Full Comment - Liberals have good reason to fear Pierre Poilievre

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00:00:11.800 for what you need. TD, ready for you. If you believe the polls, and there's no reason to

00:00:23.000 doubt them, Pierre Polyev is set to be the next Prime Minister of Canada. The Conservative leader

00:00:27.700 and his party have been leading in every poll taken for the last year. In fact, the last

00:00:32.100 time the Liberals were out in front in a poll was May 29, 2003, in a release by Leche for

00:00:38.400 Post Media. Since then, it's only been up and up and up for Polyev and the Conservatives.

00:00:44.200 Hello and welcome to the Full Comment Podcast. I'm Brian Lilly, your host, and today we're

00:00:48.440 going to talk about Pierre Polyev in a new book that's called Pierre Polyev, A Political

00:00:52.800 Life by Andrew Lawton. Andrew is a long-time political commentator who's worked in radio

00:00:57.700 print, digital media. He's currently editor-in-chief of True North and host of the Andrew Lawton

00:01:02.880 Show there. Andrew, welcome, my friend.

00:01:05.680 Hey, good to be with you, Brian. Thanks for having me on.

00:01:08.280 It's a fun read. It's an interesting one, and it's one that is telling me new things about

00:01:15.880 a guy that I've known for 20 years now, because he was elected 20 years ago. I met him on that

00:01:20.960 first campaign, but you talked to an amazing number of people. You surprised me with not

00:01:27.740 only how many people you tracked down to speak about Pierre, but who and why. You spoke to

00:01:36.300 journalists who interviewed him as a student, old school acquaintances, political friends and foes.

00:01:41.820 How many people did you actually talk to to try and get a sense of who Pierre Polyev is and why that

00:01:48.500 matters for us as we enter this next political phase?

00:01:52.220 So someone else asked me this in another interview, and I had in my mind 60, and I said that,

00:01:57.680 and then I went back and looked, because I had a tracking document, and it was actually closer

00:02:01.720 to 80 if I include conversations that I had that I didn't have an audio recording of that were just

00:02:06.880 on background or that I took some notes on. But it was pretty much pushing 80 people, and some of

00:02:12.080 those were, of course, 15 minutes. They tell you the one story they have with Pierre. Others were

00:02:16.720 hours and hours long, so it was actually quite a voluminous amount of information to sift through

00:02:22.060 afterwards. Well, what jumps out at me is a couple of things in the book jump out at me that

00:02:28.940 are important themes and consistent themes that you see in Polyev in his past, in his actions,

00:02:36.840 that I think inform who he is today. I'm talking about things like using unconventional campaign

00:02:44.800 methods to win the nomination for that first election 20 years ago, or that he was writing

00:02:50.180 about freedom while he was still a student. So before we get into any concrete examples or

00:02:58.080 stories, what did that sort of draw for you? What does it tell you about who Polyev is now and how

00:03:06.240 he might campaign or govern if he does win?

00:03:08.820 So I think there has always been in conservative politics in Canada, especially recently, this

00:03:15.040 concern about leaders that cater or pander to the base, and then once they win the leadership,

00:03:21.400 they all of a sudden decide to cater or pander, depending on your perspective on this, to the

00:03:26.320 centre. And that pivot has been very abrupt and not particularly suave for people like Aaron O'Toole,

00:03:33.340 notably. And so I think with Pierre Polyev, it is interesting to see that, yeah, in the last couple of

00:03:38.060 years, he's been consistent. The stuff he talked about in the leadership race is the stuff he talks

00:03:42.160 about now that he's leader. But that's not all that surprising. If you go back 20 years, 25 years,

00:03:47.760 and find that he was talking about the same stuff then. And that was really, I think, a standout

00:03:52.800 thing in the book. There's something that stood out to me was just how much, how little he's changed

00:03:57.920 in some key philosophical ways over his journey.

00:04:00.600 He was one of the finalists for Magna's If I Were Prime Minister contest. I think it started in the

00:04:09.900 late 90s, ran through the early 2000s. I'm not sure when it wrapped up, but I don't think it's going

00:04:14.360 anymore. And it was in 2000 that he was one of the top 10. And he was writing all about freedom. That

00:04:22.320 was the entire point, is that ultimate freedom leads to better societies, right?

00:04:27.140 Yeah, he was. And it was interesting. A lot of that, it was the 2500 word essay, he basically

00:04:34.400 pulled an all nighter to do it and get it in the mail to submit it. So it wasn't even something he

00:04:38.660 really, by his admission, many years ago, took that much time with. But with the exception of a few

00:04:45.520 little individual things that maybe didn't stand the test of time, like the one that everyone likes

00:04:50.140 pointing out is him saying that MPs should have a two term limit that one.

00:04:53.980 And he would resign after two terms. Yeah, he would resign after two terms. That was one. And

00:04:59.700 some of these populist reform policies like voter recall, that hasn't really withstood the test of

00:05:05.280 time for him anyway. But generally speaking, if you look at a lot of the core overarching messaging,

00:05:11.560 even some of the language in terms of phrases, I found parallels between that essay and his video

00:05:18.280 announcing his leadership race in 2022.

00:05:22.000 I mean, that video announcing his leadership was very unconventional. It was controversial

00:05:30.400 to the Ottawa Press Gallery. Anyway, it was mocked heartily by a lot of the people that think they

00:05:37.040 know how politics works and should work, especially him saying, I'm running to be Prime Minister of

00:05:42.580 Canada. You know, how dare you say that? Well, that's kind of how a lot of Canadians think.

00:05:46.700 You and I may know that's not how our system operates, but reality and perception aren't

00:05:52.380 always the same thing. And people think, oh, who do I want for Prime Minister? Well, you know,

00:05:57.060 none of us vote for who we want to be Prime Minister. But that was an unconventional thing.

00:06:03.320 But there's another story that you tell when he was in his first nomination. And, you know,

00:06:10.020 I was living in Ottawa at the time. I was local reporter. I didn't cover the nomination. I just

00:06:16.860 covered him after he was trying to take on David Pratt. But I'm looking back at the names that he

00:06:21.400 took on to to win the nomination went, oh, wow, he took on some heavy hitters in local Ottawa

00:06:27.380 conservative circles, and he won. But he just like with the video being unconventional, he used

00:06:32.860 unconventional tactics then tell us about that.

00:06:35.260 Yeah, so I just to set the stage here for people, because this is just, you know, ancient

00:06:40.460 history in some context, the reform or the Alliance and PC parties had just merged, and

00:06:47.120 it was the end of 2003. So all of a sudden, even though people had been gearing up for a 2004

00:06:52.720 election, there were nominated Alliance candidates and nominated PC candidates. I don't know if there

00:06:59.120 was a nominated PC candidate in his riding, but there was an Alliance candidate. So when the

00:07:04.020 parties merged, that Alliance candidate assumed, okay, we'll all just run for the Conservative Party

00:07:08.960 of Canada nomination, and I'll win that. And then you also had a city councillor in Ottawa saying,

00:07:14.100 well, I want to get in there as well. You had a member of the Lebanese community in Ottawa,

00:07:18.240 a teacher, very well connected, that wanted to get in it as well. Because everyone realized that this

00:07:22.820 was one of these ridings that with a merged Conservative vote would likely be, or almost certainly be,

00:07:29.780 a Conservative win. And Pierre Polyev, this 24-year-old political staffer for Stockwell Day,

00:07:36.140 who had basically just moved to the riding to run there, was like, yeah, no, I want to do this as

00:07:40.800 well. So he actually did stuff that right now is part of the standard candidate toolkit for

00:07:47.060 nominations, but at the time wasn't. And one of them was going door knocking. He actually did canvassing,

00:07:52.400 but during a nomination race, going to the doors of people he knew were Conservative members,

00:07:57.120 and also going to the doors of people he thought were likely to be Conservative members or supporters,

00:08:03.500 just by virtue of where they were in the riding. And he sold his memberships and had a pretty solid

00:08:09.200 contingent of members that had joined to vote for him when it got to that nomination meeting.

00:08:13.480 But going to doors in a nomination race, you quote John Baird in the book, unheard of.

00:08:19.700 Yeah.

00:08:19.860 And John Baird was a political veteran at that point. He was still down at Queen's Park,

00:08:25.780 he hadn't yet moved to the federal scene, but he'd been an elected guy for more than 10 years.

00:08:30.480 He knew that whole area intimately, had been involved in politics for years before he was

00:08:34.980 elected. So, I mean, that was something that you just wouldn't see every day. But, you know,

00:08:42.080 I think that that and before I go on, he beat David Pratt once he got the nomination.

00:08:50.140 David Pratt was a well-respected, considered blue liberal, well-liked in Ottawa. He was Paul Martin's

00:08:57.420 defense minister, and Paulieff beat him. So the two things I take from that story are that people

00:09:05.320 often underestimate Pierre. And secondly, he's willing to try and do things that others won't.

00:09:13.380 And I think that's what he's doing with these rallies, with this, with, you know, approaching

00:09:20.660 how you discuss topics with the public, how you treat the media. He's breaking the playbook wide

00:09:27.320 open and saying, I'm doing it a different way. Yeah. And I should point out that the idea of

00:09:32.580 going door-to-door was claimed by Michael Cooper, who's a conservative member of parliament. Now,

00:09:37.480 he's about five years younger than Pierre Polyab, but the two were friends. And he told me in an

00:09:41.620 interview that he gave Pierre that idea when they were having dinner over the winter break at Caesars,

00:09:46.880 a steakhouse in Calgary. So that was Michael Cooper's contribution to the, well, he had many

00:09:52.460 contributions to the book, but to Pierre Polyab's political story there. But absolutely, and I think

00:09:58.560 we see now, too, him circumventing the parliamentary press gallery, which has become a very deliberate

00:10:03.900 tool that he's used. And to your point, Brian, very unconventional, especially among conservative

00:10:09.700 politics, but among politics in general. Yeah. Stephen Harper tried and was somewhat successful

00:10:17.760 in circumventing the press gallery in his early days, but we had a different media landscape then.

00:10:26.660 He would go and he would speak to the local journalists in Brockville or London, Ontario,

00:10:33.280 or Red Deer. And he would sometimes talk to the gallery and it would infuriate people. But

00:10:41.280 it worked. We don't have the same level of local journalism, especially political journalism now

00:10:48.180 that we did 20 years ago. So Pierre's finding different ways. And now you're seeing Justin Trudeau

00:10:54.560 mimic that. Have you noticed all the times he's been talking to bloggers and vloggers lately and people

00:11:01.240 with podcasts and very different interview settings for him than what he normally does?

00:11:08.020 Yeah. I mean, I take a bit more of a cynical view with Justin Trudeau, because I think Justin Trudeau

00:11:12.560 is also reaching the realization or has reached the realization that he's no longer getting the ride

00:11:19.000 from the parliamentary press gallery that he was, I think, a few years ago. And I think when he goes to

00:11:24.560 these podcasts, a lot of the times these aren't A-list podcasts. These are smaller ones that people learn

00:11:30.240 about because he's given them an audience. And I think he's going there because he's getting a bit

00:11:35.000 of an easier ride. And I think the format itself is working for him a bit better. Because now if

00:11:39.820 you've seen press conferences with Justin Trudeau, the Ottawa journalists are downright feisty with him

00:11:44.700 in a way that they haven't been throughout much of his term.

00:11:48.980 Yeah, absolutely. I think Pierre knows he can't just talk to the Ottawa gallery because he knows

00:11:59.900 that conservatives generally don't get the same fair break that liberals do. So he's known that from

00:12:07.100 the start. And Trudeau's having to do it now because, well, people are onto him and figured out

00:12:12.440 the country's kind of grumpy right now. Yeah, exactly. And I think one thing, too,

00:12:17.780 that's interesting is that Pierre Polyev, and I don't know if Stephen Harper did this as much,

00:12:21.680 you would know better than I, he's made a point of really speaking to a lot of the ethnic media

00:12:26.080 outlets. And a lot, because a lot of these communities across Canada have these ethnic

00:12:31.160 newspapers that have circulation that just dwarfs, just dwarfs the, you know, legacy media paper of

00:12:37.640 record in the city. And whenever he gets criticized for this, you'll always see there's this little,

00:12:44.460 you know, sort of a veiled accusation of racism. Oh, are you saying these papers aren't real? Are

00:12:48.980 you saying these, these journalists aren't real? And I've seen that online anyway. When anyone tries

00:12:54.700 to say that he's not talking to the media, he points, well, look, I've spoken to all of these people.

00:12:58.980 Well, so on that, I've seen the criticism you're talking about. Suddenly, you know, speaking of Red FM,

00:13:07.020 which Trudeau does, by the way, at multi-ethnic radio station with, I don't know how many outlets

00:13:16.560 they have across the country, but there's one in Mississauga. I know there's one in Vancouver.

00:13:20.320 They've got a few. I've been on the one in Calgary in the audience. I was going to say, I think

00:13:23.880 Calgary has one. And you're right. So there are some people saying, well, these, these aren't real

00:13:30.160 media outlets. Why are you talking to them? But Trudeau's been on them. But I also hear from

00:13:35.500 the still devoted Max Bernier PPC crowd, and sometimes Max is the one pushing this, and you'll

00:13:43.560 see him post on social media, that he shouldn't be talking to these ethnic media types, or he

00:13:50.460 shouldn't be going to Agudwara, that he is pandering, doing ethnic politics, pandering, and

00:13:57.220 he's just like the liberals. You know, how do the conservatives deal with that? How does or should

00:14:04.120 Polly Ev deal with that sort of thing? So I think there are two, there are two strategies here. And

00:14:09.380 one of the things that Jason Kenney did famously well, was go to these ethnic communities across

00:14:16.220 the country. He was immigration minister, just for context. And he earned the nickname,

00:14:21.040 minister of curry in a hurry. That's what the Indian community labeled him.

00:14:26.900 Yeah. And he would go in there and he would make a pitch, he would sell the same message that the

00:14:31.920 conservatives were selling everywhere else, but he would make sure it was heard. He'd go into these

00:14:36.080 communities that might not be tapped into the sources that, you know, a white suburban audience

00:14:41.180 in Etobicoke is tapped into. And then and he did that very well. And there's another way of doing

00:14:47.500 ethnic politics, though, which is pandering, which is where you're going into a group and you're making

00:14:52.400 a very specific promise that you're never going to repeat anywhere else. And then you go to another

00:14:56.760 group and you promise them something, you go somewhere else. And we've seen some politicians

00:15:00.600 in recent years do that. And you're really just taking advantage of the fact that no one outside of

00:15:06.180 that group is going to know what you promised them. Pierre Polly Ev hasn't done that. He has done

00:15:11.360 something that far from what I've seen is far more similar to the Jason Kenney Stephen Harper approach,

00:15:16.040 where he's going in there and he's giving the same message to them. He's telling them how it applies

00:15:20.860 to them. This is how the message of freedom works for you guys. This is how my approach to this issue

00:15:25.680 works for you. But he's doing that in a way that does not set him up for this weird laundry list of

00:15:31.740 promises that people would look at and be like, what? Why? Where? Where? Where did that come from? I

00:15:36.420 haven't seen that. The the video of him speaking at a Montreal synagogue where he said, I give this same

00:15:44.080 message in mosques across the country. That was a remarkable video and an openly frank one. And

00:15:50.840 if that's the way he's doing it, great. I have unfortunately seen politicians of all stripes

00:15:56.440 do that pandering or, you know, not as much anymore. But once upon a time, you would

00:16:03.440 regularly get politicians saying one thing in English, one thing in French, and assuming

00:16:08.140 no one can speak both languages except them. Rather bizarre thing. But, you know, so I hope 1.00

00:16:14.580 it's not the pandering going on there. You know, Max was really upset that Paliyev had gone and said,

00:16:22.660 we'll get a direct flight to, oh, what's the city in India?

00:16:25.900 Amritar. Yeah. And I thought, well, what's the problem with that? I was speaking to a British 0.98

00:16:35.660 foreign service worker who's lobbying for more direct flights to Britain. You know, people want

00:16:44.220 direct flights. It is economic opportunity. And if I can jump in on that. So when I first heard that

00:16:49.880 promise, I was thinking, OK, is this is this that pandering type of thing? And then I looked into it

00:16:55.900 and I actually learned that the reason there aren't that is because of ridiculous government

00:17:02.340 regulation. It's not to do with airlines not wanting to. It's because there was this agreement

00:17:07.100 with Canada and India about the number of flights and the number of airports. So it actually is, I

00:17:12.220 think, a fairly free market position that he's taking. He's saying, listen, by offering these direct

00:17:17.400 flights, we're going to get rid of, I mean, to use his language, a government gatekeeping that's

00:17:21.100 taking place. But because that was the one when I first heard it, I thought, OK, is this just some

00:17:25.500 weird pandering thing? And then I looked into it and realized, oh, no, this is actually like

00:17:29.340 government nonsense that has made it so that this flight where there is a huge market for it can't

00:17:34.720 happen. I'd like to get your take on his handling of the media. And you talk about the

00:17:41.940 incident with Urquhart from out in the Okanagan. That's on the back cover of the book. How do you

00:17:49.880 like them apples? But this idea that he is hostile to the media, I've been on the receiving end

00:17:58.740 as a journalist over my career of stare downs and aggressive pushback from politicians of all stripes.

00:18:07.920 If you ask a question that gets under their skin, yeah, you're going to get a response.

00:18:13.420 There seems to be this idea that it's only Pierre Pauly of doing that. Justin Trudeau would never do

00:18:18.000 that. I mean, he's done it to me, but he wouldn't do it to the real journalist or the real media in

00:18:22.200 the gallery. What is your sense of how he deals with the media as someone who is in media?

00:18:30.120 So Andrew Scheer gave a very illuminating quote, which I haven't memorized. So I'm paraphrasing here in

00:18:35.560 the book in which he says that, you know, we should basically not treat media who are hostile

00:18:40.920 to us any differently than we treat the liberals who are hostile to us, which is that if they're

00:18:45.260 making a political point, we should respond the exact same way. We shouldn't just have them as

00:18:50.100 the sacred cow effectively. And that's my term, not his. And I think he's speaking to, I suspect,

00:18:56.300 Pierre Pauly of his mindset in this way of that journalists are fair game. If journalists who have

00:19:01.400 a tremendous amount of power to set a narrative and craft a narrative are going to come in and

00:19:05.560 ask a loaded question or something he feels is a loaded question, he has a right to respond and

00:19:11.600 challenge the premise. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. And look, I have a lot of people

00:19:16.680 in the press gallery that I get along quite well with. I spoke to a number for the book. I also think

00:19:21.220 there are some in the press gallery who are very much partisans in a lot of the work that they do

00:19:26.860 in a lot of the way they approach these issues. Which is fine in the general sense. You and I

00:19:31.480 approach our work in media and journalism from a particular viewpoint, but we're commentators.

00:19:38.480 We're not pretending to be neutral. No. And also, if I were to go to a Justin Trudeau

00:19:43.320 press conference and not be risking arrest in doing so, and I were to ask some really go in hot

00:19:49.400 and ask some question, I would totally be fine with him responding and saying, well, actually,

00:19:53.740 that's nonsense. And here's why. And that's, I think, his right. So it was interesting. I did

00:19:58.540 speak to one journalist who said they feel Polyev's approach, and this was not a conservative

00:20:04.060 journalist. It was a legacy media journalist in the press gallery. They said Polyev's approach

00:20:08.760 actually forces them to be better, this person thinks. They're saying basically, you know,

00:20:14.320 journalists need to make sure they're prepared and not go in there with a lazy, people say this

00:20:19.340 question, or some people think this. Like, go in with specifics.

00:20:23.460 Well, that one with the guy in the Okanagan, some people say it's right out of Trump's playbook.

00:20:31.160 Yeah.

00:20:32.040 Who says that? Well, some people.

00:20:34.000 You're taking a page. What page? Show me the page.

00:20:36.080 That was, I mean, I don't know the guy. I feel sorry for him that, you know, you're being

00:20:43.000 embarrassed across the country. And here we are still talking about it months later. But if you go

00:20:48.340 in like that, you're going to get hammered. I remember early in my career being given a question

00:20:54.680 written out by my editor to ask Lucien Bouchard. And it was over the top. And I'll admit now looking

00:21:02.960 back on it, ridiculous. I'm standing in the TVA studios. He's just finished an interview on TVA in 0.92

00:21:12.160 downtown Montreal. And he comes over for a scrum and cameras are rolling. And I asked this question

00:21:18.400 and he made me look like a fool because my question was foolish. So I don't have an issue with 0.97

00:21:25.540 that. If he does it too often, I, you know, I wonder if people will think he comes across as too

00:21:32.040 mean. I think he's got to pick his moments, but that would be about all I'd have to say there.

00:21:36.420 Yeah. And which is why I talk about, and again, to mention someone you and I have both worked with,

00:21:42.300 David Akin, I talk about another episode where I think it was his first press conference or one of

00:21:47.120 his first press conferences as leader on Parliament Hill. And David Akin, you know, was not really all

00:21:53.700 that keen on not having a guarantee that Pierre Polyev would be taking questions. And there's that

00:21:59.480 moment where he's just being very belligerent, quite frankly, with, you know, interrupting Pierre

00:22:04.300 Polyev during his prepared statement. I think something like seven times.

00:22:07.880 Yeah. And something like that is just gold for the Conservatives. Like they turn that into a

00:22:13.080 fundraising letter almost immediately. And I know other journalists were rather embarrassed by the

00:22:18.140 episode because it fed into the perception that Polyev has tried to stoke about journalists. And I

00:22:24.000 think that's the moment is that he is primed right now, where whenever he sees that in, whenever he

00:22:29.640 sees that opening to prove his point about the media, he's going to take it.

00:22:33.680 And Akin, as you say, is somebody you and I have worked with over the years or alongside.

00:22:38.660 He had an office next to me at SunU's network for five years. That was a surprising moment. I was

00:22:45.000 surprised to see that from him. But, you know, it is what it is. I want to talk about people's

00:22:53.580 perceptions of Pierre and what you find he's really like when we come back. We got to take a quick

00:23:00.020 break. But I keep hearing he's a mean guy. And I think, who have you been talking to?

00:23:04.660 More when we come back.

00:23:34.660 There's an idea out there that Pierre Polyev is a mean dude, that he's always angry. And he can

00:23:45.860 definitely be someone that goes in elbows up, Andrew. But I'm wondering if it's just a perception

00:23:53.380 people have because of stereotypes. You and I have both hosted talk radio shows. You and I both laugh a

00:24:00.060 lot on air. But I would still have people who obviously never listen to me say, oh, he's just

00:24:06.560 angry all the time. Oh, Brian Lilly, he's just, he's just, he's grumpy. I'm like, you obviously

00:24:13.080 don't listen. I'm wondering, is that it with Pierre? Or is there, is there something in, in his public

00:24:19.940 demeanor, his character, his psyche that makes people think this is an angry dude. And that's

00:24:25.540 turning me off. Because I had a conversation with a very politically astute person a little while

00:24:30.400 ago who, that was his view of Pierre. That this, this man, there's, you know, always negative.

00:24:37.860 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

00:26:50.280 to why he backed out. Did you?

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 1.00

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. 0.66

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,

00:45:10.740 wants to actually do them.

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

00:45:38.340 with us.

00:45:39.580 Always a pleasure, Brian. Thanks so much.

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

00:46:02.480 podcasts. Leave us a rating, give us a review, tell your friends about us. Thanks for listening.

00:46:07.160 Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

00:46:11.160 Bye.

Full Comment - June 10, 2024

Liberals have good reason to fear Pierre Poilievre

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