Juno News - December 15, 2019


The Conservatives need to focus on policy ideas


Episode Stats

Length

5 minutes

Words per Minute

190.68697

Word Count

1,077

Sentence Count

1

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 and just like that all of a sudden looks like we have ourselves a leadership race
00:00:10.580 Andrew Scheer announcing Thursday morning that he's stepping down from being party leader after
00:00:16.100 the poor performance in the election although it wasn't that bad he did win the popular vote but
00:00:20.960 still lots of people have the knives out for him and he decided to not stick around and wait until
00:00:25.820 the April leadership review instead he's bowing out sooner although we'll remain in office as leader
00:00:31.920 as interim leader until a new leader is selected so already we get the roll call of names possible
00:00:38.260 candidates possible contenders to replace Andrew Scheer's leader and take the next shot at trying
00:00:43.380 to unseat Justin Trudeau in the next election and people love sort of the gossip they love the names
00:00:49.680 they like oh who's interested in this who's calling that and so forth and that's all important because
00:00:53.560 obviously it is about selecting a person a name to play that role but I think this time around
00:00:59.860 we're going to and we should be hearing policy discussions happen now more than ever sometimes
00:01:06.780 leadership races kind of shamefully are actually not really about ideas they're often just about
00:01:12.920 backroom dealings and horse trading and so forth and notions like electability and likeability which
00:01:19.480 matter of course but still you'll want to pick someone based on their policies that their policies
00:01:25.660 are things that you think will advance the nation and I think we're going to be more policy heavy this
00:01:30.600 time around than we have been in past leadership races only because Canada is at a crossroads now more
00:01:37.240 than ever you know you look back to the 90s and the early 2000s John Chrétien years Stephen Harper years
00:01:42.300 and in some sense they kind of had things easy I mean yes we obviously had the conflicts in Iraq and
00:01:48.480 participating in the war in Afghanistan was a big issue to manage but right now we have almost
00:01:53.800 existential threats going on in Canada that we have not seen like this for quite some time some of them
00:02:00.660 being very new threats there is a cold war underway right now between China and the western world I
00:02:06.960 don't use that phrase lightly but it's what's happening and many eminent observers are agreeing yeah we're
00:02:13.680 pretty much in a new cold war right now Justin Trudeau doesn't want to confront the issue wants to put
00:02:18.720 his head in the sand for it now there are other people out there even conservatives who are still
00:02:23.360 reticent to throw the gauntlet down and say this is what we must do this is how we can get our game
00:02:29.100 together and our act on when it comes to resetting the relationship with China the way that the
00:02:34.240 conserved leadership hopefuls need to do is chart a path forward on this issue that is an absolute of
00:02:40.740 absolute importance here dealing with the China file climate alarmism is another big file here
00:02:45.840 there's going to be a lot of pressure put on this cadre of leadership candidates to cave on the
00:02:52.560 issue to learn to love the carbon tax and you see all these headlines and more liberal publications
00:02:57.600 saying oh experts say the next leader must support the carbon tax and that sort of nonsense and the
00:03:04.040 experts will just be seen to be partisan operatives and you know political science professors and so forth
00:03:09.660 but I think that's nonsense in fact I think the exact opposite is happening I think there's a bit
00:03:14.560 of a weakness on the climate alarmist front they've oversold things Greta Thunberg Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
00:03:20.360 they're too over the top and it's creating a bit of a backlash and I think there's an opening there's an
00:03:25.220 opportunity right now for more conservative minded people to step forward and say okay you care about
00:03:30.840 the environment and these climate issues free market solutions because that's the core thing the whole
00:03:36.620 point of running for conservative leader running for prime minister as a conservative is how will I
00:03:41.260 take my conservative principles and solve the problems of the day so the issue is how can you
00:03:47.320 take people's concerns about environment and so forth filter it through the conservative prism and the
00:03:52.520 answer to that is of course free market solutions private sector all this R&D that's going on in
00:03:58.500 industry to build a better mousetrap to herald the green revolution it's getting behind that kind of
00:04:03.140 stuff and really pushing that narrative and pushing that part of the conversation which is
00:04:07.820 woefully under discussed the idea that it must be an authoritarian top-down carbon tax that just
00:04:13.880 increases and doubles and triples every few years are you kidding me I mean that is actually the old
00:04:19.160 news that is yesterday's thinking and we need to step forward on it so hopefully we hear ideas like
00:04:24.400 that during the leadership race there's one sort of pet project idea that I want to propose that I'd
00:04:30.100 like to see people talk about a lot more and that is the opioid crisis Donald Trump is making it a big
00:04:35.840 priority you don't hear about it a lot in the media but go to the White House website and read up on
00:04:39.980 what they're doing and and they care about dealing with this issue they're declaring it a non-partisan
00:04:43.940 issue they're putting both policing issues on the table but also funding issue for support programs
00:04:48.780 thankfully we don't have an opioid crisis numerically as bad as they have in the United States but it's
00:04:54.460 still bad over 10 people a day dying from overdoses it should not be happening and let's talk about that
00:05:01.100 issue more conservatives don't discuss it anymore as much as they should be the other day a prominent NDP figure
00:05:07.840 told me that she wanted to see shipments from China crates over on the west coast there opened up by Canada
00:05:15.820 border agents to look for illicit fentanyl I think that's a great idea we should be hearing calls for that not just from the
00:05:21.460 NDP but from the conservatives as well a lot of files to lead on here a lot of important issues that are
00:05:28.000 really front and center in the front pages it's got to be an ideas-based campaign and I think the
00:05:33.900 grassroots in the membership and the general public will respond well to that also