Western Standard - Saturday Long Form with Roman Baber

00:00:00.000 well greetings friends i'm danielle smith this is the danielle smith show and we're doing a long

00:00:28.400 form interview with a candidate who I think distinguished himself in one of the recent

00:00:33.020 debates. We certainly found that Tom Clark did not distinguish himself as a moderator.

00:00:38.260 And so we, at least now that we've got some of the urgent, important questions about popular

00:00:43.980 culture out of the way, I think we can get down to some serious issues with Roman Babber. He is

00:00:49.120 a candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada leadership. He was formerly as well an MPP in the

00:00:56.300 Ontario provincial legislature. It probably didn't go quite as he had planned, so we're going to find

00:01:01.580 out a little bit more about what happened there. But I know that on my locals page, Roman, you

00:01:07.300 appeared as the number two winner in the debate on Wednesday, and so you've got a bit of a popular

00:01:12.840 following here in Alberta, and I want to find out a little bit more about you. Thanks so much for

00:01:16.320 joining me today. Good to be with you, Danielle. So first, let's just do a little bit of history.

00:01:22.140 I looked you up and saw that your citizenship and your nationality is the former Soviet Union,

00:01:29.900 so you've got to tell us that story about how you found your way into Canada.

00:01:33.980 Sure. I was born in the former Soviet Union and my family did not gain its freedom until 1989,

00:01:41.500 which is why I have a very unique perspective about Canada's democracy and how

00:01:47.980 precious democracies in general uh we then moved to israel and i lived in the state of israel for

00:01:53.420 six years or so and came to canada uh when i was 15 to the very uh district that uh i represented

00:02:01.340 that until about a week ago in the provincial legislature in ontario i like to say that i'm

00:02:07.660 exhibit eight for canadian opportunity i've had uh every blessing this country had to offer

00:02:13.340 but uh being born in a in a communist regime is something that and and living some formative years

00:02:21.260 in there certainly shapes your political perspective can you talk more about that what

00:02:25.660 do you remember from your time there you mentioned that you left fairly young at age eight but what

00:02:29.820 what strikes what stands out for you in your memories i i still recall um some of the uh

00:02:36.620 formative conversations uh and and particularly the fear uh i remember when you go to school

00:02:43.020 especially if you have a parent that is western-minded so to speak i remember i was taught

00:02:49.420 that do not use the phrase america because if you did the teacher would tell the principal and the

00:02:56.220 principal will tell the kgb and the kgb will start wondering who's this parent that's teaching this

00:03:01.580 child about america right because you could not have an ideological comparison to um to what was

00:03:09.100 going on inside communist walls and what was going on beyond communist walls um i remember very

00:03:14.540 clearly um how i first saw my my grandpa's sidur which is a jewish prayer book on an evening of

00:03:23.420 the jewish new year um i think when i was five and dad explained to me that uh if the kgb were

00:03:29.980 to find out that we have this jewish prayer book then uh grandpa may serve five years in a labor

00:03:35.740 capital my goodness and so this is this is very real and and you know there are a lot of people

00:03:42.220 from uh there are a lot of canadians from eastern europe from the former soviet bloc felt very

00:03:48.540 uneasy in the last couple years as we're seeing what i believe genuinely uh believed to be an

00:03:54.940 erosion of canada's democracy i do want to talk to you more about that tell me a little more about

00:04:00.700 the day-to-day life because i know everybody is very concerned about affordability as well

00:04:04.700 and i'm constantly struck when i drive past the the auto plexes how there's there are no cars

00:04:11.100 there we know that we've got supply chain issues there's people who take pictures of empty store

00:04:15.420 shelves i do kind of think of that as soviet uh soviet era economics that you you can't have

00:04:21.500 control of supply chains and can't have certainty of consumer goods what was your experience like

00:04:28.140 um i have another funny story to tell about that i i think i was seven or eight years old and

00:04:33.820 grandma took me to the store and and there was only a dozen eggs left and and she tried to to

00:04:40.060 grab the dozen eggs from the shelf uh but the lady at the store said that other people might want

00:04:45.020 some eggs too and so we're only allowed to take four eggs um you know what i described to you

00:04:52.140 right now uh seems not just far-fetched seems surreal to many people uh but this is this is a

00:05:00.060 reality of a product of this collectivist utopia that the radical left tries to impose

00:05:08.040 us, where you don't have reward for opportunity or for entrepreneurship, where you have central

00:05:15.980 planning, whereby you have quotas as to what you can produce, when paralysis, when bureaucratic

00:05:27.020 and government paralysis

00:05:28.840 seeps into everyday life.

00:05:31.900 And in fact, very, very similar

00:05:33.860 to what I refer to as the COVID paralysis

00:05:36.520 that we have been experiencing in Canada

00:05:39.220 for the last couple of years,

00:05:40.260 whether it's more difficult

00:05:43.220 to get a cup of coffee at Des Moines

00:05:44.920 for some reason.

00:05:46.100 It's more difficult to go out.

00:05:50.200 And in Ontario, for instance,

00:05:53.060 we joke about the liquor store.

00:05:55.480 one of the commonalities between COVID and what was happening in provinces that have regulated

00:06:02.520 alcohol sales is the lineups to the liquor stores. That's very common because public health would

00:06:09.080 believe that you'd be healthier standing outside in a line in the elements, getting cold or snowed

00:06:15.160 on in minus degree temperature instead of, you know, being warm inside. That's just science. So

00:06:22.240 yeah when yeah i hope somebody has managed to take you to one of our private privatized liquor

00:06:28.800 stores so that you can see a little more of the experience i think you're there i think you've

00:06:33.360 got a little bit more freedom in ontario now but we'll talk again about what what the the

00:06:38.480 differences are that you see across the country when you when you were talking about the family

00:06:43.680 conversations you had about the west what what what do you think the west was what did it mean

00:06:49.040 you what was it supposed to be and how did how did your image of what it was like in the west match

00:06:53.920 the reality no one asked me that question before danielle it's a wonderful question um i guess it

00:07:01.920 came from from my parents and namely from my father that believed that there would be freedom

00:07:08.400 and and that is something that i learned very very early that uh you wouldn't have to fear uh being

00:07:15.360 in possession of certain materials uh that you like reading materials that uh you would um

00:07:23.680 have stores that are not empty that you would not and another thing a very very key element

00:07:31.440 that you would not have government lying to you to the point that makes government ridiculous

00:07:38.560 and that is that is a another um very common thread uh of um of communism in in which um

00:07:47.840 and and that's what eventually ended up happening with with the communist bloc in eastern europe

00:07:53.520 at the end of the 80s and early 90s is that the system collapsed under the weight of of um

00:08:01.200 it's its own lack of credibility to put it to put it politely when you say that you

00:08:08.960 left the former soviet union went by way of israel what ultimately brought you to canada

00:08:13.540 my my parents always sought um life in in the west i guess and um we had some friends

00:08:24.420 that lived in Toronto and they they were very complimentary of Canada and I remember arriving

00:08:34.640 to Canada very very clearly it was in the middle of the night and we landed at Pearson airport

00:08:41.500 my my parents friends picked us up and took us to the apartment where we lived for the first

00:08:49.840 three years of of our stay in canada which is in fact in my district i looked out the window and i

00:08:56.240 saw earl bells park which is a very large park uh in in side urban toronto and on the other side

00:09:04.000 young street with lights and and towers and i was in love from from day one and you know danielle we

00:09:11.760 we did not have a sense to our name and and i remember what what true poverty was like

00:09:17.840 my first mattress was from the recycling bin across the street i sold ice cream on those dixie

00:09:24.320 bicycles but i've always had a job and i've always had this incredible joy because i had

00:09:30.160 canadian opportunity because i always felt that all you needed to do to succeed in canada is work

00:09:35.120 hard and be nice to people that's it and if you just did those two things that everything will

00:09:39.200 be okay and we get to do that and keep our our cultural and religious values this is why i've

00:09:44.160 always believed this is the best country in the world you decided to go for a law degree why did

00:09:49.200 you do what did tell me a bit more about the that that choice of career path because that isn't

00:09:53.840 normally the choice when i think of a law degree you're kind of putting yourself in opposition to

00:09:58.320 somebody on the other side and i have noticed actually that your tone in the debate is a bit

00:10:02.720 more conciliatory so you do have a you do have a bit of a different approach but why did why

00:10:06.720 was law an attraction for you um look i've always been interested in in how society resolves

00:10:17.040 disputes and you know frankly it was a teacher in grade 11. it was grade 11 law in high school

00:10:24.240 where i i just thought it was so remarkably interesting and sophisticated and and i think

00:10:31.120 about uh that teacher mrs s uh first initial and and and i think about how she influenced my life

00:10:39.680 as um as a high school student and sometimes that that makes such a remarkable difference

00:10:47.280 in a young person's life i've always felt that education is one of the great canadian equalizers

00:10:54.080 it's in fact if we have public education then that's truly where we need to try and focus and

00:10:59.520 provide uh kids with uh an equal opportunity to learn um not not force uh equality or or

00:11:09.120 redistribution later on in life but but give them the tools and and the difference between

00:11:16.080 um success in life and and the opposite may sometimes be a single high school teacher

00:11:23.040 that may incite your imagination and um i've been very very blessed i practiced law for 12 years

00:11:29.440 before I was elected. I started at a legal aid clinic in my law school. It's something that I

00:11:35.720 spoke about during the debate on Wednesday. It's where I picked up a lot of compassion and love

00:11:41.360 for people. People are people. And then I practiced bankruptcy and commercial litigation for the

00:11:48.480 first couple of years, and then ported my practice. And for the eight years preceding my election,

00:11:53.960 practiced commercial and insurance litigation. I love practicing law. I had a lot of fun.

00:11:59.440 I was able to put myself in a position where I could afford to go and do politics for a couple of years.

00:12:05.560 And it's something that I would encourage any young person.

00:12:09.920 If that is something that they think that they might want to do, it's a wonderful profession.

00:12:14.480 Well, let's then talk about your leap into politics.

00:12:16.740 It's not that unusual to go from law into politics, but you decided to enter at the provincial level initially.

00:12:23.760 I know you're running federally now, but let's talk about why that is.

00:12:27.380 so so if i understand that you actually beat quite a big name in the nomination joe oliver who had

00:12:33.220 been a federal cabinet minister and of quite a lot of stature actually so so tell me a bit

00:12:38.500 about that race and why it is that you you chose to run provincially uh at the time i i was involved

00:12:45.460 in um in a in a leadership campaign in fact of one of the persons that i'm now running against

00:12:51.540 in this race and that is patrick brown um i um i've known patrick for a number of years

00:12:57.860 i haven't really been involved politically and he asked me to join this campaign um

00:13:03.700 i i did uh help him uh win leadership of the progressive conservative party in ontario

00:13:10.260 um i would not say that patrick and i see eye to eye on on on all issues since but regardless what

00:13:16.740 he did teach me and and to his credit he's a very hard worker and a good organizer and and he did

00:13:23.060 teach me to reach out to communities and welcome new canadians such as myself um and so i um

00:13:32.740 i decided to seek the nomination and uh contested it against joe oliver the former finance minister

00:13:39.380 um and look uh work always pays and i've been preparing for that nomination for about a year

00:13:44.980 and a half uh mr oliver for about two to three months and and that that therein lies the

00:13:52.100 difference um and and so that was um a wonderful moment in my life to to to win the nomination

00:13:59.140 i went on to win the 2018 um election with with doug ford as we know uh patrick uh resigned as

00:14:08.420 leader of the party and uh doug ford took over as leader of the party um i had a front row seat

00:14:15.780 to a few very very interesting years in ontario politics i watched a lot of leaders um i watched

00:14:21.780 a lot of teams i watched a lot of uh leaderships being administered um and uh it it seems i don't

00:14:30.740 know between at the very least the province of ontario and and the federal conservative party

00:14:35.060 this is i don't know the seventh or eighth leadership in the last uh four or five years

00:14:40.260 it's been chaotic let me let me i want to get into some of the issues because it didn't your

00:14:44.900 your political career at the provincial level probably didn't end as you anticipated that it

00:14:49.700 would but it's interesting to me when you talk about your history that you decided to run for

00:14:56.340 the conservatives as opposed to the liberals i mean you are in toronto toronto is a difficult

00:15:01.380 place for those with conservative ideology and yet you've managed to find a way to to win there

00:15:06.900 what what is the attraction to the conservatives as opposed to the liberals

00:15:13.300 you know you you walk me down memory lane a number of times today it's something that

00:15:17.380 i haven't done in a while um i i became conservative fairly early uh in in fact in

00:15:24.580 the soviet union um so you were not allowed to have a second job in the soviet union

00:15:30.020 because then you might become a bourgeoisie and and make more money than others and and we don't

00:15:34.500 want to encourage that uh but dad had a second job he was a chemical engineer during the day

00:15:40.100 and and he had a weekend job as a night watchman and and we would travel to to this pavilion of

00:15:46.340 outside of uh saint petersburg where he would have to check in because no one actually worked

00:15:51.940 uh you know we pretend to work and then they pretend to pay us that's that's how it works

00:15:57.140 in those kind of regimes and i saw a sign and i was probably six years old or seven years old

00:16:03.300 and so there's this magnificent garden and i saw a sign that said do not feed the squirrels

00:16:09.060 and i was wondering and asked that why can't you feed the squirrels and he said well if you start

00:16:14.820 feeding the squirrels then they will not collect nuts they will stop working and they will not

00:16:20.100 collect nuts for the winter and they and and because of that they might die die off of

00:16:25.940 starvation during the winter and i understood this concept of dependency uh by squirrels on on humans

00:16:34.340 uh when i was six or seven and and that was the day i i thought i became conservative

00:16:40.900 which is why a couple of days ago i've announced that i will repeal equalization before the end of

00:16:46.180 my first term as prime minister because i don't believe in redistribution i don't think that we

00:16:50.100 We should be creating or encouraging dependency.

00:16:53.180 We should be encouraging productivity and opportunity,

00:16:57.360 primarily by way of natural resources.

00:16:59.380 And then I lived in Israel for a couple of years.

00:17:01.480 And Israel is also a very interesting proposition

00:17:03.820 where I really witnessed the existence of good and evil. 0.96

00:17:09.040 This was in the early 90s during the second wave of the Antifada. 0.98

00:17:14.620 This was the Hamas wave of terror 0.71

00:17:17.840 when a bus would blow up almost every other week. 0.82

00:17:21.540 It was the same bus, bus number five in Tel Aviv.

00:17:24.740 And Danielle, it's the type of politics

00:17:29.460 that Westerners, thankfully, are not familiar with. 0.89

00:17:32.540 It's also why everyone in the Middle East

00:17:34.120 is interested in politics,

00:17:35.120 because it profoundly affects your everyday life.

00:17:37.980 And that's where I vowed and understood

00:17:41.500 that you cannot tiptoe around terrorism.

00:17:46.660 You have to be hawkish with the people that seek to do harm to your family and to your loved ones and to your country.

00:17:56.100 And that's another thing that cemented my view as a conservative.

00:18:01.780 One thing that cemented your view as a compassionate conservative, or at least your reputation of that,

00:18:07.800 is that you had issued a widely publicized and i think lauded report after there were some missteps

00:18:14.680 in the provincial government in ontario they had made changes to how they were funding autism they

00:18:20.200 were going to they were concerned there was a 23 000 waiting list of young people that were not

00:18:25.320 getting treatment and so they were going to make the amount of payment based on income and there's

00:18:30.600 a lot of pushback on that but you ended up going and doing a report and it sounded like your

00:18:34.440 recommendations were so well received that everybody wanted the report to be adopted in

00:18:39.000 whole so so what did you discover there through that whole process because i i i don't know what

00:18:43.960 your history is that made you the obvious point person to go into looking at that program but it

00:18:48.760 seems like you you did your homework and got a lot of buy-in what happened there

00:18:55.320 first a lot of canadians do not know that we have effectively an epidemic of children with autism

00:19:02.600 in canada every 50th child is now diagnosed on on the spectrum and um it's important to appreciate

00:19:12.040 that treatment can make a very significant difference in a child's life especially if

00:19:17.960 it's early and it's not just the right thing to do it's also the fiscally prudent thing to do

00:19:25.240 because you'd much rather pay for treatment early on in life and provide better quality of life

00:19:31.880 then uh pay for supports and income replacement and housing later in life so um in in 2019 the

00:19:42.920 ford government introduced a reform that would decimate the autism program and um

00:19:50.520 i i i felt terrible for these families and i heard from many of them and and many constituents came

00:19:56.120 to see me and i take everyone's phone calls i've always done that and um i decided that i'm going

00:20:02.200 to try and do something about it and i asked the premier for permission to review our program

00:20:08.520 proposed program and perhaps come up with some recommendations um i have obtained remarkable

00:20:14.840 advice i've interviewed a lot of professionals i had some of course as a former bankruptcy and

00:20:20.360 insurance lawyer um looking at a single-payer program that is largely insolvent made sense

00:20:26.760 and i came out and and i proposed a significant reform uh the government liked my proposal

00:20:34.760 and uh the the idea was on its way to be implemented regretfully um the government sought

00:20:42.600 advice from the ongoing autism panel that it had advising the government and so they sought to vet

00:20:49.240 my program they sought to vet my proposal but instead of just submitting the actual plan the

00:20:56.040 proposal they submitted the entire work which included a lot of criticism of my own government

00:21:01.640 and even my own cover letter and um i think that this was either the bureaucracy getting even with

00:21:08.200 the minister there could be a lot of reasons why it wasn't properly edited and so it went to the

00:21:14.680 autism panel on a wednesday and on a friday it was in the globe and mail and um the there was

00:21:21.640 a remarkable political storm around it because autism families understood that there's someone

00:21:26.040 inside government that was actually hearing them and um and uh unfortunately though uh because of

00:21:34.600 the politics of of the situation and and the government did not want to take the embarrassment

00:21:38.840 uh they they um there was some distancing done with the mpp at issue and um yeah it was different

00:21:48.840 than the subsequent experience that i had over covet at the time they just said roman leave town

00:21:52.560 for two weeks and don't take any media problems that's what i did but unfortunately we haven't

00:21:56.880 seen solution to this yet but uh this is something that i'm very very passionate about which is why

00:22:01.840 approximately three to four weeks ago i have proposed a national autism plan to classify

00:22:08.040 by autism treatment as a healthcare priority,

00:22:10.980 not social services file,

00:22:13.060 and to gear the provinces towards treatment

00:22:16.140 as opposed to bureaucracy coordination and only supports.

00:22:20.760 Okay, so you've obviously got a lot of issues

00:22:23.740 that you care about at the provincial level.

00:22:25.360 And one of the things I wanna start talking to you about

00:22:27.800 is why wouldn't you stay focused at the provincial level?

00:22:31.560 Because I've seen that it can be difficult

00:22:33.240 for a politician to make the transition.

00:22:35.820 seen transitions from federal politicians trying to take over provincial jurisdiction but they're

00:22:41.020 very different areas of policy and so i'm wondering why do you have such an interest

00:22:46.380 in in federal politics what what drives you doing what's right by people and and and figuring that

00:22:57.100 we're now the canada is now finding itself in such uncharted territory uh and and so does the

00:23:03.820 conservative party of canada um presents a unique opportunity for someone to contribute

00:23:12.140 and i felt that it made sense for me instead of as some of your viewers know or will shortly

00:23:18.060 find out i became an independent mvp in 20 um in in january of 2021 um and and so i judged a couple

00:23:28.620 of months ago that instead of seeking re-election as an independent mvp in ontario's legislature

00:23:33.820 that I should weigh into the national conversation

00:23:39.120 and certainly a conversation about the soul and direction

00:23:42.900 of the Conservative Party of Canada,

00:23:44.260 of which I've been a member for more than a decade

00:23:46.900 at a time when I believe that Canadian democracy

00:23:51.420 and Canadian opportunity is being usurped.

00:23:54.160 Okay, let's talk about you getting kicked out of caucus

00:23:56.760 because you made reference to it in January 2021.

00:23:59.880 one um people will know that i was very critical about the the government approach as well but i

00:24:06.760 felt a lot of it was being driven from ontario that we had eight conservative premiers or allied

00:24:12.360 with conservative policies and they didn't do anything different than what some of the democrat

00:24:16.760 governors were doing in the states and i never quite understood why but i really felt like it

00:24:20.440 was the ontario government taking the the strident position that they did kind of set the stage for

00:24:25.800 all of the others have to follow and so i know what i was reading that gave me an alternative

00:24:30.280 perspective but i'm curious to know why it is you decided to bring craig's with uh with your

00:24:34.680 premier the time doug ford what happened a lot led up to to what made to my decision to publicly

00:24:42.520 oppose my own government uncovered response but the catalyst was the second lockdown in in december

00:24:50.840 of january of 2020 going into january 2021 where i realized beyond any shadow of a doubt

00:25:00.280 that the toll the the collateral harm of lockdown has become unbearable in that we now started

00:25:10.680 understanding or anybody who would take interest or or had a working cell phone would understand

00:25:17.080 the kind of toll that the lockdown had on our health and mental health and so i authored

00:25:23.480 a letter to the premier after exhausting all options i have been fighting against

00:25:28.760 our covert response since probably may 2020 and perhaps in a follow-up question i'll get to

00:25:34.280 explain what changed what turned my mind on covet covet is a very serious infection it can be very

00:25:40.360 risky to certain folks specifically in older demographics those in congregate settings that

00:25:45.720 approach end of life uh and for some reason it has a weird deviation to those with metabolic

00:25:51.720 conditions but that doesn't mean that we should be locking down healthy populations and potentially

00:25:57.880 making them sick and so there was a doctor from princess margaret hospital one of canada's leading

00:26:03.640 cancer hospitals that warned that we have a tsunami of cancers coming because we are missing

00:26:10.600 cancer diagnoses. The province of Ontario, by that time, has missed, in the first year of COVID

00:26:17.820 response, missed approximately a million cancer diagnoses in comparison to the years prior.

00:26:24.540 Ontario, for instance, in the first year, missed more than 300,000 surgeries.

00:26:31.320 The Canadian Medical Association already came out, I believe, about half a year ago and said that

00:26:35.800 more than four thousand canadians already passed away from the delay in in surgeries and just two

00:26:41.880 days ago in post media there was a story about alberta that the access deaths among alberta's

00:26:47.880 youths is just astronomical and those are not covet deaths those are uh addiction uh overdose

00:26:57.080 mental health and and other types of deaths that were brought about by covet response and so

00:27:02.280 So in January, and I would say that what I heard from parents who told me about their kid being depressed or being estranged from them or not eating or overeating, and I couldn't bear with it anymore.

00:27:18.140 And I realized towards the middle of January that Doug Ford was not going to come around.

00:27:23.820 A number of elements led into this.

00:27:26.080 I also heard from public health and I asked them, well, you're going to vaccinate your way out of this.

00:27:32.440 But Moderna already said on this on January 12th, 2021, that its shot is only good for a year.

00:27:39.140 So what's going to happen after the efficacy wanes? And public health didn't have an answer.

00:27:43.640 And so that's when I decided that I wasn't going to be part of it anymore.

00:27:46.960 And all I wanted to do is get a conversation started because there was no conversation.

00:27:50.780 And so I set out the facts, I referenced my work and I said, can we please reconsider? And the proposal is let's factor the toll of COVID response into our public policy and perhaps reconsider.

00:28:03.780 And what I proposed was that we beef up protection in long term care homes and congregate settings and that we focus on building up our health care capacity.

00:28:13.780 capacity. If it's short, then let's focus on increasing our capacity and largely allow people

00:28:20.780 to get back to normal to restore normalcy. Unfortunately, I was removed from caucus an

00:28:25.060 hour and a half after the letter was published. But I have no regrets. I stood up for my

00:28:31.040 constituents and I'd do it again, maybe earlier if I had to. You know what I like about what you're

00:28:35.940 saying is you're obviously very widely read. You've identified the same issues that many of the

00:28:41.600 listeners of this program have identified and uh what was interesting to me is i think it was

00:28:47.200 tagged as misinformation that was putting public health at risk and i wonder if you've got some

00:28:52.160 thoughts now about what was going on there because if i was able to read and find the information

00:28:58.240 that you've just described and you were able to read and find the information that you've just

00:29:01.760 described why is it that the chief decision makers were not able to process information

00:29:06.480 the same way do you have some observations on on what's going on why that happened maybe they were

00:29:12.160 unwilling to process it or decided to be willful blind to the information or decided that irrespective

00:29:20.240 of such information their public policy direction would be different um doug ford was quoted quite

00:29:28.560 often saying that he agreed with mpp roman babber on on the collateral harm of lockdowns um there

00:29:36.720 was no question especially uh in in late 2021 when uh we went for our fourth or fifth or however

00:29:44.880 whichever number that was that lockdowns are very very harmful it's just it's regretful that

00:29:50.960 we weren't unable or or many people especially those in decision-making positions were

00:29:58.560 scared to articulate an opinion and and that's really the catalyst to all of this and and this

00:30:05.800 is I think why I'm here because it's I'm not the media and some of my opponents are trying to say

00:30:13.200 oh Roman's running against COVID and lockdowns and that's behind us well first of all with respect

00:30:19.260 that's not fair because almost 20 percent of Canadians are being treated as a second class

00:30:24.020 citizens. The fallout from COVID is remarkable. Our kids have regressed. I spoke to a grade three

00:30:31.360 teacher who told me that her kids read at a grade one level. We have excess mortality, obviously,

00:30:39.100 that's not by COVID on the rise. We have a small business, if you're even allowed to talk about

00:30:44.060 business anymore. According to the CFIB, an average small business accumulated an average

00:30:50.100 of 180 000 of covert related debt people were wiped out or had to remortgage or sell their home

00:30:57.300 and certainly all that is staying but but even beyond that beyond the fact that this is not over

00:31:02.420 in the acute situation still ongoing by way of the segregation and the unprecedented discrimination

00:31:07.060 that we're seeing in our country it's it's what led up to covet it's it's the covet response and

00:31:13.860 the failure of all systems that were designed to prevent this erosion of democracy or to enable us

00:31:21.060 to express ourselves that have failed it's all the checks and balances that would act against this

00:31:27.140 this type of public policy error that that have failed and and and that is a greater conversation

00:31:34.260 would you mind telling me what what you would do because i often get asked the question just

00:31:38.100 for my opinion of whether i think we're going to go back into lockdowns and restrictions again

00:31:43.860 and the thing that concerns me is that so many of our politicians still seem to think that

00:31:49.620 lockdowns work still and still seem to think that those jurisdictions that didn't have lockdowns

00:31:55.220 have worse outcomes uh we still haven't increased our hospital capacity which makes me believe that

00:32:01.380 if we get into another and they're still not making therapeutics available widely um and so

00:32:06.820 it makes me believe that if we get into the same situation in the fall with a new surge in

00:32:11.460 respiratory viruses whether it's SARS-CoV-2 variant or some other uh some other virus that

00:32:18.340 we're going to see them default to the same kinds of of processes and the same kind of shutdowns

00:32:23.460 again and i i don't know if if that's a legitimate fear and worry how do you see it and how do we

00:32:28.980 avoid that well if lockdowns worked so well then why were we still back in lockdown and and it i

00:32:38.740 mean it would be amusing if it wasn't so tragic when they said that lockdown is working we need

00:32:44.820 to stay in lockdown or lockdown is not working we need more lockdown um you know look i don't think

00:32:54.980 that we're going to have another lockdown i think that the political appetite for that is gone and

00:33:00.740 the popularity is gone in fact in ontario's election right now doug is running away from

00:33:05.380 lockdown away from masks um away from even mandates it's a whole new duck ford um but i'll

00:33:13.860 i'll leave that be for now look uh i i'd like to articulate this for the benefit of your viewers

00:33:21.220 uh in may 2020 so it's okay not to understand what we're dealing with because yes it was a new virus

00:33:29.140 and and it came from china and we saw remarkable pictures and and we saw the the princess cruise

00:33:36.340 whatever that was and and so folks were rightfully afraid and um we weren't sure what we're dealing

00:33:45.460 with and and this urgent need arose to to keep the population safe and and that narrative was

00:33:55.300 fortified by the popular narrative of the day the political correctness of the day and and that

00:34:01.380 political correctness was fortified by cancelled culture so even asking basic questions as to

00:34:07.140 whether any of this makes sense uh was not permissible but in may 2020 the landscape has

00:34:14.180 changed two things happened for me at least public health came in and told me that more than 80 of

00:34:21.380 those that passed away were in a long-term care home so the response is this is tragic and

00:34:26.980 unacceptable so please go out and protect long-term care homes beef up nurses beef up psws so you can

00:34:35.380 affect good infection protocol and control but largely we know that regretfully the average

00:34:42.180 lifespan in a long-term care home is 14 months that is not to say that we should give up on on

00:34:48.100 these lives it should mean that we protect them but everybody else why don't you leave the rest

00:34:52.740 of us alone and the response was well no because the wider transmission is in the community the

00:34:58.580 greater the transmission is in long-term care homes which is just utter nonsense all it takes

00:35:04.500 is one agency employee to bring covet from one home to another and god forbid half the residents

00:35:10.820 would pass away and the second thing that happened and this is very very important i hope for viewers

00:35:16.180 to appreciate in may we started getting all sorts of serological studies that suggested to us what

00:35:22.740 percent of the population actually shows traces of antibodies to the virus in other words we started

00:35:29.940 appreciating that the infectiousness the trans transmissibility of the virus is significantly

00:35:36.500 greater than we thought there was a study out of princeton that thought i think it was princeton

00:35:41.540 the thought that it was 50 times higher potentially in the united states but generally around the

00:35:46.420 world we saw studies at about 20 times higher so for every person that was tested positive for

00:35:51.380 covet and of course the testing was arbitrary and sporadic and different from place to place

00:35:57.220 there was another 20 to 50 people outside the testing center that are walking around with

00:36:01.540 covet and that to me was wonderful news because it meant that all the metrics that we're worried about

00:36:08.260 are actually 20 to 50 percent lower the the fatality rate is significantly lower than we

00:36:15.060 initially thought and for some reason well i know why but and i suppose i'll speculate in a minute

00:36:22.100 instead of acknowledging good coven news there was a complete prohibition on good coven news

00:36:28.420 we did not reassess the risk of the virus given what we've learned about the virus

00:36:33.700 in late spring 2020 nor did we fail to properly acknowledge that children are essentially

00:36:40.260 statistically thankfully are not at risk that also failed to happen and and and that's and that's

00:36:48.340 that was a turning point for me at the end of may because the government would not retreat

00:36:54.500 on the narrative that was that developed in response to covet in the first couple months

00:37:00.900 that narrative was perpetuated for the 12 to 15 months subsequent to that you're right and you

00:37:08.500 sound like you're quite influenced by the great barrington declaration authors and jay

00:37:12.420 bhattacharya was that one of the things that was influential on you

00:37:18.580 i felt that the communications exercise that was implemented with the uh great barrington

00:37:23.860 declaration did did not go well um it was um it was it was a little bit complex uh it should have

00:37:33.460 been simplified but sure the the general the the prevalent thesis which is protect vulnerable

00:37:41.220 populations and and let everyone else be of course makes sense okay okay you were going to speculate

00:37:50.260 on why it is that what you observed was not adopted in general policy. But I'll add one

00:37:55.800 more to the list because you said you lived in Israel for a time. And that was instructive to

00:38:01.260 me because Israel had been ahead of the rest of the world on doing vaccination. And we already 0.67

00:38:06.520 began to see in July of 2021, so you were already out of caucus at this time. But by July of 2021,

00:38:13.180 it was pretty clear that the number of hospitalizations and deaths of those who'd

00:38:17.520 been double vaccinated was getting higher and higher and that the efficacy of the Pfizer

00:38:24.060 vaccination was wearing off. And yet the politicians still went ahead with vaccine passports in

00:38:30.640 September, months later. And I'm wondering how you were processing that information at the time.

00:38:35.520 And maybe you can give some thoughts on, again, why it is that that didn't get factored into the

00:38:41.560 decision-making here? Politics. Politics is the enemy of all that's good in government,

00:38:48.780 potentially. Politics gets in the way of everything, where unfortunately politicians

00:38:54.220 put themselves first and are unwilling to admit an error. And that's how it started.

00:39:01.960 In May 2020, towards the end of the first lockdown, Doug Ford, Jason Kenney, they're all

00:39:09.780 hailed as heroes right they enjoyed massive popularity so of course they would want to take

00:39:16.180 credit for the fact that they brought cases down not like it's a seasonal virus and we always see

00:39:21.860 the same trajectory which doesn't matter which jurisdiction you're in lockdown no lockdown

00:39:27.460 come end of may uh life gets back to sort of normal yeah it's seasonal and so and so they

00:39:34.260 decided that they're going to own that success and then that meant that they couldn't change

00:39:40.420 the narrative because they would have to acknowledge that maybe we didn't handle this

00:39:45.060 correctly in spring 2020 and but nobody would fault them for that because nobody knew what we

00:39:51.540 were dealing with but instead they had to stick to the very script that they themselves created

00:39:58.500 and they were not able to come around in fall 2020 and say you know what we know more about

00:40:04.340 the virus now we know who's really at risk we know that there's harm of lockdown maybe we'll

00:40:09.780 approach this differently i'm not saying have no mitigation but certainly not locked down healthy

00:40:15.380 people and so instead they continued with the same and and then in order to justify what they've done

00:40:24.020 they had to add more fear and this was the vicious cycle that the vicious covet cycle

00:40:29.620 that was created where you would see that you know there's there's fear being mongered by government

00:40:37.780 and by media so folks are afraid so you need to react so you you and you introduce mitigation

00:40:47.140 and and measures and and lockdowns etc and then of course we see the harm and some people resist

00:40:52.820 so you need to justify it to introduce a little more fear and and then respond to that fear and

00:40:58.820 so on and so forth and and by the end of it it became blatantly apparent that they have

00:41:05.860 committed to this narrative of fear so much that they did not know how to retreat from it

00:41:10.980 they were stuck politically because at the moment when they would say i'm done with this

00:41:16.260 people would say but wait a minute why have you been at this for six months for 12 months for 14

00:41:22.900 months and they could not live with that and that's just one of the factors that it went into

00:41:27.780 the bizarre world that um resulted in such tragic circumstances for so many families and your

00:41:34.500 analysis your analysis is very thoughtful and i like the way you talk about it because

00:41:38.980 i think one of the issues that we're facing and i've heard this from a number of conservatives

00:41:43.220 that they believe that this focus on covid might actually alienate that sort of centrist voter

00:41:50.340 because we have to acknowledge that for the last two years people have been fed a lot of fear and

00:41:55.780 there is a lot of um counter information that's going to need to get out there so that people can

00:42:00.980 put this to your experience into proper context but no one's doing that like no one in the mainstream

00:42:07.460 uh political role no one none of our chief medical officers of health none of our our

00:42:11.940 political leaders are trying to to make some of the arguments that you are to bring people along

00:42:17.300 and so i'm curious to know your thoughts now do you think that that we're going to be able to

00:42:22.180 bridge that divide this quickly i feel i feel like when you go into some of the big cities as

00:42:27.460 a for instance so people are still scared people are still wearing masks people are still thinking

00:42:33.060 that they if they get exposed to koba that they're going to have a very very high likelihood of a

00:42:38.180 terrible outcome and i wonder what needs to be done to try to bridge that divide so that we can

00:42:44.020 all collectively move past it rather than constantly seeing the ping pong of politics

00:42:49.300 come into play when some new variant arises you've got a stream of medical doctors who

00:42:54.740 are calling for lockdowns and harsh measures how do we get past that

00:42:58.180 well to start we allow for what i believe can cure almost everything that ails our democracy today

00:43:10.120 and that's free expression and and i'm sure we'll get into that but fairness in the narrative

00:43:19.620 objectivity and and balance in the media the ability of regulated health professionals

00:43:27.700 to speak freely instead of being gagged and threatened by their professional colleges

00:43:33.320 into submission and silence.

00:43:39.760 I love Danielle.

00:43:42.080 I think that there are many more people, many more Canadians are now coming around

00:43:46.940 and appreciate that more than half the country had Omicron in the last couple of months.

00:43:53.240 and also they have now seen the goalpost move too many times

00:43:59.680 because it started with two weeks to flatten the curve,

00:44:03.040 then we need to stay home, be safe,

00:44:06.100 then until we're all vaccinated,

00:44:08.020 then until we're at 70%,

00:44:09.320 then until we're at 90% in Ontario,

00:44:12.660 then until, and yet still we found ourselves

00:44:17.380 back in lockdown in January.

00:44:18.700 So I think that many Canadians that genuinely wanted to believe that this public health exercise made sense and thought that we are going to go back to the things that we enjoy doing, as they called it, have realized that, no, there was, in fact, a moving of the goalpost again.

00:44:42.600 And now here we are two years later.

00:44:46.440 so why not just back Pierre Polyev because Pierre has taken a strong position with the I think in

00:44:55.240 some ways the freedom convoys snapped people out of it maybe there was a recognition that it wasn't

00:45:00.860 to use the prime minister's term fringe minority that it actually was a very substantial a number

00:45:06.620 of people who had really just said enough is enough and I'm wondering why not just support

00:45:11.620 why not just support pierre in this leadership race so i like all of my opponents um

00:45:18.280 i mean i gotta be diplomatic here um i think that all of them would make for a better prime

00:45:26.980 minister than justin trudeau um hopefully even john um but i would say the following i like pierre

00:45:35.260 he's articulate and he's intelligent and um like he stands on the economy um

00:45:42.460 i would say what distinguishes me from all of my friends that are contesting this nomination

00:45:49.020 that um i am willing to stand for what i believe and and do what i believe is right

00:45:55.820 even when it's deeply unpopular i stood up against cancel culture left-wing radical ideology

00:46:03.980 the twitter mob and essentially the political system in this country uh in january 2021 when

00:46:10.860 you could not uh have when people did not have the courage to tell their best friend that their kid

00:46:15.580 is depressed because there would seem to be a grandma killer but i've always felt that i serve

00:46:22.300 my constituents first and i serve canadians and that means that i have to be not just honest with

00:46:28.700 myself but honest with them and and that's what i hope to bring to the conservative party of canada

00:46:35.820 as well well let's then talk you know you've mentioned what distinguishes you from pierre

00:46:41.500 why don't we just do that with some of the other candidates because i'm curious to know what what

00:46:45.420 you like and about what the what they are speaking about what they stand for and where you'd be

00:46:49.980 different let's go to the next one jean christian what what uh what do you how how would you be

00:46:56.860 different than him uh so look i i appreciate jean charay's stance on healthcare that we can

00:47:05.900 um we should be encouraging uh more supply even uh by private delivery but still within the framework

00:47:15.260 of the canada health act uh government cannot keep up with demand and so we need to encourage

00:47:21.020 other supply options while still paying for those options as government i would certainly

00:47:26.380 be distinguished in that i oppose the carbon tax very very strenuously um

00:47:33.820 it i don't believe that taxing sally 10 bucks on on a tank of gas or on everything that she buys

00:47:41.820 is going to potentially change the climate canada is responsible for one and a half percent of all

00:47:47.340 global emissions even if you eliminated all of them there's no clarity that it would actually

00:47:51.900 make any material difference. I think that Canada Natural Resources are a blessing, and

00:47:58.340 I'm sure we'll talk about that in a moment, but especially given how unaffordable life is,

00:48:03.520 I am against the carbon tax, and that certainly differentiates me from Jeanne. 0.89

00:48:07.860 Okay, and Leslyn Lewis, she was a pretty popular candidate in Alberta during the last round. 0.83

00:48:13.040 What do you like about her platform and what makes you different?

00:48:15.940 I like Leslyn a lot. She brings a great perspective. Well, I'm biased towards her

00:48:24.800 because she's also a lawyer. But I would say, look, she also has a PhD in environmental studies

00:48:33.580 and the law, I believe. And so she can speak about the environment credibly. She's also a

00:48:41.060 canadian and and that's another thing that we have in common that i that i think that brings a very

00:48:46.020 unique perspective uh to to leadership in canada we we know what what a blessing this country is

00:48:53.780 and um i would so a clear point of distinguishment between myself and less than our housing platforms

00:49:02.100 leslin proposes uh we have a similar proposal um my proposal is that we first of all make it more

00:49:09.540 accessible so i will double the first time home buyers exemption um i think that the best way to

00:49:19.380 of new communities is um transportation and and highways we stop build we stop building in this

00:49:26.740 country we don't have the stomach to build anything anymore uh but i will bring the political courage

00:49:31.380 to cut through the politics and build and finally and this is where our point of distinction is uh

00:49:36.420 i will propose that we divest ourselves of all federal lands that are not protected um encouraging

00:49:43.940 or or putting out more supply of land will decrease uh housing prices uh dr lewis uh

00:49:50.260 proposes something similar that she will also divest ourselves of all crown land but she

00:49:56.340 proposes that the market value or the sale price by which she will divest ourselves of crown land

00:50:02.260 will be zero she proposes to give away crown land to developers for zero dollars that's not something

00:50:09.700 i agree with we're the taxpayer on that land and we should have some sort of remuneration uh for

00:50:16.180 that and that would be like giving uh the squirrels the nuts before winter i guess to go back to one

00:50:21.700 of your earlier analogies well i'm uh giving developers for uh developers free land is not

00:50:29.300 the same as giving uh free uh free nuts to squirrels but i think that uh we should be able

00:50:37.220 to insist on a decent market value for the taxpayer this is not owned by government it's

00:50:45.380 owned by us and i think that um we we need to insist that we derive some value for the taxpayer

00:50:53.860 it would also help us address the 1.3 trillion dollar credit card that all canadians carry

00:51:01.460 completely okay so you mentioned that patrick brown actually recruited you into politics so

00:51:07.380 i mean it'd be very easy i think for you to to back him support him and perhaps run for him at

00:51:12.340 the but i'll be at the federal level this time so so tell me why why wouldn't you do that

00:51:17.220 so again i'll start with what i like about candidates patrick's a hard worker and he knows

00:51:25.700 how to reach out to new communities and and that is something that i certainly pick up from him and

00:51:31.060 that is something that uh i appreciated in him as a candidate in 2015 is that he went out to a lot

00:51:36.500 of new canadians and and appealed to them and and especially conservatives that live in urban centers

00:51:42.740 and and i think that this is something that is very very important for the conservative party

00:51:46.900 Patrick and I fundamentally disagree on a number of things.

00:51:50.620 Patrick did support the carbon tax after he did not support it in the leadership.

00:51:55.320 In the leadership, he was against the carbon tax.

00:51:57.000 He then changed his position on that.

00:52:00.660 There were, in fact, a number of items, irrespective of how you judge,

00:52:05.680 whether you agree or disagree with Patrick, that I believe that his opinion has evolved on within six months or so.

00:52:14.900 And I think that's actually very dangerous for the Conservative Party. You should not be running to the right during the leadership and then pivoting to the left during the general election.

00:52:25.220 You lose credibility with the Conservative movement and you open yourself to the attack as a flip-flopper to the Liberals, which is what they've done very successfully to Eran O'Toole.

00:52:37.460 And so what I'd say is that's certainly a point of disagreement.

00:52:44.180 I think that we need to stick to our principles, to who we are.

00:52:46.880 I'm against the carbon tax.

00:52:48.780 During the debate two days ago, Patrick said that he supported a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which I thought was an astonishing suggestion.

00:52:57.060 That means you have to be willing to shoot Russian aircraft, which could have disastrous implication for the stability of our world and for the welfare of our country.

00:53:10.460 I am not in favor of potentially getting involved in a military exercise in Europe.

00:53:19.100 I think that we have to insist on getting the parties to a ceasefire.

00:53:27.060 Well, let's talk a bit more then about national defense if we can, because a lot of these issues are interconnected now.

00:53:32.440 And I saw how some of this debate unfolded about what do we do about natural resources and the environment and our defense policy.

00:53:40.160 And because of the invasion of Ukraine, I think all of these are now intermingled that part of our defense strategy and our foreign aid strategy is interconnected with our ability to provide secure energy to the world as well.

00:53:55.840 And so let's talk first about national defense.

00:53:58.740 What should be our approach on policy?

00:54:01.340 So first of all, we are significantly below our NATO commitment.

00:54:06.920 In order for us to meet our NATO commitment, we need to increase defense spending by 50%.

00:54:11.940 I'm certainly going to do that.

00:54:14.200 I think that if we're going to ask Canadian men and women to risk their lives,

00:54:19.640 then they should be best equipped and they should be well trained.

00:54:23.160 And that also goes for our veterans.

00:54:25.320 And there may be a separate question on Canada's veterans who have essentially become an afterthought under Justin Trudeau by way of housing, by way of mental health supports, something that I deem unacceptable.

00:54:39.120 But despite the fact that I'm going to beef up Canada's military, meet our defense spending, I would propose that while I recognize Canada's historic role as a peacekeeper, probably in the last 50 years or so, I think that we have so many challenges at home, starting with Canada's democracy, that leads many nations to actually question our country's credibility.

00:55:05.900 And I don't think that we can restore Canada's standing and credibility around the world

00:55:13.340 until we restore Canada's democracy and some of the key challenges that are facing us at this time.

00:55:18.380 I want to give you a chance. You said you want to talk about veterans. I used to go to a fundraiser

00:55:22.700 for Beit Ha'alchem and they supported veterans services in Israel. And it struck me that in

00:55:29.260 Israel, they do have an amazing support system for those who've been injured in military action.

00:55:34.140 and i i wonder what your what your thoughts are on that

00:55:39.340 we we have a backward system when it comes to canada's veterans uh you know we're we're uh

00:55:46.300 we're a generation of canadians that that has many veterans among them and those are veterans of the

00:55:51.420 afghanistan war and i feel that by by and large they have been neglected and forgotten

00:55:58.700 For some reason, they're not even qualified as war service veterans that denies them.

00:56:09.360 My understanding is certain benefits, but I want to look into this again.

00:56:14.140 25,000 Canadian boys and girls served in Afghanistan under very, very difficult circumstances.

00:56:19.940 158 of them did not come home.

00:56:21.540 and um we we do not uh afford them with the same degree of deference as as we are as we recognize

00:56:30.600 appropriately our world war ii and world war i veterans and and i think maybe the cause for it

00:56:36.220 is politics but they should be immune from the politics they have served their country

00:56:40.560 and and beyond the fact that we are failing them by way of housing and failing them by way of

00:56:48.420 mental health supports and employment opportunities many of them come back with ptsd and and they may

00:56:54.500 have challenges reintegrating into society um beyond that i think we disappointed many of them

00:57:02.820 when uh in in 2021 the prime minister and and western allies have deserted our allies on the

00:57:13.300 ground when when we had um afghan nationals and others that were working with canada's armed

00:57:21.620 forces that were helping us on the ground that were saving canadian lives on the ground and and

00:57:28.500 we left them to potentially die or to consequences under the taliban that is inexcusable and that is

00:57:36.740 an insult to every single soldier canadian soldier that served in afghanistan um shame on

00:57:43.780 justin trudeau and and the way he he handled the ending of this so then let's talk about this

00:57:50.180 broader discussion that we're now having because we've gone down this path where it looks like the

00:57:54.260 federal government has been wanting to phase out oil and natural gas development i don't know that

00:57:58.820 we've turned a corner on that even but i think that there's been a recalibration now that we've

00:58:03.540 seen the danger for our our allies in europe of relying on a source of for for their uh

00:58:11.940 vital energy needs from from russia so do you think that there has been a recalibration what

00:58:17.460 would you do differently on resource development

00:58:22.340 danielle i think that canada's natural resources are a blessing and i'm not going to let oil and

00:58:28.340 gas be cancelled and and they're not just great for strategic interests as you're saying

00:58:33.140 and and our economic bottom line um given the mess we're inheriting from liberals but also the

00:58:38.900 planet because canadians can derive and produce energy cleaner and safer than any nation in the

00:58:46.900 world and so i i look forward to um hopefully turning canada into the natural resources

00:58:56.500 superpower that we ought to be and and that also means diversifying our our energy um capability

00:59:04.020 whether it's by way of refineries um in refining capacity by encouraging the development of natural

00:59:11.780 gas uh small module reactors nuclear all of it we we have an insatiable appetite for energy uh

00:59:19.860 mining is something that i'm very very interested in there is a remarkable appetite for minerals

00:59:25.060 and precious metals around the world.

00:59:26.720 Canada is blessed with them,

00:59:27.900 and it's good for our northern communities,

00:59:29.640 our remote communities, our indigenous communities.

00:59:32.160 We should embrace our natural resource blessing

00:59:36.920 instead of shooting ourselves in the foot,

00:59:39.580 importing foreign oil,

00:59:41.920 and thwarting Canadian opportunity. 0.89

00:59:45.840 I'm very much in favor of letting Canadians work. 0.73

00:59:50.580 Let people work.

00:59:51.600 It's such a simple and important proposition.

00:59:55.060 okay so your message would definitely resonate in alberta but you're running in toronto and

01:00:02.020 i've spent some time in toronto and i know some of the young people in toronto will put things

01:00:07.300 um other things first like climate change they're very concerned as well about indigenous

01:00:11.860 reconciliation many first nations are posed to projects so how do you uh when you're saying

01:00:17.060 that you have to say the same thing in all parts of the of the country how then do you take the

01:00:23.140 message that you just said on natural resources and win in urban toronto win with with young people

01:00:29.380 who are concerned about about climate change and and first nations issues you can speak about all

01:00:35.860 those issues and you can speak from the heart and you can even disagree on some issues but at the

01:00:41.060 same time we can start talking about two urban voters and two young voters about issues that

01:00:47.060 effect and are important to them i represented a toronto riding and i will potentially do so again

01:00:54.580 and i i think that many values the conservative party is talking about or should be talking about

01:00:59.940 right now may appeal to to those that live in the cities and and that's another thing we should not

01:01:05.380 be afraid to speak to to urban canadians and young canadians even though i know that we have this

01:01:11.060 tendency to you know to to appeal to rural communities and talk a lot about the north but

01:01:16.660 we need to to go to where canadians uh live as well and and and that includes the cities so i've

01:01:23.620 just discussed housing with you a couple of minutes ago uh they're very very concerned

01:01:27.540 about housing and i'm not willing to give up on canadian dream of home ownership i would also

01:01:33.540 like to talk about infrastructure in the big cities we don't have the political stomach anymore

01:01:38.500 to build mass transit and that is perhaps one of the best things you can do not just for for the

01:01:44.660 value and and for their lifestyles uh but also for uh the uh improvement of of their communities

01:01:53.460 uh and and perhaps the environment as well um i am i will not be afraid to say that that we need

01:02:00.900 to talk about for instance a subway north toronto and and somehow the conservative party feels that

01:02:08.740 that's a taboo topic no we need to be winning the gta and and we need to be winning um all all

01:02:16.740 around uh our urban centers in canada and that means talking about issues that are important to

01:02:21.380 them let's let me just finish with one more sort of thorny issue of national unity is i understand

01:02:28.260 now how you would try to win in cities how you try to win in urban toronto how do you win in quebec

01:02:32.900 i found it interesting in the in the discussion on wednesday when the question of supply management

01:02:37.780 came up you were the only one who had a pretty strong position against supply management and

01:02:43.300 it's that strikes me that there's sort of uh the memory of the last federal uh conservative

01:02:49.380 leadership when maxine bernier also took a very strong position lost barely and it was pretty

01:02:56.100 clear that the determining factor was those dairy farmers who ended up buying boats are buying

01:03:02.500 memberships so that they could make sure they voted for his competitors you're taking a bit of

01:03:06.180 a risk being so so staunch on that so i imagine that you must have some other idea about how

01:03:11.060 you're going to win over quebec and quebecers what is it danielle i i will always be frank with you

01:03:18.020 and our viewers and the voters and i do not agree with supply management i don't believe that we

01:03:23.780 should be capping the amount of milk or dairy that farmers may produce why should we have central

01:03:30.500 politburo type planning where we actually spill um precious uh i mean canadians go to a grocery

01:03:40.740 store and and they see what's happening in the grocery store and when we talk about making life

01:03:45.220 in canada more affordable we should increase supply and at the same time when we talk about

01:03:49.540 rampant inflation and too many too much money chasing too little goods we should encourage the

01:03:54.180 creation of more goods um and so i'm and that also goes with my theme of letting people work

01:04:01.060 and but at the same time i appreciate that that many folks have planned for supply management

01:04:07.300 they own quotas they own concessions and we need to figure out a way to wean ourselves

01:04:12.580 uh off that um i hope to do so uh fairly fairly quickly but i appreciate that we can't just cut

01:04:20.580 it that would be essentially taking someone's property away um we we will figure out a way

01:04:25.940 whether it's an aggressive amortization schedule whether it's perhaps figuring out some sort of

01:04:30.980 compensation or some sort of uh buyout option uh there are there's no shortage of options

01:04:38.500 but the concept itself where we prevent canadians from producing and therefore increasing artificially

01:04:45.940 um the price that's something that i find uh just just not sensible and unwarranted in our country

01:04:54.100 by way of quebec look matters that matter to the quebecers are are the same that matter to canadians

01:05:00.500 economic opportunity uh erosion of democracy uh quebec has experienced a remarkable uh erosion

01:05:07.460 of democracy and and i'm that is the primary thing that i hope we we get to speak about as well

01:05:13.940 quebec experienced a very difficult lockdown montreal was under curfew despite the fact that

01:05:20.180 montreal's public health said that they do not did not wish for that curfew

01:05:26.260 we're also seeing erosion of democracy outside of the covet framework and that is that people

01:05:32.580 are forced to make a decision between their faith and their ability to put food on the table why is

01:05:39.140 it that i cannot be uh a high school teacher if i wear a kippah or i cannot be a police officer if

01:05:48.420 i'm sikh and i wear a turban um i can't police the streets of montreal that that is so offensive 0.83

01:05:55.860 to me in in this pluralistic beautiful multicultural nation that we are um now we see quebec uh trying

01:06:05.460 to pass a language law where you'd be precluded from communicating with a doctor in any language

01:06:11.380 other than french even if both of you are are speaking english better than you do your french

01:06:16.740 that is bad for care and to censor private conversations between people and and professionals

01:06:22.580 and people that's a part unheard of in our country uh we have a lot of challenges that i think many

01:06:28.980 quebecers are hoping the federal government to address and i intend to be to project moral

01:06:34.740 clarity on what i believe is right and that is preserving democratic rights of all quebecers

01:06:41.300 do you think conservatism can win i've had somebody to ask me that question about whether

01:06:46.660 or not there's a fundamental problem with conservatism because it is tradition and it is

01:06:52.180 slow moving and it isn't uh the alternative being progressive do you think it is the the right

01:06:58.020 ideology for where we're at as a country yes why um so first of all i think the radical left has

01:07:06.020 overplayed its hand with with covet um that is very very important and that people now many

01:07:12.020 canadians now appreciate that uh maybe they're not hearing um the complete picture uh and and maybe

01:07:19.940 government is not always acting in good faith um and and maybe collectivism and redistribution

01:07:28.740 is not the way to go but empowering people to make decisions over their own lives and and certainly

01:07:35.460 over their own health care choices we didn't even speak about passports and mandates um i i think

01:07:41.700 that many more canadians are waking up to the fact that perhaps government uh is not is not the answer

01:07:49.780 but their ability to make choices for themselves and for their families uh particularly in the way

01:07:55.860 they by the way they live by the way they protect themselves from from illness uh those those i

01:08:03.060 think are now brought to the forefront also i i think that this generation you know how during

01:08:11.140 the start of this interview i told you how i've always felt that this is the best country in the

01:08:15.300 world because you could succeed just by working hard and being nice to people i don't think that

01:08:18.820 that's the case anymore and many canadians and young canadians feel that way but they want

01:08:23.380 opportunity they want to work they want to buy a home they want to succeed they want to start

01:08:27.700 a business and and we we should push back we should push back against this suggestion

01:08:34.900 where we pit people against one another or or demonize a free enterprise or uh punish success

01:08:42.100 I think many young Canadians would like to work and succeed and we should tell them that we will

01:08:50.560 encourage them to do so. That's a great note to end on. I know there's lots more we could talk

01:08:54.820 about but I also know that your time is in very high demand. So thank you so much for spending

01:08:59.580 so much time with us today. I sure appreciate it. Daniela, I enjoyed it sincerely. Thank you for

01:09:03.980 having me. You bet. That was Roman Baber and of course he is a candidate for the leadership of

01:09:09.740 the Conservative Party of Canada. I am not sure how many of the series I will be able to do. I

01:09:15.320 had interviewed a couple of the candidates before in my old life, but I do know that Corey Morgan

01:09:20.300 is also in the process of interviewing all the candidates. I wanted to talk to Roman Babber

01:09:23.580 because I know that he is one of your favorites after having seen his performance in the last

01:09:28.140 couple of debates. So there's still a number of weeks to go before you have to buy your membership.

01:09:32.520 Membership cutoff is June the 3rd, and then the voting takes place over the course of summer. You

01:09:36.480 will have lots of opportunity to see these candidates again. If you want me to interview

01:09:40.460 another candidate, let me know and we will attempt to line it up. This has been the long

01:09:44.700 form interview of The Danielle Smith Show. I'm Danielle Smith.

Western Standard - May 15, 2022

Saturday Long Form with Roman Baber

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