Juno News - Trudeau could be GONE in a month

00:00:00.000 The Trudeau Liberals are in freefall with both Sean Fraser and Chrystia Freeland announcing

00:00:04.760 their exit from Cabinet this week. Predictably, Justin Trudeau is scrambling to hold onto power

00:00:11.060 as the calls for him to resign mount from both former and current Liberal MPs.

00:00:17.200 The question that really matters is will this result in an election for Canadians?

00:00:22.660 Joining me today to discuss is Anthony Koch, a former spokesperson for Pierre Polyev.

00:00:27.540 I'm Rachel Parker, and you're watching The Rachel Parker Show.

00:00:47.900 Hey guys, welcome back to The Rachel Parker Show. I'm your host, Rachel Parker. We have

00:00:52.480 lots to dive into today. First and foremost, I want to acknowledge that I know you as the

00:00:58.120 audience are going to be very excited over Chrystia Freeland's exit from Cabinet. I know

00:01:03.520 that I used to have to do trigger warnings when we would have Freeland clips because some of

00:01:07.100 you are just so tired of listening to her talk down to you. Looks like we are going to have 1.00

00:01:12.360 a break from Chrystia Freeland clips, maybe for forever. I want to welcome our guest, Anthony

00:01:17.140 Koch, a former spokesperson for Pierre Polyev and an Ottawa insider. He is going to break down what

00:01:23.560 everything means. Anthony, thank you so much for being here today. I want to start by taking a look

00:01:28.100 at Chrystia Freeland's resignation letter. So she posted this resignation letter yesterday morning,

00:01:33.380 and it blew up because she absolutely knifed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the back. She said that

00:01:40.260 they have not been seeing eye to eye for a few weeks now, and that he had asked her to step down,

00:01:45.880 but she acknowledged that that means she had lost the confidence of the Prime Minister. She

00:01:49.220 wouldn't be able to speak for him, and as such, she thought it would be best for her to leave the

00:01:52.980 Cabinet entirely. She also accused him of costly political gimmicks. I want to ask you, have we

00:01:58.760 seen something like this before? Obviously, there's been a lot of turnover with Trudeau's Cabinet. Have

00:02:03.520 we seen someone so aptly knife him in the back on their way out the door? Obviously, you have Cabinet

00:02:09.360 Ministers who get frustrated with the incumbent Prime Minister and resign and make declarations to the

00:02:14.100 people that they no longer have confidence. But it's the way that she did this that was so shocking.

00:02:19.440 An hour before the fall economic statement is set to go live to journalists, she drops this letter on

00:02:25.240 Twitter and blasts it to every journalistic outfit in the country, basically says, Prime Minister wanted

00:02:30.960 to fire me on Friday. And by all accounts, the Prime Minister's office was not aware that she was going

00:02:35.580 to do this. And then she drops this bomb and accuses him of political gimmicks and says, you know,

00:02:40.700 basically figure it out, guys. I'm not giving the statement. So find somebody who is.

00:02:44.480 So with the fall economic statement, what was the fallout of that? How did the Liberal

00:02:50.180 Government proceed with delivering that statement to Canadians?

00:02:52.760 Well, it was funny, because at one point, it was the constant delay. So everybody was in the media

00:02:58.100 lock up. And there's a bunch of junior staffers effectively telling the journalists that they didn't

00:03:02.060 know what the heck was going on either. But every half an hour, there was an update that it's coming

00:03:06.360 soon. It's coming soon. It's coming soon. It's coming soon. It's coming soon. Subsequent to that,

00:03:10.640 Karina Gold, another Trudeau minister, was supposed to give and deliver the statement,

00:03:15.540 after which she said, actually, no, I'm not going to be delivering the statement. We're not releasing

00:03:19.640 it today. We're going to delay it. And then, again, sort of ad hoc, the Liberals actually did end up

00:03:24.720 releasing the contents of the statement to the country. So that's how we're now able to find out

00:03:28.840 we've got a $62 billion whopping deficit. But the actual more formal presentation portion

00:03:33.900 didn't really happen the way that it was supposed to. So an absolute, like, you know,

00:03:38.320 I think it was, I'm not sure if it was Chris Selley, somebody at the National Post, might have

00:03:42.100 been John Iveson, described it as government by improv. You know, they're running by the skin of

00:03:48.020 their teeth their entire day, all the way from having to grab Dominic LeBlanc in to swear him in

00:03:53.000 as finance minister within a few hours notice to getting this document out there. It was disaster

00:03:59.100 from beginning, middle to end. And again, historically unprecedented. Your deputy prime minister

00:04:03.400 taking a shot at you like this. And there's the most important part of the letter, I think.

00:04:07.320 Beyond the slights and the shots that she took at the prime minister directly, which are noteworthy

00:04:11.800 on their own, she made it very clear that she's staying in the liberal caucus and that she has

00:04:17.000 every intention of re-offering as a liberal candidate in the next election. Translation,

00:04:22.700 declaration of war. That's what that is. It's, all right, buddy, if I'm kicked out or if I leave at

00:04:27.680 any point in the next few weeks, everybody's going to know it's because you sent me packing.

00:04:31.120 I'm not leaving of my own volition. So I think we can also say this is the de facto start of the

00:04:36.660 liberal leadership to see who's going to follow up Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party

00:04:40.720 of Canada. One of the things that everyone has been talking about, yes, is of course,

00:04:45.660 you know, Justin Trudeau should step down as a liberal leader. You're saying that it looks

00:04:49.240 like Chris Diffreland is already announcing her intentions to run for that position. 0.96

00:04:53.540 Absolutely. I don't think it's a surprise to too many people. But I think a lot of plans got

00:04:58.960 jigged yesterday. So it was clear. A lot of the backrooms were wise with this. And this was

00:05:03.740 publicly speculated is that liberals have been trying to recruit Mark Carney, former governor

00:05:08.420 of the Bank of Canada and subsequently governor of the Bank of England to come be his finance

00:05:12.660 minister. Now, obviously, in order to have him be finance minister, it means you need to get rid of

00:05:16.580 the person who was currently in that position in Christian Freeland. So I think that's what they

00:05:20.220 were planning to do. I'm actually shocked. Here's a lady, whatever, love Miss Freeland, dislike Miss

00:05:24.580 feeling like I and I'm sure your listeners do. Fact of the matter is, she was very loyal to the

00:05:28.960 prime minister for the entire decade that they've been in office and has taken many bullets on his

00:05:34.100 behalf and very uncomfortable situations over the course of those years. And for the prime minister

00:05:39.080 to basically sit down with her by Zoom, not even in person, and basically say, hey, yeah, thanks for

00:05:44.400 everything. We want you to deliver this fall economic statement with a $62 billion deficit. Then once

00:05:50.200 you're done, we're going to swap somebody in for you and we're going to move you to some vague

00:05:54.580 Canada-U.S. relations position that doesn't have any staff or an actual ministry behind it.

00:06:00.880 Thanks, Christian. Hope you enjoy that one. Obviously, she didn't and now this is where we ended up. But

00:06:05.700 it's just, again, Katie Telford, senior liberal staffers were partying up in New York this weekend

00:06:12.060 after that conversation was had. So just shocking on any number of fronts. But I think there was a lot

00:06:18.580 of plans and calculations and strategies in liberal world that went up in smoke yesterday.

00:06:24.600 And Justin Trudeau's prime ministership may be one of them.

00:06:28.140 Okay, let's talk about Justin Trudeau a little bit. So we have now,

00:06:31.300 Christopher and looks like she's vying for that liberal leadership. As I mentioned, the 1.00

00:06:35.060 calls for Trudeau to step down are mounting from former liberal MPs, but also from within his caucus.

00:06:41.660 What would it take for his caucus, which has been pretty teethless up until this point,

00:06:46.320 to actually give Trudeau the boot?

00:06:48.880 So here's the thing. There's this thing called the Reform Act. So basically, at the beginning of

00:06:53.460 every parliamentary session, each caucus votes on three things. So that's why the mechanism that was

00:06:57.740 used to remove Aaron O'Toole as leader of the Conservative Party back in 2021, that's part of the

00:07:02.880 Reform Act. The thing is, the liberals refused to adopt the measures that would allow them by simple

00:07:09.300 majority vote to remove Justin Trudeau as leader. So technically speaking, by the letter of the rules,

00:07:14.760 they actually don't have any mechanism at all to remove Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal

00:07:19.440 Party. But there's, you know, the book and the letter, and then there's the actual reality of

00:07:23.960 the situation. So if a majority or even a sizable minority of liberal MPs were to basically go out

00:07:29.940 and say, hey, buddy, if you stick around, I'm going to sit as an independent, or we're going to

00:07:35.700 actively campaign against your leadership, we're going to keep taking pot shots, and basically made

00:07:39.520 it such that it would be functionally impossible for Mr. Trudeau to continue as leader of the Liberal

00:07:44.940 Party, and by extension as prime minister, he could be removed. So it's an informal sort of

00:07:49.040 mechanism. Again, it would be much more similar to the processes that undertook to remove Andrew

00:07:53.640 Scheer as leader of the Conservative Party. You know, it's sort of more informal, there's a campaign

00:07:57.520 that transfer, and then just the pressure became so monumentous that he decided to bow out among other

00:08:01.300 reasons. But in this particular circumstance, the sort of Aaron O'Toole-esque removal is not

00:08:06.260 possible because they didn't adopt it. But beyond that, now it looks like the other parties are

00:08:11.040 doing more than enough to pressure. Now we have both the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, finally.

00:08:15.500 Peter Julian made a comment yesterday, if I'm correct, basically saying that if Justin Trudeau

00:08:20.000 is still prime minister come end of January when the House comes back, that they would in all

00:08:25.080 likelihood support a non-confidence motion in the government and Trudeau elections.

00:08:28.920 Yeah, so I think that's even the more interesting question here, and it's certainly a question that I've

00:08:33.020 been fielding since all this news broke yesterday from friends and family and interested Canadians.

00:08:38.000 Does this mean that we are going to have an early election? And you're now saying that the NDP is

00:08:41.780 signaling that they are looking to that vote of non-confidence in January if Trudeau is still

00:08:47.580 prime minister? The NDP says a lot of stuff. Jagmeet Singh has been very critical of Trudeau while

00:08:53.020 propping up his government. Do you believe them?

00:08:56.260 I don't. And it was hilarious. I think the biggest loser yesterday wasn't the prime minister. It was

00:09:01.760 actually probably Jagmeet Singh. I mean, he came out and did his song and dance about how he was

00:09:05.160 calling on the prime minister to resign. But then when the follow-up question inevitably came about,

00:09:10.260 oh, Mr. Singh, does that mean that you would at least support or yourself propose a motion of

00:09:16.080 non-confidence in the government? And he said, well, all options are always on the table. Very

00:09:20.800 non-committal, classic. So I have distrust there, but I do happen to believe, I think that if Justin

00:09:27.520 Trudeau is still prime minister, that there is a very good chance that we will be in an early

00:09:32.400 election at some point later, January, early February. But what I suspect, and this is where

00:09:38.840 I could see it going in an alternative direction, somewhere around January 15th, Justin Trudeau

00:09:43.520 realizes that there's no path forward for him. The advisors and the backroom boys all come and sit

00:09:48.780 down with him and say, hey, listen, buddy, lights out. Same thing that happened to his father,

00:09:53.560 there's that famous euphemism in Canadian politics. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, when he resigned from the

00:09:58.100 prime minister's office in the mid-80s, before Brian Mulroney's election, when he became prime

00:10:02.840 minister, said that he went for a walk in the snow and came to the realization that he was going to

00:10:07.740 end his political careers. People are asking, is Mr. Trudeau going to take his walk in the snow? Now,

00:10:12.000 I suspect he probably will once the full picture sort of comes out. And now more liberal MPs are feeling

00:10:17.480 emboldened than they ever have before. So I think what we'll probably end up seeing is a Trudeau

00:10:22.440 resignation before the return of the of the next parliamentary session, maybe a proroguement of

00:10:28.600 parliament, but a liberal leadership race, very expedited. And I think that will give the necessary

00:10:35.800 ideological or situational context for the NDP to not support emotional, emotional confidence. So while

00:10:44.200 Mr. Trudeau is now gone, we have to let the liberals go through their process or whatever. Again, many

00:10:50.760 scenarios are on the table and weirder things have happened. But if I'm a betting man, I don't think

00:10:56.140 we're going into an election in January based on the actions of the New Democratic Party or Jack

00:11:00.420 Maitsey. If Trudeau does make that decision and we see a liberal leadership race, who do you see as

00:11:07.180 some contenders in that possible race? Anita Anand, Melanie Jolie, François-Philippe Champagne,

00:11:16.320 Christian Freeland, maybe Mark Carney, maybe a Dominic LeBlanc, there's a number of people. The problem is

00:11:23.020 how wonderful, like again, in theory, if this actually does come to pass, the big gold medal that's on offer

00:11:30.660 for people, the carrot, if you will, is that they become prime minister for all of six minutes. So it's great, you get to be

00:11:35.700 prime minister in theory. But again, do you want to be the next Kim Campbell? Is it fun to be the next Kim Campbell?

00:11:40.620 Because I don't think we're so... Wayne Long, an incumbent Liberal MP from, I believe, New Brunswick

00:11:47.160 yesterday, gave an interview on CBC where he basically said, we're so far underwater at this point that we're even

00:11:54.300 beyond just saving the furniture. They're toast. And if they think they're going to be able to pull a last second

00:12:01.280 bait and switch and throw in somebody new and shiny and that Canadians are going to be, oh, well, you know, the Liberals are

00:12:06.900 pulling at 17% before Trudeau left, but now that they've got somebody new, maybe we'll... that's not

00:12:11.940 going to happen. So anybody who runs for that job at this point would be doing so with the full knowledge

00:12:18.680 that their time as prime minister was going to be extraordinarily short-lived. So it's also possible

00:12:23.420 that a lot of people keep their powder dry, wait for that absolutely catastrophic election result with

00:12:28.840 a massive conservative majority, and then decide to throw their name into the race to be a part of the

00:12:34.540 rebuilding of the party, if you will, following a poly at massive majority.

00:12:39.820 So yesterday, Trudeau said, you know, he told supporters at a fundraiser he's going to stay on,

00:12:43.960 but he's going to reflect about whether he should stay on long-term as leader. I want to ask you a

00:12:48.320 little bit about the Donald Trump effect here. A lot of people sort of hailing Donald Trump,

00:12:53.220 they're saying this is all happening because of Trump's threat of 25% tariffs on all Canadian goods

00:12:59.160 entering the U.S., and obviously Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland sparring on how to best deal

00:13:04.340 with that, eventually leading to Chrystia Freeland's exit. Do you attribute any of what's gone on in

00:13:09.880 the last 24 hours to the president-elect? I think he deserves... this is almost entirely

00:13:18.020 Trump's doing to some extent. I mean, obviously, Trudeau has been mistreating his cabinet ministers

00:13:22.760 and caucus members for a very long time, so he set the groundwork for this. But even if you read the

00:13:27.780 content of Ms. Freeland's letter, it's very clear that this was, in her mind, a very credible and

00:13:33.540 serious threat that needed to be taken with the utmost sincerity by the Canadian government. And

00:13:39.820 that's why she makes that reference to political gimmicks. You know, she's saying if we're going to

00:13:42.900 end up in a trade war with the Americans, we're going to have to have some fiscal firepower either

00:13:47.100 to put in place our own retaliatory tariffs, or if we need to provide subsidies for Canadian

00:13:52.000 businesses to remain in Canada, any of those fiscal levers need to be in order. And if you're doing

00:13:56.720 these random $250 check things that are basically designed to make the government, you know,

00:14:02.880 bribe people with their own money effectively, but significantly hamstring the government's

00:14:07.160 ability to spend money in more effective ways in this sort of trade war, it's done. So that sort of,

00:14:13.480 again, Mr. Trudeau probably was going to try to get rid of Ms. Freeland anyway, but I think this

00:14:18.440 provided an ideological aggravation for a number of people in the Liberal Party to say,

00:14:24.060 okay, man, this guy's just not serious. He wasn't serious in 2015. He wasn't serious in 2019. But

00:14:30.140 let's be frank, the risks to Canada, especially vis-a-vis the United States, were not as serious

00:14:35.780 as they are now. Now they are serious. And even liberals are saying we need somebody serious at

00:14:41.660 the helm that actually recognizes the severity of the situation that we face. And they don't think

00:14:47.140 that it's him anymore. Just super quickly, I want to touch on the by-election in BC. The

00:14:53.180 Conservatives flipped the Culverdale-Langley City by-election yesterday. It was the seat held by

00:14:58.800 the Liberals. The Conservatives won it. The unofficial results I'm looking at here show they won it with

00:15:02.940 about 66% of the vote. How does a government, how does Trudeau hang on with so much bad news?

00:15:10.560 So this is the thing. He has survived so many things that nobody else would have survived. But

00:15:16.720 I don't think he's going to be able to survive this one. Because there's just too much between

00:15:20.560 the now massive string of by-election losses, including in downtown Toronto, your own caucus

00:15:27.700 is turning on you, your deputy prime minister and most visible cabinet minister that you've been

00:15:33.240 parading around up until five days ago is this great champion, an example of a brilliant person

00:15:38.900 on the world stage, now publicly stabs you in the back. You've got Minister Fraser leaving as well,

00:15:45.120 who was supposed to be the wonder kid, high performer on housing. People are dumping ship.

00:15:49.220 They're abandoning ship left, right, and center. So there's just too many problems. If it was one

00:15:53.680 of these, if it was just Christian Freeland resigning, if it was just a couple of people

00:15:57.960 grumbling in caucus, if it was just one or two by-election losses, maybe he could weather the

00:16:03.280 storm. But now you've also got the Bloc Québécois and the NDP flexing their muscles. Pierre Paulyat had,

00:16:08.280 in my opinion, his best day ever in the House of Commons yesterday, pounding the drum, getting

00:16:12.820 ready, laying the groundwork for a future election campaign. It's just too much. You've got to ask

00:16:17.040 the question, why stick around? It's not getting better. It's been bad for two years. And that's

00:16:21.960 been the joke, right? It's like, okay, the Liberals are at 25%, 23%, 21%, 19%. The question,

00:16:28.600 how far are they going to drop? And can they continue to go worse? And the answer so far has been yes.

00:16:34.420 They haven't even bottomed out yet. So I don't really see how you survive in this particular

00:16:40.580 circumstance. Anthony, thanks so much for your time today.

00:16:43.620 No worries. Thanks.

00:16:45.180 That was Anthony Koch, the managing principal at AK Strategies, as well the former national

00:16:50.960 campaign spokesperson for Pierre Paulyat. Everyone, I just want to take a few minutes and discuss

00:16:56.640 an op-ed that I wrote back in 2022 for the Western Standard, the paper that I was working

00:17:03.040 at for the time. And the reason I want to discuss this, and I think some of you have probably seen

00:17:07.380 this circulating online in the last few days, or maybe you're like an OG Rachel fan. I was Rachel

00:17:14.940 Emanuel just a few years ago now, Rachel Parker, obviously. And you remember when this all went down,

00:17:20.120 as some of you have been commentating underneath this op-ed that I reshared saying that,

00:17:24.420 you remember when this first happened. But I actually have a sort of a colourful history

00:17:31.680 with Chrystia Ferland, if you will, and the fact that her office was actually the catalyst that led

00:17:36.800 me to exiting the mainstream media. Back in 2022, we're well into the COVID-19 pandemic. I had been

00:17:43.020 working for the mainstream media, iPolitics, which was a subsidiary of the Toronto Star, having a very

00:17:48.920 difficult time there, writing articles that I thought were important and relevant to Canadians

00:17:54.220 and that spoke up for the issues that mattered at the time, which was, and still remains to be to an

00:17:58.840 extent, civil liberties. And I had, you know, been frequently, I would argue with my editors late

00:18:04.680 into the night discussing the specific awarding, discussing whether certain stories were even valid

00:18:09.440 to be written about. And the relationship had grown very difficult.

00:18:13.300 But I had always been so determined to work in the mainstream press because I felt like my voice

00:18:19.800 and the voice of the conservatives wasn't really reflected in the press. I think when you look at

00:18:25.320 the mainstream media, if you follow a certain reporter, you can typically say, you know, they seem

00:18:30.460 to lean a little bit to the left, they seem to lean a little bit to the right. And, you know, up and

00:18:35.560 coming and paying attention to journalists, I just, to journalism, I just felt like you really didn't see

00:18:39.820 many voices that seem to lean to the right. And so I thought, you know, I want to, I want to work in

00:18:45.360 the mainstream press. And I want to be that voice that, you know, does represent people on the right.

00:18:49.840 And I quickly realized, you know, why those voices are not in the mainstream press in Canada. It's

00:18:56.000 because of the institution as a whole just doesn't allow them to exist. You will have roadblocks at every

00:19:01.360 opportunity when you try to present the voice of Canadian conservatives who are not heard. And so

00:19:07.640 that sort of led to me exiting the mainstream press in Canada, because I realized that I just was not

00:19:14.300 able to follow my conscience in doing that job. And the relationship came too, too difficult. But the sort of

00:19:20.520 the nail in the coffin was, I had written an article about Chrystia Freeland, and her office had called up my

00:19:26.740 editor, and pressured my editor to change the story. And my editor obliged, they gave me a call, they gave me a

00:19:34.640 hard time about my story, which I had done lots of due diligence on, it had gone through the typical

00:19:38.300 editing process, and my company. And it wasn't until Chrystia Freeland's office called my editor,

00:19:43.600 and my editor actually went in and changed the story without running any of the changes by me,

00:19:48.020 changed the story. And I went back online, and the article had been had been changed. And it's

00:19:53.300 totally inappropriate for an editor to publish words under your name that you did not write. A proper media

00:20:00.160 outlet would never allow such a thing. For example, when I worked at the Globe and Mail,

00:20:02.980 every single change that was made to your article, you had to approve so that editors were not

00:20:09.060 accidentally editing mistakes into it. And so that certainly you as a reporter knew what was being

00:20:13.840 published under your name. So that was sort of the catalyst that led to me leaving the mainstream media.

00:20:19.580 And it was a really difficult thing for me to do at the time. And I remember having a lot of anxiety

00:20:25.220 about it, especially when my op-ed was published. But, you know, obviously, things have worked out for me.

00:20:30.400 Someone commented when I shared this yesterday, and they said, oh, now iPolitics is waiting for

00:20:35.060 the Pierre Polyev government to strip away their subsidies, and you are interviewing the premier,

00:20:41.260 which is true. So I'm just going to read a little bit from this column now. You guys can find the full

00:20:45.060 version online. I've yet to speak publicly about the events that led to my sudden departure from

00:20:50.160 iPolitics after an editor altered my article following pressure from Deputy Prime Minister

00:20:54.940 Christy Freeland's office. For the record, Freeland was photographed holding a banner that had links

00:20:59.720 to Stefan Bandera, the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, whose followers acted as

00:21:05.820 local militia members for the SS and the regular German army. And his branding has since been

00:21:10.700 repurposed by neo-Nazis. But after reading the article in its current form, post-Freeland pressure,

00:21:16.520 you'd think the Deputy Prime Minister was pictured near a scarf, but coincidentally shared the red and black

00:21:21.500 colors that have, at times, been associated with Bandera. Never mind the photo evidence of her

00:21:27.120 holding the banner, which is emblazoned with Bandera's colors and slogan. And maybe Freeland

00:21:32.260 didn't see what she was holding, or she didn't know its muddled history. But the hypocrisy of a

00:21:37.180 federal politician refusing to own her mistake, just weeks after condemning conservatives for attending

00:21:42.800 the trucker's convoy, or an unidentified man carried a Nazi flag, seemed at least noteworthy.

00:21:48.460 This wasn't the first time I'd received pushback for my work from within my editorial team,

00:21:53.780 or the first time changes were made to words published under my name that I did not agree

00:21:57.500 with or even have prior knowledge of. It also wasn't the reason I left the mainstream media.

00:22:02.720 Rather, the uncomfortable Freeland incident only solidified my decision to find employment

00:22:06.800 somewhere I could follow my conscience. As a legacy mainstream media reporter, I thought I could

00:22:12.200 give a voice to those not currently represented, but it quickly became clear that structures exist to

00:22:16.960 keep those voices, shall we call them unacceptable, out of sight, or at least portrayed in a manner

00:22:22.620 that left me deeply uncomfortable. And it goes on. And you can hear a little bit about why I decided

00:22:28.160 to leave the legacy media to work for independent media. And, you know, as I said at the time,

00:22:33.820 that decision, I had a great deal of anxiety about it. I also had a great deal of anxiety publishing

00:22:39.640 this column because I tend to be a more private person. And this felt like something very personal.

00:22:45.700 And I think that it's all worked out in the end. So if you're going through hardships yourself at home

00:22:50.080 right now, know that God has a plan for you and that, you know, sometimes going through difficult

00:22:54.980 things can really be the best for us because it molds us and shapes us as people. I want to respond

00:23:01.340 to some of your comments now in the weekly comment roundup. And I also wanted to flag for you guys,

00:23:04.880 just in case that some of you missed it, that I did interview Alberta Premier Danielle Smith over

00:23:09.380 the weekend. I promised you, promised you all when I passed off the Alberta roundup to Isaac,

00:23:14.100 that I would continue doing a lot of Alberta coverage. I think that I've held up to my end

00:23:18.460 of the bargain. You can go get my full exclusive interview with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith

00:23:22.900 on True North on our website and our YouTube page. So definitely want to watch that. I think it

00:23:27.420 was a really great conversation, a lot of positive feedback. Actually, just going to play this clip

00:23:31.780 for you guys here. I asked the Premier what she thinks about the government using the propaganda

00:23:37.460 of saying that we're going to steal Canadians hunting tools and firearms to send them to Ukraine

00:23:42.820 to help in the fight against Putin. Here's what the Premier had to say about it.

00:23:46.880 When I saw those tweets, I thought this must be fake news. Somebody must be making up some ridiculous

00:23:54.340 tweet to put that out there. And then sure enough, it turned out to be true. I think that probably some of the

00:24:00.180 the commentary where they said, well, if it does happen and Ukrainians open up the craze, all they're 0.99

00:24:04.500 going to see is a bunch of hunting rifles. Like that is not, they're trying to mischaracterize

00:24:10.660 what these firearms are. And that's the thing I find frustrating. I also find it frustrating that they

00:24:16.580 keep doing these things at a time that we are trying to have a new relationship with the American

00:24:21.460 administration, which is Republican, which is far more supportive of the rights of law-abiding firearms

00:24:28.100 owners. So it's almost like the federal government is trying to antagonize on this issue. And I don't

00:24:33.860 understand it. But my position is the same today as it was when the first gun grab was announced,

00:24:39.860 that they, I believe, have now spent $70 million and they haven't confiscated a single gun. And I

00:24:46.260 hope that continues. I hope they do not confiscate a single gun because we believe that the real issue

00:24:52.820 that we have is the cross-border legal trade and guns ending up in the hands of gangs and organized

00:24:59.140 crime. That's what we should be going after. And that's what we announced in our border announcement.

00:25:03.940 We're going to go after the criminal use of firearms. We're not going to go after law-abiding gun owners.

00:25:09.780 Okay. So you'll definitely want to go and check out that full episode. It's not too long,

00:25:13.300 about 15 minutes. It was actually funny when I showed up to the McDougal Centre in Calgary on Thursday,

00:25:18.340 like everyone in the Alberta Press Gallery was there. I guess the premier was doing her year-end

00:25:22.020 interviews. So everyone had sort of like back-to-back slots with her. I think she was

00:25:26.020 doing about 10 interviews that day. Western Standard was there. Rebel News was there.

00:25:29.780 CBC was there. So hopefully I had some interesting questions that you guys won't hear elsewhere on the

00:25:36.340 other outlets. I feel actually quite confident that I did. Just a few comments here. This one's from

00:25:41.060 user at Tanya said, I have so much respect for Danielle. Glad she is our premier. 0.81

00:25:45.940 The seventh pilot said, True North is really getting to have a great voice and hats off to you.

00:25:50.900 User Skill Gap Trainer said, thanks for doing bold things. That was in reference to something the

00:25:55.780 premier says in the interview. User Mike McCluskey said, I loved this interview. It gave me goosebumps.

00:26:02.820 I pray Danielle and Pierre take the lead in Canada and teach other premiers how to govern.

00:26:08.900 All right. So some really great feedback from the episode. You guys know, I always love to hear

00:26:13.460 your thoughts on my content. So definitely go give that a check and let me know what you think of

00:26:18.980 the interview and the questions. Sometimes you guys give suggested questions for future,

00:26:23.380 for future interviews. I always appreciate those and take them into consideration as well.

00:26:27.380 And then for today, please post in the comments below what you think about Anthony's prediction.

00:26:31.940 Do you think that Trudeau will step down and that we will see a liberal leadership race

00:26:37.780 in late January, early February, or do you think that he is going to hold onto power to the bitter

00:26:43.780 end? All right, everyone, that's all we have time for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. I will

00:26:48.100 see you guys tomorrow with more content on the Rachel and the Republic, and we'll be back next week with

00:26:53.860 another episode of The Rachel Parker Show. I hope you guys have a great week. God bless.

Juno News - December 17, 2024

Trudeau could be GONE in a month

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