Western Standard - Mountain Standard Time - April 20, 2021

00:00:00.000 .

00:00:30.000 .

00:01:00.000 .

00:01:30.000 .

00:02:00.000 .

00:02:30.000 Thank you.

00:03:00.000 Thank you.

00:03:30.000 Yes, good morning. Of course, this is the Western Standard. I'm your host, Nathan Gita, and we are

00:03:48.200 here on Mountain Standard Time. Today, I'll be taking your questions and comments when it comes

00:03:53.880 to the latest from Erin O'Toole, a bozo eruption from the Mount Vesuvius of the conservative

00:03:59.300 movement. Yes, we have, of course, apparently a carbon tax that is not a carbon tax. So we're

00:04:04.360 going to be doing commentary on that today. Please send in comments. We're not going to have a guest

00:04:08.680 on for the first hour. So I am going to try and interact with the comments for as long as I can

00:04:12.120 and ramble elsewise. Of course, later we have John Duncan, former Tory whip, of course, under Harper

00:04:18.580 and a minister in that government as well for, I believe, Indigenous affairs or as it's so called

00:04:23.700 now. Remember to like the Western Standard on Facebook to be notified when we go live and

00:04:28.760 subscribe to our website in order to support us we don't get any government cash this isn't cbc so

00:04:33.080 please support us in any way you can so now we go to my opening statement we live in a time where

00:04:39.400 what it means to be a conservative or liberal or a republican or a radical socialist depending on

00:04:44.280 where you're counting from is in flux there are people who believe progress is always good that

00:04:49.400 change is always a positive thing some of these people exist within the tory movement within the

00:04:54.840 right wing around the world and in canada we used to call these progressive conservatives

00:04:59.800 but there is another school of thought that says change is neither good nor bad in itself

00:05:05.160 it is the fruit it the fruit it bears that has to be judged and if the fruit it bears is bad

00:05:10.520 or poisonous or wrong for uh for the people and for the commonwealth it must be rooted out root

00:05:17.080 and branch it must be dismissed and cast away some people might think that that's a kind of

00:05:22.120 of, you know, extreme view. But the fact of the matter is, is that's the attitude we took to

00:05:25.800 slavery and fascism and a great deal of the oppression of women. So clearly we do believe 0.81

00:05:31.940 this value that if things are poisonous or wrong, we must get rid of them. With the advent of Aaron

00:05:37.480 O'Toole announcing a carbon tax that isn't a carbon tax, we must pause and ask ourselves,

00:05:42.480 why is this the fruit of the party of which it was born? Why is this what's coming out of the

00:05:48.280 conserved movement. Why would Mr. O'Toole betray the base in this way? Why is the leadership of

00:05:52.960 the conserved movement completely divorced from the reality of its supporters trying to court

00:05:57.060 new voters in urban liberal areas, cities? Ultimately, such a move can be traced to the

00:06:03.800 decisions of an elite few, particularly those political consultants and party apparatchiks

00:06:08.140 who are the gatekeepers to the inner circles of the conserved movement. And they are the

00:06:11.580 gatekeepers everywhere. Let's be clear. The Democratic Party of the United States clearly

00:06:14.940 has elite gatekeepers and consultants and people who make sure you get elected or make sure you

00:06:20.740 don't. And we must understand that every political party in the world has these people who have

00:06:25.960 essentially captured their movements. What they say goes. And if there is any resistance,

00:06:31.200 even by an elected member, they will silence or censor them, dig up his or her past and have

00:06:35.540 them forcibly exiled. This has happened many times. We've seen this many times in the Conservative

00:06:39.480 Party of Canada, but it happens also in all the other parties here in Canada and even here out

00:06:43.880 West. O'Toole's tax isn't the problem. It's the symptom, a symptom of a deep cancer with all the

00:06:49.960 leadership circles of our country and indeed throughout the Western world. The common people

00:06:53.300 are too stupid to govern themselves, and so their virtues from the climate, the virus, the future, 1.00

00:07:00.280 to gender, must be imposed upon them from above. Our elites believe that they are our messiahs. 1.00

00:07:07.420 Well, I happen to ascribe to a different religion, which declares all men equal,

00:07:11.460 as well as fallible. And common sense also tells me that concentrated power always leads to

00:07:16.560 corruption, whether it's in a family or in a kingdom as wide as ours. And within the conservative

00:07:23.100 world, the only time we win or get the swing voters to come our way is when we play to our

00:07:28.280 values and we campaign as what we are, Tories. When you campaign as conservatives, you win as

00:07:33.900 conservatives. Aaron, I have a message for you. You've been weighed, you've been measured, you've

00:07:38.620 been found wanting. You don't reverse course on this carbon tax policy, let alone some of your

00:07:43.280 virtue signaling. Your base is going to stay home and your party is going to have the biggest loss

00:07:48.000 that it's had since the Kim Campbell collapse right after Mulroney way back in the 90s. And

00:07:53.800 that means another liberal majority with all the tyrannical policies we're already suffering under.

00:07:58.860 God's not dead. Neither is the conservative movement in this country. But in order to

00:08:03.520 establish peace order and good government here at home or anywhere in Canada, the proper

00:08:08.560 values must be met and they must be followed. Imposing unwanted, expensive, complicated policies

00:08:15.180 from above is not the proper course and it's going to cost the conservatives the election. So that's

00:08:21.180 where I kind of stand on this. Again, let's be clear what's happened here. So we have a current

00:08:30.300 policy, right, from the liberals, that's a carbon tax. And that carbon tax, of course, is imposed

00:08:35.720 it's a very, very rudimentary thing. It's not, I'm not defending it. I'm just saying like,

00:08:40.160 it's, it's pretty, it's pretty simple. You impose a certain amount of tax on top of other items,

00:08:47.240 particularly fuel, right? And then of course, large emitters, large emitters, whatever that

00:08:51.320 means. Cause I'm guessing those categories are pretty all over the place. Of course, the point

00:08:55.960 is that it's a pretty straightforward process. This used to cost this much. Now you imposed a tax.

00:09:02.140 Now it's going to cost more. Right. Very simple. So that's the liberal system. And I don't agree with it. But one has to admit that the liberal system is actually simpler than what's being proposed by Aaron O'Toole. As far as I can tell, what's being proposed is essentially, well, we're going to take all that same revenue and maybe we'll even lower it. We'll lower the amount that you're paying. That's more. But it's going to go into this savings account.

00:09:24.880 So it's going to go into this, I don't know, Green Bucks savings account.

00:09:30.320 So yet another thing you have to know your login for, like it wasn't bad enough trying to get online for EI, wasn't bad enough to try and file for your child tax benefit.

00:09:38.440 Now you have another online account through Revenue Canada or whatever, right through Service Canada.

00:09:43.540 And that's where all of your Green Bucks are. 1.00

00:09:46.620 They're hiding in there somewhere. 1.00

00:09:48.320 And you have to get them out of there or you get a check in the mail. 0.99

00:09:52.460 Maybe, maybe it'll be like GST for people who are below the poverty line, the GST check that

00:09:57.020 gets sent in the mail. I'm not sure, or the direct deposit, I guess, but I guess probably

00:10:01.160 once a quarter. So probably about the same amount of times as GST happens, you get this sent, sent

00:10:06.240 your way and you spend your green bucks. Um, I don't understand why this is the way we're doing

00:10:12.660 this. I mean, there's all sorts of schemes around this. There's, there's universal basic income

00:10:17.360 ideas that follow this pattern. There's all sorts of redistributive techniques that follow this

00:10:21.920 pattern, but it's just, it's very, it's very odd, uh, that, that conservatives would try and make

00:10:27.000 something that is both more complicated and less sensical than even the liberals would and still

00:10:32.740 costs money and still costs, uh, the taxpayer. Well, and, and the consumer, the person just at

00:10:38.540 the pumps or doing whatever they're doing, it's just going to complicate their lives. I don't

00:10:42.340 really understand why this is what's happened, but well, I, well, I guess in my opening statement,

00:10:48.320 I try to try to point that out. I think what's happened inside of the conservative movement

00:10:52.240 is that it has been captured. I think that our elites in the party have been captured. I think

00:10:58.200 that people are speaking out of the side of their mouths with things that they would never believe

00:11:02.400 before. I think this is actually I think this is an interesting phenomenon. You know, I'm going to

00:11:05.360 wax philosophical here for a moment. I think that, you know, we always talk about this as conservatives.

00:11:11.180 We say this all the time. You elect a guy to go to Ottawa and then suddenly he's representing

00:11:15.780 Ottawa to you right this is this is an ongoing battle that we have inside of the conservative

00:11:20.280 movement and what I think happens here is that they're just so surrounded by the bubble in Ottawa

00:11:28.300 is that it's it's like it's like trying you know it's like trying to put an ice cube into a

00:11:32.380 temperate glass of water like it's going to melt it's no longer going to be a separate ice cube

00:11:36.060 and even if that ice cube was differently colored right to signify that indeed you put this ice cube

00:11:40.940 in there so you would put blue dye in it or you know red dye or something something to show that

00:11:46.180 this ice cube was different you had frozen it put it aside put it in there and you're like this is

00:11:50.680 going to keep its consistency well it's temperate water and it's going to wear away at it and what

00:11:56.040 happens in in ottawa is that people all kind of melt into the same morass and it just it just goes

00:12:04.380 wrong it just goes wrong how can you keep your values how can you keep your values when you're

00:12:09.960 surrounded by non-stop, non-stop denigration of conservative values. I'll never forget a story.

00:12:18.840 This is an important story. I won't reveal what a potential candidate this was. He did not win

00:12:24.120 his riding, but I will tell you this story. So this was the 2015 election. He had been nominated

00:12:29.260 and it was Ontario. I'll give you that. I prefer to call it un-terrible, but whatever.

00:12:33.640 uh the what happened was it was getting to be pride month or pride time and he thought about

00:12:43.420 putting up a he thought up about putting putting up a rainbow flag in his in his constituent office

00:12:49.900 this was this was a bluish riding a very well not very blue but blue enough and pretty socially

00:12:55.520 conservative around it but still he submitted even though he was kind of from there his family

00:12:59.960 was from there he's a bit of a son of privilege and he and he said well i mean i'm thinking about

00:13:04.120 putting up this this pride flag in here and it's like i'm not saying there's anything for against

00:13:08.120 pride flags but one of his one of the people that was advising him just said hey by the way uh maybe

00:13:14.200 don't incite the base in this way it's nothing wrong like we all have relatives that are involved

00:13:18.600 in this and whatever else but we but but the party still tries to stand with traditional values don't

00:13:23.560 Don't don't gaslight your own people. And he was like, well, if that's the kind of party we have, maybe we should get different members. And that's exactly the problem, isn't it? It's not about tolerance, hatred or any of that. That's not an endorsement of any of those things.

00:13:40.520 But it's a fundamental point of just as just as maybe, you know, we're not probably going to have a lot of it's not going to be a lot of symbolism around Palestinian liberation at most most festivals that involve the synagogue.

00:13:55.740 Likewise, here inside of this movement, more traditionalists are found, more socially conserved people are found.

00:14:01.620 This is just a fact of life.

00:14:02.880 I think anybody from any walk of life who isn't just trying to gaslight, isn't just trying to take false offense, would be completely on side with that reality.

00:14:09.480 They all understand that that's how it is. And yet somebody who was going to represent this riding thought to themselves, no, you know what, I'm going to be one better than my own people. And I'm going to virtue signal and I'm going to show them how to be better Canadians and better people, despite the fact that obviously there was no pandemic or epidemic of hatred, intolerance or bullying in this area.

00:14:31.220 This wasn't taking a stand on anything. This was trying to show alignment with something that had no connection really to the values around that area and to try and score political points. It wasn't about empathy. It wasn't about solidarity. It wasn't about love. And so I think that we need to be very honest with ourselves about this. This happens with us all the time.

00:14:50.980 um the people that we're electing are are getting to be influenced by the people around them in

00:14:57.420 ottawa and we need to understand that the people in the party in ottawa really like they could work

00:15:03.600 for the liberals they could work for the ndp they are not social conservatives for the most part

00:15:08.060 uh the people who are in charge the the higher ups of the apparatchiks of the party they have

00:15:13.300 everything in common with everybody else who's in all the other neighborhoods of ottawa and have

00:15:17.640 liberal values socially so you know socially liberal values are fiscally pretty conservative

00:15:23.040 because obviously bureaucratic town so they like their they like their rents they like getting

00:15:26.400 their money right it lets the housing market stay rather stable and they really enjoy having a

00:15:31.240 constant stream of money from the rest of us but but their values socially speaking are quite liberal

00:15:35.980 and you just live in that long enough unless you're in a pretty tight community that's going

00:15:40.460 to keep you informed of of a of a kind of commonsensical way of looking at things and that

00:15:45.320 you're here to represent people this isn't about you you're not important it's the people you

00:15:49.280 represent are important if that humility isn't being thrown at you all the time I'm not sure

00:15:53.280 what what will happen we're going to try and go to some of the comments now and just kind of look

00:15:57.960 around see what people are saying I think that one of the big things that needs to come to the

00:16:02.940 fore here is that Aaron O'Toole has really misstepped here he's really misstepped here and

00:16:09.180 he's going to lose, he's going to lose the base. If he doesn't, if he doesn't correct course on

00:16:15.760 this pretty quickly, we're, we're in big trouble. And I think, I think people are going to stay

00:16:20.940 at home on election day and that election could be tomorrow, right? It could be very soon because

00:16:26.140 the budget's coming. Um, it's probably going to fail and we're not sure whether we're going to

00:16:30.820 have a May or a fall election. Um, basically the liberals are just biding their time, right?

00:16:35.760 They're just seeing whether they're seeing whether or not they're going to have enough people vaccinated and whether or not they're up in the polls or down in the polls.

00:16:43.700 And that was something that, of course, Stephen Harper tried to get us away from with fixed election dates.

00:16:48.180 But fixed election dates haven't really worked for us in Canada because we're not a republic.

00:16:51.840 We're not. We have a parliamentary democracy and it's and you can dissolve a parliament at any time.

00:16:57.420 Even a majority government can dissolve its own parliament at any time.

00:17:00.280 If there was a no confidence vote against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau back before the minority government that we have now, he could have been dismissed as prime minister or his government could have fallen.

00:17:12.160 His own cabinet could have been undermined by his own people.

00:17:15.060 That's been rare in Canada.

00:17:16.680 But this happens in other parliamentary democracies, particularly in Australia and in Britain.

00:17:22.020 And so we has lost the base. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. I used the wrong tense there. I apologize for that. But it is exactly that. What are we going to do if our party doesn't seem to be listening to us?

00:17:46.520 I see some comments there. We're talking about separatism and rather sovereignty. Sovereignty. Sovereignty is a sovereignism. How would you say that? I'll let I'll let Terry correct me on that one again.

00:17:57.020 uh it the thing the thing is that i i'm going to be i'm going to be completely candid with

00:18:03.300 with all of you where do i stand on the sovereignty question i i want a better deal

00:18:08.720 from ottawa and i want it come hell or high water so whatever way i have to get that deal

00:18:13.020 outside of outright violence is is whatever i'm kind of willing to do i would prefer if i'm allowed

00:18:20.380 to go into this whole topic i would prefer to see the borders of canada not change that is to

00:18:25.980 say its external borders. I would like Canada to remain a whole country. I would like to see its

00:18:30.140 internal borders change. That's where I stand on that. I think that, I mean, I'm from British

00:18:34.720 Columbia. I'm broadcasting you live from, we call it the northern capital of British Columbia. And

00:18:38.920 yeah, Prince George is a pretty big town up here in northern BC. But let me tell you, we feel

00:18:43.700 ignored all the time. I would be happy to see, for that matter, the diocesan lines. I know that's

00:18:49.360 sounding a little rad trad on my part. But the fact of the matter is that if you look at the

00:18:53.600 diocesan map of Canada that is to say where how the church divides Canada uh you'll find very

00:18:59.460 quickly that Canada could actually be about like 46 or 50 like well kind of like the states it'd be

00:19:05.740 it'd be all these different subsections but all the major centers are also separated from the rest

00:19:09.780 of us so those major centers are governed by themselves and they don't affect the rest of us

00:19:13.540 so suddenly Toronto and Hamilton don't rule Ontario and suddenly Vancouver doesn't rule all

00:19:18.700 of British Columbia and Calgary doesn't rule all of Alberta and all of a sudden people can feel

00:19:23.580 much more much more at home in their own home right they feel that they have that more control

00:19:29.700 so that's that's a theory we'll bring that slide up another day i will talk about it more but let's

00:19:34.880 get back into the comments here uh you know people people again are are talking about you know

00:19:40.820 they're talking about actually dismissing dismissing otul i see a comment there from pamela

00:19:46.340 they're talking about you know demand okay we can serve's need to go on mass to our mps nice use of

00:19:53.220 en masse like that and demand they stand against O'Toole.

00:19:57.720 You know, this is the thing. Let's talk about this a little bit.

00:20:01.080 So we live in a parliamentary democracy, right? We don't live in a republic. So what's ironic

00:20:05.380 is that in the last 30 years

00:20:09.380 more presidents have been impeached

00:20:13.040 so that is to say essentially a confidence vote by the Congress

00:20:17.020 in the United States. More presidents have been impeached than prime ministers

00:20:20.860 losing on a confidence ballot

00:20:23.560 inside of their own caucus in Canada.

00:20:25.580 And that's weird.

00:20:26.740 That's weird because it takes nothing

00:20:28.200 to dismiss a prime minister.

00:20:29.860 It takes nothing.

00:20:30.760 Any MP from any party could stand up and say,

00:20:34.060 I no longer have confidence in this government.

00:20:37.040 I believe that the government must,

00:20:38.700 either the entire government's fault

00:20:40.040 or a new cabinet and a new prime minister

00:20:41.760 must be appointed, must be sought.

00:20:44.240 And that's it.

00:20:45.720 You don't have to have an election.

00:20:47.740 Indeed, I mean, I'm not trying to give

00:20:50.080 the liberals ideas of how to win. But I think that Justin Trudeau is their biggest liability.

00:20:53.820 Of course, he's their biggest asset. He's also their biggest liability. He's actually a lot like

00:20:56.680 Trump in this respect, right? Like Trump was the Republican Party. You were voting yes or no

00:21:00.800 on Trump, right? In the last US election. And so it's the same thing with Justin Trudeau. Do you

00:21:06.240 believe in Justin Trudeau or not? If you don't believe in Justin Trudeau, you'll vote for just

00:21:09.540 about anybody else. And I think that's one of the reasons why Aaron's doing what he's doing,

00:21:13.200 right? Let's be honest with ourselves. And then the other thing that's happening there

00:21:16.900 is that when it comes to the Prime Minister,

00:21:21.760 like I said, anybody, anybody can dismiss a Prime Minister

00:21:24.760 who's another elected MP if they stand up and say,

00:21:27.060 I have no confidence in this government,

00:21:28.200 and then everybody else in the room says,

00:21:29.740 you know what, neither do I.

00:21:31.340 That's it. Prime Minister's gone.

00:21:33.340 That's it. It could be anybody else.

00:21:34.920 I mean, at this point, obviously,

00:21:36.700 Christina Freeland is far more competent than he is,

00:21:38.800 and that's not saying a lot, obviously,

00:21:41.100 but I don't understand why the Liberals

00:21:43.700 haven't even thrown him out already.

00:21:44.960 like they should use the parliamentary procedures to try and find a better leader because he is

00:21:49.520 their liability if they find a better leader they they could live in in government for a very long

00:21:54.800 time i think it is still kind of risky for them but now with what aaron's done i don't know what's

00:21:58.240 going to happen i don't have one little speaker who gets away with everything i look cory i

00:22:04.400 completely agree nobody nobody actually you know believes in that guy outside of whoever he's lying

00:22:11.600 to at the time um but uh i you know he's in charge for now um though i guess his puppet masters must

00:22:20.240 must have a field day with the rest of us dealing with him the way to choose partly is to have the

00:22:24.480 mp select him american style leadership races we have our marketing exercises and popularity

00:22:29.040 contests well that's coming from a show favorite we've had mr claire on this show uh he has uh

00:22:36.640 some clear things to say uh to people who want to take our rights away particularly our rights to

00:22:41.280 our guns and our firearms and our heritage as a freeborn people that is both armed and able to

00:22:47.080 provide for itself. I agree. I agree that we have gone wrong when it comes to the leadership

00:22:52.700 contest here. Like here we are as conservatives. We're what, four years from the last leadership

00:22:57.620 contest? I'm looking at my producer here because he was in both of them. Four years? We have four

00:23:03.080 years, 2017, and then what, last year, right? Yeah. So we're at four years. It's 2021. So four years

00:23:09.140 ago was the replacement of Stephen Harper that saw Scheer get elected. And Trost come in fourth,

00:23:15.520 I believe. And Maxime Bernier finished second. Aaron O'Toole was third. And here we are.

00:23:22.080 Here we are again. We're in another leadership crisis right before an election.

00:23:26.540 This style of selecting our leadership isn't working. It's not working. We have to find a

00:23:34.420 better way forward. And I think part of the reason it's not working is even though we have this,

00:23:37.900 it's I've always thought this was funny about us conservatives so we hate the idea of vote reform

00:23:42.360 but our ballot for selecting leaders is the most complicated ballot in like the western world like

00:23:49.080 it's just as every place is worth 100 points and no ballot is not discounted we got to make sure

00:23:54.700 that you know every single proportion how you carry a writing how many points is it worth

00:23:58.460 like it's just it's it's pretty funny I I just think it's kind of ironic we have we have you

00:24:03.260 know conservatives in Canada's like no first past the post is the way we do things but as soon as

00:24:07.520 we go into internal party structure it is the most complicated voting system in the world uh

00:24:13.300 with multiple ballots multiple countings right it's it's funny but the point is that here we are

00:24:19.060 um and we we're in a leadership crisis we have we we have a guy who's literally telling us that

00:24:27.880 he's going to do the exact same thing that the liberals are going to do and and already have

00:24:33.620 done indeed and it's going to be more complicated more costly and less less efficient so it's not

00:24:39.640 even going to be an improvement on what's already terrorizing us at the pump i just i don't know

00:24:45.120 i don't know how that's going to go i don't think it's going to go well i think i think that's the

00:24:50.960 election right there like that's it it's over um i still think we should get out and vote but then

00:24:56.600 again even there how how do you vote for a party that's that's not holding your values um in any

00:25:03.400 sense of the word. I think that maybe you have to kind of talk to your MP directly. I think that

00:25:10.460 was a really good comment that we have to talk to the MPs directly and tell them they need

00:25:17.900 to push back. They need to push back against what's coming, against this policy. This policy

00:25:26.260 isn't working. We need to do something better. I think ultimately as well, we have to start

00:25:35.960 finding a way to get our own say in things. I think one of the things that we've learned

00:25:42.580 through COVID is that it doesn't matter whether you're right wing or left wing, you can be a

00:25:47.060 tyrant pretty quickly. And so if we look at what's happened in British Columbia and in Alberta and

00:25:53.320 the harsh lockdowns in Ontario, as well as Quebec. And technically speaking, Quebec is ruled by a

00:25:57.740 right of center government right now. And then of course, what's happened in Manitoba, and then out

00:26:03.080 there all the way into the Maritimes, where they basically, it was interesting what they did in the

00:26:06.920 Maritimes, right? I had a buddy, I should tell you this. So I had a buddy, he's a lawyer, he had to go

00:26:13.220 fly out into Newfoundland, and he needed to get inside there. Well, getting into Newfoundland

00:26:21.620 was like trying to get into North Korea during COVID.

00:26:24.720 Like you couldn't get there.

00:26:25.840 It couldn't happen.

00:26:26.640 You needed to talk to literally

00:26:27.780 the provincial health officer directly,

00:26:29.340 or at least the officer's office, right?

00:26:31.500 To the people in charge and get on to the island.

00:26:34.960 Like you couldn't get to Newfoundland

00:26:36.620 without literally a permission slip,

00:26:38.400 all but a passport from their provincial health authority.

00:26:41.420 And so I don't agree with that whatsoever.

00:26:44.900 At the same time,

00:26:46.080 it appears that the Maritimes are now past everything 0.97

00:26:49.280 and they're gonna continue to keep their border

00:26:50.840 mostly closed you know everything west west of the brunswick and and they're just going to kind

00:26:55.560 of party with themselves they're going to have a good time they're going to have a summer apparently

00:26:58.960 they're they're not in the same boat as we are when it comes to these rolling restrictions i

00:27:03.560 call them rolling blackouts blackouts of your fun you know uh and so uh what's you know what's that

00:27:11.020 going to look like what's that going to look like i don't know coming back to to just what's happened

00:27:17.260 with the lockdown here in British Columbia and everywhere else. I think that people just don't

00:27:28.360 understand how easy, just how easy it is to slip into tyranny. And I mean, anybody who has kids,

00:27:39.580 I'm unmarried. I'm hoping to be married soon. But I'm unmarried and I have no children.

00:27:44.520 no exes and no alimony i cut got lucky on that count uh for my age group but uh anybody who has

00:27:52.340 kids knows that there's being a good parent there's being a bad parent and i think that we all

00:27:57.720 know the moments where and you know whatever when i was substitute teaching that sort of thing just

00:28:02.420 being a good you know you know there's there's been moments where i was a bad teacher right and

00:28:11.560 I was, I was not as, as kind or as, as generous as I could have been to, to, you know, a particular

00:28:17.820 set of, set of classes or whatever. And to the same point, right, if you're a parent, you know

00:28:21.940 that sometimes that you can be, you can be a bad parent, right? We can all do that. We all sin,

00:28:26.560 right? We all make mistakes. And I think that the thing is that when it comes to our politicians,

00:28:30.560 like one, their sins have more consequences that they affect more people all at once.

00:28:35.400 And two, if by the very nature of your job, you're not allowed to doubt yourself or you're not,

00:28:40.620 and doubts about your leadership

00:28:42.320 must be thrown out at all times,

00:28:44.100 and you must just make decisions

00:28:45.780 and live with the consequences.

00:28:47.240 We're going to take that hill.

00:28:48.560 I don't care how many men it costs me.

00:28:51.600 You can get into a loop.

00:28:54.200 You've got that lack of humility.

00:28:56.060 You have that lack of insight,

00:28:57.460 that lack of reality,

00:29:00.560 and you get lost.

00:29:03.020 You get lost.

00:29:04.040 We're going to take some more comments here.

00:29:06.400 I see that another friend of the show,

00:29:08.680 Chris Velasco.

00:29:09.460 So what do you think of Frank Caputo running for Tory leadership based in Kamloops?

00:29:14.640 This is an interesting point.

00:29:17.360 I can't tell what level of government this is.

00:29:21.200 Is this that?

00:29:23.720 OK, so a conservative nomination.

00:29:25.640 So that makes sense.

00:29:26.860 I mean, I think that the big thing is going to be that, again, it does come down to a

00:29:32.220 test of values, right?

00:29:33.320 I think that's the time we live in is like, where do your values stand?

00:29:37.840 If you have if you're if you have the right values, then I think that, you know, hopefully people will support you and you will get elected.

00:29:44.840 But it's let's actually be clear about this. Let's talk a little bit about how primaries work in Canada.

00:29:51.120 So so that's an American term, of course. Right. That's an American term to use the word primaries.

00:29:56.580 But if we're talking about nomination battles, what happens in Canada and this gets really, really dark, really fast, especially within the conservative party.

00:30:03.340 I'm sorry, I'm letting all the cats out of the bag today. But the fact of the matter is that, one, again, to get to get into the nomination race, you have to have a signature from the leader.

00:30:13.240 I believe you still have to have a signature from the leader to to get on or that you can be canceled at any time. Right.

00:30:20.620 So so then the other thing is that, of course, people are going to go through your social media and everything else.

00:30:26.000 nobody wants a neo-Nazi elected to parliament. Yes, yes, yes,

00:30:30.180 we get that. But simultaneously, even if you do have

00:30:34.040 just stronger views, say around abortion or around euthanasia

00:30:38.180 and that sort of thing, that's another way you could get filtered out. But let's be clear, they won't

00:30:42.140 tell you that. And then finally, you get into the

00:30:46.060 nomination battle and the party is really happy that you're just helping them generate memberships

00:30:50.000 because that's what you have to do. You sell memberships so that people can vote for you in the nomination

00:30:53.940 race that's that's the name of the game um and if you have enough money or if you've got a buddy who

00:30:58.900 kind of does some political consulting or knows how to do strategy and that sort of thing you call

00:31:02.760 them up and i don't know if you put them on the books or not or you kind of hide where you're

00:31:05.800 putting that money and whatever and that's kind of that's kind of how you try to win the nomination

00:31:11.540 base but you need to be you need to understand that the party has favorites party has favorites

00:31:16.340 it absolutely has people it prefers in every single nomination base and there are times where

00:31:20.080 the party interferes the times of the party sends people in to ensure that that guy gets elected and

00:31:27.580 not that one and sometimes it's that girl or that guy or that guy or that girl it doesn't matter

00:31:32.340 it's not based on gender sex race or anything else it's that the party has its preferences

00:31:36.140 it has its politically correct understanding of things and it wants those people elected and it

00:31:41.040 does send in fixers to make that happen let's go to some more comments here my dad is very sick i

00:31:47.780 can't go see him without a two-week quarantine yeah it's there's a lot of people who did not

00:31:55.320 get to see uh their elders uh in their last days and i think that's i don't know if there are words

00:32:02.500 that are appropriate to this show to express how how disgusting that is people people should have

00:32:10.680 been able to see uh their parents as they uh as they passed um there was no comfort uh i of course

00:32:19.320 in my faith uh prayers as you pass on are very important uh very important it's a sacrament

00:32:25.480 actually inside of our faith and so the fact that that wasn't happening the fact that people were

00:32:33.340 were left without their last rights and without access to even their families and without that

00:32:40.320 comfort um it's completely it's inexcusable it's inexcusable i i i have no words for it

00:32:48.240 we're going to go to some more comments at the bottom here and just kind of see there's been

00:32:52.120 some new comments as we got got on there um you know i got to go unless they change it

00:32:59.680 will be the first time i won't vote in a federal election i have been a member of the conservative

00:33:04.680 party for a very long time but i am so furious with how they're making so many bad decisions

00:33:09.280 Shelly, look, I, you know, I completely get it there.

00:33:11.700 I completely understand that definitely appeals to me as well in the sense that, like, I, I don't really know what to say about it.

00:33:19.600 Like, I feel, I feel like we see this is see this.

00:33:23.880 So here's a theory for you.

00:33:25.240 Here's a theory for you.

00:33:26.920 What happened was.

00:33:30.160 The Conservative Party made made a gamble, made a guess, right?

00:33:33.780 So the people who run the Conservative Party, the elites inside of it, they made a gamble.

00:33:36.840 they said look conserves have nowhere else to go so the base can't leave so what we're going to do

00:33:41.780 is we're going to pivot and we're going to try and appeal to a bunch of new voters and a bunch

00:33:45.440 of liberal voters that maybe are tired of the liberals or understand that there's been mistakes

00:33:49.640 so we're going to make these policy changes to try and soften the conserved message to bring

00:33:54.380 new people into the party or at least get them to vote for us this coming election in 2021

00:33:58.260 and we're going to leave we're going to like just just hope that the social conservatives and the

00:34:04.260 Fiscal conservatives and everybody else, maybe the more libertarian conservatives or the more, you know, conservatives who want like freedom of expression, that sort of thing.

00:34:10.500 We'll let them or let them just simmer in the pot because they can't go anywhere because there's nowhere for them to go.

00:34:16.060 And we're going to bring in some new people, get a winning coalition and take majority government.

00:34:20.180 And maybe they'll throw who knows who's going to, you know, who's who knows what's going to happen.

00:34:24.460 Like, like we all know that parties get elected and then their platform completely changes and they don't follow the promises they made.

00:34:30.740 but i i i hesitate to say that that's a winning strategy because i i don't think it is i don't

00:34:40.760 think you can just throw the base under the bus and be like oh this is going to be fine everything's

00:34:46.320 going to be grand uh we're going to we're going to get everybody in there and don't worry we're

00:34:50.420 going to winning coalition and then we'll rule like actual conservatives well you didn't campaign

00:34:54.740 as conservatives and because you didn't campaign as conservatives you got a bunch of people to get

00:34:59.140 on side with you. Well, that's not good. That's not good. You know, so we're going to go to a

00:35:04.260 few more comments here. I think we've got a comment from from John here. The tyranny is

00:35:09.040 creeping bombard your MPs with emails, snail mail and phone calls. You know, snail mail gets to

00:35:13.400 people. This is important. I carry stamps with me in my wallet all the time. I know, I know I'm only

00:35:18.480 31. I come from a generation that literally saw everybody go from mail to email. But I do carry

00:35:26.140 stamps with me at all times and uh sometimes you just need to you need to be able to to send a

00:35:32.500 letter you know i think uh i think actually we got another uh another comment here this is from

00:35:39.780 isabel uh she is making the point that you talked about the lockdowns in the maritimes what do you

00:35:48.400 think about the travel restrictions coming in your province oh boy oh boy okay all right all right i'm

00:35:55.740 sorry i'm kind of vain sometimes i kind of play with my hair don't worry about it it's a big deal

00:35:59.580 i all right whatever uh what do i think about the lockdown in my in my province oh my goodness i

00:36:09.100 i don't know what i'm going to say if an rcmp officer actually tries to pull me over and say

00:36:15.920 hey why don't you why you know just just just come along little buddy like we're doing a random stop

00:36:21.220 I just, I don't want to call our Mounties, or as I always prefer to call them, the Queens Cowboys and Cowgirl.

00:36:28.680 You know, I don't want to call them anything, but I, like, do I get to call them the Gestapo at that point?

00:36:36.040 Like, I mean, shout out to all of our members who serve and are putting their lives on the line every day.

00:36:41.980 All the caveats, okay?

00:36:43.240 I'm not trying to be dismissive.

00:36:44.540 I have friends who are cops.

00:36:45.620 i i don't want to get into an adversarial relationship with with the mounties and i mean

00:36:53.220 really the membership because i mean let's be clear that the institution itself just like

00:36:57.820 anything else the white shirts upstairs if they hate me like i don't really care if they hate me

00:37:01.380 because i mean they hate anybody who gets in their way but to the members themselves i respect you

00:37:06.340 and i don't i don't want to get into an adversarial relationship with you but but honestly like i can't

00:37:12.400 even understand how how would you how would you enforce it how how could you in good conscience

00:37:18.400 pull somebody over right like how could you do it like you know it'd be one thing if it was literally

00:37:23.840 as as simple as the guy who thinks that you know i should go and hug every single old person while

00:37:29.300 infected with covid in order to i don't know expedite things that like that person okay but

00:37:35.920 how would you know that and how would you do that without a warrant without without just cause and

00:37:41.080 without all those things, like even in that terrible scenario, where somebody is literally

00:37:44.980 trying to give COVID to people on purpose, you, you would still need to prove your case or have

00:37:50.300 reasonable cause for search and seizure, right? And for arrest. If you don't have it, you don't

00:37:58.380 have it. And that's the nature of our justice system. So I can't, you know, that is what it

00:38:02.760 is, you must produce the body, right? It's habeas corpus, you must produce the body must produce the

00:38:05.960 evidence that that warrants this person being held against their will. And if you don't have

00:38:10.880 the evidence you can't you just can't random stops non-essential travel define non-essential travel

00:38:16.880 i mean the other day somebody said you know like bonnie henry wants us all to stay in our

00:38:21.920 neighborhood i'm like well i'm going to ride my motorbike pretty socially distanced from other

00:38:25.680 people i got a visor on i got a helmet on i mean not exactly breathing on people uh but yeah i'm

00:38:32.200 going for a ride my motorbike deal with it and i need to go to church and do whatever and you know

00:38:38.680 i went and prayed in front of church because the churches are still closed and i had to go pick up

00:38:43.560 some stuff and it what i don't know what we're doing i don't know what we're doing it makes no

00:38:50.020 sense and these rolling these rolling lockdowns and the the random stops like

00:38:54.220 i i think i might just tell him i tell that that member you know sir ma'am i'm sorry but i'm like

00:39:03.400 unless you want me to take your badge number and you want me to go to the media like no offense

00:39:08.380 to anybody. I'm not even trying to

00:39:10.300 just use my platform here and get some intro.

00:39:11.920 I don't want to threaten you

00:39:14.220 personally. I'm not here to dox you or whatever, but

00:39:16.280 it's like, look, I'm going to tell

00:39:18.180 people that

00:39:19.220 the RCMP

00:39:22.460 pulled me over, right?

00:39:24.200 That's going to happen, and that's life.

00:39:26.400 I hope you guys can live with the consequences

00:39:28.280 of that, not in any violent sense,

00:39:30.480 in a sense of like, can you wake up

00:39:32.220 with yourself in the morning and be like, yeah, that's fine.

00:39:34.120 It's fine. Please don't. Just don't do it.

00:39:36.620 Go bust somebody for drugs.

00:39:38.380 go, go do a Timmy's run. I don't know. My producer is out of the room for just a moment. So I'm just

00:39:45.760 going to read you some of the comments we have here. It's clear O'Toole and his staff have

00:39:49.640 decided Canada needs a Conservative Party that is also progressive. I'm surprised no one has ever

00:39:53.500 thought of this before. Winky face. That comes to us, of course, from Aaron Ekman, another friend

00:39:58.520 of the show. He's been on the show with us a couple of times. He comes on on Thursdays. Me,

00:40:03.520 him and Stuart Parker debate the issues of the day. Aaron, of course, is is is being facetious

00:40:11.080 there. We of course have a long legacy of progressive conservatism in Canada. And let's

00:40:15.820 be clear, some of that progressive conservatism, like the most libertarian person in Canada is

00:40:20.120 still pretty happy that there's going to be a publicly funded emergency room when they get

00:40:24.700 into a car accident. We conservatives have conceded this point, the idea that there being

00:40:29.160 some fundamental level of basic care that's that's a point that's conceded on on the question

00:40:35.620 of climate change etc the issue becomes more so still whether one wants to believe that climate

00:40:42.220 change is an existential threat or it's just a natural process the fact of the matter is that

00:40:46.940 no amount of taxation is going to fix it no amount of taxation because ultimately for me the way i

00:40:53.660 understand it is that really you just get to pick your theocracy i'm a good i'm a good you know

00:40:58.760 pro-democrat kind of guy i want i want there to be democracy right i want people to be able to vote

00:41:03.760 choose their leaders that sort of thing but i you know and there's the comment there yeah that's

00:41:08.260 there it is it's clear go tool and staff have decided canada needs a conservative party that

00:41:12.900 is also progressive i'm surprised no one has ever thought of that before i i think the i think the

00:41:17.400 thing is that we we conservatives there there are moments to be progressive for example say when we

00:41:24.440 when we want healthcare and that sort of thing, which was at the behest of the CCF, now the NDP

00:41:28.520 and Tommy Douglas, but still at a fundamental level, you can't pay your way to heaven. That

00:41:35.200 was the idea of the reformation, right? You can't pay your way to heaven. You know, and I say that 0.59

00:41:38.640 as a Roman Catholic, can't pay your way to heaven. You have to have a sincere sense of belief and you

00:41:42.520 have to work for it in a real way. Well, if climate change is an existential threat, you can't pay

00:41:48.840 your way to to heaven okay so no amount of taxation is going to fix it you need to make

00:41:56.560 a sustainable better future and it needs to be for everyone and that's a place of of justice for

00:42:01.560 everyone every person from the least of these to the greatest of these they all deserve a stake in

00:42:06.300 the country and if your system is going to penalize right the least the people who are the worst right

00:42:14.060 they are they're in the worst conditions the worst economic conditions they are they're the ones

00:42:18.300 living hand to mouth, and you're going to come up with an economic system to get us all to a brighter

00:42:22.080 future, that hurts them? I'm not going to back that. That's not justice. That's slavery. That's

00:42:31.360 evil. And so we're not doing that. And so I think that that's the thing with what Aaron O'Toole

00:42:35.260 has conceded here is he's like, well, I guess we can do the slavery thing. That's okay. I'm not

00:42:38.900 doing the slavery thing. I'm not endorsing that. Carbon tax is slavery. The idea that we're going

00:42:44.540 to tax our way to a better tomorrow. I'm not doing that. That's nonsense. We've got some more

00:42:49.680 comments here from a couple of different things. Let's see. The Office of the Next Prime Minister

00:42:56.080 of Canada. That's quite the statement. What is that? Is either your values as a conservative

00:43:00.180 represent the popular culture within the party base, but also the popular culture of society.

00:43:03.800 If you're not willing to stand up for those values, then you are not a conservative.

00:43:06.820 I agree

00:43:08.080 I agree

00:43:10.100 we have to stand up for the values of

00:43:12.980 conservatism which in the end

00:43:15.060 a lot of people think it's about small government

00:43:16.660 I'm not saying it isn't

00:43:18.960 but I think I've said it on the show

00:43:20.920 before and I'll be very clear now

00:43:22.800 again I am an anti-austerity

00:43:25.260 conservative and what that means is

00:43:27.160 every time conservatives only

00:43:28.980 talk about cut cut cut one

00:43:30.720 they're giving away all the votes

00:43:33.160 that they could ever give away because there are

00:43:35.100 people in the civil service that are interested in voting conservative but the idea that they're

00:43:38.780 all just going to lose their jobs is not fun but guess what the frontline workers are usually more

00:43:42.760 conservative than the managers are because they're all apparatchiks of the liberal party as we all

00:43:46.600 know so cut the management you get rid of two birds one stone you got rid of a bunch of liberal

00:43:51.780 voters that were untouchable and you gave a whole bunch you take half of their salaries and you put

00:43:55.760 it to frontline workers and then then people get better services and you actually saved a bunch of

00:44:00.120 money. How about that? Really not rocket science. If you want to fix the civil service, do that.

00:44:05.020 Simplify the tax code, take all the CRA people, put them into indigenous affairs, fix it, put them 0.57

00:44:10.440 on the water problems, figure it out. Like it's not a big deal. So, but, but no, you need to stand

00:44:15.920 with your values. You need to stand with your values. And part of that is, it certainly is at

00:44:19.540 least peace order and good government. How small that government is, is up for debate, but peace

00:44:23.740 order and good government, and certainly out of the way, it doesn't need to be in our toilets.

00:44:26.780 it doesn't need to be in our yards it doesn't need to be in our air it can it can be away from

00:44:31.000 those things okay let's see uh aaron had another comment down there but uh yeah there was and of

00:44:40.360 course the albertan has always uh always weighed into these things yeah 42 of 44 police departments

00:44:45.240 in ontario refused to enforce some of doug ford's uh most draconian restrictions uh trying to

00:44:50.080 re-establish the provincial police force in bc i'm totally in favor of there being a provincial

00:44:54.000 police force in bc of course i'm also sometimes kind of crazy and like hey why not the night

00:44:58.800 watchman who watches the watchman whatever we'll we'll get into questions of policing another time

00:45:03.060 but i appreciate that aaron mentioned that and god bless all of you uh police departments that

00:45:07.940 did stand up for the people of canada and the people of ontario as unterrible as it can be

00:45:12.520 sometimes uh it uh like good for you guys you did the right thing there i hope that your federal

00:45:20.300 brothers and sisters follow your example and refuse to impose restrictions that are clearly

00:45:26.620 they're clearly just tyranny uh we'll go to the albertian he likes to give me his hot takes uh

00:45:31.260 every couple of shows here it should also be said the government is very inefficient at providing

00:45:35.500 charity help to the needy provide non-profit profits uh do much that much do that much more

00:45:41.100 efficiently wow maybe if i could speak that would be helpful oh and when we allow government to

00:45:48.140 to administer the daily needs of people, there is a loss of efficiency at every layer of bureaucracy.

00:45:52.220 This is not a question. It's not a question. I completely agree. Of course, of course, this is

00:45:58.020 the fundamental problem of what we do with government in anything, right? And I think that

00:46:04.780 we have to understand this. So for those of you who are kind of Christian social Democrats in the

00:46:08.400 crowd, and there's a lot of us, a lot of people who kind of feel like, well, I have my faith,

00:46:13.480 my faith's very important to me, and it tells me to care about other people. And so now I want to

00:46:17.260 find a way to implement that through government policy. Again, I'm not saying there isn't a

00:46:22.500 place for, you know, some fundamental basic needs. But I think perhaps the simplest way

00:46:32.660 to look at it is like this. Your neighbor needs your help, not your tax dollars. They need your

00:46:41.240 help personally and if you want to do the right thing it's you give you give your help personally

00:46:48.820 to people you don't you don't hide it in things you give it to them personally and there does

00:46:54.800 need to be a basic level of care for everyone but the greatest thing you can do for your neighbor

00:47:01.260 is help them clean up their yard help them wash your car take care of their kids be a part of

00:47:07.120 neighborhood right be be one in your community and and let them administer to you as well in that

00:47:14.160 way right this mutual bond of charity right and we need to know our neighbors and we need to do

00:47:18.400 the things that will uh that will get us there so that's that i think is kind of the key point

00:47:24.800 when we look at when you look at how how should government act in these things i completely agree

00:47:30.240 that the non-profits have to do the detail stuff you know government's really good at and that's

00:47:34.000 not even that good at it honestly but the thing that the government does you know that we built

00:47:38.000 we built the railroad in canada that that worked you know we won the war right we were able to build

00:47:44.560 tanks and airplanes and all sorts of stuff and then the spin-off industries that comes off of

00:47:48.080 those central items right that's like whether you build a big dam or you you build you know

00:47:53.360 you build up a pipeline right the spin-off industries from all that having cheap power

00:47:57.760 having having all these machines that do metal forming right we built we were building planes

00:48:02.800 for the war with this but now we're going to build beavers and all this other stuff and the haviland

00:48:06.400 is going to happen and all that stuff and of course we built the mosquito for the war like

00:48:10.080 that's that's the way it's supposed to work so government is the one that can take ultimate

00:48:14.400 liability on things in a way that nobody else can because government is basically well governments

00:48:18.960 can fail for sure and we might have a failing government if this inflation gets any more out

00:48:22.720 of control but the point that i'm trying to drive home here is that if if if you have at least a

00:48:27.760 of responsible government, but it understands that you have to make these public sacrifices

00:48:32.040 of public dollars for these big ticket items that then have spinoff effects

00:48:35.900 that multiply in huge ways. Having cheap power in British Columbia is a big deal.

00:48:40.460 Having access to water in our country is a big

00:48:43.840 deal. Having, you know, the infrastructure we have when it

00:48:47.800 comes to our airports and that sort of thing is mostly pretty high quality. Those

00:48:51.380 investments then have multiplying effects, right?

00:48:54.700 And if you can link your business up to what the government's doing in that way or like the infrastructure they're building, that's when you definitely start raking in things and making a good living for yourself and a good living for the people who work with you and for your family.

00:49:09.580 And so that's the way, I think, to look at what government can do.

00:49:12.560 And then when you go to the charitable question, the charity question and and and and helping helping with people who are in dire straits, the simplest way to understand that is the government does a good job of of building that infrastructure.

00:49:26.800 But then the details, the details have to be done by people on the ground.

00:49:31.400 And honestly, it's it's just it's not only cheaper, it's far more efficient.

00:49:36.240 And ultimately, you can't pay someone enough to love somebody.

00:49:38.780 I think that's one of the things we need to talk about when it comes to medical care.

00:49:42.560 I'm not saying I don't want expert doctors, but you cannot pay someone enough to love somebody

00:49:49.340 else. So can't start change to the top. We can only do it from the bottom up. This is exactly

00:49:53.880 the problem of what's gone on with this latest announcement from Mr. O'Toole. I don't think

00:49:59.620 this is if this had been if this had been a party platform thing, let's say there was a more

00:50:03.620 progressive conservative riding association that had decided to put this forward. Like, hey, we got

00:50:09.000 this idea. Let's talk about finding a way to redistribute wealth a little bit, especially for

00:50:16.380 people who are hard up, and to do it through a carbon tax system or something. That would have

00:50:23.020 been worthy of debate at the National Council level and between all the constit associations,

00:50:28.300 all of them talking to each other, the presidents. Maybe there could have been some roundtables,

00:50:32.020 a bunch of Zoom meetings, town hall meetings, and then that could have been discussed.

00:50:35.920 Again, I'm not in favor of there being more levies on our fuel.

00:50:39.280 I'm not.

00:50:40.340 But at least the question could be asked.

00:50:43.060 And one of the things that we really try to do on this show, as all of you know, is we try to have just freedom of expression on this show.

00:50:49.000 Right.

00:50:49.180 We have two rules.

00:50:50.120 Right. 0.99

00:50:50.320 No denying the Holocaust. 0.94

00:50:51.480 No swearing. 0.94

00:50:52.740 Those are our rules.

00:50:54.580 And outside of that, we talk to anybody and everybody from all across the spectrum about all sorts of ideas.

00:51:00.980 And so that's the point.

00:51:02.640 If if that had been the way this was done when it came to Mr. O'Toole's announcement, then maybe there would be a leg to stand on.

00:51:09.240 But as it stands right now, as far as I can tell, this really was kind of schemed up in a back room.

00:51:14.100 And that's and that's going to have some trouble. That's going to cause some problems because people feel imposed upon.

00:51:19.180 This is the whole reason people have a problem with our Constitution is that it looks like it was kind of written on a kitchen table at midnight.

00:51:25.080 And coincidentally, it was right. This is the problem. People feel really, really alienated by a Constitution.

00:51:31.920 that in its first line tells us that god and the rule of law are the rule of the day and then in

00:51:36.940 the second line says oh by the way you can limit all these fundamental freedoms just at a whim

00:51:40.940 as you can demonstrate whatever the supreme court says and tosses a coin and then finally you get

00:51:46.160 through your fundamental freedoms and everything else and i even as a status indian have to tell you

00:51:50.340 that that i have problems with the idea that there's there's a constitutional protection around

00:51:55.880 when some of those aboriginal rights because uh what where does that stop and where does it end

00:52:01.900 Can I, as an Aboriginal person, I don't know, stand in front of the Trans-Canada Highway and just stop all the traffic from Kamloops to Toronto and be like, all right, until I get what I want.

00:52:12.820 But at the same time, we also believe in freedom of assembly and people demonstrating what they feel is wrong and telling people that we need to protest this, we need to do this.

00:52:21.800 So it's always intention. I'm not saying that there's a simple answer to this. It's always intention.

00:52:24.980 But the point that I'm trying to drive home here is that people feel imposed upon when it comes to this latest announcement from Mr. O'Toole.

00:52:31.900 And we Canadians do feel like a lot of things happen above us without us being consulted.

00:52:37.240 And then it comes down to us, you know, from on high, the high priests of our culture, the high priests of our government come down and say, this is how things are going to be.

00:52:44.660 And we're like, well, I'm a king.

00:52:48.820 It's like, well, I didn't vote for you.

00:52:50.660 I didn't vote for that.

00:52:52.120 I didn't vote for climate change policy from Aaron O'Toole.

00:52:55.660 I wonder if Aaron O'Toole is doing this on purpose of people vote for Trudeau so he gets a majority.

00:53:01.000 I don't know.

00:53:01.900 Um, I, maybe he has, I don't know, does Trudeau have a company to have stocks invested in?

00:53:06.560 I don't know.

00:53:08.720 They say, they say, pay this carbon tax.

00:53:11.740 What is the money used for?

00:53:13.020 What have they done to help us so-called climate change?

00:53:16.560 Uh, so fat with our money.

00:53:18.000 I, I live in British Columbia.

00:53:20.760 We've been paying for the sins of climate change for a really long time.

00:53:26.400 Uh, what that means?

00:53:28.460 I have no idea.

00:53:29.480 there's been uh there's been there i mean the carbon trust in bc was woefully uh managed as i

00:53:38.600 recall i believe it was a place that the bc liberal party kept putting its friends there's a lot of

00:53:43.060 cash sloshing around in it what it was for how it worked it didn't turn into like the heritage fund

00:53:48.180 i know a lot of you guys are from alberta uh and it did not turn into uh in into the heritage fund

00:53:55.380 you know it didn't uh so so bc doesn't have any investment in there that's that's you know going

00:54:02.280 to sustain us through thick and thin or whatever so i don't really know what this was about in fact

00:54:06.120 i i must i gotta ask you guys for your forgiveness because i should probably be less ignorant about

00:54:10.340 that so maybe we'll try and bring on a guest to tell us more about uh the carbon trust and that

00:54:14.720 sort of thing um the albertan has something to say about daniel smith for some reason i'm not sure

00:54:21.340 what this is all about. I didn't even mention

00:54:23.280 Daniel Smith. God love her, but

00:54:25.040 I didn't really mention anything about her.

00:54:27.360 Okay, Daniel Smith for

00:54:28.920 Alberta Premier, President. Of course, we're not

00:54:31.260 a republic, but all right.

00:54:34.140 She betrayed the people

00:54:35.340 for what he crossed the floor, killed 0.93

00:54:37.220 the Wild Rose Party. You know what?

00:54:39.180 Again, we're going to let people debate these things

00:54:41.160 in the comments as they will. I will

00:54:43.060 say this.

00:54:44.900 Two points. One,

00:54:47.360 we all remember Belinda Stronick

00:54:49.140 crossing the floor as well, and of course

00:54:51.140 That was the end of the love affair of John McCain.

00:54:54.480 But the other thing that we remember is that Winston Churchill crossed the floor, I think, no less than five times on different boats.

00:55:05.600 And that wasn't just voting against his party or for his party.

00:55:08.000 It was he literally changed parties about four or five times.

00:55:12.400 And so the man who basically won World War Two, as we all know, right, fight them on the beaches, fight them in the air.

00:55:17.900 This man, whom still remains, I think, the greatest Britain and remains, of course, an inspiration. I don't know why people are trying to cancel him. It's absolute nonsense. But we have to remember that he, too, crossed the floor. So crossing the floor in parliamentary tradition is a real thing. And actually, to the point of crossing the floor, in the congressional system, you're in a semicircle, right? You're in a semicircle. I should put my hands here. And in the parliamentary system, you're like this.

00:55:44.300 So crossing the floor in the parliamentary system is a serious sign of something, whereas in the congressional system, like in the United States, you can just kind of wander around.

00:55:52.940 And Winston Churchill actually made this point.

00:55:54.400 He said the reason we don't sit in the semicircles, you can actually see who believes in what.

00:55:58.080 They don't just kind of hop seats as they slowly move to another part of the political spectrum.

00:56:06.200 We have kind of one more comment here from Aaron.

00:56:10.760 We'll click on that.

00:56:12.100 Who's benefits more from O'Toole Schiff, Maxine Bernier, Jay Hill?

00:56:18.420 I don't know.

00:56:20.700 I guess we're back to the 90s.

00:56:22.020 I mean, everything's the 90s again, didn't it?

00:56:23.680 Wasn't that a joke like not that long ago when the Jays were in the playoffs

00:56:28.620 and that sort of thing?

00:56:29.600 It's like, we're back to the 90s.

00:56:31.140 I guess we never left.

00:56:32.500 We never left the reform and the Canadian Alliance and the PCs.

00:56:37.420 And ultimately, I think we're back to the same problem again.

00:56:42.400 And the reason the conservative consensus is wobbling.

00:56:45.080 I'm not saying it's shattered yet, but it's wobbling.

00:56:47.320 I think it's wobbling, one, because of a lack of strong leadership.

00:56:50.020 I think Stephen Harper provided strong leadership.

00:56:52.220 I have criticisms of that government.

00:56:54.260 The further and further away I get away from it.

00:56:55.920 But I will not doubt the sincerity and the strength of Stephen Harper.

00:57:01.800 I think that was part of it.

00:57:03.180 And I think the other thing that's gone gone wrong is that ultimately you have to remember what you're dealing with when you come to the Liberal Party of Canada.

00:57:12.020 You know, I like calling it an empire of lies. 0.83

00:57:14.460 Same descriptor we used to use for the Soviet Union, because that really is basically my opinion that they are an empire of lies. 1.00

00:57:20.460 And there's certainly a blue bloods. 1.00

00:57:22.160 They they own everything. 0.56

00:57:23.380 They have people everywhere.

00:57:24.720 Foreign service.

00:57:25.740 Half of them are all Liberal Party members.

00:57:27.460 They got people in the universities.

00:57:28.660 They got people in media.

00:57:29.760 They got everybody.

00:57:30.820 They got all the people. 0.96

00:57:32.340 And the thing is that they are an empire of lies.

00:57:35.820 It's about favors.

00:57:36.600 It's about wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

00:57:37.880 It's like, well, don't report on my sin.

00:57:39.360 I won't report on yours.

00:57:40.880 And they have an agenda.

00:57:45.220 And they're just, they're kind of like the Democrats in the United States in that sense.

00:57:48.660 They're more competent people, to use the words of a very odious person who tweeted that out when he endorsed Joe Biden.

00:57:54.940 They're not more competent people.

00:57:56.300 They're just better networked.

00:57:57.560 They're better connected.

00:57:59.140 They're not even smarter people, necessarily.

00:58:01.700 But they're just better connected. And so the thing is that if you're looking at what's happening to the conservative movement in Canada is that it just isn't as well connected.

00:58:09.020 It's small town mayors. It's not big town mayors. It's it's it's, you know, the third, fourth, fifth Senate seat of a province, not the first, you know, not the first three.

00:58:18.840 And and that's just how it is. They just don't have the institutional background to to hold on to it in the same way.

00:58:26.940 That doesn't mean that the Conservative Party is doomed or doesn't have a way forward.

00:58:30.960 But the reason that these other parties are coming to the fore is that they're looking for another vehicle because the vehicle they have right now doesn't seem to be listening to them.

00:58:38.620 And people are angry and they're afraid and they want their jobs and they just want an alternative.

00:58:44.540 So hopefully the Conservative Party can be that alternative to the Liberal Party of Canada.

00:58:47.720 But if they can't figure that out, we're going to be into big trouble.

00:58:51.260 We're going to take one or two more comments here.

00:58:54.100 And then we are going to get John Duncan on in just a moment.

00:58:59.100 And I'll introduce him at that point.

00:59:04.180 Let's see.

00:59:06.280 Yeah, I mean, somebody is trying to give Jay Hill the old thumbs up.

00:59:10.260 That's great.

00:59:10.880 I mean, Jay Hill was my former MP.

00:59:14.340 It's funny that, I mean, he had Bob Zimmer's writing,

00:59:17.280 which has a very long name that I cannot

00:59:20.480 remember the entire name of

00:59:21.500 and of course we have to start thinking about

00:59:24.260 regionality

00:59:24.960 there's another comment from William Scott there

00:59:28.260 Jay Hill is from the west

00:59:30.540 Bernier is from the east I will not be voting

00:59:32.360 for Bernier

00:59:32.720 and this is kind of maybe a place to sort of end this whole question

00:59:36.440 of

00:59:36.760 what's happened with the carbon tax

00:59:40.080 what's happening with the lockdowns and finally

00:59:42.000 what's happening with even the questions

00:59:44.180 of sovereignty or separatism

00:59:45.340 or just even just trying to get a fair deal from Ottawa.

00:59:49.340 I think we need to understand that Canada is very regionally divided.

00:59:55.280 And I'm not saying that I don't want people to work more closely

00:59:57.580 within their regions to do the things that need to be done.

01:00:01.260 Okay, let's be clear.

01:00:02.800 If we don't help each other, no one's going to help us.

01:00:05.300 We got to do this.

01:00:06.760 But at the same time, we have to be careful.

01:00:11.000 We have to be careful because I think if we do get too much

01:00:14.860 into a kind of tribal mentality it's not just it's not just a matter of like you know there's

01:00:18.820 going to be violence in the street and that sort of thing I mean there could be but I think that

01:00:23.120 more properly speaking the problem becomes that if if you get stuck in your regional mentality

01:00:32.040 too far the collaboration necessary to keep this nation state going is gonna is gonna go sideways

01:00:39.180 and and that's a problem because I promise you that there are people are very interested in

01:00:44.360 taking over this country by force or by propaganda. I would name the Chinese for sure. They're 1.00

01:00:51.900 definitely in, you know, they're very excited at the prospect that Canada has weak pro-China

01:00:58.340 friendly governments. That's very good for them. And I think that while the United States might 0.98

01:01:04.420 never invade Canada, I do think that they, a certain liberal elitist technocratic mentality

01:01:12.140 from the United States, which already got in here under Pearson and Trudeau. We all know that

01:01:15.520 because we all read George Grant's book, right? Of course we did. The point is that Canada has

01:01:20.340 been suffering from that consensus for a long time. That's what's really wrong with the Liberal

01:01:23.420 Party. We can't get into that right now. But the point is that that kind of mentality is going to

01:01:28.460 sneak in here and we are going to live under the same kind of regimes as California and New York

01:01:36.660 and you know and and for that matter gretchen whitmer in michigan like i don't want to live 0.92

01:01:42.860 in lockdown forever and so we have to be very careful right it's that old rule either your

01:01:47.160 army is on your property or somebody else's you're going to get an army you always have an army but

01:01:51.500 it's either your army or someone else's and we have to be careful with that uh what that looks

01:01:55.400 like when it comes to canada kind of redrawing its borders i don't know but we will talk about

01:01:59.640 that another time so we are going to pivot now to having uh john duncan the former whip for the

01:02:05.120 Tory caucus, while Stephen Harper was still Prime Minister, and of course, Minister of

01:02:09.600 what is now called Indigenous Affairs, though at the time, I believe it was still called

01:02:13.240 Aboriginal Affairs.

01:02:14.680 John, welcome to the program.

01:02:21.260 I think we have you frozen for just a moment there.

01:02:24.440 Can you hear me?

01:02:30.400 I can hear you.

01:02:32.440 Okay, very good.

01:02:33.420 Can you hear me?

01:02:33.920 i can hear you i can hear you you're a little bit jittery right now but i'm sure it'll smoothen out

01:02:39.940 in a moment well thank you for coming on to uh to the program and uh why don't you tell us a little

01:02:45.580 bit about how you how you got involved in politics and uh and where it took you over the course of

01:02:50.400 your life how did how did everything start for you john uh well it's a long story because it

01:02:58.820 started a long time ago in 1991 I met Preston Manning into the community we

01:03:09.460 filled a very large hall I was on the local part executive and it was all

01:03:18.920 kind of brand new to me I'd never been involved in federal politics before when

01:03:26.180 I actually listened to what Preston had to say. I ended up leading him in my vehicle to his next

01:03:38.020 connection because I was so impressed and then we had I volunteered for the nomination committee

01:03:46.340 because I knew that the message was a good message the report message of the day was a great

01:03:56.180 I interviewed multiple people in terms of, would you be a good candidate, would you run full candidacy?

01:04:08.140 My number one target turned his captain's chair around and said, no, I'm not going to do it, but you should.

01:04:18.940 And so I took it as a serious exercise.

01:04:22.760 If you can think back to 1992, that was the year of the Charlottetown referendum, and I took that as my cue to travel to all of the outlying communities.

01:04:42.760 It's a huge riding on the north half of Vancouver Island and it took a good part of the coast

01:04:50.520 in from Gibson's all the way up to Bellacoola.

01:04:55.940 So I had a Reform Air Force Cessna 210 that I could get around in, spent my weekends doing

01:05:05.280 that.

01:05:06.280 a very helpful boss at the time and and I I thought I'm not gonna win this thing

01:05:16.540 but I'm gonna put all my energy into it and I was quite committed for a year we

01:05:25.420 kept expecting an election we had the Kim Campbell era and she waited until

01:05:31.840 less possible date in 93. So I've been campaigning for over a year. A lot of

01:05:42.160 things changed. I knew like the Charlottetown, the Charlottetown

01:05:49.080 referendum changed everything in British Columbia. In 1993, elected more

01:05:55.340 reform MPs in B.C. than in Alberta. Of course we had a few more MPs as well, but after that

01:06:06.100 first wave, 50 Western Members of Parliament from the Reform Party. It was an interesting

01:06:16.800 time, a very interesting time, and we were not that well received when we got to Ottawa,

01:06:25.240 of putting it simply and and i mean up until recently

01:06:35.480 can you can you hear me john

01:06:41.800 i'm having trouble picking you up nathan um i understand you're breaking up yeah

01:06:48.760 okay okay um well we'll uh we'll try and uh work our way through that if we have to use

01:06:54.600 the chat for the questions we can uh in order to to facilitate that but i think that uh just just

01:07:02.280 as kind of a pivot there um jay hill uh and of course dick harris were both were both my mps

01:07:11.080 for a really long time uh here for prince george uh obviously obviously the reform movement stayed

01:07:17.720 and then of course when it became the conservative movement uh it stayed for a really long time in

01:07:21.480 british columbia would do you think that makes british columbia different that it had such a

01:07:26.280 strong reform background before it began it's uh before before the conservative movement got going

01:07:35.560 well british columbia was instrumental in uh the reform movement and of course

01:07:42.680 if you go by reform it led to a lot of fundamental change in canadian politics including

01:07:51.480 the Stephen Harper government of course. It was a government, a very good government in my opinion.

01:08:03.240 British Columbia and Quebec are a lot of common in the lead up to 1993. All those constitutional

01:08:17.000 uh conventions that were held under money for example bc and quebec were actually

01:08:33.000 closer together on their on their provincial authority and instead of fighting off the

01:08:40.840 spending authority spending power of the federal government those were really strong

01:08:49.400 unifying messages for can at the time and i think we've a lot of that recently but

01:08:59.960 But that's a fascinating look at the Canadian political scene.

01:09:08.460 And I believe to this day that we actually have a lot in common with Quebec in terms of our relationship with the federal government.

01:09:23.960 And we're both far away for different reasons.

01:09:30.160 Geographically, British Columbia, most British Columbians view themselves as British Columbians first and Canadians second.

01:09:41.160 And I'm not sure that's everywhere.

01:09:44.160 It probably applies more in the West and in Atlantic Canada than elsewhere.

01:09:50.160 uh yeah that makes sense what was well yeah uh let's let's talk a little bit about about day

01:10:01.080 one from there and and moving forward what what was on your mind as the key pc agenda when your

01:10:06.700 caucus came together uh because it was a flood of an election right it was a rise as a big

01:10:11.080 big reform wave what what was the first thing on your mind as as a new member of parliament what

01:10:18.180 What did you want to accomplish and what did your colleagues want to accomplish?

01:10:25.400 Well I think all of us had a struggle in that the things that we gained on were things that

01:10:34.140 we wanted to create considerable change in Ottawa.

01:10:41.080 So each of us had our own specialty.

01:10:46.240 a lot a lot of people had an agricultural background and so what did that do eventually it

01:10:53.920 led to uh disposing of the western canada weed board a long-standing grievance from western

01:11:03.520 canada a big positive um in my case i got involved uh a lot in natural resources from my

01:11:15.280 forestry background and i got involved a lot on first nation issues

01:11:21.920 aboriginal issues now indigenous issues

01:11:27.360 and that's sort of where i landed for some time i was on trade

01:11:34.640 trade file in opposition because of softwood lumber

01:11:39.760 So, I think we all pursued some of the big issues, the big items that had affected us

01:11:50.080 in our ridings, in our, in our, or in our province, and we, I mean, in terms of, let's

01:12:02.400 just say in terms of policy, in terms of Aboriginal policy, eventually I was the minister, correct?

01:12:09.760 So a lot of what I was being in 13 years of being an Opposition Member of Parliament were policies that were considered radical.

01:12:23.760 Most of those policies have now been adopted by government, they're in legislation, and they're considered mainstream.

01:12:35.760 how easy we all forget, how difficult some of those changes were at the time.

01:12:43.760 One of the things you might want to ask me is, what are the things that changed in Ottawa due to my presence?

01:12:55.760 What am I most kind of proud of?

01:13:00.760 and yeah what about the thing i'm most proud of nobody is on nobody's radar the uh uh

01:13:14.920 premier of the northwest territories and i met in anuba in 1994. he was a new mla

01:13:26.840 and i was a newly minted reformed member of parliament and as i went out of my way to meet

01:13:34.760 the local mla his first words to me were what's a reform mp doing up here and

01:13:46.920 you know i explained my strong interest in the north and in

01:13:50.440 uh um indigenous affairs he uh he's um kitchen and uh so we had a we had a coming together well

01:14:06.680 many years later i was minister he was the premier knew each other

01:14:14.680 What was huge on their agenda, their number one priority was to see the same independence

01:14:29.560 from the federal government that Yukon had established.

01:14:34.120 It's called devolution.

01:14:37.240 To achieve that, the two of us decided that's a common goal.

01:14:43.380 both want to do it and we went full steam ahead and we came to fruition and was finalized in March

01:14:53.540 of 2013. Huge for North Territories because the federal government was making all their land use

01:15:08.020 decisions up until then now they make their own language decisions for example they have many

01:15:15.940 other things that came with it that was probably the most important uh change

01:15:25.700 i think i think that that's exactly something to kind of jump off into a little bit more

01:15:30.420 is that i mean i'm a status indian uh i uh i was adopted out of my community and out of my culture

01:15:38.020 uh but i uh i do feel a strong connection to it uh in a in a kind of same sort of heritage sense

01:15:44.980 that that you know uh the children of immigrants do maybe in in canada sort of thing and i feel

01:15:50.660 that at times when i see some of the some of the protests and that sort of thing like i understand

01:15:55.940 bad things happened and i understand there's still things today that need to be fixed but while you

01:16:00.580 were minister what what did you find to be the most effective method of meeting the needs of

01:16:05.940 first nations people in canada what what was what the agitation worth it or did did it come easier

01:16:13.300 did you get more more flies with honey sort of thing right did it come easier to make friends

01:16:16.980 with with with a friendlier disposition what what worked on on your end both in opposition

01:16:22.260 and then when you were when you were the minister and what what about your dealings how did how did

01:16:26.660 that go well i think um we had a vehicle called the first management patients land management

01:16:42.260 option which allowed uh first nations or empowered first nations for example to

01:16:50.580 make land use decisions in a business-like way on their own communities, in their communities.

01:17:00.180 That only applied to 13 First Nations across the country and the bureaucracy

01:17:11.140 insisted, Rachel Feeding Minister Dow, that that could not be expanded

01:17:17.140 because they there was essentially a veto from the 13 that were part of it and they're feeling

01:17:26.020 the the fee is you cannot get them to change because they believe there's a fixed budget

01:17:31.860 and they don't want to share it any more widely so i didn't take this is a great thing

01:17:40.580 and there's a demand for it so I I basically wrote to the chair of the

01:17:50.040 group chiefly from West Bank at the time and asked for his permission to it and

01:17:59.460 when I got letter almost immediately saying yes please read I took it and

01:18:05.520 and waved it in front of all the bureaucrats

01:18:09.540 that were telling me that this could never happen.

01:18:12.720 And we expanded it.

01:18:14.120 So that was one way to become much more engaged

01:18:24.060 with a lot of progressive First Nations.

01:18:26.980 They wanted that change.

01:18:28.360 They've now achieved it.

01:18:29.320 I don't know what the number is now,

01:18:32.000 but I'm sure it's an excess of 30 across the country, maybe 40.

01:18:39.260 And there was a lot of demand for infrastructure.

01:18:47.320 We get a lot, you know, we get a lot on water systems.

01:18:55.440 You know, we actually had some of the more expensive projects,

01:18:59.440 arsenic in the water, things like that, that we fixed.

01:19:03.480 There were very, very fixes.

01:19:05.880 As you know, a lot of the communities

01:19:13.940 where the residences are quite far apart

01:19:16.960 and to pipe all of that, especially in the Canadian Shield,

01:19:22.220 it took a lot of money, a lot of resources.

01:19:25.220 There was many areas we could collaborate on,

01:19:27.700 Everything from education to water systems, to housing, I mean, housing is an ongoing issue.

01:19:38.380 I mean, it's happening actually in all communities at this point, but the one, you know, there's

01:19:49.620 another another piece of legislation which was standardizing the financial reporting

01:19:57.220 and there was a quite a strong from it from the rank and file

01:20:04.020 um i think the progressive chiefs were not opposed to uh standardizing financial reporting annual

01:20:14.500 reporting but um there was strong demand from it from a lot of the rank and file so we collaborated

01:20:21.620 with the um the county profession the national organization we created a standard format

01:20:32.020 that became uh legislated and so we put forward and passed the first nations transparency uh

01:20:42.340 legislation we did that early enough um that there was a full year of reporting prior to

01:20:54.100 the current administration uh getting in so there was a year of reporting there was a lot

01:21:01.220 of good results from that standard reporting everybody knew you couldn't go auditor shopping

01:21:10.020 the same way they were doing it before uh to get a positive um audit that was standardized

01:21:21.460 um unfortunately that legislation is um not being enforced not being uh

01:21:29.540 yeah it's simply being ignored at this point

01:21:31.460 and and and that's that's something that's actually of great concern to me personally

01:21:40.040 you know i feel that it this is a place where it's that that subtle racism of lowered expectations

01:21:46.180 somehow somehow us aboriginals aren't aren't supposed to keep track of our books or something

01:21:51.580 like i don't i don't understand like and the idea that somehow hiding the finances will will make

01:21:56.940 things better for for people as you said the rank and file or the leadership that lack of

01:22:01.580 accountability that we don't say this about anywhere else why why did you know why did

01:22:06.620 the liberals decide to suppress this piece of legislation i don't understand well i

01:22:18.620 yeah i think the assembly of first nations was opposed to it for their own political reasons and

01:22:26.940 The incoming government and the Assembly of Persians made a deal and so the deal is we're not going to enforce the legislation. It was that simple.

01:22:38.940 There was a lot of complaints for a while.

01:22:41.940 The fact it wasn't being enforced, I think the Canadian Taxpayers Federation took the government to court over it.

01:22:50.940 um but it's now years and um the legislation's still on the books but uh

01:23:01.420 it'll it has to wait for another day i think

01:23:08.780 yeah yeah makes makes sense well makes sense in the sense that uh clearly a deal was made

01:23:15.020 so i mean it throughout your time in in harper's government you would have gotten to observe

01:23:20.620 obviously the leader very closely uh you got to be a part of cabinet obviously and and some of the

01:23:25.900 votes that were taken throughout that time um people have different ideas about what it is to

01:23:31.260 be a whip uh do you want to tell us a little bit more about about what it means to be a party whip

01:23:36.860 is it is it as uh as as kind of sinister as people imagine it to be or as we've seen on netflix or

01:23:43.500 whatever or is it is it much more a matter of just being in good connection with your colleagues and

01:23:48.380 trying to convince them that this is the right thing to do what how did you feel in your role

01:23:56.700 well uh there's probably the most interesting thing i've ever done in in many ways i mean

01:24:05.580 i was i was actually probably well played simply because i was from far away so travel

01:24:12.780 travel. I knew everything about travel. Nobody could pull over my eyes in terms of travel

01:24:19.780 because the whip approves travel. The whip assigns seating. The whip assigns committee

01:24:27.780 responsibilities. The whip's responsible for discipline. The whip's responsible for getting

01:24:34.780 people in the right place at the right time especially for votes and in nitty. I had all

01:24:41.780 all of that having been there for i think near on 17 years and 13 of those in opposition

01:24:53.140 uh and having in a variety of roles and never having really stepped in the glue so

01:25:03.060 So, and I think, you know, you can't do a job, like, you can't do the House Leader's job or you can't do the Whip's job unless you have the confidence of the Prime Minister in government.

01:25:18.060 uh you know i've been a supporter from the time he was exploring his level for running for the

01:25:32.700 leadership um so we knew each other well um and i i think he he had no um about me

01:25:44.700 And I think the caucus recognized that that was the case, so they weren't reaching over my head, which is, which they're prone to do when they're unhappy with the decision.

01:26:03.700 So I was the whip for two and a half years, going into the 2015 election, and we knew that was going to be a tough election.

01:26:14.700 When caucus knows there's a tough election coming up, they can become very unrested.

01:26:23.700 rested and really we we did very well in we did very well as a caucus and um and i i found that

01:26:37.460 um to be a very rewarding time uh yeah i don't know what i produced well my producer is uh is

01:26:50.180 prompt here uh it to remind me to ask you about uh losing your seat and winning it again

01:26:56.900 i forgot to ask that earlier oh yeah that's

01:27:02.020 how many people do that actually uh i think i was the uh the only

01:27:10.600 conservative to be defeated by an NDP-er in the 2006 election because

01:27:21.280 that's the year we from government under Stephen Harper and I became the only conservative to

01:27:33.580 defeat an NDP incumbent in 2008 30 months later so that there was an

01:27:44.920 interesting time I I had to make a decision I've been there 13 years I

01:27:51.700 spent a very long time making sure that I was positioning myself to get

01:27:59.560 re-elected and i had a very good team i know um once we did post-mortems back in

01:28:12.360 in ottawa after the 2008 election and i gave my presentation about all the

01:28:20.280 the things that we had done i mean it was a textbook

01:28:23.640 in terms of the voter identification and the get out the vote and that the messaging how we did all

01:28:34.560 that and of course the the commitment that I made I think was a full-time commitment I was I was

01:28:49.380 already 55 already receiving some pension and therefore I could dedicate

01:28:59.200 myself for a full year ahead of this that was a minority part so we felt the

01:29:05.940 election part way I dedicated myself for a full year to getting reelected and I

01:29:12.140 I shadowed the sitting member of Parliament and made her very uncomfortable by so doing.

01:29:23.540 But that's politics.

01:29:26.080 No, I mean, you're going to be scrutinized.

01:29:29.480 Yeah, you're going to be scrutinized.

01:29:31.700 That's how it is.

01:29:34.380 Maybe we can talk a little bit then about...

01:29:37.720 i think i think that with uh with the leader and and with with harper just i mean obviously various

01:29:50.040 myths surround harper uh you know down to what he ate how he dressed right there's all these myths

01:29:55.560 within the conservative movement that surround the man you obviously were in

01:29:59.800 very close proximity to him for many years what what did you observe about stephen harper

01:30:07.720 I think you're asking me about Stephen Harper, am I correct?

01:30:12.720 That's correct, yes.

01:30:14.720 Yes.

01:30:15.720 You were breaking up, I apologize.

01:30:20.720 Understood.

01:30:21.720 Well, he's a funny guy.

01:30:26.720 You know, that's not well known, I don't think, or it's not well appreciated.

01:30:31.720 He's a very funny guy, and he's as straight as they come in terms of conversation.

01:30:42.580 You don't have to speculate or guess where it's coming from.

01:30:47.420 And I, like I always said, when I worked in industry, I always took the position that I have authority, and I'm going to use my authority until somebody tells me that I'm abusing, or not abusing, but that I've reached beyond my authority.

01:31:13.820 And it served me very well.

01:31:16.100 I behaved the same way in in Ottawa and you know there's there's people who I

01:31:31.160 think would say that the Prime Minister they say it all about a lot of leaders

01:31:37.820 that they were controlled I never felt controlled at all I knew I knew that I

01:31:47.120 have very few boundaries as long as I did what in my judgment was the right

01:31:57.160 the right things and well they maybe I suffer good judgment but I I I

01:32:11.160 appreciated the Prime Minister and I believe in the modern era that no one

01:32:19.720 has done a better job we went through this thousand eight financial crisis so

01:32:30.040 well of course we had a great finance minister in Jim Flaherty he was such a

01:32:36.880 great loss when we lost him when he passed but um you know Joe Oliver was a

01:32:44.140 a great finance minister after Jim Clarity as well. I think we had a lot of

01:32:54.140 talent and a lot of a lot of very good people and we ran a very good

01:33:01.480 government and I was comforted by the fact that I knew that my leader, the

01:33:12.240 Prime Minister was someone who had Canada's interest at first, that was first on his priorities,

01:33:26.640 and he was not somebody who could be bought. Nobody could buy Stephen Harper.

01:33:32.640 And you know, money was not his motivator. He wanted to do the best things that he could

01:33:40.160 for canada we lifted more people out of poverty and we did more for

01:33:48.000 income distribution across the board than any

01:33:57.120 any government pretends that that's what motivates them if there's if there's one

01:34:02.880 thing that um we probably didn't do very well is we didn't explain always everything we were

01:34:10.640 accomplishing our list of accomplishments was just huge yeah that's been that's been widely

01:34:21.440 yeah no that's been widely acknowledged by uh i try to remember what the title of that book is

01:34:25.440 but there is there are there was some political analytics done on the harper government and it

01:34:29.840 it was considered to be the best uh kept promises the government that kept the best promises the

01:34:35.800 most often for out of out of any government and probably it might have been as long as a century

01:34:41.040 but certainly 30 years within canada something that that was always a bit of a difficulty

01:34:46.820 for you know for the harper government was communications and one of the places where

01:34:52.580 those communications broke down was as you pointed out a lot of people think of harper as a as a stiff

01:34:58.880 kind of guy and whatever else but but were those moments of discipline within caucus again as as

01:35:06.160 whip as somebody who was right there did you think that those moments of discipline were warranted

01:35:11.440 did you you think that that that those moments where either someone was even dismissed or lost

01:35:16.800 their spot in caucus or or was was censored or or you know shuffled out of cabinet did you did

01:35:23.120 you feel like they had earned their their scorn from the leader i i never questioned any of those

01:35:32.640 uh judgments and you know i mean i i was actually removed as after two and a half years as the

01:35:43.520 aboriginal affairs minister went into the penalty box for six months and came back as as the whip

01:35:53.120 I question why that happened but I wouldn't question the judgment of the 0.52

01:36:02.900 Prime Minister because he was operating from the information he was given by his

01:36:08.480 trusted advisor and it turned out that that that maybe wasn't it wasn't

01:36:19.700 appropriate but um yeah i don't i don't recall any changes that that um that i questioned and

01:36:31.940 we we did have a very strange situation with belinda stronic when she came to the party

01:36:37.700 and yes yes stayed for a while and then went to the liberals and uh uh actually that was

01:36:46.500 We weren't government, that was the Paul Martin government. Short-lived. I was displaced as the international trade critic by Belinda because that was her price for admission and I was okay with it because I'd been off to natural resources working on the soft lumber dispute which was the biggest

01:37:16.500 project at the time to try and get us back to square one with the U.S. in terms of our

01:37:25.580 lumber trade. It was really hurting a lot of communities, a lot of producers and a lot

01:37:32.900 of jobs at the time. And it didn't get fixed until we formed government in 2006.

01:37:46.100 Stephen Harper took a strong interest, and he got fixed what hadn't been for many years.

01:37:57.620 That's our checkmark in terms of accomplishments of Stephen Harper.

01:38:05.340 i think i think that's something that is also important to people to know is is that

01:38:15.100 i i had a conversation once with actually ryan leafs a former member of parliament ryan leaf

01:38:20.320 and i recall that he explained to me in no uncertain terms what happened when when there

01:38:25.600 You locked up on me.

01:38:33.280 Ryan Lee explained.

01:38:45.160 I did serve with Ryan, and I enjoyed having such a strong character in our caucus.

01:38:58.080 You've absolutely frozen on me, by the way.

01:39:02.480 So I didn't get the question, but Ryan came to us.

01:39:12.320 And I think it was at a time when we were doing a lot in the north.

01:39:17.640 I was the minister, and the senator from Yukon, Dan Lang, was a conservative.

01:39:31.160 The only member of parliament from, so that gave us a lot of synergy to allow us to work

01:39:48.780 with the premier and that was the Yukon party, which was a conservative friendly party.

01:39:55.960 We did a lot in Yukon on the power grid and infrastructure projects and on some of the

01:40:08.360 Indigenous agreements.

01:40:12.000 We took a strong personal interest and I know the Prime Minister was doing tours of the

01:40:22.340 north on an annual basis and those were very important i mean it was a week a week every year

01:40:31.620 in the north and those those were some of our that gave us um a real insight into

01:40:42.420 to the issues and I was able to part of all of that because those weren't the only times

01:40:57.600 out of the north of course I was in the lot in that ring flying on the big on the new

01:41:08.260 Hercules and some of the clean airs and planes like that, but basically everything in everywhere

01:41:19.900 except Yukon is you have to fly. 1.00

01:41:27.780 Most Canadians don't get there.

01:41:29.780 Nope.

01:41:30.780 nope they're very fortunate i feel fortunate too you know almost every community

01:41:37.020 yeah it's it's it's a wild land out there uh i i just about stayed in the yukon when i visited

01:41:46.820 for a brief time uh back in 2018 with all my school time friends it was uh it it is a mystical

01:41:54.740 place uh and even my time up in churchill uh it you know the north is different the north is still

01:42:00.360 wild land still a lot of freedom and just a strong draw but um i think i think as we kind of pivot

01:42:08.300 into some of those questions let's talk a little bit about development in northern canada and what

01:42:12.540 that looks like obviously again with your background uh with your direct connection to

01:42:17.120 having been the minister of in of well at the time it was still called indian affairs but

01:42:22.240 and changed aboriginal affairs now indigenous affairs have a lot of name changes uh but what

01:42:27.520 How do you see things progressing in this realm?

01:42:30.440 Like this is obviously kind of the reality of Canada, you know?

01:42:37.820 Yeah, well, I was thinking I had two changes in the short time.

01:42:43.820 I was the minister because it covered the portion of two parliaments.

01:42:52.320 How do I see things changing?

01:42:57.520 well i think

01:43:03.520 i think the uh yeah it's now it's now well established that for um a lot of uh big projects

01:43:14.640 in camp in order to have those projects go ahead you have to have indigenous participation and

01:43:27.520 at times you're going to have Indigenous leadership and so that's no longer, that's no longer an issue and that's a positive.

01:43:38.520 You have some very progressive leadership now, not just at the political level but you have like the major pro-coalitions and things like that where they are

01:43:56.520 Our Indigenous groups are inviting participation from industry, popular avenues for industry

01:44:11.200 to participate with the Indigenous communities.

01:44:16.680 We're going to see more and more of that.

01:44:19.140 think we're going to you know if we're going to have the thing to have pipelines and other big

01:44:30.260 projects in Canada anymore that's that's how they're that's how they have to happen and that's

01:44:39.620 that's increasingly and abundantly clear to people on people of every walk of life and

01:44:48.980 ethnicity so um i'm actually a powerful guy i i think we're we're going to be in a much better

01:44:58.260 place i i believe we're going to be in a much better place uh yeah i i i

01:45:10.980 i don't know i don't really know what to say beyond that i i

01:45:18.020 I don't know what to say. I don't, the fact that you and I are talking, I don't, you know, you have a First Nations background, you're a status Indian under the Indian Act. 0.96

01:45:35.020 My children are status Indians. That was never really an issue when I was in Parliament.

01:45:45.020 And I never used them as a shield or a sword.

01:45:50.020 We're all just people. We're all just people.

01:45:57.020 And Canada is a blessed country, and we need to be able to support all the things that we want to continue to have.

01:46:09.020 If we want to continue to be a strong economic force in the world, we have to develop what's available to us.

01:46:25.020 And there's so much that's available and it's not because of, in my mind, because of opposition that's easy and it's really hurt the common person, it's hurt our work force, it's hurt on all kinds of fronts.

01:46:55.020 And, you know, what we've lost is hard to measure, but Canada has every opportunity to be in front of the pack, not lagging the pack in terms of jobs and the economy and our social welfare system.

01:47:23.020 And our leadership in the world. I mean, we talked about things like the military, but I'm very proud of what we accomplished for the military while we were government as well.

01:47:37.020 And some very important things. You know, the Prime Minister, Prime Minister Harbaugh is out of Afghanistan.

01:47:46.020 It's a lot easier to get involved in something like that than it is to get out.

01:47:53.020 And we got out. And he also was instrumental in getting great aircraft.

01:48:06.020 He used to rely for heavy lift on rentals. It was a gong show.

01:48:15.020 And so by purchasing, I call them Globemasters, the big C-17s, the C-17s, those are tremendous air flames.

01:48:30.800 We never had them until our government.

01:48:37.200 And it meant we didn't have to go begging when we wanted to respond to emergency.

01:48:42.260 in Haiti or Asia or wherever, wherever things happened and there was a need for our National

01:48:54.200 Defence Resorts to get there and yeah, the list of accomplishments of the Harper government,

01:49:08.260 They're huge. And I don't want to negate the huge influence that Preston Manning had, and I was loyal to all our leaders, Stockwell Day, we had interim leaders in John Reynolds and Deborah Gray.

01:49:30.260 You know, I've been there for a lot of political events and one built on another.

01:49:41.660 We wouldn't have had a Conservative government in 2006 if we hadn't showed up as the third party in 1993 and acquitted ourselves very well going forward from there.

01:50:00.260 yeah we had some some visionary people yeah i remember deborah gray yeah i remember deborah

01:50:09.420 gray's a bit with uh with rick mercer i you know it's feels like such a throwback but it just

01:50:16.300 these things like it maybe that's something that has changed in kind of the politics of canada

01:50:22.620 and i don't think harper was the harbinger of it but it even our current our current

01:50:26.780 administration and everything else is happening is that it seems like things are pretty cagey

01:50:30.940 at times and there isn't kind of the the friendliness across the aisle i know things

01:50:35.100 could get heated in parliament did you did you ever feel like it was it had gotten too heated or

01:50:40.460 it was was there still the the spirit of parliament the spirit of of parliamentarians uh in it

01:50:46.860 Oh, I think there was a spirit of parliamentitarians largely there the largest part of the time.

01:51:00.540 There was individuals who got into it from time to time, and, you know, there's a great

01:51:10.380 leveling effect when your peers don't actually support something that you've said or done

01:51:17.580 it's uh this was probably uh more influence there than there would be from somebody like

01:51:24.460 the whip talking to those on the same front that's a fair point yeah i don't care i actually i have

01:51:33.260 no feel for the current parliament they don't even sit in the same place i mean the the house of

01:51:39.420 commons has been moved to to temporary quarters which bring new definition to the word temporary

01:51:48.540 because i'm sure they'll be there for 10 or more years emphasis on the more because projects in

01:51:56.620 ottawa do take a one time uh traditionally and those iconic buildings uh they have a lot of

01:52:06.300 this to bring them up to date i haven't i think the new the new

01:52:19.260 something something that uh has gotten to me about that whole equation is that in in you know

01:52:24.300 in our mother parliament uh in england uh at westminster they they sit on benches you know

01:52:31.500 they are a nuclear power they have a large army uh and a large uh of course those famous navy and

01:52:38.380 air force they are a strong nation an ancient nation and yet for all of their pomp and circumstance

01:52:44.300 their parliamentarians sit on benches not at desks right um i always thought that renovating

01:52:49.900 parliament in canada all they had to do was clear out the desks and put in benches but they uh they

01:52:55.180 chose to just expand uh and put in more desks i don't know if you have an opinion on that or not

01:52:59.900 as as a form of whip I have noticed that what you're talking about I mean you've also British

01:53:12.080 heart yeah the benches look I mean one of the great things about it about having your own desk

01:53:21.140 is you don't have to worry about where you're going to be sitting you know you don't have to

01:53:26.220 cart everything with you because there's quite a bit of room when you lift the lid on your desk

01:53:35.100 and you always know where

01:53:39.820 the people from the other parties are as well. That would be a real cultural shock for me to

01:53:49.180 to have to deal with um with benches but the good thing about benches is if the parliamentarians

01:54:00.300 changes which ours is crowned prone to do you don't have to go through a major renovation each

01:54:07.580 time so from a practical standpoint i can see some benefits there it depends on the footprint

01:54:15.500 But I think we still have quite a bit, at least, per person in the Canadian House of

01:54:25.480 Commons.

01:54:26.480 But if it gets much bigger, then I think they may have to change.

01:54:33.120 Maybe you can have a front row set up desks and the rest of the rows can be benches.

01:54:41.120 i uh as we come to the to the close here obviously the conserved party is in flux in canada

01:54:51.360 uh there's a lot of moving parts all around the world are things going to get more popular are

01:54:56.160 things going to get back to the establishment is the old consensus going to win out or is

01:55:00.160 a new consensus going to happen the realignment i i i'm not interested necessarily in in a perfect

01:55:06.640 interpretation of all that i'm more interested in if someone were to come to you juan and say

01:55:12.000 i'm thinking about running for parliament what's the best advice you could give me or even if the

01:55:16.080 leader were to call you up today and say hey i'm i'm facing some difficulties what's the

01:55:20.320 best advice you could give me what what would that advice be well traditionally um

01:55:30.880 Traditionally, I think you would say that people vote for the leader, the party, and then the local candidate.

01:55:45.880 But I don't believe that's true everywhere.

01:55:49.880 and so it's run for Parliament as long as they're a strong advocate and known to

01:56:04.980 be a strong advocate or a strong voice in community or communities then I think

01:56:14.440 I think it can work, and it's awful at me about running on Vancouver Island, which is where I live, for the Conservatives.

01:56:35.440 And if they don't have a history with political activism, then I tell them simply they associate with a constituency organization at the local level and get to know the local executive and the party members.

01:57:05.440 as much as possible and volunteer volunteer at some level i mean even since there's things that

01:57:13.520 have to be done um if you if you're not prepared to do that then what are you prepared to do i mean

01:57:23.760 being a being a member of permits a full-time job uh it fully it more than fully

01:57:32.720 occupies it's not a 40 hour more like it you're really doing your job probably a 70 hour a week

01:57:39.600 job with a lot of travel i met flight attendants who were spent less hours in a year in the air

01:57:51.200 than i did when i was in even in opposition i was on airplanes so much well it's a long way

01:57:58.800 but yeah they have to they have to at least do that first step if somebody's got a high profile

01:58:12.640 in a community or communities already then maybe that's less important but they still want to make

01:58:22.320 sure they're uh that they know they know the little local political organization

01:58:34.720 uh not know them would be uh the unfair uh yeah i think

01:58:45.520 yeah it's it's not a science this is yeah yeah yeah

01:58:52.320 you got to dress for the job you want, right?

01:58:54.860 You got to show up for the job you want.

01:59:00.160 You do, you do.

01:59:02.400 And the only thing that Preston Manning always said

01:59:06.820 that's always resonated with is

01:59:11.700 if you're not constantly trying to make your tent bigger,

01:59:18.100 you're inevitably shrinking.

01:59:20.240 and that's that's a lesson that every person aspiring to be in the political arena

01:59:32.000 uh needs to take to heart you know you're not just talking to conservatives or traditional

01:59:38.880 conservative voters you need to be reaching out to everyone you need to represent everyone possible

01:59:47.360 I mean, it's not possible in some cases, but that I think was what served me so well.

01:59:59.360 I mean, this is not known as the home of conservatism, Vancouver Island.

02:00:05.360 To have represented a riding on Vancouver Island for 19 years was not the easiest thing in the world to accomplish.

02:00:17.360 Right now there isn't a single conservative on Vancouver Island.

02:00:23.360 We believe that will change. I believe it will change this election whenever this election is.

02:00:35.360 Well that is a bold prediction but we do wish it all the best. Again I've been speaking

02:00:42.800 with John Duncan, former whip under the Harper government and of course former minister for

02:00:48.160 what is now called Indigenous Affairs. Thank you so much for being with us John.

02:00:55.600 Well thank you very much Nathan. I wish our technical problems quite as apparent but I

02:01:02.560 really enjoyed talking with you today thank you so much absolutely we'll have you on again soon thank

02:01:09.040 you well that was our show for today uh apologies for the technical difficulties that did occur but

02:01:18.160 thank you for staying with us and a special thank you of course to uh to john for uh continuing to

02:01:23.360 keep things rolling while we were getting things sorted on our end um we'll uh i guess we'll end

02:01:29.920 it there I get there's a there's a final point I'd like to make and and I suppose that is that

02:01:35.400 again coming back to what does the future of conservatism hold and what's going to happen

02:01:40.540 when it comes to the lockdowns and all the rest of it and for that matter the format we had today

02:01:44.380 actually if you'd like to comment or send us a message about the format today we did our first

02:01:48.980 kind of wasn't quite Tucker Carlson was it we didn't have guests interspersed throughout it

02:01:52.900 but we did do kind of the long form and some commentary on news and live chat so let us know

02:01:59.540 if that format worked for you. But as just a final point, again, thank you for tuning in and

02:02:03.540 let us all hope that we're headed towards brighter shores and a more sensical future,

02:02:09.260 especially for the conservative movement and for people's freedom in Canada. Thank you so much for

02:02:14.340 watching.

02:02:29.540 You

Western Standard - April 20, 2021

Mountain Standard Time - April 20, 2021

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript