Peter Coleman, President of the National Citizens Coalition, joins me on the show to talk about the upcoming Canadian election, and why he thinks PM Justin Trudeau would make a great Prime Minister. We also discuss the impact of the French debate, and whether or not there is more to Mark Carney than meets the ear.
00:03:19.920I think he got the cost of the agenda that Canada deserves better.
00:03:23.400We have all the resources in the world, Nigel, and we should be shipping them to world markets and being a lot more prosperous than they are.
00:03:29.720But Carney's agenda is not to get the oil out of the ground or natural gas shift.
00:03:34.180And if he says different, he tries to come across as different depending on where he's speaking.
00:03:39.900He's not a guy that wants to develop our resources.
00:03:46.020That's an interesting observation you make about body language.
00:03:49.920And clearly, when somebody won't look at you, there's something going on there.
00:03:59.100Would you interpret that as contempt or just not wanting to, you know, feeling a little uneasy and therefore not wanting to confront your accuser?
00:04:13.580My dad used to say to me, Nigel, treat your enemies with respect because it drives them crazy.
00:04:17.700I thought that Paulie was respectful towards Carney.
00:04:22.080I don't think Carney's been used to in his jobs at the government of the Bank of England and Bank of Canada
00:07:20.500I think they're going to vote in droves and surprise people.
00:07:24.160The conservatives are strongly ahead in that category.
00:07:27.300They're behind with the boomers for some reason.1.00
00:07:30.980But you're seeing more and more ads now, Nigel, online saying young kids going to their parents and saying, and it's ads we've taken forward too, is you need to give your kids a better future.
00:07:41.300And a better future is not 10 more years of the same.
00:07:43.800Your kids deserve a responsible government like we had when Stephen Harper was prime minister.
00:07:49.080And to be honest, John Cretan, for a matter of fact, he was a decent prime minister in a lot of regards compared to what the Liberal Party is now.
00:07:56.140So I think the younger generation is going to go out and vote in numbers that haven't been seen before.
00:08:01.320And I think the polls that show that are not being represented as properly in the polling and the percentage that are showing right now.
00:08:10.080Well, that's an interesting proposition.
00:08:14.160Now, I've also heard it suggested that conservatives are less likely to respond to a pollster.
00:08:22.960Either they just resent the intrusion and don't even pick up the phone, or else they think my ideas are my own and you don't have a right to ask, and that there's a bias that would tend to present against conservatives in polls for those kinds of reasons.
00:08:45.820Have you any reason to think that the polls are skewed like that?
00:08:51.320I think there's a lot of quiet conservatives there.
00:08:53.760I mean, if you look at what's going on here in Ontario, I mean, it's ironic.
00:08:57.800Every sign you see damaged, you know, in the GTA, the 905, they're always conservative signs.
00:09:04.340They're always ones that are taken down.
00:09:05.820I think a lot of people that are going to vote conservative are reluctant to put signs up and do that because they don't want to be harassed and bothered by that.
00:09:14.060And I think that's the same with, to your point, Nigel, the polling is, how are they getting at these younger people under 45?
00:09:20.580that really don't spend any time on a, they don't have a landline.
00:09:24.700I know the pollsters try and get through online polling, which isn't very accurate,
00:09:29.260landlines, cell phones, but I think that that generation that's voting for the Conservatives now,0.99
00:09:34.560which used to be liberal in 2015, to be honest, are much tougher to reach.
00:09:38.680They're busy, they're working, and as you said, they have no interest in talking to pollsters.
00:09:42.820Yes. They also tend to draw their information from different sources than the older generation, which, according to our discussion just now, does answer the polls.
00:09:58.240They tend to take their information from social media, Twitter, Facebook, online newspapers such as the Western Standard here, whereas if I could compose a stereotype of the older voter, I'm thinking of a 75-year-old grandmother who watches the CBC, doesn't get a newspaper anymore, but really all she knows about what is going on is from the CBC.
00:10:28.240as opposed to her granddaughter or her grandson
00:10:32.840who is constantly on the phone scrolling through to see what there is,
00:10:38.160they would tend to come to different conclusions.
00:10:41.360And the one, the grandmother, is more likely to pick up the phone0.79
00:10:44.440and talk to the pollster, and the younger person wouldn't do that,
00:10:48.460but they would get out and vote because they're mad
00:10:50.240because they don't have a job or they do have a job
00:10:53.580and they can't buy a house and all the rage that you were talking about there.
00:10:58.180So when we're talking about the accuracy of the polls,
00:11:01.920I think your position is we can't really trust them.
00:11:05.640Well, look, I think your stereotype of the older voter is exactly right.0.99
00:11:09.380That's why people should listen like you and the Western Standard, Nigel,
00:11:13.360because CBC has obviously a clear bias, as most of the legacy media does.
00:11:19.240The online media tends to, as much as CBC people hate it,
00:11:23.420the online media tends to present the facts.
00:11:25.480if you research enough on all sides of the conversation,
00:12:49.400Nigel, when you figure that out, it's like tacking Jell-O to a wall and see if you can stick.
00:12:56.060I'm not convinced anybody can deal with Donald Trump necessarily, but the notion that Carney's the right guy, a global elitist who doesn't believe in developing resources, who doesn't believe in getting products to market, who doesn't believe in the military to any strength, doesn't believe in NATO, he believes in net zero, carbon zero, no gas running cars.
00:13:19.400Does anybody seriously think that's the dynamic that Donald Trump would enjoy as far as having to deal with on a business level?
00:13:25.960I think he'd have a much greater respect with Paulieff.
00:13:28.400I mean, people call him the mini-Trump, and I just find that laughable.
00:13:35.080There never will be another Trump in politics.
00:13:37.420And I think Paulieff is capable of dealing with Trump because he knows we have to get up off the mats and develop our resources and be energy independent.
00:13:46.800And if we'd done what we should have done 10 years ago, starting 10 years ago, Nigel, we'd have a much stronger hand, to your point, than we have right now.
00:13:54.080But we need to get going, and hopefully the people in Canada realize that we live in the greatest country in the world with all the resources that the world wants.
00:14:03.920But our government refuses to let them get the marketplace.
00:14:07.240And it's a crime how badly our finances have been dealt with, but it also can be turned around.
00:14:14.180Yes, I know it takes time, but I think Collier is much better for that because it's a different look.
00:14:19.980It's a different opportunity, and it's a much clearer set of eyes with what our real problems are than what Mark Carney's saying.
00:14:26.720And I think Carney's a wolf in sheep's clothing.
00:14:28.840I think he's saying stuff just to try and get himself elected.
00:14:31.260And he has no intention, in my view, of developing resources to things that matter to Canadians.
00:19:58.760but this country, they can't develop their resources,
00:20:00.580And all they do is get fought by a radical environmental minister who doesn't seem to care about anything other than, you know, climate change.
00:20:09.640When Canada's 1.6% of the world's greenhouse gases, if we could sell off our liquefied natural gas, for example, to China and India, we would take care of all that.
00:20:18.780And Canada's actually probably not contributing at all to greenhouse gases because we're carbon sink because of our trees.
00:20:23.940And if we can't develop our resources and get product to market, I think the people out west are going to be incredibly restless if the liberals get brought back in, heaven forbid, with any kind of mandate, because I don't think many people that are intelligent really believe that Carney's going to develop the resources.
00:20:42.640So if we can't develop the resources and we keep in an economic environment and an economic downturn, we have the lowest GDP growth, the G7 by far.
00:20:51.620We're not creating jobs. If we're creating jobs or government jobs, that's no future for our kids.0.52
00:20:57.340That's no future for the next generation. Kids are going to leave. Businesses are going to leave.0.99
00:21:02.060No economic investment is going to come from foreign sources.
00:21:05.960And that's not going to be a good recipe to try and keep this country whole as it is right now.
00:21:10.840Well, those are sad and sobering words