00:00:00.080Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here, and welcome back to the National Telegraph YouTube channel.
00:00:06.160Apologies in advance if you see the camera shaking around a bit.
00:00:09.680I am coming at you from a random, nondescript hotel room after I just went on a hike.
00:00:15.500Yes, I sometimes do physical activity, and I am sitting on a bed while holding my microphone,
00:00:21.160propping up my camera stand on the very wobbly bed.
00:00:25.040But that is not what the show is about today.
00:00:27.020Today, I want to talk about this interview from CTV News with Vashi Capellos talking to the conservative critic for Canada-US relations, Shavloy Majumdar.
00:00:37.040Because this video is heavily going to be touching on the theme from a video from a few days ago, where the liberals are trying to market nothing as something.
00:00:46.720Mark Carney has basically accomplished nothing since becoming prime minister.
00:00:51.320And I think it is the goal of the Conservative Party right now to be able to convince Canadians to actually expect real metrics.
00:01:01.240You should be expecting there to be actual positive momentum on things that affect your life,
00:01:07.500not just random announcements about the European Union or an announcement that we might get a trade agreement with Indonesia that still hasn't been ratified.
00:01:17.900You should actually want the metrics that affect your life to be improving, not simply that Mark Carney had something random to announce on a Tuesday.
00:01:27.960So let's get into this, and then I'll be kind of pausing it as I go through as there are things worth mentioning.
00:01:34.080I wanted to start on the question of the European Union and the Prime Minister's trip there.
00:01:38.420The Prime Minister today said that whatever is determined through negotiations with the EU about this so-called unique alliance,
00:01:46.760associate membership, as it's being called by both the president of the European Commission and through the Wall Street Journal reporting as well over the weekend,
00:01:54.240whatever it is, is now, he said, specifically going to go before Parliament.0.94
00:01:57.880And I wondered, based on some of the reaction from your colleagues, whether your party regrets its kind of instincts initially to say that in one case, it's asinine, the other, what fresh hell is this?
00:02:10.680Do you regret that initial reflexive reaction, given that it will now go before Parliament?
00:02:15.380Sorry, why is this the way she's framing it?
00:02:18.460I actually tend to like Vashti Kapelos in terms of, you know, maybe grading on a curve for legacy media journalists, but she usually is pretty good.
00:02:28.040Why are we interrogating the conservative reaction to Mark Carney spraying something on Canadians that I do not believe is a good thing, that he then proceeded to lie about, and then effectively admit he was lying by then celebrating the whole idea of having the associate membership, which again, the Liberal government had a quote-unquote source go out and tell CTV News earlier in the week that this was never going to happen.
00:02:53.640Sorry, joining a basket case economic alliance is not a good thing for Canada, especially when we may have to follow their insane migration regulations, as well as have to pay them money to be part of this alliance.
00:03:06.980Doesn't seem very good considering we already have a free trade alliance with the EU that Stephen Harper negotiated, but let's hear Shavloy Majumdar's reaction to that.
00:03:17.700I think Canadians have every reason to be concerned about the Prime Minister's international
00:03:22.900summitry because he has a tendency to go and announce things in foreign jurisdictions rather
00:03:27.260than being held accountable to Canadians. So whenever you're hearing a frustration of my
00:03:30.980colleagues when it comes to the Prime Minister's announcements internationally, it's with due
00:03:34.720cause. He's had opportunity to convene Parliament earlier, where technically, as he's described,
00:03:39.820a war scenario where our trade is absolutely being disrupted by the United States and President
00:03:44.880trump uh canadians have big questions about how they're going to make their own bills
00:03:49.520how they're going to make to pay their own bills uh and so when you see the prime minister darting
00:03:53.840off to strasburg to make an announcement that has no uh particular details attached to it rather
00:03:58.720than honor his democracy and our parliament with his presence and uh his plan uh you'll understand
00:04:04.960the frustration that's involved there i i totally i actually do understand the frustration around
00:04:09.200not having parliament around to debate very significant things at a time of crisis i've
00:04:13.040asked very difficult questions of the government's House leader in that vein. But if I put that as
00:04:18.560Yes, but on the issue of the EU, the CTV News, in fact, tried to cover Mark Carney by having an
00:04:26.400anonymous source deny the story that he was going to arbitrarily move Canada towards becoming an
00:04:31.700associate member of the EU. And they never came to retract that, or have the government try and
00:04:37.440actually answer questions related to why they doubled back on what they said, because it wasn't
00:04:42.220just the anonymous source that denied the story, Mark Carney denied the story. And then Ursula
00:04:47.420Vandenlen, or whatever the president of the EU's name is, she then came out and said, well, we are
00:04:53.300going to offer Canada an associate membership, which is really sketchy, because that's an invention
00:04:58.420by Mark Carney, according to the Washington Journal story. And now we're all supposed to just
00:05:03.600take it at face value that this is something now on the table, when it was previously considered
00:05:08.340controversial enough that Mark Carney lied about it. And now we are talking about if the
00:05:13.400conservatives reacted too hard. And then she brings up, well, I have been hard on them in the past
00:05:18.540about not reconvening parliament. It's like, yeah, okay, I guess you get one out of every three
00:05:23.200correct. You sometimes hold the liberals feet to the fire. And again, the sad thing is Fahashi
00:05:28.020Kapalos is like one of the better people in the legacy media. And even she is very hit and miss.
00:05:33.580aside for a second your party's criticism was not just centered on the fact that there wasn't
00:05:39.000you know parliament around to debate it you were reflexively very dismissive of the idea that the
00:05:45.140prime minister set out to europe go on this trip in order to amplify a relationship that does
00:05:49.980already exist between canada and europe why did the prime minister deny it reflexively if it was
00:05:55.480such a good thing we we keep we keep just assuming things that carney does is inherently good we don't
00:06:01.180investigate it at all in the legacy media. Why wouldn't he do that, given what's going on with
00:06:06.540the United States and is characterizing it as, again, quote, asinine? What fresh hell is this?0.99
00:06:12.140Not detrimental to the overall objective we have as a country right now, which is to survive this
00:06:17.740trade war with the United States. Well, this is part of the problem that we're dealing with
00:06:21.540this prime minister. Here we already have longstanding military and economic ties to the
00:06:27.320European Union and the Transatlantic Alliance. This is an alliance that Canada has been proud
00:06:31.840to be part of for many decades, as you all know, in the post-war period until today and in the0.89
00:06:36.660future disruption of the world to come, principally instigated by Beijing. Ties between Canada and
00:06:41.380Europe are important to harness, to nurture, and to make better and to improve. But there are
00:06:47.580questions about why we would need a political union or some sort of political association
00:06:52.500with the european union when we need to focus specifically on our productivity listen the
00:06:58.140reason and that is the heart of the trade dispute you have all these premiers puffing out their
00:07:03.340chest to donald trump most recently david eby who apparently may call a snap bc election and
00:07:09.520they're acting tough by fighting with trump when you don't win a fight with the united states
00:07:14.420economically you out compete them we have a productivity problem and banning the the us's
00:07:20.340products and putting in place counter tariffs doesn't solve the main problem of canada and
00:07:25.620again yeah why do we need to be joining a political union when we already have the military and
00:07:32.140economic ties that we need and agreements that we need with europe so we're going to pay a bunch of
00:07:37.940money to have like all the positives we already had with a bunch of negatives added on again we
00:07:44.060might have to take on EU regulations around green energy, around migration, around censorship,
00:07:50.900and they're a complete basket case right now. Does anyone think that the European Union is
00:07:56.020the cutting edge of world economics right now? No, not at all. It is an economy that's GDP per
00:08:03.080capita has been going down consistently, a lot like Canada until recently when we actually
00:08:08.660started making some good changes when it comes to immigration. Germany's GDP per capita has been
00:08:13.920going down like the keystone of the entire eu is not doing so hot right now but it's just taken as
00:08:20.460a given that we should be part of them because it's really it's just because it's not the united
00:08:24.440states that's how shallow this whole thing is isn't that uh the trade relationship with the
00:08:29.760european union or with european nations at cita by the way in which 10 countries have yet to
00:08:34.920ratify internally um really hinges on our own ability that actually is a good point that he
00:08:40.640made right there, our free to trade agreement that Harper negotiated in 2013, we passed it,
00:08:46.600we sent it over to them. And there are still, as he said, like around 10 member states that still
00:08:51.740need to ratify the thing. So why would we want to partner with the EU, who is fumbling all over
00:08:58.680itself to even get our original trade deal ratified? So we're going to get more integrated
00:09:03.600with people who cannot be trusted to actually get something ratified in how many years now?
00:09:08.44013. Doesn't seem like a great deal to me.
00:09:12.640...to get our product out of the ground and to the market. Here we have a government that has
00:09:16.640not repealed anti-development legislation, that has not acted decisively a year and a half ago
00:09:20.720as they said they would, to approve major projects, to build pipelines and other things
00:09:24.600in many directions, to unearth our critical minerals, to create a strategic reserve
00:09:28.620for energy and for critical minerals, for tariff-free access to different
00:09:32.680markets. The problem in getting our trade to be successful
00:09:36.540with the European Union hinges on Canada to be more productive. And so, you know, the domestic
00:09:41.760work has really been the barrier to expanding trade with Europe. And I think it's fair to ask
00:09:46.540questions about why a political association with the European Union has to be at the heart
00:09:51.200of that approach. What is needed is the prime minister needs to convene parliament in Ottawa
00:09:55.560yesterday. Chauveloy, don't you understand? You're supposed to cheer for current announcement and
00:10:01.520then get excited for next announcement. We're all supposed to just be sitting here laughing at
00:10:05.800Carney's terrible jokes and saying how much of a political masterstroke every single little
00:10:10.620press conference he does is. That's what we're supposed to be doing right now. And criticizing
00:10:14.900him is apparently so bad, it's worthy of Ashi Kapelos bringing it up twice, disagreeing with
00:10:22.160joining the European Union, something that people just take as like inherently good for some reason.
00:10:28.740Past transformational legislation that enhances the economic productivity of our country for the
00:10:34.820next half century and meets the moment in Europe and Asia with strength. It does make sense to
00:10:39.920ask those questions, but my point to you. But we always go back to but, at least ask him a new
00:10:45.900question. You, Mr. Majumdar, was your party didn't even wait for the prime minister to provide. Oh my
00:10:51.000goodness, it's number three now. We're back to ask a third time, oh, you guys didn't even give it a
00:10:56.940chance. Can't you give love and peace a chance? Can't you give the European Union a chance? Yes,
00:11:03.140they send police officers even more aggressively than canada does to people's doors to get mad at
00:11:07.680tweets uh but they also are like literally economically degrading over time their green
00:11:14.700energy policies have made them extremely weak to the point where they might want to repartner with
00:11:19.640russia simply because they do not have the energy to survive that's how bad it is they may try and
00:11:26.780cozy back up with russia during the war with ukraine simply because they need to figure out
00:11:31.880a way of keeping the lights on. That's how bad things have been in the EU. And we should join
00:11:36.800them instead of playing political hardball and horse trading for a good deal with the United
00:11:41.680States. That's still the grand prize here. Hopefully I'm not getting my Patriot card taken
00:11:47.600away by just simply noting the math that America, we do 78% of our exports with America. The EU
00:11:55.540doesn't even barely register. We're talking about like 2%, 3%. We trade more with the United Kingdom
00:12:01.120than all of europe over like multiple times over like two or three times more trade is done with
00:12:06.960the uk england scotland wales northern ireland than it is with all the countries in the european
00:12:14.140union and we're acting like this is some big win that we're going to integrate harder with the eu
00:12:20.160and have to follow their rules and pay money for the privilege of doing it all and and now we're
00:12:25.780like we're grilling the conservatives we're not jumping up and down for it this is what i hate
00:12:29.800about the media right now. We keep talking about how popular Mark Carney is. And in part,
00:12:34.540it's because people are just told that he's popular. People are told he's doing good things
00:12:38.300without question. And in fact, you're bad for questioning.
00:12:41.100I didn't answer, didn't even give him the chance to provide an answer before dismissing it as
00:12:45.080questions. But my point to you, Mr. Majumdar, was your party didn't even wait for the prime
00:12:51.400minister to provide an answer, didn't even give him the chance to provide an answer before0.97
00:12:54.680dismissing it, as I use the verbiage I did through your colleagues, is asinine. There is a difference0.79
00:13:00.160between asking questions and then dismissing it before you've even heard the answers. On the
00:13:04.200latter point that you're... It's asinine to spring it on people, to spring this massive thing that
00:13:09.260is not inherently beneficial on Canadians, lie about it, and then reverse yourself to then talk0.95
00:13:14.640about how great of a thing it is. That is asinine. Especially because we keep finding out about this0.99
00:13:20.320from american media because canadian media is so good at the latter point that you're making around
00:13:26.360you know this all being on canada in order to you know get stuff out of the ground and develop
00:13:31.060things more so that we can send more to europe even just the sneaky phrasing there you're saying
00:13:35.800it's all on canada it's very blamey type language he's using as if he's blaming his own country
00:13:42.020he's just pointing out domestically you have more control our biggest problem is domestic policies
00:13:48.420We need to get out of the way. We need more major projects approved. We need to make things faster.
00:13:53.300We need to become a more efficient economy. And it enables us to do so many things on the foreign front, except she makes the language.0.98
00:14:00.700You're saying it's all on Canada. It's subtle, but it makes a difference.
00:14:05.700It makes a difference for the people sitting at home who don't know how to interpret news very well.
00:14:09.860I wonder, actually, as you were saying that, what struck me is having sat at the investment summit and listened to the closing remarks from former Prime Minister Stephen Harper,
00:14:17.460obviously the former leader of the Conservative Party, he on I think it was two or three occasions
00:14:23.120said that he endorsed the way that the federal government was moving when it came to major
00:14:27.780projects, when it came to streamlining approvals, when it came to developing energy and resources.
00:14:32.660Is he wrong in his view of that? No, I think there's some selective listening here because
00:14:37.120he's right. There's selective listening. Obviously, he's not going to throw Harper under the bus.
00:14:43.340Harper is kind of a creature of the establishment.
00:14:47.080And I don't mean that in like the kind of very vague way people say establishment.
00:14:52.160When I say he's a creature of the establishment, he wants to be kind of the great man of parliament.
00:14:58.460He wants to be the well-respected former prime minister.
00:15:01.260And a well-respected former prime minister is going to say nice things about the current, highly approved of prime minister.
00:15:07.840I don't think Harper really means the things he's saying as much as it's simply what he believes he, as the former prime minister, is supposed to say about the current prime minister's plans.
00:15:20.460I was there for that as well and had a chance to engage with many of the investors that were at the summit.
00:15:25.960I thought the summit was generally a good direction where we actually have a chance to bring attention of global capital to Canadian potential.
00:15:31.840but that's what it is, Canadian potential.
00:15:33.720And you will recall that the former prime minister had actually said
00:15:36.240that not nearly is being done enough in the context of what we're dealing with
00:15:40.400in our disruptive trade with the United States.
00:15:42.620Not nearly is being done enough to make our country more productive.
00:15:46.080I think we all welcome more detail being provided by a government
00:15:51.020but that's not the pace that Canadians expect,
00:15:53.560especially when they can't afford things in their day-to-day lives.
00:15:56.680We are focused to make sure that we help Canadians save their money,
00:16:00.760that their jobs are secure that they have a chance to succeed in these in these times
00:16:05.400and in that sense uh you know i think the prime minister the former farmers was exactly right
00:16:09.080the urgency that needs to be brought to this moment is absolutely critical i appreciated his
00:16:14.040statesmanship there i thought that he he was a class act in his presentations now and that that's
00:16:19.880kind of like what i expect him to say you know he's being class act he's a team player and in
00:16:23.960a certain sense you were invited to mark carney's investment summit you're not going to say bad
00:16:27.880things about it. And Chevrolet's right. The idea of having an investment summit is not inherently
00:16:33.560bad in any way. It's not like, oh my goodness, I can't believe you're having an investment summit.
00:16:37.740Disgusting. And of course, Harper's going to say some positive things. Now, you have to kind of0.76
00:16:43.340interpret that he said some things about how, you know, Canada needs to get its internal productivity
00:16:49.000up and running better. We need to get faster with projects. He made those implications,
00:16:54.220But he never explicitly, obviously, said anything bad about Mark Carney.
00:16:58.160But the fact that the media glommed onto those comments so hard was just obnoxious.
00:17:02.720Because what do you think he's going to say?0.91
00:17:04.580Oh, you know that actually Mark Carney is really mediocre and he's terrible.
00:17:08.700Yeah, that's what he was going to get up on stage and read to the world.
00:17:13.460If Mark Carney's people even got a whisper of that being in his remarks that were going to be fed into the teleprompter, he would be quickly kicked out.
00:17:20.900You know, he would have just been, oh, we have to cancel a little Harper speech.
00:17:23.440But the thing is, the media wants Canadians to focus on frivolous stuff like Harper's