Juno News - The Conservatives are more optimistic than ever (ft. Andrew Scheer)

00:00:00.000 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:00:08.460 Joining me is a Conservative Member of Parliament and former Conservative Leader, Andrew Scheer.

00:00:13.720 Andrew, good to talk to you again.

00:00:14.560 Good to see you, Andrew.

00:00:15.540 I mean, obviously, this is a pretty rocky few years for the Conservative Party, one could say.

00:00:21.100 You know, you go from successive election losses in 2015, 2019, 2021.

00:00:26.860 You were the leader for one of those periods.

00:00:30.080 The vibe here, though, is really different.

00:00:33.020 I mean, it almost feels like an in-government vibe from the crowd here.

00:00:35.840 I mean, have you sensed this optimism before 2023?

00:00:40.700 This is an incredible atmosphere right now.

00:00:43.420 And, you know, we try not to get too hung up in the polls.

00:00:46.640 They go up and down.

00:00:47.880 But the thing that is just so encouraging is when you look at the number of people that have been coming out to Conservative events,

00:00:54.220 every delegate I've spoken to, every riding president says, you know, when we do it in our bed now,

00:00:58.220 we're getting people who have never come out, not just to a Conservative Party event, but a political event in general.

00:01:03.360 So Pierre's message of tackling the cost of living crisis that Justin Trudeau has caused by bringing inflation down, lowering interest rates,

00:01:11.300 it's really speaking to the hurt that people are feeling, in addition to the core principles, the Conservative principles that he has stood up for,

00:01:18.320 getting rid of the carbon tax, protecting individual freedom and free speech.

00:01:22.200 So there's a lot of reasons why people are enthusiastic and optimistic.

00:01:26.900 I mean, I was there in 2019 when you announced your platform.

00:01:30.140 And a lot of the things that the Conservative Party and the Pierre Pauly are talking about now are things that you were talking about as well.

00:01:36.680 I mean, affordability, balanced budgets.

00:01:38.580 And why is it that you think the message seems to be taking on this new life now that hasn't always been the case?

00:01:44.920 Because the damage that Justin Trudeau is causing has just gotten that much worse.

00:01:48.740 You know, in 2019, interest rates were lower, inflation was lower.

00:01:53.340 Now it's just crippling families.

00:01:55.880 I'm sure you know many friends who are counting down the months to when they have to renew their mortgage.

00:02:01.220 If you've got friends who are on variable rates, they're already experiencing that pain.

00:02:04.720 So I think the pain is just so much more pronounced.

00:02:08.780 Crime is way up.

00:02:10.820 You know, the scandals have piled up.

00:02:14.340 So just all the things that were there in 2019 are there again here in 2023, just times 10.

00:02:21.580 And of course, one of the big changes between 2019 and 2023 has been COVID.

00:02:25.560 And if you look at a subset of that, the Freedom Convoy, which for Conservatives, I think was a really big eye-opener.

00:02:32.260 And I've seen shades of that at the convention.

00:02:34.580 I mean, Anna Paulyev in her remarks talked about truckers, which I think got a pretty big standing ovation.

00:02:39.660 And we've had Pierre Paulyev talk about that.

00:02:42.660 We've had also a resolution to amend the Constitution that was talking about freedom of association.

00:02:47.680 And I'm wondering what you take of the fact that that seems to have really embedded itself in the Conservative consciousness, that moment in Canada.

00:02:55.200 Well, you know, Pierre spoke to this a little bit, too, where he talked about how past governments, whether they were Liberal or Conservative, would still stand up for fundamental freedoms.

00:03:05.100 I mean, we might disagree on what government policy should do or how it should be implemented, but that those basic human rights that we as Canadians enjoy, they're under attack in a way that they never have been before.

00:03:16.640 And, you know, what we saw when people came to Ottawa to stand up for their freedom, to protect their freedom of choice, there are people from all walks of life, from not just truckers, but there are a lot of small business owners.

00:03:28.160 There are a lot of people who have been fired or lost their job because of a health care decision that they wanted to make for themselves.

00:03:34.420 So, you know, there's a lot of areas we can look at to say that Justin Trudeau is eroding our freedom.

00:03:40.360 We've got the Internet censorship bill, all kinds of things that he's doing to divide Canadians.

00:03:45.780 But that was maybe a moment where it kind of hit a catalyst moment or had a breaking point and people decided to stand up and do something about it.

00:03:53.600 We're a ways past that now.

00:03:55.740 So now we're looking at, OK, well, how will a Conservative government stand up for those freedoms?

00:04:00.960 So when I hear up there talk about things like repealing C-18, C-11, you know, making sure that there's freedom of speech on campus, there's a lot of things that we could do on a go-forward basis to make sure that our fundamental liberties are protected.

00:04:15.160 I know one of the things that you had proposed that I quite enjoyed in 2019 that I think Conservatives should definitely make a point of is a law constraining governments to balance the budget.

00:04:25.620 Now, you look at the books now, I mean, something like that, you would need to have such a long runway to implement that because of how bad things are.

00:04:32.420 And is there a bit of concern on your part that if the Conservatives do win and let's say there's a majority government or there's a four-year mandate,

00:04:39.300 that it'll be so challenging to disentangle all that Trudeau has done over, by that time, eight or ten years in a four-year term?

00:04:46.820 And that there's, it'll be hard to meet those expectations that Canadians who are hurting may have.

00:04:51.620 Well, it's a great question because every month that goes by that Trudeau doesn't bring in a plan to constrain that government spending to eliminate those deficits over time

00:05:02.220 is another month where real pain hits Canadians and has long-lasting consequences.

00:05:08.300 So there really is a sense of we're running out of time to fix this before it gets really bad.

00:05:14.340 You know, when Trudeau was promising that interest rates would stay low for a long time, that debt was consequence-free,

00:05:21.860 you know, we were calling him out on that saying, no, eventually the chickens come home to roost.

00:05:26.040 And now we're seeing that. We're seeing the terrible consequences of runaway inflation.

00:05:31.300 You know, a lot of, this was when we were being told it was transitory, by the way. 0.99

00:05:35.180 It's just going to be, you know, shit passing in the night, right? 0.94

00:05:37.520 And it's so frustrating to see these economists that work at banks or Bank of Canada officials themselves who were telling those false promises back then. 0.98

00:05:46.860 And they'll say, well, it's not, it's all kinds of factors.

00:05:50.220 You know, it's global supply or it's, well, that's all nonsense.

00:05:53.760 The Bank of Canada printed hundreds of billions of dollars to buy government bonds to allow Trudeau to continue his massive spending.

00:06:02.700 That's why we're seeing inflation.

00:06:04.380 That's why Canadians are suffering through higher prices. 0.96

00:06:06.420 And that's also why now the Bank of Canada has to raise interest rates to make up for their mistakes in the past.

00:06:12.700 So what Pierre was talking about, Pierre was, you know, really the first voice with a large platform to warn Canadians about this.

00:06:20.840 Those same economists were poo-pooing him and saying, no, no, Justin Trudeau's right.

00:06:25.040 But, well, Pierre was right.

00:06:27.020 And had we listened to that common sense plan, and we just kind of used our common sense thinking as a country,

00:06:32.200 and you say, wait a second, you can't rack up the credit card forever without someday paying for it.

00:06:37.100 This mess wouldn't be as big as it is now.

00:06:39.200 So in answer to your question about, like, kind of timelines and how bad the situation will be, yes, our concern is that if he keeps racking up these deficits,

00:06:48.880 that inflation will just continue.

00:06:50.620 Interest rates will stay high.

00:06:51.680 That's going to cause all kinds of misery for Canadians, whether it's their mortgage or small businesses trying to, you know, borrow money, to expand, to hire.

00:06:59.380 So, yeah, it is very concerning.

00:07:01.140 But the good news is there's a lot of low-hanging fruit.

00:07:03.860 Liberal government put $35 billion into an infrastructure bank that hasn't built a single project.

00:07:09.920 They sent $250 million to the Asian Infrastructure Bank, which is controlled by the communist regime in Beijing,

00:07:17.080 to build the roads and pipelines that Trudeau won't let get built here.

00:07:21.000 So, yes, it'll take some hard work, but we know that there's some low-hanging fruit that the government's wasted money on

00:07:26.080 that hasn't actually benefited Canadians, and we can start there.

00:07:29.520 Yeah, I mean, this was, it was interesting.

00:07:31.320 When Pierre Polyab was speaking in his speech last night about cutting waste,

00:07:35.960 Pablo Rodriguez came out and spoke to reporters and said that Pierre Polyab was a Republican far-right speaker

00:07:43.380 who was talking about cuts.

00:07:45.020 And, I mean, I went and, you know, looked through the speech, and he did talk about cuts,

00:07:48.060 but he's talking about cutting waste and not cutting programs.

00:07:50.200 But that message to the Liberals, and by extension to the media, seems to always be a bit distorted.

00:07:56.000 So what is it that you would offer to Canadians that you would cut, that would save money,

00:08:02.160 that wouldn't go after those things, that they're kind of fear-mongered into thinking will go away,

00:08:06.660 like the Liberals' prime of seniors' care, for example.

00:08:08.900 Yeah. Well, you know, when you look at Pierre's speech, he talked about exactly this.

00:08:13.180 You know, we went through, there's something in Ottawa called the public accounts and the main estimates,

00:08:17.680 and they happen in the parliamentary cycle, and the departments have to disclose all their spending.

00:08:22.500 And when you go through there in a fine-toothed column,

00:08:24.360 you realize this Liberal government has exploded the amount of money that is spent on consultants.

00:08:29.400 So we have a public service, we have a highly trained public service

00:08:33.240 that have become experts in their areas of their portfolios,

00:08:38.020 and the government goes along and hires companies like McKinsey to give them advice.

00:08:42.160 Well, we believe that elected officials should take advice from Canadians,

00:08:45.140 and the highly trained professional public service should implement that.

00:08:49.000 We don't need hundreds of millions of dollars on consultants, so we can do things like that.

00:08:52.940 The $54 million Arrives Can app, such a waste of money.

00:08:56.840 But were there a few software programmers, I think they came up with,

00:09:01.600 they determined that you could have come up with that exact same app in a couple of weeks for a few hundred thousand dollars.

00:09:07.820 When the government sends the signal to the departments that they don't care about balanced budgets,

00:09:12.200 that they don't care about fiscal management, waste happens.

00:09:16.000 It happens organically.

00:09:17.140 You know, people aren't worried about missing a deadline or over-ordering things for the office.

00:09:23.380 So just that sense of, hey, we've got a target to get back to balanced budgets,

00:09:27.180 in and of itself will help address some of the waste.

00:09:29.860 Well, and anyone who's ever had the misfortune of going through ATIPS, as I have,

00:09:33.160 has seen that every March there always are these just like deluge of invoices

00:09:37.440 for every type of office furniture imaginable,

00:09:39.740 because you've got all these bureaucrats that say,

00:09:41.320 oh my goodness, we were budgeted this much and we don't want to lose it next year,

00:09:44.320 so let's go on a spending spree.

00:09:45.880 And this is never, I mean, it's called March Madness,

00:09:47.520 but it's never actually been dealt with by governments.

00:09:51.000 They've just kept keeping this along.

00:09:53.300 Exactly.

00:09:54.020 And one of the things I like about Pierre's message on this fiscal management thing

00:09:58.500 is how he talks about a dollar-for-dollar rule,

00:10:01.080 where if a minister comes to the cabinet table with a great idea,

00:10:04.420 you know, we're going to do something, we're going to spend money here or do whatever,

00:10:07.820 he's got to show within his own department where he's going to find the savings for it.

00:10:11.160 We're not going to ask Canadians to pay more taxes,

00:10:13.480 and we're not going to borrow more money to pay for these new types of ideas

00:10:17.000 that will naturally come along.

00:10:18.660 That in and of itself, I believe, will go a long way to ending things like March Madness,

00:10:22.200 because now the minister knows, okay, if I want to do this thing that I believe in,

00:10:25.620 or if I want to go ahead with this program,

00:10:27.260 I've got to get my own department to find the savings.

00:10:30.240 So there's a lot of things that just having that direction from the top will help with.

00:10:34.560 And as I said, some big-ticket items,

00:10:36.560 Canada Infrastructure Bank, $35 billion.

00:10:39.280 CBC, $1 billion there.

00:10:41.340 $250 million to the Asian Infrastructure Bank.

00:10:44.280 There's some big-ticket items that we can get some, you know, early savings early on.

00:10:48.480 But then there's also just that culture of prudent management

00:10:52.360 that is completely missing from this Liberal government.

00:10:55.260 Since you bring up CBC, this is something that I think Conservative members,

00:10:58.600 it's probably, like, not the most relevant issue in terms of, like, impact on lives,

00:11:03.440 but it's probably one of the ones that fires people up the most.

00:11:05.740 And we saw that during the leadership race, and even now I've seen defund the CBC T-shirts out.

00:11:10.420 And this is an issue.

00:11:11.420 I mean, a billion dollars is not chump change.

00:11:13.580 And when people look at that, that is actually a very real cost saving.

00:11:17.660 Is your position that that, how much of that is actually getting cut?

00:11:21.400 What percentage of that?

00:11:22.460 Because I know Pierre Polyev has talked about saving a little bit

00:11:25.200 for French language programming, for example.

00:11:27.140 Yeah, French language programming, some issues in northern locations

00:11:30.560 where, you know, there's just a completely different set of circumstances.

00:11:33.020 When you look at CBC News in and of itself, it's a lot of money.

00:11:37.220 Big, expensive real estate in major downtown centres.

00:11:41.120 There's a lot of savings there.

00:11:42.720 And they also have an incredibly negative effect on organic Canadian media.

00:11:48.700 You know, when I meet with publishers of local newspapers

00:11:51.200 or even some of the bigger chains,

00:11:53.160 they talk about how they're competing for ad dollars with the CBC

00:11:56.600 who gets paid by taxpayers' money.

00:11:58.780 And even under C18, they stand to be the big beneficiary of it.

00:12:01.660 Yeah, you know, so it's not just costing Canadians to put content

00:12:05.680 that they may or may not like, they may or may not watch.

00:12:08.680 You know, you look at some of the viewership for CBC News is declining.

00:12:13.540 But they're also scooping up some of those precious ad dollars

00:12:16.420 that are the lifeblood of local newspapers, local broadcasters.

00:12:20.100 So it's not just because, you know, we have a philosophical opposition

00:12:23.280 to the state broadcaster and the government running a news outlet.

00:12:27.120 If you can imagine that, we have a situation here

00:12:29.440 in a mature democracy like Canada where the government runs a news outlet.

00:12:34.020 It's not just because of philosophical reasons.

00:12:36.120 There is actually the practical impact it has on stifling that growth

00:12:39.380 and that innovation in local broadcasters,

00:12:41.800 in innovative news media like True North,

00:12:44.360 where there is that competition for subscriptions and for ad revenue.

00:12:48.720 So let's get the government out of that.

00:12:50.400 Let's get the government out of the way. 0.71

00:12:51.640 Let's let that grow naturally and organically

00:12:53.780 and let the free market decide.

00:12:55.300 You know, people who enjoy watching your show will continue to watch it

00:12:59.140 and you'll have to find innovative ways to attract new audience members as you do.

00:13:03.420 And, you know, let's let people like you compete.

00:13:06.240 Well, I appreciate that.

00:13:07.160 And I'll just ask in closing here, I mean,

00:13:08.940 one of the challenges for the Conservative Party has always been that it has,

00:13:12.300 I'd say, a broader coalition than a lot of other parties in Canada.

00:13:15.360 And it has, I mean, even just as far as the Conservative base goes,

00:13:18.020 you have your social Conservatives, your Libertarians,

00:13:20.580 your Republicans, your monarchists, your foreign policy folks and all of that.

00:13:25.300 And I think it's sometimes a very tenuous coalition.

00:13:28.000 And I think after a loss, the fractures start to show there a bit more.

00:13:32.040 Pierre Polyev won the leadership on the first ballot by a pretty significant margin.

00:13:36.240 I think your leadership was 13 rounds, if I recall.

00:13:39.100 It lasted a little bit longer.

00:13:40.220 Aaron O'Toole, multiple rounds as well, albeit with a smaller field.

00:13:43.760 So do you take from that that the party is very unified

00:13:47.620 and all of these factions are playing nicely, so to speak?

00:13:50.540 Absolutely.

00:13:51.160 Yeah, I mean, just, yeah, I'm sure you have,

00:13:53.540 but take a random sample of the people who are here.

00:13:56.180 You know, the people who are here at this convention,

00:13:58.240 they represent an excellent cross-section of the membership

00:14:00.720 because each one of them had to get elected

00:14:02.680 in their local riding association to be a delegate.

00:14:05.760 So this is a great sample of the Conservative movement across the country.

00:14:10.080 And everyone's united.

00:14:11.320 You know, we might disagree.

00:14:12.340 But the thing about Pierre

00:14:13.320 and the thing that a good Conservative leader will do to avoid that fracturing

00:14:17.600 is stay true to those core Conservative principles.

00:14:20.460 You and I may disagree on something,

00:14:21.700 but if we agree on freedom of speech,

00:14:24.320 then it doesn't bother me that you advocate for the thing that you believe in.

00:14:27.080 And we can rally around that freedom of speech aspect of it,

00:14:30.320 and then we can have our say and have our debates,

00:14:33.040 have a vote, and live with the results.

00:14:34.800 We have a government like Justin Trudeau

00:14:35.940 that divides and demonizes people who disagree,

00:14:38.180 people who want to express themselves differently

00:14:40.380 than what Justin Trudeau approves of.

00:14:42.260 Then you do see that division,

00:14:45.040 and that's what we're seeing across the country.

00:14:46.940 Justin Trudeau desperately wants to divide people,

00:14:49.420 to think about the divisions within our society

00:14:51.780 and demonize that people don't notice that they can't afford groceries.

00:14:55.180 Last question.

00:14:55.860 If you get in government,

00:14:56.580 are you going to the World Economic Forum?

00:14:58.240 Not me.

00:14:58.800 Actually, not just me,

00:14:59.980 but not anybody in a Pierre-Paulie of government.

00:15:02.040 We believe that we should listen to Canadians.

00:15:04.380 We don't need to go to fancy soirees with global billionaires.

00:15:08.320 We can go to the barbecues and the Lions Clubs

00:15:11.480 and the Qantas Club events to hear from Canadians.

00:15:15.440 That's where we'll get our common-sense ideas to improve this country.

00:15:18.160 All right.

00:15:18.600 The barbecue in your local community,

00:15:20.240 not Main Street in Davos.

00:15:21.840 Andrew Scheer, thank you very much.

00:15:23.180 Great.

00:15:23.600 Thank you.

00:15:24.520 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:15:26.980 Support the program by donating to True North

00:15:29.060 at www.tnc.news.

00:15:32.500 Thank you.

Juno News - September 15, 2023

The Conservatives are more optimistic than ever (ft. Andrew Scheer)

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