Trudeau resorts to ‘Project Fear’ for his rescue
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Summary
John Iveson joins us to talk about the election, and why we re having one at all. Why did Justin Trudeau call an election? What s going on with the other party? And why are we having an election now, anyway?
Transcript
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Welcome to the latest episode of Full Comment. I'm Anthony Fury. Our guest today is John
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Iveson, National Post post-media political columnist. What do you need to know about
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this election? About the parties and their platforms? Will Trudeau squeak in a victory?
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Or is Aaron O'Toole going to pull it off? Oh, and why are we having this election now anyway?
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There's no one better to tackle these questions than John Iveson, who joins us now. Hey John,
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thanks for stopping by. Hi Anthony. Great to have you. It's been an interesting election
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so far. I know a lot of Canadians more and more tuning in now, you know, after Labor Day
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and so forth. And to go back to that original question, I guess, I mean,
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why was this election called? Justin Trudeau clearly thought, I'm going to get a majority.
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Right. I mean, that's the essence of it. And it has backfired spectacularly because
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three weeks in, it is still an issue. I don't think people ever want to have an election,
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but they certainly didn't feel this time around that it was justified. I think most people felt
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that the minority parliament was working okay, that it could have continued. I mean,
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there was no threat to the government's longevity. The NDP were pretty much on side with everything
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that Justin Trudeau proposed. So this thing could have run and run, but Trudeau looked at the polls,
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thought that he could eke out a majority while people weren't looking. I mean, we had,
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the majority of the campaign is going to turn out to have been before Labor Day. Most people weren't
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really paying much attention. So, you know, it was pretty much one guy, and I think it was one guy,
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because I don't think there were many people in the liberal camp who were supportive, but it was
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one guy putting his own vaulting ambitions ahead of the country's interests. And I think that with
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other things that conspired to happen, like the fall of Kabul on the day that Trudeau called the
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election, Canadians just were not impressed. So do you think other MPs, cabinet ministers and so forth,
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that they were actually a little lukewarm about this? Like this was not a, you know,
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go team rah-rah enthusiasm. Some people were like, I don't even really know if I want to do this right
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now. Well, it's never, you know, it's, while we live in a democracy, these decisions are not
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democratic. And usually it is a small cabal of people around the prime minister who hammer these
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things out, the pros and cons. There was a sizable number of people who did not feel it was a good
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idea to do this, that it would be too transparent and that the public might take it out on the,
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on the liberal party as a result. They've been proven correct. And I think Trudeau's been proven
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wrong. That's one of the big surprises for sure, just that things are not going the way Justin Trudeau
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wanted them to. Perhaps one of the other surprises for, for folks who really only check in at politics
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during election time, you go back to 2015 and you go, here's the sunny ways guy. It's, it's all
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power of positivity, lots of smiles, fresh young face and so forth. And then we move forward six
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years later and well, I'll read the headline in one of your latest columns, John, Trudeau drops the
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sunny ways, heads into dangerous territory. This has been an election that has been kind of a nasty
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one. And most of those sort of more negative notes, they haven't been sounded by the conservatives
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or by the NDP, but I mean, as you know, really by Trudeau. Yeah, well, I think it was an act of
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desperation because I think prior to them bringing up the gun control issue, nothing was really
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working for the liberals. You know, when they kept hammering, uh, Aaron O'Toole on healthcare,
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on abortion, on any, a number of other things that normally work. And yet this time the public
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just kind of shrugged. And, and, uh, you know, as I said that some of these attacks are less credible
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when the target has more credibility than the person issuing the, the, uh, the attack ads. So
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I think though they really didn't have much choice because things were, were, were heading into free
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fall for the liberals. The time for change number, which is always a good indicator of how fed up people
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are with the, with the incumbent government had started rising and it looked like it might keep
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rising. And I think they needed to do something pretty dramatic to check it. And, and as we saw,
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uh, on the last weekend, they threw everything but the kitchen sink at Aaron O'Toole, uh, in the hope
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that, uh, that some of the, the, the liberal NDP switchers might decide, well, we better stick with
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the liberals because we might end up with this guy in IE O'Toole. And so that seems to have arrested the,
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the, the rise of the time for change number. It seems to have arrested the, the, uh, the conservative
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party's rise and the liberals are, have eked up for the first time in this election. But I, I do think,
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uh, you know, as that column you've just quoted starts out, what's Justin Trudeau going to do for
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an encore? Cause normally this type of stuff is left to the final week when the, the liberals try and
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scare progressives back into their columns and away from the NDP. And I've just finished talking to
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the NDP and they've got a full strategy to make sure this doesn't happen. I mean, it clearly
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happened in 2004. I remember it well that the, uh, the conservative campaign ran out of steam and the
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NDP support was scared back into the, to the arms of the liberals. It didn't work for the liberals in
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26, uh, 2006. It kind of worked in 2019, although the conservatives were never really, uh, I don't think,
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a threat for government, but, uh, but it's clear that this time the, the prospect of a conservative
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government is being used as, uh, as I call it project fear by the, by the liberals. And I'm not
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sure it's going to work this time. I think that he's used most of his bullets too early in the
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campaign. Yeah. Let's unpack a bit of that fear mongering there. Cause you talked about the abortion
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issue and they were trying to basically float that really perennial idea that we've been hearing
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for many years now, you know, you bring in a conservative government, they're going to restrict
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abortion rights or what have you much more of a conversation that's kind of pulled from,
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from us political talking points. And then Aaron O'Toole just kind of shrugged and said, well,
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I'm pro-choice and they don't have that secret video of him, you know, talking to some church
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group saying he's going to do this and that and the other and so forth. And I feel like the more
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the years pass by, it's just harder for them to bring out those sort of attacks. Oh, you're all a
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bunch of secret homophobes or, uh, you know, anti-abortion and all that kind of stuff. I mean,
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it does seem like this is getting more and more difficult. Is Aaron O'Toole, even though, you know,
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he's a traditional, you know, white guy, gray hair, so forth, wearing the suit and so forth.
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Is he in some sense a new generation for the conservatives where you just can't pull that
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stuff anymore? Well, he does make the point as a new leader with a new approach. And, you know,
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quite frankly, it is. I mean, this is a very liberal light platform. I think O'Toole, it's in O'Toole's
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image. And I think O'Toole, you might not admit it, but I think he's a traditional red Tory. And this
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is, um, a platform that is much more appealing to potential liberal conservative switchers than
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Andrew Scheer's platform. Uh, on healthcare, he inoculated himself because he's promised to spend
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$60 billion over 10 years in increased health transfers to the provinces. On abortion, as you
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point out, he's, he's somewhat inoculated himself, um, by proclaiming himself pro-choice. But the
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liberals are, are, are, are pretty canny in this regard. Um, on healthcare, they got O'Toole talking
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about, uh, experimentation and innovation within a universal access system. Um, but it allowed them
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to talk about private for profit healthcare. On abortion, they talk now about, uh, O'Toole allowing MPs
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to push their own anti-abortion legislation. And, um, they, even though that, uh, O'Toole has talked
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about a price on carbon, they're still talking about, uh, the conservatives taking the country
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back to a time of denial and inaction on climate change. And in their attack ad, they then stick
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up a big picture of Stephen Harper, the scary man. So this is, uh, this is all stuff which,
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um, has worked for them before. It's a variation on a theme. It's, you know, as I point out though,
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that there is, there are drawbacks for the liberals and having done it before people do get tired of
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hearing these things. And then, you know, if you cry wolf far too many times, the other thing,
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you know, Trudeau was out this week talking about O'Toole as a, a weak, uh, wishy-washy leader.
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We just did some polling with Leger about, uh, weak leadership and Trudeau is seen as a weak leader
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by twice as many people as O'Toole and about, about the same proportion to Jagmeet Singh. So
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that's, that's when I talked about dangerous terrain, that's one, one of the areas of dangerous
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terrain he's wandering into by, by making accusations about other leaders that people think about him.
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I mean, he said after O'Toole, uh, changed his position on the semi-automatic weapons,
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uh, Trudeau said, this guy will say anything to get elected. And yet anybody with a memory longer
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than five minutes will remember that just, this is the guy who promised electoral reform,
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balanced budgets after two deficits, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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It certainly seemed like what Justin Trudeau also wanted to do was to, to create quite a culture
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war wedge issue over vaccine passports, vaccinated, non-vaccinated, looked at the polling numbers,
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felt this was, uh, good for him. He kind of did that calculus, uh, thought maybe we can get Aaron
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O'Toole to say, all right, I'm more siding with the unvaccinated. Uh, but you know, I, I can't help
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but think a lot of people aren't too into that. Yes. The polling shows there's lots of support for that.
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Uh, there's a lot of people though, you know, myself included, I go, okay, I got the vaccine,
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but I'm not crazy about this whole vilification of others kind of thing. I mean, is this a good idea?
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Are the numbers showing John that people really are gravitating to that as a main election issue?
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No, I think that, um, the politicization has been, uh, pretty despicable on Trudeau's part. And I,
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and I think that it will rebound on him too. I think the only thing that worked for him was getting
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stones thrown at him. And, and, you know, this, uh, sense of intimidation and violence that comes
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from the, the anti-vax protesters. I mean, you know, I stood in front of them in Nobleton and Bolton,
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and it was not pleasant. And I think most Canadians looked at that and went, we want nothing to do with
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that. Um, you know, I talked to liberal MPs who are saying they're hearing that on the doorstep,
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that, uh, that the, the protests are working for Trudeau, which is probably why he's still exposing
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himself to them because anybody who's run a campaign will tell you, you don't need to be
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there. You could, you can make sure your tour is inoculated against protests, which Harper always
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did. And these guys could do too, if they wanted to. Um, but it kind of works for him because it
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shows the contrast between him and, uh, O'Toole. I'm not so sure. I mean, O'Toole has been, has,
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has been very, um, pragmatic on this and saying, look, it shouldn't be us, us versus them.
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I'm vaccinated. I want to get vaccinations levels up to 90% in this country. Um, but if for whatever
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reason you don't want to get vaccinated, you then have to do rapid testing and prove that you're,
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that you're, um, you're not positive for COVID. Um, you know, there are many, many people who
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do not like being told what to do by the government, um, or who have religious
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problems with vaccinations or, uh, medical problems or whatever. And yet they are all
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vilified as one by Trudeau as part of this anti-vax mob. And as I found out when I started
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phoning some of these people, there are many and varied reasons why they're angry at Justin Trudeau.
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And, um, a lot of it has got to do with this sense that, uh, government should not be delegitimizing
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its, its, uh, citizens in the way that he has, has done over the last little while.
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No, certainly. Uh, when you mentioned the NDP earlier and they have a strategy to sort of make
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sure that, that, that they have enough, uh, you know, gas in the tank to keep going until the end
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and so on. How should we think of the NDP right now under Jagmeet Singh? Because back in the nineties
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and predating that the NDP was kind of happy to just be the third place party. And, and I guess
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they called themselves the social conscious of parliament or what have you. And they'd approve or,
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or, or not approve, uh, things in a minority government situation or push for things in
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committee. And they were like, that's what we do. And then Jack Layton came along and said,
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no, we try to win elections very aggressively. Tom Mulcair, he took that ball and ran with it. And
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there were polling moments when it seemed like both of those gentlemen maybe could have become,
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uh, prime minister is Jagmeet Singh carrying that along is the NDP. And I know the numbers aren't
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great right now. Are they a contender or are they back to just being perpetual third place?
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No, no, they're, they're, uh, they're genuine contenders or at least maybe not for government,
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but you know, we've seen in the last, uh, couple of years that, that the NDP have got a role to play
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in minority governments. They, they've pushed the liberals to go further than they would have done
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on any number of occasions. Um, you know, I think there is a real danger for them getting too close
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to the liberal party and getting the blame and none of the credit. And we saw that with the NDP
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in the, in the seventies, when, when they were decimated, they got reduced to half their caucus
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after the 74 election. Well, hold on though. Is it that the NDP is getting too close to the liberals
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or is Justin Trudeau's liberal party getting too close to the NDP? Well, you could barely get a credit
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card between them, to be honest. But it's a factor of both things, the NDP becoming more pragmatic
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and the liberals becoming more progressive. Um, but this time they're in reasonable shape,
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you know, I mean, they were, they were rising. I think they've started plateauing now as the,
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as the, as project fear takes, takes hold, but the, you know, they're, they're plateauing at 20%,
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which when you think that they were at 16% in 2019 and they won 24 MPs, I think, you know,
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if they come in north of 20, then they're probably doubling their caucus and potentially denying
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the liberals government because, um, you know, at 20%, you're, you are eating into,
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to a lot of liberal seats. So, I mean, these splits are very hard to predict, but, um,
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but it's clear what happened last time that they were in the week before the debate last time,
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they were, they were averaging about 15% in the polls. In the week after the debate,
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they were averaging somewhere around 19% in the polls because Jagmeet had a very good debate.
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If you remember back in 2019, they didn't have any money. They ran out of money and they ran out
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of gas and they could not support with good outcomes, the, the good performance. That is not
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going to happen this time. They've got enough money and the, and part of their strategy is to save
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most of that money until after the debate where after they expect a good performance from their leader,
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they can then promote that. And they're spending a lot of time on getting out the vote
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and various other ways to make sure that the, the, the perennial scare the dippers campaign,
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the project fear does not work this time around. What do you make John of the two other parties,
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Green Party of Canada, first one in many elections without Elizabeth May at the helm, now Annamie Paul
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and People's Party of Canada, Maxime Bernier as leader doesn't have his one seat like he had last time,
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not in the debates like last time, also Annamie Paul, not involved in all of the debates either.
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They're both kind of polling in just under 5%. They're kind of, you know, at this, at this low
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level there. Are they, are they having an impact either of these parties?
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Well, the Greens are only running 252 candidates. So that, that means you've got 86 vacancies
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where there is no Green candidate. You know, there's been analysis done on whether
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in those seats, I think there was 12 of the 86 where the Green vote share was larger than the
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margin of victory by the Conservatives or Liberals. So, you know, you can argue that at the very margins,
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that that might make a difference in a dozen seats. It's strange the way the Green vote goes,
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though. It doesn't splinter, as you might expect, straight to the NDP or even to the Liberals.
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It goes all over the place. It goes to the Conservatives. In fact, sometimes I've been
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hearing about Greens going to the PPC because they're both anti-establishment parties. So,
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I don't suspect we're going to see, I think we're going to see a very much reduced Green vote.
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And that might have an impact on the number of seats it elects. You know, they were at three,
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one defected. I think they might lose in Nanaimo. We were, we were in Nanaimo with
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Erno Toole. They think they could win that seat. That's Paul Manley's seat. I would think,
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as with May, we'll come back. But as far as the, the splits,
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it doesn't look like it's going to have a huge impact either way. The Conservatives tell me that
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the People's Party is not having a big influence on its vote. I find that hard to believe. I mean,
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I think that, that they are going to come in and surprise people with the size of their vote. I
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mean, some of the, some of the pollsters are starting to show them up around eight,
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nine percent. When they're eight or nine percent, they've got to be impacting the Conservative vote.
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I think they are getting votes from people who are non-partisans or who hadn't voted. But,
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but I think that they're going to be a factor in this election. And even, even if their vote doesn't
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increase greatly, it still impacts the Conservatives. Because, you know, for example, I was in Miramichi
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with the Liberals. The Liberals won Miramichi in New Brunswick by about 300 votes. The PPC
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got 1500 votes. That was in 2019. You know, without that 1500 to the PPC, it's almost certain
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that the Conservatives would have held a seat that they've, they held for many years.
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One thing I find remarkable is that Maxime Bernier is really the only party leader who's
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been critical of lockdowns and, and much of the sort of standard approach to tackling the pandemic.
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And it's just curious, whatever you think of these issues, that this has been really some
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of the most momentous changes in our lives and obviously in many decades. And yet the main parties
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preceding this election and in, you know, sitting in the House of Commons and so forth,
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most of them, their main quibbles were just questions of process. You know,
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how many vaccines you're procuring, when you're getting them and so forth, when you're closing the
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airports. But it wasn't a sort of a more wholesale debate about, well, what are we doing? Why are we
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doing it? Maybe we shouldn't support it. And for that percentage of people who views things that
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way, however small they are, and they are in the minority, the majority of people have supported
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a lot of what's happened. It seems like Bernier is the only guy who's really representing that
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perspective. Well, I think Max will say whatever he's required to say to get people to vote for him.
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I mean, he tweeted something out yesterday about, well, it was a speech. I actually saw him give a
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speech where he talked about revolution. I mean, I remember Maxime Bernier when he was in the
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Conservative Party. He was a free marketer. He was a libertarian. He wasn't a revolutionary. So,
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you know, I think he saw which way the wind was blowing. Not that I doubt his sincerity in opposing
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lockdowns. I mean, that fits in with his prior political history. But I think, you know, the case
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for doing things that governments all over this country have done, regardless of their shade,
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the medical case, in my opinion, was justified. So, you know, it doesn't surprise me that there
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was a minority of people who don't agree with that. You know, if you're seeing your business
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decimated or your job gone or whatever, of course, you're going to be angry about that.
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But, but I think that Max is something of an opportunist in seeing the political gap there.
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Okay, maybe it's not fair to say Justin Trudeau wanted to make himself out to be a revolutionary when
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he became Prime Minister, but he certainly wanted to make himself out to be someone very different.
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The old classic saw about I will do politics differently. Obviously, the Sunny Way slogan,
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a number of other slogans that he put out there. John, are people just just tiring of him now after
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six years of him making rather grandiose promises about about to so many different individuals,
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different groups, and so forth, and just not not fulfilling them? I mean, is he wearing almost
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more than six years of baggage right now? Yeah, I think that, you know, all governments
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overstay their welcome. And usually, you know, you can usually say it's around about 10 years.
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But this guy seems to have done it in six. And, you know, maybe because of the intense nature of the
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the pandemic and the fact he was in everybody's faces every day, he just got overexposed. And that
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maybe just truncated the timeline down. But I do think you hit you hit the nail on the head there
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when you say, if you keep saying these things, and then they don't happen, then when you keep when
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you say them, again, in another election, and there, you know, there's an incremental development
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in whatever the promise was in the first place, then people stop believing. And I think people have just
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stopped believing. You know, I was on the road with him for a week, and every single commitment
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that was made in that week was a variation on the theme that he'd already embarked upon, which is,
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you know, not surprising, given the fact that when you've been in government six years and gone
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through two elections, you're continuing on the same road rather than branching off in a completely
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different one. But none of them had any impact. I mean, I don't think anybody could remember what
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Trudeau talked about in the first week of this campaign, right? Other than being asked questions
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about Afghanistan. I mean, it just was a total non event, because people have just discounted these
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suggestions. And, you know, one of the NDP tactics, for example, going to be in the final week of the
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campaign is there is a cost to voting liberal, which is new was new on me. I hadn't heard them say this,
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but you know that the liberals are always saying, well, there's a cost to voting NDP,
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you get a conservative government. Well, these guys are now going to turn around and say there's
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a cost to voting liberal. He'll promise these things and then not delivering them. So if you want
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pharma care or action on climate change, or whatever it might be, then vote NDP. I think that's a smart
00:22:26.240
tactic, because I do think that that there is a sense in the electorate that Trudeau is just not to be
00:22:32.800
believed. Are there a lot of progressives who are still upset about not reforming the electoral
00:22:37.520
system? I mean, I never supported that pledge that Trudeau made. I didn't feel like, you know,
00:22:41.200
you don't need to fix something that's not broken. But that's been a thing that progressives,
00:22:44.480
I mean, Jack Layton was going on about for many years, many NDPers said we got to change the
00:22:48.640
electoral system thought Trudeau would bring it. And maybe that's why he swung a lot of votes
00:22:52.560
originally. And now that was obviously a promise just totally shelved.
00:22:56.000
Yeah, I mean, I never supported it either. But I do think that for those who did, it was their one
00:23:01.200
of their main reasons for voting for the Liberal Party. And whether they still bang on about it when
00:23:08.000
they think about it when they go to the polls, who knows. But it certainly was a major disappointment.
00:23:13.680
And I think if the principal reason you voted for a political party,
00:23:18.240
that party doesn't follow through on that promise, then you're going to be jaundiced about that party
00:23:26.080
going forward. And I think that that is very much where the NDP are coming from when they're
00:23:33.120
when they're aiming at people who might switch between the Liberals and the NDP.
00:23:38.080
You know, tapping into that feeling of disappointment and disillusionment.
00:23:43.040
John, have any of the issues that have been debated during the election campaign or been put
00:23:46.640
forward as major platform planks? Have they surprised you in terms of, you know,
00:23:50.160
why is this the big issue we're talking about here? I always wish foreign affairs was discussed
00:23:53.840
more as one of the issues that is the sole domain of the federal government. You talk about housing,
00:23:58.800
you talk about, you know, climate, COVID-19 or what have you. Those are also provincial issues,
00:24:03.440
municipal issues, foreign affairs, only a federal issue. I feel it never gets the airtime it deserves.
00:24:08.880
Then again, other folks want to see a whole bunch of other issues discussed that are not
00:24:12.480
addressed. Where do we stand in terms of what sort of terrain's actually been covered that
00:24:16.080
matters to people? Well, I mean, I think this is perennial in elections. Foreign affairs, defense,
00:24:23.040
rarely come up in elections. You know, the gun control thing. I mean, at the end of the day,
00:24:27.440
it's a pretty marginal. I mean, I guess it becomes a cultural issue. But, you know, we spent days and
00:24:41.200
Do people really care about all of that, you know? And do people, have they now basically
00:24:45.840
internalized that conservative response that, look, most of the gun's causing trouble.
00:24:50.160
They're coming across the border. They're already illegal guns anyway. I mean, that's kind of an
00:24:53.760
established fact now. Right. I mean, and I think that O'Toole tried to hammer home the fact that
00:24:58.880
violent gun crime in this country has shot up over the last six years, up 20%. And, you know, virtually
00:25:09.040
none of those crimes were committed with the guns that we were talking about. So, yeah, I mean, we do
00:25:13.920
get bogged down on issues that are, you know, in the grand scheme of things, rather marginal. But I guess
00:25:21.360
what it came down to is that people in cities don't like guns of any nature. And it made it look like
00:25:27.040
the Conservative Party was in favour of these semi-automatic weapons, which, you know...
00:25:38.560
I'm not quite sure why it became such a huge issue. But, you know, the places that we're fighting
00:25:48.240
for votes, or that those parties are fighting for votes, the downtowns of big cities just don't like
00:25:53.600
guns. And they lump them all in together. They have no discernment between various types of guns.
00:25:58.880
Well, to circle back to one of the things that we started our conversation with here then,
00:26:02.240
the why are we having this election from the question mark, from the ballot box question,
00:26:07.360
I appreciate that Justin Trudeau, very soon, the day or two after the election was called,
00:26:10.960
he said, well, you know what, now we're talking post-pandemic, what direction we should head in.
00:26:14.720
And, you know, I want to sort of ratify the voters' support for all that. I thought that was
00:26:18.720
remarkably honest. At the same time, I don't really know that we're actually having that conversation.
00:26:23.760
So, even though there have been such momentous things, whether we're talking about people
00:26:28.240
frustrated with the relationship with China going on right now, or, you know, oil and gas sector,
00:26:33.440
major issues being decimated, that's not being discussed at all, talking about post-pandemic
00:26:37.680
issues, momentous changes to our lives. I feel like, well, that's not actually, you know,
00:26:41.520
the lead thrust in Perry right now. I mean, John, has this bizarrely been,
00:26:45.440
despite everything that's in the headlines, has this kind of been an election about nothing?
00:26:50.640
Well, it has a bit. I mean, you make a very good point there. Probably a good column for you,
00:26:55.360
You know, when he called the election, he called it the most important since 1945.
00:27:04.080
And yet, you're right. I mean, you know, even climate change,
00:27:09.600
pandemic recovery. To give O'Toole's due, that's what has, he's been laser focused on this plan that
00:27:18.160
he waves around at every single press conference and talks about Canada's recovery. I think it's
00:27:23.040
been a very disciplined campaign by the Conservatives. So they have been talking about the things that
00:27:28.480
they want to talk about. And Trudeau less so, you know? I mean, Trudeau is talking by and large about
00:27:38.480
why not to vote in a Conservative government. And it's been a really disappointing campaign from him,
00:27:44.880
I think. I think that even if he gets reelected, even Liberals would look at that and go, you know,
00:27:51.760
this is the guy of sunny ways. This is the guy of the hopeful narrative. He calls an election,
00:27:57.280
it's meant to be the most important since 1945. It's meant to be about, where's Canada going in
00:28:02.000
the next few years? And yet, it's been, the only memorable moments of it have been about
00:28:08.720
the negative side of it and why you shouldn't vote for the Conservative Party. So it may well be that
00:28:17.760
voters look at that and go, well, that's what most failing campaigns do. That's what the Conservative
00:28:24.320
campaign sounded and looked like in 2015 when they had the barbaric practices hotline. I mean,
00:28:32.800
that's the type of desperation you get reduced to when you feel everything slipping away. And that's
00:28:38.240
kind of what it feels like to me. So John, I hate to ask you this question. I know no columnist likes to
00:28:43.040
be asked this on any panel and any radio program. Who's going to pull it off? Who do you see at this
00:28:48.800
point in? Who's going to win here? I mean, Justin Trudeau, it's been remarked, 1972, Pierre Elliott
00:28:53.600
Trudeau gets a minority. Oh, he's going to be gone forever. Uh-uh. He got a majority and it was just the
00:28:58.080
beginning of the Trudeau show. Then again, well, no, it looks like Trudeau could be on the way out and
00:29:05.760
It's at this stage, it's really is too close to call. But, uh, you know, so
00:29:13.120
Aaron O'Toole needs to be well ahead in the popular vote. You know, three, four, five points ahead
00:29:19.360
doesn't guarantee him the most number of MPs. Because Andrew Scheer won the popular vote in 2019.
00:29:25.440
Right. So you see that the polls at the moment have the Conservatives ahead. That does not mean they're
00:29:29.040
winning the election. So, um, that really works against the Conservatives. They need to get some,
00:29:35.360
some clear blue water between them and the, and the Liberals. And we don't see that at the moment.
00:29:40.000
I think it comes down to whether Project Fear works. Does, do these progressive voters
00:29:48.480
pay heed to these, uh, Liberal attack ads and say, well, if I'd like to vote NDP, but I can't because
00:29:54.880
if I do, O'Toole wins. We don't want a Conservative government. If the NDP strategy to retain,
00:30:02.800
to boost its vote after a good performance by Jagmeet Singh in the debates, if they can retain that
00:30:11.520
vote, they didn't last time, it slipped back away to the Liberals. But if they can retain that vote,
00:30:16.400
then I think that a strong NDP showing gives O'Toole a real chance.
00:30:20.240
Will Project Fear work? Wow. John Iverson, thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate your insights.
00:30:28.160
Full Common is a post-media podcast. I'm Anthony Fury. This episode was produced by Andre Proulx,
00:30:34.640
with theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive producer. You can subscribe to Full
00:30:39.600
Common on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can help us by giving us
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