247. Pierre Poilievre: How He Would Fix Canada in His First 90 Days

Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada Pierre Poilievre joins to discuss how he would govern, his work as Official Opposition Leader, and his plans for Canada’s economy, housing, free speech, crime, pipelines, private property and the future of Canadian democracy with host Aaron Pete.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

If you became Prime Minister tomorrow, what would you do in your first 90 days?

SPEAKER_00 0:04

I would pass a lot of legislation almost on an emergency basis to turn the country around.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

You asked him multiple times in the House of Commons if we were in a technical recession or a real recession.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Image does not stand up to scrutiny. The illusion of Mark Kearney is far superior to the reality of Mark Kearney.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Do you believe there should be public disclosure or a formal investigation into whether anything was offered positions, promises, incentives, or future opportunities in exchange for the individuals who floor crossed?

SPEAKER_00 0:35

They ultimately betrayed the people that voted for them, and I think they will be held accountable.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

What is your take on what just took place in these online censorship bills?

SPEAKER_00 0:43

They want to control your thoughts, your religious beliefs, they want to be able to have the capacity to survey all people's online activities.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Courts are now wrestling with whether Aboriginal title can coexist with privately held fee simple land. What is your position?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

That fee simple must take priority. Once it is granted, then it must be final.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

If you became Prime Minister, how long do you think it would take for young Canadians before they could realistically start entering the housing market again?

SPEAKER_00 1:11

I think within a term in office it's reasonable and realistic to expect that homeownership would normalize again for young people.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Politics can ask a lot from a family. What has this journey been like for your wife and children? And if they were sitting here today and I asked them what it's cost them, what do you think they'd say?

SPEAKER_00 1:29

It's cost them a lot.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Canada feels more deeply divided now, regionally, politically, economically, and culturally. How on earth would you go about bringing this country back together? Dear Polyev, this is an absolute privilege to sit down with you. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you, Chief. I want to start by just asking, if you became Prime Minister tomorrow, what would you do in your first 90 days?

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Well, I would pass a lot of legislation almost on an emergency basis to turn the country around. Let's start with the economy. I would immediately pass an economic um rescue plan that would include eliminating all the anti-development laws like C-69, the anti-development law, the uh which blocks pipelines and gums up mines. I'd get rid of the uh ban on shipping oil off the northwest coast of BC by repealing C-69. I'd repeal the industrial carbon tax. Um and I would also institute some major reductions in the cost of the bureaucracy, the consultants, the uh foreign aid, the corporate welfare programs, uh the handouts to fake and phony refugees. Uh you'd have to act on all of those things immediately in order to start turning the ship around. Um and then I would introduce also a really an emergency anti-crime law to reverse all the anti-uh all the sort of soft on crime liberal laws that have come forward in the last decade and bring in tough criminal justice policies into the statutes that will lock up the criminals. I think you could do all of those things in the first 90 days, and if I were prime minister, I would.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Fascinating. You're an individual, I find, that people have different perspectives on, vastly different perspectives. Your supporters see you as bringing much-needed change. I think that one of the challenges we have in a democracy is the conservatives haven't had a voice federally for a very long time now. And so people who are conservative feel very frustrated about where we are. And then you have people on the left who see you as a very divisive individual. Where do you think those misunderstandings and misrepresentations come from?

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Well, they're very deliberate. It's uh obviously the liberal media and a liberal establishment, which has enormous funds and uh share a voice, are threatened by a change. They have uh made a fortune, uh, they have gained power and wealth over the last 10 years, making other people poor. I mean, it's it's been a great time to be a liberal lobbyist, a liberal consultant, a liberal corporate welfare bum. Uh if you uh if you're well connected to the government, you've probably made millions and millions of dollars uh over the last uh ten years, uh effectively ripping off the taxpayer and the Canadian working class. And they see me coming along, threatening uh that to to end the party uh for them and put the people back in charge of the government. And so they're gonna use every um megaphone they have to disparage and uh uh defame me. Uh and so it's been a very d uh deliberate um consistent campaign by the club, the liberal club of uh lobbyists, corporate power brokers, and insiders that uh want to stop me from putting the people back in charge of the of the government. And uh so that's where the misunderstanding comes from to answer your question directly.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Aaron Powell That also ties in with the last election, where uh one of the pieces of commentary was around the fact that there were so many government employees within your district. How do you reflect on that loss and what that means as you continue to talk about some of these issues that aren't supported by many people in Ottawa who are employed by the government?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Well, I I don't regret telling the truth. I mean, uh the reality is we have far too much bureaucracy in this country. Under the Liberal government, the bureaucracy ballooned by 50 percent in bodies and about 60 percent in cost. It grew uh about four times faster than the population and uh roughly four times faster than the economy. And I believe we needed to cut back on the bureaucracy because there's there's no free lunch. You can't you can't balloon the bureaucracy unless you're prepared to raise taxes on the working people who fund it. And I'm not. I want I want to put money back in the pockets of people who actually do productive things and work hard. I want young people to be able to keep more of their paycheck, own a home. I want moms and dads to be able to afford food, I want seniors to be able to retire with dignity, but they can't do that when they're carrying around this morbidly obese bureaucracy on their backs. I made uh perhaps it was the political mistake of telling that truth during an election campaign while serving as an MP in an Ottawa riding. But I mean, the alternative is just to be a liar and claim that we can uh, you know, balloon the bureaucracy without car charging you more. And and and that's I I just I don't feel comfortable lying to the Canadian people. So I told the truth, I paid the price, but I bounced back, and I don't regret it.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

I'm excited to ask you this question. We asked ChatGPT to compare your December 2025 interview with Donna Friesen to her interview with Mark Carney. It it found that Kearney was asked serious policy questions, but he was mostly questioned as a prime minister managing very, very difficult files. Your interview focused much more on whether you had failed, whether your leadership was a problem, whether Canadians had rejected you, and whether your caucus was falling apart. When you hear that, what is the what are your takeaways?

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Well, first of all, I think Dawn of Reason should ask if the viewers have rejected her uh when you look at the the uh the the the state of chorus media. Um but uh you know uh the reality is that uh there's a big illusion about Mark Carney. Uh he has uh failed at everything he's done, uh, but managed to fail upwards afterwards, you know, like as the governor of the Bank of England, he caused the worst inflation in the G7 and a housing crisis in London. Then he went on to be a corporate power broker where his job was to harvest a bunch of government handouts for corporate insiders and then put the money in offshore tax havens. And then he was Trudeau's economic advisor, wherein he helped double housing costs, food bank lineups, and the national debt. All his advice was followed, and we know that because his advice is public in his book. And uh then he became prime minister. And what has he done in that role? He's given us the only recession in the G7, the only um the fastest uh food price inflation, the worst household debt. And yet the media doesn't ask him questions about his actual results. Uh they just throw lob softballs at him uh so that he can uh regurgitate the same promises he's been breaking his entire career. And frankly, he's been wrong about every single major economic issue of the last decade. Um on the other hand, I mean, I wish uh the media would ask more about the the issues that affect people's lives, because I'm the only one who's been talking about how we can unblock home building uh so young people can afford homes or get the taxes and the red tape off food production so folks can afford groceries, how we can bring back sound money and let people afford their lives again. And uh those are the kinds of questions that I mean, you know, I was just watching on YouTube the other day. There was a guy who went on and said he watched my interview of his diary of the CEO, and he said he in that one interview had gone from being a Pierre Polyev hater to being a strong, ardent supporter in one interview. And the reason, the explanation was that he had never heard my message. He had heard things said about me by the liberal media and the liberal establishment and believed them all. And then when he actually heard me talk for uh half an hour unfiltered, he said, Wow, that's what he believes, that's his plan, that's what I support, that's what I've always wanted. And so one of my biggest political challenges is to get through this incredible filter of liberal interest groups uh that uh that basically see their role as as uh propagandizing for the Liberal Party and against me. And uh I'm gonna determine to keep doing that.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Well, I appreciate you being willing to do this interview today because I think that's how a lot of independent uh journalists, independent media figures feel is we're up against those same establishments where politicians are just used to going on to CTV, global news, CVC to get their message out. And so people on the outside who don't have the same questions, who aren't going to follow the same line, have a tougher time trying to get in because people are just so used to the inertia of going through those processes. So I just want to quickly thank you, but also thank your team for organizing all of this because it's a huge privilege to ask you questions. I don't feel like you get asked enough.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Right. Well, listen, I think we need to do more of this. We need to democratize, democratize political discussion in this country. You know, uh far too often those who have um a vested interest, a conflict of interest, are told to uh are given the microphone and told uh that they can uh espouse their agenda, they have too much uh uh sway. Uh those are the people who, you know, you look at the major political talk shows, who do they bring on as commentators? Lobbyists. These lobbyists have an interest in being liked by the government because they law they make money off lobbying the government. So you think they're gonna say anything that is hostile to the people in power? Of course not. And so, you know, they're not gonna criticize a minister on Monday and then go lobby him on on Tuesday. Um, but so so often it's the the club that dominates the discourse in this country. And that's why so many other people who the people who do the work in Canada feel left behind.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

I couldn't agree more. I want to ask a personal question. Yes, politics can ask a lot from a family. What has this journey been like for your wife and children? And if they were sitting here today and I asked them what it's cost them, what do you think they'd say?

SPEAKER_00 11:43

I think it's cost them a lot. I mean, yesterday uh I went to the just for you know for people who might watch this later on, uh on Sunday is Father's Day, it's uh Friday now, so it's two to two days from now, but I won't be home for Father's Day. So my uh wife showed up at the airport with uh my kids uh they she took them straight from uh daycare in school to the airport to send me off with a nice Father's Day card uh in advance in expectation that I won't see them on that very special day. Uh so I I'm away a lot. It's uh very hard on the kids. You know, they're very they're young uh and uh they work uh I work very hard, but uh the the that's not a problem. The sacrifice of being away from the kids is the the hardest part. And uh my wife uh is a real champion. She steps up to replace uh a lot of the contributions that uh I would normally have been making. And we're very blessed to have uh extended family who I learned my wife is uh Latina. When you marry a Latina, you marry the whole family. And uh that brings a lot of relief because they do a lot of the the legwork of picking up the kids, taking them to different things. Some weekends when both Ann and I are away, they step in and entertain the kids for the whole weekend, and uh they're just wonderful. Um, but it is um, you know, life uh is short and uh time is the most precious commodity. Unlike money, you can't get lost time back. It's gone. When it's gone, it's gone. And that's particularly true for small children. They're only like that for so long. You know, there's it's a very special time uh for, you know, when they're under 10, there's just a certain special uh magic about kids. And every minute you're not enjoying that is a minute you'll never get back. And uh so I'm conscious of that. And uh at the same time, though, I th the way I you know justify it is I I believe that when my kids get older, they'll realize that I was that we as a family were sacrificing for something that was worth it. And I want that's a lesson I want them to know that you have to sacrifice in life for your own future benefit, but also for the benefit of other people. Um so I I like to think that there's a a positive lesson that they will grow from and uh hopefully replicate in their own lives.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

Aaron Powell Do you ever fear that it won't be worth it? That in the end, when you're 90, being missing those moments won't have have been worth it?

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Aaron Powell I think we all I think anybody who's away from their kids a lot ha has to fear that. And um it's also a reminder not to waste time. Like uh you just can't be um uh frittering away hours um, you know, thumbing through social media or daydreaming or doing stupid things that don't uh advance either your family or your work mission. Um, because every minute you're doing that is a minute you're not spending with the kids. So I've had to become a lot more disciplined in terms of my time, like when I'm sitting on an airplane, I even I'm tired, I have to be working because I know that if I don't do the work then, then it will come out of my time when I'm back at home, time that I could be spending with the kids. But, you know, we we've managed to strike a pretty good balance. Like I almost every night that I'm in town, I read my read to my little boy, I play with my little girl, have her up on my shoulders. We uh take her, we we take the kids out every weekend when I'm in town uh to uh parks and uh playgrounds and play basketball with them and we just stay very, very b uh involved. I try to do a FaceTime with them uh to the the the goal is to do it at least once a day, sometimes more, so that they see their dad even when he's not at home with them. And um and we work at it and we fight for it. But you know, there are a lot of other people that make a lot of sacrifices too. You think of truckers, they're away from their families a long time as well, on icy roads in faraway provinces, or there are soldiers who serve long-term missions overseas and risk their lives doing it. So uh, when I compare myself to the sacrifices of others, I know that uh that uh I don't have it that bad.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Independent political commentators are now reaching major audiences. One voice I never hear about on CBC, global, CTV is David from Moose on the Loose. I'm wondering if you're aware of his work. He has over 200,000 subscribers, he gets around 80,000 views per episode. I don't agree with him on a lot, but I think having a diverse media diet where you're hearing from people on the left and people on the right, understanding how people see things is important. Uh, what do you think of where people are starting to get their political information from? And Dave?

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Well, I encourage people to listen to what he has to say. I think he's collect connected the dots and a lot of liberal corruption. Uh the media in Ottawa has done absolutely almost nothing in reporting on the enormous uh corruption that is present in the liberal government, uh, whether it's this $200 million space pad where they overpaid the government overpaid with your money for what was effectively a slab of concrete uh and enriching a bunch of liberal insiders or uh the the Brookfield conflicts that are so obvious, the fact that the Prime Minister is uh still invested in the biggest tax dodger in Canada, uh according to what uh the uh uh Toronto Star called it before he got into politics. And then when he got into politics, the Toronto Star stopped reporting on it altogether. Um then you've got um you've got all the consulting contracts that go out, uh the prescribe IT scandal of uh millions of dollars paid for almost no value to tax dollars. These are things that that day that Moose on the Loose uh and others are exposing, and I think we need to have those independent voices that get around the censorship in Ottawa so Canadians know how badly they're being ripped off.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Speaking of which, the government just pushed through a lot of new bills, including laws on hate speech, online safety, and police access to digital information. Even the CBC came out with a panel that were all blown away by uh how this is unprecedented and inappropriate. What is your take? You were just there. What is your take on what just took place in these online censorship bills?

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Well, well, we're seeing the more consolidation of power and control in the hands of uh the the Carney Liberal government. Uh they want to control your thoughts, your religious beliefs, your um they want to be able to have the capacity to surveil uh people's online activities, uh, with laws that go far beyond that what exists in any other democratic country. And uh what you're seeing is a large-scale surveillance and censorship apparatus that uh the Liberals have put together with um C9, which bans certain Bible verses that the government considers to be politically incorrect, uh, with um C11, the old C11, which is the Online Streaming Act, which allows the mini- the government to manipulate algorithms to s to uh promote content it wants you to see and demote other uh content it does not want you to see, uh, with C-22, which create basically turns giant tech companies into surveillance uh uh enterprises for the government, um, to uh and numerous other uh legisl bills that they're they've brought forward that uh, you know, for C18, for example. C-18 makes it so that a lot of independent media outlets can't even get on Instagram and Facebook anymore. And we're the only place in the world where that's the case, or the only democracy in the world where that's the case. So we're fighting for free speech. Uh I'm a f I'm a free speech champion. I believe that people should be able to decide what they think. They should be allowed to think thoughts that I don't agree with, that the government finds outrageous. And that is the only way free speech is the only way speech actually matters if you're allowed to say things that the government does not want you to say. Otherwise, there's no such thing as free speech. So uh we need to throw open the the uh the the curtains and let the sun shine in.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

I couldn't agree more. I am as close to a free speech absolutist as you can get. Uh, I've come out against the denialist bill that was put forward. Uh I've interviewed uh individuals like Francis Widowson about her thoughts on what happened with the Kamloops 215 story. I don't necessarily agree with her, but we need to be able to have disagreements, debates, uh, and that's what makes our country stronger. And then people who come out about the uh indigenous kind of reconciliation industry, they're not wrong to say that there are a huge group of lobbyists, lawyers, um, and voices that want to make money off of the Trevor Burrus, many of them are not even indigenous.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

There's people who are bureaucrats, lawyers, lobbyists who have nothing to do with the indigenous communities, they're just showing up to make money off of both Indigenous people and Canadian and other Canadian taxpayers. Uh which is not the what the what the what Canadians think of when they when they imagine that we're doing reconciliation.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

Aaron Powell And I just want to briefly say like I think in this interview, there may be people sitting here waiting for me to ask you really aggressive, tough questions. I think people are already doing plenty of that. I think that's there's already a lane for people uh trying to gotcha you, attack you, and I don't think that's productive to the types of conversations we need to be having as Canadians. I also strongly believe, and I was talking to your team before this, your role, and people forget this, and I understand, but your role is to offer different policy solutions, different options for the government to be considering. You're supposed to be a government in waiting, demonstrating a different path forward. And so criticizing you when you don't have the power to enact law, create bills, uh, and form decisions that were impact the country. It seems not a good use of my time or your time to be trying to find a question that's going to catch you. But I do want to ask, Canada feels more deeply divided now, regionally, politically, economically, and culturally. How on earth would you go about bringing this country back together?

SPEAKER_00 21:40

I believe that uh the reason that we're divided is because the government is trying to control too much. Control too much of the economy, too much of our speech, too much of our uh thoughts. And when that happens So control is a zero. Some game. If one person has more control, someone else has to have less because there's only a finite amount, uh, a hundred percent. So obviously people have to fight over control. Um, and that's divisive. Um freedom is not finite and therefore people if one person gets more freedom, that doesn't mean someone else gets less. They both get more. That's the irony, right? So, like if if if your neighbor gets freedom of speech, you don't lose freedom of speech, you gain it as well at the same time. Uh and uh, you know, if you have a Jewish neighbor who gets freedom of religion, that doesn't mean you, as a, I don't know, Christian, I don't know your religion, but me as a Christian loses freedom of speech, I I get I get the freedom as well. So one person's freedom is another person's freedom. That's why people don't fight over freedom, they fight for freedom. And uh that's very theoretical. So let me get down to specifics. If the government concentrates all the money in Ottawa, then everybody has to go to Ottawa and fight for a bigger share. If the government instead disperses economic decisions through a free enterprise system, then you no longer have to fight for a bigger share of the pie. You go out and create more because no one's holding you back. You start a business, your business does great. That doesn't stop the other business in the other side of the country from starting up and doing even better. Um, you're both creating a value for your customers and your workers, with which they voluntarily choose to participate as buyers and as employees. And therefore, everyone is getting better off uh in through a free market uh system. So I think if the government were to get out of people's hair, leave people alone, uh, you know, mind its own damn business. If I were starting a political party, it'd be the mind your own damn business party, then people would be able to get along a lot better. You know, it's it's like if you're in a household and everybody's always in each other's business and everyone's hair, that that then you'll be fighting non like cats and dogs. Whereas if you live in a household where people sort of, you know, take clean up their own room, take care of their own affairs, and live their own lives and work together voluntarily, then everyone in the household lives in harmony. That's the kind of country we need to have, to unite through freedom rather than dividing through control.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

One of the things I did that was a bit unique to this interview is I reached out to some of my peers to find out what their questions were for you. Right. Because I knew that I was gonna have my own lens and other people are gonna have theirs. This comes from a law professor that I'm a huge fan of. President Trump's political and economic attacks on Canada have changed the political landscape here. How do you campaign for conservative principles when many Canadians are looking unfavorably at conservatism in the U.S.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Well, first of all, I would say we need to focus on what we can actually control here in Canada. Uh there's nobody who can control President Trump. Uh Mark Carney promised he would, and since that the election we've seen, he's been unable to do that. In fact, he's basically caved on everything when it comes to the president. He's caved on the digital services tax, the Netflix tax, he's caved on counter-tariffs, on military spending, counterfluc, countless. So many of these things that we should have been doing anyway, Kearney's been forced to do them because he ultimately backed down and uh went uh from elbows up to sucking up. So my the moral of that story is let's focus on what we can control. We can't control Trump, but we can control what we do with our own economy. Uh and uh I think uh the positive thing is that there's a lot we can do. We we should be the richest country in the world right now. By far, we have uh the fourth most farmland per capita, depending on uh the how you measure it. We have about the fifth or sixth most natural gas, uh, the the fourth most oil, the third most uranium, the most potash, the biggest oceanic coastline. Like we should be by far the richest country anywhere on earth. And we can do that if we unlock our enterprises uh through fast permits, low taxes, and uh uh more competition. We unblock our resources uh by rapidly approving pipelines, mines, ports, and other things. Uh, if we unbridle our workers with lowered low taxes so that hard work is actually um uh pays off and people benefit from their contributions. I think that's how we bring back the trillion dollars that has left for the United States. And you know, if your goal is to get back at President Trump, well, the way to do it is by unlocking and unblocking our own economy so that we can compete with our American friends and compete with the rest of the world rather than just political theater.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Aaron Powell To clarify, I think the argument being made here is because Trump represents conservatism in the US, it's like uh it's no secret that the liberals have tried to paint you as a Donald Trump-like figure. I don't think that's the case, but they've tried to connect the conservatism in the US with the conservatism in Canada. And someone like uh David from Moose on the Loose is a fan of Donald Trump's conservatism style. And then you have uh red Tories in Ontario that aren't a fan of his style, but are still somewhat conservatives, but it it seems like there's this gap here of how do you sell Canadians who are afraid of conservatism in the US making its manifest in here in Canada without without doing that?

SPEAKER_00 27:34

The answer is to put forward a uniquely Canadian agenda, and that's what I believe I've done. Uh I mean, you know, if you look at it, here you got uh here are the here's a real choice. Mark Kearney moved his corporate headquarters to the United States of America days after he learned of the tariffs. Um he he is and the Liberal Party have implemented policies that have driven a trillion dollars to the U.S. Um of our investment. So that I don't understand how that is uh that is standing up uh uh for Canada. If you want a truly patriotic agenda, it should be one that unbridles and unlocks our own economy and uh does well by the Canadian people. Like that that we should judge the policies by what they do, not by how they make us feel about Donald Trump. Uh you know, if I could implement a policy that makes it possible for 25-year-olds to buy houses in Vancouver, or for you to feel safe walking down East Hastings Street, or uh to make the Persian community in uh you know Vancouver feel safe again uh from the risk of the IRGC terrorists, or like m let mothers buy affordable food. Who cares what does Donald Trump thinks about any of those things? Shouldn't we be concerned about our own people rather than whether our policies uh uh uh make us feel uh superior to or in conflict with the U.S. President?

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Aaron Ross Powell That's a great point. Why do you think you run such high disapproval numbers with women? What do you think is underneath that?

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Aaron Powell I don't know that I do. Uh there's now two major post-uh election studies out on how people voted, and this was the highest sh-best performance by the Conservative Party since at least the 1980s in support from women, and there was almost no gender gap in the last election. Support for can for the conservatives under me was roughly as high among women as it was among men. So that that is something that just our political commentators have repeated ad nauseum, but there's no there's no s support for it in the actual data.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Aaron Powell I will provide you some data then. I have um from Abacus data 39 percent of men say Polyev understands people like them. Among women, this is eight per points lower, and thirty-eight percent of men say Polyev's shares my values. This drops to twenty-nine percent among women per Abacus.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Aaron Powell Well, I mean, look look at the Abacus post-election poll, because it showed that I think we got 39 percent of the female vote in the last election and 43 percent of the male votes. That's like almost no gender gap, and would be a massive increase in support for conservatives among women over the prior election and over any other election since the Conservative Party was really newly reconstituted. So uh I just uh you know and you look at the Canadian election study, which came out uh that did a very extensive polling with the uh very high level of uh um with very large sample sizes, and it found a very similar result. So at the end of the day, uh I think the reason why my policies have been so popular with women is because um, you know, they're they're common sense. Uh women are struggling with uh affordability, uh they're facing crime problems in their communities, uh they want uh to be able to live safely and affordably in a country where their hard work is rewarded, and uh they haven't actually gotten any of those things from the Liberal Party. And I think the fact that I presented a positive agenda in the last election to solve those problems was probably the reason why we did so well with women and men uh on the ballot.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Aaron Powell Your memory recall is off the charts. Do you get do you think you get enough credit for that?

SPEAKER_00 31:24

I have no idea. I never thought of my memory as being especially good.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Aaron Powell What do you think what do you think makes you a strong leader in this role? Like there's there's a lot of skills people can bring to the table. Your memory recall has to be one of those, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:37

I I don't know. I I you're the first person that's ever said that. Um I I have a tendency to uh You do it in the House of Commons all the time.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

You're rattling them off. I'm watching liberal MPs reading their hands shaking while they're trying to read off of a piece of paper, and you're just running it off the doppelganger.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Well, if only I could remember where I left my phone uh or uh remembered it uh to pick my socks up. Uh my my my my wife has to remind me to do those sorts of things sometimes. So uh uh I I don't know. I I I guess when I uh when I read and study things, that there are certain facts that I've that fascinate me that are probably uh mind-numbingly boring to normal people. And so those facts uh remain uh resident in my mind.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

Aaron Powell Do you believe there should be public disclosure or a formal investigation into whether anything was offered positions, promises, incentives, or future opportunities in exchange for the individuals who floor-crossed?

SPEAKER_00 32:34

I think uh it's gonna be very hard to find out exactly what motivated it, but at the end of the day, these people ran on the conservative platform. They ran under my leadership, uh, and nothing has changed since the election that should give them any reason to believe differently than they did uh when the people voted for them. And in all the the cases, they all got more votes under my leadership than they had in prior elections, or that their the route the the ro that our party had in their riding in the prior election. So um they ultimately betrayed the people that voted for them, and I think they will be held accountable. I think there should be a law require- allowing people to petition for the resignation of members of parliament who've crossed the floor. And then uh that would be one way for the constituents to hold accountable those who make that decision.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

I just don't see how you can't see it as a betrayal, and I I am blown away by the response that people have tried to point it at you because at this point there's been so many, and it's completely goes against all the values they claimed to have had, that I don't see how it isn't necessary to really dig into this because I think those voters in those areas feel betrayed. I think the country feels a bit betrayed, and now you're seeing the outcome of this majority that I think was illegitimately gotten, and it Canadians are now starting to feel betrayed. And I don't think that we'll see the reaction to that when the bills are passed. I think once they start to be implemented, people will become more aware of the negative impacts to them.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

Look, I I think we're in a funny phase where people are judging Carney on his announcements and his promises and his perceived, perceived intentions, not on his actual results. And what I think our biggest political challenge right now is to ask people, how's your life going after a year and a half of Mark Carney? Can you uh is your are your groceries more affordable? Uh is your paycheck outgrowing, your mortgage payment, uh can your kids move out of their basement? Is your job more or less secure? Uh is the is your shape neighborhood safer than it was before uh Kearney and the Liberal government? And when you ask people that, they overwhelmingly say no. But unfortunately, the liberals and the media have created a false illusion around Kearney about the things he will do somewhere down the road, and he's being judged on that illusion rather than on people's real life experience. So I my job is actually to force a collision between reality and the illusion of Mark Kearney. And I think when that illusion happens, people will feel justifiably disappointed uh with what they got compared to what they were promised.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

You asked him multiple times in the House of Commons if we were in a technical recession or a real recession. Yes. And to just pull back the curtain, did you expect him not to answer that question? What is behind the scenes when you leave that room after he's not answered that question and people have tiptoed around it and avoided it? What does that tell you? What are your takeaways? Did you know he wasn't going to answer when you went in?

SPEAKER_00 35:44

What it tells me is that uh he's very wise not to attend question period very often because it's the only place he faces any tough questions. Uh and he's been very good throughout his adult life at avoiding tough questions, going to places where if people throw rose petals at him, and as soon as he's confronted with hard factual questions, he crumbles and he he performs very badly. Uh, you know, I asked him about a lady who was uh working full-time, having to live on a friend's couch, and he got up and told us uh ridiculous, uh conceited joke about my birthday, uh, which was an insult to her, not to me. Uh, you know, he stood up in the house and said that affordability is the best that it's been in a decade. I mean, everyone, no one in Canada believes that. Um, but that's the that's the insight we get into his real capabilities when you ask him tough questions, and he's not protected by um an entire cocoon of media and interest groups. And so that's why he he's missed a hundred question periods in a year. He's got the worst performance uh to turnout of uh And Justin Trudeau's was bad. Well, Justin's was bad, but now we're nowhere near as bad as Kearney's. And in fact, Justin, to his credit, would stand up and answer every single question on Wednesdays. All I think it was from us 20 or 30, and then another 15 or 20, so like 35 questions in a row. It's actually you've got to give him credit for the endurance of that. Kearney shows up once a week and answers six questions and then uh sits there quietly while uh he lets his backbenchers do the job for him. But the reason for that is that the image does not stand up to scrutiny. Uh the illusion of Mark Kearney is far inferior, far, far superior to the reality of Mark Kearney. And uh so it it is for me, the the frustration is how quickly can we bring reality to that illusion so that Canadians can get on with fixing the problems that he and the Liberal Party have caused?

SPEAKER_01 37:40

One of my biggest beliefs is that he he's right now managing democracy rather than participating in it. Because uh you say 35 questions by Justin Trudeau is he deserves credit. I think a hundred questions a day to the Prime Minister of Canada is not unreasonable, and we need to remember that as we go through these things. Um what would you do to address this technical recession?

SPEAKER_00 38:03

So look, I I think um, first of all, I don't think it's a technical recession. I think it's a recession. Um and it's not, you know, people say, well, you can't just measure two back-to-back negative quarters. Okay, fine. Let's use other measurements. You've got three out of the last four quarters, the economy has shrunk. Uh we've had five consecutive quarters of declining investment. Uh we've had um we had the second highest unemployment in the G7, the the highest household debt in the G7. Look at some of the more human indicators, like uh you know the massive increase in food bank demand. Uh we've had a quarter of our food banks last year ran out of food uh while there were still ongoing demands. You imagine people showing up at the food bank and then saying, sorry, we've got nothing left. That's never happened before. Um So I think we've really been in a recession for the last ten years. It was masked by large-scale immigration, which uh which inflated economic activity just because there were more humans transacting in the economy, um, even though each one of those humans was poorer than they would uh they were before. Uh and now because immigration is uh not as uh is not as not as large as it was under Trudeau, um, they no longer have the camouflage to hide the recession. But you know, uh at the end of the day, we're uh we need to get the government out of the way and off the backs of the Canadian people. Uh how would I get reverse the recession? I would eliminate the capital gains tax on reinvestments in Canada. Anybody who reinvests their gains here should be able to do so tax-free. They'll pay tax one day down the road when they finally cash out. Uh but in the meantime, why not let them roll it over and grow faster? I would um unblock our resources uh with the with the fastest permits anywhere in the OECD. I would cut the cost and size of government, I could get rid of 25% of the regulations in Ottawa. I'd incentivize the municipalities to speed up home building permits, because that's a big part of our economy. If you could get those permits uh go moving, you get people swinging hammers and building in a tariff proof industry like housing. Uh, I would cut income taxes to incentivize work. Uh, and uh those things would all uh be rocket fuel for our economy.

SPEAKER_01 40:27

Fascinating. You've said you would get a pipeline built. Under your leadership, how long would it realistically take before Canadians saw a major new pipeline approved, under construction, and completed?

SPEAKER_00 40:39

So approved, I want to get to six-month permitting. So within six months of getting an application, there should be a decision. Um under construction, it would depend on private industry, but I believe these things are so profitable that you you could get a construction underway within uh you know seven or eight months of having a permit. So that just takes you to just over a year. Um, these I I would not have the government build pipelines. I don't think the government should have to build these projects. The government needs to get out of the way so that private industry can build these wildly profitable uh projects. Um the reason why government has had to build them lately is because we have to subsidize our way over the wall of red tape that the government creates. So, you know, you look at um the Trans Mountain pipeline, it w there was a private proponent that was prepared to do it without any tax dollars. But they came to believe that you can't build anything in Canada. So they sold the project to the government and then took that the money we paid them and spent it in Texas without any Texas tax dollars, building things there. Um that's the wrong model. You know, um why not get out of the way and let businesses build pipelines and then ultimately make them pay taxes into the system rather than the reverse, is which is what we have right now. Money losing projects that government blocks weighs down or slows down, and then taxpayers having to bail them out. You can't build an economy on carve outs, bailouts, and handouts. You have to build it on productive private sector investment. And that's how I would get things that's that's the kind of project I would get built in Canada.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

Aaron Powell You're not wrong. I mean, I speak to industry privately, and they say British Columbia is one of the least competitive markets they operate in in North America, which is just shocking.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

You spoke of I I talked to one BC investor who I won't name him because he hasn't given me permission, but he's probably one of the most famous British Columbia businessmen of all time. And he was going to build a strip mall in not a strip mall, a shopping center in British Columbia and one in Texas at the same time. And he said in Texas they had permits in seven weeks. In Canada, it took seven years. Uh and exactly the same specs. There was no environmental problems on either side of the border. But he said he flew down to Texas. I think he was greeted by the mayor in uh of the town uh who said, you know, what do we need to do? There were they opened up the blueprint and got him the permit. Seven weeks he was off uh swinging hammers and uh turning sod. And here in British Columbia it was seven years. So it's not hard to imagine why a trillion dollars is left when you can't get things built in Canada. But we've got to get the government out of the way and let builders build.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

If you became Prime Minister, how long do you think it would take for young Canadians before they could realistically start entering the housing market again?

SPEAKER_00 43:42

I think within a term in office it's reasonable and realistic to expect that uh homeownership would normalize again for young people. Um that's the way it was before this government, right? It was absolutely normal for people in their mid-20s to make down payments and Own homes. And it was absolutely normal to have mortgages completely paid off by the time people were in their early 40s. That was normal. Now it takes longer to get a down payment than it used to take to pay off the whole mortgage. So we have we have no excuse for expensive housing. Like if we lived in Hong Kong or Singapore, we'd say, look, there's just no land. Where do you want us to build? But in Canada, we have nothing but land. Like we have more land per capita than any other developed country in the world. And much of it within 100 kilometers of the U.S. border where our population is congregated, and much of it around big cities. Even when you drive around big cities, you see tremendous amounts of unused brown land with tumbleweed. It's not, it's not ecologically special. It's just sitting there waiting for a permit or a zoning change. And so if we could, and we've got we've got hundreds of thousands of federal acres of land that, again, are not ecologically sensitive, that are just sitting around doing nothing because it's next to impossible for business to get in and start building there. So if we could unlock that land, then we can unlock home ownership for our young people.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

There's another piece to this homeownership. And I just interviewed Lyman Stone, who's a demographer focused on why the West is having less children, broadly speaking, why they're getting married less. And one of the key pieces he pointed out was when you have public parks, but when you don't have a police presence, people aren't willing to see those parks as useful because they don't feel like they could bring their children there. And that he's seeing that across Canada, that because parks are being used by people who are homeless and addiction, that people aren't able to build that same sense of community. How would you go about addressing that so young people can start to build fancies?

SPEAKER_00 45:51

Well, I drove through East Hastings on the way here, and um, you know, it's incredible how much misery and suffering goes on in those places. Uh and yes, in some cases the that misery has made its way into playgrounds and parks. Uh there are uh, you know, parks in places like Nanaimo and in Toronto where they've been taken over by homeless encampments. And almost as you drive down the street, you know, you can see very clearly what's going on. It's fentanyl or meth. So it's drugs. And the entire approach to drugs of the last 15 years by the Liberal and NDP NDP governments has been not only ineffective, it has been uh it has been uh almost seemingly deliberately counterproductive. Like they're they're they're making it h harder for people to get off drugs and easier to the for them to get on it. And I would say this is a top-down government-created problem. I met a young man here in British Columbia who had beat his drug addiction and then he had become homeless for unrelated reasons. He went into a government um hotel that the government had rented for homeless people, and within a few minutes he had a knock on the door from a drug dealer, and there he was restarted again on his drug addiction. So in government housing, he got back on drugs and his life went backwards. They've been giving out hydromorphone and other so-called safe forms of opioids that addicts then sell to kids in order to be able to buy fentanyl and other harder drugs. They've effectively legalized possession, which means police can't stop someone from carrying around uh deadly doses of fentanyl. And uh all of that has given us among the biggest uh drug uh overdose crises anywhere in the developed world. I would reverse all of that, by the way. I would get I would bring in a hard ban on fentanyl, meth, heroin, cocaine, crack, uh, where with the capacity for police to arrest people for possession and for judges to sentence them to treatment and recovery. I would bring in mandatory treatment and recovery and drug testing in our prisons and make it a condition of release, of earned release, that people whose crimes are linked to addiction actually have to take uh become drug free in order to get released from prison. Um I would replace all these consumption sites with treatment centers, with the goal being abstinence, getting people completely off drugs. Now you might say, well, that's is that really uh such a revolutionary policy? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Right now, it is not the stated policy of many public health agencies to get people off drugs. It is to keep them using drugs in a in a way the government considers to be safe. Like if you ask a lot of public health officials, they will tell you that their goal is not to get people off drugs, it's to continue their drug habit in uh a healthier way. But there is no healthy way to addiction with these drugs. There is no healthy future. You're playing Russian roulette, you're going to die if you keep using these things. And the the problem is that uh we have not been willing to say, tell the truth. The only way to save someone's life from a fentanyl addiction is to get them off fentanyl for good and not to replace it with another opioid, but to get them off the drug altogether. And it's possible. There are incredible treatment facilities across this country that operate on the goal of abstinence, and it works. They get on their feet, they get jobs, they support their communities, and they're better. And and that would bring safety to the parks that you're you're you're asking about.

SPEAKER_01 49:54

A lot there. First, I'll say I worked as a native courtworker for five years trying to support people through those circumstances. And the big takeaway I had was I was in a revolving door system, which is the whole reason I went to law school, ran for counsel, ran for chief, was because I wasn't able to address any of these deep problems. And the only other person I wanted to mention was uh Alia Warbus, who's serving as a conservative MLA uh here in British Columbia. She had shared a harrowing story where she was in Alberta struggling with drug use, and the hospital was mandated to keep her there until she was clean and off of those drugs. And she had said had the had she been in British Columbia, she would have likely died because they would have just let her out before she had become clean and likely gone back to using. And so these policies on a really deep level impact whether or not A, people live, but also whether or not we see the greatest gifts of our population. And the idea that the kind thing to do to people is to let them live on the streets, I think is just such a tragic um mean mindset to do to people because they don't want to be there. I've never met a homeless person or a person in addiction who wants to be in that circumstance and just wants it to be normalized so that they can continue. They have harrowing stories of not being able to see their children, not being able to have the career that they had thought they had. And I often in my community think about how I've been given this immense privilege to try and support that because so many people get stuck because of where they were born, who they were born to, and not being able to share their gifts, their identity, who they want to become. Like in First Nation communities, the odds you're going to have a uh next-door neighbor that's a doctor, lawyer, judge is so unlikely that you can't even aspire to those types of jobs. And that's why we need to address so many of these issues. On the indigenous file, I know that you're here in part to talk about private property rights. Uh, you've spoken before about uh private property rights and protections for Canadians from government overreach with the Cowichan decision in British Columbia and now the uh Wallastok in New Brunswick. Sorry, I'm not from that territory, I don't know that uh word very well. Courts are now wrestling with whether Aboriginal title can coexist with privately held fee simple land. What is your position?

SPEAKER_00 52:03

My position is that that fee simple must take priority. Once it is granted, then it must be final. And uh I believe that the government of Canada needs to argue in the forthcoming appeal of the Cowichan decision in favor of the principle of extinguishment, which is that fee simple title extinguishes all other claims on a uh piece of land. Uh the problem with the contrary uh ru uh approach, which is uh what the court found, is that it puts in risk the title of at first 800 acres of land in Richmond, uh British Columbia, worth a billion dollars. But if the precedence applies, then it could put into risk basically all the homeownership in the province of British Columbia because other tribes could simply say, well, there's a now a uh precedent that the Cowichan at Aboriginal title supersedes the private property rights of Richmond residents. Well, then the claims across the lower mainland, which are overlapping and numerous, could do exactly the same thing. So then you could have literally millions of British Columbians dispossessed of homes that they legitimately bought. They paid they paid extraordinary amounts of money, because of course it's the most expensive real estate market in North America. So imagine you bought a $1.2 million house with a $1 million mortgage, and you and your wife are working nonstop to pay down that mortgage, and someone comes along and says this property might not be yours. You still have the mortgage, by the way. I don't know how you're gonna pay that off. I think this is this risks bringing absolute economic chaos to our entire economy. And um the Liberal government in Ottawa is, along with the NDP government at BC, have been have refused to make the argument that fee simple takes priority over other chain claims. Um and as a result, uh we're in this incredible mess. So uh we're fighting hard every day to get to defend uh property rights, and uh because if we don't, we have no echo no economy left.

SPEAKER_01 54:21

Aaron Powell I've heard you advocate as well for the Castle doctrine, and I think it's fair to say in a capitalist system, in a free market, private property is one of the fundamental pieces. Would you like to see constitutional reform on that front?

SPEAKER_00 54:34

Aaron Powell Well, I I think we all love to, but I I I'm not proposing to open the constitution at this time. So I would like because the reason is that the constitution can be a can of worms. We all know that. That's the Canadian history. It's not controversial to point out. We saw Meach and Charlottetown kind of seize the national debate for over well over a year apiece. We need to focus on restoring affordability, fighting crime, homeownership, all that other stuff. So I think the first step should be to win this in court. But if that is not possible, we're going to have to look at other legal and constitutional options because prolonged uncertainty about private property could cripple our economy and our investment. So you know, what I've got right now is a task force headed up by Teko Van Poppte, who's not only a member of parliament from the Lower Mainland, but also someone who is an expert on land title as a former commercial real estate lawyer. And he's going to be coming up with options that are legal, uh parliamentary, and constitutional, um, depending on how the the appeals in these cases proceed. But one way or another, we have to protect private property or we don't have an economy.

SPEAKER_01 55:54

One of my biggest concerns that I've been doing my best to try and help bring the temperature down on is the relationship between First Nations and everyday Canadians. Because we have more and more flashpoints. We have Alberta separatism, where we just had the treaty chiefs come out and say they want an investigation into Premier Daniel Smith. We have new pipelines proposed where coastal First Nations are saying that they're against it. We have the unmarked graves controversy in Kamloops and private property rights in question with the Cowichan decision. And I'm just wondering how do we try and address a lot of these issues without anti-indigenous sentiment, but also by remembering to me, reconciliation was always about two groups coming back together, resolving the issues so we can be one, so we can see ourselves in the flag, so that we can work together on a lot of these issues. And I have a suspicion we will end up there in the end because when we talk about the economic challenges, it's primarily minority communities like First Nation communities who need economic development in order to see investment in their communities or in order to address their poverty. So I think they're likely going to get there eventually and understand that we do need economic growth. We do need pipelines in order to address this.

SPEAKER_00 57:03

But how do we make sure that we don't end up uh farther apart by the end of this than first of all, I think we have to recognize that there are non-Indigenous lawyers, lobbyists, bureaucrats, and politicians who thrive on keeping us divided. And uh, you know, they double the size of the bureaucracy, the indigenous uh uh bureaucra the indigenous affairs bureaucracy, the departments in Ottawa, and triple the budget. And much of that has just gone to, again, lawyers, lobbyists, bureaucracy, uh, and other things that don't actually help Indigenous people on the ground. Um, and there there's a vested interest in keeping disputes going and preventing solutions from coming forward. So uh I think those of us who want to move the country forward uh need to focus on what we have as common ground. So you mentioned a bunch of things. So let's look at um resource development. Like I think that the Indigenous people of Canada can be the richest people in the world as a result of resource development. And uh you look at um look at, for example, LNG Canada and the Coastal Gas Link. It was unanimously supported by the elected uh community leaders across the entire path of the pipeline and uh ultimately at Kitamat, where the liquefaction facility is. That is the single biggest infrastructure project in Canadian history, spearheaded by Ellis Ross, a former first counselor of the Heisla First Nation and a conservative member of Parliament. You look at Billy Morin, his community uh in uh the Enoch Cree in Alberta has gone from 20% unemployment to like 3% unemployment, where he balanced his his budget as a chief. And ultimately that is at least indirectly the result of resource development, as everything is in the Alberta economy. Uh and then you look at some of the other uh values that uh indigenous people have that are very, very conservative: family values, belief in a creator, um for freedom, um, hunting, and uh the right to uh to use, uh responsibly use firearms. Uh these are all commonalities that conservatives have with First Nations, and I've tried to build bridges with First Nations communities on those grounds. Uh and that's why we were very proud to bring in numerous uh First Nations people to be elected as conservative MPs in my caucus, uh, whom I've mentioned. Uh it's also one of the reasons why uh, you know, according to the Canada election study, uh Indigenous people voted conservative in the last election, uh, which I that might be the first time uh we've won so handily. And I was very proud of that. And so I want we uh people in First Nations communities to understand that when we fight for property rights, it's not at detriment or uh to against the the the First Uh Nations people. That's not our goal. Rather, it's for all of us to prosper in uh in a property-owning free market uh economy, uh and uh and that has to be uh inclusive of everyone.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:02

I have two more questions for you. I recently spoke with investigative journalist Sam Cooper about foreign interference, transnational uh repression, fentanyl, hostile state networks, and organized crime. His concern is that Canada does not have a strong enough legal tool to target these networks at a system level. Do you think Canada needs something like a Canadian RICO Act to go after the leaders, financing, and networks behind these threats?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:26

We do need much stronger laws and capacity to uh break up these transnational uh syndicates that are carrying out crime and violence on our streets. Uh it starts with better vetting of those who come into our country. We've had, for example, the Bishnoy gang, the liberals basically opened the door and said, come on in. And you've got a guy, this Bishnoy guy living in a prison in India running remote control, a terrorist group, and organized criminal enterprise in Canada from an Indian prison. But how the hell does that happen? You know, how is it that our government can't interrupt that? It's incredible. They should be kicked out of our country. Then you've got the IRGC. There's at least 700 IRGC agents in this country, according to a very extensive study that Global News reported on. And uh why the hell are they not kicked out? How is it that researchers can identify these people? They're visitors, they're not even citizens, visiting our country on extended visas, organizing terrorism, uh, hate, uh, um, they're they're threatening uh the Iranian uh diaspora population. Just last week, we got a report that uh the uh that multiple shootings in Canada have been funded and instigated by the Iranian government. Um we should be deporting any visitor associated with these groups, vetting them before they come in, setting up a foreign agent registry, which is already passed into law, but for some reason Mark Kearney doesn't want to implement it, and uh kick the people out of our country that are using this as a foreign interference playground and and endangering the lives of our people in the process.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:12

My last question. I have my only reflection on the 2025 election that I didn't like was the lack of interviews from members of parliament, the lack of participation across the board. All parties kind of participated that and hunkered down and sent out key messaging. Um, I believe many of our political leaders aren't humble enough, uh, and they don't often seek direction from citizens on specific issues. They say, I got elected, so I've got this mandate, I can do whatever we like. We're somewhat seeing that with some of the bills being put forward by Mark Carney. Do you have any regrets or things you would have done differently that you can share with Canadians?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:46

Yeah, I think we should do more interviews, and that's what I personally decided to do. Um, my I've you know, I think I said about three or four months ago that my goal was to talk to everyone everywhere and uh reach the largest number of audiences. It's uh we made a decision to try and have a very disciplined uh day-to-day uh uh message target, try and pierce through. You know, today we're talking about affordability, let's talk only about affordability. Tomorrow we're talking about fighting crime, let's talk only about fighting crime. And the concern was if we were talking, if you're doing five interviews long form, that you might say one thing that will take you off that news track. But I think in the in the modern media environment, it's more dynamic and less um less uh controlled. And so you need to talk to everybody everywhere across multiple platforms, otherwise your message just won't be heard. And like I said, with this fellow I mentioned earlier in the interview, he he saw my my Bartlett uh diary of the CEO interview was the first time in my four years as leader that he had heard my message. And why hearing it once, he was convinced. Well, maybe I wonder it sometimes. If I had done an interview like that before the election, might he have heard that interview before then? I I met um uh uh a guy who works at a mill, uh lumber mill in um Thunder Bay, 32 years old, gave a speech to at the cafeteria at their mill. And afterwards he said, Oh my God, that was amazing. I've never heard a political speech, I've never followed politics. And I was like, Oh, really? Do you mind if I ask who you voted for? He said, I didn't vote, I'd never heard of any of this. And he says, Well, you agree everything with everything I said. He said, Yes. And I always asked myself if him and another, say, 300,000 guys like him had heard my message before the election, might they have voted and might that have made a different difference? And I think the answer is yes, and that's why I've made the decision to do more interviews with more people uh across the spectrum, uh, hostile and friendly and in and everything in between.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:52

Well, thank you for doing this. I'll close by just saying that, as I mentioned, I think one of your gifts is memory recall. And I think that you're not recognized enough for raising those individual stories. I was talking to my wife, who's sitting with us, about how you participate in democracy, because it can feel like, well, vote another election could be a couple years away. Like, what are we supposed to do? Reaching out to your political leaders, whether they're MLAs, MPs, or to the leader of the opposition and saying, this is my struggle, these are my issues, they can't fix it tomorrow. But knowing that they carry it forward into the House of Commons, knowing that you've raised several people's stories here, can help people feel heard and can bring down the political temperature in the room and give people hope that all of this may be addressed over time, because it's when we stop thinking that our voice matters that democracy starts to die. And so I'm grateful you're willing to do this. I've seen you doing more. I thought your interview with Stephen Bartlett was fascinating. I'm a huge admirer of his work and your approach to doing more interviews because I think more sunlight gives us that that dichotomy that you're talking about. Mark Carney is unlikely to come sit on this podcast. He's unlikely to do long.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:56

Invite him anyway. Absolutely, absolutely. It would be great if he did come and do a podcast like this and uh hear from a different point of view. And uh, congratulations on all your success and leading your community at your age. How old are you now, anyway? 30. Holy smokes, you make me feel like an old man. I'm coming on 50. So you're doing incredible things. So I hope that you uh continue to enjoy a success and that your audience grows because there's a lot of people who have to hear what you have to say.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:20

Thank you, Mr. Polyev, and a huge thank you to all of the team here who helped put this all together. You have a tremendous team behind the scenes providing us with this amazing uh setup with all the resources we needed to make sure this all went well. So you should be very proud of the people you were.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:33

Thank you. I am a little bit of a lot of people.