In this episode of The Candice Malcolm Show, host Candice talks with Dr. David Millard Haskell about his new piece, "Invite Canada's Conservatives to Join the United States." He also talks about the gold heist suspects, and why he thinks Canada should join the Trump administration.
00:01:44.300So we're going to talk about all of that.
00:01:46.580But to start off the show today, folks, I want to bring in a person who I have tremendous respect for, Professor David Millard Haskell, who's an associate professor at Wilfrid Laurier University.
00:01:57.460Prior to being a professor, he was actually in our realm. He was a journalist and he had a successful career working in the media for TVO and several other radio stations and television stations.
00:02:09.100And he is also a current senior fellow, research fellow over at the Aristotle Foundation, sorry.
00:02:16.940So, David, thank you so much for joining the program today.
00:02:21.360So I saw one of the pieces that you had recently written with great interest over in an outlet called the American Conservative.
00:02:30.400You have a piece called Invite Canada's Conservatives to Join America.
00:02:36.080So I'm going to get you to walk us through this proposal.
00:02:38.580Before, just for the audience, let's show a clip of President Trump making an offer about a united North America.
00:02:47.040Canada and the United States, that would really be something.
00:02:51.600You get rid of that artificially drawn line and you take a look at what that looks like.
00:02:57.020And it would also be much better for national security.
00:02:59.420Don't forget, we basically protect Canada.
00:03:01.260so a lot of canadians see that and hear that and you know feel terrified uh others though i think
00:03:09.820that there's a significant percentage i don't know if it's if it's uh 10 or a quarter it's up
00:03:14.620to 50 of especially young men uh that that that hear that and say yeah that makes a lot of sense
00:03:19.900i think that we might have a better future uh if we're if we're all one one big united country a
00:03:25.740very counter to what the elites and legacy media and and and politicians basically of all stripes
00:03:30.700it seems. But I found your piece interesting because you kind of get into some of the details
00:03:36.500of why Americans might not want Canadians, right? Why they might not want to absorb us. So why don't
00:03:43.760you tell us a little bit about what you wrote? Well, what I do, Candice, is I look at three
00:03:48.180options that the Trump administration may want to consider. And the first thing I talk about is that
00:03:54.640they probably wouldn't want all of Canada. And I move in that direction saying that if you look
00:04:01.580at Canada itself, we lean politically to the left. And if the Trump administration were really trying
00:04:08.660to bolster conservatism in the US, the worst thing they could do would be to bring all Canada
00:04:15.420on board. So currently, we're at what, about 41 million people. And if this left-leaning country,
00:04:25.200which Canada is, of 41 million people, came in holus bolus into the US, that'd be like the
00:04:30.260equivalent of the state of California. So what they'd see is about 45 to 48 new representatives
00:04:38.560in the lower house of Congress and then in the Senate, two more there. And it would decidedly
00:04:47.040tip the scales toward really radical leftist ideology in the U.S. And Trump wouldn't want
00:04:54.900that. I mean, could you imagine they've just secured what we'd call a mega base? They've
00:05:00.720really got a mega foundation and it would be upended by absorbing all of Canada. So I kind
00:05:06.440of poo-poo that idea. And they must be aware of that, right? They must be. But we also see that
00:05:13.340there seems to be a special relationship between Daniel Smith and also President Trump. I mean,
00:05:19.660she went down to Mar-a-Lago and she was chatting with him. We don't know what was actually said,
00:05:24.620but she's holding her cards very close to the chest. She's not saying anything about
00:05:30.980going alone or anything like that. But I make that suggestion in my piece. I say, you know,
00:05:37.040from a strategic point of view, Trump might want to consider making an overture to the province
00:05:46.260of Alberta. And I look at it like this. First of all, they already do a lot of trading in terms of
00:05:53.760natural gas and oil, right? Like 80% of Alberta's natural gas and oil goes to the US anyway.
00:05:59.740if Alberta were able to be that 51st state as opposed to all Canada, there'd be some significant
00:06:09.000benefits economically there. There'd be no trade barriers there. In addition, people in Alberta,
00:06:17.140I mean, even 60, 65% are really solidly conservative. So again, that would benefit
00:06:25.440President Trump. He's going to get people in who are already aligned with him ideologically.
00:06:31.400From the point of view of people in Alberta, we know that they're dissatisfied
00:06:34.900with the arrangement as it applies to equalization payments, for example. I mean,
00:06:41.800almost to the tune of a couple billion every year. And most of that goes to provinces. Well,
00:06:47.700most of it goes to Quebec, who doesn't even want pipelines, right? It must be so frustrating for
00:06:53.580people in Alberta to see the money that is raised from their natural resources primarily
00:07:00.140go to a province that is trying to ruin them financially. So, I mean, we know that within
00:07:09.180the province already, there's a real separatist center.
00:07:18.700Whoops. Did we lose you there, David? You're frozen on my end. Maybe it's me though.
00:07:23.580But we will try our best, folks, to get David back on.
00:07:28.360You know, what he was talking about kind of reminds me a little bit of what Jordan Peterson said.
00:07:33.100Jordan Peterson had a recent piece in the National Post where he basically just says, look, Canada has to offer a better deal to Alberta than what Donald Trump is offering.
00:07:45.920because Donald Trump, you know, love him or hate him, he is making an offer to the Canadians that
00:07:53.360does appeal to many Canadians. Not all of them, not even a majority. Like I said, it depends on
00:08:00.300what poll you're looking at, anywhere between 10% to 15% of the country. But it is interesting
00:08:06.340to even just think about like the demographics of the people. I watched a rebel video yesterday
00:08:11.540where the journalist was walking around Calgary
00:08:14.040asking people what they thought about it.
00:08:16.420And downtown Calgary, I think he was on Stevens Avenue.
00:08:18.800It seemed like almost everyone he was talking to
00:08:41.540If you take patriotism and love of country out of the equation and you just look at it in terms of what's the best for like my finances and my family, it's hard to argue that Canada might not be better off with this offer.
00:08:56.360And particularly Alberta, because as David was saying there, they haven't been treated very fairly, very nicely in this confederation, in our Canadian union.
00:09:08.340The idea that they get taxed and the equalization system means that money from Alberta, excess money, gets sent to other parts of the country, poor parts of the country, places like Quebec and the Maritimes, where they don't have the same attitude towards resource development, towards pro-capitalism.
00:09:24.980They lean more towards big government and socialism.
00:09:27.740So they get to waste the money and spend them on big projects and big government.
00:09:31.980And Alberta is the one paying the bill.
00:09:33.520So it's such an interesting topic of conversation.
00:09:37.660And we're still working to see if we can get David back on the line.
00:09:42.260But I want to talk a little bit about, you know, just when it comes to Canada-U.S. relations.
00:09:51.900At a, the ambassador, the Canadian ambassador said that Canada's making progress.
00:09:59.160So in an interview with CBC's Power in Politics, the Canadian ambassador to the U.S., woman named Kristen Hillman,
00:10:05.720said that the president, U.S. president, is pleased with Canada's progress,
00:10:10.700pleased with the things that Justin Trudeau has done to try to protect the border,
00:10:14.540to try to crack down on fentanyl, maybe appointing that fentanyl czar
00:19:03.680For me, it makes sense because, you know,
00:19:05.860why would we rebuild our own military when they have one right there?
00:19:09.060We should probably work more closely with them.
00:19:11.520We should follow their guidance in terms of securing our border
00:19:15.020and fixing our broken immigration system and cracking down.
00:19:17.200But I didn't think that he was literal because of some of the questions that you raise.
00:19:22.340Like, I don't think that any right-minded Republican president would want to invite 40 million potentially left-wing Democrats into the country.
00:19:31.360I don't think that they would want to have two more Democratic senators, which Canada would pretty much always have.
00:19:36.620And so, you know, when you get into the kind of like real nitty gritty of it, a political union, it doesn't make sense for the Americans.
00:19:42.740I think that Canadians are too, you know, well, our entire country was built on the idea that we're not Americans, that we wanted to stop, you know, we wanted to remain loyal to the crown and not participate in the revolution.
00:19:55.520So it seems like, you know, it seems like a hard fit to make this a political union.
00:20:00.340And so I think the pieces, the issues that you raise in your piece are correct.
00:20:05.120But then that leads to the question for you, David, do you think Trump is literal?
00:20:08.780Do you think that he literally wants to absorb Canada, invade or, you know, create this union in a literal way?
00:20:16.360No, no, no. And you've hit all the main points that I would raise, Candace.
00:20:19.960Definitely, he did start out and he was trolling. He was joking around.
00:20:24.540But I think that it caught some wind in that sale.
00:20:30.100And he thought, wait a minute, there's some there's some.
00:20:34.600okay he said i don't want to buy the farm but i wouldn't mind rustling a few of the cattle
00:20:39.520and in his art of the deal i mean this is a guy who who wrote a book all about negotiation
00:20:45.880and he he basically says say crazy things at the start and see it's sort of like shake the
00:20:54.240tree and see which apples drop and so he was probably looking for the reaction he's gotten
00:20:59.900some reaction. And that's his negotiation strategy. And we did see him move back a little
00:21:06.760bit when he instituted the tariffs in February. And then he said, well, you know, I've seen some
00:21:12.040action on your border that you're trying to secure your border. You're trying to take care of the
00:21:17.000fentanyl problem. And so he said, let's move that deadline. So we know that he is looking for some
00:21:23.340very specific things as well but to your point yeah he is he's testing the waters he's putting
00:21:31.140something up the flagpole see who salutes he's he's really he i don't think he had a great game
00:21:37.600plan but then we look at his speech that he gave in january his inauguration speech he made a point
00:21:45.680of saying, we are going to expand as a nation. Now, would that have been in there if there hadn't
00:21:53.900been some kind of buzz happening around his 51st state comments, behind, around his Panama comments,
00:22:03.880around his Greenland comments? And he was getting some positive feedback on Greenland. Politically
00:22:11.100in the U.S., his comments about Panama were well-received. In Canada, we didn't receive his
00:22:17.120idea of the 51st state generally as well, but there were probably people around him saying,
00:22:22.400you know, see what happens, see what apples fall. But all this is to say that in his inauguration
00:22:30.100address, he actually makes a point of saying, we are an expanding nation again. So that to me
00:22:39.680signals something. Yeah, I tend to agree. I think that, well, I think it's pretty obvious that
00:22:46.720Justin Trudeau has done tremendous damage to our country and not just our country, like our society,
00:22:51.380our culture. It feels fractured. It doesn't feel like we're bound by unity or a shared sense of
00:22:57.380belief in our country. You know, everything from the economics to the immigration to national
00:23:03.780unity. Like, I don't think that, you know, there's a flaring Quebec separatist movement in the Alberta
00:36:14.880You know, I listened to Pierre Polyev's Canada First rally on Saturday night, and we actually did a deep dive on the show yesterday with Barbara Kay.
00:36:24.000Barbara Kay really liked the speech, and she walked us through it from her perspective.
00:40:36.720Alto will be a truly pan-Canadian endeavor using expertise and resources from coast to coast to coast.
00:40:44.800It will turbocharge our entire economy, create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs, and open new opportunities for Canadian businesses at every link of our supply chain.
00:40:57.460Again, pan-Canadian all the way from Toronto to Quebec City.
00:41:01.500So here is what the train would look like.
00:41:35.680Because the idea is like he's literally on his way out the door.
00:41:38.720his time as Prime Minister is over so he can announce this all he wants, it's really up to
00:41:42.940the next person whether or not they actually want to spend this money. Hello, we're bankrupt. We
00:41:46.960don't have any money. We are completely over budget. Everyone who is running to replace
00:41:50.640Justin Trudeau is talking about cutting the government, cutting the budget. Even Mark Carney
00:41:54.560is out there at least saying that he's going to try to balance the budget. You have to cut to do
00:41:59.100that because Justin Trudeau has basically doubled Canada's spending. So where are you going to get
00:42:03.020this money? Those aren't the questions that the mainstream media is asking. The mainstream media
00:42:06.700is asking oh prime minister Justin Trudeau how will you use the system to make sure that your
00:42:13.340plan remains in power even though you will no longer be prime minister let's play that clip
00:42:20.140do we have that clip Sean will there be any guarantees to make sure that if there's a
00:42:25.660successor well you will have a successor if there's a next government let's say the conservatives
00:42:30.780won't be able or it won't be easy for them to to stop the project
00:42:36.380listen this is this high-speed rail in this country
00:42:40.140was always going to be a project that would
00:42:44.060would be take long enough to build that it would cover multiple governments
00:42:50.620at all different orders of government from municipal
00:42:53.580to provincial to federal and it takes a will and a determination by a
00:42:58.380government to move forward and lock in this progress yeah so that's called a dictatorship
00:43:05.020folks so the the the journalist is teeing it up saying how will you guarantee that this happens
00:43:09.680justin trudeau says they're going to put contracts in place make sure things are signed so that a
00:43:14.020future government can't get out of it yeah that's not how it's supposed to work a future government
00:43:19.180has authority to stop spending money on wasteful projects if they see fit justin trudeau doing
00:43:26.140everything they can you know this reminds me of the high speed high speed rail project in
00:43:31.480california because this is what i predict will happen i mean it's already happened folks look
00:43:35.140uh it's been like 20 years since they promised to build a cross town lrt train line in toronto
00:43:41.760the eglinton line that thing has been under construction for over a decade it's nowhere
00:43:46.660near being complete they can't even build a train an lrt across toronto and yet we're supposed to
00:43:52.180believe that they're going to build one all the way up to Quebec City. So in California,
00:43:56.500it's the exact same thing that's happening. So back in 2008, California announced and agreed
00:44:01.860there was the voters approved to a measure that would put $10 billion towards a high-speed rail
00:44:08.020project. It was supposed to go from Los Angeles to San Francisco. It was supposed to be complete
00:44:13.500by 2020. The estimated price tag was about $28 billion up to $35 billion. So just keep in mind,
00:44:19.800Justin Trudeau says that his plan to build a thousand kilometers of track will cost us four
00:44:25.660billion. Even back in 2008, California, you know, their train line is only 350 miles. They said it
00:44:31.420would cost about 35 billion, so 10x more than what Justin Trudeau says. And here we are in 2025,
00:44:37.860five years after the California train was supposed to be completed, and it's nowhere close to being
00:44:42.780completed. It's nowhere close to being completed. They basically abandoned the idea of doing it,
00:44:46.420and they've already spent listen to this 128 billion dollars in california and they don't
00:44:52.340have the train line they don't have a train line uh here's a little explainer clip talking about
00:44:56.180what's happened in california november 4th 2008 the people of california voted to fund this
00:45:03.940a high-speed rail line many countries around the world have had high-speed trains for decades
00:45:09.060and this would be the u.s's attempt to finally catch up the train would whisk passengers from
00:45:14.260la to san francisco in under three hours and it was all set to open in 2020. today it's 2022 and
00:45:21.940california's high-speed rail project is famous for being a disaster will be the most expensive
00:45:27.540project in state history a train that's going to nowhere going to nowhere all that's there today
00:45:31.780is this one section still under construction from bakersfield to merced so rather than connecting
00:45:38.500two major cities it just connects two small towns along the way they've spent 128 billion dollars
00:45:43.460and now even Democrats, even Gavin Newsom is suggesting that he's going to abandon
00:45:47.380this absolute train wreck, pardon the pun, of a project. And here we have Justin Trudeau just
00:45:52.180doing the exact same thing out the door. It's so typical of liberals. They love these big projects.
00:45:58.260They have no idea how to fund them. They have no idea how to carry them out.
00:46:01.140All they really care about is that the contracts go to their friends and that they get some kind
00:46:05.860of legacy. No, Justin Trudeau, Canadians don't want this. We need to just completely ignore this
00:46:12.500because I don't think it will ever happen. Okay, folks, I'm going to move on. I want to talk about
00:46:17.040the story that we broke over at Juno News. This is our friends at True North, Alex Sultan, who was
00:46:21.960a guest on the program on Monday. He broke the story that suspects in Canada's largest gold
00:46:26.620heist are believed to be living freely in India and Dubai. So nearly two years after a $20 million
00:46:33.800gold heist was pulled off at Toronto Pearson's airport, the suspects still remain at large.
00:46:41.440So recently, CBC's Fifth Estate attempted to track down some of the people who were involved and basically found that they have warrants out for their arrest, but they're not in Canada anymore.
00:46:52.220They're living in Dubai. Other suspects remain in Canada but on bail with no trial dates.
00:46:58.120There's one person that they caught, and they are in the U.S., in U.S. custody, facing charges.
00:47:05.000There is a total of nine suspects. We have a picture of them here.
00:47:08.960these are the suspects who were charged in the spring of 2024. So you basically have a bunch
00:47:15.960of people who look like they're from the Middle East and India, not sure if any of them are
00:47:20.320Canadian citizens or not, but it turns out that a lot of them are just living large and living
00:47:26.300their lives in other parts of the world. You know, Canada, when it comes to our jail system,
00:47:35.800or police system. It's a total joke. It's a total joke, a revolving door system. This is one thing
00:47:40.280that I hope Pierre Polyev is serious about if he becomes prime minister, cracking down, issuing
00:47:45.440mandatory minimums, putting people in prison who are repeat offenders, and deporting people who
00:47:51.300commit crimes who are not Canadians. Okay, folks, I'm going to leave it at that. Thank you so much
00:47:55.800for joining us. We have a very exciting special show for you tomorrow. I'm looking forward to
00:48:01.120that. And we'll be back again tomorrow with all the news. Thank you so much. I'm Candace Malcolm.