Western Standard - Mountain Standard Time - June 16, 2021

00:00:00.000 .

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 We'll be right back.

00:02:00.000 there we go and i'm not muted anymore and now we're finally finally on the way here so

00:02:15.860 the uh the long story short it is that of course we're here with uh brad trost in a few minutes

00:02:22.360 he's going to be joining us this morning and i'm very thankful for him being here uh but we'll

00:02:28.360 talk to him in a minute because he's going to be here to talk about his return, his glorious

00:02:33.840 return. He's trying to take the nomination for, let me get this right, Moose Jaw Lake

00:02:39.160 Centre in Lannigan. So again, good morning and welcome to Mountain Standard Time. I'm

00:02:43.680 your host, Nathan Gita. Today, I'll be speaking with the Conservative nomination hopeful Brad

00:02:48.020 Trost, of course, former leadership contender for the Conservative Party of Canada. And

00:02:51.340 all that's going to take place starting at around 9.30 Pacific, 10.30 Mountain. Be sure

00:02:57.040 to like us on facebook and support the western standard with an online subscription uh but in

00:03:02.080 the meantime just before we get there i want to come back to the kamloops residential school

00:03:06.280 question that's been going on in british columbia and throughout canada uh for about about two weeks

00:03:12.020 now and uh there's been a lot of back and forth on this question obviously the politically correct

00:03:17.840 have made a lot of hay out of it and they've kind of gotten as far down that line as they wanted to

00:03:22.800 but uh recently in my own hometown there was an article in the local paper

00:03:28.220 that was again discussing the the the history and legacy of o'grady bishop o'grady who of course at

00:03:35.580 one point was the principal of the residential school in kamloops and then became uh the prime

00:03:40.080 both the bishop and the primary uh mover and shaker in prince george diocese which runs all

00:03:46.600 the way from the yukon border the alberta border and the pacific ocean uh the cross line being

00:03:51.600 just north of quennell so about half of the province was under his jurisdiction when it

00:03:56.620 came to their souls and uh the the short version of it is that the Kamloops residential school

00:04:02.380 issue continues to provide fuel for the fires of politically correct wokies here in my hometown

00:04:06.760 most recently the column expressing positive thoughts about the beloved bishop of grady

00:04:11.700 to these to these points whose name is on the high school here in prince church bc has raised

00:04:17.240 the ire of many people as well as the support of others uh facebook's actually a flame in

00:04:21.080 comments. It's gotten pretty nasty out there. People calling each other racist, people calling

00:04:25.420 each other various swear words. It's gotten pretty significant. So I never met Bishop O'Grady,

00:04:31.400 but I have spent an inordinate amount of time with people who did, and many of them, almost all of

00:04:37.020 them, to a man, loved Bishop O'Grady very much for his leadership as well as his spirituality.

00:04:43.220 And I'm not saying that he wasn't a sinner. We're all sinners. But the genocidal genius that he's

00:04:48.700 getting pictured as nowadays doesn't seem to be very accurate. If there is a valid criticism of

00:04:54.200 Bishop O'Grady, I mentioned it here in my opening statement, is that he was actually quite a wily

00:04:58.660 man. Supposedly, from some of the information I've gathered from people who knew him, he was

00:05:04.420 just very good. He was very good at getting, you know, whatever money was being given to a certain

00:05:10.220 quarter into a direction that would assist the church. I wouldn't call it malfeasance, but I

00:05:16.980 think perhaps the simplest way to say it is that just like how nowadays we all have people we all

00:05:22.900 know people that are in the non-profit industry and that sort of thing who have very very close

00:05:28.600 ties with the kind of state agencies that they deal with all the time if you're some kind of

00:05:33.680 fundraiser person for cancer you are in deep with the board of directors of your local hospital

00:05:39.160 and the money that they're given on a whole bunch of other accounts somehow some ways always ends

00:05:44.460 up going towards you or at least assisting you shared office space shared computers they upgrade

00:05:50.620 their equipment all of a sudden you get their old equipment this is an arrangement that's been around

00:05:54.940 for a long time in canada actually going all the way back to some of our some of our uh war uh

00:06:00.620 materials you know we we didn't have the money to pay for good war materials we still don't

00:06:05.340 apparently so we take everybody else's you know used stuff when they upgrade and so i think that

00:06:11.260 Bishop O'Grady in that same spirit of taking someone else's used items that still have some

00:06:15.960 life in them and having them for yourself while they go upgrade something else or making sure

00:06:21.020 that they renovate something that you'll also have access to. That appears to be the thing that he

00:06:25.760 was able to do. And that was able to help bolster church missions and school initiatives in their

00:06:30.700 traditional territory of the First Nations where he did this. So in other words, he put his thumb

00:06:34.920 on the scale of that and he got some excellent results. Nobody else could have done it. I think

00:06:39.380 it was down to his personality i think it was down to uh just kind of a foresight that he had

00:06:45.700 but also because he was able to work with the first nations to get this done and with local

00:06:49.580 authorities to get this done this wasn't something that he just did by himself he wasn't a

00:06:53.160 a self-willed strong man he was just a networker and he knew how to get things uh put together so

00:06:59.340 there will always be valid criticisms of roman catholicism which is my faith and uh those are

00:07:04.200 my leaders, and where there was abuse, those actors need to be rooted out and punished. I've

00:07:09.300 said that very clearly before, and I'll say it again. Quite frankly, I mean, at one point when

00:07:14.220 I thought I was discerning the priesthood for myself, I bet you something that kind of gave

00:07:18.200 everybody a red flag was when I asked if I was ever made bishop, if I was ever made the leader

00:07:24.820 of the episcopate of any diocese, what would I say? What would I do if I had to deal with abuse

00:07:33.460 uh and with sexual abuse in my diocese i said well i i mean i'd wait for a jury of their peers

00:07:39.420 to have uh indicted them and and to have found them guilty but i'm a big fan of capital punishment

00:07:45.720 and i don't really care that that's not valid anymore in this country so i would ensure that

00:07:50.220 justice was done i remember people being kind of shocked at that statement but i just kind of

00:07:53.920 looked at them i said look like if the church won't take care of its own i don't know what

00:07:56.800 else i don't know how anyone could respect us so so i mean that's always going to be a valid

00:08:00.700 criticism of of my of my faith but when it comes to bishop o'grady uh he was simply a man of his

00:08:06.700 times using the tools at his disposal particularly to benefit those he believed he was entrusted

00:08:11.180 with that that is true particularly when we're talking about this most recent criticism or this

00:08:15.420 most this point that i'm trying to make about i'm putting his thumb on the scale so when we

00:08:19.020 acquit ourselves from this stage uh that we call life uh can we say anything better of ourselves

00:08:24.060 and so i'll leave that there for our opening statement uh and uh craig craig making the

00:08:31.900 point that there was no sound at the beginning of this uh broadcast and that's on me because i had

00:08:37.660 failed to uh unmute my microphone so uh that's that's kind of where i'm going to start um we're

00:08:45.260 going to share a screen we're going to go over to our chrome tab here and we are going to grab

00:08:50.380 the citizens uh point here so this is again my old stomping grounds this was the uh

00:08:57.500 i i i mean maybe it's not fair to do color commentary on something that you're actually

00:09:02.380 using from somewhere else this is not the citizen that i grew up with uh it's a little

00:09:07.980 it's a little ad heavy it's a little things of media in canada is in a bad way right now

00:09:14.940 and it's rough and uh you can see that obviously we need to make money where we can uh i guess uh

00:09:21.180 when it comes to media in canada and it's it's a little bit it's a little bit of a sting so and

00:09:26.300 before we get brad on we'll do be sure to do our endorsement of resistance coffee and we'll we'll

00:09:31.580 talk about that in a minute but let's let's go through this a little bit when it comes to o'grady's

00:09:36.700 uh legacy so after bodies and unmarked rates were discovered at canvas residential school

00:09:42.780 i was really surprised at the reaction of some people against bishop o'grady's this was all

00:09:46.380 written by diane fuller she's a she's a local uh local advocate local business person somebody

00:09:52.700 somebody whose opinion that people value here uh in the northern capital british columbia

00:09:57.020 so after bodies were discovered who loved the indigenous so much up until he died in 1998

00:10:03.500 indigenous people seemed to love him as well there were at least two busloads indigenous

00:10:07.500 people from reserves across the diocese at his funeral which was held in prince george uh civic

00:10:12.460 center because of the great number of people wanted to attend. Bishop O'Grady told me that

00:10:16.000 these people would call him at all hours to talk to him, even in the middle of the night, and he

00:10:19.360 would always listen to them. They loved to pay him impromptu visits. I've heard also colloquially

00:10:25.380 that the current bishop, who's the first non-oblate bishop, right, because an order,

00:10:33.200 this was an oblate diocese, so the oblates of Mary Immaculate, this is our first non-oblate bishop,

00:10:39.540 And that's not a problem. It's just it's just noteworthy that the Oblates, the times are changing for them. 1.00

00:10:44.480 And so there's a shift in their demographics. And so perhaps there'll be an Oblate bishop again someday.

00:10:48.640 But Prince George is turning from a missionary diocese into a more stable, well, stable, just not necessarily a missionary diocese anymore.

00:10:56.760 And so that was why the Oblates were there. And now the times changed. 1.00

00:11:00.200 but even our current bishop has told me that impromptu visits are very real uh that first

00:11:06.600 nations people have come all by uh the local high school here now some people think that bishop

00:11:12.840 o'grady still alive that was a long time ago so i don't think that's the case anymore but

00:11:16.560 they come by to tell just to tell whoever uh that of their experience with bishop o'grady back in

00:11:22.260 the day so that's interesting um knew all the indigenous students at the prince church college

00:11:28.360 which which is now called O'Grady so that was what he called it uh the first the first

00:11:33.960 Catholic high school up here he knew them by name for years would have his meals with them in the

00:11:39.040 school cafeteria every day in the evenings he would visit their residences and spend time with

00:11:42.720 them listening to them this is this is true uh there are still residences indeed I was living

00:11:47.520 in one of those residences not so long ago not exactly the the trailers that the resident trailer

00:11:53.200 echo sort of you know modular home things portables whatever you want to call them that

00:11:57.720 that were used for that but i was in uh residence on church property a few a few feet away from

00:12:06.240 those and and would have been a place that uh definitely students would have visited uh for 0.56

00:12:12.020 fellowship and for food and that sort of thing when when the brothers and sisters were living

00:12:15.940 in the residence that i was living in just a few just a few weeks ago uh for a few months for these

00:12:20.960 few last months and so of course bishop o'grady asked elders to teach a language and culture

00:12:25.500 classes at school and of course his goal in building printer college was to give his students

00:12:31.020 and of all colors and creeds uh the skills need to have changed he also hoped to continue on to

00:12:36.420 university included grade 13 in the school which wasn't need wasn't needed when the college of

00:12:42.360 new calendonia was built a few years afterwards so those are just some points that i'm kind of

00:12:46.720 pointing out there when it comes to this this story of bishop o'grady and and what's going on

00:12:53.320 there and i mean i will admit that there's some pieces of this that are written that are quite

00:12:57.680 that are quite uh you know they're well and i mean you can find the full link yourself a little bit

00:13:03.220 of prince george citizen uh you just find a punch in o'grady and prince george citizen uh into google

00:13:08.840 and you'll find this whole thing but i i think what i'm trying to point out here is that there's

00:13:13.100 two sides to every story um and and i mean we know this even of the miniature the most smallest

00:13:18.900 kind of quote-unquote you know complicated characters of your life if you have an i have

00:13:25.140 an uncle who has a bit of a penchant for the bottle uh i'm guessing that his family and his

00:13:30.720 wife have have have some difficulties there uh but at the same time maybe you went fishing once

00:13:37.760 with your uncle and when your uncle passes from psoriasis or whatever else you're going to go up

00:13:43.000 at the funeral and the story that you have of your uncle isn't some of the bad stories other people

00:13:47.160 have you have this one really good story of going fishing with your uncle and i'm kind of using that

00:13:53.580 as a placeholder i'd probably say of my grandfather that's exactly i mean i was 15 when my grandfather

00:13:58.420 died but he had he had had a very rough uh relationship with some of with my father and

00:14:03.880 with others and that had to do with his alcoholism and but my experience of my grandfather is very

00:14:09.820 different than theirs and so i have a mostly positive uh memory of my grandfather in a way

00:14:15.160 they don't and so there's this fundamental difference opinion or a difference of understanding

00:14:20.480 and we all understand this this is human right this is human nature we all get this this is not

00:14:24.760 this isn't rocket science you you can have this with your wife you can have this with your co-worker

00:14:28.920 you can have this with your child you have this with your teacher so so the idea that somebody

00:14:34.380 had a completely different experience than you with this particular person isn't isn't rocket

00:14:40.260 science uh that's that's normal that's that's real life every day you know someone says i hate

00:14:46.560 that guy like why i mean like he seems like a nice guy and i've talked with him he doesn't seem

00:14:50.320 like a bad person well he cut me off in traffic once like that's that's people's life right all

00:14:54.860 the time and so i guess what i'm getting to uh with the o'grady question is that bishop o'grady

00:15:02.380 had done an awful lot uh when it came to first nations things um we have uh you know and even

00:15:09.420 hear this kind of comment the government built the residential schools made the rules and had

00:15:13.220 the churches run them in past in public schools the government had truant officers come to home

00:15:18.260 see kids weren't at school yeah we all remember truant officers won't remember them i had never

00:15:22.340 lived through that but it's still to this day there are rules about that so so i think i think

00:15:26.840 that kind of the way that i'm trying to to to kind of capitalize on this question um is that

00:15:35.360 ultimately ultimately uh there's two sides to every story and the two sides every story when

00:15:42.920 it comes to bishop o'grady are quite complicated we'll revisit this again once uh once we're kind

00:15:47.780 of completed our conversation with mr trost he'll be on in a few more minutes but i wanted to do

00:15:52.980 just one more one more thing before we got on with that and that was to highlight a story that

00:15:58.240 actually my own mother sent me uh just a few minutes ago and that is that uh drug overdoses

00:16:06.020 went way up during the pandemic so i'm going to bring on my share screen once again i'm going to

00:16:11.880 go over find my drug overdose thing and here we go so drug overdose deaths up 30 percent in

00:16:18.680 pandemic here government data shows so again two different stories uh we're told that there's this

00:16:26.500 pandemic we're told that there's this you know there's some really uh desperate things going on

00:16:31.020 in the world when it comes to the virus i mean it's all starting to feel like it was so far in

00:16:34.440 the past already because things are starting to loosen up in british columbia i understand that

00:16:38.040 over there in uh alberta things are still kind of sideways and that's a problem but uh hopefully

00:16:45.640 hopefully that turns out better rather than worse soon but i i think that it feels like it's in the

00:16:54.340 past already. It feels like we're kind of out of this pandemic and people's attitudes have

00:16:58.620 significantly changed, but there's still some fallout that needs to be recognized here. So

00:17:03.040 here's a perfect example. Again, drug overdose deaths up 30% in the pandemic year, government

00:17:08.480 data shows. So mortality from all types of drug overdoses increased by a whopping 30% over a one

00:17:17.360 year period. Dr. Nora Volkow, MD, Director of the National Institute on Drug Overdose,

00:17:23.860 reported at the fda's science forum so this sorry this was published on june 1st

00:17:31.940 data from the national center for health statistics from october 2019 to october 2020

00:17:36.900 shows that mortality from overdoses from all types of drugs increased 30 percent from 70 000 deaths

00:17:44.260 in october of 2019 to 91 000 deaths as of october 2020 i think that is the number that is a number

00:17:52.900 that is very very chilling volkow it could be volkow or it could be volkow especially if it's

00:17:59.360 german or polish said at the forum among those deaths those overdose deaths in both years more

00:18:06.000 than half came from synthetic opiates which is to say fentanyl so let's just let's just do that

00:18:12.640 number again right there we had 70 000 deaths uh from drug overdoses in in 2019 give or take

00:18:20.580 and of course about 90,000 in 2020 that's a pretty significant jump obviously that's 20,000 people

00:18:30.840 20,000 people is a quarter of my town's population 20,000 people is a football stadium I think in

00:18:37.600 some of the bigger cities the United States I think 20 I think they can hold 20 to 30,000 people

00:18:41.760 I've never been to one uh they're they're big though uh you know and on and on it goes like

00:18:46.760 20 000 is not a small number and obviously that's over a population of a 300 million because i

00:18:52.040 believe this is published out of the united states because that was the fda so that's the united

00:18:55.640 states but nonetheless that's a significant increase in deaths and again i think that

00:19:03.800 something to kind of cue in on there is that there's there's a line or a scene in in the big

00:19:11.400 short i never actually watched the whole thing but i remember there's a scene where where somebody

00:19:15.080 explains to you how numbers work and they say you know every percentage percentage point like

00:19:19.420 0.01 percentage points the the tenths and hundredths of percentage points of of unemployment

00:19:25.860 equals another thousand two thousand or five thousand suicides that every time that number

00:19:31.800 goes up like people kill themselves like it's a direct correlation between unemployment and

00:19:36.360 killing yourself and uh and we all know that because we've we've met people and we've lost 0.90

00:19:41.080 people that way as well we've met people like that and and that were in that state of life and 0.62

00:19:45.460 and and lost those people unfortunately and and i think to the same effect when it comes to the

00:19:50.780 drug dose problem uh a drug overdose problem this we know that in 2020 things were pretty tough for

00:19:58.220 a lot of people they were forced to leave their jobs they were forced to do things that they

00:20:02.800 didn't um that they didn't know how to do anymore they're forced to live on subsistence or quite

00:20:07.960 literally go bankrupt uh due to the virus and the pandemic and so who that means that that

00:20:16.240 number is magnitude higher for magnitude times higher for actual like overdoses those are the

00:20:22.440 ones that resulted in death so you don't get to 20 000 more deaths directly right there wasn't

00:20:27.380 just 20 000 more people who used drugs that year who died uh that's not a net number right well

00:20:33.540 that's a net number it's not a gross number so somewhere out there is a number saying i don't

00:20:39.260 know how many people have to play with drugs and that sounds kind of awful maybe to say play with

00:20:43.180 but i to use drugs abuse abuse drugs or abuse them or use them or be addicted to them or have

00:20:49.600 things go wrong with them or simply be at a party and have somebody offer something to them and then

00:20:54.340 unfortunately die um for you to get to 20 000 more deaths but that's a large number it's much larger

00:21:02.560 than 20,000 and it's not 5,000 it's not 10,000 more than that it probably is three to four times

00:21:08.220 that many are using the drugs and 20 and a quarter of them passed or maybe more so so there's that's

00:21:16.060 a huge amount more drug use in a single year having any kind of substance use disorder also

00:21:21.280 affects the risk of getting COVID-19 so apparently there's a direct correlation between between you

00:21:27.800 know making yourself vulnerable to drug use and getting COVID-19 and finally to find out how these

00:21:35.940 newsways are prescribing so they want to know how to get people off of substance of substance abuse

00:21:42.060 and to see whether diversion has increased results of relaxed rules they're dedicating a couple

00:21:47.860 well a couple of grand hundred thousand to it finally one thing the health care must do is 0.71

00:21:52.600 stop stigmatizing people who have substance abuse disorders

00:21:55.620 and start treating it as a mental health issue.

00:21:59.080 That's an interesting point.

00:22:02.400 Damien Sellis, not the virus, not a pandemic, please.

00:22:07.980 And I mean, I keep trying to use language

00:22:11.200 that would probably try and cross both sides of that divide. 0.95

00:22:15.620 I mean, I could throw air quotes over everything,

00:22:17.920 but there's also audio recordings of this show.

00:22:20.640 So if I start throwing up air quotes, unless I have a perfect tone to go with them that I use every time, the people who are listening to audio only are going to get a little lost.

00:22:30.700 I think maybe the place to queue up is that kind of the pivot here is if there was that many people who started using more drugs for the sake of the economic downturn that happened.

00:22:47.900 and and that we have that much more suffering and that much more uh economic devastation

00:22:55.540 i genuinely don't know uh i genuinely don't know what was worse right that the quote-unquote

00:23:04.720 disease uh the the thing that happened last year that the the 2020 problem we might call it someday

00:23:11.160 uh or or the cure that we had he's he's forgiven me he's forgiven me thanks thanks damien uh

00:23:21.160 what what was worse was was the cure of the disease um i i have fallen solidly on the side

00:23:29.660 of i've said this a couple of times but i'll just restate my position do i believe that the virus

00:23:35.880 exists i actually do so if that's a problem then feel free to to to unsubscribe and unlike and

00:23:43.700 leave leave this channel i understand uh do i think that it's as deadly as it's been pictured

00:23:49.460 no i don't i don't i really don't um i think for very vulnerable people it can be quite deadly

00:23:55.540 but that's the flu and that's all sorts of other things uh in our lives uh there's plenty of things

00:24:02.060 that are very deadly to people who are already diabetic etc so that's not a problem uh that's

00:24:08.220 that's to be expected what what comes up next do you believe that the methods we used to try and

00:24:16.020 stop the the spread of this virus do you think they work i don't think they worked i think they

00:24:22.080 were ineffective okay and do you believe that the that the the cost was worth that that you got what

00:24:29.340 you pay for it with all the economic devastation did did we get what we paid for did we save the

00:24:34.340 world my answer is no uh and i do believe that more people died as a result of the cure than of

00:24:40.840 the disease that is my fundamental opinion do i think this was planned do i think people had a

00:24:46.440 coordinated attack upon our freedoms and liberties uh that they were plotting to do this from the

00:24:51.800 beginning that you never put a good crisis to waste um i believe that people leaned into what

00:25:03.460 was already available inertia is the single greatest uh reality in the universe other than

00:25:08.480 gravity uh so when you start when you when you start at motion when you start with things headed

00:25:14.300 a certain direction if you have a moving ship you can you can do all sorts of things with a moving

00:25:19.060 ship that you can't do with a still ship and take something very small very very small uh to to

00:25:25.740 change that to try and lift up if you're trying if one of the things i have to practice for my

00:25:32.640 wedding is dancing okay because i'm i don't know a lot about dancing i gotta work on it my beloved

00:25:37.360 is a good swing dancer uh and i have to i have to learn how to do this stuff and it's uh it's

00:25:42.240 been nerve-wracking to tell you the truth i actually really enjoy learning it but it's not

00:25:45.340 i'm quite far behind i'm quite far behind and so i have a lot to learn but but what i've learned

00:25:52.120 if nothing else is that you have to keep your feet moving and you have to keep that momentum

00:25:55.960 if you don't keep the momentum now you're just a brick that somebody's trying to lift or spin or

00:25:59.820 turn or whatever right so case in point you know if even even even a woman who isn't who isn't 0.97

00:26:07.140 petite and a man who isn't uh super you know well built and strong if the two of them work at it

00:26:14.520 they can actually swing dance quite well together because if she keeps her momentum going and he

00:26:19.620 knows how to compensate he can actually swing dance her very well what does this mean about

00:26:24.520 what's going on when it comes to to the pandemic of all things seems like a bizarre a crossover

00:26:29.340 but it's but it's there and the reason it's there is that it comes down to inertia if even if you

00:26:34.360 have this virus that actually isn't nearly uh the the black plague or anything else that's ever

00:26:39.840 swept across the world and killed everybody like even the influenza epidemic that followed the

00:26:45.140 first world war so you have this thing that isn't nearly that deadly but at the same time you have

00:26:50.420 somebody who again maybe they're not even perfectly prepared for it but they just they've always had

00:26:54.520 it in the back of their mind that they're going to grab this thing and just go with it and and

00:26:58.640 lead this thing in the direction they want to go um you have a recipe for some really big disaster

00:27:06.140 And that's what I think happened there.

00:27:07.740 There were people who are always kind of scheming that, hey, if we ever had the opportunity to try, you know, full COVID communism, they wouldn't have known it was called COVID at the time.

00:27:17.400 But I mean, if they wanted to try it, they wanted to try and curtail freedoms.

00:27:20.540 They wanted to shut down churches and see how that would go.

00:27:22.800 They would try and get universal conformity when it came to masks, enforcement, freedom of speech, try and control the media.

00:27:29.500 if they ever had the opportunity to run a little game they were going to use it the same way as

00:27:35.480 the same way as if is if you're uh you know if if your kids suddenly decided that they were going to

00:27:43.220 some some aspect of your child's personality was suddenly changing and they were it was changing

00:27:47.420 for the better well you might lean into that uh or your spouse or your co-worker or your friend

00:27:53.140 it's if that aspect of their personality suddenly changed you might really really get excited you

00:27:58.700 always hoped it changed so then you leaned into it and i guess that's putting a positive spin on

00:28:02.460 it but on a negative spin yeah people people are always strategizing to a point they're not geniuses

00:28:08.700 but they're always looking for an opportunity we're concupiscent that's why i love that word

00:28:11.980 we're concupiscent and that means we're always tending towards a kind of selfish end and our

00:28:17.820 government and our leaders are no different on that count and now now we're suffering the consequences

00:28:24.060 of that they were given ultimate power for a couple of months a couple of weeks a couple of

00:28:27.740 days and that has gone into now what is almost a couple of years and it might never leave the same

00:28:34.300 way the post-war the war you know the war measures never left the way that we the way that we prosecuted

00:28:39.260 the war the methodologies we had uh the big manufacturing plants uh the american the american

00:28:45.100 war industrial complex uh military industrial complex that kept seeking new conflicts because

00:28:50.460 it had all these excess war materials that needed to get rid of so it might as well find a new place

00:28:54.700 to see conflict that that is a real reality and i think we need to be honest about that but it comes

00:29:00.540 all the way back if we want to use the analogy of swing dancing or you want to use the analogy of

00:29:04.780 of a ball rolling down a hill getting getting something started moving a boulder moving a tree

00:29:11.660 a log like human beings are not that big and they're not that strong but if you give them a

00:29:15.980 little bit of leverage and the thing that they're trying to move suddenly starts getting inertia

00:29:19.820 right we've all had to rock something to get it moving and once it starts getting that inertia

00:29:23.980 you're actually able to get it to go somewhere uh that is i think kind of the simplest way

00:29:29.420 to explain what happened with the pandemic uh it was a bit of inertia it was just that little spark

00:29:35.260 that was needed that little bit of of a catalyst to already to finally exacerbate uh and show the

00:29:43.020 cracks and fault lines and the new opportunities for anybody who is well poised to uh to enforce

00:29:49.580 their will so that's where i would start with that and i think that i think that's what it means

00:29:55.500 when it comes to the to the pandemic was it a plandemic maybe in china it was but outside of

00:30:02.140 that i think that everything else was and by plandemic in china i would say that's more

00:30:07.900 that's that's more just that i don't know if anybody purposely leaked it but once they found

00:30:13.040 out that it was leaked uh the virus they they just they leaned into it a bit uh and but at least

00:30:19.360 managed it because even if you had tried to even if you're trying to stop it and in you managing

00:30:23.880 it you are planning a way of of dealing with it so that's where i would start with that uh i think

00:30:29.520 that's that's my very i think moderate take it's not a hot take it's a pretty moderate take uh you

00:30:36.220 the the virus yes it's real yes very deadly two people well deadly enough two people who are

00:30:42.360 predisposed or

00:30:44.100 pre-diagnosed or are unfortunately

00:30:46.520 very ill already. They're diabetic,

00:30:48.520 etc.

00:30:50.020 Does that mean that everything is

00:30:51.740 that we should all shut down the world? No.

00:30:54.600 And did shutting down the world kill more people

00:30:56.280 than the virus? My opinion? Yes.

00:30:58.300 It did. So that's my two cents

00:31:00.340 on that. We're gonna

00:31:02.320 keep waiting

00:31:04.280 in the wings here. Eventually our

00:31:06.000 beloved guest is gonna show up.

00:31:08.780 But we're going to

00:31:10.120 go and kind of take a look at some of the

00:31:12.340 comments we've had on this so far uh one of the comments that we had was i had uh brought up the

00:31:17.860 point of capital punishment this is a really long comment pretty much uh pretty much covering my

00:31:21.760 face but that's okay there is a time and place for capital punishment we all know which abominable

00:31:26.480 crimes qualify i'm fine with non-negotiable no chance of being released for any reason life in

00:31:31.020 solitary confinement with no luxury or upgraded amenities only the basis for staying a very basic

00:31:35.560 quality of life would give them time and opportunity to think about what they have done

00:31:38.680 That's an interesting point. That's an interesting point. I will say that one of the great cynicisms of some of our uniform members, which is to say members of the RCMP and other agencies, they laugh at our Canadian understanding of things because they really believe that there's no such thing as life in prison in Canada.

00:32:06.260 Anybody can apply for parole. Nobody serves a real life sentence. It never happens. It never occurs. Always, one way or another, you get out. You get out early on good behavior. And so it's important for people to understand that, at least to our own law enforcement, they laugh it off in a very cynical, macabre way, to be clear. And I'm not trying to denigrate them.

00:32:31.020 I understand they have a hard job and, you know, having a cold one and laughing off just how terrible the world is.

00:32:39.840 I mean, I've done it and we all need to do it every now and again.

00:32:43.480 We all need our release to kind of be honest about what's going on out there and how hard it is and how difficult it is and how ugly it is at times.

00:32:50.340 but the point that i would draw here is that you know if that's their understanding that's

00:32:56.540 their understanding the people actually catch these people and people who arrest people who

00:33:01.600 have just committed a heinous crime still looking at them like no look i don't i don't care what

00:33:08.340 you say these people are still going to apply for parole and and prison's not that bad as far as as

00:33:13.960 far as a lot of our law enforcement members think then maybe that's just it maybe donna has got a 1.00

00:33:20.280 point there when it comes to like well maybe we should just if you've committed that heinous crime

00:33:24.860 but we're not going to bring back capital punishment you should just live in a box um

00:33:28.640 i don't know i i i feel like i'm both harsher and and looser on these questions of criminality

00:33:36.500 on the one hand i think that capital crimes right premeditated murder uh rape and and the rest of

00:33:44.340 that these things need to be punished with the death penalty to be the fullest extent of the law.

00:33:55.360 The thing is, I guess it's funny, I did become a prison reform, not advocate,

00:33:59.520 but at least every now and again, whenever the topic comes up, I start yelling about it.

00:34:04.780 I did become more in favor of prison reform after I learned that you can't smoke in prison anymore.

00:34:10.540 Now, I quit smoking. I had to quit smoking or else I wasn't going to be able to be with my beloved. She wasn't down for that. So I had to quit smoking and I did quit smoking. That was actually before we got together, but that's a different point altogether. And I had to quit smoking. And I miss it a lot at different times. But the point is that it was always a kind of religious experience for me, but I'm not going to get into that whole thing right now.

00:34:36.940 But the point is that, if nothing else, I do believe that, you know, I kind of believe in that old rule about, you know, it was alcohol, tobacco and coffee that won the war.

00:34:48.240 It was beatnik drugs that gave us anti-bullying legislation.

00:34:51.480 So you want to smoke a bunch of dope and decide what to do with your life after, you know, hazing out.

00:34:58.840 I mean, that's I don't I don't think anybody ever, ever.

00:35:03.060 I don't think anything ever started.

00:35:04.920 speaking of inertia we've been dwelling on that a lot this morning i don't think i don't think life

00:35:09.000 i don't think life goes well uh with the dope and the you know just kind of sitting there and

00:35:17.340 and and being not really present to the world whatever else i think i think the stimulant

00:35:23.100 of nicotine i think the kind of bizarre the bizarre very complicated depressant that is

00:35:28.580 alcohol and of course the other diuretic stimulant it's not even a stimulant it's just a blocker of

00:35:33.560 tiredness uh which is coffee somehow some way these things get you going and certainly nicotine

00:35:38.760 and coffee are a staple for a lot of people and so when i when i learned that you know there was

00:35:44.120 no nicotine in jail well maybe they give them patches but i doubt it but they there's no smoking

00:35:50.040 in jail i sat there and i was like you know what human beings are a lot of things but human beings

00:35:55.400 aren't animals and they don't you can't you can't decide for them what they can and can't

00:36:03.160 you know how they can and can't feed themselves or treat themselves uh on these counts i guess

00:36:07.500 they're in prison you can make that argument they're in prison so they have no right to to

00:36:11.400 have a smoke or relaxing a relaxing fresh breath of air going out for a fresh air break uh into

00:36:16.540 the yard but i just kind of sat there and i was like you know what like no i i'm sorry i'm sorry

00:36:23.300 people i don't believe in syntaxes and i do believe that people have a right people have a

00:36:28.700 right to their i don't even know if i want to call it vices but their their ability to medicate

00:36:35.060 themselves and release themselves um they they don't they they have a they have a right they at

00:36:40.900 least have a they at least have the privilege of human beings of being able to exercise the freedom

00:36:45.640 of choice around that question that's what i'm trying to say and when you rob them of that you

00:36:51.180 are treating them in an inhuman way that's that's deeply deeply deeply dark that i don't

00:36:57.340 think people acknowledge and people don't understand it um you know i i think uh

00:37:05.580 it it we need to do more on this question i think that petty crime needs to be treated differently

00:37:12.140 i don't think criminalizing poverty helps things i was just talking about that bylaw yesterday on

00:37:17.580 this show that doesn't help anything you're going to find people even for the drug paraphernalia

00:37:22.140 and stuff that's happening in downtown uh prince george here and then downtowns throughout canada

00:37:26.860 i mean this is canada we've got we got problems in our downtowns that date back to when pierre

00:37:31.820 trudeau was still ruling this country we're not we've not really left the the the homeless

00:37:37.820 intransigent unhoused and and and and drug addled issues of our time uh from the 70s onwards we're

00:37:46.220 all still stuck in the 1970s i mean just look at the way some of us canadians dress we're still

00:37:50.480 stuck in the 1970s every now and again actually i walk down the road and it can happen in winnipeg

00:37:57.740 it can happen in print storage it can even happen and i i was in ottawa briefly it can happen in

00:38:01.300 ottawa it's a little more rare but still and you just see a canadian who just walked right out of

00:38:05.860 the 1970s you're like i'm sorry did you not get the memo that that was like 40 now 50 years ago

00:38:10.900 that was in you know the 2010s that was 40 years ago this is 50 years ago now like are you okay

00:38:15.900 like do you need help um but yeah that's Canada Canada's just stuck in the 70s and it's never

00:38:21.440 going to get out uh hope well until I don't know a serious generational change where was I going

00:38:26.120 with this I think I was going to the point of when you when we treat people a certain way I

00:38:33.540 think G.K. Chesterton put it this way a man man shouldn't be a slave to drink but a man also

00:38:37.980 should always have a choice to drink and you can't because otherwise he doesn't have freedom

00:38:43.700 and it's kind of the same thing here. The prison reform question for me, I have no time for serial

00:38:50.040 killers. I have no time for people who are criminal masterminds and major drug pins. I think these

00:38:55.820 people need to be tried by a jury of their peers and then once they're found guilty given their

00:39:01.940 access to whatever holy man or shaman that they want to talk to for the next two three months

00:39:06.720 it's going to help them put their souls to rest and then they're going to be executed no problem

00:39:11.960 that's how it is um and actually if you're wondering what method of execution is the most

00:39:17.300 useful or or likely to succeed it's actually firing squad firing squad and hanging obviously

00:39:23.180 guillotine is pretty effective too but firing squad uh has been pretty effective so i mean

00:39:28.140 that's the other problem i don't understand why in the united states they use lethal injection

00:39:31.360 because all i ever hear about is how it's going wrong and not working it's like no let's let's

00:39:35.240 just get back to something that works don't torture the person like just just if they're

00:39:39.640 going to be executed just execute them um the the issue here though uh

00:39:46.600 uh the the issue here though is that when it comes to that petty crime stuff and when it comes 0.99

00:39:53.700 to poverty and when it comes to just people living their lives on a very hard end of the spectrum

00:40:00.280 i really i have a problem with the idea that you can't smoke in prison

00:40:04.520 and i have a problem that you can't uh that that that we would punish those the least of these

00:40:14.320 with sin taxes and uh with overcompensation of these things so i i'm pretty worried about that

00:40:23.660 to be honest with you because i think i think it shows a deep inhumanness people say it's for

00:40:27.380 they're good people say i even see people who i like genuinely respect who are they're good

00:40:31.900 christian people uh i i really do i really do look i do um respect these people and they're

00:40:40.780 not puritans by any means i've met people who are not puritans who still hold the opinion of like

00:40:46.040 well i mean they have to pay their share and uh and and like you know they have a choice and they

00:40:51.080 don't have to spend it on cigarettes or booze or whatever i sit there and i look at them i go you

00:40:55.140 know what like sure you don't but you know what it it might be all you have you know it might be

00:41:05.240 all you have and that's and that's the thing that kind of gets to me about it and whether they're

00:41:09.060 talking about prisoners or talking about the impoverished or we're talking about you know

00:41:13.400 the least of these and people on the hardest ends of life uh it it's not that it's not that they're

00:41:20.680 it's not that i'm saying their vices are okay or that they don't have they don't have other

00:41:24.880 choices to make or better choices to even make i just don't believe if somebody's face is in the

00:41:29.360 mud i don't think that our job as a society is to put your foot on the back of their head and help

00:41:34.580 shove them in further and that's how i view syntaxes and that's how i view not smoking in

00:41:39.660 jail that's it that's how i do it um and uh and and pamela's making a point about lighters and

00:41:47.780 weapons in jail i i don't i don't care what the methodology is uh how we would have to facilitate

00:41:54.120 that i don't want and i don't want people to suddenly start using uh their uh their their

00:41:59.880 vices and their tools for their vices as weapons i obviously i'm not arguing that uh i don't know

00:42:07.080 how you facilitate that i don't know if everybody gets a one you know has to has to go through the

00:42:11.440 smoking corridor where there's only where only one person can fit and it's only one direction i don't

00:42:15.600 know i don't care obviously we facilitated this in a past time without them becoming weapons at

00:42:21.320 least not commonly because it was allowed for so long i don't know how we change culture to do that

00:42:26.300 but but get there because that's that's better it's better it's better than than treating them

00:42:31.900 treating treating it like like an animal that you're that you're disciplining and as if you

00:42:37.480 have complete authority over them in this way i don't think that's correct and and this is just

00:42:42.460 it like it might be all they have it might be all they have and when it comes to syntaxes i just i

00:42:47.840 have no time for that it's wrong it's very wrong um you know it's uh it's it is what it is uh i

00:43:01.500 yeah i mean i'm getting i'm getting uh i'm getting some definitely uh definitely some throw

00:43:06.620 uh some throwbacks here for a few different things uh poor donna is is giving me some 1.00

00:43:13.460 guff on this point that smoking is a luxury you want to stop choosing criminal behavior and who

00:43:18.460 pays for the health issues while in prisons certainly not the criminal yeah i mean you have

00:43:22.360 to remember that i i'm pretty consistent on this point i don't believe in socialized medicine

00:43:25.700 uh i think our socialized system is a sham uh that leaves a lot of people behind it costs them

00:43:31.000 almost as much as it might if they just had a third party uh sort of things but uh

00:43:36.680 uh i think that i i guess the short version is that i don't i mean i don't really have a problem

00:43:43.560 with with people choosing to do these things to themselves because i also don't really believe

00:43:47.520 that they need that they need the socialized system to take care of them because i think

00:43:51.120 they already know what their choices were and also the the fact is that no amount of taxes

00:43:56.680 will ever pay for it that's an interesting point uh we'll get we'll get back to that but uh actually

00:44:00.880 this all ties in it's funny because you can tie all this stuff in back together so we've talked

00:44:04.740 about inertia we've talked about treating people with dignity ironically also talked about executing

00:44:09.060 people because that's in my opinion that's actually treating them with dignity there's a way to earn

00:44:13.160 your way out of this life uh and that's by taking other people's lives uh but let's let's let's

00:44:18.860 pivot back here to to the point of of uh you know what you what you what you need to do when it comes

00:44:27.520 to these questions of socialized medicine and that sort of thing uh i

00:44:31.280 and and even bishop o'grady and the schools so do you know why do you know why we use the

00:44:38.600 residential school system in canada do you want to know the real reason the real reason is as

00:44:42.680 expensive as those schools were to build the people staffing them were cheap they were extremely cheap

00:44:48.680 okay and this is the problem with canada now is that we do the exact opposite we don't just

00:44:53.440 build pretty expensive buildings you should see the RCMP detachment that we have downtown at

00:44:59.560 Prince George that's a nice building I'm not saying RCMP don't deserve to have some kind of

00:45:04.360 building I'm just saying that is a nice nice building and I don't know what that cost but

00:45:07.860 that was way too much money but the point is that and it probably still isn't even functional I bet

00:45:12.520 you half the members that think it's unfunctional there's a nice pretty building they work at but

00:45:15.900 they don't they don't think it's a very functional building I bet you but the point is that we used

00:45:21.380 to build expensive buildings to house children mostly aboriginal children for school but the

00:45:27.600 people inside of those buildings unless they were lay people and even then were paid very very little

00:45:33.080 especially if they were clergy or brothers and sisters because you can pay a brother or a sister

00:45:38.320 nothing because they take a vow of poverty so you can pay them enough to feed them and they don't

00:45:42.840 have a family and they don't have they effectively have a pension fund which is you just get taken

00:45:47.480 care of by your other brothers and sisters when you get sickly and ill and elderly and that's it

00:45:51.400 so that's how we use to bring a system everything that it does comes back to money

00:45:54.860 and that's it you can't pay someone enough to somebody it's not possible you just can't it

00:46:00.620 just can't happen you can't do it it doesn't it doesn't exist how much money would i need to pay

00:46:06.640 you to love someone how much is that worth loving somebody else the answer is an infinite amount of

00:46:12.080 money there's no there's no limit love is infinite and therefore you can't pay for it so you can pay

00:46:18.120 for somebody to kind of care enough to not ignore your baby for you or not ignore your uh grandmother

00:46:24.440 for you or not ignore your sick child for you that gets that's you can almost pay someone enough

00:46:28.780 to do that they'll never be as attentive as you are to your own grandmother or your own mother

00:46:32.660 or your own child or your own brother or whatever they never will but you could pay them just enough

00:46:38.140 to kind of keep the lights on make sure that they're dosed properly make sure that they're

00:46:42.140 you know they're sleeping in in their hospital bed and that sort of thing and and that's exactly it

00:46:46.880 so the problem is that once you're trying to pay people to love people and and do the actions of

00:46:54.700 love which is to take care of somebody unconditionally you you're paying an impossible

00:46:59.640 amount and so i think that that's where i'll kind of leave that for now because we got brad in the

00:47:03.880 wings here but i i think that that's where i would start with we have to be honest about what's going

00:47:09.180 on here you cannot pay people enough to love people and that's why our collect the system

00:47:14.480 that we've come up with is probably never going to work but that's okay we're going to get back

00:47:18.500 on that topic after we have uh brad on the show we're going to bring him on right away

00:47:22.440 um brad i think i need you to

00:47:31.580 because something's something is going wrong there i had to mute your microphone we're having

00:47:38.120 a little bit of an echo problem general green screen guests

00:47:53.620 I wonder where my

00:47:58.960 producer is

00:48:00.800 my producer is

00:48:03.520 remoting in producer could you please

00:48:05.680 help Brad with what's going on here

00:48:07.380 producer

00:48:11.240 I don't know if he's around 0.98

00:48:13.340 I'm going to shoot

00:48:15.640 him a message

00:48:16.240 but we'll take

00:48:19.240 we'll take him off the stream there

00:48:21.680 for a moment

00:48:22.220 Sheldon Jones helicopter

00:48:24.940 that's brilliant 0.90

00:48:28.400 I'm just going to shoot my producer

00:48:30.820 a message here and just see if I can't

00:48:32.880 get him to fix that for me

00:48:34.900 where did you go

00:48:41.680 for Pete's sake

00:48:44.320 oh well this is the nature of these

00:48:46.860 things when you do these things live and I'm having to learn

00:48:48.860 this stuff because we're remoting in right

00:48:50.600 So, sound problems with Brad.

00:48:59.820 Yeah, he's just grabbing some headphones, so hopefully that improves things.

00:49:04.160 And everything will come together here.

00:49:13.100 Interesting.

00:49:14.860 No, it's still not working.

00:49:20.600 And unfortunately, yeah, we're having issues.

00:49:26.780 What is this suggesting?

00:49:29.900 Try that again.

00:49:35.540 No, that's not working.

00:49:39.600 Into private chat.

00:49:40.980 i'm going to message my producer again here just kind of see what's going on there and

00:49:51.020 in the meanwhile brad from there let uh my producer figure that out yeah i think i try

00:50:00.120 to be consistent on this point it's not that it's not that i think that somehow socialized medicine

00:50:04.500 has no value or whatever i mean i'm talking to a guy from saskatchewan today and i'm i'm from

00:50:08.300 saskatchewan i mean obviously tommy douglas did a great thing giving us socialized medicine but

00:50:12.220 but i don't think tommy douglas ever thought everything would be socialized i think somebody

00:50:16.640 wrote something on that in the national post a couple of years back and the other thing that i

00:50:20.660 think needs to be understood is that again like we keep adding again with the syntax question we

00:50:26.380 keep adding taxes to our cigarettes uh and our alcohol and now marijuana is legalized at what

00:50:33.200 point do we uh at what point uh do we be honest about it and go you know what we keep adding these

00:50:42.140 taxes but nothing gets better uh it you know we're building gigantic cancer centers well then what

00:50:49.240 are those people going to work at after we cure cancer i guess i don't know it it it's all nonsense

00:50:53.960 like that money goes somewhere and it goes into general revenue that's where it goes it's not as

00:50:59.780 if every single cent of syntax on cigarettes and alcohol and everything else goes directly to

00:51:04.960 medicine right it doesn't it doesn't uh it goes into general revenue and the government uses it

00:51:10.540 for all sorts of silly projects and so that's where that's where my deep cynicism comes in

00:51:14.920 it doesn't matter what kind of empire you're building you're always building an empire

00:51:17.920 you're going to fund that empire with whatever money you have on hand that's why i don't want

00:51:21.620 to give you the money because i know what you're going to do with it that's me that sounds like

00:51:25.020 when you talk to someone don't give money to people on the street they just use it to buy

00:51:28.480 whatever. Don't give money to government. They just

00:51:30.580 use it to buy whatever they want.

00:51:33.160 Syntaxes don't correct sins.

00:51:35.000 Syntaxes don't fix sins.

00:51:36.480 Syntaxes don't fund our hospitals.

00:51:38.580 Syntaxes go into general revenue like everything else.

00:51:40.720 And they spend it on all the same nonsense.

00:51:42.920 So I don't have a lot of time for that.

00:51:48.540 They are saying restart computer.

00:51:50.520 Well, that's all right. So we'll let

00:51:52.220 we'll either, I'm going to bring Brad

00:51:58.240 back to the stream oh no he left so remove uh and uh they're gonna restart his computer yeah i mean

00:52:07.200 that's we got some comments here thank you thank you sheldon that's that's that's what i've been

00:52:16.240 trying to say the whole time it is a tax on the port that's all syntaxes are it's a tax on the port

00:52:23.120 um and uh and daryl to your point uh the stephen truscott trial i'm not not an argument here

00:52:32.200 that's why i keep saying jury of your peers jury of your peers with clear lines of evidence

00:52:37.080 reasonable doubt um no question no question at all but when you're you know oh here we go

00:52:44.680 we've got buddy here nope we're gonna let him take a minute uh and and that's just it though

00:52:51.600 that's just it it's attacks on the floor and we've got brad on one more time still a helicopter

00:52:59.980 that's okay that's just because brad's decided to identify as an apache attack helicopter that's

00:53:07.020 going on there no brad's like that's not funny that well it's the age we live in right i mean

00:53:13.900 you gotta crack jokes about anything this show's live like i that's i think that's the other thing

00:53:17.940 that needs to be told to like the audience here and everything else uh like the show's live like

00:53:22.600 we're there's no cutting to commercial here um i could do the one minute countdown i think the

00:53:28.360 closest we ever did that was uh one time one time we had to bring people into the studio and so what

00:53:36.340 we did is we did put up the counter the one minute countdown and we rearranged the entire studio

00:53:41.860 like in a single 60 seconds i had to move my chair over bring his chair in put up the two

00:53:47.560 microphones throw our headphones on and plug them into the jack which goes into a different place

00:53:52.280 because now you've got two people sitting there not one it just got completely out of hand and so

00:53:56.620 but we did it we did in 60 seconds it was like a drill but we're going to go through some of

00:54:01.140 our comments right now while we just wait in the wings um here's an interesting one who is brad

00:54:07.820 trost uh he used to be a conservative mp in saskatchewan but what's unique about him the

00:54:12.040 big unique thing about brad i mean i'm gonna let him tell his own story but i think something

00:54:15.420 that's unique about brad is that uh he's actually a principled conservative in the age of completely

00:54:21.420 unprincipled unconservative people calling themselves tories uh he cares about uh the

00:54:27.880 things that matter uh which is to say you know faith and family uh you know firearms and farms

00:54:33.420 as well those are always my favorite things but uh i think when it comes to when it comes to what

00:54:39.680 brad is trying to do brad brad when he was running for the leadership he tried to build a a brilliant

00:54:44.060 coalition he almost took the leadership himself at one point uh and i think that he posed a threat

00:54:50.620 to uh to the establishment of the conservative party and he was a sign that the social conserves

00:54:58.300 could really get behind someone and do something and get somewhere and they they uh

00:55:06.700 they took him out that's my opinion uh they they made sure they could push him out i think that

00:55:11.420 that was wrong it was unfair and they keep doing this to socially conservative people inside of

00:55:16.060 the party they keep trying to filter them out which i don't really understand because social

00:55:19.220 conservatives make up a huge amount of the base of the party and i really don't understand why

00:55:23.600 they would do this to people so it's it's a waste of time but that's on me so

00:55:29.120 so i think that the answer to it all

00:55:35.280 is that uh if you're looking for kind of answers on well who's brad truss and what's he up to

00:55:44.200 i i think that's kind of where i would start with is like a principled guy

00:55:47.240 a caring guy a guy who's done a lot of things for our you know as an mp everything else and uh

00:55:57.000 and as a leader contestant and the problem is of course that uh that you know social

00:56:03.500 conservatives don't really get a much of a hearing in our time and so i'm just happy to

00:56:07.540 have them on the show today we're still working on that end we'll get them there as soon as we can

00:56:11.340 but uh in the meantime i think it's important to note that yeah no social conservatives in

00:56:18.720 canada have definitely had some some pretty hard hard things thrown at them you know

00:56:23.820 it's uh it's a difficult thing i've had some other comments here um

00:56:29.800 arthur me he's actually a pretty consistent commenter on here um i can't really tell what

00:56:37.060 that's a picture of that almost looks like he's on the ocean or something and about to go diving

00:56:42.000 or something i don't really know what that is but anyways uh with science the world needs 12

00:56:45.560 times to look over the world scientists and a new law for politicians if you break the law of

00:56:49.280 government uh and i don't really know what that means but let's try one more time

00:56:53.600 hello brad can you hear me now i can hear you now smartphones work but my computer doesn't my

00:57:04.220 apologies oh please it's not a problem at all not a problem at all i'm glad to have you on the show

00:57:09.160 uh what we've got so let's just do it right from the top well i'm speaking with brad trost

00:57:13.820 who is seeking the nomination for, let's see if I can get this right, Moose Jaw Lanigan Lake Centre as the Conservative nominee for that riding.

00:57:25.780 And he's here with me today to talk to us about his journey previously as a Member of Parliament and his journey now as he seeks to represent the people of Saskatchewan once again.

00:57:34.300 Welcome to the program.

00:57:35.900 Good to be here, even though it took me my time to get here.

00:57:38.680 I'm in good riders green today. And, you know, what one guy said to me, the only good thing about last year's pandemic, first season, the riders went undefeated in history.

00:57:48.900 We'll never have that again. So there it is. There it is.

00:57:52.120 Well, and I mean, I'm a son of Saskatchewan myself. And when I have to cheer for anything, I do cheer Rough Riders. So there you go.

00:57:59.960 It's a strange the loyalty we have in this province.

00:58:02.320 Now, to give you a little bit of background about my family, though, and where I come from, my dad and my two uncles never cured for the Saskatchewan Rough Riders, even though they were born and raised in Saskatchewan.

00:58:13.580 You think, how did such a horrible, horrible thing happen?

00:58:17.440 Well, when they grew up, the CCF ran Saskatchewan.

00:58:21.240 That's the forerunners of the NDP and the social credit ran Alberta and B.C.

00:58:25.480 So my dad cured for the Eskimos, my uncle for the Stampeders and my other uncle for the Lions.

00:58:30.700 There was no way they were cheering for a football team that was associated with the socialist province.

00:58:36.180 There it is. There it is.

00:58:37.860 Well, I mean, that's the funny thing about Saskatchewan is that it was the beginning of kind of socialized ideas in Canada, particularly socialized medicine.

00:58:45.700 But how did Saskatchewan go from being what it was, a CCF stronghold, to where it is today, which is a conservative stronghold?

00:58:54.120 Would you mind telling us about that?

00:58:55.380 Well, I think different people have different theories, but I'm going to teach people a little bit of history of Saskatchewan here.

00:59:02.460 And one of the things also people have to understand, if you're like me and you're really into politics, you're an ideological guy.

00:59:08.180 You got right, wrong, free markets, et cetera.

00:59:11.120 You know, a lot of people don't really think in politics in base of policy and ideology.

00:59:16.480 They think of it as group, as an interest, as in, does this person speak to me emotionally?

00:59:21.760 And if you start to think about politics a little bit more like that, you start to understand

00:59:26.600 Saskatchewan. Because as much as people talk about Saskatchewan having been a really socialist

00:59:31.680 left-wing province, yeah, they elected parties that were of the left. But this is what you got

00:59:37.120 to understand. Saskatchewan's underlying culture was that of agrarian populists. These were people

00:59:43.620 who believed in farming. Agriculture dominated this province in the 1920s, 30s and 40s and still

00:59:49.500 a grip now but they were fundamentally populist if you look at the history of populism it can be

00:59:55.740 right of center we look now with trump and different things like that or it used to be

01:00:00.300 viewed as more left-wing you go back into american history with people like william jennings bryan

01:00:04.480 the progressives all that way and that's when you start talking about saskatchewan the first

01:00:10.360 thing you've got to understand this is a populist culture has been for a hundred years and at one

01:00:15.800 time the left was the populace now it tends to be the right and that's one of the fundamentals when

01:00:21.680 you start to get into our history and and that spirit of populism it's getting it's getting

01:00:27.840 stronger in canada these days uh so it's interesting that uh you know that saskatchewan

01:00:32.840 was almost almost a forerunner in a way that that would eventually come about again when it comes

01:00:39.100 to what's happening throughout the western world particularly the anglosphere what what what do you

01:00:44.460 see happening in canada comes the populist front there isn't it canada seems to have resisted the

01:00:49.360 populist bug to a certain extent it's it's not taken over as it has in america and england

01:00:53.980 and throughout throughout europe but what's different about canada or is this about to break

01:00:59.480 is that wave about to turn you know i don't know for sure but i'll give again i'm a bit of a history

01:01:05.020 buff uh and i'll give my perspective on where populism was in canada and how i think it can

01:01:10.380 grow. Populism, again, was more of a Western Canadian, rural Quebec thing with some streaks

01:01:16.700 in parts of Ontario. Why was that? Well, you look at who settled Western Canada. We didn't have a

01:01:22.620 real class structure here, unless you go to some of the more British-centric areas, which was

01:01:28.020 Winnipeg and sort of the lower mainland, Victoria, Vancouver, when it was really British, British

01:01:34.000 Columbia, and not sort of, you know, more of an Asian people from the interior mixture. We didn't 1.00

01:01:40.100 have class structures Europe all those other places that had real hierarchies they didn't

01:01:45.020 have populism so the prairies didn't have popular had had populism and rural Quebec with the voting 0.64

01:01:51.700 of the credice the union national parties like that were populist but the culture of Canada

01:01:57.240 politically founded by the United Empire loyalists was not really that populist these are the people

01:02:02.760 who backed the queen and country or king and country at the time so I think that was one of

01:02:07.980 the reasons why Ontario and Atlantic Canada have resisted the populist wave because they were

01:02:13.980 historically the anti-populists. The U.S. was the country of populism. We were the party of peace

01:02:19.700 order, country of peace order and good government. And again, if you're from Western Canada and your

01:02:24.800 ancestors took off running from Eastern Europe, you don't really care much about the American

01:02:29.460 Revolutionary War, the institutions that are set up from there. You don't give a hoot. You want

01:02:34.300 your piece of land you want the communists to stay away forever and yeah you don't want either

01:02:39.600 big business or your neighbor telling you what to do so it's like each man for himself so i think

01:02:45.300 that was the historical reasons why populism wasn't uh progressing in all of canada was more

01:02:51.400 of a regionalized thing but and this is the interesting thing i think historically we're

01:02:57.220 now at a point where those long distant ties have sort of been broken we've got new canadians

01:03:02.280 dominating in toronto and vancouver they don't have real fixed political allegiances and whoever

01:03:08.280 is up and willing to talk to them and meet their needs i think that's where actually uh populism

01:03:13.960 could really take off um new canadians you know they sometimes they're a lot more right-wing than

01:03:20.120 people believe and they don't always feel they have a voice so i actually think there's a way

01:03:25.320 that sort of western canadian populists can go and talk to new chinese immigrants who hate the

01:03:30.680 communist government in china and that's why they left and get them to be part of this uh movement

01:03:35.880 for the people so uh the writing that uh you're going to seek to represent is a uh well it's it's

01:03:46.360 it's a new amalgamation is it not what i believe that the writing that you had formerly represented

01:03:51.400 actually piece the writing that you formerly represented uh is in this writing is do you find

01:03:56.040 the new amalgamations uh that they'll that they lean to a more populous structure with some of

01:04:01.320 them or is they becoming too urban and the urban side makes them too stable yeah this is the

01:04:07.160 difference where i'm beginning to see the difference now between saskatchewan and alberta

01:04:12.440 and why saskatchewan has veered to the right of alberta i think it's the populist thing because

01:04:17.560 if you live in a place like saskatoon and i've lived in saskatoon calgary and edmonton over the

01:04:22.200 years saskatoon is still not sure it's a big city it's still just a town where a lot of people

01:04:28.800 happen to live and i think that's one of the things i found with calgary and edmonton you

01:04:33.980 were getting more of uh you know a big city approach so in saskatchewan we had about 20

01:04:40.340 years where we had blended ridings and uh now i'm going back to a riding that used to exist

01:04:47.480 roughly 20 years ago in this shape so i don't know um with the when the last boundaries were

01:04:54.820 drawn we had an unfortunate draw and we got a left-wing judge and a left-wing political science

01:04:59.720 prof so the only province in the country where the boundaries were deliberately drawn to help

01:05:04.360 the left was saskatchewan we ended up with 14 seats in the last election so go figure doesn't

01:05:10.040 matter how they cut the books in this province we're still going to win and again our rural

01:05:15.180 populists working class guys in the city i mean the big union place in regina are the guys who

01:05:22.300 make steel for pipelines so whenever their ndp union leadership tell them don't go uh support

01:05:30.380 the conservatives they go we want a pipeline we want donald trump to build keystone xl we want a

01:05:36.220 pipeline going through vancouver if you can put one through the port of churchill so we don't have

01:05:41.180 that clear line between urban and rural and populism in saskatchewan and again natural

01:05:46.300 resource industry and a lot of people grew up on the farms even if they uh currently live in

01:05:51.740 saskatoon and regina right now so let's let's get into your own background and your own story so of

01:05:59.580 course you are you are uh an honorable member former member of our legislature in ottawa the

01:06:05.500 parliament and you represented your riding for several years uh how many years exactly is is

01:06:13.420 escaping me at the moment i'm sorry brad it's okay it was 15 years in total so that's right

01:06:18.300 that's right that's right i wanted to say 15 but for some reason nine was egging at me uh but

01:06:23.660 nonetheless nonetheless uh as you as you represented uh the people of saskatchewan as you got to voice

01:06:28.540 your opinions in ottawa and then you went on of course into a leadership race i'm just interested

01:06:33.500 to hear your story on these counts and what what what the choices were that got you involved in

01:06:39.420 politics how your experience was in ottawa did you feel you could continue to represent your people

01:06:45.180 there or were they trying to march you back from ottawa and tell you how to represent ottawa to

01:06:49.420 them and finally when you got into leadership and and your attempt to to help the serve party stay

01:06:55.420 with its principles uh what kind of your understanding was from there so let's just

01:06:59.020 kind of go over the whole story yep this will take to take a while so feel free to butt in

01:07:04.380 and ask questions and so forth so i was you know typical saskatchewan farm kid you know wasn't very

01:07:10.780 good at hockey i say i'm a better shot with my hockey stick than i am with my rifle but to be

01:07:15.420 honest i'm a pretty bad shot with both um typical saskatchewan farm kid didn't really know what i

01:07:21.180 wanted to do um but i started volunteering for political campaigns in when i was 12 years old

01:07:29.740 and i came from a family that my mother's side had literally fled the communists

01:07:34.220 there was no love lost for for socialism in my family history

01:07:38.860 my grandma remembered the civil war in russia the communists on one side the white army on the other

01:07:43.660 and the shelling my dad was uh as i said you know he cheered for the edmonton eskimos because they

01:07:49.260 they were from a social credit province or right-wing province couldn't cheer for the CCF

01:07:53.260 you know by the time I grew up Saskatchewan was no longer NDP so I cheered for the riders

01:07:58.440 but I'd volunteered for every last conservative candidate university other things here there and

01:08:04.700 everywhere and I got trained as a geophysicist did mining exploration work I did diamond exploration

01:08:11.420 nickel cobalt copper you name it not oil and gas there's guys who do geophysics that's not oil and

01:08:18.140 I was a mining guy. Loved working in the territories. But whenever I had free time,

01:08:23.320 I would volunteer to work for other candidates. And that got me in because I saw, you know,

01:08:28.820 you need two basic things, in my opinion, to be a good candidate. You've got to be able to

01:08:32.500 communicate clearly. And you've got to have solid principles. And boy, did I run into guys who were

01:08:38.600 solid on principles, but were scared to get in front of a microphone. To do an interview like

01:08:43.440 this they would you know shake and freak out and do stuff and then I met the guys with the smoothest

01:08:50.260 communication skills they could look you in the eye tell you whatever you wanted they could do

01:08:55.680 the Bill Clinton I feel your pain emotional thing they had better emotional connections than Justin

01:09:02.180 Trudeau with his fancy hair and they had no principles and I'd volunteered for a couple of

01:09:07.500 candidates like that knowing not knowing they were like that until I found out later and you know you

01:09:12.520 quietly step away from campaigns and so in 2004 I decided to run and it was a strange situation

01:09:19.840 I was you know 29 year old young guy and everyone thought I had not a hope in whatever to win the

01:09:27.460 nomination because the former mayor of Saskatoon was running and at that time the majority of the

01:09:32.080 riding was in Saskatoon but here was one thing about him he had previously been a long time

01:09:38.560 new democrat and four years earlier jean christian and the liberals had been a point had appointed

01:09:44.300 him to uh run for the liberals in a by-election and now he was trying to run the newly formed

01:09:51.740 conservative party it was like no way the guy's got no history no principles i'm not letting him

01:09:59.120 win my ridings nomination i'm going to go in there and fight him and so that's how i got started

01:10:03.880 that's how uh i got in on my first election uh the headline in the newspapers that act day was not

01:10:10.040 trostwin's nomination they mentioned the former mayor loses because no one had heard of me but

01:10:16.200 uh a lot of the membership were of the same viewpoint they didn't want someone who was just

01:10:21.000 in one day and out the other and could switch parties uh running so that's what uh started me

01:10:26.600 uh to get going so no that's no i mean that's that's a place to start for sure it i think that

01:10:34.760 that question of principle is one we'll revisit in a little while uh because it seems like that's

01:10:40.200 something the conservative party is missing right now it seems to be a bit lost when it comes to its

01:10:45.240 base and what the base wants and where to go from here especially when they're trying to always pivot

01:10:51.240 with with the liberal party and how to how to win back voters from the liberals that's

01:10:55.800 that's something we can get into a little bit later with strategy but i appreciate your emphasis

01:10:59.800 of the point of principle were you able to keep keep carrying your principles into ottawa was it

01:11:04.920 was it a struggle while you were there you'd been elected now you're in ottawa what what was it like

01:11:09.960 being in kind of the heart of the beast you know one of the things people always say that you get

01:11:15.640 pressure to conform and things like that i think one of the big advantages i had when i first got

01:11:21.800 there I was in a province where I think trying to remember what we had we had 13 or 12 of the 14

01:11:27.100 ridings that year were conservatives and most of us were white guys okay and we all knew the rules

01:11:34.560 for advancement you have to have so many from certain region they want a gender balance and 0.54

01:11:39.440 you know if you're sort of with a cultural group that helps too so a lot of us especially the

01:11:44.360 rookies like me we knew we had no chance for advancement so why worry about kissing up and

01:11:49.800 i think that was that was a really good thing because you don't worry about anything you're

01:11:54.020 just so relaxed because the pressures that people who get elected often feel are not overt pressures

01:12:01.820 of people pushing their desires for advancement and they get into the habit i have to compromise

01:12:08.420 just a little bit so i can advance so i think the best thing that was for me was i got to ottawa i

01:12:15.000 looked around and said well i'm never going to be anything but a good constituency guy so that's

01:12:20.200 what i'm going to concentrate on i'm going to stick up for my people and uh 100 guarantee i'll

01:12:26.740 never make cabinet look there were some great guys in cabinet but i don't have to compromise i think

01:12:32.200 that was that was the best thing and then when we are in opposition the relentless drive to take

01:12:36.880 down the corrupt liberals people forget uh paul martin was going to win a landslide and then he

01:12:42.460 got caught doing what liberals naturally do putting their hands in the cookie jar some of

01:12:47.220 the people not even the liberal MPs it was the backroom boys and that began to put stuff in

01:12:54.280 and then when we got into government I'll say two things one I did break party ranks on a lot more

01:13:00.560 issues than I think people realized two one of the things you've got to understand about dealing

01:13:06.440 with Stephen Harper his number one interest in you when you were about to break ranks was this

01:13:12.180 are you doing this for the cameras or are you doing this if you deeply believe in it

01:13:16.460 harper would put pressure on you to make you stand with the party and go along and get along

01:13:23.480 and stuff like that but in the end if he actually believed you believed it as a core right principle

01:13:30.120 he would respect and i can give you some illustrations later on in that what drove him

01:13:35.380 nuts and i can appreciate this after being there is if he thought you were just pandering to the

01:13:40.460 cameras and breaking with the party if you believed it in your soul was right yeah they try to force

01:13:46.620 you but then he they would they would respect you but if you wanted to pull some sort of stunt and

01:13:51.520 pander then they came down on you with a ton of bricks and uh forget carrots the sticks were laid

01:13:57.820 out at that point so uh that i understood after a while and that's the thing um i stuck to my guns

01:14:05.340 and you know there was odd things where democratic reform things that we were in government we

01:14:10.340 support now but we didn't then uh this little you'll find funny this was after harper was gone

01:14:16.540 and uh harper hates the cbc okay he is no fan nor was jim flaherty but he never felt he had the

01:14:25.200 political capital to go after them so i put out a private members bill to uh scrap the cbc you know

01:14:32.660 the old line do you support any particular media and i always said yeah i support the cbc with my

01:14:38.560 tax dollars and i'm unhappy about it so we scrap it that was the time when they whipped the bill

01:14:45.020 when they whipped the voting caucus and pressured a lot of mps who wanted to vote for it um not not

01:14:52.440 to stand with me and uh it was a strange thing because no conservative mp loves loves it so

01:14:59.160 under harper if you stuck to your guns they put pressure on you really tough but if you believed 0.97

01:15:06.480 that Stephen respected you if he thought you were just being a dumb ham well then he had no patience 0.99

01:15:11.180 for dumb dumb hams sticking up and you know what I don't totally blame him at that point so that 0.99

01:15:17.040 was sort of my experience of being a you know an MP that's uh free or not free so how did you see 0.99

01:15:25.860 partisanship change over your time in caucus and your time in Ottawa I understand that you know

01:15:31.820 when when people arrived there they felt like they had you know oh i i'm i'm you know like this is

01:15:38.680 this is more amicable and some people said that as things went on things got less amicable and

01:15:44.600 the partisanship increased on both sides of the aisle did you manage to keep a good relationship

01:15:50.240 with your colleagues across the aisle or did things just get too tense yeah you know what i

01:15:57.420 would say the temperatures go up and the elbows go out when people feel they're competing for

01:16:03.340 something in the same space this is the thing you could always get along with the block quebecois

01:16:09.580 guys on a personal level because your voters and their voters were so different you thought they

01:16:15.100 were crazy they thought you were crazy but you were so different that you laughed about it and

01:16:19.580 you were really relaxed um in areas where you're neck and neck and where there's real distinctive

01:16:26.620 things that you care about that's that's where the temperatures got up i mean for western canadian

01:16:32.140 guys we hated the gun registry with a passion it meant something we owned firearms i'm a firearms

01:16:37.580 owner um on issues like that things would really get get going but if you would work with some

01:16:44.860 rural liberals on trade issues where their guys were beef producers and they're riding and of

01:16:50.220 course saskatchewan we had tons of beef it was easy to work with people then because you were

01:16:55.340 trying to get the protectionism down on the u.s or european side and so that was uh that was often

01:17:02.780 where um things got you could work together with people i would say the biggest areas where you

01:17:09.100 have elbows getting up is where you have people who are uh hyper or super ambitious and they try

01:17:15.980 to step on people not only in the other parties but in their own caucuses too uh there's a certain

01:17:22.300 name Belinda Stronick you might remember her from way way back for viewers who don't remember she

01:17:28.120 was someone who ran for the conservative leadership but then crossed to join the liberals when sort of

01:17:33.440 offered a cabinet post she was not well liked in the conservative caucus and we were kind of

01:17:39.140 relieved that she was gone and within six months the liberals were privately telling the conservatives

01:17:44.340 we wish you guys had kept her why because she was only in it to step on people and move up the ladder 0.90

01:17:50.240 for herself and it's like anything else if you've got co-workers who you know want to get promoted 0.97

01:17:56.300 on your back you just get agitated with them and uh that's one of the things you watch guys in the

01:18:02.660 house of commons stretch the truth and uh try to step on a colleague or uh play a dumb game

01:18:08.580 no one respects them and after a while you know uh they get in trouble i mean privately what a lot

01:18:16.280 of the liberal mps over the years have said about justin trudeau they would all get kicked out of

01:18:20.760 their caucus if they ever got caught on a microphone on it they don't like the guy any

01:18:24.660 more than the average conservative does but he's their leader and they feel they're stuck with him

01:18:29.260 so that's one thing you've got to understand about the partisanship a lot of it has to do

01:18:33.440 with the swollen head egos that sit in uh different posts in leadership no i and that

01:18:40.800 that doesn't surprise me that makes sense makes an awful lot of sense because that's the nature

01:18:46.000 of it anywhere in a family in a business in a in a church it is ego ego rules the day and ego and

01:18:53.320 ego can ruin things very quickly that's why we you know we subscribe to a religion that declares

01:18:57.620 charity for all including one's enemies i i think that as as we kind of look at your time in ottawa

01:19:03.580 and certainly certainly as we get to that to that climax of the leadership run um why don't you tell

01:19:08.660 us a little bit about about the committee assignments and and the and the visits that

01:19:12.340 you made the excursions you took as a member of parliament both internal and external uh when it

01:19:18.180 comes to Canada what what and what what kind of vision were you trying to live out there uh did

01:19:23.680 you want it were you trying to pick up Diefenbaker's mantle and have the north more developed

01:19:28.320 were you trying to see Canada on the world stage respected but in a position of strength not just

01:19:32.860 of softness or complicity or complacency or was it more of a kind of a dollars and cents thing

01:19:41.200 that that you wanted to see the bottom line in Ottawa just just go down that it didn't it didn't

01:19:45.820 need to be spending so much and people could really do this stuff on their own the civil

01:19:49.240 servants didn't have to worry either it's not just about worrying about the pennies like really

01:19:53.240 people can do this for themselves yeah one of the things is I think you're laying that out in a grand

01:19:59.740 strategic plan and to be honest I think I was like a lot of rookie members of parliament you know I

01:20:05.440 was 29 turned 30 right before the election was called i just wanted to go out there and beat

01:20:11.800 the liberals okay that motivated me more than anything else i wanted to beat the liberals and

01:20:17.080 i wanted to do do something for you know what i would use the term my people my farmers my blue

01:20:23.460 collar working class background people the small business guys i'd worked for when i was in the

01:20:29.720 geophysics industry you just want to do something okay because they're your people if you're like

01:20:36.560 I was you grew up on the losing side of almost every election and man you just wanted the

01:20:42.160 conservative side to win and get something done but when I got there I realized you know you can't

01:20:47.580 handle everything there's just too many issues so I got involved in things I had sort of background

01:20:53.160 interest and expertise and there was two basic areas that I took on one was energy policy and

01:21:01.560 one was Canada-US relations and I got involved in energy and natural resource stuff because I was a

01:21:07.640 geophysicist okay even though I'd done mining not oil and gas I still knew the industry lingo I had

01:21:14.060 connections I did stuff like that and my number one thing was to try to get good policy so we would

01:21:19.840 I would organize talks by people on how to develop Canada's energy industry.

01:21:25.300 And I remember when we were in opposition, guys who later on would become cabinets would show up.

01:21:29.200 No lobbying, no special interest stuff.

01:21:31.740 Just how can we do good stuff?

01:21:33.880 Remember Jim Prentice sitting beside me as we listened to guys describe about options for pipelines.

01:21:39.860 We were trying to figure out, even when we were in opposition, how we could get these things done.

01:21:45.180 Small-scale nuclear reactors, are they possible or are they a pipe dream?

01:21:48.820 um ways of developing the oil sands we did a tour up there to figure out you know what what sort of

01:21:54.400 things like we could do stuff that you know what people didn't hear of but we were trying to do

01:21:59.340 stuff to develop our mining and oil and gas industry and get good policy in there uh from

01:22:05.240 day one so that got me involved there and then that tied into canada u.s issues i got elected to

01:22:11.320 our executive of working with the americans largely because again agriculture trade and

01:22:17.740 energy are really important to saskatchewan and that began to get me introduced to uh american

01:22:23.740 politicians and going down to the states to work there because uh you know we have

01:22:29.900 three major countries that that are important to canada the united states the united states

01:22:35.380 and the united states uh for defense for trade for everything uh that's all we do and you needed

01:22:42.940 to get to know the Americans and be able to work with them. So that's what I really started to

01:22:48.520 emphasize on because our pork, our beef, our oil, our potash, that's what Saskatchewan's about. And

01:22:55.540 that starts to get one engaged in having to know all about the US politics and getting things done

01:23:02.560 like that. So yeah, getting involved from the Canadian side and learning the American players

01:23:07.360 and political actors was one of the things that I did to try to look out there for my

01:23:12.740 constituency so and we turn now to the question of of leadership in the conservative party

01:23:19.940 uh we we come to the end of the 2015 election uh stephen harper has fought a valiant fight

01:23:28.600 um the further i get away from that government the more questions i have about some of the

01:23:33.360 political decisions that were made but i mean whatever no one's perfect and uh as he put it

01:23:39.780 himself as you just mentioned he never felt like he had the political capital to do to do some of

01:23:44.980 the things he wanted to do and i don't know if that's a stay or go situation do you do you just

01:23:49.880 jump into it and see what happens or do you just hope that happens next time i don't know we can

01:23:55.360 debate that another time but nonetheless steven harper fights uh i believe 87 days uh was that

01:24:02.880 election longest period in kane history and he comes to the end of it and he still doesn't win

01:24:07.700 And that that essentially that evening and shortly afterwards, he resigns as leader of the party.

01:24:13.660 And and therefore, Rona Ambrose becomes interim leader.

01:24:17.900 And and the great race begins it.

01:24:21.620 We are now at with 15, what, 17 and now 20.

01:24:27.680 We've had three leaders in five years, plus interim leaders.

01:24:33.880 um it are we are we just in a deficit of leadership and what was your experience

01:24:40.780 as you attempted to try and and show that there was a place for a principled prairie conservative

01:24:46.100 at the helm of of the the conservative party of canada yeah i think i'll start with answering

01:24:52.220 your your question did we have a deficit of leadership um again i like a lot of what stephen

01:24:57.760 harper did i'm proud of a lot of things we did when we were in government but i think one of

01:25:03.180 the issues we had in our last term was people were being exhausted and Stephen wasn't trying to

01:25:08.880 grow new people for leadership he wasn't looking forward for the party beyond his time

01:25:14.940 we had people like Jim Flaherty who literally dropped dead on the job just about and we had

01:25:21.240 some people who'd been there for a long time and they were just burning out and they were getting

01:25:25.120 too exhausted or and you know we can debate this and I don't want to put certain names on it

01:25:30.780 Ottawa had slowly changed people not totally but partially and I'll let people fill in what

01:25:37.780 what and who they think that that might apply to but you know some really outstanding people had

01:25:43.940 been not totally but partially changed by Ottawa and we were exhausted and that I think was one of

01:25:49.920 the things Stephen had sort of assumed there would be people who could naturally step up

01:25:53.880 and I think in retrospect he would have tried to you know maybe groom two or three or four

01:25:58.880 successors who could get in there so if that happens we're after the election it's uh april

01:26:05.440 afterwards and i get some people who come into my office and try to pitch me to be leadership

01:26:10.720 candidate and my first response is nope no way not even close my french is horrible i love my

01:26:18.080 riding i know what the travel is like it's absolutely ridiculous um i don't want anything

01:26:25.840 to do with it, not in a million years. End of story. So they asked me who I should go pick,

01:26:31.440 who I should go talk to. I gave them some names, including some of the people who did run. I said,

01:26:36.680 look, everyone's got their faults. You will know them and so forth. So at that point, not even

01:26:41.880 thinking about it. Then with the Vancouver Convention coming up, there was other issues

01:26:48.040 coming up and there were things being done in the background by the leadership of the party to

01:26:53.220 influence things without letting the membership just totally organically and democratically

01:26:58.700 respond. And that began to get under my skin. And that caused me to start to respond. I remember a

01:27:07.320 phone call with Rona Ambrose, our then interim leader, complaining about, you know, rules had

01:27:13.200 been bent to get things done at party convention. And her blunt response was to me, well, certain

01:27:18.800 ex-cabinet ministers had signed off on it what are your real concern and i was like well that

01:27:24.940 doesn't matter it's the membership thing so going into convention i was already a little bit

01:27:28.880 irritated i phoned one of the other guys in the leadership race to check if he'd heard about it

01:27:34.640 because i wasn't planning on running but i knew he was he was totally blindsided by it and he

01:27:40.040 didn't know what he was going to do uh in the end you know he did a good job in the leadership race

01:27:45.140 but decided not to try to fight the establishment but press it so that had begun to get me irritated

01:27:51.000 and that games were being played the membership shows an issue not a problem then at the convention

01:27:56.700 you know things happened there and i accidentally let it slip on tv you know i'm sort of fed up

01:28:02.980 about stuff i'm willing to run for leadership and that as they say caused the phone to start ringing

01:28:09.320 and I started to get involved and I had no clue what I was doing none whatsoever I'd never done

01:28:16.220 major fundraising I'd never laid the groundwork for anything I had no ambitions to lead the party

01:28:21.960 and here after letting it slip on tv I was having people call offering to set up my campaign and get

01:28:27.540 me going and it was you know what I was going to run as a conservative conservative and wherever

01:28:33.380 I finished that's where the chips were going to be I had some good friends running in the race

01:28:38.100 guys i respected and uh guys i hoped would do well too because i didn't disagree with everyone

01:28:44.500 else i was running in the race some i did some i didn't but uh what really got me going in the end

01:28:50.420 was the sort of uh tricks and stuff that uh were done at the convention just one second here

01:28:57.960 okay no problem okay go ahead i've just got my daughters come in the room here i thought the

01:29:05.780 door was locked but that's okay she's leaving go ahead it's not a problem at all this is a family

01:29:12.060 friendly show uh it we i think that i think that something that kind of comes to mind is that

01:29:19.200 your your objections to the party are very similar to my own uh this is this is a place where i've

01:29:25.740 heard more than enough stories of and people brag about it actually uh their influence

01:29:30.880 inside of the

01:29:34.160 inside of the

01:29:36.160 Conservative Party, inside of the upper echelons

01:29:38.440 as apparatchiks of the party

01:29:39.840 and how they've made MPs suffer

01:29:41.860 or even cabinet ministers suffer

01:29:43.480 how they shape who will be in leadership

01:29:46.140 and who won't, how they rule nomination

01:29:48.060 races. I've heard people brag about this stuff

01:29:50.240 and quite frankly it disgusts me

01:29:52.020 so I must agree with you

01:29:54.440 that that would have been the kind of thing

01:29:56.100 that would have gotten my gander up as well

01:29:57.920 and I would have said

01:30:00.160 something probably as well on on a program not unlike this one uh where where i would have been 0.90

01:30:04.760 like no you know what damn it i'm i'm i'm done i'm i'm angry and i'm gonna i'm gonna fight the 0.86

01:30:09.280 good fight and i can appreciate that that's where that's where things started for you so i mean the 0.93

01:30:15.140 the leadership race goes on it continues uh i i i don't know the details of the pre-covid world

01:30:22.360 of leadership races i guess you guys toured around a little bit and did some of your debates a little

01:30:26.600 bit uh in in other places of course you gave lots of interviews uh you campaigned you compile compile

01:30:32.920 uh you know your volunteers and your supporters do your best to reach out to people and finally

01:30:38.600 we get to the convention the actual leadership convention and at one point i believe that you

01:30:42.920 were actually leading in the balloting uh was that a bit of a surprise best i ever did was

01:30:47.880 third place in the balloting uh bernier and sheer were one two all the way i bounced between three

01:30:55.000 and four and Aaron O'Toole just slipped past me on the final ballot where I got eliminated so yeah

01:31:02.440 depending on the ballot most of the time I was fourth but I did slip into third and yeah I mean

01:31:08.480 the thing is I guess for me I had never planned to do this Bernier and to a lesser extent much

01:31:14.720 lesser extent Andrew Scheer had been thinking about this for a longer time ahead of time

01:31:19.440 um a couple of the other guys had been thinking about it a bit but yeah it had been sort of you

01:31:25.020 know last minute and i really don't know a lot of rich people so my fundraising i had no clue i hate

01:31:31.220 asking people for money i just sort of went out there because i figured you know what i'm gonna

01:31:36.460 go do a stand i even had a hard time asking colleagues for support because here's one thing

01:31:41.860 to know about all mps they all want to back a winner and i realistically as much as i was going

01:31:46.960 to try hard to win i couldn't see a way i could win so why would i put pressure on guys who would

01:31:52.400 then back a loser and you know their careers would probably suffer if they backed me so i even felt

01:31:57.720 guilty about asking guys who i should have asked for support for it my viewpoint was you know what 0.92

01:32:02.840 i'm gonna do what i think is right and you know where the chips lie and in the end uh the national

01:32:09.120 press had sort of picked me to finish 12th in the field of 14 and i finished a pretty decent fourth

01:32:14.320 yeah um yes yeah that's that i mean that was i i i have you know i have a bit of an inside scoop

01:32:21.200 of what went on at that leadership convention and i know people that were on the floor i know

01:32:25.740 people that were working for you at the time who were on the floor uh and some of them were treated

01:32:29.880 quite quite um we'll just say that they weren't invited to all the nicest things uh and and they

01:32:36.000 weren't and people weren't happy about a conservative conservative daring to try and

01:32:40.160 take the throne of of the conservative party of canada because apparently we're not really

01:32:44.480 conservatives and and uh when when you did finish in the place you did especially when you crested

01:32:50.880 third there briefly uh but but definitely finishing fourth out of you know in the top the top uh

01:32:56.960 quarter of of the leadership uh candidates it uh that that that surprised people shocked people

01:33:04.320 scandalized some people and it gave a lot of hope though to those of us who are uh conservatives of

01:33:09.280 of faith of family you know farms and firearms for that matter and other things as well you know

01:33:14.560 occasionally fiscal conservatism it it uh it encouraged us and it gave us a lot of inspiration

01:33:20.000 that the party still had to hear and listen and heal to that element within its membership

01:33:26.720 what what happened after that after that that evening well after that um you know i continued

01:33:33.760 to go work in my constituency and plug along on that I wasn't put in any front bench position or

01:33:40.840 anything like that and you know I still in the next campaign went out there and worked for

01:33:46.620 candidates in the party I still encouraged people to run I still got invited but you know and I

01:33:52.920 tried to help the party as much I can in that election but yeah I wasn't really how shall we

01:33:58.240 say invited to be a major uh participant in the 2019 election campaign

01:34:06.240 and that's where things that's where things kind of start to break down and and for those of us

01:34:11.920 who are socially conservative uh we we do believe that that there is kind of a natural bias within

01:34:19.360 the party against us um i feel that that certain people within the gun community also feel that way

01:34:25.920 well in a sense conservative conservatives feel that way that so if you're actual true blue

01:34:31.920 conservative maybe even a populist conservative hardware store conservative it doesn't matter

01:34:35.640 which way you want to describe that it is somebody really does think like no i i want to discuss the

01:34:41.480 questions around abortion and and federal federal issues there i want to talk about gun licensing

01:34:47.400 or whether or not that even has an effect at all on who is ever harmed by gun crime i want to have

01:34:53.300 real discussions about this i want to talk about youth in asia i want to talk about fiscal

01:34:56.780 responsibility i want to talk about canceling the cbc or defunding it or like making sure that all

01:35:01.060 that funding is available for local media as well as it is for the federal media but real questions

01:35:06.420 around innovating the country i want to talk about pipelines it sounds like it sounds like more and

01:35:11.320 more the party has decided that it's going to try and imitate what the liberals are doing when it

01:35:16.900 comes to clientelism and and woke ideology or or political correctness or symbology or apologies

01:35:23.120 and not the really hard and fast stuff that built this country this country was built on a rail line

01:35:29.080 it's built by a you know somewhat drunk man uh who decided that he wanted a country to fight

01:35:34.100 uh mckenzie with over uh you know in the form of canada that's what canada was built on and now it

01:35:39.960 seems like canada can't get things done and like conservatives aren't helping get things done

01:35:43.760 anymore what as we get back to that that question into the 2019 race it the riding boundaries were

01:35:49.680 changed you had a nomination battle what what what was kind of your thoughts as you came out of that

01:35:54.640 ah you know what i was you know i always stood for what i stood for and i was never um how shall

01:36:02.940 we put this i've never been regretful of uh where i've stood and that's that's the thing i've always

01:36:08.920 tried to figure out that back to the point i had earlier about how to get in how can i be both a

01:36:13.760 good communicator and be someone who stands with good principle. So for me, the question has always

01:36:19.640 been, how do I have the biggest and greatest impact? Because the things you recited there,

01:36:25.640 all those issues, you know, I agree on all those. That's all those things I care about. And frankly,

01:36:30.700 there's more. But I know in the Conservative Party, there's people who pull one way and people

01:36:35.760 who pull the other way. But my view has always been, even if I lose, I'm going to get up off

01:36:42.420 the mat and go in there and engage again because again some of the people who are arguing against

01:36:47.760 me are not people who disagree with my policy they're making the pitch again to try to get the

01:36:51.960 liberal vote in eastern canada i politely disagree with them and i'll try to bring them on side rather

01:36:57.780 than fight with them so here's the thing i get in there and i will fight and dig around and do what

01:37:03.580 i can to pull those people back to my side because and then one of the uh this was either a retired

01:37:10.520 mla or an mp one of the guys who phoned me the other day said all of our membership are more

01:37:15.500 right wing um what then then when they're in public i mean the things andrew sheer said to

01:37:22.020 me about a whole range of issues considerably more right wing than when he ran is the party leader

01:37:28.420 in 2019 very much more right wing he sounds a lot more like me in private uh than he does like

01:37:35.660 himself in public. And this is the thing, rather than backing away, try to bring those people back

01:37:43.000 so that they say the same things in public, but they do in private.

01:37:47.700 We want to work together. And I think rather than fighting with them, I'm going to try to show that

01:37:52.800 I can be successful and that I can bring more people like myself in rather than driving them

01:37:58.780 out. That tends to be the approach that I'm trying to take in all of this.

01:38:02.020 i think that's a very mature approach it's something i could probably learn from

01:38:06.420 myself i'm not i'm not going to correct that at all or say like oh no i got to figure it out i

01:38:11.900 i do i mean i've had this debate with actually my own beloved at one point a few other people i i

01:38:19.080 the problem is that that pretty stern words you know upside the head as it were i did did did put

01:38:24.920 me back on a course correction a couple of times things that were things that needed to be changed

01:38:29.160 about myself that i i don't know if it would have gotten through to me any other way but i i

01:38:33.340 appreciate what you're saying there and and i do think it's mostly true particularly in the more

01:38:37.780 therapeutic time we live in at the same time i also i also would not challenge yourself but

01:38:44.900 challenge the conservative movement more broadly with the issue that i would like to see some

01:38:50.960 intelligent strategy around any of this stuff uh where it just doesn't seem like they'll even dip

01:38:56.120 their toe in and i mean even intelligence tragedy when it comes to electoral politics i have no

01:39:00.180 idea why there's a single orange riding outside of a city uh in west of west of lakehead nicky

01:39:06.420 ashton's riding comes to mind uh churchill could be a pretty conservative place if you get to the

01:39:10.960 right people uh it and on and on it goes the territories shouldn't be any other color than 0.93

01:39:15.780 blue uh and that and on you know i have there's a west coaster in right riding here in in bc that

01:39:21.740 shouldn't be any other color than blue either so it's it's the thing is like there's lots of other

01:39:26.620 places where it could still be blue and and i want to know why we don't have a smarter kind of

01:39:32.680 electoral strategy of like no really when we try to defeat the liberals we're only going to fight

01:39:38.220 for five or ten seats in toronto we're not fighting for 50 we could take more ridings elsewhere and

01:39:44.680 bring it to the point where no laurentian canada is the bastion for them sure but it is a very tight

01:39:49.860 one and we we are at their doors and we only need a few people to defect to finally break their hold

01:39:56.500 and and have a sense of a not a perpetual majority but majority that they don't they can't easily

01:40:01.820 take back whereas the one that we have right now never quite not never just doesn't quite come to

01:40:07.220 fruition in the same way well let me give you my answer and this is just observational i don't have

01:40:13.740 any professional thing but this is just my observation most political advice tends to be

01:40:19.740 a version of this do more of what appeals to me and then you will get elected so the question

01:40:27.180 that is who are the me's who tend to run political campaigns not just for the conservatives but

01:40:32.460 provincial federal parties etc tend to be often people with liberal arts degrees often even if

01:40:39.020 they grew up in a rural area they're living in an urban area now and even if they don't mean to

01:40:44.140 that's who they become more culturally comfortable with as i pointed out to someone you look at the

01:40:50.060 house of commons and again this is not a criticism this is an observation um you have way more lawyers

01:40:56.060 and university professors than almost any other profession okay i don't think we have a single

01:41:01.260 truck driver in the house of commons okay that is the most popular profession for men in the country

01:41:07.180 okay we've got a car mechanic in the house of commons i think that's a good thing so what you

01:41:12.220 have is you have the upper middle class white collar types dominate overwhelmingly politics 0.86

01:41:19.260 okay they come from a certain percentage and not because they're bad people or anything but they

01:41:25.260 just naturally reflect their own culture and their own world views and they forget areas like you

01:41:31.180 mentioned the northwest territories northern bc etc people often don't come from that background

01:41:39.020 they work in mining industries geophysics like i did farming so you get some of those guys in

01:41:43.500 rural areas and therefore there's no strategic pitch made to those people and going back to

01:41:49.740 what i told you about saskatchewan earlier saskatchewan wasn't a socialist province it was

01:41:53.980 an agrarian populist province but upper middle class white-collar people in north america are

01:41:59.740 generally not populist that tends to they tend to lose that at university if they get degrees in

01:42:06.180 arts and things like that that bleeds away not everyone it's not because they're bad people it's

01:42:11.600 just a sort of a natural process so instead of actually sitting there and realizing um you know

01:42:17.780 what some guy in a pickup truck who works in logging in northern bc isn't going to think or

01:42:23.640 care what we care about they tend to reflect their own little world the smart political operatives

01:42:30.140 and my encouragement to the conservative party leadership get a lot more guys who haven't

01:42:35.480 actually gone to university to start running some of your campaigns guys who grew up running winning

01:42:41.340 working in areas and haven't gone downtown toronto in their life because it changes you doesn't

01:42:47.820 matter who you are or where you come from the longer you hang around in certain areas the more

01:42:52.660 you lose touch with where you come from and i think that's a problem the political left has

01:42:57.740 had they have it way worse than we do which is why places like saskatchewan have completely

01:43:03.280 abandoned them because they have zero interest in the working class uh blue collar small 0.99

01:43:08.460 businessman sort of population but i think it's a temptation that again i don't think this is

01:43:14.580 deliberate conservative parties that overly professionalize their advisors can get into too

01:43:19.980 so you don't get bad people deciding we're going to ignore northern ontario

01:43:24.100 it's just they forget because they don't have as much interaction as they used to

01:43:28.560 uh i find it interesting you know you look at uh um mike harris can you guys hear me my screen's

01:43:36.640 frozen no we can hear you okay good stuff you look at mike harris the guy came from northern

01:43:42.380 ontario um you look at ralph klein he didn't have a university degree they really connected with

01:43:48.640 people who weren't sort of the downtown elites um when they were at their best and their most

01:43:54.220 popular and uh you know donald trump he had no political experience i think oddly enough

01:44:01.260 that helped him and that freed him from uh constraints that people like me who have worked

01:44:07.300 way too many campaigns sometimes bring we keep thinking things over too much instead of just

01:44:12.940 speaking from the heart and that authenticity goes well with people because people can see

01:44:18.420 that you really care for them.

01:44:20.420 You're not just spilling out a line

01:44:23.140 that you think they want to hear.

01:44:28.360 And with that,

01:44:29.900 let's turn now to your current quest

01:44:33.740 for representation again

01:44:35.440 that you would like to represent

01:44:36.900 the people of,

01:44:37.920 let's see if I can do this one more time,

01:44:39.700 Moose Jaw, Lanigan, Lake Centre.

01:44:42.820 For some reason in Canada,

01:44:44.240 we're obsessed with names

01:44:45.520 that are long and convoluted,

01:44:47.260 almost as bad as bob zimmer's writing actually but not quite but nonetheless uh here we are

01:44:53.180 you're seeking uh the nomination again and uh hoping to represent uh people in this district

01:44:58.760 what what uh what are what are the things that you're kind of riding on what are what's the

01:45:04.320 campaign looking like what's the platform you're trying to put forward as we quite possibly head

01:45:09.360 into a federal election this fall yeah i'm basically telling people i want to beat the

01:45:14.480 liberals and i want to bring back you know core conservative stuff um it's interesting i've had

01:45:20.040 pitches from people in the buffalo party the libertarian party christian heritage peoples

01:45:25.200 they all want me to come over and join them and uh run for their party but i said look i want to

01:45:33.340 accomplish something because i can change both the conservative party in directions that are good

01:45:38.600 and i can change the country without changing myself so my thing i'm telling people and this

01:45:44.100 is what i'm hearing i say look you know me i'm always going to try to be a principled solid guy

01:45:50.220 but i'm going to do everything on planet earth to beat justin trudeau if i win the nomination i will

01:45:57.200 try to help out guys across the country if it looks like my riding's going solidly conservative

01:46:02.020 which frankly this one should moose jaw lake center lanagan um but that's the thing our

01:46:07.740 membership really want to beat the liberals because man they can't take much more of this guy

01:46:12.400 it's driving them nuts they're not getting any progress people have so many ideas about how to

01:46:18.860 build the economy in our riding we're getting slowed up on things like irrigation talking to

01:46:24.400 a guy who's got a plan this seems fairly interesting to build a pipeline up through

01:46:29.920 port nelson churchill in the manitoba region so we don't have to deal with the americans we don't

01:46:35.360 have to deal with vancouver and we can still build a pipeline so this is the thing we've got so much

01:46:40.940 energy and people want someone who will get up there and fight the liberals they're always saying

01:46:47.020 hey guys i know the news is pandemic pandemic pandemic covid covid covid but i want to hear

01:46:52.660 more from you guys it's so good to hear from you and hear that you're fighting uh you know i fill

01:46:59.080 them in on some of the stuff that uh some of the good mps are really doing in ottawa and they're

01:47:04.260 like hey i didn't know about that like it wasn't on my social media and that's the reason i want

01:47:10.040 to get in there because we need some energy we need some zip and uh i really want to hear the

01:47:17.580 words uh justin trudeau resigns as prime minister due to electoral defeat i can't wait till i hear

01:47:25.580 those words someday yeah god willing they're soon it's uh it's it's been a trying time put it

01:47:32.480 politely i as as we kind of round out the hour here brad uh you know maybe maybe you can tell

01:47:39.460 us a little bit more about your vision for the party itself uh you know here we are we're kind

01:47:44.980 of in between things right now it's been been a few years since stephen harper was leader what

01:47:51.400 of his legacy would you take with you what what would you like to see change inside the party what

01:47:56.380 what does the party need to do not just to win this upcoming election but to be well become the

01:48:01.780 de facto ruling party of canada but just definitely understood to be always a strong contender on the

01:48:07.060 stage that that that does shape the direction of this country i think the one thing that i would

01:48:13.680 really want to encourage my fellow conservatives and when i talk to aaron o'toole this is one of

01:48:18.560 the things i push is try to reach out to people who are not our traditional demographic but who

01:48:24.760 share our values you hit this quite directly uh when you talked about northern bc and parts of

01:48:31.800 north in the rural areas. One of the things in my leadership race, this people don't know unless

01:48:38.180 they actually looked at the data, visible minority ridings, new Canadian ridings, I was by far the

01:48:45.620 front-running candidate. Better than Andrew, better than Max, those areas I actually did better.

01:48:52.500 And this is one thing I've really realized. A lot of people look at our immigration and they see

01:48:57.120 people who want to come into canada change our values change our country change our language

01:49:04.000 and you know i know some immigrants like that but i know a lot of new canadians who they come here

01:49:11.040 and they don't want to change canada they want the canada they read about one where it's more

01:49:16.720 free enterprise they're a little bit taken back about the socialism a good example this is from

01:49:21.520 the states a north korean defector at columbia university he said yeah the university where i

01:49:28.320 went columbia they try to brainwash you as much as the north koreans do a lot of our new canadians 1.00

01:49:35.120 they want to be free they came here for freedom they love things like the whole idea of the crown

01:49:41.280 the identity the constitutional law they want their kids to speak good english interestingly

01:49:47.920 enough they're more likely to go to christian churches than native-born canadians they want

01:49:52.880 our culture they want our religion they want to become canadian they want to have maple leaves

01:49:57.860 tattooed on the inside of their heart but you know what they often vote liberal i remember running

01:50:04.560 into a fundamentalist baptist pastor who told me he always voted liberal why in the world nothing

01:50:10.680 about him but he was haitian and no one had ever reached out to him and it's the same thing working

01:50:16.880 class voters again we don't have a single truck driver in the house of commons how ridiculous okay

01:50:22.400 truck drivers uh are the most important occupation biggest one for men across the country

01:50:28.420 so this is the message i've got to the conservative leadership we need to bring in people like that

01:50:34.360 who are overlooked because they want to participate but because they don't have those sort of job

01:50:40.800 skills that naturally push them toward media toward government we miss them new canadians

01:50:46.140 are often scooped up by the liberals even though they don't share their values and they share ours

01:50:51.420 and working class voters they're often treated as pawns to help move the beautiful people and 0.78

01:50:58.620 i use those terms in really broad quotes get elected we need to go out there and build that

01:51:04.780 coalition again ralph klein the guy never had a university degree he screwed up and make mistakes

01:51:11.500 people loved him because he was authentic and we need to get more of those authentic canadians

01:51:17.100 to stand up and vote for us because their values are our values but when their union leader says

01:51:24.260 go vote ndp or the people who help them with immigration say go vote liberal we don't get

01:51:29.440 them so that's my message to the conservative leadership there are a lot more voters out there

01:51:35.380 than you think there's a lot more people out there who share our values go out there and let's fight

01:51:40.980 for them because uh they actually don't support this crazy justin trudeau guy i mean if you came

01:51:47.060 from a socialist country and you want to come into free enterprise ish canada do you really think you

01:51:52.660 like the way justin trudeau uh wants to monitor you on the internet micromanage your business

01:51:58.880 and uh tell your kids what to think in school i don't think so

01:52:03.200 no i think that's very well said brad it's very well said thank you so much for joining us today

01:52:15.960 and we hope to have you again soon it was good to be here sorry about the technical screw-ups

01:52:22.320 brad can you hear me i can't hear you i've lost you it's not a problem at all not a problem at

01:52:29.500 all but thank you so much and we'll see you again soon okay that's on me we got you back have a good

01:52:35.500 one thank you of course i was speaking with brad trost that is the former member of parliament

01:52:48.940 and of course former leadership contender inside of the conserved party uh he went on to of course

01:52:54.920 now seek the conservative nomination for let's see if i get this right moose jaw

01:52:59.880 lanagan lake center uh or lake center lanagan one of the other in any case uh do find him

01:53:07.980 online at bradtrost.ca and uh do if you want to support him uh take out a membership and help

01:53:14.380 brad trust take his nomination and get to where he needs to go which is ottawa to help us be

01:53:21.400 better represented throughout canada as true blue conservatives as we kind of round out the hour

01:53:26.620 here and finish up the show i i just of course the pipeline comes on in a few minutes so i want

01:53:31.440 to get out of their way but the last thing i'd like to note here is again there's a way forward

01:53:36.240 when it comes to canadian leadership and there's a way forward in this country but we're not going

01:53:43.020 to get there without some very hard work and i think we talked about a bit of that today if you

01:53:46.960 look through the comments today there's some really there's some controversial points made

01:53:50.540 But it all comes down to the same thing, which is this country is in need of some serious renovation.

01:53:56.080 And again, that's whether we're the sovereignty swing or we're not, or people are soft federalists or situational sovereigntyists.

01:54:02.540 The point is that whatever you want, you want your neighborhood to improve.

01:54:05.900 You want your town to improve.

01:54:07.340 And you want your life to improve.

01:54:09.780 And you want your children to live in a better place than you did.

01:54:12.760 That's not the reality of what's happening in this country right now.

01:54:15.600 And we need to be honest about that.

01:54:17.100 And so whether that would happen, whether it requires breaking everything down into, you know, neighborhood by neighborhood when it comes to our political organizing, or it means keeping the borders externally the same, but rearranging them internally here in Canada, however, that needs to happen.

01:54:30.700 We need to be honest about it and be honest about what that means. So let's, let's discuss that. Let's be real about it. And let's pray about it at a certain level, because honestly, it's, it's a big task. It's a really big task, but we can get there if we all work together.

01:54:46.080 so i am going to figure out how to get out of here with the proper branding and everything

01:54:50.240 else we are going to see a bright and early tomorrow 9 a.m pacific 10 a.m mountain and

01:54:55.200 i'm just thankful so thankful for your guys's attention throughout this programming

01:54:59.920 uh we'll see you bright and early tomorrow

01:55:15.120 You

Western Standard - June 17, 2021

Mountain Standard Time - June 16, 2021

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