Canadians are sending us a clear message.
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
189.87854
Summary
On today's show, we have one of the latest by-election winners, Don Stewart, the Member of Parliament from Toronto-St. Paul's, the "Belly of the Beast". Don Stewart is a former police officer who served as a Toronto police officer and was elected to the House of Commons in the 2015 election.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your
00:00:14.500
host, Jamie Schmael, member of Parliament for Halliburton Corps with the legs frock with new
00:00:18.000
content for you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. We ask that you like, comment, share
00:00:23.080
and subscribe to this program. It's very important that this message gets out, especially if you want
00:00:28.180
Pierre Polyev to be the next Prime Minister of Canada. On today's show, we have one of the latest
00:00:33.400
by-election winners, Don Stewart, the Member of Parliament from Toronto-St. Paul, the belly of
00:00:38.560
the beast. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you very much, Jamie. Pleasure to be here. And
00:00:42.020
congratulations, by the way. Thank you. That was a heck of a by-election. It was. I've been hearing a
00:00:45.860
lot of congratulatory remarks this week. That won't get old for me, but they're starting to wear off.
00:00:52.220
You know, the election was just a fantastic thing. It proved the value of hard work and
00:00:59.180
understanding what people want when you're talking to them at their doors.
00:01:02.600
And that's right in the fortress, right? You are surrounded on the electoral map by a lot of red,
00:01:08.760
and now they have a nice blop of blue inside. But of course, Toronto, you have an area that,
00:01:15.800
in your seat in particular, hasn't been held in almost 30 years. Yeah, actually 31 years. 31 years.
00:01:21.000
That was the last time that there was a Conservative in the seat, and that was Barbara McDougall, who a lot of
00:01:26.840
people will remember and remember fondly. More and more people that I met on the campaign trail
00:01:32.680
talked about Barbara McDougall and how they helped on her campaign, and they actually came out to help
00:01:37.720
on mine as well. That is pretty cool. It was a common-sense Conservative message that just resonated.
00:01:42.840
It was, indeed. Indeed. You know, people across this nation need to understand that the message that the
00:01:49.800
Conservative Party has with the axe attacks, build the homes, fix the budget, stop the crime,
00:01:54.520
it resonates everywhere. There's something in that for everyone and everywhere in this country.
00:02:00.040
It may be slightly different in St. Paul's than it is in Regina or in your riding, but taxes matter,
00:02:07.880
the homes matter, the cost of living crisis, the budget deficits that we keep running. That one
00:02:13.560
really mattered for my people. And of course, stopping the crime, that's a big, big, big thing in my riding.
00:02:19.000
Yeah, you're right. In the city of Toronto, like most communities around this country,
00:02:23.400
you're hit with all of that. You're dealing with all of you, one of the most expensive real estate
00:02:28.040
markets in the country. Yeah, indeed. We have, you know, armed robberies are higher,
00:02:33.800
auto thefts are up. A lot of people at their doorsteps wanted to talk to me about auto theft,
00:02:40.600
but it's not just auto theft. It's petty crime, and it's disrespect in a neighbourhood, people littering,
00:02:48.120
and small things like that, that create, you know, an environment in the streets that just
00:02:54.440
isn't what it was nine years ago. Yeah, you're right. It's a lot. The big things do matter,
00:02:58.200
of course, the large crimes, that type of thing. But it's also the small stuff where everyday people,
00:03:04.280
they go to work, they pay their taxes, they just want the government to do their job and provide
00:03:08.600
the safety for them to go amongst their lives. It's that small stuff that kind of nips away at people
00:03:13.960
that they get annoyed with, and rightfully so. It disrupts your life when you're doing everything
00:03:21.720
you're told. I'm going to pay my taxes and do my part. The government needs to do theirs,
00:03:25.560
and this Liberal government is far off base from that. And I think that's why it was so important
00:03:29.640
during the election. You know, personally, I knocked on 13,000 doors myself, and I heard from people in
00:03:35.320
every corner of my riding, and the issues were the same. And principally, crime was up, and people
00:03:44.120
notice it. And they're afraid to take their kids out in the street past dark. They, you know, they
00:03:48.440
used to maybe take a walk with their child in the stroller past dark. In the wintertime, it gets dark
00:03:53.320
at four o'clock. There's not a lot of time to get out there during daylight hours. But those are things
00:03:57.800
that are impacting people's lives. And we should also remind people, it's not the police service
00:04:01.960
themselves in large part. It's the justice system. It's the revolving door justice system where violent
00:04:08.520
repeat offenders are getting out time and time again, and they just keep re-offending. They're
00:04:14.200
not the ones looking for help. They're not the ones that made a mistake and want to rehabilitate
00:04:18.680
themselves. This is an ongoing pattern that is disrupting communities. I'm glad you brought that up.
00:04:24.840
I've got a great relationship with the police service in Toronto in 13th and 53 Division,
00:04:29.720
major crimes and carjacking unit. I've had them all out to talk to our community. And, you know,
00:04:35.800
they're doing everything that they can. But just to your point, there are things that
00:04:42.680
I'll say don't get the scrutiny on them at the street level as they may have used to, because
00:04:49.080
the justice system is full. And we need to find a way to unclog that system, the justice system,
00:04:57.160
and get people through so we can start to prosecute these crimes that are affecting people's lives.
00:05:01.960
Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's amazing that you were able to pull that off. And I can imagine it's
00:05:06.520
still an ongoing high, but you're doing a lot of great work because the door knocking hasn't stopped
00:05:10.440
for you. You're still out every weekend meeting the people. True, true. And, you know, there's some
00:05:15.240
boundary redistributions that are happening across the country. People in the new St. Pauls were not aware.
00:05:22.680
So every 10 years, we get a boundary redistribution. And I've been focusing on those new areas to let
00:05:29.160
people know that I'm there for them and that I don't want to be a new face for them when this next
00:05:34.600
election does happen. So if anybody's asking, who is Don Stewart? Can you give an elevator pitch
00:05:41.000
about who is Don Stewart? Sure I can. I got to tell you, I've lived in this riding since 2016. I've seen a
00:05:46.200
lot of changes. But the main reason I got involved in politics is because I've got two daughters who are
00:05:51.400
in their 20s. They do not have the same opportunities that I had when I was their age. And I think the
00:05:58.040
only way we can really affect change is to get involved and have our voices heard. I spent almost
00:06:03.720
25 years in the finance industry and I learned what it means to be a fiscal, have some fiscal
00:06:09.480
responsibility. I've seen what happens when you lose that true north where you need to understand
00:06:18.040
we've got a certain amount of resources we can allocate, but we can't go over. You know, we can
00:06:23.320
borrow a certain amount of money, but we can't continuously do that. What I saw, Jamie, was that
00:06:28.600
we had a trajectory in this country where we're going back in time to the 90s, where we had decisions
00:06:37.080
forced on us from outside entities. We don't need to wait for that crisis to happen again. We can make
00:06:42.680
the decisions for ourselves now and decide how we want to run our country, how we want to allocate
00:06:47.320
our scarce resources to the benefit of Canadians from coast to coast. It's interesting you mention
00:06:52.200
that. So we're doing this show a day after National Truth and Reconciliation Day, but this afternoon
00:06:57.720
we have some pretty important confidence votes coming up. We'll see if the NDP and the Bloc get their
00:07:01.960
spine again and potentially match their actions with their words, but we could potentially have an
00:07:08.200
election called later today. I don't think it'll happen, but to your point that you just mentioned,
00:07:13.480
you're fighting for all these things because it matters to, based on the phone calls we're seeing,
00:07:19.400
the polling numbers, like there's a lot of people hurting out there. Food bank uses out of control.
00:07:24.120
And you know, I'm glad you mentioned the Truth and Reconciliation Day. I spent last Sunday at an
00:07:30.760
Equinox event with our Indigenous community in Toronto St. Paul's, and it's the first time I've
00:07:35.560
done that. It was just an amazing experience. And you mentioned food banks, and I volunteered at the
00:07:41.480
food banks in our riding, and I've seen firsthand the pain that's out there. And you mentioned knocking
00:07:47.800
on doors. So I'm knocking on doors, and I hear from people how they're understanding now that how this
00:07:54.440
government keeps printing money to fund the different things that they're implementing. But that puts our core
00:07:59.560
programs at risk. And people ask me about that. And the fact is that we need to be able to allocate
00:08:06.040
our resources, as I said earlier, to the most important things to Canadians, not pick winners
00:08:11.720
in different parts of society. Exactly. And that's all this government has really been doing.
00:08:17.160
And as we potentially move closer to an election, the landscape of how many people get their information,
00:08:24.280
it was a little sketchy actually last week. CTV put out a story, which they had chopped different
00:08:31.240
pieces of Pierre Polyev's statement together to fit a narrative that they are promoting. And so this is
00:08:39.240
something I really want to dive into as a former journalist, but how the news media is more narrative
00:08:45.720
based than they used to be. You know, the who, the what, the where, the when, the why, the how, right?
00:08:49.880
The media used to always put in both sides, and then people were able to make their decision. Now
00:08:56.200
it's more like promoting a narrative. So if you haven't seen it already, I urge you to check it out.
00:09:02.520
Andrew Scheer put out a fantastic video that shows the exact statement that Pierre made, and then the
00:09:10.440
edited version to create that narrative that we want an election based on one certain thing,
00:09:16.120
which was not true. We want the carbon tax election. So let's, let's queue up cut one. This is the CBC
00:09:23.320
now. So they're still defending what they had done. They're, they're, they're, they're trying to back
00:09:29.160
up their buddies at CTV. And this question is just absolutely incredible and shows what the media will
00:09:36.280
do to create their narrative and keep it going across multiple platforms. Play cut one.
00:09:40.840
When you make allegations like this about a publicly traded company on the floor of the House of
00:09:44.280
Commons, like, should you be doing that? Like, this is what I wonder about. There are people
00:09:49.160
with their pensions, mutual funds, their livelihood invested in Bell. I know it's gone through some
00:09:55.240
struggles and laid people off, but is that what we're going to do to corporate Canada?
00:09:58.760
I'd point out that a lot of that disdain is directed very much at the CEO and the executive team and not
00:10:05.560
at the, you know, the boots on the ground that are laying cable. I think there is an important
00:10:10.280
distinction there. This would be a lot less complicated. Um, if, you know, telecommunications
00:10:15.560
companies were kind of out of the journalism business, it would be a lot less complicated
00:10:19.560
if these companies weren't receiving either preferential regulatory treatment, uh, or in
00:10:26.360
So to me, Kate is right there pointing out that, yeah, there, there's some issues there. And it was
00:10:31.720
Pierre's comments were directed at the, the leadership, not the people on the ground,
00:10:36.520
but you just see there that the, the, the media will do everything they can to defend themselves,
00:10:41.160
even though they were completely in the wrong. And this is the CBC, CTV was the one who, who did,
00:10:47.160
made the error in the statement. And yet the blame still has to be on Pierre, right? Like,
00:10:53.080
how dare you talk about the mistake in the media because there are people whose paychecks depend on
00:10:59.720
that? Well, why is, isn't this applied to Jagmeet Singh when he calls out Loblaws or anybody,
00:11:04.600
or Justin Trudeau when he does the same thing? It's a completely unlevel playing field.
00:11:08.920
And, and I love how you, this is the great thing I think about our party is that you've got
00:11:12.920
experience as a journalist, I've got experience in finance, because what I see from that is the,
00:11:19.720
the CBC host tries to lay this, oh, Mr. Polyev is destroying people's pensions and mutual funds.
00:11:27.320
Well, it's not that he's calling out for the truth.
00:11:29.560
Right. And that's all we're doing. We just want the truth.
00:11:32.200
The blame lays at the CTV news people that allowed this clip
00:11:37.000
to be edited, to portray that narrative, uh, that that's untrue.
00:11:41.720
Yeah. And re basically repeating liberal talking points.
00:11:46.840
Like the media is supposed to be the unbiased, the, the, the neutral observers, as I call them,
00:11:52.200
right? Calling balls and strikes. But instead they're repeating liberal talking points,
00:11:57.160
editing clips, like different sentences, putting words together to, to create a narrative that they
00:12:03.720
want to portray as to why Pierre and the conservatives, us as an opposition, me included,
00:12:10.280
And I hear, I hear it again, I hear it all the time during the campaign.
00:12:13.480
People would tell me that the conservative party was this, the conservative party was that,
00:12:19.320
But people hadn't done their primary research to decide if it was true or not,
00:12:22.840
because so many things were, were, were so untrue. I got to have some very valuable
00:12:28.040
discussions at people's doorsteps where they wanted to chat.
00:12:31.720
And, and Pierre, uh, did manage to get an apology out of CTV, which was great.
00:12:36.760
It's on most social media. And I believe they did have it in their broadcast.
00:12:40.120
Uh, but at the same time, we just want fair and balanced news, just provide equal coverage.
00:12:46.200
And I think that kind of ticks off the media in a way because now with social media and the,
00:12:51.720
you know, the invention of camera phones, and now everything's on the internet,
00:12:55.640
you can actually see in real time where the news is being torqued. And I think that's why there is
00:13:01.400
this general frustration and growing frustration amongst the public that they, they can see when
00:13:07.080
the media is torquing a story. It's very clear to see and, and, and just, just make things balanced.
00:13:14.360
That's it. That's all you have to do. Just do your job, make it balanced.
00:13:17.800
It's very, it's a very hard thing right now. It seems, uh, for the media to do that.
00:13:22.040
Yeah. It seems that it's more activist than journalist, which is a shame
00:13:25.880
because it was a very noble profession and you were able to tell both stories,
00:13:30.600
at least once upon a time you were, and people had that information. But now you don't because it,
00:13:35.720
you, you just get what they want you to, to come as an outcome, which is to go against the Conservatives.
00:13:41.800
I agree with you on that, Jamie. Yeah. All right. So, um, let's put up the Justin Trudeau's, uh,
00:13:48.520
thing before we get to the end of it. I know we're running out of time here, so
00:13:51.880
we'll do it real quick. Um, this is, uh, Trudeau last week on the Stephen Colbert show. Of course,
00:13:58.280
he was in New York City, uh, talking at the UN and, and hanging out with all the cool rich people here.
00:14:03.880
So, uh, during the show, uh, he was asked, you know, what, what is it we fight of? And
00:14:10.200
it's off with lumber, lumber tariffs. Fishing is a massive problem out, out east. Um, he says
00:14:16.040
there are small issues. And I know, yes, it's comedy, right? Okay. Conservatives, where is your
00:14:20.600
funny bone? Right? I get it. It's comedies there to make people laugh, make light of it. But at the
00:14:25.000
same time, back home domestically, those are some pretty major issues that are caused by Justin
00:14:33.160
Trudeau and his government. Oh, I absolutely agree with you. I mean, I don't stay up late enough
00:14:38.600
to watch the Colbert show because, you know, we're working so hard during the day and up so early in
00:14:42.280
the morning to do that. But I did see, uh, this clip and it was very disconcerting for me to see
00:14:49.080
the problems in Canada belittled on a comedy show. Yeah, because people are losing their lives.
00:14:54.680
There are lumber mills that have shut, leaving small towns in dire straits. Hundreds, if not
00:14:59.960
thousands of jobs. Fishing communities out east being decimated because this government will,
00:15:05.800
will not do its job. And, and I think this is something we're seeing over and over again.
00:15:10.280
The crime issues we talked about, housing, the budgets out of control, these are not small issues.
00:15:15.480
And yes, you're there to make a joke, you're there to make a laugh, but at the end of the day,
00:15:19.720
these are problems Justin Trudeau continues to deny responsibility for and not even pivot on some of
00:15:26.200
them. I'm a little, I'm a little concerned that we have our prime minister going on late night,
00:15:32.440
uh, talk shows in the United States, rather than being here to deal with the issues. And this is
00:15:38.040
kind of endemic, I think of the liberal party is that they're, they're, they're not listening to
00:15:41.880
Canadians, not listening to Canadians where they are and where they want to be heard, which is right here at home.
00:15:47.560
All right. I, I did go over, I should have ended the show earlier, but, uh, I, I love talking to
00:15:53.640
you by the way. Um, the guests get the last word. This is your first appearance on the show because
00:15:58.200
you just elected. Um, T, the floor is yours. Take it from there.
00:16:02.280
Well, that's great. This is a bit of a surprise. I wasn't sure that I was going to get the, going to
00:16:06.680
get the last word. Um, but you know, being in Ottawa now that I've been here for, for two weeks,
00:16:12.520
it's been a real eye opener. There's a lot more getting done here, um, particularly by our party
00:16:18.680
than people at home, uh, realize, you know, question period absolutely is one of the most
00:16:24.440
entertaining things on TV, but those are real questions that, that we need answers to. And
00:16:29.800
that's why I'm here. That's why I wanted to get elected is to help, help this party, help this country
00:16:35.960
solve the issues that are so important to us now and create a new vision for Canada. A new vision
00:16:41.400
for Canada that's going to, uh, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Absolutely.
00:16:47.480
Thank you so much. I loved that conversation. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Don Stewart,
00:16:51.880
the Member of Parliament for Toronto St. Paul's. Feels so good to say. Appreciate your time, Don. Uh,
00:16:57.720
thank you for yours as well. Don't forget, we have new content for you every single Tuesday,
00:17:01.480
1.30 p.m. Eastern time. Don't forget to like, comment, share, subscribe to this program,
00:17:06.040
and tell your friends they can download it on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play,
00:17:09.960
Spotify, you name it, it is out there. Until next week, remember, low taxes, less government,