Jeff Russ, National Post writer and writer at Without Diminishment joins me on the show to talk about the generational divide in the conservative movement, and why young people in Canada are the least happy generation in the country, according to a new poll.
00:00:00.000Hi, Juneau News. I'm joined here by Jeff Russ, National Post writer, writer at Without Diminishment.
00:00:11.060Terrific young conservative talent. We're thankful to have him back on the show today.
00:00:14.360I hope you're having a Merry Christmas. Jeff, how are you?
00:00:18.820I'm great. Merry Christmas to you too. And thanks for having me back.
00:00:22.260Yeah, of course. You're a regular. Jeff, you're, let's talk generational.
00:00:27.340Oh, S-H-I-T. Let's, let's talk the, the, the, the modern conservative movement, which is, which continues to grow.
00:00:34.560You're a figure on what is referred to as the new right. You're a young conservative thought leader, but you think Canada in a, in a poll from CTV news going into the holiday break here, they're the least happy generation in the country.
00:00:48.740We see recent polling from abacus data that always seems to understand, David Coletto, credit to him, always seems to actually dig into this stuff and care about it.
00:00:58.080Indicating that, you know, the surge in support for young conservatives continues, but the party, the federal party continues to struggle with older demographics.
00:01:07.360What, what factors do you think are driving this divide right now?
00:01:11.480Well, the most obvious one is Canada. If you're above a certain age, it's a fantastic country to live in. If you are of a certain age, you've worked your whole life, you've made a lot of money, you own your house, you've benefited from the healthcare system, and you have a nice fat pension on top of it, especially if you're a public servant.
00:01:28.520If that is the case, this is, this is paradise. The worst thing is that it gets cold and you have enough money to fly down to Scottsdale or Palm Beach.
00:01:38.500If you're under the age of 40, I mean, people say 35, I think it's under the age of 40 at this point. It's tough out there. If you're, if you've got a mortgage during COVID, for example, with those dirt cheap variable interest rates, you are getting screwed.
00:01:53.320Um, and again, you know, maybe some people should have had some more due diligence when it comes to buying houses in such a unique economic climate, but just the promise of Canada.
00:02:03.640I think Pierre Poly has alluded to this. The promise of Canada really is not there. And that only gets more evident year after year. And it's interesting when you look at the poll, uh, people like to cite, uh, 18 to 24 as a conservative demographic.
00:02:19.420It's much more split. It's more or less 40, 40 between the liberals and the conservatives, but that older range, those under 40 from, I think it's 25 to 40. Those are the ones that really, um, like what Pierre Poly has to offer in the conservatives.
00:02:35.120And I would be careful about describing too much of it to conservative ideology. I don't think these people picked up the conscience of a conservative. I don't think they read right here, right now by Stephen Harper.
00:02:45.200I think there are people who are frustrated and they'll vote for the one who wants to effectively break this system. This one where all the wealth floats up to the top for people who already have more than enough.
00:02:54.920Um, I'm not calling for, um, I'm not calling for, I'm not calling here for redistribution of wealth. This is simply making the system a little more loose so more can fall back down to young people.
00:03:04.800If they can, because people are working hard to grab that, uh, they, or I should say that opportunity at wealth, that simply is not there for them to pick up, whether it be a job opportunity, whether it be a favorable rent situation.
00:03:17.600Yeah. And I think one of the things to keep in mind was why I say, it's not so much an ideological thing. Canada is very unique in the English speaking world with young people voting conservative in Australia. It's all for labor in Britain. They're not voting for Nigel Farage and reform.
00:03:34.600Um, it's whoever has suffered in the last decade and the government that oversaw that is going, has lost young people.
00:03:41.600Yeah. It's funny when you look at the polling dynamics and you're right. Cause, cause some folks in our sphere, um, and it's great that they're interested in this stuff, but they, they go intellectual minded. They go, oh, all the kids must be reading like Roger Scruton or like they picked up lament for a nation. And it's, it's like, no, it's, it's, it, it, there are some sure.
00:04:01.980But in the polling data, what you're actually seeing, it's like the, the tale of two countries here where it's, there's the people who got out of the economy. And then there are the people who are still in it.
00:04:11.640And if you are in it, if you are working aged or attempting to get off the launching pad, you are just stuck. It is this unvarnished truth that, you know, this works for the folks who were able to golden parachute out and, and 10 X their housing value and much respect to them.
00:04:28.880And so the, the, the concern there is that, and I think the conservatives in some ways, this is getting away from them federally. Um, cause we talk about, or I make jokes about things like gerontocracy or you point out the, the obviousness of like, Hey, we're doing a young old thing. And it's like, that's all well and good. One, our, our, our boomers and our esteemed older conservatives.
00:04:51.880It's not fair to, to just go like, it's all your fault. Cause it's not, but how do you, how do you bring them back? How do you, because I also understand the folks who view reform as threatening, who view reform as kind of spiritually NDP and revolutionary and problematic.
00:05:12.640And so how do the federal conservatives maybe better thread a needle there? Like, how do you, how do you become more stately? How do you, you don't want to tone police because the, the moment calls for urgency, but I like, I haven't been able to figure out how the heck they better balance this, but they have to, because that over 60 vote, it is just going headlong into the wilderness, not to come back.
00:05:36.640And all these working Canadians are looking around going like, guys, it still sucks here. Please don't leave us behind. We do need reform within a reasonable framework.
00:05:49.000This is going to be, this pains me to say, I don't think there's an easy path to do it through policy or, or brushing up the image of the party.
00:05:57.940I firmly believe the last election was a culture of war election in which, you know, this image of seventies and eighties, Canada, you look at the Mike Myers ad, it was very much a nostalgia election.
00:06:08.900And it's nostalgia that people under a certain age, simply, this is a fantasy land to them.
00:06:13.620And for our world, us of working age, our world is a dystopian fantasy land to them, but they seem content to vote for it all the same.
00:06:22.640I think the, if you look at the conservative vote show in the last election, it was huge. It's the biggest since they've ever gone since Brian Mulvaney any other year. That's a majority government.
00:06:33.200I do believe the battle lines are firmly drawn. I think the conservatives can appeal to them. I think perhaps if they want to not be as sharp, but people want to have someone, if you're struggling, you want to have a sharp leader.
00:06:45.560I don't see any value in abandoning, if you want to call it a populist approach. I think that actually worsens it. I think this unravels the big coalition that conservatives have amassed under Pierre Polyev.
00:06:56.400I think a lot of it comes up, I mean, a lot of it comes up just to, or it comes down rather to the collapsed NDP vote in the last election.
00:07:05.560And much respect to Mark Carney's career, he very much presents exactly the type of person who older Canadians would love to vote for.
00:07:14.000Older, managerial, doesn't involve himself in the culture war, very much presents himself as being part of that 15th fantasy land.
00:07:22.340So I'm not sure if there's a policy solution, because people always say, where's the conservative policy? Where's Pierre Polyev's policy? He's all talk.
00:07:31.940Well, they had a huge policy, but he actually proposed a lot of policies.
00:07:35.020The liberals took half of them. Like, it's like, where do you think these came from?
00:07:40.440Precisely. Subvering, low-information voters are a powerful bloc.
00:07:44.900I think that that bloc that voted for Carney last election, by and large, have picked their guy, and I think they'll stick by him, barring a scandal.
00:07:53.620So I think the conservatives just need to stay the course. I think it is on the NDP to recover and be a real party and not just be the bootluckers of the government as they were under Jagmeet Singh.
00:08:06.900But I think if the conservatives wanted to tell us something, perhaps they could talk more about a national narrative, a cultural narrative.
00:08:13.840It was a huge weak spot for them in the last election.
00:08:17.260Elbows up is not the story of Canada. It's the story of a few Canadians.
00:08:21.780The fortunate, well, I shouldn't say a few, there's millions of them, but it's the story of a very large bloc.
00:08:27.000But I think if conservatives forged a greater cultural narrative about what Canada is and why it deserves to exist, because let's face it, on the left, there is a huge narrative that it doesn't deserve to exist.
00:08:40.600I do believe that it can be easy to pin the anti-Canadian label on the conservatives because they talk about the problems as they should.
00:08:47.820But if you don't talk about this country being as great as it is, then I think that could fall short.
00:08:52.760And I think conservatives could use some reinforcing on that.
00:08:55.140Yeah, and it was such a shame and a flat foot of them so, so profoundly where all of a sudden all these these understandable reforms that needed to be enacted and like fighting for being fighters for a working class, working poor, young people who are just getting absolutely screwed.
00:09:12.620It was viewed as disloyal. It was viewed as traitorous.
00:09:15.880Daniel Smith repeatedly, you know, over the past few months, while she's been sort of the one sane head during tariff negotiations, has been branded as a traitor by these by these sort of the Thomas Lukacic crowd and these sort of some of these carny boomers.
00:09:29.840And so drawing off that cultural piece, you have a piece in the National Post going into the holidays talking about how Canada's purpose must be deeper than diverse takeout menus.
00:09:41.040You referenced sociologists on the importance of shared rituals for building solidarity.
00:09:47.820How do traditions like Christmas lights and concerts contribute to this collective effervescence, as you describe it, in Canadian society?
00:09:57.280Well, I certainly would never use the word effervescence.
00:10:00.420That was Durkheim, the sociologist, and I was quoting him.
00:10:03.720I would ban the use of that word in any publication.
00:10:14.420Christmas is a great, great tradition.
00:10:16.400It's a great ritual to see all your neighbors put up Christmas lights and beautify your neighborhood for December and maybe a little bit of January, too.
00:10:22.640It builds that solidarity and familiarity.
00:10:24.240And from there, you get confidence from the shared rituals that you have in community.
00:10:27.940I think we should be, a lot of people who come to Canada don't come from countries where Christmas is big.
00:10:33.060And I think it's important to emphasize that Christmas is huge in Canada.
00:10:37.540It's a great, beautiful thing where people can come together and share in this great tradition that we have.
00:10:43.380It doesn't matter if you're Christian, secular, non-Christian.