Jon Liedtke joins 610 CKTB’s Gene Valaitis for his weekly segment, Liedtke Has a Take!
Jon Liedtke criticizes NDP leadership and Canadian politics, specifically Avi Lewis’s stance on U.S. security threats and opposition to defense manufacturing as defeatist and damaging to union jobs. He also condemns reports of former NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s patronage appointment to Destination Canada due to his lack of experience.
Transcript (Gemini Generated):
Gene Valaitis: Right now though, every Friday at 9:15, it’s time for Liedtke’s Got a Take. Good morning, Jon.
Jon Liedtke: Good morning, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: Well, listen, NDP MPP Wayne Gates is going to be just delighted. We’re going to do a little bit of NDP agogo this morning. First of all, Avi Lewis, the new NDP leader, still doesn’t have a seat. Full disclosure, I have a connection to the Lewis family. Now, Avi appeared on a podcast recently and argued that Canada’s primary security threat is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s the United States of America. But he says there’s no way to prevent a U.S. military incursion. Now, Jon, is this just silly military nuance policy or is it just pure political fantasy or does Avi have a point?
Jon Liedtke: Well, I think it’s political fantasy and it’s absolute comedy. On the one hand, he’s running around framing our largest trading partner, our closest neighbor, our primary NORAD partner as an existential threat, but on the other hand, his grand national defense strategy is preemptive surrender because we’d lose anyway. You cannot build a serious sovereign security posture on total defeatism, especially when the Arctic is opening up, Russia is actively militarizing the North, and China is eyeing polar shipping routes, and now Canada is struggling, of course, to meet our baseline NATO commitments. So throwing your hands in the air before the game even starts, that’s not nuance. That’s waving a white flag before the whistle blows, and it’s academic anti-Americanism masquerading as grand strategy.
Gene Valaitis: Well, to paraphrase Oprah, you get a white flag, and you get a white flag, and you get a white flag! Okay, so beyond the threat assessment, Lewis is also warning against spending billions to build up our own domestic military-industrial complex. You know, we just announced we’re buying a whole bunch of new subs that’ll cost billions and billions over the next 30 years. But if Canada isn’t investing in defense manufacturing, especially for the Arctic, aren’t we walking away from like a major economic engine and job creator, not to mention our allies at NATO?
Jon Liedtke: You’re spot-on, Gene. I mean, the deep irony here is that an old-school, labor-first NDP would look at defense manufacturing and immediately see massive organizing potential and high-wage industrial capacity across heavy manufacturing, shipbuilding, aerospace, high-tech vehicle assembly. I mean, you’re talking right there about Halifax, Vancouver, Quebec, Southern Ontario. Those are great regions for the NDP to be able to pick up seats. But these are precise, high-paying, skilled union jobs, quite frankly, that would build the backbone of our middle class. But this is a guy who’s refusing to build a defense infrastructure domestically. But this isn’t going to prevent a war. This is just going to outsource those thousands of jobs to other countries and their shipyards and their plants. Instead of seizing a vital economic engine for Canadian workers and union locals, this NDP leadership is so bogged down in campus anti-military posturing, they’d rather surrender these thousands of union paychecks just to sound virtuous. That’s not economic policy.
Gene Valaitis: No, it’s not. You know, I still remember the convention in Winnipeg with all those weird cards. I mean, people around the world are still laughing at us. But when you take a look at this and where the NDP leader is coming from, what does that tell you about where the party is heading right now as a federal political force? Or is it, you know, put a fork in it, it’s over?
Jon Liedtke: I think it tells you that the party has completely lost the plot because they’re so wrapped up in their online academic rhetoric, their social media activism, the fringe policy debates, that they’ve entirely abandoned their working-class bedrock: the labor, the shop floor workers, the good union paychecks, the pragmatic economic growth. When working families are getting hammered by inflation, housing costs, and industrial shifts, they don’t want foreign policy takes that sound like a second-year university seminar. They want leaders who fight for industrial jobs, public infrastructure, and practical results. The NDP under Tommy Douglas or Jack Layton understood that you have to be connected to the realities of working Canadians. But right now, they are so far adrift from that legacy that I genuinely don’t know if they can even navigate their way back to mainstream relevance.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah, where is Ed Broadbent when you need him, right?
Jon Liedtke: No kidding.
Gene Valaitis: Let’s go to the former NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh. You may have heard me talking about this on Liteus on the News. Okay, here it goes. Reports broke that he is being considered by the Prime Minister to take over as the CEO of Destination Canada, which is our national tourism agency. We bring in about over a billion dollars a year, or something like that. Okay, so when you saw that news, what was your immediate reaction? I’m guessing it was probably just like mine.
Jon Liedtke: Did you hear that thump? It was my head hitting the desk. No, this is—I mean, this is Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes over and over. It’s total unforced political slapstick. I mean, look, we know patronage happens in Ottawa. Every government in Canadian history, and in any politics quite frankly, is going to hand out gigs to party loyalists, and it isn’t automatically fatal if the person that you’re appointing actually has the professional chops to run the organization. But Destination Canada is not an honorary advisory committee where you show up twice a year for a photo op and sign off on a PDF report. This is a major corp managing massive global marketing budgets to compete against every tourism market on Earth. Jagmeet Singh has zero corporate marketing experience, hospitality experience, tourism executive experience. So dropping a career politician with no track record in international industry management into a top executive post, that’s not governance. This is pure political parody.
Gene Valaitis: But Jon! But Jon! Jagmeet helped the Liberals stay in power, A, so he could collect his pension, ’cause he needed a few more months, and B, the Liberals want to thank him because if it wasn’t for him, I would be getting on the air today and I would be saying things like, “Well, Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” So the guy’s got—I mean, he was a lawyer and then a politician. No marketing experience in anything. I mean, you and I have more experience. The gig pays close to $350,000 a year. You know, patronage is usually when a Liberal appoints another Liberal. This would be a first, and it’s basically saying thank you for keeping us in power. Nothing more, nothing less, don’t you think?
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, this is patronage at its absolute worst. It feels like the Liberals suddenly woke up and realized, “Oh no, we owe Jagmeet Singh a massive debt for that parliamentary cover under the confidence and supply agreement,” and they scrambled to find him this position. But here’s the thing: tourism is not a plaything, Gene. You know that better than anyone else in the region that you’re in. This supports nearly a million Canadian workers annually—from hotel workers, restaurant owners, regional airports, local tour operators, and border communities like in Niagara or here in Windsor. And we have spent years battling inflation, border friction, high operational costs, the hangover from COVID, the supply chain problems. So handing the keys of our premier national tourism engine to an unqualified, former failed politician signals loud and clear that Ottawa doesn’t take this sector seriously. They view a multi-billion-dollar economic pillar as nothing more than a political favor desk. It’s the ministry of political favors.
Gene Valaitis: Well, yeah, you’re absolutely right. Even one of our local MPs, Baldinelli, has released a statement this morning, and it’s a long statement, but well, let me see if I can edit it down: “Are you kidding me?!” Now, the other thing too is, I mean, you have to attract foreigners to come here and visit and spend their money. Now, in the past, Jagmeet has spent years taking sharp political stances against foreign governments, let me see if I can remember, including India, oh, the United States, Israel, China, Russia—the list goes on and on and on and on. I mean, how do you have a track record like that when your new primary job is to market Canada internationally?
Jon Liedtke: This is a diplomatic nightmare waiting to happen. I mean, the primary objective of the CEO of Destination Canada is to travel the world, build commercial partnerships, pitch international travelers and tour operators on spending their money here in Canada. So how do you send an executive on a global press tour when he carries years of high-profile diplomatic spats and public feud baggage on his record with key source markets—especially given he was literally denied entry to India in the past? Building a multi-million-dollar travel campaign targeting international visitors when the guy at the top is politically toxic in key markets forces the ultimate question: Are we trying to invite international tourists in to fuel our economy, or are we actively hiring someone whose track record tells them to stay away?
Gene Valaitis: Jon, is the NDP in trouble?
Jon Liedtke: I think—I think we’re all in trouble, but yeah, especially the NDP.
Gene Valaitis: Have a great weekend. Another great take on a Friday morning. Thank you.
Jon Liedtke: Thank you, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: Jon Liedtke. Liedtke has a take, doesn’t he always?
This aired on 610 CKTB
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