Pierre Poilievre, The Next Prime Minister of Canada?: The Economy Is About To Collapse!

Trump threw the election and then they're after said that Canada should honestly become our 51st state Which is never gonna happen Pierre Pollyov, leader of his majesty's loyal opposition There's a fact significant probability that you could be Canada's next leader And your team said I can ask you whatever I want Okay, so it appears that the United States have made the decision to kind of go at a loan in the world And that is a very big strategic mistake In Canada's case, we have everything the United States needs if they treat us like a friend So for example, we have the fourth biggest supply of oil And if you look at the leading five, which of these countries do you think the United States can most rely on? And I'm looking at the third valve there in the road around Has Trump taken the right course of action? The Iranian government has been extremely hostile and very dangerous to Canada They are the leading world sponsor of terrorism And there's no doubt in my mind that the only reason that they are enriching uranium Is for the purpose of developing a weapon And there's a far greater risk to them having a nuclear weapon than even North Korea So the initial actions were definitely necessary But how do you think this plays out? And if Trump had called you and asked fuel support, would you have given it? Well, let's put it this way What is the thing that you most concerned about We're overtaxing our population We're punishing initiative We have 20,000 immigrant doctors who can't work in medicine Wages have been destroyed Young people can't start a family in this economy And that is why the working class across the Western world is so angry The good news is that we can reverse all of that And the other thing that I actually was really keen to talk about is this Wow I can see the emotion in your face Yeah, it's still there Yeah, I hadn't thought about that in a while Guys, I've got a favorite to ask before this episode begins The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you The best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed So when we have our best episodes on this show The most shared episodes, the most rated episodes I would love you to know And the simple way for you to know that Is to hit that follow button But also, it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make this show better I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute On the app you're listening to this one right now And hit that follow button Thank you so, so, so much Pia, Polly Eve, leader of his majesty's loyal opposition There is so much I want to talk to you about I think you have a truly fascinating formative childhood One of which I've really seldom seen on this show Especially when the person rises so high in their political ambitions But I think the most appropriate thing to start with Because it's just front of mind for me at the moment Is what the hell is going on in the world And I mean, that's genuinely, I'm up all night Trying to figure out if we're on the verge of world We're three What's going on with all these alliances we used to have What is going on in the world The history of, it starts really in the post-war period With the massive increase in the power And the wealth of the United States They unleashed the capitalist system They effectively buried the Soviet Union Just by out-hustling, out-producing And out-out-growing Until the Soviet Union collapsed And then a new authoritarian power Snuck up on the United States China went from having 80% of its population Living on one less than a dollar a day To being the second biggest economy in the world And at the same time The American working class has been thoroughly screwed over By relentless money printing That has inflated their cost of living While also inflating the wealth of a small group of elites And I think this resulted in a major pushback Now some of that was justified That pushback is justified But I also think some of it is very much unjustified Terrifying countries like Canada Makes no sense If you're the United States, you should want more friends More trade with those friends And that's one of the reasons why I've been touring the United States To make the case for Canada And to remind our American friends That they are stronger working with countries like Canada And the United Kingdom Than they are pushing those natural allies away It appears that The United States have made the decision to kind of go at a loan in the world I mean, I was at Davos and I saw What Trump said I saw a variety of things in the lead up to there talking about Taking Greenland, turning Canada into one of the United States Fifty first states So what he said? Fifty first state That's never going to happen It seems to be very adversarial And through my childhood And through my adulthood And over the last 30 years The US has always been the strong ally Not an individualistic isolated force in the world What's what's going on here? I think that is a very big strategic mistake I think America would be better off working with The traditional western alliance that helped win the Cold War We had a very big manus It's a nuclear armed Soviet Union that was expansionary Its empire was pushing eastward into Europe And the response of the United States was to build a strong NATO alliance And then to unleash its economy to just out produce the Soviets and bring them to their needs In Canada's case, we have everything the United States needs If they treat us like a friend We have the fourth biggest supply of oil You can see it, that's right We could maybe pull that over here This is the oil reserves by country As you can see, Canada is number four And after us is Iraq and then the United States But if you look at the leading five Which of these countries do you think the United States can most rely on? Is it Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Iraq? No, it's Canada It works very well with American refineries And we sell it to the United States at enormous price discount Furthermore, we could build up an enormous reserve of this oil So that if God forbid, the Strait of Hormuz were to be closed Just a random example You're from the American America's friends in neighboring Canada Would have a couple hundred millions Bill of barrels That are already produced and ready for use if it's needed So this is really a kind of rocket fuel for the Canadian economy But it's strategically important for our American friends We could cooperate better on this if we got a friendly posture And a fully terra-free trade arrangement with the US What's interesting when I look at these vials of oil that we have on the table And I see that Venezuela is number one, Saudi Arabia is number two, Iran, Canada, Iraq And then the US is a lot of these countries that have a lot of oil Are in conflict with the United States right now That's right And now as I look at this it seems like I understand why So Venezuela, I mean Trump just flew in and took the leader of Venezuela and his wife out of bed And sees the country Iran, the US will with Iran now Iraq, I mean that's a story already And Canada has been the other one whether it's been incredibly adversarial over the last couple of months Is this just all about oil? Frankly, we don't really understand what the dispute with Canada is about Because we've been a very good and friendly partner to the United States ever since The early 1800s before we even formed as a confederation What I would say to Americans though is You shouldn't have to worry about all of these countries If you are working collaboratively with Canada And you're trading freely with a separate country to the north Then you will not be bound by what happens in these other less stable And arguably more hostile countries What I believe we as Canadians need to do is use our natural resources As leverage to get what we want from this administration and future ones What we want is tariff-free trade for our steel aluminum, lumber and automobiles And in exchange for that we can produce more oil and sell more of it at better prices to the United States of America Oil is only one part of it There's also the strategic minerals that are necessary for God forbid modern warfare and we have those as well We are a resource superpower and I want to leverage that to get what we want from the US and from other nations I'm looking at the third valve there in the row Iran Has Trump taken the right course of action in Bombing Iran in the way that he has and the other question that's I think everyone's mind is like How'd you get out of this is is this going to end well The Iranian government has been extremely hostile and very dangerous to Canada They killed 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents by shooting a civilian aircraft out of the sky PS752 For reasons we still do not understand and with no explanation whatsoever They have unleashed agents into our communities and streets to harass the Jewish and Persian communities of Canada And they are the leading world sponsor of terrorism It it is absolutely unacceptable for the Iranian government to ever acquire nuclear weapons And there's no doubt in my mind that the only reason that they are enriching uranium is for Marshall purposes. There's no need to enrich it to the degree they have In order just to have nuclear power plants. I have no doubt that they were doing it for The purpose of developing a weapon And if that were to happen It could be catastrophic for neighboring countries But also for far away lands if given the ability to develop a long-range missile. So We my view in the view of the Canadian government is that the Iranian government cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons And any action to stop them from doing that is necessary for world peace Was this action necessary to stop that and you'll view I think that the initial actions were definitely necessary particularly the bombings four or five months ago to target the nuclear development sites But I think any actions to degrade their nuclear capabilities prevent them from ever achieving them Is favorable and I hope that it will weaken the regime enough for the people to overtake it And claim control of their country It doesn't look like that's the case I think they've appointed the son of the iatola to lead the country now And they seem to be firing everybody in the region There was some reports that they might have ballistic missiles that could reach Europe as well Yes, and this is what we have to stop. I mean The idea that they are they're carrying out this aggression simply because they've been attacked Is false they would have eventually carried it other question is when and with what means And if we had just sort of slept and waited we would have ended up with a catastrophe This is different than North Korea North Korea was allowed to get nuclear weapons But they don't have the same celestial fundamentalist ideology there Ultimately the regime in North Korea is interested in its own survival and It's power The regime in terran has a theocratic dream if they believe that there's an after life in which they could be rewarded for carrying out mass destruction on What they call the infidels they don't respond to deterrence the same way that pyeongyang in in North Korea would There's a far greater risk to them having a nuclear weapon Then then even having that in in a communist totalitarian state like North Korea But for Canada In this environment our superpower is again our resources And that's why it has been one of my major obsessions to unblock our resources get them to tide water accumulate them in a strategic reserve That would allow us to really flex our energy muscles in environments like this and also reduce dependence on regime like Iran like Saudi Arabia like Venezuela If Trump had called you and asked for your support Had you been leading the government of Canada Would you have given the support this is the big conversation at the moment in the UK because Kirstama was reluctant to send troops originally And it seems to have irks trump in a interesting way So our prime minister did support the attack and I agreed with prime minister karni on that point That is distinct from contributing Canadian soldiers or sailors and air crew I'd not proposing that we send ground troops to Iran And we are not in a position right now to supply a lot of the demands that this conflict would require It depends on what they ask for Before we get an answer from Canada on what what it is that we can provide you or someone that knows a lot about history You seem to know a lot about a lot frankly And I don't know a lot about a lot so when you think through how this could go It doesn't appear that the Iranians are going to Roll over very easily the the Iranian leadership are going to roll over very easily Trump doesn't appear to be a man that likes taking hits to his ego So it doesn't appear that he's just going to pull out And let you know things unravel And then the third option one would say is that they double down even further and send troops to the region What how do you think this plays out based on everything that you know about both history about Trump and from your pattern recognition Well, it could go a variety of ways remember the first Persian Gulf War George Herbert Walker Bush Decided that he had downgraded and penalized Saddam Hussein enough for the invasion of Kuwait He declared victory and he moved on and ultimately that left a lot of stability in the region His son then went and and pursued a full Out-and-out regime change and that was a much longer enterprise The the president will have to decide which of those two bushes he uses as a model But I think that the important thing is to know what the objective is for me the objective has to be to make sure that the Iranian government never gets The capacity to send long-range nuclear missiles to countries Or even short and medium-range to Israel for that matter Beyond that, I think it's up to the Iranian people To take advantage of the weakness of the regime and rise up and reclaim their Country I don't think this regime has popular support I know a lot of Iranians we're blessed to have a lot of very secular pro-western Persians who live in Canada are proudly Canadian and They will tell you that there's almost no support for the regime among the people of Iran They need to find a way to overturn the regime And that would that would give a lot of comfort and peace to the rest of the world But it will also give democracy to a deserving people. What would you do if you're a Trump? That's a good question Like I said, I would focus on the core objective of making sure that there's not a nuclear armed Without getting involved in a permanent quagmire So everything's been bombed now for those been bombed So is this the time to pull out then? I think it all depends on the intelligence they have about the nuclear capacity That is the hinge point we cannot allow a nuclear-powered Iranian military that is what they need to determine For me at the moment, it looks a little bit like it's a little bit lose-lose for Trump In an interesting way And I think this is also reflecting the fact that nobody really has a perfect answer for what to do next Because this all just trade-offs That's right here's That's right. I mean that's what the great Thomas Saul said there's no solutions just trade-offs in life And it's hitting the the price of gas at a pumps in a big way Yes A way that concerns you or Well, it's funny you should ask because it shouldn't have to concern Canadians Our enormous supply of oil should actually insulate us from it Normally what what used to happen in Canada is when the global price of oil rose Our dollar would rise with it because people would be buying more of our oil which meant they had to first buy our dollar A more powerful Canadian dollar meant that we had more buying power for internationally priced commodities like oil and food So we used to be protected from international oil price increases In a way that we're not anymore because our sector is no longer as strong and as big as it was as a share of our economy And so what I want to do is unleash oil production in Canada Clear the regulatory bureaucracy the government gatekeepers get rid of industrial carbon taxes and have a stronger dollar That makes life more affordable and much more geostrategic power in the world There's a quite significant probability that you could be Canada's next leader And for you to achieve all those things you've just described you'll need to have, you know, productive relationship with the United States Right Trump If all follows the law won't be able to be elected till Probably be a different leader by the time that you were in power Although I know that you know, there could be a vote of no confidence which mean that you could get into power earlier Your relationship with Trump Good bad and different I've never met him never met him I don't want him I've never spoken to him. No, I don't have no I've made the decision that we have one prime minister at a time and because we are negotiating A trade deal it's more like a review of our existing deal I don't want our side as Canadians to be divided even though I obviously disagree with my prime minister on a whole range of policy issues I don't want to undermine in any way the the Canadian side of the bargaining table I would only do that kind of conversation with a teamwork with the current government But what I've said is that our approach vis-a-vis Trump Should be to focus on what we can control So why not focus on what what we can do at home Unlock our resources Build up a strategic reserve of minerals that are Important to our American friends but also to our other allies A clear the way to export more goods to overseas markets Build alliances with the United Kingdom New Zealand Australia To diversify and become more self-sufficient. You keep using this word unlock. Yes clear the way. Yes What are you referring to when you say clear the way and unlock Removing bureaucratic obstacles the the resources we have are massively profitable for the private sector To mine refine store and ship as long as they can get the permits and the low enough taxes to do it So we need to remove those obstacles so that it now becomes possible for private investment not subsidized by government no handouts for business But private investment to unlock and unlock those resources. You're just saying that you don't want to get in the way of Of Mark Connie Well, I don't want to get in the way of negotiations with a foreign country I obviously have my job is to To be his opposition in the House of Commons on domestic issues and even on international issues But not to do so in a way that undermines the national interest A lot of countries aren't like that. It was interesting because you're on gerogon's shirt. It's got a global audience Yes, so you know if you talk about him and you're talking about him all over the world And you said you wouldn't criticize The leader of your position unless you were in Canada But you know that you know you're reaching everybody everywhere all the time No, that's true. It's true But I just think it's a it's a good principle to follow particularly during a negotiation That's happening across the border in that country like you know I think it would be a little different if we were in normal times and there was no trade dispute Or if we were in a country with which we have no particular contention For me to say something critical about the government's policy back home would not have any repercussions for the nation But particularly over the next several months. Well these talks are are hopefully going to go on I want to get the best outcome for Canada and I have to put my country above myself Why are you better than The current leader of the Canadian government? Mark Connie. Well, what is it you offer that is better than what he has to offer My mission is to make Canada the most affordable Freest and richest country in the world my upbringing I grew up in a very humble beginnings I grew up surrounded by working class people. Yeah, these are my folks. Yeah, that's an old one But if you're there and your your parents and you're your step brother you're half brother half brother Yes, so as my dad and my mother where they were school teachers My brothers my half brother because we came from the same biological mother But a different biological fathers adopted into the same family kind of a complicated story biological mother adopted you at 16 years old put us up for adoption at 16 years old She was 16 and then then about three years later. She had another little boy And he Patrick was then adopted by the same parents and they were two teachers that adopted you in Patrick Yes, that's right. Yeah, I still remember when we went to pick him up It was so we went to this We got a phone call and he said there's a little boy who happens to be half brothers with your With with Pierre would you like to to adopt him too? And he's absolutely So we went over to this building And we walk into this room and there were all these rows of babies And you know, we walked past them and then We said they said that's him right there and that was when I met my brother You know, we picked him up at that's why I thought that's where babies came from there's a store You know, we were to a store and get your your groceries There's a store where you can go and get a baby That's what I thought because that was my first experience with it And we brought him home and and we grew up in working class neighborhoods when I was about three four Ish we lost everything we got smashed by High interest rates my mother had had saved up enough to buy two little rental properties We lost those and our home and had to borrow from our grandfather to get a down payment So we'd have a place to live My dad was driving this old mobile that was falling apart And our neighbors were you know working class folks They were just you know electricians Oil workers police officers So that's those are the people I grew up with And I always grew up admiring those those people Admiring what they were able to do And believing that they were Generally taken advantage of by government never listened to and definitely then kept on the outside of decision making And My mission has been to bring back what I call the promise of Canada that Anyone can achieve anything doesn't matter if you start off as an adopted kid raised by school teachers Or you know an immigrant from Botswana who grows up really poor If you you work at it you should be able to buy a house Launch a business become a you know a famous global podcaster Or maybe a cure a disease and that was what Canada was all about and that is what I'm trying to reinstate Will age do you get to meet your biological mother for the first time 21-22 my adopted mother was very gracious Because I said I won't meet my biological mother Without the permission of my adopted mother she did all the work of raising me all the hardships all of my She put up with all of my Rambunctiousness and teenage years and drove me to hockey practice and You know emptied her bank account to pay for our food and stuff So I did not want her to feel like she was going to be left behind or forgotten about or replaced And I asked her, you know, would you be okay if I met her and she said yes of course because I won't always be here And I always want you to have a mother and I thought that was a really incredible thing to do because It's so big part it's such a big part of a Mother's identity is that they are the mother of that child But to have a love that's so much deeper than that personal identity or interest Is something I'll always remember it's one of the most gracious things I've ever seen I can see the emotion in your face as you say it. Yeah, it's still there Yeah, I hadn't thought about that in a while What beautiful people yes, we're very blessed and And And it's it's it's people like these that inspire me that Keep me going and in in this crazy world of politics So you get to meet your biological mother at 21 22. Yeah around that. Yeah What does one say one of the questions one needs to ask if any I'm trying to remember we went on we went on a bit of a road trip from Ottawa to Montreal and We just got to know each other She had a lot of questions about how my life had been And I had a lot of questions about our our biological family about her father who was a really great man I would go on to meet a great Irishman and The circumstances that led to my My conception and and birth and I really came to understand her decision to put me up for adoption And I've never been resentful for it at all She she was 16 she just lost her mother to a heart attack She Didn't have a lot of means and she just made a selfless decision that we would have more opportunity if we were raised by someone else Did you ever learn anything about your biological father? Yes Yeah, he works at a a Concrete plant in British Columbia and so I went and met him He's a great father with children that he subsequently had and raised and and so he he's a very good man As well and my my adoptive father is a teacher and he gave me a lot of wonderful lessons And I think is responsible for my way with words Marlene and Donald that's right So Marlene's your adoptive mother Donald's your adoptive father they divorce it when you're 12 years old Yes, it would be around that time. I was in grade five Very difficult time for parents to divorce very difficult time. I remember that that period of life very very clearly because I remember one day my parents coming to me and telling me that they didn't love each other anymore That they were gonna get a divorce they didn't okay, but I remember a bit which you know I think did enough damage for But it was around that age and I remember where I was stood in the house I remember what I was wearing when they said that to me because it's earth shattering It is actually I just can't I can't unforget it. It was it was traumatizing Well, we were my dad told me and he wanted to tell me alone So he we we got into a the car. He said he wanted to take me for a drive and we drove to the local corner store And we parked in the car and he told me that there, but it is very traumatizing and But at the same time like they were very very good parents. So I I don't judge them for how they ended up Part We were very blessed, you know, they gave me a great start in life Even though they weren't together they they loved us very much and they gave us all they could And Donald would would eventually come out as gay. That's right. One would assume that he was dealing with The conflict of feelings. Yes for much of the time He had been raised in a very devotely French Catholic household And that's why we have a French name is and before he got married He even considered going into the priesthood and he was so he was a very devotely Catholic person He genuinely loved my mother, but obviously he wasn't programmed that way You know, he has a wonderful partner and we're friends with Very close with him and his partner Ross right now. Do you see how that's changed you as a man And as you've grown up whether it's your sort of your perspective on what love and romance is or Anything else. I think that if everything just been you know white-picked fences and you know, you know totally predictable and as Then then I wouldn't be the kind of person I am today. I think it's also You know, it's it's like you I would you have been the successful as you are if you had had a very easy childhood I doubt it. I bet all the hardships that you had And the twists and turns that took you from Botswana to the United Kingdom and then onward Probably gave you some superpower and so this I think it gave me the chance to understand that you have you don't judge people You you love them for who they are my parents also taught me an important lesson That Shakespeare says to thine own self be true um My mother had when she was a small Baby she was in a car accident and her fingers were burned off and she had horrible scars Her world burns on her hand at the time and As I got to my adolescence. I said to my dad Did it ever bother you when you started dating her that she she had this injury And he said no because it didn't bother her She was totally at peace and she never hid it. It wasn't long after we met that I forgot it was even there And the message that I took from that is be yourself don't try to hide the scars scars are the trophies of survival So those are some of the lessons that my mother and father taught me and my dad was the same about Who he was he just lived his life unapologetically and openly and he never apologized for who he was and that Says stayed with me when you speak of Marlene you you speak up with her with a great fondness and expression in your face that You know, I sit up sat here six seven hundred times. So you you get to see Who matters most to people in their lives just by looking at their face And she's she's clearly On the podium Yeah, she's a very feisty little lady very short and very very forceful She she taught me a lot about being you know pugpagnacious and fighting for what you want and what you need in life and And we argued a lot when I was a kid and I think that maybe forged some of my current political Argumentation as well my wife is as a big part of it as well. She's a very strong feisty Intelligent lady with unincredible upbringing as well. She's a refugee from Venezuela and came with really nothing And so she has this sort of a mageiver like skill set To to get anything done and no matter how difficult the logistics. So I've been very very blessed with strong women Around me at a very young age it appears that you took a liking to Politics I mean, I mean you mentioned hockey first and Marlene taking you to hockey. I'm gonna. Yes A couple of photos if you playing hockey, which I found to be quite interesting, but I'm yes But politics when did politics come into your your psyche? I would have been kind of in my mid teens Well, I got into football hurt my back in football So I couldn't stay on the team my mother had always gone to these sort of local conservative meetings Sometimes just bringing baked goods or Attending a volunteer meeting and I said well, why don't you bring me to one of those because I'm bored out of my skull And she did this gives me meaning this gives me purpose. I want to go and pursue this So I started getting more and more involved. I got an internship making almost no money and I'm dressing up in a use suit and really Through myself fully into this mission one of the books that I am I realized you'd read at that time from some research is this book Adam Smith the theory of moral sentiments. Yes so This is this really this book has to be accompanied by its more famous sister book Which is the wealth of nations which that's the book that most people know Adam Smith for they think of him as kind of the father of Capitalism because in 1776 He wrote this book which described what we now call the free market system And this was a really revolutionary idea because up until then we basically had various forms of feudalism Where a small group of lords and knights and aristocrats control all the land and the great masses do all the work And so you called them serfs they would do all the heavy labor and then the lords of the manner would would take all of the benefit Along came the system of free enterprise that Adam Smith describes Which is basically it has a very simple premise voluntary exchange of work for wages product for payment An investment for interest and That the economy rather than being guided by the iron fist of the king or the state is guided by the invisible hand of the free market And this has been it been thought that this was crazy. How could the economy just sort of run itself And the answer is through price signals if the price of something goes up people just automatically start making more of it And if you need more workers to make that thing well you raise the wages and all of a sudden what do you know the workers arrive And this system is absolutely ingenious like it's why when you go into a coffee shop and you buy your coffee You say thank you. They don't say you're welcome. They say thank you Because they have something worth more to them than they had before the money and you have something worth more to you than you had before And this voluntary exchange puts everyone on equal scale even if you're a massive corporation You want to sell something to a 15 year old kid you have to convince him that's worth more than the cost So everybody has to be better off in the exchange for it to occur And that was how free enterprise Formed and it has led to a spectacular increase in the quality of living and the economic growth 200-fold increase in economic growth in the in the free enterprise era versus the feudal era So a lot of people thought Adam Smith is only interested in a system where people are out serving themselves Their self-interest that's what they took from the statement in the wealth of nations That it is not from the build benevolence of the brewer the baker or the butcher that we get our meal But from his own self-interest But that was only half the story the other half was in this book called the theory of moral sentiments In which he explains how self-interest overlaps with virtue So what he said is that we have something called fellow feeling Which is to say we feel for the other person And we feel good when someone else does good It's why we explain that you know people donate to charity Or they leave the door open for a stranger or they might help an injured person On the street because they feel bad when they see someone else their fellow suffering And they feel good when they see him succeeding And that's why it's called sentiments because you feel these things I saw this in my own son He for the first time he got a little toy and he gave it to his sister It was the first gift he'd ever given in his life And he was so happy like he literally ran in a big circle around the foyer of our of our residents And just laughing and screaming it just made him so happy happier than she was to even receive it And this is the best of human nature that his interest his happiness was served by Seeing his his sister better off and this is really laid out in some detail in the theory of moral sentiments And it for me it's like it like brings together all of human nature in one Place now he's not naive he does accept that there are bad you know dark angels in our nature But he gives the only plausible explanation that I have seen about how you intersect self-interest With altruism And how did that change your perspective and therefore you know your policies and your career I have found that Those who push a socialist ideology have a gross contradiction In their view of human nature They say that human beings are wretched self-interested greedy when they're in the private voluntary economy But they're angels when they're in the governmental economy And therefore they argue that the government should just control everything because then we have all these angels that will Decide for us decide what we get to where how our money is spent what we're supposed to believe In the modernist day what kind of vehicles we drive what we should think But that is a huge contradiction if a man if man is not capable of deciding for himself surely He's not capable of deciding for others And I think the worst First devices in human nature come out when there is too much power and concentrated in their hands absolute power corrupts absolutely So my ideology Is that we should disperse power that it should be a bottom-up system with as much freedom and agency as humanly possible That people should be free to choose for themselves And that the goal the purpose of the government is to do only those things people cannot do for themselves I guess if there's you know socialists listening now they might think well We tried this sort of capitalistic approach to the economy and it's resulted in us being able to buy less Food and vegetables for our money. It's mean that the price is gone up at the pumps people are struggling It seems that inequality has widened and the the working class seemed to be struggling more now than ever before they can't buy homes Anymore like my my parents my grandparents could could have so Clearly we need socialism they would argue because the the current system has not worked Well, we have now is socialism For the very rich We have governments that are actively redistributing wealth from the working class to the very very wealthy And that is why we see record inequality Government is actively intervening in the economy to forcefully redistribute wealth up The chain up the chain absolutely and there are countless examples of it when they block home building with heavy regulations They limit the supply of homes those who have mansions therefore are wit richer because their houses are worth more But young people newcomers working class people can't actually get a home That is a one example of state intervention. Well, we could do maybe do a little illustration here Okay, so this is um This is the total amount of land in Canada yes where homes could be built and actually this is quite reflective I think of the much of the western world as yes in the UK And this is a penny yes Do you understand this demonstration? Yes, I think what you're trying to say is that this is about how much land we live on yes So Canada is a great example of this because we have ten times as much land per person as the second closest g7 country And yet we have the fewest homes per capita to live in And why is that it's because that the vast majority of the cost that goes into building a new home Is not land Labor or lumber it's government. It's government taxes fees charges bureaucracy lobbyists consultants So if you think of this home here This home here in Canada When you buy this house more of the money for your purchase would go to bureaucrats in office buildings Then to the carpenters electricians and plumbers who actually build the home why how Because the bureaucracy has grown like any organism in nature which seeks to to survive and multiply They give us the second slowest building permits of any country in the OECD They charge enormous Development taxes which started out just to pay for plumbing and And roads for the the related housing but now have grown into Just a huge cash cow for local governments because sales taxes still apply on most new homes And all of that gets conspunged up by government and means that We have extremely expensive housing in fact we we are the most expensive in the g7 Even though we should be it should be dirt cheap to own a home in Canada because we have the most dirt to build on And my goal is to remove all of that bureaucracy Speed have the fastest permits in the world and and make it tax-free to build homes so that everyone can afford one I was reading some stats that said again I might butcher this a little bit, but it said that Canada needs to build between For roughly 450,000 new homes every single year until 2035 yes, just to restore affordability. That's right And we're building about 240,000 per year So we need to more roughly double our home building to do that The good news is we have a hundred thousand well, it's not good news We have a hundred thousand unemployed construction workers who'd be happy to pick up a hammer And start building We have hundreds of billions of dollars of investment that's ready to do it We have an abundance of land what we need are fast permits and low taxes so that we can unlock that building What is the case full slow permits? There isn't one there is no benefit to having slow permits They do not protect the environment. They do not protect public safety We used to build houses a lot faster and they didn't fall down after the second world Permits were almost instantaneous. We had a massive build up of homes so that our returning veterans could have a place to live In many neighborhoods of Canada those homes are still standing. They have not collapsed. There's no I'm not saying we get rid of building codes They should all have to follow Standards of environmental responsibility and be fire resistant and safe But it doesn't it shouldn't take seven years to approve a subdivision to do that We we know how the the developers know how to build according to the rules They just need quick permits and free to plan to do it. You'd think now with AI you'd be able to approve these permits within minutes Like with all the technology housing should be so much cheaper than it and it was before In fact, everything should be spelled so much cheaper But this is another area where government is redistributing wealth from the working class To the super rich. It's the monetary inflation Where we're creating cash at a far faster rate than we're creating the stuff that cash buys We've in Canada Increased the number of homes over the last 10 years by 13% But we've increased the money supply by a hundred percent In other words, there is now eight the the growth and the money supply is eight times faster than the growth and the growth and the housing supply Which means for the average person that it bids up a price now You might say well if everybody's equally getting their share of that money then Who cares? But they're not There's something called the catalog effect Which is that the first people to touch the money in a monetary expansion are those who are already wealthy and already connected to the financial system So when government creates cash to find its deficits It doesn't just dump the the bills out of an airplane into a suburban neighborhood It injects it into the banking system by buying government bonds that inflated prices And those who trade in those bonds are the first to get the cash those connected to the to the financial system of the first to borrow it They get to deploy it before it loses its value by the time it trickles down to the working class people It's lost its value and their wages have been destroyed And this has been happening on and off throughout all of human history But it's been particularly bad in the last 55 years and that is why I think the working class across the western world is so angry Canada have consistently dropped down the sort of happiness league table Well actually from 2015 we've gone from 5th to 25th the 18th We went from 18th to 25th just in the last year So you were the 5th happiest country in the world and now you're 25th That's right And part of it is food we have the worst food price inflation in the g7 today It's due to a lot of hidden taxes that are baked into food production We have an industrial carbon tax that it charges on farm equipment fertilizer and food producers We have a new fuel tax that's just come in single-use plastic Is now banned which makes it so that food goes bad about five days quicker So it sounds kind of very virtuous. We're not going to use plastic anymore But it ultimately means food Goes bad and somebody pays for that So we need I want to get rid of all of those taxes and fees and unnecessary regulations that do nothing for our self health and safety So that we can have more affordable food But more broadly we have to get rid of the the monetary inflation that I described as I said we've doubled our money supply in Canada From 1.4 trillion To 2.8 trillion in 10 years so it is not actually that these things cost more It's that the money with which we buy them is worth less Because because we're creating so much of it and it's and why why are you doing that to fund deficits to pay for debts That's right and that's why all government. It's not just Canada by the way. It's across the western world They're creating cash to fund deficits and the deficits come from having a big government Yes, okay, that's too big. That's right. That's too involved That's right and the result is that We're creating cash faster than we grow food build homes or produce energy and my mission Steven is to flip that I want us to create more of what cash buys by unblocking food production energy production and home building So that we add those things faster than we add what we add the cash to the system I mean, I saw this growth here this chart which is GDP per capita with international counterparts On there it has Canada United States OECD and it shows it's quite stark It shows that Canada has basically plateaued in terms of GDP per capita. What does for the average person? What is GDP per capita? What does that actually mean? It's your income really. It's the it ultimately GDP the gross domestic product is the the value of all the things that you produce if you're producing more per person Over time People will see their wages rise their real wages rise if you don't produce more per person then your wages are flat and so that is what we effectively had in Canada over the last 10 years why Because we we are not Unlocking our resources our biggest industry is oil and gas and it's locked behind Very aggressive Anti-development laws and bureaucracies because we're we're blocking home building and because we're overtaxing our population We're punishing initiative with high taxes The good news is that we can reverse all of these things if we we have the most pro-development And the fastest permits in the world if we cut taxes on work investment home building and energy Then we can massively increase our output of the things that we need to have a good life And the wages that people earn to buy it This seems to be a familiar story across some western nations. It is What are those western nations and what is the thing that they've all got in wrong in common Well, I think that it's probably true in the UK and the European Union as well What did they do? Well, let's take Germany They shut down their nuclear sector and they try to effectively drive oil and gas out of their country The end result was extremely high energy costs And this was another intervention that took from working class people and gave to the very rich Those who were able to get the subsidies for windmills and solar panels got fabulously wealthy all very powerful people But the workers and the in the plants and the mines of rural Germany Ended up losing their jobs and paying higher prices for electricity all of which by the way Has been reversed because now the Germans are back to burning coal So it did absolutely nothing for the environment This is another example of government intervention totally screwing over the working class A phenomenon across the western world and this is the big lie The big lie is that when government gets big it gives people their fair share What it does in fact is it gives the money and the resources to those who have the most political power Those people are all rich and it pays for it by taking from the working class So my mission in politics is to reverse that entire approach Have a small government with big people A meritocracy that rewards work and a free enterprise system that requires businesses compete For workers with higher wages and consumers with lower prices I'm looking here at the GDP forecasts for various countries around the world in the United States GDP forecast looks like it's um It's been pretty you know pretty strong relative to others Canada looks like it's going down 2025 estimates 1.7 percent 26 estimates 1.3 the United Kingdom as well seem to have been lagging Both the United States and Canada and Germany as you said in 2024 their GDP growth was only 0.2 Which is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of percentages lower than the United States Canada or even the UK But clearly there is a problem with GDP growth here Mm-hmm for Canada for the United States for the United Kingdom relative to a country like the United States It looks like the United States are doing something right If you look at GDP growth is the main measure Look There are some policies that we can learn from um It's not just the United States though look at Look at Switzerland for example The Swiss are Among the wealthiest in the world they have the best money the lowest inflation They have almost no inflation in Switzerland by the way They have very strong money the the Swiss Frank is the best currency in the world better than the euro or the American dollar What do they have free enterprise small government the share of government of the economy consumed by government spending is significantly lower than anywhere else in the Western world Outside of outside of Asia and so they do very well. How is it that the Singaporeans have become one of the wealthiest nations on earth They have no resources literally nothing they have to import their water for god sakes they they took an a swampy Mosquito infested island and three people who were struggling to survive in their homelands And they came together and created the wealthiest country in the world outside of the Gulf states Why they have free enterprise they have low taxes. It's easy to start a business You're rewarded for your hard work. This is the kind of thing we could be doing So looking at the numbers of Singapore Singapore operates in a league of its own Outperforming both the UK Canada and the USA in terms of growth And per capita wealth as a hub economy It is currently riding the wave of the global AI boom because they've enabled entrepreneurship And it is more than gd from a gdp perspective Last year more than double the United States gdp growth And I mean it's it's left Canada and the United Kingdom and even Switzerland in its tracks in that regard interesting It's a spectacular achievement. I mean leek one you who founded the country and created this miracle Should be studied by every leader in the world Because I don't think there's anyone who's been able to generate such a massive Increase in the quality of life and to do it with literally no resources whatsoever except for geography And they managed to exploit their geography as you said To be kind of like modern-day Nabateans. They're a trading hub For for all of Asia Every sort of economic policy or philosophies does have a trade-off I mean this one thing you land as a podcast that there's just always trade-offs And if you're not clear on what the trade-offs are then they might surprise you Right. I mean that you know you can talk about socialism or you can talk about capitalism Whatever all of them have trade-offs What are the trade-offs of your economic strategy and philosophy Well the leadership has to have humility because it has to let go of power and turn it back to the people And that is a very hard thing for politicians to do I mean no politician wants to have written on their gravestone He stated the way left people alone so that they could do great things without him Although I think we'd be better off if more of them did But I should also say that like there is a role for government I'm not suggesting that there isn't there there should be a basic social safety net That provides the things that people Who are less advantage would not be able to have for themselves to make sure that everyone has health care even if They can't afford to pay for it that there's basic schooling and roads and infrastructure But what happens is that once you get beyond providing those basics and government starts to to metastasize into well All kinds of other things that are not its core responsibility Each dollar spent has less and less return and then it turns into a negative return Where the more they spend the more damage they do and I think we're beyond that point on the curve Because I'm thinking about how immigration ties into all of this and to GDP growth I think in Canada from the research I was doing there has been a decline in birth rates. Yes. So there's significantly less People getting married there's significantly less people being born So how does one run their economy when you're not having new children being born without bringing in lots of Immigrants to to help support that economy Well first of all I think we have to ask ourselves why has the birth rate gone down? I would argue that it's Economic reach reasons if you cannot afford a home Then you have no place to raise children You know we have this phenomenon of in Canada of 35 year old still living in their parents basements and how do you even get a date? I mean how do you bring a date home? You know It's it's a challenge If you're 35 and these are great high-achieving people who've got jobs But they just can't afford a place to live or they're stuck in a A small apartment because that's all their paycheck will buy them in the way of rent and so I think for those economic constraints we we have a lot of young people who otherwise would love to have children In their late 20s early 30s who simply have nowhere to raise them I'm alright in thinking that a lot of these Western economies have allowed a lot of people into their countries to make up for The the willingness or desire or the availability of people to do this sort of low wage Jobs is this is what is this what's happened globally because I think I'm okay Yes, I think I frankly I think that a lot of multinational corporations have abused the immigration system in order to drive down wages in Canada for example the government massively expanded the international student and temporary foreign worker programs and that allowed corporations to pay artificially low wages To people who do not have the same mobility rights and Opportunities and that drove down rages displaced people from their jobs and ultimately ballooned housing costs And so my position is that we need to to cap numbers And ensure that the the economy health care and housing grows faster than the population at all times if you cap numbers Does that mean that these corporations these entrepreneurs these companies don't have Enough people to fill the roles in their companies and therefore have to move somewhere else. What does it mean? No, we have unemployment. We have people without jobs But they just some multi-nationals don't want to pay full wages So they think well, just undercut the wage by bringing someone in from a very poor country Who's willing to work for a lot less and who has fewer rights because they can't leave the job to go to another employer So it's kind of like easy street and so my view is that when you've got unemployed people And you're trying to fill your workplace pay higher wages Give give people a better return on their work You've got unemployment are those people trained and skilled and willing to do the jobs that Canada needs them to do Yes, absolutely. I mean we have a hundred thousand unemployed construction workers They could be building the homes that we need built We have young people coming out of Out of high school without a job. We have a 30-year highs and unemployment Among youth they should be getting those jobs and you know Starbucks as well. They don't want to take them Well, maybe you're not paying enough if you're not paying the right wage then you're not going to get the right worker But pay an equivalent wage and you'll attract a worker who will who will do the job Again, I'm trying to play devil's advocate. Okay, so you know Starbucks increase increase wages Yes, which means that Starbucks then will increase the cost of a cup of coffee Presumably well unless they can find more efficient ways to run their systems You know more competition in the system will allow the worker to gain more in the consumer to pay less And the entrepreneur in the middle has to find ways to save and operate more efficiently That's the magic of the market is that everybody has a A vested interest in driving the most value for the lowest cost One of the interesting ways lots of employers are finding ways to drive efficiencies is this new technological AI right And again, maybe somewhat ironically here and for Opica one of the world's leading AI companies released a report two weeks ago I'll throw the graph upon the screen, but it shows where job disruption will take place based on how people are currently using their tools And one of the things they noticed is that there's been a The increase by I think roughly 14% in youth unemployment because entry-level jobs are the ones often in white color industries that are being taken out first right and you hear these things and you go Oh, you know, that's some stats and whatever and it's not necessarily tanked the economy yet But as an employer of hundreds and hundreds of people all over the world now I have started to notice That the case for hiring certain groups of people is becoming much more tricky now because of these tools Doesn't make me sound great saying that it's not that we're not hiring hundreds of people But there's this certain set when I look at specifically entry-level Grads If they aren't really AI proficient They are a lot less appealing in some roles than people young grads that are extremely error proficient and the problem is not many of them are And that just in sort of a company like mine if you are AI proficient really irrespective of age and you know how to build this thing called AI agents It's kind of like you come with 50 team members of your own. Wow. That's what it's like So I've got a kid called Kaz here, you know, he's a young guy in his 20s. He's built a team of agents that I work for him So hiring Kaz Means I get Kaz and his team of agents because he's proficient in that technology Most of the workforce Hasn't been trained because of the education system to a thing about this right so it's becoming increasingly difficult to to hire Entry-level people but actually all the way up the board unless you have deep expertise in a domain Which would mean that I can get Kaz to make you the agents So like on my CFO for you know for example, you know 50 50 years working in finance etc Deep expertise And I just need her and then she can build that a team of AI agents to work with her Back in the day if you'd got five years ago I would have needed her and her to have a massive team of people right I say all this to say that there's a certain group in society people that have deep at domain expertise and people that are technical that I think Are in higher demand than ever before and everybody else as AI continues to replace them through things like autonomous driving and Robotics is around the corner Is I think there needs to be a real conversation about what happens to these people can I ask you a question? So Throughout history we've had these scares where new technological developments Have threatened to replace and in really have replaced certain human labor So you had like the during the industrial revolution machines were replacing muscular power And then you had the Luddites who came and tried to smash those machines to protect their jobs In the end they just got different jobs with higher pay because they could do more with these machines And they didn't have to walk behind a you know a mule fast pushing pushing a plow in the hot sun all day they had a tractor that would pull the plow And so on and so forth But and then in the dot com era we were told again that people are going to lose their jobs to computers In fact, they were made more productive by computers Do you think this time is fundamentally different than those prior technological revolutions? I would say First thing is nobody knows the second thing I'd say is yes, okay, and the reason I'd say yes is just the speed of disruption So unlike the in the industrial revolution where you know take some time for the new technologies to become adopted because of the nature of their Of what those technologies were this technology is built on the internet which has global distribution So open-claw is a good example of a technology that is very to simplify it for the audience It can do anything on my computer So if I put a computer here on this table I can text open-claw on WhatsApp and tell it to Go on this podcast right now look at the part of the conversation that was most replayed by the audience clip it add subtitles to it Tweeter or send it to my selection. I can get it to you. I'll tell you something I did the other day I was in my house in Los Angeles and it was very very hot because there's a heat wave at the moment So I said to it can you can you go on take a look at my house online um Buy me a umbrella that I can put because I like to work outside I actually voiced it this and what it did is it went on google maps It looked all around my house from all around the outside because it knew where I lived for some bizarre reason It knew that I the charcoal umbrella at a certain size would suit that table out there It went on Amazon found the charcoal umbrella. It ordered it. It arrives at my house and it transacted Like you transact because it had my my login details to transact on this particular website So but it's just you know the framing is it can do anything that you would you would do on a computer Um a lot of people work on computers And the speed of adoption that we're seeing is is staggering So my my concern is actually the sort of near-time displacement before we figure out the types of jobs that um the types of new jobs And then with robotics on the way, you know, here's someone like Elon Musk saying that there'll be more humanoid robots than Humans, you know, and people say well, you know, he's saying that because he's he's got a vested interest right However, what I'd say is his timelines have sometimes not been right But when he said he was going to make those spaceships land on trop sticks the spaceships eventually incredible Now he's a brilliant mind and don't underestimate him. My car out there drives itself without without intervention so I don't know it's a really interesting time I can both see why this technology is going to change the world for the better And I believe it will but then I'm just really concerned about certain economies and countries that aren't taking it seriously Because they're so distracted by other things like a lot of them race-baiting a lot of them like immigration seems to be The winning lever like to say the brown people are the problem But I'm like maybe the alien is something else Maybe the alien is of these agents that are actually going to take our jobs I believe the basic human need is is meaning to have the Purpose in life and often the question we have to ask is how can we guide This revolution in technology so that it empowers people to do things that continue to give them meaning I think it was John Adams who said something to the effect of my father studied warfare so that I would have the security to study commerce I study commerce So that my children will have the prosperity to study arts if these new systems give us The ability to focus on the things that we love doing that give us meaning in our lives and that could be a different thing for each person While at the same time supplying with us with a lot of our material needs it could be very positive If it simply strips away our own utility and leaves lots of people without the ability to work at all Then it could be very very dangerous to to our our lives So I think that we have the public policy objective is to to ensure that it becomes an enabler of humanity not a replacement for it So you could come into power in is it 2029 if there's no overthrowing of the current leader 2029 is going to be an interesting time If these sort of forecasts that we're getting from some of the world's leading experts in artificial intelligence and robotics come true Have you thought much yet about How you would counteract that? What you would do to make sure that there isn't huge job job disruption because you know a lot of a lot of people like Sam Altman Have suggested through their actions that they might support things like universal basic income In fact, Sam Altman's Sam Altman being the founder and co founder of open AI which makes chat gbt I think his other startup is called world coin which uses your retina scat To to validate that you're a real human being so that you they can distribute Money to people because in a world of AI We're going to need to find a way to distribute wealth And if you listen to Elon he says we're going to live in the age of abundance where working is going to be optional He says now if you're a surgeon And you're training to be a surgeon he says absolutely don't because in a couple of couple years time There's going to be no human that's better than any AI surgeon. Wow. So these things are true. I like surely you should be making plans And you know when a lot of smart you know, I know they have an incentive they're raising money and they want they have to a certain narrative Which helps them raise money, but if they are right If you should looks very different from the past Just true. Do you have a plan? I have principles that I would apply as these technologies present themselves and the principle for me is How do we make sure that the AI Enables and empowers people to make more decisions for themselves and have more freedom and a and um to pursue their own meaning Rather than replacing and rendering them um Giving them a sense of of lost meaning and purpose and so Do I think it's great that every minimum wage worker might have a personal assistant and a chauffeur vehicle? I do because like that would make more of their life They could spend on the the things that thrill them and make them happy unless of their life would be spent on The drudgery of having to drive in a traffic jam or or you know sweep their floor But uh at the same time we have to make sure that That people have the ability to work and contribute and give themselves a sense of meaning in their lives So the other thing I would say is that as these technologies bring down costs those savings should be Past on to people they should not be inflated away the government should not use this as an opportunity to just print more cash to Reflate the cost of living We should actually seek as our goal to lower the cost of living make life More affordable make our dollars go further which is which hasn't happened in in generations And so if technology is going to allow us to produce more for less than let's make sure that the working class people actually Enjoy that benefit rather than having an inflated away. It is quite concerning that you know if wealth does accrue to these big companies Yes, you know people like Elon who incredible launch banana is going to become the world's first trillionaire Right, I don't think he'll be the last the way things are going with with artificial intelligence that And then if there is job disruption I do think there's going to potentially need to be some government intervention Corrective government intervention. Do you know I don't know nobody knows exactly what's going to happen I mean it was you know Paul Krugman the Nobel Prize winning Economist who embarrassingly predicted that the internet would have no more impact on our lives than the facts machine And and he's a Nobel Prize Economist I think from Princeton or Yale or something So nobody's no stradamas on these things But we have to have guiding principles and mine are the rules around technology Always be geared towards giving people more agency more meaning and more control of their lives and not less It's funny because I don't hear it reflected enough in political discourse I hear us focusing on other things and one of those things is immigration Across the Western world the subject of immigration seems to be a bit of a winning formula for political leaders If I think about the UK what Trump said about You know being invaded by rapists and murderers from the southern border Do you feel that it's a it's a sort of a weaponized divisive tool for people to get elected Complaining about the brown people or foreigners I'll just give you the Canadian experience so for Roughly 200 years. We had the most successful immigration system in the world By far in fact other countries both Republicans and Democrats in the United States used to say we need to study the Canadian system Because it has been so successful. We had a point system That that measured whether someone would be a good fit for our labor market whether they would would integrate well into our our system And overwhelmingly people integrated Intermarried You know my wife is a as a refugee from Venezuela. That is not an uncommon story in Canada What we encountered was a very sudden and inexplicable increase in the numbers In the period from 2021 to 2024 That was strictly out of line with our our ability to absorb people into housing health care and jobs And this upset the the social peace on immigration that we had had for two centuries leading up to it And Now everyone across the political spectrum agrees that it went too far too fast And the approach that we're taking is that That we have to make it a lawful system has to follow the rules you can you people have to come in legally In numbers that we can absorb and ultimately integrate into jobs Society and our way of life population cannot grow faster than the housing stock Or your runnative places to live it can't grow faster than the number of jobs or your runnative paychecks for people And so we need a controlled orderly system that's both compassionate and common sense It's such a device of subject you've seen what's happened here in the United States with ICE Right. Yeah It's a it's a different situation in the US We The immigration problem in the US goes back many many years Many many years of chaos at their the southern border We didn't have that in Canada like that was unheard of we we had roughly one percent of population immigrating to Canada for 200 years it was uncontroversial in Canada up until this very strange inexplicable spike that really only helped very wealthy landlords and Employers that wanted to drive Wages down and rents up they were the only beneficiaries of the extreme increase in numbers If you don't get the replacement rate back up to a level where you're having enough kids in Canada Does it track that eventually you would have to rely on more immigration? To solve for this sort of GDP issues Look economic immigration of high-skilled People to our country is is has always been successful people and Nobody resents that One of the things that we have to do though is when people get to Canada they have to be able to fulfill their potential in Canada today We have these gatekeepers that block immigrant professionals from even working in their field So for example, we have 20,000 immigrant doctors and 32,000 immigrant nurses who can't work in medicine Because they can't get a license to practice There's this incredibly bureaucratic system They have to go through that takes eight or nine years to prove that they actually have the qualifications I have it's so crazy that when I went in for my eye surgery. There's a technician there Who literally flies to the UAE to do eye surgeries 10 days a month and then comes back to his family in Ottawa where we only let them work as as a technician And so UAE is a more Technologically advanced country than Canada and eyeballs are the same in the UAE as they are in Canada Immigrants in Canada have to historically been more educated than our Canadian foreign population just in terms of their credentials But have not been able to fulfill their work because our licensing system shuts them out So I want to fix that with a merit-based test that gets them into the high-paying jobs that will actually strengthen our economy Much of the reason most people haven't posted content or got their personal brand is because It's hard and it's time-consuming and we're all very very busy and if you've never posted something before There's so many factors in your psychology that stop you wanting to post what people will think of you Am I doing this right is the thing? I'm saying absolutely stupid all of these result in paralysis which means you don't post and your feed goes bare I'm an investor in a company called Stanstort You've probably had me talk about and what they've been building is this new tool called Stanley that uses AI Looks at your feed looks at your tone of voice looks at your history looks at your best performing posts and tells you what you should post Makes those posts for you you can also you just use it for inspiration and sometimes what we need when we're thinking about doing a post for our social media channels Is inspiration building an audience has fundamentally changed my life and I think it could change yours too So I'm inviting you to give this new tool a shot and let me know what you think all you have to do is search coach.stan.store now to get started You know every once in a while you come across a product that has such a huge impact on your life that you'd probably describe it as A game changer and I would say For about 35 to 40% of my team they would currently describe this product that I have in front of me called keytone iq Which you can get at keytone.com As a game changer, but the reason I became a co-owner of this company and the reason why they they now are a sponsor of this podcast Is because one day when I came to work those a box of this stuff sat on my desk. I had no idea what it was Lily in my team says that this company have been in touch So I went upstairs tried it and quite frankly the rest is history in terms of my focus my energy levels how I feel how I work How productive I am game changer So if you want to give it a try visit keytone.com slash Stephen for 30% off You'll also get a free gift with your second shipment and now you can find keyton iq at target stores across the United States Where your first shot is completely free of charge We have finally caved in so many of you have asked us if we could bundle the conversation cards with the one percent diary For those of you that don't know every single time a guest sits here with me in the chair They leave a question in the dire of a CEO And then I ask that question to the next guest We don't release those questions in any environment other than on these incredible conversation cards These have become a fantastic tool for people in relationships people in teams in big corporations And also family members to connect with each other with that We also have the one percent diary which is this incredible tool to change habits in your life So many of you have asked if it was possible to buy both at the same time especially people in big companies So what we've done is we've bundled them together and you can buy both at the same time And if you want to drive connection and then still habit change in your company head to the diary.com to inquire and our team will be in touch What is the biggest threat do you think to the western world and the western way of living? Because people often you know point it wrong. They say China. They say Russia I think it depends on what China decides to do China is a spectacular and brilliant civilization With so much to contribute to the to world Harmony if that's their choice If the if the government decides that it's going to to to direct the immense successes of that country towards Trading and working with other countries Then there's nothing to worry about But if it is a very aggressive balacost approach using technology for espionage Interference in foreign countries as they have done in Canada invading Taiwan Then China and Beijing in particular the regime could become the biggest risk and threat to our country and our world What does history say about this kind of moment in time where there's seemingly two world powers? Well, there is an incredible book called Thucydides Trap Which a professor named Allison Said that throughout history He took I think 20 occasions where the Where an incumbent superpower Was caught up on by a challenging superpower and in I think the majority of cases it did end up in war and now he said it's not necessary though And it doesn't have to happen it can be avoided and he lays out a plan in his book for it to be avoided I think it can be avoided as well If Beijing can be made to understand that it isn't in the interest of China to be part of the community of nations to work collaboratively to trade freely To be a partner rather than an enemy and I hope they make the right decision Is it fair to say that the United States is really at war with China now already but just through proxy rules and other types of sort of economic wars and Because now that they both have nuclear weapons you can't really have a Direct conflict. Can you well? Let's put it this way Venezuela Iran Cuba These are all countries that were in the realm of influence of Beijing and They're the countries where the United States is pursuing a change So there there is the the war that we watch on the evening news and the the real interest behind them that That is driving it Canada doesn't have nuclear weapons doesn't know we do not why we made a decision I think it was about I want to say about 40 or 50 years ago not to pursue a nuclear arm We didn't think we had any need to need for it lots of nuclear power lots of uranium But we don't use it for or weaponry. Do you think Canada should have nuclear weapons? I don't see a need for that. I don't know what we would get from it. We don't We don't have any desire to to threaten anyone with nuclear weapons. So I don't I don't see a purpose for that right now What you think it's so quick Canadian That's true But listen, we are a warrior nation make no mistake about it. We were in the world wars two years before the Americans And we we are We're kind of like a wool a golden retriever. We're friendly. We're likeable We like to get along, but if provoked, we will fight back Canada is building up its military. Absolutely. Why? Because there's a consensus that we have not done enough to protect our territory from The incursions of hostile powers and we often say in Canada if you don't use it you lose it There's large territories of our country that are very hard to live in. We have an incredible Inuit population But obviously, you know, you can't heavily populate the Arctic heart archipelago with industry and stuff So how do you assert sovereignty over those treasured? By territories will you have to have a military presence there? What's changed? For Canada it's It's that we want to maintain and ensure that we can make our own decisions without relying on the American Because the Americans have expressed That they are maybe not going to be as collaborative and friendly and we want to be able to decide for ourselves We want to be masters in our own home In Quebec, they say matrushing new and So if we want to control our own destiny and territory, we have to we have to be able to protect ourselves it has been Very good for Canada to be next door to the biggest military power the world has ever seen and have Friendly friendly relations that go back to The early 1800s before we were even a country we had Largely friendly relations with this enormous power But what has become clear is that we cannot Simply rely on the Americans to protect us. We have to be able to protect ourselves And that requires a massive military buildup for a country of our size the second biggest country anywhere in the world We have the longest oceanic coastline even longer than Russia. So That takes money and it takes a buildup like we've never seen and that's what we're We as Canadians agree has to happen now. This is in part because of Trump In part, yes because Trump through the election and then they're often said that he was going to make Canada an American state Which is never going to happen But that you know with the leader of the most powerful military on earth says even jokingly That they are about to take your country You can laugh But at the same time One if I was leading Canada, I'd go wait is this possible? Are we ready to defend ourselves? We as Canadians react very badly to that and we're we're we're not going to Ever be the 51st state or or any part of the United States of America The American people are our friends. They've been our top trading partner our closest ally as President Kennedy said History has made us friends economics has made us partners Geography has made us neighbors and necessity has made us allies Those whom Nature have thus joined together let no man put a sunder But he understood that that Canada was a separate country that had its own unique interests And I think the American people understand that as well. I think the American people are very fond of Canada as a neighbor and friend But they understand we will always be a sovereign country You would have been Negotiating with Trump right now if um the election the recent election in Canada had gone your way This is a pretty uh Pretty stark graph that I've just lit you it shows that you were leading in the polls Seemingly up until the very very last moment in their elections Is that accurate that poll? Yeah, I think that's probably a weighted average But yeah, I think more or less what happened Well, if you look what happened we are supported and dropped that much the other parties collapsed in behind the liberal party and it was largely due to the The Canada US issue that you raised really so but at the same time we got the biggest Vote count we had ever received and the Highest share of vote that we've received since 1988 So we did perform very well our opponents performed even better And now we have to build on the solid base that we've accumulated in order To win the next election just as the election comes into the home stretch You're polling but basically stays the same um slight little bit of a drop but roughly stays the same What caused the drop in that sort of home stretch there? Do you think what one of the challenges I had was I wanted to focus on the things that we're going on in people's lives the Doubling of housing costs the rising crime rate the inflation crisis and my solutions to all of those problems But a lot of that was swept off of the conversation because everyone was focused suddenly on the the tariffs and the president The president saying that he was going to take Canada as a state but also him saying that he was going to apply tariffs That's right and those tariffs are still in place Why did that impact you in help mark Connie? That's a good question. I think I think it allowed The conversation to move away from the domestic record of the government and on to two external factors And that always helps the incumbent and hurts the challenger How was this emotionally? Oh, it was a roller coaster and it was like some things were changing so fast and moving so quickly In the moment, it's like You don't really have time to feel anything. You're just doing so much so quickly That um your emotions They're put on delay until after it's all over so after it's all over. What's wonderful side to it? That's Yes in your family You said the emotions came off though because you were going going going going going going Yes, so my leadership started in 2022 as we're coming out of covid And there were so many people who placed so much hope in me who had suffered so much They would tell me they felt like they lost Control of their lives and that they vested hope in me so I'd get young people would say You have to win because I want to start a family and I can't start a family in this economy or Mothers would say we just can't afford food anymore or Police officers say I've arrested the same guy Four times this week and he keeps getting released You have to win to fix these problems. It's not about you mr. Pollyyev It's about the stuff that's happening in our lives and and you have to fix it You know, uh, I had a lady come to one of my rallies because when you vote in a to choose a leader of a party You have to pay fifteen dollars to join the party and She came up and told me about her life story and then she went up to the membership desk and said can I borrow eight dollars And they said whoa, what do you need it for? So well, I only have seven dollars They said oh cool. There's a bank machine downstairs. You can go get some more cash And she says I don't have a bank cart and they said well, is there perhaps could you go to your car and get some money She said well, I don't have any money in my car. What about your home? um Because we're not allowed to buy them under the rules for other people and she said I don't have a home I live in my car and the seven dollars is all the money I own And I'm spending it on a membership so that I can vote for mr. Pollyyev because he is my only hope This is the only chance I have so I wanted to deliver for these people and when we didn't win I felt I felt terrible that I hadn't delivered for them What does that look like the disappointment of not delivering for people the night of election the day after If I'm watching you as a fly on the world. What do I see you know? I didn't spend a lot of time on that. I just got back at it Because at the end of the day you have to focus on what you can control and my my approach in life is to zero in on what is in your control That is the greatest thing you can do for your mental health and for your output as a person I believe in a stoic approach. So I didn't spend a lot of time sort of rolling around on the ground um in melancholy Do you think if Trump hadn't have said the thing about taking canada and he hadn't have done the tarfs You would be leaving canada right now. We'll never know I mean these are the kinds of things you speculate about but at the end of the day What what good does it does it do to speculate? And I also don't like to make excuses I don't like to say look I'm If this person hadn't done x then I then I would be in charge. I have to own my result and that's what I do As someone that doesn't know a ton about this stuff. I'm asking kind of for me I find it interesting to see how consequential These what do they call them not um Butterfly facts or yes, how the unexpected dominoes can fall and change the course of history So if Trump hadn't have said those things If we were to speculate Do you think it would have changed the outcome of the election? I don't know because we we don't know what would have happened in absent of that if you have to bet your house I don't have to bet my host I don't I don't want to blame someone else for the outcome of the election because at the end of the day The people voted and they made their decision. I have to be at peace with that So I can't spend my time thinking on what ifs because if that what if hadn't happened and there might have been another what if so I have to focus on what I can control dealing with those moments you mentioned stoicism. Yeah, I found this book Meditations by Marcus Surrelius. Yes, I think was quite formative for how you see things in some respects and generally stoicism Yes, I'm it's it's a great book the amazing thing about it is he's so readable Like he talks about um This is just a random page, but it's a very interesting excerpt when you wake up in the morning tell yourself the people I deal with today will be meddling Ungrateful arrogant dishonest jealous and surly They're like this because they can't tell good from ego evil But if you go and read it what it basically says is expect these things and If you do and but but don't be controlled by them. These are control these are factors outside of your control Put all of your emphasis on the things that are within your control And it will bring a tremendous amount of peace Because when you are focused on what you can control you're the boss of your life And that's what that's what stoicism has done for me I heard you say you're not the you know acted upon that's right When you're when you focus on what you can control You are the actor rather than the acted upon if you say if you spend a lot of your time thinking about the things you can Cannot control then you become a helpless victim Whereas if you if you focus on what you can then you you become like the driver of the car you decide where it goes and You know as my favorite poem says Invictus that Nelson Mandelius to read himself when he was in prison For all those years in South Africa he would he would recite to himself the poem Invictus to remind him That he he could focus on what he was in control of which was his own soul I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul Is how it ends and that that gives you a lot of peace One of the things you often find in stoicism another sort of teachings of that time is this idea of being Flexibly minded in terms of being able to learn and being growth minded and being able to evolve I was wondering as you went on that campaign trail and generally over the last 10 years of your career It's it's clear to me that your your core principles have been quite consistent. Mm-hmm. I have this um This document you wrote when you were I think 20 years old, which is part of a contest Which won 10,000 dollars. That's right. For explaining what you would do if you were prime minister If you were leading Canada you even dug up the check. I found the check. It wasn't cashed I think we'll go ahead of lunch So you won 10,000 dollars for submitting this yes when you were 20 years old explaining what you would do If you ever became the prime minister. Yes And I would like you to actually just read the opening three paragraphs because it does um It is quite interesting to see how you've evolved if at all Could you just read those first three paragraphs and share any of the context which I might have excluded Sure, although we Canadian seldom recognize that the most important gardening Guardian of our living standards is freedom Freedom to earn a living and share the fruits of our labor with loved ones The freedom to build personal prosperity through risk-taking and strong work ethic The freedom of thought and speech the freedom to make personal choices and the collective freedom of citizens to govern their own affairs democratically Governments job is to constantly find ways to remove itself from obstructing such freedoms human beings are graced With the gifts of creativity Wisdom and ingenuity the best way for a society to go about improving its living standards is to allow citizens to apply these qualities to the challenges of everyday life asking a prime minister to single-handedly improve the living standards of 30 million of the world's brightest Is as about as realistic as asking him to take to an Olympic Sprinting track to help a lineup of world-class athletes reach the finish line The more the government becomes involved in the race the greater the number of hurdles competitors will encounter Therefore as prime minister What I would do to improve living standards is not as nearly as important as what I would not do as prime minister I would relinquish to citizens as much of my social political and economic control as possible leaving people to cultivate their own personal prosperity And to govern their own affairs as directly as possible In the last decades since you've been out in the road more speaking to people campaigning Where have your views evolved? I would say my temperament has mature 10 years ago. I did not have a wife and kids As a father you end up having to grow in a tremendous amount of patience because kids Don't do what they're told or they have needs that are that must supersede your own You're constantly making compromises With a spouse in order to juggle all of the difficulties of family life And that necessarily spills over into your political approach I think temperamentally I've changed I'm much more careful and Thoughtful than I was Say in my late 20s and in early 30s The people that have you know opposition parties have often referred to as Trump light And what do they base that on? I guess because you're both conservatives. I guess that would be much of the the argument And you both you both have spoken out against this term workism and d.i Yeah, look I On the on d.i. And I don't think that is something particular to president Trump. I mean, there's a lot of people around the world who for their own reasons And based on their own experiences Have criticized that particular ideology What I think has changed is that liberals used to believe in liberty And conservatives believed in conserving it You know, they used to say liberals were the gas pedal conservatives were the break But we were both heading in generally the same direction But what I think happened with wokeism is that it it it is a deeply illiberal ideology It is liberalism traditional liberalism was was a colorblind ideology It was based on total equality regardless of gender sexuality race or anything else Wokeism is exactly the opposite of that. It's it like accentuates all of those differences and disagreements groups people based on what should be a relevant characteristics like race And gender and then having divided people into groups. It seeks to expand state control over their lives What I believe in is is treating people as individuals and letting them live their own lives judging them exclusively on their own merits And I think that was the consensus view of both liberals and conservatives up until This toxic ideology came along and divided people One of the things I you know, I'm a black man. Mm-hmm. I was moved from Botswana when I was a baby and came to the UK and Thank God there was sort of social systems in place because I don't think that I had had the outcomes I'd had one of the things that I did know that when I was 18 dropped out of university and started to get into world of business Is I was aware because when you look at like funding data for entrepreneurs that are Black or especially women It's clear that there's like a systemic disadvantage of some sort And I wonder someone like yourself who's against this sort of de-ideology How do you contend with like systemic institutional discrimination towards certain groups which does pose Objectively real disadvantage on them being able to climb the ladder because you said something earlier about your goal being In Canada to make sure everybody like has a fair shot. That's right How does one counteract the systemic issues around race or gender or whatever it might be that stop that being possible Because I I find myself in an interesting position where like on one end I'm like I want to be treated like everybody else right I've always felt that way and I've always I've always actually to some degree cringed a little bit when I felt like someone was giving me special treatment Because my skin color was different because it in some way made me feel like I was at a disadvantage Which I know can become quite self-fulfilling however on the other side of the spectrum I do also believe that there is like systemic Discrimination that is going to hold certain groups back if there isn't something Done to level that playing field So Look, I think the answer is equality there has to be strict equality and equal treatment regardless of race gender Ethnicity religion and that is the That is the ideal to which we were all striving and I think if we get back to that Then we can give everybody a chance to achieve based on their own merit What we need is a meritocracy that is colorblind and And judges people based on what they can do People aren't colorblind though are they? No, I think I my dad said to me when I was young and he said everybody's prejudice I remember sitting in the back of the car my dad's white I'm thinking my dad just said that he thinks everyone might be like might be racist and everyone's prejudice Dad races, but as I've got an older I realized that he to some degree is telling the truth that prejudice is part of how we survived as humans We're able to understand danger from not so prejudices something that I think is very prevalent in society whether we Believe we're not and everyone else is So if prejudices very prevalent in society does there need to be measures That counteract that to give everybody a fair chance our institutions have to be conscious about making sure that we are judging people based on their merit And they should you know work aggressively to Make sure that there is that everyone regardless of where they come from their background Has a chance to succeed get the job get the promotion move up the ladder I don't think that is achieved by breaking people down into more and more different groups and divisions by trying to Build the barriers between paid people Based on race and gender. I think it's by actually removing them So that the problem I have with with wokeism is it it seems almost designed To divide people and that is exactly the opposite of the objective that we all sought when we When we pushed for racial equality and personal and personal freedom and responsibility How does one contend with the systemic issues though? They're like the prejudices I remember reading about studies where like if you they got a bunch of people and got them to apply for jobs And just based on the names Whether they were like a typically white name versus say a typically black name the response rate is markedly different Well, I go back to my first principles I think that government is responsible for a lot of the barriers that are put in place So let me give you some examples When government brings into place these anti-housing policies that I described They that they impact far more on minorities and disadvantaged people than they do unestablished People obviously because if you're new to a country or you come from a poor background You won't have a house and then you're the one is going to pay the biggest price for the fact that government is making housing unaffordable If you think at the occupational licensing rules that I just described that block immigrants from having Working in their professions even when they're thoroughly qualified Those are government-imposed obstacles that prevent people from getting ahead also A lot of these soft and crime policies have been sold to us On the grounds that they're going to help minorities by ensuring that we don't have as high a conviction rate Well, what they've actually done is that in many minority communities We're the law-biting people are now suffering as a result of Criminals of all backgrounds and so Ironically, it's actually government policies that are causing people of disadvantaged backgrounds to suffer even more So wokeism Accentuates all of those problems rather than solving them. So I'm interested in solving problems to give everybody the opportunity to live a safe affordable Opportunity-filled life and wokeism is not doing that the actually get creating a free market free enterprise economy With free people who have free speech that that's the single best way to give people of all racial backgrounds a better chance in life Again, I'm holding the position of the DEI to try and I like the clash of ideas because it helps me to think through these things I've never had the chance to ask somebody These kind of questions before and on that point of housing one of the things that I I found to be quite Surprising was that black mortgage applicants are up to 200 percent more likely to be denied a home loan Then white applicants with the similar financial profile This is in Canada these stats are for the worst so okay, but But what is going on there Because it says that they have similar financial profiles yet that their applications are being denied up to 200 percent more than White home buyers so I had not seen those data that data point before but I would say that this is these sound like really stupid bankers Because they're making a bad decision to deny people a mortgage and ultimately deny themselves the business If they're if that's how they're making their judgments and then DI comes in to make sure that their judgments are stupid Well, I'm not sure that DEI cures stupidity though In some cases we've seen it cause more That's how it shows uprights like a logical next step which is there's prejudice going on in the system Which is making it any any equal for some groups And it's a corrupt DEI becomes this corrective measure so they're stupid bankers don't make stupid decisions But but DEI has been in place now for several decades and how is it working You're reading the statistics to show that it's not So maybe it's not actually doing what it's designed to do. Maybe it's doing other things The other thing that I actually was really keen to talk about just realized is um sure is this Oh That's a little Valentina there She loves to be on daddy's shoulders. How does Valentina is seven years old seven years old and she's she's non-verbal She's non-verbal. Yes. What does what does non-verbal mean She is autistic. She's on the spectrum so um She her biggest the biggest difference between Valentina and other children is the ability to communicate verbally um So we're working very hard on that. She's making some encouraging progress But she does have some challenges in that area She's a very acrobatic and rambunxious. She loves to climb swing bounce jump And she is extremely affectionate and one of the superpower she has is that whatever she does she does 100 percent She's also 100 percent authentic So and that's not the case once kids get old enough to manipulate to get what they want They can put on acts and artifices. She doesn't do that. She's a the real deal all the time You know exactly how she feels because she indicates it And she's very blessed to have a little brother cruise who Adores her and treats her better than anyone else. He in the world I often hear parents talk about their concerns with You know someone like Valentina growing up in the world as non-verbal You're not going to be here forever to protect her and you know Sanji before my brother has three kids under the age of what seven years old now and I've noticed just how much he thinks about How they're going to be when he's not here? How does that relate to Valentina being non-verbal and how you think about the future? Well a lot of things like one we obviously have to build up a nest egg for her so that if she can't earn income she will have The resources for a great life after we're gone And second we're really hoping that there are we forage a very permanent and Deep bond between her and her brother cruise because he will be there and He one of the things he says again and again is my job is to protect Valentina from bad guys So This is a good attitude especially that they are actually in the same class even though she's older She is in his class at school and so she's daddy he's daddy's eyes to protect Our little princess, but I think when he's older I believe based on his nature that he's going to be there for her and We are building a plan towards that My job is to protect Valentina from bad guys. That's right It's it's a it's a great instinct How has it changed your politics? It's reinforced my sense of Compassion for people who can't provide for themselves and you know I've talked a lot about how government should be limited I do think of there's a very real role for government to help people who genuinely cannot provide for themselves people who suffer from with disabilities being probably the best example and It is reinforced to me that we have to also have policies that recognize the inherent worth of every individual too often Governments have seen people with disabilities as just someone they have to care for but not someone who can contribute And I believe that everybody has something to contribute and that we should try to unlock that in every human being Um, we don't know exactly what Valentina will do But I believe she will do some kind of a job at some point in the future And um, I'm very passionate about policies that enable people with disabilities to have work opportunities Even if it's just very limited to design programs so that when they have a for example cash or medication support It doesn't get robbed from them just because they get a job So it is focused my mind a lot on people it gives you a sense of compassionate because when you see somebody who might be different Like I see my daughter in that person I see my daughter my wife is very good at this she'll see someone who might be acting differently in a crowd And other people are looking at that person and she'll grab my hand she'll say I think he's autistic And then she will often go and talk to that that boy and make him feel loved So Compassion is about feeling what the other person feels and you have about the greater ability to do that when there's a loved one close to you who has the experience An interesting range of emotions to be the father the parent of a autistic child Yes, I know this because I get messages on mass from our audience members who have an autistic child. Yes What can you say to the range of emotions you feel My wife was able to discern that there was something different about Valentina Very early on when she was still a baby because she didn't make a lot of eye contact And there was a period during which she was not very communicative at all Even in ways that babies normally are There wasn't a lot of reciprocal communication to start with So when we went for the diagnosis We were not that shocked So you know in that when the I think she was a nurse or she was a specialist gave us the diagnosis and she was like paused like waiting for us to burst into tears I mean we were just kind of like yeah, we we expected that and let's get on with it And then we just started doing the things that we had to do and my message to a parents of autistic children is just focus on what you can control Get on to the things that you have to do get a speech therapist get to the play structures in the house that they live with Valentina It's it's it's a it's about bouncy castle and a little trampoline and a lot of building blocks and Enjoy them like they're she's so much fun like she's a fun little girl She loves to jump she's scared of nothing if anything the problem She's a pit too much of a daredevil But she's she's a thrilling little girl to be around she loves to like you see all the pictures with her on my shoulder Always loves to climb on my on my back and she loves to run She loves me to run with her on her shoulders So like enjoy the special things that they bring because they they they are magical. They're they're they're wonderful They're just they they call it autism because they're auto they're in their own world. You can't Force them to be in your world. You have to go into their world and reach them there and Understand that you know for her tapping on something might might give her a tremendous sensation that we can't appreciate On the other side Minor irritants that you and I would brush off might drive her completely crazy And so if she's having a meltdown. It's not because she's a bad kid It's because she's going through a horrific Sensation that we can't quite understand So but you just have to embrace it all and um, it's a lot of extra legwork that goes into a child that has these Conditions, but it's worth it and it's rewarding in the end She uh, you know, obviously not met her but from all the photos. She she makes she smile just looking at the photos She makes everyone smile and she's got uh, she's very popular at school The kids are very nice to her by the way like we we we get secondhand reports and it's like they love her They're sweet to her She has a little boy that has a crush on her so I'm keeping an eye on that Um, but she's so affectionate like we went to a fall fair one time and there were these little old ladies sitting there And Valentina just decided she liked this little lady went sat in her lap like complete stranger But that's how she is she decides she likes you and you're in What are your um, what are your closing statements? We've got listeners that are you know all over the world the United States Canada, Australia, the UK Few them if you have to send one final message to them What would that message be in this moment in time that we find ourselves in Well, I'm actually optimistic about the future and I think Canada's got a very bright future I think the world should look to Canada. We have the most resources of anyone in the world We have probably the most diverse and educated population We have the the most fresh water the The second biggest landmass And I think it's going the future belongs to Canada. We're going to be an incredible place The MB of the world if um if we if we do the right things I don't want to be a bit mystical about it, but I think it would help if I were prime minister as well I love Canada's one of my favorite places in the world for so many reasons um Well, I told you when I went to Toronto for the first time. I felt like I was at home Yeah, because I think you know brits and Canadians have a lot in common absolutely including a king Yeah, you would be very well received in Canada. So consider um, no, I love it are coming I go all the time when whenever I'm uh whenever I'm invited to go and I've been once or twice on vacation as well So I hope to be back there soon and uh actually going to do a tour there at some point with with the director To meet all the people that listen, so very excited about that as well. Oh, you're bigger. You're bringing up big crowds Oh, it'll be fun We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for And the question left for you is hmm What are you most afraid of and how do you deal with that fear? Hmm I don't have a lot of fears. I mean For myself um I was going back to family. It would be that something would happen to my kids You know, it just You hear uh Terrible terrible things in the news. I was just um for you know, unfortunately I had to go to a funeral for mass shooting victims in Tumblr Ridge, British Columbia And I just you know every parent worries about something happening to their kids I think that would be my biggest fear. What about the kind of direct launch the biggest fear I have for Canada is that we just keep Blocking our own potential and declining and opportunity vanishes and slowly Our people lose the promise that the country gave me and so many generations and So my fear is that we become the frog in boiling water and it just gets Slowly warmer and warmer and warmer and the frog really never notices is that the trajectory of trouble I think it is unfortunately, but I think we can change that trajectory If we make some big reversals in direction and lastly, what about for the world generally the western world I would say my biggest fear is that the western world does not stay true to its foundational principles I want the western world to stay true to the to the basic principles of That the grew out of the magna carta freedom of government that is servant people that are masters and That the Freedom democracies not only succeed at home, but work together abroad to preserve that that civilization Thank you so much. Thank you for taking the time to come have this conversation with me and on answering all of my questions It's you know, I don't like interviewing politicians Because they are very slippery right and they slip and slide away from answering things in a way that makes the the very essence of why we started this show feel like we're Like we're not delivering for the audience who want to know the truth Whether it's ugly or indifferent or whatever it might be and I really enjoyed the conversation because I feel like you answered my questions to the best of your ability Thank you, and that's often that's not usually the case with politicians and thank you I think they think that's the right approach But actually I think in a world that's now more of a glass box than ever before and not a black box where you can paint the image of something on the outside Being transparent and being willing to come into these environments and your team didn't tell me anything was off limits They didn't say there was anything I couldn't ask you right They didn't ask to be able to edit this and I would like more politicians to to follow in that vein You