Mark Slapinski - August 07, 2026


Poilievre Gets News He Feared Most


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

185.19

Word count

1,692

Sentence count

86


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Polyev has lost another MP. This is the second conservative to quit the party this summer
00:00:04.760 and the seventh person since Polyev lost the federal election last year. Ever since losing
00:00:09.360 the federal election and his own seat, Polyev has struggled to stay relevant. It seems almost
00:00:14.340 every month someone in his party quits or crosses the aisle over to the liberals. This is while his
00:00:19.120 poll numbers are in the garbage. Now Larry Brock is leaving caucus to return to work as a crown
00:00:23.980 prosecutor he news tonight about conservative larry brock the ontario mp who represents the
00:00:29.660 riding of brantford brant south six nations revealed he is stepping down next month to
00:00:34.380 return to a position at the brantford crown attorney's office but you know the fact of the
00:00:39.100 matter is is this is as you noted the seventh conservative member of parliament to decide to
00:00:44.300 leave uh and kind of pursue other opportunities you know if you're the leader of the party
00:00:50.060 the optimal situation is new people wanting to join and existing people wanting to stay uh it
00:00:57.020 looks like at least there are some conservatives that are just looking at other opportunities
00:01:01.420 that's right brock is out he's the second person to announce the resignation this summer
00:01:06.060 he joins saskatchewan mp kathy wagenthal in quitting the party things are not looking too
00:01:11.260 good for polyev now things weren't always so bleak for him though a year and a half ago he seemed
00:01:16.220 poised to become the next Prime Minister of Canada. In mid-January 2025, polls showed
00:01:21.220 Conservatives had a 26% lead over the Liberals. If an election were called at that time,
00:01:26.060 Paulieff easily would have become the next Prime Minister of Canada. However, once Carney launched
00:01:30.920 his bid for leadership of the Liberal Party and eventually secured the job, everything changed.
00:01:35.860 Carney breathed some new life into the party, centering himself as the right person to stand
00:01:39.820 up Donald Trump's attacks on Canada. And it worked. NDP voters came over to the Liberals
00:01:44.480 and even some Conservatives ditched Polyev. Not only did the Conservatives lose the federal
00:01:48.920 election, but Polyev was kicked out of his seat in the Ottawa riding of Carleton.
00:01:53.320 Despite this embarrassing defeat, Polyev chose to stay on as the leader of the Conservative Party.
00:01:57.660 About a year and a half later, Polyev and the Conservative Party, they're doing even worse
00:02:01.220 than they were then. Only 18% of Canadians prefer Polyev as Prime Minister. As of this video,
00:02:06.940 seven MPs have left Polyev's party, with four crossing the aisle, one becoming a senator,
00:02:11.580 and the other two stepping down from their positions.
00:02:14.420 There are rumors that even more MPs are going to leave.
00:02:17.320 Insiders claim there is rampant infighting in the party.
00:02:20.360 Needless to say, this is a really bad look for Polly Eve.
00:02:23.620 Majority of Canadians now believe there isn't a serious challenger to Carney.
00:02:27.400 If an election were held today, liberals would easily form a supermajority,
00:02:31.100 and that's according to projections.
00:02:32.960 If this proves anything, it proves that what Carney is doing is working,
00:02:36.420 and what Polly Eve is doing is not working.
00:02:38.540 Carney was effectively able to capitalize on Polyev's unwillingness to take a strong stance
00:02:43.020 on Trump. To be fair, Polyev did call out Trump at times, but other times he would downplay the
00:02:48.060 seriousness of the threat posed by Trump. Carney was the one that properly understood
00:02:52.040 that the old relationship with the United States was over and that Canada needs to make new
00:02:56.040 alliances. Polyev still holds on to this idea that Trump is a rational actor and he can be
00:03:01.460 talked out of his destructive trade policies. Personally, I supported Polyev for years,
00:03:05.780 even after he lost the federal election. But as Trump started to act up again in 2026,
00:03:10.280 I felt like Polyev wasn't doing enough to call him out. When Trump started an illegal war with
00:03:14.360 Iran, Polyev took his side on that, despite the fact that the war led to an increase in gas prices
00:03:19.340 worldwide. Polyev also used that opportunity to take cheap shots at Carney over gas prices.
00:03:25.220 It appears that the conservative strategy is to blame Carney for not getting a deal with Trump,
00:03:29.060 and to blame Carney for the fact that the relations between Canada and the United States
00:03:32.480 have soured. Of course, the strategy is proving to be ineffective, and it's cost probably of a
00:03:37.040 lot of his longtime supporters, including me. I can't be part of a movement that claims to be
00:03:41.140 patriotic, and at the same time makes excuses for a foreign leader who's waging economic warfare on
00:03:46.260 my country. I don't think conservatives realize how stupid and hypocritical they look right now.
00:03:51.180 Fortunately, some conservatives have noticed what's happening. The former Premier of Alberta,
00:03:55.720 Jason Kenney, outlined his concerns during a recent debate on Juneau News.
00:03:59.560 I'm curious what your response is to this really strange phenomenon in a way of siding with the United States against Canada.
00:04:07.620 Yeah, well, you know, I speak out against this all the time. I find it very disturbing. I do think it is, for those of us who spend any amount of time on social media, we get an exaggerated sense of it, because I think the very online, perennially agreed right-wing populist crowd on Twitter, on X, for example, are not an accurate reflection of the broader movement.
00:04:35.720 I keep reminding my federal conservative friends that they lost the last election and they can only win the next election if they regain the trust of older white men who used to be the core electoral cohort for the conservative party, but who believe that the conservatives are not fit for purpose in fighting Trump.
00:05:00.300 So it's a complete misdirect if we allow ourselves to be distracted, if the conservative leadership becomes distracted by, you know, a few thousand or tens of thousands of mega north Trump enthusiasts in Canada,
00:05:19.300 as opposed to the hundreds of thousands or millions of older traditional conservative
00:05:26.840 voters who we lost because we appeared to have surrendered the patriotism card to the liberals
00:05:33.540 in the last election. That needs to be regained. But I would say to these folks, have some self
00:05:41.160 respect. Frankly, it drives me to distraction to see these voices always instinctively,
00:05:48.080 immediately blaming Canada. Look, yes, the Trudeau years were a disaster. Yes,
00:05:56.320 Carney has not moved fast enough to undo that damage through deregulation, tax relief,
00:06:01.880 fiscal responsibility, major projects, etc. Yes, there are no shortage of targets for the
00:06:08.040 Conservatives to focus on like those. But at the end of the day, surely we can all be united,
00:06:14.100 especially the members of the movement and the country founded by John McDonald, that we should not be a punching bag for an aggressive man who has attacked, belittled and threatened this country now for the past 18 months.
00:06:34.880 this is not hard to figure out. We can be for sensible conservative reforms in this country
00:06:42.520 against liberal mismanagement, but not say that Canada is the cause of this disaster in our
00:06:50.040 bilateral relationship because we're not. If you're a liberal and you think the conservative
00:06:53.320 approach is off, you're right. I worked with Polyev and the conservatives for years and I
00:06:57.400 know their approach is off. They're playing right into the hands of the left and they're ensuring
00:07:01.960 that they're never going to win a federal election. Sometimes I think that's what they
00:07:05.380 actually want. I'm not sure why Polyev didn't do more to stand up to Trump and separate himself
00:07:09.840 from him, but that mistake amounts to political suicide. The Conservative Party, they've not only
00:07:15.000 failed to separate themselves from the Republicans down south, but in many ways they appear to be
00:07:19.580 cozying up to them. One of Polyev's MPs, Jamil Javani, met with US Vice President J.D. Vance
00:07:25.080 and they turned around and bad-mouthed Canadians on a far-right radio station. Polyev could have
00:07:29.560 earned some respect by immediately kicking him out of caucus. But Pauly just shrugged his shoulders
00:07:33.960 and acted like what he did wasn't a big deal. And that's just one example. Part of the reason
00:07:38.440 Liberals continue to win elections in Canada is not because they're so good, but because the
00:07:42.400 Conservatives are so bad. The Liberals find an issue the majority of people support and the
00:07:47.040 majority of Conservatives don't support and they make it the central focus of their election
00:07:50.880 campaign. For example, the majority of Canadians, they supported COVID vaccines. So Truro just took
00:07:56.200 that and use that to win the 21 election. Majority of Canadians, they want a government that stands
00:08:00.600 up to Donald Trump. So the liberals under Carney made that the focus of their campaign and they won
00:08:05.800 last year's election. Conservatives are always at a disadvantage because their bases full of
00:08:09.860 conspiracy theorists and extremists. They can't win if they don't cater to those people. But if
00:08:14.680 they cater to those people, they end up alienating the rest of Canadians. Sometimes people forget
00:08:19.240 that Canadians are a lot smarter than Americans. And the strategy that helped Trump win two
00:08:24.060 elections won't work in Canada. The strategy to win an election in Canada is to have good policies
00:08:29.220 and convince Canadians they can trust you to follow through on them. Conservatives in Canada
00:08:33.380 may think that banning trans men from women's sports is an election-winning issue, but I can
00:08:38.080 tell you it's not. I want to stress, Polyev will never be Prime Minister. Carney has outmaneuvered
00:08:43.740 him in every way possible. A small group of people, they still cling on to the hope that Polyev will
00:08:48.480 one day lead the country, but I can assure you that's never going to happen. The only way Canada
00:08:52.720 will ever have a conservative government is if an outsider comes in and changes the direction of the
00:08:57.060 party. And based on what I've seen in the last little while, that's not going to happen anytime
00:09:01.500 soon. This video wasn't made with AI. It's made by real humans for real humans. Thanks for tuning
00:09:06.580 in. Talk to you next time.