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

Canada should honestly become our 50th birthday

Which is never gonna happen?

Pierre Polyev, leader of his majesty's loyal opposition There's a quite 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 a fourth biggest supply of oil And if you look at the leading five which of these countries You think the United States can most rely on you And I'm looking at the third vowel there in the row, Iran

Has turned take in 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 over taxing 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 favor to ask before this episode begins

The algorithm, if you follow a show, 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 if 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 And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this I'm right now and hit that follow button Thank you so, so, so, so much Pierre, Polyev, leader of his Majesty's loyal opposition

“There is so much we want to talk to you about, I think you have a truly fascinating formative”

Chartered, 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 postwar 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 outgrowing 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 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 Then 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 that 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 individual stick 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

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 outproduce the Soviets and bring them to their knees 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 that's right we could uh 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 a

Normus price discount furthermore we could build up an enormous reserve of this oil so that if God forbid

The Strait of Hormus 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 if it's needed so this is really 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 tear free trade or 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's number two Iran Canada Iraq and then the US is a lot of these countries that have a lot of oil are at In conflict with the United States right now, that's right and it 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 are at war with Iran now Iraq I mean that says a story already and Canada has been the other one where it's been incredibly

“adversarily 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 When I would say to Americans though, is you shouldn't have to worry about all of these countries If you're 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 tear a 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 U.S. and from other nations

I'm looking at the third ball there in the row Iran

Has Trump taken the right course of action in

“Bowling Iran in the way that he has and the other question that's good. I think when everyone's mind is like a”

How do 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 Canadians citizens and 30 permanent residents by shooting a civilian aircraft out of the sky 75 to 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 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 faraway 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 in any action to stop them from doing that is necessary for world peace

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 Clean control of their country. It doesn't look like that's the case I think they've appointed the son of the eye 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 and this is what we have to stop. I mean the idea that they're 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 one 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 What is dream if they believe that there's an an afterlife 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

What there's a far greater risk to them having a nuclear weapon than than even having that in in a communist totalitarian state like North Korea But for Canada

“In this environment our super power 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 fuel 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 kist armor was reluctant to send troops originally And it seems to have arcs trump in a interesting way So our Prime Minister did support the attack and I agreed with Prime Minister Carney on that point

That is distinct from contributing Canadian soldiers or sailors and aircraft I'm 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 and what it is that we can provide you also when that knows a lot about history

You seem to know a lot about a lot frankly and I don't know don't know not a lot 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 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 gonna pull out

Unlet 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 Trump?

That's a good question I Like I said I would focus on the core objective of making sure that there's not a nuclear armed

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 the the hinge point we cannot allow a nuclear powered Iranian military that is what they they need to determine for me at the moment it looks a little bit like it's a little bit Luz Luz for Trump in a interesting way and I think this is also a reflect in the fact that nobody really has a perfect answer

“For what to do next because this will just trade off. That's right is that's right and that's what the”

The great Thomas soul said there's no solutions just trade-offs in life and it's hitting the the price of Gas at the pumps in a big way. Yes The way that concerns you? Well, 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 free 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 so 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 means that you could get into power earlier Your relationship with Trump

Good bad in different I've never met him never know I don't I've never spoken to him

No, I don't have no I made the decision that we have one prime minister at a time and because we are negotiating 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 Undermind in any way that 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 visa be 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 of minerals that are

“Important to our American friends but also to our other allies”

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 one unlock. Yes, clear the way. Yes. What are you referring to when you say clear the way and unlock Removing your 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 just saying that you don't want to get in the way of Mark Connie Well, I I don't want to get in the way of of negotiations with a foreign country. I obviously have my job as 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 gerrogens shows 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 criticise The leader of your position and unless you were in Canada, but you know that you know you're reaching everybody everywhere No, that's true. It's true, but I just think it's 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 hopefully going to go on. I want to get the best outcome for Canada and I have to put my country above myself

The current leader of the Canadian government more Connie what what what 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 you're you parents and you'll you'll step brother you'll offer the half brother. Yes, so My dad and my my mother where they were school teachers my brothers if I have brother because we came from the same biological mother

But a different biological fathers adopted into the same family kind of a complicated story Your biological mother adopted you at 16 years old, but it's up for adoption at 16 years old. She was 16 and then But three years later she had another little boy and he Patrick was then adopted by the same parents And then two teachers that adopted you in Patrick. Yes, that's right. I still remember when we went to pick him up It was so we we went to this we got a phone call and said there's a little boy who happens to be half brothers with your

With with Pierre, would you like to adopt him too? And he's absolutely so we went over to this building And we walked 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. That's why I thought that's where babies came from. There's a store”

You know, we would 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 or 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 well workers police officers

So that's those of 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 had and 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 cure a disease and that was what Canada was all about and that is what I'm trying to reinstate Well, HG 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 them

She put up with all of my Rambunctiousness and teenagers 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 gonna be left behind or forgotten about her 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 one of the most gracious things I've ever seen I can see the emotion in your faces. You say it. Yeah, it's still there”

Yeah, I hadn't thought about that no while What beautiful people yes we're very blessed 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 what are 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 auto watt 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

She she was 16 she just lost her mother to a heart attack

She um 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 have a Line anything about your biological father. Yes. Yeah, he he works at at a Concrete plant in British Columbia and so I went and met him He's a great father with children that 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 a wonderful lessons and I think is responsible for my way with words Marlene and Donald that's right So Marlene's your adopted mother Donald's your adopted 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 bit which you know I think didn't enough damage But it was around that age and I would 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 caught 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 They're but it is very traumatizing and But at the same time like they were very good very good parents. So I I don't judge them for how they end it up Part we were very blessed, you know, they give me a great start in life

Even though they weren't together. They they loved us very much and they gave us all all they could and Donald would would eventually come out his 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

“Devoutly French Catholic household and that's why we have a French name as a and”

Before he got married he even considered going into the priesthood and he was so he was a very Devoutly 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 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 picket 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 like you I would you have been the success was you are if you had had a very easy child that I doubt it I bet all the hard ships that you had and the twist in turns that took you from

Botswana to the United Kingdom and and then onward probably gave you some super power and so

“This I think it gave me the chance to understand that you how 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 that I know and self be true 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 Herboral 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 apologize for who he was and that has stayed with me When you speak of Molly and you speak up with her with a great fondness and expression in your face that you know I said I've sat here six seven hundred times so you get to see who matters most of 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 a pugignatious and fighting for what you want and what you need in life 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 a as a big part of it as well. She's a very strong feisty

And so she has this sort of a mgaver like skill set to to get anything done

“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 Molly taking you talking I'm gonna yes, I'm a couple of photos of 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 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 youth 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 capitalist 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 with the Where a small group of lords and knights and aristocrats control all the land and the the great masses do all the work And so you call them serfs they would I 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 and 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 had 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 the 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 them that's worth more than the cost”

So everybody has to be better off and 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 two hundred Bold 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 an 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 um for the first time he got a little toy and he gave it to his sisters the first gift he'd ever given his life And he was so happy like he literally ran in a big circle around her 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

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 Ratchet 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 moderns day what kind of vehicles we drive what we should think

But that is a huge contradiction if a man if a man is not capable of deciding for himself

“Surely he's not capable of deciding for others and I think the worst”

Versed vices 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 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 of the purpose of the government is to do only those things people cannot do for themselves I guess if there's you know socialist listening now they might think well we tried this sort of capitalism stick approach to the economy

And it's resulted in us being able to buy less Food and vegetables for our money. It's meant that the price has gone up at the pumps people are struggling It seems that inequality has widened and the the work and class seem 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 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 our 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 station 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 is yes in the UK and this is a penny yes Do you understand this demonstration? Yes, I think what you're trying to save is that this is about how much land we live on yes So Canada is a great example of this

Because we have 10 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 in your home Is not land labor or lumber it's government it's government taxes fees charges bureaucracy Obvious 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 of the bureaucracy has grown like any organism in nature, which seeks to vis to survive and multiply

They give us the second slowest building permits of any country and 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 tax is still apply on most new homes And all of that gets conspunged by government and means that we have extremely expensive housing in fact Yeah, 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

I was reading some stat that said I got a might butcher this a little bit, but it said that kind of it needs to build between 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 our 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 one zero. 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 war

Permits were almost instantaneous. We had a massive build up of homes So there are 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 coats 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 Look with all the technology housing should be so much cheaper Then it then it was before in fact everything should be spelled so much cheaper

But this is another area where government is redistributing Well 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 percent

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 gross and that 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 because something called the Catalan 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 bills out of an airplane into a suburban neighborhood

It injects it into the banking system by buying government bonds at 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 fifth to 25th the 18th We went from 18th to 25th just in the last year So you were the fifth 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 charges on farm equipment fertilizer And food producers We have a new fuel tax that's just come in single use plastic row 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 gonna use plastic anymore, but it ultimately means food

Goes bad and and somebody pays for that So we 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

So baby 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 Stephen 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 Why I mean I saw this graph here this chart which is GDP per capita with international counterpart

So 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 it 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 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've effectively had in Canada over the last 10 years. Why?

Because we we're 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 over taxing 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 in 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 will go in Rome? In Coleman?”

Well, I think that it's probably true in the UK and the European Union as well. Well, I'll let's take Germany. They shut down their nuclear sector and they tried 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 in the plants and the minds of rural Germany ended up losing

their jobs and painting 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

“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 forecast for various countries around the world and the United States GDP forecast looks like it's been pretty you know pretty strong relative to others. Canada looks like it's going down 20 25 estimates 1.7% 26 estimates 1.3. The United Kingdom as well seems to have been lagging both the United States and Canada and Germany as you said in 2024 the GDP growth is 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 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. It's not just the United States though. 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 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 the economy consumed by government spending is significantly lower than anywhere else in the western world 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.

island and three peoples who were struggling to survive in their home lands 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 creates 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 of economy, it is currently riding the wave of the global AI boom because they have enabled entrepreneurship. It is more than a GDP perspective, last year, more than double the United States GDP growth. 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, Lee Quang, 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 all of Asia. Every sort of economic policy or philosophies

does have a trade-off. I mean, this one thing Yulana is a podcast that'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, you can talk about socialism or you can talk about capitalism or whatever.

“All of them have trade-offs. What are the trade-offs of Yul 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 stayed at the way left people alone so that they could do great things without him. Oh, I think we'd be better off if more of them did. But I should also say that there is a role for government. I'm not suggesting that there isn't. 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 and to well, 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. There's 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 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? How do you bring a date home? 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 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 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 not right in thinking that a lot of these Western economies have allowed a lot of people into their countries to make up for the willingness or desire or the availability of people to do this sort of low wage jobs. Is this what's happened globally? Because what do you think comes out of? Yes, I think 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

wages 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 economy, the health care and housing

corporations, these entrepreneurs, these companies don't have enough people to fill the roles and

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 of the multinational don't want to pay full wages. So they think, well, just unkindercut 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 people a better return on their work. You've got unemployment. Are those people trained in skills and willing to do the jobs that kind of 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 high school without a job. We have a 30-year high unemployment among youth. They should be getting those jobs, and 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 do the job. Again, I'm trying to pay 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 to save and operate more efficiently. That's the magic of the market. Is that everybody has 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 technology called AI. Right. And again, maybe somewhat ironically here. And Throck picking one of the world's leading AI companies released a report two weeks ago through 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

“increase by, I think, roughly 14% in youth unemployment because entry-level jobs are the ones”

often in white-collar 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. And it 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 AI proficient. The problem is not many of them are. And just

sort of a company like mine, if you're 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 nine”

is 20, is 20. He's built a team of agents that now 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. So it's becoming increasingly difficult 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, you know,

for example, you know, 50 years working in finance, etc. Deep expertise. 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 and society. People have deep, deep, domain expertise and people that are technical, that I think are in high 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 real conversation about what happens to these people.”

And I ask you a question. So throughout history, we've had these scares where new technological developments have threatened to replace. And in reality, have replaced certain human labor. So you had like the during the industrial revolution, machines were real replacing muscular power and then you had the lotites 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 you know, a mule fast 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 area, we were told again that people are going to lose their jobs to computers.

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 technology to become adopted because of the nature 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 mostly played by the audience, clip it, add subtitles to it, tweet it, or send it to my selection. I can get it to, 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

“heatwave at the moment. So I said to it, can you go and take a look at my house online?”

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 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 it. Like you transacted it. Because it had

my login and details to transact on this particular site. So but it's just, you know, the framing is it can do anything that you would, you would do on a computer. A lot of people work on computers and the speed of adoption that we're seeing is staggering. So my, my concern is actually the sort of near-time displacement before we figure out the types of jobs that 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 got a vested interest. Right. However, what I'd say is his timeline's of some times not been right. But when he said he was going to make those spaceships land on chopsticks, the spaceships

eventually incredible. That is a brilliant mind. I'm not an underestimator. And my color

out there drives itself without intervention. So I did it's really interesting time. I can

“both see why this technology is going to change the word 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 dating. A lot of them like immigration seems to be the winning leave. I 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

a 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 dangerous to our lives. So I think that we have the public policy”

objective is to ensure that it becomes an enabler of humanity not a replacement for it. So you could come into power and 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 had counteract that? What you would do to make sure that there isn't

huge job disruption because 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 being the founder and co-founder of Open AI which makes tragedy. I think his other star I was called World Coin which uses your retina scan to validate that you're a real human being so that 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 a couple of years time there's going to be no human that's

plans and you know when a lot of smart you know they have an incentive they're raising money and they want they have a certain narrative which helps them raise money but if they are right

“if you should look very different from the past. Chastrum 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 to pursue their own meaning rather than replacing and rendering them giving them a sense 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 chauffard 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 luxury of having to drive in a traffic jam or you know sweep their floor but at the same time we have to make sure 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 saving should be passed 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 generations and so if technology is going to allow us to produce more for less then let's make sure that the working class people actually enjoy that benefit rather than having it inflated away.

It is quite concerning that you know if wealth does accrue to these big companies and yes you know

people like Elon who incredible entrepreneur is going to become the world's first trillion air

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 that'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 fax machine and and he's a Nobel Prize economist I think”

for Princeton or Yale or something so nobody's no stradomas on these things but we have to have

guiding principles and and mine are the rules around technology but 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

sort of a weaponized divisive tool for people to get elected complaining about the brown people of both 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 piece on immigration that we 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 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 you're running a place is to live it can't grow faster than the number of jobs or you're running of paychecks for people and so we need a controlled orderly system that's

in the United States with ice right yeah it's a it's a different situation in the U.S. we the

“immigration problem in the U.S. goes back many many years many many years of chaos at their”

this southern border we didn't have that in Canada like that was unheard of we we had roughly 1% 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 rent 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 so full the sort of GDP issues look economic immigration of high-skilled people to our country

is is has always been successful 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 him 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 resultant paralysis which means you don't post and your feed goes better I'm an investor in a company called StanStore which you've probably had been talking about and what they've been building is this new tool called Stanley that uses AI looks at your feed

looks at your turn 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 everyone's the while you come across a product but 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 but I have in front of me called ketone IQ which you can get a ketone dot 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 there was a box of this stuff sat on my desk I had no idea what it was Lily and 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 there's a ketone dot com slash divin for 30% off you'll also get a free gift with your second shipment and now you can find ketone 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 1% 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 jar 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 1% diary which is this incredible tool to change habits

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 instill habit change in your company”

head to the diary dot 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 they 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 world harmony if that's their choice if the if the government decides that it's going 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 ballacose approach using technology for espionage interference in foreign countries as they have done in Canada invading Taiwan than 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 is an in the interest of China to be part of the community of nations to work collaboratively to trade freely to 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 war that we watch on the evening news and the the real interest behind them that that is driving it kind of 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 a weaponry do you

think kind of this 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 well you think this thing it's so quick Canadian that's true but listen we are a war of your 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 well a golden retriever we're friendly we're likeable we like to get along but if provoked we will fight back come and it 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

in-uit population but obviously you know you can't heavily populate the Arctic art archipelago with the industry and stuff so how do you assert sovereignty over those treasured

“but 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 Americans because the Americans have expressed that they are maybe not going to be as collaborative in friendly and we want to be able to decide for ourselves we want to be masters in our own home in Quebec they say made pushing 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 of the world has ever seen and have friendly relations that go back to the early 1800s before we were even a country we had

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 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 at or at any part of the United States of America the American people are our friends they've been our top trading partner or

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 thunder 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 the election

the recent election in Canada had gone your way this is a pretty pretty stark graph that I've just legit 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 uh the other parties collapsed in behind the liberal party and uh it was largely due to the the

Canada U.S. issue that you raised really so but at the same time we got the biggest vote count we had ever received and the as high as share of vote that we 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 have 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 and slight a 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 were going on in people's lives the doubling of housing costs the rising crime rate of 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 states 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 and 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 to 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 your emotions they're put on delay until after it's all over so after it's all over it's wonderful to tell if that's yes if you're in your family you said the emotions came off them because you were 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. Polyev it's about the stuff that's happening in our lives and you have to fix it you know I had a lady come

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 well 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 my car what about your home 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. Polyev 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 flower in 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 so 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 in melancholy do you think if Trump hadn't have said the thing about taking Canada and he hadn't been the

tarfs you would be leading 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 like to say look I'm if if this person hadn't done acts 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 we're asking kind of for me I find it interesting to see how consequential these what do they call them not um butterfly facts yes how the unexpected dominoes

can fall and change 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 house so 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 it 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 stosism yeah I found this book uh meditations by Marcus Serenius yes I think was quite

formative for how you see things in some respects in generally stosism 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 uh extra when you wake up in the morning tell yourself the people ideal with today will be meddling on grateful arrogant dishonest jealous and surely 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 but but don't be controlled by them these are controlled 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 stosism 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 in Victus that Nelson Mandela used to read

himself when he was in prison for all those years in South Africa he would he would recite to himself the poem in Victus 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 stosism and other sort of teachings about 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. I have this this document you wrote when you I think 20 years old which is

prime minister if you were leading Canada you even dug up the check I found the check it wasn't cash it's a rest of it or go have lunch so you won $10,000 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 sure

any of the the context which I might have excluded sure although we can add in 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 government's 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 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 align up a 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 right most speaking to people campaigning

where have your views evolved I would say my temperament has mature ten years ago I did not have

a wife and kids as a father you end up having to grow and 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 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 time workism and DI yeah look I on the on DI 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 woqism is that 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 woqism is exactly the opposite of that it's it like accentuates all of those differences and disagreements it groups people based on what should be irrelevant characteristics like race and gender and then having divided people into groups it seeks to expand state control over their

lives but I believe in 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 like you know I'm a black man I was I 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 don't have the outcomes I've 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

that there's like a systemic disadvantage of some sort and I wonder someone like yourself who's against this sort of DI 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 so you said something earlier about your goal being in Canada to make sure everybody like has a fashion that's right how does one counteract the systemic issues around race

or gender or whatever it might be that's stopped that being possible because I find myself an interesting position where like on one end I'm like I want to be treated like everybody else right

and I've always thought 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 a quality”

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

as 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 my dad said to me when I was young and he said everybody's prejudice I'm ever sitting in the back of the car my dad's white I was thinking my dad just said that he thinks everyone might be like might be racist and everyone's prejudice on my dad races but as I've got an older I realize that he to some degree is telling

the truth that prejudices part of how we survived his humans and 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 they 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 woqism 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 that the like the prejudices?”

I remember reading about studies where like if they 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 they impact far more on minorities and disadvantage people than they do on established 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 your 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

with free people who have free speech 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 found to be quite surprising was that black mortgage applicants are up to 200% more likely to be denied a home loan than white applicants with the similar financial profile. This is in Canada. These stats are for the worse 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% more than

white time buys. 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 that's how they're making their judgments.”

And then DEI comes in to make sure that that document's all stupid. Well I'm not sure that DEI curious stupidity though in some cases we've seen it cause more. That's how it shows up right it's like a logical next step which is there's prejudice going on in the system which is making it any equal for some groups and it's a DI becomes this corrective measure so they 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, I just realized is I'm sure. Is this? Oh that's a little valentine of there. She loves to be in Daddy's shoulders. How is this function? The Valentina is seven years old.

“Seven years old and she's non-verbal. She's non-verbal yes. What does non-verbal mean?”

She is autistic. She's on the spectrum. So she her biggest difference between valentina and other children is the ability to communicate verbally. 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 rampantious. She loves to climb, swing, bounce, jump and she is extremely affectionate and one of the superpowers she has is that whatever she does she does, she does 100

percent. She's also 100 percent authentic. So that's not the case. One's 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 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, crews who adores her and treats her better than anyone else in the world. After him, parents talk about their concerns with someone like Valentina growing up in the world as non-verbal. You're not going to be here forever to protect her.

That's right. Same to you 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, well, obviously I 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 we forge a very permanent and deep bond between her and her brother crews because he will be there. And one of the things he says again, 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 dad, 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 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 there's a very real role

for government to help people who genuinely cannot provide for themselves. People who suffer from

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. 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 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 compassion 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. You'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 and she'll say, I think he's autistic. And then she will often go and talk to that boy and make him feel loved. So compassion is about feeling with 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 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 is 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 when the, I think she was a nurse or she was a specialist, gave us the diagnosis and she was like pause like waiting for us to burst into tears. I mean, we were just kind of like, yeah, 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 parent 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 a, 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. 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. She 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 are magical. 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 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 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, you know, obviously, not met her, but from all the fight ties. She, she makes you small, just looking at the fight ties. 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 get

second hand 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 ladies sitting there and Valentina just decided she

“liked this little lady went out on a lap, like a 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 of 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

of anyone in the world. We have probably the most diverse and educated population. Uh, we have

“uh, the the most fresh water, the, um, uh, the second biggest landmass. Uh, and I think it's going,”

the future belongs to Canada. We're going to be an incredible place, uh, the envy of the world.

If, um, if we, if we do the right things, uh, I don't want to be a statistical about it, but I think it would help if I were Prime Minister as well. I love Canada's one of my favorite faces in the world for so many reasons. Um, well, I told you when I went to Toronto for the first time, I thought I caused a home. Yeah. Um, because I think, you know, Brits and Canadians have a lot in common. Absolutely. Including a king. Um, yeah. You would be very, uh, well received in Canada.

So consider, uh, no, I love it. They're coming. I go all the time when, whenever I'm, uh,

whenever I'm invited to go and I've been once we're twice on vacation as well. So I hope to be back

there soon and, uh, I'm actually going to do a tour there at some point with, with, with the diary of the sea to meet all the people that listen, say, very excited about that as well. Oh, you're big at your brain. I'll big crowds. Oh, it'll be fun. We have a closing traditional on this podcast with Alaska's 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. Uh, you know, just, you hear, uh, terrible, terrible things in the news. I was just, uh, 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

for kind of dirt 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 fears that we become the frog in boiling water

and it just gets slowly 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, uh, in direction. And lastly, what about for the world? Generally, the Western world's. 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 growth of the magna carda, a freedom of, uh, of the government that is servant, people that are masters and that the freedom of democracies not only succeed at home, but work

together abroad to preserve that, that, that civilization. Thank you so much. Thank you for taking the time to come and have this conversation with me and answering all of my questions. Um, it's, you know, I don't like intervene 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, um, 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've 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 that 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 following that vein. [MUSIC]