The StoneZONE with Roger Stone

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00:00:30.000 Stockwell Day joins me.

00:00:32.420 He has been on the forefront of public policy development at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels of government in Canada.

00:00:39.520 He has served as a member of the Alberta legislature, a member of the parliament, a high-profile provincial and federal cabinet minister, and Canada's leader of Her Majesty's official opposition.

00:00:55.340 Stockwell, welcome on this very sad day.

00:00:57.920 Good to be with you, Roger, and your listeners.

00:01:02.580 So the conservatives had a strong lead in early polling.

00:01:07.520 A lot of that had to do with the deep unpopularity of Justin Trudeau.

00:01:12.460 This comes as a little bit of a surprise to some.

00:01:16.840 How do you think, how did this happen?

00:01:18.840 Well, it's a great question, and it's been a whirlwind of polling and ups and downs.

00:01:23.760 Up until about two or three months ago, Justin Trudeau, as prime minister, was declining in popularity, mainly because of the very effective opposition leading of Pierre Poliav, who was leader of the opposition at the time.

00:01:38.460 And everybody was assuming that this was going to be, even up to a couple months ago, a big majority conservative win.

00:01:48.620 Unfortunately, Poliav was so effective as opposition leader that Trudeau kept going down on the polls to the place where his party basically punted him out.

00:02:00.900 They brought in a new person who is known internationally, an international banker, and with the combination of that and the tariff wars and also President Trump seeing Canada as a 51st state, that threw panic mode into everybody, including the national media.

00:02:24.800 And national media ran stories for a couple of months suggesting that Mr. Carney would be a better fit as prime minister to fight the tariffs than Pierre Poliav, which was wrong in my estimation.

00:02:38.660 But that caused the polls to radically turn around.

00:02:42.500 Actually, up until about a week ago, all the polls were then saying it was going to be a liberal majority.

00:02:47.940 But Pierre Poliav and the Conservatives started clawing their way back, but not enough to stop the Liberals getting what we call a minority government.

00:02:57.600 I mean, this election went so poorly for the Conservatives that the Canadian Conservative Party leader, Pierre Poliav, lost his own seat in Monday's elections.

00:03:07.160 He received only 46.1% of the vote for his own seat, was defeated by Liberal Bruce Vanjoy, who won with 50.6% of the vote.

00:03:17.380 I actually thought he was an excellent candidate, an excellent communicator.

00:03:21.720 You may recall last time you were with us, we played that great audio of him answering questions while chomping on an apple from a smart-ass reporter.

00:03:30.780 I was very surprised at this turn of events.

00:03:34.840 Do you think that President Trump's trolling of Pierre Trudeau, talking about Canada being the 51st state, which was always a joke, and talking about Trudeau being governor of Canada, which was also always a joke, do you think that was detrimental to the Conservatives?

00:03:56.500 It was probably, it's a great question, it was probably the single most detrimental hit, because Canadians quite rightly are quite sensitive about being seen as a 51st state.

00:04:07.840 We've always been a key ally of the U.S. and ally being our closest friend as far as miles go.

00:04:15.880 And to be suddenly caricatured as a 51st state, most Canadians found that offensive.

00:04:26.100 And they saw in Mr. Carney the ability, because he sort of sold the message that because he'd been a globalist banker,

00:04:33.860 and head of the Bank of Canada at one point, head of the Bank of England at another point, that he would be better suited.

00:04:42.080 That's obviously not a view that a lot of people share.

00:04:45.660 But yeah, that portraying Canada as a 51st state became a rally cry for the Liberals.

00:04:55.900 Now, Pierre Polia was also very much against that thought also.

00:04:59.900 But mainstream media, which generally tracks to the left, saw an opportunity here to get behind Mr. Carney, and that's what happened.

00:05:09.580 I also think that the kind of censorship that we had here prior to the 2020 election,

00:05:17.700 and that has changed dramatically between 20 and 24, largely because Elon Musk purchased Twitter, renaming it X,

00:05:29.940 and ultimately you had more of a balance, not completely, because Facebook and Instagram are still very, very heavily censored.

00:05:41.320 But I think you have a much greater degree of censorship, both of the mainstream media, but also virtually no alternative media.

00:05:50.480 Other than rebel media, hard for me to name a center-right alternative outlet in the entire country.

00:05:57.220 Yeah, that's true.

00:05:57.960 Those have been ascending.

00:06:00.160 I don't like to use the word alternate media, but let's say free and independent media.

00:06:05.260 There's the Western Standard, there's Juno News, there are some upcoming ones.

00:06:11.480 Interestingly, some of the previous reporters from those particular news organizations actually wound up getting elected this time as members of parliament.

00:06:21.100 But there is a little different type of censorship in Canada.

00:06:25.680 If you speak out of the collective narrative, your chance of being even cancelled in terms of things you're involved in

00:06:36.540 or portrayed as somebody who's way off to the right somewhere, that occurs in a different way in Canada.

00:06:46.140 But it's very clear, it's very pronounced.

00:06:48.740 And I do think now, I mean, one of the election items was, would the CBC, that's the Canada Broadcasting Corporation,

00:06:56.580 continue to receive hundreds of millions of dollars, of taxpayer dollars?

00:07:02.360 That wasn't very much at stake.

00:07:04.040 And so there's a strong feeling that CBC, of course, and other so-called mainstream media,

00:07:09.560 if the Conservatives won, that those mainstream media would lose those valuable taxpayer dollars.

00:07:16.600 And so the media definitely had a stake in this particular election.

00:07:21.760 And to many of us, that was obvious in how they did their reporting,

00:07:25.660 which always presented a somewhat soft picture of Mr. Carney and a somewhat harsh picture of Mr. Poliev.

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00:08:02.960 Interesting that Mr. Carney did not seem to suffer from his very public relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell,

00:08:10.640 who sits right now in a federal prison, having served essentially as the pimp for Jeffrey Epstein.

00:08:17.800 Also interesting to me that many Americans do not understand how much more authoritarian society in Canada is

00:08:29.160 compared to the United States, an effort, for example, if you own a firearm,

00:08:33.960 the government wants you to register its existence with the government.

00:08:37.760 Why could they possibly want to know that?

00:08:40.060 And then many of my friends who took part in the convoy, the truck convoy,

00:08:44.780 to protest the demands of the government, they take the COVID-19 vaccination,

00:08:50.060 found their bank accounts frozen.

00:08:52.120 Some of them were charged in what I think were politically motivated prosecutions.

00:08:59.760 Justin Trudeau was moving very swiftly in an authoritarian direction, no?

00:09:06.020 Well, that's correct.

00:09:07.040 Canada's history, the DNA of Canada is one that is much more, what should we say,

00:09:14.920 accepting, going back, you know, 150 years or more, of the crown, the king, the queen from England.

00:09:22.940 And there's a large group, a large influence in Canada called the United Empire Loyalists,

00:09:27.600 that when the opportunity, they were living among the colonies at the time,

00:09:31.260 when the opportunity came to take on the king and fight the king, as happened in the colonies,

00:09:38.960 hundreds, if not thousands and thousands, moved to the north, to what became Canada.

00:09:43.660 So there is that strong DNA within Canadian thinking and culture that is much more deferential to authority.

00:09:52.940 We can argue whether that's good or bad and not quite as offended about things like higher taxation.

00:09:58.780 My own family roots go deep, and though my ancestors were part of the original colonies,

00:10:05.320 my mother's side of the family moved north.

00:10:08.060 She was one of the United Empire Loyalists.

00:10:10.400 My father's side of the family stayed in the U.S. to fight the king, to fight authoritarian control, and to fight high taxation.

00:10:18.620 So I myself, you know, I'm a product of that by partisan nature, you could say, or binary nature of Canada.

00:10:26.820 And when you have a media, mainstream media, which is, again, more deferential to certain elements of authority,

00:10:35.820 then that gets exacerbated at times like this, and you'll see that side of Canadian character kind of rising to the fore a little more than the revolutionary side.

00:10:46.380 All right, we're going to leave it there.

00:10:48.500 I want to thank our guest, Stockwell Day, a distinguished public servant in his home country of Canada.

00:10:57.820 Actually served as the, not only in Alberta's cabinet, but also held a series of senior roles,

00:11:05.680 including Chief Whip, Government House Leader, Minister of Labor, and Minister of Social Services.

00:11:10.800 I thank you very much for joining us today with this excellent analysis of the Canadian elections.

00:11:17.400 We are disappointed, but Canada will survive.

00:11:21.760 Thank you, Roger. Good to be with you.

Stockwell Day ｜ 04-29-25

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