00:00:54.860you're always a good discussion, always a great guest. I appreciate it. It's always a pleasure
00:00:58.460to be here. All right. This thing is raging on, causing a number of disruptions, right?
00:01:03.980Oil prices are going up. It's going down. Nobody knows what's going on. There's just mass confusion.
00:01:11.420But the problem is here in Canada, that confusion level remains. I think Canada's position has been
00:01:17.180one thing, then it changes. And I don't think even our allies know where we stand. Yeah,
00:01:22.060It's troublesome. Like in a difficult situation, one of the things that you really need is you need certainty and certainty from your leaders.
00:01:28.720And of course, we had Mark Carney come out initially saying that he was going to support the strikes on Iran.
00:01:33.860And then he came out and said, no, it's a breach of international order, international law.
00:01:39.480And then he came out again on the other side and said, yeah, well, maybe we'll put troops into Iran.
00:01:45.900And this lack of certainty is not good. Like you said, it's not good for the Canadian population.
00:01:50.400it's not good for the Iranian population, and it's not good for our allies.
00:01:54.000Especially when he did allude to the fact that maybe troops might or some equipment
00:02:01.040might be included in this. It did leave that uncertainty with Canadians.
00:02:06.240Yeah, and I believe the word he used was support. And what does support mean?
00:02:10.560Exactly. People just went nuts on that.
00:02:12.560It could mean anything, right? Like it could mean from providing support here in Canada
00:02:17.440for the U.S. Army. It could mean troops on the ground in Iran. We just don't know. And quite
00:02:22.660frankly, the lack of clarity on this is not surprising. The prime minister has flip-flopped
00:02:28.520on a number of issues. As you know, I'm the shadow minister for interprovincial trade.
00:02:32.840He told us that all the interprovincial trade barriers would be gone by July 1st.
00:02:37.100Here we are nearly a year later. They're still in place. He said he was going to be strong,
00:02:43.160elbows up with the President and he quickly put his elbows down. Now his elbows, I guess, are half
00:02:48.940cocked. We don't know whether they're going up or down. We need certainty in uncertain times from
00:02:53.340our leadership and we're just not getting it from our economy. All right, let's keep cut one. We
00:02:57.180have our leader, Pierre Polyev, kind of outlining what we just talked about, but actually going a
00:03:02.160step further that will lead into our next conversation. Play cut one. The Prime Minister
00:03:07.640has taken four different positions on the war in the Middle East in four days. He was for the
00:03:15.060attack. Then he said he regretted his support for the attack. Then he said his support for the attack
00:03:21.240was illegal. Then he said he was open to contributing Canadian troops to the war.
00:03:27.480And then he said his party has said one thing to one group and another thing to other groups.
00:03:34.540All they are doing is trying to pander in all directions while dividing our country and confusing our allies.
00:07:22.660The vast, vast majority of people who come to our shores are looking for everything that
00:07:27.260Canadians have, which is the ability to provide for their family, to live on safe streets,
00:07:32.420everything that we want for our families, they want.
00:07:35.200And it's our obligation as Canadians to open them with welcome arms.
00:07:38.940But there are some people here to do us harm.
00:07:41.620And we need to make sure that we have all the vetting in place in order to separate those individuals that want to commit acts of terror, that want to commit crime on our streets.
00:07:50.640And over the last 10 years, we've seen that our immigration system has been increasingly weakened.
00:07:55.580The ability to filter out some of these difficult and troublesome people has really declined.
00:08:00.840And now, according to media reports, we have 700 perhaps IRGC agents in there.
00:08:06.580And we are not talking about those folks who are conscripted or maybe forced into the IRGC.
00:08:11.620We are talking about those who are in leadership positions, making decisions to kill Israelis,
00:08:18.320to kill people in the Gulf States, and to hurt and harm Canadians.
00:08:22.560Yeah, actually, I'm glad you pointed that out, because that, and maybe we can put up the graphic too.
00:08:28.860These are the people, kind of the elite, the kind of, the one ideologically aligned with the Supreme Leader.
00:08:37.920These are decision makers who are part and parcel of the awful decisions.
00:08:42.480The decisions like the subjugation of women, the horrible, horrific events on October 7th that literally saw Israeli babies being put into ovens.
00:08:53.460These folks need to be deported from our country.
00:08:56.800Not in a week, not in two weeks, like now.
00:09:00.580And this government's inability to do this, ineptness or worse unwillingness to do this, is deeply troubling to us.
00:09:45.120This could result in terrible things happening to our country.
00:09:48.540It could happen to Iranian freedom fighters.
00:09:51.960It could happen to Iranian despair, or any Canadian could be caught up in the actions of these Iranian agents.
00:09:58.260And we've even had Ontario Premier Doug Ford talk about the sleeper cells that are active.
00:10:03.040He was talking about Ontario, but across the country as well.
00:10:06.920that could be awakened at any time. And if the government isn't keeping track of them,
00:10:11.400or at least know where they are to get them out, that's extremely problematic.
00:10:16.760It's a well-known fact, of course, Jamie, that Iran is the number one state sponsor of terror.
00:10:22.280They have put their sleeper cells all over the country, all over the world,
00:10:28.680and we need to be vigilant about this, and we need to take this extremely seriously.
00:10:32.280And like I said, the government needs to be transparent.
00:10:34.920So these are a few of our points that we're trying to get the government to align with us on, right?
00:10:40.700We want to deport the Iranian officials that are connected with the regime.
00:10:46.040We want to crack down on the terror financing, coordinate our sanctions effort to ensure that the punishments being done kind of on a national level with sanctions that can hurt Iran's ability to raise funds or otherwise are addressed.
00:11:00.200We want to ensure that Canada's threat level is appropriate to what we're dealing with, what our intelligence services are getting on the ground, relaying up through their channels, closing those national security gaps.
00:11:13.400We want a foreign influence registry, which we've been calling for for years now.
00:11:18.280Yeah, that's what I wanted to point out there, Jamie.
00:11:20.340I mean, so on a number of these issues, like the conflict obviously is a new development,
00:11:25.700but we have been calling for greater safety for Canadian citizens for multiple years.
00:11:31.100We pushed and pushed and pushed to have the IRGC labeled a terror organization.
00:11:36.360After years and years, the government finally conceded and they allowed them to be appointed that,
00:11:45.240We also, though, have been calling for, as you said, the establishment of a foreign registry agency.
00:11:50.340In fact, the parliament agreed. The government agreed. Is it here yet? No.
00:11:55.140Would it be extremely helpful in a time of conflict like this to know where foreign agents are located?
00:12:00.600Absolutely. This government's inaptitude is very troubling.
00:12:05.140And we pray every day it does not have severe consequences, but they've certainly left the door open to that.
00:12:11.180And we've been dealing over the last few years with allegations and proof, in some cases, that there has been interference, whether within our institutions, our public institutions, within our national elections, from governments like China, governments from India, and otherwise, and this government, as you said, they just don't seem that interested.
00:12:36.360And in some cases, I think people were musing, well, because it benefited them in some way to get a few more seats out of it.
00:12:45.900It's benefiting them or allegedly benefiting them.
00:12:48.720And so they don't feel a real need to speed up any investigation or removal or actually dealing with the problem in general.
00:12:55.200Sometimes in life, there are externalities that we can't contemplate and we can't control.
00:13:00.660But oftentimes, in fact, most times when a country gets themselves in trouble or even an individual, it's because they didn't control the controllables.
00:13:07.880There are relatively easy, not necessarily, I should say relatively simple, not necessarily easy fixes, but simple fixes like making sure that our immigration system is properly vetting individuals, like in-person interviews, making sure that we're aware of the people who are in our country.
00:13:24.400by having important institutions like foreign registry, like foreign agent registries.
00:13:30.320But if we do not have those in place, we open the door to what we pray doesn't happen every day,
00:13:39.280All right. I want to switch gears a little here because you're talking about interprovincial trade.
00:13:43.620I know it's a topic way off our original conversation,
00:13:47.860But our colleague, Dan Albus, introduced his private member's bill to allow Canada Post to ship beer, wine, and spirits across provincial borders.
00:13:58.420Something the federal government says they were going to work on.
00:14:00.660Remember during that election campaign when the, well, I guess he was the prime minister at the time.
00:14:06.420Mark Carney promised that he was going to get rid of these barriers to allow the Canadian economy to expand and take advantage of the vastness in our great nation.
00:14:14.400But, you know, that hasn't happened yet.
00:14:16.220We still have barriers, so this would allow some movement of goods within provincial borders that otherwise can't do it at the moment.
00:14:23.440Yeah, this is one of many broken promises from the Prime Minister.
00:14:27.460The Prime Minister promised by July 1st all interprovincial trade barriers.
00:14:31.220We would have free trade across the country.
00:14:35.240Whether you're a nurse trying to move from practicing from one province to another, a doctor or a tradesperson, those are still in place.
00:14:44.020There are a number of different types of items that you can't move across.
00:14:48.020There are different construction rules.
00:14:49.760So, for example, this is one of my favorites, Jamie.
00:14:51.960If you want to have a port-a-potty in Manitoba on a construction site, it has to be a different type of port-a-potty than the one in Ontario.
00:15:02.120It's like death by a thousand cuts to our economy.
00:15:04.640And in a time when our ability to trade with the United States has been, there's been barriers put in the way, obviously, by the administration in the States, we need to make sure we're doing everything we can to trade with each other and that we are our own best customers.
00:15:21.320And these self-inflicted wounds, whether it be the inter-provincial trade barriers or the continual over-regulation of our resource sector, continue to hurt our economy in a time when we can least afford it.
00:15:32.620Yeah, the first thing we should be doing is looking internally, right?
00:15:35.940With all the factors going at play within the United States or across the world as well.
00:15:41.360What can we do to strengthen our economy?
00:15:43.720What can we do to strengthen our country, provide jobs, opportunity, and wealth?
00:15:47.940Let's get rid of those provincial barriers, free up the ability to businesses to do trade across the provincial borders.
00:15:54.440Because you can't have, it's very difficult to have a nation going through these challenges when businesses find it easier to do business and transactions with another country than it is another province.
00:16:09.200Yeah, as Abraham Lincoln said many years ago, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
00:16:16.100We have to work together to make sure we grow our own economy.
00:16:19.760As Pierre Polyev has said, we need to put ourselves in a place of maximum leverage,
00:16:24.380whether we're negotiating with the United States or with Europe or any country around the world.
00:16:28.520We're in the best position to have a prosperous, successful economy
00:16:33.380and to get the best possible deal for Canadians when we're at the trade table,
00:16:37.280when we've got our own economy working at maximum capacity,
00:16:42.000when we've got our resources getting pumped out the ground,
00:16:44.360when we have professionals who can go across borders,
00:16:46.680When we have products that can be purchased from coast to coast without restriction, the stronger we can make our economy is the stronger position we can have when we sit down in the international trade and to negotiate deals so that we can make sure that our businesses are able to deliver their goods from Germany to China to everywhere else in the world.
00:17:06.860I know you hate to hear this, but we are pretty much out of time.
00:17:09.860But the guests always get the last word, as you well know, to the floor is yours.
00:17:13.740Yeah, so first of all, it has to go, it has to be said, it has to be acknowledged, the tremendous loss of life that is occurring in the Middle East right now.
00:17:25.760And for everyone we lose, and the Iranian culture is one of the oldest in world history, such an amazing, amazing people.
00:17:36.300And while we were joyful at the prospect of a free Iran, Iran where women have the right to drive a car, where women have the right to pursue their educational dreams, where women have the right to have leadership roles, we're, of course, very aware of the losses that are occurring in Iran and Israel and throughout the Middle East.
00:17:59.660And so we hope for a quick ending of this conflict and for a free and democratic Iran.
00:18:04.940All right. Couldn't send it better myself. Philip Lawrence, the Member of Parliament for Northumberland Clark, thank you for your time. Thank you for yours. As always, don't forget to like, comment, subscribe and share this program. Tell your friends too. It can be found on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play and Spotify. New content for you every single Tuesday, 1.30pm Eastern Time. Until next week, remember, low taxes, less governments, more freedom. That's the blueprint.