Juno News - Pierre Poilievre vindicated as Bank of Canada admits his criticisms were legitimate

00:00:00.000 Pierre Polyev's derangement syndrome continues, and the legacy media starts to pivot its criticisms towards the broader Conservative Party of Canada.

00:00:07.140 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:21.500 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast.

00:00:23.940 So one of the major lines of criticism against Pierre Polyev, and no, I'm not talking about how his rallies are supposedly too white, or how he's some kind of a secret white supremacist, just with no evidence, and it's never been proven, but the media love to say that anyways.

00:00:37.480 No, no, I'm talking about the way the media react to Polyev's criticism of the Bank of Canada.

00:00:43.080 That Polyev has had a very consistent, very clear, concise criticism of the Bank of Canada for its failure, mostly to manage the inflation crisis, and the way that they have printed money throughout the COVID era.

00:00:57.280 This has been a consistent topic for Pierre Polyev.

00:00:59.900 If you remember, he was on my show two years ago, two years ago, in the beginning of the pandemic, he joined the speaker series that we were doing at the time.

00:01:08.000 We did an in-depth interview entirely on this issue of inflation, of the problem with printing money, and how it creates a hidden tax on Canadians.

00:01:16.000 You should go check out that interview.

00:01:17.720 But you could just see that Pierre Polyev has been talking about this issue in a credible and concise way for a very long time.

00:01:24.080 However, as soon as the leadership race got underway, the media started looking at this criticism of the Bank of Canada, making it seem like it was some kind of a criticism that was beyond the pale, that it was outside the realm of acceptability, that what he was saying was dangerous, it was radical, it was populism.

00:01:40.620 And the media created this sort of narrative about Pierre, saying that what he was doing was wrong.

00:01:46.420 So we've got so many examples of this.

00:01:48.080 This is in the Financial Post back in May.

00:01:51.460 They say Pierre Polyev says he would fire the Bank of Canada governor if elected prime minister.

00:01:56.560 They quote Polyev saying, I will replace him with a new governor who would reinstate our low inflation mandate, protect the purchasing power of our dollar, and honor the working people who earned these dollars.

00:02:06.580 That's what Pierre Polyev said during the leadership debate in Edmonton.

00:02:10.820 Polyev added that those who caused soaring post-pandemic inflation rates must be held accountable.

00:02:16.580 And so this is a line of criticism that Polyev has had throughout the campaign.

00:02:20.740 Now, just to show you some of the reaction to Polyev and what he's been saying, really lots and lots of pearl clutching, lots and lots of people saying that his rhetoric is over the top.

00:02:31.140 So here's John Ibbotson over at the Globe and Mail saying just that.

00:02:34.380 Why Pierre Polyev should reconsider his rhetoric about firing the Bank of Canada governor.

00:02:39.320 And Ibbotson writes in this piece, the only way the government can force a governor's resignation is by formally and publicly demanding the bank change course.

00:02:47.980 He writes that if he ever does become prime minister, Mr. Polyev should think carefully about using that nuclear option.

00:02:54.640 It has only been tried once and it did not end well for the government.

00:02:58.660 So it's interesting because basically Ibbotson's making the point that the prime minister shouldn't have this say.

00:03:04.980 They shouldn't be able to determine who the Bank of Canada governor is, which is kind of ironic given that the prime minister gets to appoint the governor of the Bank of Canada.

00:03:12.700 That's one of the many positions that the prime minister gets to appoint.

00:03:15.880 The prime minister gets to make up so much of the federal government and the duties of the federal government in their image, in what they want.

00:03:22.680 And so a prime minister has that power.

00:03:24.820 Justin Trudeau has that power.

00:03:25.760 He was the one who appointed Tiff Macklin, who is the current governor of the Bank of Canada.

00:03:29.860 Again, it's one of the things that the prime minister gets to do.

00:03:32.040 So acting like it's so out of step for a politician to suggest that if they were prime minister, they would do things differently, sort of undermines the whole idea of democratic government and elected government.

00:03:42.300 Yes, becoming prime minister avails you to certain powers, including getting to appoint people like the head of the Bank of Canada.

00:03:50.260 Likewise, we had an op-ed over in the Toronto Star written by Heather Scofield, who said that Pierre Polyev,

00:03:55.760 has outrageous ideas about the Bank of Canada.

00:03:58.700 His party and his country deserve better.

00:04:01.620 So likewise, she writes, the promise or threat to axe Macklin was the logical extension of many months of Polyev lashing out against the central bank,

00:04:10.620 accusing the institution and its leader of collusion with the liberal government and deliberate exacerbation of inflation for political purposes.

00:04:17.720 Never mind that there's no logic in the call for Macklin's head in and of itself.

00:04:23.100 It's such an outrageous and irresponsible idea with so many implications for Canada's economic stability and reputation, let alone prosperity,

00:04:30.780 that the candidate and the thinking public just can't leave it alone.

00:04:34.800 Let's set aside Polyev's nonsensical statements for a moment to consider what we're left with if the Conservative Party wants to hang on to its reputation as good economic managers.

00:04:44.060 So according to this op-ed in the Toronto Star, the Conservatives are not allowed to criticize Justin Trudeau's appointee to the Bank of Canada.

00:04:52.420 It is irresponsible and outrageous and it hurts Canada's stability and reputation as well as our prosperity.

00:04:59.420 What about the fact that the government has been printing money out of control?

00:05:02.840 What about the fact that inflation is rampant and interest rates are going up?

00:05:06.540 These pundits ignore all of the facts about our economy and their just knee-jerk reaction is to defend Justin Trudeau, defend his appointees and say that everything is rosy and everything is good.

00:05:17.440 It will continue.

00:05:18.320 There's another report over in Bloomberg saying that Polyev's reckless attack on Macklin blasted by Bay Street.

00:05:25.160 So same kind of stuff.

00:05:26.580 Apparently, this is what political leaders in basket case dictatorships like Turkey do, according to this analyst.

00:05:33.540 And so again, the media has told us over and over again that it is just so outrageous that Pierre Polyev would even consider criticizing the Bank of Canada for the policies that they have put in place.

00:05:45.760 And this criticism has even seeped into Polyev's own party.

00:05:49.060 So recall that Ed Fast, who used to be the finance critic for the party, he came out and also criticized Pierre Polyev.

00:05:56.200 Now, Ed Fast was co-chairing Jean Charest's leadership campaign, so not exactly a neutral observer here.

00:06:02.740 And he came out and publicly condemned Pierre Polyev.

00:06:06.340 He said the breaking point seems to have come on Wednesday when Fast told reporters he believes Polyev's vow to fire Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklin over the country's inflation rate, the highest it's been in 30 years, hurts the party's credibility on economic issues.

00:06:20.660 And so after Ed Fast came out criticizing his own party and the sort of front runner of this race, Pierre Polyev, he came out and said that Polyev and his supporters tried to muzzle him on monetary policy.

00:06:31.820 And therefore, he offered his resignation to interim leader Candace Bergen of the Conservative Party.

00:06:37.800 So again, this whole drama and the process of infighting between these candidates all came because apparently it was just so outrageous for Polyev to be criticizing the Bank of, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, despite the fact that, yes, we are experiencing unprecedented interest rates and inflation in this country.

00:06:58.420 I want to just pause a little bit and refer to a friend of mine, Bed Woodfidans, a piece he had over in the Hub at the end of May.

00:07:05.520 It was really interesting. He talks about how Canada's aspiring populists aren't really actually all that radical.

00:07:11.880 He makes a really good point. And he says that the media, people like Ed Fast, a sort of more establishment part of the Conservative Party, are throwing this accusation at Pierre Polyev that he is a radical, that he's extremist, that he is a populist.

00:07:26.220 Typically, when we think of populists, we think of people who are appealing to sort of nativist, anti-immigration sentiments that are very pro-domestic policies.

00:07:35.220 They might even be pro-big government thinking of people like Marine Le Pen in France or Donald Trump in the United States.

00:07:42.960 And to take and to try to put Pierre Polyev into that camp is just such an awkward fit to take a criticism like this, saying that someone who criticizes the Bank of Canada, saying that they don't have the independence that they should and that they're partially responsible for this financial mess that has been engineered, yes, by Justin Trudeau,

00:08:00.560 but that people like Tiff Macklin and the Bank of Canada have gone along with and enabled, that fundamentally, that is not a populist or radical attack.

00:08:09.960 It's actually, at its core, a liberal attack. It's saying that this institution needs to be better protected, that it needs better safeguards, that we need more responsible policies,

00:08:18.240 and that the relationship between Justin Trudeau and the Bank of Canada is too close, and that there needs to be more protection and more of a safeguard between those.

00:08:27.200 That's fundamentally what Polyev is arguing.

00:08:29.800 And Ben Woodfine points this out. He says, this is a quote from this piece in The Hub.

00:08:34.320 He says, he may be attacking the independence of the bank, but at least on his account of what he's doing, he's not attacking the notion of an independent bank.

00:08:42.200 Rather, he thinks he's trying to restore it. In practice, what Polyev seems to be offering is liberalism, albeit a different flavor of it.

00:08:48.960 He doesn't seem intent on challenging Canada's liberal consensus in any meaningful way.

00:08:53.800 That's exactly right. Polyev is saying that he wants more independence.

00:08:57.720 He's not undermining the institution. He wants it strengthened, which, again, is the exact opposite of what his critics are saying.

00:09:04.780 Well, lo and behold, on June 2nd, guess what?

00:09:07.940 The Bank of Canada came out and said that it welcomes critics like Pierre Polyev, essentially admitting that Polyev has been right all along.

00:09:16.060 So this is the headline over at the CBC of all places.

00:09:18.400 The CBC writes this, following Polyev's attack, Bank of Canada officials says it's accountable for failure to check inflation.

00:09:26.200 So that is the Bank of Canada's own words that it has failed when it comes to inflation, which is exactly the criticism that Pierre Polyev had.

00:09:33.800 So this is from the CBC piece.

00:09:35.740 The deputy governor of the Bank of Canada acknowledged Thursday the institution has been unable to keep inflation at its target rate and should be held accountable.

00:09:43.720 Deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, Paul Beaudry, made the remarks in response to conservative leadership candidate Pierre Polyev's claim last month

00:09:51.300 that the Bank of Canada governor, Tiff Macklin, was surrendering his independence to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

00:09:56.660 through a money-printing quantitative easing program in response to the pandemic-driven economic crisis.

00:10:03.900 So during the party's official English-language debate in Edmonton, Polyev also said he would fire Macklin if he becomes Prime Minister.

00:10:10.540 Beaudry, who's the top bureaucrat over at the Bank of Canada, was asked by reporters Thursday to respond to those remarks.

00:10:16.980 He said this, the aspect that we should be held accountable is exactly right, exactly right.

00:10:23.120 So a little bit of vindication for Pierre Polyev over all this, and he acknowledged so much.

00:10:28.160 So two days later on June 4th, Pierre put this out on Twitter.

00:10:31.760 He said, I want to congratulate the Bank of Canada for accepting blame for its mistakes.

00:10:37.840 They did what Trudeau told them, print money for deficits, causing runaway inflation and a dangerous housing bubble.

00:10:42.860 But now they're doing what's unthinkable in Ottawa, taking responsibility, progress, Pierre writes on Twitter.

00:10:50.380 So again, vindication, because despite all of the attacks from the media and even from within his own party,

00:10:56.760 the Bank is now coming out saying, you know what, we made some mistakes and we caused some of those problems,

00:11:02.420 just as Pierre Polyev said.

00:11:04.460 Well, it goes even deeper.

00:11:05.260 On June 9th, the CBC had a follow-up piece saying this, following Polyev's attack, Bank of Canada governors says he welcomes criticism.

00:11:13.120 So it's no longer just a top bureaucrat over at the Bank of Canada.

00:11:15.960 It's Tiff Macklin, the person, the man himself, who was appointed by Justin Trudeau as the governor of the Bank of Canada.

00:11:22.360 So according to the CBC piece, it says that Tiff Macklin shrugged off conservative leadership contender Pierre Polyev's

00:11:27.820 pointed criticisms of him and the Central Bank Thursday, saying he welcomes input from elected officials and he knows inflation is too high.

00:11:35.560 So again, Macklin says that he is going to leave politics to the politicians, defending his own performance,

00:11:41.000 but again, admitting to the fact that inflation is too high, which again is a central criticism of Pierre Polyev.

00:11:48.320 So Pierre is not all that offside.

00:11:50.780 After all, oh, and by the way, on June 9th, we also learn the Bank of Canada says that Canadians could see a mortgage payment jump by 45% in the next few years by 2025, 2026, as the rates continue to rise.

00:12:05.420 So some Canadians who took out mortgages in 2020 or 2021 could see their monthly payments jump by as much as 45% in the next few years,

00:12:13.980 given the rising rates, according to the Bank of Canada's scenario released on Thursday.

00:12:20.020 Elevated levels of inflation, which is currently at a 31-year high, could also mean that households allocate more of their income to food and gas

00:12:26.940 if wage increases do not keep pace in this context.

00:12:30.560 Highly indebted houses are especially vulnerable to a loss of income.

00:12:34.800 Polyev again responded, could you afford to pay 45% more for your monthly mortgage payment?

00:12:39.860 Justin Trudeau's inflation deficits and money printing have real-world consequences.

00:12:45.020 Stop this now before Canadians find themselves no longer able to afford their home.

00:12:49.500 He also tweeted this, when the Bank of Canada surrenders its independence to print money for Trudeau,

00:12:54.500 it inflated a housing bubble.

00:12:56.080 If the bubble bursts, countless people will be underwater on their mortgages facing bankruptcy.

00:13:00.940 Another reason to fire Trudeau and his governor.

00:13:04.380 So again, rather than the media paying attention to the very real changes

00:13:08.560 and the disastrous consequences to Justin Trudeau's economic policies,

00:13:12.220 again, they would much prefer to criticize Pierre Polyev and say somehow that he is completely out of step.

00:13:18.540 That is wrong.

00:13:19.580 Polyev in this instance is right.

00:13:22.080 Obviously, it is a very big concern and Justin Trudeau has gotten us into a huge mess.

00:13:26.640 But what we're seeing now is, rather than admit that they were wrong,

00:13:29.900 rather than the media saying, okay, turns out that Pierre Polyev was correct when he was criticizing Trudeau and Macklin

00:13:36.540 for their printing of money and inflation and interest rates,

00:13:39.400 they're just going to quietly shift their criticism to another place,

00:13:43.580 never acknowledge that they had made mistakes and that even the Bank of Canada admits that they were wrong.

00:13:47.740 Now the media is starting to shift their criticism towards the broader Conservative Party of Canada.

00:13:53.340 I'm talking about the big news that the Conservative Party has managed to recruit some 600,000 people to join the party

00:14:00.380 to vote in the upcoming leadership race.

00:14:02.520 These numbers are staggering.

00:14:04.160 They're totally unprecedented in Canadian history.

00:14:07.540 And so, of course, there the media are to jump up and down and criticize, again, the Conservatives.

00:14:13.400 How dare they?

00:14:13.860 This is something that I should have included last week in Fake News Friday, but I missed it.

00:14:18.100 And it's just such an interesting take from John Iverson over at the National Post.

00:14:22.620 He had this story that came out last week.

00:14:24.800 He said, so many new Conservatives, but not even the party knows the real number.

00:14:29.920 And so this is how he starts the piece.

00:14:31.260 He writes this.

00:14:32.480 There's something a little vulgar about Conservative leadership candidates bragging about the number of new members they've signed on. 0.91

00:14:38.340 It's like the toxic masculinity of men claiming sexual conquests. 0.96

00:14:43.780 Okay, so apparently Conservatives are just toxic men and they're not even allowed to tell you how many members they signed up, 0.96

00:14:49.960 even though it is incredibly impressive and the media are understating it.

00:14:54.180 Remember, we told you about how back in 2013, Justin Trudeau signed up 150,000 members and the media were salivating and jumping up and down congratulating him.

00:15:02.600 Now we have the party signing up some 600,000 members, 300 and some thousand came from Pierre Polyev's website himself.

00:15:11.640 And if they even mention it, if they even talk about it, well, according to the legacy media, it's toxic masculinity and it's sort of like claiming sexual conquests.

00:15:20.440 Okay, John Iveson goes on to just say the basic rule of thumb in journalism is to never believe anything, especially from politicians.

00:15:27.980 Well, if only that worked both ways.

00:15:29.240 That is a standard that journalists hold Conservatives to, of course, as we know, and we've shown over and over again on the Candace Malcolm show.

00:15:35.700 That is not the standard that they hold for Justin Trudeau.

00:15:38.200 They basically run with whatever the liberals say as their headline without validating or verifying it.

00:15:43.360 We've seen many, many times they've had to walk that back.

00:15:46.720 But regardless, there's a theme in the legacy media saying that casting doubt on the credibility of the party, casting doubt on these numbers.

00:15:55.800 CTV had a headline saying Conservatives say leadership vote won't be delayed after many new members signed up, all in scare quotes.

00:16:03.300 So we're seeing this as the new narrative from the media, again, questioning whether or not these numbers are real,

00:16:09.900 questioning whether or not the party can handle it, saying that there could be some doubt on the credibility of this election,

00:16:16.280 just given that they frankly just don't believe the Conservatives when they say that they're doing this well.

00:16:22.040 Last week I had Hamish Marshall on the show to talk about this huge growth, the excitement,

00:16:26.980 and what it means for Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh, who, again, should be pretty worried, pretty concerned by the fact that Conservatives are able to appeal to so many Canadians

00:16:36.280 to capture the imagination, to encourage them to pay 15 bucks to join a political party,

00:16:40.660 which is not something that normal, everyday Canadians do.

00:16:43.820 Most Canadians are never members of a political party.

00:16:46.160 So the fact that they have this excitement, the fact that so many Canadians have joined this party,

00:16:53.920 really shows something.

00:16:55.500 And, of course, legacy media is there to try to undermine that excitement.

00:17:00.440 And I think this is a good time, this show, to bring in our friend Ian Brody.

00:17:04.200 Ian is currently the head of the Conservative Leadership Election Organizing Committee,

00:17:08.400 which is the body that runs the Conservative Leadership race.

00:17:11.900 In the past, he was a former chief of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

00:17:16.580 He served as the strategic advisor to the Inter-American Development Bank

00:17:19.660 and was a professor of political science over at the University of Calgary.

00:17:23.440 So, Ian, thank you so much for joining the program.

00:17:26.320 Great to see you, Gavis.

00:17:27.160 And so I noticed on social media over on Twitter last week,

00:17:31.440 you sent out a tweet basically just saying that you were in the Conservative offices last week.

00:17:35.540 Well, here, I'll read it.

00:17:36.120 I was in the Conservative Party offices, a headquarter office last week,

00:17:39.760 including for the membership deadline in the race.

00:17:42.700 I do not see a scenario in which the race could be delayed.

00:17:45.300 Candidates have signed up many, many new members,

00:17:47.400 and party staff are doing extraordinary work to produce a voters list.

00:17:50.820 I expect we'll meet the deadline set out in the Conservative Leadership rules.

00:17:55.420 So what do you make of some of the criticism that is being directed towards your party

00:17:59.460 that you just simply cannot handle the number of new memberships that you've received?

00:18:04.420 Yeah, I should say since that tweet, Candice,

00:18:07.340 we've confirmed that we're looking at more than 600,000 members

00:18:10.420 on the final membership voters list for the race that wraps up in September.

00:18:16.780 So like you mentioned last week,

00:18:18.040 all of those people to vote in that race have to be signed up as members by June 3rd.

00:18:21.880 So I was in the party office until the closing of the memberships on June 3rd.

00:18:27.320 Yes, it's a huge number.

00:18:28.600 I mean, we started this leadership with around 180,000 members,

00:18:33.920 I guess, at the beginning of the year.

00:18:35.360 And so just an enormous growth of membership signups,

00:18:38.480 which is, let's just say it's good news.

00:18:40.320 It's not just good news, it's historically good news.

00:18:42.440 And I think everybody involved is proud to be involved in this historic piece.

00:18:45.880 In the past, memberships have, for a leadership campaign or for a local nomination campaign,

00:18:52.040 have traditionally been signed up on little, you know, paper slips,

00:18:56.600 the, you know, duplicate or triplicate slips with, with checks attached or whatever.

00:19:01.640 And it took months and months and months to enter all those names and addresses into the computer to

00:19:06.680 generate a voters list and to cash all the checks.

00:19:10.120 This time for the first time in this leadership race compared to previous leadership races,

00:19:15.560 the party insisted that basically all of the members had signed up,

00:19:19.560 had to sign up through the party's website.

00:19:21.800 That just cuts the processing time to put out a membership list,

00:19:25.400 not in half, but by like one tenth of the effort that we've had before.

00:19:30.840 And then we can use, you know, all the tools of big data to go through and find duplicates or people

00:19:37.560 whose, whose home addresses are not, you know, quite rightly formatted for, for Canada Post mail-it.

00:19:43.560 So I think all these criticisms we've had from people who are involved in previous leadership races,

00:19:49.560 they're forgetting that the huge advance in technology and the change of the rules that required

00:19:55.480 effectively all of the memberships to be entered into our computer system as the race went along.

00:20:00.120 So there's still work to be done.

00:20:01.800 The parties, membership staff and accounting staff, all the staff that had office are going through

00:20:06.440 trying to clean up that list.

00:20:08.040 As you know, lots of people live in rural areas in, in Canada can sometimes be, you know,

00:20:12.760 their mailing address and their home address are in different ridings.

00:20:15.720 That matters for our race.

00:20:17.240 So that all has to be done manually.

00:20:18.600 But the idea that we're starting with, you know,

00:20:23.400 a shoe box, the size of the Skydome, full of 600,000 paper memberships.

00:20:27.720 And I've got, you know, thousands of people at head office,

00:20:30.520 keep punching them all into the computer.

00:20:31.880 That's just, that's a relic of kind of 10, 10 or 15 years ago, thinking we've, we've advanced since then.

00:20:37.560 Well, I'm glad to hear that you have the technology to keep up with the demand,

00:20:41.640 that, that it seems like there's so much interest in the party right now.

00:20:44.680 So do you have an estimate of how many, how many members, you said 600 is a little low now.

00:20:50.120 Some of the criticism may be that some of the memberships might end up getting thrown out,

00:20:53.000 that they're not legitimate. What's your estimate for how many current members there are in the party?

00:20:57.720 Well, we won't know for another couple of weeks.

00:21:00.120 That's a, that's a, that's a tricky job of cleaning up the list.

00:21:03.560 Although this is the third leadership race we've had in the last six years.

00:21:06.680 So I have to say, party staff are getting very good at this.

00:21:09.640 And of course, for each election, the party runs a couple of hundred local nomination races.

00:21:14.360 They're, you know, smaller events, but it's the same problem of trying to clean up

00:21:17.960 membership list to vote at, at, at local nominations. Um, I wouldn't be, I'm not too,

00:21:23.400 too worried about, about fraud. Um, I, in a big leadership race, there's always,

00:21:28.600 you know, organizers out there who are, who are signing people up faster than they can,

00:21:33.320 faster than they can read the rules. What I'm mostly worried about is in a big effort like this,

00:21:37.800 especially as you get down to the deadline, uh, people signing up through multiple organizations,

00:21:42.280 just in order to make sure their name is on the membership list. We've seen that already

00:21:45.640 in the, uh, staff review of the list, uh, people who signed up two or three times just to make sure

00:21:50.760 they had the right to vote. Uh, but I think that itself is also a good measure of intensity of

00:21:55.640 interest here, right? There are people who really, uh, desperately want to make sure that their vote

00:21:59.400 will count in this leadership race. So they're not, they're not going to leave it to chance.

00:22:02.920 They're going to sign up two or three times. That makes our, our job a little, uh, trickier.

00:22:07.480 But again, this is the sort of thing we've gone through before. I, I think what encourages me

00:22:12.360 here is that if you think about the conservative party, you know, 600 and upwards of 600,000 members,

00:22:19.000 um, bigger than the city of Hamilton, uh, bigger than the city of Halifax or Quebec city, bigger than

00:22:24.280 Regina and Saskatoon combined. Um, we have now, um, uh, almost twice as many members as, uh, there were

00:22:32.280 voters for the green party in the last federal election campaign. I mean, this is a huge,

00:22:36.360 this is a huge mobilization effort. And, um, look last week, uh, Aaron Wary at CBC had a piece,

00:22:44.600 uh, opinion piece out about how the liberals aren't going to deal with rising prices until the fall.

00:22:50.120 Um, uh, a pretty laxable approach to, I think what is the number one economic issue in the country

00:22:55.160 right now, uh, for Canadians, uh, the NDP liberal agreement ensures that this approach is going on

00:23:00.920 for the next three years at 8% inflation. You know, that means we're all 25% poorer by the time

00:23:06.920 this agreement comes to an end and conservatives on the other hand, we've had six credible leadership

00:23:11.960 candidates out talking to people in cities and towns across the country. They're hearing about this

00:23:16.920 and now they're pressing issues on the ground. I think that's what's driven really 400 and something

00:23:21.080 thousand people to sign up new in addition to the 180,000 we had at the beginning of this race.

00:23:26.680 Well, absolutely. It's the conservatives that are the only ones taking the issues in our

00:23:30.840 economy and our country seriously. And I think that a lot of Canadians are waking up to that.

00:23:35.160 Ian, I read a lot of the comments, uh, and, and feedback from True North viewers. A lot of them

00:23:41.080 are new members to the conservative party, people who have never voted conservative or never been

00:23:45.240 part of the conservative party before. So I'm just wondering to the viewers of this podcast or

00:23:50.120 listeners of this podcast who are new to the conservative party, could you explain a little bit

00:23:54.520 about how the leadership process works? Like once you verify the list, what happens next?

00:24:00.840 Yeah. So we'll have a preliminary list out to the candidates. Each of the six candidates will get

00:24:05.720 a preliminary list over the next couple of weeks. Uh, once we've done, uh, our cleanup of the list.

00:24:13.160 After that, each of the campaigns will get 72 hours to, uh, submit corrections to the list. There may be

00:24:19.240 people on the list they don't think are eligible to vote. That gets a bit technical. I can go into the

00:24:23.720 details if you want, or they may think there are people who should be on the list that for whatever

00:24:28.920 reason have been, have been missed. I mean, sometimes you get, you know, uh, ENQ public and ENQ

00:24:34.840 public junior. If they get, you know, merged as a result of, uh, one of our computer, uh, uh, uploads,

00:24:40.040 you know, maybe they should be actually two different people. We can, we can fix that.

00:24:43.880 So it'd be 72 hours for them to come up with changes to the list. We then have about 72 hours to,

00:24:48.920 uh, to make those changes to the list at that point. Um, uh, the, the membership list is the

00:24:56.200 voters list is closed. Everyone will get everyone who has signed up and is on that membership list

00:25:01.000 will get a paper ballot in the mail. Uh, the party's constitution requires that we have a postal

00:25:06.040 ballot sent out to people. So if you think about that, um, you know, from, um, from central Canada,

00:25:11.720 I always say we've got, we've got members in whale Cove Nunavut, uh, getting mail to whale Cove Nunavut,

00:25:17.160 letting those members fill out the ballot and send it back is, it takes a long time.

00:25:20.920 Uh, Canada post has some challenges these years to try to get, uh, during COVID to try to get mail

00:25:25.560 out and back. So that's many weeks. Plus you can't just print 600,000 outgoing ballots that,

00:25:31.240 you know, overnight to mail them all in the same day. It's going to take several weeks

00:25:34.680 to get all those ballots out. Uh, the ballot is itself, uh, a little bit complicated because,

00:25:40.440 uh, in our party, we have a single ballot, but people have an opportunity to rank order their

00:25:45.240 candidate. So they may want to cast a ballot for a particular candidate as their first choice.

00:25:49.560 If the candidate gets dropped off, uh, a second round of balloting, they get a chance to have a

00:25:54.280 second choice or a third choice in this case, uh, down to six choices altogether. Uh, each round of

00:26:00.600 counting, uh, we're looking for a candidate to get, uh, 50% plus one of the points that are available.

00:26:06.520 The party's constitution, uh, to a certain extent equalizes the voting power of each riding.

00:26:11.960 Uh, so just, you know, think about the conservative strengths in rural areas and in Western Canada.

00:26:17.640 Uh, the bulk of the points that are available, the bulk of the voting parts available in this race

00:26:23.160 will be in the ridings that we don't hold. So it encourages the candidates to vote and

00:26:27.320 organize in ridings that the conservatives don't currently hold in the House of Commons.

00:26:31.080 And in particular, uh, remote ridings where we don't have quite so many members, territories,

00:26:36.760 Labrador, uh, so forth, there's a huge incentive for the candidates to go out and organize, uh,

00:26:42.200 strongly in ridings where the party's particularly not very strong on the ground. And so, uh, at the

00:26:49.160 end of that, that'll be, I expect multiple days of counting the ballots when they come back to Ottawa.

00:26:55.080 All the ballots have to be backed by September the 6th. That gives us four days, uh, for the last ballot

00:27:00.840 coming in until the announcement on September 10th. And I don't see any scenario at the moment, uh,

00:27:06.280 barring a public health, uh, challenge in the fall. I don't see a scenario that would have us,

00:27:11.080 that would have us changing any of those deadlines right now.

00:27:13.240 And so, so four days from the time the ballots are accepted to the time that the, the, the,

00:27:19.400 the leader is announced, uh, why does it take that long?

00:27:22.360 So we, because this is a mail-in ballot, so unlike, uh, in-person elections during a general

00:27:28.120 election campaign where you have to show up at a ballot at a voting station and show some

00:27:32.760 identification, you know, show, show yourself in person to the returning officer and then mark the

00:27:38.200 ballot, this will all be conducted by mail. So we do have to be a little bit careful to

00:27:43.160 make sure that, um, that the ballots have been cast by the people who, uh, who they were assigned to.

00:27:49.400 So when people cast a ballot, they have to include a copy of some photo identification,

00:27:53.480 something like that. That all has to be verified by hand. Uh, there's no way to automate that. And

00:27:58.920 we have to make sure that the, the ballot that comes back hasn't been photocopied or otherwise

00:28:03.800 fabricated by someone. So they have to be verified before they can be counted. That's a very time

00:28:09.080 consuming process. That process will start in July when we expect the earliest ballots to come back

00:28:14.520 and we'll proceed through August. Um, I don't expect we're going to get that many ballots at the

00:28:19.240 very end on September the 6th, uh, but it's possible that we could get a, a last minute search. So

00:28:24.440 there's a couple of days in there to go through that process of verifying that the ballot has been

00:28:28.360 properly cast. And then I expect we'll take a few days to count, um, ballots at the, at the scale that

00:28:35.400 we're talking about here in the past. Uh, it's taken about a day to count, you know, 150,000,

00:28:40.360 180,000 ballots of the last few races to 200,000 ballots in the last few races. Um, so if we scale

00:28:47.240 up to, uh, uh, uh, 500, 600,000 ballots coming back, we're going to need a little bit more time,

00:28:52.280 even with, even with extra people and extra accounting machines to help us with accounting.

00:28:56.520 Excellent. And, uh, just, just one final, uh, well, one, one other question about the process here.

00:29:01.880 Um, there has been some criticism specifically from the Jean Charest camp, um, about the legitimacy

00:29:08.120 of the race. I know that, uh, Tasha Carradine, who's a co-chair for, uh, Charest said that the

00:29:13.880 next leader will have no credibility if the race isn't transparent. Uh, what, what is your response

00:29:19.320 to these kinds of criticisms? Look, uh, this is always a challenge in a very long race. Uh, people get,

00:29:26.680 you know, antsy about the outcome of that. I understand that having been on the side,

00:29:30.840 you know, I've been on Tasha's side before, uh, helping to run leadership races. These are,

00:29:35.480 are long treks. Um, that said, uh, as I say, each campaign will get, uh, a three-day period to take

00:29:42.440 a look at the interim, uh, voters list and to make changes or suggest changes that they,

00:29:47.880 corrections that they need, they think need to be made. Uh, we'll then release the final list, uh,

00:29:53.080 to everybody, uh, sometime in July. Uh, every candidate will have an opportunity to have

00:29:58.120 scrutineers, their own campaign observers observing the verification process. In the last campaign,

00:30:04.120 the verification was webcast live, uh, on a web television, uh, uh, facility platform. I expect

00:30:11.400 we're going to do the same, uh, this time. So you can see 24 hours a day, uh, what's going on. And then

00:30:16.600 each campaign will have the opportunity to have somebody, uh, scrutineer or observe, uh, the counting

00:30:21.800 process and to take a look at the calculation of the, of the final result. That's, I think,

00:30:27.080 as transparent as a federal election, uh, in Canada, I started out in this business as a

00:30:32.520 scrutineer on races like this. So I think it's particularly important that we be as transparent

00:30:37.160 about the, the mail process, the verification process and the counting process as we possibly can.

00:30:42.440 Absolutely. Well, this is a final question for you, Ian. What do you think, what do you make of

00:30:46.840 the scenario in Canada now where, you know, when, when Justin Trudeau ran for leader of the liberal

00:30:51.480 party, he, he claimed that he had 150,000 members. I think he ended up getting about 80,000 people

00:30:57.160 voting for him in that race. We see, see this huge surge in interest in the conservative party.

00:31:03.160 Uh, as you mentioned, upwards of 400,000 new members for this party. What do you make of the

00:31:08.840 enthusiasm? What do you think just is going through Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh's head right now?

00:31:13.560 Do you think they should be nervous about this huge growth in interest in the conservative party?

00:31:19.720 Yeah. I mean, look, uh, uh, in that leadership race and the liberal leadership race, when Mr. Trudeau

00:31:24.120 won, uh, as I recall, you could, you could join the party by, by liking the party on Facebook. It

00:31:29.080 didn't, uh, didn't require much of an effort to join the liberal party. These are all people

00:31:33.080 in our party who have signed up and paid membership fee and been through, uh, uh, the, the membership

00:31:38.680 gathering process. So the people who signed up had to make a particular effort to sign up. We also make

00:31:44.840 sure under federal law, if you're going to pay the membership fee, you have to pay it yourself.

00:31:49.080 And so, uh, we, we don't have any more of the phenomenon in Canada of people, you know, some

00:31:53.960 wealthy donor paying for 10,000 members to sign up. Each one of those people signed up themselves with

00:31:59.080 their own credit card, or in some cases with a personal check. I mean, that is an extraordinary

00:32:04.200 degree of the members that we have are people who really want to be members of the conservative

00:32:08.440 party. They went through all of these hoops to get into the party, uh, in order to ensure that they

00:32:12.840 had, uh, a say over who the next leader would be. I think this, uh, just as a, uh, a party building

00:32:19.960 exercise alone, the extraordinary amount of new energy, uh, in the private party is bigger than it

00:32:24.760 has ever been in any party in Canada has ever been before. And, uh, I think the liberals in the NDP are,

00:32:31.000 if I were them right now, I'd be trying to figure out where are these people, who are these people,

00:32:35.880 where did they come from? I think in some cases, they're people that the liberals in the NDP might

00:32:39.880 have expected to have in their own camp in the past, and maybe were their own camp in the past,

00:32:43.960 that they've been attracted by, by virtue of, I think the damage of the liberal NDP, uh, agreement

00:32:49.480 has done and, and, and the case, the pitch that our, our six leadership candidates are making out in the

00:32:54.280 grassroots from coast to coast. I just, I want you to comment though, because I, I saw a poll in,

00:32:59.400 uh, I think it was the Globe and Mail that said that 60% of Canadians are okay with the agreement

00:33:04.520 between the liberals and the NDP. Do you, do you think that's accurate or do you think that there

00:33:08.360 is this sort of underswell of people who are really not okay with this sort of informal,

00:33:13.480 formal agreement of governance? Well, I think that, that 60% number was a snapshot,

00:33:18.440 you know, a poll at the time when it wasn't clear what, what that, what the implications of that

00:33:23.320 agreement were going to be. And it, in so far as it did head off the risk of an election in the next

00:33:28.120 couple of years, maybe people are relieved. We've had several elections in the past couple of years

00:33:32.040 are relieved not to be back to the polls again. I'm not sure that people were too excited about

00:33:36.040 having the election we had in 2021, uh, during, during the Omicron wave of the, of the pandemic.

00:33:43.160 So, you know, I understand the 60% number that doesn't mean the 60% of Canadians like the idea of

00:33:48.280 three more years of, uh, of rising, uh, you know, food prices, gas prices, housing prices,

00:33:53.960 um, that kind of lackadaisical approach to the, to the economic growth and to the real economic

00:33:58.600 payment feel that people are feeling from coast to coast as a result of all of these cost increases.

00:34:03.080 So I, I, I think if I were in the governing side, I have been in government myself, uh, I'd be watching

00:34:08.600 those polls with, uh, with a big grain of salt because, because all of the other indicators,

00:34:13.000 uh, that, that touch Canadians, uh, in their day-to-day lives here are going, are going negative.

00:34:17.960 Okay. Well, Dr. Ian Brody, thank you so much for your insight. Thank you for clarifying the

00:34:21.880 leadership process and all the best with this entire thing. Um, we're really looking forward

00:34:26.360 to September 10th and learning who the new leader of the party will be.

00:34:29.480 Good. Great. Thanks, Candice. Good to talk to you.

00:34:31.960 All right. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:34:51.880 is

Juno News - June 15, 2022

Pierre Poilievre vindicated as Bank of Canada admits his criticisms were legitimate

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