October 6, 2025 • 55 mins
Member of Parliament Aaron Gunn joins to discuss free speech, the Charlie Kirk assassination, conservatism among young Canadians, Pierre Poilievre, drug policy, the residential school debate, and why authenticity and common sense still matter in Canadian politics with host Aaron Pete.
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Aaron Pete (00:01):
What made you interested in wanting to
understand these issues?
Aaron Gunn (00:04):
Because as voters, we're basically the shareholders
of our own country.
And if we're not informed orproperly informed, then how can
we make good decisions?
Aaron Pete (00:12):
When did conservatism become something
you were interested in, or whereyou felt more comfortable in in
terms of your ideology?
Aaron Gunn (00:21):
Because it seems to be cool to be conservative,
which is not the case when I was19 as somebody who was
conservative on campus.
Aaron Pete (00:28):
I think it would be tone-deaf not to acknowledge the
recent political assassinationof Charlie Kirk.
Are you willing to share yourreflections on what happened and
how that may have impacted youpersonally as well?
Aaron Gunn (00:39):
I'm a lot closer to this than the average person,
and you know, we've had threats.
We always hope that thetemperature doesn't get quite as
hot here in Canada as it doesin the United States.
It's helping the Chinesecommunist regime at the expense
(01:09):
of Canadian workers.
Aaron Pete (01:10):
In 2022, you tweeted there was no genocide, the
Holocaust was a genocide.
I'm just curious, what are yourreflections on that now?
Mr.
Gunn, it is an honor to haveyou on the show today.
(01:30):
Would you mind please brieflyintroducing yourself?
Aaron Gunn (01:34):
Sure.
Well, yeah, Aaron Gunn.
I'm a member of Parliament nowfor North Island Powell River.
But uh most people who might belistening or watching this uh
this podcast would uh may knowme from my documentaries.
So I've built a reasonablyprolific career over all the
major social media platforms anduh produced over 20
documentaries over the pastcouple of years, some shorter,
(01:56):
some longer, on everything fromeconomic issues to resource
development issues to uh maybemost notably the addictions
crisis and drugdecriminalization and that kind
of suite of issues, um, with twodocumentaries in particular,
Vancouver is dying and Canada isdying.
And uh but yeah, now I guessI'm just another politician.
Aaron Pete (02:16):
Can you tell me about going down that journey
and starting to document yourunderstanding of what was taking
place?
Because it's these issues areso complicated, and you decided
to start to document them andtry and understand them.
What made you interested inwanting to understand these
issues?
Aaron Gunn (02:32):
Well, I I was always I think I have a natural
curiosity and interest inpolitics and the world around
me.
So that that was organic.
And then uh there came a desireto have an impact and a purpose
in society more broadly, andthen probably matched with a
frustration at what I thoughtwas the media, in many cases not
doing their job to have uhinvestigative journalism, real
(02:56):
conversations, sometimes toughconversations about certain
issues.
Um and so especially like thedocumentaries that mean the most
to me are the ones where I feltthat I was providing a voice
that wasn't out there.
So on the drug issue.
I remember when BC uh justaround just before COVID and
especially during COVID, wentthrough this drug
decriminalization experiment,started to hand out um free
(03:18):
opioids, what they called safesupply, watching homelessness in
my uh my home city where I grewup in Victoria, go from almost
nothing to horrific tent citiessprouting up everywhere.
And we didn't seem to see anynarratives questioning the
policies of are we doing thethis this approach of harm
reduction, of injection sites,of may of reducing stigma
(03:39):
towards these substances, tohanding out free drugs.
Is this really the rightapproach?
Um, or should we maybe betaking a rethink and looking
around the world?
So uh that was just one examplewhere I wanted to um, and this
is actually why, and I've reallystarted listening to your
podcast, which I which I reallylike and you're you create such
a service to Canadians, is youare generating debate and
(04:01):
generating these importantconversations that are essential
for our democracy because asvoters, we're basically the
shareholders of our own country.
And if we're not informed orproperly informed, then how can
we make good decisions when wego to the ballot box and how can
we set expectations properlyfor our politicians?
So um it's uh so, anyways,that's how I got into it.
I went on a little bit of atangent there, but yeah, it was
(04:23):
something I was pa passionateabout, still am passionate
about.
Aaron Pete (04:25):
Interesting.
Can I ask, did you it it soundslike the lack of coverage
influenced it, but were youpolitically inclined as you were
making the documentaries, ordid that start to come about
through your understanding ofthe issues and starting to go,
oh, there this is a problem hereand and the current government
isn't acting, or were you goingin and going, I know the
(04:47):
government's doing a bad job andI'm gonna document it?
Like what was your kind ofpolitical philosophy development
during this period of yourlife?
Aaron Gunn (04:55):
Yeah, so interesting.
So I I had strong politicalviews.
I've always had strongpolitical views.
Uh there are some documentarieswhere it was the approach was
uh here is an issue I see insociety.
I think this is this is um uhthis is the this government
approach is wrong.
I believe we should be doingthis instead.
(05:15):
Um let's go create a film tobasically almost like a you
could think of think of it aslike a newspaper op-ed, but in
documentary form about why Ithink this is wrong.
And let's talk to people thatI've met along my political
journey to help kind of narratethat.
Uh and then there are otherdocumentaries where the actual
documentary re what had ended upbeing changed as I was making
(05:37):
it, because I discovered uhthings that I had no idea as I
was making the film.
So that the drug one was theperfect example.
Like I when I started makingVancouver's Dying, I did not
know that they were handing outfree drugs on the the pharmacies
in downtown Vancouver anddowntown Victoria.
I did not even I hadn't heardof Safe Supply.
So I literally found that outas I was making the film.
(05:58):
I didn't know, I hadn't talkedto very many people in recovery
who had gone, who had beenaddicted, who had lived on the
streets of downtown Vancouver.
One of my biggest surpriseswhen making that film, there's
obviously critics of it, but isthe amount of people that come
up to me who say that film wasso important, who used to be
addicted to hard drugs, are nowliving in recovery.
(06:20):
And they are the ones that arethe most opposed to these
policies of harm reduction,destigmatization, handing out
drugs.
They tell me that if when I wasliving on the streets, um they
just gave me a free place tostay in free drugs, then I would
either still be doing drugs orI'd be dead.
And um, touring some of theserecovery centers, including uh
in New Westminster, the onesthey were building in Alberta,
(06:42):
um, it was a really eye-openingexperience.
And talking to people that aresometimes the frankest and most
honest interviews that I engagedwith were people that were
living on the streets andactively using, because they
just they just tell you whatthey think and they don't and
they don't really care about thethe repercussions or what
anybody thinks of them.
Aaron Pete (06:59):
Aaron Ross Powell Right.
You said you were politicallyinclined.
When did conservatism becomesomething you were interested
in, or where do you felt morecomfortable in in terms of your
ideology?
Aaron Gunn (07:12):
I think it was like I developed like going back all
the way to high school, I gotinto politics, I think, simply
because my family wasn't verypolitical, but we had a
newspaper on the the kitchentable every morning.
So we'd be eating breakfast.
I think when I was like ingrade three, I was reading the
comics, and then by grade five,I'm reading the sports section,
and then you know, by gradeeight, you kind of want to be
(07:34):
like dad and reading theheadlines and reading the news.
So that's how I got into kindof following current events,
let's say.
And then how I developed kindof a uh propensity towards
conservatism.
I think a lot of it goes to howyou were probably raised.
My grandfather was a really biginfluence on me.
My grandfather, my grandgrater,he was uh a refugee who came
(07:55):
from uh escaped during therevolution in communist Hungary
in 1956.
So we heard the stories aboutuh you know when communism came
to Hungary, how their store gottaken away from them, um uh just
the repressions on basic civilliberties.
Um similarly, my grandmothergrowing up in southern Italy,
uh, abject poverty, living on abasically living like you know,
(08:17):
working seven days a week justto put food on the table so the
family of eleven can be able toeat, and any extra food you have
you sell so you can buy thebare essentials like shoes or or
what have you.
And just the whole nevercomplaining uh mindset, the the
lack of like a I mean, you know,the victim mentality, which you
might end up talking about.
(08:38):
I mean, they lived incrediblydifficult lives, both living
through World War II, and um,you know, came to Canada with
nothing, didn't expect anythingfrom the government, started my
grandfather worked minimum wageon the railway, um, then started
working and then eventually gota job at the mill and just kind
of built everything that theyhave through hard work and
determination and strong familyvalues.
(08:59):
So I think that for me, thatkind of the the ethos of hard
work, freedom, and and strongfamily values are like the
building blocks of ofconservatism.
Aaron Pete (09:10):
Thirty-six percent, uh, an abacus poll found uh of
Canadian young people aged 18 to29 are considering themselves
conservative.
And in comparison, only 19% uhare for the liberals and 27% for
the NDP.
So we have now uh the largestpopulation of conservative young
(09:32):
people.
Uh growing up myself, I mean,there there's this old saying of
like if you're not like an NDPor a liberal when you're young,
you're heartless.
Um, but if you're not uhconservative by the time you're
old, uh you're clueless.
And so there was that oldadage, and that seems to be
somewhat going out the windowwith the rise in young people
becoming conservative.
Did you see the the writing onthe wall on that, or were you
(09:56):
just kind of growing up in thatand starting to experience that
yourself?
How does that interact?
Aaron Gunn (10:02):
Yeah, it's it's been it's quite something to watch.
I mean, I really feel I'm amillennial, so I've really seen
it with my generation, like ahuge move towards conservatism.
I I I would say it's reflectiveof a move towards conservatism
in in culture.
Like, like to me, like comedyis an important barometer.
You've seen like I rememberstand-up, like all the comedians
(10:23):
were like very liberal when Iwas growing up, and now they've
really switched.
I feel like at least half ofthem are a conservative might be
the wrong word, but reallypushing back against the the
extremes of like the the left,let's say, just to use a r uh an
overused uh and simplifiedterm.
But it's um yeah, it's I guessmaybe a way of uh another way of
(10:44):
putting it is it seems to becool to be conservative, which
is not the case when I was 19 assomebody who was conservative
on uh at high school and onuniversity campus.
It's so there's been a there'sbeen of a change.
I think I think part of thatmaybe, as I'm just kind of
thinking on my on my feet, isthat um the the the NDP or the
Liberals or the Left have becomemore of the establishment, um,
(11:08):
maybe a bit more authoritarian,like you must act like this, um,
or you're not a good person, oror whatever the case may be,
where I think conservatism hasembraced more of the values of
individuality and free speechand free expression and these
kinds of things that I naturallyappeal uh to younger people.
And then I I also would saythat I feel the economic promise
(11:31):
that was handed down fromprevious generations hasn't
really been delivered for foryounger people.
It's so hard to get into thehousing market.
Um we've you know, wages aren'trising as fast as the cost of
living.
And for the most part, ifyou're a baby boomer and you
have your house paid off, you'redoing okay.
And I think with young people,they feel like things are
getting worse and not better.
(11:52):
I think that's the other thingthat's really uh pushed them
towards conservatives andconservatism.
Aaron Pete (11:57):
When we talk about conservatives and the
conservative movement and youngpeople, uh I think it would be
tone-deaf not to acknowledge uhthe recent uh political
assassination of Charlie Kirk,uh the role that he played in
encouraging young people to bepolitically active, to have
positions, to defend theirpositions, and to go on to
(12:19):
universities and debate these,where I think it's not
controversial to say many youngpeople don't feel like that is
the place anymore to debateideas to the same extent you
would have expected allthroughout university's history.
And I I don't want this to bepolitical, but you are a
conservative his viewpoints verymuch align with the
(12:39):
conservative movement, obviouslynot all of them, but there's a
big conversation taking placeright now about what that
political assassination means,how we should digest that.
You're a person who's very muchbeen out in the public eye,
been willing to have these toughconversations and interact.
I'm just are you willing toshare your reflections on on
what happened and and how thatmay have impacted you personally
(13:03):
as well?
Aaron Gunn (13:03):
Yeah, it's it's it's um it's probably one of the
most impactful political eventsfor me personally.
And I can tell you speaking forwhat conservatives in the
meeting look, we I got back fromOttawa, so we we we were, you
know, days after this hadhappened, I was with uh my
conservative colleagues, andpeople were people were s sick
to their stomach.
Um they're very upset.
(13:25):
Um many of my colleagues hadhad met um Charlie Kirk and his
family at different events overthe past ten years.
Um there's also a there's a thefrustration some with how it
was covered by some mainstreammedia outlets here in Canada.
Um for myself personally, likeit's it's um I I think and I
(13:49):
think it is this this went wwell beyond conservatives that I
I saw Bill Maher's comments, Isaw I I've talked to other
friends of mine who are notconservative.
I mean, for somebody to be shotand killed who's got a young
family simply because they helddifferent views than you liked
or that you did, is is theantithesis of everything that
(14:12):
our society is built on, thatour democracy is built on.
And I think that that shook alot of people.
Obviously, it was also likethere's video of it, like like
millions, tens of millions ofpeople have I'm sure have seen
that video, which is even moreshocking and disturbing.
It happened right in front of abunch of young university
students, uh, a couple thousand,I think.
(14:32):
And um for and then again forme personally, I mean I used to
you know, I I wasn't CharlieKirk, but I went to universities
to give uh speeches and wasprotested.
So like, you know, I'm a lotcloser to this than than the
average person.
And, you know, we've hadthreats repeat you know, if we
(14:52):
you always uh hope that thetemperature doesn't get quite as
hot here in Canada as it doesin the United States, but it's
still like um yeah, it was a itwas a weird feeling.
I try not to get like it justit felt like a pit in my stomach
for a couple days.
And um it was good to be inOttawa because it was just
therapeutic to talk to other MPsand find out that you know they
(15:13):
have went through the exactsame experience.
And we've got a couple MPs inour caucus that have been very
outspoken and and um uh so yeah,it was um yeah, it's it's I'm
hoping that it's not a sign ofthings to come, and I'm hoping
it's it's a it's a moment wherewe can reflect as a society that
that actually come together.
And I think it, you know, n forall the talk about the the
(15:37):
really some of the vapid anddisgusting comments online,
which there's always going tobe, I think 80-90% of people
were were rightly kind of shakenup by this a little bit, just
as much as it's it's you know,the idea that you would take
someone's life because they helda different view than you is
just so not Canada, not theUnited States, not not the West.
Aaron Pete (15:59):
I really hope that those comments that we're seeing
online, because I do see themeven on my own feed of people
justifying or explaining away.
And I really hope that the rootof that isn't malevolence, but
it's that idea that everything'sjust happening on a screen,
that it's not real life, thatit's a video game, that there's
you're just typing things into ascreen.
(16:20):
It's not that you wouldactually say go to his funeral
or something and actually havethose positions because I mean I
I couldn't believe more thatboth positions are so important,
and that when the conservativesare in power, they need to be
challenged by strong liberals,and when the liberals are in
power, they need to bechallenged by strong
conservatives, and that thereisn't one right answer.
(16:42):
There's a constant negotiationwe have to try and find truth,
to try and find what policiesare gonna serve the middle class
and the lower class and andmake sure that somebody when
they're young who's born intoterrible quality circumstances
has the opportunity to move intothe middle and upper class.
And I feel like we want to feellike we're all Canadian, so
(17:04):
we're all in the same boat.
But I I do believe a certainlevel of classism is important
in order to be able to say youare at the bottom rung of our
society in terms of youropportunities, but you can go
and make something of yourself.
And that's kind of the promisethat I've heard you talk about
and Pierre Polyev is there'sthis idea that you can just work
hard and make something ofyourself and go places.
(17:24):
And when that opportunitystarts to deteriorate and young
people who went and got theuniversity education, went and
did the things they weresupposed to do, cannot reach the
same levels that their parentsdid, that something has gone
amiss, and that we need to tryand figure out what that is.
But when we start justdemonizing people for taking
shots at what could be theissue, then we really disconnect
(17:47):
ourselves and and become animmature society.
And that's my big fear is thatwe want to be told what makes us
feel comfortable rather thanwhat might actually get us out
of these circumstances.
And I think there's a hugedanger in that and why someone
like Charlie Kirk, whether youagree with him or not, he was
willing to have theconversation.
(18:07):
And I don't want to see a acold spell over wanting to have
conversations because this iswhen we need them the most.
And I think that's how youhonor somebody like Charlie Kirk
is by by making sure that thoseconversations don't end.
Aaron Gunn (18:23):
I I agree, and I think I'm I'm optimistic
actually that that everythingall told that this event will
lead to more Charlie Kirks, morepe young people wanting to get
engaged in politics, standing upand and having that that
courage to have difficultconversations.
But it's um I mean, yeah, it'suh it you know, obviously part
(18:45):
of the early evidence that'scome out on this on the the um
assailant there, the shooter,was uh again in these online
bubbles where I think you canget you know, one of the great
things that um when I was goingto school and into university,
the internet was there and itwas rapidly growing and
(19:05):
expanding, but it still was kindof in its infancy still, and
you still, you know, would gohang out go to parties, hang out
with other people in real life,you'd have no choice, you're
gonna be interacting with peoplethat have different views than
you.
You obviously don't want so youget to know people and your
friends with people that havedifferent views than you.
And so you obviously aren'tgonna want to shoot somebody
(19:28):
just because if you get trappedin these online um uh you know
echo chambers where you're justsurrounded by people that keep
reinforcing an ideology.
And if you get in an echochamber that has a real extreme
ideology where that's thenconstantly reinforcing itself,
that's where I think you canbecome disconnected from reality
and then can become potentiallydangerous.
Aaron Pete (19:49):
I agree.
Uh moving forward, I'm curious.
Uh Pierre Poliev has come ontothe scene.
Uh, I think that was duringyour your video documentary
period prior to you deciding torun.
What influence did he have onyou as you were looking at
running uh and what has it beenlike uh to work with him?
What are your thoughts onPierre Polyviev?
Aaron Gunn (20:09):
I I probably wouldn't have run if it wasn't
for him.
So I wasn't planning to run.
Uh and then I mean the shorthistory is um Aaron O'Toole, who
who was not as strong of aconservative uh to uh one way to
describe it, um, was wasremoved as leader by the caucus.
And uh then there was aleadership race.
It became I I endorsed Pierreduring that leadership race.
(20:29):
I went out to one of hisevents.
I also became pretty clear, Ithink, or it came clear to me
that he was going to win.
And um but pretty much soon asafter that leadership race had
concluded, I started I talked tohim and talked to his staff
about potentially runningbecause you always, with other
leaders in the past, uh if youhave someone who's outspoken
that has a big platform of theirown, they might view that as a
(20:50):
negative because they just wantpeople that are just gonna tow
the line, that are just going tonot steal any attention away
from the leader himself.
But to Pierre's credit, he'sgot um such confidence and
deserved confidence, such agrasp on the issues, and he
actually wants to be surroundedby um people that um bring ideas
to the table, that have theirown voice, that have their own
(21:12):
platform, who can then reinforcereinforce and complement the
job that he's already doing.
So he was he was encouraged meto run.
I think I was the firstcandidate in British Columbia uh
confirmed.
Um it was a very long wait thatthen preceded that being a
confirmed candidate before theelection, which was less fun.
But uh yeah, so he's been greatto work.
It's great to have him back inthe House.
(21:33):
So now that um, you know, he'sin the chamber uh leading us, uh
I just had lunch with him theother day, so chatting with them
on the issues.
He is he is so laser-focused onthe issues, on crafting the
best set of policies forCanadians.
Our biggest problem right nowas conservatives is every time
we come up with a good idea andconvince a majority of Canadians
(21:53):
uh that this is the way forwardfor the country, the Liberals
just take that idea and then uhpresent it as their own, whether
it's uh scrapping the carbontax, or now they're claiming
they're gonna bring in bailreform uh or they want to build
pipelines spontaneously.
So uh these are ideas we'veobviously been talking about for
a long time.
So I guess all it's good forthe country that they're they're
uh borrowing the ideas as faras we're concerned.
Aaron Pete (22:15):
Aaron Powell Why do you think he lost his riding?
Aaron Gunn (22:18):
I think he lost his riding just because of I mean
I'm a big believer that that uhin this past election, a lot of
it a lot of the riding by ridingdiscrepancies are explained by
demographics.
So we had a demographicrealignment.
And um uh so the riding that hehas has been changing.
(22:40):
It's becoming more it's asuburb of Ottawa, so it used to
be more kind of semi-rural.
It's gradually become as everycity expands.
So Vancouver is no different.
Obviously, some areas in thevalley used to be heavily
conservative.
Now they're more uh of atoss-up or more competitive just
because they've turned intojust suburbs of a major city.
(23:01):
In the case of Ottawa, thosesuburbs are, I mean, uh mainly
people that are public servantsworking for the federal
government that tend to not voteconservative.
Um and they thought that theconservative government was
going to cut the public service,which uh we probably would have
because we had to, which is whythe Liberals are now also doing
(23:21):
it.
Um but they didn't campaign onthat.
So that's I so that's generallywhat I think happened.
Um and uh but yeah, you see usdo um well in some places and
and not others, and I think itcan be explained away by
different the biggest change youcan look at the average age of
a different writing throughStatistics Canada, and that
(23:42):
lines up pretty well with howthe different trends the other
of course the other thing thathappened in his riding is the
NDP vote collapse.
So I don't have the numbers infront of me, but the NDP went
from like 12 to 1 or somethinglike that.
And I believe he also got morevotes than he got last time, but
turnout was up everywhere, soit was yeah.
And he obviously couldn't spendany time in the riding because
(24:04):
he was traveling around thecountry as the leader of the
party.
Aaron Pete (24:06):
So Right.
After the he had lost uh inthat riding, there were big
calls, and after the election,there were big calls on it's
time for reflection, what can wedo better, where did we miss
the mark?
There were huge growth.
Uh, I think Andrew Schear did agood job of trying to highlight
where you saw like significantgrowth.
But I'm curious, what werethose areas of reflection and
(24:27):
what could Pierre Polyev bedoing better?
Aaron Gunn (24:31):
Well, I I mean the first thing to point out which
you alluded to is that if twoyears ago you said the
Conservative Party is gonna getlike 41 percent of the national
vote, are you happy with that?
We would have taken it in aheartbeat.
I mean, it's the highestpercentage of the vote since the
1980s for the party.
Uh it was more than StephenHarper got when he won his
majority government in 2011,significantly more.
(24:54):
And um so uh on the face of it,we did quite well.
Um the NDP vote collapsed, and80 percent of that collapse went
to the Liberal Party.
Um the bloc vote partiallycollapsed mainly into the
Liberal Party.
Um but that's not to say thatwe couldn't have done better and
we didn't r struggle with somegroups.
(25:14):
I mean, we were we were didvery well with young people,
millennials, Gen X.
We struggled a bit more withseniors.
Um it was a weird convergenceof events with Trudeau stepping
down and then obviously DonaldTrump deciding to uh uh uh have
this weird obsession with Canadaand just poking us in the eye
as much as possible.
(25:34):
And the Liberals were able touh take advantage of that
politically faster and betterthan we could.
Um and I think in hindsight,maybe we would have reacted a
bit differently.
But Pierre to his credit, likehe wanted to focus on the issues
that we could control asCanadians, that we saw that it's
the federal government'sfailure over the past 10 years.
(25:56):
So whether it's on crime,whether it's on the addictions
crisis that killed 50,000Canadians, whether it's housing
prices that have gottencompletely out of control,
whether it's the highestinflation in 30 years, now we
see unemployment starting totick back up, whether it was
failing to get any majornational resource projects,
almost any major nationalresource projects built, whether
it's doubling the national debtin 10 years, which is
(26:18):
completely unsustainable, andspending more money on interest
payments than we than we do onour entire military, which was
also in probably the worst statethan before World War II.
So we wanted to focus on theissues.
And the Liberals, I guess, tothe political cr to their
political credit, were were ableto just kind of I think virtue
signal on stuff that washappening in the states that was
(26:38):
completely uh outside of ourcontrol and was able to
capitalize on a collapsing NDPvote, and that was enough for
them to win a minoritygovernment, and uh hopefully
we'll get a chance to go againin the not too distant future.
Aaron Pete (26:52):
Aaron Powell One of the big criticisms that I've
spoken with uh MP Brad Vizabout, uh J.J.
McCullough and others is thelack of interviews and long-form
discussions during that periodwhere we saw in the US Donald
Trump choose to go on multipleplatforms and do long-form
interviews.
And I had dubbed right in thebeginning of 2025 that this was
(27:14):
going to be the podcast year forCanada.
It did not end up going thatway.
Uh there was a decision bymultiple parties not to want to
do long-form almost all of them.
And do you think that was anerror?
Aaron Gunn (27:27):
I think we definitely could have done more
media, specifically in Canada.
Now, there were other questionsbeing asked about like, you
know, should you like MarkCarney launched his campaign, I
think it was on like the DailyShow in the States, and I'm sure
Pierre could have gone on Roganor something if he wanted to,
but I don't think it would havemade sense politically, given
what was happening at the time,to go to the United States to do
(27:48):
interviews as as big as thoseindividuals have audiences in
Canada.
I do think we should have donemore media in Canada.
I think pretty much everybodyin the party agrees that that we
should have done.
And I think we've seen thatsince the election.
I think we'll see see more ofthat going forward.
And I think we'll also see moreof not just Pierre getting out
there, but other MPs getting outthere.
I mean, uh hopefully this is anexample of it sitting sitting
(28:11):
across from you and having thisconversation.
Aaron Pete (28:13):
Yeah.
As you know, or as you may know,I I'm a First Nations chief.
So I'd be remiss if I didn'task um about this.
In 2022, you tweeted there wasno genocide, the Holocaust was a
genocide.
I'm just curious, um, what areyour reflections on on that now?
That that was about three yearsago.
Have your perspectives changedor or do you still hold true to
(28:34):
that?
And and what is yourperspective on what happened
with First Nations and Indianresidential schools?
Aaron Gunn (28:38):
Yeah, well, I've heard I've heard some of your
interviews on the subject, whichI think have been very I mean,
I just think we were missing somuch of that in our society
right now on this particularissue, having those difficult
conversations.
I mean, my point was um I mean,like I I think I've had 10,000
posts, so definitely would havemaybe framed my thoughts
differently.
(28:59):
I obviously wasn't a politicianor running for political office
at the time.
But I do think it's importantone to have conversations, the
importance of language and theimportance of defining what we
mean by different words.
I believe there was a poll outuh a couple years ago where they
were asking this question aboutwhat Canadians thought about
genocide.
I'm not even sure if it was inrelation to residential schools,
but most Canadians didn't evenknow what exactly it meant or
(29:21):
what version, what whatdefinition that we are using of
that particular word.
Um what I do think is importantto point out is that something
can be horrible, regrettable,terrible.
People can die, people can behurt, um, there can be
intergenerational trauma, andstill doesn't necessarily mean
(29:43):
it's a genocide, in my view.
In my view, genocide has a veryspecific legal definition.
There's also people that haveum if you go back to the truth
and reconciliation report, um Iwould I would consider that like
the report on the effect ofresidential schools, they
obviously could have referred.
Referred to it as a genocide,and they referred to it as a
cultural genocide, which to meis more appropriate.
(30:06):
The um when this came up in themedia, there was a lot of um
well, I I would have preferredto do more media on it to
clarify things, but the um theywould use that comment and
sometimes try to say it was insome way a repudiation of the
truth and reconciliation reportback from I think it was 2011 or
(30:29):
2013.
2015.
Um the post that you're talkingabout were was in relation to
another report that actually uhaccused Canada or made the
accusation that we werecommitted genocide like under
the U.N.
definition and we're committingongoing genocide under the U.N.
definition.
I definitely don't think thatwe're committing ongoing
(30:49):
genocide today.
Um I don't think for a varietyof reasons we committed that
Canada is a genocidal state,like that it as bad as the
residential schools were, thatthey should be compared to
something like the Holocaust, uhwhere you know six million Jews
died or things that happened inRwanda.
And I mean I think it's alsojust part of the uh uh problem
(31:11):
in in you know nuance is hard toget across in today's society.
So how do you how can somethingbe um horrible, regrettable?
People were hurt, um, we wantto learn from it, but maybe we
shouldn't be comparing it to theHolocaust.
And to me, that was myperspective on on residential
(31:34):
schools, and I still have lotsto learn from it, and I'm happy
to I this is what one of thereasons why I was excited to be
able to come on to your show.
But that's kind of that's kindof my views.
I don't know if that's I don'tuh I don't know if the if any of
the interviews that I heardwith you, if you kind of laid
out what how you navigate thatword or that uh the definition
or what it means to you.
Aaron Pete (31:54):
I don't think that it was a genocide um because
that requires the intention.
And but I I can see why thatwould be inflammatory because it
didn't come with some of thepretext and and post text that
you provided of it was horrible,it was terrible.
And when you just say somethinglike it was not a genocide,
that leaves people to wonder, doyou think it was a good thing?
(32:15):
Do you think it was and we haveanother quote here uh that you
said uh you've suggested someindigenous bands asked for
residential schools.
Um and I I don't know if youhave any historical context to
support that claim.
Um, but that's another one ofthe challenges is say one did.
The over the there were a lotof residential schools, so even
if you can reference two orthree examples, that does not
(32:36):
suggest that the theoverwhelming amount of First
Nations people at the timewanted residential schools.
Aaron Gunn (32:42):
Right, right.
So so the inter this one of thereasons, one of the things that
frustrates so this all comes upduring an election campaign.
Yeah.
And obviously you can imaginewith a national campaign, they
don't want you talking aboutanything to do with this.
So it's like you cannot nowcontextualize or provide uh
background to where theseconversations came from.
And I had some really goodconvers.
I mean, I talked to I d I uh Inever want to talk about who I
(33:05):
had private conversations with,but I talked to a couple of
chiefs in the riding who Iconsider friends who who were
wanted to hear hear me out andwere comfortable with the
explanation.
Like, for example, theconversation or the the tweet
that you just mentioned aboutsome indigenous bands as so that
so that's part of a tweetthread that gets screenshotted
there that is strictly and mostof my commentary on this issue
(33:28):
has been a defense of John A.
McDonald, not a defense ofresidential schools.
So that's that that's simplyabout the point of and I think
it's so my big uh point on thisis that all of these bad things
happened.
But one of the most importantthings to understand is it was
not the result of a bunch ofmalicious, nefarious actors in
(33:51):
Ottawa for the most part, that Ican tell.
But from people is that thewhole the old saying, like the
the road to hell is paved withgood intentions.
There were a bunch of peoplewho thought they were doing a
good thing that were actuallypushing this program.
Aaron Pete (34:02):
Do you think that's true?
Uh well, from Like we have somequotes, you must have seen some
of these quotes from Sir JohnA.
McDonald.
Not all of them were I I've gotthe best of intentions here.
Lots of them were calling ussavages and saying we need to
get these people out of thesavage home, put them in these
schools.
The whole point of theresidential school system,
because in speaking with FrancisWidowson, her point was like,
(34:24):
oh, like in other countries,like in in a communist country,
they actually had priests gointo the communities and educate
and support.
And that had a different effectbecause the culture was able to
continue.
But Canada didn't take thatapproach.
They pulled the children out oftheir community, put them in
schools surrounded by people whotold them what to do.
And that resulted in theabsolute destruction of the
(34:45):
culture.
But the design of the schoolswas always known with the in
that it wasn't gonna have theproper air filtration and that
they were going to be squishedinto these buildings that was
never going to allow fortuberculosis not to spread, like
it was gonna encourage thespreading of tuberculosis by
their designs.
But had you left them in thecommunities, you would have been
outside just like in COVID ifyou were outside.
If you weren't squished intothese buildings all the time, um
(35:08):
sometimes not being cleaned,you're gonna have higher rates
of tuberculosis.
So his comments dovetailperfectly with what ended up
happening in so in a lot ofcircumstances.
Aaron Gunn (35:18):
I mean, I mean, I I don't want to go into the to all
of the the wormholes of it.
I I think it was a forcedassimilation program that I
think destroyed many facets ofIndigenous culture.
And I think that was that waswrong.
And it it came from aperspective of kind of cultural
supremacy.
But it wasn't, it was uh whichI think is something that we
(35:39):
should learn from.
Um and I think it was the look,if you if you if you're in the
if you're some guy in the 1800sand you think you have the
superior culture, then you'vethen and I and by the way, this
clearly was this was you knownot a controversial thing at the
time.
This was kind of just areflection of, I think, Canadian
thinking at the I would sayWestern thinking, because it was
happening in the United Statesand Australia as well.
(36:01):
So I think it was just a um alogical extension of a faulty
premise that um uh as youpointed out, the the the other
example of you know there was away to um bring schools and
education to the communitieswithout having the destructive
uh cultural effects um thatobviously ended up happening in
(36:23):
many cases.
So but I don't think we canhave uh I don't have my book of
John A.
McDonald quotes on me, butthere's um uh I mean I think he
has been maligned so horribly,um so taken out of context.
He was such a progressive voiceat his time.
Um he was somebody, and as alawyer, the first person that he
ever defended uh who was facingthe death penalty was an
(36:44):
indigenous gentleman who he hegot off uh that charge.
He was um voted to uh he pushedto extend voting rights to
Indigenous people.
The Liberals then took thosevoting rights away and they
weren't brought back in untilDiefenbaker.
Um he has quotes about uh howhe can't wait to see Indigenous
people represented in the Houseof Commons.
(37:05):
He um uh so he was attacked forproviding in the House of
Commons again for providing foodaid to indigenous bands who
were starving on the prairies.
So um this this the point thereisn't to um somehow run defense
for John A.
McDonald's to it's to say thatit's complicated, that it's a
complicated picture, that the1800s were not 2025, that he um
(37:31):
in many cases I I think I like Iwould say whatever you think of
him, he was definitely of thetwo political forces in the late
1800s, he was considered on theprogressive side of things.
He was the first leader in theWestern world to credibly
propose extending the votingrights to women.
He granted black Canadians theright to vote.
So you none of these thingscome up in the we're gonna tear
(37:51):
down the statue debate.
I mean, even just like thesimple fact I think that he was
the one pushing so hard toextend voting rights to
Indigenous Canadians shouldraise some questions about the
caricature that has been uhcreated uh surrounding him.
Aaron Pete (38:05):
Trevor Burrus, I don't think any of us can live
up to the morals of the future,you know?
Like I don't think we can everwhen we look back, we have to do
it with a level of humility.
And I'm I'm certainly insupport of that, and I've
continued to learn more.
And I think there is a hugechallenge when only one side of
the political aisle is allowedto speak on the issues or raise
(38:26):
perspectives.
And I appreciate you beingwilling to raise this because I
think the the points in this arereally valid.
I guess my only follow-up wouldbe the challenge I see
conservatives often have isoften they come across as
unsympathetic to the plight ofdifferent minority groups, uh,
because the the the broaderpoint is important, but that's
(38:47):
what I think even in these inthese posts sometimes gets lost.
And this isn't to to malignyou, but that from my
perspective, often liberals andand people on the political left
are often very we care aboutpeople, we want the best for
people, we want people tosucceed.
And I think that's stillsomething that conservatives
believe in, but it's perhaps notwhat they lead with.
(39:09):
And the the context of otherpieces that would bring the
temperature down and allowpeople to hear some
conservatives gets lost whenthose other pieces aren't
mentioned or commented on.
Do you think that's a fairassessment?
Aaron Gunn (39:22):
Yeah, I mean I mean the the the liberals are much
better at leading with withemotion.
I mean, I think that fr I mean,for me though, it it frustrates
me because I think we havewe've had a lot of do we've had
10 years of a very emotionalpublic policy based on signaling
virtue but not deliveringresults.
And to me, that doesn't improvepeople's lives.
I mean, the first documentary Ifilmed was on um it was called
(39:43):
Do All First Nations ActuallyOppose Pipelines?
So that's when I wasinterviewing Alice Ross up in
Kidamat.
Um people from the I think Ican't remember this is now five
years ago, but basically all theFirst Nations, I think it was
Sintay Nation in Burns Lake, umbasically all along the coastal
gas link pipeline route.
And you had a bunch ofactivists there who were uh
(40:05):
staging protests across theprovince, across the country
actually, including inVancouver, um, and were trying
to prop up like they werestanding up for indigenous
rights, but then you wouldn'tactually go to these communities
and know actually, like everyevery uh first First Nation band
had voted in favor of thepipeline, had signed benefit
sharing agreements with CoastalGaslink, who viewed it as a
(40:26):
tremendous opportunity to lifttheir people out of poverty.
Many of them were working onthe pipeline and the
construction.
And to me that that was sothat's a foot.
So they were leading with amotion, but I think it was like
it was false, basically.
And I do think we need to andand that's actually it's we're
back to the start of thisconversation, because that's
where I went out and made thedocumentary, because I wanted to
(40:46):
try to show it.
What I would say is that in adocumentary, it's much easier to
get the full picture acrossthan it is that uh in a tweet on
Twitter.
Because you might have noticedI didn't get attacked for any of
my documentaries that I did orany of even the short form
videos that I did.
It was all tweets and usuallyscreen grabs of tweets that were
part of a large larger thread.
(41:07):
And um, so that's maybe a goodpoint of of uh the dangers of of
of if you're going to weighinto topics like this, you
should you should do them within the context of longer
conversations.
Aaron Pete (41:20):
Aaron Powell I would tend to agree with that.
The next question I have iswhat are your thoughts on Mark
Carney?
Prime Minister Mark Kearney?
Aaron Gunn (41:29):
I think that he is like the job he's doing- I mean
I don't know him personally, soI'm assuming you mean as as
Prime Minister.
I think right now he basicallyhasn't accomplished anything,
but in fairness, he hasn't beenthere very long.
So I think most Canadians arein the still in the wait-and-see
approach.
Trevor Burrus, Jr. (41:43):
Six months in.
It's getting there.
I think kind of January iswhere he's really has to, you
know, he's talked he's talked abig game on building national
projects, and for the most part,he's just kind of re-announced
approvals of things that werealready happening.
Um there doesn't seem to be anynew pipelines being built.
He the fiscal situation isprobably the most worrying.
(42:05):
I b we're all well, therehasn't been a budget yet, so
it's hard to critique.
All you can say is there's nobudget, and he's been there for
for six months.
But everyone's expecting thedeficit to go even higher.
Um I think the housing marketis incredibly shaky.
Um obviously we haven't got youknow you know, I b uh I
sympathize in the sense thatit's m hard to strike a deal
(42:26):
with this administration in theUnited States, but he also kind
of went around the electionclaiming that he was the expert
deal maker and he could dealwith Trump and six months later,
no deal.
So we haven't reallyaccomplished anything.
So um my view is that he's donethe easy things that everybody
can support.
Um, you know, he's said thatthey're gonna try to speed up
projects, they've given our menand women a uniform a
(42:48):
well-deserved raise.
But governing is about makingtough choices, is about making
trade-offs.
And um I don't think he's doneany of those things yet.
Um I'm happy to to to uhreserve my more heated criticism
for six months down the road ifhe hasn't acted.
And we've we've tried to as aparty um work with the Liberals
(43:10):
when they presented legislation,even if we don't think it's
perfect, that would be betterfor the country.
So on C5, for example, wehelped amend it during committee
um and then voted to pass it sothat uh even if it's not
perfect, hopefully it can getsome of these projects speeding
up faster than they would have.
Aaron Pete (43:26):
One piece that I I got to see a video that you
posted was on the BC Fairies.
I think it was the CEO, right?
I found that really interestingand and almost tragic in a way
because the point you weremaking was just again, it like I
know it's the the party slogan,but like common sense.
Like, why would we not want ourBC fairies made in BC?
(43:48):
And I don't know if it was theCEO going in and trying to be
prepared for the tough questionshe was gonna have to answer,
but I I just feel like honoringthe fact that like it really
sucks we didn't make these here.
And like that is an absolutetragedy, and we will do better.
Like, would have been the easyanswer that I think we all could
have gotten on board with.
(44:09):
And I just I worry aboutpolitical talking points taking
over the conversation at times.
What were your reflections onon that conversation with the BC
Ferry CEO?
Aaron Gunn (44:18):
Well, I my my time in the committee over the summer
was definitely the mostfulfilling time I've had as a
parliamentarian so far, to beable to sit across from someone
in that position, first the CEOof BC Ferries and then Gregor
Robertson, the Minister ofIndustry, and basically to have
five minutes for them where theycouldn't they had to answer
your questions.
And you kind of hold them toaccount, hold their feet to the
fire.
That's why I ran for office, isto try to try to raise
(44:41):
awareness about these issues andand create change in our
society.
Um I think the BC Ferriesdecision, I think it shows,
first of all, it shows a lack oflong-term strategic thinking in
this country.
I mean, we had uh some of thecommentary who basically said,
you know, we need these the thepat the pat the ferries are
almost at capacity, like we needthese right away.
(45:01):
It was like, well, the ferriesthey're replacing are 40 years
old.
So why are we why are we justdeciding here at the last
seconds, well, we need we haveto build them in China because
we can't wait five years tobuild our ship or ten years to
build our capacit, shipbuildingcapacity up here in Canada.
Um the other thing is theessentially they basically
admitted this.
(45:21):
I mean, we have greatshipbuilders here.
We've got great Canadiantradespeople.
They know how to build ships.
Um I think we're efficient atbuilding ships.
The steel, the aluminum, youknow, the materials are about
the same.
They have cheaper labor andthey have lower environmental
and labor standards than we do.
So don't we don't we want tohave higher wages and higher
(45:44):
regulatory standards here inCanada?
But are are we not just what'sthe point in having them and
then just sending the sendingthe jobs to another country?
Like it defeats the entirepurpose of having those higher
standards here in the country.
And then I mean you can go downthe list the fact that this is
uh basically an adversarialnation of Canada.
I mean, there's you know, wecan't reveal everything as
parliamentarians, but this is acountry that is well documented,
(46:06):
engages in cyber attacks on aregular basis, uh, that is is is
multi- that kidnapped twoCanadians and held them hostage
in China, that is currentlyengaged in massive tariffs on
our seafood industry, our canolaindustry.
And um this is a company inChina that is literally owned by
the Chinese Communist Party.
It's a state-owned company, andwe're giving them a billion
(46:28):
dollars, and we're subsidizingit with a like a low-interest
loan from the federalgovernment.
And it's just it's just uhcompletely um and then you have
every pol all these politicians,whether it's provincially or
federally, pointing, no onewants to take responsibility for
it.
The B.C.
Ferries basically says they hadno choice, and then the
provincial government says itwasn't our choice.
Uh we dislike it, but BCFerries made it.
(46:50):
And then, even though they'rethe only shareholder in BC
Ferries, then you have thefederal government who openly
admitted in documents that havesince been released that the
purchase wouldn't have beenpossible without their low
interest loan trying to washtheir hands of it.
I just think it's it's justanother poor public policy
decision.
It's the antithesis to commonsense, as you pointed out.
And I think also ignorant ofthe new kind of uh geopolitical
(47:15):
reality that we're entering.
I mean, if uh things in theworld are becoming more
competitive, um, you know, Chinabuilt something like 6% of the
world's ship by displacementlike 20 years ago, uh twenty
twenty five years ago.
Now it's fifty percent.
That wasn't an accident.
That wasn't uh China just is sogood at building.
That is a decision by theChinese state government to
(47:36):
create a state-owned industry tocorner the shipbuilding market
by undercutting everybody sothat they have that shipbuilding
potential.
And this is an industry that isobviously dual military
civilian applications, and theirprimary objective is to one day
take back Taiwan.
So I mean, and we're basicallysubsidizing it with a loan.
So it's just to me, it makes itmakes no sense.
(47:58):
It's it's helping the Chinesecommunist regime at the expense
of Canadian workers, Canadiancompanies, and Canadian
industrial capacity.
Aaron Pete (48:05):
May I close by asking about how what does this
next year look like from yourperspective?
Uh you guys are back sitting inthe house.
What is your role?
How do you hope to continue toto bring your voice uh to the
House of Commons?
Aaron Gunn (48:20):
Well, my role is obvious to be first and foremost
a loud voice for theconstituents of my riding, to uh
uh to be a loud voice for forfor common sense within the
party, within the House ofCommons, um, to keep making
videos.
We've done a couple in thesummer, but once the offices are
all kind of running verysmoothly, I want to get back out
and doing that concurrentlywith being in the House of
(48:40):
Parliament.
And also never forgetting umyou know having that sense of
humility which you mentioned,which we don't have enough of in
our society, and also justcontinuing to be um acting with
you know, it's it's an honor tobe elected by your fellow
constituents, to go there um inone of the the oldest,
continuous democracies in theworld, to stand in these in in
(49:01):
the chamber where so many peoplehave have stood before you to
do the best that you can toguide the democracy on its right
path and to deliver for forconstituents, for people that
are that are I I think for toolong in this country, just the
the the average Canadian, Idon't need and I don't mean I
mean average in like a in a in apositive way, um, who pays
their taxes, who works hard, whoraises their family, uh, who
(49:24):
follows the law, um, but isn'tpart of any special interest
group has kind of been forgottenand sent to the back of the
bus.
And I think those are thepeople that we should be putting
first.
Um they're the foundation ofthe country.
And um I think that that's whenwe're shaping pop public
policy, that's the person I Ithink first, first and foremost
about somebody that's that's sobusy with their own life just
(49:46):
trying to make ends meet, makethat mortgage payment, raise
their kids, get them to hockeyor soccer, whatever the case may
be, that you know, they're thatuh they almost don't want to
tune into politics.
Um and I just think there'sbeen too many public policies
that that that haven't thatthey've been getting f left
further and further behind, andthat we should be one of the
wealthiest countries in theworld with the amount of
(50:08):
resources we have, the amount ofingenuity, educated workforce,
uh geographic position in theworld.
So um yeah, it's the you know,there's a hundred different
specific policies from crime tohousing to taxes to to to fiscal
management that that fit inthat under that purview.
But to me, that's those are thepeople that I want to fight
(50:29):
for.
And I was asked a question theother day, or not the other day,
on a different podcast, I said,what does populism mean for you
to you?
Everyone throws around thisword populism.
The first thing I said was,first of all, I hate words like
that because it means somethingdifferent to to different
people, and it's kind of theweaponization of language has
always been part of politics.
But when I think of kind ofpopulism, or or how I would like
(50:51):
to view it in a positive light,is that when I interact with a
voter who might be a a plumberor an electrician or a waitress
or a school teacher or a nurseor a paramedic, is that I enter
every conversation with thehumility that I have more to
learn from them than they havefrom me.
And that's what I think makes agood r representative, and
(51:14):
that's what I'm uh aiming to do.
That's what I strive to do.
And I have a very big writing,so it's a lot of work.
But I think I think we'd all bebetter off as Canadians having
more of those conversations andgoing in with an open mind.
Doesn't mean you're gonnaagree.
You might come away from thatconversation and be like, well,
I I listened, but I didn't agreewith anything that person said.
But you gotta be able that yougotta have that openness of
(51:35):
mind, um, or else I just don'tthink you're gonna be able to
bring bring people together.
I don't and I don't think you'dbe a you you'd be a good
representative.
So that's what I'm gonna try todo.
Aaron Pete (51:44):
Aaron Powell How can people follow your work?
Aaron Gunn (51:46):
You can follow me on uh well YouTube, Instagram,
Facebook, and X, I guess are thefour places I am.
I think if you just type in myname into Google, that's
probably the fastest way totrack me down on all those very
or into the apps themselves, andum or at AaronGunn.ca.
But um yeah.
Aaron Pete (52:02):
Member of Parliament, Aaron Gunn, it has
been a privilege to speak withyou today.
I think one of the things thatgives me the most hope is,
again, no talking points, noangling, no repeating certain
slogans.
Uh you came here veryauthentic, very thoughtful, and
and willing to engage on ideas.
And that gives me a lot of hopein the direction that we're
(52:25):
moving.
And I'm hoping to see more andmore young people like yourself
willing to enter these arenas,have these conversations.
Uh, and I think the the themost interesting part in having
the opportunity to speak withyou was that you started
learning about the issues priorto talking about them.
You started to, uh, you hadyour own political perspectives,
(52:45):
which is natural and normal,but you were willing to go and
look into things.
And you might think, and Ithink this is changing.
It used to be, say, a retireddoctor would run for a member of
parliament and go see what theycould do.
But as the landscape's gottenmore complicated and the issues
have gotten more complicated, wehave individuals like yourself
trying to understand the issuesbefore they put their foot in
(53:06):
the political arena so that theycan actually go in and do
something because they've seenthose front end.
They're not living in thesuburbs, having no idea what
people in poverty are livinglike.
You're going and investigatingthose things and bringing that
to the House of Commons so thatit is actually a thoughtful
debate based on what's actuallyhappening, not on what people
think is happening, uh, becauseBritish Columbia often feels
(53:28):
like it's being left out of theconversation.
And the fact that you're doingthese documentaries capturing
what's happening from yourperspective and then bringing
that back, I think, is just asign of the political evolution
we're going through.
And so it's been a privilege toget a deeper understanding of
how that all came about.
Aaron Gunn (53:43):
Well, I it's it's been a privilege to talk to you.
And I hope that uh as I'mrepresenting my constituents in
the House of Commons, I won'thave as much time.
I'm gonna still try to do somevideos and some journalism uh uh
as a member of parliament, butum hopefully shows like yours
can continue to take off.
You've done you've given such avaluable service back to
Canadians um to have theseconversations, to have these
(54:05):
debates.
It's so much.
I can tell you it's not like uhuh most conversations in the
mainstream media.
And um my only regret is that Icouldn't have done it sooner.
So thank you so much for havingme.
It's uh it's really a pleasure.
And we got to get Pierre on theshow.
So I can uh I'll put in a goodword.
Aaron Pete (54:20):
Uh the honor is all mine.
Thank you for being willing todrive out and and make the time
because uh I'll say this inclosing.
Uh it's much more conservativeswho are willing to accept the
offer and come on the show andhave tough conversations uh than
I'm seeing uh from the left.
It's not that I'm not invitingthem, it's not that I'm not
willing to engage with them,it's that they seem to be less
interested in getting into thecomplexity of certain topics.
(54:42):
That doesn't mean that it'szero, uh, but it's far less than
I'd like to see.
So again, just I reallyappreciate you being willing to
share your time.
Aaron Gunn (54:48):
Yeah.
What made you interested in wanting to
understand these issues?
Aaron Gunn (00:04):
Because as voters, we're basically the shareholders
of our own country.
And if we're not informed orproperly informed, then how can
we make good decisions?
Aaron Pete (00:12):
When did conservatism become something
you were interested in, or whereyou felt more comfortable in in
terms of your ideology?
Aaron Gunn (00:21):
Because it seems to be cool to be conservative,
which is not the case when I was19 as somebody who was
conservative on campus.
Aaron Pete (00:28):
I think it would be tone-deaf not to acknowledge the
recent political assassinationof Charlie Kirk.
Are you willing to share yourreflections on what happened and
how that may have impacted youpersonally as well?
Aaron Gunn (00:39):
I'm a lot closer to this than the average person,
and you know, we've had threats.
We always hope that thetemperature doesn't get quite as
hot here in Canada as it doesin the United States.
It's helping the Chinesecommunist regime at the expense
(01:09):
of Canadian workers.
Aaron Pete (01:10):
In 2022, you tweeted there was no genocide, the
Holocaust was a genocide.
I'm just curious, what are yourreflections on that now?
Mr.
Gunn, it is an honor to haveyou on the show today.
(01:30):
Would you mind please brieflyintroducing yourself?
Aaron Gunn (01:34):
Sure.
Well, yeah, Aaron Gunn.
I'm a member of Parliament nowfor North Island Powell River.
But uh most people who might belistening or watching this uh
this podcast would uh may knowme from my documentaries.
So I've built a reasonablyprolific career over all the
major social media platforms anduh produced over 20
documentaries over the pastcouple of years, some shorter,
(01:56):
some longer, on everything fromeconomic issues to resource
development issues to uh maybemost notably the addictions
crisis and drugdecriminalization and that kind
of suite of issues, um, with twodocumentaries in particular,
Vancouver is dying and Canada isdying.
And uh but yeah, now I guessI'm just another politician.
Aaron Pete (02:16):
Can you tell me about going down that journey
and starting to document yourunderstanding of what was taking
place?
Because it's these issues areso complicated, and you decided
to start to document them andtry and understand them.
What made you interested inwanting to understand these
issues?
Aaron Gunn (02:32):
Well, I I was always I think I have a natural
curiosity and interest inpolitics and the world around
me.
So that that was organic.
And then uh there came a desireto have an impact and a purpose
in society more broadly, andthen probably matched with a
frustration at what I thoughtwas the media, in many cases not
doing their job to have uhinvestigative journalism, real
(02:56):
conversations, sometimes toughconversations about certain
issues.
Um and so especially like thedocumentaries that mean the most
to me are the ones where I feltthat I was providing a voice
that wasn't out there.
So on the drug issue.
I remember when BC uh justaround just before COVID and
especially during COVID, wentthrough this drug
decriminalization experiment,started to hand out um free
(03:18):
opioids, what they called safesupply, watching homelessness in
my uh my home city where I grewup in Victoria, go from almost
nothing to horrific tent citiessprouting up everywhere.
And we didn't seem to see anynarratives questioning the
policies of are we doing thethis this approach of harm
reduction, of injection sites,of may of reducing stigma
(03:39):
towards these substances, tohanding out free drugs.
Is this really the rightapproach?
Um, or should we maybe betaking a rethink and looking
around the world?
So uh that was just one examplewhere I wanted to um, and this
is actually why, and I've reallystarted listening to your
podcast, which I which I reallylike and you're you create such
a service to Canadians, is youare generating debate and
(04:01):
generating these importantconversations that are essential
for our democracy because asvoters, we're basically the
shareholders of our own country.
And if we're not informed orproperly informed, then how can
we make good decisions when wego to the ballot box and how can
we set expectations properlyfor our politicians?
So um it's uh so, anyways,that's how I got into it.
I went on a little bit of atangent there, but yeah, it was
(04:23):
something I was pa passionateabout, still am passionate
about.
Aaron Pete (04:25):
Interesting.
Can I ask, did you it it soundslike the lack of coverage
influenced it, but were youpolitically inclined as you were
making the documentaries, ordid that start to come about
through your understanding ofthe issues and starting to go,
oh, there this is a problem hereand and the current government
isn't acting, or were you goingin and going, I know the
(04:47):
government's doing a bad job andI'm gonna document it?
Like what was your kind ofpolitical philosophy development
during this period of yourlife?
Aaron Gunn (04:55):
Yeah, so interesting.
So I I had strong politicalviews.
I've always had strongpolitical views.
Uh there are some documentarieswhere it was the approach was
uh here is an issue I see insociety.
I think this is this is um uhthis is the this government
approach is wrong.
I believe we should be doingthis instead.
(05:15):
Um let's go create a film tobasically almost like a you
could think of think of it aslike a newspaper op-ed, but in
documentary form about why Ithink this is wrong.
And let's talk to people thatI've met along my political
journey to help kind of narratethat.
Uh and then there are otherdocumentaries where the actual
documentary re what had ended upbeing changed as I was making
(05:37):
it, because I discovered uhthings that I had no idea as I
was making the film.
So that the drug one was theperfect example.
Like I when I started makingVancouver's Dying, I did not
know that they were handing outfree drugs on the the pharmacies
in downtown Vancouver anddowntown Victoria.
I did not even I hadn't heardof Safe Supply.
So I literally found that outas I was making the film.
(05:58):
I didn't know, I hadn't talkedto very many people in recovery
who had gone, who had beenaddicted, who had lived on the
streets of downtown Vancouver.
One of my biggest surpriseswhen making that film, there's
obviously critics of it, but isthe amount of people that come
up to me who say that film wasso important, who used to be
addicted to hard drugs, are nowliving in recovery.
(06:20):
And they are the ones that arethe most opposed to these
policies of harm reduction,destigmatization, handing out
drugs.
They tell me that if when I wasliving on the streets, um they
just gave me a free place tostay in free drugs, then I would
either still be doing drugs orI'd be dead.
And um, touring some of theserecovery centers, including uh
in New Westminster, the onesthey were building in Alberta,
(06:42):
um, it was a really eye-openingexperience.
And talking to people that aresometimes the frankest and most
honest interviews that I engagedwith were people that were
living on the streets andactively using, because they
just they just tell you whatthey think and they don't and
they don't really care about thethe repercussions or what
anybody thinks of them.
Aaron Pete (06:59):
Aaron Ross Powell Right.
You said you were politicallyinclined.
When did conservatism becomesomething you were interested
in, or where do you felt morecomfortable in in terms of your
ideology?
Aaron Gunn (07:12):
I think it was like I developed like going back all
the way to high school, I gotinto politics, I think, simply
because my family wasn't verypolitical, but we had a
newspaper on the the kitchentable every morning.
So we'd be eating breakfast.
I think when I was like ingrade three, I was reading the
comics, and then by grade five,I'm reading the sports section,
and then you know, by gradeeight, you kind of want to be
(07:34):
like dad and reading theheadlines and reading the news.
So that's how I got into kindof following current events,
let's say.
And then how I developed kindof a uh propensity towards
conservatism.
I think a lot of it goes to howyou were probably raised.
My grandfather was a really biginfluence on me.
My grandfather, my grandgrater,he was uh a refugee who came
(07:55):
from uh escaped during therevolution in communist Hungary
in 1956.
So we heard the stories aboutuh you know when communism came
to Hungary, how their store gottaken away from them, um uh just
the repressions on basic civilliberties.
Um similarly, my grandmothergrowing up in southern Italy,
uh, abject poverty, living on abasically living like you know,
(08:17):
working seven days a week justto put food on the table so the
family of eleven can be able toeat, and any extra food you have
you sell so you can buy thebare essentials like shoes or or
what have you.
And just the whole nevercomplaining uh mindset, the the
lack of like a I mean, you know,the victim mentality, which you
might end up talking about.
(08:38):
I mean, they lived incrediblydifficult lives, both living
through World War II, and um,you know, came to Canada with
nothing, didn't expect anythingfrom the government, started my
grandfather worked minimum wageon the railway, um, then started
working and then eventually gota job at the mill and just kind
of built everything that theyhave through hard work and
determination and strong familyvalues.
(08:59):
So I think that for me, thatkind of the the ethos of hard
work, freedom, and and strongfamily values are like the
building blocks of ofconservatism.
Aaron Pete (09:10):
Thirty-six percent, uh, an abacus poll found uh of
Canadian young people aged 18 to29 are considering themselves
conservative.
And in comparison, only 19% uhare for the liberals and 27% for
the NDP.
So we have now uh the largestpopulation of conservative young
(09:32):
people.
Uh growing up myself, I mean,there there's this old saying of
like if you're not like an NDPor a liberal when you're young,
you're heartless.
Um, but if you're not uhconservative by the time you're
old, uh you're clueless.
And so there was that oldadage, and that seems to be
somewhat going out the windowwith the rise in young people
becoming conservative.
Did you see the the writing onthe wall on that, or were you
(09:56):
just kind of growing up in thatand starting to experience that
yourself?
How does that interact?
Aaron Gunn (10:02):
Yeah, it's it's been it's quite something to watch.
I mean, I really feel I'm amillennial, so I've really seen
it with my generation, like ahuge move towards conservatism.
I I I would say it's reflectiveof a move towards conservatism
in in culture.
Like, like to me, like comedyis an important barometer.
You've seen like I rememberstand-up, like all the comedians
(10:23):
were like very liberal when Iwas growing up, and now they've
really switched.
I feel like at least half ofthem are a conservative might be
the wrong word, but reallypushing back against the the
extremes of like the the left,let's say, just to use a r uh an
overused uh and simplifiedterm.
But it's um yeah, it's I guessmaybe a way of uh another way of
(10:44):
putting it is it seems to becool to be conservative, which
is not the case when I was 19 assomebody who was conservative
on uh at high school and onuniversity campus.
It's so there's been a there'sbeen of a change.
I think I think part of thatmaybe, as I'm just kind of
thinking on my on my feet, isthat um the the the NDP or the
Liberals or the Left have becomemore of the establishment, um,
(11:08):
maybe a bit more authoritarian,like you must act like this, um,
or you're not a good person, oror whatever the case may be,
where I think conservatism hasembraced more of the values of
individuality and free speechand free expression and these
kinds of things that I naturallyappeal uh to younger people.
And then I I also would saythat I feel the economic promise
(11:31):
that was handed down fromprevious generations hasn't
really been delivered for foryounger people.
It's so hard to get into thehousing market.
Um we've you know, wages aren'trising as fast as the cost of
living.
And for the most part, ifyou're a baby boomer and you
have your house paid off, you'redoing okay.
And I think with young people,they feel like things are
getting worse and not better.
(11:52):
I think that's the other thingthat's really uh pushed them
towards conservatives andconservatism.
Aaron Pete (11:57):
When we talk about conservatives and the
conservative movement and youngpeople, uh I think it would be
tone-deaf not to acknowledge uhthe recent uh political
assassination of Charlie Kirk,uh the role that he played in
encouraging young people to bepolitically active, to have
positions, to defend theirpositions, and to go on to
(12:19):
universities and debate these,where I think it's not
controversial to say many youngpeople don't feel like that is
the place anymore to debateideas to the same extent you
would have expected allthroughout university's history.
And I I don't want this to bepolitical, but you are a
conservative his viewpoints verymuch align with the
(12:39):
conservative movement, obviouslynot all of them, but there's a
big conversation taking placeright now about what that
political assassination means,how we should digest that.
You're a person who's very muchbeen out in the public eye,
been willing to have these toughconversations and interact.
I'm just are you willing toshare your reflections on on
what happened and and how thatmay have impacted you personally
(13:03):
as well?
Aaron Gunn (13:03):
Yeah, it's it's it's um it's probably one of the
most impactful political eventsfor me personally.
And I can tell you speaking forwhat conservatives in the
meeting look, we I got back fromOttawa, so we we we were, you
know, days after this hadhappened, I was with uh my
conservative colleagues, andpeople were people were s sick
to their stomach.
Um they're very upset.
(13:25):
Um many of my colleagues hadhad met um Charlie Kirk and his
family at different events overthe past ten years.
Um there's also a there's a thefrustration some with how it
was covered by some mainstreammedia outlets here in Canada.
Um for myself personally, likeit's it's um I I think and I
(13:49):
think it is this this went wwell beyond conservatives that I
I saw Bill Maher's comments, Isaw I I've talked to other
friends of mine who are notconservative.
I mean, for somebody to be shotand killed who's got a young
family simply because they helddifferent views than you liked
or that you did, is is theantithesis of everything that
(14:12):
our society is built on, thatour democracy is built on.
And I think that that shook alot of people.
Obviously, it was also likethere's video of it, like like
millions, tens of millions ofpeople have I'm sure have seen
that video, which is even moreshocking and disturbing.
It happened right in front of abunch of young university
students, uh, a couple thousand,I think.
(14:32):
And um for and then again forme personally, I mean I used to
you know, I I wasn't CharlieKirk, but I went to universities
to give uh speeches and wasprotested.
So like, you know, I'm a lotcloser to this than than the
average person.
And, you know, we've hadthreats repeat you know, if we
(14:52):
you always uh hope that thetemperature doesn't get quite as
hot here in Canada as it doesin the United States, but it's
still like um yeah, it was a itwas a weird feeling.
I try not to get like it justit felt like a pit in my stomach
for a couple days.
And um it was good to be inOttawa because it was just
therapeutic to talk to other MPsand find out that you know they
(15:13):
have went through the exactsame experience.
And we've got a couple MPs inour caucus that have been very
outspoken and and um uh so yeah,it was um yeah, it's it's I'm
hoping that it's not a sign ofthings to come, and I'm hoping
it's it's a it's a moment wherewe can reflect as a society that
that actually come together.
And I think it, you know, n forall the talk about the the
(15:37):
really some of the vapid anddisgusting comments online,
which there's always going tobe, I think 80-90% of people
were were rightly kind of shakenup by this a little bit, just
as much as it's it's you know,the idea that you would take
someone's life because they helda different view than you is
just so not Canada, not theUnited States, not not the West.
Aaron Pete (15:59):
I really hope that those comments that we're seeing
online, because I do see themeven on my own feed of people
justifying or explaining away.
And I really hope that the rootof that isn't malevolence, but
it's that idea that everything'sjust happening on a screen,
that it's not real life, thatit's a video game, that there's
you're just typing things into ascreen.
(16:20):
It's not that you wouldactually say go to his funeral
or something and actually havethose positions because I mean I
I couldn't believe more thatboth positions are so important,
and that when the conservativesare in power, they need to be
challenged by strong liberals,and when the liberals are in
power, they need to bechallenged by strong
conservatives, and that thereisn't one right answer.
(16:42):
There's a constant negotiationwe have to try and find truth,
to try and find what policiesare gonna serve the middle class
and the lower class and andmake sure that somebody when
they're young who's born intoterrible quality circumstances
has the opportunity to move intothe middle and upper class.
And I feel like we want to feellike we're all Canadian, so
(17:04):
we're all in the same boat.
But I I do believe a certainlevel of classism is important
in order to be able to say youare at the bottom rung of our
society in terms of youropportunities, but you can go
and make something of yourself.
And that's kind of the promisethat I've heard you talk about
and Pierre Polyev is there'sthis idea that you can just work
hard and make something ofyourself and go places.
(17:24):
And when that opportunitystarts to deteriorate and young
people who went and got theuniversity education, went and
did the things they weresupposed to do, cannot reach the
same levels that their parentsdid, that something has gone
amiss, and that we need to tryand figure out what that is.
But when we start justdemonizing people for taking
shots at what could be theissue, then we really disconnect
(17:47):
ourselves and and become animmature society.
And that's my big fear is thatwe want to be told what makes us
feel comfortable rather thanwhat might actually get us out
of these circumstances.
And I think there's a hugedanger in that and why someone
like Charlie Kirk, whether youagree with him or not, he was
willing to have theconversation.
(18:07):
And I don't want to see a acold spell over wanting to have
conversations because this iswhen we need them the most.
And I think that's how youhonor somebody like Charlie Kirk
is by by making sure that thoseconversations don't end.
Aaron Gunn (18:23):
I I agree, and I think I'm I'm optimistic
actually that that everythingall told that this event will
lead to more Charlie Kirks, morepe young people wanting to get
engaged in politics, standing upand and having that that
courage to have difficultconversations.
But it's um I mean, yeah, it'suh it you know, obviously part
(18:45):
of the early evidence that'scome out on this on the the um
assailant there, the shooter,was uh again in these online
bubbles where I think you canget you know, one of the great
things that um when I was goingto school and into university,
the internet was there and itwas rapidly growing and
(19:05):
expanding, but it still was kindof in its infancy still, and
you still, you know, would gohang out go to parties, hang out
with other people in real life,you'd have no choice, you're
gonna be interacting with peoplethat have different views than
you.
You obviously don't want so youget to know people and your
friends with people that havedifferent views than you.
And so you obviously aren'tgonna want to shoot somebody
(19:28):
just because if you get trappedin these online um uh you know
echo chambers where you're justsurrounded by people that keep
reinforcing an ideology.
And if you get in an echochamber that has a real extreme
ideology where that's thenconstantly reinforcing itself,
that's where I think you canbecome disconnected from reality
and then can become potentiallydangerous.
Aaron Pete (19:49):
I agree.
Uh moving forward, I'm curious.
Uh Pierre Poliev has come ontothe scene.
Uh, I think that was duringyour your video documentary
period prior to you deciding torun.
What influence did he have onyou as you were looking at
running uh and what has it beenlike uh to work with him?
What are your thoughts onPierre Polyviev?
Aaron Gunn (20:09):
I I probably wouldn't have run if it wasn't
for him.
So I wasn't planning to run.
Uh and then I mean the shorthistory is um Aaron O'Toole, who
who was not as strong of aconservative uh to uh one way to
describe it, um, was wasremoved as leader by the caucus.
And uh then there was aleadership race.
It became I I endorsed Pierreduring that leadership race.
(20:29):
I went out to one of hisevents.
I also became pretty clear, Ithink, or it came clear to me
that he was going to win.
And um but pretty much soon asafter that leadership race had
concluded, I started I talked tohim and talked to his staff
about potentially runningbecause you always, with other
leaders in the past, uh if youhave someone who's outspoken
that has a big platform of theirown, they might view that as a
(20:50):
negative because they just wantpeople that are just gonna tow
the line, that are just going tonot steal any attention away
from the leader himself.
But to Pierre's credit, he'sgot um such confidence and
deserved confidence, such agrasp on the issues, and he
actually wants to be surroundedby um people that um bring ideas
to the table, that have theirown voice, that have their own
(21:12):
platform, who can then reinforcereinforce and complement the
job that he's already doing.
So he was he was encouraged meto run.
I think I was the firstcandidate in British Columbia uh
confirmed.
Um it was a very long wait thatthen preceded that being a
confirmed candidate before theelection, which was less fun.
But uh yeah, so he's been greatto work.
It's great to have him back inthe House.
(21:33):
So now that um, you know, he'sin the chamber uh leading us, uh
I just had lunch with him theother day, so chatting with them
on the issues.
He is he is so laser-focused onthe issues, on crafting the
best set of policies forCanadians.
Our biggest problem right nowas conservatives is every time
we come up with a good idea andconvince a majority of Canadians
(21:53):
uh that this is the way forwardfor the country, the Liberals
just take that idea and then uhpresent it as their own, whether
it's uh scrapping the carbontax, or now they're claiming
they're gonna bring in bailreform uh or they want to build
pipelines spontaneously.
So uh these are ideas we'veobviously been talking about for
a long time.
So I guess all it's good forthe country that they're they're
uh borrowing the ideas as faras we're concerned.
Aaron Pete (22:15):
Aaron Powell Why do you think he lost his riding?
Aaron Gunn (22:18):
I think he lost his riding just because of I mean
I'm a big believer that that uhin this past election, a lot of
it a lot of the riding by ridingdiscrepancies are explained by
demographics.
So we had a demographicrealignment.
And um uh so the riding that hehas has been changing.
(22:40):
It's becoming more it's asuburb of Ottawa, so it used to
be more kind of semi-rural.
It's gradually become as everycity expands.
So Vancouver is no different.
Obviously, some areas in thevalley used to be heavily
conservative.
Now they're more uh of atoss-up or more competitive just
because they've turned intojust suburbs of a major city.
(23:01):
In the case of Ottawa, thosesuburbs are, I mean, uh mainly
people that are public servantsworking for the federal
government that tend to not voteconservative.
Um and they thought that theconservative government was
going to cut the public service,which uh we probably would have
because we had to, which is whythe Liberals are now also doing
(23:21):
it.
Um but they didn't campaign onthat.
So that's I so that's generallywhat I think happened.
Um and uh but yeah, you see usdo um well in some places and
and not others, and I think itcan be explained away by
different the biggest change youcan look at the average age of
a different writing throughStatistics Canada, and that
(23:42):
lines up pretty well with howthe different trends the other
of course the other thing thathappened in his riding is the
NDP vote collapse.
So I don't have the numbers infront of me, but the NDP went
from like 12 to 1 or somethinglike that.
And I believe he also got morevotes than he got last time, but
turnout was up everywhere, soit was yeah.
And he obviously couldn't spendany time in the riding because
(24:04):
he was traveling around thecountry as the leader of the
party.
Aaron Pete (24:06):
So Right.
After the he had lost uh inthat riding, there were big
calls, and after the election,there were big calls on it's
time for reflection, what can wedo better, where did we miss
the mark?
There were huge growth.
Uh, I think Andrew Schear did agood job of trying to highlight
where you saw like significantgrowth.
But I'm curious, what werethose areas of reflection and
(24:27):
what could Pierre Polyev bedoing better?
Aaron Gunn (24:31):
Well, I I mean the first thing to point out which
you alluded to is that if twoyears ago you said the
Conservative Party is gonna getlike 41 percent of the national
vote, are you happy with that?
We would have taken it in aheartbeat.
I mean, it's the highestpercentage of the vote since the
1980s for the party.
Uh it was more than StephenHarper got when he won his
majority government in 2011,significantly more.
(24:54):
And um so uh on the face of it,we did quite well.
Um the NDP vote collapsed, and80 percent of that collapse went
to the Liberal Party.
Um the bloc vote partiallycollapsed mainly into the
Liberal Party.
Um but that's not to say thatwe couldn't have done better and
we didn't r struggle with somegroups.
(25:14):
I mean, we were we were didvery well with young people,
millennials, Gen X.
We struggled a bit more withseniors.
Um it was a weird convergenceof events with Trudeau stepping
down and then obviously DonaldTrump deciding to uh uh uh have
this weird obsession with Canadaand just poking us in the eye
as much as possible.
(25:34):
And the Liberals were able touh take advantage of that
politically faster and betterthan we could.
Um and I think in hindsight,maybe we would have reacted a
bit differently.
But Pierre to his credit, likehe wanted to focus on the issues
that we could control asCanadians, that we saw that it's
the federal government'sfailure over the past 10 years.
(25:56):
So whether it's on crime,whether it's on the addictions
crisis that killed 50,000Canadians, whether it's housing
prices that have gottencompletely out of control,
whether it's the highestinflation in 30 years, now we
see unemployment starting totick back up, whether it was
failing to get any majornational resource projects,
almost any major nationalresource projects built, whether
it's doubling the national debtin 10 years, which is
(26:18):
completely unsustainable, andspending more money on interest
payments than we than we do onour entire military, which was
also in probably the worst statethan before World War II.
So we wanted to focus on theissues.
And the Liberals, I guess, tothe political cr to their
political credit, were were ableto just kind of I think virtue
signal on stuff that washappening in the states that was
(26:38):
completely uh outside of ourcontrol and was able to
capitalize on a collapsing NDPvote, and that was enough for
them to win a minoritygovernment, and uh hopefully
we'll get a chance to go againin the not too distant future.
Aaron Pete (26:52):
Aaron Powell One of the big criticisms that I've
spoken with uh MP Brad Vizabout, uh J.J.
McCullough and others is thelack of interviews and long-form
discussions during that periodwhere we saw in the US Donald
Trump choose to go on multipleplatforms and do long-form
interviews.
And I had dubbed right in thebeginning of 2025 that this was
(27:14):
going to be the podcast year forCanada.
It did not end up going thatway.
Uh there was a decision bymultiple parties not to want to
do long-form almost all of them.
And do you think that was anerror?
Aaron Gunn (27:27):
I think we definitely could have done more
media, specifically in Canada.
Now, there were other questionsbeing asked about like, you
know, should you like MarkCarney launched his campaign, I
think it was on like the DailyShow in the States, and I'm sure
Pierre could have gone on Roganor something if he wanted to,
but I don't think it would havemade sense politically, given
what was happening at the time,to go to the United States to do
(27:48):
interviews as as big as thoseindividuals have audiences in
Canada.
I do think we should have donemore media in Canada.
I think pretty much everybodyin the party agrees that that we
should have done.
And I think we've seen thatsince the election.
I think we'll see see more ofthat going forward.
And I think we'll also see moreof not just Pierre getting out
there, but other MPs getting outthere.
I mean, uh hopefully this is anexample of it sitting sitting
(28:11):
across from you and having thisconversation.
Aaron Pete (28:13):
Yeah.
As you know, or as you may know,I I'm a First Nations chief.
So I'd be remiss if I didn'task um about this.
In 2022, you tweeted there wasno genocide, the Holocaust was a
genocide.
I'm just curious, um, what areyour reflections on on that now?
That that was about three yearsago.
Have your perspectives changedor or do you still hold true to
(28:34):
that?
And and what is yourperspective on what happened
with First Nations and Indianresidential schools?
Aaron Gunn (28:38):
Yeah, well, I've heard I've heard some of your
interviews on the subject, whichI think have been very I mean,
I just think we were missing somuch of that in our society
right now on this particularissue, having those difficult
conversations.
I mean, my point was um I mean,like I I think I've had 10,000
posts, so definitely would havemaybe framed my thoughts
differently.
(28:59):
I obviously wasn't a politicianor running for political office
at the time.
But I do think it's importantone to have conversations, the
importance of language and theimportance of defining what we
mean by different words.
I believe there was a poll outuh a couple years ago where they
were asking this question aboutwhat Canadians thought about
genocide.
I'm not even sure if it was inrelation to residential schools,
but most Canadians didn't evenknow what exactly it meant or
(29:21):
what version, what whatdefinition that we are using of
that particular word.
Um what I do think is importantto point out is that something
can be horrible, regrettable,terrible.
People can die, people can behurt, um, there can be
intergenerational trauma, andstill doesn't necessarily mean
(29:43):
it's a genocide, in my view.
In my view, genocide has a veryspecific legal definition.
There's also people that haveum if you go back to the truth
and reconciliation report, um Iwould I would consider that like
the report on the effect ofresidential schools, they
obviously could have referred.
Referred to it as a genocide,and they referred to it as a
cultural genocide, which to meis more appropriate.
(30:06):
The um when this came up in themedia, there was a lot of um
well, I I would have preferredto do more media on it to
clarify things, but the um theywould use that comment and
sometimes try to say it was insome way a repudiation of the
truth and reconciliation reportback from I think it was 2011 or
(30:29):
2013.
2015.
Um the post that you're talkingabout were was in relation to
another report that actually uhaccused Canada or made the
accusation that we werecommitted genocide like under
the U.N.
definition and we're committingongoing genocide under the U.N.
definition.
I definitely don't think thatwe're committing ongoing
(30:49):
genocide today.
Um I don't think for a varietyof reasons we committed that
Canada is a genocidal state,like that it as bad as the
residential schools were, thatthey should be compared to
something like the Holocaust, uhwhere you know six million Jews
died or things that happened inRwanda.
And I mean I think it's alsojust part of the uh uh problem
(31:11):
in in you know nuance is hard toget across in today's society.
So how do you how can somethingbe um horrible, regrettable?
People were hurt, um, we wantto learn from it, but maybe we
shouldn't be comparing it to theHolocaust.
And to me, that was myperspective on on residential
(31:34):
schools, and I still have lotsto learn from it, and I'm happy
to I this is what one of thereasons why I was excited to be
able to come on to your show.
But that's kind of that's kindof my views.
I don't know if that's I don'tuh I don't know if the if any of
the interviews that I heardwith you, if you kind of laid
out what how you navigate thatword or that uh the definition
or what it means to you.
Aaron Pete (31:54):
I don't think that it was a genocide um because
that requires the intention.
And but I I can see why thatwould be inflammatory because it
didn't come with some of thepretext and and post text that
you provided of it was horrible,it was terrible.
And when you just say somethinglike it was not a genocide,
that leaves people to wonder, doyou think it was a good thing?
(32:15):
Do you think it was and we haveanother quote here uh that you
said uh you've suggested someindigenous bands asked for
residential schools.
Um and I I don't know if youhave any historical context to
support that claim.
Um, but that's another one ofthe challenges is say one did.
The over the there were a lotof residential schools, so even
if you can reference two orthree examples, that does not
(32:36):
suggest that the theoverwhelming amount of First
Nations people at the timewanted residential schools.
Aaron Gunn (32:42):
Right, right.
So so the inter this one of thereasons, one of the things that
frustrates so this all comes upduring an election campaign.
Yeah.
And obviously you can imaginewith a national campaign, they
don't want you talking aboutanything to do with this.
So it's like you cannot nowcontextualize or provide uh
background to where theseconversations came from.
And I had some really goodconvers.
I mean, I talked to I d I uh Inever want to talk about who I
(33:05):
had private conversations with,but I talked to a couple of
chiefs in the riding who Iconsider friends who who were
wanted to hear hear me out andwere comfortable with the
explanation.
Like, for example, theconversation or the the tweet
that you just mentioned aboutsome indigenous bands as so that
so that's part of a tweetthread that gets screenshotted
there that is strictly and mostof my commentary on this issue
(33:28):
has been a defense of John A.
McDonald, not a defense ofresidential schools.
So that's that that's simplyabout the point of and I think
it's so my big uh point on thisis that all of these bad things
happened.
But one of the most importantthings to understand is it was
not the result of a bunch ofmalicious, nefarious actors in
(33:51):
Ottawa for the most part, that Ican tell.
But from people is that thewhole the old saying, like the
the road to hell is paved withgood intentions.
There were a bunch of peoplewho thought they were doing a
good thing that were actuallypushing this program.
Aaron Pete (34:02):
Do you think that's true?
Uh well, from Like we have somequotes, you must have seen some
of these quotes from Sir JohnA.
McDonald.
Not all of them were I I've gotthe best of intentions here.
Lots of them were calling ussavages and saying we need to
get these people out of thesavage home, put them in these
schools.
The whole point of theresidential school system,
because in speaking with FrancisWidowson, her point was like,
(34:24):
oh, like in other countries,like in in a communist country,
they actually had priests gointo the communities and educate
and support.
And that had a different effectbecause the culture was able to
continue.
But Canada didn't take thatapproach.
They pulled the children out oftheir community, put them in
schools surrounded by people whotold them what to do.
And that resulted in theabsolute destruction of the
(34:45):
culture.
But the design of the schoolswas always known with the in
that it wasn't gonna have theproper air filtration and that
they were going to be squishedinto these buildings that was
never going to allow fortuberculosis not to spread, like
it was gonna encourage thespreading of tuberculosis by
their designs.
But had you left them in thecommunities, you would have been
outside just like in COVID ifyou were outside.
If you weren't squished intothese buildings all the time, um
(35:08):
sometimes not being cleaned,you're gonna have higher rates
of tuberculosis.
So his comments dovetailperfectly with what ended up
happening in so in a lot ofcircumstances.
Aaron Gunn (35:18):
I mean, I mean, I I don't want to go into the to all
of the the wormholes of it.
I I think it was a forcedassimilation program that I
think destroyed many facets ofIndigenous culture.
And I think that was that waswrong.
And it it came from aperspective of kind of cultural
supremacy.
But it wasn't, it was uh whichI think is something that we
(35:39):
should learn from.
Um and I think it was the look,if you if you if you're in the
if you're some guy in the 1800sand you think you have the
superior culture, then you'vethen and I and by the way, this
clearly was this was you knownot a controversial thing at the
time.
This was kind of just areflection of, I think, Canadian
thinking at the I would sayWestern thinking, because it was
happening in the United Statesand Australia as well.
(36:01):
So I think it was just a um alogical extension of a faulty
premise that um uh as youpointed out, the the the other
example of you know there was away to um bring schools and
education to the communitieswithout having the destructive
uh cultural effects um thatobviously ended up happening in
(36:23):
many cases.
So but I don't think we canhave uh I don't have my book of
John A.
McDonald quotes on me, butthere's um uh I mean I think he
has been maligned so horribly,um so taken out of context.
He was such a progressive voiceat his time.
Um he was somebody, and as alawyer, the first person that he
ever defended uh who was facingthe death penalty was an
(36:44):
indigenous gentleman who he hegot off uh that charge.
He was um voted to uh he pushedto extend voting rights to
Indigenous people.
The Liberals then took thosevoting rights away and they
weren't brought back in untilDiefenbaker.
Um he has quotes about uh howhe can't wait to see Indigenous
people represented in the Houseof Commons.
(37:05):
He um uh so he was attacked forproviding in the House of
Commons again for providing foodaid to indigenous bands who
were starving on the prairies.
So um this this the point thereisn't to um somehow run defense
for John A.
McDonald's to it's to say thatit's complicated, that it's a
complicated picture, that the1800s were not 2025, that he um
(37:31):
in many cases I I think I like Iwould say whatever you think of
him, he was definitely of thetwo political forces in the late
1800s, he was considered on theprogressive side of things.
He was the first leader in theWestern world to credibly
propose extending the votingrights to women.
He granted black Canadians theright to vote.
So you none of these thingscome up in the we're gonna tear
(37:51):
down the statue debate.
I mean, even just like thesimple fact I think that he was
the one pushing so hard toextend voting rights to
Indigenous Canadians shouldraise some questions about the
caricature that has been uhcreated uh surrounding him.
Aaron Pete (38:05):
Trevor Burrus, I don't think any of us can live
up to the morals of the future,you know?
Like I don't think we can everwhen we look back, we have to do
it with a level of humility.
And I'm I'm certainly insupport of that, and I've
continued to learn more.
And I think there is a hugechallenge when only one side of
the political aisle is allowedto speak on the issues or raise
(38:26):
perspectives.
And I appreciate you beingwilling to raise this because I
think the the points in this arereally valid.
I guess my only follow-up wouldbe the challenge I see
conservatives often have isoften they come across as
unsympathetic to the plight ofdifferent minority groups, uh,
because the the the broaderpoint is important, but that's
(38:47):
what I think even in these inthese posts sometimes gets lost.
And this isn't to to malignyou, but that from my
perspective, often liberals andand people on the political left
are often very we care aboutpeople, we want the best for
people, we want people tosucceed.
And I think that's stillsomething that conservatives
believe in, but it's perhaps notwhat they lead with.
(39:09):
And the the context of otherpieces that would bring the
temperature down and allowpeople to hear some
conservatives gets lost whenthose other pieces aren't
mentioned or commented on.
Do you think that's a fairassessment?
Aaron Gunn (39:22):
Yeah, I mean I mean the the the liberals are much
better at leading with withemotion.
I mean, I think that fr I mean,for me though, it it frustrates
me because I think we havewe've had a lot of do we've had
10 years of a very emotionalpublic policy based on signaling
virtue but not deliveringresults.
And to me, that doesn't improvepeople's lives.
I mean, the first documentary Ifilmed was on um it was called
(39:43):
Do All First Nations ActuallyOppose Pipelines?
So that's when I wasinterviewing Alice Ross up in
Kidamat.
Um people from the I think Ican't remember this is now five
years ago, but basically all theFirst Nations, I think it was
Sintay Nation in Burns Lake, umbasically all along the coastal
gas link pipeline route.
And you had a bunch ofactivists there who were uh
(40:05):
staging protests across theprovince, across the country
actually, including inVancouver, um, and were trying
to prop up like they werestanding up for indigenous
rights, but then you wouldn'tactually go to these communities
and know actually, like everyevery uh first First Nation band
had voted in favor of thepipeline, had signed benefit
sharing agreements with CoastalGaslink, who viewed it as a
(40:26):
tremendous opportunity to lifttheir people out of poverty.
Many of them were working onthe pipeline and the
construction.
And to me that that was sothat's a foot.
So they were leading with amotion, but I think it was like
it was false, basically.
And I do think we need to andand that's actually it's we're
back to the start of thisconversation, because that's
where I went out and made thedocumentary, because I wanted to
(40:46):
try to show it.
What I would say is that in adocumentary, it's much easier to
get the full picture acrossthan it is that uh in a tweet on
Twitter.
Because you might have noticedI didn't get attacked for any of
my documentaries that I did orany of even the short form
videos that I did.
It was all tweets and usuallyscreen grabs of tweets that were
part of a large larger thread.
(41:07):
And um, so that's maybe a goodpoint of of uh the dangers of of
of if you're going to weighinto topics like this, you
should you should do them within the context of longer
conversations.
Aaron Pete (41:20):
Aaron Powell I would tend to agree with that.
The next question I have iswhat are your thoughts on Mark
Carney?
Prime Minister Mark Kearney?
Aaron Gunn (41:29):
I think that he is like the job he's doing- I mean
I don't know him personally, soI'm assuming you mean as as
Prime Minister.
I think right now he basicallyhasn't accomplished anything,
but in fairness, he hasn't beenthere very long.
So I think most Canadians arein the still in the wait-and-see
approach.
Trevor Burrus, Jr. (41:43):
Six months in.
It's getting there.
I think kind of January iswhere he's really has to, you
know, he's talked he's talked abig game on building national
projects, and for the most part,he's just kind of re-announced
approvals of things that werealready happening.
Um there doesn't seem to be anynew pipelines being built.
He the fiscal situation isprobably the most worrying.
(42:05):
I b we're all well, therehasn't been a budget yet, so
it's hard to critique.
All you can say is there's nobudget, and he's been there for
for six months.
But everyone's expecting thedeficit to go even higher.
Um I think the housing marketis incredibly shaky.
Um obviously we haven't got youknow you know, I b uh I
sympathize in the sense thatit's m hard to strike a deal
(42:26):
with this administration in theUnited States, but he also kind
of went around the electionclaiming that he was the expert
deal maker and he could dealwith Trump and six months later,
no deal.
So we haven't reallyaccomplished anything.
So um my view is that he's donethe easy things that everybody
can support.
Um, you know, he's said thatthey're gonna try to speed up
projects, they've given our menand women a uniform a
(42:48):
well-deserved raise.
But governing is about makingtough choices, is about making
trade-offs.
And um I don't think he's doneany of those things yet.
Um I'm happy to to to uhreserve my more heated criticism
for six months down the road ifhe hasn't acted.
And we've we've tried to as aparty um work with the Liberals
(43:10):
when they presented legislation,even if we don't think it's
perfect, that would be betterfor the country.
So on C5, for example, wehelped amend it during committee
um and then voted to pass it sothat uh even if it's not
perfect, hopefully it can getsome of these projects speeding
up faster than they would have.
Aaron Pete (43:26):
One piece that I I got to see a video that you
posted was on the BC Fairies.
I think it was the CEO, right?
I found that really interestingand and almost tragic in a way
because the point you weremaking was just again, it like I
know it's the the party slogan,but like common sense.
Like, why would we not want ourBC fairies made in BC?
(43:48):
And I don't know if it was theCEO going in and trying to be
prepared for the tough questionshe was gonna have to answer,
but I I just feel like honoringthe fact that like it really
sucks we didn't make these here.
And like that is an absolutetragedy, and we will do better.
Like, would have been the easyanswer that I think we all could
have gotten on board with.
(44:09):
And I just I worry aboutpolitical talking points taking
over the conversation at times.
What were your reflections onon that conversation with the BC
Ferry CEO?
Aaron Gunn (44:18):
Well, I my my time in the committee over the summer
was definitely the mostfulfilling time I've had as a
parliamentarian so far, to beable to sit across from someone
in that position, first the CEOof BC Ferries and then Gregor
Robertson, the Minister ofIndustry, and basically to have
five minutes for them where theycouldn't they had to answer
your questions.
And you kind of hold them toaccount, hold their feet to the
fire.
That's why I ran for office, isto try to try to raise
(44:41):
awareness about these issues andand create change in our
society.
Um I think the BC Ferriesdecision, I think it shows,
first of all, it shows a lack oflong-term strategic thinking in
this country.
I mean, we had uh some of thecommentary who basically said,
you know, we need these the thepat the pat the ferries are
almost at capacity, like we needthese right away.
(45:01):
It was like, well, the ferriesthey're replacing are 40 years
old.
So why are we why are we justdeciding here at the last
seconds, well, we need we haveto build them in China because
we can't wait five years tobuild our ship or ten years to
build our capacit, shipbuildingcapacity up here in Canada.
Um the other thing is theessentially they basically
admitted this.
(45:21):
I mean, we have greatshipbuilders here.
We've got great Canadiantradespeople.
They know how to build ships.
Um I think we're efficient atbuilding ships.
The steel, the aluminum, youknow, the materials are about
the same.
They have cheaper labor andthey have lower environmental
and labor standards than we do.
So don't we don't we want tohave higher wages and higher
(45:44):
regulatory standards here inCanada?
But are are we not just what'sthe point in having them and
then just sending the sendingthe jobs to another country?
Like it defeats the entirepurpose of having those higher
standards here in the country.
And then I mean you can go downthe list the fact that this is
uh basically an adversarialnation of Canada.
I mean, there's you know, wecan't reveal everything as
parliamentarians, but this is acountry that is well documented,
(46:06):
engages in cyber attacks on aregular basis, uh, that is is is
multi- that kidnapped twoCanadians and held them hostage
in China, that is currentlyengaged in massive tariffs on
our seafood industry, our canolaindustry.
And um this is a company inChina that is literally owned by
the Chinese Communist Party.
It's a state-owned company, andwe're giving them a billion
(46:28):
dollars, and we're subsidizingit with a like a low-interest
loan from the federalgovernment.
And it's just it's just uhcompletely um and then you have
every pol all these politicians,whether it's provincially or
federally, pointing, no onewants to take responsibility for
it.
The B.C.
Ferries basically says they hadno choice, and then the
provincial government says itwasn't our choice.
Uh we dislike it, but BCFerries made it.
(46:50):
And then, even though they'rethe only shareholder in BC
Ferries, then you have thefederal government who openly
admitted in documents that havesince been released that the
purchase wouldn't have beenpossible without their low
interest loan trying to washtheir hands of it.
I just think it's it's justanother poor public policy
decision.
It's the antithesis to commonsense, as you pointed out.
And I think also ignorant ofthe new kind of uh geopolitical
(47:15):
reality that we're entering.
I mean, if uh things in theworld are becoming more
competitive, um, you know, Chinabuilt something like 6% of the
world's ship by displacementlike 20 years ago, uh twenty
twenty five years ago.
Now it's fifty percent.
That wasn't an accident.
That wasn't uh China just is sogood at building.
That is a decision by theChinese state government to
(47:36):
create a state-owned industry tocorner the shipbuilding market
by undercutting everybody sothat they have that shipbuilding
potential.
And this is an industry that isobviously dual military
civilian applications, and theirprimary objective is to one day
take back Taiwan.
So I mean, and we're basicallysubsidizing it with a loan.
So it's just to me, it makes itmakes no sense.
(47:58):
It's it's helping the Chinesecommunist regime at the expense
of Canadian workers, Canadiancompanies, and Canadian
industrial capacity.
Aaron Pete (48:05):
May I close by asking about how what does this
next year look like from yourperspective?
Uh you guys are back sitting inthe house.
What is your role?
How do you hope to continue toto bring your voice uh to the
House of Commons?
Aaron Gunn (48:20):
Well, my role is obvious to be first and foremost
a loud voice for theconstituents of my riding, to uh
uh to be a loud voice for forfor common sense within the
party, within the House ofCommons, um, to keep making
videos.
We've done a couple in thesummer, but once the offices are
all kind of running verysmoothly, I want to get back out
and doing that concurrentlywith being in the House of
(48:40):
Parliament.
And also never forgetting umyou know having that sense of
humility which you mentioned,which we don't have enough of in
our society, and also justcontinuing to be um acting with
you know, it's it's an honor tobe elected by your fellow
constituents, to go there um inone of the the oldest,
continuous democracies in theworld, to stand in these in in
(49:01):
the chamber where so many peoplehave have stood before you to
do the best that you can toguide the democracy on its right
path and to deliver for forconstituents, for people that
are that are I I think for toolong in this country, just the
the the average Canadian, Idon't need and I don't mean I
mean average in like a in a in apositive way, um, who pays
their taxes, who works hard, whoraises their family, uh, who
(49:24):
follows the law, um, but isn'tpart of any special interest
group has kind of been forgottenand sent to the back of the
bus.
And I think those are thepeople that we should be putting
first.
Um they're the foundation ofthe country.
And um I think that that's whenwe're shaping pop public
policy, that's the person I Ithink first, first and foremost
about somebody that's that's sobusy with their own life just
(49:46):
trying to make ends meet, makethat mortgage payment, raise
their kids, get them to hockeyor soccer, whatever the case may
be, that you know, they're thatuh they almost don't want to
tune into politics.
Um and I just think there'sbeen too many public policies
that that that haven't thatthey've been getting f left
further and further behind, andthat we should be one of the
wealthiest countries in theworld with the amount of
(50:08):
resources we have, the amount ofingenuity, educated workforce,
uh geographic position in theworld.
So um yeah, it's the you know,there's a hundred different
specific policies from crime tohousing to taxes to to to fiscal
management that that fit inthat under that purview.
But to me, that's those are thepeople that I want to fight
(50:29):
for.
And I was asked a question theother day, or not the other day,
on a different podcast, I said,what does populism mean for you
to you?
Everyone throws around thisword populism.
The first thing I said was,first of all, I hate words like
that because it means somethingdifferent to to different
people, and it's kind of theweaponization of language has
always been part of politics.
But when I think of kind ofpopulism, or or how I would like
(50:51):
to view it in a positive light,is that when I interact with a
voter who might be a a plumberor an electrician or a waitress
or a school teacher or a nurseor a paramedic, is that I enter
every conversation with thehumility that I have more to
learn from them than they havefrom me.
And that's what I think makes agood r representative, and
(51:14):
that's what I'm uh aiming to do.
That's what I strive to do.
And I have a very big writing,so it's a lot of work.
But I think I think we'd all bebetter off as Canadians having
more of those conversations andgoing in with an open mind.
Doesn't mean you're gonnaagree.
You might come away from thatconversation and be like, well,
I I listened, but I didn't agreewith anything that person said.
But you gotta be able that yougotta have that openness of
(51:35):
mind, um, or else I just don'tthink you're gonna be able to
bring bring people together.
I don't and I don't think you'dbe a you you'd be a good
representative.
So that's what I'm gonna try todo.
Aaron Pete (51:44):
Aaron Powell How can people follow your work?
Aaron Gunn (51:46):
You can follow me on uh well YouTube, Instagram,
Facebook, and X, I guess are thefour places I am.
I think if you just type in myname into Google, that's
probably the fastest way totrack me down on all those very
or into the apps themselves, andum or at AaronGunn.ca.
But um yeah.
Aaron Pete (52:02):
Member of Parliament, Aaron Gunn, it has
been a privilege to speak withyou today.
I think one of the things thatgives me the most hope is,
again, no talking points, noangling, no repeating certain
slogans.
Uh you came here veryauthentic, very thoughtful, and
and willing to engage on ideas.
And that gives me a lot of hopein the direction that we're
(52:25):
moving.
And I'm hoping to see more andmore young people like yourself
willing to enter these arenas,have these conversations.
Uh, and I think the the themost interesting part in having
the opportunity to speak withyou was that you started
learning about the issues priorto talking about them.
You started to, uh, you hadyour own political perspectives,
(52:45):
which is natural and normal,but you were willing to go and
look into things.
And you might think, and Ithink this is changing.
It used to be, say, a retireddoctor would run for a member of
parliament and go see what theycould do.
But as the landscape's gottenmore complicated and the issues
have gotten more complicated, wehave individuals like yourself
trying to understand the issuesbefore they put their foot in
(53:06):
the political arena so that theycan actually go in and do
something because they've seenthose front end.
They're not living in thesuburbs, having no idea what
people in poverty are livinglike.
You're going and investigatingthose things and bringing that
to the House of Commons so thatit is actually a thoughtful
debate based on what's actuallyhappening, not on what people
think is happening, uh, becauseBritish Columbia often feels
(53:28):
like it's being left out of theconversation.
And the fact that you're doingthese documentaries capturing
what's happening from yourperspective and then bringing
that back, I think, is just asign of the political evolution
we're going through.
And so it's been a privilege toget a deeper understanding of
how that all came about.
Aaron Gunn (53:43):
Well, I it's it's been a privilege to talk to you.
And I hope that uh as I'mrepresenting my constituents in
the House of Commons, I won'thave as much time.
I'm gonna still try to do somevideos and some journalism uh uh
as a member of parliament, butum hopefully shows like yours
can continue to take off.
You've done you've given such avaluable service back to
Canadians um to have theseconversations, to have these
(54:05):
debates.
It's so much.
I can tell you it's not like uhuh most conversations in the
mainstream media.
And um my only regret is that Icouldn't have done it sooner.
So thank you so much for havingme.
It's uh it's really a pleasure.
And we got to get Pierre on theshow.
So I can uh I'll put in a goodword.
Aaron Pete (54:20):
Uh the honor is all mine.
Thank you for being willing todrive out and and make the time
because uh I'll say this inclosing.
Uh it's much more conservativeswho are willing to accept the
offer and come on the show andhave tough conversations uh than
I'm seeing uh from the left.
It's not that I'm not invitingthem, it's not that I'm not
willing to engage with them,it's that they seem to be less
interested in getting into thecomplexity of certain topics.
(54:42):
That doesn't mean that it'szero, uh, but it's far less than
I'd like to see.
So again, just I reallyappreciate you being willing to
share your time.
Aaron Gunn (54:48):
Yeah.
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