The leaders of Ontario and Florida are sparring over Premier Doug Ford s decision not to visit Florida this year. Meanwhile, angry Australians are lashing out at their own government s immigration laws after a terror attack in Sydney that claimed 15 lives.
00:12:06.100I'm not sure how many winters I've got left in me where I'm going to be sitting here saying, yeah, I'm good with frozen sidewalks and frigid temperatures.
00:13:00.660You know, I think Niagara Falls is an underutilized tourism destination right now.
00:13:07.260You know, I grew up in Hamilton and, you know, immigrant parents, every time an auntie or a granny or some relative came to the country, what did they want to see?
00:15:05.020Niagara Falls is, you know, an incredible spot that most people want to see at least once in their lifetime as opposed to, you know, 185 times like I've seen it.
00:16:57.640But they may actually start to get a little turned off because they'll start to see it as a hostile feeling on their part, on America's part.
00:17:06.540And all I have to do is allude to the booing of the national anthem, that kind of thing.
00:17:10.040That made huge news in the United States.
00:17:12.860And so, you know, a lot of Trump voters, you know, you've got a lot of Trump voters in places like Michigan, which went with Trump.
00:17:19.000You have in Ohio, in Wisconsin, even upstate New York, as you know.
00:17:24.320You go to the whole area around Buffalo.
00:17:27.840Like, Buffalo voted for Kamala Harris.
00:17:31.160Buffalo is very definitely a Democratic spot.
00:17:34.240But the entire area around Buffalo went for Trump.
00:17:41.380Riverside County in California, where I'm going to be spending the next few weeks, it went for Trump.
00:17:48.540You know, mildly, but it went for Trump.
00:17:50.980There were a lot of places that were not expected to go for Trump that did.
00:17:54.880But so, yeah, you've got you've got to be concerned about that and what it means for how people react to you for how they will come or not.
00:18:09.680Look, Canadian travel to the United States.
00:18:12.680The last numbers I saw was down about 25 percent.
00:18:24.580But if you're a tourist operator in New England, if you're in Washington State, if you're in upstate New York, you're seeing fewer travelers.
00:18:36.880You know, so are those same people going to come?
00:18:41.500I was down in Niagara Falls earlier this year, I think in August.
00:18:48.720And I was running into a lot of Americans who were not saying that they were turned off by that.
00:18:55.360But, you know, Premier Ford's rhetoric has become more anti-American as things have gone on.
00:19:10.160And I don't think that's a good thing.
00:19:11.680Yeah, I mean, if you would reverse it and say, you know, you had a government in the United States that was openly hostile towards our prime minister, whether you like him or not, doesn't matter.
00:19:23.640I mean, there might be some Canadians that say, you know what, I don't feel comfortable now going to the United States because we've got the president of the United States who is leveling as many shots as he can at our leader.
00:19:34.820And like him or not, he's still our guy.
00:20:36.200If for instance, there's any more floor crossers, what do you make of this issue?
00:20:40.220So my view, and I put this in a column at the Toronto Sun and continue to write about this at the substack of prionlily.com, is that if.
00:20:52.880If Pierre Polyev loses one or two more MPs that cross over to the liberals before the leadership review in January, then I'm not sure how he survives.
00:21:07.960Maybe the base shows up and says, no, we still love you.
00:21:22.960But you know what else may happen is that the caucus may turn against them.
00:21:29.300And that's what happened to Andrew Scheer.
00:21:31.880That's what happened to Aaron O'Toole.
00:21:33.540Uh, and if the party can't fundraise, if the party can't recruit good candidates, if all these problems are getting in the way, then the caucus may remove Polyev, even if the base doesn't.
00:21:51.640What does that do to the party and the base?
00:21:54.060Well, that's, you know, a question for another day.
00:21:57.140But, look, I think that Polyev is on the right issue at the moment, and that is affordability.
00:22:05.560We saw the stats hand-can numbers come out yesterday showing that, uh, while core inflation is at 2.2%, okay, not great, but manageable, um, food inflation is at 4.7% year over year.
00:22:21.900In the last five years, your grocery bill has gone up more than 27%.
00:22:26.420How many of us can look at that and say, yeah, my, uh, my income's gone up by 27%.
00:22:32.320I can afford to feed my family, uh, at the same way that I did five years ago.
00:22:41.080And so Canadians are looking for a party and a government that will deal with that.
00:22:48.300And right now, when they look at it, it's not the carny liberals that they're looking to.
00:22:53.920The latest polling from abacus, A, shows that the parties are effectively tied neck and neck.
00:23:01.440And B, that the conservatives are viewed as more favorable to deal with the issue of cost of living.
00:23:10.320The number one issue for Canadian voters is the cost of living.
00:23:14.660The number one issue within the subset of cost of living is, uh, the cost of groceries.
00:23:21.640So Pierre Polyev needs to keep hammering on that between now and January.
00:23:26.640And then needs, if he survives in January, needs to keep hammering on that past that.
00:23:34.240But if he keeps losing MPs, then the question really becomes, can you manage your own caucus?
00:23:43.100And look, we've got, you know, I'm sitting steps away from Queens Park where the Ontario liberals are leaderless and people keep saying Nathaniel Erskine-Smith is the next great savior for the, uh, the Ontario liberals.
00:24:01.460Well, he's a renegade in his own federal liberal caucus.
00:24:05.480And I keep saying, how can you lead a caucus if you can't be in one?
00:24:09.400He's that much of a, a wild ride that he can't be within a caucus.
00:24:14.900Well, if you can't manage a caucus, how can you be party leader?
00:24:18.820Um, and if Polyev keeps losing MPs, then yeah, there's gotta be a big question about whether he's the guy to take them into the next election.
00:24:30.980Um, and you know, Western Canadians may look at this and say, well, it's all Eastern Canadian MPs, Michael Ma from Toronto, Chris Dantremont, but Matt Jenner is from Edmonton.
00:24:43.600So there's, there's going to be a lot of questions around how things are, are working for the conservatives.
00:24:51.160If Polyev loses one or two more MPs, which is the rumor.
00:24:55.140And also, you know, look for whether, um, uh, Idlok from, uh, Nunavut, the new Democrat MP, uh, stays in the NDP caucus or moves to the, the liberals.
00:25:08.640Cause that is one of the rumors happening as well.
00:25:52.040Um, and I hear claims about him that don't resonate with the guy that I know, but I know Pierre Polyev on a way, you know, I first met him on his first election campaign.
00:26:02.640I was local reporter when he was a new local MP, I, I've known him on a very different level.
00:26:10.660Um, how that works out for, you know, the general public is different.
00:26:16.440Now, as far as caucus, that becomes a different issue.