It's a Canadian winter weekend, and the snow is falling. But it's not snowing, and there's still plenty of time to listen to some music and talk about what's been going on in the world, including the latest Trump tweet, a Canadian band rocked by a child-porn scandal, and a president who no longer cares about peace.
00:11:45.040And let me tell you that the political class in Quebec has had a field day since Thursday with this speech.
00:11:53.160The PQ leader and the PQ leader and the PQ leader have reconciled.
00:11:57.160They held a big rally, they held a big rally yesterday, and so it's putting the Federalist camp on the defense at this stage, and it's very early on in the referendum cycle, if you are to believe the poll, that the PQ is going to win the next election.
00:12:14.620You can't afford somebody, you can't afford somebody, you can't afford somebody, you can't afford those kinds of mistakes.
00:12:26.620Let me quote to you a little bit of what Carney said, the planes of Abraham mark a battlefield, and also the place where Canada began to make its founding choice of accommodation over assimilation, of partnership over domination, of building together over pulling apart, end quote.
00:12:48.320So really the criticism that's being made is that he's rewriting history in the way that people like Trump so often do.
00:12:56.560Yeah, for sure, comparisons have been made, and you can see the columns in the Quebec papers this weekend, editorials, what have you.
00:13:06.900Everybody's unanimous, even in the Gazette, in the Montreal Gazette, they're denouncing what Carney wrote, because it's not helpful.
00:13:14.920And so, you know, you might mean well, but you have to have your story straight, and you have to have your story straight.
00:13:21.620Because if not, you end up giving the kind of ammo to the PQ and the block that we saw yesterday in full flight.
00:13:36.360So I'm not sure who in the PMO talked.
00:13:38.980I mean, remember last week, I talked to you and said, I hope somebody in the PMO is paying attention, right?
00:13:43.840And now I'm saddened to say that I wish they hadn't, because they can't act like this if they're going to face this threat seriously.
00:13:54.740Colonialism is a notion that these days, whether you're in the Middle East or North America, is dangerous and potentially lethal to political futures.
00:14:05.020And that's immediately what the Prince-Quebecois leader said, which is, it had a colonialist feel to it, Carney's speech.
00:14:15.060I presume that's why PMO didn't publicize much of it after the fact, because the response was almost immediate, wasn't it?
00:14:23.440Well, and that's probably why Mark Carney, who was supposed to answer questions from journalists, after the day on Friday, left without notice.
00:14:33.380The podium was lined up in the building, journalists were waiting, and Mark Carney just took off.
00:14:40.260Because, let me tell you, the press corps in Quebec City was ready for him.
00:14:44.460They had tough questions for him, and I think they were not ready to face them, so they left.
00:14:51.860And, you know, things are so bad in Quebec right now, following this speech,
00:14:56.120that the day after Carney made this speech, the Quebec government announced that they were removing the crown from the Quebec hold of arms.
00:15:36.280And Drinville is infamous because he was a former Pekist.
00:15:39.820He's the one who brought the Charter of Values that started the whole movement of banning religious symbols in the public service and teachers and what have you.
00:15:50.100So, it's a battle royale between somebody who was in it for the economy and somebody who was in it for identity and nationalism.
00:16:00.840Well, very important development in Quebec this week.
00:16:03.720And those of us who have been around politics for a while know that you have to tread very carefully when talking about culture and history in the province of Quebec.
00:16:17.280Another politician who is stomping all over the landscape and now stomping, in my view, on people's rights in the United States is Donald Trump.
00:16:28.240So, we've had another terrible death that, I'm not a forensic scientist, but looks to me like an execution.
00:16:35.720A man, an unarmed man shot in the back while he was on his knees, shot in the back three times when he was going to help a woman.
00:16:45.440You know, watching all this stuff from afar, from our position in Canada, what's your take?
00:16:51.100Do you think that, where is this all heading?
00:16:54.040Is Trump going to back off in the way that he did to some extent after Davos, or is he going to double down?
00:17:03.840Well, I hope he doesn't double down, frankly, because we've already had two deaths in the past few weeks in Minneapolis.
00:17:13.420And these are people that, really, were not a threat, really, when you look at the footage, they were not.
00:17:23.720But what's disheartening, what's disconcerting is how quickly the administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and all of them, jump to conclusion and defend the actions and don't even take a stand to look into it, to have an investigation, a proper investigation.
00:17:43.720The rule of law seems to not apply, and G.D. Vance said it.
00:17:49.260They are above the law, basically, ICE agents, and don't mess with them.
00:17:54.100And it's, you know, this crop of Republican is a different crop of Republican.
00:18:02.020Like, I followed American politics for all my career.
00:19:13.160I've gotten leadership or a few numbers wrong an awful lot in the past few months.
00:19:18.700Like, there's now people saying that Donald Trump is single-handedly destroying the conservative movement that seemed to be on the rise everywhere.
00:19:29.440Do you think that Paliyev will continue to be associated with Trump in the minds of Canadian voters?
00:19:35.280Well, I think in many voters, he will always remain associated.
00:19:41.340Just the way he handles himself on social media, the way he jumps to conclusion, the way he makes pronouncements that make no sense, the way he threatens to send former Prime Minister Trudeau to jail.
00:19:53.540I mean, that kind of rhetoric is not helpful to him.
00:19:56.160So he needs to take stronger stance and quicker stance when Trump says things about Canada.
00:20:05.420But he's been, you know, slow to react at times.
00:20:09.480Now, that said, do I think that the solution for the conservative is to have a fifth leader in five elections?
00:24:34.780And we're back. We're back with Brian Lilly, who just wrongly described himself to me as an old man.
00:24:42.320He's not, but he's sitting by the window with a blanket raptor on his legs, which is kind of an old guy thing to do.
00:24:47.820Well, it's a lovely Sunday morning in Toronto. I'm looking out at the towers of this city being enveloped in snow because the storm that has hit the United States really hard is starting to hit here.
00:25:07.700And we're expecting it started out as 10 to 15 centimeters of snow warning and the last time I looked at the Environment Canada warning, which is now up to an orange warning, this color coding is new to me.
00:25:22.420It could be up to 40 centimeters of snow in certain areas.
00:25:28.800So I'm going out to go mall walking later today or walk the path or something just so I can get outside and not deal with living on the planet Hoth for all you Star Wars fans.
00:25:43.260Well, bring your snowshoes because Elisvia Chow will indefinitely find some way to fuck it up.
00:26:11.440If he was a minister of Pierre Polyev, he wouldn't have been allowed to go, but he went and gave a speech that has been, without exaggeration, universally well-received, accolades everywhere across the spectrum, right and left.
00:26:43.120And even someone like Michael Kovrig, who said, yes, a very powerful speech, but also said there's a very dark subtext to this.
00:26:52.220I think he said it was the darkest subtext to a political speech not given by Trump.
00:26:57.660And that's kind of my issue with it, is he comes from going to China and Qatar and shows up to give a speech about how evil the United States is.
00:27:15.980You just left Beijing praising President Xi, you just left Qatar praising them.
00:27:24.940And then you show up and use Vaclav Havel's Power of the Powerless story.
00:27:32.540I'm not alone in saying, I'm not alone in saying in an incorrect way, to criticize the United States and hegemons, which is very different than Pokemon, which is the only thing that it sounds like.
00:27:48.420So, you know, I'm fine with him criticizing the United States.
00:27:55.640I'm not fine with him needlessly poking the bear, which, in my view, is what he was doing.
00:28:05.960And then I watched the rest of the week and his speech in Quebec City, where he talked about land soaked in blood at the Plains of Abraham.
00:28:14.840Well, no, we'll talk about that in a second.
00:29:24.300Or, you know, his last minute trip to Davos that cost us almost a million dollars to go to his peace summit in Egypt.
00:29:35.460But, he's fawning over Trump when he's next to him.
00:29:40.700And then when he's not next to him, he's always taking shots at the guy.
00:29:46.620He's like, you're not as brave as you think you are.
00:29:49.740But, if you're going to be fawning over him when you're there, when he's there, and then be the big brave boy and put on your big boy pants when he's not in the room, like, no, that's not being brave.
00:30:07.340But, that's fair enough, and, you know, an illustration of your point is Dominic LeBlanc, as Post Media is reporting this morning, is already walking back some of the criticism of the United States by Trump, either implicit or explicit criticism, and saying, well, you know, that's not quite what we mean, and so on.
00:30:26.620So, you're right in that regard, but, I mean, it is reality, and it is right, it is a fair criticism to say that Carney's actions, like so many politicians, don't, you know, equal his words.
00:30:40.540His rhetoric is not, you know, representative of his action.
00:30:44.980But, it seems to me like the Canadian government and the Europeans have decided, well, you know what, we can't change this guy's behavior.
00:33:44.680Well, because a lot of people are going to be very, very interested in what you have to say in your analysis of what transpires in Calgary,
00:33:53.260which is the convention of the Conservative Party of Canada, where the leadership of one Pierre Polyev is being subjected to review a vote.
00:34:03.160And so you and I have felt that he's going to land somewhere between 70 and 80.
00:34:07.460I was talking to a couple members of his caucus this weekend.
00:35:19.860I'm like, you know, the only thing I learned in law school is I asked myself the question, what if I'm wrong?
00:35:24.680And I was like, man, you know, the numbers just don't improve.
00:35:28.880I think he, you know, I said to one of his caucus members last night, I thought his response to Carney in Davos was excellent.
00:35:37.040But it was measured, he didn't swim against the tide, like, you know, guys like you and I, well, no, you, but you guys like you, we're paid to do that.
00:48:57.260Cops, danger, bloodshed, potential for that.
00:49:01.880You've covered so many of these things and all of us, senior footage.
00:49:06.260And the stuff, obviously, that attracts the greatest number of eyeballs that you do are the things where there's violence and people thrown to the ground,
00:49:14.380you know, people spitting on your videographer.
00:49:33.480Again, we're very fortunate that, like, I at least haven't seen anything fatal or even any serious injuries arising from interactions between cops and protesters.
00:49:45.620But protesters need to understand that there is a very high degree of deference afforded to police, right?
00:49:56.440They already have the advantage of their gun and their badge and all sorts of presumptions that work in their favor.
00:50:04.360And, you know, they rightly or wrongly, and I would say wrongly, probably, but they have more control over sort of the narrative that gets put out, right?
00:50:15.960Like a police press release that is going to be an initial sort of like an early narrative setter, right?
00:50:25.880So all of these things are working in favor of police.
00:50:29.740And, you know, even in a situation where the police are wrong, that's typically dealt with after the fact, right?
00:50:37.980After the arrest, not in the heat of the moment.
00:50:41.000And so if protesters, and particularly protesters who are going in with very anti-police ideas, who don't consider the police to be legitimate or think that it's such a deeply corrupted institution that, you know, we shouldn't have to respect it.
00:51:01.940Those are all opinions that it's fair to hold, but will have real life consequences if you start pushing back against police physically and sometimes even verbally, right?
00:51:16.900And it's the police aren't meant to be judge, jury, executioner on the street.
00:51:22.760But if put before a court and an officer says, well, I was scared, I was being swarmed, this person had a gun, I didn't know what was going to happen next.
00:51:36.280Those are all things that will be mitigating factors.
00:51:41.040And again, that's not to say that this particular instance, the most recent death will, I don't know what the outcome will be one way or another.
00:51:50.900But if I'm representing the police, those are all factors that I'm going to emphasize.
00:52:24.600They just let us write and say what we want.
00:52:27.640So what is your early take as a journalist and as a broadcaster who went and saw Israel?
00:52:34.440I'm still processing, but I, you know, overall was exposed to sites and viewpoints that I don't think I otherwise would have received.
00:52:51.280So I'm grateful for that, you know, and apart from what was part of the scheduled tour and kind of the meetings that were curated for us, there was also a little bit of opportunity to go outside of that and to speak with just casually with Israeli citizens.
00:53:15.460And so I took advantage of that as well, you know, it, I guess it ties into what we were just talking about as far as being on the ground, reality on the ground and how kind of, you know, perspective is shaped, obviously, by what you see and experience, but also what you don't see and what you don't hear.
00:53:40.680So I'm parsing through all of those thoughts and just kind of longing for a world in which, you know, it wasn't so contentious or controversial or, you know, it was just, we were truly able to be in peace because from the majority of people that we heard from and that I spoke with, that was the prevailing sentiment.
00:54:08.380You know, we would really just like peace, to live in peace.
00:54:12.660And I think that that's how people feel south of the border as well.
00:54:16.720I'm confident that that's how many Canadians feel as well.
00:54:20.380And it's just now we have these differing ideas of what does that peace mean and how do we achieve it?
00:54:25.960And I'm no closer to answering any of that, but I, again, I'm, I'm grateful for sort of all of the information that I can take in to form my own thoughts and opinions.
00:54:39.500Well, I am grateful for your thoughts and your opinions and your fairness and your sense of balance this week and every week.