The Decibel - Pierre Poilievre: An interview, in full

Episode Date: June 13, 2026

Following The Decibel’s analysis of a one-on-one interview with Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, listeners wrote in and asked for an uncut interview to hear the opposition leader in his own words. This is the one-hour, full-length conversation with Poilievre, recorded on May 15, 2026. The interview has been edited for audio quality. Original Decibel episode with Poilievre: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/podcasts/the-decibel/article-an-interview-with-pierre-poilievre/ Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, it's Cheryl. A couple of weeks ago, the decibel released an episode of the Globe and Mail's reporters interviewing conservative party leader Pierre Poliav. We picked and analyzed some of Poliav's most newsworthy answers on everything from his leadership to how he'd handle relations with the U.S. to the brewing separatist movement in Alberta. There's a link for that episode in the show notes if you'd like to listen back. But then we heard some feedback from listeners about wanting to hear the entire uncut one-hour interview we did with the opposition leader. No preamble or analysis, just the conservative leader, in his own words, to our questions. So, you asked and we deliver. Here it is. The week before Parliament breaks for

summer, the full conversation with conservative leader Pierre Polyev, which has only been edited for audio quality. Hope you enjoy. Hi, everyone. Hello. Hello. Good to see you. Sorry, I'm a little under the weather. We have a germ factory. Wow, what a distracting view that is. Yes, not bad, all right. Designed to hypnotize the witness. Until they put up condo towers and cut us off. Right.

But for now, a great view. So, welcome. Thanks so much for coming to see us. We'll have some questions. But if you had some opening thoughts you wanted to share with us, we'll start with that, and then we'll jump in with questions. Well, thank you very much. I won't speak at length that as an opener, because I think it'd be

to have a dialogue rather than a monologue. But, you know, you know, the fundamental mission that I'm on is to make this a promising country for, for people, a meritocracy where anybody who works hard and puts their shoulder at the wheel can have a great life. And I believe fundamentally that we have everything we need to be the most affordable and richest country anywhere on earth by far. And I don't need to go through the list of natural attributes that we have, um, with which we have been blessed.

You know them all. Now we need to unlock and unblock that potential. So I think I would just leave it at that for the time being, and then you guys can fire away, and I'll do my best to respond. So we were talking with Stephen Pollitz earlier this week at a Globe event in Calgary. He was making the case for sort of a big bang approach to reform and tax reform, in an argument against incrementalism. I'm wondering, would that be where your own mind is?

And if so, what would a Big Bang approach from a conservative government look like? Well, it's funny you use the term Big Bang because that was Jack Mince's title. He's written a paper and an op-ed on it using what he describes as the Estonian model. But I do think we're going to need a major and serious tax reform

to massively simplify the system and make it streamlined reinvestment in the economy. We had committed in the last election to have a task force, and I was hoping that people like Jack would be a part of it. That would, within six months of taking office, report back on a major reform to simplify, lower and make fairer the system of tax that we use to generate revenue. The principles would be lower for everyone. I'm not looking to raise anybody's taxes and to limit also the amount that's spent on compliance and enforcement. Some of the interim things that we've already pulled out is that I believe that capital

gains that are reinvested in Canada should be tax-free because I think, you know, we've got a trillion dollars in debt investment that has left the country over the last decade. One of the obstacles to bring you back is capital gains. If you, you know, an enterprise, if they're not a pension fund, anybody who's invested abroad and wants to sell it and bring it home has to pay that liability. My view is let's defer the liability, not eliminate it. It's just roll it over and keep rolling it over and growing the capital stock of the

country again and again and again. And when you eventually dispose of it to, you know, go on a vacation or, God forbid, to invest again abroad, then you would pay the full capital gains. using the base level of your original investment purchase, and the government would get its pound of salt anyway. But it will probably get a way bigger amount of revenue because in that time there had been much more rollover, much more gain to ultimately tax.

I think we have an investment-starved economy right now, and this would be one way to bring back that money and also encourage locked-in investment to roll over into more promising investments rather than being kept in substandard investments that are only maintained because the owner doesn't want to trigger a tax event. So that is one of the things that would be part of my reform,

but I do think we need, for a lack of better word, a big, Big Bang tax reform. I'm not saying that to necessarily say it would be exactly what Jack described, but you did use that term and I think it's a good one. Would there be anything off limits? Raising taxes. We absolutely do not have a revenue problem.

We have insatiable governments at all three levels that are spending and spending and spending and spending far beyond the necessity. By every measurement, their spending is outgrowing inflation and population growth, it's outgrowing nominal GDP. It is outgrowing every measure of necessity. We could be doing so much more for so much less. at Singapore, they tax 18 cents on the dollar. Their GDP, the government spending is about just under 20% of GDP and they have longer life expectancy, higher rankings on the human development and index. And the tax take is a half of what it is here in Canada. So just because we spend more doesn't mean we get more, we could have a much leaner, much smaller government and deliver

better social outcomes for the people at the same time. Great. one of the big policy issues going forward is what what do we do with kuzma us mca negotiations um what is your feeling of how the government's handling trade negotiations so far both around section 232 tariffs of the upcoming review and what would you be doing differently well it's hard to say what my how i differ from mr carney um without checking uh his position on a given day because he has, you know, for a lack of better terms, it's been elbows up and then elbows down so many times it's become a chicken dance. You know, he's, he ran an entire election on elbows up and counter tariffs while he quietly eliminated those counter tariffs. He's since given a speech where he says that we are in a permanent rupture with the United States and that our integration with the U.S. economy is a weakness.

and then a week ago, to everyone's astonishment, he said we need even more integration. So I literally have no idea what Mark Carney's vision is for the relationship with the U.S. more than a year after he was elected on that singular issue. And there's other contradictions. He says that he could solve this dispute in 11 days at the negotiating table, yet he has chosen not to show up at the negotiating table for five months, while the Mexicans eat our lunch. As he said in his Sadabo speech, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu.

So what does that say about the fact that the Mexicans are at the table and we are not? And obviously we're dealing with a very tough counterparty and unpredictable, perhaps even unreliable. But is he made less unpredictable and unreliable by us not being at the table? I would argue the one thing that has protected us from his caprice is the fact that we do have the free trade agreement that was originally locked in by Mulroney and ultimately renewed by Trudeau, that is the one saving grace we do have is that there is an agreement that does constrain the president to some degree. So is that Mr. Carney's

position that we would be better off not having that or anything? Does a rupture mean an end to Kuzma? I don't really don't know what his position is on any of these things. I don't think anybody does, But on my position is actually much clearer than his, ironically, because I'm in opposition, it's not typical that an opposition leader is as specific as I've been. But my position is that we need one to have a clear objective. That objective is tariff-free trade. And two, we need a means to get there. And that means is to build up our leverage and use it to get the aforementioned objective

achieved. What do we have as leverage? One, we're entering a period of geostrategic tension that is reminiscent of the Cold War. The Americans know they need the NATO-defined critical minerals to protect themselves. Modern warfare is about minerals. We have 10 of the 12 NATO-defined minerals that are necessary to fight a war. We have the only two cobalt refineries in North America. you cannot make an F-35 without them.

We produce enough cobalt for 75,000 F-35s, just as one example. We have germanium for night vision technology, gallium for radar and semiconductors. We have aluminum for fighter jets, tungsten for heat resistant, alloys. these are things that you simply cannot fight a war without. I'm saying we should tailor make a strategic reserve of those minerals and say to the Americans, we will design this reserve in a way that serves your strategic interest if you give us ongoing tariff-free access to our country. And we should also add to the fact that we can lower the cost of Ford F1 50 trucks, the

price at the pump, the cost of building a home, and countless other things that American consumers are struggling with. get back to a tariff free trade agreement. Those are all things that I would bring to the table in order to get what we want. The last thing I would do is build up. I would agree to the idea of exporting an extra 2 million barrels of oil to the US to lower their energy costs and boost our GDP. Those are all the leverage points that I think we could use to get very close to tariff-free

trade. If I may follow up on that. Yes, please. The US has requests coming the other way. They've set out a set of demands they want. Obviously, alcohol restrictions for you. They want changes to buy Canadian policy, Online Streaming Act, Dairy Quota allocation.

Lots of things they're asking for what for you, would you be willing to put on the table or concessions you'd be willing to offer in order to secure, as you say, your ultimate goal of tariff-free trade? Well, my position on the Online Streaming Act is well established already, but I would bring it to the table

and use it as additional leverage. you know, what else, what other issue? Are you into opening up more quota to the U.S.? As I understand, they're not even using the quota they already have, so I'm not exactly sure what they're demanding in that area. But in terms of having a more free and open Internet, I mean, that's my philosophy, if it's a philosophy in general, I'm not opposed to it.

And I think that even though I hated the digital services tax, and I think the counter tariffs would ultimately have to have gone anyway. I think that a better approach is to bundle these things all up and take them to the table rather than making unilateral concessions before you even start negotiating, as Mr. Carney has done over the last year. So I would, you know, with the Online Streaming Act and a number of other issues, I would actually want to come to the table with them and get something in return at the moment that I offer them up.

Actually, I have a lot of questions, but I want to just about free and open internet, because I know I've heard you've used before about the idea that the internet needs more regulations when it comes to kids and how, don't we just disappeared, and how kids use social media and the access they have to their phones. And so I wonder how you square those two things and what you think about that. So how I square them is I think that the digital and virtual world should have the same rules as the tangible world. You know, child predators, fraudsters, those who prey on the innocent and the vulnerable,

they are criminalized in the tangible world and they should be criminalized online as well. And so, you know, we need to have strong enforcement mechanisms to go after pedophiles and other predators who target our children. and but that is because it is a criminal activity in general. As for the use of, you know, things like social media, highly addictive algorithms, to be honest, I'll just be blunt, I don't have the answer to that right now.

I do know there's a problem because I've seen it with my, I seen it with my kids. I can see the, I can see how powerfully addictive these things are. And I do sometimes worry about what, uh, this does to a developing mind. to have a, you know, watching one 15 second clip after another of cartoons rather than sitting

through an entire story or a narrative that we grew up with when we were forced to watch a half an hour long cartoon or to go read, read a book with mom and dad. And so as a parent, I spent a lot more time reading with my little guy and Valentina's a little different because she has some special needs. But I don't know the answer from a governmental point of view yet. And our caucus is spending a lot of time doing research. I spoke to Jonathan Haidt the other day in a Zoom call to get his download. His view is that social media does need to be banned outright for kids.

I haven't taken a position on that yet. But I'm trying to learn to study up on it before I take it to stand. Well, honestly, I can switch subjects maybe just because you reference caucus. I'd like to hear about separatism and how you're managing that within your caucus. And to the extent to which you're aware of anybody in there who might align themselves with the leave side, the go side, and what you're doing about that? So I haven't had any caucus member tell me that they are aligned with the leave or go side. All of my caucus members with whom I've talked have said that this is there on the side of Canada, that there are obviously legitimate grievances, which we've highlighted in Parliament for the last decade and beyond.

and they want to see us to aggressively address those grievances. I think what you're seeing from us is we are unambiguously, unequivocally, a federalist party. It is possible, though, for two things to be true. One is that Canada should stay united. It's the greatest country on earth. It's given us incredible blessings as individuals and as a people. But that there are very legitimate grievances that Albertans, harbor and that we can and should fix those grievances. And obviously I can go down the list.

I think you probably know what they are. But I think those two things can and should be viewed as compatible. And I also think we need to remind ourselves that it is the first job of the Prime Minister of Canada to keep the country united. And if we're being honest about it, 10 years ago, there was no separatist movement whatsoever in Alberta. It did not exist. And the separatists in Quebec were flat on their back and dead. Look at where the block and the PQ were. I don't think they had almost no combined seats at either level of government.

And 10 years of liberal centralization, meddling, divide and conquer, and here we are with very robust and aggressive separatist movements in both of those provinces. And I think we have to, the governing liberals need to have a look in the mirrors and ask themselves why that is. Why did the conservatives lose the last election? had a year to reflect on? I think that we saw a

massive consolidation of the non-conservative vote around one option that had a consolidation that is unprecedented in a half a century and around one issue, which was the United States. Why didn't it consolidate around you though?

Well, he did. And we got the, by far, the biggest vote count we've ever had. Our vote count went up by a third election over election, the massive increase. And it was the biggest vote count we had ever received that by the largest share of vote the party got since 1988. So normally, 41%

would have meant a massive majority government. But, you know, there are writings in Brampton, for example, that we won in the 30 percentage range, the 30s in the 2011 election, that we got 48% this time and didn't win. So that was the breakdown. But ultimately, I think that the issue set that gave us so much strength is fundamentally still there.

The problem for Carney in replicating the result will be that he was given a lot of grace based on expectations of things that he could do, but that he has yet to achieve. and two or three more years of failure to achieve and deliver will, I think, result in a very harsh judgment by the electorate that vested so much faith in his abilities. That could be, but I didn't think I heard the current answer as to why did you lose the election? Well, that was the first part of my answer.

Well, you said it consolidated, but then you said it consolidated around you. So why did more consolidate around the liberals than around the conservatives? Well, we, for example, the NDP lost close to 75% of their vote. More of it went liberal than went conservative. We got some of it. And why was that? Well, that is, that's nothing new.

The NDP and liberals should exchange more votes than we do. We did take more NDP votes than we ever have. That's why we won Windsor and seat in London. We went 11 NDP seats. But ultimately, the two, those two parties are more ideologically aligned and it's, it's, it's understandable why voters would migrate more between those two, two than they would between us and them, between us and the NDP.

At one point, you were 20 points ahead. So did, did you make any mistakes? Was there any problem with the campaign, the way it ran? If you had to do it all over again, what would you have done differently? Look, every campaign has mistakes, but at the end of the day, day, we, our 20 point lead, we did not disappear because we fell. It was because the Liberal Party, um, basically, uh, inhaled the block, NDP and green vote. Um, our, our vote actually, we took more votes from the liberals than they took from us, election over election. So, um, could we, could, can we do things better?

Yes. And, and we will learn from those lessons. But I tend to like to do strategy rather than talking it. Yeah. Yes, hi. I've been covering the federal child care deal since it was announced, and I'm curious what your assessment is of it now that it's past the five-year mark. And I'm also wondering how your views about child care have changed since becoming a parent. So on the first point, I think that there's too much of a straight jacket. The federal government has tried to limit the degree that private providers, community-based providers, and even parents can benefit from the program. And the result is that a large share of the child care infrastructure

that existed before this program came into a place have been shut out altogether and even shut down because the regulations the federal government is imposed on the provinces of condition to send the money have effectively made it impossible for a lot of previous providers to even survive So I would allow far more flexibility for provinces and parents. I don't think it has to be government run, not for profit, institutionalized.

I think private, community-based, even home-based daycare should be eligible for support. And maximizing flexibility is the best way forward. I understand the share of Canadian families that are looking for childcare has actually ironically gone up since this massive expenditure has occurred. And I believe that is because of overregulation by an ideologically driven government in Ottawa rather than because there's not enough money. So I think we need more flexibility for provinces, providers, and parents. For me, as a parent, I would say it has actually reinforced my belief that we need more

flexibility. You know, as a parent of an autistic child, autistic children have very specific needs that, for example, speech therapy, very hard to find a speech therapist, extremely hard. And believe me, we've looked. We finally found one. I believe though speech therapy should be embedded in daycares and in primary schools. And they should follow the child around as much as possible rather than being off-site. Because how does a, you know, we're, we're blessed. We have family support and resources, but I don't know how a middle class parent who has to work and leave at 10 to 30 a.m. pick up their kid at school, drive them to a speech therapist, wait an hour, and then drive them back to school and then expect to keep a job at the same time.

That should be in the schools and in the daycare. So that, that, that's the kind of flexibility that does not currently exist in our system that I'd like to see more of. But, you know, we come from, my wife's family is Latin, and so when you marry a Latina, you marry the whole family. And they all chip in.

And that's a lot of, that's the case for a lot of immigrant families. What's the public policy answer to maximize the benefit from things like that? More flexibility, not more straight jackets. Yeah. So speaking on, immigration you've said that immigration numbers should be tied towards capacity in housing and

health care we see numbers have gone down and the population as a whole is dropping do you think there should be a period a longer period where population goes down and if so which categories of immigration do you think should be reduced yes i do think there should be a longer period where it goes down we need an extended period of net negative migration to reverse the um overwhelming numbers that came in during the years 2022, 23, 24, the early part of 2025. The system is still in shock from that. Which categories? I think we should get rid of the temporary foreign worker program.

You can have a mild transition period. I call it the 555 in regions where unemployment is below 5.5%. They should have five years to transition their existing individuals out of the country. But we don't need a temporary foreign worker program outside of farming. We don't have large-scale labor shortages in Canada. I know it's popular with corporate Canada to say we do. We have among the highest youth unemployment levels in 30 years in construction. We have 107,000 construction workers out of jobs.

We've got 120,000 job losses in the first four months of this year alone. the solution for labor shortage is higher wages, not bringing in lower wage people from poorer countries. I think the student program needs to be cut back even further. I don't understand why we need to bring in that volume of students. When I was in university, we had lower tuition and we didn't have this volume of students from abroad paying the bills. So I'm curious where all the money is going at the universities. They claim, oh, we're broke because we can't. You can't make profits overcharging kids from other countries.

Well, how did you do it 25 years ago? Well, the answer is with a hell of a lot less bureaucracy in the administration. So I think those are two categories. We also need to stop the fraud in the refugee system. If you look at the rejection rates, they're still very high. And then when they're rejected, the appeals are far too long, during which time we as a country are paying for housing, legal bills, and other things, for someone who is not in danger if they go back to their home country.

So those are three areas where I would see us cutting back. Thank you. Yep, I have a question about housing. So we have lots of condos that aren't selling, especially the smallest ones. We have then pivoted to purpose-built rentals. those aren't significantly bigger than Connellsware. They often come with high fees because they have all kinds of amenities.

Do you see a structural misalignment between the kind of housing that we're adding, especially in big cities, and the kind of housing that Canadians need and want? And if so, do you see a role for the federal government to do anything about it? Well, I think there has been a role of the federal government in causing

this misalignment. I think the role of government has been to cause not to solve the housing crisis. The federal government made a decision in 2017, and I'm quoting to get back in the housing business. And since that time, housing costs have doubled. Homeownership rates have plummeted. The age at which people become homeowners has moved back, I think, five or six years. The problem in our housing sector is government, government, government. And it is government delays for permits. It's overly complicated zoning. It's egregious confiscatory development taxes. And they're not development charges. They are taxes because they do not go to infrastructure. You know, how is it that in the city of Toronto, development charges were 90 to 95 percent lower?

15 years ago and we still had pipes and parks and highways and transit. Where's all the other money going? Ten times more development charges and what are we getting for it? It's all being chewed up by bureaucracy and government. And at the federal level, all they're doing is enabling this by giving bigger checks to the same municipal governments that are blocking development and then creating federal bureaucracies to subsidize the way around

local bureaucracies. I mean, if you've got an obstacle that's blocking something that we need, the answer is not to create a subsidy to go under, around, or over the obstacle. The answer is to remove the obstacle. And by the way, I think that's true for our entire economy.

Resource development, small business red tape. Instead of trying to subsidize our way around government obstacles, let's get rid of the obstacles and let people build. We should have the cheapest housing anywhere on earth because we have by far the most land per capita. We have 100,000 out-of-work construction workers

who could be doing the building. And we have billions of dollars of developer funds that are ready to build. The only obstacle is government and we need to get government out of the way. You mentioned liberal centralization. In 2012, Stephen Harper, part of this massive reforms

gave cabinet final decision-making ability under its one project, one review process, over then the NEP, which is next year. Fair and say that some of the liberal governments applied very different priorities to that cabinet-centric approach. Last month, or in March, rather, the Business Council of Alberta called on Ottawa to remove political uncertainty by elevating the CER as the final decision-maker for all federally. regulated pipelines. Do you do that? So personnel is policy on this one.

If you put radical net zero zealots in charge of the Canadian energy regulator, then they will block pipelines there. If you put pro-development, common sense people, then they will pass pipelines there at that regulator. It depends who's running the regulator.

And so when I saw that the government was thinking about in its latest discussion paper, here we are a year into the Carney government and we're on the promise of building at unprecedented speeds, they're publishing discussion papers about things they might one day do. One of their ideas was that they're going to move pipelines from the impact assessment office to the energy regulator. I mean, that sounds to me like, you know, please hold while I transfer your call to the next department

At the end of the day, they just need to get rid of the C-69 labyrinth, and they need to make a simple rule. Any project that's exclusively within a province, exclusively affecting that province, should be approved by that province. And any project that crosses interprovincial boundaries or has a national interest should be exclusively approved by the federal government. And then there should be a legislated time limit on approving. And that is ultimately how you're going to get things done. If I'm a foreign investor and I hear, you know, it depends on whether there's Ellison chart or not. That's kind of the point, isn't it?

Yeah. I'm not very, I'm not quite sold on it. You shouldn't be. But that still leaves cabinet in control. So we don't know who's going to be governing. But what I would say in response is that you need to elect, Canadians need to elect a pro-development government if they want development to go ahead.

Because whether or not, if you elect an anti-development government, they will find a way to block things. And if you elect a pro-development government, they will find a way to approve things. So ultimately, Canadians are going to have to elect a government that wants to get things built. No. No to...

My question. To the idea that the cabinet would no longer... I believe, for example, if a project has been blocked by the bureaucracy, I think the federal government should be... be able to override that decision. That the cabinet should be able to override that decision in the public interest because the cabinet is ultimately accountable to the elector. And we need to get closer to democratic accountability and not bureaucratic discretion.

He said to ask only one quick. That's okay. Go ahead. There's a freebie. He gets a freebie. He gets a freebie. A checklist to build a pipeline on social media a couple days ago. Yes.

And I wondered if that was meant to be a bit cheeky or like, like to call out Mark Carney on over-promising, or is that an actual checklist that you believe should have been accomplished by now? It starts with certain indigenous consultations, and then the next step is complete indigenous consultation. Well, these are the steps you currently need in order to get a pipeline built. And I was just encouraging people to examine Mr. Carney's record of actually doing things, rather than signing documents and holding ceremonies.

And, you know, I don't know that Mr. Carney has done one, a single session of indigenous consultations on the Pacific Pipeline. I know he sat down with a group called the Coastal First Nations that doesn't actually represent any coastal First Nations, but gave itself that name. But they're anti-development activists. But we all agree there does need to be Section 35 consultations. were a year into the Carney government,

he claims to want to build the unimaginable at speeds not seen in generations. Has he consulted? Does he have a route? Does he have a start date? Does he have a starting location, a terminus, a construction date?

Do any of those things happen to exist a year after having taken office on this promise of a building bonanza? I'm not aware of any of those things happening. So this was, I just want to admit to be fair, like my first reaction was really, Mr. Pauli of things that you would have done this for now. That is advocating? Absolutely. You would have?

Absolutely. We would have completed a business consultation. Absolutely. A long time ago. Okay. I wanted to ask a question related to Alberta, Saturday. You said today, I'm otherwise that you're an unapologetic Federalist, you're an unapologetic federalist party. you sort of want to cheerily for Canada's as the best country on earth.

Yes. And you've also said there's some legitimate grievances and pressure points feeding Alberta separatism. And I'm wondering how you've seen your role in preserving a unified Canada. I can imagine that he would be a much more persuasive voice from those forces in Alberta and say a central government in Ottawa. So what's your role in keeping this country together? So I think my role is to,

to make the case for the benefits that this country has provided to Albertans over the broad sweep of history. Alberta has been able to become one of the most prosperous places anywhere on earth, in part because it is part of this incredible federation of ours. We have the incredible shared history of winning wars, of settling frontiers, of building a prosperous, peaceful country that literally millions of people around the world want to come to join. But there's another part to that, and it's how much hope we should have for what the country could be. And Mr. Carney is fond of saying that hope is not a plan, but you need to have hope in order to motivate people towards a plan. I want Albertans to understand that this can be

the best place in the world to develop an energy sector, the fastest place to get a permit, ultimately the wealthiest energy driven country anywhere on earth. I also think we should say to Albertans that they deserve to have all the same jurisdictional powers in their own domain that Quebec has. And why not? It doesn't have to take anything away from any other province. So no more asymmetric federalism. Well, I'm not saying that because there might be other provinces that don't want to have that jurisdiction. But if if Albertans choose to have a police force of their own, that's their choice. Quebec has one and Ontario has one, actually. And the same should go for powers on immigration. I don't know why we wouldn't allow the province of Alberta

to have the same immigration powers that Quebec has. I haven't heard a single person. argue against that. And given the way the government of the Canada has managed immigration the last few years, I think the argument is stronger than ever for that. So, you know, none of these things justify separation, but they're hopeful improvements that I think, well, if you did these things, you would inspire a lot of people to, to commit to federalism again. And so that is, that's the hopeful future that I think Alberta has in Canada is a big part of this. Great. I want to ask you about defense. I'm sure you're aware. The PBO pointed out there's sort of, I think the memory service around 60 billion in costs that are likely to materialize by fiscal 2035. Right. How do conservative government pay for that?

Well, as you know, this is going to be a very fun exercise in definitions, right? I mean, we have all the NATO countries have used. a very expansive definition of what constitutes defense spending. The rubber ruler, yes. Yeah. And there's no doubt that there are a lot of pieces of infrastructure, public and even private, that could be put under the defense rubric given the way NATO countries have defined it. So, for example, I mentioned the strategic reserve of minerals and energy.

I believe that's entirely for national defense. and the major expenditures, both public and private, to harvest those minerals from the earth and then store them, all of that should be considered as part of the 5%. And so ultimately, these could be income generating for the government as much as they are spending obligations. And then, so that's how I think we're ultimately going to get to our targets. But I do take, again, another very different philosophical approach on how to execute then does Mr. Carney. I regret that I think he's going down the same bureaucratic path when it comes to defense spending that we're seeing in resources and economic development and sovereign wealth funds and housing. He's got 13 new agencies since he formed government, which is to blow to a bunch of government bureaucracies with the eye to subsidizing corporations.

building multi, very large corporations, when I think the defense, the future of defense is moving in precisely the opposite direction. Look at the warfare in Ukraine. It is not about building big behemoth prime suppliers. It's about super lean, McGiver-like enterprises that produce things at the lowest possible cost. They're literally generating drones for $300 to $1,000 to $1,000. a pop using 3D printers in people's garages. The Iranians have generated these $35,000 Shahid drones, which at the outset of the conflict, we're forcing the Israelis and Americans

to spend 10, 20, 30 times that much to intercept them. There's a company in the Ukraine, who's a president I met with in London. They're releasing balloons into Russia with tinfoil on the bottom of them. One in every hundred has a, an explosive, but the Russians have to shoot down every hundred, every one of the hundred to protect themselves. So basically, the Ukrainians are bombing the Russian bank account by forcing them to

spend a fortune shooting down balloons. So we can't afford to have these monster procurement boondoggles that drag on for 20 years, and we spend 20, 30, 40, 50 billion dollars on something that misses every spending limit and every, and every deadline. that's not how you're going to fight a war, by the way. It's going to be by lean, highly competitive, bottom-up entrepreneurial suppliers with maximum competition and minimized bureaucracy. That's how we're going to get the maximum benefit

for our soldiers and our taxpayers. Just to look back on the NATO funding, though, I take your point on the 1.5% of infrastructure, and there is some flexibility there. But on the core, three and a half, those are military assets of spending. It does look like there's a current, an unfunded liability there. So what would you take on debt?

Would you raise taxes? And if you're going to cut spending, what would you cut to pay for that? Well, overall, we plan to cut the monstrous consulting budget, which is now up over $20 billion. That's well up over 100 percent in a decade. We still need to cut the bureaucracy. By the way, bureaucratic spending is up under Carney, up another 7 percent over Trudeau-era levels. I would cut back on this self-licking ice cream cone of corporate welfare programs. I would further cut back on foreign aid.

We need to rein in the abuse and the supplementary deluxe benefits for false refugees. I would bring in a one-for-one law requiring the government find a dollar of savings for every new dollar of spending. Those are among the things that you will see me cut. to free up funds for, among other things, defense. Let's go back for a second to the question of your caucus. I have two questions. One is about your political future. How will you decide where to run in the next election?

What do you mean, how will I decide? Like which seat? Like which riding? Well, I'm not going to announce it here, but I'll run. No, I'm sorry, I'm not dropping that today, but I'll run in a riding that I think that I can well represent in the House of Commons. And you made reference before to Mr. Carney and time will tell, you won't deliver. In the meantime, though, how do you keep your caucus motivated?

There's a lot of people there who really believed this was their shot. They were going to be cabinet ministers. They were going to lead and govern this country. And I don't think, I'm telling you what you don't already know, that morale is not at its highest at the moment. And there are people who amuse about, How long you can stay on and there's people who news already about who might be trying to what place to you. And what's your question?

How are you going to keep it together in there? So we have two missions. One is to be the official opposition and the other is to be a government awaiting list. So let's break them down. As an official opposition, we fight for people. We fight for the people that voted for us in the last election. That means fighting for affordability. That is the single biggest issue in the country today by,

far in people's lives. We are the only party that offers any serious alternative to the extremely costly environment in which people are trying to raise families, buy homes, feed themselves. So we have to fight for affordability. We have to fight for public safety. The issue of crime is continuing to overwhelm the GTI. I was just at a factory the other day and the owner said his car was ransacked and he found out from the police the day of the next day they arrested the guy and he was released three hours later and stole another car the same day so we have to fight for for public safety we have to fight for strong borders fight for terror free trade with our American counterparts so you know opposition parties don't have power but they have influence and I would we will be

using it to fight for the people that voted for us in the last election I think that is a very inspiring thing. I don't think there are any bad seats in the House of Commons. I think it's a privilege for us to be there on either side of the aisle, and we should use that privilege to fight for people. And then in the next election, we have to run on a credible platform to solve the problems that I just outlined. And I believe that we will do that. I think that, you know, Mr. Carney was partly elected because people thought he would address the problems that his party had created on affordability, resource development and I think there's still a lot of a lot of illusion about what he will eventually do but that illusion can't survive three years it might be able to

survive another year but it can't survive three years and at some point people are going to say well where where are the results you know you said it would be affordable and it's more expensive than ever you said we'd build things and there's still no shovels in the ground you said you'd get the finances on under control, the deficit is doubled. The reality is slowly moving closer, closer to a collision with the illusion. And I think in the next election,

the choice will be whether you want the real deal or you want the government, a party to re-promise doing the opposite of everything that it's done for the prior 14 years. Yeah, the question about, I guess, North American integration versus openness to China or kind of trade diversification. The US, again,

is at least one vision, and we're not totally sure exactly what Trump thinks on a daily basis, but one vision is of a fortress North America, strict rules of origin on auto, more integration on steel,

higher tariff barriers and all of that. The other vision is a Canada that's more open to the world, is trading more with China, inviting Chinese investment into Canada. Where do you sit on that continuum between seeking further integration with the US

versus trying to break apart from that and look at trade and investment relationships with other countries and specifically geopolitical rivals to the U.S. like China? Well, very clearly, it's an illusion to suggest that we can have a permanent rupture with our biggest customer in favor of a strategic partnership for a new world order with the dictatorship in Beijing, a dictatorship that Mr. Carney identified as the single biggest threat to Canada

when he was asked during the last election. So we trade 20 times more with the American. than we do with China. There is no scenario where we replace the U.S. market with the Chinese market or any other individual market for that matter. So that's why our first priority has to be tariff-free trade with the U.S. We should be able to trade and talk with China. It's a magnificent civilization. The growth in that economy over the last half century has been literally unprecedented. We've never seen anything like it. And they will continue to grow. We hope that we hope that. We hope that they will grow politically towards a more Western friendly and democratic posture,

although we haven't yet seen it. So we trade and talk with them, but we have to keep our guard up and we can never allow ourselves to become reliant on Chinese technology, refined minerals, or other essential products that determine our national security. There's a number of very different philosophies out there today. all contending for the title of conservatism. In some case, it's quite incompatible. So you have the sort of populist protectionist version of the states and in some other countries,

you have the classic sort of Reagan, Thatcher, free market, classical liberalism version of conservatives. You have a very boisterous young group of conservatives nowadays in Canada saying we have to have a very strong cultural conservatism led by the state that would intervene very aggressively on cultural questions. What does conservatism mean to you? Well, my outlook on the political spectrum, I just broaden it briefly and then I'll zero in, is that traditionally, we were very blessed in Canada in that liberals believed in liberty and conservatives believed in conserving it.

And where we've seen a divergence in the last just over a decade has been a very sharp move by the liberal party outside of the mainstream towards an illiberal ideology of government. control. And that includes economic, but also cultural and political controls. We see it with the one bill after another that seems to control what people can say on the internet, what kind of religious values they're allowed to espouse. Conservatism today, therefore, has to continue to be true to the conservation of freedom. And that is the unifying principle of our coalition.

and that freedom is various kinds. There's economic freedom, which I've been a long champion, long been a champion. There is freedom of expression and civil liberties, which we've championed over the last five years and had to champion over the last five years. There is religious freedom, and there is now modern issues of internet freedom. I think that that principle unites our coal. coalition. It's the Venn diagram. For example, social conservatives treasure the freedom of parents to choose for their kids and places of worship to define their own teachings. Fiscal conservatives,

Western oil region conservatives all share the love of economic freedom. So I think that that is the foundational, the foundational pillar that unites our coalition. And we ultimately need to have less government and more freedom for our people. And I would just take a moment to celebrate the success of the Conservative Party, the relative success of the conservative party

compared to other center right movements around. Look at what has happened, you know. And I appreciate questions about, you know, the state of our caucus and so on, but take a look around. How is the Liberal Party in Australia doing? How are the Tories doing? in the UK vis-a-vis the Reform Party.

Look at what's happened in France, in Germany. We're one of the few parties, right-centered-right parties all around the world that, despite some bumps in the road, is overwhelmingly still united under one party banner, where we have kept all of the different types of conservatives in one party,

and I consider that to be a big achievement. And why is that? What have you done differently as a party than these other conservatives? parties in these other countries. What explains your relative success then? I think we've taken the Venn diagram and said where do where do they all of the different branches of conservatim overlap and then we've obsessed over those areas rather than going outside of the diagram to favor just an exclusively one branch of

conservatism and that has been kind of a unifying exercise. You talked about this idea of being a government in ways and I'm just wondering how you do both things. Like, how do you appeal to the center-left and left-leaning Canadians without losing the support of your base? I don't know, like, and I, we're all guilty of using the term left, right, center.

I have a very hard time even defining what it means. You know, if you go to, you look at the riding of Timmons. You know, in 2019, it was overwhelmingly NDP. huge shift to the PPC in 2021, and then all that vote came conservative in 2025. Do you call that right, left or center? I don't know what you would call the voters who went from the NDP to the PPC to the conservative.

So I don't know that I look at the electorate as being on a single one-dimensional spectrum. I think it's far more complicated than that. We need to be the party of the working class. And we largely achieve that in the last election as you saw the huge gains in Windsor, London, the Niagara region, all across southwestern Ontario. We need to build upon that. We also need to reach out and show that this is a party that speaks to the well-being of folks who are, you know, live in places like Burlington and Mississauga Lakeshore

to let them know that their businesses can be even more successful if there's a conservative government, their streets can be safer, that their lives can be better. And I would say that we should have an issue-based approach rather than an ideological spectrum-based approach. I'm thinking of like, moms in the suburbs who are very worried about crime. I don't know where you put them on the left, right spectrum. I think they're just common sense. And we need to go to them and speak in their language about how their kids and their families are going to be safe.

The guy who is worried about losing his job in Windsor, again, I don't know where you put him on the spectrum. He might be a member of uniform, but he's also a hunter. Well, he needs to know that I'm championing his job and his way of life. And I think in that taking that approach will have far more success than trying to trying to parcel up the electorate along a political science spectrum. Can I also sorry. Please. What made you want to do this interview?

Feels like you're doing more media interviews recently. I'm just curious why. My approach is to talk to everyone everywhere. And so across the spectrum, you know, you saw me speak to everyone from. Peter Mansbridge to Joe Rogan. I heard Mansbridge was upset, though I didn't bring him a kettlebell. I'm going to tell him I'm going to be driving up to Stratford this summer with a gift. But I just think the approach of speaking as broadly and openly as possible is the best one going forward.

So we've heard lots of information, a lot of the differences between conservatives and liberals. But I'm wondering, can you tell us something that you think that you and Mark Carney agree on? Well, we clearly both love the country. We have a, I think we, you know, on a personal level, we're both dads. So I think, you know, we love our families. And I'm sure that spills over into our political values. On public policy issues, look, I, you know, I think that we both want the country to be autonomous. and independent while having as much terror-free access to other countries as possible.

But I think we have different views on how to get there. But as much as I respect him personally, I don't think that we have a ton of ideological overlap. I think that he is as different from the conservative philosophy as his predecessor was. he's just a lot more business-like about it. And when you look beyond the style and at the substance, I think the disagreements, particularly on economics, spending, size of government, interference in the marketplace,

I think those disagreements are quite stark, respectful, but stark. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. It was very illuminating. Appreciate it very much. Thank you. I enjoyed it. Have a good weekend. A good long weekend.

Yes, yes. It'll start soon. Well earned.