The inescapable implosion of Trudeau’s bizarro Liberal party
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Summary
The bombshell that was the Toronto St. Paul's by-election continues to reverberate throughout Canadian politics, in particular the Liberal Party of Canada. What does this mean for the Liberal's future? Does it mean that Toronto is vulnerable?
Transcript
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The bombshell that was the Toronto St. Paul's by-election continues to reverberate throughout
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Canadian politics, the Liberal Party of Canada in particular.
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What does this mean for the Liberal Party's future?
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And today we're going to look at what the by-election result means, where Trudeau may end up in the
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future, and what's the future of the Liberal Party if and when somebody takes over.
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Joining me today to talk about this is Andrew Perez.
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He is a liberal strategist, former political staffer, someone who works in the communications
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Andrew, you're one of the people that has been advocating for the Prime Minister to step down.
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Before I ask you your view on why Justin Trudeau should step down, let me back up and ask you
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I thought Leslie Church, the Liberal candidate, was going to eke out a win.
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And I thought, yeah, it'll be closer than the 15 to 20 points the Liberals normally win
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Some Liberals had told me, no, we're going to lose.
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Did it surprise you what happened in Toronto St. Paul's, the heart of Toronto, voting for
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Well, first, Brian, thanks so much for having me on your podcast.
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I was also on the record, I did lots of media in the weeks leading up to the by-election.
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And my sense, following and speaking to folks on the Liberal campaign in St. Paul's was just
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that, that we would eke out probably a victory within four or five points at the most, which
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I was warning in my media interviews in itself was a pretty dire sign that a riding that we
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won by 24 points less than three years ago would be down to the wire.
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Look, I think two things can be true at the same time.
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I think, obviously, by elections, you can't always read too much into them.
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And I think in this case, Toronto St. Paul's, it was genuinely a perfect storm for the Conservatives
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to take this riding for the first time in 31 years.
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Well, really, the first time in 35 years, because the last time they won it...
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I keep making the point that there are a lot of people who voted in this by-election who
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were not alive the last time that this riding went conservative federally.
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And it's interesting because Toronto St. Paul's, prior to 93, was considered to be a bellwether.
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It was a riding that Barbara McDougal, a high-profile cabinet minister in the Mulroney era, held.
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It was a riding held by the Ontario PCs for decades.
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But, and I think Andrew Coyne makes the point, that was an era where the progressive Conservatives
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and the Liberals were, in hindsight, pretty indistinguishable.
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And, you know, if there's any riding in Canada that has a lot of Laurentian elites, and, you
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To quote my old friend, Daryl Bricker, yeah, Laurentian elites.
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Some of them may even resemble that description.
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It hasn't been in a while, but there has been, you know, you mentioned that the parties
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While, you know, some would argue the Conservatives have gone right, you can't also help but say,
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well, the Liberals under Justin Trudeau have gone left.
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And you've got people who are, you know, I know there's been a lot of talk about significant
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But there's also a lot of professionals being hit by the capital gains tax changes.
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And then you've just got people who, as happens with every party, every politician, they're
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just disaffected from their leader because they're like, okay, you've been around long
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So, I guess, returning to my point, I think there were a mixture of national and local
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So, on the national scene, obviously, this is a deeply unpopular government that's consistently
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Obviously, that loomed large over a by-election, even in a historically safe riding.
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And then the two key local issues, I think you just cited them correctly.
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This is a riding with about 15% of the population that's Jewish.
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I hear people quibbling about that number exactly.
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I mean, all to say it's probably one of five or six ridings in Canada where, you know, the
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Anecdotally, I know friends in the Jewish community who live in the riding, long-time
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liberals, what I heard was either they were staying home or they were going right over
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And then, yeah, the capital gains inclusion rate changes, I don't think went over well in
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A lot of doctors, a lot of small business owners, professionals, people who were told by
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the government, well, you don't have a pension plan, save your retirement inside your
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Oh, wait, we're going to hit your corporation with a huge tax increase.
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And the final thing I'd mention, I really don't know if this had any impact.
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I personally think that Leslie Church is a terrific candidate with an excellent CV.
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I think that her concession, the statement that she put out was feisty, but also said,
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I'd just say on that, that when you put up a candidate that was the chief of staff to
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the finance minister and the deputy prime minister, that you're putting out a candidate
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there that's really aligned with the government of the day.
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And I'd be curious to know if that really had an impact, if the residents of St. Paul were
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In a normal election, she would have been the perfect candidate.
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You know, I dealt with Leslie Church a bit during her time in government.
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She'd been in and out of government for a long time, and I've been covering federal
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politics for longer than I want to admit, but also dealt with her when she was at Google
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I actually don't even know Don Stewart, as far as I can recall, have not met him.
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And he is now the conservative MP, which surprises an awful lot of people.
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I had spoken to senior, senior people in the conservative headquarters who said to me at
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noon on Monday, as voting's happening, we are not winning this.
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And anyone that tells you we're winning is lying and then messaged someone I know that
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was working on the, uh, the, the liberal campaign around midnight as the votes are starting to
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And I said, congratulations, looks like your team won.
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And they said, we're afraid of the advanced polls.
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And when I woke up at, uh, six 30 in the morning, it was a complete flip.
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So you, you were one of the first, maybe the first that I saw to say, look, the, the,
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Is it his personal unpopularity that, that you think is holding the party down?
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Latest advocacy poll, I think is 23% for the liberals, 42 for the, uh, conservatives.
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You know, everybody has them playing in that bandwidth, a point here, a point there.
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Uh, you know, once in a while, there'll be a nanos poll where somebody says, oh, the load,
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Well, that's still a, uh, a majority win for Pierre Paulieff with the conservatives.
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It, do you think that Trudeau is at the core of the issue with voters or has he just become
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So, um, I guess, you know, just to be clear in terms of your listeners, I've actually probably
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since the 21, 2021 election been writing and pontificating on how I feel the liberal party
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has, uh, to some degree, I mean, much more now, but even three years ago lost its way
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in terms of, uh, moving away from being a big tent brokerage party.
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And then that culminated in an op-ed in the Toronto Star in, over the Easter long weekend,
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just about three months ago, where I, where I, I didn't quite call for his resignation,
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but I, it was, you know, the, the, the, the headline was that, uh, the liberal party has
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lost its way and a party that I've been involved in for 20 years.
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So to me, this, this loss is another proof point in, in my thesis.
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Um, and I think people look, I think there's a number of factors, but I think we're now
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at the point where people have stopped listening to Trudeau.
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They're sick of, they're sick of looking at him.
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They're sick of listening to him, whether you agree with the policy agenda or not, it's
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not, um, penetrating the key, their key target audiences.
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They've made so many announcements in the lead up to the budget and the budget.
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And I don't see any dent in the gap in public opinion polling.
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Well, they've been running around for months now, uh, since last September, um, when they
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finally realized, oh, wait, housing is an issue.
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We better do something, not just make announcements.
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Uh, they seem to, at that point, it was the liberal, uh, caucus retreat in London, Ontario.
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And Trudeau came out with a bunch of ministers, bunch of MPs, you know, and rolled up sleeves
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Well, he made an announcement about giving out money from the housing accelerator fund,
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So two years prior, they'd said, we're going to do something about housing affordability.
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And then almost two years later, they say, okay, well, here's the money and we're going
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And now housing starts are going down and homes are no more affordable.
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They see, which most dentists are not signing up for.
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And so the people that are promised the care won't get it.
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And you've got the childcare program where they made promises more than they can keep.
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And it seems like, so I wrote a piece a little while ago saying Trudeau can promise, but he
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Other colleagues of mine, like Chris Elliott, National Post have said, it seems like with
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this government, which keeps blaming the comms and keep saying, oh no, we'll just, we got
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It seems like all they have are comms and they don't have deliverables.
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Uh, you have to execute at some point and these guys aren't executing.
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And I think that's part of why the public is just not listening anymore.
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It's like, well, I've been hearing you say that forever.
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I mean, the government's obviously, you know, uh, getting long in the tooth.
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I think a lot of the smartest, savviest advisors that were part of this government successes,
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obviously Gerald Buds is the high profile name that, that comes to mind.
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But there's a lot of other people, people like Tyler Meredith, who I know quite well
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Um, a lot of them have left and Leslie Church has left.
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And, um, so I wonder, I mean, I'm not going to pretend that, that I have relationships across
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the entire government, but you have to wonder, is this the B or the C team?
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It's an obsession with, um, you know, uh, Katie Telford, uh, infamously, infamously said,
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uh, I think at the height of COVID or perhaps prior to COVID that they were going to line
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And, um, so I think that that's a perfect illustration of, of how many of Justin Trudeau's advisors
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and, and key, key, key folks handle issues, but you're right.
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And I put out a tweet earlier this week saying, we need new leadership and we need better policies.
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And, and some people came at me, progressive liberals and said, well, what do you mean
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You don't support childcare and dental care and pharma care?
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Well, I do to some extent, but you know, the deficit, the debt, um, I think this government,
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we don't talk about as liberals anymore about wealth creation and competitiveness.
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We talk about how to divvy up the pie, but we don't talk about creating a more prosperous
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Which, well, as Belinda Stronick, who was famously in both the conservatives and liberals
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The Trudeau liberals are constantly saying, how do we divvy up a smaller pie?
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I mean, this capital gains tax thing, um, they said, we're going to bring in like 19.7
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About a third of that, no more than a third of that is 6.9 billion was in the first year.
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Well, the first year it only applies to a few months.
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Because all the wealthy people are going to sell everything off before it took effect
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June 25th, the day after the by-election and they're going to get a big windfall.
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So that means in a couple of years, they're going to have to say, well, huh, we didn't look
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We're not funding the programs we promised properly.
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Now we're going to have to go back and slice the pie thinner.
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And, um, and meanwhile, to make a friend's reference, the rest of us are like Joey when
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Uh, you gotta, you gotta, you know, grow the economy.
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I, I don't think that's part of the liberal lexicon anymore.
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So, and I want to be clear, like I am a, I call myself a centrist.
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Um, and I've supported many of this government's signature programs, like the Canada child benefit,
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which lifted millions of, of, of children out of poverty.
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This government has had, you know, some major successes, but there, to your point, there isn't
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that balance that we saw, uh, in previous iterations of the federal liberal party, certainly
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under Cray-Chan Martin, uh, where there is a balance between, uh, social progress and,
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The cabinet, and I wrote, I wrote about this in the National Observer, uh, as far back as
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2021, um, the cabinet under previous iterations of the party was a coalition of, of business-minded
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people, uh, and, and more what we call social liberals.
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Um, in the first Trudeau term, I mean, Trudeau was clearly from, from when he became opposition
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leader, a progressive liberal, uh, it was unambiguous where he was going to plant the federal
00:16:23.440
And in, in, in the context of the times that made sense, and even in his first term, he
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had Bill Morneau and Jim Carr and Scott Bryson and Ralph Goodell.
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These were all, for lack of a better term, business liberals who understood the economy,
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Well, none of those individuals are around the cabinet table anymore.
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And the ministers that are there that have a business background, like, uh, Champagne and
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So I want to see when the, and we can get into this later, when we do, when the party
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ultimately rebuilds, I want to see a genuine discussion about what we stand for.
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And I think the brand conflation with the NDP is a huge problem for me.
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Well, so just the other day, you had five liberal cabinet ministers out doing dental care
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announcements, including Mark, people are gargling with gasoline, Holland, and, uh, who else
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showed up and did a dental announcement on the same day with the same talking points?
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Don't tell me you're not in a coalition when you're, you know, by the Oxford dictionary
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There may not be people in cabinet, but you're in a coalition.
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And that small little bit of him doing his own dental care announcement to me shows that.
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So you've been around, um, uh, the, you were around at Queens Park in the McGinty area era.
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When didn't, you know, we all knew that when Kathleen Wynne took over the Ontario liberal
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party, that she was more on the progressive side than Dalton was.
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Dalton McGinty was for, you know, despite what his critics would say, Dalton McGinty was
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He was a little bit to the left, a little bit to the right.
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I always said that, uh, McGinty to me, and he was my MPP for years.
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I said, he, he, it looks like he's governing, governing like a new England Republican governor.
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Wynne came in and, and got progressively progressive.
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And at one point tried to outflank the NDP tried to, I thought she was trying to take them
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Um, do you think that's what Trudeau has been trying to do with his moves to the left?
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Uh, because as I say, I don't think it's worked out for either one.
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They haven't, you know, folded up their tents and gone away.
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But people that were, were in the center are kind of looking around and either sitting
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You know, I feel like I could write an essay on this topic, Brian, because I think there's
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I think that our political spectrum has evolved since the 1990s.
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Obviously on the federal scene, we had two right of center parties.
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Um, I think the rise of the NDP, uh, in the latent era, um, really, uh, it, it forced
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the liberals to, from a strategic point of view.
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And David Hurley talks about this, about, uh, trying to, uh, you know, get that NDP
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And, uh, we all know the, you know, the strategic voting line that is a very cynical one, but
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So I think, you know, in the Wynn case, it was, it was very interesting because Wynn is
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one of the very few examples, and it relates to today, a leader that succeeded a relatively
00:19:47.000
unpopular leader and was able to rebrand the party in her image and go on to win an election.
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Now, Horvath at that time was almost seen to be to the right of Kathleen Wynn.
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And certainly in urban areas, Wynn was the preferred option among progressives.
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Hudak ran objectively a pretty hard right campaign, and that also facilitated that upset majority.
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I'd be hard pressed to see that scenario happening here.
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I will say, um, there, I don't think there's any way we can win with Trudeau right now.
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And there's always the risk that you end up with a Kim Campbell or a John Turner.
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I'm, I know I'm certain that Brian Mulrooney would not have won two seats in 93.
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And I'm pretty certain Pierre Trudeau would have won more than 40 seats in 1984.
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So there is, there is an argument on the other side there, you know, those who want Trudeau
00:20:37.940
to stay, I disagree with them, but they're not completely crazy.
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Um, I think, okay, well, well, well, I've written a column on, uh, maybe, uh, Justin Trudeau
00:20:46.900
is the best option for the liberals in, uh, the next election.
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When we come back, we'll take a quick break, come back, talk about should Trudeau go?
00:20:57.480
Or, you know, does Mark, hello, fellow beer drinkers, Carney replace him more in moments.
00:21:03.940
So for all the talk of Justin Trudeau having to go, that his welcome is worn out.
00:21:09.740
So is he perhaps the best option for the liberal party going into the next election?
00:21:14.800
Uh, Andrew, I wrote about this in the pages of the Toronto sun.
00:21:18.580
I said, maybe Trudeau's not leaving because he's looked around the room and he went, okay.
00:21:23.540
Christy Freeland talks to adults like they're four year olds at story time with their, you
00:21:31.120
Mark Carney can't communicate, holds a beer can like he's never seen one, uh, while cheering
00:21:37.580
Nobody knows who Anita Anand is outside of the caucus.
00:21:41.340
Um, Frankie Bubbles or Francois Philippe Champagne, you know, he's a guy I like, but I'm not sure
00:21:47.060
he would, you know, sit with the base of the party today.
00:21:50.400
Uh, Melanie Jolie, Dominic LeBlanc, would they do better than me?
00:21:54.360
I think that's part of Trudeau's calculus, I think, at this point.
00:21:58.440
And it's a very interesting question because, um, you're right.
00:22:02.940
We, I think we need a new leader, but it has, in my view, it has to be the right leader.
00:22:07.900
Um, and it's, you know, I was reading, uh, Martin Redcon penned an article.
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He interviewed Kathleen Wynne and she's reflecting back on the very tough decision that she made
00:22:18.260
probably in 2017, uh, that she was going to stick around.
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I think probably midway, and you would recall this vividly, probably Brian, I think midway
00:22:26.860
through her, her majority government term, she began tanking in public opinion, not unlike
00:22:33.800
And, you know, they put out OHIP plus and they put out a dental program and a lot of progressive
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left-leaning new Democrat, if you will, policies, and it was having no impact.
00:22:45.340
And she, you know, she actually reasoned, she thought that she was still the best place
00:22:49.920
to, to potentially eke out another win, or if not a strong opposition, she didn't see
00:22:55.160
anybody in the lexicon that would have that ability.
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So there is some credence to that argument, but in hindsight, we know what happened.
00:23:06.920
But maybe, maybe somebody else would, would have taken them even lower.
00:23:10.540
I mean, Stephen Del Duca, who I met with and said, oh, Brian, I'm a Cretchen centrist,
00:23:17.500
and I'm going to run as the Ontario Liberals as a centrist party, still ran like the NDP
00:23:26.060
So, you know, so, I mean, that is the calculus that the leader has to think about.
00:23:30.540
And that's, that's something I'm interested in exploring more.
00:23:33.380
Why, and yes, it worked in 2014, the attack to the left, outmaneuver the NDP, consolidate
00:23:44.560
We know that Tom Mulcair was arguably running to the right of Justin Trudeau.
00:23:49.480
But in subsequent elections, it didn't work in 2018 for when it didn't really, I don't
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think you could really say that approach worked in 2019 or 2021 for Trudeau.
00:23:59.560
No, he eeked out the smallest successive majorities in, in Canadian history in terms
00:24:06.280
So why, as Liberal parties, are we still tacking to the left?
00:24:10.880
Why is that the strategic, it's like, it's like just the instant, like, reflex that we
00:24:27.280
So let me ask you, because my view is that you talked about the political spectrum having
00:24:34.880
moved over the years, you know, it ebbs and flows.
00:24:38.160
But I would say that right now, the people on any levers of power in federal or the few
00:24:44.980
provincial Liberal parties that remain, that they view themselves as progressives and not
00:24:52.180
And the old Liberal Party used to succeed because, as my Italian friends would say,
00:24:57.260
una gamba, una gamba, one leg each side, and you straddle.
00:25:02.280
And that can be a dangerous spot sometimes, but it can also lead to great success.
00:25:06.040
And it did for the federal Liberal Party for more than a century.
00:25:09.900
And if you decide, no, I don't want one leg over here, one leg over there, and just say,
00:25:16.780
Everybody come to me, you know, ignore the extremists on either side.
00:25:22.120
If you're going to say, no, I'm going to fight for that space on the left wing, and you're
00:25:27.340
suddenly not the centrist party, you're another progressive party, which is how Trudeau just
00:25:34.360
He's built the party or altered the Liberal Party into a movement centered around him.
00:25:41.020
In Quebec, you've got, in Quebec, the Bloc Québécois, which is, I mean, they're a nationalist
00:25:46.880
You've got the NDP, you've got the Green Party, and then you've got the Liberal Party.
00:25:50.900
So if we continue down this path, I don't think Pierre Poilier's brand of conservatism
00:25:58.600
And while I do think he'll be prime minister, I really wonder what his prospects are to be
00:26:06.120
And that's why I think this renewal within the Liberal Party is so exciting, because we have
00:26:10.000
an opportunity with a new leader to potentially win a minority, and if not, at least form a
00:26:15.400
respectable opposition and rebuild our party and hold that government to account, because
00:26:20.980
I think that government will be outside the mainstream.
00:26:24.980
I think that people believe things about Poliev that simply aren't true because they don't
00:26:32.100
And I will admit that I've known him for 20 years now.
00:26:35.520
And he's not the extremist that folks are painting him out to be.
00:26:40.780
And so that, you know, the Liberal Party will have to deal with that at some point, you know,
00:26:48.880
if and when he becomes prime minister, they'll have to realize, oh, well, he's saying things
00:26:52.900
that we really don't like, but that aren't offside Joe and Jane front porch in Barhaven or
00:26:59.880
in Scarborough or in, you know, Surrey or wherever across the country, they're going to say, well,
00:27:08.480
Much like, you know, Liberals in Ontario yelled and screamed that Doug Ford was so far right wing.
00:27:15.540
Now, Pierre Poliev is much more conservative than Doug Ford.
00:27:18.940
But the idea that Doug Ford is some raving right wing lunatic, you know, that did not
00:27:25.220
work out well in Doug Ford's second majority government where he grew because he wasn't
00:27:35.720
Well, it's interesting because, you know, your bread and butter is Ontario politics, I
00:27:40.420
And it's too early to really make a conclusion.
00:27:43.180
But I think that Bonnie Crombie is trying to present a more centrist party.
00:27:49.280
And you've seen even this week that they're, you know, the candidate, you know, the candidate
00:27:53.540
signs, the announcements of nominating candidates, Bonnie Crombie's candidate in Ottawa South,
00:28:03.160
It harkens back to the Paul Martin era where it was Paul Martin's Liberals.
00:28:07.280
But I think Bonnie is trying to fashion a more centrist party.
00:28:11.280
So I'll be curious to see what level of level of success that has.
00:28:16.020
Things are so bad for Justin Trudeau, though, that the Ontario Liberal leader distanced herself
00:28:29.140
It was almost as if she said, Justin Trudeau, who's that?
00:28:33.980
I was in caucus with him for three years from 2008 to 2011.
00:28:37.420
I met him multiple times as mayor of Mississauga, but I don't really know him.
00:28:41.280
To me, that said a little bit about where I think it was a misstep for Crombie.
00:28:51.980
We agree that he's got to make this assessment of whether that's the best thing for him,
00:28:59.580
I think, you know, in those equations, his own views weigh or his own interests weigh heavier
00:29:13.720
I like someone like Frankie Bubbles, as I call him.
00:29:17.440
Champagne is someone that I think is much more like a Jean Chrétien Liberal.
00:29:24.600
Melanie Jolie, though, that's someone, you know, one of the issues in Toronto St.
00:29:29.180
Paul's was the government stand on the war in Israel between Israel and Hamas.
00:29:36.680
I've said publicly multiple times that I think Melanie Jolie, as our foreign affairs minister,
00:29:48.020
She still hasn't taken down her tweet from mid-October, claiming that Israel bombed a hospital,
00:29:55.940
She is offside of where bipartisan consensus has been on this issue for decades in this country.
00:30:04.080
So on the leadership question, I've been reflecting on that more since the by-election result.
00:30:09.440
And I'm genuinely struggling with it because my instinct is that any current minister is not going to be a real starter
00:30:19.500
because there's, I just, you know, we know the average person consumes very little politics,
00:30:27.260
but the headline will be liberals elect ex-leader who has been a minister for 10 years under the Trudeau government.
00:30:34.040
So I, to me, I feel that we need to go outside the government.
00:30:41.400
There's only going to be a few ministers that people would actually know, Freeland being one of them.
00:30:48.660
And now Dominic LeBlanc, I'm getting the sense through my networks that he could be a front runner.
00:30:57.420
He's one of the most astute politicians I've watched in any party at any level of government.
00:31:01.920
Uh, he, he knows how to get things done and he goes in elbows up, but he has a quality that he shares with people like Doug Ford.
00:31:10.660
He makes you want to like him, whether you're on the same team or not.
00:31:15.040
And that's why he was intergovernmental affairs and built and, and built productive and fruitful relationships with conservative premiers.
00:31:22.740
And I've followed Dominic LeBlanc for 24 years.
00:31:27.200
I, I, I think there's many excellent qualities that he has, but this is someone that was elected to parliament in the year 2000.
00:31:34.100
And prior to that, he was a Craychance staffer.
00:31:37.440
And prior to that, he was Justin Trudeau's babysitter.
00:31:39.580
And he's a very close personal friend of Justin Trudeau, which again, like no shade on any of that, but is that what a renewed, I agree.
00:31:49.500
I think probably in terms of his qualities and his disposition and his pragmatism, he's a strong communicator.
00:32:05.300
Um, I know that a lot of people are critical of his role as immigration minister and, and, and what that led to.
00:32:12.060
And I could see the conservatives pilloring him for his tenure in the, in the immigration ministry.
00:32:18.180
But I know firsthand, based on tweets that I've put out saying that I think Sean Fraser is a promising future leader, conservatives just went crazy.
00:32:26.720
Like, I, I do think, and he does hold a riding that's not very safe.
00:32:30.760
I think he's, he's behind in that riding of Central, I think, I'm not sure the current name, it was Central Nova one day, Peter McKay's former.
00:32:38.420
You know, he's, he's, look, he's, he's a millennial, he's smart, he's a good communicator, he's, he's attractive.
00:32:49.840
Nobody's ever elected a, oh, other than Justin Trudeau.
00:32:55.100
So I, I still think we need to go outside the government.
00:32:58.140
But the only, the only two names are Mark Carney.
00:33:00.800
And the other name I'm hearing, which isn't being reported on a lot, but I know that this individual is considering it, is Christy Clark.
00:33:09.720
And that's an intriguing name for me because it's, it, Christy Clark led a BC liberal government, which we know is a coalition of liberals and conservatives.
00:33:18.700
Yeah, she, she's, she's definitely on the federal liberal side of that coalition, but it was a coalition and she's not an NDP type.
00:33:26.920
She fights the NDP courts, as they say out there.
00:33:29.040
No, she's been very critical of Justin Trudeau.
00:33:31.600
I think she even endorsed Jean Charest in the conservative leadership race.
00:33:36.820
And she is someone that was in, she's someone that took over from Gordon Campbell and the party was way, way behind and, and, and won an election.
00:33:53.960
So I, I was in her campaign headquarters doing live TV and reporting when that happened.
00:33:59.300
And we all expected that the liberals were going down in defeat and you, you would have been in awe of the people coming through.
00:34:10.260
I had federal liberals coming by to talk to me while I'm on TV at Stockwell day dropping by to say, Christy Clark's going to win in terms of backroom people.
00:34:19.400
It was Warren Kinsella, uh, working on her campaign, uh, Nick Kouvalos, who's now Doug Ford's pollster, Dimitri Pansopoulos, Don Guy, I believe.
00:34:29.720
Don Guy, all, all these backroom people from both the liberal and the conservative parties who normally battle out against each other.
00:34:41.140
She, for the most part, she led a successful government, uh, until the end, which is always how it worked, right?
00:34:46.200
You're successful in politics until you're not.
00:34:49.160
And that's the thing that this, this individual is auditioning likely to be opposition leader.
00:34:55.760
So the disposition of that person, they have to be a street fighter.
00:35:00.460
We know that leader of the official opposition or leader of the third party.
00:35:03.700
It's the worst job in politics because you have to stand up every single day and be negative and criticize.
00:35:11.260
And even if you agree with what the government's doing, you have to poke holes in it and find a way to say that you oppose it.
00:35:16.820
And a lot of, a lot of politicians who, who, who excel in government aren't, aren't cut out for being scrappy opposition leaders.
00:35:28.860
When I look at her disposition, she's, she's smart, but she's scrappy.
00:35:34.780
She's not a pointy head intellectual, like, like you would suggest Mark Carney is.
00:35:40.060
Oh, I don't suggest Mark Carney as Mark Carney is.
00:35:44.260
And if anything, I mean, on economics and, and, uh, natural resource policy, she is, she is, I think, you know, center, center, right.
00:35:52.380
Uh, she's a social, she's a social progressive.
00:35:56.860
I think it might be who the liberal party to find a leader from, from that doesn't hail from central Canada.
00:36:02.680
I think we need a radical, we need to go, we need to, the new, like we need to be looking outside the box.
00:36:08.760
Maybe there's going to be other people that come out of the woodwork from different, I don't know, different facets of society.
00:36:14.460
But I'm surprised that all these lists are, it's 95% current cabinet ministers.
00:36:23.840
Uh, my, my friend and colleague from national poster, him Muhammad did put out a fun tweet, didn't mention Christy Clark's name, didn't mention Kim Campbell's name, but he showed a map of the 93 election results.
00:36:34.440
And he just said, here's what happened the last time a party picked an obscure woman from British Columbia to run.
00:36:43.220
It's funny, but it's totally unfair because beyond being a woman and from BC that she was premier and she's, she does have some profile.
00:36:51.160
Well, across the country, but let's talk about Mark Carney before we run out of time.
00:36:54.740
Uh, he, he worked well with the Harper government, with Stephen Harper, with late finance minister, Jim Flaherty, went on to be, uh, while he was Bank of Canada governor, went on to be Bank of England governor.
00:37:05.820
He has since, you know, shown himself in statements.
00:37:12.100
He's an economist very much on the, the progressive side though.
00:37:16.240
And my view of him, and this is from covering him, smart guy, nice guy, affable, can't communicate.
00:37:24.600
So I would take, I would challenge you a bit, Brian, on your first comment around being on the progressives.
00:37:34.520
And certainly on climate change, that's been a huge focus of his.
00:37:37.480
I attended, I'm sure you, you, you, I don't know if you were there or you, you, I'm certainly, you heard about the speech through the grapevine.
00:37:46.340
He gave a speech, Canada 2020 speech, uh, actually two speeches, one in Ottawa, one in Toronto.
00:37:51.300
The Toronto speech actually differed from the Ottawa speech because the Ottawa speech took place before the budget and before the capital gains announcement.
00:38:03.140
He was talking, he actually said there was a line, you can't redistribute money that you don't have.
00:38:08.420
He talked about a growth agenda, an abundance agenda, the need to, again, not use the word, but essentially build a bigger economic pie.
00:38:18.420
He is unabashedly progressive on, on, on the environment and on climate change, which he sees as an extension, existential crisis.
00:38:25.260
But I, what I'm getting from him, read his, read and listening to his speeches is there would be a pivot in policy in terms of the economy and how it's.
00:38:44.640
And I know he comes from humble backgrounds and, and I, I say this with no disrespect, um, but I used to cover him a lot during the financial crisis.
00:38:54.160
And at times as news conferences were impenetrable, I'm there trying to get a clip for news talk, 10, 10 in Toronto and CJD in Montreal.
00:39:04.500
And you're, you're looking at it saying, there's nothing I can use.
00:39:07.340
Can you say something like it's, um, uh, you know, the, the, the average person can understand.
00:39:13.420
So Mark Carney is a bit of a curious case to me because he's been telegraphing publicly in the media since at least early 2021, when he appeared, uh, virtually at the liberal party's convention during COVID that he supports the liberal party and the prime minister, and he'll do everything he can to support the party.
00:39:34.300
So he's been telegraphing his interest in running for at least three or four years.
00:39:41.680
Like, I think he needs to seek a seat in parliament.
00:39:44.920
And I think he needs to show that he knows how politics works.
00:39:54.560
He'll be working with a coach right now and doing the media training.
00:40:00.840
Like if, if you're an intellectual by nature, a PhD, you've been the governor of two banks, you speak in a certain way.
00:40:07.020
So that's very hard, but I think he can do that.
00:40:10.000
And I think maybe I'm naive, but I look at a country like France, someone like Emmanuel Macron.
00:40:16.680
Do we as Canadians not want to elect smart, accomplished?
00:40:24.580
With the economic challenges that we have, to me, and maybe I'm living in my, you know, in an echo chamber here, downtown Toronto.
00:40:33.000
But to me, if he could get in a debate with Pierre Poirier and expose, expose the weaknesses and the shallowness of that agenda, in my view, and say, look, here's my experience.
00:40:45.580
Here's what I like, like, no bullshit politics.
00:40:52.020
Here's where we've gone wrong under the current government.
00:41:00.860
I think Canadians maybe would buy into that and say, this guy is smart.
00:41:07.620
And I think it would be a nice contrast with, with Polyever.
00:41:11.660
I think if he could do that training and learn to communicate, he'd be a threat.
00:41:18.280
And just because you're a PhD doesn't mean that you, you can't speak in simple terms.
00:41:23.880
The toughest thing to do often is speak short sentences and make yourself clearly understood.
00:41:30.840
George Orwell's essay on language and politics.
00:41:33.340
Mark Twain's comment, I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time.
00:41:42.180
You've got to be able to summarize your thoughts.
00:41:49.860
Most of the population that's going to vote for you is not at that level.
00:41:54.120
And that's why I think like if he had run in 2021, Ottawa Centre was open at the time
00:41:58.760
when Catherine McKenna resigned and had run and got himself into the ring and into the
00:42:04.640
battle and showed his medal and he would have been appointed to cabinet.
00:42:08.860
I don't know if it would have been finance, but a senior economic post.
00:42:16.000
He was thrust into parliament, instantly became minister of finance and was in question period
00:42:20.500
and not committee and obviously wasn't, you know, he would have been well to have served
00:42:30.440
The challenge with Mark Carney is he's kind of, he's skipping a couple steps.
00:42:37.040
Well, Christy Clark's from outside, but knows how politics works.
00:42:42.580
This is going to be the topic of the summer, I think, for Politico's Andrew.
00:42:46.360
It's going to be something that we all speculate on until something happens.
00:42:58.380
The rumors will be endless, but that's fun for guys like you and I.
00:43:15.200
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