Melissa Lantsman: Crime, Addiction, and Canada's Future

0:00We have a crime crisis in this country by any stretch, by any means. It's like the same story, and it's the same guy, and the police ask themselves, like, what's the point of arresting this guy? So nobody's happy with the current system, but like, what's the answer? Melissa Landsman, she is the co-deputy leader of the conservative party, and we are here to talk about the conservative positions and about social justice and justice reform. There's a lot of people who want this system to work as a status quo. They want to protect the status quo. We have the smartest people. We've got enough food to feed the world. We have enough resources to power us and our allies. This is the best country in the world, and we're squandering our potential here. In your ideal world, what alternative would you like to see? In an ideal world, I want to see you. Welcome back to another episode of Who Judges, the Judge, the podcast intended to make you question the way you judge the world around you. And I'm hoping today's guest does just that.

1:01You're going to shake things up a little bit with Melissa Landsman, sitting MP for Thornhill since 2021. She is the co-deputy leader of the conservative party, and we are here to talk about Melissa, about the conservative positions, and about social justice and justice reform. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks for having me. This is awesome. I've watched the show. Super interesting what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you. I've been watching you. It's super interesting what you've been doing, and what the conservatives have been trying to accomplish for quite a long time. And most certainly, what has been pushed throughout the last week, especially, I want to talk about this new bill that you were one of the front runners in tabling this week. But before we get there, I just want to talk a little bit for our readers about some of your background and how you positioned yourself to be in the place you are right now from second-in-command to the conservative party. How did you get into politics?

2:02So look, I think everybody's story is a bit messy about how they get there. Minds a little less messy, not a clear path there, but I knew I wanted to do something like this. And I got involved really early, walked into a campaign office in high school, wasn't a nerd or anything. And just like, I felt that I was interested in how people made decisions. Then I found my people, found a good group of people, and sort of was addicted from there. I did a whole bunch of stuff I worked behind the scenes in politics for a long time. I was in a private business working alongside politics. But the truth is, I didn't have the stomach to volunteer in an old person's home or a hospital where lots of people did their volunteering. So I remember my mom putting in sort of three flyers in front of me. And I chose this one as it speaks to me and tried it out and never left.

3:04I really never left politics. And so the conservative party spoke to you even as a teenager? Yeah, so here's the background. I'll tell you a little bit about how I grew up. I grew up in a mixed marriage where my parents always sort of talked about politics, not always in a Canadian political party way. But my mom was a liberal and my dad was a conservative. And they were both immigrants from the Soviet Union that came here and took very different paths into their career. My mother went to school here. She wore a suit to work. She was an accountant, did the whole office thing. And my father was an uncredentialed engineer who drove a cab because he wasn't going to get credentialed. They came here, they had one kid in hand already. I came later. And so he had to go to work to put food on the table. And that was just what he did when he first got here. And I looked at sort of how the world treated them both. And particularly, an early memory of how politicians were talking to them.

4:06Clean suit, white shirt, suit to work. Got treated very differently. My dad wore jeans, sometimes his shirt wasn't clear. He drove a cab, had an accent. And people talked to him like he was dumb, particularly politicians. And there was this whole part of politics that didn't look at my father as equal. And he started telling me about conservative politics and how he saw the world and how he sort of saw everybody for what they were going to do, how they were going to make their circumstances better. And I started getting attracted to politics in that way. That seems like a really crazy story to tell as an early person. But that's my earliest memory of it. Wow. One of the things that I've talked about on other podcasts is that we still see that situation happening play out here where we have a class of immigrants coming to this country as skilled immigrants.

5:09And they arrive wanting to work, able to work, but the country tells them they now have to go and repeat their entire education. Yeah, it's like a 50-year problem, right? My parents are both past. But they would have been here just over 50 years now this year. And so this was a problem back then. There's an adage in Toronto that if you need a doctor, call an Uber. And that's not really a joke, because we have people who come here and they come here to see a better life. They're educated. And they can't work to the full scope of their education or their practice. So if you're a doctor in a health care system, that's both objectively and subjectively better than ours, then why wouldn't you work here? And guess what? We have a shortage of doctors. So we've got to fix that problem of professionals who do things in their country with standards or at least give them an answer on whether they can do it within like six weeks of getting here.

6:10Like you're either going to work or you're not. Here's what you need to do. That's the end of it. But redoing your entire school, like that wasn't an option for my dad. It's not an option for so many today. And it's still the exact same problem. It's even worse now. I know, I encounter people on a regular basis and sometimes it's the people in your practice all the time. I do. Well, people in my practice, people in my life, I'm one of those people because I love people's stories. I'll get into an Uber and there are just some people where I'm like, where are you from? What did you do back then? And the number of people that tell me, oh, I was a pharmacist. Yeah, I was a surgeon. Yeah. And they come here and they spend all of their money to come here and bring their families here and do it in the most expeditious fashion. Following all of the rules, all the right paperwork and a welcoming them in. And this isn't someone who's sort of pretended they're way into their country. And why don't we have, and I've said this, a few times before, why don't we just have a proficiency test? We're take a test, because the last time I checked the human body in Iran is the same as it is here.

7:12If you can operate on someone there, surely with the right testing, if you pass the test and you meet Canada's qualifications, and I suspect that most would, let's get them working. And then, truthfully, with the shortages that we have, and the professions and the people that you want to attract to this country, that gets no doubt. In the last election, we had a, you know, the Red Seal Program, it's been around for like 100 years, I think. And it qualifies trades people to be able to work in whatever province on their trade right across the board. We brought forward a blue seal program. The same thing would advance the profession. So if you came here from someone else, let's say you were an engineer. If you were an engineer back in your country that those qualifications, you would be able to know whether you can work here within, you know, let's say six weeks of landing here and then we can get you settled into that profession. We've got to break down some of the bodies that have mounted around these professions.

8:15There's, you know, there's, there's colleges that want to keep people out in order to get, you know, in order to gatekeep for their own, for their own professionals that are here. But like we have a shortage in many of these professions and like we got to fix this problem and it's not that complicated. Everybody's going to tell you, you know, that these are big, serious public policy questions. They're not. If there's a will to do it, there is a way forward. And I think you're going to hear a lot from me about that. What's been the blockage? Well, the blockage are like, why isn't this just, why does it just so obvious to me? Why does it just have, well, there's a lot of things that seem so obvious in the, in the system. Like why, you know, why are taxes so high? Why don't bad guys go to jail? Like, I think I hear a lot, we're going to have to, we're going to have to have a car. We'll get there, but, you know, why, like why do all of these things happen? Why, you know, why can't we build a pipeline to get our oil to, to tidewater?

9:16So we can ship it to other countries and not sell it to the U.S. at a loss. Why do we have the smartest people, the most, the, the, the most amount of resources? Why are we squandering up our, our opportunities? Like those are, those are the questions we're going to get to. Those are the questions that I fight about every single day. And those are the things that we want to bring forward as, as a government and waiting. And so the short answer is just because the liberals have been in the power for too long and they're not making those changes. There's a lot of people who want this system to work as the, as a status quo. Like they, they, they want to protect the status quo. Give you, give you the perfect example of why somebody doesn't want to shake something up. If you're, if you're, you know, older in this country, you bought real estate a number of years ago, a lot of years ago, you bought it when my parents sort of bought their, their place in the, you know, in the late 70s or early 80s and you bought it for like 12 almonds and seven raspberries.

10:17And you, you kind of own your house now. All this talk of, you know, sort of additional housing, potentially, you know, you start to think about it as like, well, this is going to kill the value of my house, which has already gone up exponentially over and over again. And I can, I could have bought like 90 of them. At some point, people who, who are beneficiaries of the system do not want the system to change. And that is the, that is the thing that happens in Canada. It is the thing that is screwing young people right out of the dream of everything that, you know, I, let's call ourselves in the, in the same vintage, everything that we were able to achieve. Like we're probably the last ones to, to, to be able to do it. And everybody young is screwed because there is a group of people that want to protect what they have, whether it's, you know, asset values and, uh, or, uh, or just the status quo. And it's sad because it's taking away from overall productivity and society. Like I speak to people who are frustrated. They have given up on the dream of getting ahead.

11:20So it's like, why work hard for something I'm never going to achieve? And it's, it's an awful, yeah. You know what, Scaram is not just for them personally, but for society, society is a whole, right? It's a big time. And what scares me the most is, is when sort of your, your like expectations start to go down, um, where if you talk to a 25 year old, you know, not kid, but if 25 year old, young, professional, and they said, you know what? Like home ownership is just not in my future. Like I just, I'm just not going to do that. That's just the way that it's always been. Or you walk down the street and, you know, there's tents in your park and, and sort of needles in the, in the, in the road. And that's how it's always been. Well, but it has a, it hasn't. It definitely has, and there's a drug addiction, but not, yeah, this open air market that we're seeing. But when you see it, you start to get used to it. When you start to get used to it, it becomes a, this is how it's always been. And we continue have to remind people that this is not how it always was. And it's not how it has to be.

12:20Like you don't have to live like this. When we were talking earlier, you thought a statistic to me that I found truly just unbelievable about how much money the government is spending on decriminalization and safe injection sites and providing drug paraphernalia to addicts. That is not going to rehabilitation. And I have always spoken very openly about how much, I believe in rehabilitation and how much I do not believe in making it more comfortable for addicts to stay addicts. And as, you know, I'm 21 years sober. And for me, I cannot fathom what my life would be like today if I hadn't hit bottom. Well, you'd be dead. Yeah, or I'd be in jail, I'd be around it. I know. The drugs and what is considered safe supply

13:21and the fact that the problem has gotten, like has gotten so markedly worse that you can see it in your streets right now. I think somebody who, you know, who's gone through recovery years ago today, like that's just, it just makes it impossible. I'll tell you this. I don't know, there's two people come to mind that I used to use with. There's still a lot of, but they're also still suffering. And they're still addicts. And, you know, the prospects of their recovery are slim to nail and I wish them the best. But I desperately want those people to help that they need. Repeat that, that's statistically good. So much money is being poured into keeping drug addicts drug addicts as opposed to giving them the help. They're safe supply stuff and, you know, you'll see sort of numbers. But overall, like, let's just take the downtown east side of Vancouver, which has always sort of been ground zero for major use. It has been my brother actually went to school out there and he's 10 years older than me. And it was always a rough area.

14:24But it's, I mean, it's like the walking dead now. It's on the town. That's for sure. And it's the government overall in all of those programs spends about 360 million dollars a year. It's like a million bucks a day. 360 million supports and all of the things. So here's what I said earlier about, you know, people wanting the status quo. The same thing exists in these welfare sort of industries. Like it becomes a cottage industry of programs to like effectively what I think is keep people sick. We have a minister of health who can't say that smoking fentanyl is a bad thing. We have the government, you know, we have, we have the government sort of renaming everything safe supply. We used to tell kids that drugs are bad. Yes. We didn't rename the, you know, the notion of drugs, safe drugs and unsafe drugs. They were just drugs. We grew up on, don't do drugs, drugs, drugs. They could kill you.

15:24You're going to be an addict. Exactly. We had all the commercials with all of the weird puppets. And the egg that was broken open and this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs. Exactly. We had, you know, it was, it was a very clear indication and like it's, it's sad. Like when you, when you have a government that's so addicted to these programs, then you don't have a real conversation about like whether, you know, whether this is good for society and I happen to come from a world view that I think it's, it's awful and it's terrible and it keeps people sick. And we move away from, you know, from recovery, from true programs that give people the hope and a new life and give their families a new life. Addictions not, you know, addictions is a disease. It's not a, it's not a bad, you know, it's not a bad person thing and it affects not only that person but their entire families and with this government's view on drugs and safe supply

16:26and the continuation of pumping this stuff into the system, I just don't think that people stand a chance. Not sad. So what would, in your ideal world, what alternative would you, would you like to see? In an ideal world, I want to see, you know, I don't want to see crack pipes in giving out by cities with, you know, with their logo on it, you're telling me. Yeah, I want to see, like I want, I want to see a society that puts value on recovery. I want to see more money into recovery. I want to see in some cases, I think there's a conversation to be had about, you know, putting people into recovery, even if they're not ready to go. And I know that some provinces are experimenting with that. I want to see wraparound supports for transitional housing afterwards. But what I don't want to see is government funded drugs that are being diverted into places that they weren't before.

17:28You have effectively government run sort of pharmacies that give out a lesser potent version of the thing that you're chasing in the first place. Those things end up, and we know, they end up diverted into schools. We know that they are sort of that initial hook for somebody that wasn't using and maybe isn't chasing that high, but that's where they get. Like we know this is happening, and it is insane to say that it's not. It is insane to rebrand something as safe drugs. There's no such thing. You said something earlier that's really interesting. And of course, I have, you know, my foot in many different worlds as I've got my criminal defense hat, my criminal defense lawyer hat, and then I also have a number of, you know, sort of past times that bring me into worlds that are very much right leaning and conservative. And there's this sort of belief amongst the world

18:32and the laugh that conservatives just want to end all programming and leave people defend for themselves. And that's not what you're describing at all. You're just describing a shift from sort of safe injection sites to make it easier for people to use to giving people actual hope for long-term recovery. Yeah, there's no such thing as a safe injection site. Like there's nothing safe about it. What do you say to people who believe that without those safe injection sites, themselves or their loved ones would dive in over those? Look, I believe that people should get into recovery and we should provide every avenue into recovery. Now, we're not, you know, we're not saying that there isn't sort of harm reduction things that sort of can wrap around. If you really want to get into the nitty gritty about, you know, there's method on, there's all kinds of things that sort of keep people on a path. But that path needs to lead towards recovery. And right now, none of it is happening. I know from what I'm understanding, there's actually at least in the city of Toronto,

19:33there's like a two-week requirement for people to stay sober before they can go to rehab, but then they can only go to detox for like a week. And so there's no continuity in even stable housing that would give someone a chance, right? Because if you can't even stay in rehab long enough to stay sober enough to get into, sorry, go to detox and stay in detox long enough to stay sober to get into rehab. I mean, there's really no hope. Yeah. And sort of like, so get the number of detox beds up. Get the number of recovery beds up. Like you end up dying in a waiting list for to actually get recovery and to be part of recovery in this country. It's like, it is a sad state of affairs where we've sort of moved the conversation to like almost we give up. We're giving up on addicts. And I think the compassionate view has to be one that gives people like another shot at life.

20:34Yes, agreed. And for me, I mean, the catalyst for me to get sober was hitting bottom. And I feel like if I never hit bottom and there was always this government funded cushion that kept me comfortably addicted to drugs, I would never have stopped. It was really the fact that I was hitting bottom that I was getting to a place of almost dying of near fatal overdoses that... Well, extol the virtues of recovery. Like look at your story. And there's like, there's millions of stories like yours. I know. Of people who've come out on the other side. Yeah, agreed. Okay, speaking of beds, let's talk about jails. Let's talk about jails. So conservative government wants to make it more difficult for people to get bail because to see jail sentences longer. Right now, at least in Ontario, remand centers where people are housed while waiting for their trials. Like we got to separate penitentiaries for people who have been convicted and sentenced to

21:35over two years. But remand centers are where people who are waiting for their trials or who have been denied bail are spending their times. I know because I argue it often that the conditions in our remand centers are what has been labeled as inhumane time and time again. We have jail cells that are built for two people, housing three such that a third person is sleeping on a mattress on a floor with their head beside a toilet on most nights in most remand centers. That's just the reality. I cross-examined a supervisor from the Hamilton Wentwood Detention Center back in December on the state of affairs of the Barton Street jail there. And he testified under oath. The jails just were not meant to house the number of people that are there and there's nothing they can do as staff, which is fair. They have to put people somewhere. So we're already at a point where jails are well over capacity. If these bills are passed

22:36such that it will be harder for people to get out on bail and you want to keep people in jail for longer, like, where are they going to go? What does that look like? Yeah, look, I mean, that's part of the tradeoff. That's part of a public policy conversation that we should have. You're never going to have me sitting here saying that people should live in inhumane accommodations for the time that they're there. But fundamentally, I think this is a conversation on whether you put a value on public safety or whether you put a value on keeping people out of jail and what we're talking about, I think, as conservatives and, frankly, more and more Canadians who actually live in a city and who interact with that city every day is that we have repeat violent offenders recommitting crimes, and I'm not sure that you're going to tell me that that's not true, because the numbers bear out, and you constantly hear stories from police officers who nighttime arrests, they get somebody

23:42that they end up finding out that that person is linked to a break and enter in the area two months later. It's like the same story, and it's the same guy, and the police ask themselves, it's a point of arresting this guy. So the question really has to be is how much value do we place on public safety and how much of a conversation that we want to have on not revictimizing people, not having them live in fear in their own communities, and we work out the other pieces of policy that follows. I think people are, they work by incentive, and I think if you've got an incentive not to commit crime, and you deter people with arrests and actual jail time, then that leads to less crime, because what we've been doing on the other side has led to an increase in violent crime, 55% violent crime since 2015, 130% up on gun crime, 330% rise in extortions in this country, extortions.

24:47That's like a word that you don't think of of things that happen in Canada, and particularly in a few communities and a few parts of this country, but we can't let that get out of control, and there has to be a value placed on victims and victims' rights, and I think we've got that balance wrong. And so we gotta go back to the drawing board, and I'll tell you this as a conservative, and I think that people watching this is that I don't think there's ever gonna be a political party that you agree with 100% of the time. You're not a robot, but I think by far in large, I think our version of policy going forward, whether it's criminal justice on taxes, on resource development, on individual rights and privacy, I think we've got it right most of the time, and I'm proud to be part of a movement and a party where I don't always get my way, but I always do get my say, and we can make those arguments in the room. In the United States, it's much harder to get bail

25:50unless you're wealthy, because they have a very different system than we do have. And their sentences are through the roof. They make all of our, even our harshest sentences look like an absolute joke, but we don't see less crime. Yeah, we're not looking at US style justice reform. We're looking to sort of to strike the balance back. What is I looking on making sure that victims are at sort of at the center of this and that crime is not out of control? Again, what we've been doing over the last 10 years is like the scientific term for it is like Kuku Bananas. I mean, I think everyone can agree, and I have a lot of conversations, like I'm friends with crowns, I'm friends with judges, like every participant in the system agrees that it's not working, including my clients who are triple-bunked, and they're calling me saying like, what is happening? Like, how is this Canada when I had a client who was the victim of a horrible aggravated assault

26:51while in custody and was denied the medical treatment that his surgical team said he needed because oftentimes he didn't have officers available for transport. There was no one to take the transport wagon from the jail to the hospital to get him the surgical intervention that he needed. Like, this can't be Canada. This is certainly not looking. So nobody's happy with the current system and I don't think I would ever stand up and be like, well, what we're doing is working. But like, what we're doing is we're doing not, and you can take off your defense lawyer hat and jump into this conversation, understanding that there is going to have to be trade-offs in policy, like you can't change people and behavior by changing a system. You have to work within what you've got and to move that system to account for people's behavior. So whether it's incentives, whether it's our institutions, I think you got to come up with a policy.

27:53In this case, bail reform needs to happen in this country. In fact, the government agreed to it. I don't think they went all the way, but they've got the bill in the House of Commons. They presented another piece of justice legislation. So they're starting to get attuned to the fact that people's behaviors and their lives have changed in Canada. The way that I operate and behave in the city has changed over the last number of years. I won't take public transit, not because I don't think that it works. I think that it works really well in cities like this because I'm terrified. And there's a value placed on that. There's a value placed on public safety. There's a value placed on losses, on insurance losses, on health care, on trauma care of all of these people that have been victimized. And we've got to look at that in the system, which I don't think has been looked at. I think all that's fair. I think something that I've seen for a very long time is a lack of resources that will assist people

28:58in addressing some of the underlying issues that sort of bring them into the criminal justice system before they're even old enough to be arrested. So in Canada, you can't be arrested before the age of 12. And there's a lot of statistical research that has shown that if you address issues of poverty, education, intergenerational trauma, addiction, things of that nature that we in the system all know is a precursor to sending someone into the penal system. What is the conservative position on helping to address some of those issues? You're talking sort of the standard, nature, nurture conversation. I mean, I'm not saying that there aren't people who are hardwired to commit crimes. There's no question. I think there's a lot of people. The environment matters. Like certainly you can't discount that environment and sort of the social outcomes are bred by sort of where you start and what you're raised in.

30:00But I also think there needs to be value placed on, again, incentives, on institutions, on culture, on families, on communities, which I think has been lax. Like we believe that there are people who are going to do what people do and you can't build a system in order to change people. Like we saw that, the oldest story is the communist one, which I think is why I'm a conservative and my father used to tell me all the time. The communists believe that they could re-engineer a system, re-educate people, redistribute everything and that if you change the system, that people would change. And it was the opposite of that. People can still compete it and they still were incentivized by things and some people took risks and some people were ambitious and some people ended up being corrupted and I think at the core of it, there are people that are going to take a different level of risk. There are people that are going to have a different level of ambition. There are people that are more generous and less generous.

31:01There are people that are assholes and there are people that are not assholes. I don't know if we're allowed to say that. You're allowed to say whatever you want. Yeah, no. Like there is, you've got to work a system that is within the confines of people's nature as well. That's where conservatives stand. And of course, like the environmental factors matter but they are not, they determine it to whether people are good or bad. One of the things that they can sort of, and you've been a front runner on this this week, have tabled in response to the crime that we are seeing throughout our communities is the stand your guard bill. Yeah. Talk to me about that. Yeah, lots of people believe that that's like, you know, we have self-defense laws in this country. So it's not, you know, like your defense lawyer had shown. No, it doesn't. My legal guard owner had it. Yeah, your legal guard owner. I don't know. That's not my defense lawyer hat. Well, I guess I guess it could be both. Also a licensed gun owner. Look, we've got defense laws and we've

32:02got sort of proportionality and all of that side. But you're not sure that if somebody was to come into your house and you were, you know, whether they were, you believe that they were going to harm you, you're not sure if you can actually defend yourself and you would end up in one. Well, I'm pretty sure I can defend myself. I'm pretty sure you can defend me too. I, you know, there is, there are lots of people that end up in a long drawn out legal battle. Yes, because the system wasn't, you know, didn't apply that judgment fairly on that. It does, and I think a lot of people are mistaken at what point the self-defense laws apply. A lot of people think that the police are allowed to just assume or investigate and decide that this was self-defense. And usually they don't have that discretion. So it's reversing the owners here, right? And that's what the, that's what the bill is. So it's my colleague, Sandra Kobina.

33:03She's a, she's a first term MP and a great MP from a new market Aurora. She's tabled this, this, this piece of legislation. So lots of people will tell you that it's like a kin to cast a law. It's not that at all. It's to make sure that people have the protections within the law to not have that drawn out long legal, expensive battle on, you know, when, when they decided or when they, they, they chose to defend themselves that, that they would be in the wrong on it. So we want to see that, that go forward. There's, there's a lot of, so what does that look like? What is the bill in tail? So the bill is a, so it's private members bill by, by her. So what it does is it actually does that. It doesn't talk about the, the self-defense laws. We've, we've already got those. It talks, it talks specifically about changing a piece in the, in the, in the criminal code to give people the, it reverses the onus of not having to, not having to prevent. So, okay. And so it would essentially operate is like, let's say that bill passed, you know, and for our listeners

34:06who aren't at all familiar with this bill at all, what does that, how does that play out? Someone breaks into my house, armed intruders, I go, managed to open up my safe with my gun. Do what I need to do. All of the things that you need to do as a responsible legal gun owner in this country who is not the problem. Correct. Do all the things that need to do, and I've, you know, loaded my properly, purchased properly registered firearm, and I defend my house, my home, and I shoot that person or people. Then what, if the bill is passed? You should be able to, you should be able to defend your home and, and your case, even if that person who was intruding maybe didn't have a gun and you didn't know it and you felt threatened. The onus now is on them to prove it, but they're dead. Well, the onus is on the crown to prove it. The onus is not on you to prove it, to prove whether you were defending yourself. Okay. Yeah. And so the assumption is that if someone has broken into my house and doesn't belong to be there. You should be able to protect your family and your home. Look, we've had, we've had a number of these cases come up in the,

35:10in the, in the last number of, in the last number of months and, uh, and years and, uh, they end up in long, uh, drawn out legal battles because we don't sort of have clarity on this now. This is very different than what exists in the states where you can just, uh, you just shoot. We know that the liberals have been waging war against legal gun owners now for the last six years. And you get, you get, get the letters? I got the letters. Yeah, I got the letters. I got a, I got a couple of guns that, um, they're trying to take back and they're now prohibited. And I have until October 31st to decide what I'm going to do. Are the conservatives doing anything between now and then to try to shift this so that our legal property is not taken from us? Yeah, look, this is an issue of obviously property rights, but this is an issue just of, of, of police resources being used in, like the most idiotic way. Like we have a crime crisis in this country by any stretch, by any means. And now we've got, we've got police force after police force now saying,

36:11like I'm not, I'm not engaged in your weird, uh, in your weird program that takes away, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, guns from duck hunters, um, like we're here to protect criminals, not turkeys, um, and we're not going to take your pop-can guns, um, from, from your house. We're just not involved in this, uh, in this program. So it remains to be seen how, how the program actually, uh, actually plays out because the, the voluntary side of, of this program, um, as you can imagine, hasn't been all that successful, um, there isn't people lining up to, uh, to give back their legal guns. And like you have to stress over and over again that the problem in this country is not law abiding gun owners. I mean, we've been saying that for six years and, and we're, we still have this looming deadline. And I'm getting a lot of calls from law abiding citizens who are saying, look at, I, you know, I have an AR 15 that I purchased completely legally. It's properly registered. I did everything right. What are my options between now and October?

37:12So they come October 31st. I'm not breaking the law. Yeah. Well, you give them the options because you're the lawyer. And I promise you as, uh, you know, as a conservative MP with all of my colleagues and as reasonable, um, uh, as, as reasonable people see this, we're going to continue to, um, to fight this. And I hope that more and more police forces like, uh, like York Regional Police, like Toronto police, um, get in line, uh, or, or, or, or say the same thing and saying, we're not participating in this nonsense. Like we have a real problem in the streets. Um, and this just isn't one of them. What do you see? I mean, we've talked about crime. We've talked about, um, some of the issues with new immigrants being able to access proper, um, the employment that they're skilled and, and quite very much capable of doing. What do you see as sort of the top concerns in the study? Oh, you're just hearing crime, no, it's not, you look, uh, you know, I think we're, we're speaking on crime, but the top concern remains like the cost of living in this country is wild and, and it's wildly unattainable for,

38:15like if you did everything right, you know, you went to school and you got a job and, and you got to work and you work harder and harder and you just aren't getting ahead and you're like loaded up on debt. The price of food goes up, uh, it was up seven point two percent, uh, food inflation, um, we just saw a jobs number report, um, today where the, the country's like blood almost 85,000 jobs, most of those private sector jobs. We have a youth unemployment crisis, um, we have the inability to get our own resources to, to markets. We're in the midst of a massive, um, trade war with, uh, you know, a good front or a longtime friend and ally that has given us the richest, one of the richest middle classes in the, in the world with an unprotected border, um, for the better part of my own, for, of my life, um, there is lots of problems and there's lots of things that we can fix here. And I think if we're focused on, uh, if we're focused on making sure that we do the, we control the things that we can control, I think the, our potential in

39:19this country is limitless. And I want to, like, I want people to say that out loud. Like this is the best country in the world. And we're squandering our potential here. Um, I think young people don't see a path forward, um, you know, I'm seeing a lot of the conversation amongst Michael art for sure. Happens, how are we moving to, where are we going to go? What do we do from here? Cause it's, the views are not here. Yeah. It used to be like one of those things. And then you're probably here at amongst your group of friends. Like one of those things that would come up once in a while. And that's like every time we get together, it's like either somebody has moved or somebody is thinking about it. And I know it's not that easy and people aren't that mobile. And we have family and we have roots here, but I'm hearing it more and more. Like I don't subscribe to it. I don't buy it. I'll try to convince everybody to stay here, um, and sort of be the last one's fighting as I think I think this country is the best country in the world. I love this country. I think it gave my parents the ability, um, to, to own a home and start

40:21a business and do like all of the things that they couldn't do where they came from. And in one generation, you go from like the front seat of a taxi to the front row of Parliament Hill, like that could only happen in Canada. Couldn't even happen in the US for me. We said, I don't think so. Um, those are, like those are the things I want to protect. And I think we have the smartest people. Um, we've got enough food to feed the world. We have enough resources to power us and our allies for, for generation. We're reliable, we're dependable. We go, you know, we go to war with the, on, on the right side of history, throughout our history, um, and I just think we're squandering that opportunity. But I want people to know that the potential is there. And if you put the right people in the right time in the right place to make those decisions, I think the, the possibilities are endless for Canada. I mean, you've been front and center witness, witnessing this from the political landscape for a long time, but most certainly for the last five years that you've been sitting. Like, we have seen a very, very steady decline and there has been so many,

41:25you know, moves that Canada has made that has forced people to question, right? Like, why are we spending, sending so much money to the Ukraine? And now, of course, we have the minister of finance who's following the money train to the Ukraine and nobody's talking about it. You know, nobody's talking about, like, we still don't really understand, and I say, we as like ordinary citizens who are not politicians, I still don't understand why Trudeau stepped out. Nobody, nobody talked about it. It was just it happened. Well, why? Like, someone with that big of an ego doesn't just step aside from, you know, and I think I just let these things happen without, without any fervor. Like, I don't understand. And what do you, like, is there, is there a talk? Yeah, well, look on, on that one, I mean, I think he was deeply, deeply unpopular. And, and I think the, you know, he sort of brought the Liberals down to, to, to almost extinction and then being sort of lots of things happen.

42:27And we can talk about the, the last election, but it's still, still worth fighting for, for this, for this country. There are, there are lots of things that I think are distracting to, to the Canadian population. And I think there is a core number of Canadians who I think want to protect the status quo because it works for them. And I think everybody else is screwed. If you're a worker in this country, if you're a young person in this country, if you don't own anything and you make your, you make your living from wages, versus if you own an asset that keeps ballooning as government programs, appeal to like those who have access to them. If you make your money from a portfolio rather than, than wages, I think you want to keep the, the status quo going. And I think there needs to be somebody in Ottawa screaming to get rid of the status quo to help the, the young person, the worker, the people who build stuff, make stuff in, in this country. And we're going to do that and we're going to focus on that.

43:29And I think you, as a citizen, you got to ask those questions. You know, I, I think our media does us a disservice by sort of by the cheerleading and, and almost no scrutiny of the government. And that's why I think the opposition is so important and critical at a time like this. Couldn't agree more. I thank you so much for your time for being on the show. Thanks for another episode of Who Judges the Judge, podcast made to make you question the way you judge the world around you.