Canadaland. Funded by you. I'm Noor Azriyeh and today we're talking shit about the news. We'll talk about Elon Musk's apartheid-loving grandpappy. He was Canadian. We'll talk about a pro-Israel media watchdog. But mostly, we'll be talking about the national mood in Canada. And what this outpouring of patriotic sentiment means for our political discourse. We are wide open. This is crazy. Wait for that.
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Welcome back to the show, reporter from the Thai, Jen St. Dennis. Hello. We need to talk about the speech. This is Team Canada. at its best. From coast to coast to coast, we are all in this together. Now is also the time to choose Canada. We must pull together. because we love this country. We don't pretend to be perfect, but Canada is the best country on earth. Thank you. Merci. Vive le Canada.
Damn, that Justin Trudeau speech made me want to sing the national anthem. Like I had the strongest urge to just like get up and do that. And then I realized. I don't know the Canadian national anthem. I'm not even Canadian. But boy, did I feel Canadian after that speech. Yeah, we're all staring into those moist brown eyes. Just, yeah.
taken away with the quiet patriotism and the firm resolve. It was a very good political performance and very interesting to note that he started by speaking directly to Americans. our closest friends and neighbors. This is a choice that will have real consequences for you, the American people. I know I'm not alone in this.
Canadian patriotic feeling. I have been scrolling through Twitter and on TikTok. I saw a bunch of comments, even just in my personal life, like people calling me and being like, did you see the speech? Here are some comments that have caught my eye. Trudeau's speech making me want to die in war. I hate Trudeau deeply. I hate every time he opens his mouth, and this was a good speech.
Best Trudeau speech in ages. This sounds like a wartime address by Trudeau. I've been the most vocal critic of Trudeau ever, but this speech... was just perhaps the best speech he's ever given. I wish he had taken more of this tone throughout his time as prime minister. Jen, what do you think? Yeah, it was really, really interesting to see.
Because this is a prime minister at the end of his time as prime minister. He is done. He is resigning. He is deeply unpopular. And yet we saw that glimmer of what made people vote. For Justin Trudeau in 2015, we kind of saw a glimmer of that come back. It only took a trade war, folks. It only took a trade war. But yeah, he was doing a good job bringing the country together, channeling the country's emotions.
What Canadians needed at that moment. So, yeah, it was very effective. Anything in particular that stand out to you? What about the address to the Americans? Quoting John F. Kennedy was really effective. As President John F. Kennedy said many years ago. Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies.
And just like listing all the times that Canada has helped Americans and died alongside Americans and war was very effective. So he talked about World War II. From the beaches of Normandy. He talked about Korea. To the mountains of the Korean Peninsula. Ran hostage crisis in the 70s. Those 444 days we worked around the clock. We talked about Afghanistan. To the streets of Kandahar. 9-11. The day the world stood still.
Then he brought it right up to the wildfires in California. A mere weeks ago, we sent water bombers to tackle the wildfires in California. In the midst of Trump making all these bellicose statements, Canadian firefighters were down there helping with California's devastating wildfires because that's what we're used to doing. We're used to being friends, not having this fractious relationship.
I thought that was super effective. Bringing it forward from the really strong history right up to the present day was like super, super moving. It feels like we're living through a really interesting moment. On Sunday, Justin Trudeau posted... something to Twitter. It says, now is the time to choose products made right here in Canada. Check the labels. Let's do our part wherever we can. Choose Canada.
First of all, is this Justin Trudeau agreeing that boycotts are an effective and legitimate political tool? I don't know. You tell me. He's already sparked. A strong sense of patriotism among Canadians. Grocery shopping has become an act of patriotism. Took me a little bit of extra time to look at products, but all Canadian. We have to do what we can to support our own economy. The CBC...
posted an article, the headline is, the threat of U.S. tariffs has some Canadians taking their money elsewhere. The National Post, Canadians ready to put sovereignty over savings in response to now paused U.S. tariffs. bi-Canadian website flooded with thousands of new user submissions, the star.
has a bunch of made in Canada versus product of Canada. Like, how do I know what I'm buying? And I'm not going to lie, I was at Freshco the other day, and it was the first time I really, like, paid attention to the labels. Felt quite radical. I'm not going to lie. How are you interpreting the coverage? I think the coverage is responding to what we're seeing in the level of interest in our readers and on social media, like just the kind of mood of the country is.
Screw this. This is bullshit. And I do not want to become the 51st state is really the wide ranging sentiment. How dare the U.S. just take this unprovoked aggression against us? That is really seems to be the national mood. We haven't talked about the hockey games yet. Oh, my God. The booing. The booing.
You know, and we're all, you know, people are like, we're not booing the singer. We're just booing this situation. That normally does not happen at hockey games. We're usually like super polite. There was a Toronto Sun article. It says booing Star-Spangled Banner may feel good, but it gives Trump fuel. Apparently, it is un-Canadian to boo. Nah, gives us fuel. Keep doing it. It's harmless. It's like, don't boo the national anthem because...
It'll like upset the leader. Whatever. That's just ridiculous. I don't think that's a national mood. I think the national mood is like, no, this is not OK. And we're going to show you in like whatever peaceful means we can, because that's the stage we're at right now. Like voting with our wallets. I myself was planning to take my teenage kids to New York for a fun vacation at spring break. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to go somewhere else. Ha, take that. Take that, America.
I have directed BC liquor sales to immediately stop buying American liquor from red states. So like footage of people booing the national anthem, taking liquor off the shelves. It kind of reminds me of that footage from Prohibition era where people are like dumping alcohol into the streets.
Much like Elon Musk throwing up a Nazi salute, there are these visual images that become these really potent visual symbols. And so I think we're seeing a bit of that happening now. I feel like the patriotism over the booze lasted like what? Less than 24 hours. I am hearing that the booze is back on the shelves. Phew, we escaped the tariffs, but now we need a drink. Come one month time.
we might be taking the booze back off the shelves again. You know, the booze was symbolic of retaliatory tariffs. Like, there is a larger thing behind that potent visual symbol. That's just a... surface level thing and behind it, we do have that Canada was really willing to hit back with retaliatory tariffs.
Except for Daniel Smith, who did not like that idea and was sort of trying to negotiate outside of it. And that's where the kind of criticism of her was coming from, was that she was not really in line with Team Canada for a lot of the negotiations. What worked? I don't know what worked in getting the tariffs paused. Maybe retaliatory tariffs worked. I've also been seeing a lot of pieces about what Canada could do beyond the short term retaliatory tariffs. What would it mean to...
Look for partners elsewhere. What would it mean to possibly build more pipelines? We even had Pierre Polyev make a big statement on Twitter on the trade war and the Trump tariffs. I'll read some of it. We must put Canada first. Liberals must put aside their partisan interests and recall parliament now to pass a Canada first plan that will include retaliatory dollar for dollar tariffs.
Things like a mass emergency bring-it-home tax cut, scrapping the liberal anti-resource law C-69 and greenlight LNG plans and pipelines, and Pierre Polyev then uploaded a video. saying that he's found the perfect trading partner that we could, we could potentially partner with. It's a friendly and peaceful democracy with lots of resources that apparently shares our culture and even...
speaks two languages. What could it be? What country is this? So which country is it that we should be pursuing as our new top trading partner? Switzerland? France? No. Our new top trading partner will be Canada. But don't we already have free trade with ourselves? Nope. It's actually easier for our businesses to sell to other countries.
than to other canadian provinces like from a communications standpoint oh man that video was great it just hit all the right notes why do you think so just the way it was structured hey, I know a great country we can trade with. And I knew, I'm like, oh, it's Canada. But then when he actually got to it, it was like, yeah. And that intra-provincial trade stuff is like such low hanging fruit.
Pierre Palio for the federal conservatives can champion it. You know, David Eby out here in BC, he's an NDP premier. He can champion it. Everybody's talking about interprovincial trade. It's very easy to say, like, let's knock down barriers. Honestly, let's just all work together. It's just such a win politically. So and it's something economists and, you know, business leaders have been calling for forever. So governments can just kind of that's a really easy thing for them to work on.
And there's actually news that Trudeau will be looking into removing these intra-provincial trade barriers at a surprise Canada-U.S. economic summit that he's holding Friday. I guess he enjoyed Pierre Polyev's video, too. But after the break, we're going to check in on Polyev and see where he fits into this national mood. Does the groundswell of patriotism hurt or help him? This episode is brought to you by Douglas Jen.
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Therapy online. You know how social media just fills your life and your mind with positivity and improves your mental health? It doesn't do that at all. Here's the latest thing. Relationship red flags. Is he doing this? Red flag. Does she have this habit? That's a red flag. What if they're leaving this? Come on. What is this encouragement from strangers to sever your personal relationships with people based on like Seinfeldian minutiae?
What about green flags? Where is the encouragement to actually be grateful for the things that you appreciate and like about the people in your life? That's the kind of thing that... you talk about in like real life therapy, if you're with a good therapist, not like movie therapy or Instagram. This is about finding reasons to feel good about the life that you have and appreciate it.
And that is a practice. That is something that therapists can help you with. That's why I like talking about BetterHelp because they connect people with therapists. So you can find that right fit, which is so important in getting good therapy. As the largest online therapy provider in the world. BetterHelp can provide access.
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Pierre Polyev these days, I feel like he's kind of been shifting out of the media focus in the last month because of all the trade war news. There's been a really strong focus on Justin Trudeau, the governing Liberal Party, the prospective party. leaders and future prime minister, but... Not a lot of coverage on the catchy slogans. I feel like it was just, like, less than a month ago that the media was buying into this inevitable Pierre Polyev win. Like, we have a Time article by David...
January 12th, it's Pierre Polyev's Canada now. Jordan Peterson titled his interview with Pierre Polyev as Canada's next prime minister, and that was just January 2nd. We have another one from December in Maclean's by Stephen Marr. Canada's... Pierre Polyev era will begin in 2025. In November, an issue of The Walrus had 12 essays on how Pierre Polyev's win could affect things like housing, immigration, and health care.
The media was eating him up, me included. Was it not two weeks ago on a politics show that I was saying it was inevitable that Pierre Polyev would win? And now I'm not hearing about him. Yeah. We were all saying that because there was overwhelming polling showing that he had an enormous, enormous lead. And I know that we're always a little skeptical about polls, but this was like every poll and an enormous lead. And it was extremely apparent and also just from the vibe that we were seeing.
People were really, really tired of Trudeau, and they were looking for a change, and Polyev seemed to be capitalizing on that. Do you feel like the trade war has put a damper on the conservative headwind? Like, are the liberals getting a boost here?
Yeah. So I think what's happened is that, OK, so Polyab has really been echoing Trump a lot. We see this in his language like Canada first. Trump always says America first. The gender stuff. The gender stuff. So he was just a couple of weeks ago, he was on CTV being interviewed.
And the interviewer wanted to know, you know, in the U.S., the government has taken away a lot of rights from trans people, a lot of health care, getting rid of the ability to put X on your passport if you're non-binary. And Polyev's comment, I only know two genders. I'm only aware of two, but if you come up with another list, then you're welcome to do that. But I'm aware of two.
It went over well with Fox, I guess, but it caused a lot of anger in Canada. And it was like a very much an echoing of Trump language. All of a sudden, with all of this trade war and Trump acting the way he's been acting towards Canada, that was not going over. very well and i remember he gave a press conference at the beginning of january trying to make it all about the carbon tax and it took him a really long time to tell us what the hell he was going to do in in detail
about the trade war. I felt like it took too long for him to say like, do you support retaliatory tariffs or not? Carbon tax Carney doesn't think that Justin Trudeau is spending enough on heat pumps. That's the only disagreement we can find so far. between Mr. Trudeau and his top economic advisor, Carbon Tax Carney. And the interesting thing at that time was that that was being contrasted with Doug Ford. Doug Ford is this very conservative premier in Ontario.
I think there's a story in CBC where he's like, oh, I did support Trump, but now I don't. He stabbed me in the back. He stabbed me, stabbed me. Yeah. Which I kind of. I kind of love it. But Ford is not like a maple mega guy, the way that like Daniel Smith really draws a lot of her support from people who are quite into Trump. So I think that was a really interesting contrast between what Ford was saying and the role Ford.
was taking. He was really, you know, leading the charge to do Team Canada. I have a different theory that protect your jurisdiction, but country comes first. Canada is a priority. And I don't believe in jeopardizing one sector or another. Premier Smith's oil is Ontario's auto sector. And meanwhile, we saw Pierre Polyev still talking about trying to make things about the carbon tax.
It was a real disconnect for a while. And he also said in that early January press conference, he really spoke warmly about Elon Musk as well. He was asked if he'd accept Elon Musk's endorsement. And he said he wanted to find a way for Musk to come and build factories here. It'd be nice if we could convince Mr. Musk to open some of his factories here in Canada. And then, you know, just a couple of weeks later, Musk was...
throwing up the Nazi salute at the January 20th inauguration, praising the AFD. And that is going to come back to haunt Pierre Polyev. I think he needs to really address that. We saw him really take a divergent path. from conservative parties in Alberta and in British Columbia. In BC, we have this resurgent BC conservative party that is now the official opposition. we saw those like MLA's and conservative party sort of strategists really talking about
How Trump's tariffs were justified because, yeah, we have all these problems with fentanyl and that's really terrible. We have all this crime and chaos in British Columbia, which is a line that they've been pushing. We are wide open. Why aren't we trying to do our part in stopping that flow into Canada to begin with? You know, you look at the meth labs, you look at the fentanyl labs and the components that come in, where's those products coming from?
They're being shipped into this province and with less than 1% of containers being checked. This is crazy. But what they've kind of done by saying that is say that there is a justification for the tariffs, which is...
sort of what Trump is saying. So they're sort of looking like they are agreeing with Trump. I'm not sure if that's going to jive with the national mood. You know, they might want to like think about that, think about how that's looking. But they see it as a way to like slam their opponent, the NDP.
So that's what they're doing, but they're so focused on that that I'm not sure if they're really gauging how people are feeling about agreeing with Trump these days. We see Pierre Polyev really taking a different language. There is no justification whatsoever for these tariffs or this treatment.
He is talking about the border. He is talking about how the border needs to be strengthened. But he's talking about it like the U.S. is kind of the menace. He's like, all these guns are coming up from the U.S. 85 percent of gun crime is done. with illegal guns smuggled over the border. We must secure our border, again, to protect our own people and save the lives of our own children. He's putting it in different.
light than say the BC conservatives who are like blaming the province or blaming Canada for having a weak border. I think his conservative audience wants to hear that, but he's putting it in terms that are just.
less aligned with Trump. Yeah, I mean, the latest is that we have Polyev coming down hard on what he called fentanyl kingpins, suggesting that they should get mandatory life sentences. So we're getting a glimpse into where he'll... be positioning himself going forward and it fits into his tough on crime tough on drugs stance which has been a staple of his slogans for a while now but speaking of Doug Ford honestly I think it was interesting
to see him willing to rip up the agreement with Elon Musk Starlink in the midst of the tariff threats? We'll be ripping up our contract with Elon Musk Starlink. Ontario won't do business with people hell-bent. on destroying our economy. His willingness to kind of go against this American conservative ideological movement, though I think the contract is coming back now that the 30-day pause.
Talking about Doug Ford, I just think that Doug Ford does have this ability to kind of gauge the public mood. He's like a true populist. I've been hearing a lot in the media coverage. Discourse on TikTok that like the federal election ballot box question is who can fight Trump? And I'm sure that's having a huge say in the leadership race. Do you feel like that's an accurate?
representation of what the federal election will be about? It's such a huge threat to Canada that, yeah, I think there's no doubt that that is probably going to dominate the election, especially if 30 days from now if it's like still being talked about still in the news if it all kind of fizzles and goes away then yeah maybe we'll shift to something else but if this continues to be a crisis
And if Trump continues to be bellicose and keep threatening our sovereignty, then, yeah, I think there's no other thing that you can really be focused on. And Pierre Pagliav thought he was going to get this election focused on the carbon tax and he was going to be like, I'm going to cut taxes, which is like a very. Potent message for conservatives and right-leaning voters. But now it's like, and you know, I was so snarky about Mark Carney. I thought that was ridiculous that.
We're in this moment of populist politics and the liberals are going to choose like a central banker. I was just like, I will say it is the perfect time to be running as an economist right now. Right. Yeah. Maybe that's who we need. Somebody who's familiar with the UK and is able to like broker an alliance so that they'll help us fight Trump. I saw his interview on BBC and I was like, yeah, OK, like maybe maybe he is the right choice.
Would you expect some help, some solidarity from the likes of the UK? We're not looking for help. We can stand on our own. But what I would point out is that the system is being changed in real time. by these actions if they are followed through. And that creates opportunity. Christia Freeland, too. I mean, like she's got experience negotiating NAFTA. That was her whole thing. And it was she was actually successful at it.
Maybe these are the two that we need. But yeah, it feels like the national mood has just shifted really, really quickly. And politicians are going to need to keep up. There's this like really. patriotic and, like, nationalistic moment we're living in. I wonder how long this will stick around, this feeling, or if it'll disappear in 30 days. I think our Canadian national identity was being kind of fractured before this with our really polarized cultural landscape. We have a lot of Canadians.
watching these american right-wing influencers like ben shapiro or like tim pool or dave rubin who are really
down on Canada. They're repeatedly talking about how Canada is weak, how Canada is soft, how Canada has wacky social policies. The good thing that's happening in Canada right now is that more and more people are waking up to how absolutely dysfunctional the places it's very sad and when you're receiving all that information you know it's understandable that maybe eventually you're going to be like well our country really sucks and i feel like that was the mood like a month ago i hate trudeau and
Canada's broken. We can't fix it unless there's like this overhaul. Now it's like, no, wait, I should do like Canada. I like Canada to be its own country. Thanks. I think we have an opportunity now. And but we'll see. Yeah, like you say, I'm not sure how. Long at the last. But the feeling certainly seems to be quite deep and strong and free. So, yeah. Jen.
On this show, we like to duly note stories that aren't getting the attention they deserve. Do you have something to duly note for us today? I would like to duly note this Guardian story. called How the Roots of the PayPal Mafia Extend to Apartheid South Africa. If you are confused about what Elon Musk is doing and his background, the story can really give you a lot of interesting background.
The most interesting part of the story, though, is that it talks about Elon Musk's Canadian grandpa. Did you know he had a Canadian grandpa? I actually didn't know he had a Canadian grandpa. Yes, so this story reveals that his maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldman, moved from Canada to South Africa in 1950 because he liked the newly elected apartheid government. The story just has all sorts of interesting details. It will really give you a lot of...
Context, it was actually written by The Guardian's former Johannesburg correspondent, so he knows a lot about South Africa. So I just, yeah, really recommend that article and check it out. We need to know a lot more about Elon Musk than we already do. We sure do. Duly noted. I want to duly note a story that I don't think is getting enough Canadian media coverage.
The story was actually first broken by Samira Mohadeen, who has also been on Canada Land before. It's a story that she actually first talked about in November of last year about three people who were charged by the Toronto police with 17 counts of mischief. for spray-painting anti-Palestinian graffiti in a Toronto neighborhood. It was actually my neighborhood. I have pictures of this graffiti in my camera roll. This stuff was everywhere. Bus stops, garbage cans, sidewalks, planters.
It was everywhere, and I'm glad that someone took the time to look into it, because we now know that one of the accused assailants is the assistant director of Honest Reporting. They're a pro-Israel media watchdog. Me and a few of my colleagues have been a target of their campaigns. The Times of Israel also did a piece on it. I saw a piece in the Jerusalem Post and one in the Toronto Star. That's it. I think more people should know about that. Duly noted. you
That is our show for today. Thank you for joining me. You can email me about the show at Noor at Canada Land dot com. I read everything you send and sometimes I even respond. You can find me on Twitter at. Nurazri in 97. And you can find me on Blue Sky if you just search up my name and look for the girl with the pretty picture. Jen, where can people find you? So you can find me on Blue Sky and Twitter. So on Blue Sky, just look up my name.
Jen St. Dennis. On Twitter, I'm at Jen St. Den. You can also find my work at thetaye.ca. This episode is produced by James Nicholson. Mixing and mastering is by Caleb Thompson. Our director of audio is Max Collins, and this was Fact Checked by Sam Connert. Jesse Brown is the editor and publisher of Canadaland. This episode is brought to you by Canada Land supporters, Leron Hutton, Stacey Chappell, and Jeffrey Sachs.
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On October 3rd, 1980, a bomb was detonated outside a synagogue on Copernic Street in Paris. My mother told my brother that she would just go to the fruit store on Copernic Street to bring some figs. But this was the last time my brother saw her. Three decades later, French investigators finally identified a suspect in the case. A Lebanese-Canadian sociology professor living a quiet life on the outskirts of Ottawa, Canada. Can you introduce yourself?
Hassan Diab. Is Hassan Diab guilty? Or is he a scapegoat? From Canada land, this is the Copernic Affair. It is a surrealistic story, put it this way. Listen to The Kopernick Affair wherever you get your podcasts.