The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - February 02, 2025


Liberals' fake patriotism games hurting Canadians with trade war (ft. Greg Staley)


Episode Stats

Length

28 minutes

Words per Minute

196.28203

Word Count

5,501

Sentence Count

366

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary

Greg Staley of Diverge Media joins me to discuss the impending trade war between the United States and Canada. We discuss what to expect from the trade war, what to do about it, and why we should be worried about it.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome back to the Wyatt Claypool Show. Everything's insane right now with the coming
00:00:07.060 trade war between the U.S. and Canada, and to break it down with me, I am bringing on Greg
00:00:13.640 Staley from Diverge Media. We are of like minds on this issue, but Greg is a far better research
00:00:19.820 than I, and so we're going to be doing a video where part one is on my channel and part two will
00:00:26.060 be linked in the description below and pinned to the top of the comments on Diverge Media's channel,
00:00:31.880 so I encourage you guys to watch this conversation here, and then when we transition to other topics,
00:00:37.660 it will be on Greg's channel. Well worth the subscription to his channel, but Greg, how are
00:00:43.400 you doing? How is the trade war treating you so far? Or I guess it doesn't start till Tuesday, so.
00:00:48.940 Yeah, it's early yet. We don't know what it's actually going to look like, but
00:00:53.280 all the rhetoric from our leaders is not promising. If you understand how tariffs work and you
00:01:00.660 understand this, you know, I get the idea of like, oh, a bully's punching you, like the way
00:01:05.580 they're framing it, right? If somebody's hitting you, you hit them back. What they don't tell you
00:01:09.860 is it's kind of like a boxer punching themselves in the face with an uppercut when they go to swing
00:01:13.960 at the other opponent. They're just going, they knock themselves in the teeth. That's kind of what
00:01:18.720 we're proposing here from our premieres. By punching ourselves in the face, we'll get back
00:01:24.400 at the enemy. And why I am naming this part of the video the Liberals' fake patriotism game is
00:01:32.340 because that's what's going on right now. It feels like the Liberals and other Liberal-like
00:01:37.500 politicians like Doug Ford are using a fight like Donald Trump to push up their own popularity.
00:01:42.960 That if you're pro-Canada, well, now you have to be pro-Trudeau Liberal because they're representing
00:01:49.020 Canada. Doug Ford represents Canada. So how could you dislike Doug Ford? You can't agree with Trump,
00:01:55.460 even though he's technically right on a bunch of stuff. And I don't agree with Trump putting on
00:01:59.560 the tariffs. But I don't want to divorce myself from the reality that we don't do a good job on
00:02:05.480 board security or port security. But I'm going to start with this and then we can discuss a little bit
00:02:10.200 as we go on. Anita Anand, our Minister of Transportation and International Trade,
00:02:16.300 who has blocked me, by the way. I just wanted to use her profile here just to demonstrate
00:02:21.700 why we're not taken seriously. So she's retweeted Jonathan Wilkinson here, Liberal MP and Minister,
00:02:28.100 saying, Canada has done nothing to provoke tariffs. But I want to reassure each and every Canadian,
00:02:35.020 no matter who you are or where you live, we are prepared and ready to fight for you.
00:02:40.200 We will always be your champions. And then I just want to get to this post too, where
00:02:43.760 it's Anita Anand at a Toronto trade event. And she says,
00:02:48.300 today I met with the Committee on International Trade in Toronto. We discussed the Canadian Free
00:02:53.520 Trade Agreement, mutual recognition, labor mobility and other secretarial priorities that will cut
00:03:00.040 red tape and make it easier to do business within Canada. We are committed to kickstarting. And then
00:03:05.220 it goes on about all the great things they're going to do for Canada's economy.
00:03:08.140 I don't believe them. You've lived in the same country as I have, Greg. How has the government
00:03:14.120 in the province that you used to live, Ontario, done to make Canada's business community more robust?
00:03:20.860 Yeah. Yeah, I know. We've had nine years of the Trudeau Liberals. And really, with the Ontario
00:03:28.020 government, you've had a continuation of the Kathleen Wynne Liberal policies. I mean, Doug Ford ran on
00:03:34.040 rhetoric of the Conservatives. He ran on cuts for the middle class. He ran on what most Conservatives
00:03:40.580 still want, and then quickly ran to the Liberal side of the aisle with his policies. He's DEI Doug.
00:03:46.780 He's pushing all the same woke rhetoric through our schools. He's pushing all the same corporate welfare
00:03:51.940 that you would have seen under the Liberals, just with different winners and losers. There's really
00:03:57.260 no marketable change. Their deficit, actually, Fraser Institute posted this, and I put it up on Twitter.
00:04:04.100 If we would have just kept the same per capita spending under Doug Ford as we had under Kathleen Wynne,
00:04:10.760 there would actually be $24 billion less debt in Ontario than there currently is. So this idea that
00:04:17.120 Doug Ford is some bastion of fiscal conservatism or a conservative in any way, shape, or form
00:04:22.820 is so far removed from the truth. He's very good with rhetoric. He knows what Conservatives want to hear.
00:04:27.940 But when it comes down to policies, he says one thing to your face, then he puts on his red suit,
00:04:34.000 and he joins the Liberals, and he goes and does whatever they would have done on steroids. That's
00:04:38.480 what we've seen out of the Liberals. And I mean, of course, conservatives.
00:04:42.460 Yeah. And the thing is, what I get so annoyed with, with this whole tariff situation, is how
00:04:47.100 un-nuanced people want to be. Again, I don't actually think Trump is fully right about the trade
00:04:53.100 deficit. Trade deficits don't really matter. Obviously, the US brings in more Canadian
00:04:59.440 products than Canada brings in US products because they get so many raw materials from us
00:05:04.340 because we are a cheap country to extract raw materials from. We're obviously not going to
00:05:09.280 send them minerals and then buy minerals back from them. There's always going to be a trade imbalance.
00:05:14.440 There's no such thing as a fair trade deal. And it's not because it's always going to be unfair
00:05:20.120 for one side. It's always fair for both sides if one side is getting one thing cheaper than they
00:05:25.700 could have done themselves. And the other side is getting things in exchange for that. It's fair
00:05:30.200 for both sides. So I reject Trump. It's Trump's idea that trade is unfair if the US imports more than
00:05:37.140 they export. That's just how trade works. If one country like China is doing something cheaper than
00:05:42.960 America can do, that makes sense that you're getting more from them. I'm in favor of tariffs on
00:05:47.760 countries that are up to no good like China. But that's a different conversation. But on the Canadian
00:05:52.960 side, I even see Canadian conservatives, not even fake conservatives like Doug Ford, but like real
00:05:57.880 orthodox conservatives doing this pantomime that, well, Trump doesn't actually have a real reason to tear
00:06:05.040 up us like kind of does. I still disagree with it being done at the speed he's been doing it. But I think
00:06:10.880 Trump is running up against the fact that he thinks that his presidency is going to become very cooled off in
00:06:16.420 two years after the midterms. And so he's moving way faster than I think is appropriate to. But at the
00:06:22.420 same time, the way not to monologue too much the way the Canadian politicians are treating this is
00:06:27.840 that because Trump told us to get our ports under control and get the border under control, then it's
00:06:32.840 not actually a serious issue because Trump asked us.
00:06:35.460 Yeah. And to that point, there is nothing that isn't beneficial in Canada's interest or in Ontario's
00:06:42.660 interest or any of the provinces for that matter, shoring up the border and ensuring that illicit
00:06:47.700 drugs, illicit guns, all sorts of illicit crime doesn't happen through our border. If it benefits the
00:06:52.700 United States, it benefits Canada. But to act as though, again, from Trump's standpoint, like this trade
00:06:59.880 imbalance conversation is so misguided. Of course, a country of 40 million people is not going to need
00:07:06.240 as many cars, for instance, as America is going to buy. So why would there be an imbalance there? Of
00:07:12.420 course, 40 million people aren't going to be able to purchase as many cars as 300 plus million people
00:07:17.200 are. So of course, you're going to see imbalances. But the benefits of trade and the integration is
00:07:22.040 numerous. And that should be what's focused on. And I just want to point out, you're in very good
00:07:26.600 company when it comes to your thoughts on trade and tariffs, because Harvard educated economist
00:07:31.720 Thomas Sowell has very similar opinions on this. In fact, criticized Trump in his first, his first
00:07:38.440 bout as president, because of the tariffs that he's presenting and talked about how it would hurt
00:07:42.680 Americans. So back to this idea, again, that Canada is putting on this rhetoric that we need to fight the
00:07:48.680 Americans are the best thing we can do. As we had this conversation, you know, off air, a couple days
00:07:54.760 ago on the phone is like, let's make Canada a super competitive business environment. Let's make
00:07:59.720 this the go place, a go to place to do business. Let's make it cheap, affordable. And let's become
00:08:05.880 super competitive. But the last thing we should be doing is punishing Canadians by pretending we're
00:08:10.680 fighting for them and putting on retaliatory tariffs that are going to hurt us in the process.
00:08:16.440 Make no mistake about it, these tariffs America's putting on, Americans are going to see that in this
00:08:21.320 idea of American affordability that Trump's pushed, it's going to come home to ruse with these tariffs
00:08:25.400 that he's pushing.
00:08:26.280 And I will get accused of, oh, you're siding with Trump. And I think both of us are of a same mind
00:08:32.040 on this, just as you like inferred there before, that I'm like a Canadian patriot, you are a Canadian
00:08:37.960 patriot, I am not a nationalist, in the sense that I would consider the difference between patriotism
00:08:43.480 and nationalism is nationalism is we should, we're always right, we should always win, and all stuff like
00:08:50.200 that, where patriotism is I want my country to be better in the best way possible for the long run.
00:08:55.560 And I see people saying, see, this is why trading with the US was always bad, because now they have
00:08:59.960 leverage on us and whatnot. It's like, guys, we have not been losing jobs to the Americans, we have not
00:09:04.920 been getting hurt by the Americans by trading with them. We've always been hurt by our own bad domestic
00:09:09.960 policy. If the Trump administration put a 25% tariff on us, but we didn't have sky high business and
00:09:16.760 income and personal income taxes in this country, it would have put us in a position where we would be
00:09:22.680 less worse off than we are today. But pre tariff, our pre tariff economic condition already sucks.
00:09:29.720 And I just want to reference this quick before I get to some other people's takes on social media
00:09:33.640 for us to talk about. But this is a report from September 29, 2023. BC mayor sounds alarm over rampant
00:09:41.880 crime at local port as expansion looms. And it says City of Delta report says CBSA checks less than
00:09:49.080 1% of container traffic coming through regional ports. And I even just had a disagreement right
00:09:55.800 before you came on the show with Anthony Koch on X, who I usually agree with Anthony Koch like 95% of the
00:10:02.520 time. But he says, he said in response to me, well, how many containers do US port authorities check?
00:10:09.000 And I was just thinking it does it literally doesn't matter. The whole point is that Trump
00:10:13.240 and the US administration has a point that we don't really take this stuff seriously. Frank
00:10:17.880 Vaughn has been doing great videos showing that CSIS reports that have been declassified from the 90s
00:10:22.600 were saying that the government, the CCP governments in China were basically working with Chinese triads to
00:10:29.160 get drug products into Canada then to be made into street drugs to then be sold in Canada and the US.
00:10:36.280 And Canada is the easiest place that they identified to get it through. So maybe they
00:10:41.320 don't check any of the containers in Canada. But at the end of the day, when it comes to politics,
00:10:45.480 that doesn't matter. We what we should have done and what my approach on Trump would have been
00:10:49.880 is what we would have done was what Scott Moe and Daniel Smith have done.
00:10:53.800 Ramp up border security, then call their bluff, ramp up military spending, ramp up border security
00:10:59.160 federally, then call Trump's bluff. And if Trump says, I'm doing the 25% tariff anyways,
00:11:03.960 guess what? Now he is the villain to all of the states that mostly trade with Canada. And it's
00:11:09.800 the majority of the states that their biggest export and import market is with Canada. That's
00:11:14.680 where you call his bluff. And now he looks bad for the midterms. You have to play the American political
00:11:19.640 game just as much as you play the Canadian political game. But I find Canadian politicians
00:11:24.120 are only focused on what makes them look good to Canadian voters in the short run.
00:11:28.040 Yeah, that's a good way to say it. Because again, it's not about winning the battle. We're looking
00:11:34.120 at a war. And so if you want to win the battle, and you want to look good for the next election,
00:11:38.280 that's great. But you're going to hurt Canadians in the long run. And in terms of calling his bluff,
00:11:42.360 I it is long graded on me, it's been uncomfortable watching Canadian leaders. Like, I've said this
00:11:49.960 numerous times, Trump has a big ego. I'm not knocking on one way or another. But like,
00:11:55.080 why would you pick a public fight with a guy? Go do the things that are good for Canadians,
00:11:59.880 and then have those conversations behind closed doors. But now you're goading him
00:12:03.720 into a public tariff war, or guess what, he's going to feel the need to win, which means to
00:12:08.920 the detriment of Canadians. And you have pushed that through your rhetoric by essentially saying,
00:12:14.360 well, we're not going to stand for it. We're fighting. Just relax. Have those conversations
00:12:19.000 behind closed doors. Don't make it a public war.
00:12:20.680 Yeah, they're treating it like compliance with what Trump wants is like a fundamental spiritual
00:12:26.840 Canadian sin. And it's like, guys, Columbia did it, and they don't have tariffs on them.
00:12:31.960 And you could say, well, that's not what a country is all about. You have to have patriotism and pride.
00:12:36.280 You can't just do what the Americans want. I'm not even saying that. Like, I'm just saying that,
00:12:39.960 guys, you got caught with your pants down, that you weren't doing proper border security,
00:12:44.200 that the Americans have been flipping your security bill for the military for decades at this point.
00:12:49.640 You got caught with your pants down. He called you out in a way that I didn't think was appropriate.
00:12:53.880 But what are you going to do? Pretend that you didn't? Because that's where we're kind of at.
00:12:58.360 And I just want to jump over to this post that this Andrew Perez guy made. He was the one who,
00:13:03.320 by the way, the other day, tried to accuse Firopoli in December of being a sexist or disagreeing
00:13:09.000 with that female reporter. And so I just want to read what his take is. I'm not going to go through
00:13:15.320 all of it. But I find this is, again, the patriotism game that's being played that I find to be quite
00:13:20.920 gross. So Andrew Perez says, I don't care if you're a New Democrat, Liberal, Conservative,
00:13:25.960 Green or Quebec Sovereignist. We must now come together to project a united approach
00:13:31.720 as Canadians in light of the Trump tariffs. These tariffs could cripple our national economy,
00:13:36.600 leading to an economic depression that hits Canadian workers and their families hard.
00:13:41.000 Canada was thrust into a wartime era today, albeit a trade war, not one involving combat and death.
00:13:47.480 The economic impacts of the trade war could far eclipse the economic fallout withstood
00:13:52.840 throughout the 2008-2009 Great Recession and the more recent COVID-19 pandemic. Now,
00:13:58.600 it's not the time for partisanship and further polarization in our country. We'll get through this,
00:14:03.480 Canada, but not through dividing our people and playing partisan politics. I sincerely hope our
00:14:08.760 political leaders are up to the Herculean task. The livelihoods of millions of hard-working
00:14:14.760 Canadians hang in the balance. I broke my promise. I did read that whole thing.
00:14:19.240 Can we just clarify the framing? If you don't agree with Trudeau's approach,
00:14:23.640 you're not Team Canada. You're part of them.
00:14:27.240 If you don't agree with how we go, then you're not a part of Team Canada. You're fundamentally opposed
00:14:33.160 to Team Canada. You don't agree with the liberal approach to this.
00:14:36.280 Yeah, it's part... The BC Conservatives have honestly been doing an A++ job on this.
00:14:42.040 They are calling out David Eby saying, you know your province is rife with drugs, just
00:14:47.720 strewn with illegal drugs, including drugs provided by the government. You know that the Port Authority is
00:14:53.480 not actually looking into these shipping containers. You've been the one destroying the economy over the
00:14:58.200 past few years, and now you're going to say it's Trump's fault? We don't even agree exactly with
00:15:02.200 what Trump's doing, but that's the fakeness of Team Canada. Team Canada is helping Doug Ford get
00:15:07.480 reelected. Team Canada is forgiving the liberals and voting for Mark Carney. Team Canada is ignoring the
00:15:13.320 man behind the curtain in British Columbia's drug problems, which is David Eby and the BCNDP,
00:15:19.240 and it's saying that actually it's very nasty and bad that Trump called us out for having our pants down.
00:15:24.520 And it's like, that's what's kind of going on here. Yeah. Now, Sam Cooper has done a very good
00:15:29.800 job of exposing exactly what's going on through the BC ports and through essentially money laundering
00:15:35.480 in the Canadian system. So to act as though these things aren't legitimate problems is a farce.
00:15:41.320 Then again, back to this 1% of containers being checked. Again, you're going to make a comparison
00:15:46.760 to the United States. It doesn't matter what they're doing. If you're looking at it objectively from a
00:15:51.720 Canadian standpoint, we should want as many things being checked as possible to ensure
00:15:56.440 that Canadians aren't facing illicit drugs, crime going through our ports. We should have a legal
00:16:02.360 and lawful system. We should be ensuring that happens. But look, Greg, look at this video of
00:16:07.480 Justin Trudeau nodding his head and talking to people from Unifor. Look at it. Look at that. He's
00:16:12.280 not even looking at that man in the eyes, but forget about that. And this is what the entire trade war,
00:16:18.040 patriotism farce, is all about. We're standing up for Canadian workers. We're doing what needs to
00:16:23.160 get done. And then Trudeau is also posting stuff like this. And thanks, King of Bay Street and some
00:16:29.640 guy from Dragon's Den. Tariffs would be bad for business on both sides of the border. Glad you're
00:16:34.360 on Team Canada standing up for Canada, or on the team standing up for Canada. And he says,
00:16:40.120 no one on either side of the border wants to see American tariffs on Canadian goods. I met with our
00:16:45.080 Canadian U.S. Council today. We're working hard to prevent these terrorists. But if the United
00:16:50.040 States moves ahead, Canada is ready with a forceful and immediate response. And it's like, oh, my
00:16:55.480 goodness, guys, I know you're not. The thing was what they did on the border is that while Smith was
00:17:01.160 actually ramping up border security, got 10 cold weather drones on the border, 50 new sheriffs,
00:17:06.040 all this stuff, probably had to transfer some people from other policing departments
00:17:09.960 to the border because it is an emergency in terms of the incoming trade war.
00:17:16.040 She actually did her job. Trudeau releases a plan. And haven't we seen this so many times,
00:17:21.560 the way the Liberals put forward a plan to crack down on this or that in terms of crime or drugs?
00:17:28.040 And then you don't see it.
00:17:28.920 Yeah. And I think Trump had commented about that in a press conference where he essentially stated
00:17:34.920 it was not him particularly. I guess their equivalent of a minister was talking about it.
00:17:41.160 It's not just the rhetoric around it saying we will do this. It's also the execution was their point.
00:17:47.000 So you can have a plan as the Liberals have presented, just like they had a liberal housing
00:17:51.160 plan and a plan for the middle class. And we see how all those plans panned out just like they had a
00:17:57.080 plan to balance the budget, AKA it will balance itself. Like this doesn't work. You need to execute
00:18:03.240 what you say. Words don't matter. And you're getting called out essentially by the Americans
00:18:08.680 and say, you can say whatever nice things you want to say, show us results. And if you're not
00:18:13.160 going to show us results, this is going to continue. Now, I don't agree with it. I think it hurts Americans.
00:18:18.520 It's going to hurt Canadians in the process, especially if we go the retaliatory route.
00:18:23.320 But this is where we're at. And you need to face things as they are, not as you wish they would be.
00:18:28.920 Well, I thought I was blown away. Melanie Jolie, our foreign affairs minister, shows up to talk to
00:18:34.200 American senators. I don't need to show that on screen, but she starts meeting with mostly Democrats,
00:18:39.480 of course, but just starts meeting with a bunch of random senators, taking photos with them. We talked
00:18:45.320 about Canada and U.S.'s shared commitment on this or that. It's like, why are you doing this three days
00:18:50.360 before February 1st? Why? This is so pathetic that you're doing this, like, last minute, pretending
00:18:57.720 like you cave a crap. These people never took a second to say, Trump wants us to work on border
00:19:02.520 security. Well, let's sit down and let's also talk about where the U.S. needs to ramp up border
00:19:06.120 security. By the way, the U.S. is ramping up border security at the same time, because it's not like
00:19:10.840 Donald Trump thought Joe Biden was doing a good job. That was his entire campaign, that the U.S.
00:19:15.720 domestic administration sucked at border security as well. So this is actually one of those things
00:19:20.920 where Canada could have easily, if we didn't want to immediately jump into anti-American Canadian
00:19:26.280 politics, which fair enough, it's a big vote getter sometimes. Without jumping into anti-American
00:19:33.560 politics, we could have just done a win-win thing where America called us out, but we're calling you
00:19:38.040 guys out too. But we'll agree we'll get the border secured, but you guys got to do it as soon as you
00:19:42.280 take office as well, Trump. Would have been good. Would have been very good. And we could have talked
00:19:46.760 about all the guns and whatnot that are going to Somali gangs in downtown Toronto and other rural
00:19:52.200 gangs around Canada. We could easily look tough while also doing what they said. We could have said,
00:19:57.800 okay, we'll do this, but you have to give us that. It would have looked like a one-to-one issue
00:20:02.600 that, okay, yes, we weren't doing this, but you guys weren't doing this. Right now, like I keep saying,
00:20:08.120 it looks like we got caught with our pants down and we want to keep yelling. No, we didn't.
00:20:11.480 No, we didn't. No, we didn't until the tariffs finally probably are going to make us comply.
00:20:16.680 And again, I'm monologuing a bit, but Trump said in response to the Canadian government saying,
00:20:22.520 we'll put one dollar for dollar tariffs on you. He said, well, I'll raise to 35% then. I'm like,
00:20:26.600 okay, thanks for spiraling us into the skies. And it's not like, oh, do you not think that Canada
00:20:31.320 should respond proportionally? We can't. We are not a proportionally sized economy. I'm sorry. I'm not
00:20:37.160 anti-Canadian for recognizing we're 10 times smaller than them. And this is the conversation
00:20:42.040 I've been having behind closed doors with people. It's like, okay, can we hurt Americans? Yes. Can
00:20:47.320 they hurt us? Yes. Can we go as long as they can in a terror form? Absolutely not. It's not even close.
00:20:52.920 So why go down that path to begin with? Like, can we hurt Americans? Yes. Is that the response you
00:20:59.000 want where you go tit for tat? Because they're going to win the war. They got a longer and deeper
00:21:04.280 pocket than we do. And so it's just a matter of time. Like, why would you go down that road? And
00:21:08.760 then go back to your idea. This could have been collaborative. None of this should have been
00:21:12.680 happening in the public eye. It should have been behind closed doors. Hey, like we agree. Maybe we
00:21:17.800 have dropped the ball here on this issue and we've let it go by the wayside too long. Thanks for pointing
00:21:23.400 it out. Here's how we can have a collaborative approach. We see some of these issues on the US side
00:21:27.480 that affect us. Maybe you do this. And then if it doesn't happen in a collaborative way behind
00:21:31.960 closed doors, that's when it should be leaked to the public. But this, again, is a political issue
00:21:37.000 where they can benefit off the idea that I'm going to stand up for Ontario or I'm going to stand up for
00:21:43.400 Canada and we will fight for you. And you're so right about that. What you do is you negotiate in
00:21:49.000 good faith. And if they're not, you collect all that information and you dump it in front of the public.
00:21:53.960 Because again, the Republicans could get easily hurt in midterm elections along the border with
00:22:00.680 Canada, with all those states that do a lot of trade with Canada, including all the way down to
00:22:05.320 Louisiana. Their main export import market is still Canada. What you do is that if you were acting in
00:22:11.320 good faith and you were doing everything that seemed reasonable to do and they weren't, then you can
00:22:15.480 basically dump that onto American voters and say, your president is about to make all your goods in
00:22:21.320 Oregon and Washington and Idaho and Montana, way more expensive. There are vulnerable congressional
00:22:26.680 seats for Republicans in those states. There is like the county I sometimes go to in Flathead
00:22:34.600 Valley in Montana. That's a purple congressional district. It can go either way. And Trump does
00:22:40.760 not have a big majority. So if we didn't actually make ourselves the villains in the American voters'
00:22:45.960 eye by not doing anything on the border except for Smith and now Moe, we could have easily pulled
00:22:51.160 off this strategy. But now I just want to quickly jump to Polyev's comments because I think I don't
00:22:55.960 necessarily agree with it. I don't know why he's doing it this way. And then I want to transition,
00:23:00.680 and this was going to be in part two on Greg's channel, into the specific what's going on in
00:23:05.640 Ontario. How is Doug Ford, in my mind, cynically using this tariff war for his own political game.
00:23:12.680 But Polyev here, I'm not going to read this all, but he talks about needing a Canada first plan
00:23:18.440 on trade. And number one, he immediately says we need retaliatory dollar for dollar tariffs.
00:23:23.880 Number two, right out of the liberal media textbook, Canada first dollar for dollar tariffs,
00:23:29.880 like two liberal talk points. We're on the same consulting type talk points that you would hear
00:23:35.320 out of the liberal camp. That bothers me a little bit. In fact, that was actually technically
00:23:39.480 Jagmeet Singh's idea even before is the liberal's idea. He says put all tariff revenues into helping
00:23:44.920 affected workers. Well, what do you mean? It's all workers. There's no such thing as affected workers.
00:23:49.480 It'd be everybody. In fact, usually the workers who is going to affect the most are already the biggest
00:23:54.120 recipients of subsidies and other protections. And then some of the other stuff's good with trying
00:24:00.040 to reduce taxes and regulations and get risk of anti-energy stuff. But I thought number six,
00:24:05.400 this is actually the thing we should have been doing in December. Rebuild our military. So it's
00:24:09.960 not showing up yet. Rebuild our military and take back control of our borders to regain the confidence
00:24:15.000 of our partners, assert our sovereignty, protect our people and put Canada first. Perfect. That is the
00:24:21.400 one that we needed to actually be talking about. But, and I get where Polioff's coming from. He's having
00:24:27.960 to play to the Eastern Canadian voter in Toronto's 905 who want to hear it's Trump's fault. And so the
00:24:35.400 first five points, like the first two points are it's Trump's fault and we need to protect ourselves.
00:24:39.960 The middle three points or the middle two points are okay stuff around the fact we need lower
00:24:45.160 regulations and we need to get rid of bad energy policies, anti-energy policies. And then the last
00:24:50.360 one is frankly the number one priority. And I hate the inversion that's gone on here.
00:24:55.480 Yeah. It bothers me a little bit because it's, I had this issue during COVID where you watched
00:25:02.200 conservatives play the game of, if we know something is correct, then we lead with that,
00:25:08.840 even if it's politically inconvenient in the short term. And this would be an example.
00:25:13.320 Is it politically inconvenient in the short term to say, listen, we shouldn't go toe to toe with Trump,
00:25:18.200 even though we believe he's in the wrong? Absolutely. People want to hear you say,
00:25:22.280 we're going to stand up. We're going to fight. Is it the right thing for Canada to do? No.
00:25:26.760 It was the same during COVID. Was it right to lock down the economy and basically hurt everywhere,
00:25:32.600 in carte blanche and be super heavy handed and throw away the charter of rights and freedoms?
00:25:37.400 Absolutely not. But that's what they did because it was politically expedient. And then as they
00:25:42.600 put their finger up in the air, saw the wind of direction changing politically,
00:25:46.040 suddenly we watched the shift from the conservatives, but there was a handful of
00:25:50.520 politicians that were, were steadfast all the way. And one of those was Jim Carhalos and Belinda
00:25:56.760 Carhalos of the new blue party in Ontario, who Belinda Carhalos removed from the Ontario PC party
00:26:03.720 for voting against, I think it was bill 195. Bill that would have gave Doug Ford power to essentially
00:26:09.880 do away with every elected official. They wouldn't have to take their vote and he would have been able
00:26:14.120 to carte blanche do whatever he wanted through emergency orders month by month and just continue
00:26:18.760 to renew them for up to two years. Yeah. That's what got her kicked out of that party. That's,
00:26:23.160 this is an example. We need the lead. We know what's right. It's going to be politically inconvenient
00:26:29.320 in the short term, but it's the right thing. And leadership is convincing people in the long run.
00:26:34.120 Yeah. This is where I give so much credit right now to John Rustad and the BC Conservatives,
00:26:38.760 also Daniel Smith and Scott Moe get some credit too. But in terms of an oppositional party who could,
00:26:44.200 be easily scared into doing the wrong thing. Cause Hey, we're the smaller party. We're not in power.
00:26:49.240 You know, just say nothing. We don't want to get slapped around. We know our,
00:26:52.600 maybe our voting coalition's a bit fragile because we only had 2% in the last election
00:26:57.640 and we only searched for this election, but like it is the right thing to do. You call your shots early,
00:27:03.720 you call how this thing is going to go down, and then you reap the rewards of being right in the long
00:27:09.000 run. That's why I will sometimes side against conservatives quote unquote, oftentimes they're
00:27:13.400 not very conservative people. And then in the long run, it's like, well, you were kind of right
00:27:17.320 about that. I'm like, yeah, I kind of was. And I know some people are saying, why you predicted the
00:27:21.480 tariffs weren't going to happen before all this went down. Oh, it doesn't look like you're really
00:27:26.040 correct these days. It's like, I didn't count on my big mistake was not counting on the crushing
00:27:31.000 stupidity of politicians. That was your mistake. You should have seen it coming.
00:27:37.240 Always the stupid, my big mistake is accounting for other people to be somewhat logical.
00:27:42.520 Anyways, now we're going to transition to part two on Greg's channel, Diverge Media. Guys,
00:27:47.880 that link will be in the description as well as pinned at the top of the comments. I want to talk about
00:27:53.000 Ontario with this Ontario refugee right here. So go check that out, guys. That's it for here.
00:27:59.720 All right. A little coffee.