KINSELLACAST 362: Hamas' banker cashes in - with Lilley, Kheiriddin, Belanger, Pierson, Batra plus Illuminati Hotties, Milk & Diesel and more
Episode Stats
Words per minute
150.00917
Harmful content
Misogyny
5
sentences flagged
Toxicity
21
sentences flagged
Hate speech
11
sentences flagged
Summary
This week on The Kinsella Cast, Warren talks about Canadian politicians who may not be assholes, but may become assholes. Plus, John Mraz's back and he's in a bad mood. And Warren plays some rock and roll.
Transcript
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It's The Kinsella Cast, starring Warren Kinsella.
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I'm not going to say it's a great show or an excellent show.
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So I've got Brian Lilly walking on the beach, being thoughtful,
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talking about Donald Trump, who's an asshole,
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and talking about Canadian politicians who may not be assholes,
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I've got the panel with Tasha Carradine, Carl Belanger.
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I've got Adrian Batcher and I on with CFRA this week
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And I always watch my P's and Q's when I'm on with Batcher
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You'll hear it yourself at the tail end of the podcast.
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And I said to him when we were done, are you okay?
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I've got Illuminati Hotties, a great band from L.A.
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I've got kind of rock and roll happening this week.
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And then Home Is Where is not the name of the song.
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And, like, I was a big fan of R.E.M. in the early 80s
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when I was in Ottawa finishing my journalism degree.
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And, um, just like that swampy country rock sound
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They kind of lost their way after that, in my opinion.
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But anyway, Home Is Where, kind of interesting.
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and always checks very carefully the musical offerings,
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he will let me know if I've done anything wrong.
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that he released upon, um, an expectant, expectant,
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Like, none of them had helped to manage a big organization
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Um, and so, to me, it felt like a change in political party,
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Thirteen of them had never even been a member of parliament.
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Shafak, Shafak Ali, I apologize if I've pronounced his name wrong,
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He's essentially the manager for the financial affairs of the government.
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when he was going in the bathroom at the House of Commons.
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And he was endorsed by this wildly anti-Israel lobby group.
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And, you know, environmental policies in the West, where I'm from,
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have made the government pretty unpopular out there.
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she may be a very nice person, but she's a new Democrat.
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And she was previously the grand chief of the Grand Council of the Crees.
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Uh, we've got Heath McDonald from PEI, new minister of agriculture.
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He's got experience as a minister at the provincial level,
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but we don't know how he's going to do at an important file like agriculture federally.
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Um, uh, anyway, there's a bunch of people like that, um,
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who I've never heard of, and perhaps you haven't either,
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So, basically, these are junior ministers who will only occasionally attend cabinet meetings.
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You've got Hannah Ganey, John Zerichelli, uh, who's a friend from, uh, Provincial Liberal days,
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He was the number one critic of Justin Trudeau.
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He looked like he was on his way out, and Carney's put him in cabinet.
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So, anyway, all of this stuff taken together, I think it represents big, big change,
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and that was one of his messages during the election campaign, of course.
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For all the criticism that Trudeau received about too much change, too fast,
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he was far more cautious with cabinet shuffles.
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I mean, comparative terms, I think Mark Carney has unleashed, like, a revolution,
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because this wasn't just a cabinet shuffle, I think.
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You looked away and kept your answer encrypted.
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And standing toe-to-toe, I think we're faking it.
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Cheated the friends we brought to Stella and Cognac
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And in the background you can hear the sound of a gentle breeze, maybe some water lapping the shores, but apparently where Brian Lilly is right now, this weekend, you cannot hear black flies or mosquitoes.
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And I don't know how he's pulled that off, but he has.
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And look, all I'm happy about is that I'm not hearing construction noise at 7 a.m., which is what I get at home.
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I'm not hearing nonstop sirens or crazy people out on the crazy and or drunk stone people out on the street in the middle of the night screaming, fuck you!
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You live in a downtown city, that's what you got.
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I was up at my cabin where you have been and stayed and getting the boats in the water.
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And the black flies and mosquitoes were wearing biker jackets and driving Harleys.
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Here on Georgian Bay, I'm a bit up from Wasaga Beach, up in tiny.
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But Ontario Premier Doug Ford, for people that are from Ontario that know Wasaga Beach, Doug Ford made a great – this isn't on our agenda, but let me just make the pitch because I grew up loving Wasaga Beach.
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But a place was devastated by a fire a bunch of years ago.
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It's the longest freshwater beach in the world, and they're investing money to bring tourism back to the area and make – like, part of the reason people were pooping on the beach, no public toilets.
00:11:04.560
Yeah, don't poop on the beach, folks, wherever you are.
00:11:09.480
So, pooping on the beach, I think, is a good segue, but also a good metaphor for what the Carney Liberals did this week, their first week.
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You had Stephen Giegbo not staying in his lane.
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You had the Minister of Housing saying prices shouldn't come down for housing.
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You had the Minister of Finance saying no budget for a year.
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You had – oh, yeah, and then you had the Minister of Global Affairs basically regurgitating Hamas talking points.
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And that – you know, so Wednesday they had a good launch.
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And, you know, there were a lot of people like myself, like yourself, looking at and saying, okay, here's the good, the bad, and the ugly, as with every cabinet.
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I said at the time there's some good appointments, like Kim Hodgson, who's going to be the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, a guy who actually wants to get things built at a time when we need to get things built.
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He made some good noises, and the next day Stephen Giegbo comes out and poops on the beach with his – no, we don't need more pipelines.
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And, by the way, we're going to be at peak oil in two years, and so we don't need to, you know, have any more oil projects.
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Because peak oil is something that environmental zealots, like Giebo – and look, we all want clean water, we all want clean air, beautiful, pristine land, but –
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Well, you're going to have to start again from but – we lost you completely.
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So you said but – you talked about energy projects, then but –
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So you missed my whole rant about Stephen Giebo?
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Then Stephen Giebo comes out and starts saying that, you know, we don't need any more pipelines.
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And we don't need more oil because we're about to hit peak oil in two years, which means demand for oil will plummet.
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This is a claim that people like Giebo have been making for years, generations, that we're suddenly going to stop needing oil.
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And every time we pass their deadline, they just move it.
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And so it's just his excuse for keeping everything in the ground.
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But I just want to get your sense of the cabinet.
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Like, my take was this is – you've got a lot of rookies here.
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I think that Mark Carney is in line with Melanie Jolie, is in line with Anita Anand and moving Canada closer to the Hamas position.
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Gregor Robertson, rookie federal minister, but he was mayor of Vancouver.
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He was also mayor of Vancouver when he drove housing prices more than doubled.
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And, of course, municipal governments have the greatest responsibility for the housing sector.
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And this is the worst week I've seen for any cabinet ever.
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The Tories, meanwhile, have made themselves a very, very, very small – like Elmer Fudd used to say, very small target.
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And I'm hearing that he's making appropriately humble-sounding noises and kind of learning his lesson.
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What was your take of how he has been handling the past few days?
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When he came out Wednesday after the cabinet for a short reaction to it, and he wasn't all hammer and tall.
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He said that he would work with them when they proposed good ideas.
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And then he had a – I think some people ran into him after the disastrous comments.
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Other than that, it's been a very different Poliev.
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I'm told that he, as well, that he has been reaching out, that he – there is an attempt to set up a meeting with Doug Ford.
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Ford, I suggested they go to Ford's favorite Etobicoke Italian restaurant, Postaccino.
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And a friend of mine said, no, they've got to go fishing.
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And that way you're stuck in a boat for four hours and you have to actually talk and no one can say, oh, you know what, it's been 45 minutes.
00:16:09.160
Sit in the boat for four hours and actually talk and sort things out.
00:16:12.600
Well, always keep in mind, though, there is the possibility of somebody being thrown overboard.
00:16:22.780
You know, Don Davies of this non-party party is supposed to be the leader.
00:16:27.320
Then all of a sudden we started to hear people, including from, you know, Jenny Kwan, who's like a big, big name in the NDP circles, saying, not so fast.
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We don't like how this was – how it happened.
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I'm going to take you back to your student council days.
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What do you Democrats like better than anything?
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I don't know what their process is other than they love to debate it and argue about it.
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It's – there's going to be a bun fight over the future of the party in a little while.
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By all accounts, everyone tells me he's a really nice guy, but he's super left.
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So smart guy, affable guy, extreme left, is that the direction the party's going to go in?
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Don Davies, I don't think, will be the future face of the party.
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He would fit in with Anita Anand and Melody Jolie and Mark Carney on the Hamas front, though.
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These guys, they've got to get their act together or they will be irrelevant.
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Avi is a friend, full disclosure, and I was on his show for many years.
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But he seems to have lost his sense of humor since he joined the body politics.
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So, anyway, God bless him if he takes up that job.
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That happened to another guy you worked with, Michael Ignatius.
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You've been writing some very stirring stuff about what's been going on on the issue of Israel and anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism.
00:18:26.460
We had another terrible, terrible event in Toronto, marching down major streets in Toronto,
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and people sitting on restaurant patios being attacked and subjected to abuse and the police doing nothing.
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And, you know, we've got then the President of the United States accepting a multimillion-dollar gift from the banker of Hamas.
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And Israel's looking, to me, pretty alone these days.
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Well, on the incident that happened in Toronto, Mayor Chow views the people that do those sorts of things as her crazies.
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Thankfully, Toronto police did make an arrest after the fact, and they did intervene after a bit of time where people were harassing, you know,
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people just trying to have a meal on a patio in nice weather.
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But Mayor Chow views them as her crazies, and she knows they vote for her.
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Mayor Demkew knows that those people vote for her, and he takes his marching orders from Mayor Chow.
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And it's clear in this instance, Police Chief Demkew is a horribly weak leader, and I've been calling for him to go for well over a year.
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It's always fun when I bump into him in hallways or at events.
00:19:49.200
As far as Donald Trump and the Qatari jet, I'll say two things.
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If you weren't screaming about Qatar funding the American university system and turning places like Colombia into little Hamas outposts over the past few years,
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If you thought it was just fine that they did that, sit this one out.
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So I was screaming about that, and I will join Ben Shapiro in saying, this is greasy, and it's unacceptable, and it's got to stop.
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The President of the United States should be able to go to the front of the line with Boeing and say, we need a jet.
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Qatar, but, you know, Qatar, 40, what is it, 40 million for this jet, but it's been billions into the U.S. educational system.
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They are the bankrollers of not only Hamas, but they are, I've had some terrorism experts tell me they are more coercive than Iran.
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If some of what Trump is doing can bring them into our side and not be doing that, okay, that's good, and sometimes diplomacy is greasy and weird.
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No, it looks plenty bad, and, you know, I just don't think we should be doing trucker trade or the Americans with Hamas's banker,
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because that is, as you point out, in fact, what Qatar is.
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One of the guys that I met when I was in Israel a year and a half ago is the guy who took the first payment that came from the Qataris.
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He was a high-level officer in the Israeli army.
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His job was to take the first payments and hand it over to Hamas, and then he continued to do that.
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Like, there was, and they thought it was the right thing at the time, and obviously it turned into be a horrible thing.
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But, yeah, he's also the guy that looked at us when he found out we were taking thousands of unvetted people from Gaza,
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and his eyes bugged out and said, are you crazy?
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We thought maybe with the election over, things would maybe get a little bit quiet, but they're not.
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But in tiny township, walking on the beach, Brian Lilly is at least enjoying some calm and quiet before we get back at it.
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You had a minister of global affairs basically echoing Hamas talking points.
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You had a new minister of housing saying that housing prices wouldn't go down and shouldn't go down.
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You had a minister of finance saying he wasn't going to deign to give us a budget for many months until after the summit.
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Maybe these guys need some micromanaging because it was not a good start.
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But the two-tiered cabinet system is kind of interesting, I suppose.
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But, Carl, I guess your takeaways from either the cabinet makeup or, I guess, their ability to communicate this week.
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Well, Mark Carney saw the mirage when he pretended he was different than Justin Trudeau.
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You know, his cabinet at first, his first iteration before the election was shrunk, signaling that he was going in a different direction.
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But here we are today with basically 39, you know, which is the same as Justin Trudeau had before, if you include the parliamentary secretaries, which are basically ministers without the title.
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And then you add to that the fact, the decision that weren't mentioned about the budget, which to me means that this government is following true with the Justin Trudeau budgetary policies.
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So, you know, you make a change here and there and you try to get the ways in means motion.
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But the budgetary policies in place right now are the ones that were in place under Justin Trudeau.
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A little bit like some new paint on an old house in many ways.
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Tasha, just in terms of the cabinet makeup, I know there's been talk.
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Just, you know, Gregor Robertson has faced some criticism.
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He took the bait, I suppose, in terms of pipeline questions as well.
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But any takeaways for you from cabinet this week?
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It had been a disappointing first week, especially on the not releasing a budget, which I really believe was a purely political exercise.
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Carney did not want to have to deal with the fact that he does have a minority, even if it's only two seats.
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He would have had to talk to the opposition parties.
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You know, not wanting to do that, it's basically, well, it's getting what you want without having to deal with parliament.
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Kind of not like wanting to deal with the legislature.
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And then, you know, he did the signing of an official order, like Trump does.
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Again, you know, sitting there signing off on tax cuts symbolically, even though he has no authority to do that.
00:30:33.840
You know, for someone who ran against being like Donald Trump or against what Donald Trump stood for,
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With regard to Gilbo, yeah, Gilbo also stepped out and contradicted Carney on the pipelines issue,
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saying, you know, we're going to hit peak oil in 2028.
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I love when people say they know when we're hitting peak oil.
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The new environment minister, Julie DeBruson, also is very hard left on the environment, anti-fossil fuels.
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So those choices, as well as Hodgson, who's the energy minister, has a great pedigree in electrification in Ontario,
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Daniel Smith, Alberta, the separatists are feeling their oats.
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Fighting about pipelines is now becoming part of Canadian identity.
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It was the lifting of the retaliatory tariffs in the dead of night during the election
00:31:52.540
when the rest of us thought that they were still being imposed.
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There are reports that they lifted, Carney lifted the retaliatory tariffs and didn't tell anybody.
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You see, and I thought I had remembered him mentioning that during the debate as well,
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so I was a little bit confused by all the kind of talking points on that this week.
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Was this just kind of a political rookie mistake here, right?
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He's part of a new government that's trying to change the message,
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dealing with kind of separatist rhetoric at the same time.
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I can't reiterate how silly it was to kind of respond to something like this.
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So if you're the new minister of energy, you know, you're going to be pretty ticked off
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that this guy steps up to a microphone and starts talking about your files on the first day.
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So it's not his job anymore, thankfully, and he needs to back off
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because, you know, Carney himself was giving interviews, CTV,
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I think within the same news cycle, saying the exact opposite, saying the exact opposite.
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So again, like all of this stuff that he stitched together with Tasha and Carl and I are saying,
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If they had done something like this during the election campaign,
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Like it was really poorly done in communications terms.
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And Polioff took no time at all in kind of incorporating what Guibo had said into an attack
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and fairly easily one that just kind of dropped into his lap there.
00:33:37.580
And Carl here, I heard this week from former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page.
00:33:43.420
So he was saying, you know, it would be difficult to get a budget down right now, but it can be done.
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And he actually pointed to the Bank of Canada, which would be, you know, a former employer of Mark Carney,
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to say that they've been doing this since the start of this tariff war, right?
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They've been putting out these policy documents with all of these things and possibilities.
00:34:00.040
Is this just kind of a political excuse right now to not get something on the paper?
00:34:03.660
I think it is, because the fact is that the budget consultation process was undertaken before the election
00:34:17.580
The policies that were in place were being adopted, like adapted for a budgetary document throughout the election.
00:34:24.620
And from, you know, both the conservative and the liberal point of view, the Privy Council Office,
00:34:30.040
as a responsibility and a mandate to make sure that when the new government comes in,
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they can implement their vision and they can do it quickly.
00:34:38.640
You could have tabled the budget this spring, no problem.
00:34:42.060
The machine of the government is ready for that eventuality.
00:34:46.860
It's like they don't know that there's a budget every year.
00:34:49.260
Of course there's a budget every year, and during the election, every time a policy dropped
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from one of the parties that could aspire to form government,
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they were drafting papers and options to see how we could move this forward
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So I agree with Tasha that it is a political decision.
00:35:08.760
They do not want to give any leverage to the parties that have the balance of power,
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and they have three parties that could play along.
00:35:21.600
But at the same time, they don't want to be seen as if they are governing with a majority,
00:35:26.040
so therefore it's much easier not to have a budget from a political standpoint.
00:35:30.980
And Warren, I guess further to that point as well,
00:35:32.940
it becomes, I guess, less of facing a first confidence motion here,
00:35:36.020
but you would also think that, you know, fresh out of an election,
00:35:41.480
Do you think this is to avoid some kind of confidence votes?
00:35:44.260
What do you kind of see as the strategy in not releasing a budget here?
00:35:48.880
I think it's a bit of arrogance, and it surprises me that we're seeing this from Champagne,
00:35:55.200
from Frankie Bubbles, because he usually has a pretty good ear for these things.
00:36:01.300
So, you know, we don't know if PMO said to him,
00:36:04.560
well, you know, having a budget a year ago is good enough.
00:36:08.140
You know, we don't know what the rationale is here, and that's a big part of the problem.
00:36:14.680
If you haven't had a budget for a year in an instance where the country is facing an economic existential threat
00:36:22.400
and we're being hammered by tariffs and this hostile force to the South,
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We need to know what the financial picture is of the country.
00:36:31.100
We need to know the fundamentals so decision-making can be made.
00:36:35.600
You know, the federal government isn't just the beneficiary of having a budget.
00:36:39.220
The province is needed as well in order that they can do their planning
00:36:42.960
and they can do their budgetary forecasts, and we're not getting that.
00:36:50.060
I can't remember when we've gone this long without a federal budget.
00:36:55.100
You know, even during the pandemic, when everything shut down, we were still having budgetary statements,
00:37:01.060
and we're still getting a sense of what the financial status is of the government of Canada.
00:37:06.120
This year, this government, we're not getting that.
00:37:10.980
He had said he hopes at minimum that they'll put out some kind of, you know, debt and deficit position.
00:37:15.140
At least we know where we're kind of standing right now.
00:37:17.000
But to your point, government departments also need to be funded for the rest of this year as well.
00:37:23.040
We'll see how that kind of shakes out in the next little while ahead of a throne speech to return Parliament here.
00:37:30.080
We did hear from the leader of the Conservative Party this week, the opposition, Pierre Polyev.
00:37:34.060
He had been pretty quiet since he lost his election or lost his seat.
00:37:36.900
He's waiting for a by-election, of course, in Alberta.
00:37:40.120
We did hear a couple of, as you mentioned, press conferences this week, kind of weighing in on liberal decisions, of course.
00:37:46.720
Did you notice any kind of substantive change in Polyev?
00:37:50.680
Or was it kind of much the same we saw during the election campaign?
00:37:53.660
I noticed a few more smiles and things like that.
00:37:55.800
But a lot of the messaging seemed very similar.
00:38:08.440
He was not as aggressive, vitriolic, you know, snappy.
00:38:18.920
I just, you know, because we're not used to that.
00:38:21.060
So the question is, is that who he was all along?
00:38:24.960
There's occasions during the campaign where he was more like that.
00:38:27.900
At Tout Le Monde en Pal in Montreal, he was on Radio Canada.
00:38:30.920
He gave a performance, you want to call it that, on that show.
00:38:34.460
So a bit like that, more affable, if the word is, but also more measured in his tone.
00:38:42.280
But he also, with his words, he did not use, he used some of his stock phrases, but not as much.
00:38:48.140
He peppered them in, but it wasn't, you know, lost liberal decade five times in a row, which is what we heard before.
00:38:54.560
So I think he's shifting, and I think it's in response, naturally, not only to the loss of the election, but to the loss of his seat,
00:39:03.640
and the fact that, you know, there is so much grumbling and misery among conservative ranks,
00:39:09.420
saying, you know, how did we get 41% still loose?
00:39:12.280
How did we get to this place where the liberals are in again, essentially, with almost a majority?
00:39:19.340
This is not the result that we bargained for, and they're looking to him,
00:39:22.820
because he was the only thing in the window during this election.
00:39:25.540
So he wears it, and he looked like he was wearing it in those press conferences.
00:39:30.520
Yeah, I did notice, he seemed like he was trying to be more affable with the media as well,
00:39:37.580
Carl, did anything kind of stand out to you, hearing from the leader of the opposition this week?
00:39:42.640
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a shift of tone and a shift in demeanor,
00:39:48.600
But also, you can sense that he has not recovered from the loss.
00:39:57.420
It's really hard to be arrogant and smug when you don't have a seat,
00:40:01.680
and you are stuck banning the rules to keep the housing provided by taxpayers at Stornoway.
00:40:07.900
So I think, you know, the defeat stung him a little, and I think that's a good thing.
00:40:14.800
Eating a slice of humble pie is not a bad thing in this case,
00:40:19.200
and could set him up for a better result next time around.
00:40:23.400
And I think if he's learned his lesson, if he's not playing a character right now,
00:40:28.500
if he understands that going and, you know, chomping on apples in an orchard
00:40:34.800
while answering questions from journalists is not a good look,
00:40:40.220
He may bounce back and eventually do become Prime Minister of Canada.
00:40:46.160
But he will need to be a little more present than he's been since the election
00:40:52.780
Humbling, I think humbling is definitely a good word to use in that circumstance.
00:40:56.040
But, Warren, did anything stick out for you from Pierre Polyev this week
00:40:59.660
in delivering a couple of press conferences here?
00:41:01.860
Well, there's the game called Where's Waldo, and now it's Where's Pierre's Position?
00:41:06.460
Like, he kind of disappeared, and I thought that that was the right thing for him to do.
00:41:13.320
You know, the Conservative Party, if it's being sensible, knows
00:41:16.600
one of their principal problems during the election campaign had become Pierre Polyev himself.
00:41:25.440
An increasing number of men were starting to look sideways at him.
00:41:32.360
So it makes some sense to me that they would have him kind of disappear from the national stage.
00:41:40.480
He decides to write off to Alberta to get himself elected in the House of Commons,
00:41:45.080
and Alberta is now in the middle of this warfare about separation and Daniel Smith's government,
00:41:52.460
which is a very unpopular government within Canada, maybe not so much within Alberta.
00:41:57.980
So he can't seem to escape trouble wherever he goes,
00:42:02.320
but lowering his profile, being a little less visible, that was the right thing to do.
00:42:07.480
I'm sure he gets nervous every time Daniel Smith or Stockwell Day just starts to talk recently as well,
00:42:13.440
but causing some problems for him or headaches as well.
00:42:16.740
I wanted to ask about the NDP as well before I let you guys go this week.
00:42:20.220
So we found out over the past couple of weeks that some NDP members actually didn't even find out
00:42:24.380
that Don Davies was the interim leader, except through media reports.
00:42:27.880
They weren't properly consulted on this as well.
00:42:31.240
I know it's always difficult, Carl, after an election loss, to kind of regroup with the party here,
00:42:35.260
but obviously there's a special circumstance here.
00:42:37.520
They're fighting back for official party status here.
00:42:41.220
Are they in a little bit of a midst of an identity crisis?
00:42:44.140
Like, I would think that, you know, with seven people in your caucus,
00:42:48.900
but it seems like there have been some issues that are cropping up here post-election.
00:42:56.320
because they have been put on the sideline politically,
00:43:01.520
But, you know, using your word, the regroup, how hard is it to regroup when there's only seven of you?
00:43:06.740
I guess it's harder than it may seem, because these guys are not doing a very good job.
00:43:12.200
Now, you know, the three MPs have a point about the fact that they found out in the media
00:43:18.180
that it was poorly done, poorly managed by the party.
00:43:21.380
They should have been told immediately when the decision was made,
00:43:27.920
In terms of consultation, what is proper consultation?
00:43:31.980
The party president spoke to each MP individually.
00:43:37.820
But to the point of the three MPs wanting to have an opportunity to, you know,
00:43:42.420
express their interest for the interim leadership,
00:43:47.740
Like, if you want to run for a position in politics, you campaign for it.
00:43:55.040
And the only one who did was an excellent Bullriss,
0.81
00:43:58.300
and Bullriss eventually pulled back and said he was not interested.
00:44:02.220
So, in the end, if you truly believe that your party has a future,
00:44:07.300
and if you truly believe that you are part of the solution,
00:44:12.200
The interim leadership is not where you're going to get it done.
00:44:20.480
But complaining about this right now shows that they don't have the eye on the ball.
00:44:25.860
Well, and Warren, especially since we've been talking about the week and the rough week
00:44:29.040
that the Liberal government has had here, you know, progressive voters will be watching closely,
00:44:32.400
people that gave their vote to Mark Carney as well.
00:44:35.340
Is it important for the NDP to kind of maintain their status quo,
00:44:39.480
at least for a little while here, so that there is a place for votes to go?
00:44:43.800
Should Mark Carney lose those votes heading into the next election?
00:44:50.240
You know, the Canadian Alliance or the Progressive Conservative Party or the CCF.
00:44:55.420
Like, we have a history in this country of political parties disappearing.
00:45:06.960
It's not like any of the political parties at the federal level look good this week.
00:45:10.880
They all look bad for different reasons that we've detailed.
00:45:14.520
But, you know, like Carl says, and he knows this better than anybody,
00:45:18.820
that the NDP has to hold together, you know, hang together or you're going to hang separately.
00:45:26.980
And it was quite surprising to see this spill out into the open.
00:45:31.040
And it doesn't bode well for the future of what's left of the NDP.
00:45:35.080
And we'll be able to see what the focus, I suppose, will be, what issues they'll kind of hammer on.
00:45:40.600
There's some traditional NDP issues that they'll likely hit on, but there's some new ones hitting up.
00:45:46.220
Tasha, I guess your thoughts on just kind of watching an identity crisis unfold within the NDP over the course of the past little while.
00:46:01.040
If they're having a crisis already with their seven members and not knowing who the interim, I mean, it is, you know,
00:46:08.140
that headline alone speaks volumes about the state of the party.
00:46:12.360
Maybe they were all too busy talking to the liberals about crossing the floor.
00:46:20.920
And, you see, this is also why there was no budget, because doing a budget would have meant talking to the NDP, potentially, or the bloc,
00:46:27.780
and giving them a reason to galvanize, a reason to get together and hang together.
00:46:32.760
Right now, they're just floating around, and there's, you know, there's no party.
00:46:41.520
And so I don't know where the NDP goes from here.
00:46:46.080
I do suspect, though, I do suspect the liberals are still trying to get that majority.
00:46:50.000
I really do, and I would not be surprised if, over the course of the next year, they do find a way,
00:46:54.860
and then they won't have to go to confidence, both on budgets or pretty much anything, if they get that magic 172.
00:47:01.440
Yeah, we've heard those reports, if that's happening.
00:47:03.460
But maybe we get NDP a subscription to Signal or something so they can get all seven people in a group chat or something like that.
00:47:14.980
Tasha Keridan, Warren Kinsella, and Carl Belanger, have a great Sunday.
00:47:20.140
Carl Belanger is the president at Traction Strategies.
00:47:22.520
Warren Kinsella is a strategist and post-media columnist.
00:47:25.340
Tasha Keridan is a political columnist for the National Post.