00:00:00.000You know, I really got a chuckle at all of these political strategists and pollsters who are talking about what's going to happen in the next election.
00:00:14.680Justin Trudeau, is he going to win? Is he going to be reelected? Will it be Aaron O'Toole? Doug Ford, Jason Kenney, John Horgan, what's going to happen with their prospects?
00:00:21.740And they're kind of running the numbers and they're having the conversation about, you know, needing the 905 or Quebec or this voter base or what have you, as if the rules of the game have not changed.
00:00:33.820As if they're just going through the motions and they're talking about the way things have always been and the way things always will be.
00:00:40.420But politics in Canada has changed. It has changed in major ways that I don't think any of them are really reflecting on or really beginning to understand.
00:00:51.500And what do I mean by that? Well, a couple anecdotes.
00:00:53.820I've heard from a number of people who have gotten in touch with me this past year and a half throughout the course of the pandemic.
00:00:59.380And it's been really interesting to hear those people talk about how their views have changed.
00:01:05.620People who I haven't spoken to in years getting in touch and saying, well, you know, I thought I was this really left-wing person.
00:01:11.580But, you know, then I see the government going on and on about, you know, legally, this is how far apart you can stand between people.
00:01:18.940And this is how many people you can have in your home and what time and government curfews and all this.
00:01:23.580And these folks are going, well, hold on a second. I can make those decisions for myself.
00:01:26.640I'll take coronavirus seriously, but I'll, you know, I'll devise my own protocols.
00:01:30.740And they said, wow, I didn't realize I was so hostile to big government telling people how to live.
00:01:35.940And now I'm seeing things in a completely different way.
00:01:39.200So I hear that from former leftists who are kind of rethinking things and becoming, I don't know, libertarian, conservative, whatever they want to call it.
00:01:45.840And then I see conservatives or people who were conservatives up until yesterday going, yes, we need the government to do all of those things to determine, no, you must lock off these aisles in the grocery store that are only selling books or clothing.
00:02:00.980You've got to shut down the Joe Fresh and the Loblaws. It's just not safe. Too dangerous.
00:02:04.600Government's got to do it. And they've got to find people if they go in there.
00:02:06.960They've got to drag them out kicking and screaming.
00:02:08.440You know, these people who are conservatives who just until, again, a few days ago, a few weeks ago, what have you, were saying, no, we want government to do minimal things in people's lives.
00:02:18.540So there's just a whole lot of switching over, switching around, people wildly changing their perspectives on, I think, what they believe government should be doing and what our relationship to the state is and so forth.
00:02:30.520I mean, everything's up in the air. It is quite a wild card.
00:02:34.380Now, I don't know how we're going to be able to slice this three months, six months, a year, two years down the line, what the numbers are actually going to look like.
00:02:41.980But even if the numbers have held firm, Justin Trudeau has, you know, whatever, 37% support, it means a very different thing than it did a year and a half ago because people's calculus has changed and people have jumped from this side and that side and so forth.
00:02:57.200And I think, really, anything is possible right now.
00:03:01.320And I think it's going to be a really interesting time politically ahead and as we watch more and more people kind of rethink their assumptions and head in this direction or that direction, all because of these wild upheavals in our daily lives.