Juno News - December 20, 2021


What does it mean to be a Canadian Conservative in 2021？ (Ft. Andrew Scheer)


Episode Stats

Length

21 minutes

Words per Minute

185.2626

Word Count

3,959

Sentence Count

225


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 What does it mean to be a Canadian Conservative in 2021?
00:00:03.800 What are the core values and beliefs that hold Conservatives together?
00:00:07.140 Today we'll speak to the former leader of the Conservative Party of Canada to discuss.
00:00:10.960 I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:17.720 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into this show.
00:00:20.740 Now as we get closer to Christmas, as the news cycle starts to slow down,
00:00:24.660 we like to take a step back and sort of take stock of the situation in the country.
00:00:28.720 Look at, for instance, Conservatism more broadly speaking.
00:00:32.600 And so to do that today, I am joined, I'm honoured to be joined by Andrew Scheer.
00:00:37.160 Andrew Scheer is the MP for Regina Capel.
00:00:40.420 He's a former leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.
00:00:42.580 He was the 35th Speaker of the House of Commons.
00:00:45.080 And he's currently the Conservative Critic for Infrastructure and Communities.
00:00:49.360 As leader of the Conservatives, Andrew vouched for families, lower taxes and controlled government spending.
00:00:55.060 And while the Conservatives were unsuccessful at ousting Justin Trudeau in the 2019 election that Andrew Scheer led,
00:01:01.760 he was able to increase the party's seat count, increase the vote count.
00:01:05.520 He won the popular vote and he prevented Justin Trudeau from winning another majority government.
00:01:10.360 So, Andrew, it's so great to have you on The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:01:12.780 Thank you for joining us today.
00:01:14.220 Thanks very much for having me on.
00:01:15.260 It's always great to chat with you as well.
00:01:18.000 Great.
00:01:18.220 So, you sort of had big shoes to fill when you became leader of the Conservative Party.
00:01:23.200 You came right after Stephen Harper.
00:01:25.180 And Stephen Harper was sort of the founder of the party, sort of the father of the movement.
00:01:29.220 He helped unite the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance, which he was the leader of.
00:01:34.160 And so, I want to ask you, you know, it's been now, what, five years since Harper was the leader of the party.
00:01:41.120 And as a Conservative MP, does that Harper coalition still exist?
00:01:46.540 And if so, how, if not, what's changed?
00:01:49.940 And what is it that holds Conservatives together these days?
00:01:53.020 Well, that is a great question.
00:01:55.980 And, you know, you could probably write a book on analyzing all the different iterations of the Conservative movement over Canada's history and leading up to where we are today.
00:02:05.320 I've always believed that there are a few principles that all Conservatives can agree on in general terms.
00:02:11.960 And the biggest one of that is just kind of acknowledging that there are natural limits to government, that the government isn't supposed to grow so big as to fill every space in our society.
00:02:24.040 And that's something that, you know, a Conservative from Western Canada, Conservative from Eastern Canada can agree on, that somebody, a fiscal Conservative, a Democratic Reform Conservative can agree on, that at a certain point, government needs to know its bounds.
00:02:39.540 And I think that's the biggest difference between left-wing people and Conservative-minded people in Canada today, is that the left is always clamoring for more and more government, more government restrictions, more government control, more government regulations.
00:02:51.180 And Conservatives understand that at some point, you have to say, no, it's better for society to solve this challenge in another way, other than government.
00:02:59.700 I think that's the biggest thing that holds us together.
00:03:02.420 And then respect for the tax dollar as well.
00:03:04.620 We are hyper aware that every dollar that the government has to spend first has to come out of a taxpayer's pocket.
00:03:11.080 And when government takes from one to give to another, that there are costs associated with that.
00:03:16.260 And so we respect the taxpayer dollar profoundly and really try to measure our success in getting good results for the least amount of money spent.
00:03:25.500 And the Liberals have it backwards.
00:03:27.040 They brag about how much money they're spending and don't really care if the money's doing any good.
00:03:31.820 So I would say that those are the two biggest principles that all Conservatives can agree on.
00:03:36.220 Okay, so the Conservative Party in Canada is a big tent Conservative Party.
00:03:42.660 And, you know, it includes Libertarians, fiscal Conservatives, people who are more social Conservative, religious Conservatives, New Canadians, those types of people,
00:03:51.040 as well as sort of more socially progressive red Tories that might come from Eastern Canada or the big cities.
00:03:58.700 And so it's tough to sort of keep all of these types of Conservatives together in one party.
00:04:03.820 You look down at the U.S. and the Republican Party, they're also a big tent Conservative Party.
00:04:08.000 They disagree on more things than they agree on probably.
00:04:11.500 But what keeps them together is the respect for the Constitution.
00:04:14.960 That's something that they can hold up and say, this is what we respect.
00:04:19.020 The limits on government are written down in this document and we're going to try to uphold this document.
00:04:24.760 Canada, we don't really have an equivalent of that.
00:04:26.940 So how do Conservatives prevent the sort of slow, sort of slippery slope to bigger government that you sort of see?
00:04:34.940 You know, every year there's new government suggestions that the Liberals come up with,
00:04:38.960 new ideas to push us into bigger and bigger government, more and more spending.
00:04:43.260 And the Conservatives are just kind of constantly reacting and pushing back.
00:04:46.680 So do you think that we would be better served as a Conservative movement or Conservatives in Canada
00:04:52.200 if we had something very specific that helped us, you know, keep government limited,
00:04:58.900 stay away from big government initiatives and always sort of defaulting to government?
00:05:02.840 What do you think we could possibly use in Canada to help sort of anchor us to a more principled Conservatism?
00:05:09.740 Well, I think the key is to find the common ground between the different kinds of Conservatives that you've mentioned.
00:05:17.520 And, you know, the key for our Conservative caucus and our Conservative movement is to recognize that we do agree on much more than we disagree on,
00:05:27.020 or at the very least, the things that we agree on are higher ranked priorities for most members of the party.
00:05:33.400 So there is actually a lot of room to build those coalitions between the different types of Conservatives.
00:05:39.240 You talk about kind of current issues and how Conservatives can kind of always respond to them without necessarily always being reactive.
00:05:49.580 And that is a challenge when you're up against two federal parties who are constantly advocating for more spending and more government control
00:05:57.820 and the mainstream media doing the very same, you know, always kind of creating that market amongst Canadians for more and more government.
00:06:04.660 And that's why I've always supported independent media such as yourselves and others who are kind of trying to tell another side of the story.
00:06:13.520 If we use the example of kind of some rock-solid principles that Conservatives can build that narrative around,
00:06:20.040 we're actually in a great position to do that and link it back to the Charter.
00:06:24.780 The Charter guarantees free speech.
00:06:26.800 And here we have, in the current context, we have Justin Trudeau promoting the idea of tabling legislation,
00:06:34.440 announcing his intention to regulate the internet,
00:06:36.980 that he's going to restrict free speech and freedom of expression,
00:06:40.880 especially as it relates to what Canadians can post and what they can see online.
00:06:45.520 That's something that runs counter to, you know, our entire history as a country
00:06:50.580 and certainly the Charter and the Bill of Rights that John Diefenbraker brought in.
00:06:55.040 Free speech is an essential bedrock that all Conservatives can agree on.
00:06:59.220 So here we have a great issue where we can show Canadians that and tell the reasons why we don't want the government to have that power.
00:07:06.980 The thing that's so kind of seductive about the left-wing ideology and their communications is that
00:07:13.960 it's often very, you know, they can lead with their motives, you know.
00:07:18.840 So we do have some things online that I, as a parent, am concerned about.
00:07:23.240 I'm concerned about bullying. I'm concerned about people promoting hatred.
00:07:27.920 And so the left comes along and solves that with more government.
00:07:31.140 They do this all the time on fiscal issues, on all kinds of different policy matters.
00:07:36.600 And a lot of people want that problem solved.
00:07:40.020 And so when the left-wing parties are saying, well, government's the right thing to do it,
00:07:43.740 it's, there's a simplicity about that, that, you know, many people can be swayed by that.
00:07:49.860 So what Conservatives need to do is we need to say, hold on a second.
00:07:52.920 We're concerned about the same thing.
00:07:54.520 We don't want people to be bullied online.
00:07:56.400 We don't, you know, we want to have some kind of ability for people to interact online without being exposed to hatred and things like that.
00:08:02.980 But you don't want to live in the world in which the government gets to decide that.
00:08:07.280 And the downsides, the negative consequences of empowering government to do more things
00:08:12.240 always creates more misery than solving the problem.
00:08:18.540 And we see this time and time again in every state that gets bigger and bigger and more and more intrusive into people's lives.
00:08:24.760 They always hide their bad policies with good intentions.
00:08:29.100 We saw it in the Soviet Union.
00:08:30.640 We saw it in East Germany.
00:08:32.300 The Berlin Wall was designed to keep enemies of the state out originally.
00:08:36.400 And so we always see the left dressing up their horrible policies with good intentions.
00:08:42.020 And what Conservatives have to do is we have to constantly remind people about the downsides of the expansion of government control,
00:08:48.920 the misery that state intervention into the economy, curtailments on our individual liberties lead to.
00:08:54.680 And we need to do that everywhere we see it so that we can, you know, make the case for smaller government
00:09:02.720 actually leading to an improvement in the quality of life from fiscal issues to societal issues, you name it.
00:09:10.400 Our principles will always have better results than what the left is offering.
00:09:14.420 It's been tested and found to be true everywhere it's been tried.
00:09:18.900 Absolutely.
00:09:19.420 And I will just note that when you were giving your farewell speech as leader of the Conservative Party,
00:09:24.640 one of the things you said was you told Conservatives specifically to challenge the legacy media and their left-wing narratives,
00:09:30.300 and you gave a little shout-out to True North.
00:09:31.960 So we really appreciate it.
00:09:32.900 We've appreciated it at the moment.
00:09:34.460 We still do.
00:09:35.320 And I think it's so important that we offer alternatives, right?
00:09:39.760 So it's not just that Conservatives can stand there and say,
00:09:42.400 no, it's a bad idea for the government to regulate speech,
00:09:45.100 but you have to offer an alternative, be it, you know, in civil society.
00:09:49.760 A lot of the solutions that the Liberals propose for problems in society,
00:09:54.200 they'd probably be better off solved by the community or by individual families or by churches and charities
00:09:59.740 as opposed to the sort of heavy-handedness of the state.
00:10:02.880 And same with the media.
00:10:03.660 It's like we can sit there and criticize the media all day,
00:10:06.180 but we should also turn and support Conservative efforts to try to make a more balanced landscape in the media.
00:10:14.040 So we really appreciate you saying that.
00:10:16.940 And really, you're one of the few Conservative voices at the time that was saying that.
00:10:21.820 So we really appreciate it.
00:10:23.560 Yeah, I know.
00:10:24.380 Thanks for that.
00:10:25.280 I mean, I get frustrated when I see kind of the monolithic media narrative get constructed around various issues
00:10:33.720 and recognize how hard it is for Conservatives to kind of swim upstream against that.
00:10:40.520 And, you know, I haven't agreed with every single thing I see on True North or, you know,
00:10:45.040 the post-millennial or some other independent things.
00:10:48.020 But I just, I really appreciate what those, what yours and others are trying to do with just creating more dialogue,
00:10:56.340 more opportunities for the other side of the debate to be talked about and dissected.
00:11:00.600 And quite frankly, to cover things that the mainstream media just won't cover because, you know, of the bias there.
00:11:06.860 So there's a lot of things that you guys have covered that the mainstream media won't.
00:11:12.380 And it's imperative for voters to have all sides of an issue and to find out kind of what some alternative philosophies are about that.
00:11:20.580 So, yeah, happy to, happy to give you the shout out.
00:11:24.720 And I hope, I hope, I hope it, I hope it continues to grow.
00:11:28.900 Well, thank you so much.
00:11:30.040 We've had a, we've had a great year.
00:11:31.400 And, you know, I think that the work that we're, that we're doing, I don't, I don't always agree with everything that's on True North either,
00:11:37.440 because the idea is that we have different perspectives, different voices.
00:11:42.160 But then when it comes to the news, we just sort of try to report the facts as they are.
00:11:45.560 And like you say, so many times, it's a story that, that, that should be covered in the legacy media.
00:11:49.280 The CBC should be reporting on these things, but they don't.
00:11:51.940 I want to ask you a little bit about your role as the shadow minister, the critic of infrastructure and communities.
00:11:57.820 Because while you, while Catherine McKenna was the infrastructure minister,
00:12:01.420 you helped shine light on the fact that the government had spent $188 billion in something called an Investing in Canada plan.
00:12:08.820 It was slammed by the Auditor General.
00:12:10.600 Thousands of projects were missing or unaccounted for.
00:12:13.180 There were massive delays, no tracking.
00:12:15.040 So for viewers who might be unfamiliar with the infrastructure portfolio and this government's failed plan,
00:12:23.520 you really don't hear about it much in the media, given such a huge price tag.
00:12:27.580 I'm wondering if you could just sort of shine some light on the situation and talk about, you know,
00:12:33.460 what this money was supposed to be for in an ideal world.
00:12:36.900 Should it be spent or is that too much?
00:12:38.940 And if you were the infrastructure minister, how would you sort of better handle this file?
00:12:44.920 Right.
00:12:45.180 Well, it's a huge file.
00:12:46.780 And as you point out, it's $180 billion.
00:12:49.940 What we found over the last couple of years is that the government has put,
00:12:54.280 the Liberal government has put in all kinds of filters and lenses aimed at achieving certain outcomes,
00:13:00.920 but they had no ability to track those outcomes.
00:13:03.580 So they'd say, you know, our priority is to get, you know, X type of projects built
00:13:09.400 and it'll have this kind of impact.
00:13:12.320 And then what the Auditor General found out was that there was no tracking mechanism
00:13:15.660 to see if those targets were even being hit.
00:13:19.460 In addition, we've heard from municipalities who all over the country,
00:13:22.880 every region who have good projects, projects that will have a huge return on investment,
00:13:27.780 you know, expanding road access or expanding water capacity to handle new growth within a community.
00:13:36.040 And what they're telling us is that the projects are just sitting on tables in Ottawa.
00:13:40.860 And because of the delays, the costs are going up and the timelines are getting stretched.
00:13:45.760 So very, very critical report from the Auditor General.
00:13:49.020 We've also heard that they put in all these lenses, they call the filters or lenses,
00:13:54.080 to screen out which projects will be approved and which ones won't.
00:13:57.780 And some of those lenses are really preventing good projects from going ahead.
00:14:01.860 So, for example, there's a climate change lens, there's an Indigenous lens,
00:14:05.160 there's several other lenses, which if projects don't speak to that,
00:14:09.620 then they fall down the ranking list.
00:14:12.080 And as a result, there's a lot of communities where, you know,
00:14:14.120 they just, they need regular old infrastructure, you know,
00:14:16.740 they need their roads rebuilt, they need highway access, they need water systems.
00:14:21.100 And there isn't always a linkage to some of those lenses.
00:14:25.020 And so what we've heard from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is that we need some more flexibility,
00:14:28.820 which goes back to another conservative principle, which is the decentralization of government
00:14:34.000 and recognizing that Ottawa doesn't know best and that creating a one-size-fits-all program
00:14:39.700 where you're applying the same regulatory and same parameters from coast to coast for large cities and small,
00:14:45.620 that it doesn't work.
00:14:46.380 We're big believers in letting the provinces and letting municipalities determine for themselves
00:14:51.340 what their priorities are.
00:14:53.220 And we can support that without totally dictating how they should be spending the money that they receive from Ottawa.
00:15:00.920 In addition, what we found out, Candice, was about the Canadian Infrastructure Bank,
00:15:05.360 which is a giant boondoggle, a $35 billion bank that Justin Trudeau created,
00:15:11.400 which was supposed to leverage private sector investment.
00:15:14.760 And the idea was that if the government took on some of the risk of these large projects,
00:15:19.000 that more private sector investors would put their own money into some of these large-scale projects.
00:15:25.120 Well, Justin Trudeau must be the only person who could run a bank these days that loses money.
00:15:29.220 But the operating costs keep going up.
00:15:31.660 There's been no private sector leveraging at all.
00:15:34.500 And the bank hasn't completed a single project in over four years of existence.
00:15:38.720 It's basically become a corporate welfare bank.
00:15:40.880 We found projects where large companies were promoting a project.
00:15:46.440 For example, Fortis Energy was promoting a project to help one of their subsidiaries
00:15:51.600 fill the needs of the electricity market.
00:15:54.960 Great project, but it's a multi-billion dollar company that has lots of success in the energy sector,
00:16:00.880 both in the United States and Canada.
00:16:02.160 And for some reason, Justin Trudeau decided that Canadian taxpayers should help underwrite this project
00:16:07.740 and put your tax dollar into a project to help a giant multi-billion dollar company make even more money.
00:16:16.360 And Conservatives have no problem with companies making money, providing goods and services,
00:16:20.860 and making profit on that for its workers and its shareholders.
00:16:24.000 But we don't believe that the Canadian taxpayers should be underwriting these projects
00:16:27.400 when large, profitable companies are already doing that type of thing.
00:16:32.060 It's wild.
00:16:33.020 And again, you don't really hear too much about that.
00:16:36.040 Andrew, it's wild how much government, how much money this Trudeau government just wastes without even regard.
00:16:41.120 I mean, creating a bank that does nothing for $35 billion is outrageous.
00:16:45.620 So in Canada, this is a final question.
00:16:48.000 We have a real cost of living crisis.
00:16:50.000 I constantly hear from people trying to afford to buy their first home.
00:16:53.720 They end up having to move, like, you know, an hour and a half away from Toronto just to be able to afford a single-family home.
00:16:59.920 You know, when it comes to the cost of filling up gas, the cost of getting groceries, everything is more expensive.
00:17:07.140 I think the housing thing really is such a big issue for Canadians.
00:17:12.340 And we don't really see, you know, in theory, that's maybe what an infrastructure and communities minister would do.
00:17:18.660 And yet, that doesn't really seem to be the focus of this government.
00:17:21.720 Like you said, they're more focused on ideology and making sure that there's climate change and Indigenous lenses on things, whatever that means.
00:17:28.360 What do you think that the Liberal government could do right now to make things more affordable for Canadians?
00:17:33.980 Well, the first thing they need to do is they need to stop printing money.
00:17:37.200 The increase in the housing costs is directly linked to inflation.
00:17:41.800 And inflation rates are running over double the normal rate of inflation.
00:17:46.160 That is all directly linked to the Government of Canada running out of money to borrow.
00:17:50.460 And so they turned to the Bank of Canada and they cranked up the printing presses.
00:17:53.900 And at the beginning of the pandemic, the Bank of Canada was creating $5 billion worth of new currency every week.
00:18:00.260 They've tapered that off somewhat, but they're still creating a lot of money every week out of thin air,
00:18:05.100 buying government bonds and flooding the financial system with brand new money.
00:18:08.800 That always causes inflation.
00:18:10.700 Anytime you have more dollars chasing the same amount of goods, you're going to see prices go up,
00:18:15.300 especially when it comes to assets.
00:18:17.360 The institutions, the financial sector, they receive the money first.
00:18:22.280 And they understand that to protect against inflation, you have to buy assets.
00:18:26.000 So there's been a lot of investment, not in terms of building new homes, but buying up homes throughout Canada as a hedge against inflation.
00:18:35.860 That's part of it.
00:18:37.100 The money flowing through the system also causes inflation, which has an effect on home price as well.
00:18:43.720 But then there's a larger problem with or an equal problem as it relates to the supply of new homes coming onto the market.
00:18:49.880 And one of the things that we've talked about as the Conservative Party, both in this election and in the 2019 election,
00:18:55.560 we talked about making it easier for new units to come onto the market,
00:18:59.580 that all the policy tools on the demand side won't work if there isn't an increase on the supply side as well.
00:19:08.580 And so some of the things we've talked about was linking some of the infrastructure dollars to municipalities to create more housing stock.
00:19:14.980 So that could be investments in public transit to enable more developments.
00:19:20.660 It could look at incentivizing municipalities to reduce their regulatory framework and their approvals process timeline.
00:19:29.740 There's a CD Howell report that indicated that there's over $200,000 in the cost of the average home in Canada
00:19:35.980 is directly linked to regulatory issues at the planning level, the municipal and provincial level.
00:19:41.800 So there's a lot that we can do to free up new, to facilitate new units coming onto the market
00:19:48.020 by working with municipalities, incentivizing them to reduce the regulatory framework and their timelines
00:19:53.400 and build that critical infrastructure in areas and ways that can build up that housing stock.
00:19:58.700 If we don't look at the supply side and we only look at the demand side,
00:20:01.140 we're just going to have more dollars chasing the same number of units.
00:20:04.080 We're going to continue to see that cycle of prices going up.
00:20:07.700 Yeah, I mean, you see that.
00:20:09.000 I'm from Vancouver originally.
00:20:10.080 I spent some time in the summer there.
00:20:11.800 And, you know, you have these whole communities where there's just single-family homes,
00:20:16.040 even though, you know, there are apartment complexes sort of nearby.
00:20:19.180 And it's like, you know, so many more people could live here.
00:20:22.500 Obviously, you'd have to fix the roads and the bridges and through there
00:20:25.620 is because the traffic is already really bad in Vancouver.
00:20:28.020 But it's pretty shocking how many single-family homes there are right in the center of Vancouver
00:20:33.200 that could easily be converted.
00:20:35.080 Well, it's really interesting stuff, Andrew, food for thought.
00:20:37.560 And I appreciate your insightful comments, especially on what it means to be a conservative.
00:20:41.260 So thank you so much for joining the show.
00:20:43.440 Merry Christmas to you and your family.
00:20:44.700 And we hope to see you again in 2022.
00:20:46.500 Merry Christmas to you, too, and all the best for the new year.
00:20:49.340 All right.
00:20:49.760 Thank you so much for tuning in.
00:20:50.920 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:20:52.760 Merry Christmas to you.
00:20:57.520 Merry Christmas to you.
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