Western Standard - EXCLUSIVE： CPC leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre.

00:00:00.000 Well, thank you very much for joining us today, Mr. Polyev. It's been a pretty lively campaign

00:00:07.440 for you so far, I imagine, and we appreciate you speaking to our viewers out here in the West.

00:00:13.440 Good to be with you. Thanks for having me on the show.

00:00:16.380 So I'll get ready to it. You know, one of the themes I see in general right now from a lot of

00:00:21.720 people when it comes to government or the party as well and things like that is trust. People don't

00:00:28.120 feel very trusting of government and politicians. I mean, that's sort of always kind of been

00:00:32.120 happening. But in these tumultuous times, we've had a lot of that. And I did ask some of our viewers

00:00:37.040 to say questions. And one from Dale Grabb was about accountability. Like with the last leadership,

00:00:42.440 we don't need to go into so much that. But the candidate sort of proposed a lot of things one

00:00:47.200 way and then didn't follow through later on, which I think kind of led to the change in leadership.

00:00:52.480 But what sort of measures could we put in to ensure accountability in matters of transparency or

00:00:56.820 even potential recall?

00:00:59.520 Are you talking about within the government itself or within the Conservative Party apparatus?

00:01:05.400 There are two levels. Yeah, I packed a lot into that, I'm afraid. Well, in the leadership and so

00:01:10.240 on, your accountability would be to the members. And you're running kind of for two positions right

00:01:14.000 now. So there's mechanisms within the party. And we saw those exercised recently. But I would like

00:01:20.420 to talk about the potential Pierre Polly of Prime Minister. What kind of measures could we bring in

00:01:25.700 and then to feel that you would be following through on your word on the way up and following

00:01:30.320 after that, I guess? Well, I was the parliamentary secretary in the Harper government that ushered

00:01:35.560 the Accountability Act through Canada's parliament. That was the toughest anti-corruption law in Canadian

00:01:41.200 history. Still is. In fact, the scandals that have ensnared Trudeau are all the result of breaking

00:01:46.320 that law. It expanded access to information, separated the prosecution arm from the political

00:01:52.640 arm of government. It banned politicians from taking gifts from people with whom they have

00:02:01.680 government business, something the prime minister was all found guilty of doing. And later on in this

00:02:07.140 campaign, I will be announcing new measures to get tough on corruption and expand accountability

00:02:13.680 to empower citizens to hold bureaucrats and politicians accountable when they may waste money or defraud

00:02:21.340 the public treasury. So I believe the government is servant and the citizen master. And that is what I

00:02:32.500 will enact when I'm prime minister. Okay. So when it comes to that transparency, I've noticed like

00:02:39.800 Blacklock's reporter has been very effective actually in some of those committee hearings and

00:02:43.940 things like that, but sometimes they still hit a wall of redacted stuff or the old, you know,

00:02:48.540 toss a giant bill for an information inquiry. So would there be an intention to make it a little easier

00:02:54.560 to get in and check on our, what is our government? Yes, absolutely. I want to give more power for access

00:03:01.680 to information and more proactive disclosure of government decisions and expenditures so that people

00:03:08.240 know where their money is going and can trace every penny. There's no reason why with the modern

00:03:14.860 technology, we can't have easily traceable government spending so that we can follow not just the dollar,

00:03:22.140 but right down to the penny, what is spent and where it went. And that's the kind of transparency that

00:03:29.040 I will enact as prime minister. Great. And then maybe I'll move a bit back towards the partisan end of

00:03:34.640 things. A problem we have as conservatives in general, and as we've seen a lot of conservative

00:03:39.140 leaders lately, it seems, haven't resigned from their positions, you know, choosing to retire.

00:03:44.760 They've been pulled down by upset party members, and we're certainly in the midst of quite a bit of

00:03:48.900 turmoil in Alberta with our provincial leadership right now. So this leadership race has already

00:03:54.560 gotten off, you know, to a heated start, and that's fine to be lively, I guess, but we do also worry that

00:03:59.460 it might turn into something that could be fracturous. How can you maintain this race while 1.00

00:04:03.520 differentiating yourself from other candidates, but not letting it get too divisive?

00:04:08.800 Well, everything my campaign has said about the other candidates is just factual and on the public

00:04:13.300 record. Patrick Brown supports a carbon tax. He supports, actually endorsed Justin Trudeau's

00:04:18.260 version of the carbon tax, and said he would impose it in Ontario. It is a public fact that

00:04:24.500 Brown, like Trudeau, has been twice convicted of breaking the ethics law, in his case, the Ontario ethics

00:04:31.080 law, and he's already attacking Stephen Harper, something Trudeau does as well. So I just disagree

00:04:36.660 with him and that approach. Jean Charest was a liberal premier who raised taxes, brought in a carbon

00:04:41.380 tax, attacked Stephen Harper, and endorsed a long gun registry. So I disagree with those policies, and I

00:04:49.440 think it's better to have those disagreements out in the open rather than have these two who are in a

00:04:54.900 coalition together sneak into the leadership by hiding what they really believe and then thrusting

00:04:59.880 a big surprise on party members after the fact. Your second part of your question was, how do we

00:05:05.860 unite? Simple. We unite around one core principle, freedom. All conservatives can endorse that principle.

00:05:12.520 Social conservatives want religious freedom and freedom to preach without censorship. Progressive

00:05:18.240 conservatives want the freedom for women, gays, minorities, and others to live their lives in

00:05:26.240 equality and without government interference. Fiscal conservatives want economic freedom to control

00:05:32.440 their own money, start businesses without government blocking them. Libertarians want freedom online,

00:05:39.300 freedom to own cryptographic assets and to express themselves. Rural and firearms conservatives want the

00:05:46.920 freedom to own their property lawfully and without undue confiscation. So these freedoms bind all

00:05:55.080 different conservatives back together. And so I will unite conservatives around freedom. And that's how I will

00:06:04.180 bring together the country to become prime minister. Okay, so we've seen a time when our in exceptional

00:06:11.080 circumstances, our civil liberties have been challenged more than we've seen in our lifetimes, whether it

00:06:15.960 was through pandemic legislations, you know, ostensibly to control the pandemic, fair enough. And then with

00:06:21.940 the short invocation of the Emergencies Act, how can we be assured, though, that I mean, I understand the

00:06:28.320 reason for an Emergencies Act is sometimes you just get something that's beyond the pale, but we want to make

00:06:32.380 sure it's absolutely the very possible last resort for a government to go to. And people's confidence, I think,

00:06:38.120 has been a bit shaken.

00:06:40.100 It has indeed. Trudeau is on a pandemic power trip. He caused this emergency by targeting truckers with a

00:06:48.520 ridiculous new mandate that they had worked safely without for two prior years, even though they are

00:06:56.820 the very people least likely to spread any kind of virus because they're all alone in a truck all day and 0.81

00:07:02.100 all night sleeping and driving. And he did it at a time when the rest of the world is lifting mandates and

00:07:07.080 restrictions. So he deliberately provoked that crisis. And then he used the crisis he provoked

00:07:12.720 to invoke more to give himself yet more powers. I've been calling out Trudeau's pandemic power trip

00:07:19.180 for two years since March of 2020. I was probably the leading voice against his attempt to give

00:07:25.940 himself the power to raise any tax to any level for any reason without parliamentary approval back when

00:07:32.760 the pandemic first started. I fought against his abusive tax money in the We Scandal. And I fought

00:07:38.820 against his attempt to regulate internet speech and helped Rachel Thomas from Lethbridge stop that

00:07:47.880 bill in its tracks before the last election. So I've been fighting for freedom against Trudeau's

00:07:53.440 pandemic power trip since the COVID crisis began. And I continue to do that as now the leading voice

00:08:01.520 to end all mandates and restrictions so Canadians can take back control of their lives. 0.56

00:08:08.660 So getting to that freedom and an important part of transparency, I mean, independent media

00:08:12.580 like ours has been on the rise and it's been turning into an alternative. You've already committed to

00:08:17.340 defunding the CBC, which is appreciated. But we worry, we're worried a lot. We've got a bill C-11,

00:08:22.080 I believe, that's coming forward now that there seems to be quite a move on to strangle the growth

00:08:26.660 and development of alternative media sources out there. Would you act to protect those?

00:08:31.560 Yes, I led the charge against C-10, which was the forerunner to what is now C-11. 1.00

00:08:37.600 Well, I should give more credit to Rachel Thomas because she was the one who pushed, 0.85

00:08:43.240 she was the critic. I worked with her to stop that horrible bill. And it's really unfortunate that the

00:08:50.180 government-backed media and the corporate media want this bill to go ahead because it will further

00:08:57.260 entrench their oligopoly on speech. They are acting as gatekeepers. They want to keep out the

00:09:04.540 competition so that they can control what's reported and basically guarantee that it's

00:09:10.900 government talking points that Canadians hear without an alternative voice is getting a hearing.

00:09:17.300 That's why the media in the press gallery is so hard on me because I'm fighting against their

00:09:24.000 gatekeeping and in favor of freedom of expression and freedom of competition in the media. So yes,

00:09:30.820 I will repeal C-11 and I will repeal other bills if they pass that Trudeau is proposing to curtail

00:09:36.620 what you see and say online.

00:09:38.920 Well, it's comforting to know. I mean, it's so important that we have these means to communicate.

00:09:42.980 I mean, I understand there's a lot of misinformation out there, but we can leave it to citizens to

00:09:46.320 determine what's...

00:09:47.480 Well, frankly, there's a lot of misinformation in the corporate and government media as well.

00:09:52.700 Absolutely.

00:09:53.320 There's a tremendous amount of disinformation that the press gallery publishes. And so let's,

00:10:00.580 we want to get rid of disinformation. Let's start with ending that.

00:10:04.900 Great. So, I mean, we're coming from the West, of course, we're the Western Standard that we've got a

00:10:08.600 lot of Central Canadian listeners, but regional challenges and equity have long been an issue for

00:10:13.280 us out here, of course. And I'm of the old bent of the Reform Party way back when, and Senate reform

00:10:19.660 was a very large issue for us. I mean, the Senate right now is supposed to address regional inequity,

00:10:25.160 but realistically, it's terribly imbalanced. Would you consider looking into reforming the Senate?

00:10:31.780 I mean, seriously reforming it, not just, you know, perhaps tweaking it here and there?

00:10:35.780 Well, the truth is, I don't think it will happen. I'm just being blunt with you. Like,

00:10:41.600 I don't want to be one of those politicians that comes on air and tells you a bunch of stuff just

00:10:45.320 to get your vote and then goes back on it. The Supreme Court ruled that abolishing the Senate

00:10:51.000 requires 10 of 10 provinces. Even reforming it would require seven provinces representing 50%

00:10:57.700 of the population. We'd have to open the Constitution, which would begin a whole new can

00:11:01.940 of worms about every other grievance that people have with the constitutional structure of the

00:11:07.200 nation. And I don't think we would get to a consensus. I don't like the fact that our Senate

00:11:11.980 is unelected. I fought for an elected Senate. In fact, when I was a teenager, I worked on the

00:11:16.800 Senate election campaign of Ted Morton when the Alberta government was promoting Senate elections.

00:11:24.140 And I helped him as a volunteer at McMahon Stadium in Calgary, collecting signatures for him to run.

00:11:30.340 So that's how far back my arguments for Senate democratization goes. What I would support is

00:11:38.140 appointing the winners of elections that provincial governments hold in their provinces. So I would

00:11:44.560 appoint the candidates that Albertans elect in their locally held vote. If any other province

00:11:51.840 held similar elections, I would appoint the winner in those cases as well. So that's something doable,

00:11:57.120 doesn't require a constitutional change. And I want to promise only things I can actually do.

00:12:02.460 Good. That was the next question. I was going to ask if you would commit to appointing the ones we

00:12:06.040 elect, because we do have some senators elect right now. Yes. I'm sure they can see... They should be

00:12:10.300 appointed. They should be appointed. Sorry, the elected ones should get an appointment to the Senate. 0.85

00:12:14.920 Yes. It's the best we can do without reforming the entire system. I know constitutional change

00:12:19.260 is very difficult. I'll get to some familiar territory. Inflation, of course, is going wild. It's running

00:12:24.720 rampant. There's a number of factors. I mean, government spending is a huge part of it and

00:12:28.600 borrowing the energy costs as well. So in addressing inflation, though, I mean, how can we get that under

00:12:34.100 control reasonably? Well, three things. Let's start with what I call just inflation. When Trudeau started

00:12:42.180 printing money to finance the half trillion... ...has had in the last two years, I predicted we have

00:12:51.780 inflation. Why? Because throughout thousands of years of history, dictators, emperors, prime ministers,

00:12:56.660 presidents, print money to pay their bills, create coins out of cheap copper, as they used to do,

00:13:02.400 to pay for their opulent spending, they end up causing inflation. Why? Because more dollars chase

00:13:08.160 fewer goods, which leads to higher prices. It's not rocket science. So I said this would happen.

00:13:15.160 Now, so the first... That's what I call just inflation. So how would I stop that? Well,

00:13:20.100 I'll phase out the deficit, cancel the $100 billion slush fund of spending. Trudeau is promising

00:13:24.600 defund the CBC, cancel the infrastructure bank, which is a colossal boondoggle, and also root out

00:13:31.440 other waste and mismanagement to get rid of our deficits. So there is no need for money printing.

00:13:36.320 Secondly, I would ax the carbon tax. John Chere, Patrick Brown passionately support the carbon tax.

00:13:43.720 They want higher gas prices as a stated policy objective. And of course, the Bank of Canada

00:13:49.200 the governor admitted this week that the carbon tax is adding to inflation. I would ax that tax to

00:13:54.600 bring inflation down. The third thing is instead of creating cash, my free enterprise economy will

00:14:00.720 create more of what cash buys. I'll remove the regulatory gatekeepers to produce more Canadian

00:14:08.220 energy, to reduce taxes and regulation on our farmers so they can produce more affordable food.

00:14:16.860 And I'll incentivize municipalities and sell off as well as selling off 15% of federal buildings

00:14:24.320 to turn into more housing, to get the regulatory gatekeepers who block housing construction out of

00:14:30.380 the way and increase the supply by millions of housing units so that there's more housing to have. So in

00:14:38.340 other words, stop printing cash and start creating more of what cash buys. That's my common sense

00:14:45.880 solution to just inflation.

00:14:49.340 Okay. Would deregulating some of the agricultural controls that do lead to inflation involve supply

00:14:55.180 management? I mean, that's been proven to raise the cost of a lot of consumer staples with dairy

00:14:59.660 goods and poultry products and such. And it was a large part of the past conservative leadership

00:15:05.300 discussions.

00:15:06.340 I'm not proposing a change in that area. And the reason is that the farmers who own the quota

00:15:12.960 have had to pay millions of dollars for it. And furthermore, if we bought them out, then

00:15:19.300 it would cost more to do that than it would to keep the system that is in place right now.

00:15:25.420 Overall, I do support more choice and freedom in the agricultural sector. That's why I was

00:15:30.540 a part of the Harper government that got rid of the wheat board and unleashed the productivity

00:15:35.920 of our grains in our Western prairie provinces. And I'll also be reducing to other taxes and

00:15:46.260 simplifying regulations so that our farmers and ranchers can spend more time producing nutritious

00:15:52.600 food and less time filling out paperwork and being hounded by government bureaucrats.

00:15:57.260 Great. So in your campaign, do you plan on coming out West Alberta pretty soon?

00:16:02.000 I do. I should point out I was already in Saskatchewan, the province of my parents' birth. My folks

00:16:09.000 are from Saskatoon and Leoville in Saskatchewan. So I visited there. And of course, I'm from Calgary,

00:16:15.320 as you know, I'm born and raised there. My folks still live there. So I'm going to be back to visit

00:16:20.180 them and connect with my many Western family and friends in the great province of Alberta.

00:16:28.500 And I'll make sure you know about it when I have a date nailed down.

00:16:32.180 Great. Thanks. Well, I hope we'll get the opportunity to talk when you do come out here.

00:16:36.420 Is there anything else you'd add before I let you go?

00:16:39.780 Well, whenever someone comes to my office for a job, I always ask them, why do you want the job? So I have

00:16:45.940 to answer that question myself. I want to be prime minister to put you and every Canadian back in 1.00

00:16:52.420 control of their own lives by making Canada the freest nation on earth. That's my purpose. That's

00:16:59.700 what I've always believed. And that's why I'm in this. Well, thank you very much for joining me today,

00:17:04.740 Mr. Polyev. And we'll be watching your campaign with interest. Thank you for having me.

Western Standard - March 16, 2022

EXCLUSIVE： CPC leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre.

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