Poilievre's campaign against Alberta separation | The Big Story [20:19-25:19]

trying to say, yeah, I see we've got some real problems with the federal government and you should adopt, the federal government should adopt our policies, which are relentlessly pro oil and gas industry. There is not a problem that Pierre Polly Ebb has ever seen Canada conferred with for which he does not believe a new gas, a new oil pipeline is the solution, right? He's like the leader of the pipeline party effectively. I mean, that's, he brings it up over and over again. And he may be right. I mean, that could, you know, that could create a enormous amount of wealth in Alberta, which would also accrue to the federal government because federal government collects taxes on oil revenues and it helps. I mean, there's this tension between environmentalists obviously and people who want to see this development go ahead. Polly Ebb also, you know, using again this opportunity to highlight what he considers to be laws that are unfair to Alberta and to Alberta's prime industry oil and gas at the federal level that were brought in under Justin Trudeau, but he talks about the, Daniel Smith calls him the nine bad laws referring to these laws that are meant to control development in the energy sector, you know, the tanker band of BC's West Coast, one of them, which is a real impediment to potentially to the, to this proposed pipeline, depending on what rooted goes. And, you know, there is an audience within the current government for that point of view and they do seem to be, you know, trying to move much more quickly on environmental review processes, including for the new pipeline and also seem to be willing to listen about changing some of these laws that they don't like. But for Polly Ebb, this has become the prime, the prime issue, which plays great in its home province of Alberta, but, you know, concerns are already killing it, Alberta, right? You know, they don't, they don't need to increase their support. If the concern is one of wind federal elections, they have to grow the tent. They have to win a lot of seats in Ontario, not just in rural Ontario. They have to win seats in Quebec. And that stuff about the oil and gas sector is deadly in Quebec. Like Quebec is, we always think of BC as being, you know, kind of the most environmentally concerned province, this problem is most, most concerned about climate change. Quebec is, you know, at the same level, or at least a close second, it's really important to voters in Quebec in a way that it isn't in the rest of the country. So I don't know if the federal conservatives have just said, well, okay, forget about Quebec. We're not really competitive there. And we're going to try and find a way to form government without it. Can they do that? Yeah. Well, Stephen Harper did. I mean, he got a small number when he actually achieved majority status, he got a small number of seats in Quebec. So it can be done. I mean, the traditional formula for conservative parties at the federal level in Canada, the form of government, this is the Brian Mulroney formula, is you bring together, you know, conventional Western conservatives, and he actually brought in a lot of people who would be Quebec nationalists, or more conservative in Quebec. And that's a Brian Mulroney, one, two majority governments, but then it all kind of fell apart because the Western people went off and formed the reform party, and the Quebec nationalists formed the block of a quaw. And here we are today, reform party is not around, but it's been sort of brought back into the conservative tab, but it's still that kind of central challenge for any federal conservative leader is trying to, trying to get enough votes outside of Alberta. In the sense, from a lot of folks looking from the outside in, is that Paulie just keeps winning Alberta voters over and over again. You know, we are heading into a summer break. And as you said, this could be a moment of reflection for the conservatives. What do you think is laid out for them over the next few months? Before heading back in the end of September? Yeah, I think there's going to be a lot of discussions, private discussions amongst conservatives about where they go from here. Now, keep in mind, there's a lot of things that are going to happen between now and when the MPs return to Ottawa in the third week of September, chiefly, the trade situation with the United States, right? And this is another area of attack that Paulie have has used repeatedly is hammering Mark Carney for his failure to get, as he says, a deal to end the tariffs. And he's right. I mean, Carney campaigned on this. He made it sound like he was the guy who was going to stand up to Donald Trump to take on Donald Trump. And instead, we haven't really got anywhere on that. But no matter he has. Like, I mean, as Carney likes to say, we have the best deal of any country in the world with the United States.