Jon Liedtke joins 610 CKTB’s Gene Valaitis for his regular weekly segment, Liedtke’s Got a Take!
Jon Liedtke asks Official Opposition and Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre about Canada’s missing foreign policy leverage regarding global tariffs and the Palestinian Authority violating official statehood requirements. Poilievre responded that the government must immediately stop funding broken foreign regimes and proposed building massive strategic reserves of Canadian energy and rare critical minerals to aggressively negotiate tariff free United States trade.
Transcript (Gemini Generated):
Jon Liedtke: Jon Liedtke, Kvetch and Release. So much of foreign policy is about the leverage that we have as a country. We just saw that the Palestinian Authority has delayed elections, they have yet to demilitarize the state, and of course, we saw that there has yet to be governance reform. I wonder, with the lack of leverage that we have on that file—and it seemingly is that we’re not moving on the tariff file—what leverage does Canada have when it comes to dealing with foreign policy on the world stage, and what would Conservatives do differently?
Pierre Poilievre: So first of all, we should not be giving aid to a—to a government that’s breaking its promise. The Palestinian regime said it was going to hold elections, they—they’re breaking that promise. And I don’t know why we would be sending Canadian tax dollars from people who can’t afford to pay their bills to a dictatorial terrorist regime like that, especially now that they broke the—the central promise that our Prime Minister claimed was a condition for his support of them.
Back on this continent, our—our leverage is energy and resources. We know the Americans need energy; that’s why President Trump is signing a deal with Russia—of all countries, Russia—to get diesel that he could be getting from Canada. This is what is so frustrating about us not having a deal. We could be selling that diesel from Canadian oil sands and upgraded at Canadian refineries, generating Canadian paychecks of $200,000 a year for our welders, pipefitters, industrial carpenters here in Canada, while making North America energy secure and energy affordable.
That could all be used as leverage in this trade deal. We have 10 of the 12 NATO-defined warfighting minerals that you need to defend the continent; the Americans don’t have those. We could sign—we could build a massive reserve of that that they could access on a preferred basis if they give us tariff-free trade. We have what America needs. Let’s use that leverage to get what we want, which is tariff-free access to the most lucrative market in the world.
This aired on 610 CKTB
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