The Ben Mulroney Show - This Week in Politics Panel

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

This Week in Politics Panel Guest: Tom Parkin, Principal at Impact Strategies and Canadian columnist and commentator Guest: Adam Zivo National Post columnist and Executive Director for the Centre For Responsible Drug Policy Guest: Marcel Wieder, Liberal Strategist, President and Chief Advocate of Aurora Strategy Global If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy

From the director of The Greatest Showman comes the most original musical ever. I want to prove I can make it. Prove to who? Everyone. So, the story starts. Better Man, in theaters everywhere Friday. And I'm very glad for our first This Week in Politics of 2025. We got the big three.

We got Tom Parkin, Principal at Impact Strategies and Canadian columnist and commentator. Tom, welcome back to the show. Yes, I am. Welcome back. We've got, let's say hi to Adam Zivo as well, a National Post columnist and executive director for the Center for Responsible Drug Policy. Hey there, Adam. Hey, thanks for having me back on the show. And Marcel Wieter, liberal strategist, president and chief advocate of Aurora Strategy Global. And in an effort of disclosure, I have a professional relationship with Marcel and Aurora. Marcel, welcome back to the show. And I like the hat. Thank you, Ben.

I like the fact you're wearing a hat. I don't like the Leafs. Okay, so let's jump into sort of a fairly international story that's got some roots in Canada. The idea that ISIS is, it no longer rules a territory, but its recruits still pose a global threat.

We've got the story of the of the New Orleans terrorist who is an American. He served in the military, never visited an ISIS camp, but he was a physical presence, but it's always going to have emotional resonance to a certain type of person. And it's even reaching Canadian teens when we hear recently that the Toronto area teen was arrested over alleged plans to travel and join ISIS. Tom, I'll put it to you is is ISIS. It's no longer necessarily a physical threat, but it's harder to fight against an idea. Yeah, I think, I don't think we have any evidence that there's any recruitment. That's a word that, you know, you put out there, but I don't think that's, as far as I've read, I haven't seen any idea that there's recruitment.

Inspired seems to be true, that's that and you know you're right there's some people that find this to be an attractive idea um it's um it's you know there's always going to be i guess uh some people uh can i say crazy enough yes you can't believe that to believe that religious war is the way forward. But, you know, I think the vast, vast majority of all of us, no matter what our religion might be, absolutely despise that and believe that Canada has to continue to be a place where people of all religion or non-religion live peaceably together. And we enjoy each other. We enjoy each other's company and we try and make something great out of this country.

Adam, is it harder to fight against an idea than it is to fight against an army? Well, I actually want to make a point of clarification here. So ISIS does still control territory. It does control swaths of central and eastern Syria. In fact, I'm actually in the process of trying to put together a trip to Syria for myself, and I've interviewed a few war correspondents who I know who are on the ground. They mentioned that they have interacted with ISIS fighters in Damascus, and that there are certain roads, for example, the road between Damascus and Palmyra,

that are dangerous to go through because that is ISIS territory. So I think the central premise of this conversation, that ISIS no longer has its states is incorrect. One thing I also want to note is that ISIS is very powerful and influential in the Caucasus region in southern Russia. And with Russia now preoccupied with Islamic separatism in the Caucasus has increased dramatically. And I think that that poses a threat to people all around the world. Marcel, the way I'm looking at it is if these are lone wolf actors and they are being inspired by stories that they're reading online, to me, it feels harder to track than, OK, we've identified some recruitment tools. We're going to keep an eye on those recruitment tools. We're going to see who they collide with. If somebody is just Googling or looking up some ISIS videos or reading some ISIS literature, and that is inspiring them, that's radicalizing them, and that's making them make the decisions like this gentleman – not gentleman, wrong word – guy in New Orleans. That's to me almost impossible to track. Well, it's very challenging and intelligence organizations, you know, around the world

in Canada, the US, et cetera, being trying to, you know, monitor as much as they can. But especially in Canada, we have very limited resources. In fact, you know, if I go back to 1982 and Canada was referred to as the club med for terrorists. You know, they would send from Lebanon during the 82 war, you know, people from the PLO and various other factions to Canada because they could blend in easily in communities like Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Windsor, etc. And so you had a number of terrorist-affiliated individuals as well as organizations coming into our country. And that's continued through to this day. And so some of the stuff that you're seeing on the streets of Toronto, etc., Vancouver, Montreal, you know, have been inspired by some of these organizations

that have been able to network here in Canada. Well, I'm glad that you mentioned the protests on the streets of Toronto. A lot of people were surprised to learn that there is a new terror groups flag that was displayed on New Year's Eve in Toronto. It's called the Lion's Den. And based on the information that I've seen, it's it's it was established in August of 2022. And it's essentially comprised of one or two, one to three member cells, mostly men in their 20s. And this this is quite frightening to me. And when you couple that with the New York City anti-Israel protest that called for Intifada revolution hours after the New Orleans attack. You know, I'll ask you first, Adam, does anyone think this is still

about the protests in Gaza or is it about a fundamental threat to Western culture, Western democracy? Well, I don't think it's either or. It's clearly a blend of the two. And there are, of course, pro-Palestinian protesters who I think make very sympathetic points. They see the suffering that Palestinians are experiencing. They see the destruction in Gaza, and they want to advocate for these civilians. But at the same time, you have people who just simply hate the West and want to destroy the West, and they're exploiting the Palestinian cause to push a more radical form of politics. And I think that whether you're pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian, it's incumbent upon everyone to condemn people who support global terrorism. In fact, I think if you're pro-Palestinian, that you should be especially concerned about this,

because this delegitimizes more moderate and responsible forms of Palestinian activism. Tom, your thoughts? Sorry, I think Adam's made some good points there. The thing I just keep coming back to, Ben, is if you want to have, if you're somebody who believes in war on a, you know, religious war or race war, that's a very, that's an extremely nasty, unprogressive thing to do. If you're somebody who is motivated by, and I think this is Adam's point, if you're somebody who's motivated by compassion and

empathy and you see the suffering of Palestinian children or people in Israel who were murdered, you have a very different outlook. These are two very different groups. And Adam's point about when you have a racist or religiously bigoted political force in tension with a progressive political

force that's based on empathy and wanting to try and have peace among people, those progressive voices get squozed out. And this is what happens. It just, you know, we kind of go down a swirl of worse and worse and worse. And I wish we could get back to the days. It wasn't so long ago, and I try to remind people of this, that, you know, the PLO in Israel almost, well, they did some kind of a deal. They looked for a little while like there was going to be a two-state solution and then uh yitzhak ravine

was murdered um eric had died and everything you know went in the direction of where we are now i guess we're about 30 years after that the auto agreement sad story very sad story uh marcel we only have uh about a minute left so uh i'm going to give you a chance to say something, button this up, and then we'll pick it up on the other side of the break. But I appreciate that there can be colliding motivations, but they are intersecting daily in our lives, in our faces, in our cities. And it's hard for me to parse them out. I don't, and I don't know if it should be my, if it has to be my responsibility to do so. Well, I happen to agree with what you're saying

and also with what Adam and Tom are saying. You know, it is a challenge for Western democracies to deal with this and to be able to allow free expression while at the same time ensuring that the populations are safe. All right, we're going to come back to this, but we've got more with the political panel, including did Pierre Poliev just show the model that all politicians need to follow moving forward? That's next. Talking with Jordan Peterson. It was a long-form interview with all that. It's on track for about 30 million views on day one around the world. And let's listen to Pierre Poliev on his reasons for triggering an election as early as possible. By the way, you know, the liberal media is all saying, well, surely you wouldn't want to trigger an election during the liberal leadership race.

Excuse me. the Canadian people are not obliged, 41 million people are not obliged to wait around while this party sorts out its shit. These guys could have got rid of Trudeau a year and a half ago. They knew he was a disaster then. And now they say, well, we're low in the polls, so we have to get rid of him. Now, you didn't care when he was just depriving single mothers of food for their kids or doubling housing costs or unleashing crime in neighborhoods across the country. But now you're really concerned about getting rid of him because your poll numbers are down. You want to keep your job. reason to paralyze the entire country in the face, by the way, of a major negotiation with the incoming U.S. president who enters with a massive and powerful mandate and a man who has

proven that he can spot weakness from a mile away. Marcel, you know my opinion on this. I can't find fault with a single word he said. What's your take? Well, Pierre can say whatever he wants. He's speaking to his own people. The Jordan Peterson show is oriented to a specific audience, and of the 25 million, there's only a handful that are actually in Canada. So he's just preaching to his own. As far as whether triggering an election, he's been itching for that well before any of this leadership issue has come to the fore. I know my colleagues on the panel are going to have a slightly different opinion, so I'll turn it over to them. Tom, what's your take? I mean, yes, he's speaking to people of like mind, but this was also amplified by Elon Musk, which means, you know, it had the ear of

Donald Trump, someone that Pierre has not met with personally. And I suspect there are strategic reasons why he doesn't want to be photographed with him or anything like that. So to me, this is a way of communicating with somebody who will be his American counterpoint at some point. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of Elon Musk nor Jordan Peterson, or for that matter, Pierre Polyev. That's not a surprise, Tom. That's not a surprise. I don't find any of them to be, well, especially Musk and Trump, I find them to be pretty hideous creatures.

But, you know, having said that, you know, everybody gets it right once in a while. And Pierre Pogliev is correct that it is not for the Canadian people to hang around with an absent government that is unable to govern. A prime minister who can't appear in public, who can't answer questions, who has no support, no moral authority within Canada anymore. It's just gone that bad. We see polls that last week from Angus Reid, I guess it was Monday, actually, not last week, that pegged them at 16% with the Conservatives up in the 40s and the NDP in the low 20s. So, you know, here's my own thoughts about this. Is Mr. Trudeau has to go for the good of the country and frankly, the Liberal Party. And the quicker they can do it, the better off they are. If he hangs around anymore, 16 is going to turn to 15 and then to 14. If he tries to persuade, to prorogue and then have a leadership convention that takes two or

three months while the Liberals kind of sort out their own problems and Canadians can just, well, you know, you guys just go on ice. I think again, that's just a recipe for 16, 15 to 14. So, you know, get on, get this thing done and get it done quick

and be back in the house on the 27th and maybe, maybe there's a smallest chance. I don't think there is, but maybe there's a small, tiny chance that the Liberals might be able to come back. But I think what we're looking at now is that the Liberals are spent worse. And the question is whether there is an alternative in the New Democrats to challenge Polyam or whether Polyam is just a compli. Yeah. Adam, I keep going back to the number. I mean, it was 24 million views of on the Jordan Peterson podcast page itself. Hundreds of thousands on other pages, millions elsewhere.

God knows how many millions of individual smaller, shorter clips that have been shared. There's down interviews that have that essentially take take the puck away from the traditional media and put it to where the eyeballs and ears actually are. Well, so one thing I do want to clarify is that though it says that there are 30 million views on Twitter, that actually probably translates to about 300,000 views. Because if you watch a video on Twitter for five seconds, that still counts as a view. The question is how many people are actually watching up to five minutes, 10 minutes, an hour and a half. That being said, 300,000 viewers, that's far more than what you would have in any traditional media outlet. And I think we see obviously that the levers of influence are shifting towards non-traditional media. There was a big conversation in the U.S. election about whether Kamala Harris

should have gone Joe Rogan, right? And she initially said no, and that turned out to be incredibly stupid, right? So I think that this interview just reinforces the point that communications experts working for various political parties need to adjust their strategies and focus on these nontraditional channels to reach new audiences. And obviously not all these people are conservatives. There's a wide variety of listeners here. And I think that liberals who just dismiss this as saying, oh, you know, this is just speaking to an echo chamber, are being quite arrogant and that if they want to learn how to be more successful in the polls, maybe they should take some notes because the content of this interview was fantastic and in many ways actually stole the NDP's thunder in terms of social justice rhetoric.

Marcel, would Trudeau have been helped in the tail end of 2024 with a long form online interview, similar to this with a, I don't know who the interviewer could be, but would he have been helped? Because there's been an absence of his voice in this maelstrom of madness that we've been enduring for a few weeks now. And the only thing that we've seen from him is that Mark Critch this hour moment, which was useless. I happen to agree with you on those points. It seems that they've formed a palace guard around Trudeau

and are trying to keep him isolated from the media because there's only one question that everyone's lips are saying, and that's, when are you going to go? And so he's not prepared to answer that. And so therefore it becomes a self-fulfilling doom prophecy of him going on the media. So I only have one minute left and I'd like to go around the horn. You know, I think everybody here says, yes, Trudeau has to go. But in one sentence, I'd love to get your best take on how you think the next two, three weeks are going to go.

Tom, let's start with you. Well, I think he's going to pull the pin in the next few days, probably next week. He's got a cabinet meeting today. So maybe that clears the path and i hope i hope that he uh goes to the caucus to assign an interim leader and that that person respects that this current country needs a government and brings parliament back on the 27th then he will be met with an opposition resolution of non-confidence and we will have an election shortly into starting in maybe around the top of March. Adam, one sentence, please. I second everything that Tom said.

That's good. I like that. And Marcel, the last word goes to you because you're in studio. I think that we'll see on Monday if the Prime Minister does come back to Ottawa. He does announce his resignation and it triggers a leadership convention. Tom Parkin, Adam Zivo, Marcel Weter, thank you very much for being here for our very first political panel of 2025. Here's to many, many more.

And we'll see you soon.