DEFUND Foreign Aid
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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
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Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show. Happy Friday, everyone. We have a
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great show put together for you today. We're going to be joined in a little bit by Preston Manning
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to talk about Canada and the future of North America. Before we get to that, I just have to
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tell you about this unbelievable story that is breaking overnight and has been uncovered by the
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many, many wonderful people on the internet that exposes one thing, that our government is lying
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to us. So they're taxing Canadians, they're taxing more than ever, taking more and more of our hard
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earned money away, and they're wasting it on programs that are patently ridiculous and woke
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and absurd, even for this liberal government. And of course, as soon as Canadians start to notice
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this ridiculous waste, the government tries to back down, try to hide their scandalous spending,
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and try to lie about what it is that they found. Well, not so fast, because we are on to them.
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So here is what happened. It started when Conservative MP from Calgary Shubh Majumdar posted the following
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on X. This happened yesterday afternoon at around 1.49 Eastern on Thursday. And he wrote this,
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NDP liberals have wiped Global Affairs Canada's project database clean, hiding where your taxpayer
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dollars are going. What was once public is now erased. No transparency, no accountability.
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Really, truly unbelievable. And so to that tweet, I asked the following question. I said,
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what kind of crazy, woke nonsense are they funding and trying to hide? Well, at 2.10 p.m. yesterday,
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our friends over at Canada Proud posted this story as news. This is what they wrote. Breaking.
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Global Affairs Canada has suddenly wiped their entire public database of foreign aid spending,
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and the data is no longer available to the public. This is a big deal, folks. This is a big story.
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So two hours later, two hours after Canada Proud posted that, two hours, two and a half hours after
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Shubh Majumdar posted on X, this is at 4.19 p.m. Eastern time yesterday. Development Canada,
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which is the Department of Global Affairs Canada's X account, dedicated to international development.
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Well, this is what they posted to try to clarify the matters. They wrote,
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Global Affairs Canada's project browser is currently experiencing technical difficulties,
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and we are working to resolve this issue. The claims that it was taken down on purpose are false.
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Okay, convenient timing, wouldn't you say? At a time when Elon Musk is exposing the absolute rot
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and ideological radicalism of the programs over at USAID, suddenly the Canadian equivalent just happens
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to have technical difficulties and their website is down. And this is when everything starts to backfire
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on the Canadian government and its woke Department of Global Affairs. You see, when a community note
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was later slapped on that Canada Proud post, which by the way was going viral, it now has over 1.1 million
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views. Well, that community note, which you can see here, posted a link to the correct website
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containing all the information that we were looking for. And folks, this is why I just love the internet.
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Because as soon as that community note was slapped on to try to correct the record and say it was all
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just misinformation. Well, as soon as we got that link, the internet sleuths went to work. And I love
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this. Dozens of independent citizen journalists jumped into action and began uncovering the crazy
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woke nonsense. And oh, is there a lot of it. So just a sample of the craziness that we are funding
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with our tax dollars under the guise of foreign aid, $7.2 million for gender responsive health care
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in the Philippines, $1 billion to the Gates Foundation's vaccine alliance, $44 million to a
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climate food system fund in Luxembourg, $10 million for abortions in London, England, oh my goodness,
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$13 million for a rehab center in Bangladesh. Those are just a few of the dozens and dozens of examples.
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And we'll get to more, I promise. As True North's Clayton Demain dug up, we also give over a million
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dollars a year to the BBC, to Britain's state broadcaster. I guess bribing the journalists
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in Canada wasn't enough for the Justin Trudeau government. So they have to bribe the British
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state broadcaster. It makes no sense. And again, there's so much more, which we will get to in a
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minute. But first, let me just say that in an attempt to do damage control, Global Affairs handed
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us a link to the database of all the incredible, stupid, wasteful, perverse, and absolutely idiotic
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things that they are spending our money on. Now we have the list, we have the database, and all we have
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to do is defund it. And that is why today I am calling on the government to defund foreign aid,
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defund Development Canada, Global Affairs' foreign aid program that has been exposed as nothing more
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than embarrassing and wasteful, and an arm that promotes a twisted, woke agenda all over the world.
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Defund the entire Global Affairs Canada's Department of International Assistance, which has wasted over
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$52 billion from the fiscal year 2017 to 2023. My goodness, that money should be spent in Canada,
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not on these ridiculous programs. So folks, help me send this message to our elites. Head on over
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to my website right now, www.candicemalcolm.com, and sign this petition. Let's end the wasteful spending,
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end the ridiculous propaganda, and stop pushing this twisted, woke ideology on the world's poor
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and needy. Again, head on over to my website, candicemalcolm.com, sign the petition. We're going
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to send this message. Enough is enough, okay? We don't want to fund this stuff anymore. We don't
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like the ideas. We don't like the ideology. We don't want to do woke anymore. And we certainly don't want
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to be promoting this all over the world. It really is embarrassing. It's embarrassing, folks. This is what
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people all over the world will come to know Canada for, that Canada is the country that still believes
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in this ridiculous, perverse nonsense. So I'm going to show you the link to the actual website
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that I'm talking about. Sean, if we can pull that up for a second. Let me just find it here. This is
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the website that I'm talking about. And if you just take a look at the kinds of things that they are
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funding, even just the way they describe themselves, right? Canada's effort to address global issues.
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So the purpose of this department are actions to promote human dignity and a more just, inclusive,
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sustainable, and safe world, okay? So the purpose is diversity, equity, inclusion. And they're
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promoting this all over the world on behalf of Canada. Throw that back up, Sean. Just look at some
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of the things that they are doing. Canada's, the most requested right here on the right-hand side,
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you can see it. Canada's feminist international assistance policy. I mean, is anybody else sick
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and tired of this stuff? This is not how I want to be represented. This is not how I want people to
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think about Canadians, that we're pushing woke, intersectional feminist nonsense. Enough is enough.
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We really need to defund this entire department. And I hope you'll sign my petition so we can send
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this message to the elites, to the conservatives, to the liberals, whoever's going to be the next
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prime minister, whoever's going to win the next election. They need to put this in their sights
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and just get rid of it. Enough is enough. Just pull the plug. Do what Elon Musk is doing. They're
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creating a perfect model and example for us, and we should do the exact same thing. So I want to
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highlight some of these wonderful sleuths, the citizen journalists, the independent journalists
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on X. So there's one account here called votecanada.com, and they shared an archive snapshot
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of the database, giving plenty of examples, $75 million for an inclusive economic recovery,
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$751,000 for a community approach to gender equitable education, $7.2 million,
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for those gender reassignment surgeries in the Philippines. Another wonderful account here
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called Freedom of Goose. You got to follow this guy. He is hilarious. He writes, you dumb asses
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think you are smart by deleting access to the international funds section on Canada.ca. Well,
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you're not that bright. I got the whole data dump into a spreadsheet, a spreadsheet, be quick
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and smart next time. And so that account continues to give more information of just the kind of
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things that we have seen. There's a 91% spending increase in international assistance between 2021
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and 2023. So help me understand why they're doubling their budget at a time where Canadians
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are struggling. Canadians are using the food bank at record numbers. Canadians, more and more Canadians,
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more than half the country is less than $200 away from not being able to pay their bills.
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And we have something like 40% of Canadians are worried that if there's an interest rate hike
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increase, interest rate increase at the banks, they won't be able to afford their mortgages anymore,
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and they might lose their house. And meanwhile, we have our foreign aid budget doubling in that
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exact same time. It makes no sense. I'll continue reading here. Ukraine has received the most of any
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country with $5.8 billion in funds, $5.8 billion between 2017 and 2023, $18 billion going to Africa
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during that same time. Another one of these great YouTube accounts, or sorry, X accounts you should
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follow, TableSalt13, writes that there has been a $10 million contribution for something called
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actions buy-in for women to adapt climate change from Global Affairs Canada, that $44,000 climate fund
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in Luxembourg. And Ryan Gerritsen, another great X account to follow, writes that our government has
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given Gavi, the vaccine alliance founded by the Gates Foundation, almost a billion dollars. It truly,
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truly is unbelievable. And you know, you look down at what's happening with Trump in the States,
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and Elon Musk, sorry, with President Trump, President Trump and his efforts to basically
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just get rid of so much wasteful spending that's happening in the United States. And seeing what
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Elon Musk has come up with, Elon Musk has basically recommended that they completely defund USAID.
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Like he said, you know, you're looking for a few worms in a bad apple, and then you open it up and
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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
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been a lot of really funny stories that have been making the rounds in the US. You know, you had $15
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million for condoms to the Taliban. This is through USAID. $400,000 to promote atheism in Nepal. $47,000
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transgender opera to Colombia from the State Department. $32,000 LGBTQ comic book in Peru. $70,000
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for an Irish musical promoting DEI. And not to be outdone has $7 million for a BIPOC speaker series
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in Canada that was all funded by the Americans. No wonder they're getting rid of their program. And
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you know, it really is more than enough evidence that we need to do the same. Say it one final time,
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head on over to my website, CandiceMalcolm.com, sign that petition, help me send the message that we need
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to defund foreign aid in our country. Okay, I want to show one clip before I get to Preston Manning.
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And this is of Justin Trudeau. Justin Trudeau was speaking at a Black History Month reception
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in Ottawa. And things got a little weird. This is this is Justin Trudeau, I guess,
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letting his hair down in the last few days of work as Prime Minister of this country. And let's play that
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clip. One of the things that comes with knowing that you're on a countdown clock to your last day
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means you get to be really ruthless about the things you want to do, and the things that you
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don't want to do. So there it is, folks, I guess, be prepared. Trudeau is going to get ruthless. I
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wonder what he thinks the last nine years have been like. Now I guess he's going to show us what
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he really believes, what he really wants to do. Probably won't be defunding foreign aid,
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but that's okay, because he'll be gone soon enough. And hopefully the next government will listen.
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Okay, let's get to the big interview. I recorded this earlier with Preston Manning. And for those of
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you who don't know, Preston Manning is the founder and leader of the Reform Party, which was active in
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Canada from 1987 to 2000. He represented the constituency of Calgary Southwest in the House
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of Commons from 1993 until 2002. He served as the leader of the opposition from 1997 to 2000. And
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then he founded the Manning Foundation for Democratic Education. He's really just an absolutely incredible
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leader in Canada. We have so much that we can learn from him. And even, you know, in his retirement,
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he's still active in government. He recently chaired the review of Alberta's COVID-19 response
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and the national citizens inquiry. Did an incredible job. We get to all of it. This is really a wonderful
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interview. We talk about North America, about Trump. We talk about energy security and national
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security, the things that Canada needs to do if we're a serious country, if we wanted to take
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seriously our sovereignty and our independence. These are the things we need to do. And then later in the
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interview, we talk about the COVID response, how it diminished trust in institutions, and what
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Preston thinks that Canadians can do to fight back and to restore faith in our institutions. It's a great
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interview. And it was really my pleasure to conduct it. So without further delay, I will show you this
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interview now with myself and Preston Manning. Preston, thank you so much for joining the podcast.
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Yes, good to talk to you. It's great. Great to see you. And I'm really looking forward to this
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conversation. So first of all, let's start with Donald Trump and the tariffs that he threatened
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and then reversed. So, you know, right off the top, what is your takeaway on all of this?
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Well, I think it's necessary to go back to square one. What was the first instance in which he linked,
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even mentioned tariffs on Canada and Mexico? This goes back to November 2019, when he was
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president the first time. And he mentioned tariffs as a threat to try to get Canada and Mexico to be
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serious about stopping the illegal movement of people and drugs across the border into the United
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States from Canada and Mexico. That was what the threat was linked to. So it seems to me the
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starting point, and Premier Smith has made this point over and over again, would be to tighten up
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the border and stop illegal movement of drugs and people across that border from Canada or anything
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connected with it. And if the prime minister and the premiers are getting together, the first thing
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on their agenda should not be talking about tariffs. It should be talking, here's what we are going to
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do. Here's what we are doing to stop that illegal movement of drugs and people. And I think this
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business of getting off onto the tariff thing, when it was the illegal movement of drugs and people,
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it was the thing that triggered this, is a big mistake.
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Well, certainly. And I mean, we saw everybody jump into action. So going back to last Saturday,
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when Trump came out and said, yes, it's going to be a 25% tariff, 10% on energy, which I think you can
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credit that to Danielle Smith and the advocacy diplomacy that she did, that oil was only going
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to be 10%. Everything else was 25%. Trudeau instantly jumped in and said that they were going to retaliate
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with our own 25%. Now, luckily, we avoided all that, or at least for now, because Trump did just
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say that it's a 30-day pause and that we'll be revisiting it in March. By then, I think we'll have
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a new prime minister, Preston. But I want to point to your essay that you wrote in the National Post
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on January 30th, where you said Canada's response to Trump needs common sense, not mindless hysterics.
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So I think you would, you said that the political and media establishment got off on the wrong foot
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by responding foolishly rather than sensibly. Now, I just want to read a little bit from this,
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because I think you make such a good point here that is not being made elsewhere. You wrote that
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Trump is a businessman and a dealmaker. Common sense further suggests bringing a positive response
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to an item which clearly is on Trump's agenda, which also happens to be very much in Canada's
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interest, energy security. This is a subject dear to Trump's heart, referenced in his inaugural address
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and a front on which Canada can lead with its strengths, not its fears. And then you go on to
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say, thus, surely common sense suggests that the most important component of Canada's response to
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Trump, the Trump administration should be making North America more self-sufficient, especially with
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respect to energy. I didn't hear very many people making this case in this point. But it's so obvious that
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Canada and the United States need to be energy secure. So why don't you elaborate on that a little more?
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Well, and yes, from Canada's standpoint, what is the one front on which we are stronger and bigger than the
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United States? It's not population that we, they got a bigger population than us. It's not financial resources,
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they got more financial resources than us. It's not, we don't have the smartest government, that's
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certainly the case. But what we do have, because we're the second largest nation on the face of the
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earth, area wise, we have the largest or second largest stock of natural resources. That is Canada's
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strength. And it seems to me the second item on any agenda in dealing with the United States after
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cleaning up this border question is to say, what can we do to make North America more
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sufficient, self-sufficient, which is what Trump has talked about, and particularly self-sufficient in
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energy. And that's an area where we lead with our strengths, not our weaknesses. Ontario, Quebec,
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and BC particularly have a capacity to export much more electricity to the United States. Alberta,
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and Saskatchewan, of course, have the petroleum resources. Ultimately, no matter what Trump says,
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that North America will not be self-sufficient in petroleum without the exploitation of the
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Athabasca oil sands. So that, that's our strengths. And so it seems to me, if we're developing an agenda
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for talking to Trump, and you notice in his interviews, he uses the word deal about every
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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
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deal. He's a deal maker. So our second item, if we want to lead with our strengths, seems to me to be
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on this area of energy self-sufficiency in which Canada's got a great deal to offer. And let's not
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talk about tariffs. Let's talk about how to make this continent energy self-sufficient. This is getting,
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I'm showing my age on this, but the first time I heard the phrase continental energy security
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was from J. Howard Pugh with the Sun Oil Company back in the early 1960s. Pugh developed that first
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oil sands plant in Fort McMurray. He was 80 years old at the time. He was one of the richest men in the
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United States. You might ask him, what is this old guy doing up in Fort McMurray? He didn't need the
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money. The Sun Shipbuilding Company manufactured a lot of the tankers that were used to haul
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oil in the First and Second World War. Pugh was familiar with how many of those tankers had been
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sunk by submarine traffic and so forth. And he was convinced that North America was vulnerable
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from an energy standpoint, particularly a petroleum standpoint. He was going to go
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let the Texan boys go and find the conventional oil. He was going to go find the unconventional oil
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and develop it. So this is a subject that's been around for a long, long time. And it seems to me
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it's very much in Trump's mind and it's something that Canada should cater to. It ought to be the second
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item on our agenda and talking with them. Well, I agree that the most important issue is
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immigration and cleaning up the drugs. I know that Pierre Polyev is trying to hit that straight on with
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declaring that he would impose life sentences upon fentanyl dealers and kingpins in the drug war.
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But when it comes to energy security, Preston, I want to ask you because if it was an easy solution,
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I think we would have done it already. Obviously, Justin Trudeau's priority and agenda was towards the
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environment and making sure that everything was green. But it's led to a point where Canada now
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imports oil from the United States, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria that were not energy sufficient even in
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our own country, let alone as a continent. So how can we fix this and how can we actually make it so
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that we don't have to import oil? Well, first of all, we have to permit and encourage pipeline
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development in this country to be able to get Western resources to Eastern Canada. This has been stalled or
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objected to or obstructed by the Trudeau government and by the Quebec government. So getting the movement
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of petroleum in our own country would be an item I think that you're referring to. The other point is
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that the last people to make these arguments in Washington are the Trudeau gang. Trump thinks of
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Trudeau as a weak, narcissistic, lame duck leader. He's got no credibility there. Freeland is, in Trump's
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view, if he gave any thought to it, is the Canadian equivalent of Kamala Harris. Jolie, as a foreign
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minister, is considered a joke by our own foreign affairs people, let alone the Americans. Guy Beau is
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considered to be a climate change fanatic. These are people that ought to be sent on a cruise to
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Antarctica for the next six months and don't let them get anywhere near Washington. And this gets
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back to your point. There needs to be a change of government and get a government that is going to
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be credible with the Canadian people in dealing with Trump. And the sooner that can happen, the better.
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But even since all of this news came out and we saw a newfound approach, it seemed like all
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the parties suddenly wanted to break down interprovincial trade barriers and everybody was
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suddenly all in favour of trying to figure out pipelines. Even in that scenario, the Quebec Premier
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still came out and said no to Energy East pipelines. So how do we get something like that approved when you
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have sort of veto power by interests in Quebec? Well, I guess maybe the first place is to appeal
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to Quebec's own interests. Is Quebec interested in exporting more power to the United States as part of
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the continental energy security? If it wants cooperation from the federal government of the
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rest of the country with respect to that, then it's going to have to cooperate with respect to the
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government of petroleum. The worry in Quebec is that that government is in a lot of trouble too.
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If there's an election, provincial election next year, you're liable to get a separatist government
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elected in Quebec, which is even more opposed to pipeline development. So that's going to be a real
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internal problem for Canada and the next government, no matter who it is.
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Further to this idea about resource development, it was interesting. Steve Bannon, who used to be a
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close advisor to Donald Trump, he was on with Global News. I want to play part of this clip because
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so Steve Bannon, I'll set it up. He's a US media executive, political strategist, former chief
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strategist for Donald Trump. And he said that Canada and the Arctic has been thrust into the centre of a
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geopolitical war between Russia, China, and the United States. And so whether we like it or not,
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Canada is the centre of that. And we may choose to say we don't want to align ourselves with America,
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but the reality is if we don't, you have China and Russia knocking at the door. So let's play this clip,
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it's a bit longer, it's 45 seconds, but here he is explaining why Canada is so important.
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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,
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you are thrust into the middle of that. And quite frankly, you are the greatest, I don't know if
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target or prize. You're, you're like asking you, you're the great prize of that. That is that,
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as you awaken in the geo economically, he's saying, Hey, the United States market's so lucrative,
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you're going to have to pay a premium to get through the golden door, right? Canada could be
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all part of that. The geo economics of the, of North America combined in the geo strategic
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interest of North America combined, and particularly hemispheric defence all the way from Argentina
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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,
00:41:43.080
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.