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The Elite have Betrayed the People - Canada’s Opposition Leader, Pierre Poilievre
01:02:14
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- [00:00]
Host 1
Before we start a very quick recommendation, we know our audience and every so often something comes along that we think you'll genuinely want to see. October 8th is a documentary you can watch today on Amazon Prime, Apple TV or YouTube Premium. It looks at the explosion of anti Semitism on college campuses and across social media in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks and examines how extremist networks and foreign actors have shaped narratives inside American institutions and public discourse. Featuring interviews with prominent voices from politics, media and cult culture, it asks serious questions about how we got here and what it means for the future. If you care about what's happening in our culture right now, this film is worth your time. Head to october 8th film.com to find out more.
- [00:47]
Host 2
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- [01:43]
Pierre Poilievre
The biggest phenomenon in the Western world over the last decade or two has been the total betrayal of the working class. The people who make stuff, fix stuff, move stuff and build stuff. Their opportunities are absolutely destroyed by massive government interventions that have concentrated wealth in among a very small group of well connected insiders.
- [02:10]
Host 2
You're focusing on the narrow economic part of it, but I think what Francis is alluding to is there's a the same thing. Well, is it though? Because there's a cultural and ideological dimension to this as well? Because, say, the policy of net zero, which is just economic suicide? It's the same thing.
- [02:25]
Pierre Poilievre
Tell us exactly the same thing because it's being used as a pretext to concentrate money and power in the hands of the state.
- [02:32]
Host 1
Before we start a very quick recommendation, we know our audience and every so often something comes along that we think you'll genuinely want to see. October 8th is a documentary you can watch today on Amazon Prime, Apple TV or YouTube Premium. It looks at the explosion of antisemitism on college campuses and across social media in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks and examines how extremist networks and foreign actors have shaped narratives inside American institutions and public discourse. Featuring interviews with prominent voices from politics, media and culture, it asks serious questions about how we got here and what it means for the future. If you care about what's happening in our culture right now, this film is worth your time. Head to october 8th film.com to find out more.
- [03:20]
Host 2
Pierre Poliev, welcome to Trigonometry.
- [03:22]
Pierre Poilievre
Great to be with you. Thanks for having me.
- [03:23]
Host 2
It's great to have you. You obviously, you were very close to becoming the Prime Minister of Canada. That didn't happen in very interesting and challenging circumstances. We'll talk about that. But it's great to have you. And the first thing we actually want to do is just to hear your perspective very broadly on what you see happening in the Western world geopolitically today. There's obviously a huge realignment going on. What do you see? What do you think?
- [03:48]
Pierre Poilievre
Well, listen, I think that the biggest phenomenon in the Western world over the last decade or two has been the total betrayal of the working class. The people who make stuff, fix stuff, move stuff and build stuff. The younger people who are entering the job market and trying to start a life who have seen their opportunities absolutely destroyed by massive government interventions that have concentrated wealth in among a very small group of well connected insiders. And that I think has caused enormous amounts of political instability. It has caused a resurgence of both socialism and of protectionism. And now is a time, I think, for us to push back against that betrayal and, and give people back control of their lives. And that is true right across the Western world. It's especially true in Canada. We need, we need to restore home ownership, bring back sound money, allow people to actually benefit from their hard work and basically restore meritocracy, which was the very principle, the driving principle of Western economics for two and a half centuries. So I think that's, I think that's really the biggest. The big question of how, whether or not the Western world is going to reinstate meritocratic free enterprise or whether it's going to continue to concentrate undeserved benefits through state capitalism and big government.
- [05:20]
Host 2
Well, on the cultural level as well, a lot of things seem to have happened. I mean, you talk about free enterprise, but what about just people being free to speak their mind, to make their own decisions? One of the things that we were frankly truly horrified by is even given that Covid restrictions in this country were pretty stringent, is some of the things that happened, you know, people who were protesting against things in Canada having their bank accounts taken away. We had supporters of our show writing in, going, like, please, can you cover this? Is there something about Canada that make, you know, the Canadian psyche that made you guys more susceptible to this? Is it just. You had a particular leader at that time who was more authoritative? Like, what was that about?
- [05:58]
Pierre Poilievre
It was the government itself. It wasn't broadly the people. You know, the, the. The truckers in question, they were just looking to be heard. Most of these people had never protested anything in their lives. Through the early CO days, they were considered the heroes because they were literally driving lonely, on lonely highways across international borders, often for, you know, weeks away from their families in total isolation, bringing thus the things to our homes that we had, could not live without. And then when the time came for them to be heard, the government robbed them of their. Their liberties. And by the way, this is no longer a controversial view. The supreme. The things. The federal court now has ruled that the use of the Emergency act to crack down on the protest was a violation of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So it has even been accepted by the judiciary that that was wrong. And it's a reminder of why we need to. The government has to treat itself as the servant and not the master. And we need to give a bigger voice to the working people of our country who in this case were simply looking for the right to speak to the freedom of mobility and bodily autonomy.
- [07:11]
Host 1
And you say, you know, it wasn't the people, but we have to be honest, Pierre, I mean, Trudeau did get reelected.
- [07:20]
Pierre Poilievre
Not after that. No. He was basically. He had to leave office, extremely unpopular. So he did not get reelected after. After the use of the Emergency act against the truckers.
- [07:32]
Host 1
Oh, right. But he did. Yeah, but I was saying that he did get reelected shortly after the COVID measures and everything like that. So it's not as if it was totally against the will of the people, is my point.
- [07:44]
Pierre Poilievre
Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't attribute it to that. And the Canadian people value their freedoms. And, you know, I was very outspoken in favor of individual freedom, not just on the issue of the pandemic, but more broadly on economics, and won a lot of support, so much so that the Liberal Party later then claimed that it was going to adopt many of my policies. So I think when you. I think the agenda of giving people more freedom, economic freedom through lower taxes, unlocking home ownership and energy and resource development or personal freedom by letting people speak their minds and have freedom of speech even when it's politically incorrect. Actually that agenda is very popular in Canada and around the world and that's why I've stayed true to it, because it's been. That's not why I've stayed true to you. It's one of the, it makes it easier for me to stay true to it.
- [08:36]
Host 1
Sorry, fair enough. But it's been very disheartening and actually quite upsetting to watch what Canada has become and the trajectory it's gone on because as somebody who's from the uk, I've seen the exact same trajectory we're on and I look at Europe and the same thing is happening in Europe and you're kind of thinking to yourself why is this, why are we on this trajectory when to even the most basic of laymen it seems like we're heading on a path of self destruction?
- [09:07]
Pierre Poilievre
If you look at it, what it really comes down to is this, it's freedom or force. There are, there's a movement to concentrate power, control, money in the hands of bureaucrats, technocrats and other insiders using the state as their mechanism. And that has led to the mass impoverishment of the people across the Western world and an enormous gap between rich and poor. By the way, this is not happening because of free enterprise. It's happening because of the massive interventions of the state to take from the hard working many and concentrate it in the, in the hands of the few. Or on the other hand there's another alternative which is to give people back more economic, personal and political freedom through a smaller state and more powerful individuals, families and communities. And that's the side I'm on.
- [10:09]
Host 2
Well, you're focusing on the narrow economic part of it, but I think what Francis is alluding to is there's a same thing though. Well, is it though, because there's a cultural and ideological dimension to this as well? Because say the policy of net zero, which is just economic suicide. It's the same thing.
- [10:24]
Pierre Poilievre
Tell us exactly the same thing. Because it's being used as a pretext to concentrate money and power in the hands of the state. It is just the latest of the many pretexts that are used to justify taking away everybody's money and giving it to a treasured privileged few green grifters, you know, the corporatism of saying, well we're going to tax all of the energy and we're going to block the resources and then we're going to take the money, give it to the government, who's going to dole it out to all of these corporate insiders who claim that they are doing something for the environment, when in fact you've looked very carefully. It's all bs. In fact, they have no problem directing much of that money to China which is opening two coal fire plants a week. So it has nothing to do with the environment. It is entirely a pretext to take from the working classes and give to a small group of insiders through the mechanism of the state. So whether you're talking about the net zero fraud or massive government redistribution schemes or just an overall growth in the bureaucracy, it is all, or even on the speech side, it's all about concentrating power and money in the hands of fewer and fewer people while taking away the opportunities of the people who actually do the work.
- [11:46]
Host 1
Because I was going to say when I was researching for this interview, I was looking at the immigration rates in Canada. It's staggering. Just as it is in the uk, just as it is in Germany and other countries.
- [11:57]
Pierre Poilievre
It's same phenomenon though, the same phenomenon because here again what happened. A corporate elite was able to drive down wages and drive up rent. Why? They brought in low wage temporary foreign workers and they brought in enormous numbers of so called students. Many of them weren't actually studying, but they ultimately provided a source of low wage labor and created a major demand for a fixed supply of housing. So the rent went up and the wages went down. And those multinationals that benefited from it, they concentrated even more wealth while the working classes ultimately got shot out of jobs and homes. So again, it's the same phenomenon whether you're looking at mass immigration, censorship policies, these net zero schemes, blocking home building, very high taxes, and as the French would call it, dirigist economics where the government decides who gets what. All of it has concentrated wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. And that is why our working class people are understandably and legitimately upset with the state of things. And we have to provide them with a hopeful opportunity, a hopeful way forward that involves opportunity to own homes, have affordable energy, affordable food, start families, raise kids and live their lives. Then that's the hopeful vision that I'm trying to bring Canadians.
- [13:21]
Host 2
Well, you were poised to be in the position to implement that vision. I think a former Prime Minister of Canada described the relationship being next to the US you like quoting this, like sleeping next to an elephant. Doesn't matter how peaceful it is, every twitch and grunt affect you. I put it to you, the elephant is wide awake now and it's, you know, it's stomping around. And, you know, you might like that, you might dislike that, but is that, is Trump's behavior towards Canada the reason he didn't become Prime Minister?
- [13:51]
Pierre Poilievre
Well, the challenge for me was I was, it was very hard to focus on the very domestic, very powerful domestic case we had. I mean, we, you know, if you looked at the situation in Canada, the housing costs had doubled, so had the food bank lineups. We've got 2.2 million food bank visits every single month. Wow. A violent crime up 50%, the immigration system in shambles. And we wanted to focus the election on that became very difficult with the sound and fury of the Canada U.S. debate. So my focus now is what do I do from here? How do I go forward? And obviously our trade relationship with the US Is up for review. We have a free trade agreement that effectively dates back to the Mulroney era in the late 80s, early 90s that has largely remained intact. But that, that relationship is, is being renewed in the summer. And so what we have to do as Canadians is be, be stronger at home so that we have unbreakable leverage in any negotiations that come on that relationship. And we've got a lot of leverage. I mean, a lot of people underestimate Canada, but we got the fourth biggest oil supply. We've got 10 of the 12 NATO defense critical minerals. We've got the second biggest landmass, biggest oceanic coastline. We should be leveraging all of that power to get what we want, which is basically tariff free trade with our American friends. And that's the approach I'm going to be taking going forward.
- [15:19]
Host 2
Well, you pivoted very well from my question, but it sounds like the Trump behavior was not helpful to your election. Is that fair?
- [15:26]
Pierre Poilievre
You know what, that I acknowledge that by saying we wanted to be taught. I wanted to be talking about how we could make people's lives better on immigration, cost of living, housing, crime, all of that. But it was very hard to do that when obviously the debate was Trump
- [15:41]
Host 2
was talking about how you should become a state, which is never going to happen.
- [15:44]
Pierre Poilievre
Which is never going to happen.
- [15:45]
Host 2
Right.
- [15:45]
Pierre Poilievre
And everybody knows it's never going to happen.
- [15:47]
Host 2
And do you think he meant it or was it one of his trolley comments that he throws out there?
- [15:52]
Pierre Poilievre
Well, the, the liberal government in Canada said that it was a joke at the time. But what I would say is what? We can't control President Trump. Yeah, I think that's very clear. And actually our prime minister has acknowledged that. So that's one thing we actually agree on. But so, you know, very Stoically, we have focus on the things we can control.
- [16:11]
Host 2
Right.
- [16:11]
Pierre Poilievre
And.
- [16:12]
Host 2
Well, let me ask you about that because I, I think we, we did get the answer I was looking for or clarity, at least on it. Mark Carney, who's the Prime Minister of Canada now, after, after DAVOS and the U.S. administration presented a whole different geopolitical vision effectively at that meeting, he came out and he talked about the fact that countries like Canada and the UK and Australia, they basically need to get very upset with the US and have their own little clique that they work together while challenging the US or working with China. Do you think this is a good
- [16:48]
Pierre Poilievre
way of approaching things, working with China? Yeah, look, I think we need to trade and talk with China. Yeah, it is. It's a. The Chinese people constitute a brilliant and extraordinary civilization. There's no denying it. And if we're being honest about it, they've been out working, out hustling and out the people of China, but out working out of hustling those of us in the west for the last three decades. It's incredible really. They. China went from a country with 80% of the population living in less than a dollar a day to the second biggest economy in one lifetime. So you can't ignore them. But the idea that we can have a permanent rupture with our closest neighbor and biggest customer in favor of a strategic partnership for a new world order with China is not on. It's just not going to happen. We, we sell twice as, sorry, 20 times as much to the Americans as we do to the Chinese. They are American capitalism is the single biggest force, economic force in the history of the world, and they live right next door. So we need to have a solid friendship, free trade agreement and of course, security partnership with the United States. And there's no way that China or anyone else will replace that relationship.
- [18:06]
Host 1
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- [20:28]
Pierre Poilievre
Well, look, it doesn't have to be that way. In 2015, the ultra liberal New York Times wrote that Canada had the biggest middle, the best and the strongest middle class in the world. And people were actually leaving the US to go to Canada. That was 10 years ago. So Wilfred Laurier, who was our first liberal and our first francophone prime minister, actually said that Canada always had to have lower taxes than the United States because they would have this enormous economic gravity, gravitation. The only way to overcome that would be to have lower taxes, faster permits and more economic freedom. And by the way, for most of the early part of this century, we ranked as more economically free country than the US Based on the the rankings of numerous think tanks. So we can do that again. We need to repeal all the laws that block our resources in so that we can, we have, we should have the fastest permits anywhere in the oecd. We should we should have a policy of generating energy, home building and food production at a faster rate of growth than the growth in our money supply. And then you will find that we will become the most affordable country in the world. We should be the dirt cheap place to live because we've got the most dirt to build homes on, to grow food on and to dig resources from. Right. And for 41 million people to share in that enormous endowment, we should be the richest and the most affordable. And we will be when we unlock that potential.
- [21:56]
Host 1
Because when you talk to young people from Canada, they talk about the property situation being even worse than it is in the uk.
- [22:03]
Host 2
That's hard to imagine.
- [22:05]
Pierre Poilievre
We have the fewest homes per capita of any country in the G7, which is incredible because we have 10 times more land per person than the second closest country being the U.S. right. And so why is that? And the answer is that about depending on where you are in the country, somewhere between a third and 60% of the cost of a new home is government taxes, fees, charges, delays, lobbyists, consultants, lawyers that you have to hire to go into building a home. Twice as much money goes to guys in suits to build a Canadian home than goes to guys who swing hammers and lay concrete. So. And the consequence is that the carpenters build our homes, can't afford to buy them. So we need to get government cost out of housing. And I've proposed zero taxation on home homebuilding and massive, powerful incentives and penalties for bad behavior by municipalities that block home building. So you unblock home building and you could have very, very affordable homes. Everyone could afford to own in Canada if we did that.
- [23:06]
Host 1
Because when I look at Canada again, I've made this point before, it reminds me of the uk and I think to myself, this is economically unsustainable, particularly when it comes to your young people. You've got wonderful universities, world class institutions, but you get your brightest and best who go there. They get trained in engineering, et cetera. They look around, they see there's no opportunities, they can't buy a house. So they leave for America and they literally double, if not triple their salaries. And frequently they pay far lower taxes as a result.
- [23:39]
Pierre Poilievre
And that's exactly what I want to reverse. We have to cut income taxes so that the brilliant kids that come out of Waterloo and Kitchener and engineering can stay in Canada and earn an incredible living and, or own an affordable house. And we know we can do it. We have so many advantages over the Americans, geographically, the land mass we have, the population that we have, we should be the richest and most affordable country in the world.
- [24:05]
Host 2
And we can be Pierre. And moving to geopolitics a little bit. Do you have a clear understanding of what the Americans are doing, what their posture is towards the world? And obviously that will affect Canada as well.
- [24:18]
Pierre Poilievre
Are you now, do you want to talk about the tariff policy or the recent actions in Iran and Venezuela? What would you like to address?
- [24:26]
Host 2
Here's what I'm trying to get into. Right. And we can talk about all of those things. And I think we should. I think a lot of people thought that Trump 2.0 would be a little bit like Trump 1.0. And suddenly, you know, he's talking about Canada becoming a state of the United States. He's talking about invading Greenland, and he's taken real action. And some of it. I am a big fan of, you know, getting get rid of Maduro. Great. You know, Iran is more difficult. We can talk about the pluses and minuses, but what I think is happening is there is a clear different perspective that they have. They've shifted their entire attitude towards geopolitics, the world, and they're taking a totally different approach. Do you understand the rationale and the logic behind that? Do you see what they're trying to do?
- [25:13]
Pierre Poilievre
Here's what I think is happening. For, you know, 50 years, the United States made a calculation that they could trade freely with China and build a friendship with that rising power. And they blinked. And all of a sudden they had a very powerful rival. They looked around and saw that their entire industrial base had been hollowed out, whole towns had been emptied. And they had become increasingly dependent on a country that was at best a serious rival and at worst a serious threat. And they decided that they were going to assert dominance in order to counter that rivalrous threat. Some of that thinking was justified. Some of it has since been mistargeted. Canada, for example, despite all of the criticisms you might have made about public policy decisions, Canada is not the problem. And so I think that targeting Canada is a mistake and a distraction, and Canada is actually part of the solution because we have the resources, the minerals and the geography to help make the entire continent safer. And that would be the better way to go. But there's no doubt that the United States does not want satellites of Beijing in Latin America. In particular, as we saw with the decision to oust Maduro and with the aggressive economic approach against Cuba, and as I think we're seeing with Iran, they've made the decision that they're not going to have these sort of these countries that are ultimately in the China sphere of power, encroaching on America's security or sovereignty. And I think that, I believe that that is one of the reasons for the approach that the US Is taking. So we have to decide, as Canadians, how we fit into that. And my view is that we have the ability to make the North American continent a lot safer and more secure and more prosperous for all the countries. If we take advantage of the leverage that we have, resources, geography, etc. If we massively rebuild up our military to protect the northern, to protect the Arctic, then, then we will have a lot more leverage to get what we want, which again is unbridled, tariff free access to the most lucrative market in the world, that being the US and
- [27:49]
Host 2
do you worry that what is happening in Iran now? I mean, I don't. I'm someone who's, you know, happy to see intervention when I think it's good. But I also very, very, you know, I grew up in the era of Iraq and Afghanistan. We both did. Right. I imagine you did too. And those were not things, I think, objectively speaking, that led to positive outcomes that everybody would want. Are you worried that perhaps, you know, President Trump's felt like he's on a roll and you can just keep going and sometimes he's going to go too far and there will be a lot of drawbacks to the policies he's pursuing.
- [28:27]
Pierre Poilievre
Look, it's easier to predict the past than the future, but I don't see how it could be a bad thing for the world to remove Khomeini and the theocratic dictatorship that dominated Iran.
- [28:39]
Host 2
Isn't that what we said about Gaddafi and Saddam and all these other people? I don't see how it's. And I was like, yeah, they're bad people, but what comes after is my question. I don't see what comes after.
- [28:49]
Pierre Poilievre
Well, the difference. There's a couple of differences. One, Iran has not been just sitting back and watching the world go by. Iran was responsible for the attacks of October 7th. It was funding and directing Hamas, Hezbollah, the Yemeni terrorists before the Assad regime fell, it was responsible for that. It was actively threatening not just Israel, but the Arab powers in the region and was developing a nuclear program for the express purpose of targeting Western allies. Not just Israel, by the way, which would be bad enough, but the United States of America. It was the single biggest state sponsor of terror in the world. And by the way, they killed over 100 Canadians when they fired a missile at Flight PS752. And it was a civilian aircraft. So this is a hostile enemy regime. And so, you know, it's not just that somebody showed up at the UN and made allegations that they had weapons of mass destruction. Everything I've just said is undisputed, by the way, unlike the weapons of mass destruction allegation in Iraq. And then who would govern? Well, I think what they need to do is find a way to get to elections because I think the people of Iran could choose a government and I think it will be a very western friendly government because the population there is actually very western friendly. The government was completely out of touch with the population. And so they need to get to elections. That's the outcome.
- [30:18]
Host 2
Are we certain about this? I'd love it for it to be true. I honestly don't know. Are we certain that the population is pro West?
- [30:23]
Pierre Poilievre
We have an enormous Iranian expat population in Canada and they are very pro Western and against theocracy. So I'm confident that we'd have a better future if it were directed by the Iranian people than, by the way, by the Ayala Tola and the, the religious theocracy that was running the place before.
- [30:46]
Host 2
And is your sense that this more geopolitically interventionist policy will continue? Is Cuba going to be next? Are we going to see more things like this, do you think?
- [30:54]
Pierre Poilievre
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know the answer.
- [30:57]
Host 2
Your wife is nodding over this.
- [30:59]
Pierre Poilievre
My wife is hoping so. She's from Venezuela and her family was obviously thrilled to see Madoroko. You know, and, and this is actually what's so funny is to watch these, these woke progressives pulling their hair out in the street, claiming that they're siding with Iranians and Venezuelans by opposing the removal of their dictators. And the people, both the Iranian people and the Venezuelan people were thrilled to see these dictators ousted. And, and my wife's family can attest to that.
- [31:30]
Host 1
Oh, look. Absolutely everyone. Everyone who watches.
- [31:35]
Pierre Poilievre
And if it's making my wife happy, then it can't be bad.
- [31:38]
Host 2
The joke here is Francis says his family is from Venezuela. Every single show. It's the number one liked comment on our show. Every time.
- [31:45]
Host 1
Yeah.
- [31:45]
Pierre Poilievre
Are you, are you Venezuelan?
- [31:46]
Host 1
Yeah. Yeah, I know I don't look it. Yes.
- [31:48]
Pierre Poilievre
Oh, God, we should have brought my wife on the show then.
- [31:50]
Host 1
Yeah. Half Venezuelan. The other half is Irish, so that's why. Oh, good.
- [31:54]
Pierre Poilievre
Well, I've got a lot of Irish blood.
- [31:56]
Host 1
Yeah.
- [31:56]
Pierre Poilievre
There's only two types of people. Those who are Irish and those who wish they were.
- [31:59]
Host 1
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- [33:59]
Pierre Poilievre
Right?
- [33:59]
Host 1
So in Venezuela you get the colectivos. In Iran you get the Islamic Republican Guard numbering. I was reading about 150,000 people. It's not just as easy as removing the Ayatollah. What do you do with, with the, with the Republican Guard, they're not going to lay down their arms. And this is a very, very serious problem.
- [34:21]
Pierre Poilievre
Yeah, the IRGC is the single biggest terrorist organization in the world and then it has a whole series of spawns that it controls remotely. So you're absolutely right. The irgc, I believe, will have to be dismantled and they will have to find, you know, a new way to set up a security apparatus that is, reflects a hopefully democratically elected government. But you're quite right, the IRGC will be a very big problem and they need to be destroyed. We only, frankly, we should have banned them a long time ago. In Canada. They are active in Canada. They have something like 700 agents on the ground.
- [34:59]
Host 1
What do you mean they're active in Canada?
- [35:00]
Pierre Poilievre
There's according to intelligence, they have 700 agents on the ground in Canada. They have former IRGC members have moved to Canada and taken the plunder with them so that they can harass the Persian and Jewish populations in our country. They, they. Some of the insane anti Semitic riots and attacks that we saw against synagogues, etc. I believe in Canada were actually instigated by IRGC by inflaming the population and getting people to carry out these, these terrible rampages in our streets. So this is a terrible organization that is not just a threat to the Iranian people, but is active around the world. And it is hopefully with the, with the ousting of the regime, we can break that organization as well.
- [35:54]
Host 1
Look, I want that and we all want a free Iran, a democratic Iran. The problem comes when you remove the leader. You still have the IRGC and you think to yourself, well, how are they going to get rid of it? Because Trump said in his speech that this is a chance for the Iranian people to overthrow the regime. And you think to yourself what you want the Iranian people to go out against 150,000 trained military? I mean, that's the potential to be a bloodbath.
- [36:28]
Pierre Poilievre
Well, it's already a bloodbath. It was a bloodbath before the President and Israel removed the regime. They were, they were slaughtering the population in the street. And they have been doing that now for years. And the population has been rising up and getting crushed, rising up and getting crushed over and over again. So I think what, what he means now is, well now the regime that was crushing the population has been removed. The population has to come together and secure a democratic government.
- [36:59]
Host 2
And coming back to the conversation we were having earlier and you know, you were very persuasive actually I thought, in articulating the idea that almost all the problems that we often focus on are the product of the concentration of power and assets and wealth in the hands of a small number of people who structure society for that purpose. But there's another dimension culturally which is the kind of self denigration that has become very popular in the west and it's frankly being taught in our schools and colleges. And universities en masse now, where young people, young Canadians, young British people are effectively taught a version of their history that inevitably leads to them hating their own country. Do you see that happening and what can you do about it?
- [37:40]
Pierre Poilievre
Well, by the way, I think that's also part of the same phenomenon I described earlier, which is that those who want to have more power, what do you do? You erase history, because then they have a blank slate to write on. You can create something out of nothing. You can say everything. All of the foundations that created our civilization, we've wiped them away. And now I pull out my magic marker and I paint a brand new civilization which is, you know, in all, if you look at, if you look at all the literature about dystopia, whether Huxley or Orwell, it involves eliminating the past. But the only way to preserve freedom is to anchor it in history. Our history, for example, goes back to a field about an hour from here in Runnymede, the, the Magna Carta, the great English liberties that we inherited as Canadians. That is an 800-year-old tradition, an imperfect one, one that, that started off with a very small group securing their freedom by imposing liberty under the law, but then expanded over eight centuries to the imperfect state it is today. But without that 800 year tradition, you don't have freedom. So on the other side are those who want to erase all of that so that they can impose their agenda. And, and my point is we've got
- [39:06]
Host 2
two generations at least. I mean, my generation probably, probably similar age. Our generation, I remember it started to creep through already. Then you look at the generation below us, so you just, I mean, if they, if they went to university, I don't know if you've ever seen that meme of like the people before and after certain drugs, like before weed, after weed, before heroin. And then the last one is before college. After college. And before college, it's a normal person. And after it's, you know, nose piercings and weird hair and all of that kind of stuff. Right. So that's been the effect that, that is the country if you ever become prime minister, you will inherit, in which young people have. Some young people have been brainwashed into this ideology. I know Jordan has obviously done a lot to try and push back against it.
- [39:46]
Pierre Poilievre
Yes, great Canadian, Jordan Peterson truly gave her a great Canadian.
- [39:50]
Host 2
Yeah, he is a great Canadian. He was a great man. But the fact that he had to is evidence of where your society is. Is that fair assessment?
- [39:58]
Pierre Poilievre
No, no, I think that our young people today are more conservative, more hard Working and have more common sense than maybe any generation since the Second World War.
- [40:09]
Host 2
Lucky you.
- [40:10]
Pierre Poilievre
We have the young people in Canada. The ones I meet, they want to start families, own homes and take responsibility.
- [40:19]
Host 2
Well, the ones you meet, you're a Conservative.
- [40:21]
Pierre Poilievre
No, the ones I meet when I go to a coffee shop and I talk to the barista or I go to a restaurant and talk to the waitress. I'm not talking about at Conservative rallies. I'm talking about it on shop floors and in retail outlets across the country where I meet young people and they're the ones being held back. We won, by the way, we won the youth vote. In fact, we have our election body, elections. Candidate runs elections in the high schools. They are mock elections, but all of them participate. Now, some people say, oh, this is trivial stuff. It's. We're talking about like every high school student. We won the high school vote. They voted Conservative.
- [40:57]
Host 2
Wow.
- [40:58]
Pierre Poilievre
And this is the first time that the high schoolers voted differently than their parents in the general election. And it's on election day. So young people today in Canada, I believe, are grounded in a desire to work hard to unleash their ambitions. And so I'm actually very optimistic about our upcoming generation.
- [41:19]
Host 2
Well, if I thought that was the case here, I'd also be optimistic, but it's not.
- [41:23]
Pierre Poilievre
It's not. Okay. I don't know a lot of British
- [41:25]
Host 2
youth, but you guys are very lucky if that's the case.
- [41:27]
Host 1
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that we've seen with the UK and Australia and Canada is the guilt of their history. And. But the guilt is different. For instance, in the UK it's guilt for empire. In Australia and Canada, it's slightly different because there's the indigenous people and there's a guilt around that with. In Canada. Can we talk about that a little bit? Because that's. I've found something quite fascinating, actually.
- [41:55]
Pierre Poilievre
Well, okay, so the. I think that in Canada, what we need to do is focus on what we can actually achieve together. We, the indigenous peoples of Canada, can be literally the richest people in the world because the lands on which they live are among the most resource rich. And one thing you will never hear about in the media is the pro energy, pro oil and gas indigenous communities that are very common across Western Canada in particular. But also in the mining communities of Northern Ontario, the previous Liberal government killed a number of natural resource projects as part of the net zero obsession that had overwhelming and near unanimous support of the indigenous communities nearby. And there was one oil and gas mine, the tech Frontier mine, $20 billion. Every single indigenous community around it supported it. And the government in Ottawa came in and killed it. So the approach that we have tried to take as conservatives in Canada is to unleash incredible amounts of opportunity for first nations, allow energy companies to even pay some of their corporate tax obligation to local Indigenous communities to help with fighting poverty, training young people, getting them into six figure jobs in the trades. So that's the approach that I take and I think it's a positive one. And I think, you know, the traditional Indigenous values, I believe are quite conservative. Faith in a creator family tradition. And I think we can build on those, those foundations because it seems to
- [43:33]
Host 1
me the Liberal Party take a very paternalistic approach towards the Indigenous people, whilst on the other hand not giving them the freedom to actually be able to progress and improve their own communities.
- [43:44]
Pierre Poilievre
Well, the approach has been to, to block resource projects and then double the size of the bureaucracy for Indigenous affairs. So that is not the right approach. And we don't need more bureaucrats in the nation's capital. We have too many of those. We need is more opportunity in the Indigenous communities themselves.
- [44:03]
Host 2
Pierre, one thing that Frans and I have been thinking about a lot, because I think anyone is thinking about a lot at the moment, is I think the world is about to change very dramatically. It's a trivial thing to say in one way, but like we went to San Francisco and you walk around like a third of the cars on the road are not driven by humans anymore. Or you talk to some of the people in AI, like this thing is happening really fast. Do you have any thoughts on the impact that that will have on countries like Britain, like Canada? And what do you see coming down the pipe?
- [44:35]
Pierre Poilievre
Look, it's an incredible opportunity. I think it could massively increase the availability of goods and services at much lower prices if it's allowed to and if monetary inflation doesn't cancel out all the benefits again. But one thing I ask myself is if AI is going to replace a number of different tasks that we do, what kind of meaning will people have in their lives? Right. I'm a big believer in Viktor Frankl, incredible psychologist, and his thesis was that people need meaning even more than they need food and water. They need meaning in their lives to give them happiness. And he tells the story of a group therapy session where there were two ladies. One was a very wealthy woman who had married a very rich man. And she was sitting next to a woman who lived in poverty and had two children, one who died early and the other who was severely disabled. And he said to both of them, when you're on your deathbed at 80, what will you look back upon your life and say? And the wealthy woman said, well, I'll say that I had an easy life with lots of joys and easy, frivolous pleasures, but it all really meant nothing. Whereas the mother who had struggled and fought for her kids said, well, I look back on my life and though my first child had a short life, it was a beautiful one, and my second child had a disability, I made him into a great person and I would look back at my life and say it was an incredible success. So the point being that life is not just a pleasure machine. It's about having meaning. And if machines and robots replace the meaning that we get from doing our work and contributing, then how will we find meaning and purpose? That's something I think about 50 years from now. If some of the predictions about what these AI mechanisms are going to be able to do, what kind of meaning will. How will we get meaning? The meaning that comes from work and contributing?
- [46:38]
Host 2
I think you're exactly right. Although I think 50 years is extremely optimistic, I think it's happening very quickly. If you watch or listen to trigonometry regularly, this won't surprise you. The cost of everyday life has crept up to the point where even sensible people are feeling the squeeze. You do the right things, you work, you budget, and somehow the money still doesn't go as far as it used to. Food costs more, insurance costs more, everything costs more. And more people than you think are quietly filling the gap with credit cards charging 20 or 30% interest. If you're a homeowner, and that sounds familiar, there is a better way. Right now, mortgage rates are at a three year low and American Financing is helping homeowners roll high interest debt into rates in the low fives. What makes them different is how they operate. Their mortgage consultants are salaried, no commission, no pressure. American Financing are there to build an exit strategy from debt, not to push a product. On average, their customers are saving around $800 a month. That is real breathing room. And if you start the process now, you may even be able to delay your next two mortgage payments. There are no upfront fees and no obligation to find out what your options are. If you want a serious plan instead of a financial whack, a mole, this is worth a call. America's home for home loans is American financing. Call 866-885-1948. That's 866-8851. 9, 4, 8. Or go to americanfinancing.net trigonometry. Another thing, though, and look, I think you're totally right. Like the upside is unlimited in healthcare, in all sorts of things. There is a thing though, like they've started to do some experiments where they give the AI some information and they say, well, the CEO is having an affair. Right. And then the CEO gives an audit to shut down the AI for unrelated reason. The AI will blackmail the CEO to not be shut down. Right. In other words, it has a survival instinct.
- [48:30]
Pierre Poilievre
Wow.
- [48:31]
Host 2
And if something has a survival instinct, that means by definition its primary interest is not human beings. Its primary interest is survival. There is an existential risk to humanity. It might be very small, but is that something you've thought about at all? I hope more politicians do think about this.
- [48:51]
Pierre Poilievre
Listen, I've never been blackmailed by AI.
- [48:57]
Host 2
Well, get ready, it's coming.
- [48:59]
Pierre Poilievre
Thanks for the warning. Look, these are the kinds of things we have to think about and what happens if and when they take a life of their own. But I don't have the ability to extrapolate that far into the future. But you've given me something to think about.
- [49:14]
Host 2
Fair enough. No, it's just a new thing. But I think it's going to happen so much faster than people think. And I think, I hope politicians start to think about it a little bit more.
- [49:22]
Host 1
Because one of the challenges I think politicians face, and we saw that with Zuckerberg when he was being interrogated by us politicians, is that you were listening to the US politicians interrogate Zuckerberg and you go, oh, you don't understand tech. And the concern for a lot of people is the knowledge is concentrated in the hands of a very small amount of the population. And really we need politicians who are across this just as much as the tech industry, if not more.
- [49:55]
Pierre Poilievre
Really? I agree, I agree. Because otherwise it's a black box and for all but those who control it. And so we have to diffuse the knowledge and we have to know more about what it's going to do.
- [50:07]
Host 2
Yeah, well, you will need to. But coming back to this central theme of our conversation, which I think you've articulated, as I say very powerfully, how do you wrestle control back from the people who've established this gigantic bureaucracy, who have all the corporate structures that benefit them? How do you actually get to the point where that is no longer the case and your country, our country, is no longer about serving the interests of a very small group of people at the top?
- [50:33]
Pierre Poilievre
Well, you have to activate everybody else. You have to provide hope to everyone else that life can be so much better than it is right now for them. And that's why we've, we've focused in our party in the last several months, particularly on a hopeful message because we don't want is people to become despondent and detached from the political process. You know, if you, if they don't show up, then, then they will be governed only by those who do. So how do I, so I've asked myself, how do I go and get the mill worker in Thunder Bay to become politically active so that he can own a home and double his pay and, you know, continue to enjoy his hunting rifles and his, his pickup truck and the things that make his life great? Those, those are, that's one of the political challenges for those of us who are, who are trying to give power back to the people is to get the people engaged to take it.
- [51:22]
Host 1
But isn't also the challenge going to be that you've got to change a culture? Because it's. I, I think it was around 40% of Canadians are employed in government jobs. And I was talking to a friend of mine, he was saying, look, for a lot of Canadians, that's the dream. Because you get a cushy government job, you're not gonna have to work as hard. And that means, you know, that you've got life on easy street. Now maybe that's an unfair way of putting it, but that I've heard that from more than one person today.
- [51:50]
Pierre Poilievre
I don't know if I would say that's true in Canada today. The problem I see is that people are working extremely hard. They're running non stop, but there's so many obstacles in their way. They're, you know, you're, if you're a young person, you want to buy a home, well, they're not building them. You know, we, we build fewer homes today than we did in the 1970s. Why is that? Not because we don't have carpenters who want to swing hammers. It's because you can't get a permit to build a home. You've got go to Western Canada, the people who are unemployed in Western Canada and the trades. It's not because they don't want to work. It's because the government has blocked them from working in the energy sector. So, you know, I don't see the population as being a problem at all in Canada. I think the problem in most western countries that are in this challenge is governments. It's not the people.
- [52:38]
Host 2
I don't know how much you followed this in other countries. And I wonder if it is an issue in Canada or not. But the point you make about political activation is obviously true. But one of the things that's happened both in Europe, in Britain and in America is political activation of a very frustrated population, understandably has spilled over in many instances into anger and resentment and a much more destructive perspective. You see, you know, social media, you know, I always talk about how the, the kind of, the caliber of the influence, it tells you a lot about the time you're in. So you kind of go from Jordan PETERSON within like 10 years, you go down to Andrew Tate to Nick Fuentes, right. And in the UK you see that the polarization is creating very angry, divisive movements, which are understandable in some ways because they're reacting to things that are very unpleasant that you've been describing. Do you have that problem in Canada? And do you know, if you do what, do you know what to do about it, what other people should do about it?
- [53:37]
Pierre Poilievre
The problem being polarization?
- [53:40]
Host 2
No, it's not polarization, because if you, I guess the problem being that the anger that's created by the policies you're describing then becomes a vehicle for people who are not offering the message of hope and positivity that you are, but are offering a destructive message, a message of hatred against other people, et cetera.
- [53:59]
Pierre Poilievre
I think in Canada we're very blessed that the focus has remained on hope. And I will bluntly take some credit for it because I have been the major opposition to the status quo in the country. And during that time we have not, you know, our Conservative Party has remained unfractured. We are one party, we haven't fractured into numerous parties. And our focus has been on giving people driving their political energies towards a hopeful future rather than just being upset about the status quo. And very simply, the antidote to anger is hope. Because if you say to people, yes, you're not happy with where you are, but this is where we could be, wouldn't this be wonderful? Wouldn't it be great if you could own a home, raise a family, chart your own course, live a great life, launch a business. And I've tried to keep people focused on that optimistic, forward looking possibility. And I think that is the antidote to the problem you described.
- [54:55]
Host 2
Yeah, and I thought your, your Apple eating video was perfect illustration of people trying to drag you into the negative.
- [55:01]
Pierre Poilievre
Oh my God, that, that was strange. We, I, when my staff were there witnessing this, no one thought that this was a moment of any kind of really? No. Like we, we buried it like seven minutes into a 15 minute video that we thought no one was going to watch of me just sort of wandering around talking to people in an orchard and somehow this thing blew up. So it was when people came to me weeks later and said they had seen a video of me eating an apple. I didn't even remember what they were talking about. But it's funny how social media behaves.
- [55:30]
Host 2
That was a. That was a great moment in Internet history. Pierre, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us. We really appreciate it. Thank you. We're going to ask you some questions from our supporters. Many Canadians have written in with their question.
- [55:41]
Pierre Poilievre
Sure.
- [55:41]
Host 2
Before we do, though, the last question we ask all our guests is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be as a society, as a culture?
- [55:48]
Host 1
Before Pierre answers a final question at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our substack. The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this. What is one thing the world can learn from Canada and what is one political idea you would like see brought to Canada from elsewhere? What's your stance on the Alberta independence movement? And how do you feel about Quebec?
- [56:11]
Pierre Poilievre
One thing we're not talking about, I think is the biggest cause of economic injustice, which is monetary inflation. I think it has been the single biggest wealth transfer away from the working class. And it has been a phenomenon in all of the Western world, with the possible exception of Switzerland. And it is, you know, we're creating cash at six times the rate that we're building homes. And that is inflating the cost of everything. It's taking from wage earners and savers and concentrating money in the hands of a very small group of insiders.
- [56:46]
Host 2
And is that why it's happening, you think?
- [56:48]
Pierre Poilievre
It is exactly why it's happening, yes. It's very simple. You mentioned apples, right? You had an economy with 10 apples and $10. It's a buck an apple. If you double the number of dollars to 20, but you still only have 10 apples, it's now. It's now $2 an apple.
- [57:02]
Host 2
No, what I mean is, is the reason it's happening. Is that it? For the same reason you've said everything else there's a benefit to.
- [57:08]
Pierre Poilievre
I don't think it's a conspiracy. I think that it's. So if. If you're a politician and you want to spend money you don't have, what's the easiest way to do it? Is it to raise everyone's taxes. It go out and say, well, we're going to, you know, politician says they're going to raise the sales tax by three points or why not just print the money? It has the exact same effect, but no one realizes because it's way too complicated for even people who are extremely intelligent to understand. And, and so that is the original cause. But then there are all these secondary beneficiaries at the top and then the great masses of victims at the bottom who pay for it. And I think it is the single biggest wealth transfer in modern history. And almost no one had notices it because it is a slight of hand. It is an optical illusion that is very difficult to detect.
- [57:58]
Host 2
Well, it's become a lot easier to detect now when countries like the UK and the US are running debt at high levels on their gdp. Gdp. Do you think that music is going to stop at some point?
- [58:07]
Pierre Poilievre
It has to, because one of two things will happen. Either they'll start printing and cause inflation crises that provoke enormous upheaval or that they don't print. Then their bond yields will start to rise to points that they can't actually make their payments. One of those two things is going to happen if they don't get their spending under control.
- [58:27]
Host 2
So you have an inflationary crisis or you have a fiscal crisis.
- [58:30]
Pierre Poilievre
Exactly one of the two. And they've chosen inflation over a fiscal crisis now. And that is why the money printing has been so rampant. The deficits are enormous and the only way to deal with them, the only easy way for politicians to deal with them is to print money and rob people's buying power. But eventually people will get fed up and they won't be able to do that and the music will stop.
- [58:53]
Host 2
So how do you, if you, if you become prime minister, how do you actually deal with this? Because if you've got an economy and a society that's basically got used to the fact that you print money that you don't have to spend on things you can't afford, you are then evil dad who comes in and says, no, we can't spend money on this. No more candy for you, no more this for you. You're going to be there for one term.
- [59:16]
Pierre Poilievre
Well, the people aren't getting this so called candy, they're the ones paying for it. Right? As Jefferson said, the government is taking from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. The people are paying the price. This is why, you know, people can't eat food, can't eat beef anymore. That's why you used to be able to own a house and pay off a mortgage in seven years on a single income. You know, a welder could buy a house, raise four kids and pay off his mortgage in seven years. And now a lawyer and an accountant can't buy a house in 20 years, even get the down payment. So it's. There's no candy for the people. It's only been a candy for a small group at the top. And how do you stop it? You need to shrink the size and cost of government so that there's no longer a need to print money. That means cutting bureaucracy, consultants, corporate welfare, handouts to phony refugees, foreign aid. We have to cut all those things. And yes, it will take backbone to do it, but I have that backbone.
- [60:12]
Host 2
Follow us to triggerpod.co.uk, where we ask Pierre your questions. Trump's running commentary obviously angered a lot of Canadians. How much anti American sentiment you think will subside when he goes, and how much is locked in until the people who were alive when it happened die?