Western Standard - Poilievre's Big Pivot

00:00:00.000 Hello, good day.

00:00:28.620 I'm Derek Fuldebrand, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching The Pipeline.

00:00:32.760 Today is January 19th, 2025.

00:00:35.660 I've got my usual friends here, Nigel Henniford, Western Standard opinion editor, back from vacation in the Gulf of America. 0.57

00:00:44.460 What a foolish move that was to come back.

00:00:47.720 I came to 75 degrees down there on the coast of the Gulf of America, and here it's 40 below. 0.83

00:00:54.740 30 below.

00:00:55.200 Welcome to the Gulf of Alberta, right on the Glenmore Reservoir.

00:00:58.620 And Western Standard, City Alberta Columnus, Corey Morgan.

00:01:04.280 Well, you did leave us for a while, but you've been back with us.

00:01:06.360 I've been back for a bit now, yes, for a bit.

00:01:08.580 All right, we've got a good show.

00:01:10.700 We're going to be talking about Pierre Polyev's Big Pivot,

00:01:14.820 the Canada First, so-called Canada First speech,

00:01:18.640 that he gave over the weekend in Ottawa to a large rally,

00:01:22.840 uh pivoting away from axe attacks carbon tax election to i don't know from my cold bed hands

00:01:32.040 i don't know whatever he's going for but it definitely uh it's a it's a big change in his

00:01:37.240 messaging we're gonna talk about what that means we're gonna talk about um uh the polling around

00:01:43.960 it actually we're gonna do that second a little for a bit better uh we're gonna talk there's been

00:01:47.880 very contradictory polling out uh some polling firms saying the gap has narrowed or is even gone

00:01:55.020 the liberals are in the lead uh pax liberatus uh other polls showing no there's been a very very

00:02:03.080 minor liberal bump but not much and uh the conservatives are still headed for a thumping

00:02:07.280 majority government uh which poll is right are any of them right i don't know whose poll is it anyway

00:02:14.220 and then we're also going to talk we're going to switch it up a bit we're going to go across the

00:02:18.620 seas uh and and talk about potentially very consequential election taking place in europe

00:02:25.460 right now uh this coming weekend on sunday germans go to the polls and germans uh for the first time

00:02:33.360 since maybe helmet coal might actually elect a real conservative government it's there hasn't

00:02:40.160 been a genuinely conservative government since probably Helmut Kohl. But the politics of it are

00:02:47.680 fascinating, extremely controversial, and I've even had U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance

00:02:54.440 wade in in a way that had bureaucrats literally in tears in some cases. So very, very interesting

00:03:02.840 stuff. If you'll bear with us going outside of the usual Western and Canadian, a bit of American

00:03:08.860 politics going to see what's going on in europe all right before we get going though i want to

00:03:14.340 thank our sponsor this episode of the pipeline is sponsored by new world precious metals based

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00:03:54.460 All right. So Pierre Polyev has been criticized in some quarters, including from, you know,

00:04:01.840 some conservative commentators that since Donald Trump won the election and has been

00:04:06.840 rattling the cages on tariffs, has been started with what sounded like joking and then increasingly

00:04:15.500 less sounding like he's joking about annexing Canada as the so-called 51st state, that

00:04:21.800 Pierre Polyev was going to need to pivot, that this election maybe was going to be a carbon tax

00:04:27.460 election, but it's not going to be a carbon tax

00:04:29.580 election anymore. Just

00:04:31.460 a set of issues have changed,

00:04:33.300 particularly as the Liberals have done their best to

00:04:35.440 distance themselves from their own 0.90

00:04:37.040 marquee policy of the carbon tax.

00:04:39.860 The veracity of actually

00:04:41.440 how much they're changing their policies aside,

00:04:44.280 rhetorically, they have at least

00:04:45.560 changed their policies.

00:04:48.360 And then

00:04:49.200 so we had a very big rally

00:04:51.200 at the big convention center

00:04:53.560 in downtown

00:04:54.260 Ottawa just last weekend.

00:04:57.460 where he laid it.

00:04:59.460 I think it was a very long speech.

00:05:00.740 We are not going to play anywhere close to the full thing here,

00:05:03.260 but we're going to roll two clips here.

00:05:06.020 Let's just roll these two clips back to back. 0.88

00:05:09.060 Conservatives, as the party of Confederation and John A. MacDonald

00:05:14.220 will restore the promise of Canada.

00:05:16.260 our founding leader united our country from the atlantic to the pacific and warded off

00:05:30.500 american designs to dominate our continent in the words of our great first prime minister

00:05:37.320 conservatives will fight and i quote to give us a great a united a rich and improving a developing

00:05:45.660 Canada, instead of making us a tributary to American laws, American railways, American

00:05:52.520 bondage, and American tolls.

00:06:00.200 That is the rich, conservative legacy to Canada.

00:06:04.400 Making Canada was hard.

00:06:06.820 Those are the people who built and defended our country through sacrifice and struggle,

00:06:13.760 but they did not go that far and travel that long so that we could take the easy way out and give up

00:06:21.100 like them we are part of something bigger than ourselves we are in this together we are at this

00:06:28.640 place in this time because we have a job to do all right so two uh two highlights from uh

00:06:39.200 poly of speech there uh there's a lot of angles to this uh one of the strange things happening here

00:06:47.920 is that i think a lot of trump's bellicose attitude towards canada and uh talk of annexing

00:06:58.020 canada is creating a yeah you know a scoundrel's nationalism the people who have uh the people who

00:07:08.420 were cheered as the canadian flag was lowered at half mass for six months and

00:07:12.980 ritual national shaming people who claimed that canada is on blood-soaked stolen land that canada

00:07:20.420 is a genocidal state the people who would change the canadian national anthem because it was sexist 0.82

00:07:26.060 or who wanted to get rid of you know the anthem of the royal canadian navy because it's it's too

00:07:31.680 british in our history as if the royal canadian navy was not of direct british lineage

00:07:36.900 And, you know, the people who topple statues of Sir John and MacDonald, Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Queen Victoria, the vandals of Canadian history, all of a sudden demanding everyone stand shoulder to shoulder, not just around the flag, but around their idea of the flag.

00:07:52.960 this has put

00:07:56.480 Polyev in an awkward position 0.98

00:07:58.980 with this kind of

00:08:02.240 suddenly patriotic again

00:08:05.160 nationalism where he had to present something

00:08:08.220 alternative. But at the same time

00:08:10.900 and maybe we'll get a bit more into this in a bit

00:08:13.080 but at the same time the villain

00:08:16.060 in this story is Donald

00:08:19.040 Trump who is

00:08:21.200 liked by a lot of conservatives and so it's an awkward position uh you know corey i know you

00:08:28.420 had a good twitter post just reminding people that trump is america first he is not canada first

00:08:34.160 he he might be on the right uh the term conservative is sometimes used for him sometimes

00:08:38.680 not uh but he's on the right uh and you might like him but he's america first he's not canada

00:08:43.880 first and so it's an awkward position for conservatives now to be going against this

00:08:48.220 fairly popular man on their side of things who is also from a national perspective playing the

00:08:54.860 villain yes it was an awkward position and i think mr polio has taken the uh the best made

00:09:03.500 the best possible thing that he can out of it by not just making a big fuss about how we're going

00:09:10.040 to retaliate, although he did say that, but instead basing his whole premise on going

00:09:17.260 back into the history of Canada, bringing up Sir Johnny MacDonald from the ashes, talking

00:09:26.980 about what MacDonald did 160 years ago, talking about the pioneer, well these things by the

00:09:36.300 way or anathema to the liberals, but talking about the settlers, the pioneers, the people

00:09:40.560 who built the country, and claiming that heritage, because that is something that Canadians can

00:09:47.940 gather around if they are so minded.

00:09:51.260 I think we've all gone through the same process of thought during January, and you think,

00:09:55.720 well, isn't that nice, Mr. Trudeau making a little fist, and then saying, well, we all

00:09:59.560 have to stand together and resist the Americans. 0.74

00:10:01.420 well, actually, there's an awful lot of things that Mr. Trudeau has done that we don't agree with,

00:10:06.520 and we can also make a very direct connection between the tickle that he's put us in now

00:10:10.940 and his policies over the past 10 years,

00:10:13.680 not to mention the fact that he has been personally odious towards Mr. Trump.

00:10:20.260 I mean, it didn't look good having Obama come up here and certify him as the candidate.

00:10:29.620 good heavens, you know, if you're that close with the Democrats, what do you expect a Republican

00:10:33.860 presidential candidate to make of it? So all of that left it very hard for conservative Canadians

00:10:40.620 to say, we're with you. But you can be with Poliev if he is talking about not Mr. Trudeau's

00:10:49.980 woke ideologies, but rather Canada's grand traditions, all it has accomplished over the

00:10:56.780 past 160 years. So it was a well thought out, and by the way, an excellently written and

00:11:04.460 articulated vision that he had for us. You didn't secretly write it, did you? If I secretly

00:11:11.500 wrote it, you would never know, would you? Okay. Corey, it's an awkward position. Polioff

00:11:22.420 was having to put forward an alternative nationalism here and you know canada is

00:11:28.100 extremely unique among most countries in that the nationalism has been the party of the left

00:11:34.940 at least as it's perceived you know it's like you know it's the old trope of you know a canadian is

00:11:40.660 just an unarmed american with health insurance well now we're unarmed and defenseless and we

00:11:45.900 have government health insurance that does almost nothing in many cases um so it's not you know the

00:11:51.160 old liberal tropes of of liberal nationalism in canada are are pretty thin gruel at this point 0.77

00:11:58.460 you know even hockey we got our asses handed to us by the united states after booing their anthem

00:12:03.260 that was a bit embarrassing but um the liberals have jettisoned even uh notional pride in canada 0.96

00:12:14.300 over the last 10 years denigrating the country at the state and the nation itself that you know

00:12:19.620 it's post-national. Canada is in a real

00:12:21.140 nation. We've talked about that on this

00:12:23.560 program before.

00:12:25.280 Putting it down, all of a sudden they're trying to

00:12:27.440 drape themselves

00:12:28.860 in the flag again.

00:12:32.220 How successful do you think

00:12:33.420 Polyev is in painting

00:12:35.300 his alternative nationalism here?

00:12:37.580 I guess time will tell. You see, he's

00:12:39.480 had to pivot away from his own

00:12:41.520 commentary, which has been very good for him

00:12:43.500 in the last couple of years, where he constantly said

00:12:45.220 Canada is broken, which was very

00:12:47.500 effective in showing it more like Canada's 0.62

00:12:49.520 governance is broken or i often posit the system itself is broken but you can say that and it

00:12:55.520 undercuts things and it puts the liberals on the defensive but now it looks like a negative and

00:12:59.720 nothing unites people more than a an outside threat of some kind perceived or real and i think

00:13:07.100 it is real and we're talking about that the tariffs and what's coming so uh polio has really

00:13:12.420 had to change kind of his approach the liberals have quickly made it sound as if if you critique

00:13:16.120 the liberals you're critiquing a unified team canada and you're seeing canada's broken you're

00:13:21.120 not being positive you know i mean i it's hypocritical as you've laid out the liberals

00:13:25.500 have undercut canadian patriotism and nationalism for years but i think to a degree they've

00:13:30.900 successfully managed to spin them around the as the defenders of the country i mean trump came on

00:13:36.020 hard but you you look at it as like a family when a couple of brothers are beating the hell out of

00:13:40.740 each other but if the neighbor gets into the middle between the two of them chances are they're both

00:13:43.840 going to turn and beat up the neighbor you know that's our fight you stay out of it uh so i mean

00:13:49.060 it's very clear from the video clips that the poly have is feeling it and he's had to change

00:13:53.220 his tone his approach the big canadian flag behind him talking about canadian history i guess time

00:13:58.180 will tell if that stops that that shift but i think the liberals actually kind of pulled it off

00:14:01.620 a little bit unfortunately for those of us who really want to see the liberals see the door we'll

00:14:05.440 we'll get into liberal fortunes in the next segment here but um i mean the liberals have also uh you

00:14:12.180 with enough help from friends and media,

00:14:15.080 have at least been partially successful, I think, Nigel,

00:14:18.880 in making the case that if you criticize the policies and state of Canada right now,

00:14:26.580 you're against Canada.

00:14:28.580 It's criticizing the government during wartime,

00:14:31.340 as if we should be suspending, like we should be Ukraine and suspend democracy during wartime.

00:14:38.440 And governments, yeah, democratic governments often do suspend democracy during wartime.

00:14:42.760 But I don't think that's particularly a good case for the strength and vitality of your democracy.

00:14:47.140 That you have to suspend it to defend it.

00:14:50.740 And so, you know, the liberals of, you know, going after him saying,

00:14:54.880 well, this guy says everything in Canada is broken.

00:14:57.520 Clearly he wants to break it further.

00:14:59.360 He wants to end Canada. 0.71

00:15:00.740 He's a treasonous fifth column.

00:15:04.620 Well, they will say that.

00:15:05.880 I mean, Paulier's record speaks for itself as far as his commitment to Canada, and frankly, Mr. Trudeau's does not.

00:15:15.080 The problem is that most people don't get into this stuff as deeply as we do, and those who follow the editorial sections of all the major newspapers.

00:15:28.680 um yeah it it it was obviously a difficult discussion for him when they decide well how

00:15:37.380 are we going to respond to this but I do believe that mr. Trudeau is so widely disliked and so

00:15:48.840 widely loathed that he's not really the one we need to worry about it's mr. Carney coming forward

00:15:57.840 because apparently Mr. Trudeau is going to exit stage

00:16:02.640 in about six weeks' time.

00:16:05.640 And then it's really not about Mr. Trudeau

00:16:09.020 and everything that he has ever said

00:16:11.000 that has undermined Canadian nationalism.

00:16:13.860 It's going to be about what Mr. Carney is going to do for it.

00:16:16.880 And I think with that, Mr. Pollyer is very much better equipped

00:16:21.700 because he, how can I put this,

00:16:26.720 like he's got time in the game mr. Carney is a late arrival a lot of people

00:16:32.900 don't know who he is when they see him for the first time they think well that

00:16:37.540 was that was underwhelming wasn't it you know it's like Michael Ignatius all

00:16:42.120 over again without the passion and the sense of humor so it's no I mean hey

00:16:48.740 Michael Ignatius was this person he was a good guy just not a very good

00:16:54.540 politician. And I have a feeling that the liberal fortunes are going to sag when Mr. Carney takes

00:17:02.420 over and actually starts getting reported. But leaving all that aside, the conservatives really

00:17:09.520 had no option. And I could see this coming back in January. The second that Trump turned his sights

00:17:16.980 on on canada i thought oh this this is the refuge for this government they will raise the flag and

00:17:25.480 and don't look over here don't don't talk about health you don't talk about it it's the americans

00:17:30.420 you know and uh because it's a it's a it's a very big challenge but i do think that

00:17:35.360 polio has now staked out a position of appealing to canadian nationalism and patriotism

00:17:42.560 Very interesting that he brought up MacDonald creating the country

00:17:47.340 because at the time the calendar was put together,

00:17:50.580 the American Civil War had just finished.

00:17:53.940 The Union Army was victorious.

00:17:56.600 It was huge.

00:17:57.600 The biggest army in the world at the time.

00:17:58.940 The biggest and best, most efficient army in the time.

00:18:03.740 All due respects to your ancestors,

00:18:06.500 but they sent observers to the Civil War to see how...

00:18:11.460 They used it in the Franco-Prussian War, leaving it wasn't.

00:18:13.420 Yes.

00:18:14.080 So all of which is to say that there was a very real threat of American aggression.

00:18:19.120 And somehow MacDonald pulled that off.

00:18:21.280 So you take that tradition of MacDonald, you take his attitude, you invoke his memory.

00:18:28.480 And that is something that anybody can say yes to without having to say yes to DEI and woke policies

00:18:38.640 and the decimation of the Canadian army

00:18:40.900 and the pulling down of statues

00:18:42.860 and all the other things that you mentioned earlier.

00:18:45.620 It's the best strategy that he could have appealed to tradition.

00:18:50.000 Corey, I want to talk about kind of the awkward position

00:18:53.860 that Pauliev is in here.

00:18:58.740 I mean, comparisons between Pauliev and Trump

00:19:01.080 are just quite bizarre.

00:19:03.600 They're just their whole disposition,

00:19:05.780 their personality, even in many cases, their policies.

00:19:10.660 You know who doesn't like tariffs at all?

00:19:13.340 Bear Paul, yeah.

00:19:14.140 Most good economists don't.

00:19:15.500 Yeah, yeah.

00:19:18.480 The comparisons are pretty uncredible.

00:19:22.400 But it is undeniable that a very large number, not all,

00:19:28.140 but a very large number of conservative-leaning voters in Canada

00:19:32.700 and an even larger percentage of, say, Conservative Party members

00:19:36.120 have a very favorable view of Donald Trump.

00:19:40.860 I mean, it's hard not to be a bit jealous of watching

00:19:44.700 Doge kick in the doors of bureaucracies,

00:19:48.180 going to pull out bureaucrats by their hair, kicking and screaming.

00:19:51.780 It's pretty great to see.

00:19:53.800 So, you know, there's a lot of Canadian conservatives

00:19:56.200 that look upon Trump pretty favorably.

00:19:59.960 And so it makes for an awkward storyline for Polyev to have to pivot and fight Trump the villain here.

00:20:09.680 When, within his own country, a lot of the things he's doing, maybe tariffs aside,

00:20:15.220 Canadian conservatives are pretty happy with seeing there, would like to see in Canada.

00:20:21.600 But, as a matter of foreign policy and trade policy for Trump, he makes himself the villain in the story.

00:20:26.520 uh maybe to talk to the tightrope that very awkward tightrope that i think paulieff has to

00:20:33.200 walk here it is a balancing act i mean as i you know you mentioned that that posting i put on x

00:20:38.300 the other day it kind of laid out how i am with trump i'm lukewarm to him i always have been at

00:20:43.700 best i you know i i like seeing things getting stirred up in the states i think it definitely

00:20:47.900 needed to be done um i think they could have chosen a better bull in a china shop than him

00:20:52.540 but he's the person who's there now and that's the way it's going to go but some of the vitriol

00:20:56.320 i got for even being slightly critical online of president trump i got literally called a communist

00:21:02.860 a number of things there's a very almost religious like following of trump a segment

00:21:09.060 of conservative supporters and if i'm getting that just as a a commentator on x i i can't imagine

00:21:15.060 what it's coming into the conservative headquarters if it appears that polyev isn't

00:21:18.740 fully on board with president trump as well from that segment to the party and it's a sizable

00:21:24.180 segment so he he's got to watch it and and trump overall in canada whether people like it or not

00:21:29.880 for the most part don't really like him and if the liberals can continue to associate polyev with

00:21:35.020 trump that can harm his fortunes in the election so he's got a real tough line to walk he's got to

00:21:42.580 be standing up for canada against trump as an external threat at least as far as the tariffs

00:21:46.200 go and some of the policies and of course uh you know the america 51 thing that is this has got a

00:21:51.260 lot of people pretty upset uh but at the same time not alienate some of his strongest party supporters

00:21:56.840 he's he's got a i don't envy him the balancing act he has going forward trump's uh immersion you

00:22:05.060 know as the the leader and president of the united states they talked about that just just after he

00:22:10.120 got elected saying oh this is going to be a big bump for trudeau and it never was but uh now that

00:22:15.120 he's gotten rolling on things actually it does turn out that trump is turning into a godsend

00:22:19.000 for a party that looked like it didn't have a hope on earth and probably have has really got

00:22:24.180 his work cut out for him though okay uh i want to talk about uh polls here uh that have changed

00:22:31.220 that's that's great segue thank you um so you know we go back to january and the liberals were

00:22:39.060 facing Goddard Tamron it was the end of the liberal party we're all talking about Kim Campbell style

00:22:47.380 1993 total wipeout um you know will the liberals hold on to even official party status status let

00:22:57.280 alone official opposition let alone the pipe dream of even a minority government now come forward to

00:23:04.820 Now we've had what's happened with Trump giving the Liberals a new lease on life and the Liberals, Justin Trudeau, finally grudgingly, very belatedly stepping aside, leaving the country in just a 10 out of 10 shit sandwich position of no effective government, no one in charge right now while we're facing a crisis of both annexation threats and massive tariffs, leaving essentially the premiers to fill the void.

00:23:34.820 um but when asked you know how would you vote if mark carney's the uh the leader of the liberal

00:23:41.780 party some of the polling firms uh beginning with uh frank graves uh uh ecos who are showing them

00:23:49.060 shooting straight up uh like a trajectory of polls that you have just never seen before 0.98

00:23:55.460 yeah frank graves how do i put this without getting sued he's crazy he is a crazy man i 0.96

00:24:02.540 don't think he's healthy upstairs i think as far as i go without uh him getting litigious but uh 0.95

00:24:09.480 he is not a man who's let's just say sound judgment i trust um but he was showing the

00:24:18.060 liberals are back in the game maybe even leaving uh but you know but since then some others have

00:24:23.720 showed something similar i think angus reed has showed the liberals and conservatives on

00:24:27.240 effective five maybe the liberals even on a in a slight lead uh i remember and if the conservatives

00:24:31.160 and liberals are tied the liberals win by default because they have a more efficient seat uh seat

00:24:35.620 count or seat distribution but then uh other credible fooling firms uh think of abacus

00:24:41.400 no just not happening there was a very very minor liberal blip in the polls just a little blip you

00:24:50.520 know like justin triddle's first deficit just a little just a little blip um but nothing of a fact

00:24:56.460 The Liberals still getting completely blown out of the water.

00:24:59.800 Maybe being competitive for second place again, but that's about it.

00:25:04.360 But still a romp in conservative majority government.

00:25:09.680 Nigel, it's like these guys are polling completely different countries.

00:25:14.100 It's not that they're like, they're even vaguely close.

00:25:18.260 They're not even within 10% of each other.

00:25:21.440 It's like one is polling Switzerland, the other one's polling Swaziland.

00:25:26.800 They're just totally different countries that they're polling.

00:25:29.580 What the hell is going on?

00:25:31.360 Well, I won't claim to know.

00:25:33.500 I mean, it is a puzzle.

00:25:35.500 The number of things affect it, the number of size of your sample.

00:25:40.320 I mean, you can draw conclusions on a poll of 5,000 nationally.

00:25:46.600 can you can you draw a reasonable conclusion when you've only got 1200 like i saw maybe 100 people

00:25:52.760 performing you you can't really you can't really do that uh that would be the first question i

00:25:58.600 would be looking at the second that would be the just the intentions of the pollsters and how they

00:26:05.320 ask the questions i think without repeating your um you know your your your mental interpretation

00:26:12.760 of the state of Frank Graves,

00:26:15.120 clearly you can ask a question in such a way

00:26:19.620 that you invite the answer that you want.

00:26:22.880 Push-polling.

00:26:23.720 Push-polling, we call it, yeah.

00:26:27.080 So it's a little early to tell,

00:26:32.040 but one of the things that I wonder is

00:26:35.620 how much of the response to the polling

00:26:38.800 is predicated on the assumption

00:26:41.460 that Mr. Trudeau is there now, and people are rejecting Trudeau, how much is predicated

00:26:49.240 on the possibility that he will be replaced by somebody else, and anybody will be better

00:26:53.120 than Trudeau, and therefore I have an excuse to carry on voting like default, which has

00:26:58.800 always been there.

00:27:00.200 Well, and that's a point, actually, the question I asked in at least, I believe, it wasn't

00:27:05.180 abacus, I think it was the Angus Reid poll, it wasn't asking who you'd vote for now, it

00:27:09.520 who you would vote for if Carney was leading the Liberals.

00:27:13.160 So it's already going ahead under that leap.

00:27:15.640 So it is removing Trudeau,

00:27:17.140 but he's going to lead the Liberal from the equation.

00:27:18.780 But De Paleto is asking about right now.

00:27:23.020 So Trudeau is still there.

00:27:24.100 It's like you're saying,

00:27:24.920 and that's leading to a pretty different result.

00:27:26.880 Yeah, yeah.

00:27:30.140 I also have to wonder

00:27:34.860 what would be the effect of a delayed election?

00:27:38.760 We have got, let's just say, things drag on a bit.

00:27:42.180 And the issue with the United States gets resolved in the next few months, for better or worse.

00:27:47.600 But it's no longer the lead issue.

00:27:50.320 And we're back to talking about the things that are internal politics of Canada.

00:27:54.300 Does that favor the Conservatives or the Liberals?

00:27:56.620 I mean, it takes the boogeyman of Trump, perhaps off the table.

00:28:03.300 And the Conservatives were doing well while he was not the boogeyman.

00:28:05.700 But on the same side, if they can fend this off, does that make Carney then look like the hero?

00:28:12.660 Ah, he saved us. He beat it back.

00:28:14.820 I have a feeling this is not getting resolved quickly.

00:28:19.760 And, I mean, as much as a pickle as the Trudeau liberals have left Canada in here,

00:28:26.600 Trump has proven himself to be pretty erratic on these tariff issues.

00:28:31.060 I mean, we get a deal, and then the next day he's like, well, but steel and aluminum are back on.

00:28:35.860 And then there's a new raft of tariffs here.

00:28:38.680 It does seem to be he's got some moving goalposts.

00:28:41.080 So, okay, let me pick up on that, because while I was there on the sunny shores of the Gulf of America,

00:28:49.900 I found a copy of The Art of the Deal, and I actually read the thing.

00:28:56.580 Going on holiday, reading The Art of the Deal.

00:28:58.820 i know it sounds like i should put in for overtime but in fact it's a good read and the

00:29:03.940 number of it is to be found in chapter two where before he goes on to his personal reminiscences of

00:29:10.500 the people he dealt with 40 years ago as he put as he altered the skyline in new york he talks

00:29:16.420 about the actual steps in negotiation where you go in firing all your guns you intimidate the other

00:29:26.500 side then they start making concessions meanwhile you've always got a way out of it if you if you

00:29:35.380 need it and they know that the whole thing is laid out and when i look at what he has done

00:29:41.940 with canada over the past couple of months it seems to follow the template pretty well

00:29:48.340 if it goes on like that i would expect that eventually there will be a just kidding moment

00:29:54.980 and things will be resolved in a way that is satisfactory i am on working on the assumption

00:30:01.540 that what he is trying to do is what he says he is trying to do as opposed to having some supremely

00:30:08.980 hidden motive so you think he's trying to annex canada no i think that that's what he says he's

00:30:14.260 trying to yeah that is exactly what he says he's with the old side that's that's the sort of create

00:30:18.900 fear and confusion although we can't really believe he's trying to do his thing he's trying

00:30:22.500 know because he's what he said he's trying either trying to get he put out these outrageous demands

00:30:26.260 he wants to take control of our borders which i think any canadian can can uh uh consider you

00:30:35.700 know i would like us to take control of our borders right that makes you a right-wing extremist so

00:30:42.420 well i'm you knew that when you hired me that's why i hired you there it's all out for the readers

00:30:49.460 anyway i i think this is going to end better than what we think um

00:30:58.100 okay uh just following the script all right you've got something to add well i just want to again

00:31:04.980 question some of those polls because that's kind of where we started though in drilling down looking

00:31:09.620 at some of them like you said they're asking some pretty cut broad questions not if there was an

00:31:13.300 election held today who would you vote for that's the nice basic one that's how you should get a

00:31:16.980 a clean answer and most of them getting those outlying ones are not asking that they're asking

00:31:21.840 convoluted ones if this this this and this what would you do here here and here uh which gets a

00:31:26.720 bit loaded and a couple of things we'd won with the angus reed one if you broke it down regionally

00:31:32.620 the liberals would win eight seats in alberta yeah i i mean that makes me question the entire

00:31:38.260 they won what four to five when trudeau during the height of trudeau mania when he won five seats

00:31:44.240 yeah and alberta so the liberals are going to do pretty much twice as good as they did at their

00:31:48.360 very best in history and the two liberals that are holding seats in alberta are both disgraced

00:31:53.260 right now for separate issues on their own much less what's going on with the party no no no

00:31:59.600 there's there's three randy's oh sorry randy and randy i get on this is three mixed up that's

00:32:04.580 three yeah so i mean it just seems a little bizarre with some of those numbers it really

00:32:08.040 makes you question them i mean we we understand some areas you can call pretty clearly and

00:32:12.560 And Alberta is just not a liberal country.

00:32:14.260 There's going to be a couple of respects, but eight seats, very, very hard to believe.

00:32:18.040 They'll be lucky to get the two.

00:32:19.280 And as, you know, Nigel and others have said, Mark Carney, I mean, those of us who follow

00:32:23.420 politics know who he is, but your average person has no idea who he is.

00:32:26.940 And he hasn't been setting the world on fire with a campaign or something.

00:32:30.540 So I just find it hard to believe that your average Canadian has suddenly just gravitated

00:32:34.520 onto this man who's dull as dishwater who just came out of nowhere as far as they're 0.53

00:32:38.620 concerned.

00:32:39.200 I just, I'm finding it all a little hard to swallow.

00:32:41.740 we'll see what happens before we move on uh just about you cory um there's been some controversy

00:32:47.660 about some mark carney rally pictures online um allegations just allegations that uh these full

00:32:56.060 deny very big rooms but uh you know these rooms that he's filling are actually in large measure

00:33:02.860 ai characters these are these these are edited photos um do you have any take on it you know

00:33:11.480 i'm not going to say definitively one way or another i know there's a lot of self-declared

00:33:14.340 experts online who find look at the how odd the fingers are on this woman over in the cold here's 1.00

00:33:19.100 the best way to tell or look at this person's you know camera they're holding up filming it and you

00:33:23.360 can't see people in the background on her camera but beyond it you do so that seems a little strange

00:33:28.420 it's almost as if they'd filled it in i i wouldn't put it beyond being done i mean the

00:33:33.920 eyes getting so good you think you get because they want to show momentum you want you don't

00:33:36.760 want to see a quiet dead room uh but boy what a foolish stunt if you could find if you've done

00:33:43.060 it in a way that can be proven that you messed with it that so far nothing i haven't seen a 0.83

00:33:48.400 smoking gun but i did see the one where you know there's a carny speaking and then there's a woman

00:33:52.860 in front of him and she's kind of filming it or two on her camera and you could see the picture

00:33:57.300 on the camera and it looks very different than the picture in the actual picture which is showing

00:34:02.920 this big full room it was not showing it one smoking gun that could come louis there's always

00:34:07.540 dozens and dozens of those cameras in the room not everybody's necessarily favorable to

00:34:11.680 carney all it would take is one picture a clean one showing the room that is half empty and none

00:34:16.220 has surfaced so yeah i'm not because that would be a quick way to say look here's the real picture

00:34:21.520 here's the fake and with that many people gathered at a public you know gathering nobody produced

00:34:28.240 that picture so i'll send you and i i gonna bet that there's there's a conservative staffer in

00:34:34.880 there you know there's somewhere like there's there's a zero percent chance that there's not

00:34:37.980 a conservative operative at every carney event yeah that's the way it goes so i yeah i i don't

00:34:42.580 know uh it's maybe uh some people have run these things these pictures through uh their software

00:34:47.080 that can kind of tell on it and i sort of come up with an 80 percent likeliness that it is but i

00:34:52.980 haven't seen a smoking gun yet no it'll be funny if other picture surfaces that being said maybe

00:34:58.800 the concern whatever the conservatives are are gathering up right now they're probably saving

00:35:03.740 keep the powder dry they're probably saving it for later all right let's move on um yeah i know

00:35:09.280 this is a a little outside of you know what we would normally cover uh and we're probably only

00:35:14.320 covering it because uh i'm a publisher i get to decide what we do um but this is an objectively

00:35:19.560 important uh election coming up right now in europe uh germans are going to the polls on sunday

00:35:25.140 uh the coalition government of olaf scholls uh collapsed he had a what they call a traffic light

00:35:32.480 coalition it was uh red for social democrat yellow for uh the free democratic party fdp

00:35:40.560 and green for the Goons.

00:35:44.680 So, traffic light coalition, they call it.

00:35:47.960 The FTP is a kind of classical liberal party.

00:35:51.300 They tend to be very small in Germany,

00:35:52.700 but most elections, they get some seats,

00:35:55.900 between 5% to 10%.

00:35:57.280 And it's fallen apart,

00:36:01.200 so they're having an early election.

00:36:02.940 It's been drawn out over quite a bit of time.

00:36:05.060 Sunday, they vote.

00:36:06.600 And, wow, this is interesting.

00:36:10.560 Uh, uh, production, have we got, uh, the polls ready to show?

00:36:14.960 So, there's a relatively new, uh, there's actually a couple of new parties in Germany, uh, uh, there's one, uh, kind of a populist left party, it's interesting, the left is kind of playing with some populism, um, but, uh, the one everyone's talking about is the AFD, uh, Alternative der Deutschland, and, uh, it, it came up during the European debt crisis,

00:36:39.320 And it had the revolutionary far-right idea that German taxpayers shouldn't pay for the early retirements of Greeks, Italians, and Irish. 0.95

00:36:49.140 The pigs. Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain. The pigs. 0.99

00:36:55.340 That was considered a radical far-right idea. 0.96

00:36:59.520 Now, since then, Angela Merkel opened up the floodgates and said, 0.94

00:37:03.560 pretty much anyone in the world who wants to come to Germany and declare themselves

00:37:07.120 a refugee can do so. And it was utterly disastrous. Some of my favorite places like 1.00

00:37:15.140 Munich are unrecognizable. They're no longer a German city. It's no longer a European city.

00:37:19.900 It's completely overrun. It's not safe. Germany's had countless kind of wildcat 1.00

00:37:29.860 terrorist attacks from Islamist extremists, getting in cars and driving into Christmas markets,

00:37:37.980 shootings, stabbings. It's just chaos. And most people there want something done about it. They 0.69

00:37:47.560 want a border back. There's only one party, though, the AFD, which rose to extra higher

00:37:54.740 prominence after angla merkel opened up the floodgates and migration became a major major

00:38:01.260 issue in germany uh they've also got a lot of sim issues we've got here huge cost of living crisis

00:38:05.560 debt crisis tax crisis although they've got all those things but then they've got if you think

00:38:10.540 migration is a big issue in canada go to europe it's it's completely different and i hate to say

00:38:16.340 it it's germany's fault it's more precisely it's angla merkel's fault and and her successor olaf

00:38:21.500 Schultz. What the polls are showing though is that first place is the CDU, the traditionally

00:38:28.940 considered conservative party. Under Angela Merkel it became a center-left party. Under Mertz, the

00:38:34.580 current leader, it's arguably, at least rhetorically, back to very moderate center-right. But the AFD

00:38:43.000 is in second place, a strong second place at 20%. Third place, very distant third place, is the

00:38:49.420 actual governing body of germany the social democrats you've got the situation we can see

00:38:53.860 on the polls that because they've got proportional representation that it's going to be pretty much

00:38:59.960 impossible for the cdu the conservatives to form a government without the afd but there's kind of

00:39:05.540 this unofficial rule in germany that you're not allowed to to work with them you're not allowed

00:39:09.100 to be a coalition government with them you can't even rely on their votes in a minority government

00:39:13.060 it's called the Braumeier the the firewall that's meant to keep the quote far right out yeah

00:39:20.260 Germany's had far right arguably I would quibble on the definitions of that but whatever you want

00:39:26.540 to call it it's had an extreme it's had extreme left it's had extreme right this is not an extra

00:39:32.380 far right party you could say it's a bit spicy I think they are a bit spicy that's okay uh it's

00:39:38.120 not beyond the pale um but then you had jd vance who gave a speech at the munich security conference

00:39:44.960 i think just a day or two after another random terrorist attack from uh i think it was an afghan

00:39:52.000 migrant this time drove into a union rally killing some people injuring others um literally just a 0.97

00:39:59.320 few hundred meters away from where the conference was taking place and uh and he he gave a absolutely

00:40:05.580 revolutionary speech to uh to european leaders gathered there uh didn't talk about what they

00:40:11.500 want to talk what he said the real threat to europe is not russia well the biggest threat

00:40:15.840 to russia to europe is not russia or china it's from within europe it is european governments

00:40:21.600 and european bureaucrats restricting the freedoms of people within europe in the name of preserving

00:40:27.560 the freedom of europe and he uh he had a very specific word that probably only the germans

00:40:33.020 in the room knew what he meant and he says uh it's time to tear down the firewalls and that meant

00:40:38.400 i think to any anyone who understands the context of his words that the afd needs to come in into

00:40:45.340 government in germany and if that happens i i think it's going to be it'll be a revolutionary

00:40:52.060 change in european domestic and foreign policy that was indeed a brilliant speech

00:40:59.440 he repeated a number of things that we all think are are are second nature in a in a democracy

00:41:10.540 such as i may not agree with what you say but i will fight to the death to preserve your right

00:41:19.640 to say it he repeated that line uh he talked about the necessity of governments respecting

00:41:27.480 the opinions of their people, he called them out for arbitrarily suspending elections on false

00:41:36.280 pretenses. The one that he picked on particularly was that of Romania, which was arbitrarily

00:41:44.620 overturned by bureaucrats saying, well, you know, maybe the Russians had too much to do with this.

00:41:48.540 Well, you know, as he said, if your democracy is so fragile that a couple of hundred thousand

00:41:55.500 dollars worth of Russian advertising can upset the scales, maybe you don't have much of a democracy.

00:42:03.660 Parenthetically, and this is not to the main point, anybody who listens to Vance speaking

00:42:08.040 says, I don't disagree with this man. You know, why are we fighting with these people? Well,

00:42:13.280 that takes us back to the first segment of the show. But it gives you some hope and heart that

00:42:19.300 eventually things will be worked out and we'll be able to work together again.

00:42:23.160 And meanwhile, his comment upon the state of basically appealing to them

00:42:32.000 to get their souls back and respect the traditions that they always had

00:42:37.280 of representing the people, this has clearly fallen apart.

00:42:42.160 Brilliant speech.

00:42:43.080 Corey, so Vance's speech was a call for Europeans to return to nationalism,

00:42:49.820 re-embracing pride in themselves.

00:42:51.800 I mean, we can agree, there's times where nationalisms have gone clearly too far, and it can turn towards intolerance, but to follow the lead of America, which is a re-embracing of nationalism, of identitarianism, of a sense, and he also said, Europe can't rely on America anymore, you're going to have to stand on your own, time for the parents to leave the nest.

00:43:19.120 I think there's a turning point. As you said, some of that bad history has made it easy for

00:43:23.400 anybody to shut down anybody questioning mass immigration. You know, then we don't want to go

00:43:28.220 into that xenophobia or intolerance of the old days or something. And it makes people afraid to

00:43:33.420 speak of it. And it's been the elephant in the room throughout all of Europe, and they're having

00:43:37.680 trouble everywhere. I mean, it came to that concept, you know, immigration is good for a country. Yes, 0.99

00:43:42.000 but it doesn't mean more and more and more is, you know, you hit a tipping point. That's when

00:43:45.300 we start to talk about mass immigration canada figured it out even trudeau had to admit we

00:43:50.060 overplayed we we we're having trouble getting housing we're having trouble with with uh you

00:43:54.980 know integration some of the people coming particularly from north africa uh germany's

00:43:59.620 yeah it's the european linchpin and if they're going to turn around start changing those policies

00:44:03.400 you know it's going to set the tone for all of europe it's going to be interesting to watch

00:44:06.100 as somebody's kind of an outside observer on european politics anyway indeed okay well let's

00:44:12.020 turn it to uh to our parting shots here uh you know nagel you're back so you get to go first 1.00

00:44:18.020 okay that was got to go first when i was here this is obviously fast well it's um like i said

00:44:24.660 of vance just a moment ago when you listen to the man you cannot if you're a conservative at all

00:44:31.700 and even if you're just a plain sensible person you cannot disagree with his uh with his fundamental

00:44:39.220 analysis that we have to restore our respect for freedom and if he's the if we can agree on that

00:44:49.180 then we can probably find our way out of this mess just following on you know if we can question

00:44:54.900 Frankie Graves lucidity another public figure of questionable sound mind is David Suzuki and

00:45:00.020 he's serviced again from under wherever he's what's he saying now well he's got 98 other

00:45:04.920 environmental groups with them and they're all in strong opposition of any pipeline expansions

00:45:10.020 they're quite worried about the new atmosphere of trying to get markets to coast so uh suzuki is

00:45:15.200 back out front and center telling us all what to do with ourselves and 98 groups 98 groups i got

00:45:19.980 99 problems with david suzuki a1 okay groups you probably find the 97 of them by the government

00:45:26.900 yes how do they get to pay for usa there's a western standard story on it online if somebody

00:45:31.920 lesson look at there we go uh i want to give a shout out to uh christian freeland wow uh so the

00:45:42.060 numbers are out for liberal fundraising so far uh you know there's more to come in but uh mark carney

00:45:48.300 is at 1.9 million dollars uh he is way out ahead of his second place rival who is not christian

00:45:58.660 freeland it's christina gould uh amongst the least

00:46:05.060 least charismatic politicians i've ever i mean she makes mark carney look like the whole trump

00:46:14.380 i mean she's she is terrible uh and so she is way behind at uh let's see oh geez where is she 1.00

00:46:24.360 okay i don't know but uh she's in second way way behind and christie fillings in third at just 1.00

00:46:30.060 226 uh thousand dollars this is after they pay their 350 000 uh this is this is fundraising i

00:46:39.780 think this is including what they have to spend on their interest so it means they get some debt to

00:46:43.080 pay oh uh no they haven't had to put all the money down yet there's different levels of deposits

00:46:47.240 there's a good chance some of these candidates will drop out for the final ballot that's a pretty

00:46:51.820 common thing like most of these guys know they all know they have no chance now christia freeland

00:46:55.860 probably thought she had a chance i thought she had a chance to begin with but i think this is

00:46:59.440 evidence uh that you know the liberal parties liberal party brass is solidly behind carney

00:47:08.300 and that i think they're they're very angry at christia freeland for what she did which is not

00:47:13.000 sit there in the corner like a good girl and take whatever justin was prepared to give her um that

00:47:19.660 she stood up for herself for once, was an unacceptable crime.

00:47:23.560 I think, you know, she wasn't in a position to succeed Justin Trudeau one day,

00:47:28.560 but that she grew a figurative pair and stood up to him was unacceptable.

00:47:33.560 And the Liberal Party bosses have decided very clearly this is going to be Mark Carney.

00:47:38.860 You're implying that the Liberal bosses actually still approve of Justin Trudeau?

00:47:43.920 Yes, yes, I think they do.

00:47:45.740 There's a prospect. Now that's a parting shot.

00:47:48.420 that's my soul well put okay gentlemen thank you very much and thank all of you for joining us

00:47:55.480 today here on the pipeline remember the western standard is one of the very few media left in

00:48:00.140 canada that does not take justin trudeau's uh corporate media bailout subsidies we're funded

00:48:05.860 by a little bit of advertising and by a lot of supporters like you we want you to support our

00:48:12.200 work go to westernstandard.news right now click on subscribe it's only ten dollars a month or

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00:48:26.620 left in canada thank you very much for joining us all here today and god bless

00:48:47.280 Thank you.

Western Standard - February 20, 2025

Poilievre's Big Pivot

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