Western Standard - The federal standoff over CCP interference

00:00:00.000 Thanks for coming in and talk to us today, Jay.

00:00:01.760 My pleasure, Corey. It's always nice to be on your show.

00:00:04.360 Yeah. And what I kind of said in the email, what I want to get to is we've had all of this federal

00:00:09.100 talk. We've had all of this political games going on for months. We have a federal government that's

00:00:14.180 in a minority position, but they still, it appears, to be able to skate on a public inquiry. Like,

00:00:21.340 I'm just wondering, are there parliamentary things that can be done to address this by

00:00:25.380 the opposition parties or are there hands tied? Well, first of all, absolutely. There are things

00:00:31.040 that can be done. I think you're well aware that I hold the dubious distinction of having been the

00:00:38.520 only member of parliament in the history of our Canadian parliament to hold the position of

00:00:43.800 caucus or party whip four times. My staff did some research and couldn't find any other time that

00:00:51.380 anybody had been in that position twice, let alone four times. And I've also been the house leader,

00:00:57.520 both in opposition for the chief opposition, but also for the government, which is a cabinet position,

00:01:06.780 as you know. So I'm very well versed in certainly in what can happen and how a government can be held

00:01:16.620 accountable. Certainly part of the reason why I decided to try something else other than public

00:01:24.260 life in 2010 was at the time I had reached the, basically the apex of my political career. I was

00:01:30.440 in cabinet, I was sort of sitting on the right hand of the prime minister at the time as the government

00:01:35.860 house leader or the leader of the government in the house of commons. And as such, in a minority

00:01:42.120 parliament, it's a very, very difficult position normally, certainly for a conservative it is,

00:01:47.540 because you have to negotiate with the other parties, Corey, bill by bill, motion by motion,

00:01:54.160 daily, sometimes hourly, to try and get anything done for the government's agenda to get it through

00:01:59.860 parliament. And of course, with conservatives, we don't have any natural allies. All the other parties

00:02:05.880 are, shall we say, left of centre. And so it was immensely stressful for the two minority parliaments

00:02:14.000 that we had from 2006 to 2011 until Prime Minister Harper won his one and only majority. So I fully

00:02:23.780 recognise what can be done and what can't be done when it comes to negotiating with the other parties.

00:02:30.180 Sadly, for Canadians, we have an opposition party, the NDP, under the leadership of Jagmeet Singh,

00:02:37.400 that has given our prime minister free reign to do whatever the hell he wants. And that's totally

00:02:44.320 unlike the way we were held accountable, Harper Conservatives, in those two minorities that I was

00:02:49.900 a part of.

00:02:51.620 Yeah, well, and just the talking out of both sides of his mouth, though, whereas Jagmeet Singh has been

00:02:55.960 very critical, rightly so, of this whole scandal. I mean, see, we might as well call it that by now,

00:03:02.520 you know, the scandal of the Chinese Communist Party interference and the Trudeau government

00:03:06.200 working so hard to block an inquiry by all means. But, you know, he's tabling motions, a non-binding

00:03:11.640 motion, a non-binding motion. Well, big deal. It's virtue signalling. But are there things that can be

00:03:16.600 done that can force this then without bringing down the government? He's saying, okay, we'd have to,

00:03:22.160 it's not worth bringing the government down over right now. I mean, not all of us might agree, but

00:03:26.120 fine. But, you know, is it opposition day? Is there something they could put in as a bill or

00:03:30.760 something that can force this without turning it to a confidence matter?

00:03:34.480 Well, absolutely. I mean, the prime minister under our system always holds the Trump card,

00:03:40.780 Corey, I think you're aware of this, in so far as that he can declare any motion or any act,

00:03:47.500 any piece of legislation, a confidence motion, which means that if that motion is defeated,

00:03:54.600 if it falls, then we're into an election. That's what that means. But what we did,

00:04:03.160 what Stephen Harper did when prime minister and I as both his house leader and earlier as his

00:04:07.860 government whip, we negotiated on a continual basis with the other parties to say, okay, well,

00:04:14.660 how can we work with you to amend this so that it doesn't become a confidence measure? In fact,

00:04:20.680 we never played that so-called Trump card of declaring something a confidence unless we felt

00:04:27.880 very clearly that it was so integral to our government agenda for what we were trying to

00:04:34.760 accomplish for Canadians that we had no other choice. So that happened very rarely that we would

00:04:40.440 sort of have a showdown. And usually it was behind closed doors where you say, you know, face to face,

00:04:46.400 well, this is so much part of our electoral promises or whatever, that if you're insistent,

00:04:55.280 other house leaders, other whips about getting your caucuses to vote against it, and we lose this,

00:05:01.460 then we're going to go into an election. That's very rare under most circumstances.

00:05:05.820 The problem is, is that Jagmeet Singh never plays that card. He never, I'm sure he never says to

00:05:12.860 the prime minister, or maybe behind closed doors, the prime minister indicates all the time to him,

00:05:18.820 well, you know, if you go against this Jagmeet, we're going to be into an election. In other words,

00:05:23.360 he's playing that fear of a confidence motion constantly. Because stomping short of that,

00:05:29.640 there's lots that can be done. At committees, opposition days, as you say, in the House of

00:05:35.600 Commons, there's a few that are votable, that are actually driven to a vote, you could do a lot of

00:05:41.160 things. This is not the first scandal. There have been many. And the prime minister has done this,

00:05:48.560 prime minister Trudeau has done this repeatedly throughout the last number of years, where every

00:05:53.160 time a scandal comes up, he'll do everything possible to hide it from Canadians, even up to and

00:05:59.260 including calling an election, you know, which he did in 2021. So it's just really, it comes down to

00:06:09.340 having an extremely weak opposition party, led by someone that doesn't want to see an election,

00:06:16.820 because he fears for himself in his leadership position, and he fears for his party's fortunes.

00:06:23.380 Oh, yeah, and I understand that. I mean, Jagmeet Singh is as close to power as he will ever get. He

00:06:27.660 knows that, you know, come the next election, he might not be in such a position again. But I mean,

00:06:33.100 it just feels to me that it's a bluff that it can be called. I mean, you know, when you when you

00:06:39.120 declare something a confidence matter, that means that you're building a hill for yourself to die on.

00:06:43.280 You're saying we're gonna stand on this. And really, even Trudeau is as tone deaf as he can

00:06:48.100 seem to be, to go to Canadians, and we're going to call an early election, because I don't want to

00:06:53.780 go to an inquiry, I can't think of a more politically suicidal platform to go to the voters with, I just

00:06:59.920 don't think he would, he would do that. So to answer your question, yes, on opposition day,

00:07:05.780 certainly we had tremendous challenges at each and every committee. As you know, the procedure and

00:07:11.760 House Affairs Committee has been studying this issue, if you will, they called the

00:07:18.020 I forget what he's called now, reporter, Mr. Johnston, before them for a three hour testimony

00:07:29.360 about a week ago, I think a week ago yesterday. And, you know, put them on the hot seat asking

00:07:35.280 questions about why his report basically said, well, no, he didn't think a public inquiry was

00:07:41.700 necessary. Starting next month, had he stayed in his job before he resigned, he was going to start

00:07:47.480 public hearings. Well, public hearings do not have the strength and do not have all the tools that a

00:07:54.820 public inquiry have, as I'm sure you're aware. For example, a public inquiry is very much like the

00:08:00.860 powers of a standing committee, or even a special committee of the House of Commons. They have

00:08:06.660 rights very similar to courts, where they can subpoena you and say you will show up on this day

00:08:13.380 to give evidence and answer questions. Public hearings, which Mr. Johnston allegedly was going to do,

00:08:21.760 you cannot, they can, they can request, they can ask you to come. But if you sit, you know,

00:08:26.560 basically, say, go pound sand, nothing, nothing happened. So committees have that power. Jagmeet

00:08:34.740 Singh and the NDP have that power. They could easily, by dint of working with the other opposition

00:08:41.560 parties, they could easily force those issues at a committee and hold basically a full public inquiry

00:08:49.780 or something very similar to that at one of those committees. And you'll recall other instances over the

00:08:56.260 last number of years since Trudeau came to power in 2015, where committee started to do that. And

00:09:03.220 then eventually the NDP folded and didn't force it to go to its logical conclusion.

00:09:10.320 Okay, so they could start because I mean, people want answers. I mean, we're seeing it's rare when we

00:09:15.560 see such a dominant thing with polling and Canadians, the lack of faith in everything we've been hearing

00:09:20.320 out of this, you know, you're looking at 20 some percent of the people believing anything more out of the

00:09:25.500 Trudeau government when it comes to this issue. I mean, they still the numbers supporting the

00:09:30.000 government are higher than that. Okay, they don't want to go into election, but they want to get to

00:09:32.880 the bottom of this. They want to find out just what the heck is going on. I mean, we've had some

00:09:37.440 very direct meddling and it just flabbergasts me. I mean, our system isn't working like it should.

00:09:43.740 If we can't, in a minority situation, get a real deep dig into something this important,

00:09:48.900 it doesn't bode well for us. Well, and I think it really hinges to a large extent. And this is,

00:09:54.900 I say this very sort of sadly, that it hinges on the topic you were discussing just as I came into

00:10:01.340 the studio, which is the basic neutering of our national media. You know, why aren't they on to

00:10:12.040 Jagmeet? Why aren't they calling bullshit on Jagmeet Singh when he stands up and rants and raves 0.98

00:10:19.320 about scandal after scandal and does nothing when he has the power to do that? All he has to do is 0.98

00:10:26.340 sit down with the conservatives and block and say, okay, let's devise a common strategy of how to get

00:10:32.340 to the bottom of this at whichever committee, ethics committee, procedure and house affairs,

00:10:37.240 pick a committee, doesn't matter. They all have the same powers and say, we're going to work together

00:10:41.760 we have the majority of votes on that committee, because it's a minority government. And we're

00:10:47.560 going to force this starting tomorrow, next time that committee meets. And we have the power to have

00:10:54.100 that committee meet all summer, right through the heat of summer. You know, it doesn't have to rise

00:10:59.440 when the house rises, you know, next week or whenever it is. They have that power. But the media and the

00:11:07.740 public, you know, it's fine for, you know, the latest poll to say that 80% of Canadians, you know,

00:11:15.660 are opposed to this, the way the government is going on this issue, right? That's great. But is it

00:11:22.340 going to accomplish anything? Well, that's it. I mean, if their elected members can't bring about any,

00:11:28.960 you know, change or getting into this, you know, get, ask you to get, you know, a little speculative,

00:11:34.200 the time goes, goes fast. We still got a few minutes yet. But do you think we're going to get

00:11:38.640 a public inquiry eventually? I don't know. I mean, judging by the way that this prime minister is

00:11:46.720 skated around other issues, whether it's the SNC Lavalin thing, that should have brought him down.

00:11:51.860 I mean, my goodness, the Attorney General and Justice Minister of the country, Jody Wilson-Raybould,

00:11:58.860 resigned over it, wrote a book over it. And still Canadians put up with this? I mean, so when we

00:12:06.840 didn't over that, when we didn't over the we, he skated around that issue of trying to funnel

00:12:12.060 hundreds of millions of dollars to the we, a company that he was clearly in a conflict with,

00:12:18.900 with his members of his family receiving money for speaking engagements from that company,

00:12:25.140 the We Foundation. You know, so it's been one, and that's just two that come to mind.

00:12:30.180 I was looking online a few days ago out of curiosity, and I challenge your viewers to do this.

00:12:36.880 Go online and just Google Justin Trudeau scandals. It's page after page after page. It's almost impossible

00:12:44.340 for journalists to keep up with, and the few journalists like yourselves that actually want

00:12:49.160 to dig into it. So are we going to get one? You would think that logically he's going to be forced,

00:12:56.820 but it's only the media that can force him to do that. I don't understand why his own party is letting

00:13:02.480 this go on and on, because eventually, and I think we're reaching that point, that tipping point,

00:13:07.360 if you will, where his star is going to be so much in decline that it's going to be very difficult for

00:13:16.060 the Liberal Party to recover from it. That's where I wanted to go next, actually. I was just wondering

00:13:20.680 if that's one other area. I mean, there's got to, we know there's principled Liberal members of

00:13:24.880 Parliament, and they've got to be, you know, taking the flack from this stuff they had nothing to do

00:13:30.160 with. They're embarrassed. Their constituents are on their case, and they're looking to their own

00:13:33.600 political futures. Liberals, I mean, that's just a fact. They tend to be better at keeping them all

00:13:39.360 together than Conservatives. We love speaking out and ripping our own. I mean, that's our nature, but

00:13:44.240 at some point, as you said, that tipping point might be hit where enough in caucus, you might

00:13:49.660 finally get a caucus revolt, even if behind closed doors, but to say, look, that's enough. We're not

00:13:53.880 going to go down with this ship. Yeah, yeah, and it has happened in the past, I think, with both

00:13:58.900 governing parties, whether it's ours, the Conservative Party. Like you say, I think that

00:14:03.220 the record would show that within the Conservative Party, and it's both good and bad, that the

00:14:10.220 leadership is held more accountable than what we see in the Liberal Party. I mean, most recently,

00:14:15.880 Mr. O'Toole, right? It wasn't the general public or the media that eventually held him accountable.

00:14:23.480 It was his own caucus, and we don't see that from the Liberals, and as you say, I worked with,

00:14:29.380 well, partly because of the positions I held, I had to work daily, sometimes hourly, as I said, with

00:14:35.500 my counterparts, with the House leaders and the whips of all the other parties, and I found most of them

00:14:42.180 were very respectful and, you know, putting forward an alternate point of view, but you could work with

00:14:49.780 them. And so there are people in those ranks within the Liberal Party, the Liberal Caucus, that should

00:14:57.380 be holding him accountable, because they're not profiting. In fact, arguably, as you say, it's their

00:15:03.380 very futures that are in jeopardy because of the way that he acts. Every time one of these scandals

00:15:10.020 comes along where he does everything, well, and including, I think, on the one, I don't remember which it was,

00:15:15.760 where he actually launched a lawsuit against the Parliament of Canada to prevent them digging into

00:15:23.460 something. So, yeah, it's bizarre times. I mean, you know, another long shot, I'll throw out my

00:15:28.460 speculation, but it's not impossible to think that maybe at a point, Justin's going to take his walk

00:15:33.320 in the snow like his father did, and come back. I mean, that would be because he was getting the

00:15:37.280 pressure inside to think, you know what, maybe I'll just bail out now, move on, put it to a leadership

00:15:42.040 race, we can still kick the inquiry down the road, and maybe people will have forgotten about it,

00:15:45.560 and I can retire. Yeah, no, I think that everybody runs their term of office and has to come to that

00:15:53.340 decision, and some people are forced out. I've often remarked, I guess, that all too many

00:16:00.560 politicians, you know, are like bad milk in the fridge. I mean, they stay around until they start

00:16:05.720 to stink up the place. Well, yeah, I mean, even with great ones, it's been unfortunate, you know,

00:16:09.520 with Premier Klein's a good example of it. I mean, he's a legend in Alberta. He did a lot of great things,

00:16:14.760 but that last couple of years, it was kind of the hook was starting to come out, okay, Ralph,

00:16:18.560 maybe it's time to step aside, and he kind of left, you know, with his own party, he's turning

00:16:22.480 on him a little, which is, same with Kretchen, he was just in for too long, but just not seeing it

00:16:28.920 with Trudeau yet. No, we're not, and I think that partly because of a lot of things. We've never been

00:16:34.480 in a situation in our country where the major media has become the propaganda arm of the government

00:16:41.280 through subsidization. That's never happened before until Justin Trudeau. And so that puts

00:16:47.920 a very unique perspective on everything that's happening in and out of Ottawa. And had it not

00:16:55.280 been for that, there may have been enough pressure from multiple sources, not just the sort of the

00:17:00.980 lone, one of the lone voices in the wilderness, the Western Standard out here in Calgary is saying

00:17:06.980 these things, digging into these things, or rebel news, you know, they're very few and far between.

00:17:14.020 If you had some of the major networks doing the job they're supposed to do for Canadians,

00:17:18.700 I think they're, you know, maybe he would have already taken that walk.

00:17:22.940 Perhaps. Well, we'll see what happens. I said, you know, they're going to recess in a week or so.

00:17:28.040 I suspect they're going to kick this can down the road until fall, and we'll see if public interest

00:17:31.740 is still there when the time comes. I think so. It seems to me the leaks are going to keep coming.

00:17:35.800 Whoever that is, they've got more. They're not going to let this go.

00:17:39.620 Well, sadly, the message I want to leave your viewers with is that, don't make any mistake on

00:17:45.520 this. Jagmeet Singh and the NDP, every time you hear him say something critical of the government,

00:17:52.860 call him out for what it is. He's being a hypocrite. It's complete hypocrisy. He has the power 1.00

00:17:59.240 to work with the other opposition parties and drive these types of scandals to some form

00:18:05.880 of public disclosure at minimum. And he chooses, he and his caucus choose not to do that and instead

00:18:14.500 to prop up this scandal-ridden government.

00:18:19.060 Well, time will tell. All right. Well, thanks again for coming in, Jay. I just appreciate some

00:18:22.500 explanation. You know, not everybody are political weenies like us that watch the procedure and what's

00:18:27.860 can be done and what can't be done, committees, things like that. And just, you know, the general

00:18:31.160 audience, like they're frustrated, readers and what can be done, just the confirmation that

00:18:35.920 something can be done. They're just choosing not to and, well, we'll see what happens.

00:18:41.160 Well, Canadian democracy, especially in this case, Canadian democracy is the poorer for it. I mean,

00:18:46.920 I think that's why it's 80% of Canadians is because there is an awakening to the fact that foreign 0.90

00:18:53.880 interference in our election strikes at the very heart of everything that we stand for. I mean,

00:19:00.820 a democracy has to stand on the legitimacy of its elections. Absolutely. All right. Well,

00:19:07.020 thanks, Jay. It was great seeing you in here again. And thanks for asking me. We can have you back

00:19:11.700 again sometime soon, maybe to start talking about the next election. Hopefully we'll be into it

00:19:18.400 sooner rather than later, because the country is going to be destroyed if it keeps going the way

00:19:22.260 it is. It does seem to be. All right. Thank you. So that was Jay Hill, as you heard. And yes,

00:19:28.280 a regular guest here, a person who's certainly put in a long time of service on Parliament Hill and still

00:19:34.240 managed to maintain his marbles out of all that time in there. It's quite surprising.

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Western Standard - June 16, 2023

The federal standoff over CCP interference

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