Western Standard - January 30, 2026


On the Floor at the CPC 2026 Convention


Episode Stats

Length

8 minutes

Words per Minute

207.45451

Word Count

1,718

Sentence Count

76

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we talk to people from across the country about what they think about the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada's new leader, Pierre Pauliev. We also hear from members of the Executive Director of the Economic Development Association (EDA), Dr. Collins Sugachuku, and Mario Zelaya.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 I'm Jackson Loy. And I'm Liam Ashit. And we're here at the 2026 Conservative Convention talking
00:00:05.440 to people asking what they think about Pierre Pauliev's leadership. Yeah and we got some pretty
00:00:10.160 interesting stuff so you should tune in and watch the whole video. So should you state your name
00:00:14.800 and what riding you're from? Costa Dib, Laval et Zille in Quebec. Okay, will you be voting for or
00:00:20.560 against Pierre Pauliev's leadership? I'll be voting for, yes. Oh why are you voting for that? Because
00:00:24.880 behind Pierre Pauliev we saw a beautiful gathering of a lot of Canadians, we saw breaking
00:00:29.600 record-breaking numbers since Moroni time. We've gathered over eight million conservative
00:00:33.680 fellows, Canadian fellows that have voted for the Conservative Party. And yes, it wasn't an easy
00:00:38.560 run but we're going to continue pushing and next time we're going to cross the line. Do you feel
00:00:41.920 that as somebody from Quebec that the Conservative Party represents your region? Yes, I do believe so.
00:00:47.680 I do believe that the Conservative Party, when we're in power, we do see a very united Quebec and
00:00:54.240 Canada and I guess Quebec is a different beast but I think that we are more united than the
00:00:59.200 Conservative government. And what number would you say like percentage-wise would for you constitute
00:01:03.600 overwhelming approval from the party for Pierre Pauliev? I wouldn't be able to state a number.
00:01:07.040 Full access. Thank you. So why don't you just start by telling me what's your name and what's your
00:01:12.320 writing? Well my name is Joseph B. Ratchett and my writing is Von Wibridge and I'm part of the
00:01:17.760 EDA and I'm a delegate for Von Wibridge Riding. So also what kind of, what policies are you really
00:01:25.760 looking forward to being discussed at this event today? I'm looking at very closely at a lot of
00:01:32.400 these amendments and I think they move our party forward to get better candidates, better nominees
00:01:38.080 in the process and so that's what I'm looking forward to supporting. But none like specifically
00:01:42.800 that you're particularly? I don't have anything specific that I want to go over just generally.
00:01:49.040 And how much percentage-wise approval rating would Pierre Pauliev have to get to see like an
00:01:54.960 overwhelming approval from its delegates? I don't know. I mean I think I think he's going to get
00:02:00.480 a lot of support and I think he'll definitely stay on. I think he'll definitely get over like 70 to 80%
00:02:07.200 I think. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. My name is Dr. Collins Sugachuku. I'm from Edmonton Gateway.
00:02:17.520 How do you how do you feel about the current leadership of Pierre Pauliev? Wonderful. He's our leader and
00:02:24.480 he has my support any day, any time. So you'll be voting yes obviously for the- I'll be voting for him
00:02:28.800 for sure. Okay. He's a strong leader who wants him to be our next prime minister for sure. What number
00:02:34.480 would you say for the leadership vote would constitute overwhelming support from the party? I think it's
00:02:39.600 going to get up to 95%. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. That's it. Cheers. Thank you. Just introduce yourself and
00:02:47.920 what kind of policy- oh and also what riding you're in as well. My name is Mario Zelaya and I'm from
00:02:53.280 Burlington, Ontario. And so what kind of policies are you really looking forward to seeing discussed at
00:03:00.960 this event today? Honestly I think the big one for me is going to be Castle Law. I've been a huge advocate
00:03:06.000 for some form of Castle Law for probably the last year and a half and I think I've been a big proponent of
00:03:12.160 it and I've been pushing it on social media quite heavily actually and I think that's something that
00:03:17.120 I've been very very strongly in favor of and I think we we're at a point now where we need it in Canada.
00:03:22.480 Okay. Yeah. Is there also any other ones that you're looking forward to being discussed?
00:03:29.840 I mean there's I think there's an extensive list of them but I think that's probably going to be one
00:03:34.000 of the main ones. I think the more internal ones uh not necessarily the external ones are just uh
00:03:38.720 certain things that are more I think constitutional for uh the Conservative Party but I think there's
00:03:44.640 there's a few things that I think EDAs that are that they're very interested in making sure that
00:03:49.360 certain uh also policies are put in place internally and uh yeah I'm looking to support it.
00:03:55.200 Cool. Um okay one last question. How much of an approval rating percentage-wise do you think Pierre
00:04:02.000 is going to have to get to see like an overwhelming amount of approval by his delegates?
00:04:06.720 I don't know if there's a magic number um I don't have any magic number off the top of my head.
00:04:11.840 I think it's gonna I think he'll probably end up getting somewhere in the 70 to maybe a high 70 range
00:04:17.920 is where I think it might end up being but uh it could end up being higher. I've heard people saying as
00:04:21.600 low as uh in the low 80s or as high as the low 80s but uh I guess we'll see today. I'm excited
00:04:27.600 I'm excited to support him and vote in his favor but I think I mean I think he's he's he's he's the
00:04:32.720 person of the party. Okay interesting. Okay thank you very much Mario. I appreciate it. Thank you.
00:04:37.360 Appreciate it. All right so I'm here with uh former Conservative leadership candidate uh Scott Acheson.
00:04:42.320 Well you should just call me Conservative member of Parliament Scott Acheson. That was a
00:04:46.560 lifetime ago. So uh what are you looking forward to here at the convention? Oh conventions are just a
00:04:52.240 great opportunity to just say hi and get to visit with lots of members from across the country. There's
00:04:58.320 uh you know no political party operates without volunteers and uh this is the biggest convention
00:05:03.040 we've ever had. So it's great that so many people are here. It's great to catch up with folks uh hear
00:05:07.600 their thoughts on you know what we need to do and what we need to focus on and and how we need to win
00:05:12.880 the next election. So it's great. I love that. Yeah um what would you say um the support you're expecting
00:05:18.320 for Pierre Paul even the leadership uh vote there? It'll be it'll be resounding. Pierre has done so
00:05:23.920 much for this party. He's grown it. He's uh you know he's grown our he's he grew our our our vote
00:05:29.600 catch in the in the you know count in the in the last election tremendously. He's animated an entire
00:05:34.560 generation of young people like it's amazing what he's done uh and frankly if you look at some of the
00:05:39.680 policies that the current liberal government are starting to take from us it tells us that you know
00:05:44.160 what he was he was really on the right track and Canadians need to understand that uh it's going to be
00:05:48.160 overwhelming. He's done great things for a party and the best is yet to come. You kind of touched on
00:05:52.080 that like with the liberals sort of centering themselves as opposed to where they were a couple
00:05:56.560 years ago how would you say what we say the conservatives need to do to differentiate
00:05:59.360 differentiate themselves and make themselves the appealing party to Canadians? Well I think that we
00:06:04.560 need to continue on with the with the messaging we've continued with right it would focus very much
00:06:08.560 on affordability issues you know you look at what Mark Carney is actually doing uh he's you know traveling
00:06:14.000 around the world he's really signed no real new trade agreements uh you know Stephen Harper signed
00:06:20.000 dozens of free trade agreements with middle powers all around the world so those already exist
00:06:24.080 we see really no real new trade agreements he was supposed to be the guy that was going to deal with
00:06:28.800 Donald Trump that's not really worked out for him either and meanwhile while he's doing all those
00:06:33.360 things purportedly to create new markets for Canadian products food is still outrageously expensive in
00:06:39.040 this country and food bank use is through the roof these are the these are the real life everyday
00:06:44.000 challenges that Canadians are facing uh and and I don't think Mark Carney and his team really truly
00:06:49.120 understand that Pierre Polyevre on our team and our volunteers our team we understand those issues
00:06:54.800 and we're going to stay focused on those issues that affect the lives of everyday Canadians. There's one
00:06:58.480 last question for you here how would you say a conservative government would tackle the
00:07:01.920 American current trade war differently than the current kind of liberals? Well obviously the Americans aren't
00:07:08.080 like crucially important to our livelihoods here we need to make sure that relationship is strong
00:07:12.800 this is about relationships and building those relationships is important I don't think it's
00:07:17.120 necessarily a good idea to be you know creating enmity between us and and that's important to
00:07:21.920 maintain those relationships but you know one of the biggest things that we can do here as Canadians
00:07:25.840 is we can get our own house in order this is one of the challenges that we have and whatever you
00:07:29.920 think of Donald Trump there's a bit of a wake-up call in there I mean we have we have let our systems and
00:07:35.920 our institutions get slower and more expensive I always talk about housing and the cost and the
00:07:40.720 process you have to go through just to get permission to build a house in this country
00:07:44.480 is outrageously long it's it takes longer to get a building permit in Canada than almost any other
00:07:49.360 country in the OECD that's that's something we can fix and that will do a lot to improve our economy
00:07:55.840 and make Canadians wealthier at the end of the day and get this country moving again so you know maintain
00:08:01.040 our relationships in the states we need to work with our American counterparts but we need to get our own
00:08:05.040 house in order and the only one talking about that is Pierre Polyev thank you very much