The Candice Malcolm Show - February 07, 2025


DEFUND Foreign Aid


Episode Stats

Length

57 minutes

Words per Minute

164.78326

Word Count

9,420

Sentence Count

539

Misogynist Sentences

4

Hate Speech Sentences

10


Summary

Candice Malan is joined by Preston Manning to talk about Canada and the future of North America. Before we get to that, Candice talks about an unbelievable story that is breaking overnight and has been uncovered by the internet that exposes one thing, that our government is lying to us.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show. Happy Friday, everyone. We have a
00:00:12.620 great show put together for you today. We're going to be joined in a little bit by Preston Manning
00:00:17.480 to talk about Canada and the future of North America. Before we get to that, I just have to
00:00:23.280 tell you about this unbelievable story that is breaking overnight and has been uncovered by the
00:00:30.440 many, many wonderful people on the internet that exposes one thing, that our government is lying
00:00:36.120 to us. So they're taxing Canadians, they're taxing more than ever, taking more and more of our hard
00:00:42.040 earned money away, and they're wasting it on programs that are patently ridiculous and woke
00:00:48.340 and absurd, even for this liberal government. And of course, as soon as Canadians start to notice
00:00:56.060 this ridiculous waste, the government tries to back down, try to hide their scandalous spending,
00:01:01.700 and try to lie about what it is that they found. Well, not so fast, because we are on to them.
00:01:07.800 So here is what happened. It started when Conservative MP from Calgary Shubh Majumdar posted the following
00:01:14.480 on X. This happened yesterday afternoon at around 1.49 Eastern on Thursday. And he wrote this,
00:01:22.020 NDP liberals have wiped Global Affairs Canada's project database clean, hiding where your taxpayer
00:01:29.060 dollars are going. What was once public is now erased. No transparency, no accountability.
00:01:37.360 Really, truly unbelievable. And so to that tweet, I asked the following question. I said,
00:01:42.780 what kind of crazy, woke nonsense are they funding and trying to hide? Well, at 2.10 p.m. yesterday,
00:01:52.900 our friends over at Canada Proud posted this story as news. This is what they wrote. Breaking.
00:01:59.740 Global Affairs Canada has suddenly wiped their entire public database of foreign aid spending,
00:02:05.900 and the data is no longer available to the public. This is a big deal, folks. This is a big story.
00:02:13.680 So two hours later, two hours after Canada Proud posted that, two hours, two and a half hours after
00:02:19.760 Shubh Majumdar posted on X, this is at 4.19 p.m. Eastern time yesterday. Development Canada,
00:02:27.780 which is the Department of Global Affairs Canada's X account, dedicated to international development.
00:02:34.880 Well, this is what they posted to try to clarify the matters. They wrote,
00:02:39.100 Global Affairs Canada's project browser is currently experiencing technical difficulties,
00:02:45.220 and we are working to resolve this issue. The claims that it was taken down on purpose are false.
00:02:53.500 Okay, convenient timing, wouldn't you say? At a time when Elon Musk is exposing the absolute rot
00:03:01.440 and ideological radicalism of the programs over at USAID, suddenly the Canadian equivalent just happens
00:03:10.500 to have technical difficulties and their website is down. And this is when everything starts to backfire
00:03:17.400 on the Canadian government and its woke Department of Global Affairs. You see, when a community note
00:03:24.700 was later slapped on that Canada Proud post, which by the way was going viral, it now has over 1.1 million
00:03:31.380 views. Well, that community note, which you can see here, posted a link to the correct website
00:03:39.320 containing all the information that we were looking for. And folks, this is why I just love the internet.
00:03:47.500 Because as soon as that community note was slapped on to try to correct the record and say it was all
00:03:52.140 just misinformation. Well, as soon as we got that link, the internet sleuths went to work. And I love
00:03:58.860 this. Dozens of independent citizen journalists jumped into action and began uncovering the crazy
00:04:05.960 woke nonsense. And oh, is there a lot of it. So just a sample of the craziness that we are funding
00:04:13.140 with our tax dollars under the guise of foreign aid, $7.2 million for gender responsive health care
00:04:21.000 in the Philippines, $1 billion to the Gates Foundation's vaccine alliance, $44 million to a
00:04:29.660 climate food system fund in Luxembourg, $10 million for abortions in London, England, oh my goodness,
00:04:38.100 $13 million for a rehab center in Bangladesh. Those are just a few of the dozens and dozens of examples.
00:04:45.480 And we'll get to more, I promise. As True North's Clayton Demain dug up, we also give over a million
00:04:52.520 dollars a year to the BBC, to Britain's state broadcaster. I guess bribing the journalists
00:04:58.540 in Canada wasn't enough for the Justin Trudeau government. So they have to bribe the British
00:05:03.760 state broadcaster. It makes no sense. And again, there's so much more, which we will get to in a
00:05:09.260 minute. But first, let me just say that in an attempt to do damage control, Global Affairs handed
00:05:15.600 us a link to the database of all the incredible, stupid, wasteful, perverse, and absolutely idiotic
00:05:23.180 things that they are spending our money on. Now we have the list, we have the database, and all we have
00:05:29.340 to do is defund it. And that is why today I am calling on the government to defund foreign aid,
00:05:36.000 defund Development Canada, Global Affairs' foreign aid program that has been exposed as nothing more
00:05:43.000 than embarrassing and wasteful, and an arm that promotes a twisted, woke agenda all over the world.
00:05:49.840 Defund the entire Global Affairs Canada's Department of International Assistance, which has wasted over
00:05:56.580 $52 billion from the fiscal year 2017 to 2023. My goodness, that money should be spent in Canada,
00:06:05.600 not on these ridiculous programs. So folks, help me send this message to our elites. Head on over
00:06:11.480 to my website right now, www.candicemalcolm.com, and sign this petition. Let's end the wasteful spending,
00:06:19.780 end the ridiculous propaganda, and stop pushing this twisted, woke ideology on the world's poor
00:06:27.380 and needy. Again, head on over to my website, candicemalcolm.com, sign the petition. We're going
00:06:33.920 to send this message. Enough is enough, okay? We don't want to fund this stuff anymore. We don't
00:06:38.940 like the ideas. We don't like the ideology. We don't want to do woke anymore. And we certainly don't want
00:06:44.180 to be promoting this all over the world. It really is embarrassing. It's embarrassing, folks. This is what
00:06:49.340 people all over the world will come to know Canada for, that Canada is the country that still believes
00:06:55.200 in this ridiculous, perverse nonsense. So I'm going to show you the link to the actual website
00:07:02.920 that I'm talking about. Sean, if we can pull that up for a second. Let me just find it here. This is
00:07:11.200 the website that I'm talking about. And if you just take a look at the kinds of things that they are
00:07:17.040 funding, even just the way they describe themselves, right? Canada's effort to address global issues.
00:07:21.920 So the purpose of this department are actions to promote human dignity and a more just, inclusive,
00:07:29.280 sustainable, and safe world, okay? So the purpose is diversity, equity, inclusion. And they're
00:07:36.200 promoting this all over the world on behalf of Canada. Throw that back up, Sean. Just look at some
00:07:42.500 of the things that they are doing. Canada's, the most requested right here on the right-hand side,
00:07:47.900 you can see it. Canada's feminist international assistance policy. I mean, is anybody else sick
00:07:56.520 and tired of this stuff? This is not how I want to be represented. This is not how I want people to
00:08:02.720 think about Canadians, that we're pushing woke, intersectional feminist nonsense. Enough is enough.
00:08:09.100 We really need to defund this entire department. And I hope you'll sign my petition so we can send
00:08:16.420 this message to the elites, to the conservatives, to the liberals, whoever's going to be the next
00:08:20.680 prime minister, whoever's going to win the next election. They need to put this in their sights
00:08:26.160 and just get rid of it. Enough is enough. Just pull the plug. Do what Elon Musk is doing. They're
00:08:30.760 creating a perfect model and example for us, and we should do the exact same thing. So I want to
00:08:36.460 highlight some of these wonderful sleuths, the citizen journalists, the independent journalists
00:08:42.020 on X. So there's one account here called votecanada.com, and they shared an archive snapshot
00:08:50.000 of the database, giving plenty of examples, $75 million for an inclusive economic recovery,
00:08:57.820 $751,000 for a community approach to gender equitable education, $7.2 million,
00:09:06.460 for those gender reassignment surgeries in the Philippines. Another wonderful account here
00:09:11.180 called Freedom of Goose. You got to follow this guy. He is hilarious. He writes, you dumb asses
00:09:16.600 think you are smart by deleting access to the international funds section on Canada.ca. Well,
00:09:21.520 you're not that bright. I got the whole data dump into a spreadsheet, a spreadsheet, be quick
00:09:27.540 and smart next time. And so that account continues to give more information of just the kind of
00:09:33.120 things that we have seen. There's a 91% spending increase in international assistance between 2021
00:09:40.500 and 2023. So help me understand why they're doubling their budget at a time where Canadians
00:09:48.820 are struggling. Canadians are using the food bank at record numbers. Canadians, more and more Canadians,
00:09:54.040 more than half the country is less than $200 away from not being able to pay their bills.
00:09:58.960 And we have something like 40% of Canadians are worried that if there's an interest rate hike
00:10:04.920 increase, interest rate increase at the banks, they won't be able to afford their mortgages anymore,
00:10:09.580 and they might lose their house. And meanwhile, we have our foreign aid budget doubling in that
00:10:14.160 exact same time. It makes no sense. I'll continue reading here. Ukraine has received the most of any
00:10:20.340 country with $5.8 billion in funds, $5.8 billion between 2017 and 2023, $18 billion going to Africa
00:10:31.080 during that same time. Another one of these great YouTube accounts, or sorry, X accounts you should
00:10:36.480 follow, TableSalt13, writes that there has been a $10 million contribution for something called
00:10:44.420 actions buy-in for women to adapt climate change from Global Affairs Canada, that $44,000 climate fund
00:10:52.300 in Luxembourg. And Ryan Gerritsen, another great X account to follow, writes that our government has
00:10:58.880 given Gavi, the vaccine alliance founded by the Gates Foundation, almost a billion dollars. It truly,
00:11:05.880 truly is unbelievable. And you know, you look down at what's happening with Trump in the States,
00:11:11.200 and Elon Musk, sorry, with President Trump, President Trump and his efforts to basically
00:11:17.160 just get rid of so much wasteful spending that's happening in the United States. And seeing what
00:11:23.000 Elon Musk has come up with, Elon Musk has basically recommended that they completely defund USAID.
00:11:28.840 Like he said, you know, you're looking for a few worms in a bad apple, and then you open it up and
00:11:34.240 it's all worms. There's no apple. It's just all worms. And you have to get rid of all of it. So there's
00:11:38.760 been a lot of really funny stories that have been making the rounds in the US. You know, you had $15
00:11:44.840 million for condoms to the Taliban. This is through USAID. $400,000 to promote atheism in Nepal. $47,000
00:11:55.600 transgender opera to Colombia from the State Department. $32,000 LGBTQ comic book in Peru. $70,000
00:12:05.380 for an Irish musical promoting DEI. And not to be outdone has $7 million for a BIPOC speaker series
00:12:15.420 in Canada that was all funded by the Americans. No wonder they're getting rid of their program. And
00:12:21.960 you know, it really is more than enough evidence that we need to do the same. Say it one final time,
00:12:27.960 head on over to my website, CandiceMalcolm.com, sign that petition, help me send the message that we need
00:12:32.600 to defund foreign aid in our country. Okay, I want to show one clip before I get to Preston Manning.
00:12:39.580 And this is of Justin Trudeau. Justin Trudeau was speaking at a Black History Month reception
00:12:44.380 in Ottawa. And things got a little weird. This is this is Justin Trudeau, I guess,
00:12:49.920 letting his hair down in the last few days of work as Prime Minister of this country. And let's play that
00:12:55.200 clip. One of the things that comes with knowing that you're on a countdown clock to your last day
00:13:02.960 means you get to be really ruthless about the things you want to do, and the things that you
00:13:10.260 don't want to do. So there it is, folks, I guess, be prepared. Trudeau is going to get ruthless. I
00:13:20.020 wonder what he thinks the last nine years have been like. Now I guess he's going to show us what
00:13:24.720 he really believes, what he really wants to do. Probably won't be defunding foreign aid,
00:13:29.120 but that's okay, because he'll be gone soon enough. And hopefully the next government will listen.
00:13:34.000 Okay, let's get to the big interview. I recorded this earlier with Preston Manning. And for those of
00:13:40.480 you who don't know, Preston Manning is the founder and leader of the Reform Party, which was active in
00:13:45.880 Canada from 1987 to 2000. He represented the constituency of Calgary Southwest in the House
00:13:52.000 of Commons from 1993 until 2002. He served as the leader of the opposition from 1997 to 2000. And
00:14:01.060 then he founded the Manning Foundation for Democratic Education. He's really just an absolutely incredible
00:14:08.020 leader in Canada. We have so much that we can learn from him. And even, you know, in his retirement,
00:14:13.140 he's still active in government. He recently chaired the review of Alberta's COVID-19 response
00:14:18.880 and the national citizens inquiry. Did an incredible job. We get to all of it. This is really a wonderful
00:14:24.900 interview. We talk about North America, about Trump. We talk about energy security and national
00:14:29.860 security, the things that Canada needs to do if we're a serious country, if we wanted to take
00:14:34.780 seriously our sovereignty and our independence. These are the things we need to do. And then later in the
00:14:39.980 interview, we talk about the COVID response, how it diminished trust in institutions, and what
00:14:45.720 Preston thinks that Canadians can do to fight back and to restore faith in our institutions. It's a great
00:14:51.060 interview. And it was really my pleasure to conduct it. So without further delay, I will show you this
00:14:57.060 interview now with myself and Preston Manning. Preston, thank you so much for joining the podcast.
00:15:04.660 Yes, good to talk to you. It's great. Great to see you. And I'm really looking forward to this
00:15:10.620 conversation. So first of all, let's start with Donald Trump and the tariffs that he threatened
00:15:16.360 and then reversed. So, you know, right off the top, what is your takeaway on all of this?
00:15:21.320 Well, I think it's necessary to go back to square one. What was the first instance in which he linked,
00:15:28.640 even mentioned tariffs on Canada and Mexico? This goes back to November 2019, when he was
00:15:36.920 president the first time. And he mentioned tariffs as a threat to try to get Canada and Mexico to be
00:15:46.500 serious about stopping the illegal movement of people and drugs across the border into the United
00:15:54.600 States from Canada and Mexico. That was what the threat was linked to. So it seems to me the
00:16:01.620 starting point, and Premier Smith has made this point over and over again, would be to tighten up
00:16:07.760 the border and stop illegal movement of drugs and people across that border from Canada or anything
00:16:14.460 connected with it. And if the prime minister and the premiers are getting together, the first thing
00:16:19.840 on their agenda should not be talking about tariffs. It should be talking, here's what we are going to
00:16:26.020 do. Here's what we are doing to stop that illegal movement of drugs and people. And I think this
00:16:34.680 business of getting off onto the tariff thing, when it was the illegal movement of drugs and people,
00:16:40.240 it was the thing that triggered this, is a big mistake.
00:16:43.800 Well, certainly. And I mean, we saw everybody jump into action. So going back to last Saturday,
00:16:49.440 when Trump came out and said, yes, it's going to be a 25% tariff, 10% on energy, which I think you can
00:16:56.080 credit that to Danielle Smith and the advocacy diplomacy that she did, that oil was only going
00:17:01.940 to be 10%. Everything else was 25%. Trudeau instantly jumped in and said that they were going to retaliate
00:17:08.660 with our own 25%. Now, luckily, we avoided all that, or at least for now, because Trump did just
00:17:13.620 say that it's a 30-day pause and that we'll be revisiting it in March. By then, I think we'll have
00:17:20.080 a new prime minister, Preston. But I want to point to your essay that you wrote in the National Post
00:17:26.480 on January 30th, where you said Canada's response to Trump needs common sense, not mindless hysterics.
00:17:33.320 So I think you would, you said that the political and media establishment got off on the wrong foot
00:17:39.620 by responding foolishly rather than sensibly. Now, I just want to read a little bit from this,
00:17:44.960 because I think you make such a good point here that is not being made elsewhere. You wrote that
00:17:49.200 Trump is a businessman and a dealmaker. Common sense further suggests bringing a positive response
00:17:54.960 to an item which clearly is on Trump's agenda, which also happens to be very much in Canada's
00:18:00.540 interest, energy security. This is a subject dear to Trump's heart, referenced in his inaugural address
00:18:06.320 and a front on which Canada can lead with its strengths, not its fears. And then you go on to
00:18:12.480 say, thus, surely common sense suggests that the most important component of Canada's response to
00:18:17.700 Trump, the Trump administration should be making North America more self-sufficient, especially with
00:18:23.300 respect to energy. I didn't hear very many people making this case in this point. But it's so obvious that
00:18:30.580 Canada and the United States need to be energy secure. So why don't you elaborate on that a little more?
00:18:35.540 Well, and yes, from Canada's standpoint, what is the one front on which we are stronger and bigger than the
00:18:42.060 United States? It's not population that we, they got a bigger population than us. It's not financial resources,
00:18:49.000 they got more financial resources than us. It's not, we don't have the smartest government, that's
00:18:53.480 certainly the case. But what we do have, because we're the second largest nation on the face of the
00:19:00.200 earth, area wise, we have the largest or second largest stock of natural resources. That is Canada's
00:19:09.080 strength. And it seems to me the second item on any agenda in dealing with the United States after
00:19:16.440 cleaning up this border question is to say, what can we do to make North America more
00:19:23.800 sufficient, self-sufficient, which is what Trump has talked about, and particularly self-sufficient in
00:19:30.680 energy. And that's an area where we lead with our strengths, not our weaknesses. Ontario, Quebec,
00:19:39.560 and BC particularly have a capacity to export much more electricity to the United States. Alberta,
00:19:45.800 and Saskatchewan, of course, have the petroleum resources. Ultimately, no matter what Trump says,
00:19:52.280 that North America will not be self-sufficient in petroleum without the exploitation of the
00:19:57.160 Athabasca oil sands. So that, that's our strengths. And so it seems to me, if we're developing an agenda
00:20:04.680 for talking to Trump, and you notice in his interviews, he uses the word deal about every
00:20:10.440 five minutes. Let's make a deal. Let's make a deal on Gaza. Let's make a deal in the Ukraine. Let's make a
00:20:16.200 deal. He's a deal maker. So our second item, if we want to lead with our strengths, seems to me to be
00:20:24.440 on this area of energy self-sufficiency in which Canada's got a great deal to offer. And let's not
00:20:29.960 talk about tariffs. Let's talk about how to make this continent energy self-sufficient. This is getting,
00:20:35.800 I'm showing my age on this, but the first time I heard the phrase continental energy security
00:20:42.840 was from J. Howard Pugh with the Sun Oil Company back in the early 1960s. Pugh developed that first
00:20:50.920 oil sands plant in Fort McMurray. He was 80 years old at the time. He was one of the richest men in the
00:20:57.320 United States. You might ask him, what is this old guy doing up in Fort McMurray? He didn't need the
00:21:04.920 money. The Sun Shipbuilding Company manufactured a lot of the tankers that were used to haul
00:21:15.000 oil in the First and Second World War. Pugh was familiar with how many of those tankers had been
00:21:22.520 sunk by submarine traffic and so forth. And he was convinced that North America was vulnerable
00:21:29.560 from an energy standpoint, particularly a petroleum standpoint. He was going to go
00:21:34.120 let the Texan boys go and find the conventional oil. He was going to go find the unconventional oil
00:21:39.320 and develop it. So this is a subject that's been around for a long, long time. And it seems to me
00:21:45.240 it's very much in Trump's mind and it's something that Canada should cater to. It ought to be the second
00:21:50.520 item on our agenda and talking with them. Well, I agree that the most important issue is
00:21:56.200 immigration and cleaning up the drugs. I know that Pierre Polyev is trying to hit that straight on with
00:22:02.520 declaring that he would impose life sentences upon fentanyl dealers and kingpins in the drug war.
00:22:09.880 But when it comes to energy security, Preston, I want to ask you because if it was an easy solution,
00:22:14.520 I think we would have done it already. Obviously, Justin Trudeau's priority and agenda was towards the
00:22:20.360 environment and making sure that everything was green. But it's led to a point where Canada now
00:22:24.760 imports oil from the United States, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria that were not energy sufficient even in
00:22:31.640 our own country, let alone as a continent. So how can we fix this and how can we actually make it so
00:22:38.280 that we don't have to import oil? Well, first of all, we have to permit and encourage pipeline
00:22:44.280 development in this country to be able to get Western resources to Eastern Canada. This has been stalled or
00:22:50.040 objected to or obstructed by the Trudeau government and by the Quebec government. So getting the movement
00:23:00.440 of petroleum in our own country would be an item I think that you're referring to. The other point is
00:23:08.040 that the last people to make these arguments in Washington are the Trudeau gang. Trump thinks of
00:23:17.880 Trudeau as a weak, narcissistic, lame duck leader. He's got no credibility there. Freeland is, in Trump's
00:23:27.240 view, if he gave any thought to it, is the Canadian equivalent of Kamala Harris. Jolie, as a foreign
00:23:36.600 minister, is considered a joke by our own foreign affairs people, let alone the Americans. Guy Beau is
00:23:43.400 considered to be a climate change fanatic. These are people that ought to be sent on a cruise to
00:23:53.640 Antarctica for the next six months and don't let them get anywhere near Washington. And this gets
00:24:00.760 back to your point. There needs to be a change of government and get a government that is going to
00:24:06.680 be credible with the Canadian people in dealing with Trump. And the sooner that can happen, the better.
00:24:12.920 But even since all of this news came out and we saw a newfound approach, it seemed like all
00:24:18.520 the parties suddenly wanted to break down interprovincial trade barriers and everybody was
00:24:22.680 suddenly all in favour of trying to figure out pipelines. Even in that scenario, the Quebec Premier
00:24:28.760 still came out and said no to Energy East pipelines. So how do we get something like that approved when you
00:24:35.160 have sort of veto power by interests in Quebec? Well, I guess maybe the first place is to appeal
00:24:42.440 to Quebec's own interests. Is Quebec interested in exporting more power to the United States as part of
00:24:49.960 the continental energy security? If it wants cooperation from the federal government of the
00:24:54.440 rest of the country with respect to that, then it's going to have to cooperate with respect to the
00:24:58.360 government of petroleum. The worry in Quebec is that that government is in a lot of trouble too.
00:25:05.560 If there's an election, provincial election next year, you're liable to get a separatist government
00:25:11.720 elected in Quebec, which is even more opposed to pipeline development. So that's going to be a real
00:25:17.400 internal problem for Canada and the next government, no matter who it is.
00:25:22.120 Further to this idea about resource development, it was interesting. Steve Bannon, who used to be a
00:25:28.280 close advisor to Donald Trump, he was on with Global News. I want to play part of this clip because
00:25:34.760 so Steve Bannon, I'll set it up. He's a US media executive, political strategist, former chief
00:25:41.080 strategist for Donald Trump. And he said that Canada and the Arctic has been thrust into the centre of a
00:25:47.800 geopolitical war between Russia, China, and the United States. And so whether we like it or not,
00:25:53.960 Canada is the centre of that. And we may choose to say we don't want to align ourselves with America,
00:26:00.520 but the reality is if we don't, you have China and Russia knocking at the door. So let's play this clip,
00:26:06.920 it's a bit longer, it's 45 seconds, but here he is explaining why Canada is so important.
00:26:11.960 China and Russia, the great powers and the United States fighting it out over the Arctic with the
00:26:20.360 vast resources of the Arctic is going to be the new great game of the 21st century. Canada,
00:26:25.080 you are thrust into the middle of that. And quite frankly, you are the greatest, I don't know if
00:26:31.080 target or prize. You're, you're like asking you, you're the great prize of that. That is that,
00:26:36.040 as you awaken in the geo economically, he's saying, Hey, the United States market's so lucrative,
00:26:41.240 you're going to have to pay a premium to get through the golden door, right? Canada could be
00:26:45.400 all part of that. The geo economics of the, of North America combined in the geo strategic
00:26:52.120 interest of North America combined, and particularly hemispheric defence all the way from Argentina
00:26:57.160 and Brazil under Bolsonaro, all the way up to the Canadian Arctic is what the first half of the 21st
00:27:03.080 century is going to be about. Now, I think it's interesting because he's talking about it
00:27:08.280 strategically. He's being a realist. He's not saying that he's not trolling. He's not saying
00:27:12.840 like, Oh, we're going to take Canada because we want it to be the 51st day. He's saying like,
00:27:16.760 whether we like it or not, this is the future. This is what the 21st century will be about. What's your,
00:27:23.080 what's your take on that? Well, I think he makes a very good point. And in fact, I think it's been made
00:27:28.680 even more strongly by Mike Waltz, who's Trump's current national security advisor, that the,
00:27:38.360 the Canadian Arctic, there's other interests, there's the Russian interests and the Chinese
00:27:43.640 interests in that area. And so Canada is going to have to sharpen up its defence and its development
00:27:48.680 of the Arctic, another area that's been completely neglected by the, by the Trudeau government. So if
00:27:54.760 we're developing an agenda for talking to the United States, now we got to tighten up the borders.
00:28:00.360 Number one, we got the continental energy security and what we can contribute to it. Number two and
00:28:07.800 number three, what are we going to do to beef up our defences of the Canadian Arctic?
00:28:12.760 I had author and sort of controversial thinker Diane Francis on the podcast a couple of weeks ago.
00:28:18.680 Now, a decade ago, she wrote a book called the merger of the century and how it was a business
00:28:23.000 proposition that Canada could potentially join in with the United States. And what one of the things
00:28:27.960 that she pointed out to me was that Canada has failed to develop the north. Like we don't have
00:28:32.520 seaports, we don't even really have roads up there. And if you look at the development of Alaska
00:28:37.240 and compare it to Yukon Northwest territories, or none of it, I mean, it's just starkly different.
00:28:42.920 The Americans have the ability to build and they focus on that and they prioritized it. I'm not even
00:28:47.480 talking about military, I'm talking about even just communities that we don't really have a lot up
00:28:51.960 there. There's not really much that has been built, let alone seaports up there. I wonder,
00:28:57.480 why do you think that is? What can Canada do to show that we do have serious sovereignty up there?
00:29:04.200 And maybe talk a little bit about Canada's military, because I think the goal is supposed to be 2% of
00:29:10.920 GDP to meet our NATO targets. I think Canada barely spends 1.2% of our GDP. Our military is not a serious
00:29:19.480 force and with all due respect to the men and women who serve and who wear the uniform. I think
00:29:25.720 everyone admits that our military has become a little bit of a joke in recent years.
00:29:30.600 Well, that's a huge subject, but your first point about there's a need to develop infrastructure
00:29:37.400 into the Arctic, into the Northwest Territories and into the Yukon Territory. Incidentally,
00:29:47.960 the province has done more of that than the federal government has been Alberta. The one big road
00:29:52.600 between Yellowknife and the rest of Canada is from Alberta. It's 600 miles from Yellowknife to Edmonton,
00:30:01.640 it's 3,000 miles from Yellowknife to Ottawa. I think the province has got a lot more to do with
00:30:07.960 developing that infrastructure, but that ought to be a priority. And then the second point you make
00:30:14.520 is very valid, that the Canadian military has been neglected, particularly by the Trudeau administration,
00:30:22.200 so the next administration is going to have to beef that up. I think one lesson from the Second World
00:30:26.760 War, while Canada contributed directly in terms of soldiers and equipment, its biggest contribution
00:30:35.880 was basically made by CD Howe in organizing defense production. Canada produced a lot of the equipment
00:30:45.480 and the background materials that were needed by the Allies in order to conduct activities in the Second
00:30:53.560 World War. And whether particularly NATO would accept if Canada's contribution to NATO included the
00:31:00.520 direct contributions that they're talking about, a percentage of the defense budget, but also what
00:31:05.800 can Canada contribute in that defense production, supporting its allies with equipment and things
00:31:13.560 like that. Will that be counted as a 2%? That's where Canada had a strength in the Second World War,
00:31:18.920 and that could be repeated. You need someone like CD Howe, though, to do that. And there's nobody like
00:31:24.840 that in the current Liberal government at all. Well, yeah, I mean, Canada does need to focus more on
00:31:31.240 building up its manufacturing base in general. I think that's something that we can take away from
00:31:35.720 these trade threats. I want to go back to this Steve Bannon interview in the Global News report on it.
00:31:41.480 So I'm going to show what that looked like. Their headline says, Trump's plan for hemispheric control.
00:31:45.960 Steve Bannon on why tariffs may only be the start. And they show this sort of scary, ominous picture
00:31:52.440 of Donald Trump pointing to Canada, and it's labeled as MAGA land. You know, they make it seem kind of
00:31:58.760 dark. But then even if you just listen, Preston, to what Steve Bannon said, he said, you know, Canada's
00:32:05.560 a prize or maybe the target. And he was talking about the golden age of America that Trump has promised.
00:32:11.560 I think this is complete nonsense. I think this is complete nonsense. And the first time Trump
00:32:18.680 mentioned this, he said, well, Canada should be the 51st state with Wayne Gretzky as the governor.
00:32:23.880 Like it was a joke. It was one of his off-the-cuff jokes. And it should have been treated as a joke,
00:32:31.080 say, haha, that is funny. Let's get on to border security and energy security. But particularly the
00:32:37.480 central Canadian media, the hysteria in the Toronto Star, for example, and central Canadian politicians
00:32:46.840 took this as a serious policy of the Trump government. And I think I've blown it way out of
00:32:54.680 proportion. It's a ridiculous proposition. For one thing, Trump couldn't get it through the US Congress.
00:33:01.400 There's no way that could happen without getting it through the American Congress. You've got to get
00:33:07.160 that through the Congress as it's formed now. Secondly, Trump's got to watch it. He's a populist
00:33:14.680 leader who's got a populist base. One of those mistakes populist parties can make, and Western
00:33:20.760 Canada has had more experience and knowledge about this than any other part of North America, is if you
00:33:26.360 get elected as a populist government and get off the agenda that got you elected by the ordinary
00:33:33.000 people, you will not be the government very long. And there was nothing in Trump's platform about
00:33:41.480 Canada as a 51st state. There was nothing about the Panama. There was nothing about Greenland. And
00:33:48.360 he's got to watch it. His own voters will say, look, we elected you on issues of affordability and
00:33:55.560 controlling this immigration thing. Don't stray from that proposition. The other thing,
00:34:01.800 why on earth would Trump want to get a hold of Canada in its current condition? If he did annex,
00:34:08.200 the first thing he'd have is three separatist movements. A separatist movement in Quebec,
00:34:12.360 a separatist movement in Alberta, and a separatist movement in Newfoundland and Labrador. What
00:34:16.920 American president would ever want to get into that kettle of fish?
00:34:22.200 Yeah, I think you're right. Well, and there'd probably be a separatist movement by the Laurentians
00:34:27.240 to separate from the new, newly formed North America, because they wouldn't want anything to
00:34:31.000 do with it. But the thing that I thought was interesting about what Steve Bannon was saying there
00:34:35.480 was that he wasn't talking about it, like, like, I think a lot of the media presented like, you know,
00:34:42.360 Trump has this vision, and it's all about protectionism, and, you know, America first,
00:34:49.320 and all that kind of stuff, which is true. But Steve Bannon said right in his discussion there,
00:34:54.840 that Canada can be a part of it all. So I don't think that he means that from like a sovereignty
00:34:59.560 perspective, like we're going to take Canada. I think he means that Canada can be part of the
00:35:03.480 prosperity, part of the new golden age that Trump wants to build. And we can all be part of this
00:35:09.080 fortress North America, we just need to get our self in order, get our get our house in order,
00:35:14.760 mainly with immigration, drugs, and those are the three things.
00:35:18.600 That's an interesting point, Candace, but it bothers me, why does Canada need to be told by
00:35:24.120 an American president what its future is going to be? Why does Canada need some initiative from the
00:35:29.880 United States to restore pride in this country? Where's the capacity to do that ourselves? And
00:35:37.000 one of my concerns about this whole debate is what it says about the state of Canadian democracy,
00:35:44.040 everything on this agenda we've talked about, beating down internal barriers to trade,
00:35:49.160 strengthening the protection against illegal immigration and importation of drugs,
00:35:58.360 energy security, all of these things have been advocated by Canadians for years, by Canadian think
00:36:06.200 tanks, by Canadian political people, including myself, years and years ago. Why is it that
00:36:13.640 that gets nowhere in our democratic institutions? It does not get a reaction from the current government,
00:36:22.760 it's on another agenda that 50% of the country thinks is nonsense. Why does it take some initiative
00:36:30.120 by an American president to do the things that are self evidently in our own interest and have been
00:36:35.560 advocated by Canadians for years? I think we've got to pull up our own socks, restore some pride in our
00:36:42.680 own country, get rid of these anti-Canadian crowd in the universities and the schools that trash Canada
00:36:51.080 every opportunity they get. How are you going to get pride in the younger people in the country in a future
00:36:56.360 vision? I think we've got to pull up our own socks and we ought not to have to be told to do that
00:37:02.920 by an American president, no matter who he is. Such a good point. And I agree. When the
00:37:10.520 countermeasures were announced, when Justin Trudeau announced the new measures that he was going to
00:37:14.120 take to secure the border, putting more money on, making sure that we have enough people at the border
00:37:19.720 and all this stuff. It's like, why did this take 10 years? You know, this should have been happening
00:37:23.880 from the beginning, not at the very, very end of his role. Well, that leads me to Justin Trudeau and his
00:37:29.880 decision to resign on January 6th. So at least Preston, that's what he told us that he was
00:37:34.600 resigning, but he's still around. So he didn't actually resign. He just intended to resign.
00:37:38.680 He prorogued parliament and now they're holding a liberal leadership race so that a prime minister
00:37:44.920 can be selected by an elite few. I mean, I think that the leader has already been selected. I think the
00:37:51.000 banks, the World Economic Forum have already given us the next prime minister of Canada, Mark Carney.
00:37:56.680 But as someone who's been advocating for democratic reform and who's been frustrated
00:38:01.640 with the Canadian political system for decades, what did you think of Trudeau's move that he pulled
00:38:07.160 here in early 2025? Well, it's regrettable because it's crippled the country at the crucial time when
00:38:15.560 it needs strong federal leadership. It's just left the country in limbo. You've got a lame duck
00:38:24.280 prime minister, but still purporting to represent the country. I'm sure if you can record some of the
00:38:32.280 internal comments that are being made by some of these premiers with respect to whether Justin Trudeau
00:38:38.200 ought to even be convening these conferences, I think it'd be pretty revealing. So it's just regrettable
00:38:45.480 that we've got this lame duck situation. What should have happened was they should have recalled
00:38:49.320 parliament. The fact that you've got this whole crisis situation and the parliament isn't even
00:38:56.440 meeting. They should have recalled parliament. The parliament would have moved a non-confidence
00:39:01.480 motion. We'd be into an election and that'd be the process to decide who should be the next leadership
00:39:07.240 of the country. And I know the leaders they're putting forward, Mark Carney, you can imagine what
00:39:14.280 Trump thinks of him. You know, a central banker, an elitist, a snob who has nothing but contempt for
00:39:24.040 the rank and file of people that elected Trump or that will elect the next government in Canada. It's a
00:39:30.520 regrettable situation and the sooner we can get to an election and get a new government, the better.
00:39:36.920 So do you think that the Governor General should have said no to Justin Trudeau's request?
00:39:41.000 Should she have said, you're not going to vote?
00:39:43.320 That should have been done. There's actually a precedent for that occurring in the British
00:39:49.800 parliament and that would have moved things along further. But of course, the Governor General's
00:39:54.520 a Trudeau appointment with loyalties to Trudeau and just did what he said.
00:40:01.560 Well, it's really unbelievable that we don't have a say. What about there's a,
00:40:05.960 I don't know if it's a conspiracy theory because I think it's legal and it could happen, but there's
00:40:09.720 a theory going around online that there won't be an election in 2025, that there's an Act,
00:40:16.680 an Elections Canada Act that says an election should happen every four years, but it's not in the
00:40:20.440 Constitution. The law can be changed, it can be amended, that potentially, whoever leads the
00:40:25.240 Liberal Party, presumably Mark Carney, could strike another deal with NDP leader Jagmeet Singh
00:40:29.880 to prolong their time in power, blow past that October 2025 election date and possibly not have
00:40:36.520 an election for another 18 months. What do you think of that?
00:40:39.720 Well, I think if they resorted to that, it would be a desperation measure which would
00:40:46.680 almost ensure that they're replaced in that election. And I would think members of Parliament,
00:40:52.440 particularly NDP and Liberal members, would think twice about getting part of that kind of an
00:40:59.000 operation. They might be guaranteeing the loss of their own seat.
00:41:02.200 I think they might be losing their own seat anyway. I think Canadians are so frustrated
00:41:07.080 at Jagmeet Singh in particular for propping up this government for so long that he's going to lose his
00:41:12.120 seat. So why would he trigger an election if it just means that he's going to basically get fired? I mean,
00:41:16.360 I think that that's the concern that these people…
00:41:19.000 But again, you can look at the composition of that current department, 153 Liberals,
00:41:23.960 120 Conservatives, 33 Bloc members, 3 Independents. The Bloc members and the Independents voting
00:41:34.120 together in a confidence motion would still defeat the government. It's not entirely dependent on Singh,
00:41:40.760 but it's a big mess.
00:41:43.080 What about this story, Preston? We learned at the end of January that Justin Trudeau is going to fill
00:41:51.320 the Senate vacancies before retiring. So he's planning a final wave of appointments to fill the 10 empty
00:41:57.640 seats in the Senate. The move will allow him to mark on Parliament for years to come with unelected
00:42:04.120 legislatures. I know you've been a critic or at least someone who has advocated for reform when it
00:42:10.200 comes to Canada's upper house, upper chamber. What do you think of this move by Trudeau?
00:42:15.480 Well, that'd be regrettable too, because that cripples the federal parliament even further.
00:42:21.240 In the end of the day, the House of Commons would have the whip hand over the Senate. The Senate could
00:42:26.040 block legislation from the House of Commons, the House of Commons could pass it again. The Senate can block
00:42:31.000 that, the House of Commons can pass it again. The House of Commons at the end of the day can have
00:42:35.640 the whip hand. If the Senate blocked a piece of legislation three times or four times, unelected
00:42:42.120 people appointed by a discredited prime minister, that would make life intolerable. I wouldn't want to
00:42:49.560 be one of those senators. But again, it's a shame that it has to come to that kind of a conflict
00:42:55.480 at a time when the federal parliament should be united in getting down to business.
00:42:59.720 Well, especially when we face a situation where we have an unelected governor general,
00:43:05.720 soon we're going to have an unelected prime minister, and we have a new onslaught of unelected
00:43:11.640 legislatures put into the Senate. I mean, no wonder Canadians are losing faith in these institutions.
00:43:16.200 Yes, and as I come back to, our democratic institutions need to be strengthened, and
00:43:26.200 this current crisis indicates the weakness of those institutions, and the fact that it takes
00:43:33.000 some action by an American president to get us dealing with items which our own democratic process
00:43:39.320 should have brought to the top of the agenda and got action on.
00:43:42.520 I want to move on and talk about the Alberta COVID response report, but before we do,
00:43:47.800 I just want to ask you, because we haven't really talked about it, but Danielle Smith,
00:43:51.800 I think, has just been doing a tremendous job advocating for Canada. I heard Ezra Levant,
00:43:56.440 he was on Rachel Parker's show the other day here on True North, and he was talking about how he met with
00:44:01.480 Danielle in the midst of her basically back-to-back-to-back-to-back meetings. She rented
00:44:06.920 a hotel room right in Washington, had a conference room, and apparently her staff had, you know,
00:44:12.760 minute-by-minute interview, interview, meeting with different officials, lawmakers, Republican
00:44:17.560 insiders, Republican staffers. It sounded incredible. I mean, just such hard work. The fact
00:44:22.120 that Trudeau and no one from the federal government was doing that, and it fell on a provincial premier
00:44:27.960 is remarkable in and of itself. But I wonder, what do you think of the job that Danielle's doing?
00:44:35.160 And, you know, you think she's hitting the right marks in what she's doing?
00:44:38.040 Oh, yes. No, I think she's been the strongest Canadian leader on the particular points that we
00:44:44.120 should be emphasizing on the border security. That's where she linked that to the tariff issue,
00:44:53.560 the way Trump did, on the energy security basis. Alberta premiers have often had a good relationship
00:45:01.000 with the Western governors of the United States, who tend to think a lot like we do, and she's been
00:45:07.160 active on that front. So I think she's done a commendable job, and this is a job she never asked
00:45:13.000 for. You know, the provincial premier didn't ask to have to get involved internationally with the United
00:45:19.320 States in this way. She never asked for it. But there's a vacuum. This is not being done by the
00:45:24.520 current leader. Our current federal leader is discredited, and so I think she's doing an
00:45:28.760 excellent job, and people should support her. And some of these other premiers ought to support her.
00:45:34.040 She's providing more leadership than Trudeau, and that is self-evident to them at these meetings.
00:45:39.160 So I agree with the approach she's taking and believe she should be fully supportive.
00:45:44.440 Well, it seems like some premiers are coming around. When they first initially met with the
00:45:48.200 premiers and Trudeau, they signed a joint statement. Danielle said, no, I'm not signing that.
00:45:52.440 And she was sort of the odd man out. But then, you know, over the course of the next few weeks,
00:45:56.280 with her advocacy and Trudeau sort of vacancy, you know, we saw Saskatchewan come around. Even Quebec
00:46:02.200 came around to her perspective, and I think it did win the day. I want to talk about this report,
00:46:06.760 also commissioned by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. So she, I think she's one of the only
00:46:13.000 leaders, political leaders in the world to do this sort of introspective look at what happened
00:46:19.000 during COVID. So the Alberta COVID report, it was commissioned by Smith in 2022 with a mandate to
00:46:25.320 explore the province's response to COVID. The task force included prominent medical professionals,
00:46:30.360 including doctors Gary Davidson, Jay Bhattacharya, who's been appointed into the Trump administration
00:46:35.640 now, and Barry Brittle. The final report recommends the provincial government stop providing vaccines for
00:46:42.200 healthy children and teenagers. The report revealed evidence to suggest it was not effective. For
00:46:47.880 example, it highlighted that the original Pfizer vaccines did not prevent death compared to the
00:46:53.560 placebo in their clinical trials in any group. Further, the report alleged that Alberta Health Services
00:46:59.880 removed a dashboard after it showed higher hospitalization rates among the vaccinated than
00:47:05.880 the unvaccinated. It also said there's a lack of reliable data that COVID-19 vaccines protect
00:47:11.400 children from severe cases of COVID. The task force that published the research said that vaccines
00:47:17.000 were not designed to stop transmission. This is all really incredible stuff, things that you could not
00:47:22.360 have even said on YouTube two, three years ago. Now it's out in the open. Again, Alberta's one of the only,
00:47:28.200 if not the only government to do this kind of research and this kind of report. So I wanted to hear your
00:47:35.480 reaction to the report and what you make of it all. Well, first of all, there are two reports that were
00:47:43.000 commissioned by the Alberta government and I chaired the first one. The first one was called the Public
00:47:49.800 Emergency Governance Review Panel and its instructions were to look at the legislation which authorized the
00:47:58.360 initiatives that were taken by the Alberta government to cope with the COVID crisis and to recommend there's
00:48:04.040 the changes in the law that had to be made. That report was done, finished in February of 2023,
00:48:13.080 recommended a bunch of amendments to the Public Health Act, to the Education Act, to the Alberta Bill of Rights.
00:48:18.920 It takes forever to get these things through. You have to make a presentation to a cabinet committee,
00:48:24.760 you have to be a presentation to the cabinet, there has to be a presentation to the caucus, that then has to go to the
00:48:29.880 legal services branch of the Justice Department to do the draft legislation, which then has to be checked
00:48:35.560 with the Treasury branch if it involves spending any more money. Finally, in the fall session,
00:48:42.440 the Alberta government did make a number of those amendments, particularly amendments to the Alberta
00:48:47.240 Bill of Rights to tighten up the protection of rights and freedoms by law during a public emergency.
00:48:53.880 So that was that report. Now, this report you're talking about was not to look at the legislation,
00:49:00.200 it was to look at the data base that informed the decisions of the government during that period.
00:49:06.040 And as you mentioned, it's produced a number of questions, the modelling that was done, what was the basis of that modelling.
00:49:14.440 It's questioned the validity of masking of the vaccination programme and of the validity and efficacy of the vaccines
00:49:24.600 that were used themselves, a whole list of things. Now, the interesting thing too, that panel had about 12,
00:49:32.200 15 basically medical people on it. It's been reacted to by the College of Physicians and Surgeons,
00:49:41.320 which has a list of people with medical credentials. And its report is contrary to what the scientific
00:49:48.760 advisory group of the government that it had at that time. So you have two groups of medical scientists
00:49:55.000 with conflicting views on what should have been done. And the bigger question is, how do you reconcile it?
00:50:01.160 How does a government bring science to bear on a public issue like the COVID issue when there's this
00:50:06.760 conflicting opinion within the science community? And we had a recommendation in that report of ours to
00:50:12.680 address that. Two recommendations. One is that the overall coordination of the response to a public
00:50:23.240 emergency like the pandemic should not be assigned to the subject department like the Department of
00:50:29.000 Health, because it's got broader ramifications in health. It should be assigned to the Alberta Emergency
00:50:35.160 Management Agency. That's what it's for. And if it had been responsible, it would have had a lot more
00:50:41.880 than just internal medicine people on that scientific advisory panel. It would have had a psychiatrist,
00:50:50.360 and it would have had people dealing with the mental health impacts. It would have had an economist. It
00:50:56.360 would have had a broader group. And our second recommendation was that that Alberta Emergency
00:51:02.760 Management Agency should have a senior science advisor whose job is to have an inventory of the
00:51:10.520 science that you need to deal with the issue, and who could adjudicate disputes between groups like
00:51:17.160 the panel that was currently done and the people that actually manage the crisis. So that's a long
00:51:24.600 rambling answer. But I think the bigger problem here is that you've got two groups, all with good
00:51:32.440 to the layman, good scientific credentials, but they don't agree. The College of Physicians and Surgeons
00:51:40.200 has labeled this report as misinformation. So how do you adjudicate that? And our suggestion was with the
00:51:47.640 senior science officer attached to the Emergency Management Agency. Well, I appreciate you laying that
00:51:54.760 all out and explaining the difference between the two reports, but I think both of them had the same goal. And
00:52:00.200 I actually think it's a good thing because the fact that scientists don't all agree,
00:52:06.280 doctors don't all agree, that's the reality of the world we live in. And that's the frustration
00:52:09.960 that so many of us had during COVID, when people like Justin Trudeau would say, we believe in science,
00:52:15.640 and our method is completely science-based. And it's like, well, no, it isn't, because we have scientists
00:52:21.000 over here that are saying the exact opposite thing. So I think proving the disagreement and proving that
00:52:26.280 there are different sides was kind of the point. I did want to ask you about the media response,
00:52:30.200 because from my perspective, it was quite hysterical, labeling it disinformation, misinformation,
00:52:37.000 you know, saying these people were anti-science. It brought me back to 2020 and 2021. It was like
00:52:41.240 we were there all over again, with all of these people in the media quoting experts,
00:52:46.280 saying that the other side was wrong. What did you think of the media response there?
00:52:51.240 Yeah, well, I think it's misguided. There were headlines. The worst reporting, I think,
00:52:58.920 on it was by the CBC, which is almost hopeless when it comes to reporting anything that's going on in
00:53:03.960 Alberta, or anything initiative by Premier Smith. But they had headlines that Alberta doctors oppose the
00:53:14.120 panel report. Well, there were as many Alberta doctors on the panel as there were
00:53:22.440 with the College of Physicians and Surgeons. That's just nonsense. And what is needed, though,
00:53:28.280 is when there is this conflict, some way of adjudicating it, and somebody with the responsibility to do
00:53:33.560 that, okay, we've got this group that's saying this, and this group saying this, let's hear the
00:53:37.160 arguments out, and see who carries our judgment. And we've tried to provide that mechanism. That
00:53:43.960 recommendation has not been acted upon yet by the Alberta government, but we're hopeful that it will.
00:53:49.880 Well, it's such a great initiative. And I appreciate you being one of the ones that was spearheading it.
00:53:55.400 President, I want to be respectful of your time. But you know, while I have you, I have to ask,
00:53:59.720 you know, we are just closing up nine, almost 10 years of Justin Trudeau's rule. And I think if you
00:54:05.880 look at public opinion polls, one of the sort of unfortunate, sad things that's happening is that
00:54:11.080 pride in Canada has gone way down. I think only 34% of Canadians now feel a pride in our country.
00:54:17.320 When you look around and you see just everything from crime to homelessness to drug addiction, the cost
00:54:25.000 of living, cost of groceries, cost of gas, the number of Canadians using a food bank, there's
00:54:29.400 every statistic that you look at economically, is bad. I mean, it's a sad state of affairs in Canada,
00:54:36.040 to say the least. I'm wondering, what can be done at this point in Canadian history? What's your sort
00:54:41.720 of final assessment of the Trudeau years? And what do you think it's going to take to turn Canada
00:54:46.760 around and turn ourselves into a great country once again?
00:54:49.880 Justin Trudeau Well, I think this Trudeau year, somebody's
00:54:54.280 labeled it a lost decade. Canada has lost international prestige. It's lost credibility
00:55:03.400 with the G7. It's lost credibility with NATO. It's lost credibility internationally. But the worst
00:55:09.640 effect is that it's lost its own self-confidence. And I think a major effort needs to be made to restore
00:55:17.880 that. And that's going to be dependent on the next government, which is not going to be, in my
00:55:22.200 judgment, is not going to be a liberal government. And I think there's things individual Canadians can
00:55:28.200 do. When you hear people trashing the country, and even ask your school children, ask your grandkids,
00:55:35.800 I would say this to seniors that are going to university, if they have a professor or a program
00:55:41.960 that is trashing the country, protest that. This is anti-Canadianism. Try and root out the anti-Canadianism
00:55:50.680 from our institutions. And one simple practical suggestion I've had to friends is to fly the flag.
00:55:59.240 You know, when you go to the U.S. and go through the Midwestern towns, or even in New England,
00:56:06.120 every eight or nine house has one of these American flags on it. Americans, for all their
00:56:15.480 faults that we continually point out, are basically proud of their own country. And one of the ways they
00:56:20.520 show it is to fly the flag. Well, why don't we fly the flag? Why don't we fly the flag? If somebody
00:56:25.640 watching and you're concerned about this anti-Canadianism, at least fly the flag. Fly the
00:56:29.880 flag on your house. Fly the flag on your business. Fly the flag on your church. Fly the flag as a symbol
00:56:35.960 that you have pride in what this country is and what it can become, and are opposed to anti-Canadianism
00:56:43.960 in all its shapes and forms. Well, I think that's a perfect note to end the interview. Preston Manning,
00:56:50.280 I really appreciate your time and your insights. Thank you so much for joining the show.
00:56:53.560 Well, thank you very much, Ken. It's good to talk to you.
00:56:55.960 It's always a pleasure. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you for tuning in. We will be back
00:57:00.680 again on Monday with all of the news. I'm Candace Malcolm. This is The Candace Malcolm Show.
00:57:04.360 Thank you and God bless.