Juno News - October 07, 2024


How Pierre Poilievre STOLE the youth vote from Justin Trudeau


Episode Stats

Length

21 minutes

Words per Minute

162.12679

Word Count

3,468

Sentence Count

162

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Justin Trudeau came to power in 2015 with a majority government riding high as a young,
00:00:08.120 charismatic, popular, progressive leader. He had the support of an overwhelming amount of young
00:00:13.760 voters in Canada as he pranced around the country extolling the virtues of gender diversity,
00:00:19.980 immigration, and marijuana legalization. Now close to 10 years later, that support is gone.
00:00:25.600 Young voters in this country now consider themselves to be conservatives gearing up to
00:00:30.700 give Pierre Polyev a majority government of his own. But what happened to Justin Trudeau's youth
00:00:36.740 base? And why are young voters in this country not willing to put their support behind Jagmeet Singh
00:00:42.120 instead of Pierre Polyev? Joining us now on The Faulkner Show is Dr. Michael Bonner, a Canadian
00:00:47.440 communications and public policy expert, as well as the author of the 2023 book In Defense of
00:00:53.000 Civilization. Last week in the City Journal, you published this piece about Canada's new
00:00:57.980 young conservatives, in which you explained the phenomenon of young voters abandoning the Liberal
00:01:03.880 Party and the socialists and embracing Pierre Polyev's conservatives. So to start us off,
00:01:09.640 can you explain what is behind this new sudden shift in Canadian politics?
00:01:14.740 Of course, Harrison. Thanks for having me on your show.
00:01:17.780 Yeah, I mean, I think in Canada right now, nothing is more tired and stale than Justin Trudeau's
00:01:26.160 Liberal Party. And, you know, it's no surprise to me that the constituency that brought him to power
00:01:33.380 originally have moved along. He isn't talking their language. It's just sort of one identity,
00:01:41.520 political nostrum after another and sort of various sort of niche preoccupations that don't really
00:01:48.820 speak to the needs of millennials and Generation Z and so forth. And, you know, as I say, I'm not
00:01:56.860 surprised that that portion of the electorate have left him. And of course, it isn't only them,
00:02:02.500 but they are by far the least likely coalition that you might think, you know, would have moved
00:02:14.180 along. You mentioned that one of the reasons for this is that the Liberals have injected identity
00:02:20.920 politics and the claims of racism into every element of political life and really of Canadian life,
00:02:28.100 looking specifically at the military and of our history. So it seems that, in your opinion,
00:02:35.320 the cultural policies and the use of specific words that the Liberal government have adopted,
00:02:43.160 specifically Justin Trudeau, that's played a significant role in their downfall.
00:02:48.100 Yeah, I would say so. I mean, I think it's kind of a substitute for actually doing something. I mean,
00:02:52.680 it's, you know, we, that kind of hypocrisy, we, you know, when I was younger, we didn't really have a
00:02:59.800 name for it. Now we call it virtue signaling. It's virtue signaling on steroids. It's become extremely
00:03:06.660 annoying. And, you know, as I say, it doesn't do anything. I mean, we are not a country that has no
00:03:14.880 particular problems or in which nothing important happens. You know, we have a great deal of challenges
00:03:22.160 not the least of which is housing, the sort of uncontrolled or barely controlled mass immigration
00:03:31.080 that the Liberals now favor, inflation, you name it. We've got a lot of, we've got a lot of different
00:03:38.720 problems. And, you know, talking about, talking about these sort of obscure niche issues or what have
00:03:47.960 you, I mean, they just don't, they don't do anything to address them. And, you know, they,
00:03:52.920 there's only so long the public can put up with that for now, I don't know what it is that, that
00:03:58.280 prevents the Liberals from, from taking any kind of action, you know, that's really sort of up to them.
00:04:05.240 But, you know, talking endlessly about these, these things is, is no solution to anything. And,
00:04:14.960 you know, I'm, I'm sick of it. I suspect you are. And I think that many, many of the people who,
00:04:23.020 who probably, you know, gave Justin Trudeau, a great deal of goodwill back in, in 2015. You know,
00:04:32.520 I think that they're, they're disappointed. And Canada is not alone in this, right? I mean,
00:04:37.640 we've seen this in the UK, we see it in the United States and across Europe, young people are moving
00:04:43.540 towards the right. They are moving in the direction and showing support to charismatic,
00:04:48.820 conservative leaders, populist leaders. So do you think that Justin Trudeau is also
00:04:54.620 almost a victim of this global trend as well? Because we know that the, the, the global left-wing
00:05:02.920 politicians and the powers that be, they look at Justin Trudeau as a, as a figurehead of their
00:05:08.200 movement. They see him as someone that represents the, that sort of globalist open borders ideology.
00:05:14.640 And this seems to be a global shift. So what do you think is behind that, that this is not just
00:05:19.960 in Canada, but it's happening seemingly all over the Western world?
00:05:23.820 Well, first of all, I, I, I do think that there are, there is something to the trend that you
00:05:28.820 mentioned. Yes. There's something different in Canada though. And the, you know, all Canadian
00:05:35.300 politics is, is always going to have a populist element to it. Every party has a, a populist wing
00:05:42.860 or a, you know, we, people talk about prairie populism as being the origin of both the NDP and,
00:05:50.240 uh, uh, and the conservative party. What's, what's distinct though, is, uh, I, I think that Pierre,
00:05:57.820 uh, uh, Poilievre is a, is a, is a, is a far more substantial, uh, leader than you might, uh, think by
00:06:06.280 international standards. He talks the language that, that, uh, youth need to hear. He's squarely focused on
00:06:13.480 the problem of housing, on inflation, on the, um, um, budgetary deficits that Trudeau promised would be
00:06:22.280 gone, um, by now, that sort of thing, you know, real, and he makes them, uh, uh, he, he makes them
00:06:29.520 clearly relevant, uh, when he talks. And, you know, that's, I think, I think, uh, abroad, that's, that's
00:06:37.320 often a sort of missing element. So in addition to the, you know, the, the sort of general malaise or upset
00:06:45.280 or discontent that people might be feeling against a government that's been in power for so long,
00:06:50.140 you know, there are, there are real solutions that seem to be, uh, uh, on offer. And, uh, Pierre is
00:06:58.300 also a young man. He's, uh, he's 43, if I'm not mistaken. Trudeau is 50. Uh, you know, uh, 50 is not
00:07:07.160 exactly old necessarily. He's not, he's not exactly geriatric, but it's, he's, he's older. He's no longer
00:07:12.540 the young, uh, phenomenon that, uh, he seemed, uh, 10 years ago when he was, um, you know, when,
00:07:20.020 when, when he was much more popular, both here and abroad. So, you know, some of, uh, I was going
00:07:26.060 to say some, a lot of that sheen has come off the, the, he, you know, he's, he's tired. The government
00:07:32.480 seems kind of paralysed. It doesn't make, you know, it's sort of incapable of acting, uh, decisively.
00:07:39.260 And as the problems of the post COVID world, uh, close in on us, you know, uh, and arguably even,
00:07:47.940 you know, something of a winding down of globalization and so forth, you know, people
00:07:52.580 are looking elsewhere. Um, people are looking for, you know, something, uh, something new
00:07:59.660 and real solutions. Just to almost play devil's advocate in a way. Um, we know that Pierre
00:08:07.840 Polyev isn't exactly jumping off the charts when it comes to likability. There was recently
00:08:12.940 a national post, uh, Leger poll that basically put Trudeau and Polyev on the same likability
00:08:19.620 level. I believe the question was, I have it here. It was about, uh, which national party
00:08:26.240 leader would they least like to sit next to on a long flight? Polyev and Trudeau managed
00:08:30.940 to come out evenly on that. Um, and the same was, uh, I think there was another question
00:08:35.520 like that. Um, and we've seen governments switch before and, and go from liberal to conservative
00:08:42.320 and conservative back to liberal. And many people just say that this is part of the Canadian
00:08:45.960 system, which is Canadians vote governments out and not necessarily vote them in. Do you
00:08:51.100 think that there's something to that, that this is just Trudeau past his Dubai date and
00:08:56.460 Polyev has come along at the right time rather than Aaron O'Toole or Andrew Scheer, who tried
00:09:00.860 to jump the gun a little bit? Well, yes. I mean, I, I think that there is a certain amount
00:09:08.300 of truth to that, that, that, you know, the, the, the, the popularity of the next government
00:09:13.480 is inversely proportional to how much the previous one was hated. Uh, but look, you said, you made
00:09:20.600 a very important point about leaders, you know, not every leader obviously has the, the
00:09:26.360 same, uh, qualities you generally get some mixture of just sort of agreeableness or likeability
00:09:33.960 or whatever you want to call it. Uh, and something more like empathy and then something more like,
00:09:40.160 uh, you know, like, uh, cerebral qualities, you know, a guy like Pierre Trudeau, the prime
00:09:47.200 minister's father, he was a very cerebral guy. He struck people as, you know, sort of,
00:09:51.920 uh, you know, you wouldn't want to get into an argument with him, but not particularly, you
00:09:56.700 know, empathetic or, or nice. Uh, Reagan, you know, Ronald Reagan, uh, highly, uh, agreeable,
00:10:04.320 you know, uh, jovial, friendly, that sort of thing, but not necessarily a very, uh, you know,
00:10:09.760 not, not really a brainiac. Thatcher, you know, sort of more on the, on the, on the,
00:10:17.680 on the intellectual side also. I, I think that, I think that Pierre has more of that intellectual,
00:10:23.920 uh, tendency to him. You know, I, I, I know him somewhat. I've worked with him, uh, in,
00:10:29.360 in Ottawa, uh, back in the day. I, I, I found him agreeable, but certainly, uh, he, he has that
00:10:37.120 sort of intellectual, uh, quality. He likes, uh, he likes a good verbal sparring match and he likes
00:10:43.600 an intellectual problem. Um, I don't get the impression looking at the current prime minister
00:10:48.960 that he enjoys, uh, intellectual problems or that he is particularly, um, you know, uh,
00:10:57.040 motivated by, uh, verbal sparring matches or arguing about things or whatever, but he does,
00:11:04.560 you know, a lot of people thought that he was, he was, he had some kind of
00:11:08.720 charisma or he was dynamic or something. Maybe some people think he's empathetic. I don't,
00:11:13.360 I don't particularly see that myself, but you know, there are different qualities that appeal to
00:11:18.560 different kinds of people. And I think that the kind of world that we are in now, or that we are
00:11:23.520 entering calls for more of the type of person who's going to take a problem, uh, take the bull by the
00:11:30.240 horns and wrestle the problem to the ground and, and, you know, examine it from every angle and,
00:11:35.840 and, and come up with, uh, come up with some kind of solution, not someone who's going to say fine
00:11:41.040 words. Right. And I think Stephen Harper is someone that falls into that category of someone who's not,
00:11:47.200 not very charismatic, but people looked at him as a competent leader and he struck them as one.
00:11:53.200 Um, how much do you think immigration plays a role in the sudden change we're seeing?
00:11:58.640 It feels just from my perspective, as a young person talking to other younger Canadians,
00:12:03.680 immigration is the topic that everybody's talking about. Everybody's paying attention to it.
00:12:08.640 Pierre Polyev isn't the strongest on this issue. It's not something that he is, you know, really
00:12:13.120 grabbing by the horns, but the, but the Trudeau government seemed to be backtracking heavily
00:12:18.160 now on immigration. Do you think that the sudden shift in Canadian public opinion is part of this
00:12:25.120 shift towards Pierre Polyev's conservatives on, on immigration in particular?
00:12:30.000 Undoubtedly. I mean, as I've written, um, in, in previous pieces,
00:12:38.080 the, um, you know, the Canadian pro immigration consensus was in place for a long time.
00:12:43.520 We never had, you know, there, there were always people who, who thought that there were extremes.
00:12:50.960 They, there were some people who thought that immigration should be so high that eventually
00:12:55.440 we should have, uh, you know, a hundred million Canadians, uh, before the end of the 20th century.
00:13:00.480 You know, there was even a book in the seventies about that, you know, that was kind of weird and
00:13:04.400 extreme, but there were people who thought that. And then there were people on the other side who
00:13:07.840 thought there should be no immigration and the exact opposite extreme, but not a very popular
00:13:14.320 idea. Most people were right down the middle. Most people were happy for a long time with a
00:13:20.800 moderately high level of immigration that kept the, uh, uh, kept the population up and that selected for,
00:13:29.200 uh, people who knew English or French, people who were young and people who were, uh, people who had
00:13:36.880 a job offer. There was, there was sort of an economic, uh, emphasis on it and that kept the consensus
00:13:42.640 strong. The liberals have completely destroyed that. Now, I don't want to speculate on what they
00:13:47.920 thought they were doing or, you know, why they thought this was good. Some people have said, you know,
00:13:54.240 that they, that, that, that it was just a cynical electoral ploy, or, you know, maybe they genuinely
00:14:01.280 believed that, uh, that this was, you know, bound to produce some sort of great economic benefits for
00:14:09.520 everyone. Um, whatever it was, it hasn't worked out and we don't have the infrastructure or, or even the,
00:14:18.720 um, uh, we don't, we don't have the public infrastructure or the housing to accommodate
00:14:24.240 the, the, the, the huge, uh, uh, uh, influx of, of people and very little thought seems to have, uh,
00:14:31.440 gone into that. Um, I, I don't think that Canadians are xenophobic. I don't think that Canadians are
00:14:37.520 naturally disposed to disliking, uh, other people. I think that this is a very different kind of
00:14:44.080 phenomenon from what has taken place in, in many European countries or arguably in the, in the United
00:14:50.400 States. Uh, but the consensus is gone. People want to see lower numbers and the liberals know that
00:14:58.240 there must be polling that they have that reflects this very clearly. And so the numbers are coming
00:15:04.160 down. However, I think, you know, I, I don't have much insight into what goes on around the liberal
00:15:11.200 cabinet table, but the way they're going about it is completely boneheaded. If you ask me, I mean,
00:15:17.600 things like, uh, like if, if, if you ask me things like international students or whatever,
00:15:24.480 you know, that that's low hanging fruit for them. That's very easy to, to, to, to, to chop off
00:15:32.160 and reduce the numbers, but it's terrible. Uh, if, if anything, if anything, bringing in highly educated
00:15:40.080 people who have been, you know, uh, chosen by a unit, highly competitive universities, because our,
00:15:45.520 our universities are outstanding, the universities have chosen these people. They have agreed to pay,
00:15:51.360 you know, higher fees than, than domestic students do. And the, the, the, the, the colleges and the
00:15:58.800 universities are plugged into our industries. They're plugged into the local labor market. You know,
00:16:04.640 this is, if there's one element of the economic immigration file, that's, that's bound to, you know,
00:16:10.320 to, to actually have some kind of beneficial effect for it. It's that, and that's the first
00:16:15.120 thing the liberals cut. I think that's a huge mistake. The, the, the sort of thing that needs
00:16:20.480 to go is the non-economic stuff. Uh, the, the endless family reunifications and chain migration
00:16:27.760 and all the rest of it. We're kind of getting into a different subject here, but you know, this is a mess.
00:16:33.680 It's a mess that they made. They're cleaning it up in, in, or trying to clean it up, I think, in a completely
00:16:40.080 sort of ham fisted way. And even if Canadians don't know about this, or they're not plugged into the details,
00:16:47.360 they know that something is wrong and, you know, it, they can, they can feel it. They're, they're, they're not buying
00:16:53.120 what the liberals are selling and anyone, you know, I think, I think that they're very clearly looking for an alternative.
00:16:59.520 And the, many people will look back on the, the far more moderate and sensible policies of the,
00:17:06.960 uh, of the Harper era and, um, obviously associate that with, uh, the present day conservative party.
00:17:15.760 And that's where they will, you know, that's where the focus of their, uh, um, political interests will be.
00:17:24.080 Right. And you, you mentioned, and I think all Canadians can agree. We look at the polls. We see this.
00:17:29.760 If an election were held today, Pierre Polyev would be the prime minister the following day.
00:17:34.240 Um, and the conservatives would be voted in quite clearly with a lot of the support from young
00:17:39.600 Canadian voters, but that can easily go away. What do you think? What do you think a Pierre Polyev would
00:17:46.000 need to do for him to lose all of this young support, all these young supporters, or do you think that
00:17:50.640 this is a long-term trend that young people are going to stick with the, with the Tories? It doesn't,
00:17:55.440 it doesn't strike me as potentially the way it's going to happen, but, um, what do you,
00:17:59.200 what do you think would have to happen for that, for that to be the case?
00:18:01.840 That's a good question. I mean, what it reminds me of to be frank is like, I don't, I don't know how
00:18:06.400 many times in my life I've heard this, this sort of truism about how young people are naturally left-wing
00:18:13.040 and that they get more conservative as they age. Okay. Let's like, first of all, that's like, I don't
00:18:20.480 think that that's necessarily true, but even if it were, even, even if it were, you know, you're faced
00:18:26.560 with this population that gets older and then according to the adage, people get more conservative.
00:18:33.360 So, you know, like millennials are getting older, you know, I, I, I, I'm, I'm from 1982, you know,
00:18:40.160 I still remember the cold war and, you know, I'm, I'm not, I now have a family. I've got, uh, friends
00:18:47.120 who, who have growing families or they're starting their families. You know, you naturally start to
00:18:51.520 think about life a little bit differently when that sort of thing happens. I don't expect that to change.
00:18:57.680 If anything, I expect our electoral politics to get a little bit, you know, maybe a little bit
00:19:03.840 more, um, conservative, uh, as we move along, but the, the fortunes of the present day conservative
00:19:12.000 party depend on them and the leader continuing to focus on the issues that actually matter and
00:19:19.200 proposing, proposing, you know, workable solutions and, you know, uh, staying laser focused on, on,
00:19:29.120 on, you know, uh, on, on, on those issues fighting, you know, and I say this in the piece, you know,
00:19:36.400 fighting the culture war and winning the culture war, I'm all in favor of that. Okay. But as we know,
00:19:42.000 as we can see, the Trudeau liberals are by far their own worst enemy in this regard. Like we don't
00:19:48.560 need to like, there's, there's very little that we can do to make them look even stupider than
00:19:53.120 they, or, or like more useless than they already are. We've got to be there, uh, ready with, uh,
00:20:00.640 you know, talking the language that, that the electorate want to hear laser focused on the
00:20:05.920 issues that matter with, you know, serious, uh, serious demeanors, um, looking like we're ready,
00:20:13.200 ready to ready for government. We mean business. And, uh, if we, if, if, if Pierre and company can
00:20:20.320 stick to that, uh, they, they will maintain their lead. I'm quite certain of it.
00:20:25.760 Incredible. And, uh, just where, where can Canadians find you on social media and where can they see or
00:20:32.000 read some of your work?
00:20:33.200 Well, uh, I'm, I'm on Twitter at, uh, Dr. Michael Bonner. That's, you know, just D-R, uh, M-I-C-H-A-E-L-B-O-N-N-E-R.
00:20:44.080 Uh, you can find my book in defense of civilization in, in fine bookshops everywhere. You can even,
00:20:50.240 uh, order it on, uh, Amazon if you must. Um, and, uh, you know, watch for me, uh, watch for me in the hub,
00:20:58.800 uh, and in, uh, the Dorchester review, uh, if you subscribe and if you don't subscribe, you should.
00:21:07.280 Absolutely. Uh, Dr. Michael Bonner, thank you so much for, uh, for your time and for speaking
00:21:11.440 to us on the show today. Pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.