Full Comment - The Conservative gains the Liberal-led polls could be missing

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00:00:44.060 Ready for you.

00:00:48.480 The second week of the Canadian election is behind us.

00:00:52.040 The third week of this five-week campaign lays ahead.

00:00:54.500 Hello and welcome to the Full Command Podcast.

00:00:56.700 I'm Brian Lilly, your host.

00:00:57.800 And for the duration of this campaign, we will be bringing you highlights of the campaign

00:01:02.080 and speaking to our great roster of post-media reporters, columnists, analysts for their

00:01:06.960 take on how the campaign's going.

00:01:08.820 This week, I'm joined once again by Stuart Thompson, Ottawa Bureau Chief for National Post,

00:01:13.220 who is on the road with the Liberal campaign, and columnist Tasha Kieriden.

00:01:17.260 They put together the Political Hack newsletter, by the way.

00:01:20.400 So if you want the inside scoop, make sure you're subscribing to Political Hack.

00:01:24.980 Now, due to the nature of campaigns, we couldn't speak to both of them at the same time, but

00:01:29.080 you'll still get to hear both of them and their great analysis.

00:01:32.460 But first, let's set the table.

00:01:34.220 The man who dominated the first week of the campaign, American President Donald Trump,

00:01:39.000 was a little bit less dominant this week, but still a player.

00:01:43.960 With his big Liberation Day tariff announcement last Wednesday, Trump gave Liberal leader Mark

00:01:49.400 Carney the chance to do what he likes best.

00:01:51.600 Go stand behind a podium on Parliament Hill and act all prime ministerial.

00:01:55.120 Yesterday marked the latest in President Trump's unprecedented series of U.S. tariffs that are

00:02:01.300 designed to reshape the international trading system.

00:02:06.300 The ambition of these measures is enormous.

00:02:09.820 The effects on the global economy will be monumental.

00:02:14.280 We received confirmation that the latest reciprocal tariffs will not be imposed on Canada.

00:02:21.460 Canada was not hit as hard as we were expecting.

00:02:25.980 Yes, we still have steel and aluminum tariffs, there are some auto tariffs, and there have

00:02:29.980 been layoffs.

00:02:30.840 But this was not the cataclysmic moment we were expecting and, quite frankly, fearing.

00:02:36.320 Now, the week also saw Carney face some tough questions about a candidate encouraging people

00:02:41.020 to hand over a political rival to China, about his tax havens, about plagiarism, which

00:02:46.540 we'll get to shortly.

00:02:47.460 Conservative leader Pierre Polyev, meanwhile, took criticism that he hasn't been sufficiently

00:02:53.160 critical of Donald Trump head-on, and in a speech in Toronto, addressed the American

00:02:58.460 President.

00:02:59.020 We need a serious nation-building plan to Trump-proof our economy.

00:03:03.460 Mine will put Canada first.

00:03:05.020 It is a plan for Canada that is richer and stronger than the one the Liberals left us.

00:03:09.760 A plan to protect Canada from whatever choices, wrong choices, the President might make.

00:03:15.080 So my message to President Trump is this, if you keep attacking our economy, over the next

00:03:21.140 four years, under my Conservative government, Canada will become completely rebuilt.

00:03:26.100 As an economy that no longer is reliant on the Americans for everything, you will have 0.94

00:03:31.560 lost your greatest trading partner and best friend.

00:03:34.860 We will be a confident and strong country, capable of standing on its own two feet, standing

00:03:41.100 up to anybody that gets in our way, and moving forward to give our people back the Canadian

00:03:46.700 promise.

00:03:47.760 He also took on those critics who say that he should stop talking about other issues by,

00:03:52.560 well, saying those issues like crime and affordability were causing pain in Canada before Trump and

00:03:57.500 will continue to inflict pain unless they're addressed.

00:04:00.840 This is a two-horse race at the moment between Pierre Polyev for the Conservatives and Mark Carney

00:04:06.020 for the Liberals.

00:04:07.140 And as I mentioned earlier, Stuart Thompson is traveling with one of those horses, and

00:04:11.500 we caught up with Stuart in Montreal.

00:04:13.540 So Stuart, first week on the campaign trail.

00:04:16.260 This is your first time out on a federal election leaders tour.

00:04:20.780 What's the experience been like for you?

00:04:23.900 Yeah, well, I'll tell you, Brian, I was chained to my desk doing a live blog for the last two

00:04:28.480 federal election campaigns, one for the National Post and one for the Hub.

00:04:32.340 Um, and this is a whole different beast.

00:04:35.060 It really is something to get out there and see how these events actually come together

00:04:38.900 and see how the leaders react to things that happen on the trail, whether it's, you know,

00:04:43.540 mean questions from journalists or just logistical issues or people asking them strange questions

00:04:49.300 and meet and greets.

00:04:50.340 It is just a side of these leaders that you wouldn't see otherwise.

00:04:53.940 And, um, talking to people, you know, because they do these events and sometimes they grab 100,

00:04:59.520 200 people to be in the backdrop or just to be around.

00:05:03.340 And not all of those people are going to give you talking points.

00:05:06.320 They're going to give you actually their real opinion on what's going on, which is hard to

00:05:10.080 get otherwise.

00:05:10.740 So, um, it's been really interesting.

00:05:13.240 Sometimes, uh, the leaders genuinely get applause from the people put behind them as the props

00:05:19.060 to stand there in the background.

00:05:20.880 Sometimes they genuinely like the leader.

00:05:23.900 They like what they're saying.

00:05:24.880 Other times they're weird or they don't.

00:05:29.120 Uh, I don't know if you saw the video of, um, a woman standing behind Jagmeet Sane and

00:05:33.380 one of them, and she's eye rolling as he's talking.

00:05:36.760 Doug Ford in the last provincial campaign, he had a bunch of blue collar workers standing

00:05:41.820 behind them.

00:05:42.400 One of them pulled out a sandwich and started eating it as Ford was talking.

00:05:47.140 So you never know what's going to happen, but I'm happy you're on the campaign trail and

00:05:51.240 I'm mostly not, but we did meet up on last Monday in Woodbridge, north of Toronto.

00:05:59.640 Uh, Mark Carney was at a carpenter's training center.

00:06:03.720 I want to play the clip that, that you got to ask him, um, a question about plagiarism

00:06:08.640 because this was a big story for national post and very well documented, I thought, but

00:06:12.820 he hadn't answered it directly.

00:06:14.280 So here's your question and Mark Carney's answer.

00:06:19.180 Hi, Mr. Carney.

00:06:19.800 It's Stuart Thompson from the National Post.

00:06:21.700 Um, on Friday, the Post published a piece revealing 10 instances of plagiarism in your

00:06:26.420 doctoral thesis.

00:06:28.020 Um, your party responded by attacking the academic who was quoted in the piece.

00:06:32.840 Some of your surrogates mentioned pulling media subsidies because they didn't like the

00:06:36.240 piece.

00:06:37.020 First of all, did you plagiarize?

00:06:39.360 And is this a demeanor we can expect from a Carney government?

00:06:41.840 Will you attack the media when you don't like the work we do?

00:06:44.820 Uh, thank you.

00:06:46.540 Thank you for your question.

00:06:48.080 Um, I'm, I'm, I'm pleased that there's such interest in my, uh, doctoral thesis.

00:06:53.520 It's, it's sort of languished on the shelf for, uh, over three decades.

00:06:57.280 Uh, I think what you'll find in the middle of that piece, um, is a very clear refutation

00:07:04.100 of these quote allegations, um, by senior, the senior most academic at Oxford, uh, Dr.

00:07:12.560 Meyer, who was categorical in her rejection of, uh, many of the conclusions that you just

00:07:18.360 made.

00:07:18.660 So, uh, if you're, if, if your question is, does a professor at Oxford, well, I, I think,

00:07:26.280 I think the statement of Dr. Meyer stands is pretty obvious, uh, where it is.

00:07:30.220 And, uh, as I say, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm pleased that there is a intense interest in a game theory

00:07:35.540 thesis, uh, of 30, uh, 30 something years ago.

00:07:38.700 Now we talked after that news conference before we both went on our separate way, Stuart, but

00:07:43.500 we didn't really talk about his reaction.

00:07:46.160 I looked at it and I thought, well, as you were talking, he was smirking, you know, people

00:07:50.720 can't see that on, you know, a podcast, but he was smirking.

00:07:55.220 He was a little bit arrogant and condescending.

00:07:57.920 And, and in my view of the end of that answer, when he started talking about, are you going

00:08:01.780 to say a professor from Oxford?

00:08:03.900 To me, it sounded like he was about to say a professor from Oxford is better than, you

00:08:08.560 know, whatever Canadian you got to criticize me.

00:08:10.660 And then he caught himself.

00:08:11.820 Did you take it the same way?

00:08:14.300 Yeah.

00:08:14.820 Well, that's one of those moments as a journalist where it's agonizing when a leader catches

00:08:19.640 themselves before they're about to say something, cause you know, what they were going to say

00:08:22.820 was going to be news.

00:08:23.900 And the reason they caught themselves is that it, you know, would have been bad for them.

00:08:28.460 Um, so yeah, that was a tough moment for me because I felt like we would have had a better

00:08:31.660 story if he'd kept going, but I actually, you know, these things happen so fast as a journalist

00:08:37.300 and you're so worried about saying your question properly and, you know, getting to the

00:08:41.820 microphone and all that stuff that it actually is hard to take it all in.

00:08:45.220 And I hadn't actually noticed how annoyed he was until I watched the clip that you posted

00:08:50.540 on Twitter.

00:08:51.900 And, uh, I, I, and I was like, wow, he really hated me in that moment.

00:08:55.360 Um, so that, that was, um, one of those moments where like the thing that about Carney that's

00:09:01.960 different from all the other leaders is that he looks at you in the eye when you ask him

00:09:06.500 a question and when he answers, which, you know, uh, talk to Tash Carradine about that.

00:09:11.240 She'll tell you, don't do that.

00:09:13.420 Don't refer to the journalists.

00:09:14.500 Don't look at them.

00:09:15.400 We have a, what they call a pool camera, which is the main feed for the broadcasters.

00:09:20.880 Polly have Trudeau. 0.99

00:09:21.940 They look directly into that camera.

00:09:23.540 They don't even look at you as a journalist.

00:09:25.240 And I, one of the things about Carney is he seems to take these questions a little more

00:09:30.040 personally.

00:09:31.040 Um, he gets flustered.

00:09:32.600 He gets a little annoyed by it.

00:09:34.080 And in that moment, you could tell he was, and actually this morning we were at, um, Port

00:09:40.140 of Montreal press conference and he, Raffi Bouchikanyan from CBC asked him a tough question

00:09:46.340 on his French.

00:09:47.360 And, um, it was quite a moment.

00:09:50.000 He didn't know quite how to take it.

00:09:51.260 He got red.

00:09:52.140 He kind of looked around and tried to laugh it off.

00:09:54.840 Um, but this is a guy who's not used to this stuff.

00:09:57.640 And when you actually get to see it in person or be the guy who he's actually mad at, um,

00:10:03.600 it's, it's a whole different thing to see.

00:10:05.460 Yeah.

00:10:05.540 I was standing off to the side while you were asking your question.

00:10:08.060 I was just getting my own video to, uh, to be able to post later.

00:10:12.420 And, um, and so it is a very different thing and you're right when you're up there trying

00:10:17.240 to ask a question, if you're going to be professional, you, you don't want to sound

00:10:21.460 antagonistic.

00:10:22.220 You just want to ask a straight up question, but one that will elicit the best answer.

00:10:27.060 And the best answer is to get the most information out of the person.

00:10:31.220 You're, you know, I, I, I guess some people, a lot of, a lot of readers or viewers will

00:10:36.640 think that we're out there to do gotcha stuff.

00:10:38.460 And I guess some people are, um, but you know, most of us are just trying to get a,

00:10:44.600 um, you know, uh, the most information out of them.

00:10:48.500 We can Judy Trin, and I'm not picking on Judy Trin here from C CTV. 0.99

00:10:52.780 She's been on the campaign trail with you this week.

00:10:54.760 When the Paul Chang questions were being asked, she was the last one to ask and she got really

00:10:59.920 pointed, but that's because he wasn't answering.

00:11:02.240 You know, he, he, he was defending the candidate to the hilt.

00:11:05.500 Now, look, that's rear view mirror stuff at this point, but were you surprised that that

00:11:10.840 was, um, most of the questions in, in English that day were all about Paul Chang.

00:11:18.360 I think other than yours about plagiarism, they were all about this candidate that had

00:11:22.720 encouraged people to kidnap a political rival and hand them over to China.

00:11:27.380 Uh, were you surprised at how badly that was handled by the, the liberal team?

00:11:32.880 Because while Carney's a newbie, the people around them, they've run successful election

00:11:39.200 campaigns, three that got Justin Trudeau elected.

00:11:42.060 You would think they would know better and like, look, this guy's creating news.

00:11:46.840 He's got to go.

00:11:49.100 Yeah, it was really, um, surprising that they did that.

00:11:52.780 And it, it, it was actually the RCMP that made it, uh, happen when he was, when he resigned

00:11:57.780 that night.

00:11:58.240 And that, so like a little bit behind the scenes, we as journalists get 15 to 20 minutes with

00:12:03.900 Carney every day.

00:12:05.280 Um, that really allows for only four or five questions.

00:12:08.940 And what we do every morning is we huddle up and we decide who's going to ask which question.

00:12:13.640 And, um, the, so Judy actually, she was doing a live hit while we did the huddle. 1.00

00:12:20.000 And I think she was just so frustrated by the responses that she just jumped into the

00:12:23.800 question line and asked that.

00:12:25.880 So like, that, like that is just sometimes how these things go is that like the, the answers

00:12:30.300 just weren't coming.

00:12:31.280 And, you know, sometimes I get comments on Twitter saying like, you'd really need to make

00:12:34.900 him answer this.

00:12:35.840 And, you know, if a guy doesn't want to answer, he can, he can not answer.

00:12:40.560 All you can do is make him look silly for not answering with questions like that.

00:12:44.740 And I think that is sometimes the ball game you'd have to play.

00:12:48.320 And look, my, my view is if normally, if I've asked someone a question and they deflect

00:12:56.280 and won't answer, and you only have a certain amount of time, well, you're not going to

00:12:59.480 keep asking that same question to get, make them give you the answer that you want.

00:13:04.360 They're not going to give it to us.

00:13:05.560 You ask, you ask again, maybe ask a third time.

00:13:08.160 And if they keep deferring, as you say, the audience can take from that what they will.

00:13:13.360 Yeah, we, I'll just tell you, Brian, on that morning, we had Trump tariffs coming that week.

00:13:18.460 And that was the question that we couldn't get in because we ran out of time.

00:13:22.060 So that I don't, I know that, you know, you shouldn't complain about your job as a journalist,

00:13:27.280 but those are the agonizing questions we have to, you know, answer every time we do these

00:13:32.380 press conferences, because you have such a small amount of time.

00:13:34.560 These politicians know how to ramble, so they're going to try and stretch them out.

00:13:39.120 And sometimes you miss something.

00:13:40.940 Yeah.

00:13:41.580 You know, each campaign has their own way of doing it.

00:13:45.820 I've been out to both Carney's and Polly F's campaign stops here in Toronto.

00:13:51.360 And Carney, they say 15 minutes, and they go through as many as they can.

00:13:55.080 But then it's always English and French.

00:13:56.880 And can you repeat that in the other language that you didn't answer in?

00:13:59.940 And as you say, they know how to run out the clock.

00:14:02.640 And so people will say one's not answering questions or the other's not.

00:14:06.160 Polly F gets, I think it's four questions each time.

00:14:10.320 They used to do four, now it's five.

00:14:11.900 Now it's down to four.

00:14:13.180 You know, look, they're trying to get their message out.

00:14:15.740 They don't want to get our message out.

00:14:17.240 And that's part of the game.

00:14:18.920 What's your sense of Carney, though, after spending the week with them?

00:14:23.220 Because you only get that 15 minutes or so a day to ask questions, but you do get to see him behind the scenes.

00:14:30.760 He's not built to be a politician, I don't think, or he's not there yet.

00:14:35.560 What's he like in those moments, if you get to see them, when he's at these, you know, an event in a pub or meeting supporters?

00:14:44.600 Is he comfortable?

00:14:45.860 Is he awkward?

00:14:46.600 So I wrote a piece from the National Post from the campaign trail, and one of the things I talk about is how bad he is at this stuff.

00:14:54.740 The kind of corny activities that they do at campaign events.

00:14:58.220 And the way I described it is he's like a guy who's had his corporate board meeting interrupted for some cheesy icebreaker activities, and he's just going to grudgingly play along with it.

00:15:09.100 And that's what he's doing.

00:15:10.380 He's coming in the event we were at.

00:15:12.420 He had to use a table saw.

00:15:13.620 He was supposed to push some wood into the table saw.

00:15:18.800 It did not go well for him.

00:15:20.640 He's gone to a pub and tried to interact with people.

00:15:23.820 And that is a hard thing to do.

00:15:26.840 I'm not great at it.

00:15:27.940 Like, I was in Winnipeg on Tuesday circulating through a rally of liberal supporters to get color for my piece.

00:15:34.440 And, you know, it's hard to mix into a crowd.

00:15:37.140 Not everybody has that skill.

00:15:38.760 But it is how you campaign.

00:15:40.560 And one thing for Carney is that Justin Trudeau, say what you will about him.

00:15:46.260 He could campaign.

00:15:47.560 And he was good at it.

00:15:48.620 And he loved it.

00:15:49.560 And he was really good at mixing in with the crowd.

00:15:52.140 And Trudeau, if you go on YouTube, you can watch a video of Trudeau at the same place we were at on Monday, Brian.

00:15:58.900 And it is like night and day, the difference between the two men, because Trudeau's got his sleeves rolled up and he's chatting to everyone.

00:16:05.860 And Carney just looks like a guy who's been, you know, pulled out of the boardroom and he's going to make it happen.

00:16:11.300 And that's all he can really do.

00:16:12.940 Does he appear stronger, more in his element when he's doing the prime minister thing?

00:16:19.420 I mean, they said on Wednesday, on Liberation Day, that he was suspending his campaign.

00:16:26.600 And I thought that was a bit overly dramatic.

00:16:29.840 You know, he didn't need to suspend his campaign and go back to Ottawa for two days to respond to the terrorists.

00:16:35.960 But to me, it feels like both he and his campaign team feel like he's more in his element standing behind the podium on Parliament Hill in his role as prime minister than he is out campaigning.

00:16:50.980 Does he appear stronger when you're in person?

00:16:53.040 Because it is very different watching on TV or on YouTube than it is when you're standing 10 feet away from the person.

00:17:00.560 Yeah, so that was a minor disappointment for the journalists on the campaign plane where we were supposed to go to Montreal on Tuesday night.

00:17:08.920 And they said, sorry, guys, call your families and tell them you're coming home to Ottawa.

00:17:14.380 They totally shut down and they shut down to the extent that campaign staff don't know what's happening the next day because it has to be PMO.

00:17:22.360 And like a lot of that's just theater, but they are trying to do that.

00:17:25.860 And I think they know implicitly this is great for Carney to come in, put his tie back on and address the country as prime minister.

00:17:34.680 And I went to his prime ministerial press conference on Thursday and it is a different vibe.

00:17:42.640 And I think that this is a man who likes being prime minister more than he likes trying to convince people to vote for him to be prime minister.

00:17:51.080 And I think they know that's also a strength for them is that when you have this big incumbent advantage that's brought on by Trump.

00:17:59.220 I was talking to some conservatives who were saying the same thing, like to a certain extent, there's just this outsized incumbent advantage that we can't really do much about.

00:18:08.500 And Carney's team call it cynical or whatever, but they are going to maximize that to the full extent.

00:18:14.540 So that Thursday press conference where he responded to the tariffs from Trump, which mostly on what was announced Wednesday, we got a pass.

00:18:25.520 I'm still waiting for other shoes to drop on digital services tax.

00:18:29.500 I'm not sure what Trump is going to do on the GST because that's a value added tax and he's taken a dislike to them.

00:18:37.020 I hope that's just about the Europeans and not about us, but we will never know.

00:18:41.040 So we mostly got a pass and Carney still had to come out and, you know, rah, rah.

00:18:46.080 We know that a big part of his campaign strategy is fear and loathing of Donald Trump and anxiety about tariffs that has driven voters.

00:18:56.920 We've seen it in the Leger polling for post media.

00:18:59.300 You see it in polls like Abacus where David Coletto is asking people about their anxiety and everyone who's anxious, not everyone, but the majority of people who are anxious are going to Carney because of Trump. 0.96

00:19:10.000 But he did something in that press conference that really annoyed me because, and I've written about it a couple of times now, he is a very casual liar. 0.83

00:19:22.260 And that may be a strong word, but there's no other way to describe it.

00:19:25.720 When he claims that he was proud to help Paul Martin balance the budget during the liberal leadership debate, you didn't work at finance until six years after the budget was balanced.

00:19:35.720 Oh, well, what I really meant was I had nothing to do with Brookfield moving to New York City other than the voting and the letter.

00:19:43.440 But here's the clip of him saying that it was due to his work as Bank of Canada governor that Canada escaped a recession in 2008, 2009.

00:19:51.720 It is usually the case that when the United States has a recession that it's very difficult for Canada to avoid something similar.

00:20:01.020 There's been exceptions to that.

00:20:02.660 With the financial crisis, 2008, 2009, when I was governor, we avoided a recession.

00:20:08.060 Okay.

00:20:08.480 Now, before I get your reaction to that, Stuart, here's Mark Carney in February 2009 before the House of Commons Finance Committee talking about the recession that we were in.

00:20:16.820 The global downturn and the declining demand for exports will make this a very difficult year for Canada's economy.

00:20:23.860 We're now in recession with GDP projected to fall by 1.2% this year.

00:20:28.600 I caught that right away.

00:20:30.620 Theo Argetis, who's with the hub now, he caught it.

00:20:33.920 He used to work on the Hill with me.

00:20:35.740 I think he was with Bloomberg back then.

00:20:37.680 Brian Platt with Bloomberg was like, this is the second time he's claimed that we avoided a recession.

00:20:43.320 What is this about, this attempt to take credit for things that he either didn't do or didn't happen?

00:20:50.600 We were definitely in a recession in 2008, 2009, and it lasted almost a full year.

00:20:56.700 Yeah.

00:20:56.920 Well, there's two bad possibilities here.

00:20:59.300 One is that he wasn't paying attention so much that he didn't realize there was a recession as a bank governor.

00:21:04.920 Or it is what I think it is, is just this kind of corporate resume bluster that I think it's a very specific thing that, you know, you go into this private sector world, you claim credit for everything that was done anywhere near you in your career.

00:21:21.260 And you just sort of act like, you know, you're the best at every part of the job that you've done.

00:21:26.680 And it is, you know, at some points, it's just, we all tell the best story about ourselves in job interviews.

00:21:33.760 And at some points, it is just clear lying.

00:21:36.800 And we've pointed out a number of those instances.

00:21:38.880 And he just seems to be a guy who's, not only is he so, like, it's muscle memory to do this, but the scrutiny of it, we talked about this earlier, he just can't stand it.

00:21:51.280 Like, the idea that you would push back on some of these claims almost seems to offend him. 0.97

00:21:56.420 And I think that just shows you the world that he's been in for so long, which is that he's had a lot of people kissing his butt for a long time. 0.97

00:22:03.680 And they, when he says something, they don't push back, even if it's clearly false. 0.91

00:22:08.460 And now politics is a different world, because you have to deal with that.

00:22:11.440 Well, you know, to go back to the story that you asked him about, if he's going to lie so casually about things like this, why wouldn't he have plagiarized?

00:22:21.820 How is that far-fetched?

00:22:23.080 How is it different?

00:22:24.020 It's really not.

00:22:25.500 I know you've been on the Carney campaign, but have the other campaigns broken through at all where you are?

00:22:32.780 Because, you know, for folks that haven't done this, and I'm happy to have done it, happy to have seen the country, courtesy of election campaigns, happy I'm not on the plane.

00:22:46.020 So you're just tunnel-focused, you're in a bubble, and it's all about the guy you're following.

00:22:51.700 But have, as Polly Ev's, you know, speech or any of his announcements or Q&A portions, have they broken through?

00:22:59.100 I don't think, I'm not, well, we'll ask you about Jagmeet Sane in a minute, but I don't think he's breaking through anywhere.

00:23:03.300 But what about Polly Ev?

00:23:04.840 Does that pierce the bubble that you're in?

00:23:08.120 Yeah, I mean, there is a lot of questions.

00:23:10.960 Like, the big question to me, and I think to the journalists around us, is what do these rallies tell us?

00:23:16.580 And, you know, there's, we're all looking at the polls, and the polls are showing a slight liberal lead, but, I mean, we're looking at record-setting enthusiasm for Pierre Polly Ev.

00:23:28.000 And, you know, I've talked to some Tories who will tell you that, you know, they're not sad that they're getting these big rallies, but they're trying not to take it too seriously because they don't want to get overconfident based on something that might be due to their just most hardcore fans coming out.

00:23:45.680 But they do have a certain amount of optimism that these are unprecedented.

00:23:50.360 1,700 people in PEI, like, that's crazy.

00:23:54.220 It's historical.

00:23:54.720 Yes, so, like, that is worth paying attention to, and it is worth remembering that.

00:24:00.360 It is over 6,000 in Oshawa.

00:24:02.560 Yeah, and Pierre Polly Ev, when he was running for the leadership of the Conservative Party, was attracting these big rallies, lots of enthusiasm, and it turned out to be a big indicator that people really liked him.

00:24:14.260 And I think that is a big question for the Liberals.

00:24:18.520 It's even a big question for the Tories who, you know, they don't quite know how much they should look at this as a leading indicator for maybe polls going up in a week or two, or whether it's just their biggest fans coming out.

00:24:29.280 And I think that is, if you're a Liberal, you're sort of watching all these things and wondering, are we safe?

00:24:35.260 What more do we need to do?

00:24:37.300 Well, we've talked last week and, you know, in the pages of the paper about the polling and how older voters and women anxious about Trump are going towards Carney.

00:24:50.440 But I looked at the Stats Canada data, and there's just over 13 million Canadians over the age of 55.

00:24:58.540 Now, I don't know how many of them are voters.

00:25:00.880 You know, some may be non-citizens, grannies that came over Lake, people that moved here, never took out citizenship. 0.57

00:25:07.180 There's 13-plus million in the 55-plus category.

00:25:11.260 There's more than 19 million in the 18-54 category.

00:25:16.060 Those are the voters that are, according to polling, still with Polyev.

00:25:22.920 So there is a chance for him to break this out.

00:25:25.940 The polling wouldn't seem to indicate it, but, you know, the polls are also all over the place.

00:25:30.920 So pollsters are not super confident at the moment.

00:25:33.060 They're worried that they may be getting something wrong as well, because while there's a general trend,

00:25:39.460 when you look at their demographic breakdowns or you look at their regional breakdowns,

00:25:43.780 there's a lot of disparity between them.

00:25:46.060 And that still tells you that the electorate is in flux.

00:25:51.780 Yeah, and I'm sure you get this, too, but every pollster I talk to gives you a number of caveats

00:25:56.340 about everything they're telling you, where they're just sort of leaving the door open in case something is wrong.

00:26:02.360 And I think, actually, they are legitimately worried about these numbers are soft.

00:26:06.880 The liberal support is strong.

00:26:09.240 The liberal support is high, but it's not strong.

00:26:11.480 So these are people who don't really know Carney, and maybe they could be shaky.

00:26:15.540 And there's a lot of, you know, turnout stuff that will really matter.

00:26:20.700 The younger voters historically have not turned up, but they've historically not been as fired up as they are right now since maybe 2015.

00:26:27.660 And I think that will certainly matter.

00:26:31.000 And then the other thing is you could definitely imagine this being an election once again,

00:26:35.240 where the Tories win the popular vote but lose to the liberals just because their vote is so concentrated in certain areas.

00:26:42.640 And the liberals, they just have this very efficient vote across the country that always helps them.

00:26:47.300 Yeah, so many factors at play still.

00:26:50.080 Back to my mantra, voters are fickle, polls can change, campaigns matter.

00:26:54.860 And we've still got three weeks to go.

00:26:58.060 Stuart, enjoy the campaign trail.

00:26:59.560 Thanks for the time.

00:27:00.880 Thanks, Brian.

00:27:02.000 When we come back, the other half of that Political Hack newsletter, Tasha Kierden will join us. 0.98

00:27:06.620 We'll talk about Pierre Polyev a bit more about how his campaign's going and what she thought of, well, the big speech and the special guest introducing Polyev.

00:27:15.240 More in moments.

00:27:16.340 This is Tristan Hopper, the host of Canada Did What?, where we unpack the biggest, weirdest, and wildest political moments in Canadian history you thought you knew and tell you what really happened.

00:27:27.920 Stick around at the end of the episode to hear a sample of one of our favorite episodes.

00:27:32.400 If you don't want to stick around, make sure you subscribe to Canada Did What? everywhere you get podcasts.

00:27:38.240 When a 24-year-old Pierre Polyev first ran for Parliament in 2004, my father saw something in him.

00:27:48.180 He believed in him.

00:27:50.340 Believe it or not, my dad was one of Pierre's first donors to his first election campaign in Nepean-Carlton.

00:27:57.300 And what he saw then is what Canadians see now.

00:28:03.740 Someone with clarity, conviction, and a belief in Canada's potential.

00:28:09.640 Caroline Mulroney, Ontario's President of the Treasury Board, and of course the daughter of the late Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, introducing Pierre Polyev at a speech last Wednesday in Toronto.

00:28:21.220 It was not a pivot speech.

00:28:22.780 They weren't changing direction, as some people have been saying the Conservatives need to do.

00:28:27.380 But Pierre Polyev did spend a lot of time talking about his plan for the future and linking things together, including how he would respond to President Trump if he's elected and becomes Prime Minister, but also a big emphasis on what he sees needs to happen in the Canadian economy and in Canadian society to deal with the issues that, well, predated Donald Trump.

00:28:49.460 We'll play a clip of that in a moment.

00:28:50.760 But Tasha Keridan joins us now, of course, the one half of the Political Hack newsletter and a columnist in her own right at the National Post. 0.88

00:28:58.860 Tasha, your thoughts on Caroline Mulroney coming out for Pierre Polyev?

00:29:06.680 I've checked.

00:29:07.780 Despite what some people say, there was no edict to Doug Ford's cabinet to not get involved.

00:29:13.520 So this was not a, you know, her, you know, going off script from her boss.

00:29:18.240 But she did want to go out on her own personally and do that and highlight the connection between her dad and Pierre Polyev.

00:29:26.800 Did it surprise you?

00:29:28.100 Did you like it?

00:29:28.760 What did you make of it?

00:29:29.920 So I thought it was very interesting.

00:29:32.560 I think even if there was no edict or, you know, we assume there is an edict, Caroline Mulroney has no reason to respect an edict. 0.97

00:29:40.440 You don't tell Caroline Mulroney what to do.

00:29:42.840 You know, she has been elected three times.

00:29:46.120 She comes from a totally pedigreed political family.

00:29:49.860 She's been steeped in it since she's a child.

00:29:52.640 And the legacy of her father alone, I think, insulates her from anyone trying to say what to tell her, who she can or can't support or campaign for or whatnot.

00:30:03.000 So I saw that.

00:30:04.100 I thought my first reaction was good on you.

00:30:05.840 And I think what's interesting about it, too, is that she described Pierre Polyev as my friend.

00:30:14.600 She did talk about her father's association with him.

00:30:16.980 And I know that her father had met with him and had dinner with him, had gone to Stornoway and met with both.

00:30:23.040 In fact, him and Mila had met with Pierre and his wife Anna to talk about, you know, being a leader of a conservative party.

00:30:32.240 This was early on in his when after he was elected.

00:30:35.180 So there's definitely a truth to that relationship.

00:30:38.320 I think the signal she was sending was designed to mitigate some of the bleeding of the center-right vote that you're seeing in Ontario to the liberals.

00:30:49.520 Her father incarnated progressive conservatism.

00:30:52.200 And I would say Caroline probably does, too.

00:30:54.740 The Ford conservatives or progressive conservatives are still called that in Ontario, progressive conservatives.

00:31:01.460 Doug Ford himself has, you know, his government spends a lot of money.

00:31:05.520 It does a lot of things.

00:31:06.280 This is pretty activist, you would say.

00:31:07.940 It is not a small government conservative party by any means.

00:31:11.580 So I think that what she was doing was telegraphing to red Tories and people who might have liked her father saying, hey, it's OK to vote conservative federally.

00:31:21.720 Don't go to the liberals.

00:31:23.660 You know, you can be comfortable in this party.

00:31:26.240 I am, too.

00:31:27.180 So that was what I took away from her remarks and her endorsement of Pierre Polyev.

00:31:33.860 Did you catch much of the speech?

00:31:36.280 I was in the room.

00:31:37.600 It was a very, you know, they basically called in all the high-level conservatives they could find and say, come on out for breakfast.

00:31:45.980 So it was a friendly room.

00:31:46.960 It wasn't a rally.

00:31:48.400 It was staged kind of like an Empire Club thing, one of these rubber chicken things, but done at breakfast.

00:31:54.660 And it got a good reception.

00:31:58.260 And so, you know, I'm standing at the back with the other journalist watching.

00:32:02.240 It was a, in my view, a well-delivered speech.

00:32:05.780 I thought some good content in it as well.

00:32:07.920 What were your thoughts?

00:32:09.080 I didn't see the entire thing.

00:32:11.760 I was not invited to take part in the rubber breakfast.

00:32:15.640 So I would have probably gone if it had worked for me.

00:32:19.420 Because I think that there haven't been, aside from rallies, which are, you know, the large partisan events in the GTA for campaigns, it's really, you know, more local, hyper-local stuff that's happening.

00:32:33.580 And it would have been interesting to see the reaction.

00:32:37.500 I did see some excerpts from her speech and from Pierre's speech.

00:32:42.140 And I think that the emphasis on the sort of forward-looking stuff is important because this is what a lot of people are looking at.

00:32:50.760 They don't like the record of the liberals.

00:32:52.300 That is clear.

00:32:53.100 I think that, you know, you ask anyone on the street, do you want nine more years of this?

00:32:58.160 Most people will say, no.

00:33:00.020 But that's not the ballot question.

00:33:01.300 So going forward and talking more forward-looking, I thought, was a smart move.

00:33:06.980 It's what is going to, if anything, I think, catch people's imagination or give them the comfort to be a conservative and support.

00:33:14.800 Because the sense is, well, the liberals, you know, Carney's got a plan.

00:33:18.020 What's your plan, Pierre?

00:33:19.060 So I think that that was important.

00:33:21.220 I liked his line.

00:33:22.740 Well, he claims Mark Carney doesn't have a plan.

00:33:25.720 And I liked his line, a good catchy one, where he said, what is his plan?

00:33:29.580 A resume is not a plan.

00:33:31.900 That was a good line.

00:33:32.480 There were some good lines like that.

00:33:33.580 And I think that goes to the point that, again, we're in a new era.

00:33:40.340 We're in a very strange world.

00:33:43.120 And this was done even before the tariffs dropped, right, that event.

00:33:47.280 The tariffs are now with us.

00:33:49.000 And we have a sense of great unknown.

00:33:52.100 Markets are dropping like stones.

00:33:54.080 People are losing their retirement savings.

00:33:55.880 Like, that piece alone is a very big issue people aren't really talking about as much.

00:34:00.900 But, you know, I have friends in the U.S. too who are saying their 401k is, like, decimated.

00:34:06.560 And they're really unhappy.

00:34:08.840 They're not, they weren't Trump supporters to begin with.

00:34:10.920 But they're saying this is now, you know, they're hearing from their Trump friends, like, oh, my God.

00:34:15.360 We didn't sign on for this.

00:34:16.780 Yeah, people are watching their college, the kids' college fund go down.

00:34:20.620 Their retirement savings go down.

00:34:22.740 I mean, the good news for Canada is, and I talked to provincial governments about this and talked to people in industry.

00:34:29.800 It's like, okay, we were expecting to get hit harder.

00:34:33.100 And Carney even acknowledged that.

00:34:34.520 We played that clip off the top.

00:34:37.340 So spare it a little bit.

00:34:39.380 And I wonder if that is part of the Trump team hearing folks like Ben Shapiro saying, hey, buddy, you're going to reelect the liberals.

00:34:48.440 If you keep hitting Canada hard, you wanted rid of Justin Trudeau.

00:34:52.080 Do you want to reelect Justin Trudeau 2.0?

00:34:57.380 I think Trump cares.

00:34:58.420 I really think people make way too much.

00:35:00.380 I honestly don't think he cares who's in the chair.

00:35:02.120 Well, he clearly hated Trudeau.

00:35:03.420 I don't think he cares who's in the chair after Trudeau, but he hated Justin Trudeau.

00:35:09.920 You notice the 51st state talk has gone away.

00:35:12.860 Where is that?

00:35:13.800 We don't hear it anymore since he talked to Mark Carney.

00:35:16.260 Since he talked to Carney, it's gone.

00:35:18.660 So I think one of the things here that I think really did motivate Trump is his own base.

00:35:23.620 And also the fact there was basically a revolt within his own party on the motion that was passed in Congress and the Senate saying that don't levy more tariffs on Canada.

00:35:37.700 In fact, take them off.

00:35:38.840 The fact that the Republicans broke rank on that is a sign to him that even people who he would have thought would have fallen in line are not quite as terrified of him as they were maybe a month ago.

00:35:50.360 And that is a problem for him.

00:35:51.660 We're also hearing that Elon Musk is no longer going to be floating around as of May or maybe earlier because there's a sense that maybe he's overstepped too.

00:36:00.460 So I think Trump is looking at this and going, OK, maybe, maybe we won't.

00:36:05.300 We'll leave Canada alone for now.

00:36:07.220 We'll focus on the rest of the globe and the real agenda, the underlying agenda with Trump, which really I do believe is China and squeezing China, prying Russia away from China, imposing massive tariffs on China.

00:36:19.540 China and China also imposing tariffs on Vietnam and Cambodia, all the areas around like the whole, you know, Walmart manufacturing.

00:36:26.540 But that's that's the part of his tariff plan that I can get on board with, because when you look at the tariffs and the non-tariff barriers that these countries impose on the United States or on Canada, and we're still part of Trans-Pacific Partnership.

00:36:41.240 We're supposed to have better access.

00:36:43.680 These countries are actually horrible on trade. 0.58

00:36:46.200 We're not.

00:36:47.240 And we were getting hit.

00:36:48.600 So.

00:36:48.840 But think of what we buy from them, what they buy from us.

00:36:51.020 Do we.

00:36:51.340 And this is the irony here.

00:36:52.740 Again, is the goal here to repatriate all the manufacturing of sweatshop goods from Vietnam, Cambodia and China into the U.S. and give people jobs on the line making T-shirts, which then Americans won't be able to buy because the minimum wage is too high and they'll be too expensive.

00:37:08.100 Like, it's bizarre.

00:37:09.080 Trump, I understand he wants to onshore industries, but the industry, some of the industries he wants to onshore, like, you know, garment manufacturing.

00:37:15.500 How does that work?

00:37:16.740 Is that I mean, the reason it moved overseas is because of cheap labor.

00:37:21.020 So unless he's going to depress wages and make things more affordable, Americans are going to get angry because they're like, well, now I can't buy that T-shirt.

00:37:28.840 And maybe there's too much fast fashion.

00:37:30.880 I don't know.

00:37:31.440 But do they want to work, you know, 12 hours a day making T-shirts like people do overseas? 0.78

00:37:37.180 To me, I don't get it.

00:37:38.680 There's some industries like semiconductor, high tech stuff.

00:37:41.940 I get it.

00:37:43.040 Repatriate that stuff is a security component to that as well.

00:37:46.180 But there's none to a lot of the consumer stuff that people buy that will now become radically more expensive.

00:37:53.200 I don't think he's looking to bring over T-shirt manufacturing.

00:37:56.100 I think it's on a different scale.

00:37:58.460 But let's just go back to another clip of Pierre Polyev from that speech, because last week we spoke a lot about Corey Tanik and him, you know, putting a shot across the bow of the Polyev campaign and saying, you should be focused just on this.

00:38:17.040 Here is Polyev's response, not exactly a shot back at Corey Tanik, but a here's why I'm doing it.

00:38:25.660 Some liberal supporters and lobbyists have asked why I keep talking about the cost of living, housing, crime, and about the liberal drug crisis instead of focusing exclusively on Donald Trump.

00:38:38.680 My answer is this, the threat of the President's actions against Canada are serious, and I've proposed serious answers to those threats.

00:38:49.060 But the struggles that Canadians are facing at home, the fear and the hurt that I hear everywhere across this land, those are real too.

00:38:58.220 And I will not stop talking about these problems which predate Donald Trump and which will outlast Donald Trump if we do not act to fix them.

00:39:06.820 Because everyone is struggling with the cost of living.

00:39:11.380 Young Canadians are stressed about never affording a home.

00:39:15.200 Bills they can't afford.

00:39:16.620 So Tasha, you know, that was part of his main goal was to not only say, look, I am being tough on Trump and here's what I'm going to do.

00:39:26.340 Do you think that that works?

00:39:28.380 I mean, when I'm talking to people that are out knocking on the doors in suburbs for the Conservatives, I say, well, what are you getting?

00:39:36.720 And they say, Trump comes up, but we're also hearing about housing affordability or out in Ajax.

00:39:43.360 Talked to one guy that was out door knocking with Greg Brady and he said, crime is a huge issue in Ajax.

00:39:50.400 So was that a fail or a good move?

00:39:54.040 Are the tariffs not going to be the dominant issue they were in the first week and a half?

00:39:58.900 There's a possibility they will be less because now, like you said, we said earlier that Canada is not facing new escalated tariffs.

00:40:07.700 They will be a big deal, though, in terms of the auto sector, which is a big bad story for Ontario.

00:40:12.880 And so people are going to feel it here.

00:40:14.200 You have a Stellantis plant shutting down for a couple of weeks.

00:40:16.260 So I think it's kind of a regional thing, to be honest.

00:40:18.840 I've heard from friends who are campaigning and door knocking in Nova Scotia, for example, that everywhere they go, the issue is tariffs, Trump.

00:40:27.000 People either love or hate Pierre Polyev.

00:40:30.300 In fact, the older cohorts, interesting, as our colleague Stuart Thompson wrote about in his excellent piece in the National Post this week,

00:40:38.600 older Canadians tend to be on the side of liberals saying, you know, Polyev doesn't have what it takes to counter Trump.

00:40:46.080 That is the big issue.

00:40:47.020 And they're looking to protect exactly what we were also talking about, their retirement savings, things they have.

00:40:52.140 Younger families that my friend was door knocking said they were supportive of Polyev because they're like, you know what?

00:40:58.020 I want to get those things and I can't right now.

00:41:01.140 And like you said, tariffs aren't the number one thing.

00:41:03.400 And cost of living is groceries, food, the future of my kid, getting a house, all those things.

00:41:08.880 So I think this election will be very generational.

00:41:11.580 It will also be very regional because Atlantic Canada, for example, much older population demographically.

00:41:17.900 You move over to Ontario and you've got, you may have younger families out in areas like Milton and suburbs or the exurbs of Toronto.

00:41:26.560 Those kinds of places where they'd be like, hey, you know what?

00:41:29.320 But the tariffs are one thing, but the other issues are on the table and they are eternal issues.

00:41:37.760 So we've talked a lot last week and this week about the idea of older voters going to the liberals.

00:41:44.340 Younger voters are still with Polyev and that shows up in the polling.

00:41:48.860 And we all know that older voters are more likely to show up, right?

00:41:52.580 So it just did the numbers based off of Stats Canada population by age cohort.

00:42:00.200 They divided up by five-year age cohorts.

00:42:02.980 And there's roughly 19 million people aged 18 to 54.

00:42:09.960 And the 55 plus crowd, which is where they're all going to Kearney, that's 13 million.

00:42:15.700 Yeah.

00:42:15.980 That surprised me.

00:42:17.200 You know, but I guess it makes sense.

00:42:20.140 You know, the older boomers are passing on. 0.97

00:42:23.100 We've all lost loved ones who were, you know, would have been part of that cohort.

00:42:28.060 So there's a big opportunity there.

00:42:30.640 David Coletto from Abacus Data did some interesting number crunching this week.

00:42:36.480 He still has the liberals and conservatives tied, at least the latest horse race poll that I saw.

00:42:41.660 Most, like Leger, which does our polling, has the liberals with like a six-point lead.

00:42:48.260 But when Coletto asked people who did not vote in 2021 where they're leaning, it was 40% for the conservatives, 31% for the liberals, 13% for the NDP.

00:43:01.340 That's their best showing in any poll.

00:43:02.740 But when he asked these same people who, you know, are you certain to vote, it became 46% for the conservatives, 34% for the liberals, and 11% for the NDP.

00:43:15.880 I'm not doubting the polls because I've spent my lifetime working with these guys.

00:43:19.860 But I do know that they're nervous.

00:43:21.480 I talked about that with Stuart earlier.

00:43:23.560 I do know that they're nervous because there is so much fluidity in the electorate, which we've seen.

00:43:30.680 There isn't a real possibility for the conservatives to pull this off if they can motivate those younger voters to actually show up.

00:43:40.620 So I think that is an interesting observation because what we are also seeing is those big rallies that the conservatives are having.

00:43:46.800 Their base is very motivated.

00:43:48.380 No question.

00:43:49.140 If you're a hard, motivated conservative, you are motivated.

00:43:51.720 So likely, if you're motivated, you would think you will get yourself to the polls, to your point.

00:43:55.180 So if they motivate their base or they take their motivated base and they have a ground game that's sufficient to make sure that they track people and everything else, these people should, in theory, get themselves to the polls because they are angry.

00:44:07.060 They have a reason.

00:44:07.620 They want change.

00:44:08.440 And they want this change.

00:44:10.420 The liberal vote could be softer for exactly that reason.

00:44:13.180 People are scared.

00:44:14.080 People want to protect their stuff.

00:44:15.480 But as you pointed out, in fact, there was a flip a year or two ago of the boomers of actually being smaller as a cohort because they're starting to die off than the cohorts beneath them, the millennials.

00:44:28.220 I'm Gen X.

00:44:29.260 We're the smallest generation and nobody cares about us.

00:44:31.340 Yeah, we're little.

00:44:32.520 We're a little generation.

00:44:33.300 We're sandwiched in there, but it was the millennials that were bigger.

00:44:35.960 So for the first time, there was that inversion.

00:44:37.740 And you mentioned the numbers, but you're including Gen Zs now in that too.

00:44:41.480 So it is a bit of a watershed.

00:44:45.000 And so you've got the very nervous, I'll call them the nervous boomers and the angry millennials. 0.95

00:44:51.160 That's the people are fighting each other.

00:44:53.900 So who's going to show up, to your point?

00:44:56.860 I think the traditional thinking is older voters vote more.

00:45:01.520 But in this election, they may be a little less motivated because, like you said, the terrorist things are maybe calming down a bit.

00:45:09.320 It depends.

00:45:10.340 Really, this is an unpredictable election because you don't know what Donald Trump, who's the main driver of that boomer anxiety, is going to do.

00:45:17.760 If he does some radical, crazy things, the boomer anxiety goes way up and they get to the polls, right?

00:45:24.100 Yeah.

00:45:24.900 Let me check True Social, see if he's done anything crazy while we've been talking.

00:45:28.040 But that's just it.

00:45:29.020 Every morning you check because he posts at four in the morning, for God's sakes.

00:45:32.780 I'm not up at that hour.

00:45:33.980 I check at 6.30.

00:45:35.360 I'm like, what's going on?

00:45:36.400 And there's something there half the time.

00:45:39.480 That's what you can't control.

00:45:40.920 He has not posted about Canada in the past while.

00:45:44.540 I know.

00:45:46.460 Forgotten us, Brian.

00:45:47.060 It has really messed up my morning as a journalist.

00:45:50.840 It used to be get up, check the itineraries of the – because I cover all levels of politics.

00:45:56.680 Yeah, you get all the leaders.

00:45:57.820 You get all the press leaders for all the days.

00:45:59.920 Where's the PM at?

00:46:00.920 Where are they campaigning?

00:46:02.280 What's the premier doing?

00:46:03.500 What's the mayor doing?

00:46:04.520 No, now it's what's on True Social?

00:46:07.540 Okay, nothing.

00:46:11.240 Let's talk just quickly about Jagmeet Singh and the NDP.

00:46:15.400 We could talk about the Block Quebec Walk Trader in in Quebec, but I don't think our audience is overly infatuated with Quebec.

00:46:23.820 I'm a Quebec quasi.

00:46:25.020 I care.

00:46:25.680 I care.

00:46:27.060 Okay, well, what's driving that?

00:46:29.300 Okay, so let me say something here.

00:46:30.980 So what's driving that is the same phenomenon.

00:46:32.740 Quebec's also old, demographically.

00:46:34.660 Quebec's an old province.

00:46:36.600 And demographically also – and this is important for the rest of the country because Quebec can determine a majority or minority government.

00:46:43.000 We all know this.

00:46:44.180 And Quebec tends to look at the rest of the country and go, what are they doing?

00:46:47.860 And if they think a winter is happening in Ontario, oh, we'll go there.

00:46:51.500 So that is – it's very important.

00:46:52.660 In 2015, they're the province that picked the winner and the rest of the country followed behind in Justin Trudeau.

00:46:58.500 Well, in 2015, Justin Trudeau, who is a Quebecer, yeah, he was born in Ottawa, but he's, you know, Trudeau senior, Montreal.

00:47:05.920 Like, there's a history there.

00:47:07.740 Quebecers tend to vote for their own people, right?

00:47:09.720 Right now they've got no horse in this race.

00:47:12.340 There's no Quebecer on the ballot.

00:47:13.800 So that opens things up in a way, except for François Blachet, who's the eternal Quebecer on the ballot, right?

00:47:20.520 He's like Mr. Quebec, and that's his only issue. 0.61

00:47:23.060 So if your only issue is Quebec and you're worried about supply management at the bargaining table for future negotiations of Kuzma, okay, that's his argument.

00:47:31.700 You should vote for me.

00:47:33.080 Not everyone's thinking that far, right?

00:47:35.600 They're like, I can't pay my rent.

00:47:37.040 I can't pay this.

00:47:37.680 I can't pay that.

00:47:38.720 Who's going to keep Canada together so that Quebec doesn't end up like this island unable – with terrible economic prospects?

00:47:46.820 That's the thinking now.

00:47:47.780 So that's why a lot of people are fleeing the traditional parking lot that the bloc has been, you know, oh, it's safe to vote bloc.

00:47:54.960 It doesn't matter.

00:47:55.860 Well, this election matters because if Canada goes belly up, bad news for Quebec.

00:48:00.780 So that's the logic here.

00:48:03.240 I will tell you, though, there was a program this week, five leaders, one election, and Mark Carney's French was pretty terrible.

00:48:12.660 Everyone agreed on that.

00:48:13.600 Um, Pierre Polyev gave very good answers, um, in a decent French.

00:48:19.080 Blachet was, of course, great.

00:48:20.620 But the point is that these kinds of touchstones could make a difference in Quebec.

00:48:25.420 Shows like that, the French debate, Quebecers are watching.

00:48:29.480 And I think that for the Liberals, that is a bit of a difficult spot for them because there's things like language laws, stuff that people don't in the rest of the country care about.

00:48:37.720 But we do in Quebec.

00:48:38.580 I was out in, uh, with Carney last week, uh, watched, I always watch his news conferences, but I was actually out at, uh, one.

00:48:47.700 And the French questions were all dominating.

00:48:50.560 Um, what are you going to do about the court challenge to our language laws?

00:48:54.920 Bill 96.

00:48:55.620 Yeah.

00:48:55.880 And, and, and so Polyev has said he will not get involved.

00:49:00.580 He won't back the court challenge.

00:49:01.900 Now that, that will anger the English community in Quebec, but guess what?

00:49:05.700 They don't vote for him anyway.

00:49:07.700 Exactly.

00:49:08.580 I, I, I have, uh, I, I, I have watched Anglo-Quebecers, especially Montreal, line up and vote for the Liberals as the Liberals are attacking language rights.

00:49:18.600 And they're still like, yep, there are people.

00:49:21.340 Montreal has been a fortress liberal.

00:49:23.140 But the exception, of course, of that, um, riding in Verdun, St. Paul, that the by-election, that flipped, that by-election, that was interesting.

00:49:31.240 Um, so it, it, it, it left the, the camp that it was supposed to be in.

00:49:35.780 And I think what's going to happen here, though, is who is going to profit from, um, that argument, that debate?

00:49:43.620 Are the conservatives going to profit sufficiently from Carney's refusal to, or decision to, rather, challenge Bill 96 to the point where they could win seats?

00:49:52.400 Or will it just allow the block to come up?

00:49:54.520 I think it's more the, I think it's the block will come up, right?

00:49:57.460 A couple quick points on, on Jagmeet Singh, a couple quick thoughts there.

00:50:00.960 Okay, we must talk about Jagmeet Singh.

00:50:02.820 I know what I want to talk about Jagmeet Singh, but you go first.

00:50:05.780 No, no, I, I mean, uh, I, I, I think he's found his niche in, uh, campaigning with OnlyFans, uh, content creators, uh, who wear keffees and hate Israel. 0.55

00:50:17.600 Oh, and.

00:50:18.640 That was special. I did not have that on my bingo card for 2025.

00:50:21.700 And, and the guys who wear dog masks for their fetish, he campaigned with a couple of them as well.

00:50:27.560 I missed that. How did I miss that? I, I got the OnlyFans, though.

00:50:30.740 I woke up to that one. That was, I don't know, two days through, I don't know when that was,

00:50:34.900 but I was like, really? That was my morning feed? I'm looking at this going, oh, I've never spent more time on OnlyFans, Brian, than I did that day because I just had to see what this was about.

00:50:44.460 And, uh, yeah, it was an odd choice. And the, the, uh, this, this individual had apparently bumped into him in an elevator, I read later, like, in the last campaign in 2021.

00:50:55.420 And so he approached her again, or she approached him. I'm not sure how that happened, but he, he, I don't know where his campaign manager was in this.

00:51:03.840 You do not allow the candidate to make these choices.

00:51:06.500 How do you decide to work with her? What is that?

00:51:09.220 Rapidly, rabidly, rabidly, rabidly anti-Israel.

00:51:12.140 But then again, the whole, the whole, um, uh, NDP caucus or campaign, they've all signed the Palestine declaration.

00:51:20.640 Um, so perhaps they're McGill making noise right now. I don't know, but, um, but the thing with, they're falling apart in BC and Ontario, where in BC they, they have at times been, uh, well above 20% in BC.

00:51:35.920 It's been a three horse race often. They've just down to single digits everywhere.

00:51:40.640 Well, I think this is what, um, actually, uh, I was, we were discussing earlier with our producer, because I was saying that the NDP has really, um, picked and the left in general have picked issues that are not mainstream issues for most people.

00:51:57.240 And that also can get people upset in the mainstream, including the issue of Palestine, Gaza, Israel, and the conflict there with Hamas.

00:52:07.740 Um, because for most people, this is something that they, they, they may have an opinion on, but it is not their front burner question.

00:52:15.120 And to be confronted consistently with this as the most important issue, whenever they go to the mall or whenever they walk down the street and there's a protest and the NDP is, is there capitalizing on this and saying, this is our issue.

00:52:26.680 They're like, well, but what about protection for workers and minimum wage and like, you know, union issues and stuff the NDP used to stand for?

00:52:34.600 Where is that? Why is this secondary to, to, to, to Gaza? Gaza's not, we're not in Gaza.

00:52:40.380 And I think that the, the obsession the left has with issues that are very important to certain constituencies, right?

00:52:47.660 But they don't really resonate with most people on a daily basis have made them feel, people feel disconnected from the left, disconnected from Jagmeet Singh and the NDP.

00:52:56.080 Like what, why are you preoccupied with this?

00:52:58.500 And so you see Pierre Polyev, and we'll see if this ends up helping.

00:53:02.320 Uh, he gets endorsed by the Boilermakers across the country, which is big in Ontario and Alberta, especially Quebec as well.

00:53:09.660 Um, he gets endorsed by the pipe fitters in Hamilton, the, uh, Carpenters Union that represents workers.

00:53:15.520 I'm not sure if it's all across Atlantic Canada or just New Brunswick, but he got endorsed by them.

00:53:21.080 Um, I'm told there's going to be several more endorsements to come.

00:53:24.980 There were a bunch of union reps at that Wednesday morning speech in Toronto.

00:53:30.080 And I talked to some of them and I said, well, are you endorsing like the firefighters?

00:53:33.620 And said, no, no, but we're here to listen.

00:53:35.680 We're taking part.

00:53:36.760 So, you know, interesting that they're losing that.

00:53:40.660 Unfortunately for Polyev, it looks like most of the NDP support has gone to Kearney, but we'll, we'll monitor that.

00:53:48.100 Maybe we'll talk about that more again next week.

00:53:50.140 Tasha, thanks so much for the chat today and continue reading Tasha in National Post.

00:53:56.180 Thanks.

00:53:56.540 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:53:58.900 My name's Brian Lilly, your host.

00:54:00.340 This episode was produced by Andre Pru.

00:54:02.400 Theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:54:04.200 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:54:06.580 Remember, you can subscribe to Full Comment on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Google, Spotify, wherever you get them.

00:54:12.860 Hit the subscribe button.

00:54:14.660 Help us out by giving us a rating or leaving a review and tell your friends about us.

00:54:19.960 Thanks for listening.

00:54:20.760 Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

00:54:22.280 Here's that clip from Canada Did What?

00:54:28.180 I promised you.

00:54:31.260 In the late 1960s, you have members of the Montreal Police who can spend their entire shift rushing from one FLQ bombing to another.

00:54:41.180 Here's how New Year's Eve 1968 played out for Robert Coté, a member of the Montreal Police bomb squad,

00:54:47.720 which put him at the forefront of fighting the FLQ during this period.

00:54:52.280 He was supposed to be at home with his wife, who had just miscarried twin daughters.

00:54:57.160 But instead, at 11pm, he's called out to Montreal City Hall to investigate a bomb that had just gone off.

00:55:03.820 He's en route with sirens blaring when he's told,

00:55:06.200 actually, don't bother with the exploded bomb, there's an unexploded bomb on the other side of City Hall you have to defuse.

00:55:14.600 And then, right after snipping the wires on the City Hall bomb, Coté has to speed west where a third bomb has just exploded outside a federal building.

00:55:23.680 The bombings started in April and May of 1963.

00:55:29.700 That's when the first bombings took place.

00:55:31.660 And the mailbox bombings were the most famous part of the whole thing, 0.58

00:55:35.840 which was basically on the Thursday night and Friday night, leading into the Victoria Day weekend in 1963.

00:55:43.420 So, and initially, they started attacking these symbols of federalism, federal institutions,

00:55:50.600 whether it was the Montreal Post Office or Revenue Canada.

00:55:54.460 But the bombings escalated as time went on, in terms of the size of the bombs and the powerfulness of these bombs.

00:56:02.480 If you want to hear the rest of the story, make sure you subscribe to Canada Did What?

00:56:09.400 Everywhere you get your podcasts.

Full Comment - April 07, 2025

The Conservative gains the Liberal-led polls could be missing

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