Should the Conservatives embrace populism？
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Summary
The Conservative Party of Canada is at a crossroads. Will the party embrace populism and capitalize on the broad frustrations that many Canadians have with the Trudeau government, or will they go down the safe establishment path of presenting themselves as a more disciplined and moderate version of the Liberal party of Canada?
Transcript
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The Conservative Party of Canada is at a crossroads. Will the party embrace populism and
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capitalize on the broad frustrations that many Canadians have with the Trudeau government,
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or will they go down the safe establishment path and formula of presenting themselves as a more
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disciplined and more moderate version of the Liberal Party of Canada? I'm Candice Malcolm
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Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. So there's a couple of things that we know
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and that is that Canadians are feeling the effects of a big government led by the Liberal
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Party and Justin Trudeau. They always think that they know best. This style of government
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includes the astronomical debt that Trudeau has raked up, a bureaucratic busybody is constantly
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getting in the way of jobs and growth, a growing nanny state where the government restricts our
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rights and freedoms at every turn, and all the while it seems like Justin Trudeau is never really
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held accountable. He always finds a way to get away and give himself more power, whether
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it's through backroom deals like the one we saw with Jagmeet Singh, or just utilizing the
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various tools of government to get away with his various scandals. So many Canadians are left
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wondering what is the alternative? Could there be an opportunity here for the Conservative Party
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of Canada? Do Conservatives embrace populism? Or do they look down their noses at it like so
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many in the establishment class do? Well, my guest today on The Candice Malcolm Show is
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Ben Woodfindan. Ben is a writer and contributor to The National Post. And to Hub, The Hub, his recent article,
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he argues that it's time for the Conservatives to embrace populism. Ben is also working on a PhD over
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at McGill University. And it is great to have you on the program, Ben. Thank you so much for joining us.
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Good to be with you. So I've never had you on the show before, but I have been reading and enjoying
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your work in various publications for a long time. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself
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and how you got involved in sort of public policy and writing in various newspapers?
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Sure. So yeah, so as you said, so I'm finishing a PhD right now at McGill. Doing a PhD is kind of,
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I won't bore your listeners with the details, but basically on executive power in the Westminster
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system is the really boring version of it. So I do that, you know, it's kind of like my day job,
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so to speak. But I do a fair bit of, I never leave, I never really know what to describe myself as
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exactly. I do some writing commentary on the side. I write pretty regularly placed like the National
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Post. And what's, what's, people always assume I kind of have a kind of a hyper-partisan background.
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And I really don't, I've actually never fully worked for the Conservative Party or anything like
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that. I kind of see my role in, in the kind of the movement more broadly in that kind of more
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small C sense. You know, I don't hide my political leanings. You know, people in the academic world
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certainly are aware of my political leanings, unfortunately sometimes. But I, yeah, I kind of
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see myself as a kind of, a kind of small C voice that tries to kind of, you know, offer nudges and
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problems and kind of the way the part on directions I think the party should take.
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You know, I don't really, I don't really know if there's a kind of, I would just call myself a
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conservative. I don't know if there's a kind of type of conservative I would necessarily kind of
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frame myself as. I do, I do kind of, you know, some of the, some of the kind of broader shifts we've
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seen in the last couple of years, you know, not just in Canada, but you know, in the US and UK,
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towards a kind of more, what I like to call kind of like a blue collar conservatism. I think I'm
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very kind of sympathetic towards that. And I kind of think that's, I think that's happening,
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whether people like it or not, that's the direction it's going anyway. But I also think that's,
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it's a good thing that we're going in that direction and kind of some of the work conservatives
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need to be doing over the next few years is kind of figuring out how to kind of,
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how to put meat, meat on those bones and how to kind of really flesh and kind of good,
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good policy ideas and kind of a good, a good substantive agenda around that kind of shift as
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well. Well, it's interesting to hear you talk about the need to sort of embrace working class
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values and populism. I don't really expect that talking to an academic from McGill University.
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So I do wonder what, what brought you towards conservatism? You know, it's sort of rare,
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like you mentioned in academia and in, in just sort of, you know, elite establishments,
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like the one that you work at. So I'm just curious as to like, you were reluctant to say
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what kind of conservative you are, but what, what, what brought you to this tradition of conservatism?
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Oh, good question. You know, I was, I was a, so I, so I grew up, I was born in the UK,
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and I grew up in the UK and we moved, my family moved to Canada when I was about 15.
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It's moving, you know, moving, moving countries when you're 15 is, it's not an easy time necessarily
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to move. So I had a kind of strange high school experience when I was here. And I basically,
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you know, I wasn't, I wouldn't call myself kind of, I wasn't interested in politics or
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anything like that when I was young. You know, I basically just kind of had more time on my
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hands and doing a bit more reading, a bit more thinking when I was, when we moved here. And I just
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kind of, I kind of, of course I would say this, you know, as someone doing a PhD,
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I basically just kind of read my way into it. You know, I did, I did the kind of very,
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the very unique, maybe strange thing of that. I became, I grew up in a fairly non-religious
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family and I, I decided, I became a Catholic. I converted when I was about, I was about 21,
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when I was an undergrad. So there was definitely, and some of that was definitely, you know,
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well, it wasn't a political move, but it was definitely broader, you know, I'm fairly
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traditionalist in many ways. And so there's definitely, you know, that's definitely something going on there.
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In terms of my kind of political evolution, I think, so like I said, I grew up in the UK.
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And I think prior to that, my politics were kind of quite, I was, you know, I was always kind of
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conservative, but I was never, I was never super comfortable with maybe some of the more like free
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market-y kind of conservatism. But I kind of just went, you know, I kind of, I didn't really think
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about there being other ways to think about conservatism until Brexit. And Brexit really
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kind of changed, but really opened my eyes to certain things. So the kinds of, you know, I come
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from a fairly working class background in the UK. So, so much of the kind of the discourse,
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the kind of discussion around Brexit that, you know, before and then after, after the referendum,
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certain things really change, some things really changed for me and sort of opened my eyes.
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And the kind of, I guess if there's one kind of broad, broad thing that I changed my mind on that
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really does shape my politics now, it's the kind of the way that the way that, you know, the traditional
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defenders of the working class, people on the left, the way that they now think about politics and the
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way that they now think about defending the interest of working class people. It's just,
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just totally divorced from the real lives of these people. You know, I, I sometimes get
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fairly or unfairly, I think fairly kind of labeled as kind of a pro union conservative.
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And I always like to clarify to people that I'm very pro kind of labor unions and
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actual like trade unions. But I'm not particularly pro public sector unions, which are a totally different
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animal, just in terms of the incentives that motivate them, the kinds of people that are actually
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members of the other, if you're in a, you know, a public sector union, you're basically a member of
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like the professional class, right. And so I think like, like the Labour Party in the UK now, it's still,
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you know, a union party, but it's dominated by like public sector unions. So the kind of labor
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politics that they're into now is very much that kind of like, professional managerial kind of urban
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London based kind of politics. And also, you know, while all these kind of bigger shifts were going
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on around Brexit and stuff like that, it just kind of so many of these doors, so many new things just
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kind of became clear to me that I don't, I don't want to say that I kind of found my own consciousness.
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That's a, I really like that kind of language, but I think kind of over these last couple of years,
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I've kind of come into my own kind of sense of, you know, where I'm from, how it, how it fits into
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the world. And, you know, so when I say I'm sympathetic, it's kind of like blue collar
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conservative shifts, you know, as partially kind of like, self motivated, that's kind of
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broadly speaking, how I kind of see my background and see where I'm from. So,
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yeah, and, you know, there's a, some of this is economic stuff, some of this obviously overlaps with
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like, deeper kind of cultural questions, questions about respect and dignity for people.
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But yeah, I think so I, yeah, it's a long way of kind of explaining how I got here. But
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if there was a single kind of catalyst from that kind of shift in politics, it was probably
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Brexit and what happened in the years following that.
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It's so interesting. I could, I could do a whole show and I probably should one day on
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the number of conservatives that I know have, who have converted to Catholicism, just personally,
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either from, from like an atheist background, or, you know, maybe just like a Anglican Christian
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sort of background, where they, they've sort of feel the need to go towards something even more
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traditional and more steeped in the, in the actual teachings of the Bible and not just
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sort of the latest politics around them all. But we'll save that for another day. It's interesting
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that you mentioned that the distinction between public sector unions and private sector unions,
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because I feel like this is a conflict for the NDP. I mean, we saw the big merger or the agreement
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into the coalition of the pack between Trudeau and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh. And, you know,
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right in their priorities, it talked about unions. But you could tell that they were talking about
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public sector unions, because they're talking about sick days and perks, like it wasn't,
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it wasn't so much, we're going to fight for the interest of the working man. It was more like,
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we're going to fight for the entitlements of the government class and the manager class. And
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it's a good segue because I know you wrote this great essay over in The Hub, where you talked about
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how Pierre Polyev or whoever is going to lead the next conservative party. There's a sort of winning
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strategy baked into a speech that Pierre Polyev gave about the elite gatekeepers. And so I'm hoping
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you can sort of expand on that a little bit. What do you mean by elite gatekeepers? Or what did Pierre
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Polyev mean by them? And how is this a winning strategy for conservatives? Sure. So yes, when I read
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that essay, I had in mind, so Polyev gave a speech on the floor of the House of Commons sometime,
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I think, I think it was last spring, I'll have to go look, but he called the speech the gatekeepers.
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And, you know, Polyev has this kind of, he has a sort of kind of, he has a very distinct kind of
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style, right? He's kind of mastered his own, his own approach. It was a very kind of Polyev-ish
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speech where he, he went after basically, you know, he starts going after kind of NIMBYs that basically
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blocked an expansion of Billy Bishop to the airport downtown Toronto. And he basically uses it to show
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basically how kind of all sorts of different, these elite, elite gatekeepers are basically kind of,
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you know, holding back ordinary Canadians. And it's not, you know, the, it's a perfect,
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it's a very kind of, in many ways, it's a very kind of, it's not a very dangerous or like dark speech,
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I think like, you know, everyone, some people, you know, they hear the word, the word populism,
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they think, you know, this kind of evil, scary, you know, demonizing rhetoric. But the kind of
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populism he was kind of channeling there, I think is a very kind of healthy, healthy populism. And his
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argument is, you know, he's making essentially kind of an economic argument, right? You have these
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ordinary Canadians, who are being held back by these various kind of bureaucratic, not always
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bureaucratic, you know, whether it's kind of big corporate interests, or big government interests,
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or like, well, the wedding of the two, which happens so often. It's how these kinds of people
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are, you know, preventing, he looks at things like, like housing is the most obvious one.
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And I think, and so my arguments in the piece, but there's, there's some real potential for this
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kind of message, for him to build a kind of, for him to kind of simultaneously kind of be,
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be authentically himself, he doesn't have to pretend to be something he isn't, which,
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you know, I think that was the, as I said in the essay, that if there was one lesson to take from,
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from Aaron O'Toole's leadership, it's that you can't run, you know, you can, you can try that
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pivot, you know, that run is one thing for leader and then try and pivot towards something else.
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It's unlikely to work, right, because you kind of stuck caught between a rock and a hard place
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once you do. O'Toole did this, O'Toole was still kind of, you know, during the election was still
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attacked, as being kind of like, far right, which is, you know, farcical to think about, but
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he simultaneously, some of those attacks would stick precisely because, you know, there were
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clips of him that they could use to try and, that the liberals could use to try and make him
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out to be one thing, but then precisely because he wasn't like that, and then precisely because
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he pivoted to this completely, you know, to a complete 180, O'Toole, you know, he, he lost,
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he basically lost trust with, with the base, right, with, with the people that elected him.
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And so he had, and so he had what was, you could basically describe as an authenticity problem
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by the end of it. If Polly was to run on this kind of thing, I don't think he has that problem
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precisely because he can, I think this kind of message is appealing to enough of the kind of
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conservative base that will still, you know, resonate with the base. But where I really think
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there's kind of potential for this kind of message is it really has growth potential beyond just kind of
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traditional, traditional Tory voters. One thing that I don't want to tease it too much in here,
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I'm working on another piece right now that I'm hoping to expand on this point a bit. But the kinds
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of, so the, if, if, if he goes for this kind of this anti gatekeepers coalition, I'm kind of suggesting
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he should, you know, it's in some sense, it's a, it's a populist movement, a populist coalition. But the
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people I think he should target aren't necessarily what you might think of as kind of the traditional,
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populist voters, right? You know, when we think about places like the UK and the US,
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you know, we're thinking about kind of like Rust Belt, you know, maybe rural, like older
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people, that these are the kind of prime populist voters. And I'm actually not so sure that that's
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the people he should be targeting with this message so much. I think the kind of people that will be
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most open to what he's saying are quite likely to be younger Canadians, it's quite likely to be a fairly
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kind of diverse, like ethnically quite a diverse set of people. I'm thinking kind of like the
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four nation kind of coalition. These are the good, like, these are people, you know, they're,
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You know, they're struggling, you know, the cost of living is kind of, you know,
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threatening to swamp them. They can't afford, they can't buy a house, they've been priced out
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of the housing market. You know, they get told by, by boomers that, you know, kind of wealthy to do
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boomers that, you know, if you can't afford gas on your car, just go, oh, just, just, just buy an
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electric vehicle as if it's that easy. These, so these are the kind of people I think Polio could
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really resonate with. And so it's not necessarily, it's a kind of, it's a fairly, you might want to
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call it like an unorthodox coalition. But I think it's one that has real potential, kind of real
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formidable electoral potential for him. And one that, especially when you think about some of these
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voters live, places like the GTA and the 905, if he could find a way to successfully kind of
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mobilize his coalition, it could, it could propel him to government, you know, a big kind of resounding
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government. So, you know, it's not, it's, it would be easier, it's going to be, if, if Polio wins,
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he's going to get painted as, you know, the next Trump, the next Johnson. And so many of these
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comparisons are so silly when they're made by, you know, like media and people like that. But
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in many ways, I think if, when people, if people try and do that to him, they're really going to
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kind of miss the, miss what's going on. They might be quite shocked. You know, they might wake up in
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2025, whenever the next election is going to be now, and discover that kind of a coalition of
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people that they really weren't expecting might propel them to victory.
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One of the interesting things that came out of the trucker convoy, I saw a poll
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that showed that the people who were the most sympathetic to the cause of the truckers were
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young Canadians, people under the age of 30, which, which, which seems a little counterintuitive.
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But I think that the way that you draw out that, that sort of coalition of people who,
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I mean, if you think about the last two years, and what we've lost, you know, it's, it's hard for
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all of us. But I think that the people that were hit the hardest are those who are in school,
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who are young, who are out there, you know, looking to live a life and get experiences and
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make friends and date and all this kind of stuff. And so much of that was restricted that I don't
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think we've really properly calibrated just how much anger and resentment there is among
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that group of people. I want to chat a little bit more about this aspect that you're talking about
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with Aaron O'Toole and the authenticity issue. I completely agree with your analysis. And I think
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that that was certainly one of his many, many problems. It seems like this sort of tried and
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true strategy for conservatives is to appeal to the base that, you know, provide the red meat during the
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selection period where they're picking a new leader, and then sort of moderate and appeal more to centrist
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voters during the general election. It didn't work for Andrew Scheer, it didn't work for Aaron O'Toole.
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Do you think conservatives will learn this lesson? Do you think that they will select a leader
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based on this? Or do you think that they're doomed to continue to make this mistake?
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I think they're going to, I don't know if they're going to learn all the right lessons,
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but I think, you know, I would, you know, it's still, you know, we're recording this in March. So,
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you know, who knows what's going to happen in the next six months. But I still think this race is very
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much polly ads to lose, I'd still be quite surprised if anyone else wins. I do have to,
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I, you know, it's, it is quite, it's, it's quite funny watching some of the new kind of the race from
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non-conservatives. The people who they think, you know, there's, there's, there's nothing more,
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I mean, I find amusing, but also quite frustrating to get kind of, you know, this is who the conservative
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should, should pick from people that are never, ever, ever going to vote conservative, right?
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And I always think it's kind of like, it's the kind of, it's atheists giving advice to the church,
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right? Like, well, I'm never ever, you know, I don't believe in God, and I'm never, ever,
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ever going to go to church. But if only the Catholic church would become a bit more liberal
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on all these things. Well, you know, I'd never become Catholic, but maybe I would just, you know,
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maybe I respect the church a bit more. And so much of that advice feels like that to me,
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you're getting, it doesn't mean you shouldn't, it just doesn't mean the conservative should only
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listen to, to, to conservatives. I'm not saying they shouldn't take outside advice,
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but they should be very careful in some senses, who they take that advice from.
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People that, you know, people that want a conservative party, lots of these people that
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want the kind of, you know, the kind of liberal light candidate, they might, you know, they, they think
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that that is the kind of, you know, they'll frame their arguments as like, this is what the
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conservatives need to do to win. But what they really mean is, this is what the conservatives
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need to do so that they can be an opposition that I like a bit more, right. And I, I think they have
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to avoid that kind of, be very wary of that kind of advice. And I do, I do think this time around,
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I get the sense that the base in general is quite sick of, is quite wary of that, they're quite sick of
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that. Where I do think the conservatives need to learn, where I think they need to do some real
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thinking, where I think they need to kind of, you know, do some serious kind of work and thinking
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for themselves is, you know, we try, we treat, which we treat, which, you know, we treat, we treat
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people in different parts of the country as kind of the same. If you're in Alberta, you must be this
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way. If you're a Quebec, you must be this way. If you're rural, you must be this way. If you're urban,
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you must be this way. And I don't think I think it's such a kind of simplistic way of looking at it.
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But one of the things I kind of think the conservatives would benefit, could do well,
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would benefit from, and something where I think Polyev especially has potential to resonate,
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is think about the kinds of people that, that live in these kind of suburban writings in Toronto,
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where, like realistically, they're going to have to do have some breakthroughs if they're ever going
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to form government again. You know, there's, the suburbs of Toronto are the most kind of diverse
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place probably, maybe one of the most diverse places in the world. And I don't just mean in
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terms of kind of like different immigrant communities, I mean, in terms of kind of in terms
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of like, like class background as well, right? The idea that there's a single kind of suburban voter
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is silly, right? There are rich suburban people, there are poor suburban people, there are younger
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suburban people, there are older suburban people. And the idea that all these people will have the exact
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same kind of like, there's a, there's a, there's a way to kind of please all those people as if they
00:21:03.780
have kind of the same priorities and preferences. It's kind of, you know, it's never going to happen.
00:21:09.940
And the conservatives are never, you know, the, too often, it feels like conservatives, they either,
00:21:16.260
they either don't want to expand the base at all, or they want to be liked by everyone.
00:21:21.140
They don't need to be liked by everyone, right? You're never going to please everyone. So what I think
00:21:26.340
they need to do is be looking at the kinds of people I'm talking about, this kind of younger,
00:21:33.300
more millennial, not entirely millennial, but more millennial, younger group of people that,
00:21:40.580
you know, live in places like the GTA, figure out the kinds of things that motivate those kind of
00:21:45.380
kinds of voters and tap into that. And I think what people will be shocked to learn is that, you know,
00:21:51.700
people might kind of, if, whenever I go to places like, I was in, I was in Toronto a couple weeks
00:21:58.020
ago, and I was in a place called, I was in Vaughn, so like Northern, Northern GTA. And something that
00:22:03.060
amazes me when you live somewhere like that, you know, I live in, so I live in Ottawa, and I live in
00:22:08.180
a fairly, I live downtown Ottawa, so I live in a fairly kind of bougie, urban kind of area. And I can,
00:22:14.340
I can walk basically most, I can walk to the grocery store, I can walk to the gym.
00:22:18.580
So I have a car, but I don't use all that much. If you live somewhere like Vaughn,
00:22:23.220
you drive everywhere, right? That's just kind of how those places are built.
00:22:28.180
So if you're going to appeal to people like that, it's funny how as much as kind of urban
00:22:31.940
trendy people think that, you know, suburbs are full of people like them. In many ways, like,
00:22:38.180
people that live in kind of car, car, car oriented suburbs, places like that,
00:22:43.860
they are, they live different lives to kind of urban, urban people, urban progressives,
00:22:49.540
especially, right? And I think conservatives, if they actually tried to kind of figure out
00:22:55.300
a message that can resonate specifically with those kinds of people, I don't actually think that,
00:23:00.500
I don't actually think that should be that difficult. I think kind of conservative,
00:23:03.380
small C conservative values should appeal to those people quite easily. It's just a matter of kind of
00:23:08.340
selling that, getting through to those people and actually selling them that.
00:23:12.100
Well, and getting in front of the message so that you're presenting yourself to the Canadian public
00:23:16.180
and not letting the liberals define you. And, you know, it's interesting because the type of
00:23:21.220
coalition that you talked about, you look back at the 2011 electoral map and you'll see that Stephen
00:23:26.980
Harper, like the GTA is all blue. It's really remarkable how many of those seats went to the
00:23:34.020
conservatives in 2011. So I know so many people say, look, the Harper coalition's dead,
00:23:40.820
and you can't rerun on something that you used a decade ago, but you're clearly channeling something
00:23:46.980
that was in that platform. The idea of, you know, simplistic policies that appeal and actually help
00:23:53.700
people in those parts of the country, I think is great advice. Ben, I want to sort of switch gears
00:23:59.300
here because you mentioned that you're doing your PhD and you're studying the Westminster system of
00:24:04.020
government. I get so many people emailing me and messaging me asking how it's possible for the type
00:24:10.900
of sort of power grab or solidification coalition, whatever you want to call it, that we saw between
00:24:17.220
the NDP and the Trudeau liberals. People ask, you know, isn't our system set up to sort of protect
00:24:23.860
against these post-election jockeying of coalitions? But you're sort of the expert on this topic. So
00:24:31.380
I want to get your thoughts on that and maybe just more broadly, what do you think is a good strategy,
00:24:38.900
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to be the kind of the pet end here that kind of pleases no one with an answer.
00:24:44.580
But yeah, like, you know, there's so much of the kind of silly online discussion over this is,
00:24:51.220
you know, someone's calling it a coalition and then, you know, the Aaron worries of the world
00:24:55.380
saying, well, that's not, that's not the correct word. And then that kind of like back and forth over
00:24:59.620
terms. You know, I think this is probably very, if, you know, the conservatives, you know, will be
00:25:05.780
are publicly, as they should criticising the agreement, you know, that, you know, they probably
00:25:10.820
stand to benefit from this agreement in a couple years, given just given, you know, who they can
00:25:15.300
now run against. Technically, what's so what's what's actually being what's been agreed here is
00:25:22.340
what's called a confidence and supply agreement, which is a fairly kind of common practice in
00:25:26.900
Westminster systems. There's nothing technically kind of so both parties have signed agreed to this
00:25:33.940
confidence and supply agreement. It's not formal legislation or anything like that. So, you know,
00:25:40.260
if one of the parties chooses to break it, they're not breaking the law or anything like that. And
00:25:44.420
there's no legislation doesn't have to be repealed to remove it. So it's more of a kind of a gentleman
00:25:50.340
agreement that they'll both promise to keep. But it could be that the NDP could withdraw support at
00:25:56.260
any time if they wanted to. And more likely, the liberals could, you know, if they see an opportunity,
00:26:01.860
they could just break the agreement that happened a couple of years ago in British Columbia when the
00:26:08.020
the NDP, the the then the then minority NDP government that was backed by the Greens,
00:26:14.020
but had basically all of these agreements with with the Green Party and just basically,
00:26:19.860
I might be getting some of the details on this slightly wrong, but that they basically, you know,
00:26:23.700
broke the agreement, kind of betrayed the Greens almost, and then they won a majority. So,
00:26:28.180
you know, this doesn't guarantee that the government lasts till 2025. But I have to say,
00:26:37.060
the people I'm most surprised, but the move makes sense for the liberals because it, you know,
00:26:41.860
it basically just gives them a close to a free hand as they're going to get in this parliament,
00:26:45.940
right? It allows them to minimize, to avoid scrutiny. The place to really watch where this,
00:26:51.220
how this is going to shake out is going to be in the committees.
00:26:53.380
So if you go and read the actual agreement that they published publicly, they have a,
00:27:00.740
they have a mention of the, how this is going to work in terms of committee work. And there's some
00:27:06.180
very kind of vague language in there about both parties will agree to not have any kind of unnecessary
00:27:11.940
obstructions in committees. But, you know, the liberals are not going to get track record of
00:27:16.820
respect to committee work. So, you know, they'll probably just use this as an excuse to kind of
00:27:22.100
sideswipe any kind of like serious scrutiny in committees, which, which worries me a bit.
00:27:28.740
But in terms of what the NDP gained from this, I just don't, you know, technically they'll gain some,
00:27:34.420
some of their policy priorities, you know, pharma care, dental care, all this kind of stuff.
00:27:39.380
But, you know, there's nothing to actually force the liberals to do this.
00:27:41.860
And, you know, if I was betting, I don't think we'll actually have, you know, dental care or
00:27:46.740
pharma care two years from now, just based on how the liberal government tends to operate,
00:27:50.900
we'll have some sort of, you know, promise to have it down the road, like a white paper or something.
00:27:58.100
But the NDP of the party that I just don't understand, you know, that the traditional,
00:28:02.420
the traditional kind of self understanding of the NDP has been, you know, the conscience of parliament.
00:28:07.060
So, you know, whether you, you know, I'm not a member of the NDP, but, you know, they were
00:28:12.340
traditionally thought to themselves as kind of the principled conscience in parliament that held
00:28:18.660
You know, this is just kind of the betrayal of that almost, right?
00:28:23.700
You know, Singh, I don't know if Singh, I confess, I think Singh is kind of a,
00:28:28.500
quite far from the, his politics seem quite different from the politics that, you know,
00:28:34.100
used to define that party 30, 40 years ago, if you ask me.
00:28:38.260
He seems more interested in kind of being, you know, you know, more interested in being
00:28:43.540
recognized by people like AOC in the US and kind of, you know, playing, playing, playing
00:28:49.780
online games and stuff with American progressives than he actually seems in kind of defending the
00:28:57.540
So again, I think there's a real, you know, traditionally the conservatives have done well when,
00:29:07.940
I kind of think there's an opportunity, there might be an opportunity here for the conservatives
00:29:11.140
to really try and go after some of those kind of working class votes that, that might feel kind
00:29:17.700
of increasingly kind of adrift and betrayed by the modern NDP, right?
00:29:21.620
It's kind of this working class party that's more of a kind of urban progressive public sector
00:29:27.380
Now there's opportunities for the conservatives there.
00:29:30.740
I think if they, if they're smart, that they can exploit.
00:29:33.860
And just, just one more quick thing before I, just to go back to something for a second.
00:29:39.220
I think the, so there's something to this, this idea that, you know, you,
00:29:44.980
the Harper coalition, the Harper, the Harper recipe can't just be redone, right?
00:29:51.540
My point about kind of say, thinking about the suburbs themselves, very diverse places in all sorts of
00:29:56.420
ways is that you could still rebuild that kind of Harper coalition, so to speak, in terms of kind
00:30:03.940
But you might be able to, I think the kind of the path for the conservatives to do that,
00:30:07.540
especially under someone like Polyev, it might be with different people, right?
00:30:13.140
It doesn't, you can win those ridings and win them in very different ways.
00:30:16.820
And that's, that's so instead of thinking of kind of a book, because if I had a, if I have a criticism
00:30:22.500
of maybe someone like Scheer, Scheer's, Scheer's the 20, was it in the 2019 election?
00:30:29.780
That really did feel like a kind of rehash of Harperism, right?
00:30:33.540
Didn't really feel like it had been kind of much new thinking or fresh ideas plugged in there.
00:30:39.540
What's you, I think you can still kind of keep the broad kind of template for where you need to win
00:30:44.820
and then infuse it with kind of new ideas, new, new efforts to reach different people,
00:30:49.860
people that might not have been persuadable, reachable 10, 15 years ago, that, you know,
00:30:55.140
the world's changed a lot in the last 10 years, five years, less than 10 years, right?
00:30:59.380
So, yeah, I think that to bring it back to the, the question of the NDP and liberal agreement,
00:31:09.060
no, it's, I think there's some, I think if the conservatives play their hand right here,
00:31:13.700
there might be some real opportunities for them. But they, but, you know, it requires
00:31:17.940
them playing their hand right to do that. So we'll see.
00:31:20.420
Yeah, I tend to agree with you that the pact or the agreement is a good thing for the conservatives
00:31:26.900
in a number of ways. It also gives them more time because I knew during the 2021 election,
00:31:31.540
Justin Trudeau said that in minority governments only tend to last 18 months or so. And so there was
00:31:36.900
sort of this imperative, okay, we need to be ready for the next election. It could happen as soon
00:31:41.380
as late 2022. Well, this sort of says, okay, we can, conservatives, you can take your time in
00:31:47.380
selecting the right leader, giving that leader time to sort of set the stage with, with your agenda.
00:31:52.660
Just final question for you, because I don't mean to pick on Aaron O'Toole. I think he had a tough
00:31:57.700
job that, that he was tasked with. One of the things early on he said was that he really did want to
00:32:03.780
appeal to those working class voters and that he wanted that to be like, I remember in an early
00:32:09.220
interview, he was asked if, what, what do you thought about the comparisons with him to Trump?
00:32:13.780
Because obviously, like you said, they're kind of lazy, but they're always going to come for any
00:32:17.780
conservative leader. And, and, and he, he didn't like, he didn't push that away. He actually said,
00:32:23.380
look, there's a lot of things that Trump did that I want to replicate, something along those lines.
00:32:29.220
Whereas with his, with his, the way that he ran and his policies and his set of priorities,
00:32:35.540
I didn't see much that, that really did appeal to, to the working class. So I, I'm wondering if you
00:32:40.660
could provide some like suggestions in terms of ideas, policies, uh, things that conservatives can
00:32:47.700
do or say to, uh, attract and keep more, um, of these people that are disaffected by Jagmeet Singh and
00:32:55.700
the NDP who don't feel like they have a home in the modern, I don't, I don't even know, just as
00:33:00.740
as, I don't know if the NDP is really going to survive. I mean, at this point, it seems like so
00:33:05.060
many of the priorities that they have are mirrored with the liberals. It seems almost redundant to
00:33:08.980
have two parties. Now I see this as an outsider, so I don't, I don't know if there's, you know, I,
00:33:14.100
I, I'm not speaking as an NDP member or voter, I've never been part of that party, but I can't
00:33:19.060
imagine really what, what, what the purpose of having to, but yeah, if you, if you could, uh, maybe
00:33:24.100
comment on the future of the NDP and then also comment on what you think conservatives can do to capture this
00:33:28.580
voting block. Yeah. Um, yeah, sure. Um, yeah, I, I agree. I don't, I don't, um, you know, I'm not,
00:33:34.180
like I said, I'm not a member of the NDP. I, I don't understand what they're kind of the reason for
00:33:38.980
their existence anymore. Um, um, sooner or later, you would think that that's, uh, you know, things
00:33:45.620
that cannot go on forever don't go on forever. And so I won't suspect sooner or later that, um,
00:33:51.940
that will, something will, something will happen there with them that will force them to kind of
00:33:55.300
figure out who they are. Um, I don't think it's true that they don't have a constituency anymore.
00:34:00.500
I think they do. The problem is that constituency is just not, um, you know, the, the NDP are more
00:34:05.540
than anything else now a kind of party of kind of very urban, very progressive, um, you know, culturally
00:34:12.420
very radical, uh, people, right. And there, you know, there's, there's, there's a constituency for
00:34:16.660
that in certain places. Um, those are the kinds of people I think that the NDP that dominate kind of,
00:34:22.820
you know, how the NDP think, um, and you know, who tends to vote for them now. Um,
00:34:28.340
so I suspect they can survive as kind of a kind of whatever, whatever you want to call that kind
00:34:32.980
of party now. Um, but like you say, you know, what, in many ways that makes them not all that
00:34:37.620
different from the kind of modern liberal party, um, in terms of kind of how I think the conservatives
00:34:42.580
can kind of, you know, capitalize on some of this. Um, I think there's a couple of things. So I,
00:34:47.220
you know, I'll, I'll, I'll put in a word, a defense here for, for Aaron Atul for a second.
00:34:51.220
Um, I think some of the moves he made, especially early on, uh, in his, uh, so just after he got
00:34:56.500
elected, um, um, were, were in those kinds of directions we're talking about here. And I think
00:35:02.180
they were good. Um, I think the problem with the tool was that by the end of it, he tried,
00:35:06.740
um, he tried to put on so many different masks and faces and costumes to see if any of them would
00:35:11.700
stick. Right. Um, cause he tried that one. He tried a couple of other ones. Um, I think he,
00:35:17.460
yeah, that, again, it goes back to that kind of authenticity problem. Uh, but I do think he was
00:35:21.220
onto something with that. Um, and I would, you know, I would, and I would still, um, you know,
00:35:25.700
when the, during the election, I wrote pretty, I wrote a, uh, positively about, um, the conservative
00:35:31.540
party's platform they put out. Um, you know, I didn't like everything in it and there was plenty
00:35:35.700
of stuff I would have changed with it. Um, but I thought, I actually thought there was some quite,
00:35:39.300
there was an attempt to do some kind of original, um, new stuff in that platform. Um, especially
00:35:46.020
around kind of working class, uh, labor stuff. Um, some of the stuff that they championed around,
00:35:52.020
um, uh, some of the stuff to do with, uh, uh, you, some of the stuff around unions, not all of it,
00:35:58.500
some of the stuff around unions, I think was quite interesting. Um, certainly wouldn't have pleased
00:36:02.260
everyone in the party. Um, he didn't, um, but I think there was stuff to work with there. Um,
00:36:07.940
one place where I think, uh, federal conservatives could look, um, is that,
00:36:11.620
and there is a, there would be a role for the feds on some of this, uh, is to go and look at some of
00:36:15.780
the work that, uh, Ontario, the minister of, um, I forget his exact title, but the minister of labor
00:36:20.340
in Ontario, Monty McNaughton, um, he's really managing to cut, he's carving out a space right
00:36:25.380
now on some of the stuff. Um, he's putting, you know, it's obviously there's jurisdictional issues
00:36:29.700
here. So the feds, you know, they don't control kind of skills training and stuff like that. Um, uh, all that
00:36:34.980
much, uh, but, you know, McNaughton's done a lot of really, really good stuff around, uh, skilled
00:36:40.500
trades around, uh, reforming colleges, you know, make them more kind of suited for that kind of stuff.
00:36:46.340
Uh, they've done some good stuff recently on kind of like big work, you know, the future of work and
00:36:50.260
the gig economy. Um, and I think that is exactly the kind of, when I say that the conservatives need
00:36:55.140
to be reaching kind of new people, younger people, um, you know, get big work, so to speak,
00:37:00.980
I think is for lots of people, that is the future. Uh, and there's, there's bad, there's downsides to
00:37:05.380
that and there's good sides to that. Right. Um, I don't think it's all bad. Um, you know, it means
00:37:09.460
you get to some people really like it because, you know, they can, uh, jobs where they kind of get to
00:37:13.540
choose their own hours, you know, they can work a hundred hours one week and then, you know, 10 hours
00:37:17.860
the next, if they need to do something else. Um, so I think, you know, some people kind of like the
00:37:22.420
kind of flexibility that comes with that kind of work. Um, but the biggest challenge for big work,
00:37:27.460
I think is the kind of precarity of it, right. Um, you know, there's no kind of, um, it's harder to
00:37:32.020
have kind of stability in that kind of work. It's harder to build kind of like long-term plans.
00:37:36.580
Um, so some of the stuff that, uh, McNaughton has been doing around, uh, just kind of tweaking
00:37:40.660
kind of, uh, social security and stuff like that to make it a bit more kind of welcoming to
00:37:45.300
gig work. Uh, I think there's good stuff to be done there. Um, obviously there's, again,
00:37:49.940
there's jurisdictional issues here about what the feds can do, uh, but there's definitely,
00:37:53.700
there's, there's definitely opportunities down there. And so federally, I think, uh, looking
00:37:57.780
to kind of the work that North is doing it would be, uh, uh, it would be one good thing they could
00:38:02.500
do. Uh, but if there's a, if there's a bigger kind of, and this goes back to what I was saying
00:38:06.820
earlier about, um, some of the Brexit stuff, um, you know, parts of what this is going to take is
00:38:11.780
going to be, uh, putting kind of, like I say, flesh on the bones, like a substantive policy agenda
00:38:17.700
that actually helps the kinds of people that you're trying to target in real, real material ways.
00:38:22.180
Um, but a bigger picture, part of this picture is a broader kind of cultural questions and cultural
00:38:28.660
shifts. Um, so much, so much of the kind of, uh, so much of what I think is actually driving some
00:38:34.500
of these shifts is there's a kind of, there's an economic and kind of like a material story you
00:38:38.260
can tell yourself about it, but there's also the other side to the story is a kind of cultural story
00:38:43.220
about the kinds of the changing values of kind of cultural elites versus kind of ordinary people.
00:38:48.820
Um, and so there's, and that is where I actually think there are some real, real opportunities for
00:38:55.460
the conservatives. Um, uh, you know, we've seen the liberals and the NDP have both gone this
00:39:01.780
direction, right? But there's a, there's a real, there's a real kind of vacuum right now, uh, that
00:39:05.460
the conservative should fill, um, on kind of what you might, what I would, you know, it, it would get
00:39:10.900
painted by kind of like mainstream media as kind of like culture wall, culture warrior, um, cultural
00:39:16.180
conservatism, but what I would actually say is like a very moderate kind of mainstream
00:39:20.180
cultural conservatism that I think actually is a kind of the kind of, the kinds of cultural values
00:39:24.580
that are shared by most like majority of Canadians, at least. Um, you know, I, I, I think about the kind
00:39:31.620
of, um, you know, the, what happened with the flag last year, right? We had the flag at half mass for
00:39:36.020
like what, six months, just, just ludicrous. Right. Um, and, you know, we basically got into that mess
00:39:42.340
because the, you know, the liberals did like what was a, you know, initially like a nice gesture.
00:39:46.420
Sure. Um, you know, it was just a performative gesture in the end, right? And then they get
00:39:51.140
themselves into this mess of, well, we can't raise the flag because that means, uh, you know,
00:39:55.140
we don't care about racism anymore. It was basically kind of like what it seemed like they,
00:39:58.740
the kind of trap they got themselves into. Um, I think there's a real opportunity for conservatives
00:40:04.100
to kind of reclaim, uh, become the kind of the patriotic party, um, become the party of kind of,
00:40:10.500
you know, uh, the party that says, you know, Canada might not be a perfect country,
00:40:13.780
but Canada is a good country and we should be proud of this country. Be proud, you know,
00:40:18.180
the fact that, um, people want to come here, the fact that, you know, this is the kind of
00:40:22.660
country where people, uh, want to, and, you know, should be able to lead and can lead free,
00:40:26.740
good and free lives. Um, that kind of, you know, it used to be, you know, the, the party of the flag
00:40:32.980
in some ways used to be the liberals, right? In so many ways they owned that they owned the flag,
00:40:36.980
they owned all the kind of hallmarks or national identity, the charter, um, constitution, healthcare,
00:40:42.900
you name it, right? Like the liberals kind of own these kind of symbols of, you know,
00:40:46.420
what it meant to be Canadian, but it's kind of, it's the kind of, it's kind of culturally,
00:40:50.180
as elites kind of move in this kind of increasingly kind of, uh, more radical kind of culture,
00:40:54.820
direction culturally, whether they, you know, they reject, um, you know, Canada become,
00:40:59.940
you know, it's hard. Some of these people think of Canada as kind of illegitimate,
00:41:03.300
um, you know, settle a colonial estate, um, that leaves so much kind of cultural space,
00:41:10.340
right? For, uh, for normal people, um, that fits kind of what most normal people kind of think about.
00:41:16.980
Um, and that is something I think the conservatives really need to kind of figure out how to, um,
00:41:21.700
how to take advantage of. Uh, I don't think they do. I don't think they need to become like radical
00:41:26.260
culture warriors. Um, even though that's how they'll get painted. If they, if they do anything like this,
00:41:31.540
um, I think they just need to become kind of the unabashed party of kind of, uh, Canadian values,
00:41:36.740
so to speak. Um, and 20 years ago, I don't know if they necessarily would have been able to get away
00:41:40.980
with doing that because I think the liberal party of 20 years ago was much more kind of culturally
00:41:45.620
moderate in that sense. Uh, now I'm not so sure. Um, and so if the conservative, so, um, you know,
00:41:52.100
it's sounds kind of maybe counterintuitive, but I think one way to reach some of these new voters
00:41:56.500
is precisely to become that new, um, I wrote in a recent national post column that, um,
00:42:01.940
there's something to this kind of this, this, uh, this classic kind of, you know,
00:42:06.100
the conservatives need to moderate in order to win. Um, I think that's true. The problem is they
00:42:11.220
let all the wrong people define what it means for them to moderate and become moderate. They need to,
00:42:15.460
they need to define for themselves what it means to be moderate. And something like this is a classic,
00:42:20.660
perfect example of what it would mean to be a kind of define we're the moderate party in,
00:42:25.620
in your own image, right? You know, we are the party of Canadian values. We're the party of the
00:42:29.860
flag. We're the party that believes in this country. Um, there, there's so much ground for them to kind
00:42:34.820
of carve out there. And, you know, so I'm not, I'm not a strategist, right? I don't understand the
00:42:39.300
kind of the nitty gritties of exactly how you would, you know, create messaging and, um, how you,
00:42:44.420
how exactly you would go about doing that. But, um, I think that if there was one way to kind of
00:42:48.820
really kind of accelerate some of these shifts, uh, and really try and take advantage of them,
00:42:53.300
uh, that's, that would be the route to go down for them. Well, we, we have a prime minister who
00:42:58.340
says not, not just that Canada is a country that was formed on genocide. Um, but he says that Canada
00:43:03.380
is actively committing genocide. He, he agreed with the 2017 recommendations of the missing and murdered
00:43:09.220
aboriginal, uh, women report, which was a report that was necessary. However, the people who, who put it
00:43:15.300
together radically left-wing, um, part of their recommendations, was it admit, admitting that a
00:43:21.060
genocide is still going on today. And, uh, Trudeau said that he agreed with that. Um, so, so, so talk
00:43:26.580
about the need for a moderate, uh, just to counter our crazy, insane, woke, uh, leftist sort of mindset.
00:43:34.660
And I, I think that's right. Anecdotally, uh, last year at Canada Day, you know, amidst all of the
00:43:40.020
sort of consternation about Canada and this, this sort of horrible, irreconcilable past, uh,
00:43:45.860
cancel Canada Day movements, uh, toppling statues, uh, you know, the, the, the number of people who
00:43:51.380
were out on the streets on Canada Day celebrating unabashedly, uh, you know, the, the, the, the
00:43:57.540
horns honking all night, the fireworks going on. Um, I don't know what it was like in Ottawa, but in
00:44:03.700
Toronto, it was like an absolute party. And, uh, part of that might've been just that people were cooped up
00:44:09.140
from COVID for too long and they were finally able to go out at that time. But
00:44:12.980
really I, I saw a big outpouring of, uh, sort of Canadian national nationalistic or patriotic,
00:44:18.740
uh, impulse there. And then we saw it again during the freedom convoy. So I think, I think
00:44:24.020
definitely right. I think there's something to that, that the liberals have sort of abandoned
00:44:28.420
their traditional kind of base as being the party of Canada and all these symbols that they themselves
00:44:32.820
brought in, um, that they're now apparently ashamed of and don't want anything to do with and,
00:44:36.660
and can't bring themselves to, uh, promote. So I, I, I think that's great. I think, um,
00:44:42.260
uh, hopefully Ben, the, uh, sort of listened to the advice that you're giving and, uh, appreciate
00:44:48.820
your time today. Appreciate your, um, writing that we can find, uh, in the hub and the national posts.
00:44:54.020
So thank you so much for joining us. That's, uh, Ben Woodviden and, uh, I'm Candace Malcolm. This is the Candace Malcolm Show.