Donald Trump's proposed tariffs on Canada haven't even got into effect and it s already plunged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau s government into turmoil. Today, Candice is joined by Clyde Nichols, a political commentator and content creator who posts daily videos on news and politics about Canada.
00:07:06.380So Clyde, I want to hear your thoughts on this.
00:07:14.540Look, I don't think that Trump has been very clear, as you can see from that intro,
00:07:17.540of all the different things back and forth, his demands, what the issue is.
00:07:22.380We don't even really know if the issue is fentanyl and the border, which is what he originally said,
00:07:26.480or if it's something more like Trump wanting to fund the U.S. government with tariffs rather than income taxes and whether it's just like a general trade strategy.
00:07:37.040But I want to get your opinion on Trudeau and how you think he's been handling all of this and whether you think that anything that he said yesterday was something that would benefit Canadians.
00:07:48.100Well, I think he's been handling it terribly, obviously, and that's the case.
00:08:34.980It's because of what we've been allowing in our country and allowing to flow across the border.
00:08:41.180Now, the second set of tariffs, they'll be coming in on April 2nd, and those are reciprocal tariffs.
00:08:47.620We hear a lot about reciprocal tariffs, but this is what this is going to be about.
00:08:52.300Canada has had a tremendous amount of trade restrictions, trade barriers for a very long time, and I think Donald Trump is really just addressing this.
00:09:02.240I think that a lot of Canadians are sort of, like, clutching their pearls and jumping to this Canadian nationalism movement that we have to, like, fight fire with fire.
00:09:11.560And I don't see a lot of internal, like, retrospective look at our own policies.
00:09:16.720In fact, what we do see is kind of, like, gaslighting, saying that Canada doesn't have tariffs or that we don't ban American businesses, which is just obviously not true.
00:09:26.740Canada's economy is incredibly protectionist.
00:09:29.920We have so many limitations on what you can, like, what kind of American businesses can open here, the competition.
00:09:39.480We'll get to that a bit later in the show.
00:09:41.800That specific point, though, about how Canadians shouldn't go down and visit the States, I think you're right that a lot of Canadians can't afford those kind of things.
00:09:49.580But it's also true that a lot of Canadians spend a lot of their time in the U.S.
00:09:54.800Like, there's a whole category of Canadians called snowbirds that basically live in southern American states for the winter months.
00:10:02.520And in many ways, it's cheaper for them, right?
00:10:04.700If you go down to parts of Florida, you know, it's much, the cost of living is so much lower down there.
00:10:10.020Same with places like Arizona or New Mexico, you know, depending on where in Canada you live.
00:10:15.400I know so many people whose parents, like, basically live in the U.S. for half the year, and then they come back, you know, in order to collect their benefits or whatever.
00:10:23.900So we had Florida Governor Ron DeSantis saying this.
00:10:28.000Here's a clip of him yesterday saying that 3.3 million people from Canada come to Florida every year.
00:10:57.760That was unnecessary there, Governor DeSantis.
00:11:01.040But aside from the hockey comment, I mean, he's right.
00:11:03.220Like, Canadians aren't going to just all of a sudden stop going to the states.
00:11:06.700I think that there is a contingent of people who are, you know, putting on their Canadian nationalism hat right now and saying, like, let's fight fire with fire and kind of leaning into this.
00:11:14.620It's a good political message, particularly for the Liberal Party.
00:11:16.880But I just can't imagine Canadians, A, keeping up a boycott.
00:11:20.860Like, how can you boycott, you know, so much of our goods come from the United States.
00:11:25.880Like, unless we're going to start closing down, like, Walmart and McDonald's and all these major American brands in our country, I don't see that really having any impact.
00:11:32.880I don't think that Canadians are going to stop traveling to the United States.
00:11:36.420Well, I think there's a bit of, like, a nationalistic fervor that's people are wrapping themselves in the flag.
00:11:41.820But it's very reminiscent of, like, early 2020 COVID era, you know, let's rally together two weeks to flatten the tariffs.
00:11:52.280It really is sad to see our fellow Canadians going down this exact same path.
00:11:59.100Now, on this whole tariff, you know, the reciprocal tariffs coming from the Canadian side, this is only going to hurt Canadians at the end of the day.
00:12:09.940It's only going to hurt Canadians, and it's only going to hurt trade or relations within Canada.
00:12:16.420As we see right now, there's moves from people in Alberta to distance themselves from Ottawa.
00:12:22.400And what is that going to end up looking like?
00:12:25.200Well, only the future can tell, because I don't see any politicians at the same time talking about, you know, hard times for Canadians, easing up on the restrictions that they have.
00:12:36.080Like, for example, the transfer payments that Alberta has to make to the other provinces.
00:12:43.560Well, everything is on the table, and no cost is too high to go against the United States.
00:12:50.420It's the political class is really not considering any of these things, including the dairy cartel.
00:12:56.540Well, it's so interesting because Canada is already facing a cost of living crisis.
00:13:00.500When you look at the polls and you ask Canadians, what is the top issue facing you and your family?
00:13:05.540What is the main thing that's going to motivate you to vote in the next election?
00:13:08.120It's the cost of living and how incredibly unaffordable everything from housing to food to gasoline is.
00:13:13.600I mean, even just the idea of food security, like having access to fresh fruit and vegetables in your grocery store, that was already a concern for Canadians.
00:13:23.360And then on top of that, now you're telling us that for everything that's been imported from the United States, we have to pay an additional 25 percent tax on it in hopes that maybe it'll change Trump's mind.
00:13:34.660Like, I think it's such a bad sell to Canadians, and the fact that every single political party has the same view on this and has the same opinion, it's frustrating.
00:13:43.780So I want to move over to Pierre Polyev and the Conservatives and his response, because even though fundamentally I don't agree that Canada should be retaliating with these tariffs,
00:13:55.520I think that a better path would be let's just like try to negotiate a deal with Trump, however that may look.
00:14:00.420Regardless, I disagree with the idea of the tariffs, but I felt like Pierre Polyev's message yesterday was really strong.
00:14:08.780I felt like this was the best Polyev that we've seen on this topic.
00:14:12.180So I'm going to play a few clips for you here.
00:14:14.500So this was Polyev announcing what happened and talking about how the Americans have stabbed their best friends in the back.
00:16:20.880And we have to say, listen, we're going to have to capitulate to some of these demands.
00:16:24.980And I don't think that they're being realistic about the actual crackdown on the fentanyl crisis.
00:16:31.300When we see super labs getting taken down by the RCMP and only the janitor is being apprehended in those cases, the case that happened in British Columbia just recently, only one man was apprehended, arrested, and is being charged.
00:16:47.920An Indian guy, when they say it's Mexican cartels that were operating it, it doesn't lend to a good sense of Canada is cracking down on these things.
00:16:58.260It lends to more of the corruption that we've seen throughout the past 10 years or even longer in Canada.
00:17:05.260And I think this is part of what Donald Trump wants to crack down on.
00:17:09.360And again, I'm going to go back to the, you know, stick to my guns here.
00:17:14.240The first round of tariffs, the blanket 25% tariffs on Canada are punitive.
00:17:19.880And it's been very clear that this is about the border.
00:17:23.300It's about terrorists in Canada because of our lax immigration being able to enter the United States.
00:17:28.980The second round of tariffs that hasn't even come into play, that would be trade war territory.
00:17:33.920We haven't even entered that market yet.
00:17:36.620Well, I want to jump to U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and his response.
00:17:41.720So in an interview on Fox News Business, Lutnick said that Canada and Mexico were on the phone all day yesterday with the Trump administration and that there may be a deal yet to come.
00:17:52.880So, you know, this might not be here to stay.
00:18:32.620I want to stick with Lutnick because he also criticized Justin Trudeau, saying that hopefully Canadians will select a new leader and adding that the Canadians like to cheat.
00:19:10.380So it's really interesting because there's these two dynamics, right?
00:19:14.840It's like, yes, there's the fentanyl and drug issue and the border issue.
00:19:18.720That's something that Trudeau has been weak on from the very beginning of his administration.
00:19:22.480And that is the area, it seems, that Lutnick is saying that they're on the phones and they might be able to reach a deal on those.
00:19:27.820And then to your point that you made about the second round of tariffs coming in April, that will be more to do with like evening the playing field and noting that Canadians cheat.
00:19:36.400This is something that we don't really like to admit to ourselves that Canadians cheat.
00:19:39.820But I mean, the whole concept of reciprocity in international trade is that you have equal access to one another's markets.
00:19:46.640And it's just not the case that the Americans have equal access to the Canadian market because we have so many different taxes that we put.
00:19:53.260I mean, he mentioned the digital sales tax.
00:19:55.040But then we also have all kinds of subsidies.
00:19:56.720We have all kinds of regulations that prevent foreign entities from operating in federally regulated spaces, be it banking, digital like telecommunication companies, airlines.
00:20:06.860There's no shortage of areas where Canada just doesn't open up its market to the Americans.
00:20:12.660And yet we expect that they should open their market to us and allow us to have access.
00:20:16.800It's like I don't think like I'll just preface this all by saying I don't agree with what Trump is doing.
00:21:15.660They're not working on getting these things done because there's a whole structure of it is really corrupt here in Canada.
00:21:26.540And I think a lot of Canadians don't want to really come to grips with that.
00:21:29.820A lot of the corruption runs very deep and it would be it would expose a lot of them.
00:21:33.720And this is this is why there's so much reluctance on on actually airing this.
00:21:38.780I mean, Sam Cooper has been bringing so much of this stuff to light and it goes to the highest levels of government.
00:21:44.860So, yeah, of course, they're they're reluctant to make any moves on the fentanyl issue.
00:21:49.220But of course, they're going to speak different different language out of both both sides of their mouth, one to one audience and another to another.
00:21:58.120Well, let's move on to Donald Trump's response to all of this, because I mean, in some ways he's pouring gas on the on the fire by just continuing to poke and prod Trudeau.
00:22:09.580And I think every time he does this, it to your point about like the 2020 panic, like it strikes fear in Canadians and they don't like it.
00:22:18.160And it seems like that's helping the liberals in the polls.
00:22:20.480So it's almost like it's a song and dance now.
00:22:22.980But posting on True Social yesterday, President Trump said the following.
00:22:28.000He said, please explain to Governor Trudeau of Canada that when he puts retaliatory tariff on the U.S., a reciprocal tariff will immediately increase by a like amount.
00:22:39.360And then he also wrote that Canada doesn't allow American banks to do business in Canada, but their banks flood the American market.
00:22:49.000Oh, that seems fair to me, doesn't it?
00:22:51.880And so, first of all, just say that when it comes to Canada putting in our own reciprocal tariffs and then Trump saying we're going to come back even harder.
00:23:02.500But then you have Howard Lucknick on the other side saying we're going to strike a deal.
00:23:05.540It's not going to be a pause, but we're going to come to some kind of agreement.
00:23:07.960And you're seeing two different messages.
00:23:09.740So I don't know if they're playing this game intentionally like good cop, bad cop.
00:23:13.120But then Trump makes that point about how Canada doesn't allow American banks to do business.
00:23:18.640And I want to kind of zero in on that a little bit because Elon Musk jumped in on X and wrote, it's a valid point.
00:24:16.200Trump's claim isn't true, but foreign entry into Canadian bank sector is challenging.
00:24:22.120And this is supposedly a fact check on whether or not American banks are allowed to do business.
00:24:27.380This is an example, Clyde, of the CBC gaslighting Canadians, right?
00:24:31.820They say right here that they're fact checking Donald Trump and he is false.
00:24:36.080He is wrong that American banks are allowed to do business in Canada.
00:24:40.500But the problem is when you read the article and it explains the different rules, you can see that it's true, that you don't have commercial banks in Canada.
00:24:51.100Like you can't just walk into a Wells Fargo or a Bank of America branch in Canada.
00:25:04.580You can go and do business at a Canadian bank.
00:25:06.600In Canada, they have two different sort of types of banks, and so they're kind of making an argument that they can do business in Canada if they want to.
00:25:15.080They just have to get a different license, and it would require them to buy a Canadian bank, and that there is this kind of obscure pathway for American banks to do business in Canada.
00:25:22.360They just don't want to, which is just not true.
00:25:24.700It's like we can walk around the country and just see that there aren't American banks here.
00:25:29.200You can walk into a CIBC and an RBC, but you can't walk into one of these American brands.
00:25:34.400To me, it just seems like we're not being honest about the situation.
00:25:38.340We're pretending that things are there that aren't, and this is part of the problem with Canada in general.
00:25:43.780We have a super protectionist country.
00:25:45.900We don't allow a lot of outsiders to come in to do business.
00:25:48.880We have a lot of restrictions, even on Canadian businesses, and then we go and pretend like we're completely innocent, and it's just entirely Donald Trump and Elon Musk being crazy.
00:26:54.260And really, I hate to say this, but when it comes to the Canadian market, we're in such a bad position to be coming at the United States with demands.
00:27:05.080We're in a bad position to do all of this.
00:27:07.280But then when we doubly go to sporting events and we boo the national anthem when a veteran is singing and we do all of these things and we say on social media some pretty nasty things that I wouldn't even repeat on this show, what it does is it's fueling the American side.
00:27:23.920Donald Trump can come to the table and he's saying, I have the popularity right now.
00:27:27.980And with the Canadians and what they're doing, they'll allow me to make these punitive measures now.
00:27:34.060We don't even feel bad about it anymore.
00:27:36.840And that's not a position we want to be in as Canadians.
00:27:39.660And we don't want our politicians coming to the table like this.
00:27:43.300And I think Pierre Polyev, if he switched back to what his original rhetoric was, and perhaps even go down unilaterally, why the liberals can break all the rules and conservatives can't, go down.
00:27:54.460Go talk to Donald Trump and start talking a better game.
00:27:57.980Stop talking from your PR outfit out of Ottawa.
00:28:04.880Go down there, make some moves, and take the risk of upsetting people with Trump derangement syndrome.
00:28:11.360Because I guarantee you, when it comes down to a general election, if you sound like liberal light, you're going to get voted on like liberal light.
00:28:18.980And it's not going to do well in the polls.
00:28:24.680And it turns out that if Canadians want to elect a liberal, they'll just select a liberal.
00:28:28.260They won't elect a conservative talking like a liberal.
00:28:30.840I do worry that Trump derangement syndrome is so widespread in Canada, and particularly for people who watch the CBC or still get their media from the legacy media, that the optics of Polyev going down to try to strike a deal for Canadians would end up costing him a chance at becoming prime minister.
00:29:06.760All of the things that Americans had brewing and they were thinking, but they knew was politically incorrect and couldn't say out loud, he came out and he said it.
00:29:23.600Like, obviously, we have Maxime Bernier saying a bunch of stuff.
00:29:27.840I don't think that that's a viable thing.
00:29:31.540I think a mainstream political candidate needs to start saying the truth.
00:29:35.740Well, I want to touch back on that point that you're making about how Trump has a huge mandate.
00:29:41.060And right now he has the popularity and his agenda is incredibly popular.
00:29:46.080So I watched last night he addressed a joint session of Congress, which is sort of like the State of the Union for the first year in office.
00:29:53.560And hearing him talk about his policy objectives and his early wins, like he's already drastically reduced the number of illegal people walking across the border in the South.
00:30:04.820I think it's down 92 percent in the first month, which is just absolutely incredible.
00:30:09.100It shows you that all it really does take is political will.
00:30:11.560This idea of completely banning men from competing in women's sports and that if a school allows a man to play on a girl's team, they no longer get any federal funding.
00:30:22.320Like really putting putting forth this agenda that that is incredibly popular, that is incredibly needed.
00:30:28.620And frankly, so many of these policies would be happily welcomed in Canada as well.
00:30:34.260I think that even people in like even Americans, Republicans that believe in free trade and they believe in limited restrictions, they're going to give Trump time to see if this works.
00:30:43.300Like they're going to allow him to have a long, long rope when it comes to tariffs, even if they philosophically don't agree with tariffs.
00:30:48.840So they don't know if this is the right direction.
00:30:50.600I mean, the stock market is taking a real hit from these policies.
00:30:54.220But I think that that people are are open to hearing and waiting.
00:30:58.220So I want to play a few clips of President Trump speaking last night, addressing Congress and particularly the ones that relate to Canada.
00:31:04.980So here is Trump saying that other countries have used tariffs against us for decades.
00:31:09.980And now it's our turn. And I think I think this is right.
00:31:13.140I think that Canada does have restrictions and, you know, we're not we're not an innocent party here.
00:31:19.500If you don't make your product in America, however, under the Trump administration, you will pay a tariff and in some cases, a rather large one.
00:31:30.340Other countries have used tariffs against us for decades.
00:31:33.860And now it's our turn to start using them against those other countries.
00:31:39.760And here is Trump again talking about reciprocal tariffs coming into effect on April 2nd.
00:31:46.120April 2nd, reciprocal tariffs kick in and whatever they tariff us, other countries, we will tariff them.
00:31:57.600That's reciprocal back and forth, whatever they tax us, we will tax them.
00:32:54.140A lot of states are a lot of like not United States, but states governments around the world have their own protectionist measures that are just ridiculous.
00:33:02.180I mean, look at Canada in 2024, we went to the British we went to to talk with the Brits about trade negotiation and they told us to come back when we've put our big boy pants on because we wouldn't walk away from the dairy lobby and 250 percent tariffs on dairy products.
00:33:21.780It's it's ridiculous, the position that we're coming from.
00:33:24.640And, yeah, we're going to get spanked now.
00:33:26.740We're in a situation where Donald Trump is coming in and he's saying we want the same deal you got.
00:33:32.260We want things to work well for us just as it works well for you.
00:34:24.260And they and they know that the purpose of that is to alleviate the tariffs.
00:34:28.460But the problem in Canada is that there's not a lot of political will to talk about some serious issues.
00:34:34.560Supply management is run by a lot of politically powerful people.
00:34:38.540And unless it's that's confronted, we're not really going to be moving on from this story.
00:34:43.340And it's it's the first time that a foreign country has put this much pressure on an internal struggle that we have in our political system.
00:34:51.800We know that the dairy cartel can make or break politicians.
00:34:58.700It's going to make or break Canada at this point.
00:35:00.580But I agree if I were a political leader, I would say let's use this opportunity to get rid of it.
00:35:06.280You know, yes, there are vested interests and there are some farmers that have come to rely on us and we'll give them a fair compensation.
00:35:13.560But this program ends and we open up the market.
00:35:16.380I just don't see that happening from any political party.
00:35:20.120And in fact, the opposite is happening.
00:35:21.520Rather than saying let's start eliminating a lot of our barriers, our political leaders are responding back saying we're going to add even more.
00:35:27.600Or we're going to try to make it even more painful for the United States.
00:35:30.920Ontario Premier Doug Ford is sort of leading this charge.
00:35:33.460And so yesterday he announced that he supported retaliatory tariffs against the U.S., that they would start banning American alcohol, banning American businesses from being part of Ontario's procurement and canceling Ontario's Starlake contract.
00:36:49.420So they're taking the alcohol that they already paid for and saying that we're going to refuse to try to make any money off this product that we've already sold.
00:36:57.900I don't know what they're going to do with it.
00:36:58.980Doug Ford also threatened legislation on grocery stores, as was reported over at Juno News, that they were looking to force grocery stores to label all products as whether they're Canadian or American, so that consumers can choose to boycott the American products.
00:37:16.700Yes. And then this is this is the big one. Ford said that Ontario is prepared to escalate the trade war by imposing a 25 percent surcharge on electricity exports to the United States and potentially even cutting off power if President Trump moves forward with more tariffs.
00:37:33.740So this is where things get a little bit scary. Like, like, yes, you know, it hurts to have that 25 percent goods and services tax.
00:37:43.260But when you start cutting off sort of like critical infrastructure and the ability for people to heat their homes, I mean, presumably once you close that door, you can't reopen it.
00:37:51.920Like if if Ford does that, the Americans will seek another source of electricity.
00:37:56.080And even if we resolve this issue, they're never going to come back to us.
00:37:59.340And that could really permanently hurt the relationship. What do you think?
00:38:02.760Well, it absolutely would. It absolutely would. But I want to I want to get people to push, put their emotions aside for a second and listen to the things that Doug Ford's saying.
00:38:11.340Ontario, the LCBO in Ontario is the largest purchaser of alcohol on the planet.
00:38:16.800Shouldn't that be alarming that our government is running the alcohol business?
00:38:22.300It really it's ridiculous that one entity could be such a large supplier.
00:38:27.820Canadians should be able to make their own choices. But here's the problem.
00:38:30.880The Ontario government is jumping in and they're making the choice for you and they're not trying to convince you of what choices you should make.
00:38:37.880Now, it was it was it was famous a few a month ago, a month ago.
00:38:41.480Doug Ford made the same threat about the the the Starlink contract.
00:38:45.880Elon Musk responded to it with I believe I'm paraphrasing, but I think it was oh, well, he doesn't care.
00:38:51.820I mean, one hundred million dollars in the grand scheme of things for a billionaire who has a billion, you know, billion dollar businesses, trillion dollar businesses possibly at this point.
00:39:02.820Doesn't care, doesn't care. And it's he's really motivated to push people towards freer markets.
00:39:09.640And really, at the end of the day, it's Ontario and it's Ontario that's saying we don't have free markets.
00:39:16.060We don't have free markets because we don't allow businesses, grocery stores, everything to purchase alcohol.
00:39:22.280We control all these items. So I think Ontario should take a step back and start freeing up their own personal market within the province and then having more free markets with the other provinces.
00:39:32.740Before they come to the table and start talking about what Donald Trump is doing on the international stage.
00:39:38.760I think they have a few lessons to learn on what free trade actually is before they start spouting off about it.
00:39:45.220I hope that that's the message they take, but I'm not not super optimistic on that one.
00:39:49.260Clyde, I want to get your your thoughts on this one more thing you posted on X the other day.
00:39:54.540A basically the polls showing how the conservatives have basically blown a lead.
00:40:00.880And you wrote this is inexcusable. Obviously, the Liberal Party wants to win, but I'm not sure when the conservatives decided that they don't.
00:40:08.740Somebody needs to get fired. So just real quick here, like what what's happened in the last three months?
00:40:15.860How did the conservatives blow such a massive lead? Did they really blow it?
00:40:19.060Are the polls to be trusted? And who do you think might who should be fired? Let me ask that.
00:40:24.940OK, so there's a bunch of factors in this whole thing.
00:40:28.740Now, obviously, the liberals, they got rid of Justin Trudeau, so they're going to climb in the polls immediately.
00:40:34.140This has been said across the country and especially in the maritime provinces where MPs were getting letters from their constituents saying,
00:40:41.520I like you, but I won't vote for you if Justin Trudeau is the leader.
00:40:45.040So they were voting for they were polling for Pierre Polyev simply on that.
00:40:50.160So you can see a lot of the support being lost in the conservative party just based on that.
00:40:55.500Now, of course, the conservatives have come back to, you know, show that they're they're very, you know, they're they're friendly to liberal voters.
00:41:04.640And this is this is this is a this is a it's been plaguing the conservatives in Canada for decades.
00:41:09.940This whole idea of if we we have our base and we can upset our base as much as we want, let's try to capitulate and be what we said earlier, liberal light.
00:41:19.880And I don't think that that strategy is strategy is working out for them.
00:41:24.580They need to switch gears because it's happening again.
00:41:28.260It's happening where they had some popularity because of a bad leadership on the liberal side.
00:42:18.600Whether the you know, the liberals have taken a lot of the conservatives messaging and the conservatives have come to the left quite a bit.
00:42:26.280And they're kind of meeting in the middle.
00:42:28.240And with a populist that tends to generally vote left, it looks like that's the way they're going to go.
00:42:34.260Now, one thing to measure is if the two parties are looking very similar, what people are going to do at the polls, and I'm talking undecided voters, they're going to look at the resumes.
00:42:44.420They're going to look at the resumes of Pierre Polyev and they're going to look at the resume of Mark Carney.
00:42:48.400Now, I think Mark Carney's resume is is trash.
00:42:52.520I almost slipped a bad word out there, but I think it's it's awful.
00:42:56.700But for the average person, they would say, oh, Bank of Canada, Bank of the UK.
00:43:51.340I agree that that Mark Carney is not the kind of leader that I want.
00:43:54.880I don't want someone who is a career civil servant, central banker involved in the World Economic Forum, a self-described elitist and a globalist.
00:44:02.940But I can see how Canadians could sort of be fooled by that, especially just at first glance.
00:44:07.600They don't have a lot of time to get to know him.
00:44:09.420Well, hopefully, you know, hopefully things still change.
00:44:13.140And we really appreciate, Clyde, you take the time to join us.
00:44:22.680Okay, so earlier today, I caught up with an independent MPP named Bobby Ann Brady.
00:44:29.320She represents the riding of Haldeman Nordfolk in the Ontario Legislative Assembly.
00:44:35.180I talked about her in this sort of post-election show that I did last week about how she was, you know, a great story in Ontario of an independent fighter who was able to be re-elected.
00:44:45.240So I was pleased to sit down with her earlier.
00:44:50.400Bobby Ann, thank you so much for joining the podcast.
00:44:52.680I said to the audience last week that I thought your victory in Haldeman Norfolk was the silver lining of a very sort of predictable, boring election.
00:45:03.960Tell us what happened and how were you able, as an independent member of the provincial parliament, how were you able to beat the PC machine?
00:45:11.140So beating the PC machine in 2025 seemed a little bit easier than 2022.
00:45:18.920And I've told media over the past few days that, you know, 2022 was different in the sense that I spent much of the campaign explaining to people what an independent looked like, what an independent could do.
00:45:33.140And, you know, people would say to me, good luck, right?
00:45:36.800And you didn't really know what good luck meant.
00:45:39.540And so I won by, you know, over 2,000 votes in 2022.
00:45:44.680And I think over the past two and a half years, the people of Haldeman Norfolk have gotten a good taste of what an independent representative can actually do.
00:45:53.480And the naysayers and my detractors will say, oh, you have no voice.
00:45:57.580Well, we actually have a bigger voice in the Ontario legislature because no leader, no party tells me what I can and cannot say or can or can and cannot do.
00:46:07.600And the people of Haldeman Norfolk have really grown to embrace that.
00:46:12.080And, you know, the money still flows into the riding.
00:46:15.120So they'll say, well, an independent voice gets no money.
00:46:17.840I'm no different than any other opposition member at Queen's Park.
00:46:21.220No different than a liberal, an NDP or a Green Party member.
00:46:37.280And that messaging all resonated with the people of Haldeman Norfolk.
00:46:40.500And my goodness, they sent a very, very clear message to Doug Ford on Thursday night.
00:46:46.740Well, certainly he wasn't expecting it.
00:46:48.560The premier himself wasn't expecting it because it was just back in April where you were doing your job.
00:46:53.660You were doing what an opposition MPP has to do, what people want them to do, which is trying to hold the premier accountable, asking him tough questions, even asking him a question from the political right.
00:47:31.800By the way, you won't have a job next election.
00:47:37.680So his caucus sure liked that comment, but I'm sure he regrets saying it now because not only do you still have a job, Bobby Ann, but you won with a much stronger majority in your riding.
00:47:49.440You got 64% of the vote to the PC's 24%.
00:52:36.880You know, if I couldn't fix something, I would say to someone, I can't fix it.
00:52:40.960But if I thought I could fix it, I carried their issue like a dog with a bone.
00:52:44.520And during this campaign, more so in this campaign than in 2022, the people who came out of the woodwork and posted testimonials online saying,
00:52:55.260hey, I remember back in, you know, 2012, I contacted Toby Barrett's office and Bobby Ambrady picked up the phone and she helped me.
00:53:03.060She, you know, she may not have fixed my issue, but man, she worked hard to try and help me.
00:53:08.200There were countless testimonials in this campaign and reminded me of the work that I did over 23 years.
00:53:16.420And my goodness, when people remember that, it really tells, it really says what kind of people we have here in Haldeman, Norfolk.
00:54:00.020I am a fiscal conservative and it's no secret that I spent 23 years in the PC family, but people of all stripes in this writing, they don't like their small town girl being told she will be out of a job.
00:54:14.460They also love the fact that I can go to Queen's Park with no monopoly on a good idea.
00:54:19.560So I've supported ideas from, yes, the PCs, but I've also supported ideas from the Greens, from the NDP and from the Liberal caucuses.
00:54:27.720And, of course, that ended up on a smear piece of literature on me during this campaign.
00:54:34.360But people see the benefit of it in that.
00:54:36.700If I can support a bill that is good for the people of Haldeman Norfolk, who cares who brought forward the bill?
00:54:44.680If it's good for the people, then you vote for it.
00:54:48.200And my goodness, if we could actually just run Queen's Park like that, if representatives could stop being brand ambassadors and just truly, genuinely represent their community, what a better province this would be.
00:55:01.400I totally agree. I feel like so many candidates, so many members of parliaments and legislatures, they just tow the party line and you don't really get a genuine sense of who they are, what they believe in, what they see.
00:55:12.760There's so much party discipline in the system in Canada.
00:55:16.260So what are your priorities for this parliamentary session?
00:55:21.320And what are you going to try to accomplish?
00:55:23.920So, first and foremost, I represent a very rural riding.
00:55:30.340The PCs have long been or supposed to be the government of rural Ontario and of farm country.
00:55:37.020And over the past two and a half years, nary a mention of agriculture or rural affairs in the Ontario legislature in budgets and fall economic statements.
00:55:59.980And we have to allow farmers and small business to generate, you know, in their businesses and on their farms and allow them to stimulate Ontario's economy.
00:56:09.080But we've got to get out of their way.
00:56:10.380So one of the very first things I'm going to do, and I worked on this prior to the election, is I want to work with the Minister of Agriculture.
00:56:17.700And I'm hoping that that is Rob Flack, because Rob Flack and I get along very well.
00:56:23.460And I would love to see a standing committee on agriculture and rural affairs at Queen's Park.
00:56:29.160We're one of the only jurisdictions in North America that doesn't have such a committee.
00:56:33.920And we need to bring that rural voice back to Queen's Park and put it back on the political map.
00:56:39.960So that's first and foremost one of the most general, you know, the broader issues I'm going to bring forward.
00:56:46.980And then we have a, locally, we have what's called the Ministerial Zoning Order in kind of in waiting at the Nanticoke Industrial Park.
00:56:55.420There is a proposal to build a city of upwards of 40,000 people at an industrial park, at Ontario's largest industrial park.
00:57:03.180And I think it's the most harebrained idea.
00:57:06.340There's also an energy project on the table for that same area.
00:57:09.680So, you know, I really want to work with the government and make sure that we get an energy project at an industrial park.
00:57:16.040I think that we need power at an industrial park, not people.
00:57:20.720And so I want to work with the government to make government to make sure that we add to the good paying jobs in our in our industrial park at Nanticoke instead of putting people there and driving industry away.
00:57:30.380Well, I think that the people are lucky to have you as a representative and it's been such a great pleasure for me to have you on the show.