Juno News - Trudeau is campaigning while inflation hits another record high

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

00:00:05.220 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:13.500 Hello everyone and welcome to you all.

00:00:16.520 This is Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, the Andrew Lawton Show on True North.

00:00:20.920 Wednesday, July 20th, 2022, just after 1 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

00:00:28.140 not Eastern daily time. This is what happens when I go earlier than I'm used to. I haven't had my

00:00:32.460 third or fourth coffee of the day yet. We are doing a bit of an earlier show than usual for

00:00:37.960 our live programs. And that's because I have to immediately when I'm done, like just rush out the

00:00:43.700 door of my studio in cartoon character-like fashion, get in my car and take a toodle down

00:00:48.880 the 401 for an interview that I'm doing that I will be able to share with you in the next couple

00:00:53.600 of days. So it'll all be worth it then, but that's why we're doing things at a bit of a different

00:00:57.240 time. But if you are not watching this live, if you're watching on a repeat or you're listening

00:01:03.040 to the podcast, you're wondering why I've wasted three minutes of your time when the time of day

00:01:07.320 doesn't actually matter to you. So we will move on from there. Roman Babber, the conservative

00:01:12.560 leadership candidate, is going to be popping by in about 15 minutes time to talk about his new

00:01:16.920 platform, which has just been unveiled this morning. We are also going to be speaking later

00:01:23.000 on in the program very briefly about indigo books and this little controversy that emerged online

00:01:29.560 of indigo deciding it was not going to carry my book the freedom convoy the inside story

00:01:36.040 of three weeks that shook the world on shelf so i'll actually haven't responded to this yet so

00:01:40.600 i'll give a bit of a response in a little bit's time but i i want to start off by talking about

00:01:46.200 the big inflation story here and you'll have to excuse me i i'm just uh moving my other computer

00:01:51.160 There we go. I was on the wrong tab, and I couldn't actually see anything that my producer was telling me, which this whole thing just all falls to you-know-what if I don't actually listen to the producer.

00:02:01.840 But the inflation numbers this morning, not particularly surprising, but it's always good to be able to quantify these things.

00:02:08.740 We have an 8.1% increase in inflation across the board.

00:02:13.980 This is a 39-year high, so it's been nearly four decades since the cost of goods has shot

00:02:20.280 up annually year over year, so month over month, year to year rather, as much as it

00:02:25.440 has here.

00:02:25.840 Now, these come from the latest Statistics Canada data, which show that gasoline was

00:02:30.040 the biggest contributing factor, not actually food.

00:02:32.880 The grocery store thing hasn't been as bad this month, but gasoline has been the contributor.

00:02:37.680 Now, this is significant because gasoline is one of the few areas where government is

00:02:43.700 directly, directly driving up the costs through the carbon tax. Remember, the government has put

00:02:49.820 up the price of gasoline, home heating, other things as well, consistently and continuously,

00:02:55.440 including as recently as April. So we're now in July, three months after that latest gas tax

00:03:01.760 increase. And the federal government has been unrepentant on this. They've been completely fine

00:03:07.360 with the idea of charging consumers more for gasoline.

00:03:11.440 And when gasoline prices are going up,

00:03:14.640 everything else goes up

00:03:16.100 because it means that anything that you want shipped

00:03:18.900 has to have gotten there by gasoline or diesel,

00:03:22.040 but you know what I mean, the costs are the same.

00:03:24.200 And when you look at the broader implications of this,

00:03:27.340 anytime you wanna go somewhere,

00:03:29.120 your family vacation's more expensive.

00:03:30.820 If you want to take a plane somewhere, heaven forbid,

00:03:33.880 that's gonna cost more.

00:03:35.060 So the airlines have to pass that along.

00:03:36.680 and you know things like it was funny someone mentioned to me the other day that they were

00:03:40.440 really bored and they used to when they were bored just get in the car and go for a drive

00:03:44.680 and this person said to me that they can't even afford to just go for an aimless drive around

00:03:50.760 anymore or they can't justify doing it because of the cost of gasoline and that was actually

00:03:57.260 quite a sobering statement for someone to say that you know even just something they could do

00:04:02.820 to clear their head, just get in the car and go, is now something that has to be a cost-based

00:04:07.760 calculation. So that is the, I think, big question here that all of us are going to have to contend

00:04:14.580 with. And I don't know the answer to it. I truly don't. Because right now you've got a government

00:04:19.620 that just doesn't care. A government that absolutely, absolutely does not care. A government

00:04:25.780 that's going to continue to be more and more punitive, put more costs on consumers. And a

00:04:30.340 government that is not interested in doing anything right now other than campaigning

00:04:35.580 Justin Trudeau is in campaign mode he's been he's got that I don't know if you can see there

00:04:40.240 he's got the new haircut that I think the best meme explanation I saw is that maybe he accidentally

00:04:46.200 froze his barber's bank account and this is his barber's grand revenge but you've got a prime

00:04:52.000 minister that right now is doing the summer campaign thing now this is actually stoking

00:04:55.800 fear, stoking fear that we are going to be headed into a fall election. Now, I think this rumor

00:05:02.420 first emerged in an article in the Hill Times that came about by, you know, citing quote-unquote

00:05:08.500 insiders. This would be about a year after the last election we had in September. And to be fair,

00:05:15.000 let me say I don't believe we are headed towards an election. I really don't. I don't believe we're

00:05:19.320 headed towards an election. I believe it's possible. I don't think it's probable. But what

00:05:25.220 I find interesting is the Conservatives taking this position now they deleted the tweet but I

00:05:30.500 want you to see what they had up there at first because the Conservative Party of Canada tweeted

00:05:34.900 basically its claim that it doesn't want an election they say that you know Justin Trudeau

00:05:39.960 should be focused on helping Canadians Canadians don't want to fall election if you're the official

00:05:46.440 opposition if you're the party whose job it is to call out the government it's not exactly a

00:05:54.800 convincing or compelling message to say, we think that the Liberals are doing a bang-up job right

00:06:00.320 now. The Liberals should continue being in government. The Liberals should continue running

00:06:04.160 things. We don't think Canadians should have to vote them out, or we don't think Canadians will

00:06:09.100 vote them out. We don't think Canadians are actually going to choose us over them. So I think

00:06:12.900 that might be why they ended up deleting that tweet, because they realized that it was undermining

00:06:16.840 their own confidence in themselves when they share that. But I'm looking right now at the

00:06:23.640 inflation numbers alone, the cost of living is going to get worse. It's going to continue to

00:06:29.300 get worse. People are going to start hurting more and more. The finances of individual consumers of

00:06:34.420 businesses are going to be continuing to drive down. And what's going to happen is if the liberals

00:06:41.640 wait till 2025 or 2023, then what's happening is we are going to see a huge, huge problem

00:06:51.880 for the liberals, because you can't win an election in a recession. You can't win an election

00:06:58.040 if people are truly hurting even more than they are now. So one Politico I was talking to had

00:07:04.940 suggested that maybe the case for Justin Trudeau is to just slip an election in under the radar

00:07:10.200 now, just slip it in. And by doing so, they managed to get reelected and renew the term,

00:07:15.520 get another four years in power before things get really bad, before things get really bad,

00:07:21.520 before it becomes so untenable that no government could expect to be reelected. That would be the

00:07:25.920 theory, I think, if Justin Trudeau decides to proceed right now with an election. So when we

00:07:33.680 see this, I mean, the inflation problem, and I've been talking about this deliberately in my

00:07:38.860 interviews with conservative leadership candidates, because the inflation problem is one that we

00:07:43.920 shouldn't need these statistics to tell us about. It's one that people see when they're filling up

00:07:49.920 their gas tank it's one that people see when they're out the grocery store it's one that

00:07:53.280 people see and people were seeing before politicians even recognized it back when

00:07:58.080 tiff macklem and the bank of canada were all saying ah this is just transitory it's just

00:08:02.880 gonna it's a little thing it'll pop up you'll hardly notice it before long and canadians were

00:08:07.200 struggling canadians are struggling i mean even over the last five six years you'd always see

00:08:11.840 those stories every now and then where someone says or a study reveals that whatever percentage

00:08:18.160 of Canadians are less than $200 away from insolvency in any given month. And these things

00:08:23.800 are gut-wrenching because people are already strained. People don't have a buffer. And even

00:08:27.980 before we had these record inflation levels, people were already hurting to such an extent

00:08:33.440 that all it would take is one car repair, one dental emergency, and they cannot afford to meet

00:08:38.680 their bills. They're going into debt, which as we know, balloons and compounds over time.

00:08:42.740 so this is not something that can be taken lightly and you can talk about the fact this is a global

00:08:48.940 issue the uk i mean we're at 8.1 the uk's numbers had them i think it was at 9.4 this week so other

00:08:56.760 countries are dealing with this but i i don't think you should allow any government leader to

00:09:01.000 look at this situation and look around the world and say ah but it's an everywhere thing it's not

00:09:05.180 our problem because what governments can do is avoid putting more burdens on consumers the

00:09:11.500 Canadian government can say, all right, well, maybe we can't control some of these things,

00:09:16.020 but what we can control is the carbon tax. If you're paying $1.78 a litre, we can at least say

00:09:21.540 we're not going to add the four, five, six cents to get to that point, which is the problem they

00:09:27.240 have now. So it's despicable to me that we have Canadians in worse and worse position right now

00:09:35.720 economically and Justin I don't think about monetary policy Trudeau is still making it worse

00:09:41.960 not just by inaction but specific concrete actions that drive up the cost of living because when you

00:09:47.440 drive up the cost of fuel you've driven up the cost of everything and at a certain point this

00:09:51.680 is going to be driving more Canadians and more Canadian businesses into insolvency. Before we

00:09:57.340 bring in Roman Babber to this discussion the conservative leadership candidate I want to

00:10:02.260 talk about this story that came out yesterday, which I didn't even know, by the way, legitimately,

00:10:06.660 I did not even know this was a thing until the story came out. So Indigo, which is Canada's

00:10:12.660 largest book retailer slash sex toy emporium, for reasons unclear, has decided for whatever reason,

00:10:20.460 it is not going to carry my book on its store shelves. So my book, which I've been, you've been

00:10:26.020 very patient to put up with it over my shoulder there, The Freedom Convoy, The Inside Story of

00:10:30.660 three weeks that shook the world.

00:10:31.820 It's a piece of journalism that goes behind the scenes of the convoy

00:10:35.800 and talks to some of the key organizers and players and participants

00:10:39.500 and does it in a way that actually brings new information up.

00:10:42.820 So I'm very proud of this book.

00:10:44.500 I wrote it in a very short time frame, but it's been a tremendous success,

00:10:48.060 which I'm so grateful for.

00:10:49.800 We were number one in the Globe and Mail bestsellers list.

00:10:52.720 We are number one on the Toronto Star bestsellers list at last look.

00:10:56.720 And let me just look right now to give you the most up to date information

00:11:00.660 it is number three overall on amazon so it's number one in politics but number three overall

00:11:06.420 behind where the crawdads sing by delia owens and it's unfortunate i was thinking of putting

00:11:12.340 a crawdad in my book so we might have been number one and number two is a chiclet book called the

00:11:18.020 summer i turned pretty and i assure you i have not turned pretty in any summer so that was not a book

00:11:23.060 i was able to beat but we're number three overall on amazon and so it's not like this is just some

00:11:28.340 thing that I self-published that I just shoved out the door. It's actually moving copies. People

00:11:33.340 are interested in it. I've heard from audience members that have said they have got copies and

00:11:38.200 they've got them on the way. And I'm very, again, truly, truly grateful for this. So I don't take

00:11:43.800 an entitlement approach here. I don't think Indigo has a requirement to carry my book. It's

00:11:48.700 a private company. It can do whatever it wants. Heather Reisman, I've met, she can do what she

00:11:53.420 wants. But I find it confusing. I find it confusing given books they sell of a range of

00:12:00.660 topics, given all the dildos and vibrators and notebooks and pillows and coffee mugs they sell.

00:12:05.620 Like it still is ostensibly a bookstore. They still have a book section there. And I think like

00:12:10.480 half of their business is books. So it's always disappointing actually, because I grew up going

00:12:14.940 to chapters and buying books from chapters and I always loved it there. So it's disappointing the

00:12:19.620 store doesn't believe that my book is worthy of being on its hallowed shelves or whatever the

00:12:24.760 case is. But The National posted a story about this. And interestingly enough, like all yesterday

00:12:30.400 afternoon and evening, Boycott Indigo was trending on Twitter. And I found this fascinating. Now,

00:12:36.980 I have not encouraged any boycott. Like I said, my whole thing is I just want to be able to tell

00:12:41.340 people who are interested in getting the book where they can get it from. So right now, I've

00:12:46.080 been encouraging people to check out Amazon. I've been encouraging people to go directly to the

00:12:50.860 publisher's website, which is Sutherland House Books, or to call up your local bookstore and

00:12:55.760 see if they carry it, even if Chapters and Indigo and Kohl's are not. But all of this, I find just

00:13:02.480 so baffling. And people are so distrustful of corporations that decide, especially in this era

00:13:08.500 of wokeness, corporations that decide to make these political values judgments that really don't make

00:13:14.500 sense because I would never judge Indigo for having some anti-convoy book written by some

00:13:20.680 CBC reporter. I'd be like, okay, whatever. It's a bookstore. The whole point of a bookstore is

00:13:24.660 that it's your gateway to learning, not just to learning about specific stories, but learning

00:13:29.100 about different viewpoints and different perspectives. And I think that's been like

00:13:33.480 a library. I mean, one of the most tremendous things of literature is that I do not extrapolate

00:13:39.300 from any book on a bookstore shelf the values or views of the bookstore itself. But once you start

00:13:46.500 curating, once you get involved and say, you know, I'm a little bit more of an active participant

00:13:51.040 than just a platform, then all of a sudden everyone expects that of you. Because now that

00:13:57.320 Indigo has basically admitted that, you know, we pick and choose based on things that aren't

00:14:01.520 business decisions, what books to carry. Anytime they carry something now that the woke mob doesn't

00:14:07.260 like, they're going to get that mob jumping down them just to demand that they get rid

00:14:12.320 of it.

00:14:13.340 And they've now surrendered their ability to fall behind what I think is a very defensible

00:14:17.500 position, which is just saying, you know what, we just have everything.

00:14:20.980 We have all books of all stripes and all persuasion.

00:14:23.340 So it's fascinating to me that this book can be a number one bestseller on the two most

00:14:30.460 authoritative bestsellers lists in the country, the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star bestsellers

00:14:34.780 list, but Canada's bookstore

00:14:36.620 chain of record won't want to put it on

00:14:38.740 their shelves. And by the way, I've not

00:14:40.660 fielded any interview requests from

00:14:42.680 CBC or Toronto Star or the

00:14:44.600 Globe and Mail or anything like that. I'd happily

00:14:46.840 speak about this. And I know

00:14:48.680 this sounds very self-aggrandizing

00:14:50.840 and self-promoting. It isn't that

00:14:52.700 at all. I told this story

00:14:54.700 because I thought the story needed to be told

00:14:56.600 and I'm more bothered that

00:14:58.720 they don't seem to think this story

00:15:00.680 has a place. So that line

00:15:02.640 that Indigo gave in that National Post

00:15:04.780 article is that you know they make their decisions based on a deep knowledge of the indigo customer

00:15:09.580 so what they're saying is uh you know we don't believe these convoy books are exactly our type

00:15:14.060 of people that that's basically what they're saying that the people that would read a convoy book

00:15:18.220 are not the kind that would shop at indigo and well certainly not now in any case i want to move

00:15:23.820 away from me there to roman babber who we've spoken to on the show a number of times including

00:15:29.260 our in-depth conservative leadership series interview with him a few weeks back and he has

00:15:34.360 now unveiled his platform in the conservative leadership race and he joins me live on the

00:15:40.020 program now i should say briefly though on the indigo thing you are the only leadership candidate

00:15:44.740 roman to have come to my defense on this uh you tweeted yesterday at heather riesman which i

00:15:49.380 thought was very kind of you so thank you and good to talk to you again did i miss your segment

00:15:53.980 about the mainstream media and the treatment that conservative leading canadians received from the

00:15:58.920 mainstream media am i late for that well it's an evergreen segment so we can certainly go down that

00:16:03.420 road if you'd like yeah because you you've gone through this yourself i mean throughout the whole

00:16:06.840 covid issue where you know you as someone standing up for these things like freedom which shouldn't

00:16:11.680 exactly be marginal views are treated as marginalized by the media look uh it's it's

00:16:19.100 regretful one of the i i consistently say that we can't restore democracy in canada and i'm of the

00:16:26.040 view that Canada's democracy is being eroded without free and independent media and I think

00:16:31.380 that we have a component of not just the media being ideologically driven in that it sees itself

00:16:37.080 I guess a player a stakeholder that that wants to move events and world history instead of being

00:16:43.220 an independent observer that that scores history I I think that it's it's lack of media independence

00:16:51.320 that is driving a lot of what we're seeing and certainly a lot of the treatment that myself and

00:16:55.560 some of my friends in this race are receiving um how can media be independent when the government

00:17:01.780 signs its paycheck and i i don't think it can be um and and that's why i'm very committed to ending

00:17:08.400 all financial ties between government and media uh with respect to to your book you know i i did

00:17:14.660 tweet yesterday saying um it's it's ironic because for all that the media tried to do to demonize

00:17:21.780 this movement on February 18th, we saw as the government was breaking the rule of law with an

00:17:29.340 unlawful declaration of emergencies, the protesters remained peaceful, right? Everything that Justin

00:17:35.540 Trudeau and the media tried to say about this movement proven to be false. This is a movement

00:17:40.900 that galvanized a nation. It set a message around the world. It enabled about a third, maybe close

00:17:48.280 to 45% of Canadians to finally express themselves on the issue of mandates. It was very, very popular

00:17:52.980 around the country. At the very least, you might disagree with the movement, but Indigo should

00:17:57.080 certainly provide us some shell space. A lot of Canadians take interest in it.

00:18:01.440 Well, that's very kind of you, Roman. I want to talk to you about your platform though today,

00:18:05.940 because you came out with a commitment to Canada here. And I mean, the four key planks and what we

00:18:10.700 can drill into them in a bit more detail here, defend Canada's democracy, restore Canadian

00:18:15.820 opportunity make canada a natural resources superpower and reinstate trust in government

00:18:22.220 let's start in on trust in government because i think trust in institutions in general is right

00:18:27.100 now under threat whether it's the media as we've been talking about or government but

00:18:31.420 how do you do that because i mean i think the convoy was a reflection of

00:18:35.420 how much distrust there is and i'd say a lot of that for good reason towards

00:18:39.580 government i mean this is not something you can rebuild overnight

00:18:42.540 absolutely look canadians and and that includes conservatives are experiencing a deficit a material

00:18:51.420 deficit of trust in government and it starts with our conservative party i'm of the view that the

00:18:57.020 conservative party did not stand up for canadians in the last couple years against our cancer

00:19:00.940 screenings against their surgeries being delayed against the mental health pandemic that's been

00:19:05.420 perpetuated in us so first as a party we have to ensure canadians that we're going to say what we

00:19:11.900 believe and do what we believe is right even when it's unpopular i think that many canadians

00:19:16.300 legitimately have questions about the handling of the covet 19 pandemic uh some of the uh

00:19:22.460 money that that seems to be unaccounted for some of the decisions that were made was there any

00:19:27.020 self-dealing was any of it politically motivated so i will propose a judicial inquiry into the

00:19:32.460 handling of the covet 19 pandemic with no stone unturned i also uh think that a lot of folks

00:19:38.620 rightfully believe that lobbyists have a very big role in how governments are run and i would

00:19:45.500 propose to look at the lobbying act uh and and for our friends in the west that propose to

00:19:50.700 propose to look at the representation formula i don't think it's right that you have some

00:19:55.020 electoral districts in edmonton and calgary with 150 000 people and in other places around the

00:19:59.420 country with 30 70 000 and finally most importantly we've got to restore the rule of law

00:20:03.740 back to the government in Ottawa, something that is desperately lacking.

00:20:09.340 We've seen Justin Trudeau. I mean, one of the most, the old line in news is that, you know,

00:20:15.100 when a dog bites a man, that's not news. When a man bites a dog, that's news. Justin Trudeau

00:20:20.100 getting strung up on ethics violations is now dog bites man. Like it's happened so often,

00:20:25.740 it's barely news now. But I think the real story of all of these has been that whenever it's

00:20:30.680 happened. The punishment, if you can even call it that, is virtually non-existent. There'll be

00:20:34.680 an admonishment from the ethics commissioner, maybe a $500 fine. Would one of your reforms to

00:20:40.960 restore trust involve actually putting real penalties behind members of parliament and

00:20:47.060 the prime minister, cabinet ministers that violate ethics laws?

00:20:51.760 Got to be thoughtful as you propose that because you have to look at intent.

00:20:56.200 if you're going to and this is me not not having thought about this enough just just thinking in

00:21:04.040 in terms of my past life as a lawyer if you're going to impose very strict penalties you got

00:21:09.560 to look at intent and that means that you also have to enable the ethics commissioner to do a

00:21:15.720 very thorough investigation with subpoena powers and so on and so forth and of course then you have

00:21:19.860 due process but what what i'm talking about beyond the ethics violations is that we're seeing now

00:21:26.900 this cooperation between government agencies and government that that makes me very nervous in

00:21:32.820 particular commissioner lucky the the top the top police officer in the country sought to influence

00:21:39.860 the conduct of an of a very serious investigation is one of the greatest you know tragedies uh

00:21:46.900 in our nation's history and and she sought to do the the prime minister a favor and and when

00:21:53.460 the police is doing the political class a favor we're one step away if not already a banana republic

00:22:00.020 and and and this is something that i'm going to look at very very carefully at delineating the

00:22:04.100 lines the appropriate lines between law enforcement and government we've got to start with that

00:22:09.700 and and of course uh you know when you have crown ministers misrepresenting evidence on which they

00:22:16.660 They have invoked the Emergencies Act, the successor of the measure, Orzac.

00:22:22.940 That is something that I don't think you can put back in the bag.

00:22:27.820 I propose that we need to have a serious look at this and ministers need to be held accountable.

00:22:33.560 Now, when you say held accountable, what do you mean?

00:22:35.800 Do you mean voted out of office?

00:22:37.000 Are you talking about some form of a sanction or are you suggesting that crime laws have actually been broken here?

00:22:42.940 i'm not going to allege that marco mendocino broke the law what is clear is that he he did tell a

00:22:51.020 parliamentary committee that there was advice given by law enforcement that um the government

00:22:57.780 should invoke the war measures act uh sorry the emergencies act in order to deal with the

00:23:02.540 protesters and clearly that um at least my understanding in the media did not uh turn out

00:23:08.680 be true and in fact all three agencies ottawa the opp and the rcmp denied that uh at the very least

00:23:15.720 we'd like to see what's called ministerial accountability whereby the prime minister

00:23:19.880 would remove the minister or the minister would voluntarily resign it's just that regretfully

00:23:25.160 decency has left parliament in our political system and beyond that when when it came to

00:23:30.280 ministerial accountability then the last line of defense uh of um ministerial accountability would

00:23:37.320 be the news media that would continue to hammer and hold the minister responsible but that is not

00:23:41.720 happening regretfully so um i'm of the view that uh of course there should be ministerial

00:23:47.640 accountability but if there isn't uh our opportunity to hold them accountable is on

00:23:52.600 elections day something that the conservative party seemed to be unable to do because we just

00:23:56.600 failed to unite in spite of ourselves i was mentioning just before you joined the program

00:24:01.960 there was a tweet from the Conservative Party of Canada just the other day about effectively saying

00:24:07.620 we don't want an election. I think we can even put it up on the screen there. It was,

00:24:11.060 the Trudeau Liberals should be focused on helping Canadians. Canadians don't want a fall election.

00:24:16.080 Now, when I saw that tweet, I mean, my view is that Canadians may not want a fall election,

00:24:20.540 but it's incumbent upon the opposition to oppose. And I think it was very odd messaging, in fact,

00:24:26.260 that, you know, on one hand to say the Liberals are doing such a terrible job, but on the other

00:24:29.520 hand Canadians shouldn't have the opportunity to get rid of them what was

00:24:32.700 your view on on that and in general the idea of you know going into a potential

00:24:37.140 fall election if you were the conservative leader come September I

00:24:40.500 quote tweeted that tweet and I said what no we can't afford another day of Justin

00:24:47.340 Trudeau in office let's get this leadership done and go forward with the

00:24:51.480 full election I'm ready Andrew and I think that our party I expect our party

00:24:58.020 unite very very quickly after the leadership election we cannot afford another day of this

00:25:03.140 government and and the democratic erosion that we're seeing economic opportunity being eroded

00:25:09.220 of course we're potentially looking at a record 40 year high in inflation life in canada is

00:25:14.980 becoming unaffordable i propose that we move as quickly as possible if justin trudeau wants to

00:25:21.380 ask canadians for another mandate or to give us an opportunity to ask for a mandate bring it on

00:25:26.820 as quickly as we can. That's my view. Your plan right now for the leadership, I'll take a step

00:25:33.000 back here. One of the big frustrations we saw in 2020 is that Aaron O'Toole ran on this really

00:25:38.560 red meat, true blue conservative leadership platform, which then was watered down considerably

00:25:44.500 in 2021 when he sought the general election votes. A similar thing happened with Andrew Scheer in

00:25:50.040 2017. We saw a lot of things in the leadership that didn't really translate to the election.

00:25:54.640 I mean, the one thing, if we did have a fall election, you wouldn't really have time to do much backtracking.

00:26:00.040 Not that that would be what you'd want to do anyway.

00:26:02.080 But are you prepared to stand on every policy that you're putting forward in your platform here in the leadership race in a general election as well?

00:26:11.040 A hundred percent. Andrew, I will not say anything to you that I will not repeat in the mainstream media, be it in the leadership or be it in the general election.

00:26:18.240 That is precisely what I think harms us during every election.

00:26:23.840 and after every leadership we have this tendency where the leader runs to the right during the

00:26:28.480 leadership and then pivots to the center in which case the the conservative party faithful think

00:26:32.480 that he misrepresented herself or himself and and the liberals are laughing at us for for being

00:26:37.600 wafflers and flip-floppers no we cannot afford that to happen and and one area where i particularly

00:26:43.280 look forward other than of course canada's democracy uh passports and mandates something

00:26:47.840 that i'll make a thing of the past i'll amend the canada health act to make sure that we don't

00:26:52.240 discriminate against anyone ever again because of their medical choice uh and and of course beyond

00:26:57.520 my commitment to restore freedom of speech i am very very bullish on canada's natural resources

00:27:03.920 and i would propose to make canada natural resources superpower and that means that we

00:27:08.800 cannot be afraid to take our keys to canadians during the general election and say that we

00:27:13.440 oppose the carbon tax i do not believe in all honesty the taxing sally 10 bucks at the pump

00:27:19.920 is going to change the global climate i don't think that many people believe that i don't think

00:27:24.320 that many european countries remain committed to the paris accord which of course misses the point

00:27:28.960 because it doesn't touch the world's biggest polluters and so i think it's it's against

00:27:32.720 canada's national interest and i'll pull this out of the paris accord i'm i think that um our

00:27:38.400 natural resources are a blessing i'm not going to let oil and gas be cancelled we need to rethink

00:27:44.640 and and legislate and negotiate the construction of all three major pipelines i think our our

00:27:49.200 friends to the south might be ready for an excel keystone given how upset americans are at gas

00:27:54.560 prices we need to clarify the duty to consult and rebalance some uh timelines we need to encourage

00:28:00.320 refinery capacity mining we need to do it all uh that's the only way we're going to climb out of

00:28:04.800 the fiscal hole uh that we're in and and i look forward to taking this case directly to canadians

00:28:10.480 i think the tide on unnatural resources uh is is changing our way when you talk about the refining

00:28:17.600 capacity this is not something we hear a lot of in canada in fact a lot of people just insist that

00:28:22.480 we don't need to increase refining capacity which i i don't buy into but what would you do when you

00:28:27.280 say encourage is it just saying as a potential prime minister yes we need to do this are you

00:28:31.920 talking about uh you know tax credits to companies what does that actual process look like to you

00:28:37.680 you've got to simplify the regulatory regime that's number one number two you need to create

00:28:43.920 a culture whereby uh capital and investment is not worried about the regulatory uncertainty or

00:28:50.880 the political uncertainty that would ensue in in something to that effect and and finally

00:28:57.440 we have to we have to have a conversation about pipelines again and we have to hold

00:29:04.400 those that propose to stand in for the environment accountable to their world to their word i i think

00:29:11.200 if if anyone's passionate about the environment they should be against transporting uh natural

00:29:17.760 resources by train at least those that don't need to be by train and instead use pipelines

00:29:23.760 pipelines are a lot safer than trains right we saw the disaster in like magnetic a couple of uh

00:29:30.160 about a decade ago so uh pedal to the metal on all of that andrew and that starts with a culture

00:29:35.600 change with a certainty for investors and with regulatory reform. Another topic that doesn't

00:29:42.640 typically rank high on the list of sexiness of political topics, but you have it in your platform

00:29:47.440 under restoring Canadian opportunity, reducing barriers and encouraging competition in federally

00:29:53.800 regulated industries. So my hope would be, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, you're talking about

00:29:58.440 airlines, you're talking about telecommunications, you're talking about rail transport, 1.00

00:30:03.880 are you basically talking about everything there if there's anything we learned from the rogers

00:30:10.040 outage a couple of weeks ago is is how terrible our federally regulated industries are canadians

00:30:16.920 pay some of the highest prices for cell phones and internet access and and that shouldn't be the case

00:30:23.400 and you know uh a couple years ago when mobile tried to come into canada and and compete and i

00:30:29.400 i think they've been around for about five or seven years and and when they left the ceo said

00:30:34.040 that canada is one of the worst places on earth to do business and and that is shameful and and

00:30:40.600 that should not be the case so uh i propose that we stop protecting these antiquated institutions

00:30:47.400 i've had it with air canada okay personally and nationally so so i i propose that we invite

00:30:56.200 foreign carriers uh you know there's no reason why if if um let's say lufthansa uh lands in in

00:31:04.120 toronto and then proceeds to vancouver why a canadian cannot hitch on a ride on lufthansa

00:31:09.400 from toronto to vancouver that will be good for the consumer it'll be good for canadians same

00:31:14.600 with telecom and and same with banking we have four and a half national banks and and sorry

00:31:20.680 four and a half major banks and and i don't understand why why that needs to be the case

00:31:24.360 competition is good for consumer it's good for canadians we need to do to free up all those

00:31:29.400 industries and and encourage competition let people work because i know you did mention earlier

00:31:36.280 on that you want to reform lobbying do you view all of these things as being a victim or a byproduct

00:31:42.760 of lobbying you know all of these companies have good strong lobbyists and or do you think there's

00:31:47.160 something else there because the government will typically defend these things by talking about

00:31:51.400 really i'd say esoteric canadian qualities and the fact that oh no no we have to protect our

00:31:57.240 canadian culture because apparently air canada and via rail are the canadian culture or something

00:32:02.040 like that but like i'm just curious where you think this problem comes from because

00:32:06.280 it should be a no-brainer i mean no canadian no canadian is happy with their choices for cell

00:32:12.120 phone providers like zero especially any canadian that has a friend or a family in europe and that's

00:32:17.960 getting you know twice the data for a third of the price so where is this coming from

00:32:23.400 i think our our prudence our unwillingness to innovate uh the fact that um we we seem to

00:32:30.840 somehow associate uh some of these institutions with a hint of national pride um but but certainly

00:32:37.800 lobbying plays a part and look on on this issue um prime minister harper actually tried to reform

00:32:47.080 uh some of the lobbying in this country and he made some some good strides and i would propose

00:32:51.400 that we started he also by the way tried to let verizon come in which ended up just exploding

00:32:57.160 canada yeah uh at the very least we see a very tight um relationship between interest stakeholders

00:33:06.920 and government obviously it's it's conjointed by lobbyists and essentially uh all they do is they

00:33:13.560 offer access um for for payment i and and my view is you can take a few concrete steps for instance

00:33:22.360 you should not have a government public a public servant or a staffer leave it leave government

00:33:28.680 after half a year or a year and join a lobbying firm and start lobbying their friends we we need

00:33:33.560 to have some some arms link between insiders within government and then subsequently lobbyists that

00:33:39.960 are making money on this government.

00:33:42.460 I'm a little tired of the revolving door,

00:33:45.280 but most importantly, I think that we need to think

00:33:48.400 about our relationship with the regulators

00:33:50.340 and specifically the industry, whether it's telecom

00:33:55.080 or whether it's securities regulation,

00:33:56.780 pharmaceutical regulations, I'm concerned about the role.

00:34:02.000 Some of them now play within government.

00:34:04.300 I'm afraid that instead of regulating industry,

00:34:08.600 holding it to account they're they're busy they're more busy uh doing government relations with

00:34:13.540 government i think we need to rethink some of that uh before canadians lose any further trust

00:34:19.340 in the way we deal with stakeholders former ontario mbp roman babber you can catch at his

00:34:26.060 website join roman.ca his new commitment to canada his platform that's coming out and we'll extend

00:34:31.100 this invitation to all candidates as they have uh fully uh in i guess extrapolated uh platforms

00:34:38.380 Roman, it is always good to talk to you.

00:34:39.860 Thanks very much for coming on today.

00:34:41.780 Send me a copy of your book signed, please.

00:34:44.640 All right.

00:34:45.240 Well, hopefully we'll be somewhere in the same city in person.

00:34:47.640 I can do a personal delivery there, but I appreciate that very much.

00:34:51.160 Good to see you, Andrew.

00:34:52.620 All right.

00:34:53.100 Thanks very much.

00:34:53.720 That is Roman Babber.

00:34:55.400 And I would encourage you, if you haven't already seen it, to check out my sit down

00:34:59.560 with him about 30 minutes long in our conservative leadership series.

00:35:03.060 I think it came out two weeks ago or three weeks ago.

00:35:05.780 And we've done those with five of the six candidates so far.

00:35:08.780 The last one, Leslyn Lewis, will be coming out in the days ahead.

00:35:12.320 And we really try to capture a lot of the themes that are in the race and in Canadian

00:35:16.280 politics and in their campaigns as well.

00:35:18.160 And those have been getting very good feedback.

00:35:20.420 So thank you very much to that.

00:35:21.660 And yeah, like I said, I mean, I'm not I wasn't just, you know, kissing his rear end there.

00:35:25.760 Roman, I was very, very humbled when he tweeted that National Post story about my book and

00:35:30.700 Indigo and tagged Heather Reisman in it.

00:35:32.740 Now, I don't know if Heather Reisman has responded to him yet, but we will follow that

00:35:37.240 one.

00:35:37.920 But truly, I have to say, and I know it comes across as self-promotional, but it's really

00:35:41.920 a thank you.

00:35:42.560 I mean, when I wrote this book very quickly, I didn't know it would succeed and I didn't

00:35:47.640 know that people would be as interested in they were.

00:35:50.040 I wrote it because I wanted to read it myself.

00:35:52.180 I wanted to learn about some of these things.

00:35:54.520 And when it shot up to being like a bestseller, I was like, well, that's kind of great.

00:35:57.600 And then I was actually looking forward to just like the little nerdy kid in me was looking

00:36:01.660 forward to walking into a bookstore and seeing it on shelves. Then it was only yesterday when I

00:36:06.720 learned that Indigo had made a very deliberate decision to not put it on its shelves, which

00:36:12.660 is unfortunate, but it's not stopping people from getting it. So you can order it online. You can go

00:36:16.860 to Amazon. You can go to SutherlandHouseBooks.com. You can order it from Indigo online. You just

00:36:22.080 won't see it on a shelf. So some people have been doing the boycott thing, but whatever works for

00:36:27.020 you. If you read it, let me know what you think. And as I mentioned, I'm going to do a Q&A at some

00:36:31.640 on this and take any questions you have about covering the convoy and all that fun stuff. So

00:36:36.380 that does it for me for today. We'll be back in a couple days time with more of Canada's

00:36:41.240 most irreverent talk show. I understand we had some technical issues early on

00:36:45.380 with the stream. My apologies for those. We'll get those sorted out for next time.

00:36:49.600 But in the meantime, thank you. God bless and good day to you all.

00:36:54.720 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North

00:36:59.320 at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - July 20, 2022

Trudeau is campaigning while inflation hits another record high

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