Speaker 1 NATHAN MUNN (00:00.136)
Awesome. So today we're going to talk a little bit of Canadian election results. And the reason I thought this might be interesting to talk about is because the liberals won up here. Mark Carney's in charge. That's a great thing. You know, I think a lot of people are really, really relieved about that. was a, it was a super important election for sure. But I also think that kind of on the, on the U S and international level, that maybe the nuance of what actually happened wasn't really quite captured. Cause I see a lot of headlines like,

Canada leading the way for democracy and the Liberals win and stuff like that and that's an awesome kind of vibe. But what actually went down is a little more complicated, of course. So I'll just, I'll give a quick overview and then we can kind of talk about it.

ZACH RABIROFF: Let's get the quick Canadian overview first.

So we have five federal parties. got the Liberals, the Conservatives, the NDP, who are very left leaning, the BQ, the Bloc Québécois, which is representing the interests mostly of people in Quebec. They're a separatist party representing Quebec, and the Green Party. In this case, the Liberal government, for years now, the Conservatives have been leading in the polls, and that's because Justin Trudeau and the Liberals have been around for a decade. People were seemingly ready for a change. It looked like it was going to be a Conservative majority. Then Trump started making all his threats against Canada.

various forms. So long story short, ended up the Liberals won again with Mark Carney at the helm, who was previously the head of the Bank of England and stuff like that. So they won a minority government, which means they're just short of what they needed for a majority. So they're going to have to work with other parties to pass legislation and stuff like that. So it's a Liberal win. That's great. Now Carney is dealing with Trump, probably the best guy to be at the helm, I think, and a lot of Canadians think. But what happened to kind of behind the scenes or in the rest of the election was that

Speaker 1 (01:38.796)
conservatives actually kind of won it as well. They gained two dozen seats in parliament from where they were before. So that's a pretty big win. They increased their share of the popular vote, despite the fact that the conservative leader of the party, Pierre Poliev, lost his seat. He lost his seat, but he's staying on as leader of the party. Basically, there's been a lot of conservative wins across the country. The left leaning NDP vote and the Quebec separatist vote, Bloc Québécois, both of those votes collapsed.

as people rushed to support who they thought would be best to deal with Trump. It was split both ways. So the liberals got a lot of share of votes from the NDP and the BQ and the same thing happened to the conservatives. So the country's pretty split in that respect. So yeah, that's kind of where we're at. Now we've got a minority liberal government and yeah, it's probably going to be a pretty bumpy year ahead.

So you've got this minority liberal government that's going to be incoming to replace the majority liberal government that Canada has right now.

It was a minority to the liberal one, previous one, was a minority as well.

So is there a sense of the shape that the coalition is going to take now, given what's happened to the liberals in this election?

Speaker 1 (02:48.288)
It'll be really the Bloc Québécois who will be kind of the important people for the Liberals to give concessions to and work with in order to pass legislation. I know the NDP, the previous Liberal minority government had a coalition with the NDP, but in this case, the NDP lost so many seats that they actually lost official party status. Their challenge from here on out is going to be to rebuild the party brand basically and get some seats back in the next election.

But for now, yeah, as I understand it, will be mostly the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois working together.

think that for most Americans, that's sort of a completely mystifying thing to try and wrap our heads around. Because what does I mean, we can imagine that the bloc québécois stands generally for québécois interests. But what does that mean in practice as far as like national Canadian politics are concerned?

Yeah, so I mean, they're going to be, absolutely, they're going to be representing Quebec's interests above all else. You know, there's general concern in Quebec around immigration targets, stuff like that, because there's the sentiment towards immigration in Canada generally has kind of swung toward the negative over the past couple of years, after many years of really high immigration. That's something that Justin Trudeau got a lot of criticism for and that polls reflect a lot of people kind of being concerned about, just because now, you know,

Across the country, there's a housing crisis. There's a of a healthcare crisis in terms of very few places to live. know, rents are out of control. The emergency rooms are overcrowded. And whether right or not, a lot of people do have concerns that, you know, we've been bringing in half a million people a year, I believe, in one respect. And so, you know, we're a pretty small country, we're only 40 million people. So people see these pressures on these areas and they're concerned about that. So I think the BQ...

Speaker 1 (04:35.372)
A lot of those pressures are pretty pronounced in Quebec. So I think you'll probably see some pressure coming from the BQ on that. Wanting to lower immigration targets for Quebec, probably just generally advancing Quebec interests in terms of making sure that Quebec gets, gets a lot of money from the federal government, like annual transfer payments. And I believe it's about 9 billion a year from the federal government. So it's those types of things that they're going to want to maintain and to just make sure that the federal support for healthcare and other programs are still maintained.

Was the immigration issue really is your sense that that's what was fueling before this big comeback by the liberals once Carney became the head of the party? Was that what was fueling the strength of the conservatives when it looked for a long time like they were going to this election?

That was part of it for sure. How much of an element that played, I'm not sure at all. And again, you know, like I'm not a huge political analyst. I'm not deep, deep into this stuff. This is pretty high level where I'm keeping it and just as a general conversation about it. That was one element for sure. But more than anything, think cost of living has been a huge, huge issue. Inflation has been bad. Obviously I was saying housing crisis is a big deal up here. The quality of healthcare. I shouldn't say the quality of healthcare, but the ability to access healthcare has gradually been

suffering here for various reasons. There's a general discontent and you know, after 10 years, I think a lot of it too had to do with at a super high level Trudeau, you know, like I supported Trudeau. I voted for him. I thought he did a great job, especially during the pandemic. I think he really kind of guided the country through a super tough time past the coronavirus emergency relief benefit, which allowed anybody to, who lost their job to sign up quickly and receive benefits during the pandemic. That was a big deal, but he made some, some pretty

big mistakes, I think, or at least he pissed off a lot of people when he, you know, he referred to Canada as like the first post national state. And I think that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, despite the best of intentions. I think a lot of people don't necessarily feel that way in this country that they see themselves as Canadian. So they couldn't wrap their heads around that, you know, and during the pandemic.

Speaker 1 (06:35.5)
he associated, you know, there was vaccine hesitancy and stuff like that, but he made one speech that really stuck with the kind of more fringe elements and the people who are going around waving f*** Trudeau flags. And that was, he associated people who were hesitant to get the vaccine as being racist and misogynist. And you know, no doubt there's some like Venn diagram overlap there between these groups, but a lot of people took that really hard. And so I think that's why you saw a lot of protests and that's when the freedom convoy busted out, right? And like, and that was started by a bunch of really fringe

kind of nut jobs, but it garnered a significant amount of public support. So you had a lot of middle of the road people who were like, yeah, we support the freedom convoy. And we think the restrictions that were in place during the, during the pandemic, like the vaccine passports and the lockdowns all that. They really wanted that to end. I remember reading once that somebody referred to the pandemic as like, it was a mass casualty event, but it was also a mass radicalization event. And I think there's a lot of truth in that. And I think that we saw a lot of people in mainstream Canadian society start to distrust.

the government during that time.

And it's a fascinating outcome because of that, because, you know, when you describe that, it sounds virtually identical to what happened in the United States that propelled Donald Trump to victory. And yet it's really because of that victory that over the course of, you know, three plus months, the Canadian election was turned on its head and the conservatives and really the MAGA movement that had crossed borders did not win. So what happened there?

Yeah, it's super ironic. You're right. Exactly. It's strange that that's how it played out. And the one simple answer is that as soon as Trump came out and started threatening the country, something happened where you see this now, like all the top political pundits in Canada and the most informed people, they're all like, this is incredible. Like we're seeing a surge of nationalism, like we've never seen before. And my God, it's crazy. And it really is like, it's what's wild is that it's so organic and that it happened like overnight. And it was

Speaker 1 (08:34.222)
The country was where it's at. The polls were where it's at. And it was like, okay, we're heading into a conservative government. Like this is just the way it's going to be. And then as soon as Trump started saying that it's like everybody just, the hackles went up on the neck of the entire country. And it was like, what? 51st state?

the fuck is this guy talking about? All of a sudden it was like, boom, organically boycotts just started springing out. Like there was a period of like over a week where it was like at my house, canceled our Netflix, we canceled Amazon. We, you know, I haven't been to Walmart in months, staying away from McDonald's and all this stuff. And it happened super organically, like just really fast. were like, Nope, not having it. As a result of that, you see these, there's an NDP politician, a guy named Charlie Angus, who's just awesome. And he's been a, he's been a politician in

for a Northern part of Ontario for like 20 years. And he represents a big mining town out there called Timmons. And he's a punk rocker. He's like a left leaning, very socialist punk rock and guy. And he's always been a big community organizer and he's hugely loved and respected in his writing in Ontario. And he rose to the moment, even though this is apparently his last year in parliament, he was preparing for retirement. But when these threats started coming, he immediately started like pushing back big time. like he writes a daily sub stack called the resistance where he,

He started what's called what's being called the elbows up movement, which refers to a hockey thing, whereas like if things are getting rough in hockey, I think it's to do with Gordie Howe, this famous whole hockey player. You get your elbows up and you start taking people out. Elbows up has become like a rallying cry for this huge anti-Trump anti, not anti-American for sure, but

because obviously we realize half the country isn't behind Trump, know, but it's so anyway, he he's kind of leading this very organic grassroots and he's kind of doing what Bernie and AOC are doing in the States where he's been traveling around the country back and forth having rallies and he plays in a band. still plays in a band. So he's playing shows while he does it. And anyway, he's gotten a ton of support. So yeah, there's been this like fully organic explosion of like nationalism.

Speaker 1 (10:25.12)
in the best sense, I guess. And it's pretty wild because it's scary, man. I mean, I can't imagine what, you know, it must be different for Americans being positioned in the world and how big you guys are and like the force of the military and all that. But like we're a small country with a huge amount of land. We have a very small military and we've had such a comfortable relationship with the states for so long that I think it blew everyone's mind really quickly when this happened. And all of a sudden people were like, holy shit, like up in arms and like it just transformed the relationship overnight.

We saw, you know, in the visit that Carney paid to the White House yesterday, that there seems to be certainly not a dialing back in the threats from Trump, but a dialing back in the level of intensity in the hostility, it seems like. is less of an overt willingness to engage with Carney as an enemy, at least by the looks of things, than there was with Trudeau. I mean, do Canadians have that same sense?

Yeah, absolutely. It kind of a split feeling where it's like when Carney got in, you said it, seeing him with Trump yesterday. It's like a huge relief. We're like, my God. Like personally, it's like, thank God it's not Poliev because it was just like, this guy's a natural. And obviously, I don't know if I can say this, if it's like libelous or whatever, but it's like this guy's a natural bootlicker. Like the minute I saw Poliev and he's been in politics for 20 years and I've never heard of him. And over the past couple of years, he's been this big figure and it's like.

I don't trust him for a moment. He's like, he's pure MAGA North. it's anyway, he grosses me out. But so there's a big relief to see Carney in there and he's like on the level. He's smooth. He's smart. He's experienced blah, blah. But at the same time, I don't trust this Trump buddy, buddy act kind of thing. And you're right. The threats haven't been fully dialed down, but like this friendly thing is like, okay, how long is the honeymoon going to last? You know what I mean? Like we'll see where this really heads and where the rubber hits the road kind of thing. I think you couldn't ask for anybody better to be in there negotiating and

for a few reasons, and it's because number one, I think Donald Trump genuinely hated Justin Trudeau.

Speaker 2 (12:20.614)
Seems like it. Yeah, I don't know if anybody really knows what's up with that

well i think, you know, and it's gonna sound so like fucking surface and like ridiculous but i mean trump's that kind guy don't with that's right, right? but like i think he hates trudeau cause he's like he's a pretty boy and he's a good looking guy and like all the ladies love trudeau and da da da and there's like a meme going

Yeah, you know, I think that strikes me as right. That seems like exactly the reason that he would make that decision.

Totally right. He's like I'm gonna base my entire foreign policy against Canada based on the fact that I don't like this guy this this Ken Gall Ken doll guy and there's like the meme of him of like Melania checking out Trudeau at like some event or whatever and it's like that's the type of thing that would yeah I've done with him obviously and make him do crazy things I think that's exactly why and with the whole Trudeau's progressive rhetoric and stuff like that

and his appealing to progressive causes. It causes and so I think that drove Trump crazy too. I think he likes Carney way more. Watching that meeting with him yesterday was hilarious because you see how smooth Carney is where he's like pushing him back at the same time as he's like complimenting him. Jesus Christ, you got it in the bag here buddy for this meeting anyway. So seeing that and recognizing too that, okay, and this is weird. When a new government forms in Canada, they do what's called the throne speech, right? Like, so the new prime minister goes and gives the speech about the direction of the country and everything. And this time,

Speaker 1 (13:39.618)
They've invited King Charles to come over and give the throne speech, which is

incredibly unusual,

hugely unusual. Like, again, like I'm not a huge politics guy, but I can tell you, I've never heard of this happening in my 45 years. And as soon as I heard it, I was like, what? was like, King Charles. It's like a lot of Canadians dislike that kind of stuff. Cause it's like, dude, we're not, you know, we separated from the British Commonwealth or whatever. I don't know if you'd still call it the Commonwealth or whatever, but back in the eighties, when we finally like separated under from Britain's umbrella. so like, we're not like a monarchist loving.

country. mean, some people are into it, but it was really weird. then realizing after the fact and thinking about it, it's a hugely strategic move because he knows that Trump loves the Royals and respects and is a part of houses of Versailles.

Trump seemed to summon out of nowhere this concept of the United States joining the Commonwealth, which as far as anybody can tell was never actually offered to the United States.

Speaker 1 (14:35.096)
Totally, and it's like wasn't that what the war of independence was about in the first place?

Yeah, well, we seem to have given up a lot of that over the over the course of the past three months. So go figure. So is the signal there that Carney is making a gesture of closer ties to Great Britain and potentially to Europe? mean, because he's also already been speaking with Germany and with others in the European Union since the

Yeah, and I think Carney and the wider government is playing it as smooth as they can in the election and in the threat environment. think it was super important for Carney to take the hard language that he did, right? And it's like, it's never gonna happen. You can forget it.

working really closely with Doug Ford, who's the premier of Ontario who came out swinging. He was like, you know, he got caught on a hot mic saying, it's like getting stabbed in the fucking heart by your best friend. You know what I mean? Right. And Doug Ford's an interesting guy because he he's a real, he comes off as a real regular guy. But he's like back in the day, there's probably 15 years ago now, Doug Ford's brother was Rob Ford. So we

think those of us who were around at the time definitely remember Rob Ford. I think if there's any Canadian politician that Americans who are aware of, it's Rob Ford.

Speaker 1 (15:48.012)
Yeah, Rob Ford the maniac, the crack smoking mayor from Toronto who was like out of his mind and who everybody loved anyway and kept him in power and like just a wild man. Anyway, his brother Doug, the two of them, they're like these, you know, rough and tumble guys, like football guys from suburban Toronto, whatever. And I don't know if you guys caught this down south when this happened back 10 years ago, but.

At the height of the Rob Ford scandal when he was busted, smoking crack and all these videos came out of him being crazy. The Globe and Mail, a newspaper up here did a great investigation into the history of the four brothers and what was going on. And apparently, allegedly, they were big time hash dealers in the suburbs of Toronto back in the day, which is perfect and which is so fucking Canadian. Cause like every tough guy hoser up here was a hash dealer back in the day. You know what I mean? So it was like, of course, Dougie and Robbie Ford were hash dealers. Like I wasn't surprised at all. It was hilarious. You see, as soon as these threats come from the States, it's like,

There's no one you'd rather have responding to Donald Trump in that instant than the hardcore hash dealer from Etobicoke, Ontario comes out and is like, no way we'll shut off the power. We'll stop shipping cars. We'll do everything. Like no chance, buddy. So I was like, Dougie coming out swinging, even though he's like a terrible premier for the province by all measures, like trying to rip up bike lanes and build new car tunnels. And you know, he's selling off public brand to his buddies and stuff, allegedly. but.

Speaker 2 (17:29.806)
I'm interested.

Okay, yeah, see? So was like, that was like a huge deal and they backed off that pretty quick. And I imagine that behind the scenes there was some very pissed off American saying, what are you guys doing kind of thing. Like, don't take it to this level. So whatever, that's all speculation. But point is they backed off that threat. So Dougie's kind of in the back pocket for Carney. But now he realizes this is the reality of politics now. Like now the election is over. It's still us in America, right? Like we got a 5,000 kilometer long.

undefended border. We've got totally integrated military and security and economic everything. You can't just say, forget it. Obviously, like we've got to figure out a and negotiate a way out of this. I think that's exactly what Carney's doing. And with the whole King Charles thing, it's not only a play to Trump's aesthetic, I think, to kind of charm him and endear him a bit, but also as a show of strength that, we're still closely tied.

to Britain, this is our history, great world power, know, maybe Trump respects that or whatever. And at the same time, exactly, you know, we keep talking about and are cutting all these, you know, trade and security deals with other nations, European nations. And I think we just signed an agreement with the Philippines on security and stuff. It's a diversification under the gun moment, you know, and I think it's going to be a real, when the honeymoon's over, how's this going to go? Like it's going to be a very delicate dance.

Right, well, and meanwhile, the threat of Maple Maga isn't just vanishing. I mean, there's this weird thing going on now with Alberta and what may or may not be an organic or an astroturf secession movement. So what is happening there?

Speaker 1 (19:02.54)
Yeah, 100%. So the brief history of that and like the kind of shallow history of that is that there's always been a, there's been Western resentment towards Eastern Canada for decades now. And that goes back to Western provinces have generally felt that because the political center of weight in Canada is Ontario and Quebec and the decisions are made here in Ottawa and all that stuff. For a long time, many people out West have felt that their concerns aren't really cared about in...

in eastern Canada. So there's always been that slight resentment. It kind of ebbs and flows with political tides, I guess. But yeah, now it's coming up very strong and tends to be very conservative out there. Like when you get to the far west in BC, it's more liberal, more progressive out there. like the middle of the country, Alberta, Saskatchewan, very conservative generally. Again, not entirely, but generally more so. And the premier of Alberta right now, Danielle Smith, she's the head of what's called the United Conservative

So she's a conservative and so she's been very supportive of the federal conservative party. And I should, I should just point out to the Doug Ford in Ontario, the wild man is he's head of the progressive conservative party. There's a bit of a civil war going on in the, the conservative movement in Canada, because Doug Ford and Pierre Poliev, who still leads the federal conservatives, they don't like each other and they're, and they're at each other's throats kind of over the Trump thing. Ford feels that Poliev is too, uh, likes Trump too much, basically and vice versa. But so Danielle Smith, she's big time conservative out there.

She's kind of taken this opportunity to try and push Alberta to, to war. Like she's, gosh, she's done the stupidest shit. She, she, as soon as Trump started making these threats, she got together with this douchebag Canadian businessman named Kevin O'Leary. And we can cut that if that's libelous as well, but he's just a total jerk, really pro-maga asshole. And so she teamed up with him and they went down to Mar-a-Lago and had like a photo op with Trump to like get the ball rolling on the 51st state, which is like.

easiness, you know what I mean? It's absurd. so she, now, now that the conservatives lost though, she's super pissed and she is like threatening a national unity crisis and we're going to, you know, Alberta is not represented and this is a, you know, how can we go on this way? And so her whole thing is that now she's, I believe she's trying to pass legislation to make it easier for citizens to call for a referendum to have Alberta leave the country. And a poll that was just done a couple of days ago,

Speaker 1 (21:20.822)
showed that 30 % of Albertans and 33 % of Saskatchewans, is the Saskatchewanians, which is the province right next to Alberta. So about a third in each province would leave Canada today if given the chance either to be an independent country or to join the United States. There's still a huge majority that wants to stay in Canada, but this secessionist movement, you're right, it's not exactly AstroTurf, but the roots are like these longstanding grievances.

But now they're being drummed up big time and especially by right-wing media and you know, the standard disinformation bot shit that's going on in every country is driving this here big time too. And you get a lot of people who are really bummed out that the conservatives lost. Conservatives were leading for so long and like I said, they increased their seats in parliament by two dozen in this election and won a bigger share of the popular vote than they did last time. So the country is really split down the middle right now, liberal, conservative in that sense, voting wise anyway.

It sounds, at least from an outsider's perspective, for all of the immediate relief of the election, that's kind of a worrying brew. It's an unstable brew because even if the liberals have a government, a minority government albeit, how do you govern when some provinces have a third of the population that don't even want to be a part of Canada?

That's exactly right. And that's exactly how it feels at this moment for me anyway. And I can only speak for myself, but it feels like there was that huge breath of relief when Carney won. It's like, whew, but it doesn't feel like the end of something. feels like the beginning of something. And you see this in Charlie Angus, who I was talking about there. He just sent out his, one of his latest kind of dispatches was, you know, here's what's coming next for the Maple Maga playbook. You know what I mean? And he was kind of laying out the, political landscape of how

what a of a dangerous moment it is because you've got the really pushing the whole secessionist vibe and the MAGA vibe out West like Daniel Smith, she was down hanging out with Ben Shapiro at fucking Prager U, you know, a couple of weeks ago, which is gross. There's a media push and there's the they're ramping up the rhetoric that way at the same time. And I think that already I think Carney is making the smartest moves that he can because just yesterday I saw that

Speaker 1 (23:29.546)
Okay. Before the last government ended, when it was still Justin Trudeau leading the liberal minority and they were partnered with the NDP to get things passed. One thing that passed was a dental care plan, a national dental care plan for seniors, which was a big, deal. People are super stoked. My dad can use it now. And so it's a big deal. And one of Pierre Poliev's things was, I believe he said that if he won, he was going to cancel it. He was going to get rid of it. But now one of the first things that Carney did was he expanded. He said, we're going to expand it.

for younger people can apply now and soon we're going to bring it right down so that anyone over the age of 18 can apply for this national dental care plan. And that I think is the smartest thing you can do is forget the rhetoric and just focus on policy. Immediately start passing legislation that positively impacts people's lives across the spectrum. And he gets in the sense that

People need cost of living crisis. It's brutal. I don't know exactly what they're going to do about that, but housing crisis, he's already pledged. We're going to build millions of homes. Here's how we're going to do it. He's talking to prefab makers, trying to do something, talking about boosting training for people to get into the trades and to get good paying jobs and really speaking to the disaffected working class who have been going increasingly increasingly conservative, right? That's really what it's got to come down to is they got to see benefit directly like in their daily lives. Otherwise.

For sure, it could be a really difficult four years.

And it sounds like so far he's taking a little bit of a different approach from say the Labour Party in the UK or what the rump of the Democratic Party has attempted to do in the United States post Trump, which is that he, Carney is going kind of in a center left direction to get back those voters rather than swinging to the right and trying to peel off some of whatever was appealing to Magov.

Speaker 1 (25:12.27)
I think that's totally right. think that again, like I can only speak for myself and my impression of the country, but we're a very educated country up here, you know, and I think that, you I mean now it's fourth term, like this is unheard of to have four terms of the same government in a row. In moments of crisis and in moments of uncertainty and threat even, people tend to go towards the middle in this country, I think, because we understand that in the past and generally it's worked very well for us. Like it's, you know, we have a strong, it's been eroded in many ways, but we have a

still have a generally a strong social safety net compared to elsewhere. You know what I mean? A lot of places and people like that. You know what I mean? Like even the last piece I wrote for flaming hydro was talking about the healthcare system here. And it's like, yeah, it's got its problems. It's got issues and there's a bunch of things that need to be dealt with, but generally it's fantastic to have the hospitals are just open 24 seven. If you fall over and break your leg today, you can walk in and get fixed up. You're sitting home without a bill. You know what I mean? So right.

And there's always something very grim to Americans when we hear Canadians complain about the state of the healthcare system there, because obviously there's validity to those complaints. And yet one look at the American healthcare system and my God.

Exactly. that's exactly what I always say whenever I hear somebody complain about the healthcare system. I'm like, honestly, we've got it so good here. Like, yeah, there's issues, but don't even, you know, you can't even go there because it's, I mean, how fucking amazing is it? Like anybody, any issue. that's, you know, long story short, that's kind of the argument that I was making is that the way that you would describe Canada's healthcare system is that it's universal urgent care.

for everybody. Like it's really hard to get a family doctor. It's really hard to get an elective surgery. Those emergency room doors are open at all times for anybody. So whether you're a millionaire or whether you're a dude, you know, drunk on the street, you can go in there with and they'll take care of you and you'll get world-class care and you'll be sent home with a pat on the back and no bill. And like, that's amazing. That is a civilizational thing. You know, like I, I can't say how many times that's had a positive impact on my life. So it's like, and most Canadians

Speaker 1 (27:12.674)
The vast majority of Canadians want to it, you we just want to fix it. We know how lucky we've got it and we know that it's compromise that gets us there. You know what I mean? Like crazy rhetoric and blah, blah, blah. It doesn't help anybody really. Let's solve some problems and get some good things happening.

Do you have sense of optimism for where things are going in Canadian politics now, or is there a kind of looming dreg?

Bit of both, man. I really feel it's like standing on a waterbed. You know what I mean? It's like, some days I feel like I feel more positive about it. And at other times thinking on the longer term, and this might sound kind of bleak or like a bit much, but like all I can think about, to be totally honest, all I can think about is looking at a map and saying, look geopolitically, look at us, you know, we're this massive geographic country with an extremely small population.

And we're all centered right around the border with the States. How do we hold on to this for the next 30, 40, 50, a hundred years? You know what I mean? And, and maybe that's not the right question to be asking, but in this moment, that's what I feel deeply is like, it's an existential threat that we face at this moment in the repositioning of the global order that's going on right now. And that scares me on a day to day. I feel pretty good. mean, things are okay, but longterm man, I don't know. Like there's a lot.

There's a lot to be done and a lot of alliances to be made and a lot of things to be figured out. I guarantee you many, many, many places, not just Trump, are looking at our land and eyeing it and going, how are we going to carve this up? And I don't know what that bodes for the future, but it scares me to be totally honest.

Speaker 2 (28:46.918)
I sympathize. Obviously, we have our own reason to be scared down here as well, but it can't be easy with the state of tension, and especially the state of tension that the US is personally engendering for Canadian politics right now.

For sure, for sure. And I think that's why the country reacted the way it did and why, you know, you had a lot of people in the Bloc Québécois lost a lot of vote this time around that went to like, that went to liberals. And that's specifically because not all Quebecers want to separate by any means, like the vast majority don't, but they'll keep voting for Quebec's interests. But in this case, they knew that this was an existential election, that the stakes from here on out for the foreseeable future are existential. And that if Canada is to remain a united country and like,

prosperous country and all these things like our standard of living is at risk. Our families are at risk. It's an existential thing. And so it's like, absolutely elbows up. People are like, they're not having it and they're ready. They're ready to do whatever needs to be done.

Across the border, those of us Americans of goodwill who are still surviving down here wish Canadians well as you hold on throughout all of

man, and we wish you guys extremely well too, and like I think about you guys a lot seriously and I'm like damn man, every day I read the news and I'm like holy shit dude like what what's it gonna take to solve this problem and I that's it I I know that half the country isn't with it and I was so stoked to see the

Speaker 1 (30:22.836)
you know, the 50-51 protests and the huge amount of pushback and just the straight-up resistance that's going on. And I hope it continues and I hope that we get past this fascist bullshit as quick as possible and as painlessly as possible across the board.

Well, I don't know that I feel optimistic about it, but I certainly hope that we can hold on.

Hell yes. Together. got buddies on both sides of the border so I think...

Solidarity across the border, that's what we've got.

Absolutely. All right. Hey, hey, that was good.