The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - David Eby destroyed the BC NDP in less than a year (ft. Angelo Isidorou)

00:00:00.000 In my opinion, one of the most interesting provinces to follow right now politically

00:00:04.560 is British Columbia. It was just three months ago that the BC NDP were going to easily cruise

00:00:10.380 to a re-election victory, and now it looks like they're the ones actually having to play

00:00:14.940 catch up with the BC Conservatives. I wanted to have on Premier David Eby to discuss with me how

00:00:21.480 he was able to destroy his own party in less than a year, but obviously that was never going to

00:00:26.660 happen. So I found the next best thing, Angelo Isidoro from the BC Conservatives, who I am glad

00:00:33.460 to have on today, to just marvel at just how strange Eby's leadership of the party has been

00:00:40.660 and just how fast this decline has happened, because I don't think either of us could actually

00:00:44.540 find a time in Canadian politics where a party went from so high up to so far down in such a short

00:00:50.580 period of time. Maybe Kim Campbell, but even then I think that was more of the slow death of the BC

00:00:55.140 party. Well, thanks for coming on, Angelo. Thanks for having me, Wyatt. Absolutely. And so

00:01:02.340 of course, since you're the executive director of the BC Conservatives, you have a really good inside

00:01:07.960 look at how the party's doing, how you guys are able to appeal to BC residents. But this is at least

00:01:14.640 my impression. You can say if I'm wrong or not, but I think that your guys' greatest asset right now

00:01:21.060 as a party is simply being able to run against David Eby. Not that you guys don't have ideas.

00:01:26.700 Obviously, the best ideas you have are just reversing everything the current BC and DP are

00:01:31.060 doing. But I'm sort of in shock watching how David Eby keeps ending up stepping in it in a certain

00:01:38.220 sense, not able to actually appeal again to middle class voters, constantly doubling down on the most

00:01:44.540 radical policies. And even when he's trying to correct himself, he's not even really doing anything

00:01:49.140 to correct bad policies, merely trying to put patches on the damage he's done.

00:01:55.280 Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, look, the NDP in this province has enjoyed a pretty popular majority

00:02:01.740 for some time. They've been a popular party. But that was under John Horgan. And John Horgan was a

00:02:07.420 premier that even a lot of conservatives liked. He struck you as a guy that you want to have a beer

00:02:12.120 with. He was a hockey dad. David Eby is no John Horgan. David Eby is an ideological guy, right? As a

00:02:18.260 lawyer, I think he wrote some sort of guide or a book on how to sue the police if you get caught with

00:02:24.920 drugs, right? He is an ideologue first. So that is something that is beginning to reveal itself. He

00:02:31.840 became premier through a leadership vote. He's not an elected premier. He is a chosen premier. And for such

00:02:38.980 a long time, he enjoyed, as did John Horgan, but David Eby certainly enjoyed an opposition that was

00:02:44.720 feckless, right? He enjoyed an opposition that stood and applauded all their woke agenda items.

00:02:51.240 And for the past year now, our party has been in the legislature as an official party.

00:02:56.800 And we're actually being an aggressive opposition, right? The first day we were in the legislature,

00:03:03.180 David Eby did an interview saying that the culture in the legislature has changed. Things have gotten so

00:03:08.140 negative as a result of the conservatives being there. And it's like, well, yeah, you're not used

00:03:12.960 to having an opposition. And now we're going to relentlessly hold you accountable for these radical

00:03:18.600 policies that are making life for British Columbians worse and worse. And now here we are, right? The

00:03:23.660 crack's begun to show over the past few months with, you know, the rampant anti-Semitism within the

00:03:29.460 BCNDP, his expulsion of Selena Robinson, a Jewish MLA who wasn't on board with a radical agenda. And then,

00:03:36.460 of course, the MNP scandal, which basically revealed that, you know, we have this big bloated

00:03:42.180 bureaucracy in British Columbia that picks winners and losers. And now finally, decriminalization,

00:03:47.900 where he passed this radical policy that was supported by BC United. And life has never been

00:03:55.680 worse for addicts here. More people are dying, less people are safe, violence is up. And now he's

00:04:01.440 crawled all the way to Ottawa to beg Trudeau to undo it, which now today, at the time of this

00:04:07.580 recording, we found has been done. So, you know, we're seeing him moderate himself.

00:04:13.500 I was going to say, that's such a weak policy, too. I talked about this in previous videos,

00:04:17.820 as well as my interview with Brian Berguet. Effectively, what they're saying is that you

00:04:22.480 cannot use illicit drugs on maybe 2% of land in British Columbia. You can't use it in public parks,

00:04:28.720 in front of schools, and other public places. But they've never enforced camping laws in these

00:04:35.080 public parks. They've never enforced any other, like, drug laws when it comes to using illicit drugs

00:04:40.940 in on private property and other places like that. And do you think they're actually going to even

00:04:45.240 enforce in public property? You know, it's bad when the liberals right now are trying to now play the

00:04:50.960 blame game with the BCNDP, because the federal liberals have some blame for this, because they were 0.99

00:04:55.620 the ones stupid enough to let David Eby push this decriminalization plan forward. But when even 0.99

00:05:00.680 Trudeau's liberals will not embrace you because they see you as a liability, that's when I think

00:05:05.420 everything's falling apart a little bit for you. And watching BC conservative politics and the way

00:05:11.560 that the BC conservatives have expanded, it reminds me a lot of the way that the conservative party

00:05:16.860 federally has greatly increased in the polls since Pierre Polyev became the leader. It's that people

00:05:22.980 got really tired of conservative leaders or, you know, supposedly big tent leaders like Kevin Falcon

00:05:29.160 and other, you know, people like Christy Clark, barely actually even opposing the radical ideas of

00:05:36.480 the left, that you can't just be nice and hope that voters are going to put you into power. You

00:05:41.780 actually need to show that I am angry like you at what the current government is doing. And that's where

00:05:48.040 I think that John Rustad is a man who probably not a lot of people even knew two years ago are

00:05:53.620 gravitating to him, not because of a massive amount of personal magnetism. I think it would be the same

00:05:59.000 thing with Pierre Polyev. It's that somebody is demonstrating that they actually get it, and that

00:06:03.360 you aren't crazy for thinking that these policies are crazy. I think the most valuable currency in 2024 for

00:06:11.060 a politician is authenticity. I think it used to be expertise, right? I think we used to buy into

00:06:18.400 technocracy. We used to want people and leaders who were experts in a field. But I think as a result

00:06:24.680 of COVID, and as a result of so-called experts being wrong about many things, including how to live our

00:06:30.660 lives, people have gravitated away from this yearning towards, you know, is he credited? Does he have

00:06:37.020 expertise? And more towards, is this a genuine person? Is this an authentic person? What you see

00:06:42.680 is what you get. And that's certainly the case with John. John is an open book. He has an incredible

00:06:48.580 heart. He has an incredible love for this province. He would be a monumental premier. And I think

00:06:56.320 conservatives, but not just conservatives, like ordinary British Columbians are seeing that,

00:07:00.760 and they're seeing the other options, David Eby and Ideologue, and Kevin Falcon, who's just not really

00:07:06.800 an authentic person at all, right? It's not exactly clear what they stand for. So we're enjoying,

00:07:12.460 you know, we're enjoying this boost, I think, as a result of people having the opportunity

00:07:18.280 to see a leader who is very accessible, right? Like he's the type of guy who, you know, we finish an

00:07:25.880 event and he wants to take the SkyTrain to the next place. And I say, no, John, like you got to be

00:07:30.740 driven there, but he's just such an ordinary guy that he's open to doing that. So I think that's

00:07:37.260 playing a role. The elitism of BC United is not palpable to people.

00:07:42.460 Yeah, and what I would define what's happening in both British Columbia and federally speaking

00:07:47.140 is kind of like a middle class revolt. It's kind of the revolt of normal people kind of wanting

00:07:52.600 policies to be what you remembered policies used to kind of be like in 2005, a year where nothing

00:07:58.400 crazy was going on. It's not that we were shooting towards the stars in terms of prosperity,

00:08:02.660 but just that the government left you alone and let you kind of do it on your own. Because

00:08:06.480 the funny thing is whenever the government ends up trying to help you, they end up just needing

00:08:11.060 more programs and more government solutions in order to cover up the sort of issues that

00:08:15.580 they've caused. And this is where I'll just bring it up on screen quickly. Like you can even see

00:08:19.240 not that long ago in BC polling, you would have the BC NDP sometimes leading by 28%,

00:08:25.340 21%, 18 points. It's crazy how far above all the other parties there were. But now what we see in

00:08:32.680 this New York Phil poll, and we've seen it in Main Street polls and liaison, is that the conservatives

00:08:38.040 are either a little bit behind, tied, or even in front of the NDP. And what I'm getting from that is

00:08:45.940 all of the NDP's past support was just political inertia. This is the party that leads us, it is the

00:08:52.660 default, and there's nobody else. And as soon as something else actually, other came along,

00:08:57.840 the fact that people jumped to it so fast, demonstrated that there was a need for it.

00:09:01.720 We've seen other provinces where maybe the government wasn't that great. And it was hard

00:09:06.000 to get alternatives off the ground, because there's there wasn't that fever pitch feeling that we're

00:09:11.020 actually voting on the survival of the province at this point. And I don't think that's even hyperbolic

00:09:16.440 to say that if David Eby was given another four years in office, and that's pretty much the only

00:09:22.140 option, because it's either going to be conservatives or NDP, given another four years in office with all

00:09:26.580 these programs getting more sort of dug into the BC government, you're never going to be able to get

00:09:31.540 rid of the stuff, or at least the damage that mass addiction is going to cause is going to basically

00:09:36.340 make the province feel fairly broken for the next few decades. But I think that what was really

00:09:41.460 exciting with this poll that showed the BC conservatives up by a couple points is that

00:09:45.940 it also showed in the seat projections that you guys would be able to pull together a majority

00:09:51.660 government. And this is with still several months before the provincial election, a lot more time

00:09:56.280 to grow. But what have you guys maybe been seeing, hearing from BC voters and how quickly has the sort

00:10:03.280 of movement towards the BC conservatives been, even in spite of, frankly, you guys not having as much

00:10:08.360 money until recently than the BC United did? Yeah, well, first, what I'll say, and this is

00:10:15.620 obligatory, the only poll that matters is election day, right? Like, obviously, we're not going to hate

00:10:21.120 the fact that that we're polling well. But you can't rest on your laurels. And too often conservatives

00:10:27.200 rest on their laurels, they get ahead. And then they think, okay, we have this in the bag, it's important

00:10:31.780 not to underestimate your enemies, right? The NDP is a very savvy party, they're a very savvy

00:10:37.120 organization, they're probably the most effective NDP party in the country. So it's certainly not

00:10:43.620 over. You know, our vote is less efficient. So in order for us to form a government, we do need

00:10:49.400 significantly higher polling, or maybe not significantly, but certainly higher. But the

00:10:56.200 trajectory has been great. And I think that what we've noticed anecdotally, that is now being

00:11:01.860 validated by this polling is that people show up, you know, we host these events, we hosted an

00:11:05.880 event in Cowichan Valley, with our candidate there, John Corey, 450 people showed up to

00:11:10.620 it. That's a lot, Cowichan Valley, Cowichan Valley is an NDP rider, right? We have an event

00:11:17.100 happening in North Island, North Vancouver Island, we're expecting six, 700 people going

00:11:22.720 to that. So for provincial politics, that's a lot, especially in BC, because people for too

00:11:29.440 long have been apathetic in this province, the NDP has enjoyed, you know, higher polling in

00:11:34.620 the past, as a result of what I call soft support, in the sense that people kind of vote park,

00:11:41.360 they just park their vote with the NDP, they say, Well, I don't really see an alternative.

00:11:45.140 So I guess the NDP, that's what when they're asked, right? That's not a dedicated voter,

00:11:49.580 that's a very soft voter. So, you know, I've always believed and we've always believed the

00:11:54.700 NDP's league has been a house built on sand. And we're trying to build something with a solid

00:12:00.840 foundation. And I think it's, it'll pay in dividends. But like I said, it's not over

00:12:05.640 until it's over. We have a lot of work to do. And certainly, you know, fundraising is a key

00:12:10.100 component of it, that it's getting better, but we need more donations. But the good thing is our

00:12:14.860 dollars go further, you know, in the Langford by-election, where, you know, John Horgan's old

00:12:21.300 riding. We came in second behind the NDP. We got 20% second place, and we spent $10,000 in that race.

00:12:30.320 BC United spent $76,000 and came in fourth with 6%. So our dollars go further, our dollars go further

00:12:40.360 because the brand goes further and because we have volunteers, right? We have amazing volunteers that

00:12:44.780 believe in a message. We have a brand that is honest. We have a team and a policy handbook that is,

00:12:50.300 again, authentic. It speaks to people. You know, we're going to scrap the carbon tax.

00:12:54.600 We're not going to write out a complicated reason why we shouldn't do it. We're going to scrap the

00:12:58.760 carbon tax. We're going to hire back the healthcare workers that got fired over their private medical

00:13:02.380 decision. We're going to end the so-called safe supply program that's just killing more people. 0.98

00:13:07.360 It's a common sense plan.

00:13:13.040 Yeah, that was the one that really sort of threw me for a loop upon hearing about it,

00:13:17.240 that the BC medical system is currently falling apart. And it's not because of an inherited issue

00:13:22.660 that the NDP or the province of British Columbia is having been having to deal with for like a

00:13:26.300 decade or something. It was just self-created. And every once in a while, whenever you make a

00:13:31.080 criticism of an incumbent left-wing government who's incompetent, you'll get people saying,

00:13:36.720 well, they're trying their best. It's a difficult issue, and they're making it better. And if they

00:13:41.400 weren't doing what they're doing, everything would be so much worse.

00:13:44.020 But basically on every single issue that is defining this election, I think you'd agree

00:13:51.140 it's crime, drugs, healthcare, cost of living, the staple issues, that all of it is self-imposed.

00:13:59.300 It's all, every single issue basically mostly comes back to a piece of public policy that the

00:14:04.500 BC NDP championed and passed.

00:14:07.500 Yeah, it's ideology, right? This is what happens when you pass legislation based on ideology instead

00:14:12.460 of common sense. You have the only jurisdiction in North America, British Columbia is the only

00:14:19.000 jurisdiction in North America that has not hired back the nurses and doctors.

00:14:24.040 What was the figure on how many doctors and nurses are still not back to work?

00:14:29.860 So approximately it's around 6,000.

00:14:32.580 Wow.

00:14:33.000 Right? Many of them, many of them in rural areas. So when you see these horror stories of people dying

00:14:38.140 in waiting rooms or, you know, people not being able to see a doctor, you have 6,000 people who

00:14:43.960 are fully trained, who are not allowed to go back to work. Many of whom now are moving away.

00:14:49.000 They're going to Alberta. We probably already lost them. But the reality is these are fully

00:14:53.520 trained individuals who were fired because of their own private medical decisions. And they're

00:14:59.360 not being hired back while every other jurisdiction, every other state, everywhere else in North America,

00:15:05.720 they've been hired back except here. That's not science. That's not common sense. That's ideology.

00:15:11.300 That is ideology that tells Bonnie Henry and David Eby, no, we need to punish these people.

00:15:16.580 They ultimately want to punish them, right? They want, it's a cult. They want to punish these people

00:15:22.600 as a result of not falling in line. And who gets hurt in the end? British Columbians.

00:15:28.100 Let's also point out, it's not like the BC NDP have also lowered the amount of spending on the

00:15:35.360 healthcare system. They're now still somehow spending as much, if not more, while operating

00:15:40.200 a medical system with fewer actual employees. This is honestly one of the big problems we have

00:15:44.620 in Alberta. We spend so much money for actually very little delivery. And the BC NDP are now trying

00:15:50.260 to beat Alberta by spending even more per capita than Alberta and somehow having even longer wait times.

00:15:56.620 And maybe to jump over to the drugs issue too, I couldn't imagine that many progressives even

00:16:03.000 are blind to the fact that decriminalization has failed. So like, especially in, I would assume,

00:16:09.380 the Vancouver area and the suburbs around there, has that kind of been the major thing that if you guys

00:16:15.940 scrap decriminalization altogether, that's what people want? Because I think, frankly,

00:16:20.780 David Eby has chosen this to be the referendum on the carbon tax and drugs.

00:16:25.900 I'm not sure if he actually has witnessed the single issue polling on each of those.

00:16:31.960 Yeah, I think suburban voters want to be safe, right? So suburban voters want to be able to take

00:16:38.160 their kids to the playground and not have people shooting up. Suburban voters, you know, women want 1.00

00:16:43.980 to be able to walk down the sidewalk without getting randomly attacked. That's, you know, our policy is

00:16:49.380 fairly straightforward. People are on drugs, like fentanyl, that have a severe effect on the human mind,

00:16:56.240 right? Like, we have this huge scandal over Oxycontin and Purdue Pharmacy and Purdue Pharma and all these issues.

00:17:03.020 Some of these drugs are 30, 40 times stronger than Oxycontin. So these people need help. These people need

00:17:11.720 to treatment. These people need to follow, you know, a lot of what you guys are doing in Alberta with the

00:17:16.400 Alberta model, where we spend the money to open up facilities and send them to the facility so they

00:17:21.740 can get their life back. I get so frustrated when, you know, I debate. I'm sometimes on these radio

00:17:28.560 shows and I'm debating the NDP and they clutch their pearls and they say, oh, I just feel so terrible

00:17:34.320 for, you know, the people struggling and we need to give them more drugs. And I just, I shun at it

00:17:40.480 because I feel like if it were their children on the street, they would be getting them into private

00:17:46.200 medical facilities for treatment. They wouldn't say, here, sweetie, here's your safe supply of drugs.

00:17:51.420 What I've compared safe supply to is pretending that we've solved the problem of drugs because we've

00:17:57.860 given people safer drugs. That's the equivalent of saying that we have ended the problem of drive-by

00:18:02.980 shootings because we have mandated that gang members can only use 22 caliber firearms. It makes

00:18:08.160 it so less people are, like, it's less likely, like, people are less likely to die. That's ludicrous. 0.95

00:18:14.700 Really what the NDP's plan is doing, and it demonstrates that you can make any terrible policy

00:18:20.100 look good on paper with warping the statistics and the metrics that you used, is that they are taking

00:18:25.700 the numerator for how many overdoses it requires until someone dies, when that's pretty much

00:18:31.520 inevitable. If someone starts overdosing multiple times in a month, this is not going to be somebody

00:18:36.360 who's just going to decide to get off drugs. But they're, like, throwing it from maybe three or four

00:18:41.580 overdoses before somebody might pass away tragically from, like, ingesting very, very powerful drugs.

00:18:49.200 And they're increasing the numerator, pretending like that's making everything better, when the

00:18:53.480 denominator of overdoses that are happening is going up by 10, 20 times over the past 15 years.

00:19:01.020 That when you can make something feel safer, but in reality, you're not actually making it safer,

00:19:07.280 because there's no safe way of using meth or fentanyl or crack. But the NDP being a little bit

00:19:15.680 too, or not a little bit too, that's being very nice, being stuck in the university mindset that

00:19:22.060 progressive policies are inherently good, and they just need to be made to work, is not really working

00:19:27.020 for actual people who have to live around these problems. Because there's parts of Vancouver that

00:19:31.740 I think that wouldn't be wrong to describe as no-go zones at this point.

00:19:36.900 Human beings are not guinea pigs. We're not guinea pigs. The people of British Columbia are not guinea

00:19:41.340 pigs, and these addicts are not guinea pigs for a radical experiment. And that's how Bonnie Henry and

00:19:47.160 these bureaucrats and these elected politicians are treating people, as guinea pigs. So when you look at these

00:19:53.840 issues, the reality is addicts are addicted to drugs like fentanyl. It's not that drugs are getting

00:20:00.580 laced. I'm sure that's happening to some degree. But the notion of safe supply, that we are going to

00:20:06.580 get taxpayer-funded drugs and give them hydromorphone, we know that these users don't

00:20:12.620 want those drugs. They don't want those lighter drugs. They'll take hydromorphone. They'll take

00:20:16.420 Dilauden. And they'll sell it so they can go buy fentanyl. And they'll sell it to high school kids.

00:20:23.160 That's happening all over the place. We have, you know, Adam Zeebo has done great work on it.

00:20:28.220 I was lucky enough to be a producer in a documentary called Vancouver is Dying.

00:20:32.060 Like this issue is very important to me. It's very close to me and my personal background.

00:20:36.320 So when Bonnie Henry goes out and says, if you're an alcoholic, we can get you treatment and you can

00:20:43.560 overcome it. But if you're addicted to hard drugs like opioids, the best we can do is safe supply.

00:20:49.660 What message does that send? Like putting all politics aside, what message does that send to a

00:20:55.020 human being struggling? To a human being who thinks, wow, I'm such a broken person that I need,

00:21:01.500 you know, I need to be medicated for the rest of my life. I can't get help. I can't get better. I

00:21:06.440 can't get back on my feet. It's just, to me, it is a dark statement and it's giving up on the human

00:21:13.280 spirit. And that's not what we should be about. We should never give up on the human spirit.

00:21:18.620 In the sequel documentary to Vancouver is Dying, Canada's Dying, Aaron Gunn did a fantastic job

00:21:23.480 directing those. I would recommend people go and watch both. In that documentary, he interviews

00:21:28.000 Marshall Smith, who's now a chief advisor, chief of staff to Daniel Smith, Premier Daniel

00:21:33.060 Smith in Alberta, that he had an experience having lived in East Vancouver, being a drug 0.72

00:21:39.600 addict and that he got off of it. And that was through almost sheer willpower and the grace

00:21:45.700 of God, he was able to get off of hard drugs. But for Bonnie Henry to basically say that the 0.98

00:21:51.240 best most people can actually expect is basically a slow poisoning, because that's what it is.

00:21:57.680 You're not making people safer. It's not that if you keep taking this, you'll be able to survive

00:22:01.180 into your 80s. No, if you take these safe drugs, you might be able to survive to your mid 40s

00:22:05.720 before you've basically poisoned yourself and your organs are shutting down. You cannot

00:22:09.400 use this stuff in the long run. This is where voting in this election is not simply saying,

00:22:15.140 I want a different flavor of politics. It's basically saying we need to actually save people

00:22:19.040 rather than letting them die. And we have to make sure that the economy doesn't absolutely fall

00:22:23.620 apart. Because not to be offensive to BC residents as somebody living here in Alberta,

00:22:27.660 Alberta. But BC, under the NDP, has effectively, in my mind, become the meth lab of Canada in more

00:22:34.700 ways than one. You, one, get the hard drugs that the BC government is creating and distributing,

00:22:40.400 and they're actually leeching into the rest of the country. These safe supply drugs are being

00:22:43.860 smuggled into other provinces. But all of the worst ideas have been coming from British Columbia.

00:22:50.520 And it's not BC residents' fault. The NDP basically hoodwink people say that they're going to help

00:22:55.660 people out and they use very positive, flowery language. And then they end up just hurting

00:22:59.380 people and then running for re-election on how they're going to fix it. And the way that they

00:23:02.280 fix it is just doubling down. Yeah. You know, I have a lot of friends across the country in Alberta

00:23:08.020 that tell me, you know, we have a lot riding on you guys, right? No pressure, but we have a lot

00:23:12.520 riding on British Columbia. And that is the case. British Columbia can either be, you know,

00:23:17.140 the net importer of these hard drugs through the Western border, or it could be the prosperity

00:23:24.580 gateway for Canada, right? A conservative government in British Columbia means more energy development,

00:23:31.120 right? It means we're going to build more energy. We're going to build more resources. We're going

00:23:35.160 to, we could help the rest of Canada with prosperity. It's, it's why it's so critical. It's why so many

00:23:40.940 people are watching this election because the conservative government in British Columbia will just be so

00:23:45.440 amazing for the rest of Canada. And, and, you know, you mentioned Marshall Smith, who I know well,

00:23:50.720 I mean, what a story, right? To go from drug addicted on the street to recovery to now the chief of staff

00:23:58.140 to the premier of Alberta. Like, that's a great story. And I've spoken to a lot of people when we

00:24:03.640 were making the documentary, you know, and even now as executive director for the conservative party

00:24:08.380 who say, you know, I'm now clean. If I was offered safe supply, I'd be dead, right?

00:24:15.440 I, but I was drug addicted. I reached my rock bottom and I got clean. So many people have told

00:24:20.440 us that, that, you know, I don't want to sound negative. I don't want to sound like, oh, you just

00:24:27.140 need to pull yourself up from your bootstraps. I'm not, you know, I'm not negating the difficulties

00:24:31.540 of addiction. I know them. But what I am saying is that what we're doing isn't working. It's killing

00:24:36.900 people. It's based on ideology. It's not based on common sense and it's not compassion. It is

00:24:42.660 a religious ideology, uh, that seeks to turn people into Guinea pigs and zombies. So the 0.96

00:24:49.580 conservative party, you know, is going to put forward policy that, you know, recriminalizes

00:24:55.800 drugs, which in itself isn't necessarily even saying enough because when drugs were criminalized,

00:25:01.540 they were still not being enforced. So it's recriminalizing drugs, but we need to change the

00:25:05.380 culture, right? So it's no more safe supply, no more so-called safe supply. It's, it's killing

00:25:12.200 people. It's not helping and prioritizing treatment. We need to open up facilities. I

00:25:17.180 don't think taxpayers are necessarily against the investment. There's this notion that as

00:25:22.100 conservatives, we hate spending money, right? I don't think it's that. I think conservatives

00:25:28.640 don't like wasting money. I think many conservatives, if you speak to many British Columbians who

00:25:34.120 consider themselves supporters, they'll say that they're open to their tax dollars being

00:25:39.040 used in ways that are appropriate in ways that make life better for people, right? If you were

00:25:43.940 to ask people, would you be okay with your tax dollars being used to, to open up a facility

00:25:49.040 where people can get back on their feet? They would say yes. And then if we're being completely

00:25:53.760 shrewd and talking about the economical benefits of that, well, you have taxpayer, you have

00:25:58.620 new taxpayers, you have people going back to work, you have people.

00:26:01.060 This is actually what I have my master's degree researching for my, for public policy is that it's

00:26:06.780 not in fact poverty that drives crime. It's crime that drives poverty. East Vancouver is a great

00:26:13.200 example. It wasn't a poor area that then drug addiction and other sorts of crime moved into.

00:26:19.540 It's an area that they put all the drug addiction and crime into that they didn't enforce the law in

00:26:24.440 that area. And that has dried up business. That is what has caused convenience stores to shut down

00:26:30.500 or have to have like three locks on the door to make sure it can only lend people who aren't going

00:26:34.920 to steal or attack the staff. This is what happens when you think in purely material terms. And this

00:26:40.940 is how David Eby is falling out, right? He thinks that the only important things in life are those

00:26:44.700 tactile objects. It's material wealth and stuff like that. So he simply is trying to redistribute the

00:26:51.060 gains of BC and then solve every single problem with some socialistic material solution rather

00:26:57.160 than a actual hard solution. That is a, that is more philosophical and cultural based. That's

00:27:03.860 actually about trying to do good things rather than just trying to provide quote unquote safe

00:27:08.800 and good things. Cause at the end of the day, people have to do it for themselves and the government

00:27:12.020 can't do it for you. That's where you're right. It's not being uncompassionate saying that you might

00:27:16.800 have to be pushed off of drug addiction. Hard solutions are what you kind of need to hard,

00:27:22.780 difficult problems. It's the whole adage that weak men create hard times and obviously weak solutions,

00:27:28.400 weak men's solutions cannot then dig you out of the hole that you're in.

00:27:33.200 Yeah. I mean, you said it well, the reality is that some people need to be saved. Some people are

00:27:38.780 begging, save me, right? Without necessarily saying if they're so addicted, they're too far gone

00:27:45.900 and they need us to basically say, you need help. We're going to help you get clean and get a clear

00:27:51.020 mind, right? That's why we would use the notwithstanding clause to, to get addicts into the

00:27:56.940 treatment they need. It's not, it's not that complicated to us. And, and again, it's not a

00:28:02.520 perfect model, right? A lot of people will say, well, you know, abstaining doesn't work and it's

00:28:07.380 failed in the past. What, what this comes down to is the fact that what we've done so far has not

00:28:12.840 worked. More people are dying, more people are addicted, and their solution is to do it more.

00:28:18.420 The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.

00:28:22.700 I think the reason why we're doing so well is because people are waking up to that lunacy.

00:28:27.620 And I'll point out in 2005, because I did a study on crime in all of Canada and mostly Toronto, in

00:28:34.180 the early 2000s, 2005 to nine, the era before we had safe injection sites and safe supply and all that

00:28:41.280 stuff, we had almost no drug deaths per year. It was nothing. We had no crime. Everything was

00:28:46.540 prosperous. And guess what we did? We had drug abstinence type policy. We actually locked up

00:28:53.320 criminals because incarceration is not bad if someone is violating the rights of other people.

00:28:58.300 And we actually taught kids moral virtue in schools. We didn't teach moral relativism, which

00:29:04.880 is effectively what SOGI is on specific areas, like topic areas, especially when it comes to the

00:29:11.960 sex ed curriculum that SOGI puts forward. It teaches just complete relativism in the school system.

00:29:17.580 Then you wonder how it ends up negatively affecting the way kids see the world. But have you guys heard a

00:29:23.880 lot when it comes to SOGI 123 as something that is driving a lot of votes? Because obviously, a lot

00:29:28.600 of the other issues are very hot blooded in terms of, you know, drug addiction, crime, crazy high taxes,

00:29:35.280 but is SOGI still getting a lot of play when it comes to voters at the doors?

00:29:40.620 I would say it is with parents. I mean, SOGI 123, for those unaware, is a curriculum program

00:29:46.380 in British Columbia. And if you Google it, you'll see that it's an anti-bullying module. But in reality,

00:29:52.980 the way it's been implemented has been very ideological. And it's been teaching inappropriate

00:29:58.820 content to small children. I mean, Bruce Bandman, our MLA from Abbotsford South, took a book from

00:30:06.260 school that they have in elementary schools. They have like seven-year-olds reading this book.

00:30:09.940 And he took it into the legislature during question period and read it out loud. And the entire room just

00:30:15.620 gasped. He had to be stopped from the speaker because these words were so inappropriate.

00:30:20.260 And it begs the question, if he can't say that in the legislature, why can small children say it in

00:30:24.660 the classroom? Why can they read it? So there's significant issues with our education system and

00:30:31.220 what's being taught to children. What we've heard from parents in every community, the Chinese community,

00:30:36.980 the Sikh community, the Hindu community, the Muslim community even, they're very concerned about it.

00:30:42.580 It's a policy that was brought in by the BC Liberals. It's gotten worse under BC NDP. And again,

00:30:48.500 it goes back to the top of our conversation, which is ideology over common sense.

00:30:53.940 And it's something where it pretends that it's like a flowery and nice solution to an issue that

00:31:03.140 everyone cares about. Bullying in school, obviously bad. But when you introduce a very vague box in order

00:31:09.940 to solve the solution, SOGI is effectively a vaguely worded, nice sounding box of solutions.

00:31:18.740 But if you actually take a look at that, they can fill it up with whatever they want. So then they end

00:31:22.180 up using this anti-bullying program as a front for being able to push gender theory in the classroom and

00:31:29.380 a lot of other sorts of radically left-wing types of curriculums under the guise that if you don't want

00:31:36.740 this, then you're somehow pro-bullying, which is the greatest insult to parents who actually care

00:31:41.220 about the health and wellbeing of their children. But to transition to one more topic before we end

00:31:46.900 off here, I just want to talk about, because I've talked about David Eby a lot in this video,

00:31:51.540 obviously. Awful bleeder, doesn't understand what the actual voters in BC want. But the person I'm

00:32:00.020 almost even more confused by is Kevin Falcon. I don't know what the NDP are doing. Even their videos,

00:32:05.620 I've made fun of in the past, like this one where it looks like he's a hero who has given up. I don't

00:32:11.300 know what's going on with the United. Who are they appealing to? What's their plan? I'm just

00:32:18.260 confused and I need you to explain this to me. I think that indifference is not a virtue. And I think

00:32:25.220 right now everyone's indifferent towards them. I think Kevin Falcon, for those unaware, was a fairly

00:32:30.820 prominent politician for a long time in British Columbia. And in 2013, he quit and he went to

00:32:37.140 the private sector. And I think what happened is when he quit in 2013, he became frozen in amber

00:32:44.180 politically, right? In terms of the zeitgeist. He just didn't participate in politics for over a decade.

00:32:49.940 And I think as a result, he's now come back and effectively his strategy is to campaign like it's

00:32:56.340 2013. And if we remember politics before 2016, it looked very different. 2016 was a Rubicon moment.

00:33:04.980 So he thinks that the way to win over votes is to be as moderate and middle of the road as possible.

00:33:13.620 Be as vague as possible. Try to appeal to as many people as possible. Talk on both sides of your mouth,

00:33:20.020 basically. And that's not really popular anymore. I think this notion of a quote unquote coalition

00:33:27.700 party between federal conservatives and federal liberals does not work anymore. In 2013 or earlier,

00:33:35.860 when I think of a Paul Martin liberal and a Stephen Harper conservative, I think of two people who can

00:33:41.780 have some pretty serious disagreements with each other. But ultimately, they're both Canadians. They both

00:33:48.580 believe we're a great country. They both believe we have a good history. They both believe in the basic

00:33:53.860 tenets of what Canada is. Now you don't share that commonality. We become too polarized. Now you're

00:34:02.420 either on the side that wants to freeze bank accounts or you're on the side that doesn't want to freeze

00:34:06.980 bank accounts. We've become a very existentially divided society. So to that end, this notion that you're

00:34:15.620 going to have a party that's half Trudeau liberals and half pure poly conservatives won't work.

00:34:21.380 And then what you end up with is a very vague platform that appeals to nobody, basically. And

00:34:28.020 you have the liberals mad at you for not being liberal enough and the conservatives mad at you

00:34:31.620 for not being conservative enough. They flee your party. Federal liberals in this province vote for the

00:34:35.620 NDP. And the conservatives come to us. And now, you know, they've bottomed out. So Kevin Falcon is an

00:34:43.380 inauthentic leader. He is someone who will say anything to get elected. And I think the era

00:34:49.940 of that leader, that politician, has come to an end. The era of I will say anything to get elected.

00:34:56.820 At least David Eby. Say what you want about David Eby. He believes in all the crazy stuff he believes in,

00:35:01.780 right? He's an ideologue. Kevin Falcon doesn't actually believe in any of it. So I think we saw what

00:35:07.780 happened to federal conservative leaders that were like that. Yeah. Here's the thing that you that

00:35:12.980 both is actually negatively affecting both Kevin Falcon and David Eby is that even now, while the

00:35:18.980 polling is starting to move in decisively in the favor of the BC conservatives in terms of momentum,

00:35:25.220 David Eby and Kevin Falcon are still having to rely on a lot of federal conservative crossover votes

00:35:30.900 for, in terms of the United, about 30%, 40% of their voters. And for the NDP, they're having to

00:35:37.380 still rely on, oddly enough, about 13% to 15% of conservative federal voters who are still saying

00:35:42.740 default Eby because he's the only guy who's going to win. So I guess NDP. So that's where these guys

00:35:48.020 could fall apart. But the thing that baffled me about United was just the name change. That is the

00:35:55.140 biggest tell that it is a party populated by consultants, people who, because when you look

00:36:00.820 at their convention, somehow they were able to raise still a decent amount of money in the first

00:36:05.700 quarter of 2024. But you look at their policy convention, and nobody is there. And everything

00:36:10.580 they're doing is, it's almost like playing to the type of person who really values the opinions of focus

00:36:17.540 groups, who really values the opinions of polls, where they're trying to find the issues that every

00:36:23.700 single person can agree on. But those issues tend to be also the issues that are not actually driving

00:36:29.860 people's votes. Because if everyone agrees on something, it's probably a very neutrally toned

00:36:34.260 issue that nobody actually cares about that much. And now the United, like they're kind of voting with

00:36:39.860 you guys, the BC conservatives on some issues, but then they're like trying to say that you guys are

00:36:44.180 still too extreme, and we're going to, we're the moderate voice that people want. But it's like,

00:36:48.580 but if there's a hole in the boat right now, which is what is happening with BC, it's not

00:36:54.740 moderate to say we should half fill in the hole that's worked where we're taking on water and only

00:36:59.700 bail out half of the water that's currently inside the boat. Eventually, the moderate position is to

00:37:05.620 reverse everything that's happening. Being half crazy is not exactly sane.

00:37:09.700 No, not not at all. I think you said it accurately that it is it's a party of focus groups and

00:37:17.140 consultants, right? I mean, even the branding itself, the logo costs $300,000 for a logo,

00:37:23.540 our logo was, you know, created by my wife for free. So, you know, we're, that's the difference.

00:37:30.100 And the thing is, and I've worked in politics for a long time, you know, after I was in media,

00:37:35.300 and something happens to people when they work in this industry for too long, where they get into

00:37:39.060 these echo chambers with other consultants, and they don't think like normal people, they're not

00:37:44.980 shaking hands with normal people, they're not sitting around a coffee table, you know, in a

00:37:49.700 restaurant, saying, gosh, have you seen these prices? This is out of control. Like, they're not

00:37:54.980 in touch with the common man and woman of this province or country. That's what it's about. That's

00:37:59.940 what Pierre Paulio has done so well. And that's what John Rustad has done so well, is he'll go into a

00:38:04.420 room, he'll go into a restaurant and shake hands with every single person and say, what's going on in your

00:38:08.900 life? And, you know, you might have consultants saying, Oh, no, we have focus groups saying otherwise.

00:38:15.540 You know, the reality, I just think nothing trumps reality, nothing trumps real human

00:38:19.780 interactions. And, and if we have people saying, Look, I'm really struggling to afford groceries

00:38:24.660 because of the carbon tax. That means something that means we could be ahead of things, right? A lot

00:38:29.700 of the issues that we took a stand on, that we got attacked so relentlessly over six months ago,

00:38:35.460 are now popular in polling. But it's like, we noticed that before the polling, right? Soji being

00:38:40.580 a great example, where our first day in the legislature, John got up and gave this impassioned

00:38:45.460 speech about how parents need to be involved in their children's education. And of course, Evie

00:38:50.500 attacked us calling us bigots. His caucus stands up to applaud him. And then BC United's entire caucus

00:38:57.300 stands up to applaud him. So every single member of the legislature, except our leader, stood up

00:39:05.060 to applaud Premier Evie. And John just stood there and said, Wow, this shows that it's a uniparty,

00:39:10.980 like you're all you're all the same. So

00:39:14.420 I think that's the difference between a lot of experience in politics, and then actually having

00:39:19.460 real political wisdom. Because if you can't walk around a neighborhood and talk to people and get the

00:39:24.820 feeling of what people care about, then you're just politically useless, because nobody and nobody

00:39:29.620 can rely even if you say the right things, if you because like the polling shows it, that only shows

00:39:36.100 that the only way to get something done is to just release, like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth

00:39:41.940 of polling to be able to convince them. And at that point, it's a worthless politician, because it takes

00:39:48.020 far more work than anybody even has time to do in order to get them to do the right thing.

00:39:53.780 We're so it's like United, if you somehow had United government, and this is not happening,

00:39:57.380 if you look at the polls, they're dying, that if you had a United government, you would have to be

00:40:02.420 a pollster willing to call people all day long to prove that common sense policies are common sense,

00:40:07.460 because they're far too in their bubble, like this is an aside sort of story right before we wrap up

00:40:12.420 here. But I was trying to advise a guy running for Mississauga's mayorship in their by election

00:40:19.780 that are having in Mississauga right now since Bonnie Crombie stepped down as mayor to become

00:40:23.540 the Ontario Liberal leader. And this this guy's campaign actually told me when I said that your

00:40:29.140 slogan, the entire by election should just be cut taxes cut crime. That's it. And they said, well,

00:40:34.660 you know, people don't like hearing about crime. And it's not really a big issue. In our opinion,

00:40:39.940 I think it's overblown. And I'm like car thefts are up 45% year over year. And you're going to then

00:40:45.700 tell me that, well, if you're making a bit more of a big deal, but then it really is that that is

00:40:51.140 the consultant mentality that I cannot I hate the idea that, well, I in my high rise don't bump

00:40:56.820 into this. So it's not really an issue. People care about bike lanes. No, they do not. People

00:41:01.700 actually tend to care about the things that put their lives at risk, rather than the slight

00:41:06.100 annoyances that they experience not having a bike lane.

00:41:09.220 Yeah, well, exactly. Right. Like in my capacity as executive director, it's not common for executive

00:41:17.300 directors to go door knocking, but I like to do it. Because in going door knocking with my candidates,

00:41:23.380 you get to meet real people and get to ask them, what's your top issue? What are you worried about?

00:41:27.140 What's going on? And I can tell you that Tom in Coquitlam is worried about inflation. He's worried

00:41:32.260 about the carbon tax, right? Hannah in South Vancouver is worried about Soji, right?

00:41:38.500 We hold these events and these town halls where people can come and voice their concerns. And to

00:41:42.260 me, that's what's authentic. And that I think is why we are where we're at. And again, the only

00:41:48.980 poll that matters is election day. We're not resting on our laurels, but it certainly reflects what we're

00:41:55.300 seeing in the common man and woman of British Columbia. And I think John would be an amazing

00:42:00.660 premier and it's my absolute honor to be in the position I'm in to help him actualize that.

00:42:07.140 Yeah. And you guys are doing really good work, especially since this party basically didn't

00:42:11.940 exist a year and a half ago. The BC Conservatives were like unnamed. So it's not like you inherited

00:42:16.340 and you and John just inherited a great vehicle to be able to oust the NDP with. This is something

00:42:22.100 that literally basically had to be built past just being a registered name that somebody happened to

00:42:28.420 keep in their possession. This is something that actually has had to be built from scratch. And even

00:42:34.420 without you having to say it, guys, if you live in British Columbia, you have to volunteer, you have

00:42:40.180 to donate. You have to do one of those two things. If you really don't want David Eby to be reelected as

00:42:45.700 the premier of your province, there's no, well, I can't do that. I don't want to do that. It will

00:42:51.620 literally be worth its weight in gold to be able to have a different government in British Columbia.

00:42:56.820 And as an Albertan, I salute you if you help the BC Conservatives end up winning the legislature,

00:43:03.220 because this is a issue that in the province, David Eby is something that is affecting the rest

00:43:08.980 of the country. And you can already see it spreading decolonization is going to Toronto,

00:43:12.900 it's going to go to other cities after that. And it's because of the advocacy work, the toxic advocacy

00:43:17.940 work of people like David Eby. So Angelo, tell people like us where they can go and look up

00:43:23.380 information about the BC Conservatives, how they can help you out and what you guys want from people,

00:43:28.180 I guess. ConservativeBC.ca. You know, if you're a resident of British Columbia, you can donate.

00:43:35.860 All donations are eligible for tax credits. So you get some money back. Like I said earlier,

00:43:41.780 our dollars go far, right? The money is not being wasted on consultants. It goes very far. It helps us

00:43:47.460 a lot to get the message out. Because like you said, the party, we have to build this, right? This party

00:43:52.740 was basically in a zombie state for 100 years. So we had to redesign the logo, like I said, and

00:43:59.460 rebuild and create this brand. And it's the probably the fastest growing political party in Canadian

00:44:04.820 history at this rate, right? We were a year ago, I think we were at like 7%. And now we're at 39 or 37.

00:44:12.340 So it's a rapidly exploding political party, anything helps. Yeah, any donation helps. And if you can't

00:44:19.220 donate, then volunteer. Our candidates need door knockers. It goes so far. You'd be amazed how far

00:44:24.980 it goes to go and knock on a door and leave a flyer and say hi to someone. And people have to

00:44:28.980 realize if you feel nervous with just the idea of door knocking, I almost like vomited the first time

00:44:34.740 I tried to go door knocking for myself in Calgary. You're just going and chatting with people. You just

00:44:40.020 have to realize you're talking to people and they actually want to talk to you, especially if you're a BC

00:44:43.620 conservative volunteer, you are effectively represent the solution to a lot of problems

00:44:48.820 in this province. People want to talk to you and you just need to get them the information to be

00:44:52.820 able to show up on election day this fall in British Columbia. So thanks for coming on, Angela. I'll

00:44:58.420 definitely put all the plugs and all the links that you want in the description below so people

00:45:03.140 can go check all this stuff out. Thanks for coming on the show. And thanks for fighting for

00:45:07.220 actual freedom and condiment sense in British Columbia. Thanks for having me, Wyatt.

00:45:11.940 Thanks for having me, Wyatt.

The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - May 08, 2024

David Eby destroyed the BC NDP in less than a year (ft. Angelo Isidorou)

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript