The Candice Malcolm Show - May 03, 2022


True North’s Candice Malcolm to moderate first Conservative Debate on May 5th


Episode Stats

Length

28 minutes

Words per Minute

184.87718

Word Count

5,291

Sentence Count

267

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 What does it mean to be a Conservative in Canada, and what do Conservatives need to do to win?
00:00:04.840 Plus, yours truly will be moderating the very first Conservative Party of Canada debate
00:00:08.600 in Ottawa. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:22.880 Everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. So a bit of housekeeping, a little announcement
00:00:26.520 off the top of the show here. There is a Conservative debate happening on May 5th in Ottawa.
00:00:32.700 It's being hosted by the Canada Strong and Free Network. They'll be hosting that debate.
00:00:37.240 So far, there are six registered candidates that are going to be there, and the debate
00:00:41.000 will be moderated by Jamil Javani, as well as myself. So I'm very excited and pleased to be
00:00:45.880 able to be a part of that. And joining me on the podcast today to discuss the debate and
00:00:51.300 the broader conference and the broader Conservative movement in Canada is Troy Lanigan.
00:00:56.520 So Troy is the president of the Canada Strong and Free Network, who was previously known
00:01:00.740 as the Manning Centre, and it was built to support Canada's Conservative movement by connecting
00:01:06.200 Conservatives across the country and sharing best practices pertaining to limited government,
00:01:10.380 free enterprise, and individual responsibility. Troy is also the founder and part-time CEO of
00:01:15.260 a new think tank called SecondStreet.org. They do really excellent work. They examine public
00:01:20.220 policy through stories told about families and entrepreneurs and how they are impacted negatively,
00:01:25.580 usually, by government policy. Troy also previously served as the president of the
00:01:30.500 Canadian Taxpayers Federation. He was over there for 10 years, and he is the chairman of the World
00:01:35.320 Taxpayers Association, which is a group that creates networking and best practices to support
00:01:42.080 lower taxes, fairer taxes all over the world. So, Troy, it's great to have you on the podcast.
00:01:47.200 Thank you for joining us.
00:01:48.340 Well, it's my pleasure to be here, Candice. I'm a big fan, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk
00:01:53.060 about our event. Well, let's talk about the event. So, I was very pleased when you reached out and
00:01:58.940 asked me if I wanted to be involved in the debate. I think it's a great opportunity, and really the
00:02:04.200 first opportunity that we have to look at these candidates, to have them on the stage side by
00:02:08.480 side. So, before we talk about the broader conference, let's talk a little bit about the
00:02:12.700 debate and what is planned for that evening. Right. So, we're kicking it off on Thursday
00:02:18.760 evening. That's May the 5th, and the opening night event will be a debate. The first opportunity to
00:02:26.740 see the leadership candidates square off against each other. And what's great, too, is it's not just
00:02:33.180 a party audience, but it's a movement audience. This conference, and we'll talk more about it, is very
00:02:38.420 much activists, leaders of think tanks, advocacy groups, bloggers, people in the media, you name it.
00:02:46.200 So, it's going to be a discussion, and Candace, I know you're moderating, so you'll be talking a lot
00:02:52.180 about this. Talking about the movement itself and the connection points between a lot of these
00:02:57.820 candidates and the movements will be, I think, an important and unique contribution of this debate
00:03:02.760 that we're going to have on the opening night. And then, of course, we'll be able to get into some
00:03:06.760 of the policy distinctions amongst the candidates, too, both on the domestic and international front.
00:03:11.580 But a really exciting way to kick this off, we've been out for two full years now. The last time we
00:03:18.480 all got together at this event, it was called the Manning Networking Conference. We had over 700
00:03:23.520 folks, and we had to take the last two years, cancelled in 2020, and then in 2021, we were online.
00:03:30.920 So, I can tell you the enthusiasm for this event has been tremendous. And I think, in particular,
00:03:36.140 kicking it off with a leadership debate like this is going to be a really exciting start to the
00:03:42.860 proceedings for the two days that we'll be holding this event.
00:03:46.780 Well, and it's also just a great opportunity for conservatives to ask questions of conservative
00:03:52.440 leaders, because we've seen so many times in the past with the way that the media cover and treat
00:03:58.020 the conservative candidates. They focus on two or three niche issues, which are the issues that the
00:04:03.020 journalists care about. They're not the issues that Canadians care about, and they're certainly not
00:04:06.440 the issues that conservative members care about. So, I think that having us, I'm very pleased that
00:04:12.420 you reached out to Jamil and myself, because, you know, tapping into people who are part of this
00:04:16.900 sort of small C conservative network, and who will come from the independent media side, I think
00:04:22.600 hopefully we'll get, you know, more into the debates that our viewers and people who follow True
00:04:28.560 North that they care about. So, that's what I'm hoping, hoping from it all.
00:04:33.860 And it's not just the issues that we'll talk about, but I also think it's important to build
00:04:38.740 relationships too, right? That this sort of whole relationship between big C and small C often
00:04:44.440 breaks down. And sometimes these two sides get mad at each other, sometimes deservedly so. But I think
00:04:50.660 the hope too is in bringing the event together like this, that there can be a lot of those conversations
00:04:54.980 and a lot of friendships and relationships and exchanges struck up that I think are important
00:05:02.060 to get a lot of people on the same page and moving forward on this. So, yeah, I think it's,
00:05:10.200 everyone's looking forward to it. It's going to be exciting. And again, it's a unique audience,
00:05:15.340 and one that I think is important in getting this current debate, this decision on who the next leader
00:05:23.080 of the party will be a very important venue for that whole discussion to start off.
00:05:29.680 Well, so, and so that's happening on the Thursday night, kicking off the weekend of the conference.
00:05:33.500 I know that we have a whole bunch of our reporters from True North, myself, Andrew Lawton, several of
00:05:39.060 there will be there on the ground at the conference. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about what
00:05:43.520 you have on the agenda for the conference? Give a little pitch to our viewers, especially people who
00:05:49.220 live in and around Ottawa or anywhere around Ontario who want to go for a little road trip
00:05:53.620 and check out the sort of leading conservative, small C conservative policy conference in the
00:06:00.160 country. I'll do a pitch at the front end and the back end, but CanadaStrongandFree.network is our
00:06:05.680 website. And there's actually two events, Candice. The first on Thursday during the day before the
00:06:10.920 grand event starts off Thursday evening with the debate is a best practices forum. And it used to be that
00:06:17.220 this conference would always have a session or two for practitioners, how to improve coalition
00:06:22.020 building or improve our presence on social media and the like. And so when I came aboard a few years
00:06:27.080 ago, we wanted to set up a dedicated day just to exchanges of best practices. And so the best
00:06:34.120 practices forum is a separate event that takes place on the Thursday for the day before the debate
00:06:40.760 starts. And that information is also on the website. And, you know, we'll be talking,
00:06:45.520 there's a Facebook and Instagram are sending a team up from the states to do a workshop on that
00:06:51.120 day. We'll be having a discussion about this traditional media matter anymore. Andrew Lawton
00:06:57.100 is one of the featured speakers in that discussion. We'll have a session on planning for success,
00:07:02.320 addressing donor chill. This has been a big issue for a lot of organizations in the movement post the
00:07:07.760 emergencies act. So that's a really important discussion we have on the Thursday. We talked about
00:07:12.680 the debate Thursday night, and then into Friday, we'll have a number of issue discussions.
00:07:17.060 Some of the big ones will be on healthcare, what's happening in our cities, education reform,
00:07:23.880 we'll have a session on market solutions to emission reductions, the future of work,
00:07:30.160 we have a debate we're featuring this year on big tech regulation, hotspots around the world,
00:07:36.960 the growing cost of living crisis. These are all issues that you're talking about,
00:07:41.160 Candice, a lot of the movement in the country, ordinary folks are dealing with, as well as some
00:07:46.700 keynote speakers we're excited about. Our keynote on the Saturday morning is going to be Yanomi Park,
00:07:53.560 who's a defector from North Korea and an activist. I had the opportunity to be down in Florida last
00:08:00.800 December at a conference and hear her speak. She absolutely lit up the room, an incredibly powerful
00:08:06.760 story and a great speaker. And so we've got a full agenda of really relevant topics to the movement,
00:08:14.040 but I think the country as a whole. And we hope to blossom some ideas out of this. Obviously,
00:08:19.420 we always try and get these conferences to take action steps as to what people can do and how they
00:08:26.120 can advance these issues that are important to building a free or more prosperous society always.
00:08:30.880 That's great. And we have a special discount code for True North for anyone who wants to register for
00:08:38.060 the conference. I don't know exactly what the discount is, but you get a little bit of a discount
00:08:41.980 from the registration fee. So you can use the code. It's TNMFRIEND22. So the letter TNM and then the word
00:08:52.740 FRIEND22. And that will give you a discount, which we appreciate that. 15% off the registration fee.
00:08:58.400 Oh, that's great. That's wonderful. Great. Well, I hope listeners will head on over and sign up
00:09:05.000 because it's going to be a really fun weekend, really engaging. I always leave these conferences,
00:09:08.780 Troy, feeling really motivated and inspired and excited because so often as a conservative in
00:09:14.380 Canada, you feel lonely or you feel like everyone is up against you or that the principles that you
00:09:21.760 care about and believe in are being abandoned and not just being abandoned, but being mocked and
00:09:26.460 being disregarded and going to an event like that where you hear passionate speeches and you hear
00:09:32.860 people who are really doing things to take concrete steps, new ideas, fresh ideas, plus the networking
00:09:41.760 side, the friendship side. There's so much to gain and to benefit from these conferences.
00:09:48.040 And one thing I wanted to add, too, is we have an exhibitor hall. We have 25 people that are signed
00:09:52.900 up as exhibitors this year. So as you make your way through the hallway in between the lunchroom
00:09:59.000 and the various sessions and the breakouts and everything else that's going on, you'll have an
00:10:04.120 opportunity to interact with 25 exhibitors, think tanks, advocacy groups, some industry groups come in.
00:10:12.820 And it's just a great opportunity to make some new connections. We have a lot of new exhibitors this
00:10:17.900 year. We have some new sponsors. And, you know, it's interesting whenever we run surveys on this
00:10:23.980 afterwards, Candace, we find that a third of the people and we have we've had as many as 700 at this
00:10:29.440 are attending for the first time. So that's exciting, too. And then those people, I think, as you say,
00:10:34.840 get motivated and excited. And it hopefully, you know, encourages them to to do things in the
00:10:42.000 movement that contribute to to the issues and those things that we hold near and dear.
00:10:47.580 Well, I want you to tell us a little bit about your new organization, your other organization,
00:10:51.680 Second Street, because for viewers and listeners who aren't familiar with it, you sort of take a
00:10:57.220 different approach to public policy than a traditional think tank. So can you tell us a
00:11:01.240 little bit about that project? Well, yeah, we some time ago, born with a friend of mine,
00:11:07.980 some people know Mark Milkey in Calgary, and we'd go to conferences, we'd always hear these
00:11:13.540 sessions at conferences, especially when we went down to the United States that the conservative
00:11:18.060 movement needed to tell more stories. And of course, we knew this to be true. But then we'd
00:11:22.520 immediately go back and you'd start talking in numbers and statistics. And we came up with the
00:11:27.020 idea, what if we set up a think tank that, you know, is it statement of purpose was to tell stories
00:11:31.720 of how public policy intersects in people's lives. And so that's really the concept of
00:11:39.760 secondstreet.org. So I'll give you a really good example. One of the biggest issues that we focus on
00:11:45.080 is healthcare reform. And we know as, you know, Fraser Institute, for example, has just done tremendous
00:11:53.120 work on measuring healthcare wait lists. It's 13.2 weeks longer than doctors recommend from the time
00:11:59.880 you see your your general doctor to you see your specialist, and then there's another time frame
00:12:04.760 until you get a procedure done. But instead of talking about these numbers, and statistics like
00:12:09.860 that, which are very important, we try to compliment it, we've gone out and interviewed a lot of people,
00:12:14.820 for example, that are sitting on wait lists and in pain and suffering and tell their stories about how
00:12:19.380 the system, how that public policy has served them. And it's not very good. We we've had,
00:12:25.040 we interviewed one woman in Ontario, Candace. She's lost not one, but two daughters. Can you
00:12:33.380 imagine this two daughters died on waiting lists, we have some of the worst wait lists in the
00:12:38.760 industrialized world, we've got to address this, we've got to talk about it. And you know, I'll say
00:12:43.340 to this effect that one of the top panels that we're doing this year at the conference will be
00:12:47.900 on healthcare reform. We've got to start having a mature conversation about healthcare reform in
00:12:54.600 this conversation. And challenging this idea that only government can provide a monopoly and ration
00:13:01.400 care, this is people's lives, this is serious. The practice in Canada is like nowhere else in the world.
00:13:09.020 And it's time we start to confront important issues like this and go on the offensive, frankly,
00:13:14.980 to a policy of rationing that has not served people well. So Second Street tells those very real
00:13:21.840 stories and uses that as a tool, hopefully, to motivate and get the attention of policymakers to
00:13:26.920 make important public policy changes in this regard. Well, that story you told, Troy, is so awful. And
00:13:33.140 you just hate to hear those kind of things. But you're right that conservatives tend to sort of shy
00:13:39.000 away from debates on healthcare. I was always told it was the third rail of Canadian politics. And
00:13:44.260 that talking about it, you know, will just derail any political campaign. And we sort of saw that
00:13:49.920 with Aaron O'Toole in the last election, that he sort of, you know, proposed pretty modest changes to
00:13:56.480 improve the system. And the liberals came drumming out that he was trying to privatize and Americanize
00:14:00.900 the healthcare system. The media were all too happy to jump up and start using those talking points
00:14:06.460 to accuse him of trying to privatize healthcare. I actually think that there was a clip that the
00:14:12.120 finance minister, Christy Freeland, shared that was from one of your events, where Aaron O'Toole made a
00:14:16.680 comment that Twitter slapped a manipulated media thing on the video because she had taken it out of
00:14:22.900 context or whatever. But, you know, to me, I think that COVID gives a huge opportunity to have this
00:14:29.160 conversation because so many people, so many people like our healthcare system in theory. But then,
00:14:34.340 you know, as soon as they have to interact with it, they realize how bad it is. Like,
00:14:37.680 I have a friend who had a baby in Toronto, and she doesn't even know who the doctor was who
00:14:42.340 delivered the baby because the doctor ran in, ran out, no idea who it was, like, can't even tell the
00:14:48.040 story of, like, the doctor who delivered the baby. It's like, you know, that kind of thing. It's like,
00:14:53.720 it's so dehumanizing, so impersonal that something's, you know, such an important moment in someone's
00:14:58.500 life and you don't even have any kind of care. You know, what do you envision for a change to
00:15:04.120 Canada's healthcare system and how can conservatives really lead that conversation?
00:15:08.200 We have a supply problem in healthcare is that there's more demand than there is supply available.
00:15:14.340 And the way to do that is to allow profit and not-for-profit alternatives for people to have
00:15:21.620 choice in the system. Take away the, yes, have a universal system that's government provided,
00:15:27.240 but don't deny the right of people to pay out of their pockets or have alternatives other than that
00:15:32.940 single system. And everyone likes to compare it to the United States. It's a ridiculous comparison.
00:15:38.240 Every other country on earth, I think, except for Canada, North Korea, and Cuba, don't allow
00:15:44.380 alternatives for people. So quit talking about the American system. We need to talk about the French
00:15:49.460 system. We need to talk about the Norwegian system, the Australian system, the Kiwi system. I mean,
00:15:55.000 every other country offers people choice. And what's frustrating is that wealthy people,
00:15:59.960 of course, can get onto a plane and fly down to a clinic in the United States or Bangkok.
00:16:04.620 Medical tourism is a huge industry now all over the world. The wealthy can afford that, but those in
00:16:09.600 the middle and lower class have to sit in these wait lines. That's extremely debilitating for them.
00:16:15.620 And it hurts the economy. It hurts their families, everybody. So to provide those alternatives to,
00:16:20.500 to have a lever off the monopoly system so that there can be more supply and more provision.
00:16:26.960 And I want to say, too, you mentioned COVID. That COVID has laid bare the problems in our healthcare
00:16:32.600 system. And what's interesting is if you go to our website on secondstreet.org, you'll see we've
00:16:38.540 done some polling. And in the last year, we've seen a six to 7% increase. I don't have it in front of
00:16:43.700 me right now in support for private alternatives. The public, Candace, is ahead of the politicians on
00:16:49.760 this issue. The public increasingly understands that rationing something as important as people's
00:16:55.900 healthcare is wrong. It's got to change. We understand that, you know, the private sector
00:17:00.960 provides groceries, right? We seem to be feeding ourselves. No one would suggest that maybe the
00:17:08.080 government should ration our food or our grocery supplies in the same way they shouldn't be doing
00:17:14.120 it for healthcare. So I think common sense is coming to this. And I'm excited about the conference
00:17:20.140 in that sense that this panel is going to, we're having former Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell from
00:17:26.040 my home province in British Columbia. We're having former NDP Premier from Nova Scotia,
00:17:31.540 Daryl Dexter, is going to be speaking on this conference. We have someone coming on from the UK.
00:17:35.400 Hey, this is going to be a very unique panel. And that's why we're featuring it right up front and
00:17:40.540 up top, because we think it's one of the most important public policy issues. And you know what,
00:17:45.160 it's a real opportunity for conservatives and conservative politicians to not just play the
00:17:50.300 fiddle of the status quo, but stand out and be bold, stand up for people's right to have choice in the
00:17:57.000 healthcare system, reduce these lists by improving supply and increasing supply in the system,
00:18:02.080 long overdue. And so I hope when we get a diverse panel like that, that's speaking relatively from
00:18:09.180 the same hymn book, that that's going to be a powerful news item, I hope that that that panel
00:18:14.940 has and again, getting that conversation moving forward as the polls are indicating that more and
00:18:20.200 more people in Canada are ready to accept this kind of change. I think I think that's great timing.
00:18:26.500 And I'm really looking forward to that panel in particular, Troy, I'm going to be a little bit
00:18:30.500 pessimistic with my next question for you here. You know, there was a time where there was some
00:18:35.600 excitement with something called the resistance, there was a group of conservative premiers that
00:18:40.860 were pushing back against Justin Trudeau's radical progressive agenda. And it was sort of like,
00:18:45.460 you know, these guys were holding the line, they were going to push conservatism,
00:18:48.640 conservative politicians were doing great in the provinces. And so you had almost across the board,
00:18:54.020 right center right or right leaning premiers. And yet, at the same time, here we are in 2022. And
00:19:03.020 it seems like every single province is governed by a conservative is not doesn't look like it's
00:19:09.140 being governed by a conservative is pushing out some of the most radical left wing policies. I'm
00:19:13.620 talking about things like critical race theory, and sort of race based policies in Ontario schools,
00:19:19.160 extreme lockdowns, and and I'll say right out persecution of Christian pastors in Alberta,
00:19:26.440 they don't really feel like they're being governed by conservatives. And it seems like such a missed
00:19:32.340 opportunity. And sometimes they get really down on this idea that, you know, you have you have these
00:19:37.540 premiers, they win elections, they get elected, they're in office, now's their chance, now's their
00:19:42.100 opportunity. The provincial level is where you can do so much in terms of education, health care,
00:19:47.020 social spending, all that kind of stuff. And yet, you know, we have these, these leaders,
00:19:51.360 these governments led by people who kind of, kind of abandoned conservative principles,
00:19:55.700 they don't have the thoughtful policy leaders in their offices, they don't have the courage to stand
00:20:00.560 up to the media environment, they're constantly taking the knee, they're constantly apologizing
00:20:04.800 for conservatism. If for you, Troy, someone who comes from the movement side, someone who's been
00:20:09.460 working your whole career and building up the infrastructure, the sort of, you know, grassroots
00:20:13.940 conservative movement, making sure that policy people are connected with people who are more
00:20:18.260 politically inclined and connecting the small C and big C worlds. Do you share my pessimism? And
00:20:23.680 why do you think that? Why don't conservatives have more courage? Why don't they take pride in the
00:20:29.560 fact that our ideas are better? We have great ideas, we have, you know, all these opportunities now
00:20:34.120 that we have provincial leaders in these capitals, and yet, it doesn't really feel like we're getting
00:20:38.840 ahead. Yeah, well, I certainly share your frustration. It is really frustrating when you
00:20:43.520 see a lot of conservatives that don't always behave as conservatives. My theory of change,
00:20:49.040 though, and I'm wearing my movement hat is, is that politicians tend to be more followers than they
00:20:54.640 are leaders. I think this is what's been proven time over time. In my book, I wrote some time ago in
00:21:00.700 2015, the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. One of my favorite chapters,
00:21:06.720 one of my favorite times in public policy change was the 1990s, because we didn't have a lot of
00:21:11.820 conservative leaders in provincial capitals at the time. But what we had done is we had changed
00:21:17.360 that we had really changed the course of the conversation about debts and deficits in this
00:21:21.120 country. I remember Jason Kenney and I, young Troy and the young Jason Kenney were with the Taxpayers
00:21:28.160 Federation taking this debt clock across the country, province by province. And we'd follow Paul Martin
00:21:33.260 around during his consultations and set up this debt clock and made ourselves available to media.
00:21:38.800 And, you know, we just, we just worked and worked and worked. Think tanks worked. Advocacy groups
00:21:44.680 worked. Commentators in the media. We changed the channel in Canada. And what happened is it didn't
00:21:50.560 matter what partisan label a lot of these politicians have, whether it was Roy Romano at the time in
00:21:55.860 Saskatchewan that closed hospitals and, and, and really cut back on spending. If it was Mike Harris
00:22:03.200 in Ontario, there was a sea change in the country that regardless of what label you are under,
00:22:08.340 that we couldn't live on borrowed time and borrowed money anymore. So we are able to have really
00:22:13.440 meaningful change regardless of what party. So you see, I think it always has to come down. This is why
00:22:19.160 the movement infrastructure is even more important than the parties in my view, Candace.
00:22:23.720 We've got to have those, those conversations. We have to have that, that movement infrastructure
00:22:29.420 that continues to move the agenda, move the discussion, right? We just talked about healthcare.
00:22:35.240 That's a perfect example. Politicians aren't going to take up that position of reforming healthcare
00:22:40.580 until they feel they have the political space to do so. And how do they get that political space?
00:22:46.020 Because people like yourself that are having these conversations, advocacy groups and think tanks
00:22:51.320 like Second Street are out working on the ground, creating the space that politicians understand
00:22:57.180 that it's a winning formula to take on that, that position. I mean, Ralph Klein back in his, his day
00:23:03.080 took a, ran on a campaign of cutting spending aggressively. I mean, could you imagine that today?
00:23:09.160 No, because I don't think the ground is there, has been tilled enough by the movement and leaders
00:23:15.200 in the movement to create the kind of room that's necessary for that. So yes, we do get disappointed
00:23:21.260 by politicians, big C, but also understand that, you know, we're losing some of these public battles
00:23:28.500 too. And that's also a responsibility in all of us that are, that need to till the ground, so to speak,
00:23:34.000 with the general public to create space for these folks. It's what the environmental movement's done so
00:23:40.840 well, you know, and I mean, there's a lot of examples on the other side too, that are extremely
00:23:44.500 frustrating, but they've, they've taken control of the agenda in ways. And so we all have a
00:23:49.980 responsibility. I get frustrated with conservative politicians, but I don't blame them all the time,
00:23:54.920 because I know, I've seen it, and I've lived it. We worked our asses off in the 1990s to change
00:24:00.140 the conversation in this country about managing our finances. And we won, we won, we, we balanced
00:24:06.900 budgets, we ran surpluses, we were able to lower taxes in the early 2000s.
00:24:10.640 That was a golden era of fiscal policy in this country. And boy, it's gone. It's gone for a
00:24:15.740 wreck since, but I understand what ingredients it took to achieve those things.
00:24:21.260 Well, you know, you say that there's no appetite for what Ralph Klein was pitching back then. I mean,
00:24:26.720 I'm looking at some of the very gloomy financial outlooks and seeing, you know, six plus percent
00:24:32.500 inflation, interest rates starting to go up. I mean, we might be back in a situation like that,
00:24:38.560 before we know it, just given how out of control the spending has been, Troy. And yet at the same
00:24:43.460 time, I don't know if you caught this, but the way that the media was covering the legacy media was
00:24:48.040 covering the budget, you know, they called it a conservative budget, they called it a spend that
00:24:53.880 it was cautious and moderate and prudent. It was, it was pretty wild to see journalists calling,
00:25:01.920 you know, 50 plus billion dollar deficit, a modest, prudent budget. But I guess that's the power of
00:25:08.460 Trudeau bucks going to journalists and the, the changing attitude there. Final question for you,
00:25:16.300 Troy, what do you think the future holds for conservatives in Canada? Generally speaking,
00:25:20.960 are you optimistic? Do you think that we have the groundwork in place to really, you know,
00:25:26.960 win some of these culture battles and, and, and get a conservative prime minister back in office?
00:25:31.400 Or do you think we still have a ways to go? Oh, I always want to be optimistic. I've dedicated my
00:25:37.440 life to these fights. So of course I want to be optimistic. I think some of this stuff is coming
00:25:42.420 out of necessity. When we talk about the growing crisis in healthcare, when you just talk about
00:25:47.300 the growing crisis and absolute horrific financial management of our country and our country's
00:25:52.080 affairs, all of these things begin to necessitate a change of policy. I mean, the market is reckoning,
00:25:57.880 right? What happened in the 1990s was, is that we started to get downgrades and we were unable to
00:26:02.100 borrow in the way that, that we had been up to that point. Unfortunately, sometimes it does take
00:26:06.360 a crisis for everything to get together. But I do think when you look at some of the signs that are
00:26:10.800 coming up, especially on the economic front, we are certainly coming to a reckoning and we have that
00:26:14.500 opportunity. So we, as a movement and certainly politicians need to be in a place to,
00:26:20.240 to take up that role of leadership. And so I want to be optimistic. It can be really frustrating and
00:26:29.860 sometimes it is frustrating, but we keep pushing, we keep having these conversations, we keep working
00:26:35.600 and moving forward. And I, and I think that's, that's all we can hope for. You know, in the early
00:26:41.500 going, I'd like to use this analogy of the nineties, but you know, there was a time in the early nineties,
00:26:46.460 I really believed I'd never lived to see the day of a balanced budget in this country. Like you just
00:26:51.000 think, Oh my God, like this is the permanent state of things, but it wasn't, it did change and we did
00:26:56.480 start to create momentum. So, as I say, I I've seen what it's like to be on the, on the winning side in
00:27:02.040 a public policy sense. And I hope that there's obviously, I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't
00:27:08.120 believe that there could be another Renaissance of our ideas of a, um, of more limited responsible
00:27:14.160 government. Uh, and let's, we got to continue to build that, that big coalition of people that
00:27:19.880 want to want to work with us. I, I like to think it's, it's, um, a movement of the people that just
00:27:25.260 want to be left alone. We want, we want government out of our lives and we want to have more decision
00:27:30.300 making authority to ourselves. Some are tapping into that right now. And, and, um, hopefully that
00:27:35.580 momentum continues. Well, I don't know your specific views on the trucker convoy, but that's what I
00:27:41.740 saw it as a, as a groundswell of sort of just regular everyday people who weren't political,
00:27:46.600 who weren't organized, who weren't part of a network. They were just fed up and they went to
00:27:51.940 Ottawa to tell the government basically to leave them alone. And, uh, that, that, that gave me hope
00:27:56.120 that there's still some, uh, common sense out there amongst everyday Canadians who are sort of more
00:28:01.660 apolitical. Uh, well, Troy, I really appreciate your time. I'm very excited about the upcoming
00:28:07.160 conference. So again, we encourage everyone to go over to what, what's the, what's the website
00:28:12.100 where they can register for the conference? Canada, Canada strong and free.network. We'll
00:28:15.940 have information both on the best practices and on the main networking conference itself.
00:28:21.420 Great. All right. Well, thank you so much to you, Troy. Thanks for your time. And we look forward
00:28:26.200 to seeing you soon. Thank you, Candice, to you and to True North for giving the opportunity to promote
00:28:31.480 and talk about these conferences and events. Thank you. All right. I'm Candice Malcolm,
00:28:35.920 and this is the Candice Malcolm show.