Juno News - September 30, 2023


Trudeau’s pattern of incompetence


Episode Stats


Length

24 minutes

Words per minute

183.88289

Word count

4,426

Sentence count

234

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A former member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier division of the SS received a standing ovation in the House of Commons, even though he actually fought for the Nazis as a volunteer in World War II. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau initially brushed off the incident, blaming Russian disinformation and propaganda. Then he apologized. And then he demanded that the Speaker of the Commons take full responsibility for the incident. To make sense of all of this, we speak to seasoned political strategist and commentator Antony Koch.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hi there, everybody, and welcome to the Rupa Subramanya show. I am Rupa Subramanya. Today
00:00:22.000 we explore a series of events that have put our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, once again
00:00:27.960 at the center of controversy. It's a story of apologies, accusations, and a diplomatic
00:00:34.020 feud that has far-reaching implications. Now, first let's start with this jaw-dropping moment
00:00:39.740 last week that everyone's talking about. In honor of President Zelensky's visit to the
00:00:45.000 House of Commons, on the eve of Yom Kippur, Yaroslav Hanke, a Ukrainian war veteran, was
00:00:51.820 invited to the House of Commons and received a standing ovation. The problem is, he's a
00:00:57.720 former member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, a unit that fought on behalf of
00:01:03.900 the Nazis during World War II. Yes, you heard that right. A former member of the SS received
00:01:10.040 a standing ovation in the House of Commons as the Speaker of the House, Antony Rhoda, praised
00:01:16.960 him as a Ukrainian and Canadian war hero who fought against the Russians during World War
00:01:22.320 II. You can't make this stuff up, and you only have to wonder how such a person found themselves
00:01:27.600 in the halls of Parliament. Trudeau initially brushed off the incident, as he usually is
00:01:32.540 known to do. He first deflected to Russian disinformation and propaganda, except this wasn't
00:01:37.700 Russian disinformation and propaganda. Yaroslav Hanke, who was invited to the House of Commons
00:01:43.720 and received a standing ovation, in fact did fight for the Nazis as a volunteer. Eventually,
00:01:50.560 under public pressure and a growing backlash, he apologized for inviting him to the House of
00:01:55.460 Commons. However, he stopped short of offering a personal apology. Instead apologizing on behalf
00:02:01.440 of Canadians, as though we had something to do with this invite, he apologized on behalf
00:02:06.360 of Parliament, even though the buck stops with the Prime Minister, not with Parliament, and
00:02:12.260 Parliament is not a person. And he deflected the blame to the Speaker of the House, Antony Rhoda,
00:02:17.680 who subsequently resigned over the controversy. Now, Conservative leader Pierre Polly Everett demanded
00:02:23.320 that Trudeau take full responsibility for the scandal, criticizing him for hiding out in his cottage
00:02:29.020 instead of facing this issue head-on. As if this wasn't enough, earlier in the week, a few days before
00:02:35.540 Nazi-gate, Trudeau makes explosive allegations against the world's largest democracy, India,
00:02:41.480 claiming that Canada was in possession of credible intelligence, that agents of the government of India
00:02:47.220 were behind the June killing of well-known Khalistani separatist, Hardeep Singh Nijer,
00:02:52.920 who was a wanted man in India on terrorism and other criminal charges. India has denied these
00:02:59.140 allegations and has been united in its reaction to Trudeau's allegations. The widely shared view in
00:03:04.840 India is that Trudeau did this for political reasons, both to placate C-Canadian voters and not lose
00:03:11.600 them to Jagmeet Singh and the NDP, and also as a way to change the conversation when he and the
00:03:17.000 Liberals have been tanking in the polls in recent months. The fallout has led to the expulsion of
00:03:21.660 diplomats, travel advisories, and India taking the unfortunate and unprecedented step of stopping
00:03:27.780 visas for all Canadian citizens. To make sense of all of this is my guest today, Antony Koch. He's a
00:03:34.580 seasoned political strategist and commentator known for calling it as he sees it. He gained prominence
00:03:41.000 as Pierre Paulyevre's spokesperson during the leadership race, and he's now a public affairs
00:03:46.780 consultant and political analyst based out of Montreal, but remains an influential figure in
00:03:52.140 conservative circles. Antony, welcome to the show. It's a great honour to have you here. Let's first start
00:03:59.880 with the controversy that everybody's talking about, the controversy surrounding Yaroslav Hanka,
00:04:06.740 a former member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, receiving, well, first of all,
00:04:13.920 being invited to the House of Commons, and then on top of that, receiving a standing ovation as a
00:04:19.720 Speaker of the House, praises him as a Canadian and Ukrainian war hero who fought against the Russians
00:04:25.520 in World War II. What are your thoughts on how this individual ended up being invited in Parliament?
00:04:34.560 Well, first, thanks for having me. But yeah, like, this is fascinating, because what the Liberals have
00:04:40.040 effectively done is they've argued the letter of the law on protocol, right? So technically,
00:04:45.120 they're not incorrect. In the context of your standard run-of-the-mill House of Commons exchange,
00:04:51.260 MPs and the Speaker of the House have the discretion to invite a constituent to attend in the press
00:04:55.200 gallery, or not the press gallery, but in the gallery to watch the sort of proceedings. But as anybody who
00:04:59.520 spent more than five minutes around active politics knows, when you've got one of these one-off unicorn
00:05:05.400 style events, for example, the head of state of a foreign country, which also happens to be engaged
00:05:11.940 in an ongoing conflict, addressing the House of Commons in person, the usual structure of these
00:05:19.240 things is not the one that's actually followed. These are highly scripted events. And I'm not saying
00:05:23.660 that in a deceptive or negative way. But I'm saying, you know, obviously, these things have
00:05:28.220 to be scripted to a certain point, because if they're not, you might end up with a situation
00:05:32.140 where you accidentally invite a Nazi to be given a standing ovation by unknowing bystanders and
00:05:39.800 parliamentarians. That's the thing that I find quite fascinating. You know, having worked on the
00:05:43.480 other side of this, on the conservative side of things, etc., an event of this magnitude, okay?
00:05:48.280 Even, I'll just give you an example. You know, the last Conservative Party convention,
00:05:51.760 there's a lot of people who gave speeches, and a lot of them contribute in their own way. But,
00:05:55.340 you know, people read the speeches before they're given to make sure one's not going to go up on
00:06:00.060 stage and say something absolutely ludicrous, or, you know, there's a certain message track that you
00:06:03.860 want to follow. So, it is absolutely shocking to me, and this is what I'll say, that Anthony Rota,
00:06:10.480 the speech that he gave, was not written over or read over, you know, even if the invite wasn't
00:06:16.200 pre-screened. If it gets to the point of it being included in his speech, because you could see he was
00:06:20.440 reading from a text, okay? And it was actually funny, because as he says, fought against the
00:06:25.280 Russian, there's almost like a brief pause where he's like, well, wait a second, that sounds kind
00:06:29.340 of funny, okay? But the fact that that wasn't read over by at least three or four different stop
00:06:34.800 gaps to make sure, it leads to me to one of two things. The Prime Minister's office failed here
00:06:39.740 in one of two ways. One, they either actually did vet, just very poorly, and didn't realize who
00:06:45.980 or two, they didn't at all. So, it's either they did their jobs poorly, or they just simply refused
00:06:51.740 to do them. But no, this is absolutely ludicrous, this suggestion that, you know, Anthony Rota
00:06:57.540 definitely had a role to play here, and I think it's appropriate that he resigned. But the fact
00:07:01.440 that the Prime Minister is completely washing his office's hand of this, and then goes on to do his
00:07:06.260 classic, like I said, right, where he gives the collective apology on behalf of Parliament,
00:07:10.640 because he can never actually just give a personal apology on behalf of himself, is quite something.
00:07:16.900 Yeah, yeah, let's go back to Trudeau, Trudeau's handling of the situation, and Anthony Rota's
00:07:23.500 resignation. You know, how could Justin Trudeau, how could the Prime Minister have handled this better?
00:07:31.280 One, I think, first of all, the fact that Anthony Rota took so long to resign,
00:07:35.200 right away, all that did was drag out the story. And second of all, the fact that he, like, again,
00:07:40.640 even though an apology did come, it came several days later, and again, in a way that I think most
00:07:47.200 people will rightly recognize, unless you're a dyed-in-the-wool partisan liberal, was thoroughly
00:07:50.840 inappropriate, right? At the end of the day, leaders lead, and leaders take responsibility when things
00:07:54.660 go wrong. The buck stops with you, and instead, we didn't get that, and everybody and their mother
00:07:59.820 was coming out in the liberal land trying to justify this, explain how it wasn't the Prime Minister's
00:08:04.020 fault, or even see, like, this is what I find funny, these are people, okay, in large part,
00:08:08.500 who branded Canadians, who had never so much as heard a fly in their life, who came down as part
00:08:14.180 of the Freedom Convoy during COVID, branded them, had no issues calling them every single horrible
00:08:19.440 name in the book that you can imagine, including Nazi, okay? And now we actually had somebody who
00:08:24.780 served as a volunteer in the Waffen-SS during World War II, and swore a personal oath to Adolf Hitler,
00:08:31.280 and there were, you know, liberal Twitter was awash with people trying to explain that,
00:08:35.600 well, actually, the situation's quite complicated. I'm a very proud Jewish Canadian, you can see it
00:08:40.520 where I keep on my head, I wear a talitana, I wear a talitana, I wear Hebrew rings, like the whole
00:08:44.740 nine yards, you know? And I've got people online calling me Joseph Goebbels, and equivalating me
00:08:49.640 with, you know, the greatest propagandist of the Nazi German state, because of the work that I've done
00:08:53.100 for Mr. Polyev, who supposedly, he could tweet a picture of his daughter, and magically, Rachel
00:08:58.320 Gilmore and co will jump out to claim that this is somehow a dog whistle to the far right, based on the
00:09:04.000 number of letters and the position they put out here. And then you've got an actual Nazi in the
00:09:08.900 House of Commons, who volunteered for the Waffen-SS, swore a personal oath to Adolf Hitler,
00:09:14.200 but there's context that people don't understand that we need to, we need to, you know, absolutely 0.87
00:09:19.240 ridiculous. Like, it's just, it opens their mind, and it just goes to show you to what extent a lot
00:09:23.700 of these people don't believe half of the things that they say. It's a political tactic to get people
00:09:28.040 to be quiet and to discredit their opponents. So, what exactly happened here? I'm still
00:09:33.840 perplexed. Is this incompetence? Is this stupidity? Is it malice? What exactly is going on here?
00:09:44.640 I'm just thinking about that moment when the speaker is reading from this text. Clearly,
00:09:49.740 he hasn't read this before, as you pointed out, and others have pointed out. He pauses for a second,
00:09:55.100 and he's like, fought against the Russians, and then he goes on. And it's that, at that moment,
00:10:00.540 they all start applauding and give him a standing ovation. Was there, do you know if there was a
00:10:07.940 single member of parliament who was like, wait a minute, I'm not standing up for this. I'm not
00:10:13.120 applauding this guy. Something's really off here. Did that occur to anybody? Like, how does everybody
00:10:19.580 just do this? I think, I think it just, it baffles the mind. Like, you know, if you're sitting there,
00:10:24.760 now we have the benefit of the mindset. But if you're sitting in the House of Commons,
00:10:27.260 President Zelensky is giving his address, you know, and the Speaker of the House of Commons,
00:10:31.200 in his official remarks, highlights this person in the crowd. I don't think anybody is going,
00:10:39.040 hmm, maybe it's a Nazi. So, you sort of go through the motions, you see everybody else,
00:10:43.100 and then after the fact, it's like, wait, that's not kind of suspect. And then people did the digging.
00:10:46.460 But no, I don't think, I'll be benevolent here. I'll be generous. I don't think this was,
00:10:50.940 and I'll say it even from this perspective, this was supposed to be a huge win for the Liberals.
00:10:55.820 Okay. So, a major, major foreign policy win. Stuff's been going bad for them for a while.
00:11:00.920 You know, the India situation was a catastrophe, but they were still able to spin that too, 1.00
00:11:05.460 obviously, because a Canadian citizen was killed. And, you know, all of a sudden,
00:11:08.400 things are starting to go in the right way. And it's like, oh, now we got President Zelensky
00:11:10.720 with his surprise visit in person, addressing Parliament, emphasizing how much Canada has done
00:11:14.660 for the Ukrainian war effort, was supposed to be a huge positive press day for the government
00:11:21.880 when they haven't had very many in a very long time. And instead, it turns into another
00:11:26.720 international embarrassment. So, this is pure incompetence. This is pure incompetence. I don't
00:11:31.200 think it's malice. And I'm not going to accuse the Prime Minister or anybody in the Liberal Party
00:11:35.240 of having secret Nazi sympathies. I'll leave them to do that to us. But this is just many,
00:11:41.440 many, many people, a series of people screwed up and didn't do their job. And again, in terms of
00:11:45.280 the process of how this rolled out, it seems, from what we do know, that the grandson of,
00:11:51.220 I'm forgetting his name now, but the grandson of...
00:11:53.100 Yaroslavanka, yeah.
00:11:55.420 Yeah, his grandson had submitted something to the constituency office of Mr. Roda because
00:12:00.300 the residents of that riding saying, hey, by the way, my grandfather served, you think he could
00:12:04.900 come? And that was sort of what started off the process. But I mean, this is interesting,
00:12:09.780 right? I mean, Canada, we also keep in mind, by the way, the unit that he served in,
00:12:13.600 there's a monument to them in Oakville. Yeah.
00:12:16.900 Yeah. Like, there's a monument to them in Oakville. And this is one of the weird
00:12:19.540 parts about Canada and, you know, all of our different diasporas. We got all sorts of weird,
00:12:25.180 interesting stuff all across our country that when people actually bring a microscope to go,
00:12:32.120 what? There's a monument to a Mopin SS, you know, unit in Oakville? Why? But it's there.
00:12:40.940 Yeah. Well, the thing is, you know, when that was pointed out by the Russian embassy, I believe,
00:12:46.440 a few years ago, the prime minister's office immediately issued a statement calling it
00:12:52.240 disinformation, except that it was factually correct. And it's very similar to when it was
00:12:58.600 discovered that Chrystia Freeland, Chrystia Freeland's grandfather was a Nazi collaborator
00:13:03.740 as well. And then the immediate reaction, again, predictably, was it's Russian disinformation
00:13:09.180 and propaganda, basically. And that was also the prime minister's initial remarks when he was asked
00:13:16.380 about what had happened. And, you know, he referred to Russian disinformation and propaganda. It's like
00:13:22.640 they seem to rely on this. It's like a stock response. And it's rather disingenuous. And do
00:13:29.060 you think at any point we'll actually engage with this murky past where a whole bunch of Nazis were
00:13:37.120 actually allowed into Canada? I think it was, I forget who it was, Urban Kotler, maybe, or some other
00:13:45.480 person. Yeah. I think he said, you know, there was a time in Canada when it was easier for Nazis to come
00:13:51.280 here than it was for Jewish people trying to escape Hitler's regime.
00:13:56.920 Yeah. No, precisely. And it's funny because it's an interesting thing. She was, even in the United
00:14:00.240 States of America, Operation Paperclip, right? After the World War II, a bunch of Nazi scientists are 0.86
00:14:07.260 given papers and brought to the United States. Some of them end up in the Soviet Union. And the space race
00:14:12.160 ends up actually largely being driven by, like, if you look at a lot of the senior scientists at NASA for
00:14:17.720 the first decades of its existence, a lot of them were former Nazi scientists who had been given
00:14:21.980 documentation for the United States. So there's a very, the post-war period, all sorts of people
00:14:29.180 ended up all sorts of places for a variety of reasons. And that's the, that was the other thing
00:14:34.860 too that's a lot of complicated as well. The number of people that were complicit in Nazi crimes is
00:14:40.540 measured in the millions. How, this is what they realized at the Nuremberg trials too, right? Is it's like, okay,
00:14:46.700 how do we hold people responsible? Who do we hold responsible? And originally, you know,
00:14:52.160 people come in with the intention of making sure that everybody gets what's coming to them.
00:14:55.160 And then you just realize that the sheer number of people is so obscene that it gets a little bit
00:15:00.580 complicated. But again, in terms of this particular situation, where we end up getting, I hope the
00:15:06.520 government releases the documents. That's what Sija and B'nai B'rith have been asking for for a long
00:15:11.100 time around, not only this unit, but also specifically how many people were admitted
00:15:15.260 after World War II, what was known about them at the time, and what was the criteria that was
00:15:20.540 determined to use whether or not they would be considered, you know, Canadian residents in good
00:15:24.120 standing versus potential political problems. But how hopeful am I? I think the liberals are trying
00:15:29.840 to kill this story as fast as possible. I think they're trying to move on. And I don't think,
00:15:34.420 unless conservatives, which I'm hopeful about, force the issue on a lot of this, I think they're
00:15:39.340 going to try to flip the page as quickly as possible.
00:15:42.180 Well, of course. I mean, with the supine media establishment, you know, they might just get
00:15:46.420 their way. But, you know, how can you ignore the fact that Poland has now made a request
00:15:50.360 to extradite Jaroslav Hanka to Poland to face trial for war crimes during World War II? I mean,
00:15:58.340 you can't just dismiss that. I mean, maybe you can. Like, I mean, you can dismiss extradition requests
00:16:04.140 made by India for people who are wanted back in India for all kinds of criminal activities.
00:16:09.340 there. But maybe they'll end up doing that in this. I mean, he is 98 years old. I mean,
00:16:15.520 98 years old. This is something that happened, unfortunately, you know, over 70 some odd years
00:16:20.440 ago. How much the details can you actually prove? All these sorts of things. Because there have been
00:16:25.540 academic inquiries into this unit in particular. What they participated in, what they didn't participate
00:16:33.060 in. The ideological component is not in dispute. Everybody accepts and agrees that this was a
00:16:37.380 move off an SS unit and that people swore personal oaths to Hitler and that there was an ideological
00:16:40.840 between them. But in terms of getting individual soldiers what they did, where they were, what they
00:16:46.680 knew, what they didn't know, much more difficult. So I understand the political reasoning that a
00:16:51.540 Polish minister might request this in terms of the actual feasibility of this actually being seen
00:16:55.300 through. Even I'm saying an extradition request, even if it actually is legitimate and does,
00:16:59.780 it takes a long time. So I'm not holding my breath where that specifically is concerned.
00:17:05.500 Yeah. So let's turn to India and Canada. Actually, the week of September 18th began with Trudeau making
00:17:12.640 these explosive allegations in the House of Commons. Do you find, and you know, the bilateral relations,
00:17:21.400 you know, have just, they were already frayed, but now they're like spiraling out of control.
00:17:25.040 Do you, do you believe his accusations that Indian agents, agents of the government of India were
00:17:32.080 involved in the murder of a Khalistani separatist activist? You think those allegations are well 1.00
00:17:38.500 founded? Or do you think that they're creating unnecessary damage to an important bilateral
00:17:45.240 relationship?
00:17:46.900 Well, this is the complication, right? I mean, the number one foreign policy priority of the West,
00:17:51.960 United States included, Canada included, has to be economic decoupling with the Chinese state.
00:17:58.520 There are not that many options when you're looking around the world in terms of where you want to go.
00:18:03.840 India is the natural and obvious alternative. You've seen a lot of movement in that direction as well. 0.98
00:18:09.420 Apple, for the first time this year, is releasing made in India iPhones, right? So you're seeing there's a
00:18:13.920 transition, all sorts of stuff like that. And in terms of what the evidence suggests, as of right now,
00:18:20.100 we'll see. I'd like to see more. But the fact that the intelligence came from a Five Eyes ally,
00:18:25.620 the fact that the Americans seem relatively supportive, the details are still unclear. I
00:18:30.460 wouldn't be surprised if there were, you know, this is not something that just the Indian government
00:18:33.340 does. These are governments around the world do this sort of thing all sorts of time, and I'm not
00:18:36.440 justifying it. That's why we need to take it seriously. If a foreign government, any foreign
00:18:40.800 government, assassinates or had a role in the death of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil,
00:18:45.980 regardless of whether the circumstances around how this individual became a Canadian citizen are
00:18:50.300 quite interesting, to say the least. It needs to be fully investigated. But that issue, I see it as
00:18:57.760 fundamentally separate from another one, which is very valid that often comes from the Indian
00:19:01.680 government, which is that Canada has a history of harboring people who express extreme pro-Khalistani
00:19:09.560 views. And the fact of the matter is, if you're a Canadian citizen, and you support an independent
00:19:16.400 Sikh state in the Punjab, that's fine. You have freedom of speech. People have to do that. But
00:19:21.800 there's a subsection of it. So that's what I'm saying. Keep in mind, I want to explain to everybody
00:19:25.220 because I know it's a complicated issue. Not everybody's well versed on it. Fact of the matter
00:19:28.840 is, the majority, the Kalistani movement in Punjab proper in India is as fringe as fringe can
00:19:37.520 possibly be. It doesn't have a lot of clout. It is a primarily diaspora issue that happens to be
00:19:42.520 hyper-concentrated in Canada. But even within the Canadian Sikh community, okay, Kalistanis represent 1.00
00:19:48.620 a minority, and the extreme Kalistanis represent a minority within a minority. But they exist. They
00:19:54.500 exercise a lot of political influence because they're highly organized. And the kind of people
00:19:58.600 that I'm talking about, I want to be clear, because some people try to misconstrue it for political
00:20:01.880 purposes. If you deny the Air India bombing, right? Remember Jagmeet Singh, for example, took him
00:20:06.980 to find me. If you're trying to suggest that it actually wasn't conducted by Kalistani terrorists, 0.92
00:20:12.580 but that it was the government of India had this whole conspiracy to make them look bad,
00:20:18.380 all sorts of stuff like that. If you lionize as Shahids, as you see in some cases, the terrorists 1.00
00:20:25.480 responsible for that attack, I'm sorry. That's not okay. And again, if you're calling for violence
00:20:33.080 against Indian government officials, you are also, as far as I'm concerned, an extremist.
00:20:38.600 So, and then, you know, the analogy that I would use is, could you imagine if in the immediate
00:20:42.920 aftermath of the FLQ crisis in Quebec, okay, we had terrorists in the Quebec separatist movement
00:20:49.000 who went and established a community in some part of India, okay, and they grew, and, you know,
00:20:54.720 they were, I don't know, calling for the deaths of all sorts of Canadian government officials
00:20:58.020 and calling for an independent, all sorts of whatever you want to call it, okay? And Indian
00:21:03.800 politicians made a point of actively pandering to them because they represented, you know,
00:21:08.240 they became an important community, an organized community in certain parts of the country for
00:21:11.540 various purposes. It would be ludicrous. Nobody would ever accept that.
00:21:16.060 Yeah. Yeah. It's really gotten ridiculous. I mean, the point that you're trying to make
00:21:19.820 is a point that an Indian politician actually made a couple of weeks ago. And it's gotten to the
00:21:25.360 point where some prominent Indian commentators are offering to carve out a separate Khalistan
00:21:32.100 state in Canada. You know, it's just, some of this is just ridiculous. And it's funny. It's 0.93
00:21:39.700 entertaining. But unfortunately, it has serious implications for the bilateral relationship.
00:21:45.880 We've ended up alienating a very important democratic ally, which is a counterweight to China. 0.88
00:21:51.260 Yeah. I want to ask you a final question, Anthony. You know, Trudeau and the liberals have been
00:21:58.200 tacky in the polls. Where does he go from here? I mean, do you think he's going to last another two
00:22:02.620 years? Do you think he's going to stick it out? I think that's the plan. You know, that's the thing.
00:22:10.920 There's an expression, you know, man plans and God laughs. And also, two years and eternity in
00:22:15.520 politics, there's a million and one different things that can happen. But by all accounts,
00:22:20.580 everybody that I speak to in liberal land and otherwise, their intention as of right now is
00:22:26.480 that the prime minister is going to remain leader of the liberal party until the next election, and he
00:22:30.440 will run against Pierre Paglia. Now, again, maybe caucus gets rowdy. Maybe there's a push. Like,
00:22:36.420 there's a million and one different things that have happened in the past that could happen now.
00:22:40.100 But as far as the current intention, it seems he's pretty damn well set on running in the next
00:22:47.380 election. In terms of the liberals being able to stage a comeback, I want to be clear, you know,
00:22:51.140 the Conservative Party of Canada, we're not taking anything for granted. We've underestimated this
00:22:54.440 guy a zillion times before. And he beat us three times in a row. We're not going to do that again.
00:23:02.160 There's a very famous quote from the 2015 election campaign, where the then chief spokesperson for
00:23:06.460 the Conservative campaign was asked what the expectations were for Mr. Trudeau in the first
00:23:10.620 debate. And he said, if he shows up with his pants on, we'll consider it exceeding expectations.
00:23:15.160 And then he won a majority government. We've been in opposition for eight years. So those days are over.
00:23:19.460 That's not happening again. Stuff looks great now. And are we excited? Of course. Is it showing that
00:23:24.560 our work is resonating? Absolutely. But at the same time, are we going to take our foot off the gas pedal
00:23:30.940 and assume that it's already in the bag when we're potentially still as far as two years away from the election?
00:23:34.400 Absolutely not. Yeah. A lot can happen between now and then. Well, Anthony, thank you so much for
00:23:40.800 being on the show. It was great to have you. And thank you for your insights and for this great
00:23:45.480 conversation. And I hope to have you back soon. Absolutely. All right. All right. All right. Thank you.
00:23:51.260 Thank you.
00:24:03.540 Thank you.
00:24:04.140 Thank you.