Juno News - December 26, 2023


Will there FINALLY be an election in 2024？

Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Pierre Poilievre Hamish Marshall Chrystia Freeland Dominic LeBlanc Stephen Harper Andrew Scheer Jagmeet Singh Melanie Jolie Erin O'Toole Mark Carney Bill C-63
What is the legacy of Mike Harris？ Top Stupid Things Politicians Said in 2023

Episode Stats


Length

14 minutes

Words per minute

191.5

Word count

2,786

Sentence count

179

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

When will the next election finally take place in Canada? a question that has been on everyone s mind for a long time. In this episode, we speak with Hamish Marshall, who was our in-house pollster during the 2019 election and is now a partner at One Persuades, a government relations and strategy firm based in Ontario.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Canadians are desperate for change and polls are showing that if there were an election this winter, Justin Trudeau would lose in an historic landslide defeat.
00:00:08.500 So the only real question that remains is when will the election finally take place?
00:00:12.680 Everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today. Don't forget to like this video. Subscribe to our True North channel if you're new around here. Don't forget to leave us a five star review if you're listening to this podcast and you enjoy the show. And head on over to our website tnc.news to sign up for a newsletter. So you never miss a story. If you want to support our journalism, please consider hitting that donate button.
00:00:42.100 And becoming a True North insider. So we all know that Canadians have had enough of Justin Trudeau. After nine long years of woke, virtue signaling, endless embarrassing scandals, ruinous economic policies, Canadians are telling us they want change. Poll after poll after poll show us that the overwhelming majority of Canadians want Trudeau to go. And like I said, if there was an election held today, Trudeau's main opponent, opposition leader Pierre Polyev, would win a sweeping historical landslide in an election.
00:01:10.820 But the only question is, is there going to be an election anytime soon? We know that there is a minority government situation. So the government could fall at any time, but it could also remain intact for another almost two years.
00:01:22.560 So to help us gain some insight on this topic, I'm joined by my guest today, Hamish Marshall. You remember Hamish, he's contributed to True North in the past. He was our in-house pollster during the 2021 election.
00:01:34.220 He's also a partner over at One Persuades, which is a government relations and strategy firm based in Ontario. Hamish is well known in conservative circles. He ran the national campaign for the Conservative Party in 2019.
00:01:44.960 In 2017, he ran Andrew Scheer's winning leadership campaign. And previously, prior to that, he worked for Stephen Harper and was his pollster during the successful 2008 federal election.
00:01:56.360 So, Hamish, welcome to the program.
00:01:58.280 Great to be here, Candace.
00:01:59.900 Okay, so basically in this situation, the balance of power is held by the NDP. The NDP is one that gets to decide whether or not we have an election, whether they're going to continue to prop up the Trudeau Liberals.
00:02:10.760 So, let's start with the NDP. Do you think that they are ready for an election? And how much longer do you think they're going to prop up the Trudeau government?
00:02:17.840 I don't think they're ready for an election right now. Their fundraising hasn't been that great, which is always a good indicator of how ready they are.
00:02:24.580 Elections cost an awful lot of money. I mean, the spending limit will be a little over $30 million whenever the election happens.
00:02:32.480 And the NDP don't have anything like that amount of money or have really the capacity to get there in the short term.
00:02:38.720 But more to the point, they're also not doing particularly well in the polls.
00:02:43.500 They're not doing particularly badly either.
00:02:45.380 But in order for them, right now, things are going okay for them.
00:02:48.900 They're more or less maintaining where they've been in the polls.
00:02:51.760 And they like being in the catbird seat and making the Liberals jump up and down.
00:02:57.180 One of the things, of course, is the Liberal government is kind of out of ideas.
00:03:00.160 And as a result, the NDP is actually probably gaining, have more influence today than they did, say, a year ago or when the, back when the deal was first signed in 2022.
00:03:12.780 Because with the Liberals running out of ideas, the NDP can now just sort of suggest ideas and they're more likely to be taken and implemented.
00:03:20.120 So I think the NDP feels they're in a pretty good position and they're not going to rock the boat in the short term.
00:03:26.160 Well, it's interesting you say that because I did notice some news, first of all, that the NDP is starting to hire digital organizers, regional organizers out in British Columbia.
00:03:35.860 Say about that what you will, but to your point, the party's broke.
00:03:38.200 Why are they hiring for jobs for an election unless there's something coming?
00:03:41.040 A party treasurer recently said that the NDP expects to be debt-free in 2024.
00:03:48.180 So, you know, do you think any of those are point of signs that maybe an election might be coming maybe later in 2024?
00:03:54.940 Well, I mean, look, there's always a possibility.
00:03:57.720 But, you know, if they're trying to be debt-free in 2024, that means then they have to start saving their nest egg for the next election before they take on another ton of debt for the next election, right?
00:04:06.800 So that, to me, sounds more like they want to get clear in 2024 so that they can, you know, save a few million bucks and go into 2025.
00:04:16.960 The other thing that they, you know, right now, despite the best efforts of the conservatives, they have not been terribly tagged with the sort of association with the liberals, right?
00:04:29.400 Like this liberal NDP deal has not really dragged their poll numbers down.
00:04:36.000 You know, Trudeau's lack of popularity and increasing lack of popularity hasn't dragged the NDP down yet.
00:04:41.980 The closer they get to an election, the greater the chance of that happening and the more chance I think they'll have of pulling the plug.
00:04:49.020 It's interesting. Some polls that you see show the liberals quite a bit ahead of the NDP.
00:04:54.680 Others, I've seen some polls that show them neck and neck and even some showing that Jagmeet Singh could become the leader of an opposition.
00:05:01.340 You never know what could happen in an election.
00:05:02.800 But given Trudeau's negatives and given Canadians' fatigue with Justin Trudeau, it's possible that he could get wiped out.
00:05:09.480 Let's talk about Trudeau a little bit.
00:05:10.840 He's made it clear that he intends to stay on as leader and to fight.
00:05:13.940 But so many of these polls are saying that even among liberal voters, they don't like Trudeau.
00:05:18.160 And if there were a new leader, not Trudeau, that they would be more likely to show up and vote.
00:05:23.220 So what do you think is the future for our prime minister?
00:05:26.780 Well, I think he's sticking around.
00:05:28.360 I think he believes he's got a mission to save Canada from Pierre Polyev. 0.99
00:05:33.180 He cannot. He's a good campaigner. Give him full credit. He's good at campaigning.
00:05:37.300 But fundamentally, his view of the country is that a candidate like Pierre Polyev can't possibly win a majority government.
00:05:47.500 And therefore, if he sticks around and runs a good campaign, he'll be able to beat him.
00:05:52.140 But I think the polls are increasingly showing that that's not true.
00:05:55.380 And the really big thing that matters more than the ballot question of, you know, who you're voting for is those personal numbers.
00:06:03.540 And what we've seen is over the last few months, Pierre Polyev's numbers have just kept going up and up.
00:06:07.920 And Justin Trudeau's numbers have kept going down and down.
00:06:11.000 And that's a real problem for the prime minister.
00:06:13.520 So as far as the liberals go, do you think that the liberals would be better off with Justin Trudeau, given Canadians tired view of him?
00:06:22.540 Or do you be better off starting fresh?
00:06:24.600 I mean, there are some other names being bounced around, like Mark Carney, who is a former governor of the Bank of Canada, and perhaps Chrystia Freeland, who's a deputy prime minister.
00:06:32.580 Do you think either of those names would would give the liberals more hope or give them a boost in the polls?
00:06:37.600 Look, I think change is always a risk with change, right?
00:06:41.780 I think the desire for change is so great in Canada right now that a new leader would be interesting to Canadians.
00:06:49.660 There'd be a lot of focus on that leadership race.
00:06:51.360 And whether we ended up with either the people you mentioned or, you know, Melanie Jolie or Champagne or somebody else, that would be a way of the liberals trying to change the channel.
00:07:02.560 And I think at least for a few months, it probably would quite successfully change the channel because the liberal party would be electing a prime minister.
00:07:10.280 And that would drive everyone's interest in politics.
00:07:13.240 And the focus would be on that leadership race.
00:07:16.720 Whether that new prime minister would be able to persuade Canadians after that that they're fundamentally different from the Trudeau government that they probably were deeply connected with is another story entirely.
00:07:26.540 But I think in the short term it would work.
00:07:28.980 But there's really no mechanism for it.
00:07:30.660 You know, Trudeau himself, I don't believe he's going anywhere.
00:07:33.360 And the liberal caucus isn't going to throw him out.
00:07:35.900 We're not going to see a revolt the same way that Aron O'Toole in the liberal caucus.
00:07:41.680 The liberal caucus is overwhelmingly made up of people who were elected after Trudeau became leader, whose entire experience in politics is with Trudeau as leader.
00:07:52.740 And many of whom don't have sort of deep institutional roots in the liberal party and activism that predates him as leader.
00:08:01.140 You know, I went and looked at it the other day.
00:08:03.260 Of the 150, I think, 655 liberal MPs there are right now, there's only 19 that were elected before Trudeau as leader.
00:08:12.520 And Trudeau is one of those.
00:08:13.640 So it's a very, very small percentage of them.
00:08:18.980 Those are the sort of people, those experienced people would have probably the nucleus for any kind of revolt against them.
00:08:24.120 But it's a very small number.
00:08:25.740 And many of them are actually diehard loyalists of Trudeau, people like Dominic LeBlanc.
00:08:30.140 So I think the chances of anything coming out of the liberal caucus and getting rid of Trudeau is very, very low.
00:08:37.440 These are people whose political career exists entirely in the Trudeau universe.
00:08:41.140 And it's difficult for them to imagine what life would be like with a different leader.
00:08:44.980 Well, it totally makes sense.
00:08:45.820 I mean, Trudeau has completely remade the liberal party in his image.
00:08:49.080 I mean, it used to be sort of a centralist, rather fiscally conservative party.
00:08:54.000 Trudeau took over, first of all, he kicked out anyone who wasn't militantly pro-abortion out of the party.
00:08:58.880 And then he moved the party far, far to the left, in some ways even more to the left than the NDP.
00:09:05.460 And like you said, his success is all that these people know.
00:09:10.000 Because as we remember, Hamish, in 2011, the liberals were decimated.
00:09:14.040 The party was in shambles and it was barely even there.
00:09:16.140 It was a shadow of its former self.
00:09:17.880 Trudeau brought it back.
00:09:19.320 So when you look at some of these polls, you're actually kind of seeing the liberals just return to pre-Trudeau levels.
00:09:25.760 I want to just ask you quickly about that because we saw a little bit of caucus dissent.
00:09:29.340 We don't often see this in Canadian politics.
00:09:31.680 But a few MPs spoke out against the Trudeau government's decision to call for a ceasefire against Hamas in Israel.
00:09:38.400 You saw a couple of MPs saying that they disagreed with that on social media.
00:09:43.620 Do you think there's anything deeper to that?
00:09:45.660 Do you think that'll get anywhere?
00:09:46.440 No, and my understanding is that that was a very deliberate tactic, that they called for a ceasefire in order to deal with the pressure they're getting internally from constituencies with vocal Muslim populations.
00:10:01.900 And then they went to the MPs that represent areas of substantial Jewish populations and say, say what you need to say.
00:10:09.000 We're going to do this.
00:10:09.720 If you go and disagree with it, that's fine.
00:10:11.200 And it was very much a deliberate way.
00:10:13.960 It was their way of squaring the circle.
00:10:16.040 So I don't think it's emblematic of nothing more than issues management.
00:10:21.320 Well, it sounds like very traditional liberal transactional vote banking politics.
00:10:26.280 Let's tack back and talk about Pierre Polyev.
00:10:28.560 You mentioned that Trudeau believes that it's impossible for a conservative government led by someone like Pierre Polyev to win a majority government.
00:10:36.620 What do you think is the path for victory for conservatives?
00:10:40.180 Do you think that it is possible for Pierre Polyev to win a majority government?
00:10:43.720 No question.
00:10:44.460 There's absolutely no question that conservatives can win the next election.
00:10:49.080 The number of seats that are necessary isn't, you know, it's really only winning 50 more seats effectively.
00:10:58.980 And the numbers in Ontario are such that the conservatives should be on track for that for across the country.
00:11:05.240 So, you know, basically the conservatives have to do better in the suburbs.
00:11:10.400 And the desire for change in the suburbs is very, very high.
00:11:14.060 Pierre Polyev's message has been resonating.
00:11:16.480 The affordability, the incredible thing about the affordability issue is as much as people sort of say, well, maybe inflation will go down or things will change or whatever it is.
00:11:26.240 The affordability is bigger today as an issue than it was a year ago or two years ago when Pierre Polyev was really first sounding, I guess, two and a half years ago.
00:11:35.640 He was still sounding the alarm and even bigger than it was when he was running for leader.
00:11:39.140 It's a bigger, stronger issue and it's dominating things.
00:11:43.040 And the fact of the matter is, is that the government has had basically, has done nothing that has given them any credit on this issue.
00:11:50.020 People are not feeling that, people are feeling things are getting worse, not better.
00:11:54.080 And the people holding the bag are the federal government.
00:11:57.060 Well, to Pierre Polyev's credit, he's been sounding the alarm about inflation for a very long time.
00:12:01.380 Before it was really, you know, an issue that was affecting Canadians every day at the grocery store and the gas pumps and everything like that.
00:12:06.740 Like he's one of the most knowledgeable people that I've spoken to and I've had him on the show to explain it when it comes to these topics.
00:12:12.260 So he knows, he knows his file and he's really carved out a niche for himself.
00:12:17.620 I'm wondering if you, so if you were advising Pierre Polyev, you know, you, you have the legacy media say that his tone is nasty and that he's unelectable and that Canadians won't like his combative nature.
00:12:28.680 We've seen him push back against some reporters sometimes and not necessarily take the most, you know, friendly relationship with the legacy media.
00:12:37.960 Do you think that would, that's going to hurt him?
00:12:39.760 If you were advising him, what would you tell him with regards to media relations?
00:12:44.320 No, I don't think it's hurting him at all.
00:12:45.900 I think that he's realized that the vast majority of Canadians don't get really get their news from their legacy media in a normal, in the way that they would have 10 or 15 years ago.
00:12:55.600 People might watch a little bit of the news, see the odd article in the newspaper, see a whole bunch of different things or clips online.
00:13:03.680 And, you know, Pierre Polyev is the first politician in Canada to really, truly understand how to deliver messages built for social media.
00:13:14.080 I mean, you know, the number of shares he gets on videos on Instagram or YouTube are remarkable, the number of views he gets.
00:13:22.140 He's getting far more views for most of his videos than nightly newscasts would be.
00:13:30.480 He's already really gone around them and doesn't need them in the traditional sense.
00:13:35.920 And frankly, the, you know, things like the Liberal Bill C-18, you know, killing the sharing of news links on Facebook has actually helped someone like Pierre because his videos aren't getting blocked on social media.
00:13:52.560 But, you know, news stories about him from CTV or CBC or whatever are getting blocked.
00:13:58.160 And it's only accelerating the decline of the traditional media.
00:14:03.220 Well, isn't that interesting?
00:14:04.180 I'm sure that the legacy media are unhappy with Trudeau about that, although I'm sure they're happy about all the money that they are getting from the Liberal government.
00:14:11.120 Okay, final question for you, Hamish.
00:14:12.980 Yes or no, will we have an election in 2024 or will Canadians have to wait until 2025 to get a new government?
00:14:18.100 2025.
00:14:18.500 Well, you will be disappointing many with that answer, but we appreciate your insight and your honesty and your analysis.
00:14:26.400 So, Hamish Marshall, thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much for tuning in.
00:14:31.160 I'm Kenneth Malcolm and this is The Kenneth Malcolm Show.