The Candice Malcolm Show - Liberals SURGE in the poll

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show. We are going to talk about the

00:00:12.240 Liberal leadership debate last night, break down who are the winners and who are the losers. We're

00:00:17.280 going to talk about the surge that's happening in the polls with the Liberal Party. Is it a mirage?

00:00:22.720 Is it media manufactured? Or is this legit? Is it the real thing? Are the Liberals actually

00:00:28.240 inching ahead of the Conservatives? Really unbelievable. And we're going to talk a little

00:00:32.720 bit about Trump's latest comments. I'm very pleased today to be joined for the entire show

00:00:37.600 by the very astute and brilliant David Knight-Lagg. He was a principal advisor to Premier Jason Kenney

00:00:46.160 in Alberta. He served as the first CEO of Invest Alberta Corporation and he advises governments

00:00:51.920 and firms in energy finance all over the world. Really, really interesting person and very

00:00:57.680 delighted to be joined here on The Candace Malcolm Show with David. Thank you so much

00:01:01.360 for joining us. Thanks, Candace. Good to be with you. So the leadership debate happened last night. It

00:01:07.440 was the last one. We had the French one happen the night before and then last night was the English

00:01:11.920 one. We did a live show last night. Let me just say it was a little underwhelming. It was a little

00:01:15.600 boring. Basically, all of the candidates more or less agreed on everything. And rather than really

00:01:20.240 talking about the issues that face Canadians, it seemed that they were obsessed with talking about the

00:01:25.200 states, talking about Trump, talking about this existential threat that we apparently now face.

00:01:30.960 And it was just sort of uninspiring, but we're going to go through it. I want to start right off the bat

00:01:36.320 with Chrystia Freeland because this is, I think, the third time that she's repeated this story. And I'm,

00:01:41.360 I think this is a dubious story. She talks about how she spoke to a four-year-old girl named Ari in

00:01:47.600 Saskatchewan. And the little girl asked whether, how, how Canada could stop the U.S. from evading.

00:01:55.120 She also shared the story on X a couple of days ago, and she also said it during the French debate.

00:02:00.400 As a mother of a four-year-old child, look, I get that some little kids are precocious and they

00:02:05.520 understand things far beyond their years. But I have a very hard time imagining my little four-year-old

00:02:11.440 asking such a question, unless maybe their parents have been, you know, laying on a little thick at

00:02:17.920 home and scaring their poor children on the idea that Canada might get invaded. Anyway, here is

00:02:23.600 Chrystia Freeland recounting the story last night. A few weeks ago in Saskatoon, I met a four-year-old

00:02:30.000 girl named Ari. She asked me, can you stop Trump from invading Canada? Ari is a smart girl,

00:02:39.200 and she's asking the right question. Asking the right question. I'm not really sure that

00:02:46.800 four-year, this is really something that four-year-olds should worry about. David, you had a criticism of

00:02:51.920 this post on X. So what did, what did you make of this making an appearance again in the debate last

00:02:57.200 night? Well, look, I, you know, obviously I'm skeptical. I think a four-year-old that's worried about

00:03:02.640 geopolitics is a pretty unusual person. And if she's, she's that bright, she would be bright enough 0.99

00:03:08.480 to know not to ask Chrystia Freeland for any help on the issue. I think that the biggest issue that

00:03:14.800 we have in this entire satellite, like the, first of all, it's just so obviously scripted, you know,

00:03:20.240 this is a classic PR campaign move. I've been involved in campaigns. They tell you to try and

00:03:25.680 familiar, familiarize yourself with your audience and make your position more appealing by, you know,

00:03:31.040 putting words in the mouth of a small child or a little old lady or a guy with a hard hat, right?

00:03:36.560 And so somebody says, you know, I was in this place and I spoke to this person. What that represents

00:03:40.720 is my perspective. And I think the punchline of what she's trying to say, which I find deeply

00:03:46.800 cynical and actually craven, is the idea that she is a solution to a fear factor and a victim ideology

00:03:55.360 that seems to have seized the liberal party of Canada in the absence of having any economic or

00:04:00.720 security plan for the country. And what they've done is they've tried to say, look, there's this huge,

00:04:04.720 scary external force called the United States of America and President Trump. We should all run around

00:04:10.160 in fear and I'm here to help save you. And, you know, I'm tired of that. That's the climate motif.

00:04:16.240 That's the COVID motif. And now it's the scary tariff motif. And the problem that I have in particular

00:04:22.400 with Chrystia Freeland being the one that's purveying this bizarre story is that she is probably

00:04:27.760 the single most damaging finance minister the country's ever had. She mixed financial literacy

00:04:33.680 on things like net debt to GDP with a horrific decision to misprice our COVID debt. Over $400

00:04:40.480 billion in COVID debt was completely mispriced at, I think at the time, sort of 80 basis points,

00:04:46.640 and now we're paying 5% on it. So she's had a series of cascading mistakes that have blown up.

00:04:52.080 The intergenerational theft of a debt that's now reached $1.3 to $1.5 trillion, depending on how

00:04:57.680 you want to count it. They have no plan for removing that debt. And so that means little

00:05:02.160 Ari, whether she's fake or real, is going to inherit a structural debt that is so destructive

00:05:08.240 that it is now already costing more in interest payments every year than the entire amount we spend

00:05:13.520 on all of our military. So if little Ari is actually worried about an invasion, she's asked

00:05:18.160 Krista Freeland why she's destroyed the ability of Canada to actually pay its bills, keep its 0.91

00:05:24.320 commitments to things like NATO. At the same time that, you know, she's one of the architects

00:05:29.200 in a whole series of hugely mistaken things that Mark Carney now wants to call investments. Like my

00:05:35.200 favorite investment has been the $50 billion that they blew on these EV battery plants that have all

00:05:41.200 gone bankrupt. You know, and they call that an investment. It's gross. When the market decides

00:05:46.240 that it won't put a single cent into something like peak EV technology to compete with Chinese 0.99

00:05:51.840 supply chains or massive American supply chains, it's because it's uninvestable. And this government

00:05:57.840 and its hubris and its arrogance has taken $50 million from Ari and all her friends and said, 0.91

00:06:03.120 we're going to spend it right now to try and score some votes for something that looks like jobs that

00:06:07.600 will cost about $3 million each in terms of the subsidies and blow up in two years. It's disgusting.

00:06:13.360 So the bigger problem that I have besides the obvious sort of craven nature of the PR driven

00:06:19.360 scripted campaigns is that this entire coronation of Mark Carney that's taking place

00:06:25.040 is taking place after nine years that have been the most destructive in terms of more than doubling

00:06:31.120 the entire national debt compared with all other governments combined, right? More debt. Increasing

00:06:38.320 the bureaucracy by over 70% in terms of cost. Stunning. The total decline of public services by this

00:06:45.040 massively obese sclerotic bureaucracy that is basically paid voters for the NDP liberal coalition

00:06:51.920 and the destruction of an opportunity society for our kids, including bizarrely, as they start to run

00:06:58.560 short on money, applying taxes to the worst possible places you would apply taxes if you want to create

00:07:04.160 a turnaround, you know, with like capital gains, it's just pure investment, risk investment capital,

00:07:09.840 which is something Canada desperately needs. We're trying to have worked very hard on trying to get it from

00:07:13.520 overseas. In Alberta, we've succeeded at that. But you know, we started succeeding at that because we cut

00:07:19.360 corporate taxes, we started to reduce red tape, we made a lot of very hard decisions. And Alberta

00:07:24.960 continues to fund the rest of the country to the tune of 20 to $25 billion a year as a result of hard

00:07:30.480 economic decisions we make in Alberta, that they refuse to make federally in and other provinces.

00:07:35.920 So, you know, I don't want to go on. But I think that the punchline of what's happening at this

00:07:40.400 debate is the debates are boring because for a nation, not an actual debate, there's no serious

00:07:45.200 differences of political opinions between these, these sort of characters. The, the entire thing is

00:07:52.240 scripted and constructed. Mark Carney is not being straightforward about things that he said very

00:07:57.040 explicitly in the past, right? He's very much a central planner leveler. He was, he has a terrible

00:08:04.640 track record politically in the UK. He, you know, he sat in, in, in architecture here that didn't

00:08:12.560 permit anything like the housing crisis, and he's tried to take credit for decisions that were way

00:08:16.640 above his pay grade. So I find him to be brittle, constructed, heavily scripted, and someone that's

00:08:25.120 unwilling to be straightforward about what we're facing. And, and that's a loss to Canadians, we should 0.98

00:08:30.400 have had a huge debate on what happened with the debt in the last nine years and what's going to,

00:08:33.680 what that means for little airing. So I am, you know, I'm troubled. I, you and I spoke earlier

00:08:41.040 about the fact that when you go overseas, you see the, the absolute decline of Canada's reputation

00:08:45.760 overseas on just about every front, you know, in, in, I'm in the investment world and people just don't

00:08:50.960 think Canada's investable right now, period. Well, it's one of the things that moved Brookfield

00:08:56.240 asset management. I mean, one of the most incredible things to me is to have a guy like Mark Carney

00:09:00.320 there and not have Christian Freeland say, why did you advocate for the movement of Brookfield

00:09:05.040 asset management from Toronto to New York? He's very clear why you advocated for it. It's because

00:09:09.840 there's deeper pools of capital for global capital markets for a great firm like Brookfield. But the

00:09:14.640 reason for that is people like Christian Freeland made Canada totally uninvestable. And it's the reason

00:09:19.840 why multiple large companies have moved down to the United States. So we have serious issues they

00:09:24.880 should be debating that they're actually accountable for having created in this country. And the public

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00:09:55.760 Well, that's one of the things I completely agree that watching the debate last night,

00:09:59.600 I do your point about hubris. I mean, there was so much sanctimoniousness. These four liberal

00:10:05.840 candidates who believe that, you know, they have been brought to us to save us from their own record,

00:10:12.560 from the things that they have done and just hearing them. I mean, they weren't held to answer for

00:10:18.720 all the mistakes we've made that they've made. So many of them you just laid out quite articulately.

00:10:23.520 Instead, they were given more opportunities to sort of double down on this idea that we need more

00:10:27.920 government, more government programs. We just need more spending on health care. You know,

00:10:32.480 it's not the structure that's the problem. It's just we need more money for daycare. We need more

00:10:36.560 money. I mean, they were even talking about a universal basic income. As if, you know,

00:10:41.360 we did try a version of that during COVID with the CERB. Part of it was, like you mentioned,

00:10:47.360 what led to record debt being racked up, and also the loss of productivity. Because who wants to go

00:10:53.360 work for a living when the government will pay you to sit at home? To me, the idea of a universal

00:10:57.440 basic income is completely non-starter. It has been a disaster. And to hear them talk about it last

00:11:02.640 night, it's like, it just seems so, so out of touch to me. David, I want to go through a few more

00:11:09.200 examples of these candidates last night fear-mongering over President Trump. Here we have

00:11:15.840 Mark Carney saying that President Trump wants to take our country, and that apparently Pierre

00:11:20.960 Pauly, the Conservative leader, worships Donald Trump. Let's play that clip.

00:11:25.440 We have to recognize that the Donald Trump of today is different than the Donald Trump of several

00:11:30.000 years ago. Then his objective was to take more of our market. Now he wants to take our country. 0.88

00:11:39.040 Let me finish by pointing out one other thing. Who's the worst person to stand up to Donald Trump?

00:11:44.160 It's Pierre Pauly, he worships the man. I've never seen Pierre Pauly even say nice

00:11:52.080 things about Donald Trump, so that's news to me. Next, we had Chrysia Freeland saying that America has

00:11:57.840 become a predator and that the United States is now a threat. Let's play that clip.

00:12:03.280 For the first time since the Second World War, rather than guaranteeing the rules-based order,

00:12:07.600 the US is turning predator. And so what Canada needs to do is work closely with our democratic

00:12:14.480 allies, our military allies. That's why I would start with our Nordic partners, specifically Denmark,

00:12:20.320 which is also being threatened, and our European NATO allies. I would be sure that France and Britain

00:12:26.320 were there who possess nuclear weapons. And I would be working urgently with those partners to build

00:12:33.360 a closer security relationship that guarantees our security in a time when the United States

00:12:39.760 can be a threat. So Christina Freeland, they're writing a whole new international diplomatic world

00:12:46.800 order. And she even said that she envisions building a new world order. Let's play that clip.

00:12:52.400 I don't think any of us wants to be the leader who was asleep at the wheel and didn't get Canada

00:12:59.840 defended, did not work with our democratic allies to protect our borders. They want to work with us.

00:13:07.440 It's time for us to step up at home, to urgently reach out to them and build a new world order

00:13:13.600 where democracy and Canadian sovereignty is protected. Seems like a bit of a pipe dream to me. But next,

00:13:20.160 we'll just play this final clip here, is that Mark Carney agreed with Freeland, which we saw a lot of last

00:13:24.640 night, but added that the United States would be exiting this new world order. Let's play that clip. 0.86

00:13:32.000 I'm going to associate myself, I'm going to agree with that. The only amendment I'm going to make is,

00:13:37.040 unfortunately, it won't be a world order. It will be a subset of the world order because the number

00:13:42.240 of like-minded countries is much smaller with the US exiting.

00:13:46.720 So it seems to me that they've just created this full distraction so that they don't have to talk

00:13:51.520 about the record. They don't have to talk about the things that they as liberals have done. I mean,

00:13:55.680 two of the four people on stage were part of the Trudeau cabinet. Mark Carney was an economic

00:14:01.520 advisor since 2020. These are liberal insiders in Ottawa, distancing themselves in record and

00:14:08.240 playing international relations and pretending to be professors at a university, rather than

00:14:14.320 potential leaders taking accountability for the things that they've done.

00:14:18.880 Yeah, look, I think the biggest problem that they have is that Canadians aren't hearing in any of that

00:14:25.840 language. What they're hearing again is what the Liberal Party has done with something like climate.

00:14:30.640 They've said there's a huge problem facing us. In this case, the United States previously was

00:14:35.040 climate, then it was COVID. And the way for Canada to be relevant on this issue is to adopt a bunch of

00:14:42.400 very high spending, self-defeating policies by the Liberal government, right? So Canada's done nothing

00:14:48.160 in the planet to reduce global emissions. They've made a series of self-destructive decisions to try to

00:14:54.640 reduce domestic emissions, including domestic emissions of the one cleaner fuel that would have

00:14:59.680 removed global emissions by being shipped into the Asian coal-fired grid, which is our LNG.

00:15:04.320 And having denied multiple projects and infrastructure initiatives and private market investment into

00:15:10.960 that have closed Canada for business, not only in that sector, but in dozens of other sectors where the 0.96

00:15:16.400 largest investment funds say, look, if you're that dumb, then we just don't have any need to try and put 0.52

00:15:22.320 ourselves in a position of the guys that tried to build Trans Mountain and had it picked up by the Trudeau 0.99

00:15:27.280 government. So we've had a flight of capital because there's a lack of vision.

00:15:31.760 What's happening in the United States is Trump has come in and he's and his national security

00:15:36.400 advisors and others have basically said there will be a hemispheric shift going on. We're going to shift

00:15:41.760 away from managing Europe and we're going to shift away from managing Asia. And we're going to focus,

00:15:47.120 first of all, deep priority on our hemisphere. They're dead serious about Greenland. I had some

00:15:53.600 conversations with a couple of guys in the State Department. It's one of the most fascinating

00:15:57.760 conversations I've had. They've had files in Greenland for years and they have an entire strategy

00:16:03.120 around Greenland. They have to have a strategy around the Canadian Arctic. They're deeply disappointed

00:16:09.120 with the total lack of seriousness by Canada in the Arctic. Russia's Russian subs and Russian ships

00:16:15.120 fly Canada's territorial waters at will right now. That's totally unacceptable. Canada stands up, you

00:16:21.920 know, doesn't pay its NATO dues, but pays an equivalent amount of money on failed EV battery

00:16:26.000 plants to compete with Tesla. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. It's totally provocative. So in a

00:16:31.600 moment where and one thing that I find interesting about this moment where we've got this faculty club

00:16:37.600 discussion amongst our four liberal sort of front-runner candidates is they're trying to play this game

00:16:43.520 like Canada has some sort of relevance in the observation that it's making that the United States

00:16:48.880 is becoming more America first. That's a 10 cent idea. It's got nothing to do with our national

00:16:54.720 politics or our failure to be relevant in the planet, which we are not at all. And that relevance has

00:17:02.080 been declining steeply in the last five years. And one of the reasons for it is that

00:17:07.440 if you look at the three biggest files that the Americans have open with us, right? Number one,

00:17:12.160 security. Back in May of last year, Marco Rubio, who was then Senator Marco Rubio and is now Secretary

00:17:19.200 of State Marco Rubio, wrote a letter that was signed by 24, 26 senators, bipartisan Democrat and Republicans,

00:17:26.480 saying we're actually done now on this conversation over you being deadbeat and freeloading on the American

00:17:32.320 taxpayers for NATO and NORAD. It's over. There will be consequences, right? That letter had a different

00:17:38.480 tone than any other letter because they'd said, look, we keep talking, we keep, you keep saying,

00:17:42.000 making commitments. That's over. And now Marco Rubio is leading the charge on what's going to happen

00:17:46.560 hemispirically. Canada is a series of, and we can talk about this later, but there's sort of eight or

00:17:51.280 nine major files open on the security issue of Canada. We saw the first one and the most prominent one,

00:17:56.640 obviously the first file they're going to deal with was fentanyl because it's a promise that they made,

00:18:00.960 particularly in the Midwest where it's been most destructive and it's, and fentanyl is created to

00:18:05.280 the trade, sort of connected to the trade crisis because it's a lot of the post-industrial areas

00:18:10.480 that have become the areas where they've had the worst, worst addictions, areas that have been

00:18:13.920 hollowed out by, uh, by their manufacturers have been hollowed out. The second big file aside from

00:18:19.440 security is economy. And there's just a series of things that it's like, we're not serious about

00:18:25.840 talking about them. We have a 200% tariff, three, two to 300% tariff on our dairy products in the

00:18:30.720 United States, right? So we can't, we can't continually pretend to be victims at all times

00:18:38.080 without acknowledging that there's two sides to a trade debate and an economic debate. And we have

00:18:43.040 to be serious about it. Canada actually has a $58 billion trade surplus with the United States when

00:18:48.160 you remove energy from the equation, but energy is more important to the United States than any other

00:18:53.520 component of what we trade with them because it's the lowest cost input into a huge supply chain,

00:19:00.000 Midwest refining and advanced materials and all kinds of refined products that they then go on and

00:19:05.280 sell around the world at profits. So if you just look at the bilateral relationship, you're spending

00:19:10.000 a lot more on energy than you're sending back. But if you look at the net profitability of that

00:19:14.640 relationship to the United States and its treasury, it's enormous. And these are great points that, you know,

00:19:20.320 Premier Smith was trying to make when she was being castigated by this weird team Canada crowd 0.66

00:19:24.880 that stayed home at the CBC studios in Ottawa over the inauguration, which I was at. And I saw her

00:19:31.120 working the room with different people, you know? And so I think that the problem that we've got is the

00:19:36.640 deep lack of seriousness in the liberal party of Canada right now. It's deep desperation to make this

00:19:43.200 an election against Donald Trump who, you know, who, you know, has a lot, there's a lot to talk

00:19:49.360 about there, but he's easy to caricature. What I think we need to do as a country is forget Donald

00:19:55.120 Trump for a minute and think about our own status as a nation and what we've done, you know, to, to

00:20:00.480 make the world a better place, a safer place, a place with lower global emissions, nothing, right?

00:20:05.920 What could we have done? We could be removing more emissions than our entire carbon footprint as a nation

00:20:10.400 with the LNG capacity into Asia, only four countries, right? We could be doing that. We 0.54

00:20:14.800 could be absolutely having an impact. That would also be a trillion and a half dollar trade for

00:20:19.040 Canada's economy. And it would make us deeply relevant to the United States on the security

00:20:24.000 constraints that us being a huge supplier of energy into China and India would create, right? So we have

00:20:29.200 these win-win-win opportunities as a nation and we have no seriousness over people that are saying we

00:20:33.920 want to lead the current version of the NDP liberals and potentially the liberal party, one of our two

00:20:39.120 biggest parties. And there's no serious debate happening around our economy, around our security

00:20:44.720 and our deadbeat freeloading status and security with our allies and the provocation that's creating

00:20:49.680 the Arctic that we simply don't seem to want to talk about as a nation. And the final issue that I

00:20:55.520 think is the most optimistic opportunity for us in the next few months and that I hope when Pierre's

00:21:01.600 prime minister he'll pick up on is the power of Canada as a dual use between security and economy.

00:21:09.120 Um, uh, principal relationship to the U.S. on critical minerals, oil and gas, advanced materials, all the

00:21:14.720 CFIUS related, uh, trade in technology, AI, etc. Canada has the, we are the luckiest country in the planet and we

00:21:23.840 have the biggest opportunity in the planet to have a deep, a much deeper economic and security relationship with the

00:21:31.360 United States. They have no intention of us being the 51st state, but Trump loves to troll this because

00:21:38.240 he feels like there's just a complete lack of seriousness here. And unless he trolls it, you know,

00:21:42.800 we did nothing but stay at home and, and be worried about Trump being a bad guy for two months. And then

00:21:49.120 in two phone calls in one day gave them everything they wanted on fentanyl on the border. It's embarrassing as a country.

00:21:55.680 Right. Uh, and, and so I think the big opportunity for us is to take security seriously, have a plan

00:22:01.360 for Canadians first, but also for America and NATO and NORAD, AUKUS. We need to take our economy 0.94

00:22:07.520 seriously and start building things. Again, all the things have been denied for nine years and open

00:22:11.520 ourselves up to global capital to build those things. And we need to take the opportunity, these, these

00:22:16.480 extraordinary dual use opportunities as, as the United States focuses on its hemisphere and replaces China

00:22:22.800 as a critical minerals, uh, supply chain, Canada can, can make a, again, another trillion dollars off of

00:22:29.520 that relationship. If we get it right, this is the biggest opportunity for us as a nation to quit acting

00:22:35.440 like victims and running scared and repeating this weird 51st state mantra, or this even more weird idea

00:22:40.960 that we can have a trade war. Right. We can't, we have no capacity for a trade war. I keep reading

00:22:46.240 these bizarre economic assessments. Right. Uh, or, or we could have a, you know, there's,

00:22:52.480 it's wild to see some, uh, you know, disenfranchised liberal hippies suddenly wanting to pick up guns and

00:22:57.200 fight the United States. But I did a note on NATO, you know, we're 67,000 people in our, in our forces

00:23:04.400 right now. I'm 16,000 people shy. We have a DEI obsessed, weird, woke general staff that is,

00:23:10.960 you know, destroying the, the current military and the U S have, uh, 1.3 million standing military

00:23:17.920 and 700,000 reserves. We haven't done. I'll just, I'll just jump in on that. Cause I did want to

00:23:22.560 share this clip. Um, we have a clip of Lieutenant General Lise Bourgeon last week, um, saying that the

00:23:28.880 priority of the Canadian armed forces is to streamline its recruitment of number one, non-citizens

00:23:36.080 and number two, racialized Canadians, whatever that means. And number three is women. So to, to 0.97

00:23:41.840 your point that they focus on prioritizing this woke agenda rather than the things that actually

00:23:47.600 matter. Let's play that clip. We are challenging outdated policies and practices to simplify security

00:23:54.960 process for, uh, applicants with ties to other countries. Therefore, most applicants included,

00:24:01.920 uh, permanent resident can begin basic training after, uh, receiving their reliability status clearance.

00:24:08.560 Right now, 26.4% of newly enrolled Canadian armed forces members identify as racialized Canadians.

00:24:17.440 18% are women and 5.2% identify as indigenous. To succeed,

00:24:24.080 we must continue to tap on all Canadians from all communities who want to serve.

00:24:31.120 And just further to that, the government of Canada website, uh, four armed forces has a

00:24:35.760 dedicated section for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Here's what that looks like.

00:24:40.320 So some of the resources included is, uh, resources to combat systemic racism and racial discrimination,

00:24:46.480 a positive space program to foster what it calls an inclusive environment for L,

00:24:52.080 sorry, 2SLGPTIQI plus individuals, gender-based analysis plus integration into policies, programs,

00:25:00.320 and services. And of course, a guide on inclusive language and terminology. Um, so David, to your point,

00:25:08.160 at a time where, you know, things are getting pretty serious around the world. And this idea that,

00:25:13.920 to your point, Trump is making these remarks about the 51st state, uh, regardless of how we interpret

00:25:18.960 them, we all are starting to realize that our military is the weak link here in North America,

00:25:23.520 that we're not, uh, pulling our own weight. And yet here is the things that the Canadian military

00:25:29.680 is focusing on, uh, what, what's your comment on that? Look, you know, my, my grandfather fought in

00:25:36.080 Burma in World War II. I've grown up around people that are in the military. Um, and you know, it's been

00:25:43.360 hijacked by this woke liberal NDP faculty club, DEI philosophy that goes nowhere. It does nothing for

00:25:51.360 combat readiness. No one that you saw on that platform, that dais has, is a combat, um, veteran,

00:25:58.320 you know, it's fake and we know that it's fake, you know, it's like, it's like, you know, wanting,

00:26:04.080 if, if your house is on fire and you're on the third floor, you don't want the DEI person. You

00:26:08.800 want the 230 pound linebacker guy who's a fireman that can haul you out in throwing you over his 0.57

00:26:15.520 shoulder. Right. I mean, this is, and that's not bias. That's simply saying there are certain

00:26:20.160 attributes that make some people extraordinary at what they do. And that's what we want. We want an

00:26:25.200 our forces that celebrates extraordinary bravery, extraordinary physical capacity,

00:26:31.680 extraordinary, uh, destructive capacity. And Canada made its name by punching way above its weight

00:26:39.360 on those factors in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam War. We've always been next to

00:26:45.600 our American cousins in, in different war fighting scenarios. And we've always had an extraordinary

00:26:52.240 punch above our weight, uh, capacity because, uh, you know, you recruit young, mostly young men who

00:27:00.960 are deep believers in their country and see it as a mission because this is, this is a job that requires

00:27:07.360 you to die. Right. And, and we forget that at our peril as a nation, like there's a certain category of

00:27:14.400 person like my grandfather was that chooses to sign up and say, I know that in this job, there's a very

00:27:19.760 good chance I'll die because that's the entire intention of everybody. Oh, I'm going to fight

00:27:24.000 against. They want to kill me. Right. And they're going to figure out how, and so we have to put in, 1.00

00:27:28.400 it's, it's a deadly serious business. Russia laughs all the way to the bank of their shadow fleet. And 0.57

00:27:34.640 they're seeing situations like this. These people are a joke. They're deeply on serious people.

00:27:40.480 And, and Canadians that want to go and fight for their country to the point of risking their lives for it,

00:27:46.240 will not report to people that look like that or talk like that. Right. Like it's just, it's

00:27:52.400 implausible that we have a nation that is worth fighting and dying for. We have values that we

00:27:57.840 believe are worth fighting and dying for. And then we want to treat those the same way that we want to

00:28:02.720 treat some sort of DEI faculty club, um, you know, HR process at a university. Uh, now I think that what

00:28:12.240 happens, I mean, what my son plays for a soccer team is the most diverse strategy you've ever seen,

00:28:18.000 right? You don't need to worry about racialized Canadians that, you know, we've got a hugely

00:28:22.480 talented, uh, uh, our, our athletic community is hugely talented. The armed forces be the same way.

00:28:27.920 You don't need to worry about diversity. You commit to excellence and you create demanding,

00:28:33.040 uh, environment to create the best possible war fighters. You give them the best equipment.

00:28:38.160 So it's interoperable with all our NATO allies and American, uh, allies, you expand and extend

00:28:44.000 the strategic command function. And you, you provide a vision for what people can be and do in the world

00:28:50.240 that's worth dying for and worth living for. And you will see people sign up in droves to that because

00:28:56.000 that's a vision of what you can do and be in the world. It's not this dead, sad numbers game,

00:29:02.160 being counting people's race, being counting people's gender. It's embarrassing. And by the

00:29:07.920 way, you know, one of the things I find ironic is as soon as you, you say to someone on the left,

00:29:12.480 so you're a big fan of Tulsi Gabbard, you know, no, they're worried. So I, what I think has happened,

00:29:19.920 what I think is happening with our armed forces, what I think is happening, what happened with climate,

00:29:23.600 what happened with COVID, what's happening currently is they're politicizing something that should

00:29:28.000 actually exist for all Canadians. And it should exist on the basis of a vision of what it can do

00:29:33.040 and be in the world and what Canada needs to do and be in the world. And, and if that was the debate,

00:29:38.080 and if that was the presentation, if I saw somebody in our armed forces stand up and say, look, we have

00:29:43.200 a vision for what Canada needs to do and be in the world. And this is that vision. We are going to secure

00:29:48.400 the Arctic and make sure no Russian sub or ship ever gets through it. When it warms up enough to be the 0.55

00:29:53.680 Northwest Passage, we're going to be part of the global security force that maintains international

00:29:59.040 rule of law and rule of the sea. We are going to reestablish ourselves as the fifth largest Navy

00:30:04.320 in the planet. We are going to become fully interoperable with all NATO forces. We're going

00:30:08.640 to ship our gas to destroy Putin's control over European energy security. And to do all that,

00:30:14.240 we're going to need 150,000 deadly, dangerous war fighters supported by the best equipment,

00:30:21.280 with the best communications, fully interoperable with our European and our American allies.

00:30:27.040 And that's what we're going to do and be in the world. And we're going to fund it with three

00:30:29.920 trillion dollars worth of natural gas traded to Asia. And Russia is going to take us seriously.

00:30:35.520 And we want you to sign up if you want to be part of that. I think a lot of people sign up,

00:30:38.960 and I think they'll sign up from every possible corner and category that these sort of sad HR people

00:30:44.480 are trying to bean count. So when you, when you've got people just voting with their feet saying,

00:30:48.240 I don't share your vision. I don't want it being told that there'll be some sort of special category

00:30:53.280 that gets a special sort of, we really, really want you to join, right? This is pathetic. That's 0.98

00:30:58.720 not asking people. You don't have to ask my son's friends from every possible country in the world

00:31:02.960 that are playing soccer. If they want to sign up, they're lined up. They have to refuse more of these

00:31:07.920 kids every year than they can get, because there's a vision for what you can do and be. And that,

00:31:12.240 that that's what I think is lacking in this current liberal debate. I think it's lacking

00:31:15.680 generally in the country in some ways. And it's one of the things keeping us from making honest,

00:31:20.080 hard, straightforward decisions about who we are, what we want, what, you know, what our intentions

00:31:27.360 are, how we're going to make hard decisions to pay down the debts. Our kids have opportunities,

00:31:31.680 and we return to them the opportunity society that we inherited mostly from our parents. You know,

00:31:37.440 like, these are the things, I think my grandfather, I inherited a secure world in a safe country,

00:31:42.640 because he put his life on the line and lost some of his best friends in the worst corners of the

00:31:47.520 world, right? That was his challenge. Our challenge now is to get honest about what it's going to take

00:31:53.200 for Canada to be relevant in the world in that same way again, and it's going to look different this

00:31:57.520 time than it did that time. But, you know, that armed forces presentation and that liberal debate

00:32:03.440 both just show a poverty of ideas and a poverty of vision.

00:32:06.160 Well, all that being said, I mean, I agree with much of what you just said. It then seems remarkable

00:32:13.200 to, I'm going to tie this back to recent polls. A poll came out yesterday that has the Liberal Party

00:32:19.680 up ahead of the Conservative Party, 38% of the Liberals, 36% of the Conservatives. This is an Ipsos

00:32:25.600 poll. Ipsos is very credible. And this is the first time in four years that the Conservatives

00:32:31.040 have not been ahead. So, you know, against this backdrop of, you know, this woke mind virus that

00:32:37.920 has just completely taken over the bureaucracy to absurd extents, right? You have an economy that's

00:32:43.600 really just not working for us. And you laid it out really brilliantly with regards to just our

00:32:48.480 inability as a country to grow and be useful around the world in the ways that we should,

00:32:53.920 wasting money on things that don't matter, not investing in the things that do matter.

00:32:57.920 Like, I just, help me make sense of this all. I mean, I think that we have this black swan event

00:33:03.520 happening in Canada right now, which is that every time Donald Trump mentions the word 51st state,

00:33:08.640 Canadians get angry. They get angry, left or right, you know, regardless of your financial situation,

00:33:14.400 your social class or your income, Canadians don't like it. And so every time Trump says it,

00:33:20.800 it angers them. And instinctively, they run to the most anti-American party around, which is the Liberal

00:33:26.320 Party. And now we see in the last six weeks, a 26 point swing, David. It's unbelievable. To me,

00:33:33.280 it's terrifying that Canadians could have that short of a memory and could run back to the party that has 1.00

00:33:38.480 just absolutely destroyed our country. I don't know if it's real. I don't know if this is a media

00:33:43.360 manufactured thing that they're pumping up the numbers to make Mark Carney look good,

00:33:47.920 to make it seem like there's a chance so that maybe we'll have an election and we'll see what happens.

00:33:52.320 I don't know. But to me, it's really unbelievable. So can you help us understand what's happening here?

00:33:59.440 Yeah, look, I think that polls are snapshots in time. It's really important to remember that.

00:34:03.680 Ipsos is a terrific pollster, by the way. There's polls that are sort of, you know,

00:34:08.800 deeply funded by the federal government, ECOS and others. But Ipsos is hugely credible. I think that

00:34:15.920 we're in an unusual situation because, you know, the prime minister has suspended parliament.

00:34:21.280 So there's no normal, there's no normal parliamentary debate. There is no regular press

00:34:27.760 inquiry of Pierre Pauly ever what he thinks and how that can be distinguished. He's not on the stage with

00:34:32.320 the four people that are reading these scripted comments. So it's been sort of a press blackout of

00:34:37.920 any conservative ideas or responses to what's going on. And so in the absence of any sort of

00:34:45.680 platform for conservative ideas in opposition to liberal ideas, what you've got is three months of

00:34:52.560 no parliament, which is, I think, just extraordinary and anti-democratic. You've got the liberal party

00:34:59.760 basically, you know, in the public square right now. The debate is which liberal do you like better?

00:35:04.560 You know, it's sort of like, which flavor do you like better? This, you know, hard left

00:35:10.400 philosophy. And it's candy coated, it's presented and it's, the airways are full of it. You know,

00:35:16.400 so you've got a full campaign going with people spending a lot. You've got, the liberal party is

00:35:21.600 also very careful about scripting anything that could cause a problem that their, their Ruby Dalla

00:35:27.120 had pulled second. She was ahead of Freeland. You know, when they removed her, she was a danger to them

00:35:32.880 because her messages were contrarian to the accepted script. And so I think that when, when we,

00:35:41.040 there's a big debate going on right now, which is will Mark Carney, when he wins, call an election

00:35:45.040 right away? Or will he try and lead for a while before he calls an election?

00:35:48.800 Um, I think that there, you know, and I've, I thought that the, the, I chose kind of curtain number

00:35:55.440 two when a friend was asking me about, I said, I think he's going to lead for a while, because I think

00:35:58.640 that in an election where you actually draw a contrast between him and Pierre Polyev, I think

00:36:03.520 the polls will shift heavily. So I'm, I'm one, you know, I'm not, I'm not trying to be blithe about

00:36:09.680 it. I'm certainly not trying to, I've been through this. You know, I've studied polls a lot. I look at

00:36:14.640 a lot of things. I would want to dive deep into some of the crosstabs of geographically, where is that

00:36:21.520 shift taking place? And then also demographically, where's that shift taking place? My gut sense is that what

00:36:27.440 you're seeing is a lot of, um, uh, elderly people, uh, the, you know, the over 57, which is a very

00:36:34.640 strong voter base, liking Mark Carney and seeing him as middle of the road and, uh, given the options

00:36:41.280 of the other three candidates and, uh, and that that's kind of a response and that that's sort of,

00:36:46.720 you know, if you're, if you're constantly being shown four candidates, they're all liberals and you're

00:36:50.480 asked, how do you want to vote? I think it's, you know, it's not untenable that what's happening is

00:36:55.520 that's being reflected in a poll where they say, well, what about the conservatives?

00:36:59.920 Um, I don't know. I, one of the features of the poll that's very interesting to me

00:37:05.520 is that the NDP has lost a lot to the liberals in this current scenario. So I think if we go back

00:37:13.040 to whether Mark Carney tries to lead or calls a vote right away, one of the questions will be

00:37:17.120 what role will Jagmeet Singh play? Because he's changed his mind multiple times on this.

00:37:21.040 Yeah. Let's just show that quickly. So the Leger poll that also came out on February 23rd on Sunday,

00:37:27.360 uh, it shows that the liberal party are up seven points to 40%. Sean, if we could put this on the

00:37:32.400 screen, the conservative party is up 30, uh, up four points to 38. So the conservatives are actually

00:37:38.400 up. Oh, this isn't the one that, um, the recent Leger poll shows that the NDP are only at 11%

00:37:45.600 and that they are down 7% from previous polls. So, you know, this would be the liberals taking

00:37:52.560 entirely from the NDP and the conservatives actually doing, uh, better than, than they had

00:37:57.280 before, which is interesting. But anyway, you can carry on. Well, yeah, look, I think, I think

00:38:02.800 we've got to read the crosstabs on these things. I remember I wrote a, uh, posted a note on Twitter,

00:38:07.040 where a bunch of friends of mine said, you know, Harris is polling. And I said, her polls are all wrong.

00:38:11.040 The crosstabs don't help her at all. Right. And so you have to know how the distribution looks

00:38:16.240 in the case of the States, you could be a Democrat. You could have a hundred percent of California.

00:38:19.920 It doesn't move the voting, uh, outcomes at all. Uh, but it massively moves the, the, you know,

00:38:25.920 the public. Um, I, I just have a sense that, that this has been extremely well scripted from a tactical,

00:38:33.600 uh, point of view by the liberal party to suspend democracy in Canada, make tons of promises. You

00:38:39.840 know, I don't know how they're able to do this. Uh, you just, the prime minister just, um, you know,

00:38:45.520 said that they're going to give $5 billion to Ukraine and leave on the table, whether we put

00:38:50.560 troops. I mean, it's all, it's, it's embarrassing because no one's taking it seriously in Europe. But

00:38:55.600 the other thing is how, how are these commitments being made without a parliament sitting? This is,

00:39:00.240 this is democracy. And, and the fact that the press is paid off and that they're actually going out,

00:39:08.400 you know, this weird reminder that came from, um, Pascal Saint-Ange saying,

00:39:13.120 we need to double what we pay the CBC and CBC has become unwatchable and it has almost no,

00:39:18.000 no audience, but they're making these sort of tacit promises as they're, you know, you know,

00:39:23.920 you've got media outlets covering the liberal party and saying, what if we give you guys another

00:39:27.840 billion dollars, let's have that debate out loud, right? It's incredibly corrupt. It just looks like

00:39:32.320 a banana republic from the outside. Well, and Saint-Ange is, is saying not just that they want to give

00:39:36.560 CBC more money, but that they want to remove the decision-making away from the political realm

00:39:41.280 and basically try to find a way to guarantee their funding basically to protect them from future

00:39:46.160 conservative government that doesn't see the value and wants to defund it. We saw Justin Trudeau

00:39:50.640 announced a proposed $3 billion, uh, bullet train from Quebec city to Toronto. Um, you know,

00:39:56.960 California had a similar promise, uh, for a train half as long. Um, they said that it was going to

00:40:01.600 cost 25 billion. The tab is upwards of 150 billion today, and it's still, it's still not built. It's,

00:40:08.080 there's nothing built. And so this idea that Trudeau could build a bullet train for $3 billion is so

00:40:13.760 absurd. And yet I mean, you cover it. I want, I want to bring it back to the media though,

00:40:17.360 because I just don't understand from my perspective, no one's watching it and they're tuned

00:40:21.120 out specifically in the Gen Z and the millennial generation. People don't watch the legacy media.

00:40:26.240 So, so how is it that they can have such an outsized influence still in our country, um,

00:40:31.920 that, that they could cause such a, such a drastic swing in just a few weeks?

00:40:37.360 Well, you know, I think, I, I think there's a couple of things going on. I think the, the media,

00:40:42.960 uh, people still pull their information increasingly from social media and different

00:40:47.040 sources. Right. But there's, uh, when you, when you use people's tax dollars to fund an ideological

00:40:54.000 position that, you know, I saw this one CBC, I, I just thought about posting about this in light

00:40:59.040 of what Pascal St. Hans said, but I remember the CBC did a very high production, um, sort of Willy Wonka

00:41:04.480 mockery of the freedom convoy. Um, and I was disgusted by it, you know, outside of Canada,

00:41:10.960 the, uh, even the president was compelled to say that what Christian Freeland did with the truckers

00:41:15.600 was fascism. Right. Um, this is language that, you know, I, people in Europe found it bizarre and

00:41:22.480 it's like, it's extraordinary that a state owned broadcaster not only doesn't say, let's have a

00:41:30.880 question about civil rights and a decision that was found to be deeply unconstitutional, total violation

00:41:36.160 of the law. Uh, right. And instead we're going to create a musical mockery of people whose intention

00:41:44.000 was to confront the anti-scientific basis of a bunch of COVID mandates federally that were soon

00:41:48.480 dropped because they were totally out of line with what was going on everywhere else in the world.

00:41:52.080 And we're out of line with what was health best practice and we're killing these,

00:41:55.680 the business of these truckers. These guys were debanked, uh, you know, terror laws were invoked

00:42:02.080 against Canadians. We were told it was foreign interference. It was almost all Canadians that 1.00

00:42:08.160 backing these people and, and the one sort of, you know, news business of record that is supposed

00:42:16.880 to serve Canadians is entirely not just failing to defend the idea that there's something important

00:42:23.520 here that needs to be debated in terms of civil rights dissent, these decisions and how this was

00:42:27.840 handled. Beyond that, they're openly mocking it, sending this sort of like wink and nod, like,

00:42:32.560 aren't these people clowns? Aren't they dumb? Aren't they educated? Aren't they savvy? You know, 1.00

00:42:37.040 it was so disgusting. It was so pravda. And now we're dealing with a bunch of, you know, second tier, 0.84

00:42:43.680 you know, politicians, uh, who are using old Soviet terms like misinformation and disinformation.

00:42:50.880 And they're using them with a straight face against Canadians that want to have an open debate about

00:42:54.960 this kind of society they want to live in and they want to inherit. So I think that there's a lot to

00:43:00.240 play for right now. I think this is partly why the media is so desperate to appear to portray Pierre

00:43:06.160 as a Trump wannabe or a Trump supporter. I think it's painted the conservative party into a corner in

00:43:13.360 terms of the kind of messaging that you have to use in, you know, on the one hand, you've got to say

00:43:17.760 the people that are presenting themselves as defending Canada are actually the problem, you know, because for

00:43:22.160 nine years they've created a weaker, less resilient economy, a joke of the military and they've undermined

00:43:29.120 Canadians. We've got the worst productivity. We've got, you know, they want to do dollar for dollar 1.00

00:43:33.440 tariffs and it costs a dollar 43 to do a dollar for dollar tariff. Like, you know, this is, this is what

00:43:38.880 we're up against. And how do you, you know, it's, it's sort of like the narrative if it gets adopted wholesale by a media that doesn't want to,

00:43:46.800 uh, be critical of the government ends up bending, uh, people's sentiment and creating sort of, you know,

00:43:54.960 this idea of the Overton window where, you know, there's sort of a framing of ideas where certain

00:44:00.320 ideas become acceptable only when a crisis kind of opens that window up. I don't think Canadians have 1.00

00:44:06.160 yet seen how disastrous what's happened to the economy and our security has been, but I think they're

00:44:10.800 starting to see it. I think people are more and more frustrated, the extremism that they see in our

00:44:14.640 streets, the Bebas family in Israel, you know, um, you know, the strangulation, a little nine months old,

00:44:22.240 uh, barehanded by Gazans, Gazan civilians, you know, killed these, killed these kids in cold blood,

00:44:28.560 returned their bodies. Hamas used it as a parade. It was celebrated. Yeah. Foreign affairs people. Where,

00:44:34.640 where, where is Melanie Jolie now after repeating Hamas talking points about the fake bombing of a 1.00

00:44:40.720 hospital? Like where is Canada right now? There, there was, there was, uh, several hundred thousand

00:44:45.440 people in Buenos Aires the same day that we had militant Islamist supporters shouting murderous

00:44:54.400 slogans against Jewish people in downtown Montreal and Toronto. What has happened to Canada?

00:44:59.840 Canada. You know, it's beyond reckoning in our, in our, in our press, the fifth estate,

00:45:06.320 their job is to say, we've reached a point of moral blindness or darkness as a country

00:45:13.280 that must be addressed. The, the, the sickness and depravity of the things being said on our streets

00:45:20.560 by people sponsored by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp, which we only named a terrorist

00:45:26.400 entity in, in June of this year, by the way, we still have 600 of those guys trolling our streets

00:45:32.480 and they're all using our asylum laws to try and stay in Canada. And they're sponsoring things like 0.53

00:45:36.160 Samadu. You know, everybody that went to that Hezbollah funeral in Lebanon, every single person

00:45:42.800 that flies back in from Canada should be detained. And if they, if they have anything related to not 0.97

00:45:49.680 being a full citizen born here, deported, go live there, go live under Hamas and Hezbollah. 1.00

00:45:55.280 Let's stop the streets and quit turning us into this anti-Semitic extremist culture. And our press

00:46:02.080 is letting us down. Our law enforcement is letting us down and our, and our politicians are letting us

00:46:06.560 down. And this is not conservative liberal. This is the kind of society you want to live in. Most of my

00:46:11.040 Jewish friends are, have actually traditionally voted liberal and we have huge debates over that,

00:46:15.680 right? Because I think that's crazy, but, but what's happening, it doesn't have to be liberal

00:46:20.080 conservative. We need a society that has a vision for what it can do and be. And, and you see complete

00:46:26.080 hollowness and silence in a moment where Hamas has jumped the shark. Like if it was even possible to 0.97

00:46:32.320 think they were more depraved than we already thought they were, right? Well, I couldn't agree more. I

00:46:37.200 think it's so sick that people traveled from Canada to go to that funeral. And part of the problem is the 0.76

00:46:42.400 people I saw that were doing it were like white, far left activists, not even necessarily.

00:46:46.320 Of course, but we have terror laws for this reason. Right. I promise you this, if there was a right

00:46:52.560 wing funeral and we had a bunch of thugs with tats flying up then coming back, you bet they'd be

00:46:59.120 detained, right? Yeah, I completely agree. Here's this weird, again, you know, this very weird progressive

00:47:05.840 left instinct that wants to play, play softly. And again, I think we do this at our peril,

00:47:13.840 but we need to get our cities and our streets back and we need to end this, this fraud that's

00:47:19.440 being embedded by terror and criminal syndicates. I couldn't agree more. Well, I just want to,

00:47:23.360 we only have a minute left here, but I did want to play the latest Trump clip from President Trump.

00:47:29.040 This is pretty unbelievable. So Trump, again, doubling down on this 51st statehood thing,

00:47:33.600 you mentioned that you thought it was a joke. I tend to agree. So while signing executive orders

00:47:37.840 in the Oval Office, President Trump was asked a question about whether maybe the path to Canada

00:47:43.360 becoming American is through Western Canada, potentially Alberta. And so I wanted to specifically

00:47:48.320 get your thoughts on this. This is a bit of a longer clip, but here is President Trump on Tuesday

00:47:53.440 saying that a lot of people in Canada do want to join the Americans by that clip.

00:47:57.600 Last week, I spent some time with two government officials for Canada. I was asking them how

00:48:04.640 realistic is it that Canada would be the 51st state. And they told me there is a path. Alberta is

00:48:11.760 first. And if they sign on, Saskatchewan would follow. And then you go west to British Columbia.

00:48:18.480 There is a movement in Canada to join us. Want to get your thoughts on that and how that's proceeding.

00:48:24.160 So it's true. Thank you, Brian. It's true. A lot of people in Canada liking

00:48:30.960 becoming our beautiful, cherished 51st state. They'll have to pay much lower taxes. They'll have

00:48:36.800 the ultimate security. You know, they don't pay very much for security right now because they rely

00:48:41.120 on us, which is really unfair to us. So it's interesting. Actually, I had Bruce Pardy,

00:48:47.840 professor from Queens University on the show on Monday, and he, I think that the reporter might have

00:48:53.040 been talking about our interview because that's literally what he said. He thought that Alberta

00:48:57.040 would get a better deal. And I know Jordan Peterson made a comment like this in an essay

00:49:00.720 in the National Post that Canada has to offer something better for Alberta. Otherwise, Alberta

00:49:05.840 might be the one to look to the United States. I just want to get your comment. I know you're in Alberta

00:49:12.000 and you understand what the political culture there. You know, you would think as a conservative

00:49:16.560 province, that might be the case. Although I speak to many people in Alberta and it doesn't really seem

00:49:21.440 that way to me. What, what do you make of it? No, look, I think, I think President Trump's doing

00:49:26.320 what he always does. He's trolling what he perceives to be an extremely weak federal Canadian

00:49:33.360 government. He saw the weakness live in the way that they failed to respond to any of the questions.

00:49:41.280 You know, he, let's, let's, let's scroll back for a second, because I find this interesting,

00:49:45.440 because we don't seem to cover ourselves the way that we're covered overseas. I was,

00:49:49.440 I was in the States in December, then I was back during the inauguration.

00:49:54.160 And in the, in, in, in the US, people will play clips of people like Melanie Jolie supporting the,

00:50:00.880 the corrupt Islamist ICC judge against Netanyahu, right? That will actually play. It will be like, 0.98

00:50:06.160 this is bizarre. Trudeau gave a speech saying Americans were sexist because they didn't elect

00:50:12.720 a woman president for the second time. That was his speech in December, when we were

00:50:17.760 all worried here about being trolled as a 51st state. Um, Christian Freeland the same month was

00:50:24.960 saying, uh, maple syrup MAGA all the time, and then saying she stood up to Trump and Trump's a bully,

00:50:30.560 right? This is, this was like our, our chair, self appointed chairman of the US Canada relations

00:50:36.880 committee. Now I have some friends that are in the administration. They said they think she's a joke. 0.91

00:50:41.040 She was a disaster when she did USMCA. She was, people forget this. And again,

00:50:45.360 our press doesn't talk about it. She was totally missing in action. She got shut out entirely by

00:50:50.560 Bob Lighthizer after she went on stage saying that Trump was a dictator. She was on stage with Putin,

00:50:54.880 about Putin and Trump with some left wing activists. They did it. They did a bilateral deal with Mexico.

00:51:01.040 And then we were invited to come back and try and seal a deal in a few weeks, only a few weeks

00:51:05.520 remaining, but the bilateral deal with Mexico was concluded. She was out of the room. This is

00:51:09.680 somebody who's never stood up for anything except trying to get reelected with a left wing base.

00:51:14.720 And so what the US observe is a series of, uh, passive aggressive behaviors by people that are

00:51:21.920 extremely weak, don't know their files, don't show up, can't engage. Melanie Jolie was down there and

00:51:28.880 she posted stuff. She met with like the three most radical left senators that are totally peripheral in US

00:51:34.480 politics, right? What are we doing as a nation? Like it's deeply unserious. So when a reporter prompts

00:51:41.440 a guy like Trump and says, Hey, sounds like you're going to put these tariffs on on March 4 for Mexico

00:51:46.640 and Canada, what do you think of Canada just being the 51st States? He'd be like, you know what?

00:51:50.320 I think they'd like it. And here's what I think is happening in Alberta. In Alberta, we had this debate

00:51:55.920 where the reaction to the fact that we were so, uh, we lacked resilience was we need to build these

00:52:01.680 pipelines coast to coast again and start having alternative markets from the United States.

00:52:05.920 We have economic resilience right away. Quebec said, you know what? We don't have any social

00:52:10.160 license for your pipelines. And what happened in Alberta that I don't think it's covered nationally.

00:52:14.880 As I said, you know what? Quebec has taken from Alberta has contributed in the last 15 years,

00:52:21.680 about $300 billion net to the country. No one's even close. The next closest is BC at like 42.

00:52:28.480 And after that, it's a little bit from Ontario and then everybody else takes it. They just take the

00:52:34.160 money, right? And say, thank you. They don't say thank you. They just take the money. Quebec has taken

00:52:39.920 far more money in any one year than it would cost to build that pipeline, but they don't think there's

00:52:43.840 any social license for us to send cleaner burning liquid natural gas to our NATO allies in Europe.

00:52:51.760 That's starting to become untenable. The thing that people should be debating is not the 51st

00:52:55.920 state stuff that Trump is trolling. They should be debating what is the purpose to be in a Canadian

00:53:00.960 federation if one province is paying everybody's bills and it's basically sustaining soft socialism

00:53:07.280 in other provinces. It simply won't make the harder decisions that Alberta makes to have lower taxes,

00:53:12.320 less red tape, more trade, and to build an economy that, you know, used to be very oil and gas dependent,

00:53:17.920 but is now heavily diversified out of oil and gas. It's got the highest net income, the youngest

00:53:22.560 demographic, the highest educated workforce in the country, and the fastest growth in the country

00:53:26.560 for 20 years running, even through recessionary periods. Like, at the end of the day, conservative

00:53:31.680 politics aren't there to be sort of a blue jersey you wear. They're there to make people more prosperous, 0.86

00:53:37.520 more secure, more free. And if the politics don't do that, change your politics. Change the policies.

00:53:43.360 And when you do do that, and you do become more prosperous, and you do create higher debt income,

00:53:47.360 and you do support the federation, and you look at these provinces that refuse to do that,

00:53:51.520 and they continue to be welfare states, Quebec is now poorer. It just crossed the line from being

00:53:56.560 the 49th poorest U.S. state to being poorer than Mississippi this year. Our great province of Quebec,

00:54:03.520 I think Quebec's phenomenal, right? I love Quebec. But it has become an impoverished place because of

00:54:10.720 these sad policies. I don't care what the political party is. That has to change. And living off welfare

00:54:15.920 from Alberta isn't helping. So if people say you want to be the 51st state, I just say Canada has got

00:54:21.440 to quit focusing on being trolled by the President of the United States and figure out what is our vision

00:54:27.520 to be the first nation on a bunch of categories instead of last place in the OECD on our productivity,

00:54:35.280 last place in the G7 in terms of our economic growth, last place from where we've ever been

00:54:40.560 in terms of violent crime and sexual crimes, last place 50,000 fentanyl deaths since 2016 because of

00:54:47.360 our failed policies. We have to build our nation so that we get over the fact that the rest of the

00:54:54.000 world sees us as the 51st state in military and security concerns. The rest of the world sees us as

00:55:00.400 a vassal economic state that became more dependent on the United States the last nine years. That's how the

00:55:05.920 world sees us. We might not like it and we might not like being trolled about it and it might make

00:55:10.640 us feel proud to sort of say we're not going to be that 51st state. But what not being that 51st state

00:55:16.240 really means is policies that make Canadians more prosperous, more secure and have a better opportunity

00:55:22.560 society to pass to their kids. That's the hard stuff that has to happen. And I think when push comes to

00:55:27.600 Chevin Pierre and, you know, Mark Carney face off against conservative policies like the ones we

00:55:34.560 passed in Alberta that have made us the economic powerhouse of the country with 90% of all private

00:55:40.400 sector hires in the last 12 months in the nation and the failed policies of repeating what's been going

00:55:45.760 on in the Liberal Party, we're going to win. And that's going to be good. And that's the best response

00:55:50.080 to the 51st state BS from the president.

00:55:52.080 All right, David. Well, there you have it. Thank you so much for your insights. Really

00:55:56.240 enjoyed talking to you today. That's David Knight-Legg. Thank you.

00:55:59.600 Thanks a lot, Candice. Great to talk to you.

00:56:01.760 All right. That brings us to the end of the show. Thank you so much for joining us. We will

00:56:05.600 be back tomorrow with all the news. I'm Candice Malcolm. This is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:56:08.800 Thank you and God bless.

The Candice Malcolm Show - February 26, 2025

Liberals SURGE in the poll

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