Western Standard - The Cory Morgan Show April 19, 2021

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00:02:00.000 Good morning. Welcome to this Monday episode of the Corey Morgan Show, April 19th. I'm Corey

00:02:18.760 Morgan. We're in for a good one today. It's going to be a lot of federal issues. We've got Clinton

00:02:24.420 DeVoe coming back on along with Mark Petroni to, well, speak on our federal conservative party and

00:02:31.860 see what's going on. Is there any possible chance that we're not going to see a repeat of Justin

00:02:38.560 Trudeau after the next election whenever we get that chance to go to one? It's not looking terribly

00:02:43.300 promising. We'll be speaking to Spencer Fernando after that as well. And yeah, sort of a downbeat

00:02:50.780 show in that sense but we've got to try and figure out how we can possibly change things

00:02:56.940 in this country and we're not going along a good path going towards it start with though i should

00:03:01.980 mention we do have uh our sponsor Kyren's way and if you go to kyrensway.com it's a place that

00:03:09.660 provides uh help if you got stress anxiety issues things such as that non-pharmaceutical means to

00:03:16.460 deal with that uh good through dietary changes counseling more healthy approach to things

00:03:23.260 sometimes you know you don't necessarily need to go to your regular doctor where they can be prone

00:03:27.980 to over prescribing some medications you might not have needed in the first place her consultations

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00:03:36.860 outlet we rely on sponsors and subscriptions check out penny at kyronsway.com k-y-r-o-n-s-w-a-y.com

00:03:46.300 and uh support her she's helping us as well be sure to subscribe to the western standard online

00:03:52.940 some great news from dave naylor uh alexander dolly wall uh we've got mike demore on there

00:03:59.020 now putting out some great content and of course columns from people like myself and derek who go

00:04:04.220 on we need a subscription keeps us rolling keeps us producing content reporting to you because

00:04:08.940 the mainstream outlets aren't giving you what you need for coverage so that exciting stuff out of

00:04:15.180 of the way. Let's talk a little bit about, of course, COVID. We can't avoid it. The pushback

00:04:22.060 is coming. You know, we've seen some interesting rallies over the weekend. There was a huge one in

00:04:25.720 Calgary. Finally, it sounds like it was quite rational, which is something I've really been

00:04:29.640 hoping and looking to see more of. So I was very happy for that. And we've got other events coming

00:04:36.720 along. So people were going, by the way, to Chris Scott's restaurant in Mirror. They are still

00:04:41.560 attending there. He's still open and giving in seating service in defiance to Alberta health

00:04:45.460 orders. And we still have a rodeo coming up here. And Ty Northcott, who I've spoken about,

00:04:53.340 we're going to have him on next week, actually. And he's holding a rodeo at the end of the month.

00:04:58.420 It's going to be in Bowdoin. It's going to be a lot of fun. No more lockdowns rodeo

00:05:02.680 slash rally. And he's, yeah, Alberta health has already been sending the warnings and firing off

00:05:10.160 the shots and saying it's not going to happen. It is going to happen. Ty's dedicated to this.

00:05:15.780 Look him up online, Northcott Rodeos on Facebook. Find more information, buy tickets, come out. It'll

00:05:22.920 be a fun, absolute Alberta weekend. If Jason Kenney really wants to look bad, you think that

00:05:27.620 shutting down a church was bad, let's have the RCMP come out there and shut down a rodeo in Alberta

00:05:32.540 and see how well that works out for him. So moving on, speaking of crazed authoritarians, Doug Ford,

00:05:40.160 who has been at the forefront of cracking down on individual freedoms in the name of saving us all

00:05:46.760 from COVID, really went off his nut last week and came out with, well, border closures and

00:05:52.680 this empowerment of police to basically do street checks and stop people. It was just crazed

00:05:59.460 closing playgrounds, the whole works. And the police stood up and said, no, we're not doing

00:06:04.560 that. We are not doing that on your behalf. You can go and take care of them yourself.

00:06:10.160 And a number of areas where he got pushed back. He finally crossed the line and he has backtracked a bit. And what I do see as good as this in this is that people did push back and the state did respond. You see people, if we, you know, if we just stand up for ourselves, these politicians will respond to a reality check, at least at times, not every time, but sometimes.

00:06:31.900 So a promising thing out of Doug Ford and his Ontario mess and these border crossings being

00:06:37.640 set up between Manitoba and Ontario. I mean, who ever thought we'd see this? And I tell you,

00:06:41.860 as somebody who leads toward Western independence, maybe Doug's doing my job for me. Let's get those 0.99

00:06:46.160 borders set up and just kind of make them permanent and we'll move on from there. But as it stands,

00:06:50.080 anyways, the police aren't going to burst into people's workplaces and demand if they were

00:06:54.640 essential workers and non-essential as Doug seems to have initially wanted them to, which was really

00:06:58.880 crazy. They will back down when they push it too far. So let's look at some things too. You know,

00:07:04.320 again, I'm not one of those that denies COVID is out there. I'm not out there to question vaccines,

00:07:10.480 but we need to look at the real numbers that are going on. And because the fear mongers have

00:07:13.920 really been dominating the show. Now it's been what, six weeks since Texas opened up,

00:07:19.440 they had far fewer people vaccinated at that time than we do today. So that excuse is out

00:07:24.160 the window their cases dropped and continue to drop their deaths as we can see here 50 deaths

00:07:30.800 that's a state that has a population of what i believe almost 30 million people yes it's still

00:07:36.280 tragic 50 deaths but come on guys this is down to uh next to nothing there are far more things

00:07:41.500 taking out people in texas a lot faster than covid these days and what comes into question

00:07:46.120 is the efficacy of lockdowns how well do they actually work i mean how many examples do we

00:07:50.800 have to see some of the worst states still that are remaining with with infections and deaths

00:07:54.800 going on are the stronger lockdown states whether it's california or pennsylvania or new york

00:08:00.640 they're remaining with a pile of restrictions their infections are often higher than texas

00:08:05.180 their deaths are higher than texas so we've got factors here like i said the pandemic is real

00:08:10.180 it's a hazard but the it seems to me that the government can't really do a bloody thing about

00:08:15.520 it try as they might but i mean try to tell an authoritarian that the government can't be the

00:08:19.080 solution to a problem. It's a difficult task indeed. And here's the case count in Texas. Yeah,

00:08:24.740 new cases, 1,800. Again, out of, that's just cases, a vast, vast, vast majority of people

00:08:30.740 recover from out of near 29 million people. Here's Alberta right now. You know, there's

00:08:35.440 things of concern, okay? We've got 103 people in the ICU. We've got 450 in the hospital. Again,

00:08:41.380 we're a province of four and a half million people. This shouldn't be overwhelming our

00:08:45.040 health system. We want to watch it. We don't want to overwhelm it. I mean, it's a risk.

00:08:48.900 But realistically, the world is not ending here.

00:08:51.200 You know, we've had just over 2,000 people die.

00:08:53.360 And again, that's tragic.

00:08:54.480 But those deaths are down to next to nothing.

00:08:56.000 Some days we're getting zero deaths.

00:08:57.200 Some days we're getting one or two.

00:08:58.240 I believe there were three yesterday.

00:08:59.840 The average age of death is still 81 years old.

00:09:02.840 So the plague is not turning into the plague yet.

00:09:05.260 It's time to start taking our foot off the brake a little bit and letting this economy open up. 0.93

00:09:09.500 Let's get on to some other idiocy quickly before I move on to the guests here. 0.90

00:09:12.700 Since we're at it, the liberals are vowing to protect the French language. 0.98

00:09:16.060 Isn't that wonderful?

00:09:16.700 You know, the only people responsible for protecting the French language are French speakers. 0.81

00:09:20.500 That's it. 1.00

00:09:21.260 And hey, if they want to, good on them.

00:09:23.500 You know, and as Dave greatly wrote in the story, I mean, the census data shows French is fourth or fifth or maybe even sixth in Western provinces as a second language spoken.

00:09:31.840 You know, German, Cree, Punjabi, Cantonese, Mandarin, Filipino, they're all ahead of French.

00:09:37.640 And if we're going to be preserving other languages, and again, it's not the role of the government to do it anyways.

00:09:42.060 In the West, French is way down on our priority list.

00:09:45.320 But unfortunately, in our political system, the French are way up high on the priority list.

00:09:50.320 So we can look forward to perhaps some more bilingual regulations.

00:09:53.620 Maybe they'll make the French version on the back of the cereal box a little bigger or something. 1.00

00:09:58.000 All I know for sure is it's going to probably cost us more money, annoy us all the more.

00:10:02.340 And there's not a hell of a lot we can do about it for now.

00:10:04.180 But that's where they're moving along with things.

00:10:05.700 They're courting Quebec, of course, because an election will be coming this year at some point or another.

00:10:12.220 Here's something now, as we're getting our pipelines shut down in all directions.

00:10:17.500 You know, we didn't get social license through our carbon taxes.

00:10:19.800 That didn't happen.

00:10:20.960 It was a dream.

00:10:22.080 Keystone was shut down as soon as Biden got in.

00:10:24.680 Northern Gateway got shut down by Trudeau.

00:10:26.860 Energy East got shut down by Trudeau.

00:10:28.880 We regulated the McKenzie Valley pipeline to death.

00:10:32.020 I won't even fully blame that one on Trudeau.

00:10:33.860 That was prior to him.

00:10:34.780 But, you know, we're creative in the West.

00:10:36.860 We keep looking for new ways.

00:10:37.920 We keep finding new ways out.

00:10:38.940 and there's been proposals to get oil actually up to Churchill, whether it's through rail lines

00:10:44.060 and pipelines and things such as that. So what do we got now though? The activists, yeah, they're

00:10:48.020 coming after the Arctic. They're pushing Trudeau, they're pushing the liberal government to get more

00:10:51.320 tanker bans, to fight Arctic shipping, to make sure that we cannot export our product through

00:10:56.280 there. Venezuela and Saudi Arabia are responding uncertain with great happiness that they can keep

00:11:02.120 supplying petrochemical products to the world while Canada continues to kick itself in the balls 0.62

00:11:06.660 and stop ourselves from supplying our own products to ourselves.

00:11:10.660 So great things to look forward to. 1.00

00:11:13.040 Speaking of liberal imbeciles, I'll finish up with, yes, 1.00

00:11:16.020 and I do slaughter his name, Stephen Gabel. 1.00

00:11:18.300 He's our heritage minister. 0.99

00:11:19.780 You got to remember, this is typically a trash industry.

00:11:22.700 That's where, you know, they used to sideline Sheila Copps 0.99

00:11:24.680 to keep her out of trouble in the past. 0.88

00:11:26.160 But unfortunately, when you give them legislative power, 0.99

00:11:28.760 they can still do damage.

00:11:30.900 And in this case, he wants to come after our speech.

00:11:33.420 He wants to come after our ability to publish things

00:11:36.480 he wants to regulate the internet. I mean, authoritarians have hated the internet since

00:11:40.400 its inception. You know, people are communicating with each other without the control of the state.

00:11:45.060 It drives them mad. And what scares me with this is, look, he's saying, my job is to ensure

00:11:50.220 safety. You see, the state has discovered, as long as we can couch any violation of individual rights

00:11:57.500 with safety or public health, the public will take it. They'll roll over and take it. They'll

00:12:03.640 say well we'll suspend the charter for a while free association because it's for public safety

00:12:07.720 it's for public health in the states you notice biden was talking about with gun control he said

00:12:12.300 guns are a public health issue because they've learned with this pandemic wow we can suspend

00:12:16.520 all kinds of rights and get away with it as long as we call it a safety or public health issue

00:12:20.460 so yeah this legislation is going to come in to moderate our content on the internet yeah

00:12:25.320 you know they've managed to control a lot of the mainstream media that's in a hard way and in a

00:12:30.220 bad place these days through funding and such, but you know, places like the Western standard,

00:12:34.880 rebel media, true North, even press progress. If you, you know, the leftists as they are,

00:12:39.840 they're still squeaking out their information outside of the government's reach. And the

00:12:43.360 government is trying dearly to change that. And we better watch out. So in closing, we'll get

00:12:49.500 onto our subject of the real rant of the day. Yeah. So tool, Derek Fildebrand put this image

00:12:55.300 together, which, which is really quite good because it shows, okay, here's the news from

00:12:59.520 three weeks ago with Tory party says they'll kill the carbon tax if elected. O'Toole says the tax

00:13:04.640 threatens hundreds of thousands of jobs and puts Canada at a competitive disadvantage around the

00:13:09.060 world. And here is the same man, same O'Toole, not somebody sharing the name. It's not my

00:13:14.040 cousin-in-law, Kieran. This is Aaron O'Toole saying just three days ago, he's going to back

00:13:21.480 a $50 megaton carbon tax. And it might not be as bad as Trudeau's tax. Wow, that's quite a flip

00:13:30.780 flop. It is actually outrageous written on it. I mean, we are furious out here. And if people think

00:13:37.360 this is what's actually going to displace Trudeau, they're sadly mistaken. But that's where we are

00:13:43.040 now. So we've got this tax that goes contrary to what he was promising. I mean, he signed

00:13:47.380 a very distinct declaration with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation saying he was not going to

00:13:52.880 take part in carbon pricing in any form or means. I mean, there was no ambiguity he signed. And here

00:13:59.640 we are facing a carbon tax. And he's insulting us further by calling it this, I don't know,

00:14:05.660 pricing mechanism or something like that. It's a tax. I have no choice. The government's telling

00:14:11.320 me I have to pay it. I pay it. It's a tax. Don't try to polish a turd, O'Toole. At least call it

00:14:18.060 what it is. You've insulted us badly enough in flip-flopping. But I'm going to move on and let

00:14:21.860 some other people add in on that. So I really appreciate them joining today. We've got Mark

00:14:26.480 Petroni and Clinton DeVoe coming in from. Clinton's out in Halifax and Mark is in Ontario in

00:14:38.460 Mrs. Sawdye. That's right. Yeah, exactly. How are you doing? Oh, very good. Very good. I mean,

00:14:45.860 there's always lots of stuff to come up over the weekend to get my blood pressure up, keep me

00:14:49.020 rambling and ranting. And, and as I said, this is therapeutic for me, though, perhaps not so much

00:14:54.480 for other people. So spread the joy. So as I said, you know, I'll, I appreciate you guys again,

00:15:01.900 coming on. You've been on before and I'll start with Clinton because you really are a gentleman

00:15:06.940 who loves watching the polls, loves interpreting, loves looking at these sorts of things. And I know

00:15:11.740 it's a crystal ball. Polls can change pretty darn dramatically, but all the same, they're the best

00:15:15.900 tool we've got at any given time. And so we can't really read much into the carbon tax flip-flop

00:15:22.300 yet and how that's going to impact the polls, but we can certainly look at where they were leading

00:15:26.780 up to it. Maybe that explains why Aaron felt compelled to go completely contrary to his past

00:15:33.020 promises out of desperation because they're looking rather bleak these days what have you

00:15:37.740 seen clinton well uh so there was another poll that uh came out uh just coming into this weekend

00:15:45.260 actually it was late friday night early saturday morning and this continued the downward spiral

00:15:51.980 of the conservative party it's starting to look like a helicopter that's free falling out of the

00:15:56.860 sky quite frankly uh the numbers had tumbled to 24 this time uh and uh the liberals again are in

00:16:05.660 that majority territory they're up in that mid to high 30 range so uh the spread has increased

00:16:12.220 again some more so there's about an 11 point spread and what's more concerning for the

00:16:17.500 conservative party of canada and we've talked about this on your show in the past uh is the

00:16:23.660 regional breakdown uh what i found most fascinating was when examining the the prairies for example

00:16:31.660 uh and in this case they classify the prairies as manitoba and saskatchewan

00:16:37.660 uh the conservatives were 34 and the liberals were 31. so this tells us that the race is obviously

00:16:45.340 tightening up and the liberals are leading uh in british columbia so we see the liberals uh

00:16:54.220 you know with a 15 point lead in in ontario uh you know it's like a 20 point lead or something

00:17:02.060 maybe 25 points in quebec uh in atlantic canada it's going to be a blowout bc the liberals are

00:17:09.980 comfortably ahead so it's not looking good for Mr O'Toole and look I mean the reality is is that

00:17:18.300 there's been a trend since September of 2020 when Mr O'Toole first won the leadership within about

00:17:27.820 10 days of that he started to drift downwards in the polling data across a whole host of polling

00:17:34.460 firms and it looks like a lot of conservative mps are probably going to end up losing their jobs

00:17:42.140 in uh in ontario if not all of them most of them and it looks like uh the quebec caucus

00:17:50.220 is probably going to lose all of their jobs and it's increasingly looking more and more likely

00:17:56.140 that we're going to see more liberals being elected in alberta specifically in the greater

00:18:00.300 Edmonton area and perhaps a few in the Calgary area so things are not going

00:18:06.060 well no and so to get a perspective from another part of Canada with Mark

00:18:13.360 Petroni and and your show is 960 Mississauga I believe out there yeah

00:18:18.840 saga 960 a.m. Cory great to be a show today thank you for having me and we've

00:18:24.860 been talking this about this sort of thing on my show almost on a daily

00:18:27.660 basis. I think I was among the first, along with Clinton, to raise the issue around O'Toole not

00:18:34.620 being everything that he claimed to be. You'll recall he came out of the leadership contest,

00:18:40.360 having defeated the guy he claimed was the real Red Tory, Peter McKay. McKay, of course, claimed

00:18:46.460 that it was O'Toole who was the Red Tory and was secretly planning a carbon tax, if you'll recall.

00:18:53.560 call. I suspect there's a lot of O'Toole supporters now thinking that Peter McKay had a

00:18:57.920 point all along. That's all moot right now, as you know, Corey, because we now know who the real

00:19:02.760 carbon tax pusher was, and it was O'Toole all along. It was an interesting thing seeing a post

00:19:08.340 on Twitter this morning from Max Bernier saying, you know, it almost seems like O'Toole is trying

00:19:14.400 to help Justin Trudeau, you know, win his majority. Everything he seems to be doing

00:19:20.040 is aimed at or appears to be aimed at alienating longtime conservatives, people who believe in more

00:19:26.840 freedom, less regulation, lower tax, the kind of stuff that you and I love, more free speech, not

00:19:31.880 less like we're seeing pushed out of Stephen Gibeault right now. And so it just seems that

00:19:37.460 O'Toole is all in. I thought that maybe once the polls started to show, as Clinton pointed out,

00:19:43.940 that the Tories were headed for a shellacking in the upcoming election, that somehow O'Toole and

00:19:48.640 company would take a long hard look at their strategy and say you know what

00:19:52.000 something's not working maybe we should try something different but no O'Toole

00:19:56.360 now is doubling down and there he was on CTV on the weekend saying this isn't a

00:20:00.900 tax it's a it's a levy and we're not collecting any money the government's

00:20:05.080 not getting fat or rich off this no this is a being distributed amongst

00:20:09.520 Canadians and by the way those Canadians are gonna have to buy products that we

00:20:13.000 deem appropriate and so we have people saying wait a minute this tax appears to

00:20:17.800 even more onerous than the one that the liberals have had on the books because at least you get

00:20:24.280 some kind of a rebate and you get to decide how you spend that money but with O'Toole's it's like

00:20:29.520 oh no you have to focus your purchasing of these you know green points or whatever you saw the

00:20:34.900 loyalty points on certain products uh what is it bicycles is it uh electric cars whatever we don't

00:20:41.500 know yet. But this is pure folly on Mr. O'Toole's part. But they seem to be showing no signs,

00:20:48.460 Corey, at this point of changing direction. Can I just jump in, Corey, if that's all right,

00:20:54.440 in regards to one of Mark's points? Yeah. And I agree with him. In regards to this idea that

00:21:03.720 the conservative party of canada if it's lucky enough to form government that it will decide

00:21:11.800 for you what you are allowed to spend your money on through uh this uh carbon plan that they've

00:21:20.320 unveiled this carbon tax plan that they've unveiled i'm extremely uncomfortable with that

00:21:25.180 so to mark's point uh with the existing uh plan that's in place now with canada you know at the

00:21:32.200 of the year when you do your taxes you get a check for x amount of dollars back and you can buy a

00:21:38.280 toaster oven with it or you could buy a frying pan or whatever you want with it

00:21:43.560 i'm a little uncomfortable with the idea that government is going to decide for us what we can

00:21:50.120 spend that money on and what we can't spend that money on and the other issue i'm really concerned

00:21:55.160 about too is uh how expensive it's going to be to run a program like that and the size of the

00:22:02.120 bureaucracy that's going to be required and i have some other concerns as well uh around this notion

00:22:09.960 of um like can you like imagining how many businesses will be lobbying governments and

00:22:16.920 politicians on parliament hill to have their goods or items placed on this green purchase

00:22:24.440 list for lack of a better description uh i don't see this unfolding well and in fact i see this

00:22:31.140 turning into a tremendous boondoggle so i just wanted to throw that in there well absolutely

00:22:38.160 that's something that stunned me with the amount of administration that would be required for this

00:22:43.260 system i mean he's spoken uh of it as being almost a savings account for people so okay you're going

00:22:49.260 to set up you know 30 million individual savings accounts you're going to track this you guys

00:22:53.620 have even gotten the phoenix payroll system for yourselves together with 10 years 15 years to work

00:22:57.940 on it uh the the firearms registry was a complete debacle and we feel that this government i mean

00:23:05.320 under any political party stride could manage to to put something together like this where yeah

00:23:10.780 they'll they'll collect some of our money and efficiently allow us to as as clinton said dole

00:23:14.920 out to selected suppliers of of green products which it's just unbelievable what they've taped

00:23:22.420 together here but what we're hearing from a lot of people too though or at least you know i'm

00:23:26.020 battling on twitter and from apologists is look the only way we can win this is to have a carbon

00:23:31.460 tax the the only way we're going to get central canadian votes is with a carbon tax and i i

00:23:36.180 understand the carbon tax is completely toxic in alberna the west that's a given but is there

00:23:41.060 some of that sentiment mark like is that what you do here because we do want to hear from ontario

00:23:45.140 like what is it there that needs to be done needs to be seen to make a conservative party palatable

00:23:50.260 to voters out that way. Well, let's get this straight, Corey. Andrew Scheer, who was nobody's

00:23:56.580 idea of Mr. Charisma, still managed to get about 34% of the popular vote in 2019. Now, granted,

00:24:03.220 Justin Trudeau is facing a slew of scandals, whether it's SNC-Lavalin. He had a rough first

00:24:13.560 term, but the Tories put out Scheer, who was nobody's idea of Mr. Excitement. He put forth a

00:24:19.400 fairly bland, albeit conservative, platform.

00:24:24.120 The problem with Scheer was he couldn't answer the question

00:24:26.560 of why it was that he had an American citizenship

00:24:29.220 or where exactly he stood on certain pro-life issues.

00:24:32.640 But other than that, he ran sort of a bland campaign

00:24:36.780 and he still managed to get 34%.

00:24:39.120 But the Tories looked at that and said,

00:24:40.960 well, that's not good enough.

00:24:42.420 We need to change everything.

00:24:44.320 We need to overhaul everything

00:24:45.760 in order to get us over the hump.

00:24:47.360 really another four points, and they would be pretty close to the same types of numbers that

00:24:54.400 Stephen Harper had in 2011. As we all know, we had a majority government. He really wasn't that

00:24:59.800 off, but that far off. But the Tories, in their wisdom, put a guy like O'Toole in there who has

00:25:05.560 made a lot of noise in the past about being Mr. Environment. And what did they get? A guy who was

00:25:11.200 determined to overhaul the whole... He threw the baby out with the bathwater. And so what did we

00:25:16.420 get we get numbers of the kinds that we're looking at that clinton just tabled and he's getting

00:25:21.700 annihilated here he's if there was an election today ontario would vote huge for justin trudeau

00:25:28.260 and so all for all his efforts and this guy o'toole he keeps talking about oh i'm

00:25:34.580 bobandville guy you know i'm ontario guy he's the guy who's supposed to deliver all those 905

00:25:39.700 seats he's getting slaughtered he's going to get obliterated in the 905 why because he's a he's a

00:25:45.540 dud candidate and people don't like a flip-flopper whether you're from ontario whether you're from 0.94

00:25:50.500 alberta or whether you're from nova scotia people don't like somebody who says one thing and does

00:25:55.220 another and this guy o'toole ran throughout the entire leadership campaign we all heard about how

00:26:00.420 he was going to be the true blue conservative he gets in and bang he does a 180 and all of a sudden

00:26:05.940 he's mr environment and tries to out liberal the liberals on a carbon tax and so people are saying

00:26:11.620 wait a minute if he stabbed his own members in the back cory you know we can't very well trust

00:26:16.500 them now can can we you know canadians who are not conservatives they could see what was going on

00:26:21.780 they know what o'tools stood for when he ran for the leadership of the conservative party of canada

00:26:26.900 they know what he said yeah a lot of them were tuned out but they caught you know in the periphery

00:26:31.540 they were aware of what he was talking about and they were aware of what prompted conservatives to

00:26:36.820 support him and a lot of them are saying you know what if this guy has no qualms about stabbing his

00:26:42.420 own members in the back well you know i don't think he's going to think twice about stabbing

00:26:45.860 the rest of us on the back they don't trust him at all corey and that is at the core of o-tool's

00:26:52.260 problem right now he's just not trusted not here in ontario and i dare say a good chunk of the

00:26:58.580 country swear yeah well just there's no doubt about it that you know credibility trust these

00:27:04.900 These things are far, far more important than actual policies.

00:27:08.220 They really are.

00:27:08.760 When a person votes, they vote with their gut.

00:27:10.660 I mean, wonks like us will go into policy and look at things like that.

00:27:13.860 But your average voter, they go by feel.

00:27:16.040 I mean, Rachel Notley did not win by her socialist policies in Alberta when she won.

00:27:20.520 She won because the leaders of the two conservative parties were souring Albertans on their attitudes and trust issues because some of the hijinks that had gone on before that election.

00:27:30.860 And as you said, now that O'Toole is without hesitation throwing his own supporters under the bus, why would anybody else trust him on anything? And in the West, when we're worried about pipelines, we're worried about C-69, we're worried about a great deal of things. We know, and I would say it, we know that O'Toole wouldn't hesitate for a second to go back on his promise to oppose those things too, if he thought it might serve him better somewhere else. So we can't trust him out here. We get taken for granted.

00:27:57.220 if you want to see what builds western separatists is not when liberals screw us we're used to that

00:28:01.680 it's when a conservative does it you know when brian mulrooney gave the cf-18 contract to a

00:28:07.280 quebec company rather than a manitoba one that's what created the reform party not what trudeau

00:28:12.360 was doing because we just it seems there's no end anymore there's no way out but i mean again

00:28:17.680 the big issue is climate i mean it's a big one in the polls it's important to a lot of people

00:28:22.680 more so, I believe, in the East and in Central Canada than in the West, or they feel more dearly

00:28:27.420 about it, it does have to be addressed because it's a soft spot for the Conservatives. So how

00:28:31.280 can the Conservatives, Clinton perhaps, you know, but people on the East Coast address it so they

00:28:35.860 don't have a big hole or gap in their policy? Well, I mean, so just a couple of things. I want

00:28:42.740 to sort of, I think a lot of people in, specifically in Alberta or Saskatchewan,

00:28:49.320 They may not realize, in fact, that Newfoundland's economy is actually more dependent on oil and gas development and oil and gas exploration than Saskatchewan or Alberta's economy is, in fact.

00:29:02.740 And if we look at another eastern province, like New Brunswick, which may come as a bit of a shock to some folks in the prairies, the largest refinery in Canada, and in fact the largest refinery on the eastern seaboard of North America,

00:29:19.320 Okay. So, you know, this carbon policy position that Mr. O'Toole has released is actually something that affects other regions of the country besides Alberta and Saskatchewan.

00:29:34.820 But in regards to your specific question, Corey, look, I, you know, as we've already discussed, the liberal position on the carbon tax, and I mean, I can't believe I'm saying it, but I am.

00:29:49.540 um you know if i'm issued my money at the end of the year for whatever i've spent on carbon

00:29:57.720 and i can turn around and buy what i want with it that's a much more uh consumer friendly option

00:30:07.340 if you will then uh the government's telling me the only way that you can get access to the money

00:30:14.720 that you spent in the previous year is by purchasing items from this pre-approved government

00:30:20.060 list. So I actually think that this carbon plan of Mr. O'Toole's is a is a strategic blunder

00:30:30.060 and I don't believe it's going to appeal to voters in the east nor do I believe it's going

00:30:39.020 would appeal to voters in central Canada. And we can see from the polling data that he's having

00:30:46.440 great difficulty sort of selling it in his Western base. Now, you know, it's deeper than Mr. O'Toole.

00:30:56.140 You know, we see members of the Conservative caucus like Dan Albus, for example, in Western

00:31:02.500 canada who was proudly saying this weekend that this is an excellent tool in order to change

00:31:10.580 people's behaviors in the marketplace you know we heard another conservative mp doing rounds of

00:31:19.140 media throughout the weekend tim upple sort of proudly boasting that the price of gasoline and

00:31:26.740 diesel is going to go up at the pumps uh under this plan so you know i think they're going to

00:31:33.460 have difficulty trying to sell this in all regions of the country and i think a better environmental

00:31:40.180 uh position would have been to you know as i've alluded to many many times uh you know on your

00:31:46.900 program and other programs across this country would have been to focus on things like um

00:31:53.460 You know, a jobs program that benefits the environment and the economy simultaneously.

00:31:59.760 So, for example, a national mining strategy where Canada would supply precious metals to the global EV market.

00:32:06.360 There's something that would benefit Alberta, would benefit Saskatchewan, Ontario, Newfoundland, Quebec, all regions of the country.

00:32:14.240 You know, the conservatives could have talked about how Manitoba can help export some of its hydroelectric power.

00:32:23.460 uh to saskatchewan and alberta and how bc could do the similar sorts of things

00:32:27.860 but instead of talking about that we're extremely fixated on a carbon tax

00:32:32.340 and uh and i think that the types of controls that they've that they want to place around this and

00:32:41.020 the fact that it's going to be so cumbersome when it comes to creating an account for 38 million

00:32:48.080 individual canadians and creating a list of items that those canadians are able to purchase

00:32:55.120 i think that's just going to turn people off so i i think that this this program was not well

00:33:00.320 thought out i think it was a a strategic blunder and i think politically it's going to benefit the

00:33:08.000 liberals uh not just in uh central and atlantic canada but i believe the liberals will benefit

00:33:14.000 in western canada from this as well yeah well and and uh you know when it comes to environmental

00:33:20.880 policy which is integral and people are concerned about the bottom line is or at least we would have

00:33:25.360 thought the fact was that o'toole made it very explicit very clear that whatever his policy was

00:33:30.880 was going to be it wasn't going to be carbon pricing it wasn't going to be cap and trade

00:33:34.560 it wasn't going to be one of those schemes and and he jumped right back into it i mean his time

00:33:39.120 to tell us then that a carbon tax is the only way to do it would have been when he ran for the

00:33:43.120 leadership or would have been at least been at the recent convention. But no, he's waited until now.

00:33:48.460 And the other thing is he isn't winning the hearts and minds of Canadians as it goes. But the other

00:33:53.460 thing he's got to try and win the support and love of is his own caucus. And we had numerous reports

00:33:58.880 of MPs who were caught completely flat-footed by this announcement. He didn't consult his own

00:34:03.720 caucus whatsoever on going forward with this. I can't imagine what the phone lines were like

00:34:09.020 for caucus assistance and so on, or people working in legislative offices after this bombshell got

00:34:15.840 dropped, particularly for Western MPs, even if O'Toole's found a couple who would come out and

00:34:20.640 try and parrot his lines for it. But what do you think, Mark, like this has done for caucus unity?

00:34:26.200 Because that's another very big area of threat for a leader. Yeah, the funny part is, or not so

00:34:30.860 funny, Corey, is that there was a caucus meeting just a day or two before, and Clinton knows about

00:34:35.760 that because there had been talk about the fact that O'Toole had had very little if any contact

00:34:43.360 face-to-face time and I realized that we're in a pandemic but there was no real one-on-one time

00:34:50.140 between O'Toole and the members of his caucus and months had passed and that was still the case so

00:34:56.420 you really got the sense that whatever O'Toole was doing it was within his own little inner circle

00:35:01.920 of people who were advising him, and the caucus was very much shut out. And boy, did that ever

00:35:07.740 come very clear on the week that he tabled this bombshell report, this climate plan,

00:35:16.200 just a day or two after he met with caucus, didn't say a word about it. You know, that was

00:35:20.760 a perfect opportunity right there to say, hey, look, this is coming down the pike. I'm going 0.74

00:35:24.820 to give you a few minutes to talk about it, to look it over. Tell me what you think, yay or nay,

00:35:30.040 but this is the direction we're going. There was none of that, Corey. You talk about thumbing your

00:35:36.300 nose at the people in your own caucus. That is a perfect example. And by the way, for all the talk

00:35:41.980 about Harper being this controlling guy who had his inner circle, and you know what? He did consult

00:35:48.440 with the people in his caucus. I know that for a fact. I mean, he may not have agreed with them,

00:35:53.180 and he may have been disdainful of some of them. Yeah, that's true. But at the end of the day,

00:35:57.820 he did give them an opportunity to talk about the various things that were coming down the pike

00:36:02.840 O'Toole did nothing of that kind and so for that alone I think caucus has every reason to be ticked

00:36:08.700 off this guy but I want to talk a little bit about this whole environmental policy of O'Toole's

00:36:14.140 because I don't want it I don't want to suggest that everything about what this guy has been

00:36:19.040 talking about is a absolute failure because one thing that he is talking about that suggests that

00:36:25.320 he is getting it right it is on the area and this is a story by the way that ran on the western

00:36:29.860 standard a day after flip-flopping on canada's carbon tax conservative leader leader erin o'toole

00:36:35.300 says the liberals should slap one on imports from china well that's absolutely right by the way that 0.91

00:36:40.080 story came from black locks reporter we should be taxing crap from china and giving them a carbon 0.92

00:36:45.480 tax and i'll tell you what else he should be going even further if we're going to be importing oil 0.98

00:36:50.980 from the Saudis, from the Nigerians, from Qatar, from Venezuela, and all these other reprobate 0.93

00:36:56.940 nations. We should be slapping a massive carbon tax on all those countries and saying, fine, 0.97

00:37:02.800 Quebec, you want to use oil from all these other countries rather than Quebec oil? Well,

00:37:06.460 you're going to pay for it because we're going to levy a massive carbon tax on all that oil

00:37:11.280 being imported from those other countries. You want Alberta oil? Great. Well, you approve

00:37:15.560 a pipeline you say okay to energy east and let's move more of that alberta oil more of that alberta

00:37:23.260 crude to markets in the east because it makes economic sense to do so if you're going to tax

00:37:29.400 the crap out of the imports i think in that regard o'toole was at least going in the right

00:37:35.220 direct direction you know punishing countries where they they don't have anywhere near the kind 0.74

00:37:40.900 of environmental measures and standards that we have here in Canada. Why are we just opening the

00:37:45.840 door to those products just because they're cheap? No, that's not good enough. We should be taxing

00:37:50.100 more from China, Chinese goods and other goods from countries that do not have anywhere near 0.99

00:37:56.240 the kind of standards that we have. So at least there, O'Toole is showing an indication that he's

00:38:01.120 going in the right direction. And I throw that out there only to make it clear that I'm not going to

00:38:06.840 just bash everything the guy says if he does do something right I will talk

00:38:10.960 about that Cory okay is it okay that I jump in Cory on a couple of points that

00:38:17.660 both you and Eric just mean yeah well on just to circle this back to the

00:38:22.560 unveiling of this policy that that you were mentioning and then Mark's point

00:38:27.660 about the lack of consultation with the conservative party caucus I mean that is

00:38:33.420 one of the big problems that I think not enough people really fully comprehend in

00:38:40.620 this case so 48 hours before this announcement mr. O'Toole was issuing

00:38:47.460 statements to his caucus that he was against carbon taxes and that's fine

00:38:54.720 whether someone is forward or against it but less than 48 hours later he says no

00:39:01.800 i'm in favor of this and so the problem i see for him to circle this back to the flip-flop discussion

00:39:09.080 is that it's one thing if someone has a different perspective or view that that what you or i may

00:39:14.280 have on policy directions but it's another thing where there's this sudden flip on policy direction

00:39:22.360 so if mr o'toole had been struggling with this issue let's say over the last 12 months

00:39:27.240 and, you know, had been consulting with different people

00:39:32.260 and sort of been talking about the possibilities of this,

00:39:36.380 well, then we could sit here and say,

00:39:38.020 I guess the guy's views have changed over time,

00:39:40.720 which we could sort of understand.

00:39:44.460 But the fact that it was a sudden shift like that in 48 hours,

00:39:51.140 you know, that just leaves a sour taste in the public

00:39:55.560 because the public views it, rightly so, as a flip-flop.

00:40:00.380 And, you know, that's a lot of these problems that Mr. O'Toole is having.

00:40:05.300 And, you know, yes, I know we like to pick on politicians, and rightly so in this case.

00:40:12.960 But, you know, the more politicians outright lie and flip-flop like this,

00:40:19.940 the more the public at large is going to be turned off.

00:40:25.360 And, you know, that's one of the big problems I see for Mr. O'Toole here.

00:40:31.100 Yeah, well, it's funny, you know, this is where I like these discussions, because ideas come up and concepts that I hadn't really thought of, because that's what I've been digging as, okay, well, people do accept we want to see more environmental improvement around the world and around here.

00:40:43.240 What are other ways we can do it?

00:40:44.860 And, you know, it's brilliant, I think, in a couple of ways it could be bundled with what O'Toole's doing with what you're talking about.

00:40:50.720 We've been Boy Scouts.

00:40:51.860 We know we're clean.

00:40:52.900 We know we have high standards.

00:40:54.220 We know we have high human rights standards and all of these things, you know, Trudeau likes to

00:41:00.140 virtue signal and say that he wants to help the world with the rights of women and people who

00:41:05.980 are being oppressed. Yet we are without question purchasing their products all the time. We're a

00:41:11.580 happy customer of all those things. We can be using mechanisms to try to encourage the other

00:41:17.080 guys to improve themselves. That way we can say we're being environmentalists. We're doing better.

00:41:21.540 our domestic industries you know if you guys want to start competing with ours bring your

00:41:25.260 environmental and human rights standards up to ours and then we'll start bringing your stuff in

00:41:28.960 but in the meantime yeah we're going to tax the crap out of it because you're bad players i i 1.00

00:41:33.220 really like that approach but you know china i mean that's a huge elephant in the room with 0.62

00:41:37.480 true you think it's his weakest spot yet o'toole is not pounding him on his relationship with china

00:41:43.180 there's a soft spot it seems that every leader has with that but why do you think that is mark

00:41:47.080 It flipped with O'Toole. If you'll remember early on, O'Toole and the Conservative Caucus was pushing hard to condemn China with this declaration, attacking the Uyghur situation in that country as far as, for lack of a better word, slave labor, forced labor camps, facilities that we know in Xinjiang province, I believe it is.

00:42:15.640 and these were plants that use labor that is subject to all sorts of draconian

00:42:24.520 torture we're hearing we're hearing all sorts of stories of the treatment of the yuger minorities

00:42:29.080 and other religious groups in china and so o'toole and company were at the forefront of pushing back

00:42:35.480 against this you'll remember what happened it was a massive slap on the face to the liberals because

00:42:41.400 even though they didn't defeat the declaration they didn't show up so caucus stayed out of it

00:42:46.520 the liberals stayed out of it so the declaration passed but oddly enough after that everything

00:42:52.840 flipped and uh o'toole hired of course the canadian vp of huawei and it really got people

00:43:00.680 wondering like where is this guy you know one minute he's he's calling out china for its uh

00:43:06.760 extremist policies as far as the treatment of minority groups is concerned. And next he's

00:43:12.980 hiring the Huawei guy. And by the way, I've heard precious little out of O'Toole recently

00:43:17.260 about whether he would ban Huawei 5G. I think it would be an excellent time for him 0.97

00:43:22.260 to clarify his position on where he stands on that. By the way, where is the decision on that?

00:43:27.560 How come this prime minister has yet to decide on the issue of Huawei? Maybe he's waiting for

00:43:35.460 yet another election. Maybe he's waiting to win that majority before he finally hands the keys of

00:43:40.360 the country over to China, lock, stock, and barrel. I don't know. I'm not sure what happened with O'Toole.

00:43:46.140 I'm not sure who got to him, what changed in his head, but something clearly changed after that

00:43:52.000 declaration. O'Toole was not the same guy after that. And you can speculate all you want, Corey,

00:43:58.500 about who or what got to O'Toole but something changed and it just wasn't the same guy well

00:44:06.600 just so I can jump in there right quick I look I agree with Merck on most of those points that

00:44:11.940 he's brought up and in fact you know when the vice president of of Huawei was hired the the

00:44:22.440 motion that the conservative party had and I don't recall the exact name of that motion but it was 0.81

00:44:28.480 essentially saying you know we don't want to have to deal with with Beijing and

00:44:36.520 and Huawei in the 5g network and all that kind of stuff and there was a big

00:44:41.200 petition that went up about this and of course that petition just sort of

00:44:47.240 magically disappeared within days of the hiring of the vice president of Huawei

00:44:52.980 And look, I also think that there's a problem in Canada.

00:44:57.720 You know, to your point, Corey, when it comes to China.

00:45:02.280 Look, I really believe that Canada, quite frankly, has done a very poor job of building and strengthening relations with India.

00:45:11.680 And the reason I think that's important is because over the next two decades, it's imperative that the global economy and that in all matters related to foreign affairs and those kinds of things, that the world have a counterbalance to the growing and accelerating influence that Beijing has.

00:45:40.520 And so from my perspective, India is the perfect place for us to build those relations, because India has a deep, rich understanding of a functioning legal system.

00:45:59.180 They pride themselves on being the world's largest democracy.

00:46:02.980 you know so there's a lot of things there where India could help you know not just Canada

00:46:14.440 but the global economy as a whole I just wanted to throw that out there oh absolutely and that's

00:46:20.100 another area with foreign you know affairs that Trudeau left a pretty wide opening I mean his

00:46:25.820 is now infamous India trip I mean he embarrassed Canada around the entire world and India is a

00:46:32.720 huge developing market uh you know i mean if anything we benefit from the number of professionals

00:46:38.480 that come from india here to canada to work or doctors and chemists or or even you know business

00:46:44.000 owners we should really be nurturing that relationship but we hear so little about india

00:46:49.680 and again this being beholden to china and some of it is is our our addiction to cheap consumer

00:46:54.880 products i mean there's a lot to change you can't just flick a light switch i mean i i understand

00:46:58.720 the hypocrisy of people to a degree. I mean, I remember the big scream, or at least for some

00:47:03.500 people was minimum wage hikes in Alberta, and they're pushing and pushing. And I owned a bar

00:47:07.520 back then, you know, just to give an analogy, but there's truth to it. And people said, it's a good

00:47:11.840 idea. Notley brought it in. They raised the wages. Well, I had to raise my prices. And you wouldn't

00:47:16.580 believe how quickly some people started bitching that I'd raise prices to cover for paying staff 1.00

00:47:21.220 more. I mean, they want to virtue signal, but they don't want to reach into their own wallet. So

00:47:25.200 if you suddenly can't go to Walmart and buy those cheap Chinese products, as much as people say

00:47:30.000 they're upset with China, they're going to get crabby about it. So I mean, it does take a bit

00:47:34.760 of work to wean ourselves or change that relationship with China. So I can see a bit 0.99

00:47:39.240 of the problems going on there with that. But it's a big black hole, I think that there's some

00:47:44.920 electoral opportunity for the conservatives if they would only grasp it. Well, look, one of the

00:47:52.240 things too i think uh just to kind of to go back to some earlier points uh in the first sort of

00:47:59.080 half of our discussion um i i think one of the the concerns or worries uh is going to be for

00:48:07.160 mr o'toole is going to be how many conservative mps are going to announce over the coming uh

00:48:14.820 perhaps days or maybe weeks, that they have decided not to seek re-election.

00:48:22.600 And, you know, that I think would be really problematic for Mr. O'Toole

00:48:27.780 because there are some members of Parliament from Ontario, you know, from BC,

00:48:35.720 from Atlantic Canada that have a lot of experience that have been in government in the past.

00:48:40.400 And if some of those individuals, like let's use Pierre Polyev as an example, you know, if Mr. Polyev examines the polling data and see sort of how poorly the Conservatives are going to do in this election, and, you know, he may look at that and go, wow, you know, the party's about to lose a lot of members of Parliament from the province of Ontario.

00:49:04.640 Maybe he decides to retire and go work in the private sector rather than stick around for, you know, a potential onslaught of bad news.

00:49:17.020 So, you know, these are some of the other, I think, problems that Mr. O'Toole is going to be facing over the coming days and weeks.

00:49:25.280 Yeah, absolutely. And there's some complexity. Somebody did mention, yeah, don't forget Trudeau stepping into the mess with the Indian farm protest over there.

00:49:32.500 I did that myself, by the way. I had a podcast, I had a guest on speaking to one side of that

00:49:38.880 protest and boy, I got some feedback and I'd gotten into, basically I was out of my depth.

00:49:44.060 I didn't know enough about it. I didn't really take a side, but I put one side on and it got

00:49:47.780 another side quite stirred up. Due to having worked managing Prasad Panda's campaigns a couple

00:49:53.180 of times, I'm quite well connected in the Indian community. So I had another guest come on and put

00:49:57.400 the other side out, but it's a very nuanced, complicated, and sensitive issue, which takes

00:50:03.460 some extremely careful diplomacy on the part of our federal leadership, no matter who is delving

00:50:09.260 into there. Again, India is a potential partner we need to develop and do well with, but we do have

00:50:14.980 to tread carefully. They are a very complicated country. So moving further, though, moving on

00:50:21.080 with caucus, and that's something I bring up because Danielle Smith has said it a number of

00:50:26.020 times. And she certainly got experience with it. She says, you know, the thing that will always

00:50:29.580 take a leader down in the end is when their caucus turns on them. That's when you've really hit the

00:50:34.540 wall, the end point. I mean, citizens only have so many things they can do. The press can only get

00:50:38.400 so upset. But when the caucus behind closed doors or even in the open turns on you, then you're up

00:50:42.980 the creek. Stockwell Day dealt with it. You know, Alison Redford got wiped out by an Ed Stelmac in

00:50:50.740 Alberta did. Stéphane Dion in the end. I mean, really, it's internal politics that pulls these

00:50:55.880 guys down. What do you think may happen, Mark, again, with disenchanted caucus members? I mean,

00:51:01.940 when they start fearing for their own jobs, you know, the loyalties change pretty quickly.

00:51:06.680 Yeah, I mean, those caucus revolts that you referred to, whether it was Alison Redford

00:51:10.720 or Stelmac or any of these people, that all happened in Alberta. Outside of Alberta,

00:51:17.620 it's a little different. I think I'm getting the sense, having lived in Alberta, the caucus

00:51:21.340 members in that province are probably a little faster to turn on their

00:51:25.580 leader than elsewhere. Here in Ontario, for instance, yeah, we've

00:51:29.700 seen some elements of a caucus revolt in Doug

00:51:33.500 Ford's caucus because people are really ticked off with the

00:51:37.660 level of draconian, you know, enforcement

00:51:41.820 if you want to call it, around the lockdowns. A lot of people don't like it.

00:51:45.620 so we've had a couple of people roman babber for instance and randy hillier other people sort of

00:51:50.020 pushed out of caucus others as well but no massive caucus revolt as of yet and so if it was going to

00:51:59.220 happen here i think it would already have happened as far as ford is concerned now o'toole's situation

00:52:06.260 it hasn't happened yet i mean we thought that after this um after the tabling of what he just

00:52:13.300 lay down in terms of his climate policy that there would be a lot more pushback than there has been

00:52:17.460 so far there hasn't i guess there's been some secret caucus meetings you know in alberta

00:52:22.100 there's another meeting in saskatchewan coming up the quebecers are not happy but so far what have

00:52:27.460 we seen we haven't seen anybody stand up and say no way jose we're not going to go along with it

00:52:31.780 i'm walking where is that we're not seeing it why because uh frankly the caucus members uh you know

00:52:39.780 tools caucus are not willing to stick their neck out now some of them may turn around and say you

00:52:44.100 know what i'm not going to run again having a look at the polls but thus far we're not seeing any kind

00:52:48.740 of indicators that we're going to get the sort of revolt that some of us would hope that there would

00:52:53.700 be because i think there's a lot of conservatives out there looking at what the party is doing and

00:52:57.540 thinking you know what this is no longer a conservative party this is now kind of a hybrid

00:53:02.900 you know, liberal, maybe center-right party of something, you know, aimed at trying to get

00:53:11.680 the GTA and other metropolitan areas to vote conservative next time around, and it's not

00:53:17.320 going to work. And so what's happening is some of them might be looking at the exit, thinking,

00:53:22.800 you know what, maybe I'll sit this one out. But we're not seeing any kind of revolt. And sadly,

00:53:27.440 I'm not sure that we are going to see one, Corey. Yeah, well, and whether or not a revolt

00:53:32.660 would be productive is difficult to tell.

00:53:37.520 I mean, if they did turn, if they came out,

00:53:39.600 Alberta, yeah, we're the ones that tend to be grouchy

00:53:41.700 and then chuck them out pretty hard and fast.

00:53:43.460 I mean, right now, Jason Kenney is just under siege

00:53:45.860 from a great number of his caucus members.

00:53:48.940 You know, they've put out a letter

00:53:49.860 completely contrary to his policy, 17 of them,

00:53:53.100 even the speaker himself,

00:53:54.820 which was, I think, actually a bit of an overstep

00:53:57.100 of his role, which is a separate discussion.

00:53:59.980 But if this happened, if somehow the pressure came out, because I think what some are waiting

00:54:04.720 for right now, too, when he's taken a huge gamble with this carbon tax move, this is a giant plank

00:54:10.960 on a potential election. And if it lands, I mean, there's still time now. They're doing internals

00:54:15.740 like crazy. You just know it. They're polling. They're checking. They're listening to the phone

00:54:19.420 calls. If this does land with a bad splat for them and they feel that the polls are going to

00:54:24.700 decline further and they do rip O'Toole out. Well, we got an election coming really soon one way or

00:54:30.360 another. Who would be there to replace them? How could they pull that off? I mean, that's part of

00:54:36.160 what's holding them together, I think, is that we could be heading to the polls. You know, there's a

00:54:40.020 budget this afternoon. Trudeau might throw an election budget to fall on it. How are they going

00:54:46.840 to fill that role in such short order? Well, quite frankly, they can't. They've gotten to the point

00:54:53.420 now that if an election is held sometime between now and June there really isn't anything that can

00:55:00.200 be done to avert the impending sinking here of the the good ship Tory so you know to your point

00:55:10.220 and to what we talked about earlier is that I think the signal to look for now is how many MPs

00:55:16.100 are going to announce that they're simply not running again even those that were had planned

00:55:21.560 to Ron that you know had agreed to be that the candidate I think a number of

00:55:27.020 those are going to change their minds like for example you know let's use

00:55:30.680 Michelle Rempelgarner just as one quick example you know here is a member of

00:55:35.660 Parliament that has essentially made a career in some ways of for herself

00:55:43.160 publicly attacking the ideas around the carbon tax I have a hard time believing

00:55:49.700 that a member of parliament like that is now going to go and campaign and doorknock and say no no we

00:55:55.300 need a carbon tax and this is important um you know i look to uh mr polyev as another example

00:56:02.500 so to your question you know who is there uh to pick up the pieces i don't see anybody quite

00:56:07.940 frankly that's there to pick up the pieces um i think that uh in you know i think the party is

00:56:17.380 already is already probably starting to think about a future leadership race and i know that

00:56:23.860 i've spoken to uh some of you know party staffers that work on the hill in ottawa and and people

00:56:31.620 that work in some offices in different parts of the country that they're already having those

00:56:36.740 discussions online in various in various communications groups so I don't know I

00:56:48.860 mean would mr. McKay consider coming back probably not I mean he was run out

00:56:53.480 of the party by by mr. O'Toole mr. Kenny is probably going to go down to defeat

00:56:59.860 in Alberta provincially to Rachel Notley and let's not forget that you know

00:57:06.380 mr. Kenny in was greatly responsible for for helping make mr. O'Toole the leader of the

00:57:15.320 Conservative Party you know there's that backroom chatter that's been going on for off and on for

00:57:23.060 a couple of years about the possibility of a return of Prime Minister Stephen Harper is that

00:57:28.580 a possibility I you know I don't know we know for certain that Prime Minister Trudeau has been

00:57:34.280 monitoring uh mr harper's uh social media channels i believe mark had mentioned uh

00:57:41.080 that mr trudeau had uh had tweeted something out to mr harper recently in regards to vaccinations

00:57:48.040 um so i i don't see uh you know a lot there and quite frankly uh you know the name that

00:57:56.280 comes up the most would be mr. Paulyev and if mr. Paulyev goes down to defeat

00:58:03.120 in Ontario because of bad polling because of mishandled communications

00:58:10.200 from the Conservative Party leaders office then suddenly mr. Paulyev is

00:58:14.640 damaged goods as well through kind of no fault of his own so the future doesn't

00:58:20.640 look promising and it'll be interesting just to see how many of these long-time

00:58:26.220 time conservative members of parliament go down to defeat in the next election.

00:58:31.440 Yeah, well, and something that does hold off a revolution in a sense is you don't have

00:58:35.240 any distinctive heir apparent waiting in the background right now. There's nobody rallying

00:58:40.400 the troops or able to rally the troops. So that's sort of a savior for O'Toole. Again,

00:58:45.780 with Twitter discussions, a lot of what I get people, which I think is a negative approach,

00:58:49.440 but it's still valid to a point as well. Where are you going to go? Who are you going to go to?

00:58:53.000 what else can you do and perhaps that's what we're left with going into this election so if that's

00:58:57.320 the case we we want to try to improve this product as much as we can on the way in hold on but corey

00:59:03.000 it's it's not like i'm sorry but let's let's it's time we call a spade a spade here i mean i know i

00:59:08.840 sound like a broken record but the reality is this is that since september of 2020 through we're now

00:59:15.320 heading into the month of may so you know we're up we're getting close to a year the polling data has

00:59:22.360 progressively gotten worse on the national numbers though the polling data has progressively gotten

00:59:29.080 worse in the the regional breakdown whether we're looking at british columbia whether we're looking

00:59:34.440 at the prairies whether we're looking at central canada or atlantic canada uh look i mean the

00:59:40.360 reality is is that it's time for conservative party members and activists to start planning

00:59:45.960 for the next leadership race uh because um you know mr o'toole uh

00:59:56.920 unfortunately helicopter navigator so this is a guy that has been trained you know how to deal

01:00:01.880 with emergency situations and uh he's in a helicopter right now that's free falling out of

01:00:07.640 of the sky. And so, you know, it's time for, uh, the members of the party, uh, to start looking

01:00:15.380 at, uh, who the next leader will be. Yeah. Well, that, that looking though, that race might be

01:00:21.520 after, unfortunately, Trudeau gets himself another majority government, uh, which will give the

01:00:27.440 conservatives four years to work on figuring that out. But boy, what a long, horrible four years

01:00:33.120 that might be, as I said, at the start of the show, I knew this was going to be kind of bleak

01:00:37.140 because there's just not a lot of shining lights.

01:00:38.520 I was hoping to spot some or expose some here,

01:00:41.520 but it's looking rough.

01:00:42.540 And there's a lot of disenchanted conservatives now

01:00:44.840 that they're getting frustrated, they're getting upset.

01:00:46.460 And when they see a bleak light,

01:00:47.940 personally, I think that's where we might see room

01:00:50.260 for people to throw votes towards alternative parties.

01:00:52.680 And we're not going to see the Maverick come in

01:00:55.000 and form opposition.

01:00:56.140 We're not going to see Maxime Bernier and the PPC

01:00:58.340 take a bunch of seats,

01:01:00.760 but they can very well be getting into a position

01:01:03.120 to make things even that much worse

01:01:04.920 for the O'Toole conservatives.

01:01:06.320 do you think Mark that Bernier can pull you be a spoiler in a number of seats out there in Ontario

01:01:11.640 because that's where there are a lot of swing seats that are sensitive well there are those

01:01:14.920 who think that he was a spoiler last time around there are some who think that Scheer would have

01:01:19.760 been the beneficiary of seven more seats if he didn't have to deal with Max Bernier and his PPC

01:01:26.280 party or PPC I mean that's obviously open to some speculation but I've heard that number

01:01:32.640 we've seen max's party uh double in terms of support just in the last couple of weeks

01:01:38.480 from about two percent to all of a sudden four percent now could that become eight percent or

01:01:43.560 even ten percent it's not beyond the realm of possibility and and clinton would know that

01:01:48.400 because originally when the ppc first came out guess what they were polling double digits so

01:01:53.960 no they're not ready to set the world on fire but there are going to be a lot of conservatives who

01:01:59.260 looking around and going fine the conservative party of canada has decided they don't want to

01:02:03.340 be conservative anymore well i still am so if they want to fish around for liberal votes let them do

01:02:08.540 it i'm going to vote for a conservative party and if it's not going to be the cpc then it's got to

01:02:12.940 be somebody else whether it's a local libertarian or whether it's ppc or whether it's a maverick

01:02:19.100 party out west whoever it is i'm going to vote somebody who reflects my views on the world who

01:02:25.420 who believes in lower taxes not higher taxes who believes in more freedom keep your keep your hands

01:02:31.420 off the internet do not uh censor social media posts do not go down the road of chinese style

01:02:39.100 totalitarianism i love canada strong and free and if the cpc is not going to uh you know push those

01:02:46.940 types of policies then i'm not going to vote cpc i'm not going to vote for aaron o'toole just 0.87

01:02:51.500 because he's got a c on his forehead i don't give a rat's ass about that i want to look at the

01:02:56.140 policies what is the party offering and i'm going to vote for that individual and i think i mean 0.94

01:03:01.420 i'm not in any position tell anybody what to do in terms of their vote but in terms of myself i'm

01:03:07.420 going to look at each party at whatever each party is offering look carefully and say who reflects

01:03:13.740 my views better than every other one and if that party you know is polling three percent then so

01:03:20.540 be it i don't care you know maybe they're gonna get yeah maybe they're gonna get 20 votes well

01:03:26.060 i'll be i'll be vote number 21. stop voting strategically canadians because every time

01:03:31.100 that happens what are you stuck with you're stuck with the status quo stop voting strategically

01:03:36.380 vote for the party that best represents you so look i i just want to jump in there so uh

01:03:42.540 not specifically to to mark but just to this general point here so yeah look i think that uh

01:03:49.500 there is obviously a possibility that a western-based uh regional party like whether it's

01:03:57.020 maverick or something else uh has the ability to garner votes uh and would obviously create enough

01:04:06.460 potential enough vote splits in order to elect more liberals uh in alberta or potentially

01:04:13.260 manitoba than what would normally have been uh under this sort of worst case scenario that we're

01:04:19.020 looking at right now uh in regards to mr bernier i mean look the reality is mr bernier lacks uh

01:04:28.060 the judgment and lacks the work ethic uh to be successful in canadian politics and so

01:04:37.900 So, Mr. Bernier, to your point, Corey, I believe would act as a vote splitter in numerous

01:04:48.560 ridings in Ontario, which again would only benefit the Liberals.

01:04:54.180 And quite frankly, I don't think that the ideas espoused by Mr. Bernier are particularly

01:05:02.060 good for the conservative movement of Canada or for Canada in general.

01:05:07.280 We've talked about this in the past that, you know, Canada has an extremely low birth rate.

01:05:14.040 We have an incredibly fast aging population.

01:05:18.860 Then you combine that with the current death rate, which is kind of a depressing number, but, you know, it's a real number.

01:05:25.820 And you quickly realize that immigration is needed.

01:05:30.140 Otherwise, you know, our cities would eventually turn to towns and our towns would eventually turn to villages.

01:05:36.600 our villages would cease to exist and an example of that is just this last year

01:05:41.760 now I realize it was a COVID year so it was a unique set of circumstances but

01:05:46.140 Canada had its lowest growth in population in over a century now it

01:05:56.280 doesn't take many years like that to occur before you would grind your

01:06:01.200 economy to a stop so you know for those reasons mr. Bernie is probably really

01:06:06.660 happy he's probably enjoys being a spoiler and he probably enjoys the

01:06:12.400 attention that's being given to him because he will be a spoiler he won't

01:06:16.920 elect himself he's already lost twice he's gonna lose again a third time

01:06:22.960 becoming more and more irrelevant so this obviously the person who's smiling

01:06:29.600 the most in this situation is Mr. Trudeau, because Mr. Trudeau knows that that the Conservative

01:06:36.600 Party is is not really a legitimate opposition and is not really vying to be government.

01:06:45.520 And Mr. Trudeau is smiling, knowing that there are these other what I like to call fringe

01:06:50.860 parties, for lack of a better word, whether it's the separatist parties in the prairies

01:06:57.880 or it's Mr. Bernier in other parts of the country that are going to work to Trudeau's benefit.

01:07:04.760 So it's sad, but that's how I view it. Yeah, well, it's unfortunate that we don't have almost

01:07:11.500 a more Republican system where I could vote for my local member of parliament, who I quite like,

01:07:16.420 but not have to support the leader of that party who I'm really having some difficulties in

01:07:20.200 considering support. You can strategically balance votes a little more differently there.

01:07:24.500 But things can change. They do change quickly. It's happened before. I mean, there's different factors. But I look back to when Kim Campbell came into the election after Mulroney had the highest majority in Canadian history, ran a horrifically bad campaign, scandal-ridden, made fun of Chrétien's Bell's policy. It was just a disaster.

01:07:45.000 Now, the other factors were there was the Reform Party.

01:07:49.620 There was the surging Bloc Quebecois at that time.

01:07:52.360 There were a few things, but no pundit going into the election was going to predict that they were going to end up with two seats in the House of Commons after that.

01:08:00.080 Like it just completely collapsed.

01:08:02.800 Do you think, Mark, is there any situation where the Liberals, though?

01:08:05.260 I mean, if anything, I've underestimated Justin Trudeau.

01:08:08.180 There's something I've been wrong with over the years. 1.00

01:08:10.160 I mean, I've dismissed him as an imbecile. 1.00

01:08:12.860 he certainly does do some stupid things, but he has gotten better. He's gotten stronger. He speaks 1.00

01:08:19.020 more clearly. He's got to be doing some degree of half-decent management in there because those

01:08:23.080 liberals will eat their own as well if they smell enough weakness. I mean, he's no cerebral genius

01:08:28.560 by any means, but he's strong. He's a force to be reckoned with, or at least his party is.

01:08:35.760 Is there a way that that liberal house of cards can collapse?

01:08:38.080 so a force that you reckon with cory he's a laughing stock let's get this out i mean the

01:08:43.740 guy's a global laughing stock and you know maybe it's not a case of overest or underestimating

01:08:51.200 trudeau as it is of overestimating the conservative party of canada and its ability to field

01:08:56.420 candidates that can win and we've had two duds in a row yeah we've had andrew shear and now

01:09:01.940 we've got aaron o'toole i mean one is worse than the other it's ridiculous if they had had a

01:09:08.060 decent candidate, a good, let's say if they had a good candidate in 2019, you know, you know,

01:09:15.060 Justin Trudeau would be smoking pot full time, you know, doing, you know, he'd go back to being

01:09:19.820 a drama teacher. This is not a force to be reckoned with. He is a weak, he is a stupid

01:09:24.780 individual. He is incredibly incompetent. You know, all you have to do is run down his handling 1.00

01:09:30.320 of foreign relations, his handling of the vaccines. The only thing I'll give him credit

01:09:35.480 for is an ability to have a certain level of charm that some people find endearing i for one

01:09:40.760 do not find any of it endearing i think it's an absolute disgrace this guy is a complete you know

01:09:46.520 disaster as a prime minister so you know the idea that somehow you know he's better than we thought

01:09:52.280 now i'm not buying that for a minute i want to give you a bit of good news out of this thing

01:09:55.880 because you're looking for a silver lining cory i'm going to give you one i'm going to give you

01:09:59.640 one this is it because once justin trudeau and his liberal party win their majority we finally

01:10:05.880 are going to start seeing i believe the real kind of fracturing in the country that frankly we need

01:10:11.880 in order to for the west to finally put forth a uh an agenda that works for them okay i'm not

01:10:18.300 rooting again i'm not rooting for the end of canada but the but i'm tired of the west getting 0.82

01:10:23.960 screwed over and yet not having the balls to stand up for itself and saying, you know, we're not 0.94

01:10:29.560 asking anymore. We're demanding. This is what we want and we are going to get it. You got six 0.99

01:10:34.900 months. We're going to have a referendum six months down the road. And if we don't get what

01:10:38.500 we want between now and then, that referendum is going to happen. And if Albertans decide or

01:10:42.980 people in Saskatchewan decide, the West decides that we're gone, then we are gone. So fix this

01:10:48.760 problem now you got six months the clock is ticking get it done and i'm talking pipelines

01:10:55.160 i'm talking get rid and getting rid of the pipe of the of the carbon tax i'm talking about getting 0.97

01:11:01.060 rid of stupid regulations that undermine our capacity to attract investment in this country 0.99

01:11:06.720 all the things that are destroying the middle class that are destroying our economy the west 1.00

01:11:11.180 is going to be in a position i believe finally to say we're putting our foot down it's over canada

01:11:18.060 you know we're done we're not going to do this anymore if you and the we and the east want uh

01:11:23.800 more communism go ahead you go ahead and have it you know wreck your own economy you want economic

01:11:28.920 rat poison keep electing justin trudeau until the cows come home we're not doing it anymore we're

01:11:34.200 done we're out of here that's what i think could happen if you get a strong liberal majority he's

01:11:40.500 the strong the word strong loosely here you know what i'm talking about numerically speaking not

01:11:45.060 strong as in good government but if you get that liberal majority and you know that is largely

01:11:51.220 eastern base which it always is then the west is finally i hope really hope to grow a pair and say

01:11:57.860 you know what people it's over we're done and if you're going to resort to brinkmanship then so be

01:12:02.980 it if you know you've got to take care of your own alberta has to start taking care of its own people

01:12:07.780 don't just whine anymore because nobody cares that hasn't worked stop asking and start demanding

01:12:13.860 that's my take on that so we gotta get you back out west mark

01:12:19.300 i uh look i have to jump in there so um i understand uh you know obviously the frustration

01:12:28.580 that people have um and look when it comes to some of these issues like there are some alternative

01:12:34.260 solutions that we've talked about so for example uh again not to sound like a broken record but

01:12:39.620 But instead of always talking about pipelines in Quebec, you know, an alternative would be let's look at Manitoba and the Hudson Bay.

01:12:46.360 So I just want to throw that out there on a on a slightly different note.

01:12:51.220 I mean, I don't view it as Alberta versus the East.

01:12:57.800 And the reason I argue this is because, look, the liberals are going to do well in Manitoba.

01:13:05.940 They're going to do well in British Columbia.

01:13:07.780 So it's not just a it's not a West versus the East in this case

01:13:11.760 And in fact, I would argue that the Liberals are gonna elect members of Parliament in Edmonton as well

01:13:17.580 and

01:13:19.380 You know in order to

01:13:21.380 In order the other reason look the other reason I think a referendum is a non-starter

01:13:28.460 You know besides the fact that I don't think it's workable

01:13:31.820 Why not come back to Clinton? No, I had two of them

01:13:36.360 now why is it why why can't alberta have one well so that's what i'm getting at so in order for

01:13:43.220 alberta to have a referendum uh you would need a government other than rachel notley who's most

01:13:49.300 likely going to form government in alberta uh so i don't see her calling for a referendum now grant

01:13:55.060 i'm not in alberta but i have a hard time believing that she would want to see that occur

01:13:59.000 and quite frankly if mr kenny is re-elected uh i don't believe for a minute that mr kenny would

01:14:06.180 call for a referendum either well i think all everything changes if the liberals win a majority

01:14:10.980 though clinton i think you have to agree with me on that point if if if it's a majority liberal

01:14:16.500 and they start ramming through more of this anti-western legislation then everything changes

01:14:23.700 then the mood out west changes all of a sudden notley does not win the next election and for

01:14:28.180 that matter maybe maybe jason kenny doesn't win it either you know when i'm what i'm saying is that

01:14:34.740 if you create certain conditions in this country that are intolerable absolutely 100 intolerable

01:14:41.380 to the west then that's when things do change the sentiment of the electorate changes so yeah

01:14:49.540 so just for me to jump in here so the other problem i have with this discussion of uh

01:14:56.740 of separatism or the breakup of canada whether it's from quebec or whether it's from uh parts

01:15:02.100 of western canada the other reason i believe it's a non-starter is because look we do have the

01:15:07.300 clarity act and i know people who are advocates of breaking up the country they sort of will dismiss

01:15:12.020 the clarity act but the reality is is that um is that if if a country is divisible then

01:15:21.060 a province is also divisible and the question becomes where does it end so in other words

01:15:26.740 let's say that under this mythical sort of idea that somehow a referendum

01:15:33.580 happens and Edmonton and Calgary vote to remain in Canada you know what happens

01:15:41.440 then what how do you feel I'm gonna jump in on that one and this is old turf for

01:15:46.780 me I mean I I led a separatist party when I was 29 I've heard every argument

01:15:50.380 for and against that one what I point to anyways is Switzerland which is a tiny

01:15:56.560 little country with an incredibly decentralized government with a great

01:16:01.500 deal of autonomy and independence among the cantons which divided up and it

01:16:06.520 actually functions very effectively in a number of ways but I mean you know

01:16:12.320 getting into the feasibility of secession and I'm certain to have shows

01:16:15.160 on it but that would be a whole show in itself but what we can I think kind of

01:16:22.300 agree on though and perhaps you you aren't quite seeing as much out here

01:16:25.540 though, is a Trudeau majority would be a catalyst for white hot rage in the West like we have not

01:16:32.180 seen in a long, long time. And when it comes to Jason Kenney, he's in a lot of risk with his

01:16:38.820 leadership. And if an MLA comes along and topples him, I think the way it's going to happen within

01:16:43.420 his own party, because we're still two years from an election, that'll be somebody in his own party

01:16:47.320 coming from a strong regionalist approach, because that's where Kenney has looked weak as well.

01:16:52.000 and we might suddenly see a very at least regionalist leader or premier coming in but

01:16:57.360 that's a lot of speculation we've mostly stuck to the federal ones for now and we've kind of run up

01:17:01.940 on the clock but i really appreciate it it was a fantastic chat as always guys uh and i just want

01:17:07.900 to go on i just want to call the record of saying i am on like mark i am in favor of of a united

01:17:15.700 canada so i under any circumstances want to see the country broken up i do too yeah so i do too

01:17:22.020 but but not at any cost this is where i may differ not unity at any cost at some point the west

01:17:29.140 has to say we're tired of getting screwed over it's over either you give us what we want or we're

01:17:35.940 out and you know it's it's no different than any marriage right where you got one spouse that's 0.80

01:17:42.500 been screwed over you know in a in a negative way and in a bad sense for years maybe they've been

01:17:49.780 beaten around maybe they've been subjected to all sorts of abuse at some point you wake up and you

01:17:54.900 go i'm done i'm sorry i'm out of here i love you i wish this would work i gave it my all i tried

01:18:02.420 everything i could to make it work it has failed it is time to call it a day now i i really hope

01:18:08.180 that that doesn't happen but alberta has to be yeah the deal is you have to be prepared to leave

01:18:14.820 in order to get what you want you can't just say no i'll never leave canada because then the rest

01:18:19.460 of the country says well then why should i accommodate you you understand you have to be

01:18:24.580 prepared to go nuclear if you absolutely have to that's just the nature of negotiations so that the

01:18:30.980 idea that jason kenny or anybody else in alberta says we're never going to go down that road well

01:18:35.940 Well, you're shooting yourself in the foot,

01:18:37.800 right off the bat.

01:18:39.020 Quebec never says that.

01:18:40.460 You never hear Quebec say,

01:18:41.640 we'll never separate ever, ever, ever.

01:18:43.620 They will never say that because they know

01:18:45.740 it's the one piece of leverage that they have

01:18:48.240 in order to continue getting what you want.

01:18:50.080 So I would tell my friends in Alberta,

01:18:52.080 learn from them and start applying it yourself.

01:18:54.940 That's all I got to say about it.

01:18:56.240 Okay, and in closing, where can we hear

01:18:58.380 and find more from you, Mark?

01:19:00.120 Saga 960, yeah, Saga 960.

01:19:02.200 And you can hear us, by the way,

01:19:04.180 you're out in alberta and i talk a lot about issues uh in that province as i do in bc and

01:19:10.820 manitoba and so forth and the east coast and clinton knows that uh we can you can listen to

01:19:15.860 us at saga960am.ca my show is on at 9 a.m eastern to 11 a.m eastern so that would be seven o'clock

01:19:26.740 alberta time mountain time great thanks mark i'm sure we will be talking again and in closing there

01:19:32.020 clinton uh voice from halifax there uh thanks again for coming on it's always appreciated and

01:19:38.180 where can we see a little more of what you're up to well right on the screen you can see my twitter

01:19:42.980 handles right there and uh you can hear me on uh i'm a guest occasionally on mark show we talk

01:19:49.380 about politics and uh you know issues of the day occurring around canada um and uh i i write

01:19:57.780 articles and stuff like that and i show up in newspapers so you can follow me on twitter and

01:20:02.820 keep up to what i'm saying or doing on a daily basis there excellent well thank you both very

01:20:09.140 much another great show i really appreciate when you come on and bring different regional

01:20:12.900 perspectives i mean we're of similar political mindset but we are in different areas and and

01:20:17.060 there's different priorities so i will uh let you guys go and i'm certain we will be talking again

01:20:23.620 soon so on deck i have spencer fernando coming up with the manitoba perspective so we're doing

01:20:29.300 really good across the country here on these uh national issues with different regional perspectives

01:20:35.300 and yes jill see no i am on full screen here but i like to give the guests more uh space on the

01:20:40.500 screen because people get to look at my mug all the time uh when they're speaking i like to give

01:20:45.140 them a little more space uh because they they have a lot of information to share with us so

01:20:50.340 without pause here i will bring spencer in spencer's been on the show before he's a columnist

01:20:55.300 and blogger he's with the national citizens coalition these days and uh yes thank you very

01:21:01.460 much for coming on with me again there spencer yeah good to be here so uh your response to the uh

01:21:08.820 well capitulation flip-flop uh or as i basically put it lie uh from o'toole on the carbon taxes

01:21:16.580 has been pretty uh condemning i guess to say the the least uh maybe you know for those who haven't

01:21:22.740 a chance to to read uh it's at spencerfernando.com i believe yeah uh your piece there uh what are

01:21:30.100 your thoughts on this uh policy development i guess you could say well i mean it's obviously a

01:21:35.540 big betrayal of everything he promised i mean he signed pledges promising not only to get rid of

01:21:41.060 the trudeau carbon tax but to not bring in any similar carbon tax or cap and trade system

01:21:46.580 at the national level so he obviously broke that promise and betrayed what he told people

01:21:50.960 and you know the game he's trying to play where he's saying oh it's it's not uh it's not really

01:21:56.060 a tax because the money doesn't go to the government it goes into a fund well first of

01:22:00.140 all i mean the fund is mandated by the government the government puts the the price on carbon in

01:22:04.940 the first place so it's a government tax and then the government tells you where you can and can't

01:22:09.140 spend spend it like it gives you a list of state approved items you can spend the money they took

01:22:13.920 away from you on in a way the government decides so in some ways it's almost worse than what the

01:22:18.880 liberals are doing because the liberals at least they claim yeah we take the money then we give it

01:22:22.780 back to you and you can spend it on what you want uh o'toole is saying no you don't get to spend it

01:22:27.600 on what you want you get to spend it on what the government says you can so you know i'm it's not

01:22:32.420 just o'toole i'm upset with but it's seeing all the mps who are silent or some of them who are

01:22:36.800 pushing it it's like come on guys you know that you completely lied to people you know this is

01:22:41.600 opposite of what you've been telling people for years and then they're just going to pretend oh

01:22:45.280 no no this isn't a tax at all we're just going to use the same excuse that rachel notley and

01:22:49.040 justin trudeau did when they tried not calling their carbon tax attacks so it's it's just 0.99

01:22:53.600 embarrassing at this point well yeah i would call it even uh insulting like you know how stupid do 0.99

01:23:00.560 you think we are i mean come on you you are repackaging this thing look if you're reaching 0.99

01:23:05.120 into my pocket taking my money as a state and i don't have a choice in it it's a tax you can call

01:23:10.960 it a levy you can call it a fee you can call it whatever you want it's a tax at least don't

01:23:16.880 insult me further by trying to convince me otherwise you've already ticked me off enough

01:23:21.840 as it is uh you know be honest a little bit because we've seen such gross dishonesty in

01:23:26.800 the fact that he's completely flip-flopped on on such a i mean i i credit to the taxpayers

01:23:31.600 federation for getting him on record so clearly as to where he was on carbon taxes cap and trade

01:23:36.880 schemes i mean they even covered the text on it and uh to show that no aaron you have done a total

01:23:44.480 about face and it's unacceptable yeah and it's it's the attitude right i mean my article

01:23:49.840 yesterday was titled and i think it was aaron o'toole showing undisguised contempt for canadian

01:23:55.200 conservatives and i mean that's that's simply the case i mean he's going around and he's pretending

01:24:00.160 Like what I said yesterday, he knows he's lying.

01:24:03.960 He knows that we know he's lying.

01:24:06.180 And he just doesn't care, right?

01:24:07.840 He's just going to keep pushing the same.

01:24:10.160 No, it's not a tax, blah, blah, blah.

01:24:12.620 So, you know, and I see people saying, well, okay, I'm still going to, you know, still need to give O'Toole 100% support because of these other issues.

01:24:20.380 Well, what makes you think he's not going to flip on the other issues?

01:24:22.900 How can you have confidence in what he says, say, on protecting, you know, Canadian gun owners, right?

01:24:27.960 Or on balanced budgets?

01:24:29.240 although he says he's not going to balance the budget for 10 years so i don't even know

01:24:33.640 what the deal there is but you know why would you trust somebody who's flipped on such a big issue

01:24:38.520 so obviously and so brazenly and so arrogantly and then think oh but on these other issues i'm sure

01:24:43.160 he'll totally stick to what he promised we can trust him on these other things i mean trust has

01:24:47.240 to be earned and he hasn't even come close to earning well no i mean out west here you know

01:24:51.800 we're pretty upset still and it's stinging with c69 c48 i mean these were legislations that were

01:24:57.800 targeted towards our industries and our resources. And Erin O'Toole has been vocal,

01:25:04.200 as have the Conservatives in general, in saying they're going to repeal or backtrack. But

01:25:08.280 how can I believe him for a second now? If he finds it politically inexpedient,

01:25:12.440 he's not going to back off on CC69. I mean, he might rebrand it and stick it out there and say

01:25:18.120 it's not an anti-pipeline bill. I just have difficulty being able to pull out a ballot for

01:25:25.160 this man now yeah and you know i think a lot of mps have to be answering those questions too right

01:25:30.280 conservative mps who've been saying one thing to their constituents and party members and supporters

01:25:34.840 for years and then all of a sudden i guess some of them they're just silent on this they're not

01:25:38.520 saying anything so again you know if they can't stand up for themselves you know it's self-respect 0.89

01:25:43.800 too right i mean from what most of the reports show it seems that o'toole didn't even tell most

01:25:49.720 of his caucus about this he just went out and announced it so if you're an mp and you let 0.99

01:25:54.280 Let yourself be treated, let's be honest, just be treated like garbage like that. 0.98

01:25:57.840 Someone, the leader showing no respect to you whatsoever, doesn't think you should be included, doesn't think you should talk to you at all. 0.99

01:26:05.160 How can you then go to voters and say, I'm going to be a strong advocate for you and I'm going to stand up for the country and our interests when you couldn't even stand up for yourself?

01:26:12.480 So I think a lot of them have to answer those questions.

01:26:14.540 And if they're just going to hide and hope, oh, it's just going to blow over and go away.

01:26:19.440 Look at how people are responding.

01:26:20.880 I don't think it's going to be that easy for them.

01:26:22.400 No, I mean, there's got to be some internal discord. I mean, what a sign of disrespect for all of those people who got elected. I mean, you know, that's the thing of our system. It's not one big election that puts in there. It's a series of hundreds and hundreds of little elections. And these people all earned their spot. They were representatives of their area within their party. They should be respected enough to at least be told before such a massive policy shift. And they weren't even informed. I can't imagine what the email inbox is for some of the prairie members of parliament or

01:26:52.380 looking like right now. And they were caught flat footed. Will this have a cost though? I mean,

01:26:58.140 is there a chance, do you think of some caucus rebellion going on or some pushing? I mean,

01:27:02.400 I think of a lot of it. We discussed that prior with the other guests on the show.

01:27:06.080 A bit of a saving grace for a tool as far as that goes is it just looks like we're on election alert.

01:27:10.920 There's going to be one happening this year. It could be right away. At the latest, it's going

01:27:15.020 to be this fall. So it's just really a self-destructive time to try and tear out and

01:27:19.640 replace a leader or even just have a lot of infighting with a leader so they're more inclined

01:27:24.920 to toe the line but how much longer do you think they'll take that yeah i think that's what o'toole

01:27:29.160 is counting on and again i think that itself shows uh really in many ways a lack of character on his

01:27:35.080 on his part because he's saying look i basically i'm holding you guys hostage uh there's nothing

01:27:39.640 you can do about it you know if you go against me now it makes us look bad so i'm just going to do

01:27:44.680 whatever i want i'm not going to talk to you i'm going to just ignore what we've told the party

01:27:48.200 and told our supporters and you just better go along with it because there's an election coming

01:27:51.980 up so it's it's very manipulative and it's very i think disrespectful to his colleagues and of

01:27:57.020 course to conservatives in the country and all the people he campaigned uh to during the leadership

01:28:01.800 race and uh but yeah i guess he thinks he's going to get away with it the problem is none of the

01:28:06.880 polls show that it's working right if his whole idea was we're going to trade some you know western

01:28:11.680 hardcore conservative support and win more support in the east well he seems like he's losing some

01:28:16.540 western hardcore support but he's not gaining anything in the east or really anywhere else in

01:28:20.620 the country and i've been writing about this for a while is that the big risk is he loses core

01:28:25.260 supporters and just doesn't resonate with the public and then you're even worse off than when

01:28:28.860 you started and it looks like that's what's happening to him well that's it i mean if you're

01:28:32.540 going to look from a cold just electoral electoral strategic point of view and that's part of why

01:28:37.580 alberta tends to get taken for granted hey we're predictable voters i mean you know even if you

01:28:42.860 your MPs in Alberta lost 20% support. Most of them are still going to get re-elected having

01:28:47.900 lost that much. So you can kind of ignore them. And just the reality of Canada's makeup is

01:28:53.580 you have to appeal to central Canada. You have to, there's no getting around it.

01:28:57.340 You've got to win a certain chunk there. O'Toole has decided to sacrifice the Western ones and he 0.71

01:29:03.180 feels that in coming up with a carbon tax, he's going to garner that central Canadian vote that

01:29:07.820 he needs so badly which you know he hasn't been able to catch their eye so far in his period of

01:29:13.180 leadership but i mean we're going to know pretty soon whether people want to accept his disingenuous

01:29:18.140 bloated bureaucratic carbon tax versus at least trudeau's carbon tax which is already in place

01:29:22.860 and i got a feeling i already know the answer to how this gamble is going to come out for him

01:29:27.020 yeah that's you know beyond all the dishonesty and the lying it's also objectively just a terrible

01:29:32.300 plan i mean that's that's the other big problem he has is you know if he came up with something

01:29:37.100 amazing and brilliant you could maybe get away with it and say look how smart this plan is i

01:29:41.420 mean look how brilliant i am well aren't i a smart guy you should listen to me but it's a terrible

01:29:45.340 plan i mean it's you know in politics to say if you're explaining you're losing right so you try

01:29:50.380 to explain to someone the the liberal carbon tax and i'm not saying i agree with that i don't like

01:29:54.540 it at all but from a pure you know political pr perspective they say we tax it then we give it all

01:29:59.820 back to you right it's simple to explain the tool plan so we tax it and then we put it into a fund

01:30:06.780 uh that's run by you know it's gonna end up being like a bay street consortium of banks so

01:30:11.260 we're gonna give the banks more power and put them in charge place it like the interact system

01:30:15.340 and then you can use it but not on anything you want you can use it on this government approved

01:30:19.820 checklist of green items to make your life greener i mean just explaining that to people i've talked

01:30:24.860 to a few people you know not really very political people about it and they don't like how it sounds

01:30:29.260 at all it's just it's tough to explain it doesn't really make sense it's more bureaucratic and more

01:30:33.820 almost of a kind of nanny state program than what the liberals are doing and so beyond all the issues

01:30:38.700 of how Tua lied to everybody you know the thing he lied for the plan the big plan he wanted to bring

01:30:44.460 in it's terrible oh and yeah the administration of it would be horrific i mean that's for each and

01:30:50.860 every canadian in the nation uh i said it earlier with the other guests it's true let me look how

01:30:56.140 well government has managed the phoenix pay system or the gun registry in the past i mean these are

01:31:00.540 and that's just the nature of bureaucracies and governments in general they just don't run

01:31:04.540 sleek efficient uh uh things and i know that they're saying oh we would outsource it yeah but

01:31:09.980 when it's government contracts outsourced we just see the same thing it's just now it goes into

01:31:13.500 private pockets rather than government ones it this is just uh bad but you know and if carbon

01:31:19.580 tax was the only way to win if it was because that's what some people on twitter are coming

01:31:22.300 after me well we just have to do it it's the only way to do it why didn't he tell us about that then

01:31:27.820 four months ago why didn't he say it at the convention even you know when you're going to

01:31:31.180 change your mind on issues and that's fine issues change leaders should be flexible but this was just

01:31:36.540 out of the blue i i mean what's he thinking yeah i think his problem is that he's totally buying

01:31:43.260 into the kind of the narrative of much of the establishment media and it's very interesting i

01:31:47.980 notice a lot of people rewriting history they're saying oh if only andrew shear had a carbon tax

01:31:52.940 he would have won last time. But that wasn't actually the big problem Scheer had. Scheer's

01:31:57.300 problem was on social conservative issues and his difficulty giving answers to some of those

01:32:02.440 questions, right? That's what everyone was talking about then. Scheer lost because he was seen as too

01:32:06.280 socially conservative or couldn't answer the questions well. You know, everyone's kind of

01:32:09.780 pretending that that didn't exist. And now, oh, the actual problem is that Scheer just didn't have

01:32:14.060 a carbon tax. He would have won with the carbon tax, right? The conservatives still won the popular

01:32:17.940 vote last time and you know you flip maybe you know a hundred thousand votes in a few ridings

01:32:23.220 and you're talking about the liberals and conservatives with the pretty uneven splitting

01:32:26.500 seats right so the idea that all the conservatives needed to told that all all they need to do is

01:32:31.220 bring in a carbon tax and they're going to win well do the polls show that that's working i mean

01:32:35.780 is is that the right approach is that actually a good thing to do and also just in terms of

01:32:40.900 democracy i mean canada's supposed to be a country where you know people who have opinions on

01:32:46.180 different issues are represented and a large portion of the country is still against the

01:32:50.580 carbon tax and the conservatives were supposed to be the party for those people with those beliefs

01:32:55.100 and they've been totally abandoned so you're disenfranchising a lot of people as well

01:32:58.940 by saying oh we'll just buy into the media narrative and just give the liberals and the

01:33:02.620 media what they want well they're just going to keep demanding more from you they're just going

01:33:05.860 to say oh the tax isn't high enough or now the new thing is that you need to cut emissions even more

01:33:10.420 they're just going to move the goalposts again and so what is a tool just going to keep chasing

01:33:13.840 them around. I mean, it's just, it's very stupid. Yeah. Well, and you brought up an important point 1.00

01:33:19.900 when it came with Scheer. It wasn't just the fact that he was socially conservative. I mean,

01:33:24.620 people accept that with some leaders. It's not as un vogue, I guess, as it used to be,

01:33:28.760 but it's still okay. But you have to trust a socially conservative leading leader to know

01:33:34.140 that they'll feel, you know, they'll protect the personal individual rights for social

01:33:37.300 conservatism, but not trying to impose it on anybody else. And because Scheer couldn't give

01:33:40.920 clear answers the trust got lost and that's where the issue hit because once trust is lost then

01:33:46.440 people can read in anything they like into what you say and it's hard to deny and now O'Toole

01:33:51.800 has broken trust with his own members and I mean if I was a liberal voter sitting on the fence I'd

01:33:57.000 be saying well how can I believe anything you're telling me you won't even respect your own members

01:34:02.600 why would I even consider giving my vote to you and you're in Manitoba which is a much more

01:34:09.720 swing riding it's a great interesting central canadian spot i mean geographically it's truly

01:34:14.040 central but uh you know you've really got a great deal of ridings that can go either way out there

01:34:21.080 how do you feel this will resonate out that way though will this potentially help them i mean

01:34:26.440 there's still there could be some benefit in some areas for for the conservatives with this

01:34:31.480 i mean it's always possible if there's voters on the fence who are saying oh i really love

01:34:35.160 the conservatives if when they had a carbon tax i just think the number of those people is very

01:34:39.720 small and i think if if you really feel that government intervention on climate change is your

01:34:44.840 top issue you're probably voting liberal ndp or even green right so for the voters on the fence

01:34:51.880 i think you know the issue you know for a lot of people is well the economy is in serious trouble

01:34:57.480 the debt's a big problem they want some action in the environment but they obviously don't want to

01:35:01.720 to pay a whole bunch more because people i mean the government says inflation is 1.1 nobody

01:35:06.280 believes that people are seeing costs of everything rise out of control life is getting more expensive

01:35:10.680 so i think focusing on those uh core issues would be the most important so yeah there may be a few

01:35:15.800 people who are saying yeah i'll vote conservative if they have a carbon tax but i just don't think

01:35:19.160 it's too many people and i think you're going to lose more by doing what o'toole did than you gain

01:35:25.560 yeah well and o'toole's facing a kind of an ugly situation there's some things that are beyond

01:35:29.480 conservative control that are big factors in canada if a conservative party wants to form

01:35:33.800 government basically you need somebody to pull votes off those liberals you know you need a

01:35:38.200 strong ndp or you need a strong block and both of those parties are decimated right now i mean jagmeet

01:35:45.320 singh is is just abysmal in the polls he's not appealing to much of anybody and that all is to

01:35:50.600 towards trudeau's favor because disenchanted ndp voters don't typically go to the conservatives

01:35:55.000 they will go liberal uh what can the conservatives do to remedy that though i mean the only way

01:35:59.880 somebody would say is well we got to tack left a little bit in order to grab some of that vote if

01:36:03.720 we have any hope yeah well i think and this is something a tool can't change and i guess we'll

01:36:08.920 try to put it nicely but um you know having photogenic and charismatic leaders is often

01:36:14.920 very important right i mean you know justin trudeau gets away with a lot of stuff i think

01:36:19.160 because you know a lot of people see him as a charismatic politician now people can disagree

01:36:23.400 agree with that or not, but he's definitely built up a cult of personality around himself.

01:36:27.500 And in politics, that's a big thing, right? So Aaron O'Toole, not really photogenic,

01:36:31.360 not really charismatic. So if you're like that, the only thing you really have to offer is

01:36:35.060 competence and honesty, right? Maybe he still has a little credibility as a competent person,

01:36:40.360 but the honesty thing is kind of fading away too now. So that's a big problem they have.

01:36:44.780 One thing I've said is they should be emphasizing their team much more, right? They do have a fair

01:36:48.700 amount of MPs, Pierre Polyev, Michelle Rempelgarner, Michael Chong, Raquel Dancho, you know, put them

01:36:55.340 in ads, you know, I guess alongside O'Toole, because you have to put O'Toole's face out there

01:36:58.720 a bit, but put them in ads and show, look, we're a big team, you know, we've got a lot of, you know,

01:37:03.440 charismatic or photogenic young people in the party, and that's just kind of the image you have

01:37:07.360 to present, but they seem to, once again, be just focusing it all on the O'Toole brand, which again,

01:37:12.200 if you're trying to build a brand around someone who's not really that interesting and not super

01:37:16.160 likeable then it's not going to go well so i would say they should emphasize the team but

01:37:20.400 the leader's office is often seen quite narcissistic and unwilling to do that

01:37:25.200 yeah that's interesting because it has been quite the the opposite i mean paul you have you know i

01:37:29.200 mean some people love or hate him but he's certainly a vocal and he's got a strong following

01:37:33.120 you would want to diversify your reach have him out front but what did o'till do he's kind of

01:37:37.520 slid him a little farther back and a little out of the spotlight and uh michelle rempel again a

01:37:42.880 polarizing but active and vocal person with a portion of support among her I mean you could

01:37:50.000 distribute that yeah I see that strategy and yeah he's not doing that

01:37:55.360 I got spanked a bit by Mark just recently on that whereas I gave Trudeau a little more credit than

01:37:59.760 he felt was due because I still feel I've underestimated Trudeau a little bit over the 0.99

01:38:03.680 years and I've called him an imbecile in many things and he's done many stupid things there's 0.99

01:38:08.080 no doubt about it but he does seem to be getting a little better at the role that you know he's not 1.00

01:38:12.480 a cerebral type of leader or anything like that he never will be but he's being more controlled

01:38:17.920 there's less yeah there's fewer gaffes uh he's communicating better um this is gonna make him

01:38:23.920 harder to take down as a cult of personality around him and then and then that's fine so

01:38:27.840 if you can't beat him on that boy we've really got to come up with something new and fast

01:38:33.120 yeah i mean the liberals they're terrible at governing but they're great at politics right

01:38:36.400 and unfortunately in today's world that's often enough to stay in power and the conservatives

01:38:41.280 Maybe they have the opposite problem, although I guess some could question some of the governing

01:38:45.200 in some conservative provinces right now in the country.

01:38:48.500 But yeah, I mean, the conservatives have a politics problem, which is ironic, right?

01:38:52.400 You know, you're in politics, you should know how to communicate.

01:38:55.120 But the conservative party federally, I mean, they seem like they're just terrible communicators.

01:38:59.860 I mean, to have O'Toole come out and give that plan and then the big line being, oh,

01:39:03.440 it's not actually a tax.

01:39:04.740 I mean, that's the best you can come up with.

01:39:06.400 That's just embarrassing.

01:39:08.300 So yeah, Trudeau will be difficult to take down.

01:39:10.340 mean he's he has high emotional intelligence maybe not traditional iq but he certainly understands

01:39:15.540 emotions how to manipulate them how to use them to his advantage and right now the conservatives

01:39:20.340 don't seem able to match that no you can't just seem to get grab traction so it makes me wonder

01:39:25.860 if this move wasn't a little bit of desperation too i mean they're trying and trying and he's just

01:39:29.620 sliding further and further so it's kind of like well we'll throw this to the wind and see if it

01:39:33.940 doesn't somehow grab some some support but i mean you would think with a again a party would be good

01:39:39.220 at politics at least even if your caucus isn't going to like that brief them all and say look

01:39:44.420 this is where we're going get ready for it i'm going to put out the announcement let's get on

01:39:49.140 the ground and sell it you know we've got a couple of mps trying to do that right now most of them

01:39:54.180 are just kind of saying silent and finding excuses to stay away from the camera they were caught

01:40:00.340 flat-footed i mean you just talk about what a wonderful way to lob disunity into a party when

01:40:05.700 you're coming into an election when you need it more strongly than ever do you think there's any

01:40:10.180 chance of caucus revolt or some of them potentially stepping aside not running again or even you know

01:40:15.860 sitting as independents that sort of i mean we've seen that with conservatives we saw it with

01:40:18.740 stockwell day lost confidence of some of his caucus members jason kenny's walking a very fine

01:40:23.140 line in alberta right now um you know if once once elected members start fearing for their actual

01:40:29.300 jobs it's astounding how quickly they can move from party loyalty to something else do you think

01:40:33.620 there's any chance of that sort of happening yeah you know i definitely look for the next few cycles

01:40:38.740 of polls i mean i know politicians say they don't look at polls but they all do of course we know

01:40:42.500 that so i think if you start seeing more polls showing them slipping even further i think you

01:40:47.060 know i'd like to think some of them will publicly revolt and say look buddy you just lied to

01:40:51.300 everybody we're not going to put up with this you know uh you know unfortunately i don't see that

01:40:55.780 kind of courage from a lot of these mps sadly enough uh but i think what you will see is as

01:41:00.660 you said a lot of people saying you know i you know i think i'm just going to spend more time

01:41:04.100 with my family you know i've got some business interests i'm looking into i've been in politics

01:41:08.100 for a while i've got my six years in so that pension's on the way so i think you'll start

01:41:12.420 seeing some people uh do that if the polls are bad and there's a lot of people could be saying

01:41:17.140 look you know if a tool is going to get you know demolished and you know the party's going to be

01:41:21.220 kind of split i'll sit this one out and come back next time right because you still have a lot of

01:41:25.220 credibility you think they'll be a better leader you can probably get back in again so that's what

01:41:29.540 i would look for and again you know i tweeted a while ago look at which mps actually retweet

01:41:34.740 some of our tool stuff and which ones don't involve right and i think that's something

01:41:38.020 to look forward to the ones who are just completely staying silent might not be the

01:41:41.700 most courageous but i think they're sending a message as well yeah well and looking at you

01:41:46.580 know the the two mps you mentioned for example if we're looking at anybody might be considered

01:41:50.260 up-and-comers it'd be like remple or polyev and they're both relatively young i mean as far as

01:41:54.660 politics go they can bide their time but a four-year liberal majority boy what a terrifying

01:42:00.980 thought almost uh you know would they be able to survive politically for four years in that

01:42:05.300 environment i mean i i know in alberta and it's looking more likely we're going to get that liberal

01:42:10.820 majority i mean there's going to be some white hot politics going on out here uh provincial politics

01:42:16.580 federal politics i mean we're going to see regionalism and secessionism just explode

01:42:22.180 uh but will that be you know it's gonna be a difficult area to foster a rebuilding of a

01:42:27.080 conservative party when the base is busy all fighting in Alberta and Saskatchewan on regional

01:42:31.100 terms as well yeah that's another reason I think what O'Toole did is so dangerous you know just

01:42:36.920 beyond the dishonesty it's also dangerous for the unity of the country because you know he just

01:42:41.440 handed western separatists one of the best arguments right which is you know oh look even

01:42:46.260 the conservative party lied to you and betrayed you right you don't have any advocates in any

01:42:49.820 federal parties anymore so you've been betrayed by everybody so you know i think this is why you

01:42:55.780 know western conservative mps especially in alberta they need to think okay this maybe is more

01:43:00.540 important than just my political career you know to keep canada together the conservative party

01:43:05.060 must be seen as an advocate not just for the west but an advocate for the west and a party where

01:43:09.800 western interests are listened to and become a part of policy not a party where they say to the

01:43:14.340 west okay give us all your money give us your volunteers give us your time give us your seats

01:43:19.700 and then oh but you know you know the media bad media cycle we're just going to turn around and

01:43:24.160 totally betray you now sorry but keep giving us money they'll keep volunteering and keep giving

01:43:28.180 us money while we're betraying so if that kind of you know feeling of betrayal sinks in fully in the

01:43:33.200 west and the conservative party is not seen as an advocate for the west then yeah the chance of the

01:43:38.540 country breaking up goes up dramatically so some of these uh mps in the west and the conservative

01:43:43.200 party i think need to say even if i'm going to screw over my own political career for a few years

01:43:47.360 i need to speak up against what otul's done because otherwise i think you know it's going

01:43:51.280 to get much worse yeah well i said it before kind of in other ways but you know liberal betrayals

01:43:56.560 we're used to in the west that's just the nature of it but it's conservative betrayals that create

01:44:01.200 separatists i mean that's when people say oh you know we're out of hope what else can we do and

01:44:05.360 particularly in this case i mean for some i think they're conservative mind people they say okay you

01:44:10.160 know what the real loyalists are. I'll swallow this. I'll try and at least stay quiet or promote

01:44:15.760 a carbon tax and things like that. But if you do that, that much bending of your principles,

01:44:21.840 that much backtracking and still lose, you still lose, it's going to be very hard to get 0.73

01:44:28.880 conservatives, you know, small C conservatives to compromise on much of anything in years to come.

01:44:33.120 uh but i mean what what uh outlook could you see where in in the next coming months that the

01:44:41.020 liberals could lose the next election because it's really getting hard to see a way that they might

01:44:45.320 yeah the only thing i would say is elections are unpredictable right that's that's the only thing

01:44:50.520 o'toole maybe has going for him is that once you enter an election there's a lot of chaos and

01:44:54.820 events you know the problem is you think okay man if something crazy happened like wow maybe if

01:44:59.840 Justin Trudeau, after years of being a woke progressive, was caught wearing blackface multiple times in the past.

01:45:05.380 Surely that will do him in this time. 0.80

01:45:07.140 But again, we saw that happen, and even that didn't cause him to lose, right?

01:45:10.580 So, okay, what are you going to say?

01:45:11.980 Too much spending?

01:45:12.760 Well, that's not really an issue.

01:45:14.240 It's a problem, but the conservatives are saying no balanced budget for 10 years, so they're kind of boxed in there, right?

01:45:19.980 And so you'd have to say some sort of scandal.

01:45:21.780 Well, the waste scandal didn't hurt the liberals much in the polls, or if it did, it was relatively temporary.

01:45:26.580 So the only thing I can really see is an extremely strong performance by O'Toole in debates and, you know, on the campaign stump and Trudeau making tons of mistakes.

01:45:37.240 But as you said, Trudeau, he's not getting worse at politics, right?

01:45:39.980 He's getting a little bit better, unfortunately, at least at the time.

01:45:42.600 Yeah, he's no genius still, but he has been adapting.

01:45:46.820 I mean, that's kind of what I hoped for in the past, too. 0.99

01:45:48.620 I thought, look at this twit. 0.98

01:45:49.960 You know, Scheer's just going to rip him to shreds at the debates and so on. 0.98

01:45:53.480 And, well, no, I mean, again, Trudeau didn't let him knock out punches, but he just didn't let himself get knocked out.

01:45:58.000 That's all he needs to do.

01:46:00.680 So to turn this tide around, I mean, we need to, and it sucks having to rely on the incompetency of others, I guess.

01:46:08.320 But you almost need the liberals to implode because we can't seem to chip away at them from the conservative approach right now.

01:46:14.760 Yeah, the only other thing I could see, and again, I don't see this happening with the conservatives, but it's actually taking, you know, controversial but courageous stands on a lot of issues.

01:46:23.320 For example, housing prices, right?

01:46:24.960 I mean, you talk to anybody and they say, this is crazy.

01:46:27.320 You know, the fact that in many cases you have Canadian citizens being priced out of the housing market,

01:46:32.160 in large part because of, you know, billionaires and millionaires from foreign countries.

01:46:36.620 And you see, okay, no one's really talking too much about that.

01:46:39.620 Pierre Poliev talks about it a bit, you know, but not much from O'Toole, so it doesn't get much attention.

01:46:45.800 Even issues like immigration, this is where it does get touchy for them.

01:46:48.760 But, you know, most polls show half the country is not really in favor of higher immigration levels, especially coming out of an economic crisis.

01:46:55.400 Right. You had even less support for it. Then you've got issues of inflation, of course, you know, money printing, the debt, all those things.

01:47:02.200 So there's issues that conservatives could be talking about. I think health of the population.

01:47:05.940 If we saw anything in the last year, it's how vulnerable we are because of our very weak physical and mental health in this country. 0.75

01:47:12.040 So I think if they took courageous stands on a lot of deeper issues that I think a lot of people are very concerned about, people would say, well, at least they're not just saying Trudeau sucks.

01:47:20.680 At least they're saying, here are some other problems in the country, some deeper issues, and we're actually going to look at addressing those.

01:47:26.820 And I think that would be a way to kind of escape from the traditional political spectrum, because the average person doesn't go around life saying, I'm a conservative.

01:47:33.540 I think I'm 8 out of 10 on the left to right scale today, right?

01:47:37.140 People don't really think that way in their own lives.

01:47:39.600 But the Conservatives, they seem like they're just going to try the same approach.

01:47:42.440 Oh, we'll just nitpick the Liberals here and there and hope that they make some mistakes.

01:47:45.660 And then we win.

01:47:46.580 You know, we get lucky.

01:47:47.600 NDP wins enough votes and we kind of sneak through.

01:47:50.720 So, yeah, they need to be very creative and courageous and take some risks.

01:47:54.340 And they're not willing to do that, obviously. 0.81

01:47:57.220 No, I mean, a big blind spot, I think or feel, though it's hard to put out of solution, is with China, for example.

01:48:03.320 I mean, the whole developed world is realizing that you're kind of partnered with the devil here. 0.87

01:48:08.160 I mean, we're reliant on them for so many trade items and so many things.

01:48:11.160 But at the same time, they're a harsh, dictatorial, rogue nation.

01:48:15.740 I mean, they're holding our citizens hostage.

01:48:17.560 They are pulling off some trade practices that are horrific and, of course, human rights practices in their own country.

01:48:22.920 They have always been awful.

01:48:24.720 And Trudeau has always been extremely weak when it comes to China.

01:48:28.160 And instead of finding a good ground to cover there, at least, and show, you know, we're standing up against that nasty regime, O'Toole hires a Huawei executive.

01:48:38.160 i i i just it seems like a self-destructive party at times i i don't get it yeah yeah that was one

01:48:47.020 area where they were actually doing quite well i think uh you know canadians were seeing well

01:48:50.740 the conservatives seem like they're pretty tough on china and in some ways pushing the liberals to

01:48:54.520 be a little bit tougher right the conservatives were dominating that and so yeah then you go

01:48:58.240 hire a former uh huawei executive and it's like why would you do that i mean it's not saying the

01:49:03.580 guy's evil i don't think the guy's evil but is he such a supreme political genius that hiring him

01:49:08.680 was worth throwing a lot of your credibility on china away like why would you do that and again

01:49:13.480 seeing that move and then the carbon tax move they seem kind of similar to me right it's

01:49:19.220 this is so obviously arrogant this is so obviously kind of in your face opposite to what we had

01:49:24.960 promised people but we think we're smarter than you and we think that you either won't notice or

01:49:29.600 we'll just talk our way out of it and so we're going to do it anyway and that seems to be kind

01:49:32.960 of the attitude from O'Toole. And the problem is that's very similar to the attitude of the

01:49:37.260 liberals, right? Which is, yeah, we're lying to your face and we're going to keep lying and you're

01:49:40.940 going to listen to it and we're going to convince you that our lies are the truth. So that lack of

01:49:45.300 respect for people, just treating people like idiots, we're starting to see that from O'Toole 1.00

01:49:50.300 and the liberals now. And I think that's the last thing people are looking for. 0.99

01:49:54.000 That's a pretty frustrating way for us to be right now. The budget's coming out today. I mean,

01:50:01.040 we know it's going to be a high spending budget. I mean, no matter who was in, it was going to be

01:50:05.320 one. What do you think, though? I've still been of a mind, though, because the infections have

01:50:11.480 spiked again and that, that, okay, the Liberals are taking their foot off the electoral gas again.

01:50:15.440 But my theory was that, you know, if infections have been going down, the pandemic's starting to

01:50:19.400 ease off, we're going into spring, people are going to be in a better mood. You know, if I was

01:50:23.660 a Liberal strategist, what I'd be doing is say, let's put out a feel-good budget, an election

01:50:27.040 budget all full of goodies and promises in the works and then we'll tell everybody this budget

01:50:31.420 is so important for the rebuilding of Canada the pandemic that I have to go to well we don't even

01:50:35.900 have a governor general I got to go to somebody and dissolve the parliament and we've got to take

01:50:40.040 it to the people to affirm this document you know and we're off to the races uh I I think right now

01:50:46.920 it's looking a little too uh volatile out there on the ground I don't think the liberals want to

01:50:50.700 quite pull the pin yet but when do you think we might be in for an election yeah I think certainly

01:50:55.300 by the end of the year, it's possible. I mean, as I've said before, the Liberals have a window

01:50:59.400 where there's going to be some euphoria when people feel the pandemic is basically over and

01:51:04.260 they're pumping tons of money into the economy. So there should be maybe a year, year and a half

01:51:08.240 where you don't really notice the impact of the debt and all the money printing. It's not super

01:51:13.400 obvious yet. And so it's going to feel like all the economy is booming and man, we get to go

01:51:18.340 outside and we're hanging out with our family again. This is great. So I think the Liberals

01:51:21.980 know that that's their window. If they wait, you know, two years, then people start saying,

01:51:26.480 it seems like there's a lot of inflation going on here. You know, why is the debt so high? Why is

01:51:30.900 the economy not really doing as well as it felt like it was? And then again, just going back to

01:51:35.260 normal, it's not going to be euphoria for long. People are going to say, well, this is what the

01:51:38.960 life we had before the pandemic. So we just expect this as the baseline. So I think the liberals have

01:51:44.100 a relatively narrow window and the conservative party seems like it's very much in chaos right

01:51:48.880 now. So I'm sure they want to take advantage of that as well.

01:51:52.940 Yeah. Well, we'll wait and see, I guess. I'll leave it at that. For today, we get ready to,

01:51:59.780 well, wonks like us who will actually read and look at the budget so we can digest it and see

01:52:03.460 what we can read out of those tea leaves. They don't just really seem to mean much anymore.

01:52:07.220 They're almost as bad, in my view, as drone speeches. They're broad documents, but you're

01:52:11.580 really, it's difficult to tell what's actually going to be implemented or what they'll mean.

01:52:15.980 So thank you very much for joining me again today.

01:52:19.280 It was really appreciated.

01:52:20.420 I know you write columns in the Western Standard,

01:52:22.360 and we see your stuff from the National Citizens Coalition.

01:52:25.340 You've got your own site.

01:52:26.320 Where else can we see what you're up to, Spencer?

01:52:28.920 Yeah, I write at spencerfernando.com,

01:52:32.020 and then you can follow me on Twitter, at Spencer Fernando,

01:52:34.760 and I also write for the Post Millennial from time to time.

01:52:37.560 So you can see all my stuff there.

01:52:39.460 Right on.

01:52:40.100 Well, thanks, Spencer, and I'm certain we'll be talking again soon.

01:52:43.040 maybe one of these times we'll have a nice positive subject to go on you know a big breakthrough or

01:52:47.440 something like that and then see something good but in the meantime while we've just got to

01:52:51.200 discuss kind of the crappy stuff but hopefully we'll find some solutions out of it while we've

01:52:54.400 added back and forth so uh hope the good weather is approaching out there in manitoba for you guys

01:52:59.280 finally so you can get into your mosquito season and uh we will uh talk again soon all right take

01:53:04.960 care. Thanks, Spencer. Okay, so that's what I got for today's show. Thank you guys for tuning in.

01:53:14.740 The questions, yeah, like I said, it was a bit of a bleak thing. It was federal politics for the

01:53:18.160 whole show, but it had to be covered because we've seen a big federal move. I mean, that's what's

01:53:22.580 front and center right now, and it just, we got to try and find a way out of this mess. I'm not

01:53:30.300 sure what it might be. Well, I got a pretty strong idea what it might be, but it's going to be

01:53:33.120 post-electoral, Dave Borkman there and some of the others. Yeah, you know, this is the last kick

01:53:38.220 of the cat. It's time to work on getting out of this broken system. And the system's broken.

01:53:43.580 I've said it before. I'll say it again. Canada's broken. We can compromise. We'll go ahead. We'll

01:53:49.560 run in these elections. We'll throw conservative principles to the wind and we'll still lose.

01:53:55.620 Provincially, same thing. You know, I mean, Kenny has tried two years of appeasement with

01:53:59.820 the Liberal Ottawa, and what has that gotten us? It's gotten nothing. Back to what Patron was

01:54:06.360 talking about, Patroni, the referendums are an opportunity. You know, we've got the equalization

01:54:12.800 referendum coming this fall. Yeah, that's not the one that gets us out, but I tell you what,

01:54:17.320 that's a hell of a practice run. This is how we learn to get on the ground and get the vote out.

01:54:22.940 This is how we do show, even if it's not people ready for the nuclear option of secession yet,

01:54:27.380 that can be a referendum by proxy in a sense. It's their way of giving a middle finger to

01:54:32.440 central Canada, giving the middle finger to the Canadian system to say, we've had enough. It has

01:54:38.420 to change. That's a big warning shot across the bow. So even if we can't change things in the

01:54:43.740 federal election, don't underestimate the ability of that referendum this fall on equalization. And

01:54:49.240 I know Ottawa will tell us to take our results and stuff them up our butts. That's fine. It was still 0.96

01:54:53.940 an exercise moving towards what we needed to. Next week, I'm going to have Franco Terrazzano

01:54:58.860 coming on. We are going to dissect and talk about the federal budget. That'll give him a few days

01:55:02.780 to chew on it from the Taxpayers Federation and see what we can read into it. As well, I'm going

01:55:08.520 to have Ty Northcott coming on. He is the gentleman who is running that rodeo up in Bowdoin, contrary

01:55:13.940 to Alberta Health Services regulations. It's going to be a good time. It's his family business. It's

01:55:20.800 really in crisis. You know, I interviewed him. I put a video up. If you go to the Western Standard

01:55:24.980 YouTube channel, you can find it there where I talked to Ty. His family's been at it for

01:55:29.400 generations. A lot of, you know, rural rodeo livestock families are really in a terrible

01:55:34.480 position in Alberta right now. I mean, they haven't been able to work in over a year and

01:55:38.160 AHS is basically saying, we're going to shut you down for another season. They can't do it.

01:55:42.260 You can't just put the riding bull in the closet or the bronc and be able to pull it out in six

01:55:49.480 months and use it again you got to feed it you got to maintain it or you've got to get rid of it and

01:55:53.580 I think he said he's down to a half or a third of his herd right now already so keep that in mind

01:55:58.100 two weeks from now get out to the rodeo it's up by Bowdoin it'll be a hell of a time the show will

01:56:02.460 be next Friday I'll be on the pipeline on Wednesday where Derek and Dave and I usually rant about some

01:56:08.380 issues for a little while and we've also got Nathan Guido with his show every day Mountain

01:56:13.980 Standard Time he's coming out of Prince George real bright young fella same time slot as mine

01:56:18.800 10 a.m till noon he's going to be on tuesdays wednesdays and thursdays you know we don't have

01:56:23.920 to listen to that crappy talk radio anymore and god knows it's gotten crappy we can download this

01:56:29.580 on podbean by the way if you can't catch it when it's live go to our you know any of your podcast

01:56:33.460 sites search out the western standard we're there you can download it listen to it at work listen

01:56:37.480 to it you're driving okay enough self-pronotional crap it was a great chat today thank you all for

01:56:43.040 tuning in and i will see you all later

Western Standard - April 20, 2021

The Cory Morgan Show April 19, 2021

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