True Patriot Love - September 10, 2025


＂Canadian Submarines＂ ｜ What are we missing？


Episode Stats

Length

43 minutes

Words per Minute

185.03267

Word Count

7,968

Sentence Count

10

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 well like it or not submarines are a fact of life in a modern military and as the canadian armed
00:00:18.160 forces and the canadian government continues to expand the military and try to reach the all
00:00:22.560 elusive two percent of the gdp goal buying submarines is the key to everything thrilled
00:00:28.560 to be joined by paul to talk more about it and paul this is something that's received a lot of
00:00:32.720 attention in parliament hill in the military and for average canadians from coast to coast oh yeah
00:00:38.160 it's a big expenditure jim you know and uh yeah he's uh he's actually trying to hit that magic
00:00:44.800 number as you said and he's gone to nato and he's even said as much as five percent right so which
00:00:50.240 you know we had that uh um podcast with the fraser institute yes which was a which was a great
00:00:57.680 discussion about the military and this five percent goal um but it's not it's a non-binding commitment
00:01:04.480 so you know he's talking about doing it submarines we've needed for a while and you know give us some
00:01:10.160 stats on submarines for a minute well so canada has never had new submarines if you can believe it
00:01:17.040 in 1965 the country bought three u submarines from england the oberon class which served for years
00:01:24.640 and in the late 1990s under the christian government art eggleton the then minister of national offense
00:01:30.320 bought for use victoria class diesel electric submarines from england at the time the royal navy
00:01:36.160 went to all nuclear powered ships it's been an expensive long process for the canadian navy with
00:01:42.320 these submarines when they're in the water and they're operating they do quite well but the maintenance
00:01:48.320 time and the money and the expenditure is huge and right now they're looking at a massive expenditure
00:01:54.400 the biggest most ambitious thing the canadian navy's ever done to buy 12 state-of-the-art air
00:02:00.720 independent propulsion diesel electric submarines that would completely change the military navy
00:02:05.600 and with this purchase they would have no trouble reading the two percent goal paul two yeah two percent
00:02:11.600 because it's roughly 60 billion bucks right it is so probably expect a little bit more as well yeah so
00:02:16.960 it's 60 billion but you know the question we talked about before and it keeps coming to my mind should
00:02:22.400 they all be electric diesel or should they you know and that that is the big question for me you know
00:02:29.040 we're a nuclear force we're six in the world in nuclear production we have 19 reactors you know we're the
00:02:35.840 can-do reactor country which is magnificent for us ontario just doubled down and uh you know came up with
00:02:43.760 the small reactor uh program you know is there a hybrid mix we should be looking at so is there
00:02:50.960 you know and maybe for the group jim let's talk a little bit about what's the pros and cons of nuclear
00:02:56.800 verse uh diesel i mean with the nuclear power submarine once it's in the water the only time you need to
00:03:04.800 go back to port is for food right the fuel cell will last 25 30 years and never have to do anything
00:03:12.160 and that's the beauty about it it powers the submarine it desalinizes the water it runs everything
00:03:19.680 and it keeps you moving and the best thing about it is you can go submerge for weeks on end once you
00:03:28.400 drop down you never have to hit the surface ever again for weeks on end the only problem is with the
00:03:34.000 submarine and even the most sophisticated u.s submarines know this that after a couple months you've
00:03:38.720 run out of food so you have to go back to a port a friendly port and restock your food stuff but
00:03:43.440 other than that there's not much not to like about nuclear powered submarines the big question for a
00:03:49.520 lot of critics is if something happens and you have a nuclear reactor dropping down to the surface of
00:03:54.320 the ocean which is an environmental disaster the diesel electrics they have to surface every few weeks
00:04:00.640 to get fresh air that's just part of the technology though there's pros and cons to both of them but
00:04:06.720 it's it's a cost thing right for most navies don't have and most governments don't have the
00:04:11.920 wherewithal to build nuclear powered submarines there's only a few countries in the world that
00:04:16.240 have them because they're so cost prohibitive paul unfortunately and canada's never had nuclear
00:04:21.840 powered submarines they tried in the late 1980s when parent beatty was a minister of national defense
00:04:27.120 and they wrote a white paper saying that this was the future of canada's sovereignty especially in the
00:04:31.840 arctic it met overwhelming criticism from the media from the public from the press uh from the other
00:04:39.520 opposition leaders so it's been a non-starter ever since so if you asked all the leaders of the canadian
00:04:45.360 navy in confidence what would they like they'd like half these electric half nuclear but without
00:04:51.040 question but it's never going to happen unfortunately in this country right no no i get it i you know my
00:04:57.120 mind of course uh i understand the cost right so i understand you have to build new ports new dry
00:05:03.760 docks you have uh nuclear uh waste you have all that stuff you have to deal with but again you know
00:05:10.800 we we committed to nuclear a long time ago but i think we're six in the world i was actually before
00:05:16.080 we we sat down i was uh surfing all around you know i was shocked you know we have uh 19 nuclear
00:05:24.480 reactors right so we're uh number six so there's the us china france russia south korea ahead of us
00:05:32.080 in the nuclear reactor space and production generation we're number six in generation so we do
00:05:37.760 and which makes up about 13.4 of our energy which i was like oh wow that's that's bigger than i thought
00:05:45.120 so and i think that number is just going to climb paul because as you mentioned ontario with the smaller
00:05:49.920 reactors and whether people agree with it or not there is a major push provincially to provinces
00:05:56.240 all across the country and federally to reduce all fossil fuel power plants so exactly if you can't have
00:06:02.480 hydroelectric because it's not everywhere the next best thing is the nuclear power plant okay so then
00:06:08.960 you're making my point for me you know and i get we signed a proliferation agreement with the
00:06:15.840 you know nato and everyone uh i think we along with most of the world except for china the us you know
00:06:24.240 got out of uh a nuclear from a weapon perspective but this isn't a weapon right this is the powering
00:06:31.520 of a submarine right and i know i know people have freaked out about that in the past unfortunately once
00:06:37.600 you say nuclear powered submarine people think a nuclear armed submarine and england france russia china
00:06:47.360 the united states are among those who have nuclear powered weapons nuclear weapons on
00:06:51.600 their submarines that they can launch right and that's their that's their defense but canada
00:06:57.440 after the 1960s have never had nuclear weapons and never will have nuclear weapons ever again and
00:07:03.360 one and i just with the way the political climate um the the appetite and so little is known about
00:07:11.520 the military amongst the general canadian public that when they hear that word they can't separate
00:07:16.800 the two paul so unfortunately for our military and our navy especially even though they would like
00:07:21.840 a hybrid of both they know that's a non-starter so they have to get the best possible diesel electric
00:07:28.720 technology that's available right now in the world and that's their future their submarine fleet
00:07:33.280 right okay uh i don't like that i don't like that because i think you know again when we were uh
00:07:42.320 let's say dependent on the us yes you know and i think we've we've got a wake-up call the country in
00:07:47.120 the last you know six months huge wake up yeah huge wake-up call um i get why nuclear was off the table but
00:07:54.320 now with that relationship sort of teetering um and you know the threats about you know joining
00:08:01.920 the us and everything else you know we should be looking at all options right now and we should be
00:08:07.040 looking at what we're good at and we should be developing what we're good at and when we are as
00:08:11.200 canadians you know i i'm the can-do reactor generation where i was so proud of the fact that we created that
00:08:17.840 and remember the canada arm yeah remember what a big deal that was yeah for the space shuttle huge right i
00:08:23.200 remember sitting there watching the tv all proud that we were doing that you know those are the things that
00:08:27.840 i think we need to look at so i do think you know i know they're trying to uh they've discounted
00:08:33.360 the option i think they should put it back on the table and look at it as a hybrid i agree with you
00:08:38.720 i think you you really should i with mark carney as prime minister and the liberals in power
00:08:44.880 that will never happen now maybe if there was another government in place another leader
00:08:49.600 who didn't worry about getting re-elected and had an overwhelming majority and they would try to
00:08:54.480 make this happen but with a with a liberal minority government to them they may think that's a
00:09:00.000 non-confidence vote and the ndp and bloc quebecois at the very least would be so overwhelmingly against
00:09:06.080 it they would find themselves in political turmoil and peril so you think the bloc would be against that
00:09:12.000 oh a hundred percent they would be a 100 against a nuclear powered submarine unless it was built in
00:09:18.480 davy's shipyard in quebec well that's what i'm saying so okay so you know good segue into
00:09:24.480 where i wanted to go with this next but you know so say say that option gets thrown on the table okay
00:09:30.000 right so now you know the block says okay we'll do it if we get to build it in quebec and bc and we
00:09:37.600 get two ports dry docks we we create them we build them you know great projects we need now so we get
00:09:44.560 to do it so the question then becomes now that's not on the table so right now it's kind of been
00:09:51.680 shortlisted to two countries correct germany and south korea right you know and you and i you know
00:09:59.440 lots of conversations about that i'm concerned right i've said that from the beginning because
00:10:05.360 those two countries like most of the world right now have had some challenges in the last year right
00:10:10.560 correct you know we've seen south korea with impeachments of the president you know a new
00:10:15.600 president uh declaration of martial law the consumer index for south korea is abominably bad it's like 88
00:10:24.400 uh restaurants don't even open during the day anymore there it's a very challenged economy right
00:10:30.720 um good good manufacturing skills i get it right country has its challenges and then germany likes
00:10:38.000 most of europe right now you know with stomer and and things going on have some real real big issues
00:10:44.480 with debt populism and some other things happening there and you know they're they're now we complain
00:10:50.240 about uh you know our deficit they're now at 2.7 trillion euros they're talking about debt breaks you
00:10:58.880 know they're trying to put caps which is something i talked about on a previous show that we should look at
00:11:04.240 right um so you know what the world's unstable and i throw this because i really wanted to talk
00:11:10.000 to you about it today these things aren't billed today no like when you know and i you know of course
00:11:16.240 you know uh when i think of manufacturing i always think okay this is quick but we're talking about
00:11:22.080 the first sub coming out if they're lucky in 2035 yeah 20 if they're lucky so decade a decade
00:11:29.200 oh my goodness a modern submarine ball is so complex and so difficult to build that the korean shipyard
00:11:37.840 have told the canadian government and mark carney if they sign the deal by 2026 they guarantee four
00:11:43.680 new submarines in the canadian navy by 2035. now germany's only promised one by 2035 then another one
00:11:51.680 a second in 2037 right and that's tough for canada to say no to now i hear what you're saying
00:11:58.960 about the countries and their respective economies but you sign a deal like that that's a lot of cash
00:12:04.800 infusion into their coffers into their treasury yeah and in revitalizing their local economy and
00:12:11.840 their shipyards and their welders and their machinists yeah so it's interesting so you know the
00:12:17.840 uh the steven lecce announcement on the small reactors in ontario i was amazed so they're talking about
00:12:24.400 15 000 jobs in those reactors and they're talking about you know 500 uh spin-off jobs out of those
00:12:32.400 they're talking about a lot of uh benefits to the economy we're not going to get right so in this
00:12:37.680 this submarine project at a time when i think you know and i've said this on previous shows
00:12:42.800 at a time when i think we have to look at all of our national projects and we have to say can we do them
00:12:50.080 right like can we be involved with them can we build these submarines here so i'm pro canadian
00:12:58.560 enough to believe that we could build anything and we've proven that time and time again paul sure we
00:13:03.280 are and we have a track record of building surface ships yeah both commercial um whether it's ferries
00:13:10.240 or cargo ships destroyers supply ships right we're doing it right now it's c-span in vancouver and irving
00:13:16.880 shipyard in halifax and building sophisticated state-of-the-art ships that's not a problem
00:13:22.320 they've never built submarines now in a perfect world they'd sign the deal hanwei in south korea
00:13:27.600 who are building the four by 2035 we send navy personnel engineering graduates people with
00:13:34.960 specialized skills and trades go to south korea for a couple months see how they're doing it and
00:13:40.160 transfer those skills to a canadian shipyard to start building them their own so say our submarines that
00:13:46.400 we build don't come online to 20 36 or 37 we still have four to keep us going until then right but
00:13:53.760 then we have all those jobs and all the money that comes into it with tax revenue and everything else
00:13:58.480 on canadian soil right i know and you know i hate to bring it up because i'm not trying to give him any
00:14:04.400 uh benefits or give him any shout outs but you know isn't that kind of a donald trumpism thing isn't
00:14:10.560 that isn't that kind of where he you know let's keep our military resources at home let's produce
00:14:16.160 what we need let's keep our critical uh skills and critical resources in country for our defense
00:14:24.880 and that you know it does make some sense i hate to you know i'm not trying to prop him up but
00:14:29.680 i i i really do think we have to think twice about you know offshoring all of our military procurement
00:14:37.600 and bringing it back and then just sending our people for training i think that's one thing right yeah
00:14:44.240 but paul it goes i don't even care if it's trump related or not to me right now in the state of
00:14:49.280 the world and the state of our economy in the state of everything else it makes common sense to do as
00:14:54.640 much as possible on home soil to reduce youth unemployment yeah to increase our tax revenue to
00:15:02.320 and everything there is a company in the brampton mississauga border called rochelle and they build
00:15:08.400 armored cars that we as a country bought over a thousand of them and sent them to ukraine the
00:15:14.240 chassis are built at the fort planet oakville and then they're manufactured in brampton mississauga and
00:15:19.120 sent there we could easily buy a thousand for our own military for our reserves and regular force in a
00:15:26.080 heartbeat and create all those local jobs i totally agree saab has told the canadian government if they
00:15:32.240 buy their fighter jet the grip in that they you could license build them in canada that means the
00:15:38.080 first batch would be built in sweden and the rest dozens and dozens of them built in canadian soil
00:15:43.680 with canadian jobs that the more that we do that and we've done that in the past yeah the better it
00:15:48.720 is for our country oh of course you know 7.1 unemployment now or yeah right so we're growing and
00:15:56.000 you know we look at the and i'll just get on my soapbox for two minutes and i'll jump off please yeah
00:16:01.040 yeah but you know you look at right now today coming in you know i'm i'm watching a country a
00:16:06.320 very peaceful country having a lot of issues for a number of reasons one of them being and this is
00:16:11.440 i'm talking about is nepal the point of them being 11.5 unemployment mostly youth right so you know
00:16:19.680 that's a key factor in that you know those people sitting around not being able to get jobs not being
00:16:24.880 productive is not great for our economy right and and i think we have to start looking at
00:16:30.960 every single public procurement project yeah and say if we don't have the skill sets how do we
00:16:38.080 build the skill sets you know i'm gonna i'm gonna tell you a story and uh please do my uh god rest his
00:16:44.480 soul my uh my brother-in-law passed away years ago but he actually was a really cool guy and he was a
00:16:51.040 welder fitter and and he actually uh went to work and he built armored cars here wow yeah uh and uh then he
00:16:59.360 he went up to london and with uh gm and they had the contract and he did armored cars there and he
00:17:07.040 they he was so good they actually moved him over to uh build locomotives wow so he went over there
00:17:12.720 and then when he's doing that um they set him up and he lived up in london at his own house
00:17:18.000 and then uh the pipeline guys came actually no sorry the the maple leaf gardens team came and got
00:17:24.320 him for the freon system for maple leaf gardens wow so he went down and put that together with the
00:17:29.680 team and he he loved it he's a big maple leaf fan then he then he decided to go on the pipeline so you
00:17:35.680 know uh i went out you know and i i was able to see him and he came back a number of times to tell
00:17:41.600 me the stories but you know the number of skilled people that i met through him from that trade and
00:17:50.000 through the the engineering and the welder fitters and the technicians uh in that trade were astonishing
00:17:56.640 we do have the capabilities to do amazing things now it's dwindling here's the challenging thing so
00:18:01.920 you know i tell that story um he would have been you know god rest his soul he would have been 62.
00:18:09.200 no so he'd have probably been retired and most of the guys i met retired you know are we backfilling
00:18:14.080 that right you know is that happening because do we have the projects to backfill it you know down on
00:18:19.680 the east coast we do you know you said like when you go to uh saint john's when i go to see my buddy
00:18:24.800 blair and saint john's the people i'm meeting are all coming off the shipyards back from the pipeline
00:18:31.200 right they're actually returning all the time the most of the people i meet in saint john's uh have
00:18:36.800 either returned from alberta or you know on the way there right so they're still got that culture
00:18:42.560 they're still building things ontario not so much right which is how she's hurting us right now and
00:18:48.000 would it hurt us in ontario if we took some of our new immigrant crew and got them involved in this
00:18:54.000 and shipped them out we have a lot of talented new immigrants coming who not do not necessarily have
00:18:59.440 skilled trades but they do have engineering degrees they do have they're they're well educated right
00:19:05.440 so the one thing they've done in in countries like i just brought up like nepal they have
00:19:10.000 really good education systems right look as far as i'm concerned no matter what country you come from
00:19:14.800 paul if you have a skill let's maximize and utilize it right if you're an engineer let's put you on an
00:19:21.120 engineering project if you're in health care work in health care if you are whatever skill you have
00:19:27.440 let's utilize it and i couldn't agree more i know there is a plan to revive and this is a combination of
00:19:33.680 doug ford and mark carney to revive some of the ship building and shipyards in ontario yeah you
00:19:38.800 know the canadian navy is looking at building a corvette which is a smaller more versatile warship
00:19:45.040 that could go different places and the idea is to build them at these very shipyards in ontario
00:19:50.160 that's brilliant i mean i was hurt to hear that the bc government was going to give china 1 billion
00:19:57.040 dollars to build a new ferry to go from victoria to vancouver that should never happen especially if
00:20:03.040 everyone's talking about elbows up and pro canada and canada first using we need to use canadian
00:20:09.120 steel from canadian steel factories and steel mills yeah built and built by canadians steel aluminum
00:20:16.000 right whatever it is and have the canadian skills and trades and specialists build these things we should
00:20:22.560 never be offshoring a lot of those because it's one thing we do as a country that's extremely well is
00:20:27.440 build surface ships of all different varieties whether it's cargo ships passenger ships of
00:20:32.800 ferries passenger ferries ice bakers or whatnot we've been doing it for centuries okay so you know i'm with
00:20:39.920 you so i'm totally like yeah i agree so solution a hybrid model of uh nuclear verse uh you know yeah
00:20:49.760 it'll never happen but it wouldn't be perfect no no good solution yeah right and now a uh an agreement
00:20:57.440 that allows uh whoever they select i don't think i have a preference here it doesn't to me it's
00:21:03.040 whoever's most qualified and can go as fast exactly both countries are good countries with challenges
00:21:08.880 good product but i think we want them to actually educate us to go forward and build them and maintain
00:21:15.440 them and you know that's the other thing you know we we talked about earlier too and i want to bring up
00:21:20.880 you know once these are built and they're in the water their useful life is 30 40 years
00:21:27.280 both max 30 years 30 years right so we have 30 years of repairs we have 30 years of upkeep we have
00:21:33.520 30 years wouldn't that be great to be doing it here and not have to be shipping in parts every time
00:21:38.640 producing those again that's creating an industry right that's now as i understand it the maintenance
00:21:44.800 will be done at canadian shipyards right you brought up a good point about parts
00:21:49.040 and there was an incident where mark carney recently was with our canadian army in latvia with
00:21:54.480 our nato group there and murray brewster from cbc.ca i want to give him credit for an outstanding
00:21:59.520 article with quotes from all the commanders of field commanders on the ground there mentioned that
00:22:05.520 because of a lack of spare parts 30 of the vehicles are non-operational yeah and you can't have any
00:22:12.080 kind of military vehicle without a warehouse of spare parts because unfortunately they're run so hard
00:22:17.120 things break down so that is a key component that whatever contract they sign they need to have proper
00:22:22.960 spare parts have them in canadian ports and halifax and victoria yeah and the two major navy shipyards
00:22:29.280 so that when they're doing repairs the spare parts are there and they're not just sitting there because
00:22:33.920 they don't have a spare part yeah yeah no the supply chain doesn't catch us you know it's funny you know
00:22:38.880 uh over the summer i don't know if anyone paid attention uh you know orange helicopters of course
00:22:44.480 yeah yes you know i see them all the time do you know how many weeks they were grounded for
00:22:48.080 uh i think it was at eight yeah no parts yeah so as you're driving up to the cottage
00:22:55.440 right yeah yeah i don't think half the people were realizing if anything happened there were no ability
00:23:00.000 to airlift you out at that point at one point there was no ability all of them were grounded
00:23:06.080 and this goes back to years of assuming everything would always be the way it was
00:23:10.080 yeah not and this is the short-sighted thinking that well if we buy helicopter a from this country
00:23:17.600 and they're built in ohio who cares they'll always be our friends we'll have no trouble getting parts
00:23:22.960 and now it's really but it's in the butt as a country and i think as a nation we're in a bit of
00:23:27.040 a paradigm shift ball where we realize we can't always rely on other people we have to start relying
00:23:32.320 on ourselves right so you know this is uh back you know when your father was in the military
00:23:38.480 so that this is a great one you tell this story because you told to me before you know uh maybe
00:23:44.320 because of their uh generation the way they looked at things it was a little different and the way the
00:23:50.240 world was as far as shipping and everything else they had to be more creative in the way they did things
00:23:55.360 but they not only uh figured out how to produce the parts and to get trained but they actually
00:24:02.160 figured out methods to do that so the reason you were able to live in different countries was because
00:24:08.480 he was doing that right he was yeah yeah and my dad a high school dropout in the 50s and all his
00:24:15.280 buddies from halifax were all high school dropouts and they had limited job prospects working on the
00:24:20.480 shipyard or working as a butcher and they all said well we want to see something outside of
00:24:24.640 the greater halifax area because they've never traveled anywhere and can i tell can i stop you
00:24:30.320 from it limited job opportunities what does that remind you of i know today yeah right are we talking
00:24:36.560 the same thing we just said that you know yeah yeah and then they um they joined the military and
00:24:41.920 my father with without a high school diploma learned to trade to fix aircraft engines ended up
00:24:48.000 getting his ged down the road after the fact became an expert in tube turboprop engines which are
00:24:53.840 the engines on the famous c130 hercules which also happens to be the engines on the cp 140 aurora
00:25:01.040 this state-of-the-art sub hunting plane so our family moved to california he went to the lockheed
00:25:07.040 plant at the time in burbank where they were building it and all there was 200 canadian servicemen
00:25:12.320 in total basically learning every nut and bolt and every system on the airplane we all got transferred
00:25:18.080 back to greenwood nova scotia to the training squadron and they all became instructors and and
00:25:24.160 so generations of pilots and ground crew and air crew and technicians all stem from that venture in
00:25:31.680 the late 70s and early 80s right yeah you know there you go right so we're talking the same thing really
00:25:37.680 today we're talking whatever contract we do yes we actually do the same thing so we ship a bunch of
00:25:44.160 people over there they work on the line they work in engineering they understand the how the the
00:25:50.320 submarines are built how they're operated they take control of all the technology tracking so when it
00:25:56.480 comes back it's ours solely um you know there's some ip agreements and everything goes on because
00:26:02.320 because we're using their technology to figure it out but but that is the you know and it's funny
00:26:08.080 because we're not talking anything new here but why are we talking the interesting thing we're not
00:26:13.760 talking about this hybrid model i don't i personally i think it would be great paul yeah i just don't
00:26:20.800 think anyone in government to them it's almost a third rail topic it's it's it is 60 billion dollars
00:26:28.480 is a third no the hybrid of of electric and nuclear i think a lot okay yeah the politicians won't even
00:26:35.920 mention it because they're so afraid that it would cost them votes so that's why when they talk about
00:26:41.120 submarines unless you have a like a 300 seat majority government and you never have to worry about a
00:26:46.800 non-confidence vote it's never going to happen so to me if they can build 12 of these state-of-the-art
00:26:52.400 diesel electric submarines you have six in each coast the problem is with any warship any anything in
00:26:58.960 any country whatever is at sea when it comes back it needs a tune-up right it has to get resupplied
00:27:04.880 and every four or five years it needs a long long-term tune-up and then every 10 years it
00:27:10.720 needs an even longer tune-up no matter what country it is oh yeah to keep it going and so every time
00:27:17.760 they're in dry dock that means they're not in the sea but if you have six in each coast that means you
00:27:21.840 always have at least one submarine in the water at all times for canadian sovereignty and that is an
00:27:27.040 important thing especially in the current world climate oh i agree and we're talking a decade out a
00:27:32.400 decade we gotta get it we gotta get we gotta get there yes with the current submarine force who
00:27:38.160 at the best of times we have one that's ocean ready at any one time out of the four yeah and
00:27:43.600 depending on what coast is that yeah yeah we're well we're we're protecting three seas or three
00:27:49.280 three oceans right well right now with our submarine technology we can only do two right we can't do the
00:27:54.960 arctic ocean but these new submarines we could finally put a submarine in our waters in the arctic ocean
00:28:01.120 which would be an absolute game changer yeah and in i always think about the mental aspect and the
00:28:06.960 morale of the people in the service it can't be fun when you know you're going to your base no matter
00:28:13.440 what your trade and you're working on 34 year old 30 to 40 to 50 year old equipment that's falling apart
00:28:19.840 how nice would it be to have brand new state-of-the-art equipment now when they do have new equipment it works
00:28:25.440 fabulously and it does great work and it's it it empowers the men and women in our military knowing
00:28:30.640 that the government's provided them i don't think anyone can dispute the fact that uh the work in
00:28:36.320 our canadian military whether it's um frontline combat search and rescue uh rescuing people from
00:28:42.000 wildfires if they got the right equipment to do the job how could any taxpayer have a problem with that
00:28:47.600 no no i don't think anyone would right no and if if we were creating an industry at home see
00:28:52.880 that's that's where we're at right if we create an industry at home i'm okay i and i'm not okay
00:29:00.000 anymore with subbing it out and creating industries in other countries i want long-term industries here
00:29:06.480 with our taxpayer dollars so let's build them let's build a military but let's build it where it
00:29:13.600 transitions to being here in canada not being uh over in another country so we're not in this predicament
00:29:19.920 come 30 years from now we're not sitting there going well we need another well 12 submarines what
00:29:26.160 do we do let's go to and i'm like oh my goodness you've got to be kidding me right like we really
00:29:32.320 because right now that's what would happen we'd have to go to other countries to ask for bids
00:29:36.720 and i couldn't agree more than what you said this is something i've wanted to vote for years and people
00:29:41.680 always thought jim you don't we'll just go to something no now we're in a real you know we're
00:29:49.040 in a real predicament as a nation like this is a tipping point as our as our country oh yeah going
00:29:54.640 forward so why not develop homegrown industries as much as humanly possible where possible that
00:30:02.000 protects us so if anything else happens on the world stage with a world leader that we are insulated
00:30:07.760 from it and canada is a stronger country because of it and who knows people may actually buy it from us
00:30:13.680 yeah that'd be great right we're dependable right right we're good manufacturers we've proven that
00:30:19.440 time and time again and quite frankly we've been there for nato you know so i know we have from the
00:30:25.440 beginning in 1949 we've been there from the absolute beginning so i i know a lot of people wonder
00:30:33.600 should we have a military should we spend money in the military so here's your options as a canadian
00:30:38.240 if you don't have a military you could ask another country to patrol your seas your air and your land
00:30:45.920 but then are you really a sovereign nation if you have another country like protecting you
00:30:51.280 no well i don't think you are well that's not even a definition of a country is you secure your own
00:30:56.640 borders yes so you have to you have to we as a nation have to right and if we're going to do it do
00:31:01.760 it right and do it here do it in canada supporting look we talked about this before we started the
00:31:08.000 youth unemployment rate in canada is pretty scary right now and we're not talking just kids out of
00:31:12.800 high school we're talking young men and women with with white collar sophisticated engineering degrees
00:31:19.680 specialist degrees that should be working in the industry making this country better who are doing
00:31:25.280 quite frankly jobs that are beneath their skill set and their education level yeah yeah exactly you
00:31:30.720 know i mentioned to you i had a cousin right a civil engineer right that's a pretty good job pretty
00:31:35.840 good degree came out of waterloo really good kid uh but you know quite frankly you know he's walking
00:31:42.080 along putting lines on asphalt right now and and you know that's a waste a waste because there's no
00:31:47.920 real motivation you know jobs are sparse you know a lot of over-educated people right now doing some
00:31:53.680 basic stuff um and not feeling overly motivated right and quite frankly enjoying enjoying our cannabis
00:31:59.920 trade maybe too much uh uh our cannabis business is here and uh you know and too frequently early in
00:32:07.680 the day and and that's causing a problem right because he's not motivated and by not being motivated
00:32:12.800 he's not doing stuff that he wants to do but you know what better thing to do than go to a uh either a
00:32:18.880 pseudo uh defense company or a defense yes or the military yes be involved in something get some
00:32:25.040 discipline be motivated to go somewhere uh again you know then i'm okay now i'm doing something i
00:32:32.160 want to buy a home i want to take a mortgage now i want to have a family now i want to have exactly so
00:32:37.600 these are all the things right now you know he he's not going anywhere right because he's not seeing
00:32:44.400 the future why motivate myself what am i motivating myself for for and that's the challenge with where
00:32:50.320 we're going and that that's what concerns me right now and i couldn't agree more so now the question
00:32:55.440 i have just and i wanted to go so you know i think we got uh in our mind if we had you and i were you
00:33:01.600 know having lunch we would have a solution coming out of this you know we would have a a few nuclear
00:33:08.640 submarines we'd have a few uh diesel electric um the rest diesel electric and then we would actually
00:33:15.920 uh let's call it uh create a agreement with one of the companies either in germany or south korea
00:33:24.880 that would uh work alongside of us um to bring the industry back to canada uh or make them actually
00:33:34.160 come here and set up a plant here uh to do it we would figure that out right that would be the
00:33:40.240 anything could be accomplished when you put your heads together i agree well at the same time producing
00:33:45.920 you know two to four submarines directly there so we could make sure that we had something for sure
00:33:51.440 because our fleet is diminishing exactly so we get we got it right why is that a challenge for the so
00:33:59.120 like and i know you said to me you know politically i get the nuclear thing that's a weird one in this
00:34:05.120 day and age and where we're at but i get it um why is it so challenging like to me that should be one
00:34:11.760 where house of commons sits everyone someone stands up and they explain it everyone goes here here done
00:34:19.920 vote and they start yeah and we start i don't i don't why is that a it's it's uh the politics of it
00:34:26.960 are we are we mirrored are we so mirrored in the politics of this quite frankly that we're going to
00:34:32.400 fight about we're going to fight about what's pretty obvious like so we get a military strategy house of
00:34:39.920 comments it's you know the stand up the liberal government provides their military strategy
00:34:47.040 a little bit of debate everyone comes to a resolution is there more to do than that
00:34:53.200 there shouldn't be but paul unfortunately we've developed a system with the privy council and
00:34:58.000 with the parliament and with the government procurement no matter what it is if it's for
00:35:03.360 school buses or commuter trains no matter what piece of equipment it is yeah even though everyone
00:35:09.360 knows it needs to be bought and built and produced and delivered it takes years and years more than
00:35:14.880 it should and the the timeline of any kind of procurement is growing exponentially and the timeline
00:35:21.760 for military procurement is beyond anything you could possibly imagine you said how could it be that we
00:35:27.600 have to wait 10 years for four submarines that's actually doing it quickly that's crazy that is a great
00:35:33.280 timeline to build four submarines now that's great you know you know i got to tell you i was i um the
00:35:39.280 jamaican government asked me to go to jamaica cool uh years ago and look at a property it was a convention
00:35:45.360 center right on um and i went down and they want to convert it into a gaming facility so i went down
00:35:51.760 and i took a look at it and the chinese had built the chinese needed a vote uh at the un and so they
00:35:58.640 actually reached a deal with jamaica to build this convention center okay convention center got built
00:36:03.600 and it wasn't hugely successful it was kind of uh not run very well and quite frankly had its challenges
00:36:09.920 financially but they were looking at options of what to do with it a beautiful facility just gorgeous
00:36:16.000 right um and what had happened was one of the state uh construction companies of china dropped in
00:36:22.720 and uh they showed me a video and i honestly i've never seen this before in my life uh they were uh
00:36:30.400 airlifting in containers of materials and sleeping facilities so they made a city so there was an open
00:36:38.640 field they made a city of containers they emptied the containers of all the materials they then stacked
00:36:44.640 the containers and made living quarters for all the workers that were coming they brought local workers and
00:36:50.320 then they brought the people who had the skill to do it the engineers and the trades people and they
00:36:54.800 built this convention center in record time this was crazy how fast they did it and you know i i always
00:37:00.560 remember that and i think to myself you know we're talking projects now that we're working on for
00:37:06.560 transportation and like that are taking us a decade or a billion dollars overruns like we're not
00:37:13.840 somewhere along the way we are not bad builders we're good builders as canadians somewhere
00:37:19.840 along the way to your point jim our procurement processes got so messed up that we became bad
00:37:25.200 builders because we can't seem to buy anything like we're not we're not bad builders we're bad buyers
00:37:31.040 so how is it that the eglinton crosstown lrt and for people across canada there's a light rapid transit
00:37:37.920 that they've been working on in the toronto area for 15 years yes i know i drive by it every week and
00:37:46.560 it's been the biggest boondoggle ever and some of the people running it had to admit paul that the
00:37:51.840 trains were bought so long ago thinking you were to be up and running that some of them may need to be
00:37:56.480 replaced well yeah there are they're actually because they're 10 years old they're actually
00:38:01.040 their warranties are up now yes they're trying to replace it and they haven't started taking any
00:38:04.880 posture anywhere and they can't get parts yeah and so this is this is something that's it's not just the
00:38:10.560 military it's like mass transit it's how long does it take to add a lane to a highway every province in
00:38:17.760 the country is pulling their hair in frustration paul like why do i look at my facebook and they built an
00:38:24.080 overpass in holland in a long weekend and they've been spending 10 years to add a lane to my local
00:38:28.880 highway yeah oh i know i know my grandpa is i tell you this but down to you right yeah my my grandfather
00:38:35.280 actually was working at kodak he was uh oh yeah okay you know in maintenance he was pulled out
00:38:40.560 because he was a sheep metal worker from england he was pulled out and he was actually put in the
00:38:46.000 plane division uh so in the during the war and quite frankly most of the uh people who worked with
00:38:52.480 them were female yes because very much male men were all gone to war right so he would he operated the
00:38:57.920 plant and he built the planes and amazing you know he showed me the books but again you know when when
00:39:04.240 we are motivated and we want to do something we can do it for some reason we don't we lack that
00:39:10.160 motivation but i believe there is a certain motivation paul there should be now i wish there
00:39:16.160 was i mean i don't know how many governments municipal provincial federally over the years have
00:39:21.840 talked about getting rid of the red tape to make things faster and we as a nation have not seen any
00:39:27.520 evidence of that and whether it's building a new school a fire station a hospital whatever it is it
00:39:33.920 always seems to take so long and cost more than it should okay so now i'm going to kind of go to
00:39:39.360 another level on this one for you so you know in the states you hear it you know it's a national
00:39:45.360 threat you know donald trump's doing this quite a bit he's actually doing things because he's saying
00:39:50.000 it's a threat to the country correct right and there he's being challenged uh in the courts and
00:39:54.640 everything else but is this not a like are we not there in canada right it's funny how we don't escalate
00:40:01.920 things like we don't see things as critical and i think you know coming into this session for
00:40:06.400 government i would you know i'd love to see uh the parties right i know there's going to be back you
00:40:12.480 know we're all setting up for this to and fro but to tell you the truth i i'm sick of this great i don't
00:40:17.360 this interesting sarcastic kind of funny debate stuff you know i'm it's old i hope they know it's done no
00:40:24.400 it just it's honestly i i i might really caution both parties to stand up for another session and
00:40:30.480 just say silly things to each other for the the session but but you know what um i would recommend
00:40:37.840 that they sit down and actually try to prioritize so what are the key priorities of the country and
00:40:42.800 quite frankly this one's got to be up there somewhere so if you're now when the u.s does it when
00:40:48.400 they do call it a a national threat or they create something it's all you know it's all hands on deck
00:40:54.640 right so they put the money they allocate a budget it's it's you know it's like a disaster recovery
00:40:59.040 program they go to work right that's what we need to kind of focus on so whether it's you know whether
00:41:05.040 it's transportation whether it's defense whether it's immigration whatever the concept is or what are
00:41:10.160 the pillars you know that's what i recommend we do and i hope this session we don't spend another
00:41:16.560 you know up until christmas just sitting there criticizing each other in the meantime say you
00:41:23.680 want to build high-speed rail from toronto to montreal guess what there's no shovels in the ground
00:41:28.160 or you need to buy more jeeps for the army nothing is bought and you i in a perfect world paul you're
00:41:35.760 100 correct the leaders of the different parties stand up and said mr speaker i'm not here to criticize
00:41:42.480 the liberal government or mark carney we're on um serious national emergency that's going on with
00:41:49.360 america we need to get things done right now let's start voting on things and start building it and
00:41:54.320 getting things done immediately we'll worry about getting votes another day now that's not going to
00:41:59.280 happen no but that's what it should be because once upon a time and we've all seen the great movie with
00:42:05.120 um about winston churchill with gary oldman and basically saying hey we just escaped from dunkirk
00:42:14.240 the we may lose the whole war we may lose england we've all got to work together for the next few
00:42:19.360 years and forget about votes or we're going to lose to hitler and that's what they did yeah yeah
00:42:25.600 i mean england was that close to losing everything yes yeah and so you know we're in a serious situation
00:42:32.080 as a nation right now what is wrong with all the parties and all the sides saying let's worry about
00:42:36.720 votes another time right now let's get let's build 10 hospitals five high-speed rail lines let's do this
00:42:44.320 and that and let's get it built right now and let's include 12 submarines and 12 so please for the
00:42:49.520 need to save 12 submarines that'd be great paul it's always a pleasure thank you my friend