Nuanced. - 210. Aaron Gunn: Free Speech, Conservatism & The Charlie Kirk Assassination

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Member of Parliament Aaron Gunn joins to discuss free speech, the Charlie Kirk assassination, conservatism among young Canadians, Pierre Poilievre, drug policy, the residential school debate, and why authenticity and common sense still matter in Canadian politics with host Aaron Pete.Send us a textSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

What made you interested in wanting to understand these issues? Because as voters, we're basically the shareholders of our own country. And if we're not informed or properly informed, then how can we make good decisions? When did conservatism become something you were interested in, or where you felt more comfortable in terms of your ideology? It seems to be cool to be conservative, which is not the case when I was 19 as somebody who was conservative on campus. I think it would be tone deaf not to acknowledge.

deaf not to acknowledge the recent political assassination of Charlie Kirk. Are you willing to share your reflections on what happened and how that may have impacted you personally as well? I'm a lot closer to this than the average person and, you know, we've had threats. You always hope that the temperature doesn't get quite as hot here in Canada as it does in the United States. I got to see a video that you posted was on the BC Ferry's. What were your reflections on on that conversation with the VC Ferry CEO? This is a company in China. that is literally owned by the Chinese Communist Party. It's a state-owned company, and we're giving them a billion dollars,

and we're subsidizing it with the low-interest loan. It makes no sense that it's helping the Chinese communist regime at the expense of Canadian workers. In 2022, you tweeted, there was no genocide. The Holocaust was a genocide. I'm just curious, what are your reflections on that now? Mr. Gunn, it is an old. honor to have you on the show today. Would you mind please briefly introducing yourself?

Sure. Well, yeah, Aaron Gunn, I'm a member of parliament now for North Island Powell River, but most people who might be listening or watching this podcast would know me for my documentaries. So have built a reasonably prolific career over all the major social media platforms and produced over 20 documentaries over the past couple years, some shorter, some longer, on everything from economic issues to resource development issues to maybe most notably the addictions crisis and drug decriminalization and that kind of suite of issues with two documentaries in particular Vancouver is dying and Canada is dying and but yeah now I guess I'm just another politician can you tell me about going down that journey and starting to document your understanding

of what was taking place because it's these issues are so complicated and you decided to to start to document them and try and understand them. What made you interested in wanting to understand these issues? Well, I was always, I think I have a natural curiosity and interest in politics in the world around me. So that was organic. And then there came a desire to have an impact and a purpose in society more broadly, and then probably matched with a frustration at what I thought was the media, in many cases, not doing their job to have investigative journalism,

some real conversations, sometimes tough conversations about certain issues. And so especially like the documentaries that mean the most to me are the ones where I felt that I was providing a voice that wasn't out there. So on the drug issue, I remember when BC just around, just before COVID and especially during COVID, went through this, you know, drug decriminalization experiment, started to hand out free opioids, what they called safe supply, watching homelessness in my home city where I grew up in Victoria, I go from almost nothing. nothing to horrific, tent cities sprouting up everywhere. And we didn't seem to see any narratives

questioning the policies of, are we doing this approach of harm reduction of injection of injection sites, of reducing stigma towards these substances, to handing out free drugs? Is this really the right approach? Or should we maybe be taking a rethink and looking around the world? So that was just one example where I wanted to, and this is actually why, and I've really started listening to your podcast, which I really like and create such a service to Canadians, is you are generating debate and generating these important conversations that are essential for our democracy, because as voters, we're basically the shareholders of our own country. And if we're not informed or properly informed, then how can we make good decisions when we

go to the ballot box? And how can we set expectations properly for our politicians? So it's, so anyways, that's how I got into it. It went on a little bit of a tangent there, But, yeah, it was something I was passionate about. Still am passionate about. Interesting. Can I ask, did you, it sounds like the lack of coverage influenced it, but were you politically inclined as you were making the documentaries, or did that start to come about through your understanding of the issues and starting to go, oh, this is a problem here and the current

government is enacting, or were you going in and going, I know the government's doing a bad job and I'm going to document it? Like, what was your kind of political philosophy development during this period of your life? Yeah, so interest, so I had strong political views. I've always had strong political views. There are some documentaries where it was, the approach was, here is an issue I see in society. I think this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is government approach is wrong. I believe we should be doing this instead.

I'm, let's go create a film to basically, almost like a, You could think of it as like a newspaper op-ed, but in documentary form, about why I think this is wrong. And let's talk to people that I've met along my political journey to help kind of narrate that. And then there are other documentaries where the actual documentary, what ended up being changed as I was making it, because I discovered things that I had no idea as I was making the film. So the drug one was the perfect example. When I started making Vancouver's dying, I did not know that they were handing out. free drugs on the pharmacies in downtown Vancouver and downtown Victoria I did not even I

hadn't heard of safe supply so I literally found that out as I was making the film I didn't know I hadn't talked to very many people in recovery who had gone who had been addicted who had lived on the streets of downtown Vancouver one of my biggest surprises when making that film there's obviously critics of it but is the amount of people that come up to me who said that film was so important who used to be addicted to hard drugs are now living in recovery. And they are the ones that are the most opposed to these policies of harm reduction, destigmatization, handing out drugs. They tell me that if when I was living on the streets, they just gave me a free place to stay in free drugs, then I would either still be doing drugs

or I'd be dead. And touring some of these recovery centers, including in New Westminster, the ones they were building in Alberta, it was a really eye-opening experience and talking to people that are sometimes the frankest and most honest interviews that I engaged with were people that were living on the streets and actively using because they just tell you what they think and they don't really care about the repercussions or what anybody thinks of them. Right. You said you were politically inclined.

When did conservatism become something you were interested in or where you felt more comfortable in terms of your ideology? I think it was, like I developed, like going back all the way to high, school. I got into politics, I think, simply because my family wasn't very political, but we had a newspaper on the kitchen table every morning. So we'd be eating breakfast, I think, when I was, like, in grade three, I was reading the comics, and then grade five, I'm reading the sports section, and then, you know, by grade eight, you kind of want to be like dad and reading the headlines and reading the news. So that's how I got into kind of following current events, let's say.

and then how I developed kind of a propensity towards conservatism. I think a lot of it goes to how you were probably raised. My grandfather was a really big influence on me. My grandfather, my grandmother, he was a refugee who came from escaped during the revolution in Communist Hungary in 1956. So we heard the stories about when communism came to Hungary, how their store got taken away from them, just the repressions on basic civil liberties. Similarly, my grandmother growing up in southern Italy, abject poverty,

basically living, like, you know, working seven days a week just to put food on the table so the family of 11 can be able to eat and any extra food you have yourself so you can buy the bare essentials like shoes or what have you. And just the whole never complaining mindset, the lack of, like a, I mean, you know, victim mentality, which you might end up talking about. I mean, they lived incredibly difficult lives. both living through World War II, and, you know, came to Canada with nothing, didn't expect anything from the government, started my grandfather worked minimum wage on the railway, then started

working, and then eventually got a job at the mill, and just kind of built everything that they have through hard work and determination and strong family values. So I think that, for me, that kind of the ethos of hard work, freedom, and strong family values are like the building blocks of of conservatism? 36% an abacus poll found of Canadian young people, aged 18 to 29, are considering themselves conservative. And in comparison, only 19% are for the liberals and 27% for the NDP. So we have now the largest population of conservative young people.

Growing up myself, I mean, there's this old saying of, like, if you're not like an NDP or a liberal when you're young, you're heartless, but if you're not conservative by the time you're old, you're clueless. And so there was that old adage, and that seems to be somewhat going out the window with the rise in young people becoming conservative. Did you see the writing on the wall on that, or were you just kind of growing up in that and starting to experience that yourself? How does that interact?

Yeah, it's been, it's quite something to watch. I mean, I really, I'm a millennial, so I've really seen it with my generation. like a huge move towards conservatism. I would say it's reflective of a move towards conservatism in culture. Like to me, like comedy is an important barometer. You've seen like I remember stand-up, like all the comedians were like very liberal when I was growing up. And now they've really switched. I feel like at least half of them are a conservative might be the wrong word,

but really pushing back against the extremes of like the left, let's say, just to use an overused and simplified term. But it's, yeah, I guess maybe another way of putting it as it seems to be cool to be conservative, which is not the case when I was 19 as somebody who was conservative at high school and on university campus. So there's been of a change. I think part of that maybe, as I'm just kind of thinking on my feet,

is that the NDP or the liberals or the left have become more of the establishment, maybe a bit more authoritarian, like you must act like this, or you're not a good person or whatever the case may be, where I think conservatism has embraced more of the values of individuality and free speech and free expression and these kinds of things that I naturally appeal to younger people. And then I also would say that I feel the economic promise that was handed down from previous generations hasn't really been delivered for younger It's so hard to get into the housing market. We've, you know, wages aren't rising as fast as the cost of living.

And for the most part, if you're a baby boomer and you have your house paid off, you're doing okay. And I think with young people, they feel like things are getting worse and not better. And I think that's the other thing that's really pushed them towards conservatives and conservatism. When we talk about conservatives and the conservative movement and young people, I think it would be tone-deaf not to acknowledge the recent political assassination of Charlie Kirk, the role that he played in encouraging young people to be politically active, to have positions, to defend their positions, and to go on to universities and debate these, where I think it's not controversial to say many young people don't feel like that is the place anymore to debate ideas to the same extent you would have expected all throughout

university's history. And I don't want this to be political, but you are a conservative his viewpoints very much align with the conservative movement, obviously not all of them, but there's a big conversation taking place right now about what that political assassination means, how we should digest that. You're a person who's very much been out in the public eye, been willing to have these tough conversations and interact. I'm just, are you willing to share your reflections on what happened and how that may have impacted you personally as well?

Yeah, it's probably one of the first. of the most impactful political events for me personally, and I can tell you speaking for conservatives in the meet, look, we just got back from Ottawa, so we were, you know, days after this had happened, I was with conservative colleagues, and people were sick to their stomach. They were very upset. Many of my colleagues had met Charlie Kirk and his family at different events over the past 10 years. There's also a, there's a frustration with how it was covered by some mainstream media outlets here in Canada.

For myself personally, like it's, you know, I think, and I think it is, this went well beyond conservatives that I saw Bill Maher's comments. I saw, I've talked to other friends of mine who are not conservative. I mean, for somebody to be shot and killed. who's got a young family simply because they held different views than you liked or that you did is the antithesis of everything that our society is built on, that our democracy's built on. And I think that that shook a lot of people. Obviously, it was also like there's video of it, like millions, tens of millions of people, I'm sure, have seen that video, which is even more shocking and disturbing. it happened right in front of a bunch of young university students, a couple thousand, I think.

And then again, for me personally, I mean, I used to, I wasn't Charlie Kirk, but I went to universities to give speeches and was protested. So, like, you know, I'm a lot closer to this than the average person. And, you know, we've had threats appear, you know, you always hope that the temperature doesn't get quite as hot here. in Canada as it does in the United States, but it's still, like, yeah, it was a weird feeling. I try not to get, like, it just, it felt like a pit in my stomach for a couple days. And it was good to be in Ottawa because it was just therapeutic to talk to other MPs and find out that, you know, they went through the exact same experience.

And we've got a couple MPs in our caucus that have been very outspoken. And so, yeah, it was, yeah, it's, it's, I'm hoping that it's not a sign of things to come. I'm hoping it's a moment where we can reflect as a society that actually come together. And I think, you know, for all the talk about the really some of the vapid and disgusting comments online, which there's always going to be, I think, the 80, 90% of people were rightly kind of shaken up by this a little bit, just as much as it's, you know, the idea that you would take someone's life because they held a different view than you is just so not Canada, not the United States, not the West? I really hope that those comments that we're seeing online,

because I do see them even on my own feed of people justifying or explaining away. And I really hope that the root of that isn't malevolence, but it's that idea that everything's just happening on a screen, that it's not real life, that it's a video game, that you're just typing things into a screen. It's not that you would actually say go to his funeral or something and actually have those positions because, I mean, I couldn't believe more that both positions are so important and that when the conservatives are in power, they need to be challenged by strong liberals.

And when the liberals in power, they need to be challenged by strong conservatives. And that there isn't one right answer. There's a constant negotiation we have to try and find truth, to try and find what policies are going to serve the middle class and the lower class and make sure that somebody when they're young who's born into terrible. quality circumstances, has the opportunity to move in to the middle and upper class. And I feel like we want to feel like we're all Canadian, so we're all on the same boat. But I do believe a certain level of classism is important in order to be able to say, you are at the bottom rung of our society in terms of your opportunities, but you can go and make something of yourself.

And that's kind of the promise that I've heard you talk about in Pierre Pahliav is there's this idea that you can just work hard and make something of yourself and go places. And when that opportunity starts to deteriorate and young people who went and got the university education, went and did the things they were supposed to do, cannot reach the same levels that their parents did, that something has gone amiss and that we need to try and figure out what that is. But when we start just demonizing people for taking shots at what could be the issue, then we really disconnect ourselves and become an immature society. And that's my big fear is that we want to be told what makes us feel comfortable rather than what might actually get us out of these circumstances. And I think there's a huge danger in that and why someone like Charlie Kirk, whether you agree with him or not, he was willing to have the conversation. And I don't want to see a cold spell over wanting to have conversations because this is when we need them the most. and I think that's how you honor somebody like Charlie Kirk is by making sure that those conversations don't end.

I agree, and I think I'm optimistic, actually, that everything, all told that this event will lead to more Charlie Kirk's, more young people wanting to get engaged in politics standing up and having that courage to have difficult conversations. But it's, I mean, yeah, it's obviously part of the early. evidence that's come out on the assailant there, the shooter, was, again, in these online bubbles where I think you can get, you know, one of the great things that when I was going to school and into university, the internet was there and it was rapidly growing and expanding, but it still was kind of in its infancy still, and you still, you know, would go, hang out, go to parties, hang out with other people in real life, you'd have no choice you're

going to be interacting with people that have different views than you. We obviously don't want so you get to know people and you're friends with people that have different views than you and so you obviously aren't going to want to shoot somebody just because, but if you get trapped in these online, you know, echo chambers where you're just surrounded by people that keep reinforcing an ideology and if you get in an echo chamber that has a real extreme ideology where that's then constantly reinforcing itself. That's where I think you can become disconnected from reality and then can become potentially dangerous.

I agree. Moving forward, I'm curious. Pierre Pauliev has come onto the scene. I think that was during your video documentary period prior to you deciding to run. What influence did he have on you as you were looking at running and what has it been like to work with him? What are your thoughts on Pierre? I probably wouldn't have run if it wasn't for him.

So I wasn't planning to run. And then, I mean, the short history is Aaron O'Toole, who was not as strong of a conservative, one way to describe it, was removed as leader by the caucus. And then there was a leadership race. It became, I endorsed Pierre during that leadership race. It went out to one of his events. I also became pretty clear, I think, or it came clear to me that he was going to win. And but pretty much soon as after that leadership race had concluded, I started talking. to him and talk to a staff about potentially running because you always, with other leaders in the

past, if you have someone who's outspoken that has a big platform of their own, they might view that as a negative because they just want people that are just going to tow the line, that are just going to not steal any attention away from the leader himself. But to Pierre's credit, he's got such confidence and deserve confidence, such a grasp on the issues. And he actually wants to be surrounded by people that bring ideas to the table that. have their own voice, that have their own platform, who can then reinforce and complement the job that he's already doing.

So he was encouraged me to run. I think I was the first candidate in British Columbia, confirmed. It was a very long wait that then proceeded that being a confirmed candidate before the election, which was less fun. But yeah, so he's been great to worry. It's great to have him back in the house. So now that, you know, he's in the chamber leading us, I just had lunch with him the other day, so chatting with them on the issues. He is so laser-focused on the issues on crafting

the best set of policies for Canadians. Our biggest problem right now is conservatives, is every time we come up with a good idea and convince a majority of Canadians that this is the way forward for the country, the liberals just take that idea and then present it as their own, whether it's scrapping the carbon tax, or now they're claiming they're going to bring in bail reform, or they want to build pipelines spontaneously. So these are ideas we've obviously been talking about for a long time. So I guess it's good for the country that they're borrowing the ideas as far as we're concerned.

Why do you think he lost his writing? I think he lost his writing just because of, I mean, I'm a big believer that in this past election, a lot of the, a lot of the riding by riding discrepancies are explained by demographics. So we had a demographic realignment. And so the writing that he has. has been changing. It's becoming more, it's a suburb of Ottawa, so it used to be more kind of semi-rural. It's gradually become, as every city expands, Vancouver is no different. Obviously,

some areas in the valley used to be heavily conservative. Now they're more of a toss-up or more competitive just because they've turned into just suburbs of a major city. In the case of Ottawa, those suburbs are, I mean, mainly people that are public servants working for the federal government that tend to not vote conservative. And they thought that the conservative government was going to cut the public service, which we probably would have because we had to, which is why the liberals are now also doing it.

But they didn't campaign on that. So that's generally what I think happened. But yeah, you see us do well in some places and not others, and I think it can be explained away by different. The biggest change, you can look at the average, age of a different riding through Statistics Canada and that lines up pretty well with how the different trends of course the other thing that happened is writing is the NDP vote collapse so I don't have the numbers in front of me but the NDP went from like 12 to 1 or something like that and I believe

he also got more votes than he got last time but turnout was up everywhere so it was yeah and he obviously couldn't spend any time in the riding because he was traveling around the country as leader of the party. Right. After he had lost in that riding, there were big calls, and after the election, there were big calls on, it's time for a reflection, what can we do better, where did we miss the mark? There were huge growth. I think Andrew Shear did a good job of trying to highlight where you saw, like, significant

growth. But I'm curious, what were those areas of reflection? And what could Pierre Pollyev be doing better? Well, I mean, the first thing to point out, which you alluded to, is that if two, years ago you said the conservative party is going to get like 41% of the national vote are you happy with that we would have taken it in a heartbeat i mean it's the highest percentage of the vote since the 1980s for the party it was more than stephen harper got when he won his majority government in 2011 significantly more and so on the face of it we did quite well um the nDP vote

collapsed and 80% of that collapse went to the Liberal Party. The block vote partially collapsed mainly into the Liberal Party. But that's not to say that we couldn't have done better and we didn't struggle with some groups. I mean, we were, we did very well with young people, millennials, Gen X. We struggled a bit more with seniors. It was a weird convergence of events with Trudeau stepping down and then obviously Donald Trump deciding to have this weird weird obsession with Canada and just poking us in the eye as much as possible, and the liberals were able to take advantage of that politically faster and better than we could. And I think in hindsight, maybe we would have reacted a bit differently.

But Pierre, to his credit, like, he wanted to focus on the issues that we could control as Canadians, that we saw the federal government's failure over the past 10 years. So whether it's on crime, whether it's on the addictions crisis, it killed 50,000 Canadians, whether it's housing prices that have got completely out of control, whether it's the highest inflation in 30 years, now we see unemployment starting to tick back up, whether it was failing to get any major national resource projects, almost any major national resource projects built,

whether it's doubling the national debt in 10 years, which is completely unsustainable, and spending more money on interest payments than we do in our entire military, which was also in probably the worst state than before World War II. So we wanted to focus on the issues, and the liberals, I guess, to their political credit, were able to just kind of, I think, virtue signal on stuff that was happening in the states

that was completely outside of our control and was able to capitalize on a collapsing NDP vote, and that was enough for them to win a minority government, and hopefully we'll get a chance to go again in the not-too-distant future. One of the big criticisms that I've spoken with MP Brad Viz about J.J. McCullough and others is the lack of interviews and long-form discussions during that period where we saw in the U.S. Donald Trump choose to go on multiple platforms and do long-form interviews.

And I had dubbed right in the beginning of 2025 that this was going to be the podcast year for Canada. It did not end up going that way. There was a decision by multiple parties not to want to do long-form, almost all of them. And do you think that was an error? I think we definitely could have done more media, specifically in Canada. Now, there were other questions being asked about, like, you know, should you, like Mark Carney launched his campaign. I think it was on, like, the Daily Show in the States. And I'm sure Pierre could have gone on Rogan or something if he wanted to.

But I don't think it would have made sense politically, given what was happening at the time, to go to the United States to do interviews, as big as those individuals have audiences in Canada. I do think we should have done more media in Canada. I think pretty much everybody in the party agrees that we should have done. And I think we've seen that since the election. I think we'll see more of that going forward. I think we'll also see more of not just Pierre getting out there, but other MPs getting out there.

I mean, hopefully this is an example of it sitting across from you and having this conversation. Yeah. As you know, or as you may know, I'm a First Nations chief. So I'd be remiss if I didn't ask about this. In 2022, you tweeted, there was no genocide. The Holocaust was a genocide. I'm just curious, what are your reflections on that now? That was about three years ago.

Have your perspectives changed or do you still hold true to that? And what is your perspective on what happened with First Nations and Indian residential schools? Yeah, well, I've heard some of your interviews on this subject, which I think have been very, I mean, I just think we were missing so much of that in our society right now on this particular issue, having those difficult conversations. I mean, my point was, I mean, like, I think I've had 10,000 posts, so definitely would have maybe framed my thoughts differently. I obviously wasn't a politician or running for a political office at the time. But I do think it's an important one to have conversation, the importance of language and the importance of defining what we mean by different words. I believe there was a poll out a couple years ago where they were asking this question about what Canadians thought about genocide. I'm not even sure if it was in relation to residential schools, but most Canadians didn't even know what exactly it meant.

or what version, what definition that we are using of that particular word. What I do think is important to point out is that something can be horrible, regrettable, terrible. People can die. People can be hurt. There can be intergenerational trauma and still doesn't necessarily mean it's a genocide, in my view. In my view, genocide has a very specific legal definition. There's also people that have, if you go back to the Truth and Reconciliation report, I would consider that like the report on the effect of residential schools. They obviously could have referred to it as a genocide and they referred to it as a cultural genocide, which to me is more appropriate. When this came up in the media, there was a lot of, well, I would have

preferred to do more media on it to clarify things. But the they would use that comment and sometimes try to say it was in some way a repudiation of the Truth and Reconciliation Report back from, I think it was 2011 or 2013. 2015. The post that you're talking about was in relation to another report that actually accused Canada or made the accusation that we were committed genocide under the UN definition and were committing ongoing genocide under the UN definition. I definitely don't think that we're committing ongoing genocide today.

I don't think for a variety of reasons we committed that Canada is a genocidal state, like that as bad as the residential schools were, that they should be compared to something like the Holocaust, where, you know, six million Jews died or things that happen in Rwanda. And, I mean, I think it's also just part of the problem in, you know, nuance is hard to get across in today's society. So how can something be horrible, regrettable, people were hurt, we want to learn from it, but maybe we shouldn't be comparing it to the Holocaust.

And to me, that was my perspective on residential schools. And I still have lots to learn from it. And I'm happy to, this is one of the reasons why I was excited to be able to come on to your show. But that's kind of, that's kind of my views. So I don't know if that's, I don't know if any of the interviews that I heard with you, if you kind of laid out how you navigate that word or the definition or what it means to you. I don't think that it was a genocide because that requires the intention. But I can see why that would be inflammatory because it didn't come with some of the pretext and posttext that you provided of it was horrible, it was terrible.

And when you just say something like it was not a genocide, that leaves people to wonder, do you think it was a good thing? Do you think it was? And we have another quote here that you said, you've suggested some indigenous bands asked for residential schools. And I don't know if you have any historical context to support that claim. But that's another one of the challenges is say one did. There were a lot of residential schools. So even if you can reference two or three examples, that does not suggest that the overwhelming amount of First Nations people at the time. wanted residential schools.

Right, right. So the interest, one of the reasons, one of the things that, so this all comes up during an election campaign. Yeah. And obviously, you can imagine with a national campaign, they don't want you talking about anything to do with this. So it's like you cannot now contextualize or provide background to where these conversations came from.

And I had some really good conversation. I mean, I talked to, I never want to talk about who I had private conversations with, but I talked to a couple chiefs in the riding who I consider friends. who were wanted to hear me out and were comfortable with the explanation. Like, for example, the conversation or the tweet that you just mentioned about some indigenous bands, so that's part of a tweet thread that gets screenshoted there that is strictly, and most of my commentary on this issue has been a defense of Johnny McDonald, not a defense of residential schools.

So that's simply about the point of, and I think it's, so my big point on this is that all of these bad things happened, but one of the most important things to understand is it was not the result of a bunch of malicious, nefarious actors in Ottawa for the most part that I can tell, but from people, the old saying, like, the road to hell is paid with good intentions. There were a bunch of people who thought they were doing a good thing that were actually pushing this program. Do you think that's true? Well, from the... Like, we have some quote, you must have seen some of these quotes from Sir John A. MacDonald.

Not all of them were, I've got the best of intentions here, lots of them were calling us savages and saying we need to get these people out of the savage home, put them in these schools, the whole point of the residential school system, because in speaking with Francis Widows, and her point was like, oh, like in other countries, like in a communist country, they actually had priests go into the communities and educate and support, and that had a different effect because the culture was able to continue. But Canada didn't take that approach. They pulled the children out of their community, put them in schools surrounded by people who told them what to do, and that resulted in the absolute destruction of the culture. But the design of the schools was always known that it wasn't going to have the proper air filtration, and that they were going to be squished into these buildings that was never going to allow for tuberculosis not to spread. Like, it was going to encourage the spreading of tuberculosis by their designs. But had you left them in the communities, you would have been outside just like in COVID if you were outside,

if you weren't squished into these buildings all the time, sometimes not being cleaned, you're going to have higher rates of tuberculosis. So his comments dovetail perfectly with what ended up happening in a lot of circumstances. I mean, I mean, I don't want to go into all of the wormholes of it. I think it was a forced assimilation program that I think destroyed many facets of indigenous culture. I think that was wrong, and it came from a perspective of kind of cultural supremacy. But it wasn't, it was, which I think is something that we should learn from. And I think it was the, look, if you're in the, if you're some guy in the 1800s and you think you have the superior culture, then you've, then, and by the way, this clearly was, this was, you know, not a controversial thing at the time.

This was just a reflection of, I think, Canadian thinking at the, I would say Western thinking because it was happening in the United States and Australia as well. So I think it was just a logical extension of a faulty premise that, as you pointed out, the other example of, you know, there was a way to bring schools and education to the communities without having the destructive cultural effects that obviously ended up happening in many cases. So, but I don't think we can have, I don't have my book of Johnny McDonald quotes on me, but there's, I mean, I think he has been maligned so horribly, so taken out of context. He was such a progressive voice at his time. He was somebody, as a lawyer, the first person that he ever defended, who was facing the death penalty was an indigenous gentleman who he got off that charge. He was voted to, he pushed to extend voting rights to indigenous people. the liberals then took those voting rights away and they weren't brought back in until Diefenbaker. He has quotes about how he can't wait to see indigenous people represented in the House of Commons. He was attacked for providing, in the House of Commons again, for providing food aid to indigenous bands who were starving on the prairies. So the point there isn't to somehow run defense for Johnny McDonald's. It's to say that it's complicated, that it's a,

complicated picture, that the 1800s were not 2025, that he, in many cases, I think, like I would say, whatever you think of him, he was definitely, of the two political forces in late 1800s, he was considered on the progressive side of things. He was the first leader in the Western world to credibly propose extending the voting rights to women. He granted black Canadians the right to vote. So none of these things come up in the, we're going to tear down the statute of debate. I mean, even just like the simple fact, I think that he was the one pushing so hard to extend voting rights to indigenous Canadians to raise some questions about the caricature that has been created surrounding him.

I don't think any of us can live up to the morals of the future, you know? Like, I don't think we can ever, when we look back, we have to do it with a level of humility. And I'm certainly in support of that. And I've continued to learn more. And I think there is a huge challenge when only once. of the political aisle is allowed to speak on the issues or raise perspectives. And I appreciate you being willing to raise this because I think the points in this are really valid.

I guess my only follow up would be the challenge I see conservatives often have is often they come across as unsympathetic to the plight of different minority groups because the broader point is important. But that's what I think even in these posts sometimes gets lost. and this isn't to malign you, but from my perspective, often liberals and people on the political left are often very—we care about people. We want the best for people. We want people to succeed.

And I think that's still something that conservatives believe in, but it's perhaps not what they lead with. And the context of other pieces that would bring the temperature down and allow people to hear some conservatives gets lost when those other pieces aren't mentioned or commented on. Do you think that's a fair assessment? Yeah, I mean, the liberals are much better at leading with emotion. I mean, I think that, I mean, for me, though, it frustrates me because I think we have, we've had a lot of, we've had 10 years of a very emotional public policy based on signaling virtue but not delivering results. And to me, that doesn't improve people's lives. I mean, the first documentary I filmed was on, it was called Do All First Nations Actually a Post Pipeline.

So that's when I was interviewing Alice Ross up in Kittamat, people from the, I think I kind of remember, this is now five years ago, but basically all the First Nations, I think it was Skintai Nation in Burns Lake, basically all along the coastal gas link pipeline route. And you had a bunch of activists there who were staging protests across the province, across the country actually, including in Vancouver, and we're trying to prop up like they were standing up for indigenous rights, but then you want to actually go to these communities and no, actually, like every First Nation Band had voted in favor of the pipeline,

had signed benefit-sharing agreements with coastal gasoline, who viewed it as a tremendous opportunity to lift their people out of poverty. Many of them were working on the pipeline and the construction. And to me, so that's a fun. So they were leading with emotion, but I think it was like it was false, basically. And I do think we need to, and that's actually, we're back to the start of this conversation, because that's why I went out and made the documentary,

because I wanted to try to show it. What I would say is that in a documentary, it's much easier to get the full picture across than it is in a tweet on Twitter because you might have noticed they didn't get attacked for any of my documentaries that I did or any of even the short form videos that I did. It was all tweets and usually screen grabs of tweets

that were part of a larger thread. And so that's maybe a good point of the dangers of, if you're going to, way into topics like this, you should do them with in the context of longer conversations. I would tend to agree with that. The next question I have is, what are your thoughts on Mark Carney, Prime Minister Mark Carney? I think that he is, like, the job he's doing, I mean, I don't know him personally, so I'm assuming you mean as prime minister.

I think right now he basically hasn't accomplished anything, but in fairness, he hasn't been there very long. So I think most Canadians are still in the wait and see approach. Six months in. it's getting there I think kind of January is where he's really has to you know he's talked he's talked a big game on building national projects and for the most part he's just kind of reannounced approvals of things that were already happening um there doesn't seem to be any new pipelines being built he the fiscal situation is probably the most worrying we're all like well there hasn't been a budget yet so it's hard to critique all you can say is there's no budget and he's been there for for six months but everyone's expecting the deficit to go even higher I think the housing market is incredibly shaky. Obviously, we haven't got, you know, I sympathize in the sense that it's hard to strike a deal with this administration in the United States. But he also kind of went around the election claiming that he was the expert dealmaker and he could deal with Trump.

And six months later, no deal. So we haven't really accomplished anything. So my view is that he's done the easy things that everybody can support. You know, he's said that they're going to try to speed up projects. They've given our men and women a uniform a well-deserved raise. But governing is about making tough choices, is about making trade-offs. And I don't think he's done any of those things yet. So I'm happy to reserve my more heated criticism for six months down the road if he hasn't acted.

And we've tried to as a party work with the liberals when they presented legislation, even if we don't think it's perfect, that would be better for the country. So on C-5, for example, we helped amend it during committee and then voted to pass it so that even if it's not perfect, hopefully it can get some of these projects speeding up faster than they would have. One piece that I got to see a video that you posted was on the BC Fairies. I think it was the CEO, right? I found that really interesting and almost tragic in a way because the point you were making was just, again, like I know it's, the party slogan, but like common sense.

Like, why would we not want our BC fairies made in BC? And I don't know if it was the CEO going in and trying to be prepared for the tough questions he was going to have to answer. But I just feel like honoring the fact that, like, it really sucks. We didn't make these here. And, like, that is an absolute tragedy and we will do better. Like, would have been the easy answer that I think we all could have gotten on board with. And I just, I worry about political.

talking points taking over the conversation at times. What were your reflections on that conversation with the VC Ferry CEO? Well, my time in the committee over the summer was definitely the most fulfilling time I've had as a parliamentarian so far to be able to sit across from someone in that position, first the CEO of BC Ferry's and then Gregor Robertson, the Minister of Industry, and basically to have five minutes for them where they had to answer your questions. And you kind of hold them to account, hold their feet to the fire. That's why I ran for office, is to try to raise awareness about these issues and create change in our society. I think the BC Ferry's decision, I think it shows, first of all, it shows a lack of long-term strategic thinking in this country.

I mean, we had some of the commentary who basically said, you know, we need these, the, the fairies are almost at capacity, like we need these right away. I was like, well, the ferries are replacing are 40 years old, so why are we just deciding here at the last seconds? We have to build them in China because we can't wait five years to build our ship-building capacity up here in Canada. The other thing is essentially, they basically admitted this. I mean, we have great shipbuilders here. We've got great Canadian traits people. They know how to build ships.

I think we're efficient at building ships. The steel, the aluminum, the materials are both the same. They have cheaper labor and they have lower environmental and labor standards than we do. do. So don't we want to have higher wages and higher regulatory standards here in Canada, but are we not just, what's the point in having them, and then just sending the jobs to another country? Like, it defeats the entire purpose of having those higher standards here in the country. And then, I mean, you can go down the list, the fact that this is basically an adversarial nation of Canada. I mean, there's, you know, we can't reveal everything as

parliamentarians, but this is a country that is well documented, engages in cyber attacks on a regular basis that is multiple that kidnapped two Canadians and held them hostage in China that is currently engaged in massive tariffs on our seafood industry our canola industry and um this is a company in China that is literally owned by the Chinese Communist Party it's a state-owned company and we're giving them a billion dollars and we're subsidizing it with a like a low interest loan from the federal government and it's just it's just completely um and then you have every Paul, all these politicians, whether it's provincially or federally pointing,

no one wants to take responsibility for it. The BC Ferries basically says they had no choice. And then the provincial government says it wasn't our choice. We'd dislike it, but BC Ferries made it. And then even though they're the only shareholder in BC Ferries, then you have the federal government who openly admitted in documents that have since been released that the purchase wouldn't have been possible without their low-interest loan, trying to wash their hands of it.

I just think it's just another poor public policy decision. It's the antithesis to common sense, as you pointed out. And I think also ignorant of the new kind of geopolitical reality that we're entering. I mean, if things in the world are becoming more competitive, you know, China built something like 6% of the world's ship by displacement like 20 years ago, 20, 25 years ago. Now it's 50%. That wasn't an accident. That wasn't China just is so good at building. That is a decision by the Chinese state government to create a state-owned industry to corner the shipbuilding market by undercutting everybody so that they have that shipbuilding potential.

And this is an industry that is obvious dual military civilian applications, and their primary objective is to one day take back Taiwan. So, I mean, and we're basically subsidizing it with a loan. So it's just to me it makes no sense. It's helping the Chinese communist regime at the expense of Canadian workers, Canadian companies, and Canadian. and industrial capacity. May I close by asking about what does this next year look like from your perspective? You guys are back sitting in the house. What is your role?

How do you hope to continue to bring your voice to the House of Commons? Well, my role is to be first and foremost a loud voice for the constituents of my riding to be a loud voice for common sense within the party, within the House of Commons, to keep making videos. We've done a couple in the summer, but once the offices are all kind of running very smoothly, I want to get back out and doing that concurrently with being in the House of Parliament.

And also never forgetting, you know, having that sense of humility, which you mentioned, which we don't have enough of in our society, and also just continuing to be acting with, you know, it's an honor to be elected by your fellow constituents to go there in one of the oldest continuous democracies in the world to stand in these, in the chamber where so many people have stood before you to do the best that you can to guide

the democracy on this right path and to deliver for constituents for people that are that are I think for too long in this country just the the average Canadian I don't need and I don't mean I mean average in like a in a positive way who pays their taxes who works hard who raises their family who follows the law but isn't part of any special interest group has kind of been forgotten and sent to the back of the bus. And I think those are the people that we should be putting first. They're the foundation of the country. And I think that when we're shaping public policy, that's the person, I think, first and

foremost about somebody that's so busy with their own life, just trying to make ends meet, make that mortgage payment, raise their kids, get them to hockey or soccer, whatever the case may be, that they almost don't want to tune into politics. and I just think there's been too many public policies that they've been getting left further and further behind and that we should be one of the wealthiest countries in the world with the amount of resources we have, the amount of ingenuity, educated workforce, a geographic position in the world. So, yeah, there's a hundred different specific policies from crime to housing to taxes to fiscal management that fit in that, under that purview but to me that's those are the people that I want to fight for and I was asked

a question the other day or not the other day on a different podcast I said what does populism mean for you to you everyone throws around this word popular the first first thing I said was first of all I hate words like that because it means something different to to different people and it's kind of the weaponization of language which has always been part of politics but when I think of kind of populism or how I would like to to view it in a positive light is that when I interact with voter who might be a plumber or an electrician or a waitress or a school teacher or a nurse or a paramedic is that I enter every conversation with the humility that I have more to learn from them than they have for me. And that's what I think makes a good representative. And that's

what I'm aiming to do. That's what I strive to do. And I have a very big writing. So it's a lot of work. But I think we'd all be better off as Canadians having more of those conversations and going in with an open mind. Doesn't mean you're going to agree. You might come away from that conversation and be like, well, I listened, but I didn't agree with anything that person said. But you've got to be able to, you've got to have that openness of mind. Rouse, I just don't think you're going to be able to bring people together.

And I don't think you'd be a good representative. So that's what I'm going to try to do. How can people follow your work? You can follow me on, well, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X, I guess, for the four places I am. I think if you just type in my name into Google, that's probably the, fastest way to track me down on all those very or into the apps themselves and um or at arngun dotia but um yeah member of parliament aaron gun it has been a privilege to speak with you today

i think one of the things that gives me the most hope is again no talking points no angling no repeating certain slogans uh you came here very authentic very thoughtful and and willing to engage on ideas and that gives me a lot of hope in the diet direction that we're moving. And I'm hoping to see more and more young people like yourself willing to enter these arenas, have these conversations. And I think the most interesting part in having the opportunity to speak with you was that you started learning about the issues prior to talking about them. You started to, you had your own political perspectives, which is natural and normal, but you were willing to go and look into things. And you might

think, and I think this is changing. It used to be, say, a retired doctor. would run for a member of parliament and go see what they could do. But as the landscapes gone more complicated and the issues have gotten more complicated, we have individuals like yourself trying to understand the issues before they put their foot in the political arena so that they can actually go in and do something because they've seen those front end. They're not living in the suburbs, having no idea what people in poverty are living like. You're going and investigating those things and bringing that to the House of Commons

so that it is actually a thoughtful debate based on what's actually happening, not on what people think's happening because British Columbia often feels like it's being left out of the conversation. And the fact that you're doing these documentaries capturing what's happening from your perspective and then bringing that back, I think, is just a sign of the political evolution we're going through. And so it's been a privilege to get a deeper understanding of how that all came about. Well, it's been a privilege to talk to you. And I hope that as I'm representing my constituents in the House of Commons, I won't have as much time. I'm going to still try to do some videos and some journalism as a member of parliament,

but hopefully shows like yours can continue to take off. You've given such a valuable service back to Canadians to have these conversations, to have these debates. It's so much, I can tell you, it's not like most conversations in the mainstream media, and my only regret is that I couldn't have done it sooner. So thank you so much for having me. It's really a pleasure. And we've got to get Pierre on the show, so I can –

I'll put in a good word. The honor is all mine. Thank you for being willing to drive out and make the time because I'll say this in closing. It's much more conservatives who are willing to accept the offer and come on the show and have tough conversations than I'm seeing from the left. It's not that I'm not inviting them. It's not that I'm not willing to engage with them. It's that they seem to be less interested in getting into the complexity of certain topics. That doesn't mean that it's zero, but it's far less than I'd like to see.

So again, just really appreciate you being willing to share your time. Yeah. I don't know. ...you know... ...and...