The Candice Malcolm Show - Ditch Mexico and Deal Directly with America (with JJ McCullough)

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm and welcome to The Candice Malcolm Show. We have a great show for you today.

00:00:12.420 Thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget to like this video, subscribe to the channel.

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00:00:25.240 and never miss a story. Okay, we've got a lot to talk about. We're going to continue on with the

00:00:30.300 discussion of what is happening down in Washington with Trump's inauguration, this sort of big news

00:00:36.160 coming out. The executive orders are still coming in fast and furious. And we'll give you the latest

00:00:40.840 on the Canada-U.S. trade tariff discussions. But before we get into it, I want to welcome a guest

00:00:47.760 that we have on the program today, my friend JJ McCullough. JJ is a Canadian commentator and he

00:00:53.540 hosts one of the largest YouTube channels in the country focusing on politics and culture.

00:00:58.700 He also publishes his own sub stack, JJ McCullough's Short Stack. So go check that out and don't forget

00:01:03.840 to subscribe to him as well. JJ, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

00:01:08.080 Thanks for having me.

00:01:09.300 Okay, so let's get right into it. So it seems that Danielle Smith was the only Canadian representative

00:01:15.800 that was really visible at the inauguration. I didn't really see anyone from Team Trudeau down

00:01:21.760 there. And because she was there, because she was making the case to not have the tariffs and

00:01:27.880 oppose the idea of Canada having countervailing tariffs, we heard a lot of people kind of accusing

00:01:32.740 her of putting Alberta before the rest of the country, being selfish. Some people going so far

00:01:38.740 as calling her an appeaser or a traitor or talking about treason. We talked about that yesterday

00:01:43.840 on the show. So just before we get into what's happening today, JJ, what is your take on sort of

00:01:50.580 Danielle Smith, the diplomat, going down to Washington to try to try to calm Trump down?

00:01:56.200 Yeah, well, I mean, well, I think that you're right that that was sort of how she was characterized

00:01:59.600 on sort of the broad sort of left side of the Canadian commentariat. On the right end, it was

00:02:05.460 the complete opposite story. You know, I think that she's been portrayed as quite a hero, right? A lot

00:02:09.820 of I saw, you know, people saying things to the effect of like, you know, Danielle Smith saved the

00:02:14.480 Canadian economy, right? Like that, the fact that there were not tariffs on day one, as Trump had often

00:02:19.460 loudly promised, you know, some people have been willing to give her the benefit of the doubt as

00:02:24.720 far as that goes, that her sort of one woman diplomacy, you know, maybe softened him up a

00:02:29.800 little bit. I mean, we know that the president has sort of suggested that maybe it will be happening

00:02:34.720 on February 1. So I mean, if she bought us some time, I guess that's better than nothing. But you

00:02:40.480 know, I think it does sort of show, though, that one thing that we know about Trump and the Trump

00:02:45.120 administration is that, you know, it is it is ideological, it is sympathetic to conservative

00:02:49.620 people, it's sympathetic to people that can speak the conservative language. And I think that that is a

00:02:54.540 case for why, you know, people are rational to assume that Pierre Polyev could have a better

00:02:59.740 relationship with this particular president and this particular administration, then, you know, people

00:03:04.760 that I think the Trump inner circle increasingly identifies as being sort of contiguous with the

00:03:10.300 American left, which is to sort of say people from the sort of the Trudeau orbit. Well, you remember

00:03:15.340 when Justin Trudeau was first elected, it was a very tail end of Barack Obama, and they kind of painted

00:03:20.940 them as these two kind of similar politicians coming from the same sort of place in the ideological

00:03:26.520 spectrum. And they had this great relationship. And then Trump came in. It's interesting that you

00:03:31.260 mentioned all that because Danielle Smith was talking to reporters yesterday, and she talked about how

00:03:36.940 Canadians have to be non ideological when they are down dealing in Washington, it doesn't matter if

00:03:41.880 it's a Republican or a Democrat, you have to get along. And, you know, I think back to Harper and how

00:03:46.900 he had to work alongside Barack Obama, you know, they were on opposite ends of the spectrum. You know,

00:03:52.020 you had Trudeau and Trump really struggling in their relationship. First, let's let's play this clip

00:03:56.900 of Danielle yesterday. Let's be super clear about why we find ourselves in the situation that we're in

00:04:04.000 today. It lands 100% at the feet of Justin Trudeau, who even just a few weeks ago, gave a speech where

00:04:12.480 he thought it was an affront to women that Kamala Harris didn't win. We're in a trade negotiation

00:04:18.440 with a brand new administration. And we have a prime minister who keeps on poking his finger in the eye

00:04:26.200 of the current administration and has damaged that relationship. So if there's a failure,

00:04:30.920 it lands at his feet, which is why I'm counting down the days to when he's gone, and we can have

00:04:36.300 a reset. It's 47 days to go. And I hope he doesn't continue torching the relationship in the meantime.

00:04:42.380 All I can do is, is try to repair and build relationships that should have been repaired

00:04:49.680 and built over the last four years. That is what we do by having our office in Washington,

00:04:54.540 Washington. We have good relationships with people on both sides of the aisle, because that

00:05:00.040 is what diplomacy is. You have to be able to work with both Democrats and Republicans, and you have

00:05:06.800 to refrain from expressing a preference for who you would like in the White House. And so if there's a

00:05:12.820 failure of leadership, and if there's a damage to the relationship, it's 100% at the feet of Justin

00:05:18.560 Trudeau. Two sort of major points that she made there. One, it's 100% Justin Trudeau's fault.

00:05:24.560 This isn't Trump. This is Trudeau that's causing this. And then that second point about how it

00:05:28.920 doesn't matter which political parties in office, you have to be able to deal with both of them.

00:05:32.400 So what's your response to that, JJ? I mean, she's not being very diplomatic within a Canadian

00:05:37.780 domestic context, is it? Sort of saying that I can't wait to see the backside of Justin Trudeau,

00:05:43.200 right? So I mean, like, you know, I get what she's saying. And I think that we can all agree,

00:05:46.560 in theory, that that is true. You know, in theory, yes, what do they say? Politics stops at the

00:05:51.780 water's edge, right? Like when you're in the realm of foreign policy, yeah, you're supposed to put your

00:05:55.480 national interest above your partisan domestic interest. That's all well and good to say. But

00:05:59.620 I do think we are in a bit of a different world these days. I think that, and you saw this in terms

00:06:04.480 of like the international characters that were at Trump's inauguration parties, you know, you have

00:06:09.100 people, you know, representing, you know, sort of the European right, the British right, you know,

00:06:13.980 people are much more comfortable, I think, identifying with their ideological tribe in

00:06:19.480 a global context than they used to be. And I think there are a lot of people, you know, in this country,

00:06:24.340 elsewhere in the world, who identifies being on the political right and see Trump as a sort of

00:06:28.800 sympathetic figure and a figure whose, you know, motives are perhaps, you know, more relatable than

00:06:34.160 even some of the motives of their, of the left wing domestic politicians in their own country.

00:06:39.220 So I do think that, yeah, Danielle Smith can hold herself up as a sort of great diplomat in a kind

00:06:44.700 of, you know, objective sense. But, you know, if we're being honest, if we're engaging in plain talk

00:06:49.300 here, I think it's pretty clear that a conservative Canadian politician will have an easier time

00:06:53.680 making deals with Trump's Washington than the one on the left would.

00:06:58.460 Well, and I think that just given Trudeau's history, so, I mean, even the comments that Danielle

00:07:04.380 alluded to there, that he said that it was disappointing for all women and for the feminist

00:07:08.780 movements, something along those lines that Kamala Harris wasn't elected. Like, I find that

00:07:14.000 insulting to women. I mean, the idea that we would vote for a candidate who is wildly unprepared and

00:07:20.780 like very, not very bright, like not, not showing good leadership, but just because she's a woman,

00:07:25.720 we have to vote for her. And if we don't, it's because we hate, we're like deeply misogynistic or

00:07:29.740 something like that. Like that, that first of all, it's none of Justin Trudeau's business and he

00:07:33.400 shouldn't be talking like editorializing about a U.S. election when he's the one that has to deal

00:07:38.120 with the incoming president. And second, the point about how women should vote for women and feminist

00:07:42.220 men should vote for women was, was, was just abhorrent. And then you have Chrystia Freeland

00:07:46.660 as well, who, when she was the trade minister during the first NAFTA, which remember the NAFTA

00:07:52.920 trade deals originally went off the rails, like Trump uninvited Canada to it and said, I'm just going

00:07:58.180 to negotiate directly with Mexico because I don't want to put up with the Canadians. And then the

00:08:02.040 Canadians kind of had to plea to get back into it. And Chrystia Freeland was out there. She accepted,

00:08:07.360 I mentioned this on the show the other day, she accepted an award from foreign policy magazine

00:08:11.420 called diplomat of the year. And she went and gave this like speech about how like tyranny and

00:08:17.360 authoritarianism is on the rise. And she made a whole bunch of references to Trump. She had also sat on

00:08:22.240 a very anti-Trump panel in Washington, DC during one of the meetings, one of the trade negotiations,

00:08:27.640 like she wasn't trying at all to be diplomatic towards Trump whilst negotiating with him. She was doing

00:08:33.780 everything she could to sort of promote her own brand and her own, her own ideas on the world

00:08:38.460 stage. Trudeau did the same thing. Like, you know, he's the liberal's last best hope or whatever.

00:08:43.780 Yeah.

00:08:44.240 So I mean, I think that there's just really something there that, that it isn't just that

00:08:50.000 conservatives like getting along with other conservatives. Yeah, that's great. But there's

00:08:53.700 also something uniquely awful about how Trudeau has, has, has undertaken his relationship with

00:09:02.000 Trump from day one.

00:09:03.760 Yeah. Well, I mean, and that kind of goes to what I'm saying though, it's that,

00:09:06.600 you know, Trudeau and the liberal party and the liberal base sort of see themselves as contiguous

00:09:12.860 with, with the American left and with the democratic sort of left. Right. And so that there's a kind of

00:09:17.540 sense that, you know, there's a large sort of constituency in this country on the left, you know,

00:09:22.960 broadly speaking, who want to see their prime minister engage with Republicans in a kind of

00:09:30.260 partisan kind of American way. Right. So there's kind of a sense that like, you know, people on the

00:09:35.900 left in this country cannot really sort of compartmentalize the idea that like Trump and the

00:09:40.780 Republicans are like a foreign government and represent, you know, a party that Canada has to deal

00:09:46.480 with. There is a kind of sense that we have to engage with them as if they are domestic Canadian

00:09:51.340 political characters as well. And thus, in the same way that Trudeau has to maintain, you know,

00:09:55.680 a strong posture of opposition to Pierre Polyev and the conservative party and so forth in order

00:10:00.300 to appease his base. So too, does he have to maintain something approximating a similar posture

00:10:06.020 to the Republicans in the U S you know, obviously not going quite as far because I think even Trudeau

00:10:11.520 realizes that there's a limit that you can push those kinds of things, but he has to throw bones to

00:10:16.540 his own domestic political base. He has to show that, no, I'm not completely buddy, buddy with Trump.

00:10:21.700 I do understand that he's bad when it comes to women and all this kind of thing. Right.

00:10:25.540 Like that is part of sort of the fusion of the domestic and the international that we all sort

00:10:29.760 of now have to deal with. And, uh, you know, uh, Christia Freeland in her, her, um, her campaign

00:10:36.880 launch video, you know, makes a big deal about this. Like Donald Trump doesn't like me. Right.

00:10:41.160 Which is again, like, is that a message that says anything about her, her competence or her

00:10:46.100 skillset as a prime minister or as a diplomat? Not really. It suggests that that's going to be a

00:10:50.860 source of tension, but that is a message that will be attractive to many liberals who don't like

00:10:55.860 Donald Trump as a kind of partisan figure and sort of view a candidate that is adversarial towards him

00:11:02.180 in just a kind of like purely, you know, aesthetic sense or, or, or, you know, whatever,

00:11:07.360 like that is a, that is a benefit. And I don't know to what extent you can ever fully transcend

00:11:12.240 this because it's not, it's not entirely irrational, right? Like, I mean, people on the

00:11:16.760 right in this country, like I said before, we'll look at Democrats and see them as, as flawed and

00:11:21.340 bad in all sorts of ways. So it, it, it is like, I do have sympathy for the challenge of being able

00:11:26.480 to sort of completely compartmentalize domestic politics from international politics.

00:11:31.460 Well, especially in North America, where our politics, as much as we try to pretend that we have

00:11:35.400 a completely different and distinct political culture. There's so much overlap. We could get

00:11:40.920 to that a little more. I know as one of our topics to talk about. But when it comes to, well, I, first

00:11:46.360 of all, I didn't understand Chrystia Freeland's pitch. Like even if you were a liberal, it's not 2016

00:11:51.640 anymore, right? Like the whole point isn't just to be the anti-Trump. Like we're, we're actually in a

00:11:55.200 situation where our economy is like completely reliant upon American trade. And if they cut us off,

00:12:01.280 or if they do this 25% tariff, it will be terrible for the country. So sending someone to Washington

00:12:07.100 that doesn't like Trump, I don't get that pitch. I don't understand that. But again, I'm, I'm not a

00:12:12.880 Canadian liberal, so maybe that's why I don't understand. Danielle Smith though, it's, it's kind of

00:12:18.780 interesting because she's sort of stepped up. I mean, when I watch her and when I listen to her, when I read

00:12:23.020 her, completely like my honest opinion, my personal opinion is like, she is representing what I want

00:12:29.760 better than any other Canadian politician, including Pierre Polyev. Like she has come out

00:12:33.860 much more stronger. Um, it's interesting because, uh, Kevin O'Leary, who's the, you know, the investor

00:12:39.160 and businessman who's sort of facilitating the relationship, the friendship between Trump and

00:12:43.900 Danielle Smith, uh, reportedly, she was the one that he was the one that invited Smith down to Mar-a-Lago.

00:12:48.900 Um, he initially said that he wanted Pierre Polyev to come down and meet, um, Donald Trump and go to

00:12:54.660 Mar-a-Lago. I found it of note that Polyev didn't do that. I'm sure it would be a sort of

00:12:59.680 political suicide to be down there. Um, you know, being photographed in Trump's home turf and being

00:13:05.320 seen as inserting himself in there. Um, but I, I wonder what your thoughts are on Polyev and how

00:13:11.980 he's handling this. He's, he's kind of not getting involved and allowing the premiers to play a bigger

00:13:16.320 role and sort of staying out of it. Yeah. I think that, I think that your basic analysis is, is right.

00:13:22.380 We, we might remember that, uh, when Danielle Smith, uh, hosted that big gathering of sort of

00:13:28.580 conservative luminaries in, uh, I think in Calgary and in Alberta with, you know, Jordan Peterson and

00:13:34.160 Conrad Black and Tucker Carlson. And, and, you know, like there was a lot of conservative

00:13:37.820 politicians there from both the federal and provincial level, but Pierre Polyev was very

00:13:41.800 conspicuously not there. And I think that that sort of says something about his desire to kind of

00:13:48.220 maintain a certain distance from, you know, I guess what we could call the sort of more Trumpy sort

00:13:54.000 of right, which I think Danielle Smith has been associated with. Like it is interesting that

00:13:58.400 she and Pierre Polyev in general kind of feel like two ships passing in the night. Like has she done

00:14:04.380 like rallies alongside him? I mean, it doesn't, I don't know, maybe she has, but it certainly doesn't

00:14:09.140 seem like they're, uh, people that we think of as being sort of joined at the hip in any sort of

00:14:14.380 meaningful sort of partisan sense. And I think that, you know, Pierre, as much as he is a, you know,

00:14:19.100 much more sort of combative, uh, sort of figure than some of the previous conservative leaders

00:14:24.020 we've had, you still do see that kind of instinct of caution that always sort of defines conservative

00:14:29.600 national campaigns. You know, the idea that we can play with, uh, with certain issues, but there's

00:14:35.080 certain lines that we just don't cross. And I think in some ways it actually works to Pierre's

00:14:38.920 advantage to have someone who, uh, you know, is so identifiably a conservative as Danielle Smith to do

00:14:45.200 some of these things that would be more sort of, uh, possibly political domestic liabilities for Pierre

00:14:50.940 to do. So yeah, even if they're not, uh, necessarily, uh, you know, joined at the hip, I do think that

00:14:57.660 they, there's a sense in which they're working as an effective tandem team to serve, uh, the larger

00:15:03.320 interests of, uh, of, of the goal of a conservative victory, which as Danielle Smith said in that clip

00:15:08.580 you just showed remains a very much her, uh, her big goal. Yeah. And Pierre's just so skillful at it

00:15:14.400 that you don't really notice it, but he is completely cautious. Like even when he was asked

00:15:18.740 about, um, you know, the export tariffs and, and whether there should be any kind of measures,

00:15:23.860 uh, blocking Canadian oil, you know, he, he just pivoted right back to, you know, this is all

00:15:28.180 Trudeau's fault and look at all these pipelines we could have built and we could have actually

00:15:31.220 diversified markets. Like, like, like he doesn't engage in the politics of it at all. He just goes

00:15:35.820 right back to the policy. Whereas Danielle will be the one saying, I agree with Pierre a hundred

00:15:40.000 percent, but you're right. You don't necessarily see it back. Well, you know, there was a lot

00:15:44.340 of consternation about, um, Danielle Smith and, and the idea that she didn't want to sign that,

00:15:49.880 um, premier's, um, the meeting of the premier. She didn't want to sign, um, the statement that they

00:15:55.540 all put out together, um, that she said that cutting off energy should be off the table. Interesting

00:16:00.520 that, uh, the bloc Quebecois leader, um, Yves-Francois Blanchet came out basically in support of

00:16:06.560 Danielle Smith. Here's, uh, an article from the Canadian press yesterday. He says that cutting off

00:16:11.840 energy exports to the United States is absurd. Um, and so you don't, you don't usually have this

00:16:17.680 alignment, JJ, where you have the, you know, hard, hard right conservatives in Alberta in agreement

00:16:22.960 with the federal, um, block. Uh, this is a map that Danielle Smith has talked about. Um, and it's

00:16:28.660 just, it's, it needs to be shown because if you look at how central Canada gets its oil, it comes from

00:16:35.320 Alberta, but it goes via the United States. You can see line five and line nine cut through Mexico,

00:16:40.260 uh, through Michigan, uh, down to Sarnia and back in. So if you cut off oil to the United States,

00:16:46.640 or even if you put in some kind of a, of a levy, um, anything, you would be cutting off

00:16:52.260 energy to central Canada. So it is absurd. It is completely absurd on its face, but just interesting

00:16:58.160 to hear, um, you sort of more of a traditionally left-wing politician from Quebec in agreement.

00:17:03.200 Uh, what's your take on this? Yeah. I mean, that is interesting because, uh, you know,

00:17:07.640 not to put too fine a point on it, but a lot of Quebec politicians often have quite a demagogic

00:17:12.760 position when it comes to Albertan oil, which, you know, they do often again for like domestic

00:17:18.020 Quebec political consumption. It's often sort of a very fashionable thing to, uh, to rally against

00:17:23.600 perhaps in the abstract. But, uh, you know, what you're seeing now is that sort of when push comes

00:17:28.160 to shove, a lot of people, uh, you know, on the political left are willing to concede that there's

00:17:33.320 certain economic realities about this, this, uh, this continent that, uh, you don't really want to,

00:17:39.000 uh, fiddle with. Like we've seen the same thing here in British Columbia where, you know, some of

00:17:42.940 the first nations, uh, leaders who had previously been opposed to all pipelines and this sort of

00:17:47.480 thing are now abruptly changing their tune because they're like, well, actually maybe this stuff

00:17:51.780 actually matters. Maybe, you know, the ensuring the flow of oil and, uh, ensuring sort of Canada's,

00:17:57.000 uh, energy, uh, you know, livelihood is actually something that matters a great deal. So it is

00:18:02.060 interesting to see sort of people, you know, to put some of their ideological priors aside and

00:18:06.920 actually for the first time kind of think in a, in a kind of self-interested national interest

00:18:11.660 kind of way, instead of just always kind of playing to sort of domestic, uh, ideological

00:18:17.420 abstractions. And, you know, that's, that's a good thing because I do think that as one of the

00:18:21.920 things that's held Canada back as a, as a nation is not being able to think in these kind of like

00:18:26.760 rational self-interested, what is good for the country, what is good for the people of this

00:18:31.260 country, what is good for the economy of this country, as opposed to sort of chasing, yeah,

00:18:35.080 again, sort of more ideological, uh, flights of fancy, which can seem like the, uh, the privileges

00:18:40.480 of, uh, of a society in which everything is just, you know, stable and there's never any sort of

00:18:45.400 threat of fundamental disruption. Right. I was just thinking, as you're saying that they're kind

00:18:49.300 of luxury beliefs. And I do think that the sort of like green era that Trudeau sort of became the

00:18:54.380 face of is over. I mean, if you just even look at like the very first executive order Trump signed

00:18:59.400 yesterday was getting rid of the, or exiting the Paris accord, like, like the Paris agreement on

00:19:04.300 climate that's over, right. That the whole idea that we can like tie up different pipelines because

00:19:10.840 we want to, um, send a message. It's like, you know, there's a cost of living crisis in, in Canada.

00:19:16.560 Um, like one in four Canadians use a food bank, right? Like we have a total spiraling, uh, when it

00:19:22.660 comes to things like crime. I mean, Canada's in pretty rough shape right now. I don't know,

00:19:27.120 um, how much you're feeling it out there in British Columbia. I mean, in my mind, JJ is,

00:19:32.160 I feel like there's always been a certain subset of problems in Vancouver and rather than fixing

00:19:37.480 those, they've just now spread across the entire country. Right. Like when I was growing up, we had

00:19:42.100 like the Lower East side of Vancouver, which was just like an ungodly, like undignified place where

00:19:47.160 people were just treated in the worst possible way imaginable. Um, and it was a little pocket and you

00:19:52.800 could kind of ignore it. Um, and now you have those little pockets like in, in cities and even

00:19:57.800 towns all over the country with like out of control drug use. Um, and you know, that, that when I

00:20:04.200 graduated from university, I couldn't afford an apartment in Vancouver. So I lived with my parents

00:20:08.640 while I had my first job. Um, and the idea of home ownership in Vancouver, in the neighborhood

00:20:13.000 that I grew up in was like totally, I couldn't even fathom it. Right. Like I think the average house

00:20:17.700 in Vancouver, even back then in like the early two thousands was like millions of dollars and that

00:20:21.940 was like a Vancouver problem. And now it's like everywhere in the entire country. So like the

00:20:26.480 problems that have been happening in Vancouver have, have kind of exploded, but I just, I can't

00:20:32.460 imagine that, um, that, that the political beliefs, especially the environmentalism is going to continue

00:20:38.260 to lead the charge. Um, and, and you can see this because the liberal candidates, I don't think any of

00:20:43.940 them are running on a carbon tax. I think they've all flipped like Mark Carney's doing away with it.

00:20:48.720 Um, Chrystia Freeland said that she's not going to go for it. I, I think that like the carbon tax

00:20:53.340 is basically done, which is a victory, um, for Canadians victory for those of us who have said

00:20:58.360 that we don't need another tax in this country. Uh, what's it, what's your take on all that?

00:21:02.760 Yeah. I mean, I, I agree that it's like, it's, it's the good policy outcome. It is a little bit,

00:21:08.800 uh, of, uh, a worrying development, I think, as far as the conservative, uh,

00:21:13.280 national campaign goes though, because Pierre has put a lot of eggs in the, uh,

00:21:17.680 acts, the tax basket, right? We know that like all of the branding of the campaign is based around

00:21:23.040 the idea that this is going to be a carbon tax election and there's, you know, carbon tax

00:21:26.900 Carney and carbon tax Christia. I remember when Christy Clark was running as like the queen of

00:21:31.560 the carbon tax. It's like a very sort of, you know, like one note, uh, uh, a campaign to date,

00:21:36.760 because I think, you know, Pierre, again, then this gets to sort of the inherent cautiousness of

00:21:40.640 the conservative party, which is there's like, this was like an objectively safe issue to run

00:21:46.140 on. Everyone hated the carbon tax. It was bad on the merits. It wasn't even good as an, as a tool of

00:21:50.840 environmental policy. Like no one could be pro carbon tax. And therefore it was the safest,

00:21:55.860 most focused tested sort of issue to run on. But you're right. Like if we're now in a kind of like

00:22:00.140 new political paradigm in which sort of not just the carbon tax, but kind of like green policy stuff

00:22:05.720 in general is, is sort of fallen out of fashion, you know, then the conservatives do need to be

00:22:11.260 kind of nimble and sort of adapt a message as opposed to just kind of saying, well, I don't

00:22:16.100 believe you. I mean, maybe that works as a political message. Maybe you can still fight an issue, an

00:22:21.260 election over a carbon tax when all the candidates claim to be opposed to it. But, you know, it definitely

00:22:26.700 makes their political game a little bit, a little bit harder. I mean, it's not to say that there's no

00:22:30.920 other issues that they could run on certainly, but, but yeah, there's a, you know, it's, it's not

00:22:36.240 entirely good news for the, for the CPC. Well, I think that there's multiple like ballot box

00:22:41.760 questions, right? Like I think that the liberals want to make the election about who can best defend

00:22:46.540 Canadian interests to Donald Trump. And I think that's valid. Like that is the most important.

00:22:52.560 I mean, if the tariffs go through, they'll destroy our economy, what's left of it. So having a strong

00:22:57.540 position there is important. The conservatives, it's not just the tax, right? It's cost of living,

00:23:02.520 like the entire system of, of, of everything from, um, housing to immigration to like all the taxes.

00:23:09.600 Um, and just the lack of, um, you know, just not competitive. Like we don't have competitive

00:23:15.180 policies. We're driving away entrepreneurs. Uh, I had Max and Bernie on the podcast yesterday and he

00:23:20.280 believes the, the ballot box question should be about mass, uh, deportations and mass immigration. I mean,

00:23:26.480 when I asked him about deportations, he, he didn't really have an answer about what, like who, who he

00:23:31.680 would deport and how many and all that kind of stuff. But he did say that he would put a total

00:23:35.320 moratorium on immigration if he was prime minister, which won't happen. But, um, I, you know, it's,

00:23:41.080 it's interesting to, to imagine which of these three would be the main issue in an election. Um,

00:23:46.260 because any of them would be a valid, uh, question. I think, I think the immigration

00:23:50.180 question specifically it's flipped. Like majority of Canadians now say we need to stop. We have too

00:23:57.560 many immigrants and we need to have mass deportations. Um, so what was your thoughts on

00:24:02.240 all that? Yeah, no, I mean, I've, I've witnessed that, uh, as well. I mean, I've, this is an issue

00:24:07.100 that I've been writing about for, for a while in the sense that I think that, you know, cause the line

00:24:11.640 that you always hear is that there was a consensus about immigration in this country. And I very much

00:24:16.320 disagree with that narrative. I don't think there ever really was a consensus. I think you

00:24:19.580 always kind of had like a third of Canadians who basically wanted immigration to stop a third of

00:24:24.320 Canadians who wanted the immigration rate to freeze. And then, you know, a third of Canadians

00:24:27.640 who wanted the immigration system to stay status quo or increase. Right. So it's always been a very

00:24:33.100 divisive issue in, in this country. And I think what's happening now is just that, that faction of

00:24:38.960 the pie chart who are in favor of, of, you know, ending or like dramatically limiting immigration or

00:24:44.800 freezing immigration rates. That group is just much more ascendant. And I think that they've gotten

00:24:48.840 a much more sympathetic, uh, ear from the press than they used to. And that, that opinion,

00:24:53.420 which has so long been sort of stigmatized as being, you know, un-Canadian and bad and all the

00:24:57.660 rest of it is now something that people talk about openly, read about in the Globe and Mail

00:25:01.580 editorial page, you know, and politicians speak about it openly because yeah, there is a sense that,

00:25:06.340 you know, immigration has some responsibility for the cost of living, for the housing crisis,

00:25:11.520 you know, just for the taxing on, on, uh, on resources in general, whether that's,

00:25:15.160 you know, the medical system or the public transportation or, or whatever else. Right.

00:25:19.960 So there is a kind of a sense where this is a clear opportunity, I think, for a political

00:25:25.040 party that has the courage to, to capitalize on it. And obviously you don't have to go full PPC

00:25:29.580 about it and be a real sort of demagogue and zero immigration and this kind of thing.

00:25:33.540 But it, it seems very obvious to me that there is a moment now where the public and the media,

00:25:38.440 uh, and the political class are receptive to the idea of, of some level of immigration cuts.

00:25:43.720 I mean, we've seen that the Trudeau government itself has introduced immigration cuts and is

00:25:47.340 musing about, you know, deporting people who are overstaying their visas when the time for that

00:25:51.380 comes. So I, I know that, again, this is an issue that the conservatives, uh, are very cautious about,

00:25:57.940 you know, I think that there still is this kind of legacy of Jason Kenney, which I think is not

00:26:01.760 entirely justified that sort of like the, the immigrants are now voting for the conservatives and

00:26:06.340 these are our people and we can't dare sort of offend them in any possible way, even though I think when

00:26:11.000 you actually poll immigrants, a lot of them have sort of, uh, you know, quote unquote, surprisingly,

00:26:15.300 uh, sort of, uh, adversarial, uh, opinions of the immigration system in this country.

00:26:20.620 So it'll be interesting to see if, if, if Pierre goes for it, if he seizes this as an issue that he

00:26:26.600 can talk about in, in any sort of forceful way, as opposed to just, uh, you know, Trudeau has made a

00:26:31.500 mess of things kind of, you know, sort of deflecting it into a kind of partisan way. But yeah, I agree with

00:26:36.220 you. I think that it, it certainly deserves to be one of the big three issues that, uh, Canadians

00:26:40.760 are voting on in the next, uh, in the next federal election. Well, one of the things I found

00:26:44.840 interesting just as a juxtaposition with the Americans is, uh, I think Donald Trump did very

00:26:49.700 well among minorities. I don't have the stats in front of me, but I think he did really well,

00:26:53.900 especially among sort of like, uh, people, Americans that are originally from India and even among

00:26:59.660 Muslims, uh, which doesn't, uh, you know, that, that doesn't sound like that would be correct

00:27:05.140 given Trump's, uh, first, uh, term in office in the so-called Muslim ban. But I think that

00:27:10.240 a lot of people just vote for him because they agree with his values and they agree with his

00:27:13.880 sort of strong position on America. Um, but you, you don't see pandering, um, from Trump to

00:27:20.560 ethnic minorities. You don't see the kind of vote bank politics. You don't see him, you know,

00:27:24.920 showing up and wearing Indian garb or, you know, dressing in the, that seems like a distinctly

00:27:30.820 Canadian thing. And it's not just a liberal thing. It's not just Trudeau that does it.

00:27:34.060 You know, you mentioned Jason Kenney, um, conservatives do it as well. Do you think

00:27:37.720 that's just like a permanent part of Canadian public life now, or do you think that there's

00:27:41.220 any chance that we'd get away from that? Well, it's, it's, it's interesting. I mean,

00:27:45.080 Pierre has sort of recently made the, uh, the quip about how he doesn't want to see a sort

00:27:50.340 of hyphenated Canadians that we're all Canadians and this kind of thing. You know, I think that's

00:27:53.960 a line that Diefenbaker used a million years ago. So, I mean, I don't know, maybe he's making sort

00:27:58.220 of soft gestures in that direction, but you're, you're right though. Like this is a very entrenched

00:28:02.320 aspect of not just sort of conservative politics, but Canadian politics in general,

00:28:06.040 that like the way that you win immigrant votes is by basically sort of pandering to them on a sort

00:28:11.860 of cultural level. It's like you, you send out the Instagram posts that says you, you know,

00:28:17.000 happy, whatever holiday to them and this kind of thing. Like, you know, and like you say,

00:28:21.440 you show up at the festivals, you wear the clothing and that kind of stuff. And, you know,

00:28:25.000 that is what the Democrats tried as well in the States. And I think that there is an attitude among

00:28:29.460 a lot of immigrant communities that that stuff does become a bit cringe. It does become a bit

00:28:33.760 condescending. It becomes a bit one note because it sort of suggests that like, no matter how long

00:28:37.780 you've been in this country, you're still sort of fundamentally of that other place and that your

00:28:43.080 mind doesn't resonate with issues of crime and affordability and whatever else. No, you're,

00:28:48.000 you're only care about cultural issues and the immigration system itself. Like those are your

00:28:52.940 two issues. And, you know, Trump's victory, I think disproves that thesis in quite dramatic ways,

00:28:59.680 right? Like not only did Trump was sort of not interested in that kind of stuff, he ran a very

00:29:04.160 hard anti-immigration platform as he always does. And a lot of immigrants are sympathetic to that

00:29:09.020 because, you know, again, immigrants are people just like you and me, and they can have, you know,

00:29:13.700 sometimes this is deeply hypocritical, but nevertheless, sometimes they can have a very

00:29:18.460 harsh attitudes towards other immigrants and a very different standard for their own family.

00:29:23.380 I mean, there's been some stories that suggest that even illegal immigrants were more pro-Trump this

00:29:28.720 time around. And a lot of illegal immigrants, you know, were happy to support him because they don't

00:29:33.260 sort of conceptualize themselves as being part of the bad ones. They think of themselves as being part

00:29:37.640 of the good ones. So yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's a, it's a much more sort of like nuanced issue. And

00:29:42.260 I don't think that the Jason Kenney sort of thesis of it is really being borne out much by,

00:29:49.880 by new facts that we're seeing.

00:29:51.940 Well, I think Jason was right when he was talking about the fact that conservative values are

00:29:55.840 prevalent in immigration, in immigrant communities, like, like talk to them about issues that we care

00:30:00.920 about, like faith and freedom and all these kinds of things, family. And you can connect with them on

00:30:06.200 that. I think that he was correct on that. But when it came to, you know, yeah, some of the more

00:30:12.060 pandering things, that's, I think, where, where it's gone off track. And, you know, here we are

00:30:16.220 a decade later, and not much has changed in terms of conservatives still doing that. I want to get

00:30:21.780 back to the news here, JJ, because let's talk about Trump and basically what he's doing with

00:30:28.040 these tariffs. So yesterday, he was signing executive orders. I love how he has the press in

00:30:33.520 there, like in his office while he's working and just shouting questions. That's just like,

00:30:37.080 I love it. But here he is, he's asked a question about whether the tariff threat against Canada is

00:30:42.940 really just a renegotiation tactic for the USMCA, which is a, which is the new NAFTA trade

00:30:50.040 agreement. And Trump says, no, it's, it's all about drugs. It's all about fentanyl. And Canada

00:30:54.400 is sending millions and millions of people into the country. So let's play that clip.

00:30:58.700 Are you able to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico in an effort to force negotiations

00:31:03.560 sooner on USMCA? No, it's really not on USMCA. It has nothing to do with that. They've allowed

00:31:12.200 both of them in Canada, very much so. They've allowed millions and millions of people to come

00:31:18.380 into our country that shouldn't be here. They could have stopped them. And they didn't. And

00:31:23.040 they've killed 300,000 people last year, my opinion, have been, have been destroyed by drugs,

00:31:30.580 by fentanyl. The fentanyl coming through Canada is massive. The fentanyl coming through Mexico is

00:31:37.520 massive and people are getting killed and families are being destroyed.

00:31:43.520 So, sorry, that wasn't him at his desk. That was him at a press conference later, but the same,

00:31:47.640 you know, he says that Canada's let millions and millions of people. And I'm not sure

00:31:51.100 exactly what he's talking about there or the idea that fentanyl coming through Canada is massive.

00:31:56.160 That's probably true. Let's play this other clip as well, because here he's asked specifically

00:32:00.120 about the percentage of the tariffs. And he says 10% for China, 25% for Mexico. I don't know why

00:32:08.480 China's getting a better deal, getting off easier than we are. I don't know if he misspoke here too,

00:32:13.300 because when he says 25, he actually says Mexico and China. I think he meant Mexico and Canada, but

00:32:17.480 I'll get your thoughts on it. Let's just play this clip first.

00:32:21.060 About that too. We're talking about a tariff of 10% on China based on the fact that they're sending

00:32:26.980 fentanyl to Mexico and Canada. How soon on those tariffs?

00:32:33.460 Probably February 1st is the date we're looking at. For Mexico and China, we're talking about

00:32:40.160 approximately 25%. I don't know if that was a Freudian slip where he was thinking of Canada,

00:32:48.440 but he said China. What are your thoughts on that, JJ?

00:32:51.640 Well, I mean, I have a few thoughts. One of the thoughts, and this is sort of like a contrarian

00:32:58.640 opinion I have that I wish would sort of become a little bit more mainstream, is that I do think

00:33:02.640 some of this is just rooted in what I think was a historic mistake for Canada to tie its sort of

00:33:08.660 diplomatic identity to Mexico in the American mind. I don't know if we would necessarily be in this

00:33:14.900 place today if we were not, you know, several decades ago so determined to make Mexico and

00:33:21.940 Canada sort of linked together as one sort of diplomatic unit in the eyes of the Americans.

00:33:26.880 Because I do think that Trump's sort of negative attitude towards Mexico is being sort of projected

00:33:32.880 on to Canada. And this idea that these are like sort of the two nations on both sides of the U.S. and

00:33:38.920 you know, they both sort of operate in tandem and the problems of one are the problems of the

00:33:42.860 other. You know, Mexico has a drug problem, therefore Canada has a drug problem. And I think

00:33:46.600 there's even kind of a sense that like when you speak of both of these countries, it sort of

00:33:51.260 protects you a little bit from the prejudice of sort of singling out Mexico. But I do think that

00:33:55.460 this is definitely something that Canadians have to think a lot about going forward is the degree to

00:34:01.100 which we do, I think, need to sever the relationship with Mexico and have a bilateral relationship with

00:34:06.580 the U.S. when it comes to all of these important, you know, questions about the economy and the

00:34:10.980 border and drugs and the migration of people and all that kind of stuff. Because it just

00:34:15.060 seems to me pretty obvious that we are being dramatically held back through our association

00:34:19.640 with Mexico, even if it's just that sort of the rhetorical level that you see Trump lapse

00:34:24.220 into so easily. The other thing I would think about it as well is that it is kind of remarkable

00:34:28.520 how during the Trump's first term, the big sort of panic that people in this country in sort of the

00:34:36.100 commentariat were having was this idea that like, oh, all of these migrants are sort of leaving

00:34:41.360 Trump's America and flowing into Canada, right? Like that was very much the issue that dominated

00:34:46.540 the editorial pages for years. And it's interesting now that like Trump perceives the problem in a

00:34:52.100 completely opposite way. It's that Canadian people are sort of flooding into Canada, which then sort of

00:34:56.840 makes it seem like, you know, it's much more sort of Canada's responsibility to control its flow of

00:35:01.440 people as opposed to the way it was previously, which was that all of the blame was on America for not

00:35:05.320 controlling its flow of people into, into this country. So that's, that's interesting, to the extent

00:35:10.140 that it signals that there is now kind of a, a bipartisan or not bipartisan sort of, sort of transnational

00:35:16.820 consensus that the border is something that matters and that border security is, is, is something that, that

00:35:22.320 matters quite a bit. And I guess that's a positive development. I mean, I feel I have sort of mixed feelings

00:35:27.820 about that just because I do want to see a much sort of more integrated and sort of more seamless sort of

00:35:32.860 passage of, of people between Canada and the U.S. I mean, I think the Mexico border is, is obviously a

00:35:39.680 whole other sort of issue. And I, again, like it goes back to what I was saying before, it's like, I would

00:35:44.580 not like to see the Canadian U.S. border sort of thicken in this dramatic and vindictive way, simply to

00:35:53.320 appease Trump's anxieties about the Mexican border, which I think are much more, you know, valid.

00:35:59.720 I completely agree with you. I hadn't, to be honest, hadn't heard that perspective before about

00:36:04.000 how Canada's tied its ship too much to Mexico, but you're absolutely right. Like, like I hear,

00:36:10.120 this is, this is what I hear in reaction to the Trump thing from a lot of conservatives and people

00:36:14.220 who I usually agree with and respect, but they basically say Canada needs to stand on its own

00:36:18.920 two feet. We need to beef up our military. We can't rely on the United States anymore. We need

00:36:24.000 to thicken that border, like kind of some of the things you say there. And I just, I just don't agree

00:36:29.300 with that. I don't think it's a good use of our resources. Like, yes, I think we should get to

00:36:32.900 the 2%. I think that, um, like I've advocated in the past for some kind of a national service that

00:36:38.640 like young Canadians should go and like work in the military for two years and get some skills and

00:36:43.800 toughen up and have some unity amongst them. Um, and that would help get to the 2%, but that's

00:36:49.600 another conversation. Um, but the idea that, that somehow we need to like build up, become our own

00:36:55.700 superpower basically to rival the Americans. It's just, it's not going to happen. Right. And so the

00:36:59.960 way that I see it, if you're just being completely realistic and completely honest is imagine 50

00:37:04.440 years from now, or a hundred years from now where China, possibly Russia, possibly Iran are actual

00:37:11.060 adversaries, adversarial like aggressors, and they want the Arctic, they want the North, like they're

00:37:16.620 going to take it. Right. And Canada's only chance for that not happening is an alliance with the

00:37:22.480 United States in some shape or form. And so whether that is Canada becoming the United States,

00:37:27.140 which is now the meme that's floating around and seems to be Trump's preferred statement,

00:37:31.080 or if we just kind of continue the relationship that we had up until like 10 years ago, where we

00:37:37.100 have, we, we, we are in deep agreement about our, our, our borders that, that, that it's like a

00:37:43.680 continental shield around the North America, not a thick line between Canada and the U S I would much

00:37:50.100 rather have that. And I think you're right that the idea that we use Mexico as, as sort of like a

00:37:56.660 bargaining chip so that we have more equal power with the United States, like we can get a better

00:38:00.380 deal if there, if it's two against one, just given that we're both so much smaller in the United States

00:38:04.380 doesn't, doesn't actually serve Canada's interest in this moment. What do you, what do you think

00:38:10.260 about Canada's like long-term future? Like I, you know, if, if, if the, if the question is become a

00:38:16.580 vassal state of China or, or of the United States, I think we would probably both be in agreement

00:38:21.900 that it would be much, much better to be aligned with the United States, but it seems like there's

00:38:25.560 so much resistance to that. Yeah, no, I mean, I agree with everything you, you just said. I mean,

00:38:30.820 and I think that actually the, the, the man who's been sort of the most kind of objective and forward

00:38:35.780 thinking about this has been Kevin O'Leary, honestly, like he's the only guy that's like pursuing

00:38:40.120 big ideas for sort of integrating Canada and the U S in a sort of productive way, a way that's,

00:38:45.280 you know, fair and respects Canada's interests and, and, and all the rest of that. But, you know,

00:38:50.140 realizes that this is obviously the inevitable sort of destiny of, of the two countries is closer and

00:38:55.480 closer integration as it always has been. And that, that will be ultimately in the economic

00:38:59.220 interests of both countries. It will help the U S sort of maintain a stronger posture via these other

00:39:04.880 sort of hostile nations, you know, and that's, I think what is the tragedy of this whole sort of

00:39:09.420 situation right now is that I think that Trump is, has, because of some of the provocative

00:39:15.120 things that he said and done, like he is not, I think, valuing how much Canada has to offer to

00:39:21.740 the U S and to what extent that the two of us will be, you know, much, much stronger together.

00:39:26.280 But again, like Trump has also egged on, you know, not explicitly, but, you know, there are obviously

00:39:32.460 tons of anti-American people in this country and tons of people in this country that have always,

00:39:37.340 always, always fantasized about this idea of not needing the U S and sort of cutting the U S away.

00:39:42.560 And we'll diversify our trade. And we'll have more to do with Europe and China. And like,

00:39:46.360 you've heard these kinds of lines for, for literally centuries in some form or another.

00:39:50.360 And that's also something that bothers me a lot is the degree to which sort of Trump's rhetoric has

00:39:55.880 now kind of like enabled a certain kind of left-wing anti-American in this country that has always

00:40:00.780 hated the U S has always sort of fantasized either about, you know, ditching the U S or in some cases

00:40:06.720 not to be too sort of a right-wing about this, but have fantasized about a sort of like more sort of

00:40:11.220 socialistic economy in which sort of the Canadian state dictates all of our economic, uh, sort of

00:40:16.440 needs and developments. And we don't need to trade at all because trade is sort of seen as, you know,

00:40:20.840 kind of vulgar and capitalistic in a way that, you know, a completely sort of a state driven economy

00:40:25.880 is not. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a bad moment. And, but again, like this is another reason why I

00:40:32.260 just have no faith in, uh, in the Trudeau liberals to deal with this kind of thing, because I think

00:40:37.220 they're not big thinkers. I think they have an American or an anti-American base that needs to

00:40:41.660 be appeased. I think that the idea of like protecting Canadian sovereignty first and foremost,

00:40:46.400 and even when that's against Canadian, uh, interests is I think sort of just the conventional

00:40:50.880 wisdom of, of their, of their scene. So I really do hope that when Pierre gets in and he is talking

00:40:56.400 with Trump, that I hope that like a, they can think about sort of cutting Mexico out, frankly,

00:41:01.040 and that once that's done, that they can think about what would be a productive 21st century

00:41:05.760 U S Canada bilateral relationship. And I think that's one with much freer exchanging of goods

00:41:10.520 and much freer exchange of, of labor and migration of peoples across the, uh, across the 49th

00:41:15.560 parallel. I do think that that is just so objectively in America's interest, so objectively in Canada's

00:41:20.300 interest. And I just think so objectively, just like the path that our combined histories have

00:41:25.740 been leading us. And so I really hope that we don't blow this moment because as much as it's the

00:41:30.520 moment of, of stress and tension, it's also a moment of great opportunity, just because people

00:41:34.520 just don't talk about these kinds of things that often, these big ideas of, of what kind of

00:41:40.140 relationship Canada and the U S should have. Yeah. Well, it's funny because I had Diane Francis

00:41:44.720 on my show last week and she wrote a book 12 years ago called merger of the century. And I remember

00:41:49.200 that book came out. I thought it was so interesting and it piqued my interest. And I was like, this is

00:41:53.480 such a fantasy. It would just never happen as much as like, even it would be in Canada's best interest in

00:41:58.940 many ways to have this relationship. It would never happen. And then I, you know, I had her

00:42:01.840 on and it's like, I can't believe it. We're talking about it because it's actually on the

00:42:05.120 table. And, and it's because of Trump, you mentioned, uh, Justin Trudeau and the sort of

00:42:09.620 knee jerk anti-Americanism. I, I kind of grew up, um, you know, it's interesting because I think when

00:42:16.140 I was a little kid, um, I loved America cause it was just like USA, USA. And it was like something

00:42:22.000 like, like, I kind of just admired the culture. This is like in the nineties when America was still

00:42:26.100 like seen as sort of cultural exporter of like all the coolest things. And then it kind of shifted.

00:42:31.880 Like I would say probably after like nine 11 and, you know, Rick Mercer's like talking to Americans,

00:42:37.120 there's like this perception that came out that Americans are dumb and ignorant and uninformed.

00:42:42.320 And there started to be this sense that like Canadian identity is that we're not them, right?

00:42:47.860 Like America, like we're more sophisticated. We're more European. We're more worldly. We care about

00:42:52.560 each other. We're more sympathetic. Uh, we have our government healthcare or like free healthcare,

00:42:57.700 free university, like women's rights, all this stuff. It's, it's all defined on like left-wing

00:43:03.260 political issues. Um, and I don't like, I don't identify with those at all. Like, I don't think

00:43:08.780 that those are good things. I don't think that those are good attributes of Canada. I think that

00:43:11.600 the Canadian identity that I see is different. I want to play this clip. This is Justin Trudeau.

00:43:15.860 Just as recently as two weekends ago, he was on American television making the case, uh,

00:43:21.520 that Canadian identity. He, he, he, he defines Canadian as being just not American. Uh, let's

00:43:26.360 play that clip. Canadians are incredibly proud of being Canadian. Uh, one of the ways we define

00:43:32.200 ourselves most easily is, well, we're not American. If you talk to any Canadian, you ask them to define

00:43:37.440 what it is to be a Canadian. They'll talk about all sorts of different things. But one of the things

00:43:41.500 we will point out is, and we're not Americans. Like, I know he's trying to do like a charm

00:43:46.760 offense there. He was on with, uh, Jake Tapper on CNN and then Jen Psaki on MSNBC. I, if I were an

00:43:51.940 American, I would be offended by that. Like, wait, you're so proud and so pleased that like the way

00:43:56.500 that you consider yourself is just like, not you guys. Um, I, I know you'll have strong opinions on

00:44:01.380 this, but what do you think of the whole Canada is defined as just not being American thing?

00:44:06.000 Yeah. I mean, I find it offensive and off-putting and I also, but I also find it just like on some level,

00:44:11.020 it's, it's not even, uh, sorry, I dropped my headphone. That's fine. On some level,

00:44:16.300 it's not even true though, because it's like Canadians and Americans have always been part

00:44:19.840 of a shared cultural identity. And, you know, on my YouTube channel and all that, I make a big

00:44:24.560 fuss about this. Like I, I try to emphasize the degree to which Canadians and Americans

00:44:28.560 have always been part of a shared cultural continental space. Always. You can go back hundreds

00:44:33.820 and hundreds of years. Like this has always been the case that, you know, Canadians and Americans,

00:44:37.820 you know, we watch the same movies, we listen to the same music, you know,

00:44:40.640 we speak the same way. We have the same vocabulary, like just on any sort of like metrics. And even

00:44:45.340 like, as we were talking about, uh, in the first segment, right? Like, uh, even our politics is

00:44:50.120 just deeply intertwined, like to be left-wing in, in America, to be left-wing in Canada, to be right-wing

00:44:55.460 and vice versa. Like there's far more similarities than differences in terms of just basic philosophy

00:45:00.480 and how we have, uh, how we conceptualize our values and all of this kind of stuff. Right. So

00:45:04.660 to say that like, we're not American, uh, in some level it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's,

00:45:11.460 it's really sort of like overstating things. And it creates this kind of perpetual anxiety on the

00:45:17.180 part of the Canadian people that like, we're kind of failing as a nation, right? Like that because we

00:45:22.780 can't acknowledge the sort of American realities that define our actual lived culture that we all see

00:45:27.680 and experience every day. We have to have this kind of like constant sort of shame and guilt about

00:45:33.300 it. Like the idea that we're like failing, we're a weak nation, we're a bad nation, you know, that

00:45:37.960 we're not really a real nation and that we don't really have an identity and this kind of thing

00:45:42.680 where it's like, there's other countries in the world where they have a very similar identity to

00:45:47.040 their neighbors. I think of like, say Germany and Austria. Right. And they don't have the same kind

00:45:51.340 of anxiety. Like you talk to an Austrian person, it's like, yeah, German culture. Yeah. We're part of

00:45:55.000 German culture. It's fine. Like we speak the German language and you know, we're, we're Austrian,

00:45:59.080 which is, you know, a regional variation of a sort of German identity, you know, like, and then

00:46:03.100 there's, there's, I mean, I even sometimes when I talk to people from Pakistan and India, they say

00:46:08.940 the same sort of thing. It's like, you know, like these identities are, are fundamentally sort of like

00:46:13.680 regional, like you're a regional offshoot of a sort of larger kind of like continental, uh,

00:46:18.540 civilization and that's fine. Right. We can claim a lot of American culture as our own. We can say that

00:46:24.000 this is our culture. You know, Marvel movies are part of Canadian culture because there are things

00:46:28.520 that Canadians consume, right? There are things that define the Canadian way of life, you know,

00:46:33.460 hot dogs and hamburgers or whatever, like it's Canadian, right? Because it's what we do in this

00:46:38.680 country. It's a descriptivist attitude. And I've always had a descriptivist attitude and a

00:46:43.980 descriptivist philosophy when it comes to culture is you define culture based on what the people of that

00:46:49.060 community do and value and experience. You do not define culture based on what some people in the

00:46:55.940 capital or elsewhere tell you your identity is. And I feel like that has always been the problem of

00:47:02.060 this country is that we've given too much of our sort of cultural, um, too much of our cultural

00:47:07.540 responsibility to like Ottawa and bureaucrats at the CVC and the CRTC and the national newspapers and

00:47:14.340 lord knows what else to tell us what being Canadian is instead of allowing ourselves to define it for

00:47:19.900 ourselves and to define it based on the things that we actually like and value. So yeah, this is

00:47:25.560 like a very rich and complex topic. And, uh, and I just think that people on the left and some people

00:47:31.620 on the right in this country just refuse to accept the country that they actually have and are instead

00:47:36.240 constantly fantasizing about a way that they can invent a Canadian identity that will somehow sort of

00:47:41.860 seduce the kind of like poor ignorant middle-class people who are so seduced by, you know, their, uh,

00:47:48.180 their, uh, their, uh, their TV shows and, uh, sneakers and all of this.

00:47:53.540 Yeah, no, it really is like a hobby of the elite and the more elite that you get, like, like, as young

00:47:58.980 people go into university and sort of engage with these like elite Canadian institutions, um, the more they

00:48:04.980 want to like say that Canada is, is different and Canada is unique. I, I kind of think of it, JJ,

00:48:12.100 as like if it were a Venn diagram between like Canadian elites or Laurentian elites, like especially

00:48:17.460 the French speaking, um, Canadian population. Um, and then you had Americans on the other side,

00:48:22.420 the overlap would be Canadians, like the overlap between the elites and, and the Americans. And that's

00:48:28.340 where most, uh, Canadians lie. And yet when I look at polls, JJ of Canada's like openness to becoming

00:48:35.300 part of the United States, um, joining America, you know, there's been sort of a lot of things

00:48:39.620 floating around. Maybe I'll, I'll, um, use my own example that I posted on X. It caused quite a stir,

00:48:44.820 but I I've heard people saying, you know, if Donald Trump just like called you up on the phone and

00:48:49.620 offered you American citizenship, would you take it? Like what, what if he offered to like buy out your

00:48:55.460 Canadian pension plan, um, or offered to like trade your savings account, um, from Canadian dollars

00:49:01.540 into American, uh, dollars and just become part of the United States? Like how, how many people would

00:49:06.420 do it? I know there's been some polling that say most Canadians say no, but then younger Canadians,

00:49:10.740 18 to 34, I think the recent, uh, poll we have it here. Yeah. Four in 10 of Canadians aged 18 to 34 would

00:49:19.220 take American citizenship if, um, and conversion of assets to USC. That's, that's pretty devastating.

00:49:26.660 Um, as for, for young Canadians to, to, to, to have like that willingness to just say like, yeah,

00:49:32.100 I mean, it's an economic question at the end of the day. Um, I put, I posted on X, um, over the

00:49:37.860 Christmas holiday. Cause I was kind of thinking about this, like how many Canadians would actually go.

00:49:41.540 I think it's, I think it's higher than people tell pollsters because they wouldn't want to admit it,

00:49:45.300 but if push came to shove. Um, so I, I, I wrote about how Trump could destroy Canada in three

00:49:50.740 easy steps. Not that I was advocating for this, but I was just, it was like a thought experiment.

00:49:54.580 And the idea was like, you know, Trump wouldn't have to buy Canada. He could just take it because

00:49:58.900 all he would have to do was offer citizenship and some kind of a conversion of assets. And it would

00:50:03.940 just be like the most insane brain drain ever, because we already have the best, the best people

00:50:09.460 go to the United States in most fields, right? Like my, my brother and my husband both went to the

00:50:13.540 university of Toronto law school. That's kind of considered, I think one of the best or the best

00:50:16.900 law school in the country. And every single year, 25% of the graduates go to New York just because

00:50:21.860 they pay like twice as well as even the top paying Canadian firms. Um, it's the same thing with Waterloo

00:50:26.660 and tech, I think tech, um, engineers, um, software programmers and developers, they pretty much all go

00:50:32.420 to the Silicon Valley, like all the, like, and then you can name like any field, right? Like sports,

00:50:38.500 music actors, like they all end up in Hollywood or in the U S. Um, so if, if like the top people,

00:50:44.260 like the top 1% or top 0.1% already go, if it was offered to everyone with the top 10% go or the top

00:50:50.100 20% go, whatever would happen, it would create such a void in Canada because all of the sort of

00:50:54.740 entrepreneurial productive people would leave. And what would you be left with? Like refugees and

00:51:00.100 government bureaucrats and Canada would collapse. I mean, I'm not advocating for this, but I do think

00:51:04.660 it's interesting, like how fragile our country can be. So I don't know if you saw my post, but

00:51:10.180 I wonder if you could comment on all that. No, I mean, it's, it's an interesting take. I mean,

00:51:14.100 I might, I might frame it a little bit less, perhaps apocalyptically just because I do think

00:51:19.380 that when Canadians move to the States, I mean, Canada does benefit as well because like if our,

00:51:25.220 the fact is like, and this is like why we have to think of, of, of North America as like a continental

00:51:30.180 civilization rather than just these two sort of nations with narrow self-interests that never,

00:51:34.500 overlap. Right. So it's like the big centers of, um, innovation and creativity and sort of the

00:51:42.020 great economic engines of, of this continent are located in the U S but again, like they're not

00:51:46.260 just located in the U S they're located in specific American cities that have developed over time and

00:51:50.820 have become centers of particular, uh, you know, industries and, and innovation. Right. So it's like,

00:51:57.460 you know, if a Canadian, if an ambitious sort of Canadian engineer, uh, moves to, uh, the U S moves to

00:52:04.260 Silicon Valley and creates, you know, the new iPhone or whatever, then that technology comes to Canada

00:52:09.060 and then it benefits Canadian lives as well. And the same way that even though it wasn't developed

00:52:12.660 in North Dakota, it comes to North Dakota eventually. Right. It's the same with, you know,

00:52:16.580 when Canadians move to Hollywood, they create big, you know, careers that create great entertainment

00:52:20.740 products that we can all enjoy all over the world. Right. So, and this is thinking about the

00:52:27.060 civilization of this continent in that way, I think can be very liberating because then it sort of

00:52:32.100 removes the incentive to create the Canadian version of everything, which has never worked

00:52:37.060 right. The idea of creating Silicon Valley North, well, maybe we already have a Silicon Valley North

00:52:41.140 and it's Silicon Valley South, right. It's in the same way. There's no, there's no North Dakota,

00:52:45.460 Silicon Valley, you know, just sometimes it's just rational for economic centers to be established

00:52:50.900 in one city and be very entrenched there. And then for people that want to sort of pursue careers in

00:52:55.140 those places to go to those places. So I think, yeah, there is a brain drain effect in the same way that

00:53:01.140 there's a brain drain effect that, you know, robs the most ambitious people from, you know,

00:53:05.620 Idaho or whatever, but, you know, it's, that's just kind of the nature of a free market economic

00:53:10.820 system. And I think that we can't necessarily view it in an, in an overly zero sum way, if in the final

00:53:17.380 end result that we, is that we all sort of benefit from the innovations and the cultural products and

00:53:22.500 whatever else is developed in these big sort of American centers. I actually think it's important that we

00:53:27.620 make it easy for Canadians who have ambitions to move and live in the US and be able to, you know,

00:53:33.620 pursue economic opportunities. But then also that we, you know, we create opportunities for

00:53:38.420 ourselves in this country to be able to poach American talent and make it easy for ambitious

00:53:42.900 and skilled Americans to come and work in this country, because that is another sort of part of the story,

00:53:47.620 too, is that you, you do often find when you look at the big universities or even like big corporate firms and stuff in

00:53:54.580 Canada, they will often have Americans working for them, you know, I've seen, you know, American

00:53:59.300 CEOs, American, you know, presidents of large companies or institutions or whatever, like it

00:54:05.780 does happen in the other direction as well. And so I think that, you know, just having free movement of

00:54:11.700 labor, it's something that we've never really tried on this continent, the way that the Europeans have

00:54:16.500 tried the way that the Australians and the New Zealanders have tried, you know, the way that other

00:54:20.340 similar countries are in the world have tried with each other. I think it's, I think it's something

00:54:24.260 that we, we is worth exploring again. And so as a result, I think that we should focus less on

00:54:30.900 border security, and more on security on things like airports and international ports of entry,

00:54:35.700 because I do think at the end of the day, that's where the problems come. It's not from sort of

00:54:40.020 Canadian citizens and American citizens crossing the borders, it's from, you know, people from other

00:54:43.860 places entering this continent for the first time, and whether or not our screening mechanisms are

00:54:48.420 strict enough to prevent sort of problematic people from becoming permanent residents,

00:54:52.020 who then can become problematic people when they cross the border and wreak havoc in, you know,

00:54:56.740 one country or the other. Yeah, no, I agree with that last part. I want to go back to something you

00:55:00.820 said earlier, though, that like, it's good for Canada, if smart people leave, because one of the

00:55:05.380 things, so I spent a couple years, my husband and I spent a couple years living in the Silicon Valley.

00:55:09.540 And one of the things that really struck me, I mean, it's just such a different culture,

00:55:12.980 just in terms of how open to change everyone is, like, everyone wants to do something totally different.

00:55:18.260 And like, being part of the status quo is seen as like, people look down on that, which is like,

00:55:22.100 kind of the opposite of a place like Toronto, but like, okay, so there's all these Canadian clubs,

00:55:28.100 there's tons and tons of Canadians in the Silicon Valley. I spoke to a guy that was part of the C 100

00:55:32.820 club, and he told me that there were over 100,000 Canadians living in the Bay Area of San Francisco.

00:55:38.260 San Francisco is about that big, right? It's like maybe two, three million people. So the idea that

00:55:42.020 there's 100,000, and I think, like, who are these 100,000 people? They are like entrepreneurial,

00:55:48.260 innovative, forward-looking, the kind of people that you need to build a civilization. Like,

00:55:54.260 if you look at like the number, even just look at the post-COVID, I don't think we have this graph,

00:55:58.260 but there's a graph that shows the post-COVID job growth, and it shows like public sector going

00:56:03.700 straight up, private sector kind of going across, and then small businesses, it just like plummets and

00:56:08.740 down. So it's like all the people who would start a business, all the people who would do something

00:56:13.540 innovative in the economy, people who know how to, you know, do computer programming, all these kind

00:56:18.580 of people that would just help bring so much energy. Forget about like the tax base, the tax revenue,

00:56:24.740 but just like the energy that they would bring to your country. And instead, they're like living down

00:56:29.700 in California, contributing to that. It just, to me, it's just a shame. I don't know. What are your

00:56:34.020 thoughts on that?

00:56:34.540 Well, it's like, I agree in theory, like what you're describing, yeah, it makes, it makes a kind

00:56:40.220 of sense. And it certainly can easily offend us as a sort of matter of sort of national dignity,

00:56:46.460 right? It does seem sort of undignified to lose sort of talented people. But again, like, I think that

00:56:52.300 this analogy, it kind of breaks down when we think about the extent that this just naturally happens

00:56:59.580 across the countries themselves, right? You know, for example, here in Vancouver,

00:57:03.740 I know quite a few people who have moved here from Saskatchewan, right? Like Saskatchewan compared

00:57:08.700 to Vancouver is less dynamic, less economically sort of vibrant, you know, a lot of people from

00:57:14.620 Saskatchewan feel like they have less of a future there than they do here. And you know, we can think

00:57:19.340 of Atlantic Canada, how much sort of there's out migration from there. And so like, this is just,

00:57:25.260 there's a certain sort of geographic mobility that I think is a natural part of a sort of a market

00:57:30.380 economy where you sort of seek out people. And then in contrast, if there's one thing that I

00:57:34.940 do think is somewhat discredited as an economic strategy, it is these kind of like domestic

00:57:40.140 industry building programs, right? Going to back to what we said before, like kind of,

00:57:44.300 because once you sort of get to this idea where it's like, well, we should have industry X, Y,

00:57:49.420 and Z, and we should have an economic hub of activity, then you get into the sort of down

00:57:53.500 the road of like government planning and sort of government trying to create economic

00:57:56.940 opportunity zones. And something that, you know, frankly, the Trudeau government has

00:58:00.380 pumped a lot of money in to no success, you know, trying to, again, like trying to invent

00:58:06.060 the Canadian Silicon Valley when there's already a pretty, you know, good Silicon Valley in Silicon

00:58:10.860 Valley. So it's, it's, it's difficult, right? Because I, you are simply like, it is sympathy.

00:58:16.780 We do have sympathy for losing talented people to other things. And we don't like the idea of seeing

00:58:21.980 our communities sort of depopulated of our best citizens. But I do think that most economists would

00:58:28.620 argue that if you take like the projected larger view of things, the quality of life of Canadians

00:58:33.580 in general do benefit from the innovations made overall, even if those innovations are not made

00:58:38.940 in our own backyard. Yeah, that's a very good point. And you're right about the fact that,

00:58:43.820 you know, one of the interesting things, because I went to university in Edmonton at a time where

00:58:47.100 Alberta was absolutely booming. And one of the kind of fun things is that there was people from all over

00:58:51.100 the country there. And like, I had never met people from like Newfoundland before. But it was,

00:58:56.060 it was great to have that experience of just like everyone wanted to be in Northern Alberta

00:59:00.780 during that time because of the price of oil. Okay, JJ, I really appreciate having you on the show.

00:59:04.860 It's been so much fun. Thanks for joining us and everyone go check out JJ's Substack and his YouTube

00:59:09.420 page. Thanks so much. It was great. Okay. All right. Thanks so much for tuning in,

00:59:13.820 everybody. We will be back again tomorrow. Thank you so much. I'm Candice Malcolm. God bless.

00:59:18.060 God bless.

The Candice Malcolm Show - January 22, 2025

Ditch Mexico and Deal Directly with America (with JJ McCullough)

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