Shots fired. It happened in Davos last week at the World Economic Forum. A war of words erupts between Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump. And it s still going.
00:10:01.000They find a reason to go to the polls.
00:10:03.000Justin Trudeau, in one of his elections, I think it was 2021, spent months blocking everything from going through parliament himself and then turned around and said, parliament's dysfunctional.
00:10:48.000I think what he's setting up, though, if he's setting up for an election is sort of an election of unprecedented times, i.e. things have changed.
00:11:31.000He's going to have to face a conservative electorate.
00:11:33.000UCP, 60% of them think that separation is a nice idea.
00:11:37.000So it's going to be really tricky for him.
00:11:40.000So all these winds are blowing at the same time.
00:11:42.000And Carney's like just surfing them right now and thinking, ah, great time to have an election.
00:11:47.000I'll be the only one standing up for Canada.
00:11:49.000I didn't think that they would be able to turn a potential spring election, which is what we're talking about now, into another referendum on Donald Trump again.
00:12:10.000And I'd like to hear from both of you.
00:12:12.000I think it's a combination of Carney and Trump.
00:12:17.000And this war of words that kicked off in Davos started with Carney.
00:12:24.000He had just come from China and Qatar and then shows up at Davos after praising leaders in both China and Qatar is saying that the United States is the big problem in the world.
00:12:42.000Which doesn't have the same ring when you've just been saying how great a leader President Xi is.
00:12:49.000It doesn't have the same ring when you're like, well, we need to have a strategic partnership with China.
00:12:54.000The guys that kidnapped our own people for two years.
00:12:57.000But there's an awful lot of the Canadian public just so angry about the United States and Donald Trump that they are all in on this.
00:13:07.000Yeah, I said earlier that, you know, it may have been a deliberate provocation from Carney, but I do also think I think it was.
00:13:18.000Yeah. And so there is this world we now live in where if Trump says something, you know, hostile to Canada or something we just profoundly disagree with, the Greenland stuff is a good instance of this.
00:13:30.000I think every world leader has this question of, do I go out there and say what I think and what is the position of my country and risk some tariff or something that would never happen if I didn't do that?
00:13:43.000Do we actually stand on these principles? Is it actually worth it to go out and say this?
00:13:48.000It probably doesn't make any difference in the long run.
00:13:51.000And I think that that is a hard thing to do for four years is to sort of hide and try to just cower under some coats and hope it all goes away.
00:14:01.000So I think Carney was kind of getting at this big question for the middle powers and his solution is for them to band together.
00:14:10.000So I think the substance of his speech was it wasn't delusional.
00:14:17.000It wasn't something outside of the reality that Canada lives in.
00:14:20.000And I think he was trying to toe the line of not angering Trump too much because he didn't mention his name.
00:14:26.000He just kind of left it quite clear that that's who he was talking about, because we know that Trump probably has a Google alert for his name.
00:14:45.000I do understand the question that all these middle powers are facing.
00:14:49.000And I think probably every Canadian has a different line of, you know, are we really going to accept a 10% tariff on Canada just because Carney felt like he had to speak up to Donald Trump?
00:14:59.000I think most of us would say, just keep your mouth shut.
00:15:01.000And I think that's probably the line he's dealing with right now.
00:15:04.000And then there is that incentive for Carney, which is always going to run against the interests of Canadians, which is that when Trump's mad at him, it helps him out electorally.
00:15:17.000So, Tasha, as our resident Carney whisperer, help me understand then, he didn't say much about Venezuela and going in and arresting Maduro, which I actually think was a good thing.
00:15:32.000He didn't say much about Greenland ahead of time.
00:15:37.000So why did he do this Vaclav Havel, power of the powerless, America is the evil hegemon speech at Davos?
00:15:50.000Well, I think that I disagree that it was necessarily just Carney who started this.
00:16:10.220Steve Bannon was out there on a tear about Canada.
00:16:12.920So there was already this conversation brewing about Canada, again, in that context, which we know stirs nationalist sentiments here.
00:16:22.380And then Donald Trump sent out his little missive about Greenland and the Peace Prize to the Prime Minister of Norway, saying that he was mad he didn't get the prize.
00:16:33.420And this is tied into why he wants Greenland.
00:16:35.800And I think that was a real jump the shark moment for a lot of people.
00:16:38.820I mean, Trump says insane things a lot, but that one was, somehow it hit home because I think people realized that, you know what, no matter what we do, there's no point.
00:16:48.900There's no point with this man because he will change his mind whenever he wants, do whatever he wants.
00:16:53.420And it's about, it is about ego as opposed to anything really rational.
00:16:58.680And yes, he's very much against China and, you know, that's a good thing holding the Chinese influence at bay and he's done some good things in the world.
00:17:05.160But there's always a subtext of what's in it for me, even with Gaza.
00:17:08.680I mean, look at the, you know, the Trump-Gaza plans that Jared Kushner unveiled at, in Davos, giant towers looming over Gaza that presumably the Trump empire will build.
00:19:36.140And then Melanie Jolie said it the next day.
00:19:38.000And then Carney was asked about it and he said, yes, stable and predictable.
00:19:40.900So, um, the question is, were, well, who was the audience of that statement?
00:19:46.940Were they trying to say to the U.S., listen, if you guys could just get it together and be a little more stable, things would go a lot better.
00:19:55.540Or were they just genuinely saying what they were encountering when they got to China?
00:19:59.420Because I guess, you know, Tasha is right that we know what we're getting with China.
00:20:04.320And I think when you make a deal there, nobody goes on Twitter and retracts it the next day.
00:20:09.620And I think that's the kind of thing that drives diplomats nuts.
00:20:12.200So, um, so I think there was definitely an intention behind those words because the same words were used by all these different ministers and then Carney, uh, on that trip.
00:20:23.480So, you know, maybe they're just sort of crying into the wind and hoping to change how the U.S. governs itself.
00:20:29.940Your, uh, your statement that, uh, we, we know what we're getting reminds me of what a friend said about Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow.
00:20:38.380Um, well, we had John Tory as mayor and we thought we were getting a conservative and we got a communist, at least with Olivia Chow.
00:20:45.640We know we're getting a communist, um, a bit of a, an overstretch on both of them, but you, you know, it, you know, something Tasha can relate to as a Toronto, right?
00:20:54.320All right. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Greenland and, uh, whether the world was pulling out its hair unnecessarily over this, um, it, with claims of invasion and seniors taking up arms to go and defend it. More in moments.
00:21:13.620This is Tristan Hopper, the host of Canada Did What?, where we unpack the biggest, weirdest, and wildest political moments in Canadian history you thought you knew and tell you what really happened.
00:21:24.860Stick around at the end of the episode to hear a sample of one of our favorite episodes.
00:21:29.100If you don't want to stick around, make sure you subscribe to Canada Did What? everywhere you get podcasts.
00:21:35.360A letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail said that, uh, well, as a 71-year-old, I'll go defend Greenland.
00:21:41.780A letter to the editor in Postmedia's own Victoria Times columnist said, well, colonist, not columnist, uh, said,
00:21:48.540stop the gun buyback program because we're going to need those to start militias to defend Canada.
00:21:56.460Here's my thing, folks, is that we need to stop pulling our hair out about Donald Trump, listen to what he says, separate the noise from the signal, and figure out what he really wants.
00:22:15.460I, first off, I, I never thought that they were going to, um, invade Greenland.
00:22:21.320I still don't think they're going to invade Canada, despite it was a Leger poll that said a third of Canadians, believe he will.
00:22:28.560And, and yet, that was the talk for weeks, even after the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and others had reported that Marco Rubio had briefed Congress that the plan was to try and purchase Greenland,
00:22:40.740a purchase offer that has been made three or four times over the last 175 years.
00:22:46.060Um, and, and yet, at Davos, before Davos, it was, should we send troops to Greenland?
00:22:53.180Are we going to send troops to Greenland?
00:22:54.820How many troops should we send to Greenland?
00:22:56.980I think the tell that Carney never believed that was a real threat is that we still participated in the NORAD exercises with the Americans in Greenland.
00:23:07.100Should we stop overreacting to everything Trump says and does, Stuart?
00:23:11.220Um, well, it's, uh, I'll admit it is hard, especially when you're a journalist and you cover it for the news.
00:23:19.560But I, I, I think the, the problem we have here is that Trump, through his real estate background, has developed this incredibly effective negotiating strategy,
00:23:29.840which is that you rattle people and you start with an offer that's way up here and then you come down, um, and then you end up in a more favorable spot.
00:23:39.600And if it didn't work, people wouldn't be rattled, but people are.
00:23:45.360And I think the other problem we have in Canada is what I mentioned earlier is there's a lot of incentives to rattle people from the Liberal Party.
00:23:52.420Um, so I, I agree in theory with what you're saying, um, but in practice it's hard to do.
00:23:59.720And I do say, if we all know he's doing it, stop reacting and sit there and say, okay, what does he really want?
00:24:06.080Because several weeks ago I said, I think what he wants is more sea in Greenland, more military bases in Greenland.
00:24:15.780Um, and I think that's where we're going to end up.
00:24:21.080I'll just say quickly that, um, it, it is hard to know.
00:24:24.680And I do remember, I think we're in sort of a different era now in Trump's second term than we were in his first term.
00:24:29.740And I think people, people are still adapting to this, but when the tariff threats were flying around in December,
00:24:35.540I remember speaking to people close to both Pierre Polyev and Justin Trudeau, um, months later who said that neither of those two men took the tariff threats very seriously at all.
00:24:47.100And I think I, you know, it's hard to remember these things.
00:24:49.360News is a bit of a blur, but I think that I kind of thought they were empty threats until they actually happened.
00:24:54.580And that I think is the trouble with Trump is that the one time that you say, ah, he's clearly bluffing, that might be the time that you get smacked in the head.
00:25:03.180I think Stuart hit the nail on the head when he said, Stuart, this, that, you know, this is how he does the deal, right?
00:25:10.100He's treating the world like a real estate market.
00:25:14.800This is not building another tower in Midtown Manhattan.
00:25:17.360This is dealing with the lives of 57,000 people who live in Greenland.
00:25:21.680And treating a country like a real estate deal, you're, you're, you're neglecting the fact that there are a million political and personal feelings that enter into the equation.
00:25:55.780It's not like you're just dealing with the real estate board of New York City to get your tower built.
00:25:59.040You're dealing with all these other countries now who are going to freak out and the people in Greenland who freak out naturally freak out because this is not how the world has done business.
00:26:07.460And, you know, Trump can want to do business this way, but he also alienates people.
00:26:12.380And, you know, he doesn't care that travel from Canada to the U.S. is down by a third.
00:26:16.760And that Las Vegas is now offering hotels, offering deals at par because they're desperate to have customers and people are impact, negatively impacted by what he's doing.
00:26:28.740And he could have gotten more say in Greenland by using honey and not vinegar, but that's not his style.
00:26:34.160But here's the problem is that using so much vinegar, you're going to basically dissolve all these relationships that you used to have and make people turn against your country in other ways that you may not foresee.
00:26:45.040So, you know, he thinks it's great to be a bull in a china shop.
00:26:48.420I personally think it's obnoxious, but apart from obnoxious, I also think it's ineffective ultimately because at some point, you're right, he cries wolf all the time.
00:26:55.940People are going to stop taking him seriously.
00:26:58.100And when they stop taking you seriously as a leader, that's where things can get iffy.
00:27:02.820And I think that his Norway thing was part of that too.
00:27:05.500People are now saying the guy is just mad and what's the point?
00:27:09.360Let's just get together over here and ignore what he's doing, which may not be a bad thing.
00:27:13.080So, to quote Mark Carney, we have to take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.
00:27:20.320And the simple fact is this is how he is acting.
00:27:23.460This is how he's going to keep acting.
00:27:26.000So, pulling out our hair, overreacting and pretending like France is going to somehow defend Norway or Greenland.
00:27:34.340I love the statement that in a sure sign that Greenland will surrender to Trump, France is now sending troops.
00:28:42.040I'll just say, too, this is something I notice in my life, which is I'm 42.
00:28:49.440So I feel like I'm right in the middle of the two generations that were important in the last election.
00:28:54.040The younger voters who tended to go towards, especially young men, going towards Polyev.
00:29:00.820And in general, being less worried about the Trump threat.
00:29:04.320And then the sort of older voters who worried about the Trump threat to the exclusion of everything else.
00:29:10.880And I start most of my days in a suburban McDonald's with a cup of coffee, just listening to the old timers talking.
00:29:19.240And all they talk about is Donald Trump.
00:29:21.520And it's such an interesting insight into the psychology of what's happening right now in Canada.
00:29:27.980And I think the trouble with Trump is that he is, no matter what he's doing, whether it's dark or whether it's something else, it is entertaining.
00:29:37.460It is a reality show that you can watch.
00:29:39.580You can put on CNN and you can watch it for eight hours and you will be entertained by that.
00:29:44.460And even if you are sort of viewing it in the terms of, like, fear and outrage, at its heart, they are enjoying watching the show.
00:29:52.000And I think that's probably the big problem with the Trump thing as a whole.
00:29:56.200My mother's Facebook feed, we were on a trip together recently and she kept scrolling for a Facebook feed.
00:30:01.760And it was late night comic after late night comic talking about Trump and her whole news feed.
00:30:09.020And I'm like, you know what I liked about being in California for two weeks over Christmas?
00:30:14.700Nobody talked to me about Trump unless I talked to a Canadian.
00:30:17.360I went to America to escape Trump and I'll gladly do it again because he lives in the heads of Canadians rent-free in a way that I don't think is healthy.
00:30:30.200Well, he lives in the heads of Minnesotans too.
00:30:32.200He lives in the heads of other – in Maine.
00:30:47.140And I think that it strikes a chord with Canadians because, you know, A, he's the president of the United States.
00:30:56.100We feel we have to take him seriously.
00:30:58.400But it's also a frustration because we thought we were making progress and now we're not.
00:31:04.180And I think this started actually with Doug Ford.
00:31:06.040I'll throw him into the mix because some people are saying, well, it's hypocritical to praise Carney for his provocation when dumping on Doug Ford for his ads that he ran, if you remember, not that long ago.
00:31:17.040His ads using Ronald Reagan and trying to tell the Americans that we need to deal with them and they need to deal with us.
00:31:23.920And Trump took this very personally and the negotiations fell apart after that.
00:31:28.740And Carney wasn't happy and he had told Ford not to do that.
00:31:43.600This what what Carney did is different because Trump has already been in everyone's consciousness because of Greenland, because of all these things.
00:31:51.240So it is it feels like a more appropriate time to respond to this and say enough's enough.
00:32:10.040Honestly, I think a lot of people just while this may have repercussions, obviously, on our relationship, they feel like thank you for saying this because so many people wanted to say it but couldn't or didn't dare.
00:32:22.760Let's talk about Pierre Polyev's response.
00:32:28.760In fact, let's play a little clip of that right now.
00:32:31.420Here is what the leader of the official opposition had to say.
00:32:35.360Prime Minister Carney's well-crafted and eloquently delivered speech at Davos has been widely noted, and I want to start by offering my own praise.
00:32:43.320The prime minister is right to restate what many have said for years.
00:32:48.060Canada must become more self-reliant, less dependent, and work with like-minded countries to advance our interests.
00:32:55.440And conservatives are, as always, willing to work with him to turn these words into results.
00:33:01.860What stood out most to me was when he pointed out, quote, the gaps between rhetoric and reality.
00:33:10.700If liberal words and good intentions were tradable commodities, Canada would already be the richest nation on earth.
00:33:19.240It took a couple days for this response to come out, and then when he did, he, you know, Polyev saying, you know, good things about the speech, but what have you done for me lately?
00:33:30.120What are you actually accomplishing for Canada?
00:33:32.360I think it's a valid criticism, but I'm not sure that in a war of words between Pierre Polyev, or sorry, between Mark Carney and Donald Trump, that Pierre Polyev matters.
00:33:44.340Yeah, that's the fundamental problem for Pierre Polyev is the last election landscape was extremely unfavorable to him.
00:33:53.140And right now, I think we're seeing the best he can do, which is to say, yeah, it's a good speech, but Canadians have seen a lot of good speeches.
00:34:04.840And I think that's probably the best criticism of Carney, which is that he's got a lot of grand ambitions.
00:34:10.240He wants to do pipelines and major projects and deals with Trump and all this stuff that's apparently on the way, but hasn't arrived yet.
00:34:21.020And I think there will be a point where Canadians start to go, well, you know, is this guy just flying around giving speeches or is this stuff actually happening?
00:34:30.060And I think for Polyev, it's not a good time for him.
00:34:33.640And that's probably why, if you're a liberal, you're thinking about a spring election, because, you know, time is good for Polyev.
00:34:43.160So I think the speech is about the best you can do if you're a conservative, but I don't think he's going to be getting a lot of headlines from it.
00:34:52.040Yeah, I think that Polyev started off this speech.
00:34:56.880He tried to mitigate the usual criticism that he has, which is that he's just opposing and he's dumping on Carney regardless of whatever he says.
00:35:03.660And he came out, you know, at the beginning and said, well, it's, you know, Carney, Carney wasn't, it wasn't all bad, basically, what he was doing.
00:35:10.920He was putting things in the window that need to be addressed, but he's not addressing them.
00:35:15.200And we are the people to address them.
00:35:16.560And he went on for like 13 minutes in this address.
00:35:18.520You know, Carney was 18 at the World Trade Forum, ironically.
00:35:24.340Polyev's was 13 minutes saying about how these are, you know, the issues in Canada that are going unaddressed and things like groceries and inflation and cost of living and all these legitimate things.
00:35:36.820And my understanding, the conservatives are going to be hammering those nails in constantly.
00:35:41.840That is, they're going to stay on that message because it does resonate with their electorate.
00:35:46.440I mean, Pierre Polyev would never have even gone to the WEF, right?
00:35:54.300So people who like that kind of idea, that it's great that we boycott these kind of elitist high-profile events, will be like, yeah, Pierre, you're right, right?
00:36:05.620But there are a lot of the people, Stuart was referencing, the older people in particular who think that these institutions still matter or want Canada to be on the world stage,
00:36:14.080who will say, nah, that doesn't do it for me.
00:36:17.040Plus, they're not in the same economic bucket.
00:36:28.020And I think that people will, you know, those people will still be there.
00:36:31.300But in terms of that other voter base and switcher voters, especially boomer voters, I don't think that he would have convinced anyone of those people to switch back to him.
00:36:42.180Looking at the latest polling from Abacus, which has dropped a couple of big polls over the past couple of days, doing deep dives into where the conservative vote is, where the liberal vote is.
00:36:58.700You're looking at accessible voter pools.
00:37:00.700The liberals, 53% of the population say that they would consider voting for the liberals.
00:37:07.04048% say they would consider voting for the conservatives.
00:38:18.360But, I mean, regionally doing well in Ontario, doing well in British Columbia where they're competitive at least.
00:38:28.880Not bad in Atlantic Canada considering how strong the liberals are out there.
00:38:33.940But it doesn't seem like this is – if we did go to a spring election that this would be a position where they could win.
00:38:42.100The thing that I think is worth noting with Pierre Polyev's reaction to Carney's speech is that not just the substance, but also it didn't come out until Thursday evening.
00:38:53.600Carney gave the speech two days before that, more than two days before that.
00:38:56.940So, I think that the conservatives are looking at these numbers.
00:39:01.700I know there's a fear in that party that what if we hit a ceiling in April?
00:39:07.740And without the NDP, that's just it for us.
00:39:11.280They're looking at boomer men who are becoming more unattainable and who seem to have – some conservatives have told me there seems to be a personal thing with Pierre Polyev where, you know,
00:39:22.600the liberal attack about how he's only ever been a politician really resonates with those older men like this guy never had a real job.
00:39:30.780And this seems to be the most reliable demographic for the Harper conservatives.
00:39:43.080I'd say it's a small part of it is a Polyev thing and part of it is a structural situation with Trump.
00:39:48.100And that's why they did that ad in April last year with the two men golfing and kind of talking in, you know, Stephen Harper supporter kind of ways.
00:39:57.880And the other voter pool that they may be swinging for there is either boosting the young men, which they're kind of maxing that out as it is,
00:40:05.400but women are going more to the liberals and to the progressive side.
00:40:09.820That is like a structural problem across the whole West, that there's ideological polarization between men and women.
00:40:17.940Men are leaning a little bit to the right.
00:40:20.740Women are going much farther to the left.
00:40:22.940And that's just something, it's a phenomenon you see everywhere.
00:40:25.980Yeah, I was seeing polling on that in the United States the other day.
00:40:29.280And the graph that was put up showed men bouncing up and down.
00:40:33.740So there's a line in the center showing the middle and men were bouncing up and down around the line and women were for years and years.
00:40:42.780And then the past five to 10 years, it's a 20 point swing towards very liberal positions.
00:40:49.960And every conservative I know has seen that chart.
00:40:53.380So I can see, I can imagine being in the conservative party and feeling a little bit of despair at those numbers and the sort of structural changes that are swimming against them.
00:41:02.620Um, so I think that's maybe why you see when Pierre Polyev takes two and a half days to respond to a simple speech in Davos, it's because they're a little bit paralyzed by the situation they face.
00:41:22.980Like he, he said it was best speech he'd read in a long time.
00:41:26.760It was very powerful, but also dark subtext that he's very concerned about and would have to think about.
00:41:32.620And, but that's kind of where I landed on it.
00:41:35.280Uh, Tasha, you know, as you look at these numbers and what do you think of the conservative chances?
00:41:44.240Now we'll, we'll talk quickly about the, uh, the upcoming, uh, convention in Calgary, but I mean, do the conservatives, how do they find their way out of this wilderness?
00:41:56.440And nationally, they're doing well, some regional numbers they're doing well, but still not a coalition that could win.
00:42:01.760Yeah, it is tricky, um, because, you know, the dark days ahead speeches, actually conservatives have often played more on fear than, than liberals.
00:42:11.620Um, and this is a reversal in a way of that usual dynamic.
00:42:16.060The conservatives are not usually the sunny ways, happy days party.
00:42:21.000And in fact, they're not on things like the economy at all.
00:42:23.840They're, they're look, you know, look how bad it is.
00:42:25.840And Polyev has been talking about this for years now about the, the fact that the younger generation can't get a break, et cetera.
00:42:35.300Those, those men you're talking about, those older men, I think it's a comfort factor too.
00:42:39.900They, they look at Carney and they're like, you're like me, like someone who looks and thinks like me, as opposed to Polyev, who has a different personality, different style.
00:42:48.820He appeals to younger people in the way he presents himself on social media.
00:43:01.300Many of his tactics look very much the same.
00:43:03.940So that older generation, I think the older men just, they, they have a disconnect with him on that too.
00:43:09.780And Harper was not like that, you know, and, and the times were different too, but Harper, Harper, first of all, didn't have a Trump to deal with.
00:43:15.340But second, Harper was, you know, he, he presented in a way people could relate to, too.
00:43:20.720His, his, his politics were, uh, more conventional than Polyev's are.
00:43:30.780Well, the left said that, but I think many men didn't necessarily, that wasn't something that, that, that, that, that hit home with that cohort of voters.
00:43:37.420I think with, with hardcore liberal voters, NDP voters, absolutely, they didn't like it.
00:43:42.100It hit harm with women, because the hard right agenda implies, excuse me, things on abortion.
00:46:51.880I know a lot of conservatives – this is not based on reporting.
00:46:55.240This is based on conservatives' deepest, darkest fears.
00:46:58.660But a lot of them are worried about some new floor crossing being announced the day after or two days after he gets his leadership review.
00:47:07.320So even if he does well, they'll still find something else to be fearful about.
00:47:12.720The folks I've been speaking to about floor crossing – and this is going back weeks now – based on how Chris D'Entremont went, where even he was surprised that his floor crossing was announced because he didn't realize he was on the record.
00:47:25.180And how others disappeared, Matt Jenneru, that the liberal plan had been if there were more floor crossers, they would do them immediately and not try and orchestrate them.
00:47:53.720Everyone thinks politics is filled with really smart people like in West Wing and you always have to remind them, more Veep, less West Wing.
00:48:02.020So I think – I have not heard – I've not been paying rapt attention to the 70, 80 or 90.
00:48:08.260I had heard over a week ago, so maybe it's still now, over 80.
00:48:49.660I will say on the floor crossing, though, that I've heard also these rumors.
00:48:55.160However, I think that the fact we think he may be setting up an election as a plan B indicates that maybe those floor crossers aren't out there.
00:49:04.400And he can't get the majority because that little parade's not happening.
00:49:07.960So they're saying, OK, let's forget about plan A.
00:49:11.880Let's go to plan B, set up an election.
00:49:15.160If it doesn't, well, we've got something else in the hopper.
00:49:17.960So I am not as set on floor crossing or seeing floor crossers as I am on the plan B scenario maybe playing out.
00:49:30.080Well, we know that they were courting floor crossers because Scott Anderson, the conservative from Vernon Lake Country, Mona Shee in British Columbia.
00:49:40.240I had to look up the full name of the writing.
00:49:44.100Both he and Lori Eidluck from Nunavut, she's a New Democrat, said, yes, we were approached.
00:49:51.940And they both said that, no, they're not going to do it.
00:49:54.940Anderson was adamant he's not doing it.
00:49:57.060And Eidluck was like, well, like I've talked to people in maybe one day possibly.
00:50:08.280The fact that they appear to be prepping or laying the groundwork for an election.
00:50:14.980The things that people don't realize about politics is there's always like 15 different things going on, planning for different scenarios.
00:50:22.700And just because we say, well, looks like they might be planning for an election and then the election doesn't happen, doesn't mean that they weren't planning for it.
00:50:31.420It means that something else may have happened that changed their mind.
00:50:35.040It's like trying to get rid of Melanie Jolie because she's a pain in your butt and they don't like her.
00:50:42.940And then Stephen Goubeau resigns from cabinet and then you're like, ooh, but maybe we still need Melanie now for the Quebec.