The Ben Mulroney Show - BC's growing homeless garbage problem/Monday Political Panel

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

GUEST – Paul Johnson / Global News BC Guest: Dimitri  Soudas, Former Director of Communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper  Guest: Max Fawcett, Lead Columnist for Canada's National Observer -  If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get better answers to tough questions. BlueJ. AI for tax experts. All conversation, no cancellations, all across the nation, let's go. Ladies and gentlemen, how about a round of applause for the musical stylings of Ben Mulroney and the Intrepid producer. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. We are the 12th of January, 2026. And we're going to jump right in with a story,

I think an important story coming out of British Columbia. You know, we talk a lot about homeless encampments in big cities and how they take over a park or a laneway. And the knock-on negative effects are well-known in big cities. But increasingly, we are seeing homeless encampments popping up on Crown land outside of big cities. And people are moving there for lots of reasons. And Paul Johnson of Global News met some of the people living on Crownland and asking how'd they

get that way. Let's hear about one of these homeless encampments in Chilowack, just outside of Chilowac, B.C. And the environmental concerns that are caused by it. It's about 15 kilometers out of town up Chilawak Lake Road where you start to see the camps. Some of little concern, others a certifiable mess. This is an abandoned camp that probably was maybe a year old now. We're with Derek Kramer and Ross Aikenhead, who for years have been volunteering their time to haul out tons of garbage and debris that's accumulated in many of the campsites

that have popped up on crown land in the Chilawak River Valley. There's a lot of chemicals here, whether it's the paint cans, whether it's the aerosol cans, the chemicals, the foam, the stuff that they burn. Yeah, no one would necessarily think about this sort of thing. As far as we talk about in cities like Toronto, you know, people experiencing homelessness deserve dignity. And if they want to stay outside unless there's a place for them to go, then we let them go there. But this is demonstrating that there are a whole bunch of environmental issues,

a raft of them that need to be addressed. And I thank Paul Johnson of Global News, B.C., for the United States. for helping tell this story. Paul, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. My pleasure, Ben. So you visited some of these encampments. And seeing it on TV is one thing,

but walking the path and walking through them, it's got to be a whole other. Well, Ben, it's really a sort of a staggering statement about where Canadian society is right now that people are choosing to do this. We have a growing number of people who have clearly made the decision. decision that their best way to survive now is, you know, if they're in a fairly desperate or

precarious situation, is not to be in a city, availing themselves of the services that are typically there for homeless people, but to get a van, a big tent, a trailer, haul it up into crown land, and basically do this kind of improvised off-grid living. Yeah. And the group that we were with was tracking 15 sites that they know about up in this. area, very likely more, also appears there's more people choosing to do this. And go ahead. Well, I was going to say, you know, a lot of people are looking at it, say, oh, you know,

there's lots of people that for a lot of reasons live out of a van or live out of a camper. But I've seen Instagram accounts of camper life and trailer life. And those are people who still, even though they don't have a fixed address, take great pride in their home. And when you see how derelict and how environmentally irresponsible the people living there are, it's clear the issue is not just that they have no home. There are other things going on. There absolutely is drug addiction. There absolutely are mental health issues.

If there weren't, if this was simply a group of people who chose to live off grid, their experience, their living experience would not look like this. Absolutely. I mean, a good number of the camps that we visited were clearly lived in by irresponsible people. I don't know their personal backgrounds. But yeah, we're not making a judgment on these people as people. They clearly have other demons they're wrestling with and so many problems that keeping a clean house is not the top of their list. Yeah. But to be hauling up tons and tons. of, well, old cars, appliances. In one case, we saw for some unknown reason, the remnants of a fire

where they'd burned a bunch of old paint cans, aerosols, fuel cans, not to mention their own human waste, which we didn't see any known means of them dealing with. This is a major contamination issue, and it's something that the government needs to get out in front of. And from what we gather so far, it's not really happening. Pretty much all of the cleanup work that's going on there is being done by volunteers, people who live in the area. And they're quick to point out just what you said. There's a group of bad actors up there who are abusing this.

But on the other hand, there's a group of people like William, who we met, filed in our story. And he's up there. He's living responsibly. Let's listen. We've got William from your story. And I'm so glad you mentioned him because that was going to be the next clip we played. My living situation is I don't fit in the city. William has been living up here for nine years.

He's 60 years old. I got 21 years clean now. And I can't live where there's smoking crack on front door steps. I got my wood. I got my generators. I had my solar up on the roof. And I'm glad he was in there because that shows you. It's a tale of two experiences.

And one is I don't fit in the city because life there is impossible for a person like myself. who is dealing with trying to stay sober, and I can't stay sober around all those drugs. And then you have all these other people that you see, you see that they're dealing with a whole lot of other stuff. But I want to go back to something that you said before, Paul, which you said, you know, the government's got to get ahead of this. It's too late for them to get ahead of it.

You know, when you see that, you know, residents want the provincial government to step in and clean up the site, saying that environmental risks are there located next to the Chilliwack River fish hatchery. but they haven't, you know, according to the activists, they're not doing anything. The government sees little urgency in action. You would think that the British Columbia government

that is so concerned with the location of a pipeline that may or may not affect wildlife doesn't seem to care about this. That's a very good question. One other issue that has come up when we asked the government about this, it was the Department of Housing and Municipal Affairs that got back to us, And we thank them for that. They said they're aware of this situation and they're working to get as many of these people moved indoors as possible. Well, from what you saw and from what I experienced, this is going to be a problem because there's a good number of these people who the last thing that they want is to be moved back in to some kind of traditional housing situation for homeless people because of the problem with open drug use.

Yeah. It has grown in BC's biggest cities. Yeah, some of them don't want to. And then you have others who are up there. And a speculation on my point, but I think it's educated speculation. They're up there to be free to consume those drugs, free of prying eyes. And then you've got what happens. The large amount of chemicals and burn materials and plastics and debris,

they're contaminating the forest and the waterways and leaching into the aquifers. This damage is happening in real time, right? This is not happening superficially. They've been there long enough. There's enough of these local. that real damage is being done to the local ecosystems. Yeah, this is a consequential amount of contamination that's going on up there. And with no known plan from the government, you have to wonder how they're going to get a

handle on this going forward. It's probably going to fall on volunteers, for the most part, as far as I can see. It says something about where we're at as a society that people are living like this and that we can't seem to allow this to happen really in a responsible way. Well, if the government has no plan and people can just move on to Crownland and not get booted off and they can continue to do this environmental damage, it's not going to improve. It's going to get worse. More people will flee from the city and they will go up there and they will go to places

that should be pristine environmental sanctuaries and turn them in. into what we saw in your reporting? Absolutely. And Ben, I have to say, as a guy who's been around the world a bit, doing reporting, this is not the kind of situation that you typically associate with a wealthy country like Canada. And you have to ask yourself, what's gone wrong that people are feeling that this is their best shot at survival? You ask the question, what's gone wrong? How long you got, buddy, because I could make a list as long as my arm.

But unfortunately, we've got to leave it there. Paul Johnson of Global News, British Columbia, so appreciate your time, so appreciate your reporting. All the best. Thanks for having me on. All right, we want to know about the problem from your perspective. The phone lines are open to take your calls next. Is this really the best use of my time?

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BlueJ. AI for tax experts. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And before we take your calls, I want to let you know, I got a text from a celebrity listener, Cheryl Hickey, a great friend, former competitor of mine in the entertainment news space, has been listening to this show. And she very much enjoys the theme music.

And let me tell you, it is, it's funny how life, how life goes because, and I think Cheryl would, would say the same thing. We did not like each other for a big portion of our careers. We did not because we were locked in this battle between our two shows and we couldn't see beyond those things. It was foolish and it was naive and it was, these were the battles fought by perhaps younger, dumber versions of ourselves. But I think with the experience of age and appreciation of the hard work that we both put in, I think we came to, genuinely appreciate each other and like each other. And anyway, I say thank you to Cheryl for listening and for sticking with me as a friend. All right.

Now, thanks to you for sticking with me through that. And thanks for sticking through the previous segment. Phone numbers are, phone lines are open. 416-860-600 or 1-3-8-225 talk. In our previous segment, we were talking about the environmental damage done by homeless people living on Crown Land. and Paul Johnson of Global News, British Columbia, did a phenomenal job highlighting just how bad it's gotten in certain places

just outside of Chilawak British Columbia. And so we want to hear from you. 416-8-7-0-6400 or 1-3-8-225 talk. What should we do about people living on Crown land? That's our land. That's Canada's land. And it's certainly not, has been earmarked for homeless people. Like, a solution for homelessness in our cities is not for people to go live on Crown land.

that's just allowing the problem to spread, right? It's spreading. As I said, we've all been on social media. We've all seen people saying, I've been priced out of the market in my hometown. So I bought a camper for $16,000 and I'm renovating. I'm going to live on the road. And there's pride that's taken in that work to build that new home.

And those people live, they trick it out with everything they can. It's not the Canadian dream. It's not the Canadian dream, but it's Canadian ingenuity finding a solution to a problem. This is not that. This is not people living off grid because they want an adventure. They have a lot of issues with their lives, intersecting problems, sometimes of drug addiction, sometimes of trauma, sometimes of mental health issues. And going out to live in the forest means they are going to bring the problems of the city that they experience in the city, like turning a park into a drug den, making it. unsafe to walk down the streets.

Same thing is happening in the forest. Environmental damage. Derelict vehicles, garbage, hazardous materials. They're contaminating with debris, with material burning plastics and chemicals. All of this is leaching into the underground water. And it's affecting the entire ecosystem. And the BC government doesn't seem to have a plan for it, which I find rich A.F. Rich A.F.

given how they are lecturing anybody who says, let's build another pipeline. Oh, no, that's going to go through pristine this and pristine that. We don't want an oil spill. Well, you don't seem to mind this. You don't seem to mind this. So could you pick a lane? Could you be consistent?

Because otherwise, inconsistency, there's another word for inconsistency. Hypocrisy. Hypocry. And so pick a lane, guys. You're either environmentally conscious or you're not. Me thinks. that your issue with the pipeline isn't environmental at all.

It's because the oil sands are, I don't know, in Alberta. Maybe that's where the conservatives are. Call me crazy. Hey, Glenn, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us on this Monday. Yeah, thanks for taking my call. I just have some insight on this issue and how it can be solved. Like, I just got back from being in Finland for like a month for Christmas with my in-laws.

And they don't have a homeless problem anymore, right? Like they, they, and if you go around Helsinki, they've built, you know, a lot of, a lot of homes, like, you know, a lot of condos and apartments and whatnot. And not only that, like, you know, my children have friends, my son served in the military there and has friends there, and they can all afford a place to live. Like, we're just not building stuff. And this is a symptom, you're talking about a symptom of an issue that we can solve. Like, countries have solved this problem. Yeah, but the problem. The problem that I see is, and I think I just laid it out, which is you can build all the homes you want.

If you take the people who are living on Crownland, and if you take them out of the tent cities that are popping up under bridges and in parks all across this country, and you put them in these condos within months, they will be unlivable because we haven't solved the underlying issues around mental health and drug abuse. And until we deal with those, until we have the money that is directed to those things to give these people, The real chance at success that they deserve, all we are doing is, you know, stealing from Paul, someone with stealing from Peter to Pay Paul, it's not going to work. Well, I mean, we're seeing it, yeah, we're seeing it in the, in, on Crown land. Now take that problem and put it in a condo building. Well, I agree.

We're talking about two parts of the same problem. Yeah, yes, absolutely. Right. And it can be solved, right? You know, there's a model out there that works. I've seen it. I lived in Helsinki in the 90s. I saw homeless people.

You don't see them anymore. Well, I thank you for the call. I will do some research into the Helsinki model, but I thank you for your call, my friend. Thanks so much. Who do we have now? We got Daryl. Daryl, thank you for calling in.

What should we do here? Well, what you have to do is try and organize it. I was mentioning to your producer there. I was out in Cholawak about six years ago. Yeah. And the motel. that there was a young gal just turning 26 and she was going to the garbage bin. I offered her up a burger and all she asked for was my cans and whatnot to be put outside

of the garbage bin so she can get the funds for it. Yeah. Because they do have an encampment or they did where people congregated in the Cholawak area. And this was six years ago? Correct. Okay, so a lot of environmental damage can be done with six years of living in one place or another. I mean, this is not, whatever environmental damage is happening is not superficial at this point. I have to believe that these chemicals have been leaching regularly into the underground water,

into the aquifers for years now. And it is, to me, the height of hypocrisy that you have leaders in British Columbia lecturing people about potential damage of, you know, building a pipeline versus actual damage that's happening on their watch. and it's a shame, but I thank you for your call. Six years since he's, so at least six years, stuff like this has been going on. David, David, welcome to the show. And thanks for taking my call.

Love your show. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I hate to use the old adage, but the problem just isn't homelessness and things like that. A lot of these people have, you know, to put it politely,

extenuating circumstances. Absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, I would say, if I were a betting man and tell me what you think, like, the issue in these cases is not homelessness. No. Because we could build a house tomorrow and put them in it. And all of their, the problems that really affect people are still there. Problems with issues with drugs. Issues with unresolved trauma. Issues with abuse at home. Like, none of that stuff has been dealt with. Well, it's interesting. And I don't know whether or not I can say the name, but there's a, Barry had the same issue. I'm just south of that in Innisville.

They had a huge encampment, which just destroyed the land, polluted it, and it's been closed off, and it's being monitored now because of the excrement and everything else that's gotten into the ground. But there's a place up in Barry, I believe it's independent living. And what it does is it takes people like this and teaches them, because putting someone in a brand new home, we've never had a brand new home. David, I got to run by. It's like, yeah, you got to teach them to fish.

Don't just give them the fish. I thank you very much. We've got time for one more. And David is calling from British Columbia. David, thanks so much. You've got about 30 seconds, my friend. I'm out there, you know, looking for minerals and looking for that next big strike. And I see more and more trash there all the time.

I've seen bags down in the Hope area. I've seen bags of asbestos. And when someone's looking to dump something illegally, they look for a pile of of illegally dumped stuff and then they add to it. And as soon as that pile gets started, it just gets bigger. Yeah, you're right. As soon as someone is given license to do it, you're absolutely right, the pile on continues.

And the fact that there are so many of these, I mean, at 15, I think we're found by Global News at British Columbia. I bet you it's more than that because that's just outside of Chiluac. Hey, thank you so much for all the calls. When we come back, our Monday afternoon political panel is going to supercharge the day. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. love Mondays for lots of reasons.

The top of the list is I get to talk to these guys. Please welcome to the show, Dmitry Sudas, former director of communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Max Fawcett, lead columnist for Canada's National Observer. Guys, happy Monday. Good afternoon. All right, so I know, listen,

we're living in a time where one paycheck doesn't always get you all the way there. But this story that we're starting with kind of rubs me the wrong way. because, you know, we hear stories of, you know, doctors who are also city counselors. But I've never heard of an MP also being a city counselor simultaneously. But that is the case for, I think his name is Chuck Ow. He's a member of parliament for the Conservative Party and he's also a sitting city counselor. Max, I want to start with you. I just, I can't, there's nothing illegal about it.

It just kind of doesn't sit right for me. If we're going to give it to Christia Freeland for a split in her time between the UK and being a sitting member of parliament, this one feels even worse, I think. Yeah, I mean, I'm glad that this is a bipartisan issue now, that, you know, we see people from both sides of the aisle doing this. This feels slightly different in that I believe he's doing those jobs right now. Yes. But, but yeah, it's absurd. If you are serving the public as a member of parliament, that job pays. very well. You know, I know there are those who would argue it could pay better and maybe it could,

but, you know, we're talking well into six figures here. You do not need to have a second job. And if you don't find your role or your, you know, your daily workflow as an MP challenging, I don't know, go on, take on more projects, go on some trade missions, do do some outreach. I don't know. It just, this shouldn't be a hard one to oppose. It doesn't matter what party you are, what color you are. Like, this is just not on. Well, yeah, because fundamentally, I land on the position of, you know, representing people in your position and also the taxpayer. And like, you're kind of double dipping from the same people. And I get it.

Like, he could argue, look, if I were, you know, I tried to run for one. I didn't get it. So, you know, I've got both jobs for a certain amount of time. And he could also argue I'm representing the exact same, more or less the same people. But still, like, you've got divided attention. I mean, listen, you guys know as much as I do how busy an MP can be. And if you're busy with that hat on, you're not wearing the other hat, DeMitri. Yes.

And, you know, anybody who tries to polish this turd, the struggle, struggle, because it goes beyond the salary, which he says he's donating. This is a deeper representational issue. So Richmond voters did not elect for a hydrid member of parliament city council. Yeah. A counselor. They elected a federal representative with a razor-themed margin, by the way. And when that margin is under 5% perception of focus, how can he be focused to be both a sharp member of parliament, which is federal policy and a local city counselor?

How available is he to his constituents as a local city counselor when he's spending two-thirds of the year in Ottawa? So these questions become more important. So I'm not arguing that Mr. Al is lazy. What I'm arguing is that he is divided. And in politics, divided attention is often interpreted as diminished accountability. But there's also the issue, you know, there's no specific scenario I can point to. but I can imagine a situation where a vote would come up at city council that he might ask himself, hey, if I vote one way or another, that could affect my party's position in Ottawa.

You're not, you know, just because you're the same person doesn't mean the interest that you're representing at the municipal level are the same at the federal level. And to me, that's an issue that the ethics commissioner should be looking at. I mean, it looks to me like he could be putting himself in a position of conflict. And I said it last week about Christia Freeland. If you're in conflict for even one second, you're in conflict, Max. Well, and I'll go one further. You know, we saw this in the last federal election when the mayor of Edmonton,

Emerg. So he took a leave of absence to run federally for the liberals. And then when he didn't win, he went back to his old job. You should not be allowed to do that. You should not be allowed to, you know, have one elected job, put it on pause to see if you can get a better job. And then if you don't get it, you go back to the other one first. It's disrespectful to voters.

It's disrespectful to the system and other candidates. You know, if you're going to put your name on a ballot, you have to quit all of your other political jobs first. That should be a pretty easy, pretty easy test for people to pass. Yeah. Well, you know, so what you're suggesting is you got to have a place to land before you jump. And this next story demonstrates that Ottawa doesn't always do that. You know, the story that Ottawa had launched a $1 billion national school food program calling it a game changer.

But then, now we're spending $1.3 million to see whether it actually works. Tells me they didn't do the research before. This is proof of what I've said before that there are certain politicians in Ottawa that sure do love an announcement. They love a big check and they love the big scissors with the big ribbon. but they don't do the work to ensure that whatever program they're announcing is going to solve the problem that they're trying to solve. And we're not even getting into my belief that the government should not be. If the government is feeding our kids, it's because they failed somewhere at making sure parents could feed their own kids, Dimitri. Yes, and this is another great liberal example of virtue signaling.

They announced these big programs and then they have absolutely no idea how to implement them where one thing's for sure. the money that it was supposed to go to the bureaucracy, landed in the bureaucracy, created new bureaucracies. You know, if you look at what also, you know, another example, it was in the newspapers a couple of days ago where this pilot project in Cape Breton, where they were supposed to do the buyback of all these banned firearms and less than 20 people participated, it's just that constant virtue signaling and the federal government

trying to do things that have nothing to do with their responsibilities. Yeah, Max, I'm just, I want to get to a place. Like, whatever the program is, show me that it's going to work and show me what problem

you're trying to solve. And I'll probably get on board with it, whoever's idea it was. But it feels to me that they jumped into this, oh, we're going to feed a billion, you know, we're going to feed 400,000 kids a day. But they put a program together and didn't even know

if it was going to work to the point. Now we've got to spend a $1.3 million trying to prove it works. This is, this to me is, this is beneath the federal government of a G7 country. What's interesting to watch two fiscal conservatives argue against a fiscally conservative decision here. They're, you know, think of it as as though it's an oil company that knows that there is an oil deposit under the ground, but they have to drill a couple of test wells just to get everything calibrated properly. What the government is doing here, it sounds to me, is making sure that the billion dollars that it intends to spend is going to be spent as efficiently and intelligently as possible, not just spraying the money out from day one. That is actually quite prudent to make sure you know

that you're going to get the most bang for your buck. I would happily, you know, spend a million three if it saves the federal government a hundred million down the road in waste and inefficiency. This is prudent, not waste. I'm going to push back as a fiscally conservative Canadian. Again, a dollar earned by a Canadian is best spent by that person. And they have taken so much from Canadians that Canadians can't feed their kids. And now the benevolent federal government is going to come in and feed my kids. No, thank you. Go ahead, Dimitri.

Go on, Dimitri. The only thing I'll add, and I understand Max's point on spending money in order to make sure that the bigger envelope is better spent, But this isn't an example of an oil company doing research to ensure there's oil. It's an oil company trying to find water. Again, the root cause of the problem is federal programs, and I'll add pharma care to this. I will add dental care that they created, is that the federal government doesn't run hospitals. The federal government doesn't run schools. So if you really want to do something about this, Ben, you mentioned.

in one point, solve the real issues so the parents don't have to choose between paying rent and feeding their kids. And number two, if you want to create some of these programs, fine, just transfer the money to the provinces who run schools, who run hospitals, who run healthcare systems, albeit defective in many ways. Don't try and do everything for the love of God. All right, we're going to leave it there, but don't go anywhere. I've got more with my panel on a couple of issues. Does Mark Carney need a gentle nudge to get the big projects moving?

And what on God's Green Earth are the Conservatives are going to be talking about at their convention? Don't go anywhere. That's right. This is the Ben Mulroney show. But as always on Mondays,

I'm joined by Max Fawcett and Dimitri Suda so we can go over some of the biggest political stories around. And we want to talk about the time it's taking to approve these major projects. A lot can change in a week, guys. And with sort of the changing

landscape of Venezuela oil that exists in that country and the potential for a renewed positive relationship with Iran, again, with massive deposits of oil. All of a sudden, the value of Canadian oil to the American market doesn't mean today what it used to mean and doesn't mean what's going to mean in the future. And so Danielle Smith has respectfully, and she said she had a positive call with Mark Carney on Friday, but she's asking to shorten the approval from the time. she puts forth her request to the time it gets approved to reduce that time from two years

to six months. Pierre Poliyev is going even further saying that that approval time should go down to 60 days. Max, you're in the heart of it right there. What do you think of this? I mean, this is, you know, this is if everything looks like a nail, or if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. It's sort of what this is. There is no project yet. There is nothing on the table in terms of a new project to the West Coast, no specifics, no details, no proponent, no equity participation. This is all theoretical. Yeah, but shouldn't we get our ducks in a row, though? Shouldn't we know what the rules and engagement are before that comes up? Sure, get the ducks in a row. The federal government can't rubber stamp a project. Dimitri knows this. We, you know, it ends up in

court the way Northern Gateway ended up in court. You cannot fast track to that extent the amount of indigenous consultation that needs to happen. I am sorry. It is the country we live in. But a good start here for Pierre Pollyev and Daniel Smith would be to get their ducks in a row, get the project on paper, get a proponent, get a route, get all the things that you need to have in place so that we can then get to the work of doing consultation, of reaching out, of building partnerships, and maybe getting this thing going. But it feels to me like they're trying to create an excuse for why it won't happen. Dimitri, what do you think? So max points are valid.

You actually can't as fast as you may want to go. You cannot approve a pipeline at the stage where things are at is in 60 days. I just think Mr. Polihev is just, you know, at the end of the day, it's like an auction house. If Daniel Smith said three months, he would say 30 days. But Premier Smith's point is valid because she talks about economic urgency and talks about Alberta's old. Let's not forget here. We have actually lost a decade of not allowing Alberta to explore and develop its natural resource being oil. Second international competition. So you talked about it initially been with what has recently happened in Venezuela. The upside to this is while the U.S. have now taken control of the oil in Venezuela, Venezuela, China has lost two-thirds of what it used to receive from Venezuela.

Therefore, Canada can step in if a pipeline were to be built, if we were to maximize the current pipeline that exists. And politically, obviously, Premier Smith, who is also dealing with the idea of a referendum, with the idea of Alberta separating, wants to lower the temperature. What was interesting a couple of days ago, I read an article where Alberta's former natural resources minister, who served under Jason Kenney, said, the industry is ready to step up, but what they see right now is a federal and a provincial government that is desperate. Therefore, they will ask government, therefore taxpayers to backstop the funding of such a pipeline. Yeah, that doesn't sound like it's going to fly. Okay, let's move on to the imminent conservative convention coming up in Calgary at the end of this month. And word out of the CBC is all sorts of policies are going to be.

discussed and including a lot of hot button social issues. And the CBC is positing that this could be a problem image-wise for the conservatives. Pierre Poliyev, or the leadership is under no obligation to take whatever the membership votes on and turn it into policy. But it would still be there for the world to see if all of a sudden the conservative membership votes in favor of language that suggests that a woman's right to choose should be on the table. table, that could be a problem for them. Now, I was at the policy convention in 2000 of the Progressive Conservative Party, which actually launched me into television. Had I done, had I not done that, I wouldn't be here today. And I was there the moment, the very moment, where the David Orchard, progressive conservatives, the anti-free trade guys, put forth a motion

wanting to cast aspersions on NAFTA. The membership voted, I think, 95% in favor. In Facebook, of NAFTA and free trade. In fact, the language that they selected was something like, be it resolved that the progressive conservative party is the party of free trade. And I got to witness that. What I witnessed, and I'll say this, and then I'll pass the microphone over to you, Dmitri, is that was a party in that moment that was unafraid to have risky conversations. It viewed itself as a big tent party, not afraid to let David Orchard and his followers

speak. And the end result was a positive one. If you're a big tent party, if you want to invite people in, you have to be willing to have those risky conversations. You have to, and any conversation is important. The difference between conservatives and liberals is that the conservative movement, the conservative party, remains a grassroots movement. So you have economic conservatives, social conservatives, a law and order conservatives. and you know we all focus on abortion because it's it's the easiest topic to focus on but they'll be talking about getting rid of DEI policies and replacing them with meritocracy policies

that there's economic resolutions and you know the CBC didn't uncover something that was hidden somewhere the Conservative Party of Canada actually put all these resolutions on its website for everybody to be able to see at the same time a policy convention is advice to the leader of the party. So on the issue of abortion, let's stop pretending we've been having this discussion for a quarter century now. The Conservative Party of Canada and Mr. Polyev is one of the first, other than Mr. O'Toole, pro-choice leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. Therefore, I don't expect such a resolution to be adopted. And even if it does, it will not read my lips. It will not become Conservative Party of Canada policy.

the liberal party is is as good at playing politics as any party in the history of Western democracy. If abortion were as important to them as they say it is, they would have legislated something years ago when they had one of their myriad majorities and they've chosen not to because they like having this out there.

They like that hanging in the window so that the conservatives can debate it at their own risk. Max, is this is, is, is Demetri right? Is this, is this just how it goes? So there are, there are actually legal reasons why they haven't legislated an abortion law, but I don't want to get sidetracked on that. I'm sure some of it is politics, but the politics that Pierre Polyeuf has to be careful of is not the abortion issue this time. Dmitri's right. Like, you know, on the abortion file, Pahliav is is better, you know, from my perspective, I suppose. He's more pro-choice than most conservative leaders have been.

And that is not the danger here. The danger is him sounding like Trump. The danger is him endorsing policies that sound like things that come out of the Trump White House or the Trump mega movement. And he strikes me as being someone who might step right into that. You know, the DEI stuff is very Trumpy. Immigration stuff could be very Trumpy. And if he comes out of this convention, sounding like he is a, you know, a Diet Coke, Donald Trump. That is going to be death for him in the next election and the liberals will make use

of it. But you don't think Max, and we don't have a lot of time left, so I'll try to be brief here. You don't think that the news stories that we've seen over the past few months of how DEI seems to have infected our judicial system where two people who commit a very similar crime will get completely different sentences depending on what their racial background was. You don't think that maybe the pendulum has swung a little bit on those things? Oh, I think it has swung. I also think that the impression that he gives off by endorsing those sorts of, you know, anti-DEI policies puts him in the same category as Donald Trump. And that is something he cannot have happened to him. So, you know, there is merit in maybe some of those resolutions, but the political effect will be

very bad for him if he, if he has seen to be, you know, kind of riding shotgun on the same package of things as Trump. Gentlemen, I love talking every Monday. I genuinely learn something different. My positions are always tweaked and nuanced because of the conversations that we have to the both you. So I say thank you very much, and I look forward to talking again soon. Until next week. All right. Don't go anywhere. We're going to say goodbye to our national audience, but don't forget you can find us on all platforms and we'll see tomorrow. My name is Jordan, and I'd like to invite you to join me on the Canadian Gothic, a podcast covering stories of Canadian crime, mystery,

and the offbeat. The Canadian Gothic blends the spirit of late night talk radio with the depth of a documentary film and applies that approach to both developing stories in historical cases. So if you're drawn to the dark, mysterious, and offbeat, search for and subscribe to the Canadian Gothic wherever you find podcasts. You were listening to Canadian Gothic.