that we'll be revisiting it in March. By then, I think we'll have a new
00:03:46.440 Prime Minister, Preston. But I want to point to your essay that you wrote in the National Post on January 30th,
00:03:54.200 where you said Canada's response to Trump needs common sense, not mindless hysterics. So I think
00:03:59.960 you said that the political and media establishment got off on the wrong foot by responding foolishly
00:04:07.960 rather than sensibly. Now, I just want to read a little bit from this, because I think you make
00:04:11.800 such a good point here that is not being made elsewhere. You wrote that Trump is a businessman
00:04:16.680 and a dealmaker. Common sense further suggests bringing a positive response to an item which clearly
00:04:22.920 is on Trump's agenda, which also happens to be very much in Canada's interest, energy security.
00:04:28.600 This is a subject dear to Trump's heart, referenced in his inaugural address and a front on which Canada
00:04:34.760 can lead with its strengths, not its fears. And then you go on to say, thus, surely common sense
00:04:40.840 suggests that the most important component of Canada's response to the Trump administration should
00:04:45.720 be making North America more self-sufficient, especially with respect to energy. I didn't hear very
00:04:51.320 many people making this case in this point, but it's so obvious that Canada and the United States
00:04:57.960 need to be energy secure. So why don't you elaborate on that a little more?
00:05:01.560 Well, and yes, from Canada's standpoint, what is the one front on which we are stronger and bigger
00:05:07.800 than the United States? It's not population. They've got a bigger population than us. It's not
00:05:14.120 financial resources. They've got more financial resources than us. We don't have the smartest
00:05:18.920 government. That's certainly the case. But what we do have, because we're the second largest nation
00:05:25.320 on the face of the earth, area-wise, we have the largest or second largest stock of natural resources.
00:05:33.960 That is Canada's strength. And it seems to me the second item on any agenda in dealing with the United
00:05:41.400 States after cleaning up this border question is to say, what can we do to make North America more
00:05:50.040 sufficient, self-sufficient, which is what Trump has talked about, and particularly self-sufficient in
00:05:56.920 energy. And that's an area where we leave with our strengths, not our weaknesses. Ontario, Quebec, and BC
00:06:06.280 particularly have a capacity to export much more electricity to the United States. Alberta and
00:06:12.120 Saskatchewan, of course, have the petroleum resources. Ultimately, no matter what Trump says, North
00:06:18.920 America will not be self-sufficient in petroleum without the exploitation of the Athabasca oil sands.
00:06:25.160 So that's our strength. And so it seems to me, if we're developing an agenda for talking to Trump,
00:06:31.880 and you notice in his interviews, he uses the word deal about every five minutes. Let's make a deal.
00:06:38.200 Let's make a deal on Gaza. Let's make a deal in the Ukraine. Let's make a deal. He's a deal maker.
00:06:45.560 So our second item, if we want to lead with our strengths, seems to me to be on this area of energy
00:06:52.040 self-sufficiency in which Canada's got a great deal to offer. And let's not talk about tariffs. Let's talk
00:06:57.640 about how to make this continent energy self-sufficient. I'm showing my age on this,
00:07:03.160 but the first time I heard the phrase continental energy security was from J. Howard Pugh with the
00:07:11.160 Sun Oil Company back in the early 1960s. Pugh developed that first oil sands plant in Fort McMurray.
00:07:20.120 He was 80 years old at the time. He was one of the richest men in the United States.
00:07:24.680 You might ask him, what is this old guy doing up in Fort McMurray? He didn't need the money.
00:07:32.280 And the Sun Shipbuilding Company manufactured a lot of the tankers that were used to haul oil in the
00:07:41.800 First and Second World War. Pugh was familiar with how many of those tankers had been sunk
00:07:49.640 by submarine traffic and so forth. And he was convinced that North America was vulnerable from
00:07:56.040 an energy standpoint, particularly a petroleum standpoint. He was going to go let the Texan
00:08:01.080 boys go and find the conventional oil. He was going to go find the unconventional oil and develop it.
00:08:06.600 So this is a subject that's been around for a long, long time. And it seems to me it's very much in
00:08:12.360 Trump's mind and it's something that Canada should cater to. It ought to be the second item on our
00:08:17.400 agenda and talking with them. Well, I agree that the most important issue is immigration and cleaning
00:08:23.720 up the drugs. I know that Pierre Polyev has tried to hit that straight on with declaring that he would
00:08:29.640 impose life sentences upon fentanyl dealers and kingpins in the drug war. But when it comes to energy
00:08:37.080 security press, and I want to ask you because if it was an easy solution, I think we would have done
00:08:41.480 it already. Obviously, Justin Trudeau's priority and agenda was towards the environment and making
00:08:47.480 sure that everything was green. But it's led to a point where Canada now imports oil from the United
00:08:52.680 States, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria that were not energy sufficient even in our own country, let alone
00:08:59.320 as a continent. So how can we fix this and how can we actually make it so that we don't have to import
00:09:05.800 oil? Well, first of all, we have to permit and encourage pipeline development in this country to
00:09:11.720 be able to get Western resources to Eastern Canada. This has been stalled or objected to or obstructed by
00:09:19.000 the Trudeau government and by the Quebec government. So getting the movement of petroleum in our own
00:09:27.800 country would be an item I think that you're referring to. The other point is that the last people
00:09:35.640 to make these arguments in Washington are the Trudeau gang. Trump thinks of Trudeau as a weak,
00:09:45.800 narcissistic, lame duck leader. He's got no credibility there. Freeland is, in Trump's view,
00:09:53.720 if he gave any thought to it, is the Canadian equivalent of Kamala Harris. Jolie, as a foreign minister,
00:10:03.160 is considered a joke by our own foreign affairs people, let alone the Americans. Guy Beau is
00:10:09.560 considered to be a climate change fanatic. These are people that ought to be sent on a cruise to
00:10:19.800 Antarctica for the next six months and don't let them get anywhere near Washington. This gets back to
00:10:27.320 your point. There needs to be a change of government and get a government that is going to be credible
00:10:33.720 with the Canadian people in dealing with Trump. And the sooner that can happen, the better.
00:10:39.080 But even since all of this news came out and we sort of saw a newfound approach, it seemed like all
00:10:44.760 the parties suddenly wanted to break down interprovincial trade barriers and everybody was suddenly all in
00:10:49.880 favor of trying to figure out pipelines. Even in that scenario, the Quebec Premier still came out
00:10:55.640 and said no to Energy East pipelines. So how do we get something like that approved when you have
00:11:01.880 some sort of veto power by interests in Quebec? Well, I guess maybe the first place is to appeal
00:11:08.600 to Quebec's own interests. Is Quebec interested in exporting more power to the United States as part of
00:11:16.120 the continental energy security. If it wants cooperation from the federal government of the
00:11:20.680 rest of the country with respect to that, then it's going to have to cooperate with respect to the
00:11:25.880 movement of petroleum. The worry in Quebec is that that government is in a lot of trouble too.
00:11:31.720 If there's an election, provincial election next year, you're liable to get a separatist government
00:11:37.960 elected in Quebec, which is even more opposed to pipeline development. So that's going to be a real
00:11:43.640 internal problem for Canada and the next government, no matter who it is.
00:11:49.080 Further to this idea about resource development, it was interesting. Steve Bannon, who used to be a
00:11:54.520 close advisor to Donald Trump, he was on with Global News. I want to play part of this clip because
00:12:01.000 so, Steve Bannon, I'll set it up. He's a US media executive, political strategist, former chief
00:12:07.240 strategist for Donald Trump. And he said that Canada and the Arctic has been thrust into the
00:12:13.320 center of a geopolitical war between Russia, China and the United States. And so whether we like it or
00:12:19.480 not, Canada is the center of that. And we may choose to say we don't want to align ourselves with
00:12:26.280 America, but the reality is if we don't, you have China and Russia knocking at the door. So let's play
00:12:32.840 this clip. It's a bit longer. It's 45 seconds. But here he is explaining why Canada is so important.
00:12:38.120 China and Russia, the great powers and the United States fighting it out over the Arctic with the
00:12:46.520 vast resources of the Arctic is going to be the new great game of the 21st century. Canada,
00:12:51.240 you are thrust into the middle of that. And quite frankly, you are the greatest, I don't know if
00:12:57.240 target or prize. You're like asking, you're the great prize of that. That is that as you awaken in
00:13:03.240 the geo-economically, he's saying, hey, the United States market is so lucrative,
00:13:07.480 you're going to have to pay a premium to get through the golden door, right? Canada could be
00:13:11.640 all part of that. The geo-economics of North America combined and the geo-strategic interest
00:13:18.760 of North America combined and particularly hemispheric defense all the way from Argentina and Brazil
00:13:23.880 under Bolsonaro all the way up to the Canadian Arctic is what the first half of the 21st century is
00:13:29.640 going to be about. Now, I think it's interesting because he's talking about it strategically.
00:13:35.240 He's being a realist. He's not saying that, he's not trolling. He's not saying like, oh,
00:13:39.640 we're going to take Canada because we want it to be the 51st day. He's saying like, whether we like it
00:13:43.560 or not, this is the future. This is what the 21st century will be about. What's your take on that?
00:13:51.000 Well, I think he makes a very good point. And in fact, I think it's been made even more
00:13:55.800 strongly by Mike Waltz, who's Trump's current national security advisor, that the Canadian
00:14:05.880 Arctic, there's other interests, there's the Russian interests and the Chinese interests in that
00:14:10.680 area. And so Canada is going to have to sharpen up its defense and its development of the Arctic,
00:14:15.720 another area that's been completely neglected by the Trudeau government. So if we're developing an
00:14:22.120 agenda for talking to the United States, now we've got to tighten up the borders, number one. We got
00:14:28.520 the continental energy security and what we can contribute to it, number two. And number three,
00:14:34.600 what are we going to do to beef up our defenses of the Canadian Arctic?
00:14:38.280 I had an author and sort of controversial thinker, Diane Francis, on the podcast a couple of weeks ago.
00:14:44.920 Now, a decade ago, she wrote a book called The Merger of the Century, and how it was a business
00:14:49.160 proposition that Canada could potentially join in with the United States. And what one of the things
00:14:54.120 that she pointed out to me was that Canada has failed to develop the north, like we don't have
00:14:58.760 seaports, we don't even really have roads up there. And if you look at the development of Alaska, and
00:15:03.560 compare it to Yukon Northwest territories, or none of it, I mean, it's just starkly different. The
00:15:09.240 Americans have the ability to build and they focus on that, and they prioritized it. I'm not even
00:15:13.640 talking about military, I'm talking about even just communities that we don't really have a lot up
00:15:18.120 there. There's not really much that has been built, let alone seaports up there. I wonder,
00:15:23.000 like, why do you think that is? What can Canada do to show that we do have serious sovereignty up
00:15:29.720 there? And maybe talk a little bit about Canada's military, because I know, I think it's the goal is
00:15:36.200 supposed to be 2% of GDP to meet our NATO targets. I think Canada barely spends 1.2% of our GDP. Like,
00:15:43.240 our military is not a serious force. And with all due respect, to the men and women who serve and
00:15:49.400 who wear the uniform. I think everyone admits that our military has become a little bit of a joke in
00:15:55.240 recent years. Well, that's a huge subject. But your first point about there's a need to develop
00:16:02.680 infrastructure into the Arctic, into the Northwest Territories and into the Yukon Territory. Incidentally,
00:16:14.120 the province has done more of that than the federal government has been Alberta. The one big road
00:16:18.840 between Yellowknife and the rest of Canada is from Alberta. It's 600 miles from Yellowknife to Edmonton,
00:16:27.800 and it's 3,000 miles from Yellowknife to Ottawa. So maybe I think the province has got a lot more to
00:16:33.560 do with developing that infrastructure, but that ought to be a priority. And then the second point you
00:16:40.520 make is very valid, that the Canadian military has been neglected, particularly by the Trudeau
00:16:47.720 administration. So the next administration is going to have to beef that up. I think one lesson from the
00:16:52.360 Second World War, while Canada contributed directly in terms of soldiers and equipment, its biggest
00:17:00.760 contribution was basically made by C.D. Howe in organizing defense production. Canada produced a lot of
00:17:10.600 the equipment and the background materials that were needed by the allies in order to conduct
00:17:16.600 activities in the Second World War. And whether particularly NATO would accept if Canada's
00:17:24.680 contribution to NATO included the direct contributions that they're talking about, a percentage of the
00:17:30.360 defense budget, but also what can Canada contribute in that defense production, supporting its allies
00:17:38.200 with equipment and things like that. Will that be counted as a 2%? That's where Canada had a strength
00:17:44.120 in the Second World War and that could be repeated. You need someone like C.D. Howe, though, to do that.
00:17:49.960 And there's nobody like that in the current Liberal government at all.
00:17:53.960 Well, yeah, I mean, Canada does need to focus more on building up its manufacturing base in general. I
00:18:00.040 think that's something that we can take away from these trade threats. I want to go back to this
00:18:04.600 Steve Bannon interview in the Global News report on it. So I'm going to show what that looked like.
00:18:09.400 Their headline says, Trump's plan for hemispheric control. Steve Bannon on why tariffs
00:18:14.120 may only be the start. And they show this sort of scary, ominous picture of Donald Trump pointing
00:18:19.800 to Canada and it's labeled as MAGA land, that, you know, they make it seem kind of dark. But then
00:18:25.720 even if you just listen, Preston, to what Steve Bannon said, he said, you know, Canada's a prize or maybe
00:18:32.520 the target. And he was talking about the golden age of America that Trump has promised.
00:18:37.960 And so I think this is nonsense. I think this is complete nonsense. And the first time Trump
00:18:44.840 mentioned this, he said, well, Canada should be the 51st state with Wayne Gretzky as the governor.
00:18:50.040 Like it was a joke. It was one of his off the cuff jokes. And it should have been treated as a joke,
00:18:57.240 say, haha, that is funny. Let's get on to border security and energy security. But particularly,
00:19:03.480 the central Canadian media, the hysteria in the Toronto Star, for example, and central Canadian
00:19:12.440 politicians took this as a serious policy of the Trump government. And I think I've blown it way
00:19:20.600 out of proportion. It's a ridiculous proposition. For one thing, Trump couldn't get it through the U.S.
00:19:27.000 Congress. There's no way that could happen without getting it through the American Congress.
00:19:32.360 You've got to get that through the Congress as it's formed now. Secondly, Trump's got to watch it.
00:19:39.320 He's a populist leader who's got a populist base. One of those mistakes populist parties can make,
00:19:46.440 and Western Canada has had more experience and knowledge about this than any other part of North
00:19:50.760 America, is if you get elected as a populist government and get off the agenda that got you
00:19:57.640 elected by ordinary people, you will not be the government very long. And there was nothing in
00:20:05.400 Trump's platform about Canada as a 51st state. There was nothing about the Panama. There was nothing
00:20:13.080 about Greenland. And he's got to watch it. His own voters will say, look, we elected you on issues of
00:20:20.680 affordability and controlling this immigration thing. Don't stray from that proposition. The
00:20:27.320 other thing, why on earth would Trump want to get a hold of Canada in its current condition? If he did
00:20:33.880 annex it, the first thing he'd have is three separatist movements. A separatist movement in Quebec,
00:20:38.520 a separatist movement in Alberta, and a separatist movement in Newfoundland and Labrador. What American
00:20:43.640 president would ever want to get into that kettle of fish? Yeah, I think you're right. Well, and there'd
00:20:51.000 probably be a separatist movement by the Laurentians to separate from the newly formed North America,
00:20:56.200 because they wouldn't want anything to do with it. But the thing that I thought was interesting about
00:20:59.960 what Steve Bannon was saying there was that he wasn't talking about it. I think a lot of the media
00:21:06.760 presented like, you know, Trump has this vision, and it's all about protectionism, and, you know,
00:21:14.520 America first, and all that kind of stuff, which is true. But Steve Bannon said right in his
00:21:20.040 discussion there, that Canada can be a part of it all. So I don't think that he means that from like
00:21:25.080 a sovereignty perspective, like we're going to take Canada. I think he means that Canada can be part of
00:21:29.480 the prosperity, part of the new golden age that Trump wants to build. And we can all be part of this
00:21:35.240 fortress North America, we just need to get our ourself in order, get our get our house in order,
00:21:40.920 mainly with immigration, drugs, and those are the three things. That's an interesting point,
00:21:46.280 Candace, but it bothers me. Why does Canada need to be told by an American president what its future
00:21:52.360 is going to be? Well, why does Canada need some initiative from the United States to restore pride in
00:21:57.960 this country? Where's the capacity to do that ourselves? And what one of my concerns about this
00:22:05.000 whole debate is what it says about the state of Canadian democracy, everything on this agenda,
00:22:11.560 we've talked about beating down internal barriers to trade, strengthening the protection against illegal
00:22:20.600 immigration and importation of drugs, energy security, all of these things have been advocated
00:22:27.720 by Canadians for years, by Canadian think tanks, by Canadian political people, including myself years and years ago.
00:22:38.680 Why is it that that gets nowhere in our democratic institutions? It does not get a reaction from the current
00:22:48.200 government. It's on another agenda that 50% of the country thinks is nonsense. Why does it take some initiative
00:22:56.360 by an American president to do the things that are self-evidently in our own interest and have been
00:23:01.720 advocated by Canadians for years? I think we've got to pull up our own socks, restore some pride in our
00:23:08.840 own country, get rid of these anti-Canadian crowd in the universities and the schools that trash Canada
00:23:17.320 every opportunity they get. How are you going to get pride in the younger people in the country in a future
00:23:22.600 vision? I think we've got to pull up our own socks and we ought not to have to be told to do that
00:23:29.640 by an American president, no matter who he is. Such a good point. And I agree. When the countermeasures
00:23:37.320 were announced, when Justin Trudeau announced the new measures that he was going to take to secure the
00:23:41.160 border, putting more money on, making sure that we have enough people at the border and all this stuff,
00:23:46.440 it's like, why did this take 10 years? This should have been happening from the beginning,
00:23:50.760 not at the very, very end of his role. Well, that leads me to Justin Trudeau and his decision
00:23:56.920 to resign on January 6th. So at least Preston, that's when he told us that he was resigning,
00:24:01.240 but he's still around. So he didn't actually resign. He just intended to resign. He prorogued
00:24:05.560 parliament. And now they're holding a liberal leadership race so that a prime minister can be
00:24:11.560 selected by an elite few. I mean, I think that the leader has already been selected. I think the banks,
00:24:17.800 the World Economic Forum have already given us the next prime minister of Canada, Mark Carney.
00:24:22.840 But as someone who's been advocating for democratic reform and who's been frustrated
00:24:27.800 with the Canadian political system for decades, what did you think of Trudeau's move that he pulled
00:24:33.400 here in early 2025? Well, it's regrettable because it's crippled the country at the crucial time when it
00:24:41.960 needs strong federal leadership. It's just left the country in limbo. You've got a lame duck prime
00:24:50.680 minister, but still purporting to represent the country. And I'm sure if you could record some of
00:24:58.280 the internal comments that are being made by some of these premiers with respect to whether Justin Trudeau
00:25:04.360 ought to even be convening these conferences, I think it'd be pretty revealing. So it's just regrettable
00:25:11.640 that we've got this lame duck situation. What should have happened was they should have recalled parliament.
00:25:16.520 The fact that you've got this whole crisis situation and the parliament isn't even meeting,
00:25:23.000 they should have recalled parliament. The parliament would have moved a non-confidence motion. We'd be
00:25:28.520 into an election and that would be the process to decide who should be the next leadership of the
00:25:33.720 country. And I know the leaders, they're putting forward Mark Carney, you can imagine what Trump
00:25:40.760 thinks of him. You know, a central banker, an elitist, a snob who has nothing but contempt for the rank and
00:25:51.080 file of people that elected Trump or that will elect the next government in Canada. It's a regrettable
00:25:57.400 situation and the sooner we can get to an election and get a new government, the better.
00:26:03.160 So do you think that the governor general should have said no to Justin Trudeau's request?
00:26:07.160 Yes, I think that should have been done. There's actually a precedent for that occurring
00:26:15.320 in the British parliament and that would have moved things along further. But of course the
00:26:19.880 governor general's Trudeau appointment with loyalties to Trudeau and just did what he said.
00:26:27.800 Well, it's really unbelievable that we don't have a say. I don't know if it's a conspiracy theory
00:26:33.560 because I think it's legal and it could happen, but there's a theory going around online that there
00:26:38.600 won't be an election in 2025, that there's an Act, an Elections Canada Act that says an election should
00:26:44.920 happen every four years, but it's not in the constitution. The law can be changed, it can be
00:26:48.920 amended, that potentially whoever leads the Liberal Party, presumably Mark Carney, could strike another deal
00:26:54.280 with NDP leader Jagmeet Singh to prolong their time in power, blow past that October 2025 election date
00:27:01.800 and possibly not have an election for another 18 months. What do you think of that?
00:27:05.880 Well, I think if they resorted to that, it would be a desperation measure which would
00:27:12.840 almost ensure that they're replaced in that election. And I would think members of parliament,
00:27:18.600 particularly NDP and Liberal members, would think twice about getting part of that kind
00:27:24.840 of an operation. They might be guaranteeing the loss of their own seat.
00:27:28.360 I think they might be losing their own seat anyway. I think Canadians are so frustrated
00:27:33.240 at Jagmeet Singh in particular for propping up this government for so long that he's going to lose his
00:27:38.280 seat. So why would he trigger an election if it just means that he's going to basically get fired? I mean,
00:27:42.600 I think that that's the concern.
00:27:44.360 But again, you can look at the composition of that current department, 153 Liberals, 120 Conservatives,
00:27:51.560 33 Bloc members, three independents. The Bloc members and the independents voting together in a
00:28:01.320 confidence motion would still defeat the government. It's not entirely dependent on Singh, but it's a big
00:28:09.000 mess. What about this story, Preston? We learned at the end of January that Justin Trudeau is going to
00:28:17.160 fill the Senate vacancies before retiring. So he's planning a final wave of appointments to fill
00:28:23.240 the 10 empty seats in the Senate. The move will allow him to mark on parliament for years to come
00:28:29.560 with unelected legislatures. I know you've been a critic or at least someone who has advocated for
00:28:35.640 reform when it comes to Canada's upper house, upper chamber. What do you think of this move by Trudeau?
00:28:41.720 Well, that'd be regrettable too, because that cripples the federal parliament even
00:28:46.840 further. In the end of the day, the House of Commons would have the whip hand over the Senate.
00:28:51.480 The Senate could block legislation from the House of Commons and the House of Commons could pass it
00:28:55.560 again. The Senate can block that, the House of Commons can pass it again. The House of Commons,
00:29:00.360 at the end of the day, can have the whip hand. If the Senate blocked a piece of legislation three
00:29:06.440 times or four times, unelected people appointed by a discredited prime minister, that would make life
00:29:13.960 intolerable. I wouldn't want to be one of those senators. But again, it's a shame that it has
00:29:19.320 to come to that kind of a conflict at a time when the federal parliament should be united and getting
00:29:25.080 down to business. Well, especially when we face a situation where we have an unelected governor
00:29:31.080 general, soon we're going to have an unelected prime minister, and we have a new onslaught of
00:29:37.160 unelected legislatures put into the Senate. No wonder Canadians are losing faith in these institutions.
00:29:43.160 Yes. As I come back to, our democratic institutions need to be
00:29:50.440 strengthened. This current crisis indicates the weakness of those institutions and the fact that
00:29:58.840 it takes some action by an American president to get us dealing with items which our own democratic
00:30:05.000 process should have brought to the top of the agenda and got action on.
00:30:08.680 I want to move on and talk about the Alberta COVID response report. But before we do, I just want
00:30:14.360 to ask you, because we haven't really talked about it, but Danielle Smith, I think, has just been doing
00:30:18.920 a tremendous job advocating for Canada. I heard Ezra Levant, he was on Rachel Parker's show the other day
00:30:24.520 here on True North, and he was talking about how he met with Danielle in the midst of her basically back
00:30:30.920 to back-to-back meetings. She rented a hotel room right in Washington, had a conference room, and
00:30:37.000 apparently her staff had minute-by-minute interview, interview, meeting with different officials,
00:30:42.600 lawmakers, Republican insiders, Republican staffers. It sounded incredible. I mean, just such hard work.
00:30:47.960 The fact that Trudeau and no one from the federal government was doing that, and it fell on a
00:30:52.280 provincial premier is remarkable in and of itself. But I wonder, what do you think of the job that
00:30:59.800 Danielle's doing, and you think she's hitting the right marks in what she's doing?
00:31:04.440 Yes, I think she's been the strongest Canadian leader on the particular points that we should be
00:31:11.320 emphasizing on the border security. She linked that to the tariff issue the way Trump did on the
00:31:21.640 energy security basis. Alberta premiers have often had a good relationship with the Western governors of
00:31:28.760 the United States who tend to think a lot like we do, and she's been active on that front. So I think
00:31:34.920 she's done a commendable job, and this is a job she never asked for. The provincial premier didn't ask
00:31:42.520 to have to get involved internationally with the United States in this way. She never asked for it,
00:31:47.640 but there's a vacuum. This is not being done by the current leader. Our current federal leader is
00:31:52.840 discredited, and so I think she's doing an excellent job, and people should support her. Some of these other
00:31:58.520 premiers ought to support her. She's providing more leadership than Trudeau, and that is self-evident
00:32:03.480 to them at these meetings. So I agree with the approach she's taking and believe she should be
00:32:09.560 fully supported. Well, it seems like some premiers are coming around. When they first initially met with
00:32:14.280 the premiers and Trudeau, they signed a joint statement. Danielle said, no, I'm not signing that,
00:32:18.600 and she was sort of the odd man out. But then, you know, over the course of the next few weeks,
00:32:22.440 with her advocacy and Trudeau sort of vacancy, we saw Saskatchewan come around, even Quebec came
00:32:28.600 around to her perspective, and I think it did win the day. I want to talk about this report also
00:32:33.880 commissioned by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. So she, I think she's one of the only leaders,
00:32:39.480 political leaders in the world to do this sort of introspective look at what happened during COVID.
00:32:45.960 So the Alberta COVID report, it was commissioned by Smith in 2022 with a mandate to explore the
00:32:52.360 province's response to COVID. The task force included prominent medical professionals,
00:32:56.520 including doctors Gary Davidson, Jay Bhattacharya, who's been appointed into the Trump administration
00:33:01.800 now, and Barry Brittle. The final report recommends the provincial government stop providing vaccines
00:33:08.200 for healthy children and teenagers. The report revealed evidence to suggest it was not effective.
00:33:13.960 For example, it highlighted that the original Pfizer vaccines did not prevent death compared to the
00:33:19.800 placebo in their clinical trials in any group. Further, the report alleged that Alberta Health Services
00:33:26.120 removed a dashboard after it showed higher hospitalization rates among the vaccinated than
00:33:32.120 the unvaccinated. It also said there's a lack of reliable data that COVID-19 vaccines protect children
00:33:38.040 from severe cases of COVID. The task force that published the research said that vaccines were not
00:33:43.640 designed to stop transmission. This is all really incredible stuff, things that you could not have
00:33:48.680 even said on YouTube two, three years ago. Now it's out in the open. Again, Alberta is one of the only,
00:33:54.440 if not the only government to do this kind of research and this kind of report. So I wanted to
00:34:00.520 hear your reaction to the report and what you make of it all.
00:34:05.080 Well, first of all, there are two reports that were commissioned by the Alberta government and I
00:34:12.120 chaired the first one. The first one was called the Public Emergency Governance Review Panel and its
00:34:19.880 instructions were to look at the legislation which authorized the initiatives that were taken by the
00:34:26.200 Alberta government to cope with the COVID crisis and to recommend there's changes in the law that had to be
00:34:32.040 made. That report was done, finished February of 2023, recommended a bunch of amendments to the
00:34:41.400 Public Health Act, to the Education Act, to the Alberta Bill of Rights. It takes forever to get these
00:34:46.600 things through. You have to make a presentation to a cabinet committee, you have to be a presentation
00:34:52.200 to the cabinet, there has to be a presentation to the caucus that then has to go to the legal services
00:34:57.240 branch of the Justice Department to do the draft legislation, which then has to be checked with
00:35:01.880 the Treasury branch if it involves spending any more money. But finally, in the fall session,
00:35:08.600 the Alberta government did make a number of those amendments, particularly amendments to the Alberta
00:35:13.400 Bill of Rights to tighten up the protection of rights and freedoms by law during a public emergency.
00:35:20.120 So that was that report. Now this report you're talking about was not to look at the legislation,
00:35:26.360 it was to look at the database that informed the decisions of the government during that period.
00:35:32.200 And as you mentioned, it's produced a number of, it questions the modelling that was done,
00:35:38.920 what was the basis of that modelling, it's questioned the validity of masking of the vaccination program
00:35:47.240 and of the validity and efficacy of the vaccines that were used themselves, the whole list of things.
00:35:52.840 Now the interesting thing too, that panel had about 12, 15 basically medical people on it. It's been reacted to by the
00:36:05.800 College of Physicians and Surgeons, which has a list of people with medical credentials, and its report is
00:36:13.000 contrary to what the scientific advisory group of the government that it had at that time. So you have two
00:36:19.240 groups of medical scientists with conflicting views on what should have been done. And the bigger question
00:36:25.080 is, how do you reconcile it? How does the government bring science to bear on a public issue like the COVID issue,
00:36:32.360 when there's this conflicting opinion within the science community? And we had a recommendation in that report of ours to address that.
00:36:39.560 Two recommendations. One is that the overall coordination of the response to a public emergency like the pandemic should not be assigned to the subject department like the Department of Health,
00:36:55.720 because it's got broader ramifications in health. It should be assigned to the Alberta Emergency Management Agency. That's what it's for.
00:37:04.920 And if it had been responsible, it would have had a lot more than just internal medicine people
00:37:11.080 on that scientific advisory panel. It would have had a psychiatrist and it would have had people dealing
00:37:18.600 with the mental health impacts. It would have had an economist. It would have had a broader group.
00:37:23.960 And our second recommendation was that that Alberta Emergency Management Agency should have a science,
00:37:31.560 a senior science advisor whose job is to have an inventory of the science that you need to deal with
00:37:38.120 the issue and who could adjudicate disputes between groups like the panel that was currently done and the people
00:37:46.440 that actually manage the the the crisis. So that's a long rambling answer. But I think the the bigger problem
00:37:54.200 here is that you've got two two groups with all with good to the layman good scientific credentials, but they
00:38:03.640 don't agree. The College of Physicians and Surgeons has labeled this report as misinformation.
00:38:09.960 So how do you adjudicate that? And our suggestion was with the senior science officer attached to
00:38:16.200 the Emergency Management Agency. Well, I appreciate you laying that all out and explaining the difference
00:38:22.280 between the two reports. But I think both of them had the same goal. And I actually think it's a good
00:38:27.480 thing. Because the fact that that the science doesn't all scientists don't all agree, doctors
00:38:32.840 don't all agree, that's the reality of the world we live in. And that's the frustration that so many
00:38:36.600 of us had during COVID, when people like Justin Trudeau would say, we believe in science, and our method
00:38:42.920 is completely science based. And it's like, well, no, it isn't, because we have scientists over here that
00:38:47.720 are saying the exact opposite thing. So I think proving the disagreement and proving that there are
00:38:52.760 different sides was was kind of the point. I did want to ask you about the media response,
00:38:56.440 because from my perspective, it was quite hysterical, labeling it disinformation, misinformation,
00:39:03.160 you know, saying these people were anti science, it brought me back to 2020. In 2021, it was like
00:39:07.480 we were there all over again, with all of these people in the media, quoting experts, saying that
00:39:13.080 the other side was was wrong. What did you think of the media response there?
00:39:17.480 Yeah, well, I think it was it's misguided. There were headlines, the worst reporting,
00:39:24.840 I think on it was by the CBC, which is almost hopeless when it comes to reporting anything
00:39:29.320 that's going on in Alberta, or anything the initiative by Premier Smith. But they had
00:39:35.800 headlines that Alberta doctors oppose the panel report. Well, there were as many Alberta doctors on
00:39:45.880 the panel as there were with the College of Physicians and Surgeons, that's just nonsense.
00:39:52.520 And what is needed, though, is when there is this conflict, some way of adjudicating it,
00:39:57.640 and somebody with the responsibility to do that, okay, we've got this group that's saying this,
00:40:01.560 and this group saying this, let's hear the arguments out and see who carries our judgment.
00:40:07.160 And we've tried to provide that mechanism, that recommendation has not been acted upon yet by the
00:40:13.240 Alberta government, but we're hopeful that it will.
00:40:15.400 Well, it's such a great initiative. And I appreciate you being one of the ones that was
00:40:20.440 spearheading it. Preston, I want to be respectful of your time. But you know, while I have you,
00:40:24.840 I have to ask, you know, we are just closing up nine, almost 10 years of Justin Trudeau's rule. And
00:40:31.560 I think if you look at public opinion polls, one of the sort of unfortunate, sad things that's
00:40:36.360 happening is that pride in Canada has gone way down. I think only 34% of Canadians now feel a
00:40:42.520 pride in our country. When you look around and you see just everything from crime to homelessness,
00:40:49.800 to drug addiction, the cost of living, cost of groceries, cost of gas, the number of Canadians
00:40:54.040 using a food bank, there's every statistic that you look at economically is bad. I mean, it's a sad
00:41:00.840 state of affairs in Canada, to say the least. I'm wondering what, like, what can be done at this
00:41:05.880 point in Canadian history? What's your sort of final assessment of the Trudeau years? And what do
00:41:10.520 you think it's going to take to turn Canada around and turn ourselves into a great country once again?
00:41:16.520 Well, I think this Trudeau year is something, but he's labeled it a lost decade. Canada's lost
00:41:24.760 international prestige. It's lost credibility with the G7. It's lost credibility with NATO. It's lost
00:41:32.840 credibility internationally. But the worst effect is that it's lost its own self-confidence. And I think
00:41:41.800 a major effort needs to be made to restore that. And that's going to be dependent on the next government,
00:41:46.600 which is not going to be, in my judgment, is not going to be a liberal government. And I think there's
00:41:52.600 things individual Canadians can do. When you hear people trashing the country, and even ask your
00:41:58.920 schoolchildren, ask your grandkids, I say this to seniors that are going to university, if they have
00:42:06.200 a professor or a program that is trashing the country, protest that. This is anti-Canadianism. Try
00:42:14.200 and root out the anti-Canadianism from our institutions. And one simple practical suggestion I've had to
00:42:23.080 friends is to fly the flag. When you go to the U.S. and go through the Midwestern towns or even in New
00:42:32.040 England, every eight or nine house has one of these American flags on it. Americans, for all their
00:42:41.640 faults that we continually point out, are basically proud of their own country. And one of the ways they
00:42:46.680 show it is to fly the flag. Well, why don't we fly the flag? Why don't we fly the flag? If somebody
00:42:51.800 watching and you're concerned about this anti-Canadianism, at least fly the flag, fly the
00:42:56.040 flag on your house, fly the flag on your business, fly the flag on your church, fly the flag as a
00:43:01.800 symbol that you have pride in what this country is and what it can become, and are opposed to
00:43:08.120 anti-Canadianism in all its shapes and forms.
00:43:12.360 Well, I think that's a perfect note to end the interview. Preston Manning, I really appreciate
00:43:17.400 your time and your insights. Thank you so much for joining the show.
00:43:19.800 Well, thank you very much, Ken. It's good to talk to you.
00:43:21.880 It's always a pleasure.