Juno News - Will Trudeau do anything about Roxham Road？ (Ft. Aaron Wudrick)

00:00:00.000 Hello everybody. I'm Rupa Subramanya and welcome to the Rupa Subramanya show. Today we have a great

00:00:24.640 guest. Erin Woodrick is director of the domestic policy program at the Ottawa-based think tank

00:00:29.680 at the McDonnell Laurier Institute. He's been at the forefront of some great commentary on some very

00:00:35.600 big domestic issues like immigration reform, healthcare, the opioid crisis, and more recently

00:00:42.540 allegations of foreign election interference in our elections. All of these issues have been in

00:00:47.980 the news lately. We're going to talk about them and it's a real pleasure to welcome Erin to the show.

00:00:54.660 Erin, welcome to the show. I wonder if we could just start by chatting about something you wrote

00:01:02.560 recently in the Montreal Gazette on immigration reform. You start with the crisis at Roxham Road.

00:01:10.800 I've written about this as well recently. You have this crazy loophole in our third safe country

00:01:17.820 agreement with the U.S. where would-be asylum seekers, if they cross illegally, or what Canada

00:01:23.340 euphemistically calls an irregular border crossing, they have to have their case heard and not be sent

00:01:29.560 back to the U.S. Now, the Americans aren't too shy about enforcing their borders, yet the Trudeau

00:01:34.980 government has been extremely lax. Why do you think this is? Is it driven by politics, incompetence,

00:01:42.260 or is something else going on here?

00:01:45.720 Yeah, look, it's a bit of a pickle from a legal standpoint. Because of this deal we have with

00:01:49.780 the Americans. It basically is a loophole, like you say. I mean, it's a loophole that's being abused

00:01:54.900 dramatically right now, right? I mean, for many years, no one cared about this loophole because

00:01:58.700 there was nobody coming. But the numbers of people who are coming, and to be clear, it's nothing like

00:02:02.960 on the U.S. southern border or what they see in Europe with millions. But relative to what Canada

00:02:07.220 had got before, we're talking about tenfold increases in the number of people. And I think

00:02:12.440 this really starts to eat away at Canadians' confidence. I think a fundamental thing for a

00:02:18.520 lot of people is having integrity on our borders. I mean, countries have to have borders. If you don't

00:02:22.500 have a border in a country, you're kind of not really a country. And yes, of course, every country

00:02:27.880 is going to be able to decide how many refugees can we absorb, how much humanitarian support are we

00:02:33.000 willing to offer? That's up to people in any given country. But you can't have people sort of abusing

00:02:38.140 the system and sneaking in and using loopholes. That undermines, I think, trust in our borders

00:02:43.420 and our system generally. And frankly, it's not even fair to other refugees who are going through

00:02:48.060 the right process and following all the rules. I mean, they're essentially getting crowded out by

00:02:52.300 these people who are breaking the rules. Yeah, no, absolutely. So, you know, a couple of

00:02:57.100 follow-up questions to that. So, Roxham Road is not a legal border crossing, yet it was closed during

00:03:04.300 the pandemic. And then Trudeau decides to reopen it, I think, I believe, in the fall of 2021.

00:03:10.540 Why would you reopen a border crossing that is not legal?

00:03:16.620 Yeah, it doesn't make sense. I mean, why have legal ones if you're going to sort of openly send

00:03:20.220 this invitation? And let's not forget the Prime Minister had previously sort of, you know,

00:03:25.820 signaled that, you know, Canada is welcoming and almost sort of inviting people in not so many words

00:03:31.420 to abuse these loopholes. So, you know, he says, well, you know, we've got a 5,000 mile border and

00:03:37.020 we can't block all the spots. Well, as you point out, it was closed during the pandemic, so it can

00:03:41.500 be done. And secondly, yes, maybe you can't close, you can't, it's not like you can stand a cop, you

00:03:46.300 know, every 10 feet across a 5,000 mile border, but you can certainly make it harder. You can certainly

00:03:51.740 make it less accessible for people. And, you know, they say, well, that's dangerous, but it might also

00:03:56.700 deter people. I mean, people are doing this. They're using Roxham Road because it's easy to get to.

00:04:01.100 And if you make it less easy for them to abuse loopholes, and it follows that fewer people are

00:04:05.660 going to abuse them. Yeah. You also make a very interesting observation in your piece,

00:04:11.980 in this op-ed, that unlike most Western liberal democracies, Canada has a near universal all-party

00:04:21.020 consensus, at least among the major parties, political parties, in support of large increases

00:04:26.220 and immigration targets. But you note that in some ways, this is a facade. People are afraid to

00:04:32.620 challenge the official position because no one wants to be branded a racist or a xenophobe,

00:04:38.780 and the consensus could crumble very quickly if things go south. Do you want to elaborate on this

00:04:44.220 argument? What's the actual level of support for high immigration targets in Canada? And how are the

00:04:50.940 major political parties positioning themselves on this issue? Yeah. So first, I want to be clear.

00:04:55.820 I mean, I'm a child of an immigrant. My wife is a child of immigrants. I'm from immigration. I think

00:05:00.700 immigration has been good for Canada. And I think we are lucky that we live in a country where we have

00:05:05.820 people who come here because they want to be Canadians. So that's a good thing. I also think that,

00:05:09.820 generally speaking, Canadians are welcoming to immigrants. What I'm talking about, you know, in the

00:05:15.740 piece I wrote is that this idea that people can't have reasonable concerns, most obviously about the

00:05:21.020 number of immigrants that are coming. And the reason for that even has nothing to do with even the types 0.65

00:05:26.460 of immigrants. It has to do with things like housing. It has to do with things like infrastructure. It has

00:05:31.420 to do with things like the fact that people can't find doctors. I mean, what is the point in welcoming

00:05:35.420 people to a country where you have nowhere for them to live and where they instantly become competitors 0.98

00:05:40.540 and exacerbate a demand problem for housing? That's already a huge problem for the Canadians

00:05:45.900 who are already here. So I think we need to be reasonable. We need to listen to the concerns about

00:05:51.260 people who are saying, hold on. Can we take this many people? What is the impact going to be on the

00:05:55.580 rest of the country? Can we manage this level of immigration? We have to take that seriously, 1.00

00:05:59.900 because if we don't do that, I think we're going to get a much nastier backlash. And I don't think

00:06:05.180 anyone is going to like the outcome. Okay. So since you mentioned a number,

00:06:09.420 you said number in your response, what is the magic number? I know a lot of people have been

00:06:15.100 a little taken aback by the fact that Canada is now going to have 500,000 people coming in every

00:06:21.580 year starting next year, I think. What is the magic number? I mean, I get all of the arguments. I've

00:06:28.060 made these arguments myself that can the system actually support this large influx of immigrants 1.00

00:06:34.220 coming in. I'm also an immigrant myself. But I do have concerns, just like the ones that you raised.

00:06:42.780 Can the system actually support this large number of immigrants coming in? How do you decide the

00:06:47.900 number? Why 500,000? Yeah. Well, maybe part of the problem is that we're picking a number,

00:06:52.700 right? I mean, we don't do this for a lot of other things. The government is trying to centrally plan

00:06:57.740 a metric, which is really should be more market driven, right? I mean, part of the decisions that we make,

00:07:03.100 and our system is already structured this way, frankly, to a better degree than other countries,

00:07:06.700 where the point system, you know, the immigrants that we select outside the humanitarian and the

00:07:11.500 family categories are based on our economic needs, right? The government tries to estimate. So,

00:07:15.900 but we should go a step further in a lot of cases, you know, I think, and the model I mentioned in my

00:07:20.940 piece is for refugees. I mean, the evidence shows that privately sponsored refugees that have people who

00:07:26.380 support them and help them integrate and help them learn the language and find jobs, they have much

00:07:29.900 greater success. It's a win-win for Canada and for the refugees than the ones that have government 1.00

00:07:33.980 sponsorship. I think when it comes to economic categories, we need to look at this more. It

00:07:37.660 needs to be employer driven. It needs to be driven by places and industries where they have labor

00:07:42.300 shortages and they can't find people. That's a better fit than picking a number and saying,

00:07:46.620 well, we're just going to let in 300,000 or 500,000 or 800,000. It should be a market driven process.

00:07:51.740 That I think is the better way to ensure both they have the support and that there is a defensible

00:07:56.540 rationale for letting those people, that level of people in.

00:08:00.060 Yeah. You know, I was also struck by this analogy that you make in your piece.

00:08:04.300 You know, it's an analogy between your argument on immigration and a very similar situation with

00:08:10.700 socialized medicine, for example. So for decades, again, there was this all party consensus on

00:08:15.740 socialized medicine and many Canadians apparently identified this as a key feature of Canada or the

00:08:21.500 Canadian identity. Anyone challenging it was seen as, you know, was branded as cruel and heartless

00:08:28.860 and no party really touched it. But now you have these provincial healthcare systems that are

00:08:32.780 basically collapsing all over Canada. They're falling apart and provincial governments are now

00:08:37.420 finally testing the waters by privatizing more services. How do you see this debate on socialized

00:08:44.060 medicine and allowing a private alternative play out over the coming months? You know, could this be an

00:08:50.140 election issue? I should note that one of the things that struck me about the immigration issue

00:08:56.540 is that there are a lot of liberal voices in the pages of the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, I

00:09:02.220 think, that have been raising concerns about, you know, can we actually support this large influx of

00:09:08.380 immigrants? Yeah, look, first on the healthcare debate, I think the tattoo is gone. I think it's gone. I

00:09:15.580 think that's a good thing. I think we can actually have a grown up discussion about healthcare. I mean,

00:09:19.900 it's kind of bizarre the language around healthcare. It only really is here, right? I mean, you don't have

00:09:25.180 this taboo against private healthcare in any other country, including progressive and lefty parties

00:09:31.180 and politicians in other progressive countries. They just don't have this strange taboo around

00:09:37.500 private healthcare. So when it comes to immigration, you know, what my hope is that we get out a little bit

00:09:41.580 more nuanced, that we can recognize that people can have legitimate concerns about immigration that isn't

00:09:47.180 because you're a racist. And I don't want to say there aren't any racist. I mean, there are some

00:09:50.220 people that just don't want immigrants because they don't want people who don't look like them

00:09:53.900 to come here. I'm not talking about those people. I don't agree with those people. I agree with the

00:09:57.660 people who say, you know, I would be fine with welcoming new people, but I can't find a family

00:10:03.260 doctor. My kids can't afford a home until you address these things. I am voicing the fact that I'm

00:10:09.180 concerned that we don't have the ability to absorb, you know, hundreds of thousands of new people,

00:10:14.860 because there's just no room and nowhere to put them.

00:10:17.500 Yeah. I mean, again, I mean, I asked the question, why, why this increase in immigrants? Is there a

00:10:25.980 labor shortage in the country? Of course. I mean, we know that there is a labor constraint in Canada,

00:10:32.220 exacerbated by the pandemic. What exactly is going on? Like, you know, I'm a little puzzled.

00:10:38.460 Yeah. Well, look, part of it is demographic shifts and every, especially every sort of,

00:10:43.980 you know, developed country is going to be dealing with this problem. You've probably seen,

00:10:47.340 people have seen in the news, the fertility rate has dropped sort of across the developed world.

00:10:51.180 You know, historically the immigration is sort of made up for that gap. And now, and now the debate

00:10:58.940 is like, well, what's the right level? And there's another separate debate about this because some

00:11:03.180 people say, well, why do we need new immigrants or why do we need to have more babies? Well, 0.93

00:11:06.940 are all our social safety nets are built on this sort of pyramid, right? Where you sort of,

00:11:10.460 there are more people working than are retired. That ratio is shrinking dramatically. So it's going to put a

00:11:14.700 lot of pressure on our healthcare system on, you know, pressure to increase taxes, things like CPP.

00:11:21.020 So we do need to do something. We need to get the right mix between, you know, immigration and,

00:11:26.060 and having, you know, families in Canada, having the amount of kids they want to have. It's not about

00:11:30.940 telling people they have to have kids, but surely, you know, there was other work out there showing that

00:11:35.820 there are a lot of Canadians who there's a gap between how many kids they have and how many they

00:11:39.900 want to have. Surely that seems like a legitimate public policy problem for governments to be wrestling. 0.71

00:11:44.380 Yeah, no, absolutely. Shifting gears a bit, in your role as director of domestic policy at

00:11:53.580 McDonnell Laurier Institute, I believe you commissioned a study last fall assessing the response to the

00:11:59.980 opioid crisis in BC versus Alberta. This, this issue has been heating up with, you know, you have the

00:12:06.620 usual progressive commentators decrying Alberta's approach and praising BC's. What is the real story

00:12:13.260 here? What exactly is the difference in approaches between the two provinces? Are they really that

00:12:19.100 different? And what, what, in your opinion, is the way out of this opioid crisis?

00:12:24.220 Yeah, look, this is, this is obviously a very charged topic. And I think it's hard to separate

00:12:28.780 the politics of some of the facts here, right? It's, it's very highly charged and politicians have

00:12:34.140 a very strong interest to sort of make anyone proposing some alternative as the villain.

00:12:39.740 So I think both on the sort of liberal and conservative sides, you've seen some,

00:12:43.180 both some exaggerations and some sort of vilification, misrepresentation of what these

00:12:48.220 two differences are. You know, what we have in British Columbia and most of sort of the West Coast

00:12:52.300 United States is what they call the sort of the harm reduction safe supply approach. The logic behind

00:12:57.740 this is people are going to do these drugs anyway. So we're going to give them clean versions of the

00:13:01.900 drug, which is to say, I mean, there's still drugs that are bad for you, but they, they don't have sort of

00:13:06.220 street ingredients in them. So, you know, the odds of an overdose are lower, you have these

00:13:11.740 safe injection sites, so people have help on site, so they don't die. You know, the thing that that

00:13:16.540 has done, of course, is that people, they don't die at these injection sites, because there are people,

00:13:20.540 their staff around. So that's the sort of thing that the safe supply advocates are sort of declaring

00:13:25.500 victory on saying, well, people come to these sites, they do drugs, they don't die, that's a win,

00:13:30.220 because you can't help people recover if they don't die. That's their argument. I think if that's

00:13:35.020 where you stop the analysis, that's pretty hard to argue with. The problem is there's a lot more

00:13:39.420 going on here. I think a lot of people believe that it's, you know, yes, keeping people alive

00:13:43.660 is important, but it's not the only thing. What happens after that? How do you help them recover?

00:13:47.820 How do you incentivize them to recover? What are the impacts of things like, if you look at places

00:13:52.940 like the Lower East Side and Vancouver, I mean, the 10 cities and homelessness is growing,

00:13:57.660 it is not shrinking, crime is rising, it is not shrinking. So there are other problems

00:14:01.980 associated with this. Like, yes, it's great that more people aren't dying. That's a victory. I'm

00:14:05.980 not saying that's bad. But you can't just stop there and say, you know, we won, this is the solution.

00:14:10.780 And in Alberta, what they're doing is a little bit different. They do have an element of harm

00:14:15.980 reduction, they don't give you the street drugs, they give you sort of synthetic drugs that address

00:14:19.980 the high, but don't, sorry, that address the craving, but don't give you the high. But they have all

00:14:25.980 kinds of levels of off ramps into treatment, which is all fully funded. So, you know, in Alberta,

00:14:30.860 it's not just about keeping you alive. It's about what can we do to try and get your life back on

00:14:35.900 track as well. That's the real distinction between these two approaches. I think some people are trying

00:14:40.540 to frame Alberta as some sort of, you know, retro 1980s, you know, you know, throw everybody in jail

00:14:46.700 who smokes one joint kind of thing. That's not what Alberta is doing. Alberta is trying, I think, 0.89

00:14:51.260 to take the best of the harm reduction approach, which is keep people alive, but also recognize

00:14:55.980 that for society's benefit, and for these individuals, you can't stop there, you have

00:14:59.900 to try and look at everything you can do to help them recover to get them off drugs and to to

00:15:05.500 incentivize recovery, which is was something that we don't see in places like risk formula.

00:15:10.220 Yeah, so you know, on a related issue, BC took the extraordinary step recently of

00:15:16.140 legalizing the possession of a small quantity of illegal hard drugs, I believe of hard drugs such

00:15:22.700 as cocaine, heroin, etc. Yet, the production, sale and purchase of these drugs is still illegal.

00:15:31.820 So can you tell me how exactly this is supposed to work? How does it make sense to legalize

00:15:36.700 possession when you can't legally buy it?

00:15:38.780 Yeah, I think this is just another step in the whole destigmatization argument,

00:15:42.780 right? It's that we can't. And it's also a matter of, well, we don't want to criminalize

00:15:47.420 someone who's got an addiction if they can't help themselves. And all they're doing is feeding their

00:15:51.820 own habit, as opposed to increasing the supply and getting other people addicted, you know,

00:15:57.100 that that's a relatively minor crime. You know, my response to that is that is this really going to

00:16:01.420 change very much? I mean, in a lot of cases, when these laws were on the book, they weren't enforced

00:16:05.660 anyway. So I really don't know that there's going to be a really dramatic shift here. And, you know,

00:16:11.180 when I come back to the stigma issue, I mean, I think there's a legitimate debate about, you know,

00:16:15.260 sometimes stigma is that it can be a useful incentive to people, right? And I find that

00:16:20.300 there's a big disconnect in sort of progressive circles between stigmatizing things like cigarettes

00:16:26.220 and alcohol versus cannabis and hard drugs. I mean, why in some ways is it acceptable to try and

00:16:34.300 stigmatize it and see that as an effective way to get people to change their behavior? In other cases,

00:16:38.940 it's like, well, we can't do that, because it will it won't help. I just I find there's an

00:16:43.820 inconsistency there. Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm switching gears yet again, Aaron. Let's talk

00:16:51.340 about the public inquiry into the Emergencies Act. You know, it's disappointed many, including myself,

00:16:59.340 I've I've written about this as well. And despite all of the caveats in what Rouleau said, ultimately,

00:17:07.820 he was rubber stamping what the Trudeau government did. Again, you take you had an interesting take

00:17:14.540 criticizing the report. You're you're also a lawyer by profession. Could you could you dissect

00:17:20.220 where you think Rouleau went wrong and whether he ought to have found whether he ought to have found

00:17:27.180 whether the government acted incorrectly in using emergency powers? You note in your piece that the

00:17:33.580 Rouleau report is not the last word. And ultimately, this will be decided in the court of public opinion,

00:17:40.220 presumably at the ballot box in the next election. Do you think this this will whenever

00:17:45.820 that will whenever that's expected to happen? Do you think this issue will resonate enough with

00:17:50.780 especially fence sitters that could sway how they how they vote in the next election? 1.00

00:17:56.300 Yeah, I mean, on the first point on the electoral consequences, I actually think the people,

00:18:00.940 you know, on in the minority on this issue. So, you know, supporters of the convoy,

00:18:06.140 I think it's going to resonate more with them because they it's going to be fresher in their mind.

00:18:09.980 I mean, a lot of the people who came to the protest, I mean, they did it out of exasperation.

00:18:14.780 They did it out of frustration. They did it because the measures being imposed on them were

00:18:18.780 causing real hardship in their lives. And so for them, that is going to weigh heavily on their mind.

00:18:24.620 I would I would guess that probably most of those people were not voting liberal anyway.

00:18:28.620 So I don't know about the electoral consequences. You know, in terms of the report itself,

00:18:33.980 first of all, I do want to say there were some there were some good parts of the report.

00:18:37.580 I thought that Rouleau did a much better job than some other certainly other observers recognizing,

00:18:43.420 for example, that, you know, not everybody in the convoy was a racist and there was not,

00:18:47.420 you know, he I think he did a fairer job of saying, you know what, the media and some politicians,

00:18:52.380 they really didn't help this by trying to characterize this as some, you know, uniformly hate

00:18:59.100 filled get together. I think he I think he did a better job with the nuance there. So I'll give him

00:19:06.060 credit for that. What really bothered me, though, was that while recognizing it wasn't his job to make a

00:19:11.820 legal determination, he kind of went ahead and did it anyway. And then he did it with all these sort

00:19:15.980 of caveats saying, well, you know, I'm not entirely sure and I recognize reasonable people could disagree

00:19:22.060 and I recognize the court is going to have the final say on this. But anyway, I'm going to go

00:19:25.740 ahead and say I think it was valid under the law. You know, to me, the lawyer, you either you either

00:19:31.500 sort of state your opinion because you're supposed to and stand behind it or don't say anything at all.

00:19:36.780 He could have actually just demurred and said, you know what, it's not my job to make a ruling of

00:19:41.580 legality. That's for the court. And he didn't do that. The other thing, a theme that sort of ran

00:19:47.420 throughout it that bothered me was that he seemed to almost be leaning all the time to looking for

00:19:53.180 ways to make it easier to use the act. You know, people need to recognize this law is so unusual and

00:19:59.580 extreme. It's basically supposed to be it's designed to be very hard to use. Like you should have

00:20:04.460 government should have to jump through so many hoops to use this thing that they almost never

00:20:07.660 even want to think about using it. And all the recommendations that Rouleau makes are almost

00:20:11.900 about how can we make it easier in the future for a government to use this in any context.

00:20:16.860 I think that's very problematic. I think it's against the spirit of the act. And I think it's

00:20:20.540 the opposite. I think the government, if anything, there were there were some wiggle rooms over certain

00:20:26.140 interpretations. People are probably familiar with this definition of a threat to national security

00:20:32.460 under under the CSIS Act. I mean, these are things that were put in place to make it hard to use.

00:20:38.540 And Rouleau is basically viewing them as obstacles. And I'm like, yes, they are obstacles. They were

00:20:42.620 there for a good reason. And we should keep them there. We should tighten them up. We shouldn't be

00:20:46.220 saying, Oh, well, we've got to make it easier for governments to use this tool down the road. 0.88

00:20:50.540 And I fear now because of that report, there are going to be people who are saying, Oh, yeah,

00:20:54.780 let's, let's make this easier to use. And one last thing on that,

00:20:59.020 I really feel a lot of people make that tremendous mistake of their position on the act and its use

00:21:05.580 falling along the line of whether they like the convoy or not. I think that is a tremendous

00:21:09.180 mistake. People need to think of it in a context where they don't know the nature of the protest,

00:21:14.860 and they don't know whether they're sympathetic to it or not. That is the proper test. Because

00:21:19.180 someday, and I genuinely worry about this, there's going to be a different government and a different

00:21:23.420 protest. And all the people that were happy to use this hammer on the convoy are going to be

00:21:28.220 horrified when a future government uses this act for all and they're going to use all the same

00:21:32.620 arguments that the Trudeau government used against the convoy. The only difference is that people are

00:21:36.140 going to be sympathetic to the cause where they weren't sympathetic convoy. And I am a firm believer

00:21:40.940 that governments should not use tools, you know, against their enemies that they then could then,

00:21:45.980 you know, have used against them down. If you don't use a tool, if you're not prepared to see

00:21:49.900 a different government with a very different point of view, use the same tool later on.

00:21:53.900 Yeah, no, absolutely. There's got to be some consistency. And this, you know, cuts through,

00:22:01.020 you know, partisan politics. And of course, I mean, what happened sets an incredibly bad

00:22:09.740 precedent for, you know, and as you point to this, that future governments could use this

00:22:15.820 for an issue that their supporters, you know, care about. And it's, it's, it's, it's very dangerous.

00:22:25.900 And yeah, and I have, you know, I must say, I'm just more than just disappointed. I'm actually quite

00:22:31.980 worried. But, but anyway, let's, let's talk about being worried. Let's talk about what's in the news

00:22:40.540 right now, which is China's interference in Canada's elections. Until now, I feel that Trudeau

00:22:49.020 has been Teflon man, many people have referred, referred to him in that way. But finally, it appears

00:22:55.020 that this very serious issue of China's interference in our elections, this might finally spell the end

00:23:01.900 for the Trudeau government. So far, the NDP, which at first joined hands with the conservatives in

00:23:08.140 agreeing that there should be a public inquiry seems to have gone radio silent after Trudeau

00:23:13.740 quashed the idea. Do you think this special rapporteur is meant to give the NDP a face saving,

00:23:19.660 a face saving way to keep supporting the government? How do you think, how do you think things will play

00:23:24.860 out? Yeah, look, with respect to the NDP first, I mean, I understand their rationale for striking

00:23:30.860 this deal is the sort of well, we could be a positive influence and we deliver a tangible result.

00:23:35.260 I don't know that they properly weighed the trade off to that. I think if to the average

00:23:39.020 Canadian, it just looks very bizarre to be both sort of a member, almost a coalition partner and also

00:23:45.420 a critic, like, like every time Jagmeet Singh opens his mouth to say, well, you know, I'm going to hold

00:23:50.700 the government account for this people were like, well, you, you'll have the power to do that right now.

00:23:54.620 I mean, you can right now you can hold them very accountable and he never does. So I just,

00:23:58.860 it just seems the very strange, the obvious question that I think a lot of people will ask,

00:24:04.060 you know, as to whether, you know, the, the prime minister is going to use another one of his

00:24:08.060 political lives up on this. I mean, if he's got nine, he's probably running out of them now,

00:24:12.620 you know, part of that is his specific government's track record, but part of it is also just how long

00:24:16.620 he's been there. I mean, people forget it's coming up on eight years that Justin Trudeau has been

00:24:20.540 prime minister. Every government starts to pile up baggage. This is not a specific

00:24:24.540 to him. And, you know, I mean, people, if people remember the euphoria of 2015, he was this fresh,

00:24:30.460 new progressive face. I mean, that's feels like a lifetime ago for a lot of people, including for

00:24:34.300 a lot of his voter coalition. So, you know, I do think, and the other thing too, I don't think

00:24:38.940 he's Teflon, man. I think he's consistently lost support over these issues. I think Blackface was a hit.

00:24:44.620 I think SNC-Lavalin was a hit. I think all the ethics violations were a hit. I mean, I think these

00:24:49.180 are hits. People forget he lost the popular vote the last two elections. Yes, the quirks of our

00:24:54.460 electoral system means he stays in power. Those are the rules of the game. But in terms of the

00:24:58.700 number of Canadians that voted for him, he was outvoted by his opponents the last two elections.

00:25:03.820 So he's not exactly starting from a position of strengths here, right? So I imagine they're going

00:25:09.900 to carry on as long as they can. I think the government is at the point now where they recognize

00:25:16.620 they're probably not the favorites in the next election. So they're going to try and forestall

00:25:20.060 that day as long as they can and hope that something comes up that might change the game,

00:25:25.020 you know, a misstep by Mr. Polyev or some other sort of economic good news or something that they can

00:25:30.780 change the channel with. Because right now, this Chinese interference story, it's interesting. 0.68

00:25:36.220 I think had Mr. Trudeau not sort of spent a lot of his political capital already, people might be

00:25:42.540 willing to give him the benefit of the doubt now. But with things like SNC-Lavalin and all these other

00:25:46.540 instances where he sort of, if not lied, certainly omitted things that he should have said. People now,

00:25:53.660 when he says things like, well, I didn't know, or well, I'm going to appoint an eminence,

00:25:57.660 you know, impartial person. A lot of people are not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt

00:26:01.740 of it. And that's, he only has himself to blame for that. Yeah. Well, I mean, since you mentioned

00:26:06.540 the elections, last question for you. If the election were called today, there's a good chance,

00:26:11.580 according to various polls, that Pierre Polyevre would be the next Prime Minister of Canada. If

00:26:16.860 the Liberal government survives its full term, then we won't see an election till 2025. How do you see

00:26:22.860 this battle playing out between now and then? Yeah. I mean, the interesting question for Mr.

00:26:27.980 Polyevre is that, you know, he was obviously elected with some very enthusiastic supporters.

00:26:33.020 I mean, he clobbered his opponents in that leadership race. It wasn't even close. I guess

00:26:36.860 the question for him is when the fire is burning that hot, how do you keep it burning at just the

00:26:40.860 right temperature, right? A lot of his people already in his coalition really don't like Justin Trudeau.

00:26:47.180 I mean, we already know that. The question is, those folks that are on the fence, maybe they

00:26:51.500 don't love Trudeau, but they kind of need an alternative that's a little more inviting.

00:26:55.980 How do we get those people? That's the tougher hill decline, those last 5% for Mr. Polyevre.

00:27:01.740 And it's going to be interesting to see how he balances keeping his supporters who are very angry,

00:27:06.780 happy and convinced that he's in their corner, while also reaching out to people who maybe aren't

00:27:11.260 really angry, but are kind of annoyed with the current government and could be sold on,

00:27:16.220 you know, voting conservative. How does he walk that line? That's going to be an interesting

00:27:20.060 challenge for him in the coming years. Okay. Well, on that note, Aaron, I really appreciate

00:27:25.660 you sharing your insights with us and for being on the show,

00:27:28.540 and I look forward to having you back again sometime soon. It was great. Thanks for having me.

00:27:46.220 Thank you,

00:27:48.040 I love you.

Juno News - March 10, 2023

Will Trudeau do anything about Roxham Road？ (Ft. Aaron Wudrick)

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