The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 273. Conservative Resistance in Canada | Roman Baber

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

Canadian Politician Roman Baber joins Dr Peterson to discuss the state of the Conservative Party in Canada and their approach to climate change, and the devastating hit Canada's reputation has taken at the international level.Roman Baber is a former Member of Ontario's Provincial Parliament. He is running for Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada because he will not "sit back while Canadians are losing faith in Canada's democracy and Canadian opportunity." He was removed by Doug Ford from the Ontario government caucus after calling out the collateral harm of lockdowns in January 2021. Since then, Roman has been a staunch advocate in favour of a balanced covid response and in particular against lockdowns due to their toll on the health and mental health of Canadians. Roman brought legislation to cut MPP pay to CERB levels while Emergency Orders are in place, commenced and is in litigation against the Attorney General of Ontario over Canadians' right to protest and worship outdoors and recently brought a Bill to outlaw workplace mandates. Roman is passionate about and is well familiar with justice, transit and autism policy.Roman was born and lived in the former Soviet Union until he was almost 9. He then lived in Israel until he immigrated to Canada with his family at age 15 and settled in the heart of the north Toronto district he now represents. Roman obtained a BA from York University and graduated from law school at the University of Western Ontario. During his last year of law school, Roman was a supervisor with the school's legal aid funded clinic. Roman was called to the Ontario Bar in 2006 and practiced civil and commercial litigation until his election in 2018. He served as Chair of the Ontario Provincial Parliament’s Standing Committee on Justice Policy from September 2019 until January 2021.Roman is an occasional lecturer at an after-school program, engaging high school students on constitutional and criminal law topics. He loves Canadian kindness, the Toronto Raptors and his special someone, Nancy Marchese.—Links— Visit Roman’s Website: Joinroman.caFollow Roman on Twitter: @Roman_BaberMeet Roman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIYipQID1t8&t=8sGoodRanchers.com/Peterson or use code: PETERSON at checkout!Get $30 Off + Free Shipping!ExpressVPN.com/JordanGet 3 Months FREE!// SUPPORT THIS CHANNEL // Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/jordanbpeterson.co... Donations: https://jordanbpeterson.com/donate // COURSES // Discovering Personality: https://jordanbpeterson.com/personality Self Authoring Suite: https://selfauthoring.com Understand Myself (personality test): https://understandmyself.com // BOOKS // Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life: https://jordanbpeterson.com/Beyond-Order 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos: https://jordanbpeterson.com/12-rules-... Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief: https://jordanbpeterson.com/maps-of-m... // LINKS // Website: https://jordanbpeterson.com Events: https://jordanbpeterson.com/events Blog: https://jordanbpeterson.com/blog Podcast: https://jordanbpeterson.com/podcast // SOCIAL // Twitter: https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson Instagram: https://instagram.com/jordan.b.peterson Facebook: https://facebook.com/drjordanpeterson Telegram: https://t.me/DrJordanPeterson All socials: https://linktr.ee/drjordanbpeterson#JordanPeterson #JordanBPeterson #DrJordanPeterson #DrJordanBPeterson #DailyWirePlus #Psychology

Hello everyone. As you may or may not know and probably don't, Canada is in the midst of a leadership race for its federal conservative party. The federal conservatives in Canada are generally the second most likely political party in Canada to govern at the federal and the provincial levels. Recently, as a consequence of the aftermath of the trucker's convoy, the conservative party blew up in some sense in Canada. The leader resigned and a new slate of contenders is now vying for leadership position.

I spoke with one of them recently, Pierre Pauliev, who's currently the front runner, and I extended an invitation to the other candidates to speak with me. Mr. Roman Babber took me up on that. He's currently, as I said, a candidate for leadership of Canada's Federal Conservative Party. He's a former member of Ontario's provincial parliament.

He was removed most infamously by Ontario Premier Doug Ford from that provincial government caucus after calling out the collateral harm of lockdowns in January 2021. Since then, Mr. Bobber has been a staunch advocate in favor of a balanced COVID response and such emergency responses. And in particular, against lockdowns due to their toll on the health and mental health of Canadians, Roman also brought legislation to cut MPP, member of provincial parliament pay to Canadian emergency response benefit levels, while emergency orders are in place. Commence and is in litigation against the Attorney General of Ontario over

Canadians' right to protest and worship outdoors, and recently put forward a bill to outlaw workplace mandates. He is running for leader of the Conservative Party of Canada because he does not wish to quote, sit back while Canadians are losing faith in Canada's democracy and Canadian opportunity. Thank you very much, Mr. Babber, for coming to talk to me today, and I'm looking forward to a provocative discussion. Good to be with you, Jordan. So let's start with a question that I thought was handled very badly by the Conservatives

during the last federal debate. The debate was during the election that Trudeau precipitously called. The debate was framed around five issues, and one of the things I thought the Conservatives did extraordinarily badly was to allow the progressives essentially to dictate the terms of the debate, to dictate the topics. So one of the things I wanted to ask you, you're cont dictate the terms of the debate, to dictate the topics. So one of the things I wanted to ask you, you're contending for leadership of the conservative party and hypothetically for Prime Minister's ship of Canada. What do you think the most crucial issues facing Canadians today are?

I think like in much of the Western world, it's the erosion of Canada's democracy that I fear very much and that propelled me to enter into this race. I'm seeing unprecedented erosion, whether it's by way of censorship. We have I have social media giants, also censoring speech. Then, as many of you know, I have been very saddened by the fact that close to 20% of Canadians are treated as effectively second-class citizens. I made the choice that most Canadians have made, but that doesn't mean that we should impose our choice on others. In fact, we've never done that as Western civilization. We're seeing an unlawful invocation of the emergency's act that was predicated in false propositions voted on after the alleged emergency was over,

clearly without meeting the matter of the law, which suggests that you don't need it if you have other legislation to deal with. So, Jordan, I think that if you don't have democracy, you don't need it if you have other legislation to deal with. So, Jordan, I think that if you don't have democracy, you don't have anything. And I'm very, very concerned about where we're headed. So, what makes you think that this concern is warranted? I mean, you're from the former Soviet Union. So, you have experience with such things that your family does certainly.

You talked about censorship. We could go into that with Bill C-11 in particular, which is a stunningly overreaching piece of legislation, no matter how you slice it, and will be absolutely impossible to oppose. What makes you think that we're actually facing something serious in Canada in relationship to our democratic freedoms. And why should people assume that this isn't just a, you know, what, what a scandal is talking point that the conservatives are using to drum up interest in the leadership race? What do you see happening? Well, as they would say in Latin, look, you said, look at her, it speaks for itself. You see it before your very eyes. Government is passing legislation which would dictate,

which would manipulate what Canadians see online, giving the CRTC, which is our broadcast regulator, even more power to determine what we may not see. We see government also picking winners and losers in the media in that we know that we do not have effectively free and independent media in Canada because it's heavily subsidized. The government bailed out the media a couple of years ago and continuous with annual subsidies. How can you have free and independent media when the

media signs its paycheck? Yeah, well, let's drill down into that a little bit. So the Canadian federal government subsidizes the CBC to the tune of between $1.2 and $1.5 billion a year for a shrinking market of virtually no viewers. And then seems to also, in some sense, collude with the CBC to produce news pieces that are in keeping with government legislation, and then to refer to those pieces of legislation for proof that the legislation being covered was actually necessary to begin with. And then there's this broader pattern of subsidizing media in general.

And to me, this is reminiscent of what's technically termed fascism because fascism comes from fascist to bind together and fascism is collusion of elites, right? So government, media, corporation, colluding together to produce a kind of monolith. What would Pierre Pauliev on my podcast when I interviewed him famously, or infamously said that he would defund the CBC. And so what's your take on that from a policy perspective? So it's important for you, as you mentioned, to understand I was born in the former Soviet Union and we didn't leave until I was almost nine. I still have a very good recollection about that communist regime. Specifically, there was a newspaper called Pravda.

Pravda means truth in the Russian language. And so Pravda would be plastered all over walls and buildings and subway stations, and it would essentially be government talking points. And what we've seen particularly in last two or three years is that government was effectively repeating, sorry, media was effectively repeating government talking points, particularly as it came to the public health exercise. But I would say beyond that, so we don't only have this funding of the CBC, which I will

end before lunchtime, we also have bailouts and subsidies of a number of other stakeholders in the media. And on top of that, we're now seeing an unprecedented move for media buys. Government has become one of the biggest advertisers on all news and media platforms. And there's an old rule in the ad game, he or she who pays for the ad, gets their narrative across. And so I would not just defund the C game, he or she who pays for the ad gets their narrative across. And so I would not just define the CBC, I will also end the bailouts and the subsidies

and I will limit the way that government is able to advertise on all platforms. You make sure your viewers fully agree and understand that free and independent media is one of the most important checks and balances we have in our democracy because it is, in fact, vested with the responsibility to put a check in government, something we're simply not seeing in Canada, which I think in large part resulted in the catastrophe that our village has transpired over the last two years. Yeah, well, you know, we have the continual suspension of parliament in Canada, which is a catastrophe that's now being extended essentially another year in an absolutely unprecedented and unwarranted

move. And so the possibility for genuine opposition to the Trudeau government's policies has been dramatically reduced on the parliamentary front. And now we have this situation where the press, which, and even the CBC in years past, was at least under some circumstances. And what would you say, an effective, critical of the, of the,

of governmental policies, both federal and provincial. And also saw that as their sacred duty, let's say, that seems to have gone entirely by the wayside. And so that means Canadians are in a position. I saw this with the truckers, Cornvoy. You know, when Trudeau called them misogynists and bigots, and that they were attempting in some sense to foment a coup, my sense that was that Canadians had a really hard option in front of them, which was to either decide that their prime minister was a complete liar and that the federal government had become untrustworthy as an institution, along with all

the legacy media outlets, or that the truckers were reprehensible, misogynists and bigots, and many Canadians decided to take the latter stance. But it's not surprising to me because our institutions had been pretty sound for about 150 years, and it's a bitter pill for Canadians to swallow to understand that that in some real sense may no longer be the case. You cannot underestimate the role that the media plays in every day Canadian discourse. You said yourself at the commencement of this interview, that conservatives have difficulty reframing the debate. In fact, liberals frame the debate very, very well. And so it seems like we're fighting every election on their ground instead of talking about issues that may be important to us. And so there is no question that media has a large part in how the daily conversation goes on, which is why it's so apparent that we keep it independent and objective by

ending all financial relationship between government and the media, but back to the truckers. Jordan, everything the Trudeau government said about the Ottawa Convoy turned out to be false. The arson was not connected. There were no weapons... That was a huge lie, man. There was no weapons found anywhere near the site. There was very little foreign funding, about 10 to 12 percent, and all of it was small donations. And there was no foreign collusion.

And it's on the strength of those misrepresentations that a lot of Canadians formed public opinion. And on the strength of those misrepresentations that the government tried to justify, the invocation of the Emergency Act, which is the successor of the War Measures Act, that hasn't been invoked since the 70s. And so this particular piece of legislation was invoked for the first time. This is, of course, an up front to democracy, but it's important in how you stated that it was, in fact, the CBC but it's important in how you stated that it was in fact the CBC that raised the prospect of foreign collusion. And one or two cabinet ministers pointed to evidence in the media in support of their

suggestion that there was foreign collusion. So the government is finding the media. The media is speculating and is often wrong, the government is predicating action on the basis of such media speculation and then justifies it's invasive and very undemocratic action. So I think we're in real trouble here and we've got to rethink all of this. Well, Trudeau, it seems to me that Trudeau believes his own press releases in some real sense. And I'm not actually quite as cynical about that as I might be because I don't think

it's possible to generate a web of deception around you, a web of instrumental deception around you and simultaneously maintain your distance from that. And so I think when he feeds stories to the CBC and then the CBC feeds them back, he believes it. It's not merely cynical. It's that he's trapped up in his own web of deception. I think we've been seen last couple of years. One of the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes is that the pedal half truths or things that often are not true, but quite often they tend to believe in the system that people around them are made to buy into those half truths because that essentially strengthens the system. And we've seen that largely in our public health exercise.

We've seen, for instance, that, and even I'm talking about objective facts, facts that we understood pretty well. For instance, we knew that the modeling was not reliable. The modeling was consistently overly aggressive. They would meet some of the metrics like cases, but we understood very early that the factor by which you have to multiply all the categories we're interested in, like hospitalizations or deaths, was constantly overstated. But despite that, even though time and time again, the modelers were wrong, the government continued to this pervasive fear, this belief that we have to

continue down this very aggressive path of mitigation that of course resulted in a catastrophe. Well, and a catastrophe that hasn't ended yet because the fact that we disrupted supply chains, we're still going to pay for that. And I was thinking the other day too, you know, because we locked everything down around the whole world, that also meant that political leaders didn't get to meet face-to-face. And so in some real sense, Putin, for example, was taken out of the face-to-face discussions that

might have also otherwise occurred for a period of a couple of years. And God only knows what that did to savage Russia-Western relationships. So we, like the consequences of this lockdown have not by any stretch of the imagination come to an end yet. Now you got tossed out of the Doug Ford conservative provincial caucus because of your vociferous objection to the lockdown. So let's go into that for a bit. What happened there and why did it come to blows, so to speak?

And what's been the consequence of that for you? And what should Canadians think about that? I started feeling a lot more optimistic about the risk of COVID early in May 2020. Public health came in and said, look, first of all, 80% almost 80% of everyone that regretfully passed away were in long-term care homes in garden good settings. So, okay, that's that's of course tragic. So, let's focus our resources on long-term care into infection protocol and control instead of locking down healthy people and making them sick. The second Of course, tragic. So let's focus our resources on long-term care into infection protocol and control

instead of locking down healthy people and making them sick. The second element we learned very early is that the virus was considerably more transmissible than we thought. And that was actually good news because that meant that there was the infection rate was considerably higher than previously thought. And that means that the metrics that we're worried about, like hospitalizations, like deaths, like mortality, is significantly lower. And of course, I thought that we're going to potentially pivot our response because there's no question that locking down healthy people, delaying their surgeries, canceling cancer screenings, and of course, locking down the economy is probably not going

to be good for our health and mental health. And as time went on in 2020, I started hearing more and more of some of those unintended consequences of lockdown. And so I had difficulty towards the end of 2020 to continue to not be able to speak out on something that I felt defined our generation. I worked very, it is well known that I worked very hard within my government to try and steer them into a different course. But in early January, I realized that we're probably not going to turn.

And all I wanted to do during this to start a conversation because there was no conversation. People were afraid to tell their best friend that their kid is depressed because that would render you a grammar killer of some sort. And I was hoping that by issuing this public letter, a conversation would start, would ensue, and in fact, thankfully, it started. What I was also hoping for is that a lot more leaders would follow, a lot more business leaders, political leaders, union leaders, train leaders, whoever, academic leaders, but unfortunately that did not happen much because of this culture of fear that has gagged everyone

into silence. And so since then, I've been asked to leave caucus. I lost my chairmanship of the Justice Committee, but I'm at peace with my decision, and I'm grateful that I've been able to give a voice to many Canadians. Yeah, well, I mean, Ford obviously piloted Ontario well enough to, in the minds of the constituents, to win an overwhelming majority in the last election. And so he steered a course that seemed to be in accord with the desires of the people. Were you surprised? Now I have been personally unhappy, at least to some degree, with the degree to which

Mr. Ford has co-seed up to the federal liberals. And also appalled at some of the legislation, for example, that his Minister of Education has proposed. I think that was Bill C67, which is an absolutely appalling piece of legislation, likely to die in an in any case, but that's not precisely the point. What was your personal experience like trying to make the case that you made and then running into opposition from your former compatriots? It's interesting to know that and I of course will not reveal any names or or details and I will not breach confidentiality of my former caucus, but I will say that it's well known that many have in fact shared my view, including at

times even the previous himself. And it's regretful. And I found it incredibly regretful that we didn't have the courage, we didn't have the political courage to say enough, we have to reassess our response because we're clearly harming people, right? If this was tax policy or if we were dealing with you know highway construction and Fine, I understand why some people might be more inclined to do politics than others But when it comes to human life and that's that's what I tried to stress in the sexer size subsequent to my

Expulsion from the conservative caucus I've been subjected to what I try to stress in the sexerc care about life or you want to compromise life. But I think it's precisely the opposite. It was an attempt to save lives. And in fact, I think that this entire exercise of last couple of years, dehumanized so many people around the world. In fact, as we try to convey this collective sense goal of safetyism, what we've in fact done

is the opposite, is we've compromised human life, we've compromised human ingenuity, we've compromised, we've progressed our children considerably. So the goal was to take a holistic view, and so that's what I'm upset by my friends. Given recent SCOTUS wins, it feels like the pendulum may be swinging back to a time when the nuclear family was situated at the center of American life. Where real conversation, learning and growth began at home, President Ronald Reagan said in his farewell address that all great change in America begins around the dinner table. Well, all great meals in America begin with good ranchers.

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So start bringing people back to the table with high quality American meat. Go to goodranchors.com slash Peterson to get $30 off your first order plus free shipping. That's goodranchers.com slash Peterson. So I have it on good authority that a lot of the decision making around COVID policy, specifically in Ontario, but also at the federal level, was not based on so-called following the science, which is not an easy thing to do in any case, but on continually conducted opinion polls. And that's problematic to me for two reasons. Number one, as a psychologist and a research psychologist, I know perfectly well that asking people questions to find out what

they really think is unbelievably difficult. And so the way you formulate the question to a large part determines the response you're going to get. So for example, when Trudeau, here's a good indication, when Trudeau clamped down on the truckers, the polls indicated that most Canadians supported his decision. But at the same time, the polls indicated that his popularity had plummeted. And so what in the world are you supposed to make of that if you're polling? And so if you're a political leader and your your guidance is polls, first of all, you're relying on something that's unbelievably unreliable. Short-term sampling of public whim done badly by people who don't have the

psychological credibility to answer the questions properly. And then as you said, you have a proclivity to forego your principles. Now, I know that the Doug Ford government, as well as the federal liberals, was relying on pull data to make their decisions. And so you said even the Premier agreed with you, at least in private, in relationship to the appalling consequences of the lockdowns and the abdication of political responsibility to healthcare experts. So why didn't they have the courage of their convictions? Politics. Politics is, as I often say, stupid, it's stupid politics, right? Because there's no indication that following the polls in that matter actually constitutes a reasonable way forward.

So politics is the right on government. It's a cause of almost everything that's bad with government. And I hope that we get to get into that in a moment. But back to opinion polling for a moment. What's important to appreciate is that a lot of that opinion is also shaped by government itself and media. Well, of course. And what we saw during the COVID pandemic was a vicious cycle in that you had public health come out.

Of course, the media would pick up on that and would spread fear. The public would react with fear. The government would feel that intuitively and would act in response to that fear, even when it was completely unwarranted and it was objectively unwarranted. And then in order to justify its own decisions subsequent to the fact, the government would add more fear to justify its action. And so on it went. You know, this is exactly why we don't have direct democracy. You know, we have a parliamentary democracy. So there's a bit of a space put in between government policy and public feedback and response because I think

I think the reliance on opinion polls as a replacement for parliament does inevitably especially in social media mediated times with the acceleration of communication it does inevitably produce these kinds of vicious circle vicious cycle feedback loops that you just described vicious cycle feedback loops that you just described. When when you don't have objective media, questioning the government, right? Because because the only thing we've heard over the course of this pandemic is, are you doing enough? Are you doing it fast enough? Are you saving enough lines? How?

Why haven't you acted sooner and so on and so forth? Instead of asking, is any of this effective? Is any of this making sense? Are you factoring in the collateral harm of what you're doing? That was never asked. Right. Which is the job. That's the fundamental job of politicians right there.

Because they abdicated their responsibility to these public health experts and decided that this narrow target, the narrow targets that you described, trumped every other political and economic consideration in the short, medium and long term. There's an absolute abdication of political and legislative responsibility in the face of this, well, what turned out to be not so overwhelming threat and a collapse of our

institutions as a consequence. The abdication responsibility was to their constituents, was to the people that put them in office. And I've said before, anyone with a working cell phone would have understood the mental health catastrophe. Of course, the economic catastrophe, the collapse of health care. I think one of the greatest legacies

of our pandemic response is going to be the collapse of health care in Canada. And we're seeing that to some extent around the world, we have a trauma. We have a post trauma in the workforce and that includes healthcare. We see that we have a lot of conditions that went on diagonals. They are now catching up with us. We're diagnosing cancer a lot later than we should be. And so what they have done,

what the political classes done, in fact, the ladies, they've advocated their responsibility, their constituents, and why did they do that? For politics, they were afraid that they're going to be canceled by the radical COVID, I call it the COVID mob, that would cancel them on Twitter, that would dehumanize them or say that they don't care about lives.

And that's what effectively they try to do to me is they, a lot of politicians figured that they may be asked to leave their own government caucuses or caucuses if they went against the grain. And they're in lies the classical agency conflict of politics in that it's inevitable regretfully that politicians continue to put themselves in their offices and their careers and their aspirations ahead of what's what's right for their constituents. And and know where it has been true before I think to the extent that it has been with our COVID response. to the extent that it has been with our COVID response. So did this, the fact that you did get mobbed and excluded, let's say, did that shake your faith in, well, you said it didn't shake your faith

in what you had to say, what did it do to your opinions of your political colleagues and to your sense of the functionality of the political process in general in Canada. Look, thankfully, I've been able to survive as I call it the COVID-Mom and I've continued to work ever since. articulating sensible moderate propositions that if people want to, for instance, avail themselves of the benefit that the vaccine offers, then they're certainly welcome to do so. But that doesn't mean that they should force anyone else to do anything that they don't want to do. We've just never done that before as Western civilization.

You can acknowledge that the virus can be very, very risky to certain demographics, but you can also be reasonable and say, look, it's not about how many people get COVID. It's about who gets COVID, because we all have different risk positions. And so that's what's missing is that we could have overcome this public health emergency, probably in a much better way, if we just allowed for some sensible conversation, which we haven't. And so I'm grateful for the fact that I've

been able to continue to speak on behalf of millions of Canadians. And that, I think, in part, has brought me to today, in that I feel that we need to have the courage as a conservative party to say what we believe and do what we believe is right. And that, I think. How do you think, how do you think, can, okay, so the conservatives, I've talked to in Canada

over the last 10 years, they do have this terror of the mob. Each of them privately is afraid that they'll be targeted as you were by the woke mob and taken out and that they'll be abandoned by their colleagues in doing so. And that has put conservatives to say it, put them on the defensive, is to say almost nothing. It's put them unbelievably on the defensive. Why in the world did they decide, first of all, how do you think conservatives might be able to protect themselves against that? And second, why in the world did Ford and his people think that the right approach to take to you was to like dispense with you in some sense.

Why couldn't your conversation, your objections be part of the ongoing conversation? Why did they have to take such a drastic move. Look to conservatives that fear speaking their minds they need to do some self reflection and determine why they got into this business right and what is it the differentiated us traditionally from the liberal party? Is that we stuck to the principle of principles, right? We never sought popularity. We never sought to be populists and appeal to the most common denominator. Instead, we sought to implement sensible policy. And so if the goal is to say what's popular and win elections,

then we lost the hard and sold the Conservative Party, we do not deserve, we have not earned the vote of Canadians. So they need to think about why they got into this business and do some self-reflection. And the second element of that is that those that are determined to do right by their constituents and to do right by Canadians, leadership needs to give them cover. They need to know that they are free to speak their mind and do the right thing without suffering reprisal. And so you can't restore democracy in our country without restoring parliamentary democracy as well. It's something that I'm very passionate about. I, like I often say, look, I don't work for the boss, I work for constituents, and that's what I'll expect, if should I

win the leadership of my caucus as well. I'm not going to penalize NNP for introducing legislation. That's their parliamentary right, even if I'll vote against it. I'm not going to, I'm not going to punish them for disagreeing with me because they're not expected to parody me, they're expected to serve the people, they elected them. Otherwise, what do you even need parliament for? They could just vote by proxy or just all the other. Well, increasingly, we don't need parliament, right? I mean, our federal government is doing everything it possibly can to make parliament merely and, what, and an unnecessary impediment to their woke utopian future.

And we're headed down that road very rapidly. Well, that is a disaster. And so parliamentary democracy, it's important to understand that it spills to other institutions, right? You have a lot of close cooperation with industry and you have close corporations with regulators. And so if the people around start ascensing

that there is no more dissent that is allowed, and that's in fact what in part I think contributed very much to the prevailing COVID response in that people in positions to disagree and in fact affect a different outcome like the colleges or physicians, like the colleges or nurses, like the teachers just decided that no, we're going to stick to the messaging and we're not going to allow

for any descent. I'm of the view that if regulated health professionals were able to freely articulate their view on concerns over the last couple of years, we would have been out of this mess. Yeah, that's gone completely out the window. So what's happened among the, for healthcare professionals, speaking as one, is that the colleges have become weaponized, and so that anyone who has a dissenting voice of any sort medically on the nursing front, social workers, psychologists, if they dare a voice at dissenting opinion,

the college will come down in them hard with at, so the college is the professional body that regulates independently in some sense of the government regulates these professions. Anyone in the world can take out a complaint against me, for example, as a psychologist, for any reason whatsoever because of something I said. And the college will launch an investigation that tangles me up in six months worth of legal trouble and substantive expense. So, and I've talked to many physicians who are absolutely unwilling to say what they think

about health, the health of their patients and about public health in general, because they are petrified that the college will make their life a living hell and destroy their enterprise. I've had multiple conversations with the regulated health professionals that wanted to speak out but did not have courage to do so because they fasted those professional repercussions. But it's important in this discussion, not to the side of the fact that discussion and expression is not just important for democracy.

It's also very important for public policy. Right? How can we make, how can we make informed decisions when our field of opinions is limited? Don't you want a greater baseline of opinions so you can consider, so you can weigh your options, informed options, and then come to some sort of consensus as to what's reasonable. But when you have a, when you have silence, when you don't have opinion, you inevitably have blind spots,

intentionally or unintentionally. And so it's not just back for democracy. It's terrible for public policy. Right, right. Well, that was also less, we need to be reminded the, one of the major points of parliament was to flesh out the ideas on a broad, across the broad range of political ideas in as broad a manner as possible to make policy more subtle and nuanced and targeted

and appropriate. It's, it's part of the process of thinking. It, it's true not just for politics. It, it's, It's true for business. If you're coaching a sports team and it's true for academia, right? And any good manager will tell you that the best thing they can do for their businesses is probably to surround themselves with folks that might disagree with them from time to time.

And so I don't know why we resent that in government. This uniformity of message. Well, Trudeau told us why when he told us that he admired the Chinese Communist Party for their efficiency and decision-making capacity in relationship to such things as environmental policy. Why bother with all that messy process of consultation and thought, when you already have the answers handed down on high, and all you need to do is implement them as quickly as possible. It's interesting because that moment, I think, defined him very much, and we're seeing that hubris, that arrogance, almost there, I say, thuggish approach to others that we're seeing displayed from the prime minister, which is why he's not.

He has no, I don't know if Canadians have any idea at all what a devastating hit the international reputation of our country has taken. And so all of the Eastern Europeans, I met a lot of Eastern European politicians in my last two or through Eastern Europe, and they are utterly appalled by what's happened in Canada. And then in the United States, even among the Democrats in the United States, the fact that Trudeau dared to suggest that American Republicans financed what was essentially an insurrection attempt on Canada's capital is something so jaw-dropping, like I said, even to the leftists in the US, the

liberals, and the leftists, that it's appalling and absurd nature can hardly be overstated. And then I'm thinking too, from a strategic perspective, although I don't think he ever does, thinks strategically, it's obvious to anyone with eyes that the Democrats are going to get absolutely lambasted in November. And that means that, and then probably in the next presidential election as well. And so in all likelihood, Canada is facing a conservative slash Republican-dominated monolith in the United States on the governmental front for the next four or five years after Biden departs. And that means the Trudeau essentially alienated the biggest ally that Canada has by accusing those very same people of fomenting of all the absurd things,

a anti-democratic insurrection in Canada. It's just boggles the bind. And then for him to have frozen bank accounts as part of the emergency act, that there isn't. I don't think I talked to anyone in the entire world over the last four months who thought that that was anything approximating, adjustable, no, let's not say justifiable. Anything other than an absolutely catastrophic decision, it shook everyone's faith in the foundations of both Canadian democracy and the Canadian financial system. My first, when I first started practicing law at a law school, I practiced commercial litigation primarily. And so I was in the receiving end of bank account frozen and knife rose a number of accounts. And it's so difficult to do so in in Canada or the United States. You have to meet a very high evidentiary threshold to ask the court to freeze a bank account.

And here essentially bank accounts of Canadians were frozen on a phone call, right? With no trial, with no trial, no hearing, for something that was made richer actively, arguably unlawful, right? It was retroactively unlawful. And it wasn't just bad for our democracy. It was terrible for investor confidence. We know that there was a very material risk of a run on the bank. And it's not clear that any of that in any circumstance was warranted.

But I want to make an interesting point further to you suggesting that there is still an European pro-Limitarians that doubt whether Canada's a democracy anymore. So you're correct. Generally, I think that our reputation around the world has suffered immensely. And so my view on foreign affairs

is we don't have the credibility to opine on world events anymore until we fix our democracy at home, which is what my run for the Conservative leadership is predicated on. But it's also issuing European Canadians, not just them, but I like to joke that if you're from an Eastern European blog and myself included, you have been very nervous about what you've been seeing for the last couple of years. And that, that really scares me. And I'm often asked, do I see any similarities between what I'm seeing in Canada today and what I saw in the Soviet Union as a kid?

And I'd say, jokingly sure, I mean, the lineups to the liquor store, that's always a classic. That's a classic. But beyond that, it's when government engages in remarkable activity that is predicated on a false narrative, when it does extraordinary things very honorous, high-handed, running rough shot over people, knowing that the pretense for such action. The narrative for such is false. That's indicative of those authoritarian regimes. And as I said to you, we knew we kept treating the virus as if this was still March or April 2020, as if we didn't learn anything.

We continued this honorous response on a false narrative. And that's what probably scares me most, because if you can engage in, if government can engage in a remarkable action on false narrative, then it can do essentially whatever it wants for as long as it wants. Yeah, well, it's going to do the Trudeau government is going to do exactly the same thing

on the environmental front. And there's absolutely no doubt about that. And they're going to ride this idiot quasi-communist anti-capitalist ethos that they're pushing like mad to the ultimate degree. We've already seen most recently this week some of the consequences of that unfolding similar actions, let's say unfolding in Holland where the farmers, although they haven't got much unfolding in Holland where the farmers, although they haven't got much media coverage, surprise, surprise, are doing in Holland something or in the Netherlands something very similar to what the truckers did in Canada. So the Dutch government has made it very difficult for farmers to

plie their trade because all they're doing after all is growing food and who's going to need that, let's say, come fall when there's terrible shortage. And so we're seeing the consequences of this top-down, heavy authoritarian governance style in Western countries all over the world. You probably already know that there are data brokers out there selling your internet data off to companies who want to serve you a targeted ad. But you might be surprised to learn that they're also selling your information to the department of Homeland Security and the IRS. Mask your digital footprint and protect yourself with ExpressVPN.

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with the best VPN money can buy. Visit expressvpn.com slash Jordan right now and get three extra months free. That's expressvpn.com slash Jordan. Look, I think to some extent, now is an opportunity to have a conversation with Canadians, with, I think throughout the world, about where the radical left and radical left-wing ideology has gotten us over the last couple of years. I am seeing a sense of optimism, because I think the media is actually turning on Justin Trudeau.

We certainly see a different conversation in the United States. And so I have a cause for optimism that we can get around this. But it's important to note, as we talk about the environment, that I think that what transpired over the last couple of years has actually resulted in opportunity for classical liberals, for traditional, small D-democrats to have a conversation about issues that we couldn't speak about before, right? I think I think the left has overplayed its hand with COVID. They overplayed its hand. And so now I think Canadian conservatives should feel a lot more comfortable to say things that we otherwise would not have jumped off saying. For instance, we shouldn't be afraid regardless. But look, I think that we should comfortably say that taxing Sally $10 at the gas pump whenever she fills up is probably not going to affect climate change. It's probably not going to factor

into global temperatures. We should counterproduces less than a percent and a half of all global emissions, and it's not clear that even if we were to cut all of them, that it would make a material difference. And so instead, we're just punishing Canadians with our environmental policy. That is something that the conservative party had difficulty articulating over less couple of elections. Well, it also, Canada could be supplying cheap and reliable energy to the US.

We could be doing the same for Europe. we could be doing the same for Europe, we could be doing the same for China, and we could be, so we could have our cake on the energy front and eat it too, we could provide clean and, and carefully regulated fossil fuel energy supplies on a global scale, we could make ourselves much more prosperous than we already are by using our natural resources properly, and we could make ourselves much more prosperous than we already are by using our natural resources properly, and we could make advances on the environmental front. We know, for example, with the Americans that they cut their carbon output for those who are concerned about such things, and I don't happen to be one of them particularly, but

they cut their carbon output substantially by turning to fracking in natural gas utilization, and no environmentalist preachers saw that coming. I think Canada's natural resources are a blessing and we should not let and I certainly will not let oil and gas be canceled. And it's important not just for our strategic and national interests and our economic bottom line because that's the only way we're going to get out of our economic hole. But it's also good for the planet because Canadians can produce and derive energy cleaner and safer than any other nation on earth.

And so I'm very interested not in just oil and gas, but mining. We have an insatiable appetite around the world for precious metals and minerals. I'd like to look into natural gas as well. I think if you're concerned about the environment that you would certainly be more interested in transporting oil and gas by pipeline instead of transporting oil by train, which is very, very risky, I think, you know, as we come to think, as we look at this conversation,

I think that we can solve almost everything that ails Canada right now with democracy and natural resources. If we just... Yeah, well, you know, it's definitely the case that the conservatives on the environmental front could be taking the moral high ground back from the idiot environmentalists. Because these are problems that we can solve. And the pathway to solving them is actually late forward, quite clearly, not least by people like Bjorn Lomburg,

who've produced an extremely detailed roadmap, I would say, of how to move forward in the face of the climate changes that we may perhaps be contributing to. We're obviously going to be able to adapt to them, and they're nowhere near as clavicleismic as the Doomsayers have prognosticated constantly from Elgor onward. So we can do this, and we can do it while ensuring that everyone had abundant resources, that the poor didn't have to freeze in the dark, which seems to be the leftist environmental

approach to the problem. It's like, who cares about today's poor? When we have poor in 100 years to worry about, you know, pretty, pretty sad bit of moralizing. And obviously one, this war in Russia with Ukraine and with the West in general has certainly brought home one of the consequences of what foolish, environmentally predicated energy policy. That's another thing that Canada could play a role in ameliorating. We don't just can do this, we must do this. Yes. Half of Canadians, there are a lot of estimates even before the most recent inflationary

crisis is that almost half of Canadians were $200 away from not being able to meet their monthly obligations. So now with the price of gas effectively doubling and the price of everything and most notably food, significantly increasing. Canadian, many Canadian families are vulnerable. And we cannot continue to have this conversation over and over. We need to get serious and at least telegraph to the market that we're willing to start and we're determined to develop Canada's natural resources that will immediately give people some relief.

Which is why I'm really worried, also, Jordan and Femi very quickly, I'm nervous about what's happening in, by way of our monetary policy. So much of this inflation is driven by food and energy that I'm not sure that aggressive tightening of our monetary policy is going to make the traditional difference that tightening would. And instead what we're doing is we're significantly increasing the cost of borrowing, which means we're increasing the cost of living on many Canadians. Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, there are actually food shortages and they're going to get a lot worse, especially with the fertilizer crisis. And so this isn't this inflation isn't merely a consequence of runaway monetary policy. Precisely. Yeah, it is it is quite the situation. You know, you could

have hardly hoped for a worse outcome to entice Canadians into over investing on margin in real estate and then cranking up the interest rates to cut them off at the knees, which is exactly what's happening at the moment. It's important to appreciate that our housing industry accounts for about a third of our economy. And for many people, their life investment, right? Their principal residents can be their way to save for retirement. And the fact that we continue to try and undermine the market, even though we have to focus on affordability for sure. But we also want to preserve value for people that work hard for it.

But beyond that, yes, the main cause, in my view, for what's transpiring, is not just the printing. We printed half a trillion dollars with nothing in Canada, with nothing to show for. But beyond that, it's the lockdowns in my view that are responsible for this runaway inflation. We essentially, we stopped the supply chain and it strikes a number of times. We reopened the economy, so there's obviously a spike in demand and supply is simply not catching up to demand. The market is either... You just can't get anything. You know, Penguin Random House informed me that they couldn't put out a double edition of my book in any reasonable amount of time my two books because they can't get car-border paper.

That's penguin random house. A sheet of plywood in British Columbia is now $100. You can't buy a vehicle for love nor money. Most, most large-scale appliances and that sort of thing, especially those that depend on ships are an unbelievably scarce supply. And one in five container ships right now across the world is locked in a port somewhere unable to move because of backups. Like, we have no idea how much damage we did to the supply chain.

And we are by no means done with that catastrophe. No, I like to joke, my Jeep started misfiring and I gave it to the dealership and they told me it's going to take three weeks because there are no car parts. So there's no car parts, not because we printed so much money, but because we simply stopped the supply chain and his tracks. But there's another reason for all of this. And I think that that's the tragedy of the labor market that is the remarkable unprecedented catastrophe in our labor market. Canadians have already suffered from low productivity before the pandemic.

But what I'm seeing right now and speaking to many Canadians and small businesses and medium businesses businesses of all sizes, is that there's a remarkable shortage of labor. And even though it appears as if we're back to almost full employment, we're just north of 5% unemployment, which seems good, but productivity has not come back. People are working less, people are not, those some continue to work remotely,

so productivity is done is down. And you know, primarily what I'm noticing and that's something that I talk about a lot, is that the labor force has suffered a post trauma from COVID. A lot of, I think, Canadians and others around the world feel that something was materially lost in the last couple of years. They're losing faith in institutions. They're estranged from their family.

They're seeing erosion of their democracy. Nothing's fun anymore. And so that, of course, translates itself into productivity. And until we restore productivity, we will not catch up on supply. And we will not be able to catch up with the nation. That's constant demoralization. That's constant demoralization. Yeah, well, Canada is what we're 35% now behind the Americans in terms of comparative productivity.

And the OECD has prognosticated that will be the worst performing industrial economy in the world for the next 40 years. It's a disaster. That's what Canadians are facing. So that means, in all likelihood, we'll be half as wealthy as the Americans in 10 years. That's what it looks like now. When we could be more wealth, we could be wealthier and more prosperous than any nation on earth with reasonable policy. I'm not sure how we get out of this in the short term, but I know the following

for for fact is that as soon as Canadians start feeling that this public health episode is behind us, when we feel that we no longer need government to mention. Those that that receive risk should certainly are welcome to take mitigation steps. But for many Canadians to continue to worry, are they going to lose their job if they don't take a booster? Are they going to have to work, are they going to have to work a minimum wage job again if they have to wear a mask for eight hours? Are they going to be told that they might not be able to go to school again next year? While government still remains in our faces, sort of, speak, the labor force has a difficulty recovering. We need to give

people a relief by extricating government out of our lives as quickly as possible. Yeah, well, God only knows what's going to happen when we face the next serious flu, because the mortality rate for COVID wasn't that high. And as you pointed out, most of the people who died had were very elderly, often already passed their stated life expectancy in the vast majority of cases, and also suffered from a number of comorbidities. And so, and there's going to be a serious flu epidemic in the near future because we haven't

had a serious flu for a number of years. And so, it's an open question now. What mortality rate will be deemed acceptable by the public health, mavens, and the authoritarians who've now come to run the government and to provide us with the excuse to lock down the yet again. Like, what if the next flu is half as deadly as we thought COVID was going to be? Are we going to lock everyone down again? And if not, why not? Where's the line? Now that we've established the precedent following in the aftermath of the bloody CCP authoritarians, what, what, what, it's no wonder that people feel that something has been lost because something was lost.

So, this is why it's so important that history reflects on what happened fairly, right? I never sought to minimize the risk of COVID. It can be a very serious infection for certain folks and it can regretfully be deadly for some. But that doesn't mean that we don't need to be a forefront about objective metrics. It doesn't mean that we don't need to factor the collateral harm and potentially rethink our response,

but beyond that. I think it's very important that history regards this episode fairly because Canadians, Americans, people all over the world, in the free world, have been subjected to unprecedented government tactics, right? The censorship, the segregation, the psychological manipulation. And if that narrative somehow prevails, and it suggests that it saved lives, then we will never fully get our democracy back, and we will never fully go back to normal and those are two propositions that are fine and acceptable. We have to get our democracy back,

we have to go back to normal. And that will also help us deal with potentially the next public health crisis because we should have the courage to address it professionally and and objectively. So, let's turn a bit now to the actual conservative party race. And I just looked at some stats this morning about popularity polling within the conservative party itself. And there are, there were six candidates, although my understanding is that Patrick Brown has now withdrawn from the leadership race. So there are five remaining if I have that right.

And Pierre Polier has clearly has the lead in Jean-Charais is clearly in second place. I asked Charais people, by the way, if, if he wanted to speak with me on this podcast, as I said, I've extended an opportunity to all the leaders, and my, the response I received as far as I can tell, although it wasn't exactly that clear, was that Sheree people decided I was too toxic to associate with the aftermath of the tweet. I put out about a swimsuit-illustrated model. I guess they thought that was a scandal, which was quite surprising to me because it was a tempest in a teapot. But in any case, Paulie have seems to have about 45% of the popular sport among those who are going to vote in the conservative leadership race in Shere about 14.

And then you and Lesslie and Lewis and Scott H. and are bringing up the rear. What do you expect and hope to, what do you hope to accomplish by your leadership race? And what do you see as the future for the conservative party as the vote occurs? And there's a new leader. And how do you hope to play a role in that?

So look, of course, we still see a path to winning, although I'm not under any illusion that we are not in first or second place. I will not comment on my friends and how they perceive or choose to conduct the race. I think it's important for the electorate itself to evaluate our respective positions and approach to the race, I think it's important for the electorate itself to evaluate our respective positions and approach to the race because this is really an audition for the general election.

But what I think is important that I've been blessed to contribute to the conversation, I'm glad that many of the conservative candidates are coming around on this question of democracy. Initially, a lot of the media speculated that Romans are just going to talk about COVID and lockdown on this question of democracy. Initially, a lot of the media speculated that Romans just couldn't talk about COVID and lockdown on this behind us. Well, first of all, 20% almost 20% of Canadians are still treated differently, so it's certainly not behind us. But beyond that, now we're seeing all the other camps coming around to our democracy message. And so that is certainly something that I was very much hopeful for and grateful for that we get to push.

And second of all, I think that insisting that our party is not afraid to stand for what it believes and that we speak with clarity, something that I've tried to do throughout McIrrian the last couple of years is something that I will demand from, and expect from the leadership of this party, the future leadership of this party, as the voter has expected from us, and that's the only way we're going

to prevail with Canadians is when they believe what we say and when we speak clearly and we're not afraid to stand up for all Canadians unlike in the last couple of years. Is there, I think we should switch over to the other portion of this conversation. For those of you who are listening, I'm going to talk to Mr. Babber some more behind the, on the Daily Wire Plus website. We're going to talk a little bit more personally, I would say. Is there anything else, Roman, that you would like to bring to the attention of Canadians? You sort of summed up there by pointing out that you got Pillaried pretty hard for speaking your mind and the leadership convention and race offers you, or the leadership race offers you an opportunity to speak your mind again,

to show that that is possible and to bring these attention, these issues to the attention of Canadians, which seems to me to be a very valid ambition. Is there anything else that you'd like to say to people before we move to the second part of this conversation? I don't see myself as a victim of the cancel culture or mob on the country. I saw what transpired as a remarkable blessing. I came to Canada when I was 15. We didn't have a scent to our name, and I've had every blessing this country had to offer. And I would encourage Canadians not to give up on Canada.

I've always felt that this is the best country in the world because all you need to do to succeed in Canada is work hard and be nice to people. And if you just do those two things, then everything will be okay. And we get to do that and still keep our religious and cultural values and we get to be ourselves. And I have a sense of optimism as a sit you

in the beginning of this interview that even the media is turning on Justin Trudeau. And with so many things that we're concerned about that illness right now, we can solve them. As I said, we just need democracy and natural resources that would alleviate a lot of the concern we have right now. As soon as government extra kids itself out of our lives, we're gonna breathe, gonna breathe the sigh of relief. We know what to do to solve this. And I'm incredibly grateful

to so many Canadians close to coast with whom a message of democracy has resonated. And I'm also thankful to all of my friends in this race. We have record membership of 675,000 members. It's something to the credit of all of them and it's something to be proud of because that means we're bringing a large motivated base into our next election. We have to emerge out of this united and firm. We cannot give up on our country nor do we need to. We are a wonderful country and I'm optimistic about the future. Great. Well, that's a lovely place to end and so thank you very much. I've been speaking today with Mr. Roman Bobber who is running for the leadership of the Federal Conservative

Party in Canada, hoping to lead that party and then to challenge the reprehensible, shall we say, just in Trudeau for the position of Prime Minister of Canada in the next election, which can't come too soon in my humble estimation. Thank you very much for speaking with me today. Thank you so much, Jordan.