00:01:06.980This is the point in the week where we like to, I was going to say, relax ourselves.
00:01:11.220And then I look at Isaac wearing a three-piece suit with a tie.
00:01:16.000Well, William and I just, like, threw on whatever was, you know, hanging nearby for this.
00:01:20.140So I'm not sure if you're dressed up for Off the Record or if you've just, like, come back from serving Batman or something.
00:01:26.120But either way, I'm Andrew Lawton, hosting things for the next little bit, joined by Isaac Lamerud, True North reporter, and also our Chief Operations Officer, William McBeth, both holding down the Western Fort there in their respective communities.
00:02:27.600But I had a tornado warning yesterday.
00:02:30.920And I got the, like, alert on my phone.
00:02:33.680And it was just before I was about to go on air, actually.
00:02:35.780And the weird thing was that I didn't actually need the warning because I could just hear for the 30 minutes before that, like, things, like, smacking up against my house.
00:02:42.060Like, and then I walk outside and, like, my trees are, like, half just on the pavement.
00:02:46.660So, no, it wasn't like, you know, like a house smacking up against my house.
00:03:58.360And that message is heard loud and clear.
00:04:00.300And for Terry, Dan, and I, like, yeah, we're going to dig deeper.
00:04:05.120I'm going to wake up in the morning and try to work harder and try to do more and try to meet the frustrations of those people with better effort and clearer communication.
00:04:13.500But, you know, I don't think saying that they made a decision about the kind of country or government they want is at all accurate.
00:04:48.200Yeah, well, I just want to start by saying that leading up to the election in St. Paul's, I remember the conservatives had about a 25% chance of winning based on polling.
00:06:06.860They're just going to shift the blame as much as they can.
00:06:09.660Yeah, and I think we're seeing a particular tone deafness there.
00:06:15.160And it's interesting because most of the liberal cabinet ministers to be trotted out this week are all there just to say, I have confidence in Justin Trudeau.
00:06:47.940I think if the liberal cabinet had spent any more time in St. Paul's, they would have had to buy houses there.
00:06:55.000A few of the people in Canada who can actually afford houses, given their very high salaries.
00:06:59.920They put everything they had into this by-election.
00:07:03.700And that means that because they lost it, they all have to wear it, including the prime minister.
00:07:09.280If you throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at a by-election and then lose it, you have no choice but to own it.
00:07:18.720I think the fact that Mark Holland is saying, well, everybody's unhappy in the whole world.
00:07:24.900I personally called them all and they told me they were, you know, just shows exactly how in denial they really are about how bad things are.
00:07:44.460And to wake up the next morning and discover the Conservative Party won was a shock to me.
00:07:49.780I'm not going to say it wasn't a happy shock.
00:07:51.900But the fact is that if this riding is vulnerable, there is no longer a safe liberal seat in the entire country.
00:08:00.620And the fact that they can't see what the message was from voters turning a safe liberal seat blue shows that these people don't even know there's a problem, let alone how to fix it.
00:08:12.120They haven't figured out they're in that much trouble.
00:08:15.080They're still saying actually things are fine.
00:08:16.980Look, we're just as unpopular as the rest of the world.
00:08:20.660Well, OK, let's see how well that serves you when you go before voters in the next election.
00:08:25.580Yeah, and I just want to give the contrast on perhaps why people might not have been voting with the liberals.
00:08:31.180This is what Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland had said before the by-election took place.
00:09:10.020Well, what does it say about you, Minister or Deputy Prime Minister, that that's the vision that Canadians voted for?
00:09:15.140Or maybe they didn't actually buy into that idea.
00:09:17.540I don't think it's fair to malign the good people of Toronto St. Paul's of just being small-minded and cold and cruel just because they didn't believe that the liberals are the ones that have their back.
00:09:34.360I mean, I can't believe that the communications plan prior to the election was, hey, let's go out on stage and smack talk the district's voters.
00:09:45.980Who thought that could have gone over well?
00:09:48.140I mean, I don't know how well Freeland was prepared for that speech.
00:09:52.320But I don't understand how that got by anyone without raising serious red flags.
00:09:56.720Like, hey, maybe the day before the election, I don't know if it was the day before, but it was close to, the day before the election, we shouldn't go and call people in a district cold, cruel, and small.
00:10:05.880I mean, that's about as ludicrous as it gets, in my opinion.
00:10:11.640Well, I would just say it's interesting because, of course, Chrystia Freeland's riding, I believe, is right next door to Toronto St. Paul's, or if not next door, nearby.
00:10:21.460It should be giving the finance minister some worry that safe riding like Toronto St. Paul's could fall, maybe hers is next.
00:10:28.940But, you know, when you get something that wrong and suffer a loss, some people would say it's time to be humble.
00:10:36.740It's time to look at and fairly evaluate whether or not what you've been offering to Canadians is something they actually want.
00:10:45.620And in the case of Chrystia Freeland, painting where now a near majority of the country stands as cold, cruel, and small is not how you win back swing voters who used to support your party and have now switched to your opposition.
00:11:01.480You should be taking this as a time to change course, not double down on the very things that make voters flee from your party and pursue an option that heretofore have been considered unthinkable in a riding like Toronto St. Paul's.
00:11:17.880So, yeah, I reiterate, these are people who haven't even quantified the problem and acknowledged it, let alone are actively trying to fix it.
00:11:26.320Yeah, and just to talk about Chrystia Freeland's riding for a moment.
00:11:29.680So, she's in University Rosedale again, one of those, you know, suburban midtown Toronto ridings.
00:11:35.140Not one that's going to go conservative anytime soon, but could very much go NDP if there were a stronger NDP there.
00:11:41.360Now, I'm looking at 338 Canada's projections right now.
00:11:46.360And they have the Liberals at 36% plus or minus 7 because riding level polls have a large margin of error and the NDP at plus or minus 30, which means, in theory, the NDP could be neck and neck with the Liberals.
00:12:03.060And if the NDP were to step up its game, which it has not under Jagmeet Singh and may not unless there's another leader at the helm, that could be really disastrous for people like Freeland, who previously I never would have thought in a million years could be at risk of losing her seat or even really having to fight for it.
00:12:19.400Yeah, if the New Democrats weren't quite such a basket case, the news for the Liberals would be even more dire.
00:12:26.640Like, if you can imagine that the New Democrats nationally managed to claw even 2% from the Liberal Party, that puts ridings not only in danger, it takes a huge chunk of ridings even out of contention for the Liberal Party in the next election, particularly around the GTA area, that part of Toronto that's maybe not suburban or ex-urban.
00:12:49.180But that is closer to the middle of it.
00:12:52.480And it puts them in a huge problem in the greater Vancouver area, you know, one of the few places where the Liberal Party used to be able to reliably count on a chunk of seats.
00:13:02.420So, no, I mean, look, there's no good news for the Liberal Party in the results of this by-election.
00:13:09.160There's no possible way to spin it, except for, I guess, Leslie Church won't be going to Ottawa, so think of all the carbon emissions we're saving by not having a commuter back and forth.
00:13:22.640I have to talk about Jagmeet Singh here, because the NDP's performance in that by-election was absolutely nothing to be excited about if you're the NDP.
00:13:32.180Their candidate got 10.9%, which is a five-point drop from where the NDP have been in the last, I think, three elections.
00:13:39.660Now, obviously, by-elections are weird.
00:13:41.660Like, things happen there, but it's not exactly instilling confidence in the NDP being the progressive alternative to the Liberals.
00:13:54.220And, you know, Jagmeet Singh, it's not surprising that he still is not talking about wanting to pull the plug on his really unqualified support of the Liberals.
00:14:02.940So he was asked at a press conference yesterday about whether he'll finally, once and for all, end the NDP's four-year supply and confidence agreement with the Liberals.
00:14:12.680And this is what he said, or should I say, didn't say.
00:14:15.800Given the Liberals having lost the seat and the NDP's low performance in a seat that you hold provincially, do you think it's time to pull out of the supply and confidence agreement?
00:14:28.660Is that something that you're going to do?
00:14:30.140Well, our plan right now is what we've always said.
00:14:34.500Our goal is to get Ottawa to work for people.
00:16:17.500He's always – I mean, some of the posts I've seen from him online attacking the Liberals, it's like you're the person allowing this to happen.
00:16:24.020And so, I mean, yeah, he says all the right things in theory, but he doesn't do anything that he says.
00:16:29.920He doesn't hold the government to account in any way, shape, or form.
00:16:32.520I don't know that he's helping the NDP in any way.
00:16:37.420They're really – if the NDP were polling better, as you guys alluded to earlier, the Liberals would honestly be at risk of potentially following to a third-rated party,
00:16:47.520which I don't know the precedent around that, how common that is, that a governing party may fall into third place.
00:16:53.260But, I mean, that would be something, wouldn't it?
00:17:23.300But supposed to say, if you look up the word hapless in the dictionary, I think there's now got to be a picture of Jagmeet saying no one has been a more hapless leader of a –
00:17:35.200and particularly if you think about it, in a minority government, that's when opposition parties should have more power.
00:17:54.720Jack Layton, who was the NDP leader then, he was able to extract real things from the liberals and put them on notice of every confidence vote saying,
00:18:02.740here's my list of demands, and I want this and this and this, or I'll vote against you.
00:18:07.440Whereas Jagmeet Singh says, well, we know Justin Trudeau has failed, and I'm doing everything I can to continue enabling his failure for Canadians.
00:18:15.720You know, I will make sure he fails for a full four-year term rather than, oh, I don't know, ending the failure sooner and attempting to replace him.
00:18:26.700And I think, you know, why he won't pull out of the agreement is he knows that the number of seats he has right now is the high watermark.
00:18:33.460If and when the NDP go back in front of Canadians, they'll have to explain why they were partners in crime to a deeply unpopular, deeply unsuccessful liberal government.
00:18:44.360And I think they're going to feel the wrath of Canadians just as much as the Liberal Party will.
00:18:49.520Well, yeah, and it's, I mean, the old, it's the oldest joke now in this whole thing, when every time he comes up and speaks about, oh, the Liberals are failing Canadians, the Liberals and Conservatives have it out for you.
00:18:59.500And it's like, well, yeah, but you're, you are single-handedly keeping them in power.
00:19:03.920Like, it doesn't take a genius to find the logical inconsistency in the entire NDP thing.
00:19:09.480And the concessions, the quote-unquote concessions have been virtually non-existent.
00:19:13.320I mean, he was promised universal pharmacare and got birth control and a diabetes drug.
00:19:18.560He was promised dental care and has a dental program that's not even really reaching that many people.
00:19:25.000And it's, and he's trying to claim this as a big win.
00:19:29.580And, you know, the fact that he's trying to paint up his, this, you know, dismal record, I don't think it's going unnoticed.
00:19:37.120It must be infuriating to be a new Democrat right now, to be someone who, who thinks, you know, we've got a minority government that's predisposed to leaning left on all of these issues.
00:19:48.100And I've got my party that could keep this government in power.
00:19:51.680Why am I not extracting things left, right, and center?
00:19:54.620Why aren't we building statues of new Democrat leaders in every major city and demanding that the federal government pay for it?
00:20:01.840Instead, we're getting a dental plan that even dentists think is terrible and won't work for Canadians.
00:20:07.960And a pharma care plan that in no way replaces the private insurance that millions of Canadians get from their employers is now at risk of being clawed back because of this ill-considered national pharma care plan.
00:20:20.900So, no, not a happy time to be a new Democrat.
00:20:25.680Yeah, just, I did do an article on the dentist thing earlier today, and I remember it was the Canadian Dental Association.
00:20:31.040They said, I think it was 61% of dentists were not interested in any way, shape, or form of signing up for the federal dental plan.
00:20:37.400And then just one comment quickly on William's memory of Jack Layton.
00:20:42.360I feel that if Singh did a similar thing with a list of demands for Trudeau and said, hey, you need to do these things or else I'll call a non-confidence vote.
00:20:49.600I honestly think Trudeau would say to him, no, you won't.
00:21:02.100The other related aspect of this is that Trudeau's global reputation and his reputation outside of, well, basically like six people in downtown Montreal has been taking a hit particularly lately.
00:21:47.400You're not always here in Canada these days.
00:21:49.500But in terms of what you see when it comes to the Canadian economy, what springs to mind?
00:21:56.280Missed opportunity is the two words I would use.
00:22:00.260We are such a wealthy country, and we are so poorly managed from a policy basis.
00:22:05.460When I think about the tremendous potential the country has in natural resources, which was the essence of its success from the beginning over the last 200 years,
00:22:12.620and we've ignored it, and we have tried to do many other things that have nothing to do with our core wealth.
00:22:17.560And I can't help but blame Justin Trudeau for that for the last decade.
00:23:43.880I think he's, you know, got a solid head on business issues.
00:23:46.560So I didn't quite buy into this whole Kevin O'Leary as a Conservative thing when he was running for the leadership of the Conservatives a few years back.
00:23:53.420However, I think his criticisms on the government are coming from the business side of him.
00:23:58.220And he's saying, like, this is just absolutely absurd.
00:24:02.060We're seeing a real economic crisis starting to foment here in Canada.
00:24:07.000Our productivity, which is an amorphous concept that doesn't get well-defying.
00:24:12.980People talk about how we have a productivity problem.
00:24:15.260Basically, how much we generate, how much we produce, what our country makes is going down.
00:25:39.700If we squander, keep squandering our opportunity, we are at risk of becoming a really difficult country, a place that people no longer want to come to, a place that no longer offers the same opportunity it used to.
00:25:51.420Another thing Larry mentioned, which is worth mentioning quickly, because we've done a lot of reporting about this at True North, is he talked from direct experience about the new capital gains tax hike, which just came into effect.
00:26:03.900And he said, look, he probably has hundreds of millions, if not billions of assets in Canada.
00:26:08.480He said, look, these accountants, the accountants have been telling me and other people like me how to get our assets out of Canada, how to pay the old tax rate, which was the 50% instead of the three quarters, or two thirds, sorry, 66%.
00:26:21.260Yeah, how to get our assets out of Canada.
00:26:23.740So these people are divesting their assets from Canada to save money.
00:26:26.680I mean, it's obviously a terrible, terrible price that we're going to pay in the long term, which is exactly what he said.
00:26:32.120Like, Canada will pay for this for decades if it is not fixed quickly.
00:27:53.840I was in Canada last week in a couple of cities, and I can't tell you, Rita, the detestation that you find for Trudeau across the political board.
00:28:06.100A vast majority of Canadians want him to stand down now.
00:28:12.260He has really impressive opposition now.
00:28:16.860I think that Pierre Polievre and the others on the conservative side that are coming along, they're very impressive people now facing off against Trudeau.
00:28:27.480I think he's absolutely toast because finally, you know, we've got to that stage where being a sort of superannuated drama teacher,
00:28:35.980turns out you can fool some people for a little while, but not for all that long.
00:28:40.940Everyone in Canada who wants to see through Justin Trudeau has seen through him.
00:28:46.780I don't think anyone will regret finally seeing the back of him.
00:28:50.880So I should say, I love the idea of a himbo, although I didn't know bimbo was not...
00:30:21.840I mean, you know, I wish the prime minister wouldn't leave the country anymore.
00:30:27.320I'm embarrassed as a Canadian every time he goes internationally on a trip and other people discover just what a terrible person we have as our prime minister.
00:30:37.780It's frankly, it's like, look, we all know here at home what a travesty you are.
00:30:42.660Could you please stop going around the world and letting other people know as well?
00:30:46.360As a Canadian, I find it embarrassing.
00:30:49.340Yeah, I think you're quite right about that.
00:30:51.900Well, let's bring it a little bit closer to home again and talk Alberta.
00:30:56.000I don't know which of you wants to kick this off.
00:30:59.320Probably William, considering he lives in Calgary.
00:31:02.600Well, you know, our mayor, Jody Gondek, not widely beloved already, has managed to achieve something I think is incredible.
00:31:11.940She's managed to become less popular than Justin Trudeau in Calgary.
00:31:16.520And had you asked me, I would have said that was impossible.
00:31:20.240But the fact is, she managed to achieve a disapproval rating there if you look of 64%.
00:31:25.280But my favorite two numbers are the strongly approved and the strongly disapproved.
00:31:29.900Strongly disapproved is at a whopping 48%.
00:31:33.140That's one in two Calgarians think she's doing a truly terrible job and fewer than one in 10 at 7% strongly approved.
00:31:42.540I mean, that is an approval rating, I think, slightly below the Ebola virus in terms of overall popularity.
00:32:03.620I, you know, for those of us who've never really liked Mayor Gondek, it's gratifying to see more and more Calgarians getting on board the wow, isn't she terrible train.
00:32:14.040Yeah, Gondek had an approval rating, obviously, of 26% compared to Trudeau's 28%.
00:32:20.000But speaking quickly on unification, from that study, which was done by Think HQ, the president said something along the lines of,
00:32:27.700normally, when global disaster, or sorry, not global, when disasters happen, like the water crisis, he said residents rally around their mayor.
00:32:37.560But then he said the opposite has happened with Gondek in light of Calgary's recent water crisis.
00:32:42.420He said if they have supported her handling it in any way, shape, or form, it's overshadowed by other issues that they disapprove of.
00:32:51.040Because obviously, during the crisis, her ratings have gone down, not up, which is what he expected to happen.
00:32:58.520And then now we, of course, have a new leader of the NDP in Alberta, Nahed Nenshi, who has made one of his first orders of business,
00:33:05.680trying to basically have nothing to do with Jagmeet Singh, who we talked about a little bit earlier.
00:33:10.520But interestingly enough, I think the federal, or the UCP, their line of attack on this has been to link him instead to Justin Trudeau more than the federal NDP.
00:33:20.140They actually, pretty soon out of the gate, I think, you know, what, less than five days after he was the NDP leader, they came out with this ad.
00:33:26.320New NDP leader, Nahed Nenshi, is Justin Trudeau's choice for Alberta.
00:33:31.640That's Nenshi helping Justin Trudeau defeat Stephen Harper in the 2015 federal election.
00:33:37.280When asked about Nenshi running for the NDP, Trudeau called Nenshi a strong mayor and said we should welcome his candidacy.
00:33:45.500Trudeau even tried to get Nenshi to run for his federal liberal party.
00:33:48.760We've had enough of Trudeau in Ottawa. We don't need one in Alberta.
00:33:53.720Nahed Nenshi, Trudeau's choice for Alberta.
00:33:56.900William, does that line of things, does that work or is that just the UCP having some fun?
00:34:01.840Well, you know, I love an attack ad. It must be my time in politics.
00:34:05.620People say they hate attack ads. I love them.
00:34:07.840I would only watch political attack ads if given the choice.
00:34:11.360From the west to the east to the west to the east.
00:34:35.960He's now the leader of a lefty political party, and he's going to have to reconcile the fact that he played footsie with the Trudeau liberals for a long time and is now trying to get elected in a province that does not like the Trudeau liberals.
00:34:52.120And so the fact that the UCP is starting early, I think, is good.
00:34:56.480Nenshi's forte or his area of strength would be perceived to be Calgary.
00:35:01.440But when he left office, he was far from universally liked.
00:35:04.380A lot of people thought he had overstayed his welcome.
00:35:07.040And frankly, they didn't like his arrogance and his thin-skinned nature, his inability to build a consensus on city council.
00:35:15.600And now you've got him leading a party that a lot of Albertans feel just doesn't understand this province.
00:35:21.680So I wish the UCP well in their attempt to remind voters of just how friendly Mr. Nenshi was with Mr. Trudeau.
00:35:30.980And we'll see if that is something that Albertans rally around when the next election happens.
00:35:36.220Yeah, speaking quickly on Nenshi's approval ratings from that Think HQ survey, that same one about Gondek, in June 2014, he had an approval of 74%, but then the latest one before he ended his tenure was 57% by May 2021.
00:35:53.560So his approval ratings did drop quite a bit as his time as Calgary's mayor.
00:35:59.600But really, the way the NDP, the Alberta NDP, is going to win the next provincial election, the only possible way is through gathering support from rural Alberta.
00:36:09.120This is why they lost the last provincial election.
00:36:12.760The Conservatives cleaned house in rural Alberta.
00:36:15.380I mean, it was like they literally won all the seats.
00:36:18.840So the NDP needs to figure out how can we capture rural Alberta.
00:36:22.420And I think the Alberta Conservatives pairing Nenshi with Trudeau will not help him there because I don't imagine anyone in rural Alberta really likes Trudeau.
00:36:32.780Yeah, and to be honest, I kind of wonder if he would have had a shot, and he must have considered it, if he would have had a shot at federal liberal leader, had he just waited things out for, you know, a year and a half until Trudeau resigns.
00:36:47.160Like, I don't know how much broad appeal he has within the liberal movement nationally.
00:36:51.080Surely that wouldn't have been totally out of left field, would it, William?
00:36:56.540The thing that probably would stand against him is it would be extremely hard to be a liberal leader from Alberta under current circumstances.
00:37:04.120You know, he'd be in a – there wouldn't be a seat in this province that's particularly safe.
00:37:08.500He would have to find a seat in, like, you know – well, actually, even anywhere he couldn't find one.
00:37:14.840You know, so either he would have to run in a different part of the country where maybe he doesn't have nearly as much name recognition, nearly as much of an existing political infrastructure, or face a rioting in Alberta where the federal tour would have to land every three days in order for him to doorknock in his rioting without trying to lose it.
00:37:34.820You know, the other problem for Mr. Nankshi, of course, is he's widely regarded as not a team player.
00:37:39.240He likes to call – he likes to go his own way.
00:37:42.600He really struggled on council to build coalitions of support around his issues.
00:37:48.720He just was too arrogant and too egotistical.
00:37:52.440And I think he would have that very same problem running to be prime minister where you absolutely need a team of people around you that you can count on.
00:38:01.480And I think it will be a problem he faces here in Alberta.
00:38:04.300You know, he's not used to this party political realm.
00:38:07.600He's not used to provincial politics as someone who's ever engaged in it.
00:38:11.900And I think he'll find being a party leader very challenging, given his personality.
00:38:16.380Yeah, if he couldn't lead a council, like leading a caucus is, you know, a thankless job at the best of times.
00:38:21.820And I don't know, Isaac, if you're familiar with this, but how much diversity is there within the NDP caucus ideologically?
00:38:30.120Like how many different perspectives and positions are there that a leader has to, you know, keep rowing in the same direction in that party?
00:38:35.920Well, I don't know, because something that was maybe showed the diversity of opinions a bit was during the NDP leadership race, wherein some of the prospective leaders stood against the carbon tax and others didn't.
00:38:48.620So obviously there was some leeway there, I guess.
00:38:51.700But outside of that, I'm not too sure.
00:38:53.280I mean, look, I think it'll be interesting because he wants this divorce from the federal NDP.
00:38:58.540He's putting it to the members to vote.
00:39:00.600If the members are split on that, already he showed that he is not necessarily where they are.
00:39:05.800Maybe they're for it, maybe they're against it.
00:39:08.440Do you have any sense on how members would vote for that, William?
00:39:12.380You know, that's a really interesting question.
00:39:14.400And, you know, there's a lot of people in this province with deep NDP roots.
00:39:20.340You know, Rachel Notley's father was an NDP politician and held in quite high esteem back from when the party did have some support outside of the cities, when it was seen as on the side of farmers and other people working.
00:39:35.280It was the old prairie populist NDP, certainly not, you know, the woke he, him, they, them of today's NDP.
00:39:46.540But the fact is, you know, Isaac's point about them trying to win support outside of the cities, it's one of the many things the NDP is going to have to do.
00:39:54.520I don't think Mayor Nahed Nengshi is the emissary to rural Alberta that I would have personally chosen.
00:40:00.560A man who I'm not convinced has ever been outside a city in his life.
00:40:05.280But, you know, whether or not the party supports the divorce, even if they vote to do it, I don't think everybody's going to be happy about it.
00:40:13.240And then what happens when you've split the NDP party?
00:40:16.160Rachel Notley is very much against it as recently as a couple of weeks ago.
00:40:21.040She came out right before the vote and said, this is a terrible idea.
00:40:24.040And it reinforces the message that, to borrow a phrase from the federal conservative party, Nahed Nengshi might just be just visiting a new Democrat party.
00:40:34.160He might not really be someone who is wedded to this party that he now leads.
00:40:39.860His big win gives him some latitude, for sure.
00:40:42.540He's got a bit of runway to figure out what he wants to do.
00:40:45.620But I think, first of all, he has to understand how not to break the NDP coalition.
00:40:50.200And divorcing itself from the federal party might make political sense in terms of how unpopular Jagmeet Singh is here, especially his opposition to the energy sector.
00:40:57.840But if he loses the hearts and minds of those people who have doorknocked for New Democrats for decades, who write the checks, who work the phone banks, who organize the unions, which I'm told is a very big thing in the New Democrats, these are people you don't want to drive away from the party.
00:41:15.020And they're the ones who are most likely to oppose getting rid of that federal NDP association.
00:42:04.160You know, talk about trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
00:42:06.600This is someone who I would have probably bet some amount of money wouldn't have entered partisan provincial politics or federal politics just because it was so anathema to who he was as a politician.
00:42:19.720But, you know, maybe he's at a loose end.
00:42:21.900Maybe after he was done being mayor of Calgary, he just found himself sitting at home bored, you know, binging episodes of Cupcake Wars or whatever it is he does.
00:42:35.000I guess we'll see if he if the Nancy charm can get out of out of the mothballs and start working its magic again.
00:42:43.320I'm guessing that happens to a lot of politicians, much like a professional athlete, let's say, where in something is just your entire life and then it's gone completely.
00:42:51.360And you're like, well, what do I do now?
00:42:54.300That we have politics also has a lot of enablers.
00:42:56.640There's always someone in someone's life that's going to tell them they should do something like Frank Bayless, who's like a nobody liberal MP, a one term liberal was saying to CBC, I've had people approach me to run.
00:43:31.440But yeah, I mean, wow, boy, it used to be that that the heavyweights said, oh, I would be liberal leader because it was a virtual guaranteed path to being prime minister.
00:43:41.580And now it's like no, no names are putting their names forward.
00:43:45.740So, gosh, what a what how the mighty have fallen.
00:43:48.640And now it's like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.