The Canadian election is in full swing, and the third week of the campaign lays ahead. This week, we catch up with National Post reporter Stuart Thompson, who's on the campaign trail with the Liberal campaign, and columnist Tasha Kierden, who puts together the Political Hack newsletter.
00:14:46.600So 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.
00:14:54.740The kind of corny activities that they do at campaign events.
00:14:58.220And 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.
00:15:49.560And he was really good at mixing in with the crowd.
00:15:52.140And Trudeau, if you go on YouTube, you can watch a video of Trudeau at the same place we were at on Monday, Brian.
00:15:58.900And 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.
00:16:05.860And Carney just looks like a guy who's been, you know, pulled out of the boardroom and he's going to make it happen.
00:16:12.940Does he appear stronger, more in his element when he's doing the prime minister thing?
00:16:19.420I mean, they said on Wednesday, on Liberation Day, that he was suspending his campaign.
00:16:26.600And I thought that was a bit overly dramatic.
00:16:29.840You know, he didn't need to suspend his campaign and go back to Ottawa for two days to respond to the terrorists.
00:16:35.960But 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.
00:16:50.980Does he appear stronger when you're in person?
00:16:53.040Because it is very different watching on TV or on YouTube than it is when you're standing 10 feet away from the person.
00:17:00.560Yeah, so that was a minor disappointment for the journalists on the campaign plane where we were supposed to go to Montreal on Tuesday night.
00:17:08.920And they said, sorry, guys, call your families and tell them you're coming home to Ottawa.
00:17:14.380They 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.
00:17:22.360And like a lot of that's just theater, but they are trying to do that.
00:17:25.860And 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.
00:17:34.680And I went to his prime ministerial press conference on Thursday and it is a different vibe.
00:17:42.640And 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.
00:17:51.080And 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.
00:17:59.220I 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.
00:18:08.500And Carney's team call it cynical or whatever, but they are going to maximize that to the full extent.
00:18:14.540So that Thursday press conference where he responded to the tariffs from Trump, which mostly on what was announced Wednesday, we got a pass.
00:18:25.520I'm still waiting for other shoes to drop on digital services tax.
00:18:29.500I'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.
00:18:37.020I hope that's just about the Europeans and not about us, but we will never know.
00:18:41.040So we mostly got a pass and Carney still had to come out and, you know, rah, rah.
00:18:46.080We know that a big part of his campaign strategy is fear and loathing of Donald Trump and anxiety about tariffs that has driven voters.
00:18:56.920We've seen it in the Leger polling for post media.
00:18:59.300You 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.
00:19:10.000But 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.
00:19:22.260And that may be a strong word, but there's no other way to describe it.
00:19:25.720When 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.
00:19:35.720Oh, 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.
00:19:43.440But 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.
00:19:51.720It is usually the case that when the United States has a recession that it's very difficult for Canada to avoid something similar.
00:20:08.480Now, 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.
00:20:16.820The global downturn and the declining demand for exports will make this a very difficult year for Canada's economy.
00:20:23.860We're now in recession with GDP projected to fall by 1.2% this year.
00:20:56.920Well, there's two bad possibilities here.
00:20:59.300One is that he wasn't paying attention so much that he didn't realize there was a recession as a bank governor.
00:21:04.920Or 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.
00:21:21.260And you just sort of act like, you know, you're the best at every part of the job that you've done.
00:21:26.680And it is, you know, at some points, it's just, we all tell the best story about ourselves in job interviews.
00:21:33.760And at some points, it is just clear lying.
00:21:36.800And we've pointed out a number of those instances.
00:21:38.880And 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.
00:21:51.280Like, the idea that you would push back on some of these claims almost seems to offend him.
00:21:56.420And 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.
00:22:03.680And they, when he says something, they don't push back, even if it's clearly false.
00:22:08.460And now politics is a different world, because you have to deal with that.
00:22:11.440Well, 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?
00:22:25.500I know you've been on the Carney campaign, but have the other campaigns broken through at all where you are?
00:22:32.780Because, 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.
00:22:46.020So you're just tunnel-focused, you're in a bubble, and it's all about the guy you're following.
00:22:51.700But have, as Polly Ev's, you know, speech or any of his announcements or Q&A portions, have they broken through?
00:22:59.100I 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.
00:23:04.840Does that pierce the bubble that you're in?
00:23:08.120Yeah, I mean, there is a lot of questions.
00:23:10.960Like, the big question to me, and I think to the journalists around us, is what do these rallies tell us?
00:23:16.580And, 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.
00:23:28.000And, 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.
00:23:45.680But they do have a certain amount of optimism that these are unprecedented.
00:23:50.3601,700 people in PEI, like, that's crazy.
00:24:02.560Yeah, 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.
00:24:14.260And I think that is a big question for the Liberals.
00:24:18.520It'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.
00:24:29.280And I think that is, if you're a Liberal, you're sort of watching all these things and wondering, are we safe?
00:24:37.300Well, 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.
00:24:50.440But I looked at the Stats Canada data, and there's just over 13 million Canadians over the age of 55.
00:24:58.540Now, I don't know how many of them are voters.
00:25:00.880You know, some may be non-citizens, grannies that came over Lake, people that moved here, never took out citizenship.
00:25:07.180There's 13-plus million in the 55-plus category.
00:25:11.260There's more than 19 million in the 18-54 category.
00:25:16.060Those are the voters that are, according to polling, still with Polyev.
00:25:22.920So there is a chance for him to break this out.
00:25:25.940The polling wouldn't seem to indicate it, but, you know, the polls are also all over the place.
00:25:30.920So pollsters are not super confident at the moment.
00:25:33.060They're worried that they may be getting something wrong as well, because while there's a general trend,
00:25:39.460when you look at their demographic breakdowns or you look at their regional breakdowns,
00:25:43.780there's a lot of disparity between them.
00:25:46.060And that still tells you that the electorate is in flux.
00:25:51.780Yeah, and I'm sure you get this, too, but every pollster I talk to gives you a number of caveats
00:25:56.340about everything they're telling you, where they're just sort of leaving the door open in case something is wrong.
00:26:02.360And I think, actually, they are legitimately worried about these numbers are soft.
00:27:02.000When we come back, the other half of that Political Hack newsletter, Tasha Kierden will join us.
00:27:06.620We'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.
00:27:16.340This 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.
00:27:27.920Stick around at the end of the episode to hear a sample of one of our favorite episodes.
00:27:32.400If you don't want to stick around, make sure you subscribe to Canada Did What? everywhere you get podcasts.
00:27:38.240When a 24-year-old Pierre Polyev first ran for Parliament in 2004, my father saw something in him.
00:27:50.340Believe it or not, my dad was one of Pierre's first donors to his first election campaign in Nepean-Carlton.
00:27:57.300And what he saw then is what Canadians see now.
00:28:03.740Someone with clarity, conviction, and a belief in Canada's potential.
00:28:09.640Caroline 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.
00:28:22.780They weren't changing direction, as some people have been saying the Conservatives need to do.
00:28:27.380But 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.
00:28:49.460We'll play a clip of that in a moment.
00:28:50.760But 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.
00:28:58.860Tasha, your thoughts on Caroline Mulroney coming out for Pierre Polyev?
00:29:32.560I 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.
00:29:40.440You don't tell Caroline Mulroney what to do.
00:29:42.840You know, she has been elected three times.
00:29:46.120She comes from a totally pedigreed political family.
00:29:49.860She's been steeped in it since she's a child.
00:29:52.640And 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.
00:30:04.100I thought my first reaction was good on you.
00:30:05.840And I think what's interesting about it, too, is that she described Pierre Polyev as my friend.
00:30:14.600She did talk about her father's association with him.
00:30:16.980And I know that her father had met with him and had dinner with him, had gone to Stornoway and met with both.
00:30:23.040In fact, him and Mila had met with Pierre and his wife Anna to talk about, you know, being a leader of a conservative party.
00:30:32.240This was early on in his when after he was elected.
00:30:35.180So there's definitely a truth to that relationship.
00:30:38.320I 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.
00:30:49.520Her father incarnated progressive conservatism.
00:30:52.200And I would say Caroline probably does, too.
00:30:54.740The Ford conservatives or progressive conservatives are still called that in Ontario, progressive conservatives.
00:31:01.460Doug Ford himself has, you know, his government spends a lot of money.
00:31:06.280This is pretty activist, you would say.
00:31:07.940It is not a small government conservative party by any means.
00:31:11.580So 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.
00:32:11.760I was not invited to take part in the rubber breakfast.
00:32:15.640So I would have probably gone if it had worked for me.
00:32:19.420Because 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.
00:32:33.580And it would have been interesting to see the reaction.
00:32:37.500I did see some excerpts from her speech and from Pierre's speech.
00:32:42.140And 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.
00:32:50.760They don't like the record of the liberals.
00:35:18.660So I think one of the things here that I think really did motivate Trump is his own base.
00:35:23.620And 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.
00:35:38.840The 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.
00:35:51.660We'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.
00:36:00.460So I think Trump is looking at this and going, OK, maybe, maybe we won't.
00:36:07.220We'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.
00:36:19.540China and China also imposing tariffs on Vietnam and Cambodia, all the areas around like the whole, you know, Walmart manufacturing.
00:36:26.540But 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.
00:36:52.740Again, 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.
00:37:09.080Trump, I understand he wants to onshore industries, but the industry, some of the industries he wants to onshore, like, you know, garment manufacturing.
00:37:16.740Is that I mean, the reason it moved overseas is because of cheap labor.
00:37:21.020So 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.
00:37:28.840And maybe there's too much fast fashion.
00:37:58.460But 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.
00:38:17.040Here is Polyev's response, not exactly a shot back at Corey Tanik, but a here's why I'm doing it.
00:38:25.660Some 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.
00:38:38.680My answer is this, the threat of the President's actions against Canada are serious, and I've proposed serious answers to those threats.
00:38:49.060But the struggles that Canadians are facing at home, the fear and the hurt that I hear everywhere across this land, those are real too.
00:38:58.220And 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.
00:39:06.820Because everyone is struggling with the cost of living.
00:39:11.380Young Canadians are stressed about never affording a home.
00:39:54.040Are the tariffs not going to be the dominant issue they were in the first week and a half?
00:39:58.900There's a possibility they will be less because now, like you said, we said earlier that Canada is not facing new escalated tariffs.
00:40:07.700They will be a big deal, though, in terms of the auto sector, which is a big bad story for Ontario.
00:40:12.880And so people are going to feel it here.
00:40:14.200You have a Stellantis plant shutting down for a couple of weeks.
00:40:16.260So I think it's kind of a regional thing, to be honest.
00:40:18.840I've heard from friends who are campaigning and door knocking in Nova Scotia, for example, that everywhere they go, the issue is tariffs, Trump.
00:40:27.000People either love or hate Pierre Polyev.
00:40:30.300In fact, the older cohorts, interesting, as our colleague Stuart Thompson wrote about in his excellent piece in the National Post this week,
00:40:38.600older Canadians tend to be on the side of liberals saying, you know, Polyev doesn't have what it takes to counter Trump.
00:42:30.640David Coletto from Abacus Data did some interesting number crunching this week.
00:42:36.480He still has the liberals and conservatives tied, at least the latest horse race poll that I saw.
00:42:41.660Most, like Leger, which does our polling, has the liberals with like a six-point lead.
00:42:48.260But 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.
00:43:01.340That's their best showing in any poll.
00:43:02.740But 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.
00:43:15.880I'm not doubting the polls because I've spent my lifetime working with these guys.
00:43:49.140If you're a hard, motivated conservative, you are motivated.
00:43:51.720So likely, if you're motivated, you would think you will get yourself to the polls, to your point.
00:43:55.180So 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.
00:44:15.480But 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.
00:45:10.340Really, 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.
00:45:17.760If he does some radical, crazy things, the boomer anxiety goes way up and they get to the polls, right?
00:46:36.600And demographically also – and this is important for the rest of the country because Quebec can determine a majority or minority government.
00:47:13.800So that opens things up in a way, except for François Blachet, who's the eternal Quebecer on the ballot, right?
00:47:20.520He's like Mr. Quebec, and that's his only issue.
00:47:23.060So 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.
00:48:20.620But the point is that these kinds of touchstones could make a difference in Quebec.
00:48:25.420Shows like that, the French debate, Quebecers are watching.
00:48:29.480And 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.
00:49:08.580I, 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.
00:49:18.600And they're still like, yep, there are people.
00:49:23.140But the exception, of course, of that, um, riding in Verdun, St. Paul, that the by-election, that flipped, that by-election, that was interesting.
00:49:31.240Um, so it, it, it, it left the, the camp that it was supposed to be in.
00:49:35.780And I think what's going to happen here, though, is who is going to profit from, um, that argument, that debate?
00:49:43.620Are 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?
00:49:52.400Or will it just allow the block to come up?
00:49:54.520I think it's more the, I think it's the block will come up, right?
00:49:57.460A couple quick points on, on Jagmeet Singh, a couple quick thoughts there.
00:50:00.960Okay, we must talk about Jagmeet Singh.
00:50:02.820I know what I want to talk about Jagmeet Singh, but you go first.
00:50:05.780No, 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.
00:50:18.640That was special. I did not have that on my bingo card for 2025.
00:50:21.700And, and the guys who wear dog masks for their fetish, he campaigned with a couple of them as well.
00:50:27.560I missed that. How did I miss that? I, I got the OnlyFans, though.
00:50:30.740I woke up to that one. That was, I don't know, two days through, I don't know when that was,
00:50:34.900but 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.
00:50:44.460And, 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.
00:50:55.420And 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.
00:51:03.840You do not allow the candidate to make these choices.
00:51:06.500How do you decide to work with her? What is that?
00:51:12.140But then again, the whole, the whole, um, uh, NDP caucus or campaign, they've all signed the Palestine declaration.
00:51:20.640Um, 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.
00:51:35.920It's been a three horse race often. They've just down to single digits everywhere.
00:51:40.640Well, 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.
00:51:57.240And that also can get people upset in the mainstream, including the issue of Palestine, Gaza, Israel, and the conflict there with Hamas.
00:52:07.740Um, because for most people, this is something that they, they, they may have an opinion on, but it is not their front burner question.
00:52:15.120And 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.
00:52:26.680They'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?
00:52:34.600Where is that? Why is this secondary to, to, to, to Gaza? Gaza's not, we're not in Gaza.
00:52:40.380And I think that the, the obsession the left has with issues that are very important to certain constituencies, right?
00:52:47.660But 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.
00:52:56.080Like what, why are you preoccupied with this?
00:52:58.500And so you see Pierre Polyev, and we'll see if this ends up helping.
00:53:02.320Uh, he gets endorsed by the Boilermakers across the country, which is big in Ontario and Alberta, especially Quebec as well.
00:53:09.660Um, he gets endorsed by the pipe fitters in Hamilton, the, uh, Carpenters Union that represents workers.
00:53:15.520I'm not sure if it's all across Atlantic Canada or just New Brunswick, but he got endorsed by them.
00:53:21.080Um, I'm told there's going to be several more endorsements to come.
00:53:24.980There were a bunch of union reps at that Wednesday morning speech in Toronto.
00:53:30.080And I talked to some of them and I said, well, are you endorsing like the firefighters?
00:53:33.620And said, no, no, but we're here to listen.