The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - March 17, 2026


We stand with the people of Iran.

Hosted by
Jamie Schmal
Mentioned
Jamie Schmael Ayatollah Khomeini Philip Lawrence Pierre Poilievre Mark Carney Michelle Rempel-Garner Abraham Lincoln Doug Ford Dan Albus Clark
Canada must defend its economic sovereignty. Reaching millions with a vision for Canada.

Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

169.43

Word count

3,233

Sentence count

205

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

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

On today's show, the conflict in Iran rages on, and Canada's position is quite unclear. To talk about this and so much more, we bring on Philip Lawrence, the Member of Parliament for Northumberland Clark, and the person we went to immediately to discuss this issue.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm
00:00:13.500 your host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton Quartha Lakes with new content
00:00:17.140 for you every single Tuesday, 1.30pm Eastern Time. Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe
00:00:21.860 and share this program. Tell your friends too. They can download it on platforms like
00:00:25.860 CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify, you name it, it is out there.
00:00:29.500 On today's show, the conflict in Iran rages on, and Canada's position, quite unclear.
00:00:36.080 To talk about this and so much more, we bring on Philip Lawrence, the Member of Parliament for Northumberland Clark,
00:00:42.100 and the person we went to immediately to talk about this issue.
00:00:46.360 Thank you very much, and it's always a pleasure to be here.
00:00:48.860 Very serious topic today, and I think we'll be able to have a great discussion.
00:00:53.020 I think so too, that's why we brought you on.
00:00:54.560 Thank you.
00:00:54.860 you're always a good discussion, always a great guest. I appreciate it. It's always a pleasure
00:00:58.460 to be here. All right. This thing is raging on, causing a number of disruptions, right?
00:01:03.980 Oil prices are going up. It's going down. Nobody knows what's going on. There's just mass confusion.
00:01:11.420 But the problem is here in Canada, that confusion level remains. I think Canada's position has been
00:01:17.180 one thing, then it changes. And I don't think even our allies know where we stand. Yeah,
00:01:22.060 It's troublesome. Like in a difficult situation, one of the things that you really need is you need certainty and certainty from your leaders.
00:01:28.720 And of course, we had Mark Carney come out initially saying that he was going to support the strikes on Iran.
00:01:33.860 And then he came out and said, no, it's a breach of international order, international law.
00:01:39.480 And then he came out again on the other side and said, yeah, well, maybe we'll put troops into Iran.
00:01:45.900 And this lack of certainty is not good. Like you said, it's not good for the Canadian population.
00:01:50.400 it's not good for the Iranian population, and it's not good for our allies.
00:01:54.000 Especially when he did allude to the fact that maybe troops might or some equipment
00:02:01.040 might be included in this. It did leave that uncertainty with Canadians.
00:02:06.240 Yeah, and I believe the word he used was support. And what does support mean?
00:02:10.560 Exactly. People just went nuts on that.
00:02:12.560 It could mean anything, right? Like it could mean from providing support here in Canada
00:02:17.440 for the U.S. Army. It could mean troops on the ground in Iran. We just don't know. And quite
00:02:22.660 frankly, the lack of clarity on this is not surprising. The prime minister has flip-flopped
00:02:28.520 on a number of issues. As you know, I'm the shadow minister for interprovincial trade.
00:02:32.840 He told us that all the interprovincial trade barriers would be gone by July 1st.
00:02:37.100 Here we are nearly a year later. They're still in place. He said he was going to be strong,
00:02:43.160 elbows up with the President and he quickly put his elbows down. Now his elbows, I guess, are half
00:02:48.940 cocked. We don't know whether they're going up or down. We need certainty in uncertain times from
00:02:53.340 our leadership and we're just not getting it from our economy. All right, let's keep cut one. We
00:02:57.180 have our leader, Pierre Polyev, kind of outlining what we just talked about, but actually going a
00:03:02.160 step further that will lead into our next conversation. Play cut one. The Prime Minister
00:03:07.640 has taken four different positions on the war in the Middle East in four days. He was for the
00:03:15.060 attack. Then he said he regretted his support for the attack. Then he said his support for the attack
00:03:21.240 was illegal. Then he said he was open to contributing Canadian troops to the war.
00:03:27.480 And then he said his party has said one thing to one group and another thing to other groups.
00:03:34.540 All they are doing is trying to pander in all directions while dividing our country and confusing our allies.
00:03:41.540 We as conservatives have been clear.
00:03:44.660 We support the removal of the theocratic terrorist regime in Iran, which has killed Canadian citizens,
00:03:50.720 including shooting down a civilian aircraft that contained well over 100 Canadians
00:03:55.960 and terrorized Persian and Jewish communities in our country.
00:04:00.280 Now we have an issue here domestically. We had, not too long ago, I guess last week,
00:04:07.780 a shooting at the U.S. Embassy, or the Consulate, sorry, the Consulate in Toronto. We have had
00:04:14.200 businesses shot up of, you know, people supporting what is going on in Iran, kind of the removal of
00:04:24.220 the Ayatollah and the leadership, the Supreme Leader, and it's getting a little troubling
00:04:30.120 here at home to know that there is a level of violence that's potentially simmering under
00:04:35.680 the surface here.
00:04:36.860 Yeah, I mean, of course, throughout Canada's history, there have been conflicts being around
00:04:41.360 the world, though one thing that's very different, and just since the Liberals took power back
00:04:47.320 in 2015, is those conflicts are increasingly eroding into our shores, and we're having
00:04:53.880 those, we're having acts of violence like we've never seen in Canada. We've seen attacks on
00:04:58.980 synagogues, on those who are pro-freedom in Iran. It's really quite troubling. We need to crack 0.99
00:05:05.940 down on that, and I'm sure we'll talk about this later, but this government's been woefully inept
00:05:11.960 at making sure that we're protected from Iranian agents that might exist here in Canada.
00:05:17.700 Absolutely, and not to mention, it goes along with the soft-on-crime approach this government
00:05:21.500 has been taking for the past 10 years.
00:05:23.900 Let's clear up cut two here as our deputy leader
00:05:25.980 talking about what we were just mentioning.
00:05:28.600 Play cut two.
00:05:29.540 We now know from the Iranian community
00:05:33.560 right across the country, from many others,
00:05:37.520 that there are hundreds of IRGC agents
00:05:41.940 presently on Canadian soil using Canada as a safe haven
00:05:45.920 to organize and to fundraise
00:05:48.280 and to terrorize diaspora communities right here at home.
00:05:52.660 Pretty scary stuff.
00:05:53.940 Yeah, I mean, it's terrifying because, of course, if you're in Iran, 1.00
00:05:58.320 you're trying to overthrow what's left of Ayatollah Khomeini's regime
00:06:04.400 and the Supreme Leader, the recent one, I believe he was wounded as well.
00:06:07.520 But it's terrifying because you've got the IRGC right there.
00:06:12.800 But perhaps more remarkable is the fact that if you are a dissident here
00:06:17.100 trying to organize people in Canada and back in Iran to overthrow this government.
00:06:22.080 There are agents right here in Iran that are imposing threats and terror.
00:06:26.260 And it's been absolutely bizarre.
00:06:27.880 I don't know a better word for it than the Liberal Minister won't tell us if they know or how many.
00:06:34.580 They've said that media reports, which put it over 700, aren't true, but they don't fill in the vacuum.
00:06:40.200 They don't tell us whether it's 1,000, 200, 500.
00:06:43.520 They've told us that they've had one person deported.
00:06:47.100 one Iranian agent. That's one. There could be, according to media reports, as many as 700.
00:06:53.340 They have to give us clarity, as I've said from the very beginning. In uncertain times,
00:06:57.480 it's incumbent on our leadership to have certainty and to have transparency. And in this government,
00:07:02.040 we have neither. And that's why a proper immigration system is so important. So you
00:07:05.780 have those measures in place. You have the background checks in place. And that's why
00:07:09.860 we're pushing for a coherent immigration policy from this government that we've talked about for
00:07:16.000 a long time on how the Liberals have broken our immigration system.
00:07:21.440 Yeah, and let's be clear.
00:07:22.660 The vast, vast majority of people who come to our shores are looking for everything that 0.99
00:07:27.260 Canadians have, which is the ability to provide for their family, to live on safe streets,
00:07:32.420 everything that we want for our families, they want.
00:07:35.200 And it's our obligation as Canadians to open them with welcome arms.
00:07:38.940 But there are some people here to do us harm.
00:07:41.620 And 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.
00:07:50.640 And over the last 10 years, we've seen that our immigration system has been increasingly weakened.
00:07:55.580 The ability to filter out some of these difficult and troublesome people has really declined.
00:08:00.840 And now, according to media reports, we have 700 perhaps IRGC agents in there.
00:08:06.580 And we are not talking about those folks who are conscripted or maybe forced into the IRGC.
00:08:11.620 We are talking about those who are in leadership positions, making decisions to kill Israelis, 0.98
00:08:18.320 to kill people in the Gulf States, and to hurt and harm Canadians. 0.67
00:08:22.560 Yeah, actually, I'm glad you pointed that out, because that, and maybe we can put up the graphic too. 0.96
00:08:28.860 These are the people, kind of the elite, the kind of, the one ideologically aligned with the Supreme Leader.
00:08:37.920 These are decision makers who are part and parcel of the awful decisions.
00:08:42.480 The decisions like the subjugation of women, the horrible, horrific events on October 7th that literally saw Israeli babies being put into ovens.
00:08:53.460 These folks need to be deported from our country. 0.98
00:08:56.800 Not in a week, not in two weeks, like now.
00:09:00.580 And this government's inability to do this, ineptness or worse unwillingness to do this, is deeply troubling to us.
00:09:07.560 and I'm sure most Canadians.
00:09:09.160 And the fact that they keep rambling on the number keeps changing.
00:09:12.840 How do you not know or at least have a better idea of what we're dealing with?
00:09:17.100 Yeah, Michelle Rumpelgardner has been absolutely fabulous on this file. 0.81
00:09:20.340 And the Minister of Immigration, though, and the Minister of Public Safety
00:09:23.360 have failed to provide even, she'll ask very simple questions in question period,
00:09:28.620 and they will not answer these questions like,
00:09:31.400 how many Iranian agents are there in Canada?
00:09:33.500 How many are currently under investigation?
00:09:35.760 How many have been deported?
00:09:36.920 Well, they're clear on that, I have to say.
00:09:38.860 They said one.
00:09:40.100 Yeah, one.
00:09:40.800 One.
00:09:41.140 One.
00:09:41.440 That's out of 700.
00:09:43.360 These are very real issues.
00:09:45.120 This could result in terrible things happening to our country.
00:09:48.540 It could happen to Iranian freedom fighters.
00:09:51.960 It could happen to Iranian despair, or any Canadian could be caught up in the actions of these Iranian agents.
00:09:58.260 And we've even had Ontario Premier Doug Ford talk about the sleeper cells that are active.
00:10:03.040 He was talking about Ontario, but across the country as well.
00:10:06.920 that could be awakened at any time. And if the government isn't keeping track of them,
00:10:11.400 or at least know where they are to get them out, that's extremely problematic.
00:10:16.760 It's a well-known fact, of course, Jamie, that Iran is the number one state sponsor of terror. 0.96
00:10:22.280 They have put their sleeper cells all over the country, all over the world, 0.64
00:10:28.680 and we need to be vigilant about this, and we need to take this extremely seriously.
00:10:32.280 And like I said, the government needs to be transparent.
00:10:34.920 So these are a few of our points that we're trying to get the government to align with us on, right?
00:10:40.700 We want to deport the Iranian officials that are connected with the regime. 1.00
00:10:46.040 We 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.
00:11:00.200 We 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.
00:11:13.400 We want a foreign influence registry, which we've been calling for for years now.
00:11:18.280 Yeah, that's what I wanted to point out there, Jamie.
00:11:20.340 I mean, so on a number of these issues, like the conflict obviously is a new development,
00:11:25.700 but we have been calling for greater safety for Canadian citizens for multiple years.
00:11:31.100 We pushed and pushed and pushed to have the IRGC labeled a terror organization.
00:11:36.360 After years and years, the government finally conceded and they allowed them to be appointed that,
00:11:42.060 and I would use that language.
00:11:43.280 We pushed and got that there.
00:11:45.240 We also, though, have been calling for, as you said, the establishment of a foreign registry agency.
00:11:50.340 In fact, the parliament agreed. The government agreed. Is it here yet? No.
00:11:55.140 Would it be extremely helpful in a time of conflict like this to know where foreign agents are located?
00:12:00.600 Absolutely. This government's inaptitude is very troubling.
00:12:05.140 And we pray every day it does not have severe consequences, but they've certainly left the door open to that.
00:12:11.180 And 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.
00:12:36.360 And 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.
00:12:43.840 And this is the problem, right?
00:12:45.900 It's benefiting them or allegedly benefiting them.
00:12:48.720 And so they don't feel a real need to speed up any investigation or removal or actually dealing with the problem in general.
00:12:55.200 Sometimes in life, there are externalities that we can't contemplate and we can't control.
00:13:00.660 But 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.
00:13:07.880 There 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.
00:13:24.400 by having important institutions like foreign registry, like foreign agent registries.
00:13:30.320 But if we do not have those in place, we open the door to what we pray doesn't happen every day,
00:13:37.400 which is severe consequences.
00:13:39.280 All right. I want to switch gears a little here because you're talking about interprovincial trade.
00:13:43.620 I know it's a topic way off our original conversation,
00:13:47.860 But our colleague, Dan Albus, introduced his private member's bill to allow Canada Post to ship beer, wine, and spirits across provincial borders.
00:13:58.420 Something the federal government says they were going to work on.
00:14:00.660 Remember during that election campaign when the, well, I guess he was the prime minister at the time.
00:14:06.420 Mark 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.
00:14:14.400 But, you know, that hasn't happened yet.
00:14:16.220 We still have barriers, so this would allow some movement of goods within provincial borders that otherwise can't do it at the moment.
00:14:23.440 Yeah, this is one of many broken promises from the Prime Minister.
00:14:27.460 The Prime Minister promised by July 1st all interprovincial trade barriers.
00:14:31.220 We would have free trade across the country.
00:14:33.460 We are far from that.
00:14:35.240 Whether you're a nurse trying to move from practicing from one province to another, a doctor or a tradesperson, those are still in place.
00:14:44.020 There are a number of different types of items that you can't move across.
00:14:48.020 There are different construction rules.
00:14:49.760 So, for example, this is one of my favorites, Jamie.
00:14:51.960 If 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.
00:15:02.120 It's like death by a thousand cuts to our economy.
00:15:04.640 And 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.
00:15:21.320 And 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.
00:15:32.620 Yeah, the first thing we should be doing is looking internally, right?
00:15:35.940 With all the factors going at play within the United States or across the world as well.
00:15:41.360 What can we do to strengthen our economy?
00:15:43.720 What can we do to strengthen our country, provide jobs, opportunity, and wealth?
00:15:47.940 Let's get rid of those provincial barriers, free up the ability to businesses to do trade across the provincial borders.
00:15:54.440 Because 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. 0.63
00:16:09.200 Yeah, as Abraham Lincoln said many years ago, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
00:16:14.020 And we struggle with that.
00:16:16.100 We have to work together to make sure we grow our own economy.
00:16:19.760 As Pierre Polyev has said, we need to put ourselves in a place of maximum leverage,
00:16:24.380 whether we're negotiating with the United States or with Europe or any country around the world.
00:16:28.520 We're in the best position to have a prosperous, successful economy
00:16:33.380 and to get the best possible deal for Canadians when we're at the trade table,
00:16:37.280 when we've got our own economy working at maximum capacity,
00:16:42.000 when we've got our resources getting pumped out the ground,
00:16:44.360 when we have professionals who can go across borders,
00:16:46.680 When 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.
00:17:06.860 I know you hate to hear this, but we are pretty much out of time.
00:17:09.860 But the guests always get the last word, as you well know, to the floor is yours.
00:17:13.740 Yeah, 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.
00:17:25.760 And for everyone we lose, and the Iranian culture is one of the oldest in world history, such an amazing, amazing people.
00:17:36.300 And 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.
00:17:59.660 And so we hope for a quick ending of this conflict and for a free and democratic Iran.
00:18:04.940 All 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.
00:18:34.940 Transcription by CastingWords