Juno News - September 23, 2022


What does Poilievre’s win mean for the PPC？ (ft. Maxime Bernier)


Episode Stats

Length

13 minutes

Words per Minute

172.23605

Word Count

2,261

Sentence Count

156

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 You're tuned in to the Andrew Lawton Show.
00:00:08.080 We covered a little over a week ago the Conservative Party of Canada's leadership results in which
00:00:14.820 Pierre Polyev very handily won the leadership party of Canada on the first ballot and what
00:00:22.360 we see now is I think a big question about the place that the Conservative Party of Canada
00:00:26.780 has in Canadian politics and what that means for the broader Conservative movement and
00:00:32.740 Libertarian movement.
00:00:33.860 So I wanted to bring in Maxime Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada and a good
00:00:38.340 friend of this program on to discuss this.
00:00:40.780 I was just talking earlier about this poll that came out from Nanos today showing the
00:00:45.020 Conservatives at 31%, PPC at 3%.
00:00:48.320 It's one poll.
00:00:49.320 You never want to extrapolate too much.
00:00:51.180 But what do you think is the strength or health right now of the PPC?
00:00:55.080 Well, it's a big difference between us and the Conservative Party of Canada.
00:01:00.240 I believe that, you know, there's a lot of difference between us and the Conservative.
00:01:05.260 They have a new leader.
00:01:06.600 Yes.
00:01:06.960 That new leader, Pierre Polyev, is more popular than Andrew Scheer or the other leaders that
00:01:15.060 they had before.
00:01:16.700 And I believe that Pierre Polyev is more intelligent than O'Toole and is a better communicator.
00:01:22.260 So I think that's a good news for the Conservative Party of Canada.
00:01:26.100 But also the big difference between us and the Conservative is the way that we are doing
00:01:31.720 politics.
00:01:32.740 As you know, we are doing politics based on ideas and conviction.
00:01:37.100 And, you know, it's not because something is not popular or politically correct that we
00:01:41.740 won't speak about it.
00:01:42.920 We will speak about the values that we believe are very important for the future of this country.
00:01:49.380 And the Conservative and Polyev are doing politics based on survey and polling.
00:01:55.340 And Polyev was very popular during the last leadership contest because he spoke like a
00:02:01.180 Conservative.
00:02:02.260 Actually, O'Toole did that also.
00:02:05.340 And he said, I'm the true blue and Polyev, you know, you need that actually to speak like
00:02:10.640 a Conservative during a Conservative contest.
00:02:13.340 And now Polyev will want to have more support.
00:02:17.180 And I believe that they will do some compromise with their ideas.
00:02:20.580 But also he's not speaking about something that is very important for Western Canadians and
00:02:26.920 the alienation from Western Canadians.
00:02:29.720 They are fed up with the federal government that is not respecting the Constitution and,
00:02:36.960 you know, doesn't do anything to build pipelines.
00:02:39.780 And also Polyev didn't speak about the equalization formula.
00:02:43.720 That is very important for all Canadians.
00:02:46.260 We must be less generous.
00:02:47.520 We must change the formula.
00:02:48.580 So we have a lot of policies that are very different than the Conservative.
00:02:52.620 I can add climate change.
00:02:55.000 Pierre won't impose a carbon tax.
00:02:56.940 I understand that.
00:02:57.960 But he will have to impose more regulations.
00:03:00.880 For us, we won't sign the Paris Accord.
00:03:04.080 We will withdraw from that Paris Accord.
00:03:06.440 So there's a lot of distinction.
00:03:08.800 And we'll see what will happen in the near future.
00:03:12.780 I heard anecdotally from a lot of people in the last two federal elections,
00:03:17.680 but certainly the last federal election when the PPC did very well, almost tripled its vote share over 2019.
00:03:23.640 And I heard people say things like, well, I'm going to vote PPC.
00:03:28.020 But if someone like Pierre Polyev or Leslyn Lewis were the leader of the Conservatives,
00:03:33.880 if someone like Pierre Polyev or Leslyn were there, I would vote Conservative.
00:03:37.560 So now that is there.
00:03:38.560 And a lot of people, for example, that were supporters of the convoy and supporters of the PPC
00:03:43.040 have now a choice between two politicians who were there and speaking about mandates.
00:03:48.340 So how do you recapture or hold on to some of those people that voted PPC
00:03:53.120 that were actually not supporters of the Conservatives last time, but might be this time?
00:04:01.000 I believe that we will grow.
00:04:02.880 Actually, we did that in the past from 0% in 2018, 1.6% in 2019, 5% at the last election.
00:04:10.320 You're right.
00:04:10.820 And I don't know what would be the issue for the next election.
00:04:14.620 And I believe that we won't be in election in this fall.
00:04:18.140 It can be in a year or two years.
00:04:20.240 That being said, if it's the immigration, we are the only party that is speaking for
00:04:25.020 saying no to mass immigration, for sustainable immigration.
00:04:28.960 Polyev and Trudeau and Jack Mead are on the same wagon on that.
00:04:35.120 They want more and more immigrants.
00:04:36.940 That can be a subject of our next campaign.
00:04:39.820 It can be also the economy.
00:04:41.740 We don't know.
00:04:42.640 But we have strong policy, and that can be the future of our country.
00:04:46.720 As you know, right now in Alberta, there is an independence party in Alberta.
00:04:50.920 32% of Albertans want to separate.
00:04:55.040 And we are the only national party that is addressing that, saying we need to have a radical
00:05:00.720 decentralization.
00:05:02.220 We need to give more autonomy to provinces.
00:05:04.640 We are speaking about that.
00:05:07.040 So I don't know what will be the main issue at the next election, but we will be there.
00:05:11.800 We have the same platform, and that will be the same one.
00:05:14.820 And I don't know what will be the platform of the Conservative Party of Canada, because
00:05:18.680 like I said before, they will do polling and focus group before the election.
00:05:23.380 And after that, they will do some compromise, try to have more votes in Ontario and Quebec.
00:05:28.660 As you know, there's more seat in the GDA than in all Alberta.
00:05:32.980 So that's why let's wait and see.
00:05:35.440 But for us, people understand we are doing politics differently.
00:05:39.140 We will always be the same and always fight for what we believe, for a smaller government
00:05:44.260 Ottawa that will respect provincial jurisdiction and respect our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
00:05:49.440 I know it's a question you get asked all the time, and I know it's an annoying question,
00:05:54.400 but I think the audience also is very interested in your answer to it.
00:05:57.700 So I hope you'll indulge me, Maxime.
00:05:59.760 But the idea of a merger, because we've seen the right split in the past in history when
00:06:04.800 the Reform Party was born out of the Progressive Conservative Party, and eventually they came
00:06:09.280 together as the Conservative Party of Canada.
00:06:11.240 What are the circumstances that would need to happen for a PPC, Conservative Party of Canada
00:06:16.340 merger, if something like that would ever happen under your leadership?
00:06:20.600 I want to use the example that you just used in the past, you know, the Reform Party of
00:06:25.280 Canada.
00:06:25.820 Yes, the Reform Party of Canada did merge with the, at the end, it was a conservative, the
00:06:31.320 Progressive Conservative Party, but in between the Canadian Alliance, as you know.
00:06:36.780 But what is the legacy of Stephen Harper?
00:06:39.120 We had 10 years, and I was part of that, of a conservative government.
00:06:44.220 What is his legacy?
00:06:45.680 I can name only ending the whiteboard.
00:06:49.260 That's it.
00:06:50.160 And so, you know, we won't do that mistake.
00:06:52.700 We will always fight for what we believe.
00:06:54.720 We cannot trust the Conservative Party of Canada.
00:06:57.660 We don't, they are conservative when they are in the leadership contest, and after that,
00:07:02.400 we don't know.
00:07:03.420 With O'Toole, we knew he went, he went all the way to the left.
00:07:07.640 Poliev will do that maybe a little bit later.
00:07:10.700 So it's not my responsibility to help elected Conservative candidates.
00:07:16.240 My responsibility is to help our candidates, our PPC candidates, to be elected.
00:07:22.040 So answer your question, we won't merge.
00:07:24.860 Because what happened in the past, you know, we are the new Reform Party.
00:07:29.460 90% of our platform, it's based on the old blue book, the Reform Party.
00:07:34.540 So we won't do any compromise with our ideas, and we won't do the mistake that President Manning did.
00:07:40.520 One thing that I would ask you about the PPC, and I know that you have a lot of things in your platform that touch on a number of issues,
00:07:48.000 from Indigenous issues to ending supply management and so on.
00:07:52.060 But last time, I mean, overwhelmingly, when I went to your rallies, and I covered you on an Alberta tour,
00:07:58.580 and when I interviewed you, the biggest topic was vaccine mandates and vaccine passports.
00:08:03.300 And this was an issue that no one else in Canadian politics was speaking up on.
00:08:08.060 It was only the PPC, and I commend you for that, Maxime.
00:08:10.980 If those issues are not live issues in the next election,
00:08:15.180 how do you get people who might have only been introduced to the PPC because of that to stick around?
00:08:21.320 First, adding the ending, the mandates, it's not, you know, we still have to work on that.
00:08:28.000 Actually, tomorrow, I'll be in the court in Ottawa with Brian Pettford.
00:08:32.200 We are fighting for our rights to freely travel across this country against the vaccine mandates
00:08:38.420 that Trudeau imposed to us on unvaccinated Canadians.
00:08:41.820 And it's important to do that fight in the court because we want to have a legal precedent.
00:08:47.240 And like that, it would be impossible for any government to impose these kind of mandates on Canadians.
00:08:52.980 So we are doing that fight also in the court.
00:08:55.640 But yes, you're right.
00:08:56.820 Maybe in the next election, it won't be COVID-19, and I hope it won't.
00:09:00.880 But that being said, there's a big difference with us.
00:09:03.980 You know, climate change.
00:09:05.000 Now we are living in a climate hysteria everywhere.
00:09:07.720 We are the only party that is saying no, and we will redraw from the Paris Accord.
00:09:12.740 Immigration, it's another big challenge.
00:09:15.180 Mass immigration at the Roxham Road in Quebec.
00:09:18.320 People are staying crossing our border illegally.
00:09:21.260 We are the only party that is speaking against mass immigration for sustainable immigration,
00:09:26.940 a maximum of 150,000 a year, with the big majority of them being skilled immigrants.
00:09:33.300 The Conservative won't speak about that because it's not popular.
00:09:36.360 Like, Poliev didn't speak against the mandate because it was not popular in 2020.
00:09:41.820 Poliev is an opportunist politician, and he's speaking about things when they're popular.
00:09:47.040 For him, the most important is not to be on the right side of the current issue.
00:09:52.500 It's to be on the popular side.
00:09:54.800 And that's why I said the Conservative Party is intellectually and morally corrupt.
00:10:00.020 They don't fight for real conservative values.
00:10:02.580 And we are doing that.
00:10:04.520 And that's why, and I'm very pleased right now that Poliev is speaking against the mandate.
00:10:09.080 It's a sign that the freedom fighters, the truckers, that ourselves and all the freedom fighters across the country won the battle.
00:10:17.720 Because, yes, we were a French minority in the beginning in 2020.
00:10:21.980 And after two years, now we are part of the majority.
00:10:25.340 So, for Poliev, he can speak about it, and he's doing that.
00:10:29.460 So, I don't know what will be the issue next time, but the BBC will be there always to fight for a smaller government, Ottawa, that will respect our rights and respect the autonomy of every province.
00:10:41.460 Just before I let you go, Maxime, I wanted to ask you about this little victory you had in Saskatchewan this week.
00:10:47.480 Now, oftentimes, it's hard to affect change directly when you're not in Parliament.
00:10:51.800 But you and one of your lieutenants in Western Canada, Kelly Lawrence, had posted this on Twitter, and it did very well, that the Saskatchewan Public Health Line, I think it's like 511 or 811 or something, had on its main menu, you know, press 1 if you want to speak to a nurse, press 2.
00:11:09.540 Number 5 was if you want help with assisted death, you press 5.
00:11:13.360 And this is the number that people were dialing if they had a mental health crisis as well.
00:11:17.800 And in your advocacy on this, they've actually removed this now.
00:11:22.640 Yeah, I'm very pleased with that.
00:11:24.480 It took them a couple of weeks, but the common sense has prevailed, and that's important.
00:11:30.060 They were promoting assisted suicide, and when they're doing that actively, the provincial government was doing that actively.
00:11:38.540 When you know that in our healthcare jurisdiction right now and healthcare system, it's not working well.
00:11:47.320 We have wait time for surgeries and long waiting lists.
00:11:51.000 So that being said, when you're promoting that, and the goal of that number, 811, is for you to have the medical assistance, not to have somebody that will tell you, hey, if you want to die, by the way, we can help you.
00:12:05.820 Yeah, just press 5.
00:12:06.500 Press 5.
00:12:07.340 Yeah, press 5.
00:12:08.420 I was very pleased that they understand, and that was a victory for us, but not only us.
00:12:15.140 Common sense people, Canadians, that called the minister and said, hey, you must stop that.
00:12:20.300 I voted for that legislation, Eutaneza, when I was a member of parliament, but now we need to change that legislation because it must be more restrictive.
00:12:32.240 Now they're promoting that, and it's not only at the end of the life when it was supposed to be, when you have an extreme medical situation, and I think that we must review that legislation to have put more restrictions on the use of that option for Canadians.
00:12:50.640 Maxime Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada.
00:12:55.080 Always good to talk to you, Maxime.
00:12:56.260 Thanks for coming on today.
00:12:57.860 Thank you, Andrew.
00:12:58.700 Have a nice day.
00:12:59.520 Bye-bye.
00:12:59.900 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:13:02.080 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.
00:13:06.640 www.tnc.news.