Juno News - How Pierre Poilievre STOLE the youth vote from Justin Trudeau

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 0.99

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 1.00

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 0.99

00:19:53.120 they, or, or like more useless than they already are. We've got to be there, uh, ready with, uh, 0.98

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. 1.00

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.

Juno News - October 07, 2024

How Pierre Poilievre STOLE the youth vote from Justin Trudeau

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