Ezra Levant examines Pierre Poilievre’s landslide 68% Conservative leadership win, defying expectations by dominating even in Quebec, while contrasting his grassroots-driven, anti-Trudeau campaign—backed by figures like Roman Baber (5% vote) and Dr. Leslie Lewis—with Justin Trudeau’s elite disconnection, including vacations in the Bahamas and reliance on polarizing tactics like vaccine mandates. Poilievre’s refusal to engage traditional media, his wife Anaya’s trilingual speech critiquing Liberal hypocrisy, and his direct challenges (e.g., no new tax increases) signal a shift toward tangible economic issues amid housing crises and inflation, potentially making Trudeau’s demonization harder despite past parallels like 2015’s snap election. Poilievre’s principled yet relatable stance could reshape Canada’s political landscape, forcing Liberals and NDP to adapt or risk losing working-class support. [Automatically generated summary]
What an interesting weekend, including the results of the leadership contest of the Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Polyev, getting 68% of the points, a crushing first ballot victory.
I'll tell you more about that victory, more about his speech, more about what it was like being at the convention and what I think the next months or years will be like, too.
That's ahead.
But first, let me invite you to go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
That's the website where you can sign up for the video version of this podcast.
It's really, I think, a lot of value because, I mean, listen, if you need the podcast because you're driving or jogging or whatever, I get it.
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Plus the eight bucks a month that we charge for my weeknight show, plus the four weekly shows we have.
That's 36 episodes a month.
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So please consider going to RebelNewsPlus.com and clicking subscribe.
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All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, Pierre Polyev wins the conservative party's leadership race, and the battle is on.
It's September 12th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
shame on you you censorious bug well this weekend the conservative party of canada had the results of its leadership contest It's no surprise that Pierre Polyev won, but what was, I think, somewhat surprising was the strength of his win.
Pierre Polyev's Victory00:13:30
More than 68% of all the points on the first ballot.
I say points because it wasn't quite votes.
He won even more votes.
But in the party's system, each electoral district was given 100 points.
So if you won 70% of that district, you get 70 points, whether that district had 200 members or 2,000.
The idea was to give smaller districts the same weight as bigger districts.
This quirk in the rules was supposed to benefit Jean Charais, who thought perhaps and convinced others that he would win the smaller population districts in Quebec.
Alas, he did not.
Polyev won almost every district in the country.
Here's the moment that was announced to the crowd in the Shaw Convention Center in Ottawa.
Ladies and gentlemen.
I have some results.
I have some results.
It's my great privilege to announce the results.
Lous avants and nouveau chef.
We have a new leader.
The next Prime Minister of Canada, the Christian Premier Minister de Canada.
The next Prime Minister of Canada.
it was such a dominant win uh it The evening came to a close quite quickly.
Now, I was down there as I had been on previous party, in fact, in that very same building when the party selected other leaders, too.
Except for there were moments where Rebel News was banned by the Conservative Party.
might recall both Andrew Scheer turned against us and Aaron O'Toole as well.
We have always stayed the same.
We're conservative, we're populist, we believe in telling the other side of the score story and standing up for the little guy, but for their own reasons, Andrew Scheer and Aaron O'Toole blackballed us.
What was interesting, we were welcomed by the party this time, not just welcomed, we were set up on what they call a riser at the back of the room, along with all the other media companies to have our camera pointing at the stage in the front.
So we were there at pride of place.
In fact, we were right near the center.
It was exciting to be back in there.
And just walking into the convention center, I went with Alexa Lavoie and our young reporter, William Diaz-Bertiom from Ottawa and producer cameraman Guillaume Wa.
We had an all-Francophone team there, actually, which was really fun for me as a Westerner to think how much Rebel News has grown.
And he was just walking into the convention center.
We couldn't move 10 feet without someone coming over to say hello and congrats to the Rebel.
And can they take a selfie?
Not just me, but of course Alexa, our star from Montreal, who had done such amazing work during the Ottawa convoy.
I didn't even have to show ID.
They said, oh, Mr. Levant, come here and get your media pass.
And the reason I tell you these things is, I mean, they're completely normal.
We're media.
We would get a media pass.
It was a public event.
We would go to cover it.
Is that the Conservative Party hardened its heart towards us under both Andrew Scheer and Aaron O'Toole?
They're both gone.
In the case of O'Toole, it's because he was not conservative enough.
The truckers actually dispatched him.
But it was a reminder that just because the party leadership didn't much like our reporting, I tell you, the people in that convention did.
They never stopped liking Rebel News.
They knew we told it like it was.
And frankly, they agreed with us that Aaron O'Toole had to go.
It's just good luck that the Truckers had him thrown out the window.
Otherwise, Pierre Polyev would not now be the leader.
And who amongst us could possibly think that tired, timid Aaron O'Toole would have a chance against Trudeau as opposed to Pierre Polyev.
Just simply the raw number of memberships that he sold.
He claims he sold more than 300,000.
And the statistics of his results seem to back that up.
Just in terms of the interest and the excitement, literally having thousands of people attend, even in small centers for his speeches, who could deny that trading from Aaron O'Toole to Pierre Polyev is a trade-up, not just in terms of ideology, but in terms of winnability.
So that was very interesting.
We were in the right place there.
We live streamed our coverage of the event.
We had over 100,000 people watch.
That puts us in the same league as some mainstream media outlets.
And it was just me sitting in a chair with my little earpods and William filming things on his cell phone.
We were very low budget.
That's the Rebel News way.
And yet we had more coverage and more viewers than many mainstream media outlets.
I enjoyed the evening.
I enjoyed seeing people that I had been banned from seeing in a long time, either banned by the anti-gathering rules of the lockdowns we've been living under for the last two years or banned by Red Tories who didn't like Rebel News much and wouldn't have allowed us in in the past.
So it was nice to catch up.
Over the course of the evening, we had members of parliament stop by in our Rebel News chair to chat.
Here's a member of the party caucus who was not on any particular team because he was part of the interim leadership of the party in the parliament during the leadership race.
It was nice to have him on the show.
We had Roman Baber, one of the candidates who fared fairly well.
He popped by to give us an update afterwards.
Here's just a listen to Roman Baber.
I asked him, what's he going to do now?
Because I think he made a very strong impression.
He got about 5% of the vote, which doesn't sound like a lot, but remember, at the beginning of this, he did not have federal experience.
He had never been an MP.
He was a member of the provincial parliament under Doug Ford before Ford got rid of him for his principled objection to the lockdowns.
For someone who was really only known in one district in the country to place a strong showing like that was quite impressive, I thought.
And I think he's got a bright future.
Here's an excerpt from my interview with Roman Baber.
Pierre Polyev, 68%, very dominant.
You were not an MP.
You were active in the provincial PC party, but you debuted.
I mean, for you to have a strong 5% ahead of Scott Aitchison, not far behind Jean-Charais, I think you rung a bell.
I mean, listen, Pierre Polyev was dominant, but I think you connected with something in the Conservative Party.
What do you think that was?
I have to congratulate Pierre on a very decisive victory.
He ran a very strong campaign, and I have optimism for the future of the Conservative Party, especially given the depth that he showed tonight and the conciliatory tone that he offered to Jean Charais.
I thought that was very good because the most important thing we need to do right now is unite as a party, embrace all conservatives so we can defeat Justin Trudeau and eliminate what I think, frankly, is the existential risk of facing our democracy.
Ezra, we ran a terrific campaign.
I've been fighting for Canadian democracy and for millions of Canadians that haven't had a voice for the last couple of years.
Of course, it cost me my role with the provincial government, but I'm delighted that without question, we were able to push all the candidates in the democracy direction.
And that means we helped shape this race and therefore our party and therefore our country.
I just want to emphasize that.
I mean, you were the MPP for York Center and you won that, which is, you know, in the greater Toronto area, not too far north.
So that's the kind of turf that the federal party will need to win to get a majority to go from one district to winning votes across the country.
I think people liked the fact that you proved, you suffered for the cause.
You were kicked out of a government on a point of principle.
That feels rare.
That's a kind of ethical price to pay that few politicians have done.
I think that's why you resonated.
And I think you're right.
I think the other candidates picked up on your message.
How do you feel about Pauliev's comments about the Arrived Pan App and mandates and other hangovers from the whole locked down mania?
That he showed some depth tonight.
It wasn't, he didn't scratch the surface.
He went into substantive issues and he drew a difference between himself and our Conservative Party and Justin Trudeau and the Liberals.
I like the fact that he was very clear that issues of the economy is something that's very predominant, but at the same time, he did not leave individual choice and our freedom to decide.
And I have every confidence that he will restore freedom of speech and freedom of choice.
And at the same time, really resonate with Canadians on what is now turning into a major issue, and that is the cost of living.
Justin Trudeau is going to be thinking about the next pair of socks he's going to wear.
Pierre Polyev is going to think about making life for Canadians more affordable.
Of course, ahead of Roman Baber is someone who I think can be called the fan favorite.
She didn't win, and she didn't mean Jean-Cheray, but she wasn't far behind.
I'm talking about Dr. Leslie Lewis, who we've had on the show many times.
In fact, on her previous campaign, her first campaign appearance was Rebel News.
And I chatted a bit with her campaign manager, Steve Outhouse.
Here's an excerpt from that.
Sheila, sitting with me now is Steve Outhouse, who is the boss of the Leslie Lewis campaign.
It's a pleasure to have you on the show.
Thanks very much.
You know, there's a lot of overlap between Rebel News viewers and Leslie Lewis.
Wherever I go, people want to talk to me about her, ask me about her.
They're rooting for her.
What is it about Leslie Lewis that has built such a dedicated following?
I know I sound like a fanboy here, but I'm just reporting to you: wherever I go, there's a special depth of commitment.
Why is I have a theory, but I want to hear from you?
Well, I think she's been willing to kind of talk about issues that maybe other candidates have been a bit shy to discuss.
And I think that kind of mirrors your audience a bit too, where they're kind of looking to go a bit deeper on a few different things and her background in international law in particular.
Right now, there's a huge interest in sovereignty issues, like you're well aware of, and there's been a lot of requests.
She's been going kind of across the country, and she did over about 110 campaign events that came up in every event that we sovereignty.
So, you're talking about globalism, World Economic Forum, stuff like that?
So, it was fun talking to these folks.
Before our cameras were rolling, where I was just sitting there and getting ready for the night, Jenny Byrne, the campaign manager for Pierre Polyev, came over and chatted with me and talked.
We talked a little bit about the place of Rebel News and the media ecosystem.
And it was interesting to me the approach taken by Polyev towards the media.
I think it's an excellent approach.
It's noteworthy to me that Polyev did not do an interview with any of the media who were there.
In the past, Aaron O'Toole would have, or Andrew Scheer would have, gone and sat down with CTV and then sat down with CBC and then sat down with Global News and had an interview.
Like, they would have bent the knee and been a part of the process.
And Polyev did not do that.
He puts out the media he wants to do.
He puts out his own social media.
He gives speeches and access to them, but he does not over-respect the press.
And it's not just him.
I have to say, the star of the evening, I mean, Pierre Polyev, it was obviously his night, and he won.
And later on the show, we'll show you an excerpt or two from his speech.
But I have to say, the highlight of the speech for me was Pierre Polyev's wife, who I had seen in little video clips before, but I'd never seen her speak at length.
She gave a great speech.
She's a good talker.
She's a good thinker.
She's smart.
She's political.
She happens to speak three languages: English, French, and Spanish.
Her family came from Venezuela.
I want to show you.
Here, let me run a couple minutes of Anaya Polyev's talk.
I thought it was good.
My husband and I share the same values, although our background is a little different.
Mon mari et moi, nous partageons les mêmes valeurs, malgré que notre parcours est un peu disparate.
I was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and my family immigrated to Canada in 1995, in a working-class neighborhood in the east end of Montreal.
My father, he went from wearing business suits and managing a bank to jumping on the back of a pickup truck to collect fruits and vegetables because that's what he had to do to feed his family.
The Yalinda family present here tonight taught us hard work and that there is no greater dignity than to provide for your own family.
Years later, here we are.
Gutsy Opposition Needed00:14:54
My father is a small business owner, and my siblings went all from their humble beginnings, including me working at McDonald's, to being a renovator, a registered practical nurse, a proud member of the Canadian Air Forces.
And here I am, La Pie de Pointe de Tram, standing in front of you and by my husband's side.
You know what else I like about her, besides the fact that she's a believer and obviously up for the campaign and energetic, which, by the way, Sophie Trudeau is not.
And I'm not picking on Sophie Trudeau.
I truly am not.
I don't think she's a public person.
I don't, I mean, she was a TV presenter, so how could she not be a public person?
Well, she clearly is at odds with Justin Trudeau.
She rarely campaigns with him, appears once or twice for some photo ops, and then is never seen.
For example, she's actually doing a TED talk with Hillary Clinton and bizarrely asked Hillary Clinton for relationship advice.
And if you're looking up to Bill and Hillary Clinton for relationship advice, it tells me you'll take advice from anyone.
Here, take a look.
You know, stay in my marriage.
And, you know, I said that's not the right choice for everybody.
Sometimes the gutsy thing is not to.
But everybody should be given the opportunity to make those difficult choices about relationships the best that they can.
Because it goes back to the Maya Angelou quote: I mean, do the best you can, and when you know better, do better.
And I really wanted to highlight, we have people there who lost their spouses, both husbands and same-sex partners.
We, you know, talk with Gloria Steinem, who was engaged when she was a young woman and broke the engagement because it didn't seem like the life that she wanted to live.
We really tried to cover the gambit of the most personal aspects of our lives where, yeah, we're called to be gutsy.
And does being gutsy mean reimagining love in relationships?
You know, Esther Perrell?
She says that because of our emotional and relational immaturity, we have a tendency to want to kill a relationship instead of re-questioning its structure.
Love is taking on so many different forms from all gender, from all race.
And really, as long as human beings are happy, is it not our responsibility to keep an open mind to reimagine how love can express freely?
Amen.
Amen.
I absolutely think you're right.
All right, I don't mean to pick on Sophie Trudeau, but my point is: where is she these days?
She does not campaign with Justin Trudeau because she is not built for public life.
She says the goofiest things, and the party does not let her out.
Anida Polyev is the opposite.
She's brilliant.
She's more attractive and more winning personality than her husband.
A little bit like Lorene Harper in that way, who had some emotional intelligence that the colder Stephen Harper didn't have.
I think Anida is going to be a secret weapon, not just as a campaign spouse who is telegenic, but also very warm connections.
I think she's going to be a bridge to new immigrants in other communities.
Don't underestimate her power.
And my favorite thing about Anida Polyev is this.
Look at this exchange just not too long ago.
Look at this series of tweets.
The CBC apparently learned that Anada Polyev, before she met and married Pierre Polyev, worked in the House of Commons, worked for other members of parliament.
And the CBC asked, well, if she married Pierre Polyev, shouldn't she be fired by the Conservative MP for whom she worked?
It was a bizarre thing that the Liberals would never say about anyone else.
But look at Anida Polyev's stream of Twitter comments poking back hard at the CBC.
You would never see that from Mrs. O'Toole or Mrs. Scheer, neither of whom was a particularly useful campaigner.
But you most certainly would never see that from a politician on the left.
You would never poke back at the CBC.
Even if they were mean to you, you would have a private call with them.
But Anida Polyev understands what her husband does, which is the real enemy is not the Liberal Party.
It is the media party.
More and more Canadians have learned to distrust Trudeau.
They have been disillusioned by him.
He is not the threat.
No one trusts him, really.
No one believes he's really the brains of the operation.
But the smear machine of the media party is what you have to watch out for.
Trudeau is too smart to say we should pick on Anada Polyev.
She should be fired.
But the CBC will do his dirty work for him.
And the fact that Anada Polyev pushed back at them is the most encouraging thing.
Would you not agree?
So I attended there along with our team, and it was great to have a catch-up, not just with the people on TV, but the people I spoke with privately.
What was interesting is the grassroots loved us.
Jenny Byrne of Polyev's own office had a good heart-to-heart with us.
But there were some people there who didn't like us much, and I would say it was the professional political class, the mercenaries, who were only too happy to do Aaron O'Toole's bidding and fight with us.
It's the same, I think, in every institutions.
You have the professional elite, and the trouble is that they have similar traits to the professional political elite of other parties.
I hope that Pierre Polyev can remake the campaign, the party, and the parliament to be more respectful of true conservative grassroots instead of the do-anything Aaron O'Toole says professional political class.
But either way, I had a lot of fun there.
I actually chatted with some media from other companies too.
And by the way, not every reporter from the mainstream media looks down on Rebel News.
I'm not going to say who I was talking to because I don't want him to get the mean treatment from his colleagues.
But I spoke with one prominent reporter who said, look, there should be more voices in the conversation.
Let's keep talking with each other.
That was his way of saying he doesn't necessarily agree with everything Rebel News does, but he's glad we're a voice.
I really appreciate that.
And because I appreciate it, I will not identify him in this conversation.
I should tell you, though, the media swarm is coming.
They know their marching orders.
They also know, for example, the CBC that Polyev has said he will defund them, and he most certainly will, at least more likely than Stephen Harper.
Stephen Harper proved that you cannot tame the wild animal called the CBC.
Even if you pay it for 10 years like Harper did, it'll still bite your hand.
And there's no point in pretending that they can like you.
They simply will not.
The media swarm is coming even more than ever because they're all on the payroll of Trudeau's media bailout now.
What's interesting is the language.
In a moment, I'm going to show you some language that Melanie Jolie, one of Trudeau's generals, used today to describe Pierre Polyev.
And you can see it rings hollow.
It's a rehash, a reheat of comments made in previous elections that just won't click anymore.
The liberals are parties or the party of hope and hard work.
Yeah, that was your motto back in 2015, sister.
I don't think that's really going to click in 2022 when no one under 40 can afford to buy a house in a city like Toronto or Vancouver, when few people can afford to fill up the car.
Gas is so expensive, when inflation in groceries is terrifying, and when interest rates are skyrocketing.
Can you even buy a house now?
I don't think, hey, where the party of hope and hard work works after seven years.
You'll see Justin Trudeau's been working on some lines for Pierre Polyev, but I think it's going to be very interesting.
I think we are in a kind of recession.
You could say it's stagflation, a kind of stagnation plus inflation.
And I see this because I see it in my own city.
If you're not making six figures, how do you ever get into a home?
How do you scrape together a down payment?
Now, maybe because the market has cooled off because of the high interest rates, but fine, you can't afford the high interest rates.
I think we are in a deep trouble.
And I think a lot of it is on Trudeau, but he's never been good at dealing with issues.
He's always been the fancy socks guy, the selfies guy.
I don't know if it works anymore.
We can see some of the attacks from the media party.
Althea Raj made this bizarre attack, mocking Pierre Polyev for caring about, you know, young people who can't move out of their parents' basements.
Radj said, those are people living in their mom's base remotes who can't get a date.
No, Althea, it's not that they are in cells or whatever you want to say.
It's that if you cannot afford to get your own place and you're living in your parents' basement, not because you're a bad person or even that you're poor, but rather because housing prices are so astronomical, and now so is interest rates too.
You actually can't start your life.
You can't likely find someone and form a family and have kids.
You can't do that if you can't afford to buy a house.
And it's not because these are nerdy losers in their parents' homes.
They're in their parents' homes because Trudeau's housing policies, which includes inflation and, by the way, the highest immigration levels in history, pouring hundreds of thousands more people in the housing market.
That's why they can't afford a home.
That's why they can't afford a home.
I think there's a chance we will see a snap election.
The Liberals have done that before.
They did that to Stockwell Day before.
You might recall when he took over the Canadian Alliance Party from Preston Manning, and all of a sudden he was younger, cooler, spoke better French, seemed more energetic and hip.
I think Kretchen was a little bit afraid of him, enough that he called the snap election so that the media party could define Stockwell Day before he defined himself, but before Stockwell Day could properly introduce himself to the country.
Now, Pierre Polyev is not an unknown factor, but he's not well known around the country.
And I think that Justin Trudeau may be tempted to do the same thing.
He may be tempted to call a snap election and dump a ton of money demonizing Polyev, although he doesn't have to spend a cent because the media will do it for him.
There is also another scenario I hear murmured about.
Maybe Trudeau himself will be shuffled out, maybe replaced by Christia Freeland, who is in many ways the de facto prime minister.
Trudeau, of course, just working on photo ops and relationships while Freeland engages in the actual levers of power.
I'm not sure if I believe that, though, because I think Justin Trudeau really has no other job to go to.
I don't think that he will be received at the United Nations, where I think, frankly, he would have been a better fit there seven years ago than as prime minister.
He likes doing mascot type things.
He likes having no accountability, no elections.
He likes traveling around the world and being really cool and showing his socks.
That is a fit for a place like the United Nations.
But I think they've soured on him over the years.
And, of course, they rejected his application for Canada to be part of the Security Council.
I don't think he has that place to go to.
And he still wants the luxuries of being the prime minister, the private jet, the endless vacations.
And I think he probably wants to match his own father's 16 years in office as prime minister.
So I think Trudeau's going to stick around.
I think that the good news is there's finally some opposition in this country.
Now, I do hope that Pierre Polyev beats Justin Trudeau in the next election and does what he says, ranging from unlocking Canada's oil and gas, building the pipelines, stopping the crazy coming war against agriculture, getting out of the tax and spend and inflate plans of the Liberals, ending the vaccine mandates, ending the Arrive Can App.
All of those things are wonderful, and frankly, it feels like a rebel news checklist.
I hope he becomes prime minister, but I know this: even until he does, or even if he does not, he will be more of an opposition than Aaron O'Toole or Andrew Scheer ever were.
And I emphasize Aaron O'Toole because, in the most difficult time in our recent history, when there was a crisis and a civil liberties crisis packed on top of that, and an economic crisis packed on top of that, most of the crisis generated by people, not by a virus, Aaron O'Toole failed the test.
He did not do what he ought to have done and been Her Majesty's loyal opposition.
He was not that.
He did not oppose.
He did not loyally oppose.
And because there was no opposition, this country suffered.
And because he was not in opposition, conservatives did not vote for him with any enthusiasm.
I think that Pierre Polyev will oppose not just the Liberal Party, but he'll also oppose the media party and his wife will too.
I think Pierre Polyev has a real chance of winning, and I hope he does.
But I know that starting today, he's already provided more opposition and more arguments and facts against Jason Justin Trudeau than either of the last two leaders did.
In that sense, it's a good time, and it's good news.
And the rebel news has an important part to play, too.
And that happened over the weekend as well.
Stay with us.
We'll talk more about this with our friend Spencer Fernando next.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
There are people in this country who are just hanging on by a thread.
These are citizens of our country.
We are their servants.
We owe them hope.
They don't need a government that sneers at them, looks down on them, calls them names.
They don't need a government to run their lives.
They need a government that can run a passport office.
That was part of Pierre Polyev's remarks on Saturday night when he won the conservative leadership contest on the first ballot with more than 60% of the points.
Remember, they had a point system where every district had 100 points.
But even in raw votes, his results were even more impressive.
Polyev winning more than 90% of all the districts in the country.
I think that blunted some of the wishes of the opposition and the media party who thought there would be a great division and Jean Charé might storm off in a huff.
That didn't happen.
I think partly because Polyev did so well even in areas that Charé was thought to be strong, Quebec especially.
I thought the speech was interesting and positive.
Responsible Leadership Debate00:14:56
I'd heard much of it before from Polyev, as I mentioned on the night's live stream, where we had over 100,000 viewers, by the way.
It was very exciting.
The star of the night was Anida Polyev, Pierre Polyev's wife, who's a great communicator, a great speechmaker, trilingual English, French, and Spanish.
Her family fled Venezuela.
Very strong comments by both Pierre Polyev and his wife Anida about new Canadians and about starting from scratch.
I thought it was a strong debut.
Let's talk a little bit about the weekend's convention, and then we'll update you with some of the back and forth today between Polyev and Trudeau and his campaign generals.
But let's start by going to our friend in Winnipeg, Spencer Fernando, the boss of spencerfernando.com.
Great to see you, Spencer.
I'm sure you were riveted by the event, although it wasn't really much of a surprise.
I think everyone thought Polyev would win.
But the question is, would it be on the first round and how resoundingly?
What did you think of the result?
Did you expect it to be around that?
Well, I was certainly confident Polyev was going to win.
I think people would have been shocked if anything else happened.
The extent of his win, I mean, it leaves no doubt that the party's united behind him and that the party supports him.
And so, as you say, you know, the liberals and the media were certainly hoping for a result where they could say, oh, look how divided the conservatives are.
You know, Jean Charé is going to leave and he's going to take a bunch of people with him and maybe start his own party.
He just can't really do that now.
I mean, he got so severely beaten in the results that he has no real ability to, you know, say that he represents any large portion of the party at all.
And that's why he's going back to the private sector.
So I think it's a good result for the country.
It's a good result for the fact that we're going to have a real ideological choice in the next election, not the conservatives pretending to be the liberals.
And that's very positive.
You know, I think that campaigns, no campaign is quite like the one before it.
They say about generals, they're always want to refight the last war.
And in politics, you see that a bit too.
Let me show you, for example, Melanie Jolie, who's a cabinet minister under Trudeau, I want to show you her reaction.
And you tell me, does this sound like she's just reheating the talking points from 2015 when the liberals ran against Stephen Harper?
Take a listen.
Canadians value good government, and they don't want the polarization they've seen in other countries, including South of the Border.
So based on that, we'll make sure that we deliver, that we're connected.
And meanwhile, for the rest, if Gar Polyev wants to go into division, it's his decision will be about hope and hard work.
Hope and hard work.
I literally think that was their campaign motto from 2015.
There was a little bit of your Donald Trump of the North division in the South.
It's a bit rich for the party that has spent two years demonizing unvaccinated people, saying, should we even tolerate them?
I'm not sure if they've quite worked out their message track about how to handle Pierre Polyev.
What do you think?
Yeah, they're just rehashing what they did in 2015.
And they're just, you know, I'm just, I just wrote something for the National Citizens Coalition that'll be coming out soon.
And I talk about how, you know, it's, are they just pretending the last seven years didn't happen?
I mean, did they forget that in the 2021 election, they ran on dividing the country and demonizing unvaccinated people?
So it seems like it's all gaslighting from them.
Gaslighting is going to be their strategy going forward.
But I just don't think people are going to buy it the same way.
I think it's, you just, you know, you can fool people in your first election and pretend to be positive when there's no real track record to look at.
But the liberals can't do that now.
So yeah, they're going to try that.
They're going to do the whole thing where they're going to have a few of their top people who try to say how positive they are.
And then all the people on the state-controlled media are going to be extremely negative, trying to divide and tear apart the country and go after Polyev.
So, you know, we know they're going to try that, but I think people are going to push back against it, as we saw people in the conservative leadership race push back against the media narrative.
Yeah.
I want to talk a little bit more in a moment about how the media, how Polyev's approach to the media is quite different from past conservative leaders.
But I want to show you something in Toronto Star.
This caught me by surprise.
For weeks, the Toronto Star has been demonizing Pierre Polyev, calling him extremist, saying he's the politics of rage.
Watch out, Polyev, you're going to cause some violence or something.
I mean, the headlines were so over the top, but after Polyev's speech on the weekend, the Toronto Star ran this headline where they acknowledged that his message was actually hopeful and that he was talking about real problems, whether it was the price of housing or people's inability to start their lives because of inflation.
And even the Toronto Star, which is a die-hard liberal newspaper and is the largest recipient of media bailouts, even they are reflecting the fact that, well, Pierre Polyev is using the word hope, rekindle hope, renew hope.
And I don't know.
I don't think Pierre Polyev is going to be quite as easy to demonize as Conservative leaders in the past, especially given the fact that there are some problems in Canada.
And Trudeau can't really say, I will give you hope that we can solve these problems if he doesn't want to acknowledge that the problems are here at all.
And Trudeau is still pretending that everything's fine, and the government media is going along with him on that.
But I don't know.
I just don't know if their old messages, you're racist, you're sexist, you're divisive, you're Trump of the North.
I just don't know if that's going to work.
I think that that doesn't work when you're teetering on the edge of a recession and no one young can afford to buy a house.
Yeah, it's kind of like the hierarchy of needs, right?
I mean, in the 2015 election, the country had been doing pretty well.
The budget was balanced.
The economy, it had slowed a little bit, but it wasn't doing too badly.
The country had recovered well from the global financial crisis.
So ironically, even though the Conservatives were in power, it was easy for a lot of Canadians to think, well, I mean, things are pretty good.
There's no real big threats ahead.
So let's take a chance on this.
Hopeful Trudeau guy is going to legalize marijuana.
Seems pretty positive.
He's saying he's only going to run a few small deficits.
So we should be pretty fiscally responsible, whoever gets elected.
You can't say the same thing now.
You can't say that there are no threats in the world.
You can't say the economy is doing well.
So I think people start to look for more serious leadership and look for somebody who's actually offering a real change.
And so the liberals can't run on change.
They have to run on the status quo, but the status quo is not good for people.
So it's really going to be a lot of fear-mongering from them.
Their only real hope now is to just attack Polyev so much that people get scared of him.
That's obviously what they're going to try doing.
But again, when people are feeling that they can't pay the bills, they can't afford food, things are getting worse and worse for them economically, they're not going to just be swayed by someone and say, oh, well, this person seems a little impolite or this person seems like they've said a bunch of terrible things.
People are just not going to put up with that.
And people are also going to look at Polyev and his family and think, hmm, this doesn't really seem much like a white supremacist to me.
So I think that rhetoric is going to be pretty tough for them to push.
Yeah, I think you're right.
Here's a clip of Trudeau himself today.
And he looks very serious.
I mean, he's dressed sharp.
Obviously, he's been clean-shaven for a little while now.
But he looks like, I'm not going to say he looks worried, but he looks like he knows he has a serious campaign on his hands.
It's not going to be a slam dog.
Here's Trudeau.
Now is not the time for politicians to exploit fears and to pit people one against the other.
As you all know, the Conservative Party picked a new leader over the weekend.
I want to congratulate Mr. Polyev for becoming the leader of His Majesty's loyal opposition.
We've been making every effort to work with all parliamentarians, and we will continue to do so.
But this doesn't mean that we're not going to be calling out highly questionable, reckless economic ideas.
What Canadians need is responsible leadership.
Buzzwords, dog whistles, and careless attacks don't add up to a plan for Canadians.
Attacking the institutions that make our society fair, safe, and free is not responsible leadership.
Telling people they can opt out of inflation by investing their savings in volatile cryptocurrencies is not responsible leadership.
By the way, anyone who followed that advice would have seen their life savings destroyed.
Fighting against vaccines that saved millions of lives, that's not responsible leadership.
Opposing the support and investments that have helped save jobs, businesses, and families during the pandemic.
That's not responsible leadership.
Well, you can see that was much more scripted than Melanie Jolie's rehash of, I guess, I guess it was the only thing that came to mind: hope and hard work.
You know, she's been repeating that mantra since 2015, so it's no surprise.
This was obviously carefully scripted.
And, you know, it's you can see the argument.
You can see the ads right now.
Pierre Polyev said we should invest in Bitcoin.
If you did that, you would have like they're picking things, you know, not responsible leadership.
He's reading it in that dramatic actor voice of his.
There's a lot of gaslighting in there, though, Spencer.
And when he says, hey, we can't exploit fears to pit people against each other.
Aren't you the prime minister who said there's no room for vaccinated people, unvaccinated people in our country?
And should we even tolerate those people?
And you're not allowed on a train, you can't sit next to me because you've got cooties.
Like it's a bit of chutzpah for this guy to say, don't exploit fears and pit people against each other.
But he thinks that people will forget.
He thinks people will forget.
Maybe he's right.
Yeah, I think that's the confidence of somebody who knows that he's managed to get much of the established media to be co-opted by government funding and dependence on the state.
And he also knows that for a long time, a lot of media institutions have increasingly been, you could say, infiltrated or whatever you want to call it by radical far-left activists.
So he knows that much of the current media structure is on his side.
And he also knows that he's currently using government power with legislation like Bill C-11 to try to shut down independent media, to narrow the bounds of communication in the country, to control social media, control what people can say.
So I think that's why he feels that he can get away with so much of the gaslighting and the dishonest rhetoric.
He thinks that he's got a big structure there to support him.
And it's true, he does.
So he will feel he can get away with it.
But the other problem is that for him, if you look at the results of the Conservative leadership race, not just Polyev's victory, but how many memberships he sold, how much money he raised, how much bigger the Conservative Party is now than it was before the leadership race, it tells you there's a real groundswell of public opinion and energy that is opposing him.
And that's, you know, he took advantage of that in 2015 when people were tired of their previous government.
And now he's seeing that same dynamic that's now working against him.
So, you know, he's obviously going to run a negative campaign.
I think it's going to be the most negative campaign we've seen in Canadian politics, you know, possibly in the history of the country.
You know, look at how angry people are already.
The Liberals are going to try to make people more angry to try to hold on to power.
So that's the direction he's going to go in.
I think Canadians are well aware of that.
And they can say all they want about being about hope and hard work, but the next campaign is going to look quite a lot different than that.
You know, I'm thinking about that cryptocurrency thing.
I mean, cryptocurrencies, they go up, they go down.
I don't think Pierre Polyev was giving personal financial advice to anybody.
He was talking about cryptocurrencies as a possible new way of doing commerce, a new industry.
And I think he was talking about it as an alternative to government-controlled currency that can be inflated by the government.
The fact that cryptocurrencies have dipped down is bad for those who have invested in them, I suppose.
But if that's the thing that they're hanging on to, I mean, that's a comment.
That's a niche issue.
That's a curiosity.
It's not a central issue.
It was always a throwaway line, and it was his way of sort of, Polyev's way of being sort of new and modern compared to Trudeau.
And it was an answer to the Bank of Canada.
But that was the most interesting and the most colorful criticism that Trudeau had of him.
And I think that says something.
I think that says they don't have, like, they didn't call him racist there.
They didn't call him sexist.
They didn't call him homophobic.
They didn't use the, they didn't talk about abortion.
Maybe they're saving those things for later.
But it feels like they're really stretching if they're saying, you know, he expressed interest in cryptocurrencies.
And boy, I hope he didn't invest.
If that's what they got on the guy.
I don't know.
I mean, I'm sure their war room is digging up everything terrible they can on Pierre Polyev, but the first draft doesn't look as scary as maybe it ought to.
What do you think?
Yeah, it's interesting to look at the parallels between different political parties and campaigns, even when they're, you know, on different sides of the political spectrum, but to look at the broader situation they're in.
And, you know, there are, you know, some of the, when you see, you know, kind of, as you say, the petty and kind of nitpicking attacks on Polyev, it does remind you a bit of how the conservatives were trying to attack Justin Trudeau in 2015.
You know, when a government is kind of out of energy, when people are looking for a change, you do see kind of the petty, oh, you know, nice hair, though, right?
I mean, okay, that didn't really work out too well for them.
So when you see that they have to find very kind of niche and obscure things to go after somebody for, it starts to tell you that they know they're in trouble.
And I think, you know, the thing we're also not talking about, too, is, you know, where's the NDP in all of this, right?
I mean, they're the supposedly working class party and they're just, you know, Polyev is just eating their lunch right now.
And so it's very interesting to see what the dynamic there will be, because Trudeau is, at some point, the liberals will inevitably start to say to NDP voters, oh, Polyev is so dangerous, you can't risk voting NDP.
And what does Jake Meet Singh do in that situation?
Does he just say, oh, the Liberals are just as bad?
He's been unwilling to really say that.
Can he even say the Liberals are bad?
NDP's Working Class Appeal00:05:30
He's been propping them up all this time.
So I think, you know, if you're the NDP, you're looking at what's going to happen after this next election.
Do we really see the country become fully polarized between the left and the right, where you have the conservatives taking a principled conservative stand and the liberals basically wiping out the ADP and trying to get all the NDP voters to vote for them?
I think it's going to be a very interesting dynamic to look at going forward.
And I think, you know, the Conservatives will have to look at how do they appeal to working class voters?
How do they get NDP votes?
Because I think those votes are going to be very much up for grabs.
I think you're right.
Jagmeet Singh, very weak.
And the speech by Polyev really did feel working class in terms of ordinary issues for ordinary people.
And Jagmeet Singh is nowhere.
Let me play one final clip.
This was Polyev calling out Trudeau at, this was an excerpt from his speech to caucus as leader.
Here, take a look.
And so I'm issuing a challenge to Justin Trudeau today.
If you really understand the suffering of Canadians, Mr. Prime Minister, if you understand that people can't gas their cars, feed their families, or afford homes for themselves, if you really care, commit today that there will be no new tax increases on workers and on seniors.
None.
You know, look at that language, the suffering of Canadians.
If you care.
Hang on.
Care.
That's the liberal grant.
Suffering.
That's the NDP grant.
Workers and seniors.
So he's taking that working class language.
And I think he can do so legitimately.
And I think it works.
You know, one of the most interesting things that I've learned during this campaign, I've known Pierre Polyev casually for decades, actually.
I did not know he was adopted.
And he told that story of how he was born to his teenage mom and given up for adoption and parents raised him.
And like, it's just a whole interesting story.
And I'm really glad he tells that story because it changed, because you can't say, oh, you're just a rich fat cat conservative, you know, a billionaire Trumpist.
This is a guy who started life in an uphill battle.
And if he's talking about suffering in Canadians, and if you care, what an interesting difference to Mr. Elite Spoon, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, jetting around to Billionaire Island in the Bahamas for vacations.
Like Justin Trudeau never pretends that he's anything less than a fancy trust fund kid.
It's part of his mystique and glamour.
And Trudeau's taking that head on and saying, yeah, you're a fancy pants who doesn't know what it's like to have to pay for a house or pay for gas.
I think it's an interesting challenge, and I think it can actually work.
Yeah, I think what's interesting about what Polyev is doing is that, you know, there have been two kinds of schools of thought on what does it mean for conservatives to reach out to new voters.
And so previously, especially under Aaron O'Toole, the thinking clearly was, well, reaching out means that you just basically give up on all conservative ideas and you just kind of try to be just a little tiny bit to the right of the liberals and hope that's enough.
And that's what reaching out is.
Whereas I think what Polyev is doing is he's reaching out in a way that is still consistent with conservative principles, but he's explaining them in a different way and explaining them in a new context.
And you look at how he's trying to appeal to young people, for instance.
And he's not saying, oh, well, you know, young people are all socialists, so we're just going to offer them more government money.
He's saying, no, look, this is why, you know, sound money is important.
This is why fiscal responsibility is important.
This is how what the Bank of Canada has done and what Justin Trudeau has done has made it impossible for so many young people to afford to get a house.
This is why rent is going up.
This is why everything's more expensive and why a whole generation is being held back.
So he's taking principled conservative ideas, but using them in any way and appealing to a new group of voters.
And I think that's the much more effective strategy because, you know, it's one thing to just say you're going to win votes, but you also have to win people over to your vision and your ideology and your viewpoint of the world.
And the conservatives have for a long time failed to do that because they basically adopt the liberal worldview and then hope that, oh, if we do that, people won't be too scared of us.
You know, you actually have to persuade people and you actually have to convince people.
And Pauliev is certainly showing that he understands that.
And I think so far that he's capable of doing that.
Yeah, it's going to be very interesting.
Well, Spencer Fernando, great to catch up with you.
How's the website, spencerfernando.com, coming along?
You've got that in-depth email subscription.
Give our viewers a quick update on how you're doing with that.
Yeah, it's going well.
I've started a new, I'm still doing all the free content on my website, so I'm not going to stop doing that.
But also a more in-depth look at Canadian politics just this weekend.
It's on Patreon, and I'm sure maybe you can include a link.
It's certainly there's a link on my website.
And it's about 4,500 words going mostly into the conservative leadership race, some of the things we've talked about today, how it affects different groups, how it affects the establishment media, how it affects the liberal NDP socialist coalition, what it means for the country and democracy going forward.
So if you like the writing on my website and you want even more of it and more in-depth content, then I think you'll enjoy it.
Right on.
Well, you're doing the hard work.
I mean, that's a serious think piece, as they're called.
That's a serious.
Well, listen, congratulations on that.
We need more independent journalism like yours.
So I salute you for that.
And you're a hardworking guy, and you're always fast on the news.
I'm impressed with how quick you are on the breaking news.
Thanks for taking the time with us today and keep up the fight.
Conrad Black's Stories00:03:43
No problem.
Take care.
All right.
There you have it.
Spencer Fernando from the website spencerfernando.com.
Stay with us.
Your letters to me are next.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me, 7 Emmanuel 7, talking about my chit chat with Conrad Black, says, you guys have a great chemistry in this interview.
I hope Conrad becomes a regular.
God bless.
Well, he's so smart, and he's lived such an interesting life in high circles of society.
Remember, he was the proprietor of the Daily Telegraph, really one of the most prestigious newspapers in the UK and indeed the world.
He ran in those circles.
He was a member of the House of Lords, so he met the Queen.
He met Charles.
So he had personal anecdotes you heard.
He didn't want to share too many of the private ones, but I liked what I heard.
It was very interesting.
I thought we were one degree of separation away from the Queen.
A. Nickerson says, most would argue that King Charles is on board with Klaus Schwab's World Economic Forum with investments.
I don't know about investments, but here's a photo of the now King Charles with Klaus Schwab and actually Václav Havel.
It doesn't surprise me that a man who really didn't do a lot for 73 years, Prince Charles, who was in that high society of wealth, power, and prestige, met up at the World Economic Forum, which is really about oligarchs and power and prestige.
It doesn't surprise me.
And I don't like anyone who hangs out with the World Economic Forum.
At least my spider senses start tingling.
I can forgive a guy attending an event or posing for a photograph.
That's not what scares me.
What scares me more about the World Economic Forum, not if someone went there or listened to things or said something.
It's, are you part of their agenda?
And do you believe that they should be a source of power, even though they have no democratic legitimacy?
Do you believe that they should inject themselves, as Klaus Schwab would say, into the cabinets of the world?
You know, I don't think there's anything wrong with actually listening or meeting with anybody as long as you remain yourself as opposed to co-opted.
So I'm worried about King Charles, but I'm actually more worried about all his green extremism, his ideology that we're all going to die if we don't tackle global warming while he gets on his private jets.
I hope he abandons that and leaves it behind and focuses on the uncontroversial duties he has rather than his pet issues.
We'll see.
Get Kraken says, wasn't this guy knighted or given a title of some sort?
Wouldn't that make him part of the club?
You're talking about Conrad Black.
And yes, he's interesting in that he had one foot in the club, but one foot in conservative politics and one foot in the insurgent National Post newspaper.
And of course, he is affiliated with the Democracy Fund as the civil liberties historian.
Yeah, he's a complicated fellow with a lot of irons in the fire.
I'm talking about Conrad Black.
I like him.
I find him interesting.
And I mean, I know that he personally knew who Klaus Schwab as well.
So, you know, my focus with Conrad Black is usually on matters of civil liberties and Canadian politics.
But he does have other interesting and sometimes controversial stories as well.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.