Cory Morgan Show - Nadine Wellwood and the People's Party & Clinton Desveaux talks East Coast
Episode Stats
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Summary
Nadine Wellwood is running for the PPC in the Alberta riding of Banff and Airdrie. Clinton De Voe is running in the Nova Scotia riding of Nova Scotia and the Liberals are out of office.
Transcript
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Hey, welcome to The Cory Morgan Show. First one of the electoral season. Justin Trudeau
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predictably called the election. We're off to the races. Looks like all the parties are trying to
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outspend each other. It's going to be an interesting campaign. There's going to have
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to be some movement or we're just going to come out of 35 days of campaigning and have the same
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government coming out of it that we went into it with, but there's lots of time for things to
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change. We'll see what happens. We'll be covering them, of course, on the Western Standard all the
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way through. Today, I am going to talk to Nadine Wellwood. She's running for the PPC
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in Banff, Airdrie. That'll be the second time she's run there to get some perspective from the
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alternative parties that are coming up and challenging this election. There's a lot of
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them out and about this time around, and even Derek Sloan might be making an appearance somewhere,
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it sounds like. And then I'll be talking to Clinton DeVoe from out there in Nova Scotia.
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They had an election last night. There was an upset win with the Progressive Conservative Party
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and the Liberals are out. So we'll talk a little bit about that and a little bit about the federal
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election, of course. For starters, though, I should speak to our sponsors and those subscribers. I mean,
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winning all around. So a quick rant going into this election. As I said, people are saying, you know,
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do we need one? Do we not? I don't know. Justin feels he needs one. He wants a majority. And, uh,
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the, you know, the opportunity looks to be there. We'll see what happens if the pandemic explodes.
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Uh, if things go out of control, this might turn around and bite him really hard in the ass as it
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stands. I don't see a lot of, I mean, the conservatives are coming out. Okay. No stumbles
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yet or anything, but they're not really light in the world on fire either. Like they have to
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pull those liberals down if we're going to see a change. And, uh, well, it's very early. We'll see
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what kind of momentum develops and what happens. But, uh, right now I, I see a stalemate kind of going
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on there. They're all just kind of coasting and making promises to, uh, try and outspend each
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other. Uh, as things stay more stagnant though, I imagine parties will get more desperate to try
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and do things and create momentum, create interest. And, and we're going to see a lively campaign. I
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mean, you know, nobody, including the parties in power wants to see a minority government for
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another two, three years or whatever it might take. Afghanistan, you know, I got to speak to that.
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It's in the news. It's an issue today. What a horrible, horrible site. Uh, here's another
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example of government gone bad. You know, we never, we really never should have gone there
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in the first place. How many times has the world got to see this? I mean, I was just a child when
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it was happening, but people remember and see those images of the evacuation of Saigon. You know,
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a country goes in, they meddle around in a country for years. They tried to take control of it. They
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fail and then they bail out and anybody who helped them gets left behind. And, uh, how many got
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tossed out into the Cambodian killing fields, uh, and things such as that after the Americans
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abandoned Vietnam, it was a horrific thing, but did the Western world learn from it? No,
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no. We pissed around in Afghanistan for 20 years, 158 Canadian soldiers died over there.
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Thousands got injured over there. And what have we got in the end when the forces pulled out
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within a week, the Taliban extremists rolled right back in and all those poor people again,
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who counted on the West, counted on us over there are left hanging. They're trying
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desperately to get the hell out of there. The reprisals are going to be brutal. I mean,
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the Taliban is trying to talk nice right now, but come on, they're the Taliban. We know what
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they're going to do. I don't know what it takes to get things better in Afghanistan. But one thing
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I think we can say for sure is to trying to invade and control that country is going to fail a hundred
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percent of the time. The Brits tried at the end of the 1800s for crying out loud and they failed.
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They left with their tail between their legs. The Soviet union threw everything they had at that
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country through the eighties, got their butts kicked out of there. And now Canada, United States,
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other coalition forces spent two decades almost in there. And it's right back to where it started.
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The only, I mean, I hope for the best for them. I hope we find a way that the developed world,
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the civilized world can influence nations like that and improve their human rights practices,
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improve their lot in life, you know, bring up their economies. But going in on the ground with forces
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is clearly a failure. Let's not do it again. Let's try to learn from this. Do we have to do this
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every generation? I really hope not. It's a horrible, horrible thing. I hope those people
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get out of there. I hope for a change, the Taliban are being a little bit honest. They're saying,
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you know, that they're going to lighten up a little and be a little nicer with women's rights.
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They put that caveat, they'll respect women's rights as far as Sharia law allows. That's kind of
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ambiguous in the interpretation of human rights. And of course, God help you if you're a part of the
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LGBTQ community. I just hope they can get the hell out of that country because it's not going
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to be good. So bad news on that front. Either way, locally, hopefully, maybe election time is a good
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time for the country to talk about those sorts of things. Let's talk about the weakness we have on
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the international stage. I mean, Canada is not a huge player. We can't pressure and crush other
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countries into submission. Well, even the large countries can't seem to do that. But maybe we can
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improve our diplomatic standing, our ability, and actually have an influence on some of these
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countries and do some good in the world. In the meantime, we do have to worry about doing good
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within our own countries. So let's try and elect the right people to represent us and bring good
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policy ideas forward. So enough about the international stage. As I said, back to the local
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election, let's talk to candidates who have ideas and views on the ground. The people are actually
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working it. We got Nadine Wellwood running for the PPC in Banff Airdrie. Okay. Thanks for joining me,
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Nadine. Good to see you. It's been a while. So you're on the campaign road in Banff Airdrie again
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for the Maxine Bernier's PPC. You ran for them two years ago as well, didn't you?
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So, I mean, we've got a lot of candidates entering the field. There's people coming from all over.
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It's almost getting a little crowded. One of the things I want to ask, I mean, the Maverick
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Party is a new one on the scene that's come about since then, and they speak to regional issues
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and things such as that. What are you offering with the PPC that's different than what the
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Maverick Party would? I think the PPC, the People's Party of Canada, is very different than what the
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Maverick has to offer. For one, I actually am putting Albertans first. I'm not a representative
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for the West. I am a representative for my constituents, and that's Banff Airdrie first
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and Alberta second, and then everything else is after that, whether it's a party or otherwise.
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So that, I think, is a substantial difference. And we've been around. Our platform, Max started
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this party three years ago. Our platform hasn't had to change. Because it's so principled,
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and we run on freedom, fairness, respect, and responsibility. Our policies around immigration,
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around equalization. It's everything that Albertans wanted in 2019. And I think from the fear factor of
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we just have to get rid of Trudeau, they didn't vote for it. But it's everything Alberta wants and
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needs. I think the Maverick Party is wasting their time with the Triple E Senate. I think that will
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actually only give more power to the West, or to the East, especially the have-not provinces,
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you know, from the Atlantic provinces, for example. They would have more senators,
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which would mean less influence in Alberta here. And I went down that path with them,
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actually, at their request. And onto Maverick, for the Maverick Party. They're not looking for
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outspoken candidates. It's a very top-down. It's not grassroots, contrary to what they want to promote
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themselves as. And yeah, it's not what it appears to be. You know, the top-down made some decisions
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without consulting their EDAs. And their MPs are whipped. And we all know what that means. It means
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they're not free to speak to represent the actual issues as they relate to their constituents and
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their province. Okay. Because yeah, it's just, there are conservative people who are looking at
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different alternatives rather than the Conservative Party all the time in Alberta. So there's a couple,
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I wanted to see what the distinguishing differences were. With the PPC, do you know, I mean, nomination
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day is still a little ways away. How many candidates, roughly, does it look like you guys are going to get
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in the field in this election? We have well over 200 right now. Max is still looking to run a full
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slate. I think we had about 304 or so in the last, no, 308 or so in the last election. So I would assume
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it would be, you know, we'll be approaching that number. You know, I'm not, I don't think it'll be a
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full 338 ridings. The East is very liberal. And I think getting anybody brave enough to run for anything
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other than that is always a challenge. Yeah. Well, it's a big area to chip into.
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I would imagine, I mean, there's always the talk about vote splitting or picking away and people
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feel they should try and choose it. Well, what I see is a lesser evil and say, well, vote conservative
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because perhaps not so much in Banff Airdrie, but in some of the tight urban ridings, the PPC could
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most definitely be making the difference, which changes from a Conservative candidate winning to a
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Liberal one. How do you respond to that concern? Well, you know, we ran the last campaign,
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especially here in Alberta. We sent a sea of blue with the exception of one NDP that was elected.
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And I'm just challenging people, where did that get us? And I think most people this time around
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recognize, and I've had a lot of people tell me already, they know Aaron O'Toole is not going to
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win this election. He's not going to beat Justin Trudeau. So I think people are more free to vote
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their conscience and to vote for what they want. And let's send a message. I said that the last time,
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we need to send a message to Ottawa that Alberta just wants Ottawa to get out of our way. And
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Albertans can take care of ourselves. We don't need Ontario or Ottawa to tell us what we need to do.
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We just need you to get out of the way. We know what we need to do.
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Yeah. Well, and getting to your local writing, Banff Airdrie is an interesting one. I mean,
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it's solid blue country with, especially with the ranch land to the east and such. I grew up in
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Banff. That's my hometown, actually. You really get quite a mixed match of all kinds of views there
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from small C conservatives to hard, hard left people. How's your campaign been going so far on
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the ground? What issues are standing out in Banff Airdrie right now?
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Well, it's been interesting. This election is very different because Justin Trudeau has made this
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election a lot more about freedoms. And he's actually put out a call, it seems, to Canadians
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to say that, hey, this is your election, your opportunity to choose the direction of Canada
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for your children and your grandchildren. And if you read between the lines there and you look at
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the direction that he's taking with this build back better, he, could you imagine a majority of
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government with no opposition? And that's what we've seen in the last 18 months with the Conservative
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Party of Canada is absolutely zero opposition. This is a power grab by the Liberal government,
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Justin Trudeau, for a majority government. So people are seeing that here. And it's interesting
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because whether you're NDP, whether you're Liberal, whether you're Conservative, I've had people,
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a lot of people who have been not interested in politics come to me and say, Nadine, I'm taking
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an interest this time. Why? Because their freedoms are on the line. And either we move more towards a
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totalitarian state where the government is going to dictate by decree what we can and cannot do,
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what we can and cannot say, or the people themselves are going to stand and fight and defend their
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freedoms. And that's the stance I take. You know what? It's like, I reject a class society where some
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individuals have more rights than others. And I think that's going to be a big political issue and
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one that's going to stand out in this election that's going to make the difference. And I think
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that's pulling together Albertans. And it crosses the political boundaries.
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Yeah, well, the pandemic in this election is a variable like we've never seen before. I mean,
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it does cross left and right. And it comes down to individual rights. I mean, whether people feel
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that it should be the government imposing controls on them to try and get this under control, or whether
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we leave people to their own devices and have this come under control on its own, however it may be.
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So it makes it difficult. As well, though, if this does explode, more infections, people are getting
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concerned. Do you think this could backfire on the Liberals in calling it a time when there's still
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some instability, I guess, health-wise right now? Well, Justin Trudeau, if you look at the polls
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and take them for what they're worth, but he lost, I think, 5.6% in the polls when he called this
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election. Canadians don't want to go back to the polls. And I'll have to say, I was one of those
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amongst that as well. But there's other pressing issues. I mean, Afghanistan has fallen. We have,
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the world is in a dire situation. And, you know, he's gotten, Justin Trudeau has gotten everything
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that he's asked for. He's had no opposition. He has a ridiculous budget. You know, the only thing he did
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not get that he asked for was unlimited power. And that's what he wants. And that's what he's going after.
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And in general, in politics, nobody's talking about cutting spending. Nobody's talking about
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getting it under control. Aside from people like Maxime Bernier, I mean, the Conservatives and the
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Liberals are in a battle to outspend each other and the NDP are borderline, you know, communists. So
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where, though, would the cuts come? I mean, if a PPC could influence the government or be in
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government, where are you going to shave things down? Well, we have to look at the areas where we can
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save. And the obvious ones are in foreign aid. A lot of foreign aid goes to countries that doesn't
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get to where it needs to be. We have problems in our own country that we need to solve first.
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That hasn't changed since our last election platform. Media, yay, you guys are independent.
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Congratulations for staying that way. But $600 million going to fund CBC and other media.
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We have state propaganda now. We don't have independent journalism anymore. There's an easy
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one to cut. And there's other areas like that, that, you know, we need to clean up. And people
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need to become more efficient. Government, everybody keeps looking for generating more revenue.
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That's what government does, right? More revenue, we have to increase taxes. Well, let's look at the
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obvious problem here. Government is too large. And it continues to grow. That's the expense right there.
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So we need to make, we need to shrink government. It needs to be smaller, more effective, more
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efficient. So a big issue, and it looks like the Trudeau government hasn't really dipped into it,
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but I suspect they're going to make it a big one in this campaign, of course, is environmentalism
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and climate change. Both now the conservatives and the liberals want to carbon tax us into a green new
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world. They seem to feel carbon tax has put up forest fires. We just haven't raised them highly
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enough yet. But still, you will encounter people who are concerned. It's been a smoky summer. Things
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are hot. You know, climate is changing. I mean, it's debatable on why or how. How can the PPC help
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to address those concerns with people in the electorate? Well, climate change was a big issue,
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I think, in 2019. I think it's a little bit less of top of mind this time around. But we do need to
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protect our environment. And we've always said we need to protect our environment. My dad was a
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firefighter for 45 years. It's all he's ever done. And his passion for his work was unbelievable. I have
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friends that are out fighting fires right now. Many of them will tell you the truth. And we have
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mismanaged our forests. Absolutely. Forest fires are not caused because of climate change, per se. It's
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been a dry summer. Absolutely. But we've had dry summers in the past. But we've got a lot of tinder.
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We've got a lot of fallen dead wood, you know, that we haven't really managed all that well.
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I mean, there's seeds, there's there's trees that need fire in order to, you know, open the seeds to
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replant. So, you know, there is a cycle. And I think we just need to take a common sense approach and find
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the right balance between the environment and the our economy and people's wants and needs.
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You know, the liberals, the NDP, the Greens, they'd have us back to living in caves and stone age.
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That's not realistic. And I'm a proud supporter of Alberta oil and gas. Oil and gas in Canada is the
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most humane, ethically sourced place. Why are we buying it from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela? It's
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ridiculous. I know why, because Justin Trudeau's trust fund benefits greatly from the Irving family
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that, you know, pad his trust fund. But, you know, that's not what's best for Canadians. So Canadians
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have got to get back to taking a look at what's going on behind the scenes here, why these decisions
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are being made. And let's take a look at who's actually speaking out and trying to expose the truth
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Well, and likewise, we have it south of the border of that trend. Joe Biden virtue signaled
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by shutting down the Keystone pipeline when it was nearly done. And now he's groveling and begging
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OPEC to increase production because lo and behold, the price of fuel went up. Nobody would have seen
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that coming. But when it comes to foreign affairs, I mean, Afghanistan's a mess. Our relationship with
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the United States has been up and down and on and off. How could the PPC address some of those tensions
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and bad relationships? Well, I mean, I think, unfortunately, our prime minister is the laughing
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stock internationally. Justin Trudeau is not a leader. He's weak. His responses to these issues
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and to these world events have been appalling, in my opinion. I was in the aerospace and defense sector
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for many, many years. I owned my own aerospace and defense company. I worked in modeling and simulation,
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human factors engineering. I met Mr. Honorable Jean Chrétien, for example, under that title.
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And, you know, Afghanistan, I left that space when we went into Afghanistan. I didn't agree with going
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into that country. I knew we would make a bigger mess than what was already there. You know, Russia
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tried, so many places have tried. But now that we're there, we needed an appropriate
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response if we were planning on pulling out that we did not leave the people who supported us behind.
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It's not enough to just say, oh, sorry, and pull our own people out. There were Afghanis on the ground,
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their families that now are being killed, raped, tortured, because they supported Canadian and U.S.
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troops. We don't leave people behind. And Trudeau's response has been weak. And the Taliban, they're
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terrorists. They have just released every terrorist that we have rounded up for the last 20 years.
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Where do you think they are going to direct that anger and frustration? And we're a laughing stock.
00:22:39.240
They know our prime minister, our national leader is weak. Where do you think a lot of that direction,
00:22:51.240
Yeah, it would be nice to see respect on the world stage for Canada again. And we certainly won't get
00:22:55.880
that from the current leadership. So I'll leave that there though. Where can we find more information
00:23:00.680
about your campaign and the PPC and what you're going to be up to in the next five weeks?
00:23:06.200
Well, it won't be hard to find. And you can check out my website, nadinewoldwood.ca.
00:23:12.280
And of course, you can follow me on Twitter, Facebook as well, if that's more convenient.
00:23:17.960
My website will lead you back to our platform and our policies, as well as my own personal views.
00:23:24.600
This is the difference with PPC is as a member of parliament, even as a candidate,
00:23:30.280
I have the liberty to have these conversations with you to tell you what I think, what my views are.
00:23:36.600
You know, as long as they align with Max's freedom, fairness, respect and responsibility,
00:23:42.520
he's not going to tell me what to say what to do. And that's a big difference between every other
00:23:48.600
federal party available today that are being told, stick to the script, you can't discuss this come
00:23:54.120
back to your talking points. I'm free to have those discussions. And I think anybody who's been
00:24:00.360
following me on YouTube, or even previously on the Western Standard knows I have opinions,
00:24:04.760
and I'm happy to share them. Great. Well, thanks for coming on to talk to me. I'm looking forward to
00:24:09.720
watching the campaign unfold and your campaign, and I'm certain we'll be talking again soon.
00:24:14.440
Fantastic. Thank you so much, Corey, for having me. Thanks.
00:24:19.880
Okay. Moving from West to East, I'm going to have Clinton DeVoe on. Clinton's been on a number of times.
00:24:26.600
He loves drilling down into the polling numbers, making speculation, and he comes from the East Coast
00:24:32.120
out there in Nova Scotia. I'm sure he's going to have some words to say about that Nova Scotia
00:24:36.840
election, that upset out there. It's going to be an interesting chat, and we'll see what Clinton
00:24:41.800
has to say right away here. Hey there, Clinton. Thanks for joining me from the East Coast there.
00:24:49.240
This is a brilliant time for political wieners like ourselves, and you had a local provincial election,
00:24:54.360
even on top of the federal one that's kicked off. I think it kind of slid under the interest or radar of
00:25:00.040
a lot of Canadians outside of Nova Scotia, but once it popped up and we saw an upset win with
00:25:05.080
progressive conservatives, suddenly people sat up and took note. It was an interesting outcome
00:25:09.800
and a hard-fought election. Maybe you want to give us a rundown of what's happening out there in your
00:25:13.800
hometown? Sure. So the progressive conservative party of Nova Scotia won a majority last night,
00:25:20.440
and it looked to be a majority fairly early on in the night.
00:25:24.040
The Liberals had gone from a multi-term majority government dynasty to complete and utter defeat
00:25:34.360
provincially here in Nova Scotia. There was two big issues throughout this campaign. The overriding
00:25:41.080
issue for the province of Nova Scotia as a whole was health care, paramedic services,
00:25:47.240
wait times, those kinds of things. And that was an issue that the progressive conservatives embraced fully
00:25:57.560
probably about two years ago. And they keyed all of their marketing, all of their messaging,
00:26:05.720
everything around the idea of spending a lot of money in health care. So the progressive conservatives
00:26:11.240
have promised to run bigger deficits than either the Liberals or the New Democrats in order to deal
00:26:18.760
with the health care crisis, or so they claim. The other big issue in the province was rent control,
00:26:25.560
and more specifically in the greater Halifax area. So for your listeners that may not know, Nova Scotia
00:26:31.240
has a population of about a million people, and somewhere in the vicinity of about half of that
00:26:36.600
lives in the greater Halifax area. So the New Democrats provincially here, they made rent control
00:26:45.080
their issue. And so they spent all of their time throughout the city of Halifax promoting that
00:26:51.480
issue. So the combination of the Tories on health care, the New Democrats on rent control, they were
00:26:57.720
able to essentially crater Liberal Party support in every region of the province, from Cape Breton Island
00:27:04.200
to the mainland, to the urban city population. So it was a devastating night for the provincial Liberals.
00:27:13.000
But look, the hard work starts today for the progressive conservatives, because
00:27:19.560
you know, they have to deliver now on these really big promises on mental health, on physical health,
00:27:27.000
on ambulance services, wait times, you know, all of that stuff. So I don't envy them because they're
00:27:37.800
going to have to deliver over the next four years. Otherwise they are going to hear from the voters.
00:27:43.560
Yeah, well, and that's something interesting to see out of this whole thing. So, you know,
00:27:46.680
people don't want to interpret that Nova Scotia took a big small C swing to, you know, to conservative
00:27:52.440
right. I mean, this was a conservative party that campaigned from the high spending left, as far
00:27:56.920
as fiscal goes. And as you said, the NDP took a bite out by taking on rent control, which is, again,
00:28:02.920
is a very left-wing issue. So there hasn't been a swing to conservative values, just a change in
00:28:09.480
Yeah. So to answer some questions, to give you some more ideas as to how the whole rent control thing
00:28:16.200
took off in the city. What we have seen throughout the, well, throughout Nova Scotia, but specifically
00:28:23.480
the greater Halifax area in this last year is that homes, which 18 months ago were selling for,
00:28:33.160
you know, we'll say three to $400,000. We're now selling for six, $700,000, $800,000.
00:28:43.160
Homes that were selling for half a million, we're now selling for a million dollars.
00:28:51.240
So there's been an extreme shortage of housing. And there's also an extreme shortage of condos and
00:28:57.480
apartment buildings and those kinds of things. And so the new Democrats looked at that and they ran
00:29:02.200
with it. And in fact, I have a member of my family who works with a conservative MLA here in Nova Scotia,
00:29:08.840
a member of the legislative assembly. And the member of my family was telling me that they
00:29:13.960
were taking two to three calls a day for the last 18 months on, on nothing but the housing issue.
00:29:23.640
So the liberals, you know, they didn't have an answer for that. And then there was another
00:29:27.960
problem that the provincial liberals had in Nova Scotia. So the premier, his name was Ian Rankin,
00:29:34.440
former premier, he was never actually elected as premier. So he inherited the premiership from
00:29:43.320
from Stephen McNeil, who had won multiple majority governments. And in the very beginning of the
00:29:49.640
campaign, the sitting premier, it was exposed that he had been caught drunk driving on multiple
00:29:57.800
occasions, and in one occasion, ended up flipping a car and creating a major accident. So, you know,
00:30:05.800
I think it was unlikely that that this former premier Ian Rankin was going to pull out a victory.
00:30:12.920
In the final 96 hours of the campaign, local polling firms started to detect a swing
00:30:19.720
of momentum that worked its way towards the progressive conservative party. And then in the
00:30:26.520
final 72 hours, there was a couple of polls, local polls in the Halifax area that were actually
00:30:33.800
predicting a progressive conservative majority government. And that's what ended up happening
00:30:38.520
last night, or that's what ended up happening Tuesday night. Sorry.
00:30:41.480
Okay. And one other thing that was striking was that Smith McCross and one is an independent,
00:30:47.560
clearly a strong local support showing. And it was a very issues-based thing. I mean,
00:30:51.960
she's on the border of the province with New Brunswick and she got kicked out of caucus
00:30:56.440
due to attending and taking part in protests that were blocking that border. But it was just striking.
00:31:01.960
We don't often see independents, you know, winning in general elections and she won it fairly comfortably.
00:31:07.400
Well, and to your listeners, more importantly, you don't normally see independents being elected
00:31:14.200
anywhere in Atlantic Canada. So Elizabeth Smith McCross and was a former progressive conservative MLA.
00:31:21.320
She had blockaded the Trans-Canada Highway over COVID regulations between the province of Nova Scotia
00:31:28.520
and New Brunswick. And she essentially refused to back down for a number of days. It got to the point
00:31:36.200
that guys delivering groceries and tractor trailers were sitting on the side of the road for days on
00:31:44.040
end with their food going bad. And doctors were actually prevented from getting to their local
00:31:51.160
hospital work between the two provinces. There's communities like border communities.
00:31:57.640
So she ended up being kicked out of the progressive conservative caucus.
00:32:01.480
And I actually predicted that she was going to lose that seat. And I actually predicted that the
00:32:09.400
Liberals would win that seat because they had former member of parliament, Bill Casey, who served in
00:32:17.400
multiple federal conservative governments of both Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper running as a provincial
00:32:23.720
liberal. And so I figured that because of the vote split that he would come up the middle.
00:32:29.960
But instead, she won convincingly. And to your point, yeah, it's a riding that is a it's a rural riding
00:32:38.760
that that literally borders the province of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
00:32:43.640
Yeah, well, it's just interesting to see when issues can sometimes overcome partisanship. It's a pretty rare
00:32:50.120
thing, not just out there, but out here and everywhere else. And I'm sure a lot of people will be kind of
00:32:53.640
paying attention to that. So moving on to the big race now, the federal one, the issues are
00:32:59.800
just starting to emerge in this one. What do you see in the trends right now where things are standing?
00:33:07.800
Well, I think in the opening days of the campaign, the first 48 hours, the Liberals took a big hit,
00:33:14.360
which I think was to be expected. And that's because of the, you know, the campaign issue was,
00:33:21.400
why are we having a federal general election? And as you recall, Corey, over multiple elections,
00:33:27.560
usually the first two days, maybe three days, the driving issue that the media tends to promote and
00:33:34.920
whoever the opposition parties are is we don't need an election right now. But what we have seen in the last
00:33:42.280
the last 24 to 36 hours has been somewhat of a return to form over as we've seen over the last 12 months for the federal
00:33:53.800
Liberals, where they have crept back into the lead. It's not as big as it was, say, a month ago.
00:34:01.320
But one of the problems I see for the Conservatives is that they seem to have hit a ceiling of around 30% support.
00:34:07.240
Some polls have them down around 28. The other big problem I'm seeing is that Mr. Bernier's vanity project,
00:34:16.280
the People's Party, after examining Frank Graves from ECOS Research, some of his polling data,
00:34:24.920
the regional breakdown, he indicates that they are polling as much as 11% support in British Columbia.
00:34:31.160
I believe that's going to lead to a lot of conservative vote splits and allow the Liberals to win.
00:34:40.520
In the province of Ontario, same sort of thing. There are multiple polling firms that show Mr. Bernier
00:34:46.760
sitting somewhere around between 5% and 8% support. And again, I believe that that is going to decimate
00:34:53.560
the Conservatives if those numbers hold over the course of the next three and a half weeks.
00:35:03.000
Look, and I think it goes to the earlier point that you and I have talked about in the past.
00:35:07.640
Look, I'm a firm believer that Mr. Bernier is a form of controlled opposition. And the only person that
00:35:13.640
he benefits in this election is the Liberal leader, Prime Minister Trudeau. Because every one of those
00:35:21.720
votes blitz that takes away from the Conservatives helps elect another federal Liberal member of
00:35:29.320
Yeah, well, we've got a lot of that, plus with Derek Sloan picking up whatever he's going to do,
00:35:34.520
we're hearing some rumors about that, and Jay Hill with the Maverick Party. So O'Toole's got to try
00:35:41.000
and figure out how to regain and pull back some of those factions, some of the support that he's been
00:35:46.840
bleeding for the last few months, and he doesn't have much time left to do it.
00:35:49.720
Well, one of the things the Conservatives are really hoping for is to see a surge in support
00:35:55.400
for the NDP. So as many of us know, when the New Democrats perform well by their party standards,
00:36:05.400
in the sort of the low 20% threshold, that 20-21% popular vote, they can often create the
00:36:14.520
opposite effect that the Conservatives are having with Mr. Bernier, the Liberals can end up getting
00:36:21.480
punished for vote splits. And so to be fair to Mr. Singh, the new Democratic leader, I do think that
00:36:32.120
on the opening day of the campaign, that he probably had the best day of all the party leaders.
00:36:38.600
I do think the Conservatives, they need to rethink the upcoming number of weeks, their studio that
00:36:48.360
they're using. It feels cold, it feels unfriendly. It doesn't make one view Mr. O'Toole as a potential
00:37:00.120
Prime Minister. I think they need to get out on the road. I think they need to campaign. I think they
00:37:04.840
need to have in-person events. And the rumors that I've heard from multiple sources is that they're going
00:37:11.240
to spend anywhere from three to four days a week hanging out in their television studio in Ottawa.
00:37:18.200
And I don't think as the campaign progresses, that that's a good strategy. I think that allows the
00:37:26.760
Liberals, the New Democrats, you know, to basically control the day-to-day narrative with photo ops,
00:37:35.560
with, you know, public crowds and all of those kinds of things.
00:37:41.800
Yeah, well, Jack Layton's popularity definitely contributed to some of the ability for Stephen
00:37:46.520
Harper to form a majority. I mean, he pulled from the Liberals in Ontario, in British Columbia,
00:37:51.640
and it benefited the Conservatives. But to sit as a party and hope for those sorts of variables to
00:37:56.520
play in your favor, it reminds me of like football teams getting towards the end when they're hoping for
00:38:00.840
another team to lose because it's the magic formula to make the playoffs. It's out of your control.
00:38:05.160
So the Conservatives have got to find those things that are in their control, as you said,
00:38:08.440
that get their ground game up, get out there and humanize themselves and endear themselves to the
00:38:13.000
electorate. They've got not much time left to do it. Well, I think for the Conservatives,
00:38:19.000
a gift for them could potentially be the announcement coming from the upcoming leaders debates. So one of
00:38:26.200
two things, either Mr. Bernier is excluded from the debates because he doesn't break the 4% threshold,
00:38:34.360
in order to attend. And if he is able to hit that 4% threshold, I have to believe that the
00:38:41.880
Conservatives are hoping that the leaders debate demands that all participants be fully vaccinated
00:38:49.560
in order to take part in the debate. And I think from a Conservative Party perspective, that would be
00:38:57.560
good for them because that would keep Mr. Bernier off the stage. And it would allow the Conservatives to
00:39:03.480
focus their attention on Mr. Trudeau and the Liberals without always having to pivot and look over their
00:39:13.000
I could see that somewhat, but you know, the people who are very strongly against vaccinations,
00:39:18.680
and I know when I've mentioned that I got vaccinated, boy, I hear from them. But those
00:39:22.840
who are very dedicated, they are very upset with things. And it could really turn Bernier into a
00:39:28.680
martyr if he was taken off over the fact that he wasn't vaccinated. It could actually consolidate
00:39:33.800
his support with something that's not going to win a bunch of seats, but will definitely be a strong
00:39:38.200
core of voters that would keep pulling those votes. Well, that's, that is one school of thought.
00:39:44.360
To me, the bigger concern would be to just to keep him off of the stage at all costs. Because that would,
00:39:51.080
the fact that he, the fact that he could appear at the debates may allow him to just slightly pivot
00:39:59.000
just a little tiny bit in order to appeal to a greater number of mainstream Conservatives on some issues.
00:40:08.360
And, you know, if he goes from, say, five or six percent in the national polls
00:40:14.360
to seven or eight or nine percent because of a decent debate performance,
00:40:22.360
well, suddenly you'd have Conservatives having vote split losses, you know, all over Ontario and
00:40:29.240
British Columbia and other places. So to me, the goal from a Conservative perspective would be to find out
00:40:37.800
how to keep him out of the debates, if in fact there is a way to do so.
00:40:41.720
Yeah. Well, and Bernier is no fool and he could present himself well on the floor at a debate. So
00:40:46.200
it would certainly lend an other element of credibility that perhaps people might feel he didn't have.
00:40:51.000
So we've, we've got interesting times coming and a whole lot to cover. I'm looking forward to it.
00:40:55.960
So I hope we can check in with you in a couple of weeks and see where things have moved and how the
00:41:00.600
Definitely. I'm looking forward to chatting with you and hearing from your viewers.
00:41:04.920
Excellent. Where can people find you, Clinton, to see what you're up to and what you're speaking on?
00:41:09.480
Well, you can see my name here at the bottom of the screen. So you can find me, Clinton DeVoe,
00:41:14.600
on Twitter, all one word. And I'm often sharing stories and, and thoughts. And it's not always
00:41:22.520
necessarily endorsements from me. It's just stuff that I think is newsworthy.
00:41:25.960
Uh, because, uh, I do think, uh, all of this stuff, uh, helps us figure out where the, uh,
00:41:34.840
Great. Well, I always appreciate you coming on. I'm certain we'll be talking again soon.
00:41:44.120
All right. Well, that's it for today's show. Thank you all for tuning in. Let's not forget
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