Join Candice and her guest, Mario Zaleo, as they discuss the feud between Alberta's premier, Danielle Smith, and Ontario's premier Doug Ford, as well as the fallout from the Trump-Carney bilateral meeting.
00:00:00.000Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show. We have a great episode for you today. It was an explosive day in politics yesterday. We covered that meeting, that bilateral sit down between the Canadians and the Americans in the Oval Office with Trump and Carney. We went through that, but we're going to cover a bit more of the reaction.
00:00:19.760I want to start, though, by talking about this feud between Premier Danielle Smith in Alberta and Premier Doug Ford in Ontario. Before we get to that, though, I'm going to ask you to like this video. It really helps us with the YouTube algorithm.
00:00:33.240Okay, so the two premiers, the two quote-unquote conservatives are changing a war of words, and I want to get into this a little.
00:00:41.720First, I'm going to introduce our guest today, who is Mario Zaleo. Mario is a political commentator and a businessman, a successful businessman. He has a huge, huge audience over on TikTok and many other social media channels.
00:00:54.360So, Mario, always great to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us.
00:00:58.440So, I want to get into this sort of war of words here. As we saw after the election, after the federal election ended, sort of the knives came out.
00:01:09.080During the election, we saw, oddly, the progressive conservatives, Doug Ford, his chief of staff, Corey Tanike, unnecessarily inserting themselves in the election.
00:01:17.840And as soon as the vote was over, we saw Jamil Giovanni kind of jump in and smack him down and say, I'm sure, what they had been wanting to say for quite some time, which was basically just that we don't need advice from the Ontario provincial conservatives as to how to run the federal campaign.
00:01:33.440Well, this time, Doug Ford decided to take a swipe at Alberta Premier Daniel Smith and sort of boost Mark Carney.
00:01:40.500I think it's pretty openly clear that Doug Ford is just openly a liberal at this point.
00:01:46.060All he's trying to do, and we wish him, I forget about political stripes, by the way.
00:01:51.800We have a prime minister down there, and he's going to be sitting down, and he's going to give it everything he can.
00:01:57.860This is a time to unite the country, not people saying, oh, I'm leaving the country, or I'm doing this, I'm doing that.
00:02:04.660You know, united we stand, divided we fall.
00:02:07.580And we have to be united Canada together to fight President Trump's terror.
00:02:13.140It was sort of like an old school George Bush line, united we stand, divided we fall.
00:02:19.600So, Danielle Smith sort of responded in kind yesterday, saying that she has a great relationship with Premier Ford.
00:02:27.080She did joke that they probably supported different people in the last election, kind of just taking a jab that he's, at this point, like I said, basically a federal liberal.
00:02:34.560And then she just said, I don't tell him how to run my province, so he shouldn't tell me how to run his.
00:03:31.140All she's doing is creating a democratic process to basically just acknowledge the fact that there is a large separatist movement in Alberta.
00:03:39.360So, Mario, what did you make of this back and forth here?
00:03:43.020Well, I think the backlash towards, you know, Ford, I think it started probably well before I think Jamil actually made public comments.
00:03:52.660Um, and, you know, I've seen it a lot on X.
00:03:55.580I've seen it on the social media platforms.
00:03:57.480A lot of, you know, major, you know, political influencers, people who cover the news, uh, people like myself have been, uh, very vocal against Doug Ford and how he did not endorse nor help, um, Pierre Polyev.
00:04:11.780I think he specifically said that, um, we're busy.
00:04:18.160And then he started criticizing and doubling down saying things like the truth hurts when his, I think, campaign manager basically accused Pierre Polyev of, of, I think he called it political, uh, campaign negligence.
00:04:30.940So something along those lines, but it was grotesque for them to insert themselves in that way.
00:04:36.120And meanwhile, sip on, you know, basically lattes and have coffee with Krista Freeland and, and do a photo op with Mark Carney.
00:04:43.620I think it was, I think we all saw for what it was.
00:04:46.240And I think Danielle's commentary of, you know, we probably supported different people in the last, I think it's all true.
00:06:22.980Like, I don't think that the conservative base and the, like, the, the, the voting, uh, partisans in the party would ever forgive Doug Ford for what he's done.
00:06:33.880I don't know that his polling is low in Ontario because there isn't really much competition.
00:06:37.900Like both the liberals and the NDP in Ontario just can't seem to get their acts together.
00:06:43.720And both of them sort of always prioritize the federal party as opposed to the provincial party.
00:06:48.260They just don't have like a good candidate to step in, in either, either place because both, you know, talented people in Ontario that are part of the liberal party tend to go towards the feds at this point anyway.
00:06:58.200You know, maybe if Polyev was the prime minister, things would change.
00:07:00.500But I, I did, I did kind of wonder, like, what is the motive?
00:07:03.980Why? I, I actually, like, probably thinking about it, I'm not sure that Doug Ford has aspirations to become prime minister.
00:07:10.400I think he just really likes to be involved.
00:07:12.420Like, he wants to be, he likes the attention.
00:07:14.520He likes to be in the center of things.
00:07:17.940And the fact that Pierre Polyev was getting all the attention because of the federal campaign, he just, like, in some way felt left out and wanted to be involved.
00:07:24.080I don't think that there's anything deeper than that.
00:07:26.660But from an Ontario perspective, I know that people are deeply disappointed in the way that the government is run.
00:07:32.700Like, you know, maybe we need to do more to pressure this government to actually be conservative.
00:07:40.040You know, it's right there in the name of their party, but they don't seem to have conservative principles, especially when it comes to standing up for tradition, protecting children against sort of like the most excessive, you know, left-wing ideology that gets pushed in our school system.
00:07:55.400Like, the total collapse of our health care.
00:07:57.700Like, there just doesn't seem to be any competency there or any conservatism.
00:08:07.080I think his policies, I mean, even if you go back to the COVID days, like, if you, you know, if I were in his position, you know, we have a shortage of nurses.
00:08:16.900We have a shortage of health care workers.
00:08:19.220I would have rehired all of the health care workers that lost their job because they refused to put something in their body.
00:08:39.720Like, we're facing a crisis, and we're basically instead importing nurses that are not qualified, that have fake credentials from overseas, that go over to Buffalo to get trained on how to actually do IV injections because the diploma they have is fake.
00:08:56.940And I know this because I hear from people that tell me this.
00:09:11.880And so these are very real problems that I think are much larger than what we think.
00:09:16.900And so if we have that, if we have that problem, why is it not being plugged?
00:09:21.540I would make sure that there would be criminal consequences associated with that.
00:09:25.840I would come down so hard to deter anything like that ever from happening.
00:09:30.220We're talking about people taking care of our parents, taking care of our children, of ourselves.
00:09:36.000And we're trusting, what, a bunch of scam artists that decided to, you know, pay $500 for a fake, you know, a nursing degree overseas to bring it over here and take care of us.
00:09:48.980And so, you know, to me, he's not a conservative.
00:09:53.720I don't think he ever really has been.
00:09:55.240His policies, I mean, like, look at the things that he lines himself up with.
00:09:59.980He would much rather have alcohol sold in every single corner convenience store than to focus on expanding health care, than to fight for us and go to the federal government and say, you're letting too many people into this country.
00:10:14.880Like the city of Brampton right now is the fastest growing city in all of Canada.
00:10:19.540We don't have enough hospitals for all these people.
00:10:25.540Not explicitly, not publicly, not ever.
00:10:27.440And so a true leader needs to stand behind the facts and the people of what's happening.
00:10:33.460It just shows that there's this massive disconnect and he tiptoes around issues and never says things explicitly.
00:10:41.080He has no problem with corporate welfare and giving, you know, the billions of dollars in incentives, tax breaks, and money to, you know, these large multinational corporations to build EV plants, which were just decimated completely by the tariffs.
00:10:55.460And so, you know, they went all in on corporate welfare, but they left the regular working class citizen completely holding the bag.
00:11:06.220I wish that that was something that we all took away from the Trump tariff threats is that it's probably not a good idea to have government prop up industry because this is what Trump is talking about when he says that Canada is subsidized, that Canada is cheating, all this stuff.
00:11:18.260It's like he's pointing to something that is real, that exists, and it seems to be a philosophy sort of of the liberals, but it does get picked up from time to time from conservatives, or at least they don't have the courage to eliminate it.
00:11:28.120But why is it in Canada that government needs to hand millions of dollars, sometimes tens of millions, sometimes even billions of dollars to private companies?
00:11:37.420It doesn't make sense. Like, even in the media space, which is one I'm familiar with, it's like, we started Juno News from basically nothing, we've built it up into a successful business, we've only been around for a few months, and it's already profitable, very profitable, okay?
00:11:49.220So, like, why is it that some media go hat in hand to the government and get money? Like, it just doesn't make sense. When there is a free market business plan that makes sense, then you don't need the government involved, and yet the government just loves to be involved, and they want to be involved, they want to prop up these industries.
00:12:06.220They created essentially an artificial film industry by just creating tax credits and bribing these film industry movie companies to come up to Vancouver and Toronto to film the movies here.
00:12:18.460The companies did it because they were getting paid to by the Canadian government, and Trump just wakes up one day and says, enough, we're going to tariff it, and it's going to be devastating.
00:12:26.960So, this whole idea that it's the government's job to prop up businesses and industries and create entire sectors of the economy, it's not sustainable, it's not, like, we can't afford it, first of all, and second of all, it's like, all that has to happen is the Americans decide, like, hey, you can't do that, that's cheating, and then the entire thing goes away, and it will be, I'm sorry to see it.
00:12:49.220Like, I feel bad for everyone who works in the film industry, because it won't be nice, it won't be pretty, but the reality is that the government, Canadian government and liberal governments and progressive conservatives like Doug Ford, they're the reason why these industries are so unstable.
00:13:04.820Yes, and I would say that there's also this mass disparity between the billions of dollars that get deployed into different sectors, and I'll give you a perfect example.
00:13:12.740Uh, I believe between, uh, Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford, it was something to the tune of 14-ish billion dollars that was given, I think it was to Volkswagen, and I think the totality of jobs that were going to be created was 2,000.
00:13:25.620And so, the ROI that we would get from this is, is what?
00:13:31.680And, and, and, and on the, on the film industry side, you know, the, the incentives aren't in the tens of billions of dollars, but it created, you know, I, I think the, uh, international portion of the jobs that get created was something like 138,000 jobs or something like that.
00:13:49.740That's what's at risk right now, because it's been propped up.
00:13:52.580What people, you know, may not realize is there's something called shred credits.
00:13:56.840I don't know if you're familiar with it.
00:13:57.960It's called, uh, it it's S R E D and these shred credits are, uh, it's basically almost like an innovation fund.
00:14:04.880And it existed when I used to be back in, in, in the tech world, uh, over a decade ago, they've expanded them and I'm, I'm going to leave, um, you know, certain companies anonymous, but I know Canadians who do not live in Canada.
00:14:18.860They live in the U S they have their headquarters in Canada.
00:14:22.740They take advantage of the credit system.
00:14:26.340Their costs are in Canada, but their profits are in the U S.
00:14:31.060And so what they do is that it's a form of transfer pricing.
00:14:33.920And so what you do is you make the U S dollars, you have the costs in the U S you have enough of those, sorry, you have the costs in Canada, but what the government does, they pay nearly half of the salaries.
00:14:45.260If you're doing something innovative and innovation is by the way shred defines it, it, I honestly believe it's very subjective and it's something that you could very easily sell.
00:14:55.860So as soon as you say, Oh, we're, we're leveraging AI in video or in the way we're doing, you know, video channels and video feeds.
00:15:03.740Well, no, what there's their whole business model.
00:15:06.920They're getting top notch engineers from Canada, taking advantage of our tax dollars, using us as a cost basis, taking those credits and exporting those profits to the U S.
00:15:18.440Well, and just even to add onto that, I I'll just speak briefly on this because my husband started a tech company in Waterloo about a decade ago as well.
00:15:25.060And one of the things when they were trying to raise money was that all the VCs.
00:15:28.720So the investors of venture capitalists were all like, you have to sign up for these government subsidies.
00:15:33.220And it's like any self-respecting entrepreneur who's trying to build a big business and has a vision for the future, doesn't want to be spending like half their work week filling out government welfare forms.
00:15:44.460Like it's, it's, it's so the entire process itself is humiliating.
00:15:48.080It's like you're taking an engineer and rather than getting them to code and do something innovative and do something exciting, you're saying, go apply for your government welfare check.
00:15:56.420And these guys would have to spend like every Friday doing this stuff.
00:15:59.060And it's like, no wonder Canada can't innovate.
00:16:02.060No wonder innovative and entrepreneurial Canadians move out of Canada and move to like the Silicon Valley because the entire system joke.
00:16:08.700I want to move on just sort of talking about Trump and tariffs with a bit more backlash.
00:16:13.620So, you know, like I said, we covered this in great detail on the show yesterday, but there's a bit more kind of bubbling out that I wanted to go back and cover.
00:16:21.080So, yes, Mark Carney was in Washington, D.C., had that bilateral meeting with Trump.
00:16:26.300I thought it was like Donald Trump did like a master class, like art of the deal, subtle, low level, embarrassing Carney, taking jabs at him and getting essentially exactly what he wants and showing who's who's in control and who's the boss.
00:16:39.400So, first of all, here is Mark Carney being greeted by Donald Trump and just optically like this, you know, anti-vaxxer pointing this out on X.
00:16:48.160Mark Carney, terrible posture, slouched shoulders, jello wrist, just awful.
00:17:11.580This is another post on X from Behezi tweets saying this.
00:17:16.580This is the very moment Mark Carney realized he lost everything.
00:17:19.380Just look at his body language after hearing Trump's firm response like you don't even have to hear the sound here, but you can just see Mark Carney.
00:17:26.880And this was kind of the theme, Mario, throughout the entire meeting yesterday is it was just kind of awkward for Mark Carney, right?
00:17:33.720Because Donald Trump is so in control.
00:17:35.960He's such a you know, he's so outspoken.
00:17:51.380He knew he had to say something because Trump just kept insulting him.
00:17:54.280Like, you know, in a kind of like big smile on his face, like low level insults.
00:17:57.720But like saying that Canada shouldn't be his own country, saying that he didn't like Carney's predecessor, Justin Trudeau or Chrystia Freeland,
00:18:07.660talking about how Canada cheats on trade and that they were still going to go through with like the tariffs, like all this stuff.
00:18:14.840And you can see Mark Carney trying to interject, but like he wasn't quite able to.
00:18:19.320I just I just didn't think it looked good.
00:18:20.760I don't know why he agreed to this kind of a meeting in the first place.
00:18:23.620What was your like total overall takeaway from the meeting yesterday?
00:18:26.800I think it was a I told you so moment for all liberal voters.
00:18:34.600And I think it basically showed that Mark Carney wasn't going to be going elbows up.
00:18:41.200He wasn't the person to be aggressive.
00:18:43.960He wasn't the person that's going to change anything with the tariffs.
00:18:47.900Donald Trump had already made his mind.
00:18:49.880I truly believe Mark Carney knew this.
00:18:52.600And I think he knew that because he could have had that same meeting a month ago.
00:18:56.880People forget he won the leadership, but he was our prime minister before the election actually happened.
00:19:01.780He took over for Trudeau and instead he jumped on a plane and went to Europe.
00:19:05.460He did that strategically because he knew if he had that same meeting, it would send the signal to all of Canada.