The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - May 09, 2017


Tony goes to D.C.

Hosted by
Jamie Schmal
Mentioned
Susan Del Bene Anne McLean-Cooster Daniel Kildee Diane Watson Bill C-63 Speaker Surrey Trump
China is not Canada’s best friend Michael Cooper on the Liberal gutting of Wynn’s Law

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

150.02

Word count

1,226

Sentence count

68


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Conservative MP for Parry Sound Muskoka, Tony Clement talks about his recent trip to Washington, D.C. to meet with a House of Commons committee on public safety and national security. He also talks about border security issues and trade with the United States.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 You're listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:00:09.000 Well, they thought they were going to have an easy day over there today, but not so fast, Mr. Speaker.
00:00:16.640 What is it going to take for the Prime Minister to have any respect for any laws in this country that may curb his out-of-control behaviour?
00:00:25.320 And now, here's your host, Tony Clement.
00:00:31.380 Welcome, one and all, to Volume 2 of Blueprint, the Conservative Party of Canada podcast.
00:00:38.920 And I want to thank the Office of the Leader of the Opposition for the opportunity.
00:00:42.040 My name is Tony Clement, Member of Parliament for Parry Sound Muskoka, and your host for The Blueprint.
00:00:49.100 Well, first off, I want to talk about something that might be of interest to folks,
00:00:52.740 because what does an MP do when he or she is not in the House of Commons and not in her or his constituency?
00:01:00.500 I spent two days last week in Washington, D.C. with a House of Commons committee,
00:01:06.760 the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.
00:01:10.960 We visited Washington, D.C. as a committee,
00:01:14.760 and it was part of the committee's study of Canada's national security framework.
00:01:20.400 So I was there with a colleague, Diane Watts, from Surrey, B.C., a Conservative MP from Surrey,
00:01:27.740 but also with Liberal MPs and with an NDP MP, all members of the committee.
00:01:33.440 And we had a series of meetings, of course, to really gain insight on Canada, U.S., border security issues,
00:01:41.160 anti-terrorism, the border control, transportation security, all of these issues that are part and parcel of our national security.
00:01:50.880 I serve as the Conservative Party's national security and public safety critic,
00:01:55.160 and as a member of the Public Safety and National Security Committee, it was my honor to be part of that session as well.
00:02:01.920 So a number of meetings. We had, of course, congressional meetings.
00:02:05.000 It was kind of an interesting day to have congressional meetings on the Thursday
00:02:08.540 because it was the day that the House of Representatives in the U.S. was having the vote on Obamacare.
00:02:15.240 So a little bit of distraction going on there in Congress,
00:02:19.440 not dissimilar to sometimes when we have a big vote in the House of Commons,
00:02:23.300 your mind is really focused on that vote.
00:02:25.940 But we had a number of congresspeople, congressmen and women who did agree to meet with us,
00:02:34.020 mostly from border districts, districts that were either on the Washington state, B.C. border
00:02:42.000 or the New Hampshire border with Quebec or, in one case, New York, upstate New York fellow.
00:02:49.040 So people like Congressman Daniel Kildee, a Democrat from Michigan, met with us.
00:02:54.940 We also met with, as I say, congresspeople like Susan Del Bene from Washington and her staff
00:03:01.320 and Anne McLean-Cooster, again, a New Hampshire congresswoman and her staff.
00:03:08.100 So it was a great opportunity to talk about border issues, but also talk about Canada-U.S. trade.
00:03:14.340 I mean, you're not just wearing your national security hat.
00:03:16.720 You're also there advancing the argument that it is important for the U.S. to maintain and enhance trade links with Canada.
00:03:24.580 You know, there's a big debate going on post-Trump about whether the United States should sign off
00:03:32.200 and remove itself from NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement,
00:03:36.700 or what sort of changes the United States is going to pursue.
00:03:40.100 So we wanted to get our two cents worth in about how important that border trade is for their own districts,
00:03:47.500 that they have jobs that are important to them as congresspeople that they want to maintain and enhance,
00:03:54.920 and those jobs are dependent upon Canada-U.S. trade.
00:03:58.060 So that was really important.
00:03:58.960 On the national security front, we talked about terrorism threats, cyber security, intelligence gathering,
00:04:06.100 information sharing, oversight of national security activities and national security agencies.
00:04:12.940 So these were all very important issues.
00:04:15.660 Did I raise the issue of these illegal border crossers coming from U.S. to Canada?
00:04:22.720 You bet I did, and, of course, made the point to all who would listen that this is something that we're quite concerned about,
00:04:32.040 and we're concerned about how many are crossing, and we want to work with the Americans to prevent illegal border crossing
00:04:39.780 because we have rules in place, and we have people who are legitimately trying to advance their case
00:04:45.960 that they are genuine refugees who should be welcomed to Canada,
00:04:49.420 but illegal border crossers who are fake refugees, obviously, that is not something that we're interested in promoting
00:04:55.460 or seeing occurring at the levels that is going on.
00:04:59.620 So that was obviously a topic.
00:05:01.520 We got to visit the terrorism screening agency, which is the watch list, basically.
00:05:07.780 There's about a million people around the world on this terrorism watch list
00:05:12.900 and how they go about within a legal constitutional framework to add people to the watch list.
00:05:19.820 Of course, we have some concerns about names that appear on there that shouldn't be on there,
00:05:24.420 and they are quite aware that the list is not perfect,
00:05:27.540 but they're constantly working with Canada and with allies to improve that watch list.
00:05:33.100 So that was very interesting.
00:05:35.180 Hey, I also got to visit the NASA offices.
00:05:37.720 The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has an office in Washington.
00:05:42.140 Of course, Cape Canaveral and Houston are their main operational centers,
00:05:48.040 but they do have a presence in Washington, D.C. as well.
00:05:50.640 So we got to meet with some of the directors there and see what their plans are.
00:05:56.260 Hey, good news for those who think that space travel is important.
00:06:01.080 President Trump has signed off on continual funding for the mission to Mars,
00:06:05.440 the manned mission to Mars.
00:06:06.360 So that's very exciting and could be a reality.
00:06:09.940 Certainly, I'm hopeful within my lifetime, and if you're a younger listener,
00:06:14.320 definitely within your lifetime, and that's very exciting.
00:06:17.180 And there will be all sorts of breakthroughs, technological breakthroughs,
00:06:21.380 that will occur because we will, as a civilization, be pursuing this mission to Mars.
00:06:28.160 So that was kind of cool.
00:06:29.360 I got to see their operations center there where they had a live feed from the International Space Station
00:06:35.400 as well as some of their other sites as well, and that was very cool to see too.
00:06:40.380 And I got to do it on May the 4th, which was Star Wars Day.
00:06:43.140 You know, May the 4th be with you, and so on.
00:06:45.640 So that was kind of fun to do that, to do real space stuff on International Star Wars Day.
00:06:51.920 A great trip.
00:06:53.060 I want to thank the committee for having me as part of that.
00:06:56.880 And, of course, there will be some follow-up that will occur as well as we continue our discussions at committee.
00:07:03.580 For instance, the National Security Committee is reviewing Bill C-23 right now,
00:07:11.300 which is the pre-clearance bill that will expand pre-clearance to the United States to make it easier for travelers to get their pre-clearance
00:07:20.020 and to land at domestic airports in the United States and vice versa, of course.
00:07:24.800 So we will continue to hear witnesses on that particular topic,
00:07:29.080 but certainly having those discussions in Washington, D.C. was very, very helpful to all of the committee members who attended.
00:07:36.640 So that's my report from Washington, D.C.
00:07:39.320 I hope that was useful to you as it was for me.
00:08:09.320 Thank you.