Juno News - September 10, 2023


Conservatives are optimistic about next election. Should they be？

Topics
Conservative optimism at convention
Hosted by
Andrew Lawton
Mentioned
Pierre Poilievre Andrew Scheer Melissa Lantzman Stephen Harper Justin Trudeau Ronna Ambrose
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Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

159.31

Word count

717

Sentence count

37


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The mood at the Conservative National Convention in Quebec City has been jubilant, and it s often been remarked that it feels like an in-government convention in terms of the level of optimism that people have. I spoke to Andrew Scheer, a former Conservative leader, about why people are feeling so optimistic.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.200 I'm here in Quebec City for day two of the Conservative Party of Canada's National Convention.
00:00:06.380 Now, despite the fact that the Conservatives have lost the last three elections
00:00:10.120 and have gone through four leaders in that time,
00:00:13.440 plus Candace Bergen as interim leader and Ronna Ambrose as interim leader as well,
00:00:18.500 the mood here has been rather jubilant.
00:00:20.840 It's often been remarked by some of the participants that it feels a little bit like
00:00:24.060 an in-government convention in terms of the level of optimism that people have.
00:00:28.200 Now, a few things have changed. Not only did Pierre Polyev win the leadership last year
00:00:32.400 with a resounding majority on the first ballot,
00:00:35.440 a more commanding victory than any Conservative leader has had in the last few leader elections,
00:00:40.600 including Stephen Harper, by the way.
00:00:42.500 But more importantly, it also is very much noted that the Liberals are being decimated in polls right now.
00:00:49.300 Now, you have to take polls with a grain of salt, but pretty consistently over the last few weeks,
00:00:53.540 polls have been showing the Conservatives doing incredibly well.
00:00:56.220 A recent abacus poll this week showed the Conservatives at 40 percent.
00:01:00.400 The Liberals trailing, I think, 15 or 14 points behind that.
00:01:04.400 Now, obviously, this is difficult momentum to keep up indefinitely until another election,
00:01:08.660 which could be as long away as 2025.
00:01:11.740 But this is a little bit about why people are feeling so optimistic.
00:01:14.980 I spoke to Andrew Scheer about this, a former Conservative leader
00:01:17.780 and a very big champion of the Conservative Party now under Pierre Polyev.
00:01:21.600 Why are people here so hopeful?
00:01:23.360 This is an incredible atmosphere right now.
00:01:26.780 And, you know, we try not to get too hung up in the polls.
00:01:29.700 They go up and down.
00:01:31.100 But the thing that is so encouraging is when you look at the number of people
00:01:35.080 that have been coming out to Conservative events,
00:01:37.280 every delegate I've spoken to, every riding president says,
00:01:40.120 you know, when we do an event now, we're getting people who have never come out,
00:01:43.340 not just to a Conservative Party event, but a political event in general.
00:01:46.400 So Pierre's message of tackling the cost of living crisis that Justin Trudeau has caused
00:01:52.140 by bringing inflation down, lowering interest rates,
00:01:54.360 it's really speaking to the hurt that people are feeling.
00:01:57.140 In addition to the core principles, Conservative principles that he has stood up for,
00:02:01.620 getting rid of the carbon tax, protecting individual freedom and free speech.
00:02:05.500 So there's a lot of reasons why people are enthusiastic and optimistic.
00:02:10.240 Scheer's comments were echoed by other members of Parliament and delegates I spoke with.
00:02:14.420 I raised it with Deputy Leader of the Conservatives, Melissa Lantzman.
00:02:18.040 You know, with thousands of delegates from across the country,
00:02:20.760 every single riding represented in beautiful Quebec City,
00:02:25.160 that doesn't hurt with nice weather.
00:02:28.000 The vibe here is electric.
00:02:30.500 People are excited.
00:02:32.380 Look, it's not lost on you.
00:02:34.320 The poll numbers look good and that has an effect on people.
00:02:37.640 It means that all of the work that all of these folks do,
00:02:41.220 every single day on the ground, in their ridings,
00:02:44.420 is resonating and the message that we've been on track with for a number of years,
00:02:50.420 and particularly in the last year, is resonating with Canadians.
00:02:54.100 As you can hear there, obviously, people are very hopeful.
00:02:57.320 Now, the question will be,
00:02:59.040 what does the Conservative vision look like moving forward?
00:03:02.380 You'll see in my interview with Andrew Scheer,
00:03:04.100 that'll be coming out next week on my show,
00:03:06.240 we talked about the coalition that exists around the Conservative Party.
00:03:09.880 People from all these different groups, like social conservatives,
00:03:12.540 libertarians, fiscal people, foreign policy people,
00:03:15.860 that all have to come together and get along
00:03:17.680 under what's often referred to as the big blue tent.
00:03:20.720 Now, so far, it seems like we're not seeing those fault lines
00:03:24.380 or fractures within the party, certainly not at this convention.
00:03:27.460 So with a party that's unified, riding high in the polls,
00:03:30.060 an unpopular prime minister,
00:03:31.780 it is very much the case that the Conservative Party of Canada right now
00:03:35.160 thinks the next election is it's to lose.
00:03:37.480 Whether they're right or wrong, we will see in due course.
00:03:40.380 For True North from Quebec City, I'm Andrew Lawton.
00:04:00.060 Thank you.