Western Standard - Media mayhem at the English debate

00:00:00.000 would you let Jeffrey Epstein watch your kids didn't think so what about his accomplice

00:00:11.180 Ghislaine Maxwell hard pass so why trust him Mark Carney Maxwell's friend not yours

00:00:30.000 Good day.

00:00:59.580 welcome to the cory morrigan show take two we're doing it on the good friday happy good friday i

00:01:05.820 guess to those who are observant and uh to whom it's important it's kind of one of those odd

00:01:11.140 holidays for a lot of people you know you kind of get one day off for the long weekend and it's

00:01:15.700 going to be either the friday or the monday or some places union places government jobs they get

00:01:21.000 both uh in this case though there's just too much going on to uh take the friday off so we've dragged

00:01:26.320 our poor producer John in here and we're going to report on the debate I mean this is a turning

00:01:31.720 point in the election now the advanced polling has opened up it's begun and that's been a new

00:01:37.080 trend a lot of people use advanced polls now it wasn't a big thing in the past but it's huge

00:01:41.340 so once those votes are registered those people are committed it's not going to change so people

00:01:47.940 who haven't made their minds up yet that's going to narrow more and more and uh you know it's

00:01:52.620 looking kind of questionable for the conservatives. We'll see. I got a number of guests coming on

00:01:57.420 today to talk about some things. We've got Erica Baroudis from the Macamie College. She's going to

00:02:03.380 come in and chat. We'll break down the debate a little more and talk in detail on those things.

00:02:07.940 Alexander Brown from the National Citizens Coalition is going to come on. We'll talk some

00:02:11.800 more federal issues there. And then Tracy Wilson is going to come on and we're going to discuss

00:02:16.300 firearm rights. That one keeps falling by the wayside. I mean, we had some justice talk on

00:02:20.640 some of the debates and other issues, but it's more been about who's going to ban more or less

00:02:24.500 firearms, not so much maybe we'll stop banning legally owned firearms. So I use that comment

00:02:32.260 scroll there. I see Shauna Vision and Mike checking in, send questions my way, notions,

00:02:38.780 ideas. I read them all. I don't necessarily read them all out, but it keeps things rolling along.

00:02:46.100 And Freedom Honey there, you know, Mike saying the freak out was staged so they could cancel

00:02:49.740 the unflattering questions for Carney. I don't know. I don't know. I think some people, I'm going

00:02:56.380 to talk a bit about that. I'll expand on it for people who might not have been sure, who didn't

00:02:59.560 watch everything. James Mesher saying lamestream media greedily trying to protect their turf.

00:03:04.820 So I'll kind of lay it out. Last night was the debates. Traditionally after the debates, every

00:03:09.200 leader year after year used to be this way would come out and they would do a media scrum, take a

00:03:14.440 certain number of questions. And it was really good. I mean, it used to be a good way to, if

00:03:19.840 there were questions missed in the debate or if there was something unusual in the debate or

00:03:22.980 whatever, media members could throw that to the leaders and the leaders could answer whether it's

00:03:28.480 a, you know, a question they want to hear or not. It was one more opportunity to get a feel for the

00:03:34.760 leaders in that event. Now, something that had happened with the debate commission a few years

00:03:39.940 ago, they banned independent media outlets from coming in. They wanted the good old legacy media

00:03:45.520 folks to be in there as usual, and they kept out the independent media sources. So Rebel Media,

00:03:52.500 to their credit with Ezra Levant, they did a court challenge and they got it put through.

00:03:56.240 And in 2021, the Debates Commission basically was forced to allow independent media outlets to come

00:04:01.820 in, which is great. It's a good development. Independent media is the future, whether legacy

00:04:05.580 media likes it or not. And it's growing. You need more voices and more questions. The problem is

00:04:10.380 now, so the debate commission kind of opened it up for a free for all on the French debate and

00:04:17.440 they had the media room and it sounds like there was no real controlled method though to get people

00:04:22.420 to the mics. So, you know, again, it depends on what you look at it with. Credit where due in a

00:04:28.340 sense that rebel media got up there, got a lot of reporters on the ground and they managed to take

00:04:33.980 up four of the questions at the microphones. Now, there's probably, what, a couple dozen media

00:04:40.100 outlets there. And only, even with all four leaders, only half of them would be able to get

00:04:47.040 through and get a question. And to have one outlet take up four of them. And then the thing was,

00:04:51.500 and I got to admit, as a viewer, I got annoyed because they started ragging the puck a bit,

00:04:55.720 some of them. They extended the questions and turned them more into statements rather than

00:04:59.900 questions. Again, it's free media. You can't tell media what to ask and what not to, but I think

00:05:05.220 they could have controlled it better. You can lay down some ground rules without infringing on the

00:05:12.680 free media. Like say, start a cycle where every outlet gets one person in line until you've gone

00:05:18.620 through them. And then maybe if you've got enough time, you can get the second round and start

00:05:23.240 getting some repeats from the outlets. And if you pointed out, Nezra pointed that out last night,

00:05:26.660 came on our show. CBC got four questions in as well, because they break it up. CBC Radio Canada

00:05:32.280 and CBC TV and the rest. No, it should be maybe just get one per, like they should have organized

00:05:38.740 it better. So it turned into a bit of a mess. It was frustrating. And, you know, some other

00:05:44.600 organizations, and again, I understand you want to make your mark, you want to be standing out

00:05:49.940 at the event, but they kind of were playing a bit of gotcha. And hey, there was a left-wing

00:05:54.340 Rover Media or some bloody thing there too. It was independent as well. And they were hung up on

00:05:59.020 the Gaza incident. So they were asking their questions along there, which again, they should

00:06:02.740 be allowed to, but we need to have some balance, you know, so it wasn't just as the CBC was just

00:06:07.980 mortified. It was hilarious watching their panel with the usual Pearl Clutchers, Rosie and Andrew

00:06:15.040 Coyne and the rest of them up there. They were just aghast that these independent outlets got up

00:06:20.480 there. But they shouldn't take advantage of that time, in my view anyways, to try and play gotcha

00:06:25.720 with the candidates. You want to ask candidates tough questions. You want to ask them questions

00:06:29.360 that the other media outlets wouldn't ask. But if you're trying to corner them or catch them,

00:06:34.680 I don't know how much value there is there. Either way, so this led to problems. And video,

00:06:41.440 some of the folks watching it last night, there was a large media room. Arjen Hodgson was there

00:06:47.760 amongst them. She said there's probably about 150 reporters in there. And that's what I'm talking

00:06:51.120 about. Like when you get the lineups for the scrums, it's just not logistically possible for

00:06:55.200 everybody to get through. But some were really upset. And you get the real snobby legacy media

00:07:01.540 folks who really don't think independent outlets belong there at all. And one fellow from the Hill

00:07:06.080 Times was just beaking and having a temper tantrum and going off in there. And he was yelling at

00:07:13.020 Ezra Levant and he was snottily talking to Kian Bextie and that was getting, you know, and that

00:07:19.760 got shared out on video and it turned into just a gong show in the media room among media members.

00:07:28.200 It's funny, you get in a debate, usually the moderator has to manage the candidates. In this

00:07:33.040 case, it sounds like it was the media members who went out of control, particularly again,

00:07:37.200 the one having his temper tantrum. It was kind of pathetic watching him whining and yelling at 0.99

00:07:41.240 Ezra. But the response that the debate commission did was just to ban all questions from all outlets 0.87

00:07:51.160 and throw out the baby with the bathwater. They couldn't figure out how to organize and manage

00:07:57.780 good control of a media setting post-debate, so they just tossed everybody out altogether,

00:08:03.640 which was tragic. It was not good. This was not a good development for media in general,

00:08:08.720 particularly for independent. The push from the Laurentian elitists and the legacy media and the

00:08:17.160 CBC, you know, the state-funded broadcasters is going to be stronger than ever to ban independent

00:08:22.900 media outlets from these kinds of events. And we got to keep pushing back and fighting against that.

00:08:28.960 So it was an interesting thing. Look up the videos, of course, after you're finished watching

00:08:34.460 my show. But you'll see some of the screaming matches going on out on the media floor. You

00:08:42.480 know, this is the one of the most important elections we've seen in a long time. And the

00:08:46.560 media shouldn't be the story, unfortunately, but it's turned into it. And what we're kind of

00:08:53.680 seeing too, again, is the last gasps of some legacy media. They feel victimized. They feel

00:08:58.420 entitled. They feel they're the only ones who should be there, who should have that right to

00:09:02.680 sit in those chairs and question the leaders. And they don't. And they're coming towards their end.

00:09:08.520 But go out with dignity, guys. Or improve your game. Do better. Instead of screaming at the

00:09:14.960 up-and-comers. It's not going to help. But I lay the fall to this mess on the Debates Commission.

00:09:23.980 Ironically, they picked the moderator. One of the things I'll point out for the moderation

00:09:27.500 with Paken was great. It was one of those rare times when you really didn't know where the

00:09:35.700 moderator stood politically. He didn't interject with any of his political opinions on things,

00:09:40.480 as we've seen in American debates. It's been terrible with moderators coming in and they're

00:09:44.740 debating the candidates rather than the candidates debating each other. We saw a little bit of that

00:09:48.780 even in the Canadian-French debate. Paken kept his views to himself and seemed balanced throughout

00:09:55.120 the whole thing. I guess

00:09:57.080 some of the questions about, you know, I see

00:09:58.860 Wildrose pointing out a commenter, if there

00:10:01.000 was a winner last night, she's saying it would be

00:10:02.800 Pierre Polyev. Maybe.

00:10:06.080 It's,

00:10:06.900 I could say it's possible.

00:10:08.980 I mean, these kind of debates, usually you'll get

00:10:10.960 every party is going to say that their candidate won

00:10:13.000 when they came out of it.

00:10:14.860 I think perhaps Polyev did

00:10:16.920 better than all the rest,

00:10:18.940 but was it a blowout

00:10:20.820 knockdown? You know, did it move the

00:10:22.940 needle for him? Was it a

00:10:24.980 large enough win, and I don't think so. I mean, it could be worse. You can also have a disaster.

00:10:30.320 It can go badly, and you can lose support, and I don't think Pauly have lost any support last night.

00:10:34.340 Carney, though, I don't think he lost any either. He kind of held his ground. I didn't like how he

00:10:40.820 treated things. One of the things that was pointed out, if you watch the debate, Carney wouldn't look

00:10:44.980 at anybody. He would just look at the camera. You know, in most debates, candidates will turn,

00:10:50.660 address their questions to each other, and debate with each other, and you watch it.

00:10:53.580 not Kearney. Kearney would just stare straight ahead. Polyev is looking at Kearney,

00:10:58.540 asking questions of him. You want that engagement between the two people. You want that eye contact

00:11:02.920 between the two people. And I think this was a tactic just to keep Kearney from being rattled.

00:11:11.500 You know, it's easier to stare at a camera, as I'm doing right now, and say your thing without

00:11:17.280 having to see somebody actually looking back at you. You don't have that feeling of an engagement

00:11:22.640 with another person necessarily. I mean, there is one. I've seen the commenters here, but it's not

00:11:26.300 the same as being in a room face to face. And Carney wanted to avoid that. They knew that there

00:11:31.340 was going to be a gang up on Carney in this debate. That's just the nature of these things.

00:11:35.980 That's when you're the front runner. That's when you're the incumbent. And I think they told him

00:11:40.700 just to keep himself from getting in trouble, just stare ahead. Kenzie's saying Carney looked

00:11:48.840 off the side. I think he really looked at the cameras. Well, I don't know, maybe a little to

00:11:51.720 the side of the cameras, but he wouldn't look at the other candidates. That's the thing. He would

00:11:55.520 not engage. But I mean, Carney's skin is thin. We know that. We've seen that with media before.

00:12:03.960 He doesn't take to it well. And I think they were worried. That's where a candidate can slip and

00:12:08.360 lose something. And they were worried about that. So they, you know, make sure, coach him. There's

00:12:16.660 always a lot of coaching before these debates. And just said, look, stare ahead. Don't let those

00:12:21.240 guys get to you. Just keep making your answers. And that's what he did. But it came across as

00:12:25.120 James commenter saying, look cold and avoid, you know, looking at the camera. Perhaps fair enough,

00:12:30.020 but he doesn't need to look warm. He just needed to look solid. And I think he did.

00:12:37.820 So the discussion, Wildrose asked if I have an election prediction and Mavro's saying, yeah,

00:12:43.220 my last prediction was a liberal minority. And that's both, that's right. I mean, again,

00:12:47.820 you're throwing spaghetti at a wall. I'm just guessing. Uh, I still feel we're looking at a

00:12:53.400 liberal minority. I don't mind being wrong. I don't. Uh, I think the liberals are going to

00:12:59.140 slip a little more over the next couple of, you know, we're not even a couple of weeks left

00:13:02.220 anymore. I think, uh, but I don't think it's going to turn to the point where they're going

00:13:07.120 to lose that lead. I don't understand it. I don't see the appeal of them. I mean, I, I don't see

00:13:13.180 how people can flip that switch so quickly with themselves after having almost 10 years of such

00:13:19.760 a terrible government to say, oh, they changed the guy at the front, even though he was the guy in

00:13:24.980 the back room the whole time, but they've moved him to the front. Everything's better now. I'll

00:13:29.820 return to the liberal fold. All is well. Let's give him another four years, which might lead to

00:13:34.500 eight years or 12 years. I don't understand. I mean, honestly, if I'd have had 10 years

00:13:39.800 of conservative government and they sucked, I would vote against them. That's how it works. 0.67

00:13:47.060 In fact, every government must be turned over now and then. If they're in too long, it goes

00:13:54.860 badly. It always does. They get too entrenched. They get too entitled. You get too many inside

00:13:59.500 deals going on. You need to flush them like a toilet now and then and get a fresh start,

00:14:04.780 even if it's from liberal, you know, from conservative to liberal. I live in Alberta.

00:14:09.180 We had the progressive conservatives in power from 1971 until, well, what was it when they

00:14:15.700 finally got turfed out, you know, 2015, I think. I mean, it's insane. You know, I was middle-aged

00:14:23.200 before I saw a second government in Alberta, and that's not healthy for democracy. I mean,

00:14:29.900 there were good governments. Ralph Klein did some good things as the premier,

00:14:32.420 but there was a lot of rot within that party and it was not healthy for Alberta. It wasn't

00:14:38.380 healthy for democracy. It just was not good in general. Yet people think that the liberals with

00:14:45.540 the amount of, I mean, that's usually the thing that nails the liberals no longer. They're always

00:14:49.000 prone to corruption. You know, the Gomery inquiry with Chrétien and now, you know, the endless

00:14:56.800 scandals with Trudeau, but there's something with Laurentian Canada. They'll just set it aside.

00:15:01.780 They'll let it go. Give them another five years, four years. I don't understand it,

00:15:08.320 but that's where we're sitting. Let's see. You know, Mavro's saying, you know, what hasn't

00:15:15.100 seemed to happen is a release of a scandal. Like with Trudeau with the black face. I wonder if 0.72

00:15:19.960 there's going to be a last minute revelation to come against Kearney. You know, it's interesting

00:15:22.820 because, yeah, if you're a party and you're sitting on something that could very potentially

00:15:26.840 be devastating for your opponent, usually you're going to drop it just before voting time.

00:15:34.880 And there hasn't been anything of the sort coming out, which is making me think there

00:15:37.880 isn't anything, which is a good thing. I mean, I mean, I know a scandal can turn the pages and

00:15:41.120 things, but I mean, I'm glad there's no bomb and old murder conviction on one of the candidates

00:15:46.640 or something like that that's going to pop out of the woodworks. But if you were going to do it,

00:15:52.780 as I said, the advance polls open today. Any party that was going to do it would do it

00:15:57.060 yesterday or the day before because they want to make sure they hit every possible voter

00:16:01.940 with this apparent scandal. We saw a nasty incident of it in Calgary actually four years ago during

00:16:09.220 the municipal elections with Sean Chu, for people not familiar with it. But Sean Chu

00:16:15.900 was an incumbent city councillor. He'd been in for a couple of terms. He was a former police officer

00:16:21.840 and somebody had brought up some, some disciplinary things where it looks like 0.89

00:16:26.180 Sean had done something pretty stupid and, and, uh, it wasn't illegal, but while he was an officer, 0.81

00:16:31.580 he had, uh, I guess, relations with a girl who turned out to be under age, like not, you know, 0.98

00:16:37.800 child, but yeah, under 18. And, uh, you know, he went through the disciplinary hearings and the

00:16:43.940 rest and got cleared, but that was from back in the nineties yet somehow it all kind of came back

00:16:48.960 into the news scroll just a few days before the election vote. And the funny thing was the people

00:16:54.000 who sat, because they did, they sat on that bomb and tried to release it to do the maximum amount

00:16:59.000 of damage to them. If they'd have done it a week earlier to catch the advance polls, they probably

00:17:04.280 would have wiped them out. But instead they waited all the way right until the general election day

00:17:08.280 and it wasn't enough. It knocked him down. He just barely won it. But they kind of, their bomb

00:17:14.700 didn't quite work the way they hoped it would. So we'll see. I don't think there's going to be

00:17:17.980 anything like that coming out now. So let's bring Erica Barutis in and talk more on things. Hey, 0.96

00:17:23.960 welcome back. Long time no see. Yeah, it's just been a couple hours.

00:17:29.220 And for those not familiar or didn't see Erica last night, she's a director of applied policy

00:17:35.640 and politics. What do we got here? Politics and public affairs at Macamie College.

00:17:40.260 I was going to say, I like crapped on Derek last night for not knowing

00:17:43.540 and I gave you a Nigel credit and then you just screwed it up.

00:17:47.500 I didn't fully screw it up.

00:17:49.460 It's applied politics and public affairs at Macamay College.

00:17:51.880 Okay, I got it right before it.

00:17:53.920 And because of that, it got me all self-conscious about it today.

00:17:58.060 So, yes, what an interesting night.

00:18:02.340 I've been mostly talking about the media aspect,

00:18:04.400 which shouldn't really dominate what happened in a debate.

00:18:07.740 Maybe I'll turn the page a little back to the debate

00:18:09.780 and just get you to kick things off with a summary.

00:18:12.160 what did you take away from last night? You know what? I think all of the candidates or at least

00:18:17.860 the two front runners both played it pretty safe. If we look at polling today, there's lots of

00:18:22.560 individuals that say Pierre performed better, but Carney's still more likable. So I think that

00:18:29.120 both camps are probably happy with how they performed. Overall, I don't think that there

00:18:35.940 was a clear winner except maybe the moderator because I thought he did a really good job,

00:18:40.080 which I'm usually very critical of, and that there is some bias, especially when done by the

00:18:44.860 CBC or Rosie Barton is asking questions. But I thought he did a great job. I don't know who he's

00:18:49.960 voting for. He kept everyone accountable. I would say that the NDP, I don't know if I'm allowed to

00:18:56.740 say shit the bed, but I'm going to. This is my Friday show. This one doesn't go to the cable 0.99

00:19:02.360 channels. So I mean, you don't have to go to the ones that'll make people's ears bleed. But yeah,

00:19:06.760 we can see the odd swear today. Okay. Perfect. So he, yeah, I think that it was, it was really

00:19:13.360 disappointing to see. I know that Jake Meek can do better. It almost looked like he was saying

00:19:18.160 farewell. I bid you adieu. I don't think I'm going to win my seat. So I'm just going to be rude,

00:19:24.280 interrupt people. I'm not going to follow the process. And he, he just, he just looked like

00:19:30.180 very amateur hour. Now, my favorite highlight was actually Francois Blanchet, who I think did the

00:19:37.400 best job for the Conservatives, and I don't think Pierre needed, this was not his role last night,

00:19:42.500 was to really pressure the Liberals, especially with how they're actually going to support

00:19:51.440 Quebec. And in this case, hopefully what that translates into is some of those seats that are

00:19:58.840 liberal dominated with the bloc behind, that the bloc can pick up some of those seats, which

00:20:03.700 is pretty important for the conservatives and the bloc in this case. So overall, it was actually a

00:20:09.620 pretty boring debate. There wasn't really any zingers. I think that they all did fair or did 1.00

00:20:17.460 their job with the exception of the NDP leader. And that, you know, as I think we talked last

00:20:25.000 night, there's such a small number of undivided undecideds where it's six to 7% that I don't

00:20:30.940 really know how much this is going to sway voters one way or the other. But I do want to give props

00:20:37.380 that like Pierre Polyev needed to look like prime minister. And he did that last night.

00:20:41.680 Yeah. And I think perhaps people who were leaning conservative made up their mind to stick

00:20:45.800 conservative, but from a conservative mind, likewise, the people who might've been mushy

00:20:51.340 liberal supporters, they were probably impressed by Carney. I mean, he came across solid. And

00:20:57.440 for those of us hoping or expecting or thinking that we might see some movement in the polls or

00:21:03.780 something after this, I don't think the debate's going to be the factor that's going to make it

00:21:07.180 happen if it does. Yeah. And you know what? I think that the conservative campaign has been

00:21:11.100 focusing on, you know, Carney's kind of Jekyll and Hyde. He says one thing, he does it different.

00:21:16.320 He's not taking accountability for the liberal record. He is not getting hit by mainstream media on his lack of disclosure of his investments. He's not getting hit for the Brookfield thing. I don't know what it is about liberals and being like Teflon, but it seems to not be phasing him. He didn't let it phase him either.

00:21:37.900 All the questions, a lot were directed at him, obviously, from both the Conservatives and the Bloc and sometimes the NDP, although they were kind of spraying and praying who they were going after on whichever issue.

00:21:51.500 There's lots of media training feedback I could give Mr. Singh right now, but I don't care how he does, except hopefully he just takes a few vote splits on the left for us.

00:22:01.560 yeah I think overall again it was there was they all tried to get immigration talk in there even

00:22:10.040 though that was on the French debate I think if you wanted to look at the difference of who can

00:22:14.560 best represent all of Canada the French debate I really think showed Carney's lack of French

00:22:22.620 and his lack of ability to really truly speak to that demographic which I think he he's taking for

00:22:28.700 granted right now. So, I mean, if somebody was going to play kind of the cold strategic look

00:22:33.300 at the game and everything, you would almost hope, okay, Paulie have held his ground, but you'd

00:22:37.380 almost hope that then that Singh would shine or, you know, Blanchet, because that at least, I mean,

00:22:43.080 you don't want to rely on the actions of others for your win, but still strategy's real. If the

00:22:48.640 bloc takes a bigger bite out of Quebec, if Singh could hold on some of his lower mainland seats,

00:22:53.400 you know the electoral picture could look better for the conservatives if only for a minority

00:22:58.720 government but Blanchet was solid but but seeing if anything lost ground I mean if there was a

00:23:04.240 loser in last night I think it solidly lands on him. Absolutely and I think ultimately you're

00:23:09.380 right like that does impact the the conservative vote this is a two horse race and we needed those

00:23:18.260 two to perform to help with close that gap that we're seeing in some of the polls. Blanchette

00:23:24.680 knew his assignment and you didn't ever see Polyev go after the block, nor did he really go

00:23:33.080 after the NDP because he needed both of them to shine. So as much as you're all against each other,

00:23:37.820 there is strategy within these debates and hope for some vote splitting by your opponents to help

00:23:47.400 you form a majority government. So there's a lot of strategizing outside of just, I need to perform

00:23:53.380 the best I can. Who do you, who do you throw grenades at? And I think Singh just came in 1.00

00:24:00.120 upside down. Yeah, no, he dropped the grenade at his own feet. And I mean, you know, as some of

00:24:05.980 a sports fan, at least when it comes to football, my team, it just seems to love to get to the

00:24:09.860 playoffs almost, but then it's going to rely on a weird combination. Okay. If that team loses this

00:24:14.460 and this team ties that and everything else, we can still squeak in. But if you played a better

00:24:18.660 game before you got to that point, you wouldn't have to rely on the others to win. One of the

00:24:24.320 tougher questions, the Conservatives haven't been able to get their feet under them in this campaign

00:24:27.960 at all. What went wrong? For the Conservatives? Yes. Why can't they just seem to get a grip?

00:24:35.180 They've been preparing for years. Yeah. You know what? I think it goes back to the tactic that

00:24:40.560 they've had. They have been campaigning as opposition since Pierre took office. I think

00:24:46.460 he's done a fabulous job of that. I think the challenging part isn't really what the

00:24:52.720 Conservative campaign has done, because I know there's been some criticisms of having to pivot

00:24:57.340 to talk about the tariffs. I mean, both individuals have very similar plans. I think it was knowing

00:25:04.020 your opponent. And in this case, unfortunately, Carney has done a decent job of veering away from

00:25:11.680 being accountable for the nine year horrific government and the Liberal Party record. And,

00:25:18.300 you know, looking back, if I could go back in time, I think that the campaign, the conservative

00:25:24.980 should have been going after the Liberal government, not Trudeau, even though he was

00:25:29.100 hated, because now we're in a position where people are not the average voter is not looking

00:25:33.820 at Carney's Liberals and Trudeau's Liberals is the same. So there's always things you would do

00:25:40.040 in hindsight. I think that from the tactics of why they were coming up behind is that

00:25:45.920 some of their messaging, I think, isn't maybe resonating with that Ontario-centric voter

00:25:53.700 that I don't care about, but the electoral system that we have in Canada does. And I think that's

00:25:59.460 where Pierre took maybe some of that for granted going into this writ period.

00:26:05.060 So the pencils are hitting the paper now. I mean, they're really down to the crush.

00:26:08.980 What can the Conservatives do in this next nine, 10 days to try and take this back?

00:26:15.320 Yeah, I think the focus is just talking to those undecideds, talking to mushy middle voters that

00:26:21.780 just need to really focus on where the Conservatives will be strong. And that is

00:26:26.760 like cost of living, affordability and the economy. So again, I think that at the start of

00:26:33.940 this writ period, we were all hyper-focused on tariffs. If we look at the polls, it was a

00:26:39.240 significant gap between tariffs and Trump. With the economy, we have seen that close because

00:26:46.120 we're seeing the effects of the tariffs. It's not a hypothetical, it's a reality now. And I think

00:26:51.560 regardless of who becomes government that tactic against trump and the tariffs will be pretty

00:26:57.220 similar for both both leaders so the conservatives need to talk about what the conservatives do best

00:27:01.480 which is putting money back in the pockets of canadians um and again differentiating i think

00:27:07.920 what will help maybe all of canada maybe not quebec as strongly because of what blanchette

00:27:13.500 said last night but is getting our natural resources to market and differentiating that

00:27:19.520 C-69 does mean something. And that Carney isn't going to remove that. He has been asked and he

00:27:28.360 won't. So what does that really mean? But they just got to focus on the economy and their bread

00:27:32.520 and butter, because I don't think people are paying attention to the minor details of how

00:27:38.340 they might differently approach the tariffs. Yeah. And in one area I could see that probably

00:27:42.960 have really tried to make an issue, and he did a good job on, was justice. I think it's difficult

00:27:48.480 to defend somebody who's saying, look, we want to take these multiple murderers, these very

00:27:54.300 dangerous people and put them away for life. People have seen too many cases of very dangerous

00:27:58.720 people being released or just terribly twisted murderers, but putting families of victims

00:28:06.080 through misery as they got to face a parole hearing every couple of years. And when the

00:28:11.680 Liberals defend against that, it's a good spot to twist a knife a little, but I don't know if

00:28:15.700 it'll be a vote changer. I agree. Like first gun owner myself. And when we're talking about the

00:28:23.940 buyback, I thought that was one of the weakest moments of Carney when he really didn't, he

00:28:28.920 didn't lean into the liberal buyback strategies that there's some corrections he'd need to make

00:28:33.000 them, but he doesn't have any real plan. He can't say that they've have and are going to forever

00:28:39.540 invest in our military, that they're going to invest in border security. So I think that was

00:28:47.300 from a wedge issue perspective where Pierre really said, like, listen, let's just be tough on crime

00:28:52.920 and criminals. We're not here to defend criminals. We're here to defend the victims. And I thought

00:28:58.840 that was maybe some of his stronger messaging, but that is not a ballot box question. And I think

00:29:05.300 that it's, again, how do you campaign to that Toronto centre that thinks guns are bad things

00:29:11.120 and that even though facts say that gun owners are the responsible ones and that murders

00:29:17.940 and crimes are happening by illegal guns being smuggled 90% over in Canada, I just don't

00:29:25.740 see it being the TSN turning point for voters.

00:29:29.420 I think it solidifies the Conservative vote.

00:29:32.420 I just don't know if that's where people...

00:29:35.300 are going right now with the ballot box question.

00:29:40.100 Yeah. Well, if I had to live in Toronto Centre,

00:29:41.780 I'd want my firearms more than ever, but I'm going to make it.

00:29:46.120 I'm going to have my nine millimeter with me.

00:29:47.880 Yeah. I'm going to keep my rural Alberta location for my place of living as

00:29:52.720 long as I humanly can. So, so before I let you go again,

00:29:56.540 I appreciate you joining me on a good Friday. Where can people find you?

00:30:00.080 Let's talk quickly about that, you know, applied politics and public affairs.

00:30:03.140 so i mean this is basically training to become a wonk uh well we wouldn't really that's not really

00:30:09.220 our slogan um but no i i created this because when i got into politics or i took a political science

00:30:15.780 degree appreciated it for what i learned but it never really helped me with how do i apply that

00:30:21.540 in the the field of public affairs or when i got into politics there was also no hands-on training

00:30:27.140 for you know i learned how to write a 10-page paper how do i write a briefing note how do i

00:30:31.140 brief a minister? What are key messages? How do I create talking points? How do I run a local

00:30:36.040 campaign? Or when I ran for Senate, I mean, that's its own anomaly of a campaign, but there's no real

00:30:42.400 book on how to do that or what are those skills that are maybe also transferable. So this is a

00:30:48.080 two-year diploma with three practicums where students can get that hands-on experience to

00:30:53.040 see what field or part of the public affairs and politics sector they want to go into, whether they

00:30:58.260 want to, you know, live in the trenches of campaigns and elections, or they want to be a

00:31:02.180 public affairs expert, either working for not-for-profit public or private entities. We teach you all of

00:31:09.000 those skills from how a bill is made, passed, how do you influence it, to stakeholder relations,

00:31:16.640 briefing notes, and then, you know, how to ask people for money and political fundraising.

00:31:21.620 That is one of the hard parts. No, and I love that, the applied part. I mean, I went to SAIT,

00:31:25.840 again, you know, where you can get some direct, get you to work on what you want to do. I mean,

00:31:30.460 it's great to take poli-sci and spend a whole course discussing John Locke, but it's not going

00:31:35.060 to help you when you're suddenly working for a candidate or an elected official. You need a

00:31:39.500 little more hands-on for that sort of thing. So this finds the balance between, yeah, like

00:31:43.980 what I say is I have a BAMBS or dinner table conversation. I can talk about philosophers,

00:31:49.660 which is great, but how does that actually translate into a skill set? As well as, like I

00:31:54.160 said in campaigns and elections, we're not going to waste your time in this two years. It's a lot

00:31:59.920 of the application practical side of things and critical thinking. And so we are based in a good

00:32:06.560 Alberta college in Edmonton and Calgary, but this is an online program because we know that this is

00:32:11.760 a national opportunity that people can learn for many, many sectors that they're in. And like I

00:32:18.060 said, it's, um, if people want to learn more, go to macamaycollege.com and check out our program

00:32:24.020 Applied Politics. We have another pilot, but we officially launch in September. And like I said,

00:32:29.180 it'll be evenings for those that work full time, uh, and also online so that, you know, you don't

00:32:35.580 have to leave Brooks or Lacombe or Lacrete or anywhere in this country, uh, to be able to get

00:32:43.020 that education. Right on. Well, thanks for laying all that out. And thanks for joining us today. I

00:32:48.580 hope we get to see you on election night. We'll have the ongoing panels and stuff going on. And

00:32:52.900 I think I'll be taking the QE2 down to hang out with you, gents. It looked like you had fun last

00:32:57.520 night all sitting there. So I want to be a part of the party. Well, and you know, from our past

00:33:01.620 traditions, it usually seems that Derek dumps the later part of the election on me and all the beer

00:33:05.540 and pizza goes on behind me. So it can be a fun time for some people. Okay. So how do I get on

00:33:09.760 team Derek for that. You apply once you get here. Okay, perfect. All right. Thanks, Erica. We'll

00:33:16.160 talk again soon. Okay, see ya. Great. So again, Erica Baroudis and yes, the Director of Applied

00:33:21.980 Politics and Public Affairs at Macamie College. There we got it right. Okay, let's get to a

00:33:26.960 couple of the commenters. We got a little bit to chat before the next guest there. Stan Bifford

00:33:32.600 saying, talking to lots of Easterners and the reason stuff isn't sticking to the Liberals is

00:33:36.380 most of them really don't like Pierre. Most of you don't want to hear this, but Pierre's support

00:33:40.280 for the convoy is really working against him with most Canadians. It played well out West,

00:33:44.340 but that's not where he needs support. I think there's something to it. We've got a hard time.

00:33:49.800 We've got a degree of personal bias. I certainly do. And that's why I find myself mystified. I

00:33:55.380 like Pierre. I always kind of have, but it doesn't, that's me. I mean, the reality is he has to appeal

00:34:01.020 to more people and he's having a hard time appealing to people out East and you need those

00:34:05.520 votes too. So what does he got to do? I don't know. They've got to sort that out. The convoy

00:34:09.880 support, you know, it depends. People have tired over it, but there's a lot of negative imagery

00:34:17.160 with it. It's unfortunate he's still wearing it. I think a factor that hit though, I mean, again,

00:34:23.900 and I've seen some of the commenters talking along that, it's the Trump factor. Nobody bloody saw it

00:34:29.220 coming. I mean, we saw Trump coming. He always campaigned on tariffs. That wasn't new to him,

00:34:33.880 but just to come on like a freight train, like he did to come on as abrasively as the, you know,

00:34:40.000 that America 51 thing. I've talked about that on the shows before. I mean, I'm a guy who wrote a

00:34:44.360 book on, on Western sovereignty. I'm not a person who's got this loyalist jingoistic love for the

00:34:50.280 federation being united, but at the same time, I don't want an outsider poking around on my affairs

00:34:55.520 in here. That's, that ends up making people circle the wagons. And when things ironically,

00:35:01.700 even though, you know, during the convoy, people were called extreme for waving the Canadian flag.

00:35:06.160 And now the liberals, and they did it very effectively. They pivoted fast. They latched

00:35:12.840 onto that. They said, we're team Canada. We're holding it together. We're going to be united.

00:35:18.020 And it's, again, it makes us want to rip our hair out. Like, what do you mean? You guys were the

00:35:22.120 ones telling us for years that we're genocidal assholes and we should look at our shoes whenever, 0.99

00:35:26.160 you know, somebody talks to us because we're a terrible nation, but they pulled it off and we 0.98

00:35:33.020 can get upset about it or we can accept it, but then just try and figure out how the heck to deal

00:35:37.660 with it. And that's a tougher question. I guess I'd be working as a political strategist if I

00:35:42.980 knew how to change the conservatives direction and things can still happen. I mean, the last

00:35:47.460 couple of weeks of a campaign are critical. Charmaine Kirk saying, Pierre is a master at

00:35:53.500 debating, oh, you must admit Blanchett scored some zingers. And there's no doubt about it.

00:35:57.940 You see that out of so many people, whether it's left or right, whether you like it or not, Blanchett,

00:36:01.900 he's a bit arrogant, but he's personable. And I think part of the reason, some of it is, well,

00:36:06.560 he's very experienced. He's comfortable up there. He's been in that circumstance a number of times.

00:36:11.960 And his mission is so much more simple than the other politicians. And he makes no bones about it.

00:36:17.140 I don't even know if it's his personality that people like so much out of him, but the fact that

00:36:20.900 he's as transparent as it gets. You don't have to wonder where Blanchet's coming from. He's there

00:36:25.960 for Quebec. He's not even insulting the rest of the nation. He's just saying, I don't care about

00:36:30.840 the rest of the nation. I care about Quebec. And every policy that comes up, he looks at it from

00:36:35.680 the frame of how does it benefit Quebec? That might be maddening to a lot of people, but it's

00:36:40.960 honest. And, you know, maybe it's time some other politicians learn from him. But being in that

00:36:47.440 comfortable position and knowing his mission, it allowed him to be a little more personable,

00:36:51.420 take some jabs, have some laughs during the campaign. It was important for him last night.

00:36:55.640 He wanted to make up some ground. He certainly is taking a beating in Quebec more than he expected

00:37:00.760 to out of this whole thing. But, you know, he's just in a better position to go into those things.

00:37:10.300 Let's see now. What else have we got? Back and forth on whether or not Pauly have supported

00:37:15.660 the convoy look you know he was supportive of the people in it he was uh uh he never came out and

00:37:25.660 said you should block the streets or any of those things it was a tough balance for him i mean most

00:37:30.220 of the people out there were of a conservative leaning and uh you know what do you do it's this

00:37:35.580 unfortunate game of gotcha and it works and it's painful and the liberals are masters at playing it

00:37:41.500 and we saw that and and there's no doubt there was some staging i mean there were enough odd

00:37:47.980 people at the convoy you didn't need to stage it further but if you wanted to make them look extreme

00:37:52.140 they planted people there and i just remember aspects of that like one knob where you know

00:37:58.280 walking around with a confederate flag and whatnot and he was fully masked of course

00:38:03.080 you gotta remember the convoy protesters the real ones they were anti-mask people at that time the

00:38:08.580 last thing they were going to want to do they were making a point of walking around crowds without 0.97

00:38:12.020 masks but this ass clown's walking around with a full mask he couldn't recognize him he couldn't 0.99

00:38:15.680 see him he walked into the crowd the crowd got upset with him and basically pushed him out of 1.00

00:38:20.580 there said get out of here you don't represent us take that garbage somewhere else and he left

00:38:25.980 but the bottom line was all the optics now showed this confederate flag walking around amongst the 0.88

00:38:30.620 convoy crowd and the legacy media happily played it up and the liberals happily dumped it on the

00:38:34.540 conservatives. And then there was a conservative who was, I don't remember if it was Polly of

00:38:39.320 himself or another conservative, but it was doing an interview. I think it was another MP

00:38:42.620 and somebody was waving a Canadian flag and it had a bunch of writing on. I think this one might

00:38:47.300 have been a convoy supporter, but didn't help with things because he'd drawn a swastika on the flag.

00:38:53.640 I'm going to guess here that this person's intent was just saying that, you know, the Canadian

00:38:58.060 government cracking down on people over the pandemic or our Nazis and fascists and the rest.

00:39:02.520 okay, fine. But again, you don't do any bloody favors. It makes it look like you're a Nazi

00:39:06.440 supporter. And that's how it gets painted. The other weird one, of course, was on those back

00:39:10.860 steps where a handful of, again, masked people in the distance. Somebody happened to have the

00:39:15.480 camera there at the right place at the right time. And they actually had an outright swastika flag.

00:39:19.500 They appeared quickly enough for a few pictures to be taken and then vanished. Nobody else saw

00:39:22.640 pictures. Nobody saw them come. Nobody saw them go. When you can see the Liberal Party actually

00:39:27.100 going to plant buttons in a conservative gathering to try and sabotage things, do you

00:39:31.960 put it beyond those kind of people to go out and literally with a flag, I guess you could say a

00:39:36.620 false flag, go in and try and sabotage the convoy thing. No, they definitely did. But it makes it

00:39:41.480 really difficult for the public who aren't drilling deeper, the public who was lukewarm on that

00:39:45.100 protest. They weren't fully against it. Maybe I'm not fully for it, but they worried about extreme

00:39:48.380 elements. And Polyev looked like he's supporting those extreme elements. People get uncomfortable.

00:39:54.980 I'm not saying it's fair. I'm not saying it's right, but it's real. And that's kind of what

00:40:01.040 happens. So he's, it's just so wrong in so many ways with the Trump factor coming in this sudden

00:40:07.360 Canadian loyal push and the least loyal party of them all managed to embrace the momentum out of

00:40:14.480 this. And as I said last, I think it was last Wednesday on my monologue though, we're seeing

00:40:22.620 the conservatives rising up in the polls a little bit and hopefully that continues. I'm hoping in

00:40:27.140 this last part of the campaign people actually start looking at the issues and the policies

00:40:31.240 because part of the reason they start creeping up I think is that Trump shut the hell up for a

00:40:37.280 little while he hasn't been poking at us he's been doing his things but he hasn't stirred things up

00:40:41.820 in Canada more than normal as he had been for the first half of the campaign so that took things out

00:40:47.420 of the news cycle and let people start looking at the policies because if you look at the policies 0.97

00:40:50.920 you look at the actions you look at the record of the liberals and they suck you know what people 0.99

00:40:55.760 suddenly can make up their mind and say, wow, these guys stink. You're right. I want to change 1.00

00:41:00.080 this. I want to get out of this. But we hadn't had a chance to get a breather and have people

00:41:06.360 look at things a little more closely. Part of what we have difficulty with is people,

00:41:13.320 the ones watching this show, these are engaged political people. The people who watch political

00:41:19.660 shows are ones that want to see things closely. And we're more in tune with the issues. Your

00:41:25.140 average Canadian, unfortunately, often only pays attention maybe for a couple of hours towards the

00:41:29.900 end of an election period and makes their mind up. We can't understand that mindset. That's not like

00:41:34.360 us. But we've got to realize that's the majority of the voters. They don't wrap themselves around

00:41:41.000 the issues as hard as we do. People don't until they get a kick in the ass. A lot of them. You 1.00

00:41:45.260 know, people don't pay attention to justice issues until it's their car window that got smashed.

00:41:49.040 People don't pay attention to the addiction issues until it's their cousin or nephew or son

00:41:53.460 who got addicted and got into serious trouble.

00:41:57.700 People don't worry about the economy

00:41:59.660 until suddenly they find themselves without a job

00:42:01.600 and not sure how they're going to make their mortgage payment.

00:42:04.400 Unfortunately, politics always kind of comes down to the same thing.

00:42:07.800 People, it's what's in it for me.

00:42:10.240 And the majority of the people, if they're comfortable

00:42:12.100 and they're doing okay, they're not going to closely pay attention.

00:42:16.080 So we hope that they will.

00:42:18.160 Vamp Fashion saying, no, Corey, people only need to look at,

00:42:21.000 you know, we need change, not four more years.

00:42:22.880 We agree on that, but not enough of the electorate perhaps does.

00:42:26.600 Hopefully in this next, yeah, nine, 10 days, that's it.

00:42:30.860 It seemed to have taken a long time.

00:42:33.180 It seemed to have gone quickly at the same time.

00:42:36.080 But to try and change the trajectory, well, momentum's everything.

00:42:40.020 The polls started showing a little more movement on the Conservatives,

00:42:42.400 and that could change between now and then.

00:42:44.080 I mean, a lot of people were predicting that Trump was going to lose that last election,

00:42:48.040 and he certainly won it quite comfortably when push came to shove in the end.

00:42:52.540 So, you know, nothing's a done deal, that's for sure.

00:42:56.080 Okay, let's get to my guest.

00:42:57.040 I've been blathering at you long enough.

00:42:59.000 It's Alexander Brown of the National Citizens Coalition,

00:43:01.820 and we'll break some more stuff down in federal politics.

00:43:04.820 Hey, Alex, how you doing?

00:43:06.020 Hey, Corey.

00:43:06.820 First time, long time.

00:43:07.780 Thanks for having me.

00:43:08.760 Yeah, no, I appreciate it.

00:43:10.020 Yeah, it was great to have you on.

00:43:12.680 You know, the National Citizens Coalition, I mean, that's a well-established, storied group.

00:43:18.800 But again, I mean, you know, the original alumnus, you got Stephen Harper came out of there and you've been in an effective group for a long time, you know, speaking to federal issues.

00:43:27.880 Maybe just kind of describe what you guys are up to.

00:43:30.280 Yeah, I stand on the shoulders of giants.

00:43:32.900 I follow behind some really impressive folk, most certainly the right honorable.

00:43:38.140 It was founded by my grandfather back in the 1960s.

00:43:41.160 and so even as a non-profit third party and no one's in the the non-profit game for the money

00:43:47.000 uh i guess i'd be a nepo baby so to speak but um no sort of canada's oldest conservative

00:43:53.560 third party advertiser and so you you do all kinds of conservative advocacy between the elections you

00:43:59.400 you hold conservatives to account when they're not being conservative example doug ford every single

00:44:04.920 day since he was first elected three elections ago but um everything from digital ads uh reaching

00:44:12.120 millions of people to radio in battleground ontario right now to to to um being lucky enough

00:44:19.160 to to do some work here with the western standard and we gosh you know the the name of the game

00:44:24.120 especially with the third parties the real value is turning out the missing middle engaging people

00:44:30.200 on both the right and the left in the sense because my message right now the national citizens

00:44:34.440 coalition's message it's not explicitly vote for pierre and you know personally um i think that

00:44:42.520 the best thing for the country would be to vote for pierre but it's just don't vote liberal like

00:44:46.920 if you're an ndp person who's on the fence if you're if you're an actual traditional left-wing

00:44:51.640 voter um mark carney should scare you mark carney is like the final boss of like the global banker

00:44:57.960 elite and i thought um your value system was was not down with that was not down with with

00:45:04.840 tax shelters run through bermuda bike shops was not down with with with shady meetings with with

00:45:11.240 beijing power brokers and so the the name of the game is is taking to millions of people as many

00:45:17.080 people as possible hitting them in their cars hitting them on their cell phones computers

00:45:20.760 smart TVs, just don't vote liberal. Well, as a third party advertiser, I mean, the National

00:45:28.080 Citizens Coalition has had a lot of challenges over the years. The rules kind of change. It just

00:45:32.820 seems to be every government with who's allowed to advertise where, how much they can spend,

00:45:37.300 what they can say. How has it been this time around? Are you very constrained?

00:45:41.820 Don't jinx me because it's been, I've got a, I don't know if it's wood, it's like maybe

00:45:46.780 particle board for my desk here um but i just knocked on it three times um nothing no no issues

00:45:53.980 yet uh normally uh all of a sudden the facebook goes down you get censored there normally you get

00:45:59.580 some angry letter even though you've been following the letter of the law it is is very much deliberately

00:46:04.620 set up now to make it as difficult as possible for third parties to enter in anyone who wants

00:46:09.900 to spend more than 500 bucks and we are certainly spending much more than that um so it is it is

00:46:15.100 disincentivized to the utmost degree but this time it's going okay we have a terrific business admin

00:46:21.900 named miriam who i want to shout out who's been with the organization for a long time

00:46:26.460 um and so she she keeps the trains running on time i just give her problems i give her 0.99

00:46:32.380 that is my job i go out i make noise i reach a lot of people uh and then i send her the the reports

00:46:38.540 and she has to make sense of everything and she's done a terrific job and so we have had no trouble

00:46:44.940 yet there's 10 days to go and so i'm knocking on particle board right now and uh let's hope for the

00:46:51.420 best but we've been able to run um a really strong uh and efficient third-party campaign here and and

00:46:58.220 and i'm looking forward to to the final few days of it well so since i've got you you know another

00:47:03.020 thing mystifying us out in the west and everything uh what the hell is doug ford what the hell is 0.66

00:47:09.260 doug ford okay so i'm in uh the lower mainland of british columbia right now so uh but you're

00:47:16.320 watching issues kind of across the country more than i would my what the hell is doug ford was

00:47:21.500 so profound cory that i left ontario i was born in toronto i loved toronto it was a great place

00:47:27.940 to grow up it was it was as i imagine calgary still is it was it was street hockey games game

00:47:33.560 seven of the stanley cup final every day after school you know you could leave your door unlocked

00:47:38.120 It was it was absolutely terrific. It was it was like a Thomas Kinkade painting. It was pastoral.

00:47:44.100 It has only gotten worse to the utmost degree. He has abdicated on everything from crime and chaos.

00:47:49.740 He was terrible during covid. Our businesses were shut down for two and a half years on this

00:47:54.180 constant yo-yo. He said he wouldn't go into the mandates. He went all the way into the mandates.

00:47:59.120 My fiance and I eventually looked at ourselves a year ago and just said, let's get the hell out

00:48:03.560 here and and we haven't looked back and it is such a shame to see a liberal light campaign i put in

00:48:10.760 this little walk and talk recently on my on my twitter account for for followers and in the

00:48:16.520 hopes of reaching the missing middle um that's it said that sort of doug ford and his government

00:48:23.800 and his advisors they remind me of this little nintendo character named kirby i don't know if

00:48:27.960 you remember him or if you're familiar playing like kirby's dream world on the original nintendo

00:48:31.960 He's this pink, fluffy, cloud-like, adorable Japanese concoction. 0.99

00:48:37.100 And his power is that he eats his enemy's power themselves.

00:48:40.620 So if he eats a little guy with a sword, he gets a sword.

00:48:43.900 Doug Ford, to win evidently three majority governments in a row, just became the liberals.

00:48:50.060 He devoured the powers in more ways than one, perhaps, of Kathleen Wynne and Dalton McGinty.

00:48:56.300 And they've just run this just insufferable liberal light campaign. And there are good people in Queens Park, well-meaning, like just salt of the earth. And they are just constantly being pushed aside for this sort of coalition of cowardice that exists between the premier's office and largely a strategy group by the name of Rubicon, who have run his campaigns before and have been knifing Pierre in the press instead of waiting till after the election.

00:49:25.140 Yeah, I mean, often, I mean, this is nothing new, but premiers influencing federal elections,

00:49:32.020 candidates usually, you know, federally would rather the premiers just kind of shut up for a

00:49:36.460 month. I know Daniel Smith gets mixed reviews. She's been quiet lately on things. I don't think

00:49:44.000 probably ever really wants Premier Smith to speak up very much. She's perhaps popular in Alberta,

00:49:48.260 but he doesn't want to have to explain to Eastern people what she's up to.

00:49:53.900 But something interesting in Ontario, there's always been that pattern.

00:49:57.320 They seem to like, and is it a conscious strategic vote?

00:50:01.240 They're going to keep a progressive conservative in

00:50:03.160 when there's a federal liberal government.

00:50:04.780 If there's a federal conservative government, they'll stick the liberals in.

00:50:07.620 It's like they enjoy to have a counterbalance going on.

00:50:12.280 Is that sort of playing to some strengths on both ends right now?

00:50:15.680 I think so.

00:50:16.220 And that was when they, gee, I'm trying to think of things that just don't get me wholly

00:50:21.760 canceled here or ways to describe them.

00:50:23.680 That was my concern and the concern of many when the Ontario Progressive Conservatives

00:50:31.000 pulled the trigger on their early election this year, which was, uh-oh, because there's

00:50:36.260 always this kind of once provincial or the Federalist, you know, Federalist conservative

00:50:40.220 or the province is conservative.

00:50:41.580 by pulling early they were able to avoid some of the blowback of the tariff situation some of the

00:50:47.620 and then they'd put a little bit of stink on the federal conservatives themselves and and and so

00:50:51.820 yes that is that is the concern that you often seem to get one or the other um and and this

00:50:59.180 make no mistake this is a a provincial conservative government um that there's there's very little love

00:51:07.120 for them even amongst the conservative base like you talk to anybody you talk to people in queens

00:51:11.200 Park. I have pals in Queens Park. You hear from everybody. I'm not going to name any names. I

00:51:16.280 don't want to get them in trouble. But as high up as his office, and they know that it's just one

00:51:22.420 big apathy exercise, that they are the best of bad options. And the motivation has never been

00:51:31.200 greater than that, which is such a shame because they could have won three elections in a row by

00:51:36.060 actually being kind of conservative. And kind of conservative in Ontario is extremely conservative.

00:51:42.320 It could have worked. They could have actually, you know, tried to shut down the hate rallies.

00:51:46.280 They could have immediately cracked down on the diploma mills, which have destroyed towns in 1.00

00:51:51.040 Ontario, absolutely destroyed them. And they just they haven't been anywhere. And so by going early,

00:51:57.180 by claiming, you know, all folks, we're going to we're going to protect you from that evil guy down

00:52:01.800 South. And of course, they're valid criticisms of the Trump administration's approach. They've

00:52:06.860 kind of just handed this flaming bag of dog poop to the federal conservatives. And then they turn 0.98

00:52:12.320 around and have the gall to give them advice. When they were in a liberal campaign that nobody

00:52:17.960 wanted, they couldn't turn out voters. And they were facing a nothing opponent. And they turn

00:52:23.780 around to an actual group of conservatives who are facing, let's be honest, a worthy adversary

00:52:29.000 is like the final boss of technocratic banker elites.

00:52:32.900 And it just, it has driven a bunch of people up the wall

00:52:36.060 from inside Queen's Park to MPs,

00:52:39.000 to ministers, former prime ministers,

00:52:42.900 just all, you know, you hear from,

00:52:44.580 you know, in the back end, all these people.

00:52:46.900 And normally you reserve your knives for after the campaign.

00:52:51.220 And I know that I would never take advice

00:52:54.100 from a Ford conservative.

00:52:56.160 Well, and I've heard some speculation.

00:52:58.380 it's it's hard to necessarily know the motivation of individuals and everything but we had some of

00:53:03.920 that discussion on a panel show i was on a few days ago that possibly one of the things that

00:53:08.520 would explain ford's actions are that he's looking to kind of torpedo the conservatives because he's

00:53:14.040 got his eye on maybe pursuing a federal job down the road quite possible um i can gee i'd love to

00:53:22.100 you something really punchy here um i hear all kinds of things about their motivation and from

00:53:29.220 from good sources and ones you know that are backed up from by you know anecdotes from multiple

00:53:35.460 people i i don't know that for sure but it would not surprise me this is it can be i mean you meet

00:53:42.180 some terrific people um along the way but this can be a nasty business like i i i'm sure in some

00:53:48.980 part you're thankful you're on the independent side of things i know i'm often thankful to be

00:53:53.140 a third party that you know we get to we get to kind of pick and choose how we interface with

00:53:58.420 this we don't we don't always have to work the blue suit cocktail circuit and um stick shivs

00:54:04.340 under people's ribs like i i wouldn't feel comfortable doing that and so gee if it comes

00:54:09.220 out that that's what they have lined up um i wouldn't be remotely shocked i have heard some

00:54:14.260 rumors to to suggest that but i also know based on what they just pulled they've got thousands of

00:54:20.500 campaigners from coast to coast who would tell them to you know what themselves and it would be

00:54:26.500 a very difficult proposition not just because we all know they're not particularly conservative

00:54:32.580 and they've they've let down canada's supposed growth engine which now has the the economic

00:54:38.500 productivity of lowly Mississippi. Oh, no, less than Mississippi. But their actions the last few

00:54:44.600 weeks, these sort of tacit endorsements of Mark Carney, these little, these little, whenever like

00:54:49.600 some big story hits in the Globe and Mail on foreign interference or the conservatives have

00:54:53.360 a great day for momentum. For some reason, Corey Tenecki like slinks back onto CTV news to tell

00:55:00.200 them that they're not on the quote unquote effing ballot question. They've rubbed so many people

00:55:06.120 the wrong way, really good people, like the nicest Albertans, Saskatchewanians, Saskatchewars,

00:55:12.200 I don't know how to say that one, behind the scenes, that it would be a very difficult

00:55:17.520 proposition for them to pull off any kind of federal run.

00:55:21.380 Yeah, well, political intrigue and self-serving ambitious people, I mean, have caused messes

00:55:29.060 since the very first beginnings of democracy.

00:55:31.360 I mean, anybody reading a lot of Shakespeare can see that's actually the basis of half

00:55:35.340 of his plays, it seems, or starts there one way or another. It's just sad when it sees it derail

00:55:40.740 good policy or good people. But I mean, going away from that, so over the course of the rest

00:55:45.660 of the campaign, what do you as the National Statistics Coalition going to be focusing on?

00:55:49.660 What do you want to see becoming the issues in these final days?

00:55:53.140 I think I'm excited to see, and I know, I think some people are breathing a sigh of relief that

00:55:58.300 we're actually returning to what this election should be about, which is change in the economy

00:56:03.920 and housing and immigration and affordability, whereas the Liberals' entire campaign, as

00:56:12.140 we all know, has just been fear-mongering about Donald Trump.

00:56:14.660 And that is their way of getting away from their record and pulling the wool over the

00:56:18.940 eyes of gray-haired socialists who view Carney as enough of a social license to run all this

00:56:26.260 damage back and to really harm the West and really harm young Canadians while their real 0.96

00:56:32.160 estate values, you know, only get better and, and, and, you know, they continue to be disconnected

00:56:36.920 from the, the, just the frayed connective tissue of the country. And so I'm very excited to see

00:56:42.160 that we actually, especially coming out of the debates, we can actually talk again about, Hey,

00:56:47.420 this is, this isn't going well. Like we, we need to make changes here. And so at the coalition,

00:56:53.420 it's, I think it's going to be about taking those additional ballot questions to market to people,

00:56:59.360 because i know as a pseudo young person uh that if i talk to anybody my age younger you know older

00:57:08.480 you know let's say under g under 55 they don't go to trump first they just don't and we see that in

00:57:14.880 the polls as much as the the sort of ford neo connie ruthless shakespearean character types

00:57:21.680 want you to believe he's not the number one ballot issue he's he's a 1b or he's a two

00:57:28.960 but it's affordability. And so let's talk affordability. And only one side is actually

00:57:32.940 promising to help you with that. That won't just build these miserable Khrushchevkas as part of 1.00

00:57:38.580 some housing policy where we all get a little Soviet housing block to ourselves. And so it's

00:57:45.680 about sort of finding and cultivating and listening to and emboldening that missing middle,

00:57:50.300 those first time voters, those young voters, I think, particularly of young men and women coming 0.98

00:57:54.880 out of the COVID years who were just treated like absolute crap. Their futures were all but robbed 0.97

00:57:59.780 from them. They missed graduations. Their entry-level jobs have been taken away by temporary

00:58:06.240 foreign workers. And that would only continue under the Carney government. And so I want to

00:58:11.600 talk policy. I want to talk hope and change and common sense and all those conservative buzzwords

00:58:16.720 because they're needed in a dire fashion. And so, for example, we have a radio spot

00:58:23.880 playing in battleground ontario right now which is expanding to the fan 590 which is like the big

00:58:28.320 way to to reach the baseball fans and the hockey fans especially with the playoffs and to reach

00:58:32.920 commuters in their cars who want to talk about how the leafs are probably going to blow it this

00:58:37.300 year as they always do um and it's telling you like hey wow canada sure has changed the last

00:58:43.180 10 years you know there was a car jacking down the street my kids can't you know find a home or

00:58:49.340 you know or or or work and like we have to make a change here and so let's talk change let's let's

00:58:56.700 take these little pockets of the media not being completely distracted by trump until a cbc reporter

00:59:03.420 asks him and asks him another question and then he'll you know maybe his his his press gal will

00:59:08.620 go right back to to more 51st state nonsense but um let's remember what got us here and then let's

00:59:15.500 let's really hear from these people and then let's let's bring them to the polls well that's

00:59:20.840 another you know and just kind of finishing i mean that's gonna be the hard part we've seen an

00:59:24.660 interesting demographic change i mean justin trudeau wrote into power in 2015 on youth vote

00:59:30.880 he got the young supporters out there the conservatives were the blue hairs this time

00:59:35.800 around it's the younger people that are as i was kind of saying before you came on i mean politics

00:59:40.420 always just kind of comes down to what's in it for me and young people are not seeing a lot in

00:59:44.240 for them right now. And that's why suddenly, as the polls are indicating, they're conservative.

00:59:49.520 But it's the seniors who are now suddenly all liberal saying, well, I kind of got my little

00:59:53.460 kingdom and I want to stick with what I got right now. Fine. But one of the downsides of youth

00:59:59.680 support is turnout. They can be difficult to pull out to the polls. So there are going to be efforts

01:00:04.900 just to make sure to remind them, you know, get in there, make your mark, don't get distracted,

01:00:08.480 it won't take too long uh you know they aren't necessarily an efficient vote no and that's the

01:00:15.040 that's the concern and also the game which is impressing a level of urgency i suppose unlike

01:00:22.720 we've we've seen before um i don't know if you've been on twitter recently and it's anecdotal but

01:00:29.120 today apparently there's huge lines at polling stations that may have something to do with

01:00:33.840 Elections Canada ineptitude and there only being like a single place to, you know, little shelter

01:00:39.840 to fill out your ballot behind. But, you know, I'm hearing of lines down the block in Midtown

01:00:45.940 Liberal Toronto. I just heard from a campaign guy out in BC, there's a line down the block in

01:00:51.520 Vancouver. And so, you know, maybe that's filled with all the socialist gray hairs and the folks

01:00:56.100 where this has gone okay for and the limousine liberal types who get to parachute, you know, 0.98

01:01:01.640 away to Palm Springs or Del Boca Vista while the rest of us are forced to live in the ashes to

01:01:09.880 borrow from F. Scott Fitzgerald. But I think it's encouraging. I think that there's been so much

01:01:17.140 great messaging from the conservatives, even with some of the struggles of recent with the Trump

01:01:22.660 situation. The third parties are working their butts off. All the writing and advocacy is there.

01:01:29.080 And so I think we're going to see a significant bump in voter turnout. And I think that that bodes well for a change election. And so the all the way to the very end, it's about being hope, showing hope. It's about, you know, being composed and forward looking and upward oriented. And I think if you if we stay positive and on message, it should be a pretty great voter turnout for younger voters and they can really change things.

01:01:57.500 Well, let's hope.

01:01:58.620 I mean, let's hope it's a good turnout for everybody.

01:02:00.540 I mean, just the idealist in me says, you know, the more the better.

01:02:03.600 Get out, vote, take advantage of it.

01:02:05.700 You've got the chance.

01:02:06.660 It is a privilege and a right that should remain.

01:02:09.980 So, you know, before I let you go, where can people find the National Citizens Coalition

01:02:15.040 to keep up with what you're doing or support you guys?

01:02:17.620 Gee, nationalcitizens.ca, nice and easy, or fireliberals.ca if you want to chip into

01:02:23.540 the third party campaign before we're all done and dusted here. And thank you. Thank you so much

01:02:29.160 for the opportunity here, Corey. Right on. Oh, it was great to have you on. Hopefully, perhaps

01:02:33.200 we'll chat after the election and see whether we're celebrating or mourning and what the next

01:02:38.100 steps in the game are. Let's hope it's a positive one. I'll keep the whiskey on ice for you.

01:02:43.220 Right. Thanks. Okay. So that was Alexander Brown of the National Citizens Coalition. As we said,

01:02:49.020 it's about time we got them on. And yes, let's bring it back to an issues-based election. It's

01:02:54.840 so hard. It's hard. Policy can be dull. Policy can be non-engaging, but it's just so, so important.

01:03:02.160 So I'm going to get to a couple of the commenters. I see some discussion back and forth in the

01:03:05.620 comment scroll, and it's great. You know, the elephant in the room that comes up and doesn't

01:03:10.480 between Kenzie and Vamp Fashions on immigration, you know, that's been a big factor, at least

01:03:15.560 leading up to things. And it's mixed on how it's impacted things. Immigration, I mean, most people,

01:03:23.700 if you look at economics and the rest, it's good. It's good for the country. It benefits people.

01:03:30.060 And as well, the immigrant population actually, as I saw some of the commenters,

01:03:35.080 are often excellent conservatives. They came here to get away from somewhere terrible. They came here

01:03:40.180 to get away from bad governments. They want to start a business. They want to start a home. They

01:03:44.760 want to start a future. And they're fantastic conservatives. Unfortunately, we do get xenophobic

01:03:50.360 conservatives who push new Canadians away. And careful, guys, this is a good base. And that's

01:03:56.920 what allows unprincipled left-leaning people to kind of bring in the immigrant vote. Look, look, 0.69

01:04:02.060 you got those nasty people over on the right. They're being cruel to them. But there's room 0.98

01:04:05.540 for a real discussion because controlled immigration, though, is what we need. I mean,

01:04:10.880 immigration with a plan, immigration to make sure you have the resources to integrate and house and

01:04:17.860 employ and have health care for the new Canadians you've got. And that hasn't happened. We've had 1.00

01:04:23.900 the floodgates open for a few years and we're seeing the consequences of it. We're seeing the

01:04:28.440 consequences of overloaded hospitals. We're seeing, you know, real estate being out of reach,

01:04:33.740 difficulties getting into schools. It's just been too much. But just be careful. Don't turn

01:04:40.540 the blame on the immigrants. These are just people here trying to come in and make a better

01:04:44.900 life for themselves. In fact, they're your allies. Turn the blame on the bad policy. Turn the blame

01:04:50.340 on the government that messed up the programs because nobody's winning. I mean, think of the

01:04:57.820 people who had a dream and came here and tried to get set up and then find out, yeah, yeah, but

01:05:02.240 you better have a lot of savings if you want to get into a house and, oh, you need that medical

01:05:07.020 treatment. Well, be prepared to sit around for a few months and hope you don't die while waiting.

01:05:10.540 That's not their fault. That's the fault of, again, bringing in more than we're able to manage.

01:05:16.840 So it's not being prejudiced. That's the game that gets played, though. If you critique

01:05:22.560 the volume of immigration coming in, you know that the liberals are going to label you as a racist.

01:05:28.220 They're going to label you as intolerant. And it works. It works sometimes. But the thing is,

01:05:33.220 part of what makes it work is we do have some people who get off and who are intolerant. They're

01:05:39.100 minority, thankfully, but they're a massively loud one sometimes. And they give the ammunition 1.00

01:05:44.600 to the left to shoot back at people if they want to try and have a good, critical discussion on it.

01:05:53.080 And, you know, it's the debates. It's funny. I saw some of the commentators mentioning

01:05:59.480 immigration came up during the debate, the English one anyways, even though it wasn't on the agenda

01:06:03.700 for it. They just left that for the provincial government, the provincial, the French language

01:06:09.600 debate to come up. But the candidates got into it anyways. And it's worth discussing. I mean,

01:06:15.760 you know, you can have a rational one. It's a real factor. It's a real issue. I want to get to

01:06:20.240 it. So as Alex is pointing out, and as I said earlier, the advanced polls are open. I get

01:06:26.200 annoyed. And it's usually leftist groups too, though, saying it's too hard to vote. We've got

01:06:32.560 to make it easier to vote. Voter turnouts are low. It's because it's too hard to vote. Oh,

01:06:36.460 piss off. I'm sick of that. You know what? If you can't find your way into vote, you're lazy. 1.00

01:06:41.960 It's not hard. The very first election I voted in, it shows what a dork I am. I moved to Calgary 0.99

01:06:50.440 on my own when I was 17. I lived in an apartment. I was out working and the enumerators came around.

01:06:55.640 My landlady didn't realize I was underage and she spoke to the enumerators and there was actually a

01:07:00.300 voters card slipped under our apartment door when I came home from work. I was tickled pink. Holy

01:07:04.480 cow, I could vote. You know, I mean, most 17 year olds are thinking other things, right? I assure

01:07:08.000 you, I was thinking of those too, but, but at the same time I wanted to vote. So I went in and I

01:07:11.640 cast my ballot for the NDP, uh, the one and only time in my life. That's fine. I was 17. I had a

01:07:18.680 lot of growing up to do, but it wasn't hard. And in that vote, that election, that 1988 election,

01:07:25.960 Canada had over a 75% voter turn up. There were no advanced polls back then, but you had one day

01:07:36.200 you would have a station somewhere. And in the cities, they made it, even if you didn't have

01:07:40.760 a vehicle, typically there was going to be a church or a community hall or something,

01:07:48.480 a school where they've set up the polling station within walking distance for where you are.

01:07:52.880 and even then there were polls that would come into senior centers and there were special ballots

01:07:58.460 I started working in the oil field in the early 90s and I would find out okay we got an election

01:08:03.060 coming up I've got to go into the returning office and tell them look I'm going to be out in a camp

01:08:07.920 in the bush during the election they would give me an envelope often they wouldn't even have the

01:08:12.800 final list uh for a ballot yet so you'd actually have to write the name of the person you voted for

01:08:18.260 and it would be sealed in an envelope and it would be counted when the election came.

01:08:25.060 Where there's a will, there's a way. And now, now you've got three voting days,

01:08:31.060 even before the general election day, where you can get out and cast a ballot. Plus you got mail-in

01:08:36.960 ballots, plus you got special ballots. As somebody else pointed out, yeah, we got polls coming now

01:08:41.180 into prisons. We got polls going into the universities. Guys, there's no excuse not to

01:08:47.340 vote. We don't need to walk in and hold it up to your lazy ass on a platter and say, please cast 1.00

01:08:53.260 your ballot. You know what? If you don't want to take that little bit of time to vote, don't give 1.00

01:08:59.960 a flying hoot what you think. I don't care. You're too lazy. You're too lazy a voter to have earned 0.98

01:09:09.500 the right to impact the election that's going to govern my life. So quit whining. Quit saying we 0.99

01:09:14.780 have to make it easier. Quit saying we got to get online voting. That's ridiculous. Talk about an

01:09:19.280 area to build mistrust and, you know, and possibly open things up to abuse. We got a system that

01:09:27.020 works. There's where we start getting into the other areas of mistrust and things too.

01:09:33.900 You know, electronic counting machines and people talk about, you know, having machines for casting

01:09:40.160 ballots and everything else. I thought we should have learned this way back with Bush and the

01:09:44.280 states and everything. We got a system that works. Write it on a piece of damn paper and have somebody

01:09:49.500 count it with scrutineers being able to be there and see the process from end to end. I don't think 0.99

01:09:55.600 there's been corruption in the polls in Canada. I'm going to get clear on that. And we see that

01:09:59.080 people claiming that all the time and everything. Look, if you've ever actually volunteered in a

01:10:04.460 campaign as a scrutineer, really boring job, I got to tell you, but you can sit, you can sit in a

01:10:09.860 polling station right from the beginning. I mean, the reason they know how to plug all the holes is

01:10:15.000 because people have tried to rig elections one way or another over the last couple hundred years,

01:10:18.400 and I'm not saying it never happens, but it doesn't happen to the point where it actually

01:10:21.920 impacts the outcome very often, particularly here. We got some good controls, actually,

01:10:26.280 if you look at it. I found Elections Alberta, Elections Canada to be very unbiased,

01:10:30.780 very helpful with candidates, and very helpful with scrutineers. You can be there in the morning

01:10:34.460 before the poll even opens up. They will show you the box, and you can look in it to make sure it's

01:10:39.300 empty. So somebody hasn't stuffed ballots in before they did it. Then you can watch the

01:10:42.500 ceiling of the box. You can sit there all day and watch people come and go to make sure nothing

01:10:47.960 funny has happened. Of course, you can't lean over their shoulder while they were casting a ballot,

01:10:52.160 but you can sit in there and then you can be present at the end of it when they seal the

01:10:57.860 doors and they rip open those boxes and actually count the ballots. It's all very transparent.

01:11:05.280 And if you do it that way, it's very hard to fix. And why do we got to change it? It comes down to

01:11:12.380 the, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Ironically, when we get a lot of these counting machines and

01:11:16.900 crap going on, I don't think there's a fix coming in, but quite often the bloody votes seem to

01:11:21.700 actually take longer to come in than they used to when they were just counted and you had a 0.99

01:11:25.080 returning officer sending it into a central place where the media would report on it.

01:11:30.260 So just leave it alone. Leave it alone. Because if you give the impression of mistrust,

01:11:35.940 That's just about as bad as actually something going on.

01:11:38.840 That's one of the things where people jump on Premier Smith because she said, no, we're not going to have electronic ballots going on when, you know, there's so much mistrust.

01:11:50.760 And people say, oh, she's a conspiracy theorist and thinks that those machines are fixing. 1.00

01:11:53.420 No, no.

01:11:54.380 But it avoids just the headaches.

01:11:55.960 We've got something that works.

01:11:57.960 Van Fashion saying, my dad and I were scrutinaries for years.

01:11:59.920 He was able to report results within a few minutes when some polls had taken hours to count to 250.

01:12:03.860 yeah station by station it depends on who's managing it it depends on who's been employed

01:12:10.200 in it there's a lot of factors but for the most part when you're properly staffed they can count

01:12:15.240 a lot of votes fast and accurately I'll tell one quick little story it is getting back it would

01:12:21.260 have been 2006 maybe I can't remember which election it was and Harper was running it I was

01:12:26.200 working up in Inuvik up in the Arctic and I had a fair amount of free time I was actually processing

01:12:30.620 data for the ice thicknesses. And I really only needed a few hours a day to process it at that

01:12:34.980 point in the job. I got busier as I went later. So I volunteered for the local conservative

01:12:38.360 candidate, the guy named Richard Egericon. He was from Yellowknife. And I just went out to

01:12:42.580 put signs out, just do some minor stuff when I had free time. And I volunteered to scrutinier.

01:12:47.920 So I sat in the gymnasium in Inuvik while the votes were coming in and the people coming in

01:12:53.060 to vote. And it was interesting to watch. I mean, you literally had people dressed in leather,

01:12:58.560 like trappers coming out of the hills to cast their ballot and then go back to where they were.

01:13:02.260 Again, some people, if you want to vote, you'll find a way to do it. And they had translators

01:13:05.960 because there's so many languages up there with the Inuvialuit, you got Cree, you got Dene,

01:13:09.500 of course you got English people, everything. It was, it was very interesting. And then

01:13:13.360 when I left, another scrutineer came in, another conservative, and I handed it off to him. And

01:13:19.500 I sat that night in my hotel room and watched the results coming in. And I just wanted to see,

01:13:27.020 We knew that the Conservatives weren't going to win in Inuvik, but I wanted to see if my efforts made even a little bit of difference, you know, because I volunteered up there.

01:13:34.220 They didn't have anybody even around to work those northern areas, because I went up to Tuck and I went to Aklavik and some of the areas to do a little bit of campaigning for them.

01:13:46.720 And it's like midnight.

01:13:47.960 Every other vote's been cast.

01:13:49.620 Every other ballot across the country has been in.

01:13:52.360 Nothing out of Inuvik.

01:13:53.460 What's going on?

01:13:54.260 And well, it was a couple of days later because the results came out like six the next morning

01:13:58.300 or something.

01:13:59.020 And I came across that other scrutiny and said, what the heck happened?

01:14:01.620 Well, they'd hired local people.

01:14:03.680 You got to understand if you've ever been to the Arctic, local people up there are very

01:14:06.300 different.

01:14:07.220 And they trained them and they paid them a whole heck of a lot to work at the polls for

01:14:11.100 the elections.

01:14:12.500 And after eight, nine hours, they were complaining a lot.

01:14:16.200 Even when I'd left, oh, I'm tired.

01:14:18.120 Oh, this is boring. 0.99

01:14:19.240 Oh, this sucks. 0.98

01:14:19.980 I guess about an hour after I left, basically 90% of them got up and quit, went home. 0.95

01:14:25.120 Welcome to the Arctic. This poor returning officer who was a guy they'd flown out from

01:14:29.260 Ottawa to try and run this. What he actually did was swore in the scrutineers, the ones working

01:14:36.440 for the parties. Just, can you please, you know, we will pay you. We'll sign you up. We'll swear

01:14:40.540 you in. Can you help count votes? So he did that on the spot. You have to do what you got to do.

01:14:45.420 And it took them until the wee hours, but they finally got their votes counted and got it out.

01:14:48.660 The moral of that story, I guess, is just that, again, if you ever get a chance to go to the Arctic, just remember it's really weird and different up there from anything you've ever encountered before.

01:14:58.040 And the other thing is democracy will get through.

01:15:00.740 The people running it are serious.

01:15:02.500 They take it seriously.

01:15:04.320 They're most often very unbiased, and they will do whatever it takes to make sure a fair vote gets through.

01:15:10.100 Your job, if you're supporting one party or another, is just to make sure as many people as possible get out to take advantage of it.

01:15:15.700 And if people choose not to, then screw them. I don't care. You're lazy. Watch reality TV, 0.55

01:15:25.060 you know, do whatever you're doing, play video games. I don't care that you don't register your

01:15:29.660 thoughts. Then people say we got to reach out and pull them in. No, if you've got to be pulled in

01:15:34.040 to take advantage of a right that so many people don't have in other countries,

01:15:38.180 you don't deserve the bloody right. You're taking it for granted. People say we should make it the

01:15:44.240 law like in Australia, again, if you've got to have a legal gun to your head forcing you to vote,

01:15:48.100 I don't care who you support. It's not an informed thing. You should be happy to vote. You should be

01:15:54.740 very regretful if things happen to the point where you just weren't able to get out. I just want to

01:15:58.800 get that rant out. And like I said, I want to see as many people as possible choose to get out to

01:16:05.780 vote. But if they don't want to screw them anyways, I don't care what they think. I really don't.

01:16:10.640 uh you know this election we got a lot of other also rands speaking of the mushy middle the

01:16:16.680 canada the canadian future party um they're an interesting group they they if people aren't

01:16:23.520 familiar with alberta we've had this this party called the alberta party it's been around forever

01:16:27.660 it's a whole separate side story it was basically a party built for the head nenshi and nenshi ended

01:16:32.300 up being mayor and the party ended up being nearly dying on the vine because they never

01:16:35.560 got the leader they needed but they've always were kind of there for years but they always

01:16:39.380 campaign. We're in the middle. We're not left. We're not right. We're in the middle and we're

01:16:44.300 mushy. And you know, the media loved them. The amount of coverage this little middle party would

01:16:51.220 always get. It was astounding. And they never get anywhere. Three, four percent support, but they

01:16:59.900 would be covered as if they were a contender for the race every time around. The thing is, you got

01:17:04.660 to stand for something, guys. If you keep staying, I mean, I understand you don't want to be on a

01:17:08.340 fringe on one side or another. But if you just sit here and pretend to be mush, it doesn't work. I

01:17:13.360 guess it works for Ford. Maybe they should study Ford and figure out how he's pulled that off. But

01:17:18.180 for the most part, no, you've got to be somewhere. People say left and right don't matter. That's BS.

01:17:22.520 They do. And people tend to have more inclinations one way or another. Again, when you get to the

01:17:26.320 extremes, it's funny because when you get to the extremes, they kind of diverge and you get back 0.90

01:17:29.580 to authoritarians and lunatics. Whether you're talking Stalin or Hitler, is one better or worse 0.70

01:17:34.180 than the other? No, they're both monsters and they're both extremists and they both took their 0.99

01:17:37.240 ideology is way off to the end. They didn't represent rational right or rational left at 0.84

01:17:41.660 all. They were, they were categories all their own, but there are people who are more inclined

01:17:45.620 to smaller government and bigger government. There's people more inclined to liberal and

01:17:49.440 conservative. And if you're going to have some party that says we're neither, you're not going

01:17:53.860 anywhere. The Canadian Future Party is one of those. So they've come up with this and they're

01:17:57.140 putting their statements out and pushing along, but they're going to follow the fate to the Alberta

01:18:02.340 party. I guess, thankfully, they have little enough support that they aren't going to impact

01:18:07.720 the vote anywhere. There's just not going to be enough people. What else do we got going on out

01:18:14.920 here in the news? One more thing with, as I said, the Trump factor was one of the things impacting

01:18:20.600 this election that people didn't see coming. The other was just this complete and total collapse

01:18:26.940 of the NDP. Whether we like it or not, especially when you look at the balance of the country,

01:18:31.480 Most of them tend to vote.

01:18:32.420 Again, if we're going to talk left or right, they tend to vote to the left.

01:18:35.660 And with the NDP and the Liberals splitting the vote,

01:18:38.640 it would make it possible for the Conservatives to win occasionally.

01:18:43.140 But the NDP have collapsed.

01:18:46.460 And again, Singh was so terrible.

01:18:50.360 I try to avoid sounding like a conspiracy theorist. 0.95

01:18:52.640 I just wonder if he was bloody doing it on purpose last night.

01:18:56.920 Like, he was so awful in that debate.

01:18:59.080 and he's already cratered this party to next to nothing. They're broke. They're going to lose

01:19:03.540 most of their seats. If he cared at all, he would have been trying because he knows he's losing his

01:19:10.380 votes to the liberals. You know, the votes that are going, they aren't going to the conservatives,

01:19:13.300 they're going to the liberals. He should have been turning on Carney and getting on Carney,

01:19:17.860 but instead he attacked Polyev and annoyingly for almost the entire debate. I saw so many tweets

01:19:24.220 coming up with people just saying, shut up, Singh, shut up, Singh, shut up, Singh, because he was 0.99

01:19:28.440 just being a pestering child. When your party is on the ropes, a long-established party, and you're 0.97

01:19:34.420 an experienced politico, and you pull off a performance like that in a time when you so

01:19:39.180 dearly needed to do well, you almost have to wonder if he's doing it on purpose, if he really

01:19:45.540 is tanking it for the sake of the liberals, because that's what's happening. You know, as I said to

01:19:51.460 Erica, you don't want to count on that, but still, if the NDP had looked strong, it actually would

01:19:55.900 have helped the conservatives a little bit, but he was terrible. Nobody could watch that debate

01:20:00.840 and say with a straight face, wow, this guy's a smart, strong, mature leader who I would like to

01:20:06.020 see representing people in the House of Commons. He stunk. He stunk. But that was the debate. 0.96

01:20:15.480 All right. It looks like for another week, Tracy isn't going to make it to the show. 1.00

01:20:20.040 So I'm going to close it up. It is Good Friday, guys. You know, I appreciate so many of you coming

01:20:25.580 out to watch things today, discuss this, and look at things as the election goes. Again, you got the

01:20:30.800 advanced polls this weekend in your neighborhood somewhere. If you're not going to come out on

01:20:35.200 voting day on Monday, maybe take advantage of it this weekend, pop out, do it. It sounds like the

01:20:39.680 lines are long. It's a good sign and a bad sign at the same time. This next 10 days, again, the

01:20:46.860 Western Standard is free. There's no paywall until the end of the election. Take advantage of it.

01:20:52.900 get in there, see those call owners, see those reporters, see what Jen's reporting from Ontario

01:20:56.380 and other people reporting on here. And once that free period's up, consider taking out a

01:21:01.460 subscription. That's how we stay independent. That's how we aren't part of the legacy media

01:21:06.040 snobbish group out there, guys. It's 10 bucks a month, 100 bucks for a year. Well worth it. And

01:21:11.720 for those who've already subscribed, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. And if you haven't yet,

01:21:15.400 come on, guys, get on board. We can beat the system together. All right. Thanks again. I will

01:21:20.380 be back on wednesday with my regular show have a good weekend happy easter and uh vote wisely

01:21:50.380 We'll be right back.

Western Standard - April 18, 2025

Media mayhem at the English debate

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