In this episode of The Candace Malcolm Show, host Candace Malan sits down with opposition leader of the opposition, Pierre Poutine, to discuss the current economic and political situation in Canada and what the country needs to do to fix it.
00:16:26.720Or would you rather have us spend 2% of GDP and park in Kabul and let someone else do the
00:16:31.020real fighting like the other Europeans?
00:16:32.640I think 10 times out of 10, American generals at that time would have said, we would rather
00:16:37.600have you fighting on the front lines doing stuff.
00:16:39.780Let's measure government actions by what they achieve, not just by what they cost.
00:16:44.740Well, I love your Afghanistan example.
00:16:46.540And people may know, I mean, the organization that we're launching is called Juneau News.
00:16:50.940It's named after Juneau Beach, the old blaze of Normandy.
00:16:53.260There were five beaches that were stormed that day.
00:16:55.420The Canadians had one, the Brits had two, the Americans had two, and the Canadians made the greatest gains that day.
00:17:01.460And so it is an homage to the fact that Canadians punch above our weight militarily in the last, and that is a big part of our legacy.
00:17:09.220We always have, and you know, I could hit 2% tomorrow if I were to do what Justin Trudeau did, which is have a gigantic boondoggle on the F-35s.
00:17:20.220You could blow billions of dollars on a boondoggle and that would bring your defense spending up, but not your capabilities up.
00:17:26.180So I just once again say our focus should be, let's reduce the back office bureaucracy, the procurement boondoggles, and let's deliver more war fighting capability for the best possible price to taxpayers and the highest quality of life for our men and women in uniform.
00:17:45.180That's excellent. Okay, I want to talk a little bit about the election, the upcoming election, because I think a lot of Canadians were expecting it to happen in October 2025.
00:17:52.180Of course, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said in December that he was going to pull the plug on Parliament as soon as it resumes.
00:17:58.180But here we are in this precarious situation where Parliament's been probed. We don't really have, we don't know who the next Prime Minister will be, presumably Mark Carney, but possibly Chrysia Freeland.
00:18:08.180So I guess I just want to know, when do you think the election will be, and are you ready for an election?
00:18:13.180We are ready. I think it will happen quickly. I think Mr. Carney wants to avoid scrutiny.
00:18:17.180He wants to run during a honeymoon and the legacy media to protect him from any kind of tough questions or scrutiny.
00:18:24.180Whether it is about the advice he gave Trudeau that tanked our economy over the last five years.
00:18:31.180Whether it is about him moving his company headquarters to New York only a few months ago, when that's exactly what President Trump wants.
00:18:41.180Whether it's about him opposing Canadian pipelines while buying pipelines in the Middle East or opposing Canadian energy while investing in American coal.
00:18:53.180Those are all highly hypocritical things that Mark Carney does not want explored.
00:18:58.180And so I think you'll want a quick election to avoid any scrutiny.
00:19:02.180I think it is important we do get a quick election, but let's not mistaken the real reason why Carney wants that.
00:19:08.180It is to avoid any scrutiny and to have the Liberal establishment, the Liberal media, basically rubber stamp him as Prime Minister so that he can go on carrying out the same policies that have destroyed our economy, doubled our debt and housing costs after nine years of the Liberals.
00:19:25.180Well, you mentioned the legacy media, the Liberal media. Does it concern you going into an election that you, you've been outspoken, you said that you are going to defund the CBC.
00:19:34.180I believe that you said you're going to remove the $600 million newspaper fund that Trudeau created to fund the legacy newspapers as well.
00:19:41.180Does that concern you that the media is just not going to give you a fair shake?
00:19:44.180Well, the traditional mainstream media has always been totally Liberal.
00:19:50.180I mean, there's a few exceptions, but by and large, they will just regurgitate whatever the Carney Trudeau Liberals say.
00:19:58.180And in all of the last six or seven elections, they have campaigned almost openly for the Liberals.
00:20:06.180So I would not expect it to be any different this time.
00:20:09.180And so just to clarify, would you get rid of that $600 million newspaper fund that Trudeau gave to newspapers?
00:20:16.180We are going to be cutting back on that. You'll have to wait for our platform to get the details.
00:20:21.180We have to depoliticize news media finance, because right now what happens is that there are subsidies that go to favored media outlets that CRA designates,
00:20:34.180and then there's not funding for others. So, and of course, the worst example is CBC, which gets this enormous subsidy to do largely what Canadians can get elsewhere.
00:20:45.180Canadians can get digital media, videographical media, anywhere else, and yet they're paying a billion-plus dollars for CBC to do that.
00:20:55.180So I think those are examples of where we need to cut and we need to defund the CBC and have an independent, self-supporting media that can keep Canadians informed.
00:21:07.180Well, there is a growing ecosystem of independent creators, independent journalists, citizen journalists that you see popping up all over social media.
00:21:14.180And so I wonder, if you form government, the Parliamentary Press Gallery is like an insider's group. They don't want to give access to people who don't work for legacy media.
00:21:23.180What would your policy be around allowing access to your government or to you personally for independent media?
00:21:29.180Absolutely. I think that independent media should be allowed on the precinct.
00:21:33.180There's no reason why it should be a small cabal of government-approved mouthpieces.
00:21:39.180It is highly undemocratic. I've always believed that. And it's made it particularly difficult for me because it means that only when I go and hold a press conference, it's just liberal media who are there to attend.
00:21:52.180But practically speaking, I'm in the precinct, I'm on Parliament Hill, I have to hold a press conference to get my message out.
00:22:00.180I would love to see a scenario where every different kind of journalist from all backgrounds, of all opinions, is given a chance to report on what happens on the Hill.
00:22:09.180Well, because you know what happens, right? Like all these press galleries are like 50% CBC journalists.
00:22:14.180And they sort of set the tone. They set the priority. They get the questions. And so they're always pushing in one direction.
00:22:19.180And it means, I mean, there's a huge opportunity. This is why we launched Juneau News, because so many Canadians just don't feel represented at all by the media and the questions they represent.
00:22:29.180It was three years ago that the Freedom Convoy was here in Ottawa, just right outside this building.
00:22:34.180And I think that that was one of the things that they were saying, that the policy and the people in the city weren't representing what they believed.
00:22:41.180I wonder, like, what do you think the legacy of the Freedom Convoy was?
00:22:46.180Well, I think that I supported those people who lawfully protested, because I believe that most of them just wanted their jobs back.
00:22:55.180The reason they were spending the time on Parliament Hill was just that they couldn't go back to work.
00:23:01.180And I think if the Prime Minister had gone out and talked to them, I actually think that most of them would have just would have gone on with their lives.
00:23:08.180But I think it was a very divisive, unfortunate approach that he took name calling, denouncing them and treating them like they were not Canadians.
00:23:20.180And I think it's a good reminder that when a Prime Minister disagrees with a protest, he still has to remember that the people who are attending the protest are Canadians.
00:23:31.180They have the right to express themselves and they deserve dignity and respect.
00:23:37.180And I think if that had happened, then we would not have, would not have dragged on so long.
00:23:43.180And I, you know, I look at the Hamas riots that we're seeing in our streets, far more violent than, you know, we're seeing, you know, fire bombings and bullets going into Jewish schools.
00:23:58.180You know, and I think to myself, you know, it was supposedly a national emergency worthy of suspending civil liberties that there were trucks parked in front of the Parliament building.
00:24:12.180But it's not an emergency when bullets are flying into children's schools or synagogues are being firebombed.
00:24:19.180And that is a very strange irony to me.
00:24:22.180Well, I'm glad you brought up immigration.
00:24:24.180So you recently announced that people who are participating in those rallies, people who engage in violence and hate crimes, will lose their status.
00:24:33.180If they're here temporarily on a student visa or temporary visa, you would suspend the visa and deport them.
00:24:38.180So can you walk us through what that would look like?
00:24:42.180If you break our laws while you're here as a visitor, you go, we kick you out.
00:24:45.180I don't know how anybody can disagree with that.
00:24:48.180If someone shows up in our country claiming to be a student or a temporary worker and they start firebombing coffee shops, bakeries, synagogues, or any other place,
00:25:00.180then they need to be immediately arrested and they need to be deported.
00:25:04.180If someone is obviously a citizen, they should be prosecuted through our legal system and put in prison here in Canada for those sorts of crimes.
00:25:13.180But there's no excuse for keeping people in this country who are visitors here on a temporary visa or permit if they're breaking our laws.
00:25:23.180What about people who are here illegally?
00:25:25.180What about people who have entered the country illegally or who have come to the country, applied for asylum claim, had that rejected, but remain in Canada?
00:25:36.180I mean, that's supposed to be the policy right now.
00:25:38.180I mean, if someone comes in, makes a false asylum claim, it gets rejected, they're supposed to leave today.
00:25:45.180The challenge that we're going to face is that under nine years of the Carney Trudeau Liberals' open border policies,
00:25:53.180we have now millions of people whose permits are going to expire over the next sort of two years.
00:26:00.180And if they don't leave, we have a very hard time, first of all, even knowing they're still here, finding them and then carrying out a deportation.
00:26:11.180There are some among them that we do want to keep.
00:26:14.180They could be a master's graduate in computer engineering that has a six figure job in Kitchener Waterloo,
00:26:20.180started a family, integrated, speaks the language.
00:26:25.180But we need to be able to make that decision ourselves through selection based on these criteria,
00:26:33.180not just by accident because people who are not eligible to stay decide they're not going to leave.
00:26:39.180One of the other things that's happening in the states right now in the new administration is that President Trump has been serious about deportations.
00:26:47.180And a couple of weeks ago, we had Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying that if he were the Canadians,
00:26:52.180he'd be concerned that a lot of the bad people there in the United States right now might try to sneak up into Canada.
00:26:58.180This happened last time Trump was president, Mr. Trump was president,
00:27:01.180where we had people crossing illegally through Roxham Road, thousands and thousands and thousands.
00:27:06.180And it was disgraceful. I went there myself, Pierre, and I couldn't believe it.
00:27:10.180You had CBSA officers acting like bellhops, lifting their suitcases, putting them into buses, taking them to Toronto or Montreal.
00:27:16.180Their choice, they got to choose where they would go.
00:27:18.180So we were sort of facilitating illegal entry into our country.
00:27:21.180I believe Roxham Road has been closed, but I'm sure that happens in other places.
00:27:26.180I'm wondering, what would you do to stop bad people that are about to be deported from the United States from just walking across into Canada?
00:27:33.180With the RBC Avion Visa, you can book any airline, any flight, any time.
00:27:40.180So start ticking off your travel list.
00:28:02.180Well, they closed Roxham Road 30 days after I issued an ultimatum to Justin Trudeau that he had to close it or that we would move non-confidence.
00:28:14.180And so he actually met my ultimatum and closed it, which proved that what they had been saying before was all a lie.
00:28:19.180They claimed they had no way of closing it.
00:28:21.180Well, of course they had a way of closing. They didn't want to.
00:28:24.180We have, we're a nation with borders and we have the ability to seal our borders against illegal crossers and to block people from coming in.
00:28:33.180And those that get onto our soil, what you need to do is just do a last in first out refugee review of their claim.
00:28:43.180If you're the last person into the country, then you immediately have your claim heard, which means that within a couple of weeks, if your claim is false, you're sent back.
00:28:55.180What that does is it sends the signal to everyone who might come in the future that they're going to be sent home all automatically.
00:29:05.180The problem right now is that if someone gets in illegally, they then, and even if they're not, they're not a real refugee, they're not fleeing danger.
00:29:12.180They have seven or eight years of appeals, appeals, appeals, during which we're paying for hotels and lawyers and food.
00:29:20.180Healthcare above and beyond what Canadians get.
00:29:22.180And healthcare above and beyond what Canadians get.
00:29:24.180So that then attracts more people to say, oh, hey, if I get to Canada, even though I'm not a real refugee, I can get into the country and I'll be bounced around in the system at someone else's expense forever.
00:29:34.180If we solve that problem, the message would go out very quickly that Canada is not a place to come to make a false or fraudulent claim.
00:29:43.180And I believe you would see a very real reduction in the number of people who even tried to come.
00:29:49.180I have a lot of sympathy for real refugees.
00:30:17.180I think that there's, well, even Justin Trudeau himself admitted that they let in too many people too fast and it had a wonky impact on housing market and everything else.
00:30:25.180What is your position on the right number in terms of the levels for permanent residents?
00:30:29.180It would be a lot more like the Harper-era numbers that were the same basically for 40 years before Trudeau took office.
00:30:38.180We were bringing in about 200,000, 250,000 a year in citizens.
00:30:44.180And that was, we were more than able to house those numbers because we were building about the same number of homes as we were adding people.
00:30:50.180So we had a housing surplus at the time.
00:30:54.180Um, what I would do is bring in a simple mathematical formula that says we cannot bring in people faster than we add houses.
00:31:02.180And you basically take home building in the prior year to set the population growth numbers in the next year.
00:31:10.180Um, and you have, you guarantee, in fact, you, I, I would, I would actually make sure that we're building surpluses of housing into each of the next four years,
00:31:19.180because that's how we close the gap that we, that is built up under Trudeau.
00:31:24.180One of the other things, uh, we talk about a little bit, um, is crime.
00:31:28.180I know that you talked about how you want to put life sentences on fentanyl dealers or the king, kingpins in the drug war.
00:31:34.180Uh, what about immigrants who are caught on drug charges? Do you think they should be deported?
00:31:39.180When you say immigrants, you mean people who are citizens or permanent residents?
00:31:42.180People who don't have their citizenship yet.
00:31:44.180I don't think anyone here is here on a temporary visa of any kind who's caught breaking our laws should be allowed to stay.
00:35:10.180So what you need is mandatory, not only mandatory prison for convicts, but you need to make it so that repeat offenders are ineligible for bail once they're arrested again.
00:35:21.180And, uh, that would automatically take, like the 40 offenders in Vancouver got arrested 6,000 times.
00:35:27.180So imagine if they just stayed in jail, you'd have 6,000 fewer crimes.