Stockwell Day warns rural U.S. hospitals face congressional threats while critiquing Canada’s April 28, 2025 election after Trudeau’s March 23 resignation, praising Pierre Polyev’s fiscal plan—capping spending, slashing waste—to counter Trudeau’s inflationary policies and authoritarian crackdowns on dissenters like Tamara Lischt. He links Trudeau to scandals involving Mark Carney and Ghislaine Maxwell but highlights media bias suppressing such stories while targeting conservatives. Polyev’s trade stance opposes U.S. tariffs, prioritizing reciprocal deals and border security against fentanyl, setting the stage for potential Trump negotiations amid Canada’s media censorship crisis. [Automatically generated summary]
Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our country has to offer, especially health care.
Across every state, every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
Don't cut rural health care.
Welcome back into the Stone Zone.
The Canadian federal election is scheduled for Monday, April 28th.
This date was set after Prime Minister Mark Kearney, who became Prime Minister upon the resignation of Justin Trudeau, advised the Governor General to dissolve Parliament on March 23rd, 2025, triggering a 36-day campaign period.
Joining me now is Stockwell Day.
Stockwell Day has a long career in the forefront of public policy development at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels of government.
He served as a member of the Alberta legislature, a member of the Canadian Parliament, a high-profile provincial and federal cabinet minister, and as Canada's leader of Her Majesty's official opposition team.
At every stage, he's worked tirelessly to advocate for Canadians and for freedom.
I had the blessed opportunity to actually meet him in church and am delighted that he agreed to join us today.
Stockwell, welcome to the Stone Zone.
Thank you, Roger.
Good to be with you.
I'm a great admirer of Pierre Paliev, the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, the head of the official opposition.
And I have to play this short clip of him schooling a member of the fake news media.
On the topic, I mean, in terms of your sort of strategy currently, you're obviously taking the populist pathway.
What does that mean?
Well, appealing to people's more emotional levels, I would guess.
I mean, certainly you tap very strong ideological language quite frequently.
Type what?
Left-wing, you know, this and that, right-wing.
I mean, that type of ideological thing.
I never read talk about left, but right.
I don't really believe in that.
Okay.
A lot of people would say that you're simply taking a page out of the Donald Trump.
Like who?
I don't know who, but...
Well, you're the one who asked the question.
So you must know somebody.
Okay.
I'm sure there's some out there, but anyways, the point of this question is, I mean, why should Canadians trust you with their vote, given not just the sort of ideological inclination in terms of taking the page of Donald Trump's book, but thinking about what page?
What page?
Can you give me the page?
Give me the page.
In terms of turning things quite dramatically in terms of Trudeau and the left wing and all of this, I mean, you make quite a you know, it's quite a play that you make on it.
So I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
I don't know what you're questioning.
Then forget that.
Why should Canadians trust you with their vote?
Common sense.
Common sense for a change.
We're going to make common sense common in this country.
We don't have any common sense in the current government.
You know, the guy prints $600 billion, grows our money supply by 32% in three years.
That's growing the money eight times faster than the economy.
No wonder we have the worst inflation in four decades.
I'm going to cap spending, cut waste, so that we can balance the budget and bring down inflation and interest rates.
You'll want to be able to pay your mortgage again.
You want to be able to afford rent?
Then you have to vote for Pierre Polyev because I am the only one with a common sense plan that will bring back the buying power of your paycheck.
Now, if you saw the actual video of that, Pierre Polyev is calmly eating an apple through the entire thing.
It was one of the greatest things I've ever seen.
Tucker Carlson actually sent me that audio by text.
We both enjoyed it.
Stock, you know the man.
Tell us about him.
Well, I do know him.
I've had the honor when I ran to be leader of the official opposition.
This is 20 years ago, over 20 years ago in Canada.
Pierre at the time was a young, fired-up university student.
And just because of the way he could connect with people, we got him to run our campus outreach program right across the country.
And he brought in just tons of young and college-age and educated vote.
Then when I got elected, I successfully won that particular leadership campaign.
Pierre agreed to come to Ottawa with me as my assistant, worked with me for a couple of years in that regard.
So I know him well, and I watched him with great satisfaction mature over the years.
And not that he needed a lot of maturity, but he's learned a lot.
So I'm not surprised.
This is the type of way he addresses.
He expects direct answers from direct questions, which you don't often get from media.
And so I'm not surprised to see him do this and very pleased to see how he's running things as leader of the official opposition right now in Canada.
How would you describe the factors that led to Justin Trudeau's resignation?
My wife is Cuban-American.
She fully believes the idea that he may be the illegitimate son of Fidel Castro and Margaret Trudeau, who, let's face it, did, as they say, get around.
I don't know whether that's true or not, but I do know he's an authoritarian.
I do know when you seize the bank accounts of people because you don't agree with their views.
I do know when you want every citizen in the country who owns a firearm to register the fact that they own it, that that's a step in an authoritarian direction.
When you throw people in jail because they disagree with government policy, people like Tamara Lischt and Chris Barber, two folks that I know, I know what he is, but how would you describe the factors that led to his resignation?
Well, I'm not surprised to see you've done the research there.
Those are all true, factual events that you've talked about the other, what you started with, the rumors.
Well, you know, that's out there and we'll let that float as it may.
It took a number of years for mainstream media in Canada, which leans significantly liberal, small, and small and large.
It took a long time for them to begin to report, I would say, the negative side of what he was doing.
And really what you heard Pierre Polyev articulate at the start of the program here, it's the terrible impact of the fiscal policies.
People have lost their buying power.
People are not able to purchase homes.
On and on it goes inflation.
And it just became so increasingly obvious that media, mainstream media, had to really start reporting it.
And as you know, with mainstream media, they largely affect the undecided people in a population.
In Canada, at any particular time, that can be 5 to 8 percent, 9 percent of people.
And they finally, through Polyev focusing on it with real intensity and forcing the questions to be asked, the public in general became increasingly disillusioned with Justin Trudeau because of how what they saw happening, mainly in their own buying power.
We literally saw our future dissipating in front of our eyes.
Mainstream media had to start reporting that the last couple of years, as they did and started reporting accurately.
Trudeau continued to fall in the polls and Pierre Polyev continued to rise.
One of the major factors in this country in 2020 was the widespread use of censorship, mostly on the internet, but censorship across the board.
We now know, thanks to Elon Musk and his release of internal documents, that our own American government was coordinating with all of these social media giants to essentially silence any voice that talked about whether it was the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccination or whether it was the legitimacy and integrity of our elections or whether it was Hunter Biden's laptop,
which we turned out, thanks to the great reporting of the New York Post, to be completely authentic and real.
I'm concerned about the extent to which censorship by the government is a real problem, even worse than in the United States in Canada.
Your thoughts?
Well, it's a problem, and the way it works is the government financing of what they call, or what we call legacy media, mainstream media, the CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and some other mainstream media.
They have significant subsidies available to them that other media don't.
And that's part of, along with the fact, Roger, that most people in mainstream media have been schooled in a philosophical and political worldview, which cranks significantly to the left, which is in fact culturally Marxist in terms of its viewpoint.
And that, added with the fact that they could actually lose subsidies, their entire subsidy, if the Conservatives get elected, I believe it just, you know, it strikes terror in their heart on the one hand.
And they're absolutely convinced to the core that small C conservatism is evil and therefore a threat.
And therefore, taking a culturally Marxist view, which is, and as Marx himself, I'm not saying the media are communist.
I'm using the expression culturally Marxist, which is if there are voices that are speaking out against what the policy of the day is, the voices must be silent.
And of course, the way Stalin did it and the way through the Soviet years it happened, people would just be eliminated in the public square.
It's different now, thank God.
We have a democracy, but the forces that be still find a way to eliminate in the public square or cancel people.
Obviously, they don't physically do that.
But it's been the use of that power, the use of the large megaphone of mainstream media with the voice application of government subsidies that leads to self-censorship.
First of all, people are afraid to speak up, and then actual censorship.
It's happened to me when I was canceled a few years ago.
It's happened to others.
And they wield that as a club which literally bludgeons anybody who wants to speak up on certain matters that are going against what they are trying to carve out as the mainstream view, mainstream philosophical worldview.
It's an awful instrument.
We have seen the ability to speak freely without extreme punishment.
We've seen that increase in Canada.
It was alarming to our international friends to see Justin Trudeau actually just seize bank accounts for a trucker convoy that had emerged in Ottawa.
And at the end of the day, after all the investigations and everything else, the honking of horns, which can be irritating, was one of the things that led to people getting extremely upset.
And it was really, you know, when people actually started to come to grips with the fact that bank accounts were frozen, that began to be the start, I think, of a lot of citizens who hadn't really seen the heavy hand of government before starting to wake up and say, this is going too far.
We, of course, now only recently learned that we have the same subsidies here in the United States for legacy media.
Thanks to Elon Musk and Does.
We now know that the U.S. taxpayers sent $140 million to the New York Times.
Well, that's a lot of subscriptions.
$90 million to Politico, the fake news propaganda front that pretends to be a journalistic enterprise.
$9 million to Reuters.
I don't think government should subsidize media, period.
I frankly think the national public broadcast should be shut down.
Their reporting is not unbiased.
It's not news.
It's political propaganda.
A lot of discussion in this country regarding Justin Trudeau's place in Mark Carney and his relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell, who was, of course, convicted in New York City essentially for being the pimp for Jeffrey Epstein.
There are photos that can be seen widely on the internet of them together.
Those are not deep fakes.
They're real.
Do you think the people in Canada are aware of this connection and will it make any effect on this race?
I think there's an awareness of some of the things you just talked about.
Again, the mainstream media will pursue with intensity questions that are aimed at, let's say, a conservative leader just because they are so philosophically opposed to where conservatism goes generally.
So if you get an accusation of any kind, it'll be pursued with real vigor.
If it's against a leading liberal figure, the same intensity doesn't happen.
So it'll be mentioned, and then it's like the mainstream media says, there, we've mentioned it, and then it goes away.
Awareness and Intensity00:05:49
And so the time and opportunity it takes for something to sink into the public psyche, it doesn't catch, it doesn't hold.
So we're saying, and conservatives are generally saying, we just want answers.
We want, whether it's to Mark Carney or if Pierre Polyev is getting hit with questions, fair enough.
But we want answers, and we want some intensity of purpose.
We don't see that with the media, mainstream media.
I think for your American listeners, probably comparing the CBC to a rough comparison to your national public radio would be a close comparison.
Massive amounts of money.
And so naturally, I mean, we're all human beings and we're self-interested and we are aware of where our funding and our livelihood comes from.
Most of us tend not to want to really bite hard the hand that feeds us.
That is a calculus that should not be entering into the minds of journalists.
If you're looking to create, grow, and sustain your wealth, download and subscribe to the Pain Points of Wealth podcast at bebullish.com with Bob Ryan and Chris Payne.
It's your podcast for market insights, money tips, and real talk on the economy.
Download and subscribe at bebullish.com.
If you're just tuning in, we're talking to Stockwell Day, a distinguished leader of Canada's Conservative Party.
And when we come back, I'm going to ask him how, if Conservatives win the next election, how Canada will respond to Trump's tariffs and the negotiations.
So whatever you do, don't touch that dial.
We'll be right back with our analysis of the upcoming Canadian elections with my guest, Stockwell Day.
This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
We're back.
We're talking Canadian politics with Canadian statesman Stockwell Day under Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Stockwell was appointed Minister of Public Safety, where he was responsible for the National Police Force, Federal Prisons, Border Security, and Security Intelligence.
He went on to serve as Canadian Minister of International Trade, which is why my next question I think is most important.
Should Conservatives win the upcoming election, how do you believe the new government will respond to President Trump's tariff positions and those upcoming negotiations?
Yeah, great question.
And Pierre Polyev has been very clear that we as Canadians are not happy with the approach that the president is taking.
The history book of trade wars that are successful is a very thin one, and we feel we are being unduly impacted.
So Pierre Polyev has already articulated some actions that he will take somewhat in a reciprocal way to push back on these.
And that's not to say that everything the U.S. is doing shouldn't be, or all the concerns shouldn't be listened to.
I posted for Mr. Carney and for Mr. Polyev, and having been, as you said, Minister of International Trade and also Minister of Public Safety, which is your equivalent, Roger, to Homeland Security, I have said, listen, come out very strongly and say, yes, we need to, and we can always improve at the borders.
We have great border officers, but let's put more money into our borders.
We are concerned about the fentanyl problem.
So to show that, to assure Americans of that, let's be much more aggressive, put more resources into searching out and hunting down the fentanyl production labs, some of which do exist in Canada.
And let's be very publicly, our public officials, standing up and demanding that China stop the production of the precursors that go into making fentanyl.
China is a surveillance state like none other in the world.
They know where every precursor lab in their own country is.
They could shut it down.
So let's be really aggressive on those type of things.
Let's be really aggressive on serious, criminal offenders who shouldn't be in the country.
Let's show the U.S. that we are concerned about that.
That's the way to do it and to calm some of the concerns.
But going this through the tariff route is not something Canadians are happy with, certainly not something that Pierre Polyev is happy with.
Well, let me say this.
I've known Donald Trump for 50 years.
He is a businessman.
He's a negotiator.
This is about the art of the deal.
I actually don't think he likes tariffs either.
But he does want a level playing field and he wants a reciprocal agreement, reciprocal agreement that's good for both states, both countries.
And I think in Polyev, he will find a willing partner, and an agreement can be reached that will be good for the people of both Canada and the people of the United States.
I saw the Mexicans today announced they were dropping their tariffs, and therefore we will drop all of our tariffs against goods coming from Mexico.
So progress can be made.
I think you have the potential for a great partnership that works in conjunction to the betterment of both peoples.
Let me thank our guest, Stockwell Day, a Conservative Party veteran.
Stockwell, I'll see you in church this Sunday.
Thank you so much for joining us here in the Stone Zone.
Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our country has to offer, especially health care.
Rural Hospitals: Lifeline 24/700:00:50
Across every state, every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.