00:06:43.220Well, I mean, I guess you can ask that.
00:06:45.060But I mean, they could just lie. I mean, presumably when you're running for a party, that's already the biggest kind of proof point you have that you're serious about that party.
00:06:55.060Right. Like we're going down the path where it's like, well, I'm running for the conservatives.
00:06:58.620But, you know, who knows? Maybe I won't. You know, it's really asking a lot for a voter to have to be like, well, you know, what is you know, what is your deepest passion?
00:07:07.460like what would it take to get you to convert and like have to sort of like measure candidate
00:07:11.700loyalties to their own party that they're choosing voluntarily to self-identify with
00:07:16.020like it's a preposterous request the whole premise of canadian democracy is that when you choose to
00:07:21.860run under a party label you are loyal to that party you are loyal to the leader as i said in
00:07:26.980that tweet you know you're getting into politics because a vote for you is an indirect vote to
00:07:31.860help make the head of your party the prime minister of the country the prime ministership
00:07:36.100is an incredibly powerful office you know being elected to a majority government is even more
00:07:41.060powerful than a minority government you know this is just the basic architecture of how our
00:07:44.820parliamentary system is supposed to work and yet what i see a lot is you have these people in the
00:07:49.460media you have these kind of you know self-proclaimed experts of canadian parliamentary
00:07:53.060democracy who talk in this like hectoring condescending way where it's like well you
00:07:57.460know nothing is actually going wrong this is just how our system works and mps can do whatever they
00:08:01.940want and you know they're a liberal one day a conservative the next day like who are you to
00:08:05.640complain this is just our way of doing things and I think people are right to be pretty cynical about
00:08:10.600that because supposedly Canada is a democracy and supposedly the preference of the voters actually
00:08:15.900matter like we're not living in you know the Soviet Union or Iran or something where we just
00:08:20.780have these sham elections and the politicians just do whatever they please right in theory
00:08:25.800there's supposed to be some line of accountability between the MP the political party they represent
00:08:31.480and the voter who made an expressed preference at the ballot box and then sort of the collective
00:08:37.100wisdom of the voters of this country who, you know, on election night, we are told if we
00:08:41.680collectively elected a minority government or a majority government, if all that stuff goes out
00:08:45.880the window and if this is all just kind of like a performative exercise in which, you know, we just
00:08:49.740elect random people and they just do whatever they want and the voters have no say, yeah, then I
00:08:53.960think we are right to be cynical because we are in a very different system at that point than the
00:08:58.280system that we've been taught to believe we live in, you know, starting in elementary school.
00:09:02.320A lot of people predicted that we would be going to the polls in 2026, that this government would
00:09:08.280not be around a whole lot longer. But it seems to me that maybe that's changed now. And it also
00:09:15.440suggests, despite polls, that suggests that the liberals are way ahead. I mean, I'm asking polling
00:09:21.220that has them up by 15 points. So you would think, based on those types of numbers, that the liberals
00:09:29.040We can little trounce the conservatives next time
00:09:31.780and get our majority the old-fashioned way.
00:09:34.600But instead, they're doing it this way.
00:09:36.580What does that tell you about Mark Carney,
00:09:38.260that he would rather do it in a sneaky way,
00:09:42.560luring conservatives and New Democrats to cross the floor
00:09:46.320rather than go to the polls and ask Canadians
00:09:49.940to give him the majority that he is seeking?
00:09:53.100Yeah, that's a very good question, actually.
00:09:55.240And it's one that I honestly like don't understand. Like even if we assume the worst of Mark Carney, like the more kind of cynical sort of schemey thing to do would be to just call an election when your poll numbers are higher. You know, that's a tried and true cynical technique in Canadian democracy.
00:10:09.940The idea of just kind of cobbling together this kind of ideologically incoherent majority government of like one, like just kind of creeping over that magical line from minority to majority, like, I don't know, that seems like a kind of dopey way to go about doing things.
00:10:25.400Because even if you have a majority of government of one or even have a majority government of two or three, you know, you're just a few resignations or deaths or, you know, party switches in the other direction to lose that.
00:10:34.820So you would think that a prime minister would just be inclined when his numbers are good to just, you know, pull the trigger and have a big election and win a big solid majority that way.
00:10:43.900I don't know. I mean, maybe Carney is just a little risk averse because, of course, Carney only got into power in the first place because of a dramatic, unpredicted, you know, sort of swing in the polls towards him.
00:10:54.040and so maybe he's just a little risk averse and worried that you know he could live and die by
00:10:58.640the same sword and that maybe something could happen that could see the pendulum swing in the
00:11:02.800opposite direction and then you know he would regret uh calling the early election but it's
00:11:07.220it's a good question and it's and again like this is something the press should be asking
00:11:10.920carney is basically committing this conspiracy in open sunlight and yet there's this kind of
00:11:17.320passivity in the canadian press where just like oh well you know this is just happening and isn't
00:11:21.820this interesting how he's doing this and hmm what will the next day bring right it's like no he's
00:11:26.420actually doing a thing he's consciously plotting in this very conspicuous way so we should ask him
00:11:32.240like why are you doing this what is your logic mr prime minister and then like i said also ask all
00:11:37.080the mps who have been converted or who have been uh sort of courted to convert how exactly is this
00:11:42.880pitch being made what are you being offered yeah and of course there's always rumors out there there
00:11:49.940was that story posited by the guy at La Presse who said there were 10 conservatives potentially
00:11:57.260that were ready to cross and the inevitable finger pointing that takes place at the leader,
00:12:04.100which is to say, you know, is it his fault? We just had a very successful from the conservatives
00:12:09.320vantage point from Paglia's standpoint, leadership review that had him at 87% support. So we all
00:12:16.380thought that was put to bed. But again, they resurrect concerns about his leadership.
00:12:21.380And there were no direct shots at Polya by Marilyn Gladue, except she just said,
00:12:28.380well, you know, I really wanted to work with a smart leader.
00:12:33.380Maybe that was directed at Pierre Polya, or a serious leader, you know.
00:12:38.380And I don't know where she was going with that.
00:12:43.380But how do you see this, if you do in fact see it, coming back on Polyev? Will this cast a shadow over his leadership once again?
00:12:52.940Well, I don't know. This also sort of gets to, I think, a kind of breakdown of the lines of authority in Canadian democracy.
00:12:59.980It's like, who exactly is Polyev supposed to get his mandate from? Who is he serving, right?
00:13:06.240Like, is he serving the membership that overwhelmingly reelected him as conservative leader? Or is he serving like the caucus, which is, you know, overwhelmingly loyal? Or is he somehow like accountable to these dissident MPs and that, you know, a small minority of the caucus whose loyalty to the party is clearly incredibly fragile to the part where they would join the party that they just finished running against?
00:13:28.500Like, is that who Pierre Polyev as conservative leader should be most sensitive to? Like the least representative faction of his own caucus? I don't know. It's very strange, right? And it's like, you know, we know when we look at polls that Pierre Polyev is still popular with conservative voters, you know, the Conservative Party is still at the end of the day, competing quite well in the head to head against Mark Carney.
00:13:50.200like we're not looking at some sort of existential wipeout if an election was held tomorrow i mean
00:13:55.280the liberals are up as you said but the conservative party is you know still doing quite
00:13:59.140well and pierre has led the party to its best showing in you know uh i believe decades right
00:14:04.160so i don't know it's it's it's just this it's a strange sort of calculus where we're being
00:14:10.300like the the lines of accountability traditionally understood between the voter the party the party
00:14:16.800leader the base all of this kind of stuff is getting muddled by all of these sort of machinations
00:14:21.540and then a press that's sort of pushing certain narratives because they want to see certain
00:14:25.340outcomes as well i don't know i it's it's it's not a great point for canadian democracy when things
00:14:30.800to for things to be this muddled and for people to be so actively muddling them as a type of
00:14:37.960political strategy you know i do think that that is responsible for a lot of cynicism because it
00:14:42.640makes the Canadian political system seem very confusing, very counterintuitive, governed by a
00:14:48.560kind of like alien Ottawa logic, as opposed to just the kind of common sense logic that I think
00:14:53.160your average, you know, voter on the street assumes that their democracy operates according
00:14:58.120to. So, yeah, it's, it's, it ain't great. Yeah, and these MPs have to look their neighbors in the
00:15:05.300eye, too. I mean, that can't be an easy thing to do, whether you're a Michael Ma or Chris
00:15:10.960We know that they ultimately lose, right?
00:15:16.060We know that party crossers don't tend to get rewarded very much by their electorate when they do this.
00:15:22.260Because, you know, most people, like, this is the thing, too.0.61
00:15:24.240It's like most Canadians are voting for the party, as they should, right?
00:15:27.800You should vote for the basis of the party because by voting on the basis of the party, you're helping make a certain person prime minister, right?
00:15:34.160The prime ministership is an extraordinarily important job in our political system.
00:15:38.040So you should vote for the party whose leader you think would be best suited to run the country.
00:15:43.780Like, this is not a sort of radical proposition, at least it shouldn't be.
00:15:47.480But now we're sort of being told it's like, oh, well, you know, the MPs should just be able to pick whoever they want.
00:15:53.160And, you know, they are the real sort of, you know, figures of agency in our parliamentary system, which is just it's just not true.
00:15:59.620Like, we all know that that's not how Canadian democracy has ever worked up until like five minutes ago,
00:16:04.180where we're suddenly being sort of told to, you know, retroactively justify the bizarre way in
00:16:09.640which Carney plans to get his majority, that he was denied by voters. Yeah. J.J. McCullough,
00:16:15.300where do people find you online? You can just find me on my fabulous YouTube channel. J.J.
00:16:21.240McCullough. McCullough is hard to spell, but if you just type J.J. Canada, you'll see me pop up.
00:16:26.520Okay. Thank you, J.J. Appreciate that. If you enjoyed this show, consider supporting
00:16:31.720independent journalism by becoming a premier member of Juno News, go to junonews.com backslash
00:16:38.680straight up. You can find a link below that helps us do what we do. Thank you so much for tuning in.