The Candice Malcolm Show - Pierre Poilievre on Trump’s tariff threat, border security, and cutting immigration

00:00:00.120 Trudeau said that they would issue retaliatory tariffs against the Americans.

00:00:03.920 So why is a conservative leader agreeing with basically a 25% liberal tax increase?

00:00:10.440 These tariff threats from the United States are utterly unjustified.

00:00:13.260 There is no justification for what Mr. President Trump is threatening on Canada.

00:00:17.480 What is your position on the right number in terms of the levels for permanent residency?

00:00:21.840 It would be a lot more like the Harper era numbers that were the same basically for 40 years.

00:00:27.880 It's very simple, if you break our laws while you're here as a visitor, we kick you out.

00:00:32.480 I don't know how anybody can disagree with that.

00:00:34.640 What do you think the legacy of the Freedom Convoy was?

00:00:39.060 Well I think that what I...

00:00:48.380 Hi I'm Candace Malcolm and this is the Candace Malcolm Show.

00:00:50.820 We have a very special episode for you today folks.

00:00:53.700 We are in Ottawa in studio with none other than the leader of the opposition, Mr. Pierre

00:00:59.300 Polyev.

00:01:00.300 Pierre, thank you so much for doing this.

00:01:01.300 Thank you very much for having me.

00:01:02.300 Okay.

00:01:03.300 So I want to start by talking about Canada, talking about the Canada that has become over

00:01:08.060 the last nine years, specifically Justin Trudeau.

00:01:10.300 So I want to ask you, Pierre, what is the worst thing that Justin Trudeau has done to Canada?

00:01:14.460 Well, he broke its promise.

00:01:18.160 There was a very simple promise in Canada that you work hard, you get a great life, doesn't

00:01:23.420 matter where you come from, it matters where you're going.

00:01:26.440 It doesn't matter who you knew, it matters what you can do.

00:01:29.780 Your bloodlines, your birthplace, your background was irrelevant as long as you were able to 0.99

00:01:35.100 put your shoulder to the wheel and contribute something.

00:01:38.600 And that meant you got a nice house.

00:01:40.900 You could feed your kids good, nutritious food.

00:01:44.300 You'd have a powerful paycheck that you'd bring home.

00:01:47.340 That promise is broken after nine years of the Kearney Trudeau Liberals.

00:01:52.360 And now I think their main objective will be to distract people, make people forget about

00:01:56.960 the last nine years, to give them another four.

00:02:01.600 The worst thing about breaking this promise is politicians break promises all the time.

00:02:07.140 Usually they break their own promises, but this was not Justin Trudeau's promise to break.

00:02:13.420 It was a promise that belonged to all of us.

00:02:16.680 And that is why it's so tragic that he's been able to break it.

00:02:19.180 But the good news is we can put the pieces back together.

00:02:22.560 We need to get back to a common sense, free enterprise country with low taxes and fast permits

00:02:29.280 that allows people to work hard and achieve great things and be honored as entrepreneurial heroes.

00:02:36.360 That is the country that I grew up with.

00:02:37.900 And that's what we're going to bring home.

00:02:39.460 So what do you think Justin Trudeau's legacy will be specifically?

00:02:42.640 I think it'll be just that, like he, you know, he promised all these wonderful things

00:02:46.540 for the middle class, remember?

00:02:49.260 And what did he give the middle class?

00:02:51.600 He doubled their housing costs.

00:02:52.800 Now there's not a single middle class youth in Canada outside of a few small number of communities

00:02:59.120 where they can afford homes.

00:03:00.960 If you're a middle class 25 year old in Toronto, there's no way you can afford a house.

00:03:06.360 That wasn't the case before Trudeau.

00:03:09.200 People feel endangered in their streets.

00:03:10.760 50,000 people have died of drug overdoses because of radical drug liberalization.

00:03:18.280 And that is the consequence of decisions made by government.

00:03:24.020 The good news is because they're all self-inflicted problems, we know how to fix them.

00:03:27.920 We need to reverse the decisions that caused the problems in the first place and we can

00:03:31.820 do that.

00:03:32.820 So you were one of the first people that I heard and definitely the loudest voice warning

00:03:36.100 about what you called just inflation or the consequences of printing money.

00:03:41.100 You came on my podcast back in 2021 and warned about it.

00:03:44.060 So tell me, Pierre, how did you know, how do you predict that that was going to happen

00:03:47.640 and walk us through what exactly did happen with the print?

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00:04:13.440 Well, it's a very simple mathematical problem that we've known about for millennia.

00:04:21.000 And it's the correlation between the growth and the money supply as a share of GDP and

00:04:29.680 the cost of things.

00:04:30.960 And if you look at Milton Friedman's amazing tomb, it's like a big brick of the monetary

00:04:37.360 history of the United States.

00:04:39.240 He puts in graphs of countries around the world and he can show like a near perfect correlation

00:04:46.100 between the growth in the money supply per unit of economic output and the inflation rate.

00:04:53.240 And so what happens is you have the same number of goods and services, but more money chasing

00:04:58.720 those goods and services, you get inflation.

00:05:00.800 So what I saw happening in 2020, 2021, 2022 was that the central bank was buying government

00:05:09.660 debt and effectively creating additional cash.

00:05:14.680 And the result was that our money supply grew by about $500 billion or about 30% during which

00:05:22.360 time the real output of our economy actually declined.

00:05:25.680 So you had a lot more money buying a lot less goods.

00:05:29.600 And it stood to reason that that was going to result in inflation.

00:05:33.100 All the central bankers, including Mark Carney said, oh no, that's just simple thinking.

00:05:40.180 Money printing doesn't cause inflation.

00:05:41.600 Well, of course it did.

00:05:43.440 And then we spent the last two years, our working class people spent the last year or two years 1.00

00:05:49.440 suffering with this affliction.

00:05:51.680 So this, the inflation is actually just the symptom.

00:05:56.420 The real disease is overspending.

00:05:58.480 Governments don't print money for fun.

00:05:59.800 They print it so they can spend it.

00:06:01.760 It's the sneakiest way to raise taxes without actually holding a vote.

00:06:07.660 It'd be like, you know, raising the GST three or four points.

00:06:11.140 You'd get thrown out of office for that.

00:06:12.720 But if you just tell the central bank to do a bunch of backroom hocus pocus that no one

00:06:16.120 can understand, call it quantitative easing, you can sneak it under the radar.

00:06:20.660 And that's what they did.

00:06:22.920 And so what I'm saying is stop the spending that's driving the money printing.

00:06:27.060 You need to cut bureaucracy, cut the consultants, cut foreign aid, cut back on corporate welfare

00:06:33.040 of these checks we give corporations when they should be raising their own money through

00:06:37.340 free enterprise.

00:06:39.240 And then you don't have to print money and you can protect the purchasing power of your

00:06:42.820 dollar.

00:06:43.820 It's frustrating because Milton Friedman wrote that book probably, I don't know, 60 or 70

00:06:47.860 years ago, we knew that this was going to happen.

00:06:50.120 You were warning about it.

00:06:51.340 And yet governments all over the world did it because everybody did it.

00:06:54.580 There's inflation everywhere.

00:06:56.100 And the liberal government and Dustin Trudeau can say it's a global phenomenon.

00:06:59.620 Right.

00:07:00.620 It has nothing to do with Canada.

00:07:01.900 You got into some heat at the time by the legacy media for saying that you would fire the

00:07:05.640 governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklin.

00:07:08.140 Is that still your position?

00:07:09.140 And what else would you do to get money under control?

00:07:11.860 Well, there's a lot of things we need to do.

00:07:15.380 First of all, let's start with this notion that it was a global phenomenon.

00:07:21.140 It was only a global phenomenon in countries that did money printing.

00:07:25.020 Switzerland did not.

00:07:26.020 Switzerland is probably one of the most trade dependent countries in the world.

00:07:30.640 If the inflation was really the result of supply chains and just a contagion that was traveling

00:07:37.200 everywhere because of COVID, well, then Switzerland would have had bad inflation, but they didn't.

00:07:41.700 Why?

00:07:42.700 Because they didn't create cash.

00:07:43.700 They had small deficits, which they eliminated quickly and they controlled their money supply.

00:07:48.900 As a result, inflation never went up above three and a half percent and then it dropped

00:07:53.680 below 2% almost immediately.

00:07:57.460 Switzerland has really hard money.

00:07:59.360 They have a lot of gold in their vault and they do not create cash unnecessarily.

00:08:07.280 And the Swiss have had actually averaged inflation of 0.8% for the last 25 years, which means

00:08:13.560 that in that period of time where we've been more like 2%, our money has lost value 25% more

00:08:20.900 of its value in purchasing the power than theirs has.

00:08:24.800 So what you need to do is be more like the Swiss. 0.98

00:08:27.900 Grow your money.

00:08:29.160 Don't grow it faster than you grow the stuff that money buys.

00:08:32.720 The other thing is that I'm not talking right now with the demand side, where there's also

00:08:36.400 the supply side.

00:08:39.300 If you have an economy with 10 apples and $10, it's a buck an apple.

00:08:42.000 You double the number of dollars to 20, you still have 10 apples.

00:08:45.000 Well, now it's $2 an apple.

00:08:46.820 But if you do the opposite, which is to say you keep the $10, but you double the number

00:08:50.900 of apples you grow to 20, now it's 50 cents an apple.

00:08:54.700 So if we were to produce more energy, grow more food, build more homes, then we would

00:09:00.200 actually reduce the cost of those things because there'd be a greater supply.

00:09:04.580 The way you do that is unleash the free enterprise system.

00:09:07.080 We should have fast permits for mining, pipelines, home building, and any other construction projects.

00:09:14.460 We should cut taxes to reward production rather than raising them to punish it.

00:09:18.820 That will unleash the production of the things that make our lives more high quality and gain

00:09:26.200 purchasing power back for our people.

00:09:28.080 And so what specifically, though, would you do to make things more affordable?

00:09:32.460 So like we want sound money, we want to stop printing money, but how would you kind of go

00:09:37.320 back to the things that are already become really expensive, like groceries and gas?

00:09:40.960 What would you do to...

00:09:41.960 Well, first of all, I think we need to get back to a monetary policy where the Bank of Canada

00:09:48.360 does one thing, which is preserve purchasing power through price stability, not creating cash

00:09:53.780 for governments to spend.

00:09:56.080 Taxes are also a problem.

00:09:57.440 We have these carbon taxes that go on fuel, which are then passed on through truckers to

00:10:02.920 everything that you buy.

00:10:05.020 You know, if you got it, a truck bought it, brought it.

00:10:07.780 And so if you tax the trucker's fuel, you're going to tax everything.

00:10:10.600 By getting rid of that tax, you can bring down the shipping costs and the food costs, everything

00:10:16.860 that you buy that requires energy.

00:10:21.040 And there's a trick coming, a con job.

00:10:23.540 Mark Carney has said that, you know, he has this long history of supporting carbon taxes

00:10:28.860 and pushing for them to be increased.

00:10:31.320 He's going to pause the current carbon tax to get through the two month election.

00:10:36.400 And then if you, God forbid, he wins, he'll bring back a much bigger tax with no rebate

00:10:41.140 at all.

00:10:42.660 And that will be devastating for our economy.

00:10:45.100 So if you want an end to the carbon tax for good, for real, forever, then it's only the

00:10:50.660 conservatives that will deliver that.

00:10:53.160 So there's a funny clip of you, Pierre, sort of in the House of Commons with Justin Trudeau.

00:10:58.200 And he was sort of bragging that his liberal government had won three straight elections

00:11:02.060 on the issue of the carbon tax.

00:11:03.160 Right.

00:11:04.160 He said, if you're so confident, why don't you have a fourth?

00:11:06.260 And at that point, we were sort of gearing up for an election based on this issue of carbon

00:11:11.160 taxes.

00:11:12.160 I think the liberals are trying to neutralize it, to your point, at least on the surface, saying

00:11:15.840 that they're going to walk away from the carbon tax, too.

00:11:18.160 So do you still think that we're heading to an election where the ballot box question

00:11:21.760 will be about cost of living and the carbon tax?

00:11:24.220 I think it's even more important now.

00:11:27.780 So let's talk about the carbon tax for a minute.

00:11:29.860 There is no question Mark Carney will bring in a newer and bigger carbon tax.

00:11:34.940 He said so.

00:11:35.940 He said he's going to replace the current tax with a new tax that he wants to apply to Canadian

00:11:41.160 industry.

00:11:42.160 And when he was asked on CTV the other day, what if, for example, a steel company passes

00:11:46.760 the price on to consumers?

00:11:47.760 He said, well, when was the last time you needed steel for anything?

00:11:52.720 You need steel for everything.

00:11:53.940 I mean, this building is held up by steel.

00:11:57.140 Automobiles are made of steel.

00:11:58.880 Your pots and pans have all kinds of metallic value that will go up in price.

00:12:04.820 Gym equipment.

00:12:05.820 You need to name it.

00:12:06.820 It's all got steel.

00:12:09.120 And so he's going to tax the very industries that Trump wants to tariff.

00:12:13.580 The other thing I would say is the Liberals are making this funny argument.

00:12:17.060 They're saying, please forgive them for all the economic damage they did, because we have

00:12:23.820 to focus on the Trump tariffs.

00:12:26.240 The economic damage Liberals did through taxes, debt, and blocking resource projects was bad

00:12:32.720 before the tariffs?

00:12:34.660 It's lethal after the tariffs.

00:12:37.340 The fact that we're facing threats of these unjustified tariffs now is another reason we

00:12:43.500 can't afford to take a risk on the radical tax-and-spend, Carney-Trudeau liberal policies

00:12:49.140 that failed over the last nine years.

00:12:50.900 Okay.

00:12:51.900 Because you mentioned tariffs, I'm going to ask you this question.

00:12:54.220 When Trudeau said that they would issue retaliatory tariffs against the Americans, 25%, you came 0.97

00:13:00.900 out in a basic agreement with that, saying that you would also support.

00:13:03.840 So my question is, a tariff that Canada imposes is really just a 25% tax on the goods that

00:13:10.680 we import.

00:13:11.680 So it's a 25% tax on what Canadians pay for.

00:13:14.820 So why is a conservative leader agreeing with basically a 25% liberal tax increase?

00:13:21.520 Well, I don't agree with any liberal tax increase of any kind ever.

00:13:26.520 But I do believe that if a foreign government attacks Canadian industry that we have to retaliate.

00:13:31.580 That is the only tool we have to deter.

00:13:34.100 These tariff threats from the United States are utterly unjustified.

00:13:36.200 There is no justification for what Mr. President Trump is threatening on Canada.

00:13:42.920 And you know, they have their grievances about border and military.

00:13:45.760 We have grievances with them about softwood lumber and Buy America.

00:13:50.260 That doesn't justify a trade war.

00:13:53.120 So what I've said is that whatever tariffs we collect on incoming American goods should be

00:13:57.420 given directly to the affected industries and whatever surpluses left over should be used

00:14:02.520 for tax cuts.

00:14:04.200 That would mitigate and try to neutralize the costs that Canadians would face from paying

00:14:10.020 tariffs on incoming products.

00:14:12.080 There's no question.

00:14:13.080 Tariffs are taxes.

00:14:15.660 That's why they're bad.

00:14:17.720 But we have to defend our country and our industrial base if it comes under unfair and unprovoked

00:14:23.160 attack by a foreign government.

00:14:25.420 And cut other taxes to neutralize the effect of that unfortunate but necessary action.

00:14:31.120 You were up in Iqaluit earlier this week announcing your Canada First plan with regards to increasing

00:14:36.440 military spend.

00:14:37.440 So would your goal be to raise Canada's military as a percentage of our GDP to 2%?

00:14:42.940 Yes, it is a goal.

00:14:44.440 I will say, though, I've never believed in any part of the government that we should

00:14:48.880 judge our success by how expensive we could be.

00:14:51.560 It's funny.

00:14:52.560 It's only in government that we have this funny formula where we say our program, my healthcare

00:14:57.420 program has more billions than your healthcare program, therefore it must be the best healthcare

00:15:01.740 program in the history of healthcare.

00:15:05.200 And then you find out that a billion dollars was wasted on a contract to a sleazy consultant

00:15:11.000 under the guise of this or that public policy objective.

00:15:16.060 I would rather, yes, increase funding for the things we value like healthcare and military,

00:15:23.320 but I would rather judge our success by what we deliver.

00:15:26.660 I would rather judge, for example, on healthcare, how much we shorten wait times, how many Canadians

00:15:32.100 get an extra family doctor on military, judge by how much territory we've protected by opening

00:15:37.020 new base in the north or by securing our waters with new icebreakers or by delivering the best

00:15:45.100 best arms and kit to our soldiers or the best quality of life to military families.

00:15:50.860 That's how we should judge our success.

00:15:52.340 You know, during the Afghan war, we probably did more pound for pound than any country save the U.S.

00:16:00.640 and possibly the U.K., even though we were spending a lower share of our GDP on military than many

00:16:06.800 of the European countries who parked themselves safely in Kabul where the fighting wasn't happening.

00:16:13.100 If you had gone to the Pentagon at the time and said, which would you rather have?

00:16:17.160 Would you rather have Canadians who are actually tearing apart Al-Qaeda in Kandahar province,

00:16:23.340 but spend 1.3% of GDP?

00:16:26.720 Or would you rather have us spend 2% of GDP and park in Kabul and let someone else do the

00:16:31.020 real fighting like the other Europeans? 1.00

00:16:32.640 I think 10 times out of 10, American generals at that time would have said, we would rather

00:16:37.600 have you fighting on the front lines doing stuff.

00:16:39.780 Let's measure government actions by what they achieve, not just by what they cost.

00:16:44.740 Well, I love your Afghanistan example.

00:16:46.540 And people may know, I mean, the organization that we're launching is called Juneau News.

00:16:50.940 It's named after Juneau Beach, the old blaze of Normandy.

00:16:53.260 There were five beaches that were stormed that day.

00:16:55.420 The Canadians had one, the Brits had two, the Americans had two, and the Canadians made the greatest gains that day.

00:17:01.460 And 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. 0.59

00:17:09.220 We 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.

00:17:20.220 You could blow billions of dollars on a boondoggle and that would bring your defense spending up, but not your capabilities up.

00:17:26.180 So 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.

00:17:45.180 That'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.

00:17:52.180 Of course, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said in December that he was going to pull the plug on Parliament as soon as it resumes.

00:17:58.180 But 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.

00:18:08.180 So I guess I just want to know, when do you think the election will be, and are you ready for an election?

00:18:13.180 We are ready. I think it will happen quickly. I think Mr. Carney wants to avoid scrutiny.

00:18:17.180 He wants to run during a honeymoon and the legacy media to protect him from any kind of tough questions or scrutiny.

00:18:24.180 Whether it is about the advice he gave Trudeau that tanked our economy over the last five years.

00:18:31.180 Whether it is about him moving his company headquarters to New York only a few months ago, when that's exactly what President Trump wants.

00:18:41.180 Whether it's about him opposing Canadian pipelines while buying pipelines in the Middle East or opposing Canadian energy while investing in American coal.

00:18:53.180 Those are all highly hypocritical things that Mark Carney does not want explored.

00:18:58.180 And so I think you'll want a quick election to avoid any scrutiny.

00:19:02.180 I think it is important we do get a quick election, but let's not mistaken the real reason why Carney wants that.

00:19:08.180 It 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.

00:19:25.180 Well, 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.

00:19:34.180 I believe that you said you're going to remove the $600 million newspaper fund that Trudeau created to fund the legacy newspapers as well.

00:19:41.180 Does that concern you that the media is just not going to give you a fair shake?

00:19:44.180 Well, the traditional mainstream media has always been totally Liberal.

00:19:50.180 I mean, there's a few exceptions, but by and large, they will just regurgitate whatever the Carney Trudeau Liberals say.

00:19:58.180 And in all of the last six or seven elections, they have campaigned almost openly for the Liberals.

00:20:06.180 So I would not expect it to be any different this time.

00:20:09.180 And so just to clarify, would you get rid of that $600 million newspaper fund that Trudeau gave to newspapers?

00:20:16.180 We are going to be cutting back on that. You'll have to wait for our platform to get the details.

00:20:20.180 OK, because...

00:20:21.180 We 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,

00:20:34.180 and 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.

00:20:45.180 Canadians can get digital media, videographical media, anywhere else, and yet they're paying a billion-plus dollars for CBC to do that.

00:20:55.180 So 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.

00:21:07.180 Well, there is a growing ecosystem of independent creators, independent journalists, citizen journalists that you see popping up all over social media.

00:21:14.180 And 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.

00:21:23.180 What would your policy be around allowing access to your government or to you personally for independent media?

00:21:29.180 Absolutely. I think that independent media should be allowed on the precinct.

00:21:33.180 There's no reason why it should be a small cabal of government-approved mouthpieces.

00:21:39.180 It 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.

00:21:52.180 But practically speaking, I'm in the precinct, I'm on Parliament Hill, I have to hold a press conference to get my message out.

00:22:00.180 I 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.

00:22:09.180 Well, because you know what happens, right? Like all these press galleries are like 50% CBC journalists.

00:22:13.180 Yes.

00:22:14.180 And they sort of set the tone. They set the priority. They get the questions. And so they're always pushing in one direction.

00:22:19.180 And 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.

00:22:29.180 It was three years ago that the Freedom Convoy was here in Ottawa, just right outside this building.

00:22:34.180 And 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.

00:22:41.180 I wonder, like, what do you think the legacy of the Freedom Convoy was?

00:22:46.180 Well, I think that I supported those people who lawfully protested, because I believe that most of them just wanted their jobs back.

00:22:55.180 The reason they were spending the time on Parliament Hill was just that they couldn't go back to work.

00:23:01.180 And 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.

00:23:08.180 But I think it was a very divisive, unfortunate approach that he took name calling, denouncing them and treating them like they were not Canadians.

00:23:20.180 And 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.

00:23:31.180 They have the right to express themselves and they deserve dignity and respect.

00:23:37.180 And I think if that had happened, then we would not have, would not have dragged on so long.

00:23:43.180 And 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.

00:23:58.180 You 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.

00:24:12.180 But it's not an emergency when bullets are flying into children's schools or synagogues are being firebombed.

00:24:19.180 And that is a very strange irony to me.

00:24:22.180 Well, I'm glad you brought up immigration. 0.97

00:24:24.180 So you recently announced that people who are participating in those rallies, people who engage in violence and hate crimes, will lose their status.

00:24:33.180 If they're here temporarily on a student visa or temporary visa, you would suspend the visa and deport them. 0.96

00:24:38.180 So can you walk us through what that would look like?

00:24:40.180 Well, it's very simple.

00:24:42.180 If you break our laws while you're here as a visitor, you go, we kick you out. 0.93

00:24:45.180 I don't know how anybody can disagree with that.

00:24:48.180 If 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,

00:25:00.180 then they need to be immediately arrested and they need to be deported.

00:25:04.180 If 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.

00:25:13.180 But 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. 0.99

00:25:23.180 What about people who are here illegally? 0.97

00:25:25.180 What 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?

00:25:33.180 Would you deport those people?

00:25:35.180 Yes.

00:25:36.180 I mean, that's supposed to be the policy right now.

00:25:38.180 I mean, if someone comes in, makes a false asylum claim, it gets rejected, they're supposed to leave today.

00:25:45.180 The challenge that we're going to face is that under nine years of the Carney Trudeau Liberals' open border policies,

00:25:53.180 we have now millions of people whose permits are going to expire over the next sort of two years.

00:26:00.180 And 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.

00:26:11.180 There are some among them that we do want to keep.

00:26:14.180 They could be a master's graduate in computer engineering that has a six figure job in Kitchener Waterloo,

00:26:20.180 started a family, integrated, speaks the language.

00:26:23.180 This is someone we want to keep.

00:26:25.180 But we need to be able to make that decision ourselves through selection based on these criteria,

00:26:33.180 not just by accident because people who are not eligible to stay decide they're not going to leave.

00:26:39.180 One 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.

00:26:47.180 And a couple of weeks ago, we had Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying that if he were the Canadians,

00:26:52.180 he'd be concerned that a lot of the bad people there in the United States right now might try to sneak up into Canada.

00:26:58.180 This happened last time Trump was president, Mr. Trump was president,

00:27:01.180 where we had people crossing illegally through Roxham Road, thousands and thousands and thousands.

00:27:06.180 And it was disgraceful. I went there myself, Pierre, and I couldn't believe it.

00:27:10.180 You had CBSA officers acting like bellhops, lifting their suitcases, putting them into buses, taking them to Toronto or Montreal.

00:27:16.180 Their choice, they got to choose where they would go.

00:27:18.180 So we were sort of facilitating illegal entry into our country.

00:27:21.180 I believe Roxham Road has been closed, but I'm sure that happens in other places.

00:27:26.180 I'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?

00:27:33.180 With the RBC Avion Visa, you can book any airline, any flight, any time.

00:27:40.180 So start ticking off your travel list.

00:27:42.180 Grand Canyon? Grand.

00:27:45.180 Great Barrier Reef? Great.

00:27:47.180 Galapagos? Galapago?

00:27:50.180 Switch and get up to 55,000 Avion points that never expire.

00:27:54.180 Your idea of never missing out happens here.

00:27:57.180 Conditions apply.

00:27:58.180 Visit rbc.com slash Avion.

00:28:02.180 Well, 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.

00:28:14.180 And so he actually met my ultimatum and closed it, which proved that what they had been saying before was all a lie.

00:28:19.180 They claimed they had no way of closing it.

00:28:21.180 Well, of course they had a way of closing. They didn't want to.

00:28:24.180 We 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. 1.00

00:28:33.180 And those that get onto our soil, what you need to do is just do a last in first out refugee review of their claim. 1.00

00:28:42.180 And this is how it works.

00:28:43.180 If 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.

00:28:55.180 What 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.

00:29:05.180 The 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.

00:29:12.180 They have seven or eight years of appeals, appeals, appeals, during which we're paying for hotels and lawyers and food.

00:29:20.180 Healthcare above and beyond what Canadians get.

00:29:22.180 And healthcare above and beyond what Canadians get.

00:29:24.180 So 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.

00:29:34.180 If 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.

00:29:43.180 And I believe you would see a very real reduction in the number of people who even tried to come.

00:29:49.180 I have a lot of sympathy for real refugees.

00:29:51.180 My wife is a refugee.

00:29:53.180 This has been a wonderful refuge for people who genuinely have claims.

00:29:56.180 And that still will be the case when I'm prime minister.

00:29:58.180 But we can't take in fraudulent fake claimants and pay their bills for seven years while they work the system.

00:30:04.180 Okay, one more question on immigration.

00:30:05.180 So Justin Trudeau and his government dramatically increased the number of legal permanent residents to Canada.

00:30:11.180 So I think that average during the Harper years was about 250,000.

00:30:15.180 2025, we're up to 500,000.

00:30:17.180 I 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.

00:30:24.180 Yes.

00:30:25.180 What is your position on the right number in terms of the levels for permanent residents?

00:30:29.180 It would be a lot more like the Harper-era numbers that were the same basically for 40 years before Trudeau took office.

00:30:38.180 We were bringing in about 200,000, 250,000 a year in citizens.

00:30:44.180 And 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.

00:30:50.180 So we had a housing surplus at the time.

00:30:54.180 Um, what I would do is bring in a simple mathematical formula that says we cannot bring in people faster than we add houses.

00:31:02.180 And you basically take home building in the prior year to set the population growth numbers in the next year.

00:31:10.180 Um, 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,

00:31:19.180 because that's how we close the gap that we, that is built up under Trudeau.

00:31:24.180 One of the other things, uh, we talk about a little bit, um, is crime.

00:31:28.180 I know that you talked about how you want to put life sentences on fentanyl dealers or the king, kingpins in the drug war.

00:31:34.180 Uh, what about immigrants who are caught on drug charges? Do you think they should be deported?

00:31:39.180 When you say immigrants, you mean people who are citizens or permanent residents?

00:31:42.180 People who don't have their citizenship yet. 0.78

00:31:44.180 I 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.

00:31:52.180 It's that simple.

00:31:53.180 Any laws, any other than a parking ticket.

00:31:56.180 Like if, if you come to Canada and you're caught selling and you're not a citizen or a permanent resident,

00:32:01.180 you're selling drugs, you're doing violence, you're doing a fraud, a car theft, you gotta go.

00:32:08.180 Well, one of the things you pointed out in a recent video that was talking about this fentanyl thing was that the Trudeau government,

00:32:12.180 through Bill C-5, eliminated the mandatory minimums.

00:32:15.180 Yes.

00:32:16.180 And because there aren't minimum sentences for a lot of these crimes,

00:32:18.180 you do end up having immigrants that get caught with like illegal guns or something like that,

00:32:21.180 and they don't get deported because there's no minimum sentence.

00:32:24.180 So, uh, would you put back those mandatory minimums?

00:32:27.180 Yes.

00:32:28.180 Yeah.

00:32:29.180 And, uh, and to be clear for people who are permanent residents and citizens,

00:32:32.180 we're not, we're not going to obviously deport to permanent residents and citizens,

00:32:35.180 but they will do very serious jail time under my new plans.

00:32:40.180 So, um, to put it into perspective, it takes only two milligrams of fentanyl to kill someone.

00:32:45.180 Um, there was a recent super lab that was, uh, busted in, uh, British Columbia about a month ago.

00:32:53.180 And they were, they had produced enough fentanyl or had enough fentanyl ingredients to kill 95 million people.

00:33:01.180 That is to say, kill every Canadian more than twice. 0.73

00:33:04.180 So these are large scale mass murder operations.

00:33:08.180 Fentanyl kills far more people than homicide.

00:33:11.180 So when you are selling lots of fentanyl, you're like spraying bullets into a crowd.

00:33:17.180 You might not know who you're killing, but you're killing someone.

00:33:20.180 So you should go to jail for life.

00:33:22.180 Um, anyone who's caught trafficking more than 40 milligrams will get a life sentence.

00:33:27.180 Between 20 and 40 will be 15 year sentence.

00:33:31.180 Those will be mandatory minimums.

00:33:33.180 One of the remarkable things in a negative way that's happened recently is just the level of crime,

00:33:38.180 specifically in the city of Toronto.

00:33:40.180 Like I can't tell you how many times, like it's shocking to me that there are carjackings in Canada

00:33:45.180 where gunned people will come and force you out of your car, even sometimes when there's kids in the car.

00:33:50.180 Or so many people I talk to in Toronto are really worried about home invasions.

00:33:54.180 People breaking into their house in the long night.

00:33:56.180 You had a police, uh, representative tell Canadians to just leave their keys near the front door.

00:34:01.180 So if someone broke in, the thief could just take the car and they wouldn't bother you in the house.

00:34:06.180 Um, like what, what's happened in Canada?

00:34:08.180 Like how is this the case?

00:34:09.180 What would you do to make Canadians feel safer and to get rid of a lot of this really heinous crime that's happening in Canada?

00:34:15.180 Um, well, these people have to go to jail. 0.94

00:34:17.180 Like the problem is right now, if you do a carjacking, you get arrested, you'll be back out on the street in a couple of hours.

00:34:23.180 And Canadian police officers tell me they arrest the same offender often three times in the same day.

00:34:29.180 Um, and why he's in, he's released on bail.

00:34:33.180 The officer's not even done doing the paperwork on the arrest and the offender's already back out on the street doing a new offence.

00:34:39.180 So the good news is we actually don't have a lot of criminals in Canada.

00:34:43.180 The bad news is they're extremely productive.

00:34:45.180 Um, they can, they do a phenomenal amount of crime.

00:34:49.180 Um, and there's one guy in Penticton, his name is Levi.

00:34:53.180 And the police tell me when he's out of jail, he does so much crime.

00:34:57.180 The crime rate for the entire city of Penticton goes up.

00:35:01.180 Like you can say, you know, for this month, Levi was out of jail and you can see a spike in crime.

00:35:06.180 Um, one guy, it's just insane.

00:35:10.180 So 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.

00:35:21.180 And, uh, that would automatically take, like the 40 offenders in Vancouver got arrested 6,000 times.

00:35:27.180 So imagine if they just stayed in jail, you'd have 6,000 fewer crimes.

00:35:31.180 It's a very simple cause and effect.

00:35:33.180 So jail, not bail is one of our, our principles.

00:35:36.180 Well, I think that's a really good one.

00:35:37.180 Okay, Pierre, thank you so much for your time.

00:35:39.180 We really, really appreciate it.

00:35:40.180 We're going to wrap up the Candace Malcolm show now, wrap up the YouTube and the X feed.

00:35:44.180 We're going to continue the interview though.

00:35:46.180 I have one more question that I want to ask of Mr. Polyev.

00:35:48.180 It's a good question.

00:35:49.180 So if you want to see the rest of this interview, please head on over to JunoNews.com.

00:35:54.180 Subscribe.

00:35:55.180 Our subscribers get all kinds of, uh, bonus features, including, uh, long form interviews

00:36:00.180 like this one.

00:36:01.180 And, uh, again, please go over to JunoNews.com, subscribe, and then we'll see, you'll see the

00:36:06.180 rest of the interview there.

The Candice Malcolm Show - February 14, 2025

Pierre Poilievre on Trump’s tariff threat, border security, and cutting immigration

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