Canada’s Biggest Problems | Pierre Poilievre | EP 253

When you look at Canada at the moment, what are our problems? Well, the central underlying illness is a monstrous growth in the power and cost of the state at the expense of the agency and freedom of the people. I'm here simply restoring what can already belong to Canadians, um, by virtue of their 800-year inheritance of English liberties going back to the Magna Carta. I'm just among the common people who are custodians of that freedom while we're alive. You know, Edmund Burke said it's a contract between the dead, the living, and the yet to be born. We're the living generation that has the duty to pass on that inheritance, and that's what I see myself doing: to re-kindle that inheritance and pass it on to my kids so they can pass it on to their kids. I'll pass away into the fade away into the past one day, but hopefully we'll have secured the freedom that we inherited for many more generations to come. That's what I mean when I want to give people back control over life in the present. It's also, um, to extend it into the future. So, that's my purpose. That's why I'm running. If people want to support me, my by pierre4pm.ca. Yes, that's pr4, the number four, pm.ca is how you can sign up, become a member, and do that. I would be honored to have people's support in this enterprise.

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Hello everyone, I'm very pleased today to have with me Mr. Pierre Pauliev. He is the current front-runner in the race for leadership of the Federal Conservative Party of Canada, and he is therefore a likely candidate for Prime Minister of Canada within the foreseeable future. Within the next few years, the Conservatives in Canada have served historically alternatively to lead Canada, competing with the Liberals primarily at the federal or national and provincial or state level. Although the Liberals, their primary opponents, have been more historically successful, they've served more terms, and Pierre has served as a senior cabinet minister in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government prior to the recent election of Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. He has served as a Member of Parliament for seven terms. With that brief introduction, I'm going to turn the discussion over to Mr. Pauliev, who can fill us in on a little biographical information, so we know who he is. Then we'll turn to more specific issues. Thanks very much for agreeing to talk to me today, and welcome.

Thanks very much, Dr. Peterson. Great to be with you.

So. We'll do Jordan and Pierre. How was that?

That's fine by me. Alright, away we go. So, let's start. Who are you? Where'd you come from, and how did you get interested in politics, and why are you the man for the job here?

Thank you. Well, like you, I'm from Alberta, although further south. I come from Calgary, and my folks are from Saskatchewan. They married in '77, moved to Calgary, where they adopted me. I was born of a 16-year-old unwed mother whose mother had just died, and so she was in no position to raise a child. So, she put me up for adoption, and I was blessed to be adopted by Marlene and Dawn Pauliev, two teachers from Saskatchewan. I had a pretty normal upbringing. I grew up in the '80s, and like I was born in '79, so my early childhood was in the '80s. It was kind of a brutal time to be a homeowner or a family because there were these monstrous interest rates. Some of my early memories as a child were the financial stress that my folks were going through, and a lot of people were losing their homes and their livelihoods at that time. I think that made an early impression on my thinking. Even though at the time, I didn't really understand what was happening or why, I was able later on to look back at that strain and stress and try to diagnose it when I was old enough to understand. That kind of formulated some of my political ideologies. We can return to that later on, but I grew up middle-class, a couple of teachers who got divorced when I was in my mid-teens, and sort of bounced back and forth between Mom and Dad's place throughout my teenage years. Went to the University of Calgary.

Yeah, so we do have a fair bit in common because one of my parents, my father, is a teacher. Both my parents are from Saskatchewan. They moved to Alberta, same as lots of people from Saskatchewan did. I got interested in politics at an early age. I remember that period of inflation because well, my parents, my father, and maybe your parents did—they lose their pensions when the banks collapsed?

They teach because the teachers did. My didn't lose their pensions. We did have to move because I think in retrospect that was because of the interest rate hikes. I'm guessing my folks were not able to pay the mortgage at the higher rates, and then we had to move to a smaller place, and we had to sell our car and downgrade our automobile and all of the above just to kind of keep our heads above water. That would have been, I'm guessing, around sort of '83-'84. That was a really kind of hellish time, particularly in Alberta, because the central government had unleashed a wicked assault on the energy sector called the National Energy Program. Simultaneously, the worst of the Trudeau socialist years were coming to bear on the entire national economy. You had 12% inflation, 12% unemployment, 24% mortgage rates. That's real fun for everyone.

Yes, and the highest misery index in Canadian history—that was unemployment plus inflation. That was under Justin's father. Yes—surprise, surprise! Yes, and here we are with the same policies leading to the same results. Just as the dog returns to its vomit and the sow returns to its mire, the burned fool's bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the fire, as Kipling would write. But, you know, it was a miserable time for a lot of people. Now, I was blessed because my folks were teachers, so they ultimately didn't lose their livelihoods. We were able to—we had a modest upbringing, but I would never have called myself poor, and my folks worked hard to make sure we could play hockey and enjoy life and go on camping trips. So, I'm not—I would not cry poor, but it was a modest upbringing, one I'm very proud of, and one I'd like to pass on to my kids as well.

How old were you when you got interested in politics, and what were you like in high school?

Well, I was a scrappy kid who loved sports, and then I got a terrible tendinitis in my shoulder, which made it impossible for me to do any amateur wrestling or football or any other sports that I enjoyed. So, I'd get home from school and be bored out of my skull. My mom used to go and attend Progressive Conservative meetings, and so I said, "Why don't you take me to one of these meetings because I've got nothing to do?" She took me, and I fell in love with it. I just started reading books—oh God, you should do that. I'm still recovering from....

And, uh, so why in the world were you attracted to conservatism? Because that's not a particularly, what would you say? It's not necessarily an attractive proposition for the typical young person; although, you know, maybe something could be done about that. But what attracted you to conservative philosophy?

It was a bit of a winding road. I started off by reading a lot of left-wing books and commentary and was very, very briefly persuaded by that. But then I stumbled on a book called "Capitalism and Freedom" by Milton Friedman. You know, I didn't agree with 100% of what he wrote and still don't. However, the fundamental logic of the free market system to me is inescapable.

Okay, what is that logic, as far as you're concerned? Why is it inescapable?

Because in a free and open market, you can't get ahead unless you make someone else better off. So I use the old apple-orange analogy: if you have an apple and want an orange, and I have an orange and want an apple, and we trade, we're both better off. Even though we still have an apple and an orange between us. It's like when you go to a coffee shop and you buy a coffee. You say thank you to the lady who gave it to you, and then she says—not "you're welcome," but she says "thank you" back. Now why is that? Well, the answer is because each of you has gained something more valuable than you had before: you have the cup of coffee that's worth more than the $2.50 you paid for it; the coffee shop has the $2.50.

And why do you think the free part of that is important?

So that's the trade part. Why is the free part important? Because that's the only way to guarantee both people—both sides believe they’re better off, right? Because in the form of taxation, government forcefully imposes a transaction. It is considered to be a transaction tax—taxes, right? You're paying for a whole plethora of services, but you didn't choose it. So even if you've decided that the cost of your tax bill is not worth the benefit of the government services, you have to pay it anyway. Whereas back to the coffee shop: if you don’t believe the coffee’s worth more than the money, you won't pay it, and if they don't believe the dollar’s worth more than the coffee, they won't sell it. So the only way in a market system to make yourself better off is to make someone else simultaneously better off.

So why did you—now, look, lots of young people in it today either are not exposed to the ideas that you just put forward or they don't find them persuasive. Say, in contrast to what appears on the surface to be the more compassionate left-wing view that’s characterized frequently, and sometimes realistically, you know, by concern for the working class. Like I worked for the NDP when I was a kid, and at that time in Alberta, Grant Notley ran the NDP, and he was an old union guy in some fundamental sense. And so were most of the people he associated with, you know? And they did have a real concern for the working class—at least some of them did. I would say that was particularly true of the leadership, not so much the activists. But, you know, you were pretty young when you came across Friedman. I didn't have that experience when I was, say, the same age as you. Why did you find that persuasive in contrast to the left-wing ideas, the ideas of socialism, this rooted in this hypothetical compassion that seems so attractive to kids today?

Because I didn't see the compassion playing itself out in any real way. It's a catchphrase. But what we're actually debating is not who's more compassionate. There's no evidence that people on the socialist left are especially generous with their own money. Sure, they like to spend other people's money. But what you see is really with socialism is "Animal House" playing itself out over and over again. You know, "Animal Farm," excuse me. "Animal Farm," you know? The pigs didn't say they wanted to take the house so that they could be more comfortable and spoiled; they said they were doing it to make everyone equal and to remove the oppression. But then when they actually took the house, they basically became the new masters and served themselves. And that's what actually happens in socialism. It doesn't eliminate hierarchy.

So why did you buy that argument? Was it as a consequence of encountering Orwell as well?

I think it's because I witnessed it again and again in—as I studied what actually happens in socialist models, it became very clear that the rhetoric about economic equality never actually came to pass. It was used as a tool to mobilize the masses. Ultimately, the outcome was to concentrate power more in the hands of the political elite. Look, government is really legalized force. So if you believe in big government, you believe in expanding force. Relationships of force always favor the powerful. In reality, those who have more political power benefit from a bigger government, and those people are all rich, right? They are disproportionately powerful in the system. So when this big beast called government gets bigger and more powerful, those who have the ability to steer that beast are the ones who are going to profit from it.

So what do you think of the success of countries like the Scandinavian countries, let's say? Well, in the relative success of Canada because there's been a fair solid socialist influence, more the English socialist type than the communist-derived type—fair socialist influence in Canada, and it's formed some of our fundamental institutions: our healthcare system, our pension system, a fair bit of labor legislation. I mean, when you look at—and then, of course, the Scandinavian countries, small though they are and homogenous though they are, they're quite radically successful in function. So what do you make of that? And how do you balance that against your emphasis on, well, more conservative philosophy and your support of the freest markets possible in some sense?

Alright, so let's start with the Scandinavians. I mean, there are some really uncomfortable facts about the Scandinavian countries that the left would not like to talk about. Like Norway, 25% of Norway's economy is oil. So that’s really tough to grapple with if you’re a modern socialist moving to the other countries. Sweden welcomes all kinds of free enterprise and choice, including in the provision of public services. They have, in fact, in the '90s, moved quite dramatically to reduce the cost of government and open up markets and free enterprise. So it's not as simple as to say that these countries are socialistic and therefore successful. Yeah, I think it was even the day one of the Danish leaders came to the United States, and he was speaking at Harvard, and he was saying, you know, he was all the socialist kids were expecting him to pump his fist in the air and champion socialism. He said, "No, actually, we're not a socialist country." So, um, you know, there's no question they definitely do have a strong social safety net, and I don't object to that. But I wouldn't say that they are state-commanded economies like we're seeing Trudeau attempt to adopt here in Canada, right?

So you see this is variation within the free market world, right?

Variation, like there is between the Democrats and the Republicans in the U.S. But fundamentally, it's a free market. Everything is a question of degree. But you know, there’s a lot of academic literature that shows that countries with smaller governments as a share of GDP tend to have less poverty and better social and economic growth outcomes. And that is true in both the developing world and the developed world. So I believe that you can provide a solid social safety net at the same time as having a powerful free market economy that generates the wealth to fund that safety net.

Okay, so you got interested in politics. Were you a popular kid in high school, would you say?

Off and on. There were times when I was interested in hanging out and being part of the club, but there were other times where I just didn't care. Once I got involved in politics, I couldn't care less about the social life at high school anymore.

How old were you when that transition took place?

You said that was also—sixteen, seventeen? Like I said, I kind of wasn't able to do any more sports, and so I said, “You know, I'm going to go do something else.” Once that part of my life took off, I didn't look at the social.

Right? No, I had like a lot of my early teens—I loved hanging out with my friends and playing sports and stuff, but once I found a new passion, I became more focused on that.

How did that influence your choice of education when you went off to university? That was it, you did you say University Calgary?

That's right, yes. I wanted to do a generalist, liberal arts kind of program, and so I did international relations, which had some econ, a lot of history, some strategic studies, a little bit of poli sci, and it was a good overview, a jack of all trades kind of Bachelor of Arts. It worked well.

And was that in hypothetical service of your political ambitions at that point, or had they catalyzed?

I don't know that my political ambitions were clearly defined at that point. I just knew I was generally interested in politics and that international relations would give me an overview of almost all parts of a political environment.

Did you have a conception of a career path at that time?

I mean, I don't think I knew exactly what paths I was going to take. I just knew that I wanted to fight for certain things that I believed in and that that would probably take me into the political theater.

Were you active in campus politics?

Yeah, I was involved with the campus—it was then the campus Progressive Conservatives and Reform Party, and got involved in the debate club and stuff like that. You have a place called Speaker's Corner. It's like three floors of balconies where people could look down, and someone would stand on a big stool in the middle and shout out a speech, and the Speaker's Corner would meet every Friday, and there'd be lots of heckling, and it was just a rowdy affair. But mostly about hilarity and joking around and giving silly ridiculous addresses. That was the Friday tradition—we'd go and belt out these speeches. Sometimes, 70 or 80 students would come and take in these speeches. I imagine if we had the phone cameras back then, they'd probably be circulating wildly on the internet right now.

No doubt. God, what a horrible fate. They have everything you do when you're young recorded and never forgotten.

So yeah, well, you seem to have a sense of humor about such things too, and you're kind of viciously satirical in the House of Commons. So what role do you think having a sense of humor plays in what you do?

I think it's important. I try to remember it, because politics is a combat sport, but there has to be some joy in it as well, and you have to make people feel good. You know, the rabbi Hillel said, "People won't always remember what you do or what you say, but they'll always remember how you made them feel." So I think it's important to make people feel good when you're giving a political speech, make them feel a good about the moment and also good about the future. And the most powerful way to do is humor.

Well, this is very interesting to me because you've got a lot of people coming out to your rallies, and that I should let everyone know who’s listening internationally—that's not really a Canadian thing. There have been times when that’s occurred, but it’s not run-of-the-mill. But you have a lot of people coming to your rallies, and you've been attacked fairly viciously, I would say, by the press for the nature of the despicable people that you're attracting, you know, otherwise known as Canadians. So what is it that you're doing that's working to attract people? Is it related to this sense of humor and to an optimism that you're projecting despite, you know, some of the dire things that might be characterizing the Canadian state?

I think it's, um, I think people are desperate for hope in Canada right now. These rallies have been really emotional events. People come with incredible stories, and I do this thing after every speech. I plant myself in front of my sign, and I just let everyone come up one by one and talk to me. I don't think the political class in this country appreciates how much suffering there is in Canada right now. Well, they did get honked on out a lot, you know, and that's pretty rough. Yeah, you know, yes, they've had— I mean, the political class has had a wonderful two years. They have an unbelievable amount of power and a tremendous amount of comfort. All of their homes have gone up by 50% in value, and their stock portfolios, up until recently, have been inflated. So they're sort of looking down at the working class and saying, "Oh, what are you complaining about? Isn't you've never had it so good?" Well, that's the exact opposite that has been true for the working folks. If you don't own a home, you're purchasing. If you didn't have a home before 2019, likelihood is you'll never own one unless and until there's a major reduction in housing prices. So you've got this whole generation of young people who have concluded that they'll never be able to afford homes. They're 32 years old living in their mom's basement. You can imagine the psychological impact that has on someone's personal security. Like, how do you start a family? So people come to my rallies and they're looking for an explanation about why things are the way they are and looking for some hope about how we might make them better. The situation doesn't make sense to people because—like, I have one go, you know what? Perfect example. Um, there's a guy living in the south end of my riding, south Ottawa, and he has the same job that his mother has. Ironically, he works at the same desk that she worked at when she was there. Yet she was able to buy a house in south Ottawa 40 years ago that he could not even dream of affording today. So what he's saying is, "Wait a sec, how does this make sense? I thought we were supposed to be getting better off, and now, after 40 years, our family is far worse off, and I'm stuck in my parents' basement. I can't get married, I can't start a family. I don’t even know where my life is going." And so they're coming—they see me actually explaining why this is happening and then offering solutions, and they say to me that I'm actually giving them a sense of hope. That's the number one word I hear from people when they come up to me in the line, they say, "We feel like we have hope again." So that's what's bringing people out.

Okay, so you're listening to people. One of the things I've learned about good politicians, and I know people think that's an oxymoron, but that's not an acceptable amount of cynicism in my estimation. They—and I think this was really true of Preston Manning, for example—they're really good at listening. And if they listen, then people tell them what their problems are. And so you just focused on housing and housing crisis for young people. When you're talking to people, individual to individual, what's tugging at your heartstrings and making you understand the problems?

Apart from housing, that's a big one, obviously. What else do you hear, and what's really concerning you?

People feel like they've lost control of their lives. Whether it's the people who have made a decision not to get vaccinated for their own reasons and have been, had the government basically steal their livelihoods, prevent them from getting on an airplane, ban them from ever leaving the country. Or whether it's the, you know, single mom who's skipping meals so her kids don't have to, or you know the guy who can't fill up his tank to go and drive and see his parents for one last time before they die in Thunder Bay. People feel like they can't make the normal decisions that a free person could make in a free society, and there's devastating personal consequences to it. And then what they hear from the government is, they speak out, right? They speak out, they hold a protest, they post something online. Instead of the Prime Minister saying, "You know what? I know you're suffering. I'm sorry. We're going to work harder to make your life better. We hear you. I feel your pain." What he says is, "You're a nasty, unacceptable fringe element, and not only are we going to seize your bank account and bring in the Emergencies Act, we're also going to double down on the things that have made your life so miserable in the first place." And so people feel like they're under attack from a big, bullying government that takes their money and tells them what to do. What they see in my campaign is that an opportunity to take back control of their lives, to remove the gatekeepers so that we can build affordable housing, to unleash the energy sector so our working class can get good jobs again, to stop the money printing and bring inflation back down so folks can afford things again. And that gives them hope that there’s actually a better day coming, and that’s why we’re attracting so many people.

Well, so why do you think—it's interesting listening to you because your narratives center around the individual individuals who make up the working class who are under duress and isn't necessarily the way in that you might regard as most probable for a conservative, you know? And so why is it? So I think that's extremely interesting, and in this upside-down world of ours, why is it though, do you think that people find you capable of delivering hope? And I mean there's other candidates on the Conservative front we should talk about that soon, but what makes you credible on the hope front, do you think in terms of what you're offering and who you are?

Because I speak clear, plain language that makes sense to people. So, you know, I'm a believer in using simple Anglo-Saxon words that strike right at the meaning that I'm trying to convey, and so I say things that people say, "Yeah, that actually makes sense." Folks say, "Well why is it—why is inflation running rampant?" And I explained to them in direct language that when you print more money, you have more dollars chasing fewer goods; it leads to higher prices. Folks say, "Yeah, that actually makes sense. Isn't that what we were taught in grade school?" And the explanations they get from everyone else are a bunch of convoluted, nonsensical, irrational excuses. And so they like my direct, blunt style not because it’s simplistic, but because it's simply true.

So what do you like about political life? It's a rough life, and you take a lot of flack. I mean, obviously from your bio, and I think from the way you comport yourself—it's obvious that you've got the constitution, to some degree, of a fighter, which is, I think, would say something I lack. But what is it about your—what is it about you that attracts you to the political—in terms of the interpersonal domain—you talked about it intellectually in some sense, you know, and you talk a little bit about your care for people one-on-one, but you like to listen apparently. Why do you care about ordinary people, and why should people believe that you care?

Well, I think that what bothers me most about politics in Canada is that there's a comfortable establishment that sits on top and governs for itself at everyone else's expense. The people who do the nation's work—the plumber, the electrician, the truck driver, the police officer—have almost no share of voice. I want to empower those people and disempower the political establishment, and that's my mission. It's my purpose, and I believe in it. I actually do believe in what I say; I truly believe that the ideas and the political approach that I advance are right. So having that purpose allows me to persevere through all of the nastiness and the exhaustion of political life because if you don't believe in it, then it just becomes an egotistical vanity project, of which there are many in politics. But it seems to me to be a pointless life. All you're doing is trying to advance, trying to keep your name in the news and in high office as long as possible just so that you can say you were there. I think if—to have a fulfilling political career, you actually have to have a purpose, and I do. My purpose is very simply: I want to put people back in charge of their own lives. I don't want the state to run people's lives anymore. I want them to be masters of their own destiny.

Okay, so let's drill down into that a little bit. So I would ask you two things: one would be, you know, I watched the federal leadership debate in the last election, and I thought the Conservatives lost before they opened their mouths because they accepted the diagnosis that was brought to the table. There were five topics of conversation, if I remember correctly, and two of them were basically progressive talking points. One was truth and reconciliation, another was climate change. There was 20 minutes devoted to the economy. I thought you guys made a big mistake because you let the progressive types define the questions. And so I would say, because it may be the diagnosis in some sense is more important than the cure, at least you know you've got your finger on the problem. And so when you look at Canada at the moment, what are our problems?

The central underlying illness is a monstrous growth in the power and cost of the state at the expense of the agency and freedom of the people. That is the overriding issue. Now, I can then give specific examples of how that outputs led. So let's just take monetary policy. There’s no way Justin Trudeau could get away with spending all the money he has in the last two years if he had to use real cash, because people would never accept the many thousands of dollars of tax increases that it would require. So he has basically turned our central bank into an ATM machine for his spending. They've created $400 billion of new money in two years, which has given us a 30-year high in inflation and boosted real estate prices by 50%.

How does that compare to previous expenditures by governments?

Well, it's not even there. It's not off the charts. If you look at the balance sheet of the Bank of Canada during the Harper era, even during the great global recession, there was a minor bump in the assets it held, which indicates how much money it was injecting. Whereas right now, it shot off the charts. The balance sheet of the central bank is up something like 350%. All that cash is particularly ballooned asset prices. That's the unspoken story here. Everyone thinks about consumer inflation, which is horrible as it is, then there’s asset price inflation. And what that’s doing is creating a kind of an aristocratic economy where people with where the bigger the asset you have or before the inflation, the richer you’ve become after it. And it is almost like the housing is attached to a balloon, and it’s being lifted higher and higher up, and anybody who’s not already in the house will never be able to grab it and get inside. And so we’re—but it is all the result of this massive expansion of the money supply.

And so we’re basically seeing a transfer of wealth from the have-nots to the have-yachts, as I like to say. And those in the managerial class, the CEOs whose stocks have been artificially inflated, and they've been able to give themselves a share buybacks. With exceptionally low interest rates, they can borrow money and then buy back shares, which increases share value and gives them a bonus. The folks who own mansions in neighborhoods that are protected by zoning laws against anyone else moving in, these people have done exceptionally well over the last two years. And yet the people who are doing the nation's work are now having their salaries destroyed by inflation. You know, and then at the local level, you have municipalities bringing in zoning laws that prevent new construction so that you have artifacts—they're invisible gates. They're gated communities, but they're invisible gates, and the invisible gate is government bureaucracy that prevents construction. We have fewer houses per capita than any country in the G7, even though we have the most land to build on. So what I’m proposing in both cases: stop printing money and start building houses. I’m going to tell the big city mayors that if they don’t remove their bureaucratic zoning rules and let builders build, then I'm going to cut back on some of their infrastructure funds because I think it's going to need something that drastic to get these gatekeepers out of the way and actually build houses so that our youth have a place to call home. And you know, but it's across the economy, ironically. All of these big government interventions seem to hurt the most disadvantaged. Our immigrants come here as doctors and engineers, but they can't work in those fields because of occupational licensing protectionism. They're the gatekeepers. So I want to incentivize provinces to speed up recognition of foreign credentials so an immigrant doctor can actually work as a doctor and remove the gatekeepers from our energy sector so we can build pipelines and dig for resources and become energy self-sufficient and then remove the gatekeepers in speech. And you know all about those. The government is now pushing new censorship laws on the internet, and I promise very clearly that I'm going to get rid of all of those laws and restore freedom of expression on the internet. So really what I see is the need to remove the governmental gatekeepers to restore our freedom and let people take back control of their lives.

Okay, so let's delve into economic policy a bit. The OECD recently predicted—this is lovely—that Canada’s economy will be the worst-performing advanced economy over 2020 to 2030 and then three decades after. Now, we haven't been doing very well as a country not only under the liberals; we weren't doing that great before under the conservatives as well, especially compared to the U.S. and many other countries that in some sense are peers. And so that's a pretty damn gloomy forecast, right? Forty years out, we’re going to be the worst-performing advanced economy in the world. What do you think the conservatives conceivably did wrong in the past to fail to stave that off, and what do you think you can do differently? Maybe we can make so you’re interested in housing, you’re interested in deregulation especially on the housing front. I want to focus in as we progress through this part on energy in particular because that’s a killer topic for everyone in the world at the moment, I would say. So what did the conservatives do wrong? What has Canada done wrong? What have the liberals done wrong apart from, you know, printing money like madmen and instituting these arbitrary rules? And what do you think you can do differently?

Right, well, I would respectfully disagree on the Conservative economic track record. If you look at the 07-08 financial crisis, we came through better than any of the other G7 countries, certainly way better than the Americans. We didn’t have a housing crash here, we didn’t have a banking crisis, we didn’t have to bail out a single bank. We had very modest inflation. I don't think it ever cracked 4%, and I don’t think it was above 3% for more than one or two quarters in the entire 10-year period Harper was around. Unemployment stayed relatively low. You could buy—the average house when Harper left office in Canada was $434,000. It’s kind of hard to imagine that now. On a fast forward to energy, we need to repeal C-69. That's the bill that makes it effectively impossible to build an energy project in Canada today because it has introduced a whole series of sociological questions into the—um, in addition to being sort of ridiculous—pop cultural sociology. It introduces massive uncertainty for investors because they don't really know how and why a project will be approved or rejected, and they don't have seven years to sit around. So they’ll take their money and invest it in other parts of the world, and that’s why the projects aren’t happening here. We don't mine lithium in Canada even though we have lots of lithium in this electric car battery era. You know, we’re importing lithium from China because they actually get projects built. However, they burn coal to refine their lithium, so ironically, we’re just inducing pollution in other countries when we buy electric cars that are made—whose lithium is refined in that country. So if we could approve a lithium mine in Canada, we could actually mine the stuff, refine it, manufacture it here. We have the third biggest supply of oil on planet Earth, but we’re importing 130,000 barrels of overseas oil every day. The solution to which is so obvious is that right next door to the St. John Port, where we bring in the oil, we have St. John's, Newfoundland, is capable of adding another 400,000 barrels of Canadian production. We could just approve that production. We could ban foreign oil—overseas oil from Canada altogether—and that would mean that the dollars wouldn't be leaving our country for overseas dictatorships but would be staying here paying Canadian wages instead. And natural gas—we’ve got 1,300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and you know what you do? You get natural gas onto a ship; you have to freeze it down to a liquid. What do we have in Canada? Cold weather, as you know. And, yeah, we have a geographic advantage. We're the closest point in North America to Asia; the closest point in North America to Europe is Newfoundland. So we have a shorter shipping distance, less energy needed to liquefy gas, and yet we haven't succeeded in building a single major liquefaction facility in Canada despite the fact that in 2015 there were about 18 proposed projects. So you could approve those projects. We could be bringing hundreds of billions of dollars of opportunity to our people, particularly our First Nations people, but it takes getting those regulatory gatekeepers out of the way to let it happen.

What makes you think you could take on the woke crowd in relationship to such things? So we could say, "Well, what about the planet? What about the climate crisis? You're going to turn back to fossil fuels, you're going to demolish the globe in the next 30 years. We should be moving towards net zero." You're going to doom the poor to catastrophe while you're pretending to elevate them economically? It's like—and you’re going to be like cut into ribbons by that crowd. And so let's talk about climate change and the Paris Accords and all that. You want to promote Canadian energy. There's a foreign policy reason for doing that. You made a case for liquefaction. Like, exactly what should Canada's position be in relationship to climate change and then the development of our energy infrastructure?

Well, our resources are not the problem; they're the solution. For example, we export our natural gas; we can displace foreign coal burning electricity. The energy-hungry Asian markets are desperate for non-coal sources of electricity, but they need things like natural gas to replace it, coal with. We have that gas. We also have the biggest supply of civilian-grade uranium in the world right in Saskatchewan that could be used to export to regenerate emissions-free, pollution-free nuclear energy. We have an overabundance of hydroelectricity in Manitoba and Quebec that we could be exporting to the northern United States to displace their coal-fired electricity. We could be using small modular nuclear reactors to decarbonize the electrical grid for the oil sands, and we have the ability to do that right here in Canada. We have carbon, the carbon capture and storage techniques in our home province of Alberta, are second to none. There are some, you know, Whitecap Resources, a mid-sized company there says that it's actually now a carbon-negative company. In other words, they bury more carbon in the ground than they put into the air. And so we have the technology and the resources to do it, but we're—right now, what we're doing is punishing our own resource sector to the advantage of heavily polluting foreign dictatorships with no environmental standards and who use the money to do great harm. So we would be better off to displace their energy with ours and use that as a method of fighting for the environment while enhancing the well-being of our working class at the same time.

Well, so if this optimistic view is true, which is a view that basically says in some sense we can have our cake and share it with others and eat it too, right? Because we can make progress on the economic front and on the climate front at the same time—and I would like to point out that America's turn to natural gas has knocked their carbon dioxide output substantially down over the last 15 years, which is not a statistic you hear from the typical environmentalist types—okay.

So if we—the world could turn to Canadian energy, and as a consequence the net cost—the net impact on the carbon economy would be positive, meaning reducing carbon dioxide output, and we could get wealthier in doing so, then why in the world aren't the liberals already doing this? If the pathway forward is so clear and they're concerned about the environment in some genuine sense and also, let's say, secondarily about economic matters, is there something wrong with your reasoning that they know that's made this impossible, or how do you understand the fact that this isn't already happening?

You know, it is hard to understand. I think that it goes in line—their environmental policies seem more designed to give the state more control of the economy than they are designed to deliver an environmental outcome. They, by attacking the energy sector, it gives them the ability to create more of a command-and-control economy, which is what they believe in, and to redistribute wealth between industries and towards political friends in a very parasitical manner. But, you know, we have a total nut as our environment minister right now, Stéphane Guilbeault. He is bonkers, and he’s against nuclear; it’s not just oil and gas. He would get rid of nuclear as well. So I don’t know what would be left. You can’t, well, you know, all you have to do to get electricity is put a plug in the wall.

Yeah, that's right. Out it comes. You know, plentiful. I don't know why I'm overcomplicating it here.

I don’t either. And yeah, yeah. So it is quite a mystery to me—all of this—the fact that, because I do believe at least to some degree that the reality that you put forward is actually valid, that we could have our cake and eat it too. I certainly think the Americans have managed that as they've turned to fracking and have become a net exporter of fossil fuel. I can't see that that's done the damn world one bit of harm. Well, in this situation with Russia is one of the things that shows just how foolish we are in depending on countries other than, say, standard, reliable, forward-moving, stable democracies like Canada. So it would be lovely if that could all occur.

So okay, so let’s turn away from economic policy just for a moment. Why do you think the press in Canada dislikes you to such a degree? And are there exceptions to that rule?

Well, there are exceptions that I find the independent media gives me a fair shake, um, but, and there are some columnists even in the mainstream publications that are fair and reasonable. But the political media in the parliamentary press gallery are part of the establishment, and that defines me threatening because I’m upsetting the apple cart. They are part of the ecosystem of big government. When it comes to the CBC, they are big government. Their entire budget comes from government. The corporate owners might want to tell our international listeners and viewers just how big a subsidy the CBC gets every year and what the CBC is, and then we can talk about media subsidies in general and the collusion between the federal government and the Canadian media establishment. So maybe we start with CBC. It's $1.2 billion a year, right? In that range?

Yeah, it's $1.2 billion to produce a negligible audience, a very, very small audience, and produce almost no original content that you couldn't find somewhere else. But what this does is create a massive state-funded ecosystem, and even the journalists who don’t work for CBC, they get these contracts to comment on CBC this. They go on these panels and they get paid. I’m told $300, $400, $500 a pop to go and offer their opinion, and this basically creates a monolithic ideology and political narrative that comes from the center of the government and is designed to uphold the Trudeau government to keep them in power for as long as possible. So yeah, I’m running against that.

Is that going to be hard? Absolutely! They're going to do everything they can to tear me apart. I have no doubt about that.

Would you defund the CBC?

Yes, you've made that claim. You absolutely would do that?

Yes.

Even though, okay, so let me push back against that for a bit, okay? Because this is an important question to me, because I'm not very fond of the CBC, especially as it's managed itself over the last decade, let’s say. I used to watch it a lot when I was a kid; I used to listen to CBC Radio a lot too, and I thought it was a reasonably credible and reliable purveyor of information. I think those days are long gone. In any case, many conservative politicians in Canada have made gestures in that direction, you know, and then the people who are going to come after are going to say, “Well, you know, you're not a fan of Canadian culture, and because of the overwhelming influence of the United States and foreign media, we need to subsidize Canadian journalistic and entertainment activities, because otherwise we'll have nothing at all.” Generally, what happens is the CBC continues to survive regardless of government. So what makes you think you'd do it, and how do you think you could survive? This is back to that question before, right? How do you think you can push back against the woke types who are so good at savaging reputation and interfering with the kind of, well, policies that you're trying to put forward?

So on the CBC, there was a time when you could make an argument for a market failure. You could say, "Look, here we are—American culture is so massive and noisy." Competing with it is like trying to have an argument with a marching band, right? It’s just so loud and it’ll drown out everything in Canada. But that was only the case because the massive cost of production and distribution made it very hard for Canadian talent to even get on with the airwaves without some assistance. But now there are almost—like the cost of production and distribution of culture, information, and content is negligible. I mean, any teenager with, you know, seven or eight hundred bucks can use his or her phone to start producing content, put it online if people want to see it. Or any disgraced university professor.

That's right. But, no, I mean like the reality is that, you know, if you had a— if you were a Canadian artist in 1980, you didn’t have the capital to compete with Hollywood. Now you actually don’t need a lot of capital. And so with the free and open internet, anyone can break through as long as they have a willing audience. So the reason that CBC's content requires subsidy is not because of some market failure; it’s because it’s not appealing to Canadians.

Well, that's just because Canadians aren't smart enough to appreciate it, you know?

Well, that’s the narrative, right? You know that. And that’s the irony about the Canadian media today. They think their job is to hold the people accountable to the government rather than the government accountable to the people.

So what about other media subsidies? What's your policy on that? Because during COVID in particular, but over the last few years, you know, obviously print journalists have taken a beating from the internet because, well, for the same reasons you just outlined. I mean, what do you think—is there a role for the subsidy of the press in Canada? And if there is a role, what is it? And if not, what would you do?

Well, I haven't—the Trudeau policies are definitely designed to basically make the entire media apparatus dependent on the goodwill of the state. They have a government bureaucracy that determines what is considered to be a qualified journalistic company, and they pick and choose based on their own political views who then qualifies and therefore gets the subsidy. I think this is designed to again create more dependency on the government and curry more favor with the state. I haven't made an announcement on exactly how I'm going to fix that problem yet, but I guess I would say stay tuned on that. I want to de-politicize that and basically restore the freedom of the press in this country again by getting the state out of it.

So you're at least philosophically opposed to the idea of let’s call it government press collusion. And it might take—see, that part of the problem is I think that once you obtain power, let’s say the temptation to have the media under your thumb in some sense, as a consequence of such subsidies, you can see how that would tempt people, right? I think it's very useful to be cognizant of the sorts of temptations that do beset someone as they acquire a position of authority and power. And this is why I want to push hard on the CBC issue, because it's a signal issue. It would be quite a dramatic move to defund the CBC because it has been a standard bearer, in some sense, of a whole vision of Canadian culture. And so that would send a powerful message. Like, if they do have such an incredibly loyal audience, then they can support themselves through their audience like other institutions do. I mean, you know, there are countless other journalistic organizations that support themselves through subscriptions, sponsorship, advertising, and other means. And I think that’s what we need to do with CBC. If they genuinely have an audience, then they can go get support from their audience. I know there are lots of publications to which I subscribe. I don’t ask the taxpayer to pay for my subscriptions; I pay for it out of my pocket, and I watch either that or I suffer the advertising. But I don’t expect that other people are going to pay for me to consume the media that I like, so why should I—why should other Canadians be forced to pay for this far-left liberal propaganda that makes up most of CBC’s coverage?

Alright, well, it’ll be interesting to see what all comes of that. That should make even some more friends on the journalistic front. So, but you know, that’s the thing. People say, “Well, you’re going to—you’re picking a fight with the CBC. They’re going to come after you in the next election.” Well, they went after Harper, they went after Scheer, they went after O'Toole. What we found is that by not proposing to defund them they're just as vicious as they would otherwise be. They campaigned full-time to get Justin Trudeau elected Prime Minister even though Harper had run a 10-year government without defunding them. So yeah, they’re going to come at me guns blazing. I know that.

But they would do that even if I weren't taking the principled stand on defunding them, right?

So, okay, so that's a good point. You’ve got nothing to lose on that front in some sense. So, let if you don't mind, let's turn to Trudeau and to Singh. These are your two—your two people who will—you'll be facing off against in some real sense, and you do face off against quite regularly in the House. What do you think of Mr. Trudeau?

So I think he's an egomaniac, and I think everything he does comes back to his egomania. Even his political ideology, you really think about his expansionistic role of the state, it never comes back to serving an individual objective other than to make him more powerful or his legacy more grand. So let me give you a few examples. He slashed the amount you can put into a tax-free savings account, but then he simultaneously increased the amount you were forced to pay into the state savings plan. He killed multiple pipelines, then he invested state money in a pipeline. He attacked parents’ ability to take care of their own children by removing tax fairness for families of the stay-at-home parent, and then he brings in a government program to replace it. So what you’re seeing there is you say, “Well, this sounds like these are utterly inconsistent positions,” and the answer is, “No, they’re not.” They’re all very consistent. In all cases, what he does is takes away the ability of business or individuals or families to do things for themselves, and it requires they do things through him and through the state. His ideology is always about creating a pretext in order to justify the state garnering more control over every aspect of your life: how you raise your kids, how your business functions, what you see and say on the internet. He believes the state has to be everywhere always because, as King Louis would say, the state is him.

Well, you know, that's—I think it's a very dangerous thing to attack the man rather than the ideas, but you're making, you know, as a rule of thumb, but you're making a case that in this case, that can't be done because there is a personality trait that is uniting diverse policy decisions that isn't ideational or ideological even, it is in fact personal. And so my sense of Trudeau—initially I was very upset with his decision to run for Prime Minister because I thought, “Well, you don’t know anything and you’re attractive, and you can behave well in public, and you have a charming facade, but you don’t know anything in any real sense, and there’s no indication that you do.” You're not particularly well-educated, and you're not particularly accomplished. And this is actually a hard job. But worse than that, the only reason you even have the vainglorious possibility of succeeding is because you have the same last name as your father. And so, and then he ran, and I thought, “Well, how do you justify that to yourself?” Because the gap of knowledge must have been painfully evident to him, and the fact that the Trudeau name—you could say, “Well, you know, the Liberal Party came to me.” That’s his justification. “They came to me, and there wasn't another person that could win on the Liberal side. Better a Trudeau liberal, even if it’s a consequence of family name, than any damn conservative,” let’s say. But I still saw it as a manifestation of a really profound narcissism. I think a reasonable person would have said, “I’m not prepared for this, certainly not yet, and I’m not the man that needs to be in this position.” So, I don’t know what you think about those musings, but that’s how I looked at Trudeau, and I certainly haven't seen anything in the preceding years that has disabused me of any of those notions.

I think there’s some truth in that. He was—his victory was definitely not a meritocratic one. He was probably the least vetted prime ministerial candidate in our history. The media just glossed over so much of his life to go straight to help him and protect him. It was almost like they built a protective cocoon around him, and, you know, like he had dressed up in grotesque racist costumes so many times. By his own claim, he can’t remember them all. I mean, the average politician had done that once, it would have been exposed, and that person would have been expelled from politics altogether. But, you know, but he was protected by the media who still protect him because he really is their camp candidate. He represents the political class and the establishment in Canada: those who profit off a big, bloated bureaucracy and regulatory state. The old upper-Canada-era aristocracy know that he will always deliver for them, and he has his deliverables; he's delivered mightily for them, and that's why they're doing so well and why they'll fight tooth and nail to keep him there.

Why do you think he was and still remains attractive to a substantial subset of Canadians? I mean, people seem to regard him as charming and caring, and I think he is charming in a kind of shallow sense, but it isn't obvious to me at all that he's caring. But he seems to play the part, and he plays it well enough so that while many people—and this is true of people all over the world—certainly by the act. So why do you think that is, and how do you combat that?

Yeah, look, he is charming, I won’t deny that. And he’s a good-looking dude. But I don’t think he’s actually that popular. So people forget he got 32% of the vote in the last election. Sixty-eight percent of those who cast ballots voted against him. That’s the lowest he got—the lowest share of vote of any Prime Minister in Canadian history. And before him, the record was set by him in the previous election. He got 33% of the vote. He never actually reached the height—the vote share that Harper got in 2011. So we sometimes think he’s an extremely popular guy because of the adulation he gets from the mainstream media, but in fact, he’s not that popular with ordinary Canadians. What he succeeded at doing, to his credit, is engineering a very efficient distribution of votes, so that with 32% of the vote, I think he got something like 45% or 46% of the seats. And that is the nut we need to crack. He wins a lot of seats with few votes; we win few seats with lots of votes. In fact, the last two elections, Conservatives have beat him in the popular vote; we just haven’t gotten them in the right places. So we need—that’s the change we need to make, and I believe we will make in the forthcoming election.

So you don't think that it is a preponderance of Canadians who have had the wolf pulled over their eyes?

No, he’s not, by any objective analysis of the data, he’s not an especially popular Prime Minister.

What about Mr. Jagmeet Singh, who, for our international watchers and listeners, is the leader of the Canadian Socialist Party and in some sense the person who holds the balance of power right now in Canada's House of Commons and therefore the keys in some real sense to the federal government. What do you think about Mr. Singh?

Well, he lacks on that, right? Why does he exist? You've already got an NDP Prime Minister, a socialist Prime Minister in Justin Trudeau. So that means the Socialist Party has to try to figure out what to do with itself. Jagmeet has said, “Well, he'll just support Trudeau in a coalition.” The problem is when you go back to the electorate, people are going to say, “Well, you're part of the same problem.” Like I had a gentleman in—I was in Charles Lee in Quebec—a lifelong NDP supporter, very upset with how life is; the guy was telling me he’s had to reduce his diet to one meal a day because food is so expensive, and he was voting for the NDP until he saw the NDP formed a coalition with Trudeau—the guy who’s caused all the misery. It's gonna be very hard for Jagmeet to go to the people and claim that he represents anything other than the trudopian status quo, and I think that in the next election, people will be looking for a drastic departure from Trudeau.

So, um, they’ll be looking for the anti-Trudeau. And so what do you think of him on the personal front? I mean, one of the things that’s really struck me about Singh, apart from his unconditional support for Trudeau in exactly the manner you described, is that he seems almost stunningly and singularly devoid of ideas. I haven't seen anything come out of the NDP federally that isn't just woke nonsense that constitutes a genuine appeal, let’s say, to the working class. And I also thought that his—we can talk about this too—his response to the trucker’s convoy was something remarkable to behold because here you had the party— the putative party of the oppressed working class, if anything, even more dismissive of that protest than the liberals, which is really saying something because Trudeau, as you pointed out, called them misogynists and bigots and claimed, completely falsely, with the collusion of the CBC, that the vast preponderance of the money that funded that protest had come first from the bloody Russians and then from the, like, from the American Republicans who were apparently, you know, trying to stage a coup in a country they don’t even really—it isn't even really on their radar for reasons that no one’s been able to—I was in the States, you know, for three months. I went to 50 cities in the last three months, and I talked during the Q&A period about—because people kept asking, “What’s going on with Canada?” And I said, “Well, you’re not going to believe this, but our government and our media have told Canadians that MAGA-type Republicans basically tried to stage a coup to destabilize our democracy.” And they would ask, and this was Democrats and Republicans alike, they would ask, “But why would we do that? What possible motive if we cared, which we don’t, why in the world would we possibly want to destabilize Canada’s democracy?” And the answer to that is, well, I always felt as a representative candidate in that situation, I always felt like I was in some sense out of my mind because I couldn't believe that I could present that complex of ideas as a reality and that there wasn’t just something wrong with the way I was looking at the whole situation. It’s so utterly preposterous. So, well back to Mr. Singh. He, the NDP, has abandoned the working class. They have become another party of the elite institutional aristocracy that they represent. Those with big salaries doing managerial work, many of whom have been able to work from home with fully protected salaries and incomes for the last two years. Which is fine; I mean, there’s nothing wrong with having that good fortune, but it certainly—if you are such a person, then you shouldn’t be judging those who are protesting because they’ve lost everything over the last two years. And you would think that, you know, the NDP would have actually stood for the downtrodden, but that is not what they really believe. And that goes back to what I was saying earlier, like you were saying, you know, isn’t it—isn’t that the left? Isn’t the socialist parties that really care about the downtrodden and the disadvantaged? The answer is, of course not. That is the rhetoric. What they really care about is a powerful state, and anyone who threatens the state is the enemy. And that’s what we saw with Jagmeet Singh. You saw a group of people who were independently raising their voices for their freedom. He said, “We can’t have that. I’m going to join with Trudeau and call them a bunch of horrible names.” And that’s what he did, which is exactly the opposite of what you’re supposed to do if you really care about working-class people.

Well, they seem—the people who purported to care for the working class, and this certainly happened with the American Democrats under Clinton, seem perfectly willing to sacrifice the economic interests of the real working class—those people who exist right now—to some hypothetical utopian future. And every time push comes to shove, the real working class takes a walloping hit in the name of this hypothetical future utopia. You see that on the energy front. We talked about policy there, and that’s certainly not only the case in Canada. It’s like—it's like a church show when he visited our home province of Alberta, and he just—he saw the working classes in the energy sector. And his son Randolph said these are not members of the cultural elite, and he said, “Churchill said to his son, 'Yes, but the elite are but the glittering scum that floats upon the river of production.’”

Yeah, well, I think maybe that was part of the backlash against the truckers, you know, because these real people came out and said, “We’ve got a problem here with you guys. You’re pushing us down a little too hard, and maybe you could stop doing it. You’re fundamentally violating our civil liberties,” and we might point out that this is in a country that still does not allow its citizens to travel.

Yes, that’s right. And you know what? What I think the real backlash by the elites against the truckers was this idea that truckers have no business going to Ottawa and raising their voices. That’s the idea that the elites were trying to push back against. They think—the thinkers of the working class should just shut up and pay up and let the experts just run things for us and provide—and the population should provide total deference to these institutional elites to just run our lives for us and do what we’re told.

Now, you stood up for the truckers, so now you've had some time. It's been a couple of months; you've had some time to consider your position. Can you tell me what you think happened with the trucker protest? And then I'd like to segue into the imposition of the Emergencies Act which, you know, is grist for the mill, let’s say, in terms of discussion. So tell me, tell me your response to the truckers' protest in convoy and where you stood, and where you stand.

So I—as I said before, the truckers even arrived on Parliament Hill. When the media asked me about it, I support those peaceful, law-abiding truckers who came to Ottawa to peacefully protest for their livelihoods and liberties, and I simultaneously condemn any individuals who broke laws, behaved badly, or blockaded critical infrastructure. I think it's possible to hold individually accountable the bad actors without painting every single person with the same brush. If you went to any protest that had nine or ten thousand people, you will find bad actors, but that doesn’t mean that all nine or ten thousand are themselves bad actors. You know, for example, I was confronted by a journalist the other day. He said, “Yes, but what about those journalists who—sorry, what about those truckers that were angry at journalists who behaved badly or conducted themselves poorly? What do you say to them?” I said, “Well, they should be individually held to account for their behavior.”

But he said, “Well, don’t you take some responsibility for supporting the cause?” I said, “Well, let me ask you this: do you hold every single environmentalist personally responsible for the acts wielding terrorists who went to the Coastal GasLink pipeline construction site and started trying to kill pipeline workers? Does every single person who’s spoken out against pipelines take personal responsibility for what those axe-wielding terrorists did or are the axe-wielders themselves personally responsible?” And even I would say, “No, you can criticize a pipeline. I disagree with you. You can criticize a pipeline without taking personal responsibility for the violence of some eco-terrorist you’ve never even met.” And so I walked around. I saw the truckers on Parliament Hill. By the way, those who—most people weren’t actually there. The media depiction was total nonsense. If you watched it on television, you would think that it was armageddon. Um, Jordan, every single member of parliament that condemned the truckers in the House of Commons during the protest had to walk right through the trucker convoy, right? Because they were parked right up front; there was no way to get in without walking through them. Not one of them was prevented from walking through. It was peaceful. Most of the time, it was sort of a jubilant celebration. And people came and went. They walked around on Parliament Hill. Members of Parliament of all political stripes walked through the protest every day without incident. And yes, it was—some businesses were inconvenienced, and lost money; they should be compensated. But by and large, it was a peaceful protest by people who generally don't get involved in political activism. They're truckers—they drive truck all day.

Yeah, they have things to do, man.

They have things to do. The other thing is: what—you know, why didn’t they all go home after the first week, Jordan? They had nowhere to go because the government had taken away their jobs. They weren’t allowed to go back to their jobs. You can imagine if Trudeau had just said, “We’re going to lift the mandate on the truckers,” they would have fired up their machines and hit the road to go back to work. But he took away their jobs and their livelihoods. No wonder they stayed there for so long, and it was absolutely unscientific and malicious. Look, if anyone is going to spread a virus, as sure as hell’s not the guy who’s sitting alone by himself all day in a truck. So this was never about medical science; it was about political science. It was about demonizing a small minority for political gain. And I'm proud of the fact that people stood up and fought for their freedoms in that case.

Yeah, well, there is a contempt associated with that on the liberal and the NDP side that was really quite striking to see—like really quite mind-boggling to see. And you know, the other thing that struck me about the truckers, because I talked to quite a few of them also publicly when the protest was occurring and suggested near the time when they did decide to leave that they should probably leave because the crazies were going to show up and cause trouble. Because I think if you occupy anything, if you protest long enough, the people who want to cause trouble are going to gravitate. And I think they left about exactly when they should. And I do think they reached a lot of their goals. I mean, first of all, they did blow up the Conservative Party, which I know they didn't exactly intend to, but that wasn't nothing. And also, maybe you disagree with that interpretation, but also Canada really started to move on the mandate front pretty much at the same time the truckers jumped up and down about it. And so I thought they did extremely well, and I also think the world responded that way because that protest became a model for similar and peaceful and useful protests all across the world.

So now, do you—what do you think happened to the Conservatives in the aftermath of the trucker's protest? Am I being too harsh?

No, I look, I don’t know that there’s a direct link between the two, but I think by and large the concert—it was a difficult political challenge to hot potato for any political party to manage. But I can’t speak for how everyone else in the caucus managed it or commented on it, but I’m happy with where I landed. I pushed through the controversy and stood my ground, and I’m happy to say that my position on that protest is exactly the same as it was before it even arrived in Ottawa, and I believe I can defend everything I did and said on it.

I'm going to ask you one last question. I’d like to talk to you for about two more hours, but we can’t do that, and I don’t want to push the patience of the viewers and listeners either. Let’s talk about the Emergencies Act. So what do you have to say about that?

Well, I mean, it’s ironic that Trudeau brought in the Emergencies Act after the border crossings were cleared of protest, which is the only—you know, the blockades of the border were wrong; I said so at the time. But that being said, they had been resolved by the time Trudeau actually brought in the Emergencies Act, and so what we effectively had at that point was about, you know, 10 or 11 blocks in downtown Ottawa that were blocked by trucks. You know, to put this into perspective, the Emergencies Act is sort of like a War Measures Act almost; it’s almost kind of like martial law.

Yeah, a lot like it. We haven’t actually done that in Canada since this law was actually instituted. His father did use the War Measures Act to tackle some terrorist attacks by the radical Quebec separatist group, but since that time, we’ve not done it even in 9/11 when 24, 25 Canadians were killed in a terrorist attack in New York or when a terrorist shot dead a soldier at the War Monument and then stormed Parliament spraying bullets around in all directions. We didn’t use it then. And so we’ve never really used this law. You would think that it would be used in a case where there was a foreign invasion or a monstrous terrorist attack or something of that magnitude, but we never did. And then Trudeau did it for this protest. I think he ultimately was just angry that he was personally facing a political protest and didn’t want to face the political consequences of a democratic protest. He also wanted to be as malicious as possible to deter any similar protests. So he actually seized bank accounts, which caused a lot of people to have fear that if they ever donated to the wrong political cause, that the state might freeze their account and shut them out of business. So I think there’s a lot of fear is a powerful political tool. I think that’s what he was trying to invoke with the use of this act.

So what do you think should be done about the fact that he did in fact invoke it? Because this is a major league suspension of civil liberties. This along with the fact that unvaccinated Canadians still can't leave the country or fly within the country or take a train, and I see no excuse whatsoever for the imposition of those restrictions as of now. It’s maliciousness; it’s vengefulness as far as I can tell. So how is the government going to be held accountable when we have what’s essentially a coalition in place?

Well, it’s going to be hard. I mean, I think it’s going to have to be voters that will hold them to account when we finally have an election. But they will, you know, they’ve appointed someone who was a former liberal staffer to be the—to oversee the inquiry into the use of the Act. I think we need—I’m consulting with scholars, legal scholars, on how we can curtail the power and limit the use of the Emergencies Act in the future. I want to be very careful though in how I do it because, you know, this is an incredibly blunt instrument. But in times of war, or foreign attack, or something like that, you could understand why there might be an occasion where these powers might be needed. But I do think we need to craft changes to the Act that will prevent it from being abused for political purposes like this again.

So I said at the beginning, I would be mindful of your time in our private conversation before we started, and we are unfortunately running out of time. There’s at least twice as many things as we got to that I would like to get to. And so maybe we can do that in the future. So I’d like to give you the opportunity at the end just to—well, is there anything we didn’t talk about today that’s of signal importance that you would like to bring up today and close with?

Yeah, I would just say, you know, I think that we’re divided right now in Canada because of a deliberate strategy of divide and conquer—governments that want to enhance their control. They have to turn citizens against each other. They have to make you afraid of your neighbor, your co-worker, your trucker, so that you’ll turn to the state for protection against your fellow citizenry. And that’s the oldest trick in the book: divide and conquer. Control is, by its definition, divisive because it’s a zero-sum game. If one gets more control, another must have less. Freedom is not the quite the contrary. If your neighbor gets more freedom, you don’t get less freedom; the likelihood is you’ll have more as well. So if your friend has more freedom of speech, well, you’ll have freedom of speech. If the immigrant has the freedom to work as a doctor, then you’ll have the freedom to have a doctor. If the local small businessman has the freedom to function without red tape, then you’ll probably have the freedom to buy his products more affordably. Or your teenager might get a job with the freedom to have a job with him. If the Muslim or Jew gets more religious freedom, then the Christian gets more religious freedom. And that’s why freedom is a unifying principle—it brings people together because it allows each of them to be masters of their own destiny without taking anything from each other. We fight over control, whereas we fight for freedom. That is the difference. And I believe we can bind up the nation’s wounds by reinstating the ancient freedoms that we inherited from our ancestors. So I really see my role as quite an unimportant one. I'm here simply restoring what can already belong to Canadians, um, by virtue of their 800-year inheritance of English liberties going back to the Magna Carta. I’m just among the common people who are custodians of that freedom while we’re alive. You know, Edmund Burke said it’s a contract between the dead, the living, and the yet-to-be-born. We’re the living generation has the duty to pass on that inheritance, and that’s what I see myself doing: to re-kindle that inheritance and pass it on to my kids so they can pass it on to their kids. I’ll pass away into—fade away into the past one day, but hopefully we’ll have secured the freedom that we inherited for many more generations to come. And that’s what I mean when I want to give people back control over their life in the present. It’s also to extend it into the future. So that’s my purpose; that’s why I’m running. If people want to support me, by pierre4pm.ca. Yes, that’s Pierre for the number 4 pm.ca is how you can sign up, become a member, and do that. And I would be honored to have people's support in this enterprise.

Mr. Pierre Pauliev, thank you very much for talking with me today. Much appreciated. I hope we get a chance to continue this conversation. There's many more things that it would be a pleasure to jointly bring to the attention of Canadians. So, and I would also say thank you for your, I think, your courage in allowing me to do this. You know, I've asked other politicians, including some on the Conservative side, and I've had some agree to speak with me. But generally, they seem intimidated by the span of time that stretches out in front of them or perhaps, you know, not cognizant fully of the power of YouTube dialogue. But you—well, thank you very much for participating and for talking to me. Much appreciated.

Thank you, Dr. Peterson. I really appreciate your prodigious work. And we have enjoyed your books and look forward to continuing our conversation into