Off the Record - Are we witnessing the end of the Trudeau Liberals？

00:00:00.480 You have the Calgary Stampede coming up, don't you, William?

00:00:03.840 Yeah, it starts in, I would say, two weeks, and we're excited.

00:00:08.240 And if there's enough water to last it, we'll be even more excited.

00:00:11.920 I've never, I've still never, I keep wanting to go.

00:00:13.880 I've never actually been.

00:00:15.260 For all the time I've spent in Alberta, it's never coincided with the Stampede.

00:00:19.120 It's a hard time.

00:00:20.000 I've already doubled my age, and you've never been.

00:00:21.640 That's crazy. 0.99

00:00:22.740 Double your, how old are you, you jackass? 0.99

00:00:25.060 Okay, I underestimated my own age, I'm 21, but, you know, kind of close. 0.98

00:00:31.420 That was like when Sean and I were coming back from Davos, and the Air Canada woman thought he was my son.

00:00:38.800 And he's like 12 years younger than me, which was like just mortifying.

00:00:44.540 I mean, if you did adopt Sean, that'd be a pretty interesting family you got there.

00:00:48.520 At the age of 12, I thought I needed a redhead videographer for my entire life as my son, anyway. 0.98

00:00:53.400 All right, let's get this started.

00:01:04.860 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:01:07.360 This is Off the Record on True North.

00:01:09.760 It's Friday, June 21st.

00:01:11.220 We like to kick back, look at the lighter side of things, and analyze, not analyze, no, analyze is too serious a word.

00:01:17.400 We like to just, you know, kick around, vamp on the week that was, things that are coming up.

00:01:22.400 And we do this with a regular cast of characters at True North.

00:01:26.620 It's, well, irregular at times.

00:01:28.360 Today is one of those days.

00:01:29.380 We've got William Macbeth, who is the COO and occasionally a voice on The Daily Brief.

00:01:34.780 And Noah Jarvis, who you've seen on here before.

00:01:37.540 I think he was on last week as well, and you hear him all over the place as well.

00:01:41.240 William, Noah, good to have you both with us.

00:01:43.160 Thank you.

00:01:44.260 Happy to be here.

00:01:45.500 It's always a pleasure.

00:01:46.440 I'm Andrew Lawton, by the way.

00:01:47.660 You guys sounded so depressed with that.

00:01:49.920 It's like, I was like, I'm trying to lift up the energy.

00:01:51.840 You're like, yeah, it's great to be here.

00:01:53.160 I was following William's lead, but, you know.

00:01:54.480 Like Ross from Friends.

00:01:55.960 Hi.

00:01:57.180 That's an old reference now, I realize.

00:01:59.220 You guys have, well, William, are you like just parched right now?

00:02:04.500 Yeah, you know, people are down on 8th Avenue with little buckets begging for a quart of water of people coming to work.

00:02:11.900 It's, you know, it's not too, too bad yet.

00:02:14.360 We have had to reduce our water usage.

00:02:17.320 You know, it's funny.

00:02:18.240 The city of Calgary spends billions of dollars every single year, very little bit apparently, on keeping water going into our taps.

00:02:27.060 They prefer to spend it on things like the climate crisis and bike lanes that nobody uses in the city.

00:02:34.040 But I think this is a reawakening that cities have important jobs.

00:02:37.600 One of them is to get water into your taps.

00:02:39.940 And when that doesn't happen, people notice.

00:02:42.960 People notice and they're not really that happy.

00:02:45.080 A chicken in every pot, a car in every garage, and a droplet of water in every faucet.

00:02:50.240 Apparently not for the last one.

00:02:51.620 But did, so are you actually, like, doing the good citizen thing and, like, you know, showering every, you know, nine days or whatever it is they're asking you to do?

00:02:58.520 Or are you just, like, business as usual?

00:03:00.820 Well, I left the city for about five days.

00:03:03.600 So I'm hoping that means I get to use up all of the water I didn't use.

00:03:08.300 Oh, yeah, you've accrued, yeah, you've accrued water credits.

00:03:10.720 Yeah, isn't that how that works?

00:03:12.360 You know, I don't use water then and I use it now.

00:03:14.940 And somehow that helps with our carbon emissions, I think, if I read that correctly.

00:03:19.140 The new social credit score.

00:03:20.360 You've got all your H2O credits.

00:03:23.200 Well, and you're in Toronto, so you probably just don't want to use the city water anyway.

00:03:27.240 No, probably not.

00:03:28.100 But, you know, I like to think that, you know, the Calgarians were self-righteous about, you know, having the, being the best part of Canada, you know.

00:03:35.280 And now they're looking to Toronto, you know, spare any water?

00:03:39.060 You want to donate some water to us?

00:03:41.500 But, you know.

00:03:42.660 It's reverse equalization.

00:03:44.000 You've got to get some water shipments from Atlantic Canada, will you?

00:03:46.520 I mean, there is an awful lot of water out there, although Toronto only seems to be sending us their crime.

00:03:51.560 And we're perfectly okay if Toronto didn't keep doing that.

00:03:54.760 I'm just imagining, like, a line of people from, you know, Halifax to Calgary just holding, like, a pail that they just keep dumping into the next one there.

00:04:03.220 This is how we're getting by.

00:04:04.200 All right, we are, like, four minutes in and it's already a train wreck.

00:04:07.080 Welcome to Off the Record, everyone.

00:04:08.840 Let's talk about the one thing we can all unite on, Calgarian or Ontarian or Manitoban or from anywhere else, which is that the Liberals are not exactly popular right now.

00:04:19.880 The latest poll that came out was from Abacus.

00:04:23.140 It showed the Conservatives with a 20-point lead, literally 40%, 40-some-odd percent, exactly 20 points ahead of the Liberals.

00:04:31.260 That is just blowout territory, not quite, you know, Kim Campbell 93 blowout territory, but, I mean, could conceivably bring the Liberals down to being the third party.

00:04:41.880 Absolutely embarrassing.

00:04:43.660 And no one in that party is openly saying that Justin Trudeau is the problem.

00:04:50.000 And there was a piece in Radio Canada, the French arm of CBC, which interviewed a few anonymous MPs that were all saying, basically, they need to change in leader,

00:04:59.200 but they don't actually have an ability to get rid of him.

00:05:02.360 Now we have the Liberals getting a little bit desperate on all sorts of things.

00:05:06.680 Talk about the mug, Noah.

00:05:09.100 Yeah, well, a couple of days ago, Liberal MP Mark Garrison, perpetually not a caucus member of the Cabinet.

00:05:16.540 So, you know, just want to put that out there.

00:05:18.520 But Mark Garrison, he printed a mug from, I guess, his local Walmart photo center, and he has it plastered on it with a big face of Jennifer O'Connell and the quote, boo-hoo, get over it.

00:05:31.780 Now, if you might recall, Jennifer O'Connell, in a committee meeting, she basically said, boo-hoo, get over it, to Conservative MP who was trying to demand the government release the names,

00:05:42.800 or at least be a bit more transparent of what is in the NSICOP foreign interference report,

00:05:48.220 which basically stated that there are certain parliamentarians who have been collaborating with foreign governments against the interests of Canada.

00:05:57.160 And so, you know, just to brag about protecting people who are potentially betraying our country is quite something.

00:06:05.260 But I don't know.

00:06:06.040 It seems like the Liberals, they sink to new depths every week that goes by.

00:06:11.740 Yeah, I mean, Mark Garrison is, I don't really hold him up as being a skilled political operator by any stretch.

00:06:19.280 But I'm trying to think of what this would be like.

00:06:22.100 Like, this would be like Justin Trudeau drinking out of an Essency Lavalin mug after he fired Jody Wilson-Raybould.

00:06:27.220 It would be like, you know, Harper drinking out of a Mike Duffy mug at the middle of the expensive scandal, basically.

00:06:32.680 Like, it just says, I do not care about this thing that Canadians clearly do care about.

00:06:38.040 Canadians are clearly frustrated about.

00:06:40.580 And just to go back to the poll numbers for a second, I wanted to ask you about this, William,

00:06:44.340 because this house just rose for the summer.

00:06:46.480 I think it was Wednesday, Wednesday or Thursday, whenever it was.

00:06:48.980 Which means that they've now got, you know, basically three months of runway to go out and campaign, spend time in their ridings.

00:06:57.100 Like, what do you think Justin Trudeau, is there something he could do to turn this around?

00:07:02.680 And if there is, what would that look like over this summer?

00:07:05.940 Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting question.

00:07:08.420 MPs usually spend an awful lot of their calendar year, actually, in Ottawa.

00:07:14.500 The House sits a lot longer than many of our provincial legislative assemblies do.

00:07:19.980 But, you know, now you've got sort of a two-month break.

00:07:22.480 And you're going to have Liberal MPs back in their ridings.

00:07:25.440 And I think they're going to get a bit of an earful from voters over the course of the summer.

00:07:29.320 As they go to every church fair, small town festival, Lions Club, or senior center to visit.

00:07:36.480 They're going to be hearing, I think, a lot of unpopularity.

00:07:39.440 And that is going to put pressure on the Prime Minister.

00:07:41.540 I think he is going to come back at the end of summer.

00:07:44.420 And there's going to be a sense that things are not going well.

00:07:47.860 And, you know, I think they really tried to change the channel with their budget.

00:07:52.120 And that didn't work.

00:07:53.400 They thought the capital gains tax cut was going to be a slam dunk.

00:07:57.400 And then it turned out...

00:07:58.140 Hashtag generational fairness.

00:08:00.340 And, you know, if you listen to Minister Freeland and others talking about that with increasingly dire messaging around it.

00:08:07.860 And, you know, it does point to the fact that this government simply has run out of steam.

00:08:12.480 They don't seem to have any new ideas.

00:08:15.200 And it's a real big problem.

00:08:16.160 Because I remember back in 2015, when the Conservatives went onto the campaign trail, they went out to talk to Canadians.

00:08:22.300 I didn't think that we had as much of a vision to sell people as we had in previous elections.

00:08:27.520 Vote for us because X.

00:08:29.180 It was because if you vote for the Liberals, they could blow up the economy.

00:08:32.520 By the way, it turned out to be completely true.

00:08:35.240 But, you know, what is Justin Trudeau going to say? 0.98

00:08:38.340 Vote for us or Pierre Poliver will take away your abortion or will, you know, put you all into concentration camps because he's a white supremacist.

00:08:48.820 I don't think that's a compelling message.

00:08:51.200 So is there anything the Prime Minister can do to turn it around?

00:08:54.120 Well, there's one thing.

00:08:54.920 He could go, I guess.

00:08:57.240 That would be one thing.

00:08:58.240 Yeah, I think it was a line from, you know, was it, you'd know if it was from Frazier, where it's like, you know, so-and-so lights up a room by leaving it.

00:09:07.700 That was the, I can't even remember who it was about.

00:09:09.820 But there is something about that.

00:09:11.440 Like right now, you've got a lot of Liberals that are just waiting.

00:09:14.080 And again, I mean, who the heck wants to take over that?

00:09:16.260 Like you'd end up with someone who doesn't have ambitions of being the leader long term, that would just be an interim Prime Minister and get the Liberals through the election.

00:09:24.960 And then afterwards, they can have their, you know, Grand Reconstruction with, you know, Mark Carney or something like that.

00:09:30.960 But I'll ask, you know, as you alluded to before we started recording here, you are half my age.

00:09:36.660 You are not actually.

00:09:37.480 But the question I'd ask about younger people, because it was younger folks that in a lot of ways got Trudeau elected in 2015.

00:09:45.660 And those folks we've seen have just turned on him entirely.

00:09:49.400 Like they're the ones who, you know, if you were 18, 19 in 2015, you're now nearing 30.

00:09:54.960 You're finding that you can't afford a house.

00:09:56.900 You maybe can't find a job that you like.

00:09:59.240 You may be living with your parents.

00:10:00.480 Like all of these things that are naturally pushing people in Pierre Polyev's direction.

00:10:05.480 But when you talk to people your age, what's the sense of Justin Trudeau?

00:10:08.380 I think the sense of Trudeau is like he's a phony and that he's robbed sort of my generation of their future.

00:10:15.620 You know, people who are apolitical, they tell me that, you know, you know, they have no sort of opportunity or shot to buy a home in the next 10 years.

00:10:24.240 And, you know, they're 20 and they want to, you know, start a buy a home, start a family like everyone else, you know, in human history.

00:10:30.000 Yet this is not really possible, not just for young Canadians, but even people who are like in their 40s, you know, there's people who are still renting far longer than they thought they would be when they voted for Trudeau originally.

00:10:42.280 You know, and, you know, a lot of them, they probably thought, oh, you know, he'll we'll be able to get some pot and, you know, hotbox my new home when I'm, you know, in my 30s.

00:10:51.540 And then, you know, you can't buy a home.

00:10:52.920 So now you're smoking pot in a homeless shelter.

00:10:55.680 So, you know, it's not really great for Canadians who are quite the vivid picture you're painting, Noah. 1.00

00:11:03.740 You know, but it's not it's not really great for the average Canadian who has to, you know, get up every day, go to a job, come home, cook food for their children and, you know, all those things.

00:11:15.840 Instead, it's really great for, you know, liberal insiders who are, you know, making money off SDTC or who are just, you know, really wealthy and just profiting off of their assets, getting a lot more expensive.

00:11:28.620 What's your read on the coalition, William?

00:11:34.780 Because I think there have been you've been involved in conservative politics since it was reform politics.

00:11:38.440 So you've seen the various iterations of this party.

00:11:41.640 It seems like the base of accessible voters looks a lot different now than it did for Harper and certainly than it did for, you know, the alliance before him.

00:11:51.500 Yeah, no, I think something you really have to give credit to Pierre Poliver either because he.

00:11:57.140 Very Alberta pronunciation.

00:11:58.620 Yeah, I get credit.

00:12:00.740 I should say probably I apologize.

00:12:04.420 You have to give him credit, though, because he either read where Canadians were going or he helped to bring them there himself.

00:12:12.340 But he really did change the fundamental voter coalition for the conservative party.

00:12:18.480 A lot of people who either had never voted conservative before are now open to voting conservative or people who had never playing voted at all before.

00:12:28.620 Are now open to voting conservative and voting for the first time.

00:12:32.200 And that's a that's a tremendous difference.

00:12:34.160 And it really changes the political calculus.

00:12:36.320 When when Stephen Harper was trying to win his majority government back in 2011, the path to victory was on the edge of a knife.

00:12:44.900 Right. You know, it required the new Democrats to outperform anywhere they've ever been, the liberals to hit historic untimed historic lows in popularity and the absolute right set of conditions.

00:12:56.860 Because the conservatives at best could scrape up to just about 40 percent under ideal conditions.

00:13:03.520 And now you're seeing with these polls that Pierre is routinely getting above 40 percent.

00:13:09.140 So that voter ceiling is higher, which makes the path to a conservative government far more easy, far easier than it's been in the past.

00:13:18.040 And for the liberals, the exact same problem, but an opposite.

00:13:20.920 They have a much smaller voter universe.

00:13:22.400 Them being able to hold on to power becomes it was already difficult.

00:13:25.360 They were already winning minority governments with the lowest percentage of the popular vote in our history.

00:13:30.220 And now it's all but impossible for them unless something fundamental changes in the next year.

00:13:35.880 Yeah. Like I recall during the 2021 election, it would have been I had made a I don't even know if it was a prediction per se.

00:13:42.320 But I had remarked that I couldn't see another conservative majority government in Canada.

00:13:47.240 Like I just was not seeing that for the reasons you just mentioned.

00:13:50.100 And people forget the 2011 election was weird for a number of reasons.

00:13:53.940 That was the election in which you had all of these like, you know, 12 year old NDP MPs that were elected in Quebec.

00:13:59.560 It was the year you had, you know, this collapse of the bloc, a collapse of the liberals.

00:14:04.300 You had this surge of the NDP.

00:14:07.020 It was an election in which you had a majority that didn't really involve Quebec.

00:14:12.320 The Conservatives didn't make a breakthrough in Quebec.

00:14:14.540 It was all GTA, lower mainland Vancouver.

00:14:17.660 So there was a lot of there was a lot of weirdness to that.

00:14:20.600 And, you know, that was where I think early on when when Pauly Ev won and I had interviewed him about it, I think.

00:14:25.420 And I was asking about, you know, the path to victory.

00:14:28.260 They weren't saying what it was, which I understand.

00:14:31.140 They don't want to give up their strategy.

00:14:32.600 But I actually think they're going to put some more areas in play.

00:14:35.200 I think Quebec, I mean, I could see that going both ways.

00:14:38.260 But it's going to you're right.

00:14:40.560 It seems a lot more natural than it did even for Harper in 2011.

00:14:44.740 And there's definitely more parts of the country that are competitive.

00:14:48.380 The Conservatives are absolutely dominating a large swath of British Columbia, including quite close to Vancouver, the proper city of Vancouver itself, which is not always something they've been competitive in.

00:15:00.520 In fact, I think it's been back until the 2000 election that the Conservatives have been this popular in and around the region.

00:15:06.260 They're competitive in large swaths of Quebec, including coming up to, if not actually in Montreal, pretty darn close to it.

00:15:13.820 And a ton of Atlantic Canada, which used to be considered a safe liberal bastion, is now trending very much towards the Conservatives.

00:15:21.560 And I think it's because everything that we know, property values, the cost of housing, the cost of living, the fact that the carbon tax is deeply unpopular from one end of the country to the other.

00:15:32.880 All of these are giving Pierre Prollivre and his Conservative Party a lot more opportunity electorally than any Conservative has had since, I would say, Stephen Harper in 2011, or possibly even since before that.

00:15:46.560 And there is coming up going to be one test of the political leaders to some extent.

00:15:53.580 Noah, what's going on next week?

00:15:56.280 Well, next week, there's going to be a by-election here in Toronto.

00:16:00.060 Well, I'm actually in Mississauga.

00:16:01.340 But in Toronto-St. Paul's, it's usually considered a safe liberal riding.

00:16:05.860 There's going to be a by-election, but it looks like it's going to be suspiciously competitive because I have 338 Canada up right now.

00:16:13.280 It says that the Conservatives are within striking distance of the Liberal candidate.

00:16:18.300 They are pulling at about 35% to 40% for the Liberals.

00:16:22.440 Now, riding by riding, sort of polling isn't as, say, accurate as, say, you know, national polling.

00:16:27.840 But at the end of the day, the fact that the Conservatives are even competitive in this riding shows that there is a massive swing in Canada.

00:16:36.320 I mean, Toronto used to be, you know, a liberal stronghold that was impenetrable, especially the downtown core of Toronto.

00:16:42.300 I mean, we're talking about, like, you know, the people who are, you know, living up in apartments and, you know, they take the TTC instead of a car.

00:16:49.940 And, you know, they are the most concerned about climate and stuff like that.

00:16:53.320 This is the type of people that are swinging over to the Conservatives.

00:16:57.280 So the fact that Trudeau really has, you know, pissed these people off is, it's incredible.

00:17:02.340 Yeah, and it's funny because Toronto Paul's used to always be the one where if you were the Conservative there, you were the sacrificial lamb. 0.99

00:17:09.900 And you do it either because you're, you know, a complete idiot that doesn't know what a Conservative at St. Paul's is, 0.95

00:17:14.940 or you're doing it because you want to get in the good books so that, you know, down the road you can get Mississauga Streetsville or something as a candidate or get some good staffer job. 0.99

00:17:22.980 Like, it was always the, it was always the joke.

00:17:24.900 And there are other ridings like that.

00:17:26.460 Like, you don't want to be the Conservative running in Toronto Danforth.

00:17:29.820 And you also don't want to be the NDP or Liberal running in Grand Prairie.

00:17:33.680 I mean, politics has these safe seats.

00:17:35.840 The fact, like, I still think the Conservatives are probably going to lose.

00:17:40.380 But the fact that it's even a discussion, the fact that it's even a discussion,

00:17:44.620 the fact that we can have this debate about St. Paul's as though this by-election is in play.

00:17:48.960 Like, William, did you, when, did you see this coming?

00:17:52.860 No.

00:17:53.880 Frankly, I did not think the Conservative Party would be a viable force in this by-election.

00:17:59.500 I thought we could muster a reasonable show of support, but nothing extraordinary.

00:18:05.580 And it's remarkable to think about if you look at who we're talking about in terms of who lives in this riding, right?

00:18:10.200 You've got a large number of working professionals, people who work in professional jobs in suits and ties and work on their computers.

00:18:20.540 You've got immigrant families, people who are first, second, third generation immigrants.

00:18:25.320 You've got large numbers of LGBTQ people who live and work there in this downtown urban riding.

00:18:31.580 And all of these people are, not in small quantity, now considering voting Conservative.

00:18:38.200 That is a disaster for the Liberal government because they rely on a lot of those groups to keep up their support.

00:18:46.240 So if they're starting to see cracks, if they're starting to see bits of their core voter coalition peel off, that's absolutely terrible.

00:18:53.880 That is when, if you're on the Liberal campaign, you begin to look around and see what things you can steal and smuggle out of the campaign headquarters because you're not going to have a paycheck at the end of the month.

00:19:06.860 So, yeah, I can't imagine they're very happy about how that by-election is going.

00:19:11.760 Yeah, it's just like completely and utterly embarrassing in the same way that it would be if like, you know, the Conservatives were to lose, you know, Grand Prairie or Peace River Wetaskiwin or something like that.

00:19:24.000 Okay, the, oh, let's talk about this one.

00:19:27.020 The Liberals, I think perhaps why they might not be doing all that well in the polls, because they don't focus on the things that matter.

00:19:34.540 Polly Ebb's out there talking about housing. 0.97

00:19:36.660 He's talking about the carbon tax.

00:19:37.940 The Liberals are saying, you know, what we really need right now, gender neutral bathrooms on Parliament Hill.

00:19:44.480 So, Centre Block right now is going through a massive, massive transformation.

00:19:50.500 It's going to take, you know, billions of dollars and many, many years to finally be brought back up to what it was before.

00:19:57.380 So, the House of Commons and Senate are actually in other buildings right now.

00:20:01.520 They've set up these temporary chambers for them to take place.

00:20:04.740 But when they rebuild them, when they rebuild them, Parliament Hill is going to have all gender neutral bathrooms. 0.99

00:20:11.660 Any surprises here?

00:20:14.560 No, not at all.

00:20:15.720 I mean, this is part of sort of the Trudeau government's agenda.

00:20:19.360 And it's kind of surprising because, you know, the Liberals, they have like a fundamental problem resonating with Canadians when it comes to these cultural issues.

00:20:29.680 For example, they've tried to throw the Conservatives under the bus on abortion.

00:20:35.100 And if you noticed in recent weeks, they've stopped, you know, talking about it because they probably realized that it's not actually working.

00:20:41.380 It's not resonating. And a lot of Canadians are actually becoming conservatives because the Liberals are, you know, just kind of revolting to a lot of people, you know, in terms of like what they've done with the economy, what they've done, even with COVID lockdowns, because people remember that pretty vividly.

00:20:56.980 So, you know, just to push this issue, it's not something that people care about.

00:21:00.500 It's not affecting their pocketbook. It's not affecting, you know, their life.

00:21:04.280 It's not like a needed change to Canada's institutions or just to the bathrooms of, you know, Parliament.

00:21:11.860 It's just, you know, a very it's something that will grab headlines.

00:21:15.600 It'll say, you know, maybe rise a little support in the LGBTQ community.

00:21:20.120 But I'm not I don't think like, you know, it's going to boost their polling numbers very much at all.

00:21:25.380 If not, it's just going to become a source of ridicule for the Liberals, like most things have become for them nowadays.

00:21:33.320 And, you know, we get to laugh about it.

00:21:35.580 But, you know, people are going to have to go to Parliament and women are perhaps going to be put at risk because they have to go in the same washroom with a bunch of men.

00:21:44.940 You know, even just the fact that it can make a lot of women uncomfortable being in the same washroom as men is a reason enough to not bring in these all sex washrooms. 1.00

00:21:55.600 But it's not like the Trudeau government cares about gender based analysis or they actually do claim to care about it, but not in this instance when it affects the trans community.

00:22:06.060 Yeah, it's the far cry from the government having no place in the bathrooms or the bedrooms of the nation.

00:22:10.720 But in the bathrooms of the nation, absolutely, apparently.

00:22:13.380 William, you worked on Parliament Hill back in the day.

00:22:17.020 Was this, you know, a pressing concern that, you know, you had to decide which one to use and you weren't quite sure and all of this with that gender segregation of the bathroom?

00:22:26.980 Yeah, you know, I'm thinking back to my time on Parliament Hill and at least to the building I was in.

00:22:32.460 Bathrooms were not our biggest priority.

00:22:34.520 I think what we really wanted was working air conditioning for Ottawa's hot and humid, some would say swampy summer weather because it never seemed to have working air conditioning.

00:22:45.860 You know, it's funny.

00:22:48.920 Nobody cared about bathrooms on Parliament Hill.

00:22:51.880 You know, first of all, in most cases, you're already having to go through security checks in order to get into these spaces.

00:22:59.120 You have to swipe your security card, go past actual security guards who man their desks.

00:23:05.000 And so we're talking about people who work for MPs.

00:23:08.280 And so this idea that there are hordes of strangers roving through center block who somehow pose risks and therefore we need to make fundamental changes to our entire structure to help people feel safe is frankly just a made up nonsense answer.

00:23:25.660 And I think it's because it's one of the few groups who are still supporting the liberal government, the ultra woke, the people who think it doesn't matter how much progress has been made.

00:23:36.360 There's still so much more we have to do and we have to do it in the most angry and confrontational way possible.

00:23:42.380 You know, one of the few legacy journalists who I think some of us still enjoy reading is Adam Zeevo.

00:23:47.780 And I thought he had a great piece where he said, you know, the extreme and radical LGBTQ activists are actually undoing the progress being made on the LGBTQ rights movement that we're taking steps backwards.

00:24:03.880 People are becoming less welcoming, less tolerant because they're tired of being having this stuff shoved in their faces and told that if you don't subscribe 100 percent to what you to what you're being told,

00:24:17.780 that you're hateful and you're a bigot, you know, if you dare question the need for multi-gender washrooms, you know, to represent all 18 or 47 genders, or if you somehow question whether or not four year olds should be allowed to go on puberty blockers. 0.69

00:24:33.920 Well, that means you're hateful and you're intolerant. 0.89

00:24:36.680 And but the liberals, that's one of their only constituents.

00:24:40.160 They've got the ultra woke and they're doing whatever they can to keep them in the liberal voting coalition.

00:24:46.320 Well, remember, they made this big thing six months ago of having tampons in the men's washroom of all federal buildings, including army bases, where soldiers were just like ripping out the dispensers because they thought it was all nonsense.

00:24:58.820 And then you had that conservative MP Michelle Ferreri that like went into the men's washroom with her younger male staffer to like film the thing there. 0.91

00:25:07.660 And I think she ended up deleting that.

00:25:09.040 But yeah, these things are like it's not going to win the votes in St. Paul's.

00:25:12.360 I guess that's my takeaway unless you disagree, Noah.

00:25:14.640 Well, I think, you know, maybe it wins them a couple of votes in St. Paul's, but.

00:25:20.460 But I think, you know, he's generally getting at something.

00:25:23.140 The liberals are trying to keep, you know, their main constituency.

00:25:25.680 It kind of reminds me of the Rishi Sunak strategy that's going out now.

00:25:29.000 If you guys don't know, the UK, they're having an election and Rishi Sunak, the conservative leader, is going to lose in a blowout.

00:25:34.260 And apparently he's trying to just appeal to, you know, his right wing sort of older gentleman base by trying to bring back the National Service and, you know, some other programs that is meant to appeal to them so that they don't get killed by the new reform party by Nigel Farage.

00:25:49.820 It seems like a kind of similar strategy.

00:25:52.660 The liberals are trying to, you know, keep their vote coalition together and not have it sort of break apart, you know, by voting for the NDP or the Greens or whatever.

00:26:01.620 So I don't know.

00:26:02.800 It seems like the liberals are in survival mode right now.

00:26:05.960 Yeah, and it's not even like they're particularly doing a great job at that survival.

00:26:13.260 We'll move from federal politics here to provincial politics.

00:26:16.980 Tomorrow, the NDP will crown their new leader.

00:26:21.040 It's not exactly a horse race here.

00:26:22.960 All roads are leading to Nahed Nenshi, the former Calgary mayor, as taking over.

00:26:29.100 William, as the token Albertan, I'll just let you lead into what's going on here.

00:26:33.220 Uh, yeah, no, it's going to be the Soviet secretariat of Alberta is meeting in its conference and they're going to choose a new chairman.

00:26:43.000 And it looks like the head Nenshi is going to be the winner.

00:26:45.820 So, I mean, a few interesting things.

00:26:47.780 First of all, when he was mayor of Calgary, he liked to prided himself on saying he wasn't left or right.

00:26:54.440 You know, he had his color was purple because he said he was blue on some issues and red on some others.

00:27:00.600 And we said, you're not a conservative by any definition. 0.98

00:27:03.980 You're a crazy communist who wants to destroy our way of life. 0.99

00:27:08.320 And so pretending you're a conservative is not believable. 1.00

00:27:12.020 But then good news.

00:27:12.900 He's just announced he's becoming the leader of the new Democrat party.

00:27:16.460 Any facade of being a conservative gone out the window.

00:27:19.320 So, yeah, I mean, unless something extraordinary happens, like, I don't know, a comet hitting the planet,

00:27:24.540 I think he's probably going to become the new leader.

00:27:27.920 And then it will be an interesting matchup in Alberta politics.

00:27:30.860 You'll have Daniel Smith for the United Conservative Party and the head Nenshi for the Alberta New Democrats.

00:27:36.080 They went to university together.

00:27:37.640 They were both at the University of Calgary.

00:27:39.380 I think they may have run against each other or for opposing slates for the student council.

00:27:45.320 And certainly they've been a thorn in each other's side on multiple occasions.

00:27:49.360 You know, when I worked for Daniel Smith in the Wild Rose days, we used to have to think, well, how is his purpleness, as we called him, going to react to whatever we were deciding to do?

00:28:01.300 Because if he made it a big issue, if he really went after you, it's a problem.

00:28:06.360 But, yeah, I mean, still, being a new Democrat in Alberta, not an easy job.

00:28:11.660 There is not a lot of love for that party.

00:28:14.500 I think Rachel Notley did as well as could possibly be expected for a new Democrat leader electorally.

00:28:21.640 She got one government before being booted out. 1.00

00:28:25.740 But I guess we'll see.

00:28:27.040 Not at all time, though.

00:28:28.100 I mean, Alberta politics used to be very sleepy.

00:28:30.160 And certainly that's not the case anymore.

00:28:32.780 And do I understand he's, like, proposed a divorce from the federal NDP, basically?

00:28:37.700 Yeah.

00:28:38.360 You know, it's always been a contentious thing, being a new Democrat in Alberta.

00:28:42.900 This is, of course, a party that up until I think Rachel Notley became leader had never won more than four seats out of 83.

00:28:52.980 So that's not a great track record.

00:28:55.420 And certainly outside of Edmonton and Calgary, outside of the two big cities, being a new Democrat, it's an extremely hard ticket in order to try and get elected.

00:29:03.360 So, yeah.

00:29:04.020 So there is some conversation about divorcing from Jagmeet Singh, his very anti-oil, the federal New Democrats.

00:29:10.760 That's offside for a lot of Albertans.

00:29:13.400 Rachel, I think, did a pretty good job moving the party towards the center, at least on some files. 1.00

00:29:19.580 And I think they want to probably continue that without having the association with Mr. Singh, who is not widely liked in Alberta.

00:29:28.700 But, you know, changing the name of a party, well, it's a double-edged sword.

00:29:32.600 You only have to look at British Columbia to see how changing from BC Liberals to BC United has gone over.

00:29:38.120 That party is literally in a nosedive to oblivion as we speak.

00:29:42.640 So it's an implosion.

00:29:44.340 Yeah, and it's weird in NDP because the Alberta NDP has always had that weird coalition of, like, the crazy, like, you know, blue-haired Wokies. 1.00

00:29:52.240 And then also, you know, you're more centrist people that might identify as liberal but really just don't because that party doesn't really exist in Alberta anymore.

00:30:02.540 And then you have some disgruntled PCers like that former minister, his name I can't remember anyway, the PC minister who's now an NDP supporter.

00:30:12.020 But, yeah, the reality is, like, I don't know if Nenshi, was Nenshi really popular in, well, to you, like, Noah?

00:30:18.480 Like, do you care who Nahed Nenshi is?

00:30:21.320 No, I only had to learn about who Nahed Nenshi is.

00:30:24.500 Well, I know William used to complain about him a lot before he started running for the BC NDP leadership.

00:30:29.020 That tracks, that tracks.

00:30:30.360 So, you know, that was my introduction to him.

00:30:32.780 So I already didn't get a good impression.

00:30:34.040 But, you know, I mean, Nenshi seems like the type of guy who, you know, is popular amongst a kind of, like, certain type of person.

00:30:42.300 Maybe has, like, a bit of a Doug Ford type appeal.

00:30:44.560 And sort of, like, you know, he's able to appeal to the common man, a little folksy.

00:30:48.840 You know, William's probably like, oh, the common man.

00:30:51.100 You know, this guy's anything but that.

00:30:53.060 Which is true.

00:30:54.520 But, you know, at the end of the day...

00:30:56.040 I mean, how common is that?

00:30:58.860 Yeah, exactly, right?

00:30:59.900 So I don't really know if, you know, separating off from the federal NDP and then, you know, just keeping the name NDP will do anything in, like, the minds of the average voter.

00:31:09.460 I think you would have to actually change the party name.

00:31:12.800 But, you know, as, you know, William mentioned, I'm covering B.C. politics a lot.

00:31:17.120 Changing your name is, you know, a very, very big step.

00:31:20.720 You know, it didn't really help the reform when they changed it to Canadian Alliance all that much.

00:31:25.200 It's not helping the B.C. liberals at all.

00:31:27.940 So, you know, there is that risk.

00:31:30.420 With that said, I don't know if, like, the current political landscape in Alberta is sustainable right now.

00:31:35.480 Because before it was P.C.s versus Wild Rose.

00:31:38.760 And they've sort of merged together and it's become more of a right-left battle.

00:31:43.160 So I don't know if, you know, maybe Alberta will go back to that sort of dynamic. 0.52

00:31:47.080 Or maybe the NDP will sort of have to mellow out in terms of their radicalism to really maintain their relevance in the post-Notley era.

00:31:57.940 Yeah, fair enough.

00:31:59.720 There was.

00:32:00.540 I totally lost the story we were going to go to next here.

00:32:03.080 Oh, yes.

00:32:03.900 William, you get to also complain about bureaucrats here. 0.99

00:32:06.960 I would never complain about the hardworking public servants who keep our government moving with peak efficiency and deliver valuable services to Canadians in a timely and affordable manner.

00:32:18.460 But fortunately, I don't have to because we're about to hire a squad of Terminators to wander the halls of the Federal Civil Service to keep an eye on them.

00:32:28.160 Yes, there are spy robots trundling through the halls of some of the Federal Public Service buildings.

00:32:35.600 Although if you talk to the people who own them, the government, they're not really for spying.

00:32:40.320 Therefore, apparently making sure the air conditioning is running the way it's supposed to or something.

00:32:45.280 The Federal Civil Service are being kept comfortable.

00:32:47.560 It makes them sound like plants that they require enough light and oxygen and humidity.

00:32:53.380 But let's just take it at face value for a second.

00:32:57.220 Let me let me pull up the the article here and read that line.

00:33:01.660 So the.

00:33:02.000 It said.

00:33:05.840 The robot gathers information on air quality, light levels, noise, humidity, temperature and even measures CO2, methane and radon gas.

00:33:14.460 So, I mean, arguably, I guess they're monitoring, you know, particularly flatulent bureaucrats, but it's like classic, classic government.

00:33:21.260 They can't just have someone go over and check the thermostat and, you know, say, oh, the light's bright.

00:33:26.200 I'm going to turn it off like it's they need to get this like expensive robot to do it.

00:33:29.780 Yeah, that glides up and down the halls and may or may not be counting how many people are in the office to determine if there's enough workspace and possibly whether or not you're in your individual office at any given time.

00:33:43.600 Look, first of all, I don't think we have done a good enough job monitoring federal public servants at all.

00:33:48.900 We have the fact that thousands of them, tens of thousands of them, hundreds of thousands of them just walked off jobs to work at home and none of us really noticed says a message that maybe these people aren't the paragons of efficiency that the federal public service paints itself into being.

00:34:06.240 So, I personally would welcome some more oversight and ensuring that the very expensive federal civil service that we pay for is actually doing some work.

00:34:16.960 But, of course, the union is deeply opposed to all of this.

00:34:20.340 First of all, they're deeply opposed to having any of them have to go back to their offices.

00:34:24.300 They think they should be allowed to work from home forever.

00:34:27.860 And then now they're very upset that people might be monitored as to whether or not they're actually in their office at any given time.

00:34:35.420 Well, the union is opposed to all work.

00:34:38.000 Yeah, you know, well, my God, if they have to be back in the office, surely they don't have to be actually at their desk and working.

00:34:44.280 Well, you know, they should be, you know, I don't know, synergizing with their colleagues at the water cooler or whatever it is they might be spending their time doing.

00:34:52.580 But, yeah, it is interesting that the solution proposed by the government just happens to be, A, the most controversial and, B, the most sort of expensive and over the top one, as opposed to, oh, I don't know, making supervisors accountable for the behavior of their subordinates and saying, why does your department of 14 people only produce the work of one half person every other week?

00:35:16.200 Fair enough.

00:35:18.780 Fair enough. This one was a weird, well, actually, we don't have time for this one.

00:35:22.780 We'll do that one on my show next week.

00:35:24.880 So here we can all complain about the quality of what's on TV.

00:35:29.200 Now, I'm assuming that most of you tuning in have just chosen to, like, swear off the, you know, crappy TV and you're watching True North shows and we thank you for it.

00:35:36.840 But if you happen to, like, flip through the channels, as I have from time to time, you'll come across things and you're like, this is just so bad.

00:35:44.020 Well, this clip was from a show called New Amsterdam, which is off the air now, thankfully.

00:35:49.700 It ran from, I think, 2008 to 2000.

00:35:52.360 Or no, when did it run?

00:35:53.380 I've already forgotten when it ran.

00:35:55.760 I think it was 2018 to 2023.

00:35:58.900 Yeah, so it just went off the air last year.

00:36:00.520 But I saw this clip circulating and I was like, this is, like, perfect off-the-record material because this is exactly why none of the shows on TV are good right now.

00:36:10.520 Let's just let the video do the talking here.

00:36:14.880 Make yourself comfortable.

00:36:15.960 There's a couch over there.

00:36:17.340 Hey, is he okay?

00:36:19.100 Yeah, yeah, he's okay.

00:36:21.680 I had Cephas answer some questions from a Harvard test known as unrest.

00:36:25.680 It is designed to measure someone's level of social resistance.

00:36:29.600 Social resistance.

00:36:31.180 When people like us oppose the values and policies of the dominant culture.

00:36:35.960 That's right.

00:36:36.680 And what does that have to do with...

00:36:38.240 Your son, he feels threatened on a daily basis.

00:36:41.700 Like everything he's earned can just be taken away.

00:36:44.640 He's disenfranchised.

00:36:46.640 But because his life is seemingly free from all this, because he can't name it, he's internalizing it.

00:36:53.840 Name what?

00:36:57.100 Racism.

00:36:57.580 I think your son's tumor was caused by racism.

00:37:08.480 That's too much.

00:37:09.660 Now, I don't have a medical degree.

00:37:12.560 So, I may be missing something.

00:37:15.580 But I am not aware of racism causing tumors.

00:37:19.220 I did not think that Black Lives Matter was an anti-cancer campaign, just to put that point on it.

00:37:27.820 Noah, how do you feel on this?

00:37:29.200 Do you feel seen?

00:37:30.120 Do you feel represented?

00:37:31.060 Oh, yeah, totally.

00:37:33.860 I mean, you know, it's just all that social resistance building up in my chest.

00:37:37.040 And now I got, like, heart palpitations, you know?

00:37:39.300 Maybe I got to go to my doctor.

00:37:41.340 But, you know, it's kind of funny.

00:37:43.140 It's like, you know, when he said social resistance, I'm like, you know, I live in Canada.

00:37:45.840 I'm a conservative.

00:37:46.540 It's a pretty liberal country.

00:37:47.520 I mean, am I growing a tumor?

00:37:49.280 Like, this has got to be something, you know, that's happening.

00:37:51.440 I'm pretty sure, like, Ezra Levan is, like, in stage four or whatever.

00:37:55.240 Like, this guy, you know, needs a checkup.

00:37:58.680 But I think it's utterly absurd.

00:38:01.500 It's great that we get to laugh at this stuff, you know?

00:38:03.540 It just really shows that, you know, this wokeness whole thing is nonsense.

00:38:08.020 And, you know, I sent it to a couple of my friends who are also Black.

00:38:11.020 And they're like, you know, like, what is going on?

00:38:12.820 Like, can you just, like, be normal?

00:38:14.800 Can you, like, tell a good story instead of, like, just trying to overtly appeal to, like, one racial group in your show? 0.99

00:38:21.020 It's ridiculous. 0.77

00:38:21.500 I used to like, back at the last medical show that I watched on TV was House. 0.70

00:38:25.500 And House was about this, you know, cranky doctor played by Hugh Laurie that just was an absolute brilliant guy.

00:38:31.940 And he would always find the most obscure conditions imaginable that people had.

00:38:37.020 And he would save the patients generally.

00:38:38.520 And I'm like, they never did the racism thing.

00:38:40.480 You know, they never did the, like, Dr. House, we cannot figure out why this person is dying.

00:38:45.080 And he just looks at them and says, racist tumor.

00:38:48.760 They never did that.

00:38:49.620 Well, I have to say, if I'm wheeled into hospital and it's a cancer diagnosis, I would ask that they please use conventional cancer treatment on me.

00:39:01.280 I don't want the doctor to say I need 10 cc's of DEI training stat to be, I'm like, no, no, no, radiation and drugs, please.

00:39:10.860 I don't need everyone sitting in a talking circle learning how to be anti-colonial.

00:39:16.200 That's not going to take the tumor out of my brain.

00:39:19.460 Thank you.

00:39:19.740 So your doctor diagnosing you with wet fragility does it in gender confidence?

00:39:23.660 That's kind of crazy, William.

00:39:25.060 I don't know about that.

00:39:26.180 Yeah.

00:39:26.560 Well, we can send you to the radiologist or we have this great working group on confronting unconscious bias.

00:39:34.640 Yeah, but don't worry.

00:39:36.200 We have a whole selection of washrooms for you to choose from as the tumor makes your brain explode from the inside.

00:39:44.060 So this is a, to be honest, this is, this is an American show, but I'm kind of getting like some Canadian healthcare vibes from, from it there.

00:39:52.180 All right.

00:39:53.040 That was a new Amsterdam.

00:39:54.420 So there was, I used to love this show in its first season, it was called Designated Survivor and it was this like political thriller starring Kiefer Sutherland.

00:40:03.560 And the first season was like the first episode was that the white house or the Capitol gets blown up in the middle of the state of the union and the designated survivor, who's like some obscure cabinet secretary is the guy that takes the presidency.

00:40:16.860 And he has to navigate through this massive, massive terrorist conspiracy.

00:40:20.460 Fantastic show.

00:40:21.660 Second season, yeah, a little bit less good, but I was still there.

00:40:25.500 Got canceled.

00:40:26.900 Netflix brought it back for season three.

00:40:29.680 And in season three, half of the episodes of the season, I kid you not, were about the president's transgender sister-in-law.

00:40:36.460 And in one of the episodes, the president's transgender sister-in-law, who was born a male, is giving the president's daughter advice on how to get through her first period.

00:40:45.940 And I'm like, can we bring back the terrorists?

00:40:48.740 That was like why I started watching this show.

00:40:50.580 But this is what TV is doing now.

00:40:53.160 You know, I actually loved the first season of that show.

00:40:56.240 It was a political thriller.

00:40:57.480 It was supposed to have elements of politics.

00:40:59.840 You know, the guy is trying to rebuild a government that's been blown up by terrorists.

00:41:04.000 And, you know, while simultaneously trying to track down the terrorists who did it.

00:41:10.020 And, yeah, and by the end, it's this weird social studies lesson in wokeism that isn't remotely enjoyable to watch anymore.

00:41:22.040 It's like, ooh, the president denounced his sister-in-law to win in Texas.

00:41:26.000 It's like, what the hell?

00:41:27.240 Where did this come from?

00:41:29.300 Yeah, no, it was deeply disappointing what happened to that show.

00:41:32.100 And unbefitting what I think Mr. Kiefer Sutherland deserves in his career.

00:41:38.840 Whose father just, or whose grandfather, rather, just passed away.

00:41:42.860 No, his father.

00:41:43.720 No, his grandfather.

00:41:44.600 Yes, Shirley Douglas' father.

00:41:47.020 No, wait, I've forgotten this whole family now.

00:41:49.560 I used to know this.

00:41:50.180 It's his father.

00:41:51.200 So, yeah, Donald's, because he was so old.

00:41:53.260 Yeah, Donald's his father.

00:41:54.220 And then his mother, his grandfather was Tommy Douglas, because, yeah, okay, got it.

00:41:59.680 Yeah, no, it's very sad.

00:42:00.880 I mean, I didn't agree with Donald Sutherland's politics.

00:42:04.980 He was a pretty hardcore raging lefty.

00:42:07.320 But I enjoyed him in a lot of movies.

00:42:09.700 And so it is sad when we lose someone who's an actor.

00:42:13.220 And, you know, that's one of the things I like to say is I don't have to necessarily agree with everyone's politics to enjoy a movie they make.

00:42:21.680 Because there's, you know, the woke says, say, oh, you can't watch so-and-so, he's a Republican, or you can't listen to so-and-so's music, he's a Republican.

00:42:29.400 I think, well, I enjoy their content.

00:42:30.940 I actually don't care about their politics.

00:42:32.900 I'm not choosing who to vote for because of this actor.

00:42:36.360 But he was great playing the evil president on The Hunger Games.

00:42:40.480 And that was an entertaining role.

00:42:42.160 So, yeah.

00:42:43.260 All right, final words.

00:42:44.040 Yeah, no, it's the 10th.

00:42:45.220 Well, that's exactly how I feel about Kanye West.

00:42:47.460 It's like, you know, he might say some crazy things every now and then.

00:42:50.060 But, hey, you know, you put on that graduation album from 2007.

00:42:55.160 It's really good.

00:42:56.220 It's great music, like 20 years ago, yeah.

00:42:59.500 Okay, okay.

00:43:00.380 Relax, William.

00:43:01.220 Let's not, you know.

00:43:03.080 I think you just gave Noah a tumor, William.

00:43:06.640 Yeah.

00:43:07.640 I think I just had a stroke there.

00:43:09.460 I'll go check our insurance policy, see if you're covered for some DEI treatment there, Noah.

00:43:14.000 All right.

00:43:14.740 Noah Jarvis, thank you, sir.

00:43:16.320 William McBeth, thank you.

00:43:17.260 My name is Andrew Lawton, and remember, everything you've heard is off the record.

00:43:29.760 I actually don't know if I know any Kanye West songs.

00:43:33.480 Oh, man, Andrew.

00:43:34.640 I already knew this was going to happen.

00:43:35.980 You got to culture yourself, you know.

00:43:37.540 Maybe I'll jump out to London one day and just, you know, lock you in a room.

00:43:40.520 Okay, name five ABBA songs, Noah.

00:43:46.200 Somebody that I used to know.

00:43:48.040 Wait, no.

00:43:49.520 No, that's the wrong person.

00:43:51.140 It came out like 20 years after ABBA.

00:43:54.440 Okay, okay, okay.

00:43:55.860 In my defense, in my defense, like I've only heard like one song at a club.

00:44:01.400 And, like, my friend was like, hey, you know, is that somebody I used to know guy?

00:44:05.020 Like, so, I don't know, stuck in my head.

00:44:07.280 Andrew, you would maybe know all of the lights.

00:44:09.340 I think that's probably the most famous Kanye song from that got a lot of radio play.

00:44:16.340 Oh, yeah.

00:44:16.540 Or stronger.

00:44:17.460 Rihanna was in that one.

00:44:18.380 Work in order, make it better, order, better, faster, stronger.

00:44:23.200 Yeah, that one.

00:44:23.940 Good impression?

00:44:25.180 Yeah.

00:44:25.540 That was great.

00:44:26.160 That one.

00:44:26.660 Yeah.

00:44:26.960 Like it was in the room.

00:44:27.740 All right, you all listen to a Kanye album, you listen to an ABBA album, and then we'll

00:44:32.540 share our cultures next week, Noah.

00:44:35.480 ABBA's not my culture for, I'm not Swedish or.

00:44:38.160 I was going to say, are you Swedish in Europe?

00:44:42.340 I don't know.

00:44:43.000 You could pass off.

00:44:44.360 All right.

00:44:44.760 You can pass off as Swedish. 0.81

00:44:46.220 I think I'm a little bit too brunette. 0.64

00:44:47.380 All right.

00:44:47.980 We just pass it.

Off the Record - June 21, 2024

Are we witnessing the end of the Trudeau Liberals？

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