KINSELLACAST 363: Whither thou goest, Murky Mark? Lilley, Pierson, Mulroney, Lavigne, Harrison - plus Horsegirl, This Is Loralei, Soft Play, Bowie and more!
00:14:01.380And we're back, and we're back with my friend Brian Lilley, and Brian just came back from John Micotishian's, what is it called? Conservative Leadership?
00:14:12.380Right, and I've spoken at it a couple times before, even though I'm not a Conservative, and John is always open to hearing different voices. So you were there to talk about what happened in that federal election thing that happened a few weeks ago. So why don't you give us a taste of what you said to the assembled crowd?
00:15:03.180Really talk about Doug Ford and the provincial word. But, you know, there was some applause when I said, you know, if you guys want to win, you got to stop having purity tests and saying, oh, you're not a real Conservative. We don't want to talk to you. I said, you either have to get everyone on your team rowing in the same direction, or just accept that you're not going to win. And I wasn't sure how that would be received.
00:15:33.180It got applause. People definitely agreed with that. And, yeah, so Tash and I were breaking down where we felt that things change. I invoked your name, and not in vain.
00:15:46.780I said that shortly after Trudeau had resigned, I was doing a Batra's burning question with Adrian Batra and Warren Kinsella. And Adrian said, Brian, what does this mean? I said something about how I think the Liberals can win the next election. And I said, if you find the video of Warren, he'll look like he's going to fall over. Because you thought I was nuts when I said that.
00:16:15.660I was surprised. But you were right. As I was right about Justin Trudeau leaving, you still owe me a lunch, by the way.
00:16:24.980Yeah, well, come to town and actually meet me at the Patricia and you'll get your lunch. Don't just whine about it.
00:16:31.360So they didn't want to talk about Doug Ford, who's the winner. That's interesting. Does that mean something?
00:16:38.640I didn't sense any animosity. I think it was, how did we lose this thing?
00:16:44.360And, you know, you and I have written about it. We've pontificated. We've talked about it. But, you know, I still think not pivoting at the right time, was it?
00:16:56.600Now, I'm going to disagree with our friend, Corey Tanik, who said they've got to pivot to talk about Donald Trump more.
00:17:02.960I believe some of the analysis that says if they talked about Trump more and not the other issues that was motivating the people voting for them, they could have reinforced the liberal message and help the liberals.
00:17:16.700So, but, I mean, there were things they could have done. Like, they didn't pivot to the fact that Trudeau was gone right away or early enough.
00:17:27.300Mark Carney's line in the debate, Justin Trudeau's not here.
00:17:31.380And then Pierre's line before that, you know, just like Justin, it's like, fuck, Pierre, if I've tried to find a guy who was not like Justin Trudeau, it would be Mark Carney.
00:17:42.080That couldn't be more different. But Carney, like, I mean, did you guys talk about how he's doing so far?
00:17:47.940Because I don't think he's doing that shit hot.
00:17:50.220A little bit. We, you know, I spoke a bit about the column that I wrote in response to Chris Nardi's really good piece in the National Post that detailed the difference.
00:18:03.780And you read it for the context, right? But, you know, my takeaway in the column was, we're excited about the fact that the Prime Minister is on time, that he's punctual, that he expects other people to be punctual,
00:18:19.020that he expects results, that he wears a suit and wants proper spelling.
00:18:24.560Like, that's how low Justin Trudeau lowered the bar.
00:19:47.140Everyone's like, oh, wow, that's magnanimous of you.
00:19:51.080It's like, no, that's how things used to work.
00:19:54.140Trudeau was just like, you know, he's such a departure.
00:19:58.080But I was asked at one point, you know, if I'm worried about the future of the country with him, and is he going to be radical like Trudeau?
00:20:06.940And it's like, I honestly don't know, and I'm not sure if he does or his cabinet does.
00:20:11.420Back to your point about them not being too shit hot.
00:20:15.300You know, the first couple of weeks, who is Mark Carney?
00:20:39.920I got to wonder what that first cabinet meeting or the cabinet meeting this last Tuesday was like.
00:20:47.040The cabinet retreat that they had, where, you know, just days earlier, Carney had to step out of the Pope's inaugural mass and say, oh, by the way, there will be a budget.
00:21:56.580Being public, and, like, there's been a big court case all the way to the Supreme Court to try and get Doug Ford to force him to release his mandate letter.
00:22:04.420If a mandate letter is public, it tells you nothing.
00:22:06.700If they think it's going to be made public, it tells you nothing.
00:22:10.540But Carney just did one mandate letter for the whole thing, basically said, here's our priorities, everyone focus on this.
00:22:34.420There's always long-term planning in government.
00:22:36.740No, it's falling from one crisis into the next, and then you think you're through it, and something comes out of left field and takes all your attention.
00:22:46.720I mean, and that's regardless of party or level.
00:22:58.700Maybe it was Reid, maybe it was Abacus, saying, you know, what's the main reason you, Canadian voter, think that the Tories lost the election?
00:23:08.460And the issue ahead of the policies, policies was number two.
00:23:46.920So they may need to start thinking, and we'll see how the NDP goes, they may have to start thinking about a world where the NDP is just not there.
00:23:58.700And it is more of a two-party or two-party-plus, tiny bit, party system.
00:24:06.400And if that's the case, then they've got to change how they operate in their elections.
00:24:10.120And, you know, we've talked a lot about how the NDP collapse really helped the Liberals.
00:24:18.360Interestingly, on the panel, and I had read the column where Tasha did this for National Post, she examined it.
00:24:25.780And in a lot of writings, the NDP vote went more to the Conservatives.
00:24:31.100Places like Windsor, Hamilton, Timmons, the blue-collar appeal really worked.
00:24:37.560It's just that it didn't work in enough writings for them to win.
00:24:43.860But, you know, is there a different future where 41.3% since, what, the 70s?
00:24:52.720That would have given you a huge majority.
00:24:56.140Is that going to not be the case in the future?
00:25:00.640I mean, look, Carney got 43.7, I think it was.
00:32:57.420Yeah, the days are long when you are not around.
00:33:04.820It's only 20 meters surrounding the facility.
00:33:09.020But most importantly, it's not a ban against protesting outside any synagogue, for example.
00:33:16.220The institution has to actually prove that within the last 90 days, there has been a protest that has impacted people's ability to enter the facility.
00:33:30.180You're listening to The Alex Pearson Show.
00:33:32.740That is the voice of April Engelberg talking to Greg Brady this morning about City Council, which we'll meet today.
00:33:38.600And they will likely vote tomorrow on this proposed bylaw to create these defined buffer zones around facilities, things like schools or places of worship.
00:33:48.700And you very much do have a right to speak freely in this country.
00:33:51.840But that doesn't mean there are no consequences for what you say.
00:33:54.480And if the people that you're talking to are spewing your stuff at don't have a chance to walk away from either the humiliation or the intimidation, then you're holding someone captive to a hostile message, which is not freedom of speech.
00:34:07.420And so, again, other areas have done this.
00:34:11.300Vaughn and Brampton have both enacted 100-meter bubble zones around places of worship.
00:34:51.600I should ask how many chapters would be dedicated to the lack of leadership in this country on things like, you know, Jew hate, anti-Semitism.
00:35:07.720And yet in Toronto, you cannot get Demke out of his office to deal with these protests over 18, 19 months.
00:35:12.740And we can't get Olivia Chow to do anything proactive.
00:35:15.880And we've got a huge increase in protests and mob, mob action, frankly, targeting the Jewish community since October 7th.
00:35:26.440And like, you know, in Toronto, as you know, Alex, 4 percent, less than 4 percent of the city's population is Jewish.
00:35:34.340And they account for the victims of more than 40 percent of all reported incidents.
00:35:41.460And like, we're not even learning about all incidents.
00:35:44.900Like, not everything gets reported to the police because people have been intimidated into silence.
00:35:50.360And so we've got schools and hospitals and places of worship being targeted.
00:35:53.900And like, as my colleague, Brian Milley at The Sun reported today, the police have taken this hands off approach to dealing with protesters to the point of allowing them to block access or an ambulance responding to call for assistance for a child.
00:36:20.260If you are intimidating and, frankly, terrorizing people around a place of worship, whether it's a synagogue or a mosque or a church, you should you are breaking the law.
00:36:31.340That's certainly the case now with abortion clinics.
00:36:34.500And again, there was not a lot of hysteria around that was understood.
00:36:37.580I mean, we wouldn't have to have these laws, Warren, if people were just civil and decent.
00:36:41.220But we certainly know with with the groups and I don't want to let everybody in with them.
00:36:45.900But these protests, 18, 19 months long, I mean, attended by a lot of the same people who either don't have jobs, but they're being paid somehow.
00:37:09.840It's crazy to me why they don't see the threat.
00:37:12.740And the mayor and the majority of council, when this first came up, voted against it.
00:37:19.500Now, the federal, the Kearney liberals have said in their election platform, so it'd be hard for them to wiggle out of this one.
00:37:27.080They intend to make it a crime to obstruct access to any place of worship, you know, including schools and churches and synagogues and so on.
00:37:53.740Well, in fact, it would have been easier just to lump herself in with them and say that all municipalities are doing that.
00:37:58.160And therefore, you know, she's if she worried about her base coming after her, well, we all agreed to do this because it is not just a Toronto problem.
00:38:06.260These things have been going on. And frankly, I think a lot of people don't know about them, Warren, because we don't cover them every day of how bad it's gotten.
00:38:13.620I mean, when you drive through areas of Toronto, certainly Montreal, where you've got Jewish people now having to pay for 24 seven security.
00:38:19.740That's not cheap. And frankly, you shouldn't have to pay for security to be able to live in this country.
00:38:25.260But that's where we're at, because no one's taking action.
00:38:28.060No. And, you know, I've spoken at lots of synagogues in recent weeks about, you know, this book that I've written and this documentary that we're filming.
00:38:35.960I just got back from Israel where we were filming there.
00:38:38.520And like you go into these synagogues, places where people worship, you know, places where people are at their most vulnerable.
00:38:45.680And yet it's a wall of police and private security and they have to pay for that.
00:38:50.700You know, they they've got to come up with the money.
00:38:53.260And increasingly, a lot of these small congregations and Jewish communities, they don't have the money to do it.
00:38:59.500And and so we've seen across the city the consequence.
00:39:03.200We've got fire bombings of, you know, synagogues and Jewish businesses.
00:39:08.260We've got schools for little Jewish kids being shot up like two, three times.
00:39:14.180Like the policing of this issue in the city of Toronto is and I can say this now because I've written a book about it is one of the worst in the world.
00:39:23.980It's not it's not the worst in Ontario.
00:40:45.360They brought in cops from across Canada to deal with, you know, a protest that was supposed to last a weekend and ended up lasting, you know, more than a month.
00:40:53.840And I thought that was an appropriate thing to do.
00:40:57.780When you're intimidating people in their neighborhoods, you know, when you're threatening them, when you're attacking them, when you're, you know, doing all the stuff we're seeing happen, you've got to take action.
00:41:08.780And like this weekend, we've got the Walk for Israel taking place on Sunday.
00:41:12.960I'm going to be one of the people attending it.
00:41:14.780And the bad guys have already said they're going to blockade it and they're going to try and stop this from happening.
00:41:21.400So the police, they're going to have to act and they're going to have to take action to protect citizens because right now they're not doing it.