Liberals have good reason to fear Pierre Poilievre
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Summary
Andrew Lawton talks about his new book, Pierre Polyev, A Political Life, by Andrew Lawton, which details the life and career of former Conservative Party of Canada leader, Pierre Poirier. In this episode of the Full Comment Podcast, Brian and Andrew talk about the themes and ideas found in the book, and why they think it's a must-read.
Transcript
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Whether you own a bustling hair salon or a hot new bakery, you need business insurance that can
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keep up with your evolving needs. With flexible coverage options from TD Insurance, you only pay
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for what you need. TD, ready for you. If you believe the polls, and there's no reason to
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doubt them, Pierre Polyev is set to be the next Prime Minister of Canada. The Conservative leader
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and his party have been leading in every poll taken for the last year. In fact, the last
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time the Liberals were out in front in a poll was May 29, 2003, in a release by Leche for
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Post Media. Since then, it's only been up and up and up for Polyev and the Conservatives.
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Hello and welcome to the Full Comment Podcast. I'm Brian Lilly, your host, and today we're
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going to talk about Pierre Polyev in a new book that's called Pierre Polyev, A Political
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Life by Andrew Lawton. Andrew is a long-time political commentator who's worked in radio
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print, digital media. He's currently editor-in-chief of True North and host of the Andrew Lawton
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Hey, good to be with you, Brian. Thanks for having me on.
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It's a fun read. It's an interesting one, and it's one that is telling me new things about
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a guy that I've known for 20 years now, because he was elected 20 years ago. I met him on that
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first campaign, but you talked to an amazing number of people. You surprised me with not
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only how many people you tracked down to speak about Pierre, but who and why. You spoke to
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journalists who interviewed him as a student, old school acquaintances, political friends and foes.
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How many people did you actually talk to to try and get a sense of who Pierre Polyev is and why that
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matters for us as we enter this next political phase?
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So someone else asked me this in another interview, and I had in my mind 60, and I said that,
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and then I went back and looked, because I had a tracking document, and it was actually closer
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to 80 if I include conversations that I had that I didn't have an audio recording of that were just
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on background or that I took some notes on. But it was pretty much pushing 80 people, and some of
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those were, of course, 15 minutes. They tell you the one story they have with Pierre. Others were
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hours and hours long, so it was actually quite a voluminous amount of information to sift through
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afterwards. Well, what jumps out at me is a couple of things in the book jump out at me that
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are important themes and consistent themes that you see in Polyev in his past, in his actions,
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that I think inform who he is today. I'm talking about things like using unconventional campaign
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methods to win the nomination for that first election 20 years ago, or that he was writing
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about freedom while he was still a student. So before we get into any concrete examples or
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stories, what did that sort of draw for you? What does it tell you about who Polyev is now and how
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So I think there has always been in conservative politics in Canada, especially recently, this
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concern about leaders that cater or pander to the base, and then once they win the leadership,
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they all of a sudden decide to cater or pander, depending on your perspective on this, to the
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centre. And that pivot has been very abrupt and not particularly suave for people like Aaron O'Toole,
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notably. And so I think with Pierre Polyev, it is interesting to see that, yeah, in the last couple of
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years, he's been consistent. The stuff he talked about in the leadership race is the stuff he talks
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about now that he's leader. But that's not all that surprising. If you go back 20 years, 25 years,
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and find that he was talking about the same stuff then. And that was really, I think, a standout
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thing in the book. There's something that stood out to me was just how much, how little he's changed
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in some key philosophical ways over his journey.
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He was one of the finalists for Magna's If I Were Prime Minister contest. I think it started in the
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late 90s, ran through the early 2000s. I'm not sure when it wrapped up, but I don't think it's going
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anymore. And it was in 2000 that he was one of the top 10. And he was writing all about freedom. That
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was the entire point, is that ultimate freedom leads to better societies, right?
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Yeah, he was. And it was interesting. A lot of that, it was the 2500 word essay, he basically
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pulled an all nighter to do it and get it in the mail to submit it. So it wasn't even something he
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really, by his admission, many years ago, took that much time with. But with the exception of a few
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little individual things that maybe didn't stand the test of time, like the one that everyone likes
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pointing out is him saying that MPs should have a two term limit that one.
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And he would resign after two terms. Yeah, he would resign after two terms. That was one. And
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some of these populist reform policies like voter recall, that hasn't really withstood the test of
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time for him anyway. But generally speaking, if you look at a lot of the core overarching messaging,
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even some of the language in terms of phrases, I found parallels between that essay and his video
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I mean, that video announcing his leadership was very unconventional. It was controversial
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to the Ottawa Press Gallery. Anyway, it was mocked heartily by a lot of the people that think they
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know how politics works and should work, especially him saying, I'm running to be Prime Minister of
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Canada. You know, how dare you say that? Well, that's kind of how a lot of Canadians think.
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You and I may know that's not how our system operates, but reality and perception aren't
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always the same thing. And people think, oh, who do I want for Prime Minister? Well, you know,
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none of us vote for who we want to be Prime Minister. But that was an unconventional thing.
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But there's another story that you tell when he was in his first nomination. And, you know,
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I was living in Ottawa at the time. I was local reporter. I didn't cover the nomination. I just
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covered him after he was trying to take on David Pratt. But I'm looking back at the names that he
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took on to to win the nomination went, oh, wow, he took on some heavy hitters in local Ottawa
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conservative circles, and he won. But he just like with the video being unconventional, he used
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unconventional tactics then tell us about that.
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Yeah, so I just to set the stage here for people, because this is just, you know, ancient
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history in some context, the reform or the Alliance and PC parties had just merged, and
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it was the end of 2003. So all of a sudden, even though people had been gearing up for a 2004
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election, there were nominated Alliance candidates and nominated PC candidates. I don't know if there
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was a nominated PC candidate in his riding, but there was an Alliance candidate. So when the
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parties merged, that Alliance candidate assumed, okay, we'll all just run for the Conservative Party
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of Canada nomination, and I'll win that. And then you also had a city councillor in Ottawa saying,
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well, I want to get in there as well. You had a member of the Lebanese community in Ottawa,
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a teacher, very well connected, that wanted to get in it as well. Because everyone realized that this
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was one of these ridings that with a merged Conservative vote would likely be, or almost certainly be,
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a Conservative win. And Pierre Polyev, this 24-year-old political staffer for Stockwell Day,
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who had basically just moved to the riding to run there, was like, yeah, no, I want to do this as
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well. So he actually did stuff that right now is part of the standard candidate toolkit for
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nominations, but at the time wasn't. And one of them was going door knocking. He actually did canvassing,
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but during a nomination race, going to the doors of people he knew were Conservative members,
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and also going to the doors of people he thought were likely to be Conservative members or supporters,
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just by virtue of where they were in the riding. And he sold his memberships and had a pretty solid
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contingent of members that had joined to vote for him when it got to that nomination meeting.
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But going to doors in a nomination race, you quote John Baird in the book, unheard of.
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And John Baird was a political veteran at that point. He was still down at Queen's Park,
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he hadn't yet moved to the federal scene, but he'd been an elected guy for more than 10 years.
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He knew that whole area intimately, had been involved in politics for years before he was
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elected. So, I mean, that was something that you just wouldn't see every day. But, you know,
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I think that that and before I go on, he beat David Pratt once he got the nomination.
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David Pratt was a well-respected, considered blue liberal, well-liked in Ottawa. He was Paul Martin's
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defense minister, and Paulieff beat him. So the two things I take from that story are that people
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often underestimate Pierre. And secondly, he's willing to try and do things that others won't.
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And I think that's what he's doing with these rallies, with this, with, you know, approaching
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how you discuss topics with the public, how you treat the media. He's breaking the playbook wide
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open and saying, I'm doing it a different way. Yeah. And I should point out that the idea of
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going door-to-door was claimed by Michael Cooper, who's a conservative member of parliament. Now,
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he's about five years younger than Pierre Polyab, but the two were friends. And he told me in an
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interview that he gave Pierre that idea when they were having dinner over the winter break at Caesars,
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a steakhouse in Calgary. So that was Michael Cooper's contribution to the, well, he had many
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contributions to the book, but to Pierre Polyab's political story there. But absolutely, and I think
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we see now, too, him circumventing the parliamentary press gallery, which has become a very deliberate
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tool that he's used. And to your point, Brian, very unconventional, especially among conservative
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politics, but among politics in general. Yeah. Stephen Harper tried and was somewhat successful
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in circumventing the press gallery in his early days, but we had a different media landscape then.
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He would go and he would speak to the local journalists in Brockville or London, Ontario,
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or Red Deer. And he would sometimes talk to the gallery and it would infuriate people. But
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it worked. We don't have the same level of local journalism, especially political journalism now
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that we did 20 years ago. So Pierre's finding different ways. And now you're seeing Justin Trudeau
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mimic that. Have you noticed all the times he's been talking to bloggers and vloggers lately and people
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with podcasts and very different interview settings for him than what he normally does?
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Yeah. I mean, I take a bit more of a cynical view with Justin Trudeau, because I think Justin Trudeau
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is also reaching the realization or has reached the realization that he's no longer getting the ride
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from the parliamentary press gallery that he was, I think, a few years ago. And I think when he goes to
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these podcasts, a lot of the times these aren't A-list podcasts. These are smaller ones that people learn
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about because he's given them an audience. And I think he's going there because he's getting a bit
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of an easier ride. And I think the format itself is working for him a bit better. Because now if
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you've seen press conferences with Justin Trudeau, the Ottawa journalists are downright feisty with him
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in a way that they haven't been throughout much of his term.
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Yeah, absolutely. I think Pierre knows he can't just talk to the Ottawa gallery because he knows
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that conservatives generally don't get the same fair break that liberals do. So he's known that from
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the start. And Trudeau's having to do it now because, well, people are onto him and figured out
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the country's kind of grumpy right now. Yeah, exactly. And I think one thing, too,
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that's interesting is that Pierre Polyev, and I don't know if Stephen Harper did this as much,
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you would know better than I, he's made a point of really speaking to a lot of the ethnic media
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outlets. And a lot, because a lot of these communities across Canada have these ethnic
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newspapers that have circulation that just dwarfs, just dwarfs the, you know, legacy media paper of
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record in the city. And whenever he gets criticized for this, you'll always see there's this little,
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you know, sort of a veiled accusation of racism. Oh, are you saying these papers aren't real? Are
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you saying these, these journalists aren't real? And I've seen that online anyway. When anyone tries
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to say that he's not talking to the media, he points, well, look, I've spoken to all of these people.
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Well, so on that, I've seen the criticism you're talking about. Suddenly, you know, speaking of Red FM,
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which Trudeau does, by the way, at multi-ethnic radio station with, I don't know how many outlets
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they have across the country, but there's one in Mississauga. I know there's one in Vancouver.
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They've got a few. I've been on the one in Calgary in the audience. I was going to say, I think
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Calgary has one. And you're right. So there are some people saying, well, these, these aren't real
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media outlets. Why are you talking to them? But Trudeau's been on them. But I also hear from
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the still devoted Max Bernier PPC crowd, and sometimes Max is the one pushing this, and you'll
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see him post on social media, that he shouldn't be talking to these ethnic media types, or he
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shouldn't be going to Agudwara, that he is pandering, doing ethnic politics, pandering, and
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he's just like the liberals. You know, how do the conservatives deal with that? How does or should
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Polly Ev deal with that sort of thing? So I think there are two, there are two strategies here. And
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one of the things that Jason Kenney did famously well, was go to these ethnic communities across
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the country. He was immigration minister, just for context. And he earned the nickname,
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minister of curry in a hurry. That's what the Indian community labeled him.
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Yeah. And he would go in there and he would make a pitch, he would sell the same message that the
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conservatives were selling everywhere else, but he would make sure it was heard. He'd go into these
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communities that might not be tapped into the sources that, you know, a white suburban audience
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in Etobicoke is tapped into. And then and he did that very well. And there's another way of doing
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ethnic politics, though, which is pandering, which is where you're going into a group and you're making
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a very specific promise that you're never going to repeat anywhere else. And then you go to another
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group and you promise them something, you go somewhere else. And we've seen some politicians
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in recent years do that. And you're really just taking advantage of the fact that no one outside of
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that group is going to know what you promised them. Pierre Polly Ev hasn't done that. He has done
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something that far from what I've seen is far more similar to the Jason Kenney Stephen Harper approach,
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where he's going in there and he's giving the same message to them. He's telling them how it applies
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to them. This is how the message of freedom works for you guys. This is how my approach to this issue
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works for you. But he's doing that in a way that does not set him up for this weird laundry list of
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promises that people would look at and be like, what? Why? Where? Where? Where did that come from? I
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haven't seen that. The the video of him speaking at a Montreal synagogue where he said, I give this same
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message in mosques across the country. That was a remarkable video and an openly frank one. And
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if that's the way he's doing it, great. I have unfortunately seen politicians of all stripes
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do that pandering or, you know, not as much anymore. But once upon a time, you would
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regularly get politicians saying one thing in English, one thing in French, and assuming
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no one can speak both languages except them. Rather bizarre thing. But, you know, so I hope
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it's not the pandering going on there. You know, Max was really upset that Paliyev had gone and said,
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we'll get a direct flight to, oh, what's the city in India?
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Amritar. Yeah. And I thought, well, what's the problem with that? I was speaking to a British
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foreign service worker who's lobbying for more direct flights to Britain. You know, people want
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direct flights. It is economic opportunity. And if I can jump in on that. So when I first heard that
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promise, I was thinking, OK, is this is this that pandering type of thing? And then I looked into it
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and I actually learned that the reason there aren't that is because of ridiculous government
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regulation. It's not to do with airlines not wanting to. It's because there was this agreement
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with Canada and India about the number of flights and the number of airports. So it actually is, I
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think, a fairly free market position that he's taking. He's saying, listen, by offering these direct
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flights, we're going to get rid of, I mean, to use his language, a government gatekeeping that's
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taking place. But because that was the one when I first heard it, I thought, OK, is this just some
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weird pandering thing? And then I looked into it and realized, oh, no, this is actually like
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government nonsense that has made it so that this flight where there is a huge market for it can't
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happen. I'd like to get your take on his handling of the media. And you talk about the
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incident with Urquhart from out in the Okanagan. That's on the back cover of the book. How do you
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like them apples? But this idea that he is hostile to the media, I've been on the receiving end
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as a journalist over my career of stare downs and aggressive pushback from politicians of all stripes.
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If you ask a question that gets under their skin, yeah, you're going to get a response.
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There seems to be this idea that it's only Pierre Pauly of doing that. Justin Trudeau would never do
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that. I mean, he's done it to me, but he wouldn't do it to the real journalist or the real media in
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the gallery. What is your sense of how he deals with the media as someone who is in media?
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So Andrew Scheer gave a very illuminating quote, which I haven't memorized. So I'm paraphrasing here in
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the book in which he says that, you know, we should basically not treat media who are hostile
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to us any differently than we treat the liberals who are hostile to us, which is that if they're
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making a political point, we should respond the exact same way. We shouldn't just have them as
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the sacred cow effectively. And that's my term, not his. And I think he's speaking to, I suspect,
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Pierre Pauly of his mindset in this way of that journalists are fair game. If journalists who have
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a tremendous amount of power to set a narrative and craft a narrative are going to come in and
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ask a loaded question or something he feels is a loaded question, he has a right to respond and
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challenge the premise. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. And look, I have a lot of people
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in the press gallery that I get along quite well with. I spoke to a number for the book. I also think
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there are some in the press gallery who are very much partisans in a lot of the work that they do
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in a lot of the way they approach these issues. Which is fine in the general sense. You and I
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approach our work in media and journalism from a particular viewpoint, but we're commentators.
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We're not pretending to be neutral. No. And also, if I were to go to a Justin Trudeau
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press conference and not be risking arrest in doing so, and I were to ask some really go in hot
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and ask some question, I would totally be fine with him responding and saying, well, actually,
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that's nonsense. And here's why. And that's, I think, his right. So it was interesting. I did
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speak to one journalist who said they feel Polyev's approach, and this was not a conservative
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journalist. It was a legacy media journalist in the press gallery. They said Polyev's approach
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actually forces them to be better, this person thinks. They're saying basically, you know,
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journalists need to make sure they're prepared and not go in there with a lazy, people say this
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question, or some people think this. Like, go in with specifics.
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Well, that one with the guy in the Okanagan, some people say it's right out of Trump's playbook.
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You're taking a page. What page? Show me the page.
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That was, I mean, I don't know the guy. I feel sorry for him that, you know, you're being
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embarrassed across the country. And here we are still talking about it months later. But if you go
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in like that, you're going to get hammered. I remember early in my career being given a question
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written out by my editor to ask Lucien Bouchard. And it was over the top. And I'll admit now looking
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back on it, ridiculous. I'm standing in the TVA studios. He's just finished an interview on TVA in
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downtown Montreal. And he comes over for a scrum and cameras are rolling. And I asked this question
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and he made me look like a fool because my question was foolish. So I don't have an issue with
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that. If he does it too often, I, you know, I wonder if people will think he comes across as too
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mean. I think he's got to pick his moments, but that would be about all I'd have to say there.
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Yeah. And which is why I talk about, and again, to mention someone you and I have both worked with,
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David Akin, I talk about another episode where I think it was his first press conference or one of
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his first press conferences as leader on Parliament Hill. And David Akin, you know, was not really all
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that keen on not having a guarantee that Pierre Polyev would be taking questions. And there's that
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moment where he's just being very belligerent, quite frankly, with, you know, interrupting Pierre
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Polyev during his prepared statement. I think something like seven times.
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Yeah. And something like that is just gold for the Conservatives. Like they turn that into a
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fundraising letter almost immediately. And I know other journalists were rather embarrassed by the
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episode because it fed into the perception that Polyev has tried to stoke about journalists. And I
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think that's the moment is that he is primed right now, where whenever he sees that in, whenever he
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sees that opening to prove his point about the media, he's going to take it.
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And Akin, as you say, is somebody you and I have worked with over the years or alongside.
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He had an office next to me at SunU's network for five years. That was a surprising moment. I was
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surprised to see that from him. But, you know, it is what it is. I want to talk about people's
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perceptions of Pierre and what you find he's really like when we come back. We got to take a quick
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break. But I keep hearing he's a mean guy. And I think, who have you been talking to?
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There's an idea out there that Pierre Polyev is a mean dude, that he's always angry. And he can
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definitely be someone that goes in elbows up, Andrew. But I'm wondering if it's just a perception
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people have because of stereotypes. You and I have both hosted talk radio shows. You and I both laugh a
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lot on air. But I would still have people who obviously never listen to me say, oh, he's just
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angry all the time. Oh, Brian Lilly, he's just, he's just, he's grumpy. I'm like, you obviously
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don't listen. I'm wondering, is that it with Pierre? Or is there, is there something in, in his public
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demeanor, his character, his psyche that makes people think this is an angry dude. And that's
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turning me off. Because I had a conversation with a very politically astute person a little while
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ago who, that was his view of Pierre. That this, this man, there's, you know, always negative.
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It's funny. He, I just saw not that long ago, a clip where Pierre Polyev was in the House of Commons
00:24:44.720
and Justin Trudeau was talking about his housing plan. And he makes this comment about how he's
00:24:49.820
putting a housing catalog in. And Pierre Polyev just rolls off that immediately and starts talking
00:24:55.540
about, and he basically gets the conservatives to give Justin Trudeau a standing ovation.
00:25:00.420
Because, oh, wow, look, he's making a catalog. Good for you. Like he's having the time of his life
00:25:04.540
when he does this. But you're right. People will look at that and mistake passion, which I think you
00:25:09.260
need to have to be effective as a broadcaster, as a politician, whatever it is, that mistaking that
00:25:13.980
with anger. And I think he gets angry, I'm sure. And we've seen him be a bit more pointed at times.
00:25:21.060
But he also, one on one, in all the conversations I've had about him with people that know him well,
00:25:29.440
I've never heard anyone recount a story of anger. Now, I've heard people recount stories that were not
00:25:36.660
pleasant encounters of, you know, him being very demanding as an employer of him saying things that
00:25:42.520
people have have taken as mean spirited in a particular context. So it's not to say that he's
00:25:46.800
just all sunshine and roses every day. But I've never heard of him being a temperamental person.
00:25:53.040
And that was not something I got. But I think people forget that when you're the leader of the
00:25:57.460
opposition, opposition is baked into your name, you are the antagonist to the government, that is your
00:26:03.060
your not constitutional, but it's your your political role. And I could see how someone would
00:26:08.860
mistake that for being a crank for being cantankerous.
00:26:13.720
He's, he's very affable guy, very thoughtful, in in my experiences with him. And in a very,
00:26:22.140
you know, determined, hardworking, we'll get into that when we talk about the leadership race. But
00:26:26.300
did you get a sense? I know, you talk about it briefly in the book, he was going to run
00:26:32.900
in 2020, for the, the leadership of the conservative party, the one that Aaron O'Toole won. And I'd spoken
00:26:41.500
to him the night before, about his launch the next morning. And I've never gotten a clear reason as
00:26:52.740
Well, you sort of, I have a couple of, I don't want to say theories, I, well, let me just take a step back
00:27:00.140
here. Because one of the challenges is that it seemed very abrupt for the reason you just mentioned, that
00:27:05.500
people were talking to him that night. And then the next morning, he's saying he's out. And people have made
00:27:11.980
the conclusion from that understandably, so that it was really this 11th hour decision. Now, the one part I did get
00:27:18.740
definitively was that the doubts had started forming much earlier. But he knew that if he was going to
00:27:25.720
do it, he had to behave and act a certain way. So he was operating as though he was going to do it
00:27:32.000
while he was working out these doubts, because he knew that he couldn't afford to just sit there and
00:27:36.440
do nothing. So he basically was erring on the side of I'm doing this, but he wasn't fully in it. And then
00:27:41.780
there was a moment that he did speak about publicly, where that night, maybe after your conversation with
00:27:46.840
him, maybe you're the reason Brian, who knows, he says, Alright, I'm going to go to bed. And I'm
00:27:51.440
going to wake up. And basically, the first thing that I think about this is what I'm going to do,
00:27:55.420
I'm going to wake up. And that's how I feel. And then he realized, this is not what I wanted. Now,
00:27:59.520
one of the more compelling reasons I've ever heard about that, that's never been reported elsewhere,
00:28:06.420
is that at that time, Pierre and his wife, Anna were just learning about the extent of their
00:28:12.500
daughter, Valentina's diagnosis of autism. She has had tremendous success through therapy over the
00:28:18.620
years, but she's still nonverbal, it was something they were just grappling with at that moment. And
00:28:23.340
I think that family dynamic of what this is going to mean for us was really sinking in at that point.
00:28:28.980
So that's the most plausible explanation I've heard. There have always been since that withdrawal,
00:28:35.160
rumors circulating of some real reason, some sinister, ominous reason, there was some big
00:28:40.460
manila envelope of opposition research, there was something that he wanted to hide or bury,
00:28:45.700
there's never been any evidence towards that. It's never been shared with me, people have
00:28:50.860
hinted at that. It's like, okay, well, what do you have? Well, you should look into it. Well,
00:28:56.940
what do I look into? Just go around and say, hey, have you heard anything about it? Yeah.
00:29:01.160
But I think that he just didn't feel the timing was right. And maybe there was some higher power
00:29:07.080
looking out for him in that moment, because it clearly wasn't right. I mean, I don't think the
00:29:10.840
story would have at all materialized the way it did for him had he been the leader in 2021.
00:29:17.760
So Aaron O'Toole is fighting back against the convoy and convoy elements within his party
00:29:25.680
when he is struggling to save his leadership in February 2021. Or sorry, 2022. And I can't exactly
00:29:38.380
say definitively that it was Pierre Polyev that helped slip the knife in. But a lot of the people
00:29:45.140
around him were part of the group that helped take out Aaron O'Toole. Did he know at that point
00:29:50.380
that, all right, I'm in, we got to take care of the old leader first? So, you know, Pierre Polyev's
00:29:56.240
hand was not on the knife. And when I say that, I mean it. Now, the point that I make in the book
00:30:01.860
is that he was so, his hands were so clean on the ousting of Aaron O'Toole that it is almost
00:30:07.660
conspicuously so that everyone around him wanted to make sure that there was no connection whatsoever
00:30:14.380
to him. So everyone around Pierre really saw that he was the natural next leader. He was the natural
00:30:23.040
beneficiary. And they really went out of their way to keep him insulated from the movements against
00:30:28.360
Aaron O'Toole. He did get a bit of a tip off from one MP that, hey, get ready. And the understanding
00:30:36.520
that I have about that conversation was that Pierre knew what it meant and probably did start getting
00:30:42.000
ready in that moment, but was not involved. But he was basically told, hey, this is a thing that's
00:30:47.440
going to happen in not as many words. It's just, look, it's politics and it's how it works, but O'Toole
00:30:55.020
was going to be gone no matter what. But the push, a lot of it did come from people who then gathered
00:31:01.780
around Polyev immediately. Yeah, very much so. And to go back to that video you mentioned earlier,
00:31:08.120
when he came out and was the first out of the gate, he was really trying to scare everyone else
00:31:12.580
out of the race. And when he said Pierre for prime minister, he was basically saying the race is
00:31:17.260
already over. I'm the leader. I'm running against Trudeau. I'm not worried about these, you know,
00:31:21.640
this Gene Cherist guy, this, you know, Ramon Bibar. Who are the, no, no, no. I'm running for prime
00:31:27.480
minister. I'm the guy. And that was really the message that he was trying to send. And I think largely it
00:31:32.360
worked. His work ethic is unbelievable. And I know you picked up on that from discussions. You
00:31:39.460
know, I think back, as I said to that, that first campaign that he won in 2004, because I lived in
00:31:47.260
the riding and was always going through it, I saw how hard he was working to win. And I remember
00:31:53.460
telling Steve Madeley, the morning show host at CFRA back then, and well-connected politically,
00:32:00.240
I said, Steve, this guy's going to be David Pratt. Oh no, not going to happen. And then he did.
00:32:06.140
I said, he's going to win this leadership if he's in it. He did. He works incredibly hard.
00:32:13.040
I remember seeing him at one community event. And I said, how many have you been at today? And he
00:32:18.440
said, this is the eighth. How many left? I think he had two or three more left to go in the day,
00:32:24.620
10 or more events during the day. That's probably slowed down since now that he's married and has two
00:32:30.220
children. But that's the kind of work ethic he's bringing to try and win Canada for the Conservative
00:32:37.480
Party. Yes. And I would also point out that when the 2015 election came along, which was just an
00:32:44.100
absolute blowout for the Conservatives, Polyev was the only Conservative in the Ottawa area to keep his
00:32:51.100
seat. And it was by, if I recall, I think about 2000 votes. And largely the only reason he survived
00:32:57.440
that many people have said, and I think you can sort of infer from the results is because he had
00:33:02.580
put in over the preceding 11 years, all of that work, because he had built a name and a brand for
00:33:08.120
Pierre Polyev that was powerful enough to overcome the, at the time, toxicity of the Stephen Harper and
00:33:14.380
Conservative brands. You could call them on any given weekend to get a comment or just see what's going
00:33:20.840
on. One of the things I like to do is I just, I talk to politicians when I'm, I'm not interviewing
00:33:25.540
them. And it's always just the same question. What are you hearing at the doors or what are you doing?
00:33:29.720
Didn't matter when you called them. Uh, there was a very good chance he was door knocking that same
00:33:35.480
thing he did to win the nomination. There wouldn't be an election on, but he'd say, Brian, if I'm not out
00:33:40.680
door knocking, if I'm not out talking to people, then I'm disconnected, uh, from what they're
00:33:45.680
thinking and I'm not hearing from them. That's kind of the message that, uh, I know this isn't
00:33:51.700
part of the book, but it's kind of the message he, he put out there with that fire, your lobbyist,
00:33:56.180
uh, op-ed he put out, um, you need to talk to the people. Yeah. And he's been doing that. And I think
00:34:03.780
what was interesting as well is that he also has in, in his riding of Carlton, he was originally
00:34:09.880
in Nippean Carlton, a tremendous amount of public servants who are not typically a conservative
00:34:14.620
demographic people assume, but he really put in a lot of work to say to those people. Now,
00:34:20.000
now when I take aim at like Ottawa and government, I'm not talking about you guys, you're, you're
00:34:23.700
the, you're the real folks, you're my constituents. And he really tried to turn that into a political
00:34:29.000
asset for him. And I think largely has been successful. You've also written a book about
00:34:33.920
the freedom convoy and you talk about, you know, uh, Pierre's, um, overtures to the freedom
00:34:41.360
convoy, uh, in this book. Is that something that's going to hurt him with swing voters?
00:34:49.180
I'm not talking about the conservative base. Um, you know, the, the liberals haven't been
00:34:55.040
very good at making hay out of that, but does that potentially hurt him at some point with
00:35:00.680
swing voters who weren't on side with the convoy? Look, I, I think that there is a contingent
00:35:07.080
of people who live in downtown Ottawa that will never forgive anyone that, you know, was even
00:35:12.960
marginally sympathetic to that because it was very raw for them. I think for people everywhere else in
00:35:17.760
the country, the sense that I've gotten is that they've moved on the people that were not in the
00:35:22.640
small group that was really on board or the small group that was really against it have just moved
00:35:26.840
on from it. And there, there's always the possibility that some externality in the news cycle
00:35:32.100
changes. Like, you know, let's say for example, that a criminal conviction comes down for one of the
00:35:36.720
people involved closer to the election. Like that could be the kind of thing that disrupts him and
00:35:42.320
forces him to have to talk about it. But he was also always very cautious about it. He was very
00:35:47.740
careful. He was never an out and out cheerleader. He was very measured and nuanced in his comments
00:35:53.160
and has also softened a little bit of it in interviews after the fact, I think to try to insulate against
00:35:59.140
that. During the, the leadership, um, he would make appeals to people who, uh, might've been on
00:36:10.520
board with the convoy, but it was more along the, uh, world economic forum stuff. And I remember
00:36:15.220
writing a couple of, uh, columns critical of them for that because I, my basic thinking was, uh, look,
00:36:21.820
world economic forum is real, but if you're appealing to people who believe that they, Klaus Schwab
00:36:27.540
actually runs Canada, which is what I was hearing from people, you know, why aren't you talking about
00:36:32.660
this? I heard that Klaus Schwab actually runs Canada. If you're appealing to that, then you are
00:36:37.720
getting into some wacky territory beyond like WEF is wacky and weird enough without making up stuff
00:36:44.320
about it. Klaus Schwab does a very good job of making himself creepy. So it was critical of some of
00:36:49.560
that. Um, but he, he doesn't appear to be on, on that anymore. The liberals aren't yelling at him
00:36:55.700
about Bitcoin anymore, but that might be because it, it went back up.
00:37:00.060
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But let me just comment on the WEF stuff because I I've actually gone to Davos
00:37:06.580
the last three, uh, annual meetings to cover the world economic forum. And I had a bit of criticism
00:37:11.500
the first time from people that said something basically similar to what you said, which is that
00:37:16.340
you're, you're catering to people that believe in all these wacky conspiracy theories about the WEF.
00:37:21.260
And I had sort of taken a view of it that I think has been, I think, I think it's, I've been proving
00:37:28.320
correct on this, which is that that makes it more important to address the issue in a very fact-based
00:37:34.740
measured way and say, no, no, no, this isn't the issue with the world economic forum, all this crazy
00:37:40.020
stuff. This is, and, and point to the policies, point to the issues. And, and I think that he has
00:37:45.100
done that in a lot of ways. He, he has, he's talking about it and he may immediately grab in the
00:37:50.640
people that have conspiratorial views about the organization. But when the point that he makes,
00:37:55.320
the point that he follows up with after he's got their attention is, Hey, this is this agenda they
00:38:00.400
have. Hey, this is this policy we're pushing. I think you're actually bringing people away from
00:38:04.760
the fringes that, I mean, maybe that's an overly optimistic view, but I think that's what he could
00:38:10.900
benefit from doing when he talks about that issue. And that, that's what I've tried to do when I cover
00:38:14.980
the Dweb. I, I, um, yeah, I would agree with that because it is a, can be a powerful organization,
00:38:22.220
but they don't run the government. Um, they don't control Canada. Same with agenda. What did they
00:38:28.420
switch it to now? It used to be agenda 2020. Was it? I think it was 21. And now it's agenda, wait,
00:38:32.760
30 or 20, 31. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they, they invented a name that sounded like a conspiracy theory.
00:38:38.660
Yeah. I was one and, and Klaus Schwab doesn't do himself any favors when he talks about, uh,
00:38:43.160
penetrating the cabinets, but, uh, yeah, all of that it's, but it's important to pay attention
00:38:49.080
to what they're doing because those ideas do inform where our government wants to go on things. Um,
00:38:55.840
in that, but that's the way that I always approached it. And I've been talking about
00:38:59.220
them for, I don't know, 15 years now. Um, but it, you look at the ideas, they're crazy ideas,
00:39:06.580
make sure they're not implemented here. That's always been my view much, much the way that you
00:39:10.880
did in, uh, uh, in going there and reporting, uh, very, but just a side note, just a very tiny town,
00:39:17.700
isn't it? Oh yeah, it is. And it's amazing that like everyone in the town leaves, uh, when the
00:39:23.680
meeting is there because they can just make massive, massive money by shutting down your business to
00:39:28.640
like rent it out to, you know, the government of, you know, India or whatever to have a little
00:39:32.340
pavilion there. But yeah, it's very, very beautiful, very beautiful village. If I were, uh,
00:39:36.220
uh, seeking world domination, I would want to station somewhere there as well too, but, uh,
00:39:40.580
yeah, it's known for, uh, the world economic forum and the Spangler cup and more Canadians pay
00:39:46.040
attention to the Spangler cup, which is like a D level hockey tournament. And, uh, but I still think
00:39:52.340
we, we spend more time on that. Were you surprised after, uh, Polly have won in September,
00:40:00.340
2022, that the liberals weren't ready with a bunch of attack ads to paint this guy as someone that
00:40:10.300
suburban mom should never ever go near. It's a strange one. And I think normally that's what
00:40:18.380
they do. That that's their plan to try to brand the guy before everyone else gets to brand him.
00:40:22.880
I think the liberals have a blind spot though. And they're, they have two blind spots. One of them
00:40:28.200
is that they assume that everyone else sees Justin Trudeau the way they do. And the other is that
00:40:33.660
everyone else sees Pierre Polly have the way they do. Which has been the conservative problem for a
00:40:38.520
while. Yeah. And they assumed everyone hated Justin Trudeau. Why don't they hate Justin Trudeau
00:40:44.060
like we do? Yeah. I think was part of their problem. Yeah. And I think that with Pierre Polly have,
00:40:49.000
they were so convinced that this is this far right Canadian Trump, this radical terror of a
00:40:57.340
candidate that they assumed that it would spin itself and that they, they hadn't quite realized
00:41:02.960
that Canadians are not seeing him that way. Canadians are not some are, but, but many Canadians
00:41:08.300
are not. And I think they assumed that their caricaturish perception of him was more widely held
00:41:16.200
than certainly polling now. And the last two years has showed it is. Uh, Corey tonight, um,
00:41:22.220
was on the podcast a couple months back and he, he said that that failure by the liberals
00:41:27.840
to run attack ads, defining Polly Eve early on might be the biggest mistake in Canadian political
00:41:36.400
history because Pierre has gone on to define himself. And I don't, you know, those rallies
00:41:41.900
attract people who were not conservative voters before many who were voting for other parties or not
00:41:48.280
at all. And, and they're on team Pierre now. They are. And again, I think that there was a,
00:41:55.400
there was a time and place of this and people have asked me and I try to touch on it in the book.
00:42:00.200
Was this a case of just a runaway freight train in Canadian politics that Pierre Polly have happened
00:42:05.440
to hop on and take to victory or, or did he do this? Did he create this? And I think it's impossible
00:42:11.460
to come to a conclusion that isn't both. Yes. There was a circumstance that benefited him.
00:42:16.220
There was timing. There was a natural groundswell of people looking for change, but you needed someone
00:42:21.680
very specific that could have harnessed that in the way that he did. It's always a combination of
00:42:28.460
hard work and luck coming together. And luck is often due to hard work. Uh, so I would say that,
00:42:34.420
what do you see after all your, uh, writing about him, talking to him, talking to people around him?
00:42:40.480
What do you see as, uh, the future? What will he be like if he does get to govern is, is he going to
00:42:48.660
do that pivot that you mentioned off the top? Is he going to, uh, be Donald Trump? What are your
00:42:54.920
thoughts? So I, it's funny. I, one of his friends, Adam Dyfala, who's a long time, uh, conservative
00:43:00.660
advocate. Uh, he had said in an interview that I did with him for my book that he expects a very
00:43:06.340
ambitious first term, a very Mike Harris. I'm going to do everything I promised. I'm going to
00:43:12.120
move quickly. I'm going to make some pretty big changes, which stands in contrast to the Stephen
00:43:17.480
Harper approach, which was far more moderate and incremental. Now I mentioned this in an interview
00:43:22.120
with, uh, power and politics on CBC, and I saw it's been turned into a liberal attack ad now of,
00:43:28.560
uh, where Paul Yev is going to be Mike Harris. So the liberals see me as this credible Oracle now,
00:43:33.560
but I do think there is something to that. I think that we see some pretty significant
00:43:37.800
structural issues in the Canadian government right now that need big, quick action. And I think
00:43:43.160
there, there's going to be a very eventful and forceful first hundred days, which was always
00:43:48.040
that barometer for a government's tone and approach. And I think there has to be, I think
00:43:52.940
if he gets elected on a look, it's if he takes over, he'll be taking over very different Canada
00:43:58.000
and government than Stephen Harper took over for Paul Martin. You know, Stephen Harper
00:44:03.380
took over a functional bureaucracy and, and government problem. Sure.
00:44:08.180
Yeah. And he took it over with a minority. And so he was very limited in what he could
00:44:12.100
do. And you could also, you just didn't need a, a, you know, a massive change. You could
00:44:18.100
do things incrementally. This is almost a poison chalice. If Pierre Paliyev wins and becomes
00:44:24.940
prime minister, he's taking over a really screwed up Canada.
00:44:28.120
Yeah. And, and again, for the guy that says governments need to balance the budget, how
00:44:32.600
does he look at the deficits we're posting right now and come up with a plan to balance
00:44:36.920
the budget that wouldn't require massive, massive cuts or some form of increased revenue,
00:44:43.080
which is, you know, going to be a tax. So that's a big issue. And again, if I would look
00:44:47.520
at this and say, you better find a way to balance the budget within four years to prove that you
00:44:51.000
are delivering that fiscal vision you've been talking about. But I realize it's easier said
00:44:56.120
than done when you're dealing with a government that's been as, uh, spend happy as, as the
00:44:59.800
liberals. But I think philosophically, the approach that I've been told is there is that
00:45:05.580
he doesn't want to squander a majority. He wants to go in. And if he has the power to do things,
00:45:13.040
Well, it's, uh, uh, by the time Stephen Harper, uh, took over, uh, with the majority in 2011,
00:45:19.220
he'd been in office for five years and didn't have that energy, that desire for a great deal
00:45:25.900
of change. So it'll be interesting to see, uh, what happens if, and when it gets there,
00:45:30.480
Andrew, thanks so much for the time. I know you've got a pile of other interviews to do.
00:45:33.720
You got your day job to do. You got to get back home. So thanks. Uh, thanks for taking the time
00:45:41.160
The book is called Pierre Polyev, a political life. Read it. Get it. If I learn things,
00:45:46.780
you will. Full comment is a post-media podcast. My name's Brian Lilly, your host. This episode
00:45:52.080
was produced by Andre Pru with theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive producer.
00:45:57.940
Remember, you can subscribe to full comment on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, wherever you get your
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