00:05:29.480I think the problem we have here is that the prime minister thinks he's a king.
00:05:38.100He has been told his whole life that he's a prince.
00:05:40.980And princes and kings often don't think that the rules of the realm apply to them.
00:05:49.320So he would probably subconsciously anyway say, yes, normally it would be unethical for a prime minister to direct a billion dollar sole source contract to a group that had paid his family 300 grand.
00:07:02.640And when you mentioned questioning, the Conservatives have now tried to get him before the Finance Committee to answer questions.
00:07:10.080I mean, there are two aspects of this.
00:07:11.800Number one, how likely do you think it is that that'll happen?
00:07:14.320And number two, what is it that you can really get out of this?
00:07:17.320I mean, it does seem plain as day what happened.
00:07:20.060What more is there that you think we need to learn?
00:07:22.020Well, we want to know where this idea came from.
00:07:26.720I mean, he continually claims that the public service concocted this scheme.
00:07:31.700Andrew, I used to be the minister responsible for employment and training.
00:07:37.820And I can tell you there's no way the bureaucracy in that department would have concocted this idea.
00:07:43.160It just doesn't make any sense, especially given that the purported purpose of the program is to pay young people
00:07:51.860to help charities and non-for-profits.
00:07:55.480But there's already a program that does that.
00:07:57.600It's called the Canada Summer Jobs Program.
00:08:00.380In fact, the amounts that they subsidize hourly wages is similar to what Trudeau proposes with this new scheme.
00:08:09.740So, in other words, it's basically a duplication of something already done within the public service.
00:08:16.920I would be stunned if public servants, knowing that, and they do, would have recommended farming the program out that they already run inside.
00:08:26.140And so, I believe that we need to find out where this idea originated.
00:08:31.780And I suspect that what we will find as we follow the breadcrumbs is that it was the Trudeau, the Team Trudeau, the elites around him,
00:08:41.220and those who stood to profit from this transaction, who concocted it, rather than public servants.
00:08:48.880You mentioned something interesting there about the pre-existing program.
00:08:52.700If you were to take out the Trudeau-We connections and all of the connections between Bill Morneau and We and Seamus O'Regan and We
00:09:00.220and take out all of those things, does it seem like it was just a bad program in general?
00:09:05.560I mean, or something that was unnecessary, even if you take out the conflicts of interest?
00:09:09.840Oh, absolutely. It's a ridiculous concept.
00:09:12.880I mean, you know, Orwell warns us that whenever governments abuse language, they're probably abusing other things at the same time.
00:09:21.180And to start with, he calls it a paid volunteer program.
00:09:40.320Now, they needed to invent a new name, though, in order to justify a new program.
00:09:45.700And that was the only reason why this program, why this name was created.
00:09:51.800They would have loved to just say it's a summer job program.
00:09:54.920But if they did that, then they wouldn't have been able to justify creating a separate billion dollar sole source contract.
00:10:00.920Everyone would have said, well, why wouldn't you just use the program that already goes by that name?
00:10:06.020So whenever you see language that is abused, you'll see other abuses.
00:10:12.020You know, the other thing, Andrew, I would point out is that so often with these scandals, they result from governments doing things that they have no business doing in the first place.
00:10:23.460Right. Like the sponsorship program, you know, was it really justified for any government to be putting advertised, advertorials and advertisements up at these events all over a particular province?
00:10:38.560No, not really. That's not the role of government.
00:10:42.600Well, I mean, even if it had cost one dollar, it was something the government should not have been doing.
00:10:47.560And here again, we have government interfering with the charitable sector to effectively corrupt the very meaning of a benevolent word like volunteer.
00:11:01.240And so whenever governments venture outside of their core purpose, they tend to attract corruption or perhaps it's the other way around.
00:11:11.180Perhaps corruption attracts government outside of its core mandate.
00:11:16.440Yeah, that's a really great point on this.
00:11:19.040And, you know, I'm all for finding ways that we can, you know, perhaps download the bureaucracy's responsibilities and find private sector delivery of services.
00:11:27.280But that doesn't seem at all like what this was.
00:11:29.580This was really just expanding the bureaucracy to a group that wouldn't even have the accountability.
00:11:35.740And this is something we always have to watch out for.
00:11:38.400You know, this happens again and again.
00:11:40.460And we as conservatives, we say, look, let's remove government and allow either the private sector or the societal sectors like charity and philanthropy to replace it.
00:11:53.760But we have to be careful that we don't get the opposite of what we are looking for.
00:11:57.400So instead of, in this case, instead of vacating the space, the government vacating the space so that the volunteer and charitable sector could fill it, they tried to nationalize the volunteer and charitable sector.
00:12:13.300And instead of expanding the role of society and shrinking the role of government, they did exactly the opposite.
00:12:21.320And we see this, for example, with the infrastructure bank.
00:12:24.420We'd all we'd all like to see more private sector investment in infrastructure.
00:12:29.340But with the infrastructure bank, what they're doing is the opposite.
00:12:32.060They're taking things that are already privately financed and nationalizing the risk.
00:12:36.700So it's we have to be very careful to watch the real meaning of words and actions to determine if government is, in fact, just grabbing more power and controlling more and more of our lives.
00:12:50.960I mentioned earlier on in the show, one of the big problems is that our ethics infrastructure that we have for investigating and pursuing these doesn't really have any teeth.
00:13:00.700And we know this because Justin Trudeau has been found to have violated this multiple times and other parts of his government as well.
00:13:07.080What do you think needs to be done to reform the ethics and conflict of interest process so that there's actually some heft behind it when they go after lawmakers that have broken the rules?
00:13:17.180Well, listen, I think that the problem with the previous violations is that the police didn't do the job and we have law enforcement for to to apply the criminal code.
00:13:33.120In the case of the Aga Khan Island, the police simply just didn't do the job.
00:13:37.240There are provisions in the criminal code that ban government officials from accepting benefits from entities that are that are seeking assistance from government.
00:13:50.100And so in the case of the Aga Khan Billionaire Island vacation, Trudeau took two hundred thousand dollars of vacations from someone asking him personally for a 15 million dollar grant.
00:14:23.020You can't productively pursue an investigation where you were you stopped?
00:14:26.540Did someone in the government block you from doing your job?
00:14:30.320You know, so in other words, the RCMP did not do its job.
00:14:34.920And frankly, if the Mounties felt they were implicated in that scandal, they should have just referred it to a different police force to do an independent criminal investigation.
00:14:45.500And so and I think maybe that's what the Mounties are going to have to do in this case.
00:14:50.780Just simply say we're too close to the prime minister.
00:14:53.660The cabinet appoints the RCMP commissioner.
00:14:57.460Maybe the Mounties ought to simply redirect the complaint to the OPP, the QPP, the Ottawa Police Service or some other police entity that is not compromised by prime ministerial power.
00:15:11.240So do you think the police should be involved in this situation as well, then, just to be absolutely clear?
00:15:16.760I don't I'm not saying I haven't concluded that there was a criminal code breach.
00:15:21.600I'm neither a police officer nor a judge.
00:15:24.680So I don't have the and I know we don't all we don't have all the facts yet.
00:15:29.140But I certainly think that the police should examine whether or not there was a breach of trust, whether or not the prime minister considered the payment to his family to be an inducement, you know, that motivated him to create this extremely unusual contract.
00:15:50.420And and and so there should be a high level inspector investigator with a police force go in, establish all of the facts and determine whether or not the criminal code applies.
00:16:02.840Just turning before we wrap things up here to the broader financial state of Canada right now, we found out last week a deficit over three hundred and forty billion dollars.
00:16:13.880I know that a lot of that was inevitable, just given government forcing people to shut down their businesses.
00:16:19.080So you have to have a bit of relief there.
00:16:21.480How much of that do you think was avoidable, though?
00:16:24.240I mean, I mean, I know that you've been critical, as has the leader of the Conservatives right now, Andrew Scheer, about a lot of the programs and how they were delivered.
00:16:31.800Do you think that we could have had an even smaller deficit?
00:16:36.260Oh, there's no doubt we should have gone into this with a balanced budget from 2016 until 2019.
00:16:46.940And for for some of that time, not all of it, some of that time, commodity prices were high and the U.S. economy, which we have the privilege of neighboring, was on fire.
00:16:59.000And therefore, we had all the winds blowing at our backs.
00:17:03.540And there's no reason we ought not to balance the budget in that time period.
00:17:08.400If we had, then the balance going in would have been strong.
00:17:13.780And the debt load we carry, total debt load, would have been about 80 or 90 billion dollars smaller than it is right now.
00:17:21.080The other thing I would point out is that the programs that are designed to respond to COVID have serious anti-growth, anti-work attributes.
00:17:32.720Like if you're on this CERB program, you go back and earn more than $1,000.
00:17:37.100They kick you from the CERB to the curb.
00:17:39.260So a lot of workers are saying that they can't go back to work and they can't earn money for 16 weeks.
00:17:46.520We should remove that anti-work penalty, let people earn more than $1,000 and let them phase out their CERB as they earn more with their jobs.
00:17:55.300Same with the rent and wage subsidies.
00:17:57.960Both of them require businesses keep their revenues down 30 or in some cases 70 percent below pre-COVID levels.
00:18:06.920So that requires businesses to artificially suppress revenues in order to get government support.
00:18:14.300They should remove that and make those scalable programs so businesses are always better off with an extra sale or an extra dollar of revenue.
00:18:22.680Those kinds of pro-growth policies would allow businesses and workers to recover.
00:18:27.960It would reduce dependence on government and increase the taxes that businesses and workers pay under the existing rates.
00:18:38.240And so we need a pro-growth agenda now.
00:18:41.560We cannot set the government and the Bank of Canada cannot simply pay the wages of the nation forever.
00:18:46.920And I guess that just in closing, we know there's a conservative leadership race on right now.
00:18:52.180The election could be theoretically at any point in the next couple of years.
00:18:56.560What do you think the conservatives moving forward need to do, either in running for an election or even if they form government, to get the books in check?
00:19:04.820I mean, because obviously you have to close that deficit somehow.
00:19:07.740You don't want to raise revenues by increasing taxes and certainly cutting spending is going to be something that will unleash the mass of criticism that conservatives are so accustomed to.
00:19:19.400Well, I think we need a pro-growth free market agenda that will unleash the economy.
00:19:25.920We have, you know, trillions of dollars of natural resources locked beneath the ground because of anti-development legislation like C-69, C-48.
00:19:38.080We have a tax system that punishes work and business earnings.
00:19:44.160We have some of the slowest approvals for normal economic activity.
00:19:50.560It takes almost three times longer to get a warehouse approved for construction in Canada as it does in the United States.
00:19:57.220Just as one example, we need to remove all of those those obstacles to unleash the full power of free enterprise that will generate the wealth necessary to phase out our deficit over time.
00:20:12.320And make our enable our people to carry the enormous debt load that governments have thrust upon them.
00:20:23.200Conservative finance critic Pierre Paulyev joining me on the line.
00:20:26.360Pierre, thanks so much for coming on today.
00:20:56.260We haven't talked about the climate change alarmism in quite a while.
00:20:59.400And I think it's time we do because of this little music video of sorts, commercial, I don't even know what you want to call it, put out by Burger King, which is I know not the place you go to for your intellectual public policy stimulation.
00:21:12.460But nonetheless, Burger King is wading into the climate change global warming fight with this cow farts and burps are no laughing matter.
00:21:21.100They say they release methane contributing to climate change.
00:21:24.600That's why we are working to change our cows diet by adding lemongrass to reduce their emissions by approximately 30%.
00:22:24.960So maybe just, you know, bow out altogether.
00:22:26.860But it is interesting when the people who are vilified by the climate crusaders decide that they want to be on the woke side.
00:22:34.860They want to be on the cool side and capitulate to them.
00:22:37.420Except they don't seem to realize that all of the critics see them as the problem.
00:22:42.980So people that go on about bovine flatulence being the greatest menace to society since, you know, the incandescent light bulb or something.
00:22:50.760They just think we should all be vegans.
00:22:53.100This is what Joaquin Phoenix talks about when he goes and speaks.
00:22:56.340This is what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thinks.
00:22:58.960This is what all of these PETA activists try to say.
00:23:01.760You know, maybe if they can't get us to eschew meat on humanitarian grounds, we can do it on global warming grounds.
00:23:07.980So with the exception of the fact that the video is spectacularly bad, and I think that's intentional, they're doing what, you know, the David Suzuki Foundation loves to do and all of these other environmental groups, which is put a cute kid out front so you can't be mad at them.
00:23:21.660Because if a kid's telling you to do something, you're not going to be like, oh, you know, go shut your mouth.
00:23:26.300This is the whole Greta Thunberg dilemma.
00:23:28.900By the way, has anyone heard anything of Greta Thunberg as of late?
00:23:32.860The one thing that coronavirus has done is sidelined the jet-setting climate crusaders.
00:23:38.900So Greta Thunberg, who I have no personal ill will or animus to, she has had nothing to do because everyone's been preoccupied.
00:23:46.020So the media fawning over her has at least been put on hold for now.
00:23:50.780But the alarmists love to put a child out front.
00:23:54.200And, you know, the interesting thing is they would love nothing more than for people to not eat meat.
00:24:01.480And I take the view on this that there is going to be a natural cycle of things.
00:24:07.760We know that people are going to eat meat.
00:24:09.780We know that cows have to get out that gas somehow.
00:24:13.300This is not enough of a reason, I think, to sell to people stop eating it.
00:24:18.080So as far as what Burger King is doing, listen, if there's an organic, and I don't mean that as far as organic food is concerned,
00:24:24.800but organic is, in other words, like a way that you can do this without a radical change by putting lemongrass in cows' diets, then fine.
00:24:33.400I mean, I like lemongrass in Asian cuisine.
00:24:35.120I mean, if Burger King wants to do a lemongrass burger patty, for example, I might give it a try if it seems to be unique or seems to be tasty.
00:25:05.860When we come back, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
00:25:08.700You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:25:15.140We are back on The Andrew Lawton Show, and we have a very exciting announcement for you.
00:25:20.180Two weeks from today, there is going to be another debate among the Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidates.
00:25:27.120All four, Leslyn Lewis, Peter McKay, Aaron O'Toole, Derek Sloan, they're all going to be there in Toronto broadcast live.
00:25:35.180True North is going to be carrying it, and yours truly is going to be one of the moderators for the debate.
00:25:41.080Now, this is a really exciting initiative, and it's one being pushed by the Independent Press Gallery of Canada.
00:25:47.280Now, the Independent Press Gallery is a new organization that's meant to be a counterbalance to the closed-off and, quite frankly, inaccessible and unfree parliamentary press gallery.
00:26:00.280The monopoly that has allowed the government to bar independent media, including, again, yours truly, from covering elections, from covering the work of government, from covering federal election debates, all of these things.
00:26:13.740So, Candace Malcolm, who's my boss and friend here at True North, is now the president of the Independent Press Gallery.
00:26:20.800She's pushed this initiative forward, and I think it's a fantastic one.
00:26:24.280I'm not involved in any leadership role in it.
00:26:26.620I'm just an aspiring member of the Independent Press Gallery, and I was very grateful to have the opportunity to be co-moderating the debate alongside Candace in just a couple of weeks,
00:26:38.260and very grateful that all four candidates agreed to come.
00:26:41.200This debate is something that is so desperately needed.
00:26:45.120I've been covering the Conservative leadership race since the beginning, actually, since even before the race began.
00:26:51.260And the questions that the mainstream media asks about it, the coverage that the mainstream media gives, is not really relevant to small-c Conservatives in Canada.
00:27:00.900If you look at the official debate that the Conservative Party did,
00:27:04.080all of the questions that the media were asking afterwards in the scrums were about abortion and systemic racism.
00:27:10.920And those, quite frankly, aren't the issues that most Conservatives care about, aren't the issues that most Conservatives are talking about,
00:27:16.960and aren't the issues that the leadership candidates wanted to be talking about.
00:27:20.340So our goal in this debate is to actually ask the questions that matter to Conservative Canadians, and to all Canadians,
00:27:27.300and actually asking questions that are putting a perspective forward and inviting a perspective and a dialogue that the mainstream media isn't doing.
00:27:35.600So it's going to be absolutely fantastic.
00:27:37.380I want you to mark your calendars for it.