The Candice Malcolm Show - Pierre Poilievre vindicated as Bank of Canada admits his criticisms were legitimate

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

00:00:07.200 I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:21.520 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast.

00:00:23.980 So one of the major lines of criticism against Pierre Polyev, and no, I'm not talking about how his rallies are supposedly too white or how he's some kind of a secret white supremacist just with no evidence and it's never been proven, but the media love to say that anyways.

00:00:37.520 No, no, I'm talking about the way that the media react to Polyev's criticism of the Bank of Canada.

00:00:43.120 That Polyev has had a very consistent, very clear, concise criticism of the Bank of Canada for its failure, mostly to manage the inflation crisis and the way that they have printed money throughout the COVID era.

00:00:57.340 This has been a consistent topic for Pierre Polyev.

00:00:59.940 If you remember, he was on my show two years ago, two years ago, in the beginning of the pandemic, he joined the speaker series that we were doing at the time.

00:01:08.040 We did an in-depth interview entirely on this issue of inflation, of the problem with printing money and how it creates a hidden tax on Canadians.

00:01:16.060 You should go check out that interview.

00:01:17.780 But you could just see that Pierre Polyev has been talking about this issue in a credible and concise way for a very long time.

00:01:24.120 However, as soon as the leadership race got underway, the media started looking at this criticism of the Bank of Canada, making it seem like it was some kind of a criticism that was beyond the pale, that it was outside the realm of acceptability, that what he was saying was dangerous, it was radical, it was populism.

00:01:40.660 And the media created this sort of narrative about Pierre, saying that what he was doing was wrong.

00:01:46.460 So we've got so many examples of this.

00:01:48.120 This is in the Financial Post back in May.

00:01:51.300 They say Pierre Polyev says he would fire the Bank of Canada governor if elected prime minister.

00:01:56.620 They quote Polyev saying, I will replace him with a new governor who would reinstate our low inflation mandate, protect the purchasing power of our dollar, and honor the working people who earned these dollars.

00:02:06.620 That's what Pierre Polyev said during the leadership debate in Edmonton.

00:02:10.860 Polyev added that those who caused soaring post-pandemic inflation rates must be held accountable.

00:02:16.860 And so this is a line of criticism that Polyev has had throughout the campaign.

00:02:20.580 Now, just to show you some of the reaction to Polyev and what he's been saying, really lots and lots of pearl clutching, lots and lots of people saying that his rhetoric is over the top.

00:02:31.180 So here's John Ibbotson over at the Globe and Mail saying just that, why Pierre Polyev should reconsider his rhetoric about firing the Bank of Canada governor.

00:02:40.180 And Ibbotson writes in this piece, the only way the government can force a governor's resignation is by formally and publicly demanding the bank change course.

00:02:47.640 He writes that if he ever does become prime minister, Mr. Polyev should think carefully about using that nuclear option.

00:02:54.680 It has only been tried once and it did not end well for the government.

00:02:58.860 So it's interesting because basically Ibbotson's making the point that the prime minister shouldn't have this say.

00:03:05.000 They shouldn't be able to determine who the Bank of Canada governor is, which is kind of ironic given that the prime minister gets to appoint the governor of the Bank of Canada.

00:03:12.600 That's one of the many positions that the prime minister gets to appoint.

00:03:15.900 The prime minister gets to make up so much of the federal government and the duties of the federal government in their image, in what they want.

00:03:22.720 And so a prime minister has that power.

00:03:24.860 Justin Trudeau has that power.

00:03:25.920 He was the one who appointed Tiff Macklin, who is the current governor of the Bank of Canada.

00:03:29.880 Again, it's one of the things that the prime minister gets to do.

00:03:31.980 So acting like it's so out of step for a politician to suggest that if they were prime minister, they would do things differently sort of undermines the whole idea of democratic government and elected government.

00:03:42.540 Yes, becoming prime minister avails you to certain powers, including getting to appoint people like the head of the Bank of Canada.

00:03:50.220 Likewise, we had an op-ed over in the Toronto Star written by Heather Schofield, who said that Pierre Polyev has outrageous ideas about the Bank of Canada.

00:03:58.760 His party and his country deserve better.

00:04:01.640 So likewise, she writes, the promise or threat to axe Macklin was the logical extension of many months of Polyev lashing out against the central bank, accusing the institution and its leader of collusion with the liberal government and deliberate exacerbation of inflation for political purposes.

00:04:18.160 Never mind that there's no logic in the call for Macklin's head in and of itself.

00:04:22.700 It's such an outrageous and irresponsible idea with so many implications for Canada's economic stability and reputation, let alone prosperity, that the candidate and the thinking public just can't leave it alone.

00:04:34.840 Let's set aside Polyev's nonsensical statements for a moment to consider what we're left with if the Conservative Party wants to hang on to its reputation as good economic managers.

00:04:44.100 So according to this op-ed in the Toronto Star, the Conservatives are not allowed to criticize Justin Trudeau's appointee to the Bank of Canada.

00:04:52.460 It is irresponsible and outrageous and it hurts Canada's stability and reputation as well as our prosperity.

00:04:59.440 What about the fact that the government has been printing money out of control?

00:05:02.880 What about the fact that inflation is rampant and interest rates are going up?

00:05:06.580 These pundits ignore all of the facts about our economy and their just knee-jerk reaction is to defend Justin Trudeau, defend his appointees and say that everything is rosy and everything is good.

00:05:17.500 It will continue.

00:05:18.360 There's another report over in Bloomberg saying that Polyev's reckless attack on Macklin blasted by Bay Street.

00:05:25.200 So same kind of stuff.

00:05:26.600 Apparently, this is what political leaders in basket case dictatorships like Turkey do, according to this analyst.

00:05:33.580 And so, again, the media has told us over and over again that it is just so outrageous that Pierre Polyev would even consider criticizing the Bank of Canada for the policies that they have put in place.

00:05:45.780 And this criticism has even seeped into Polyev's own party.

00:05:49.100 So recall that Ed Fast, who used to be the finance critic for the party, he came out and also criticized Pierre Polyev.

00:05:56.360 Now, Ed Fast was co-chairing Jean Charest's leadership campaign, so not exactly a neutral observer here.

00:06:02.460 And he came out and publicly condemned Pierre Polyev.

00:06:06.380 He said the breaking point seems to have come on Wednesday when Fast told reporters he believes Polyev's vow to fire Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklin over the country's inflation rate, the highest it's been in 30 years, hurts the party's credibility on economic issues.

00:06:20.700 And so after Ed Fast came out criticizing his own party and the sort of front runner of this race, Pierre Polyev, he came out and said that Polyev and his supporters tried to muzzle him on monetary policy.

00:06:31.860 And therefore, he offered his resignation to interim leader Candace Bergen of the Conservative Party.

00:06:37.840 So again, this whole drama and the process of infighting between these candidates all came because apparently it was just so outrageous for Polyev to be criticizing the bank of the governor of the Bank of Canada, despite the fact that, yes, we are experiencing unprecedented interest rates and inflation in this country.

00:06:58.140 I want to just pause a little bit and refer to a friend of mine, Bed Woodfieden's piece he had over in the Hub at the end of May.

00:07:05.620 It was really interesting.

00:07:06.620 He talks about how Canada's aspiring populists aren't really actually all that radical.

00:07:11.920 He makes a really good point.

00:07:13.520 And he says that the media, people like Ed Fast, a sort of more establishment part of the Conservative Party, are throwing this accusation at Pierre Polyev that he is a radical, that he's extremist, that he is a populist.

00:07:26.020 Typically, when we think of populists, we think of people who are appealing to sort of nativist, anti-immigration sentiments that are very pro-domestic policies.

00:07:35.380 They might even be pro-big government, thinking of people like Marine Le Pen in France or Donald Trump in the United States.

00:07:42.960 And to take and to try to put Pierre Polyev into that camp is just such an awkward fit.

00:07:48.260 To take a criticism like this, saying that someone who criticizes the Bank of Canada, saying that they don't have the independence that they should, and that they're partially responsible for this financial mess that has been engineered, yes, by Justin Trudeau, but that people like Tiff Macklin and the Bank of Canada have gone along with and enabled.

00:08:04.520 That fundamentally, that is not a populist or radical attack.

00:08:10.000 It's actually, at its core, a liberal attack.

00:08:12.620 It's saying that this institution needs to be better protected, that it needs better safeguards, that we need more responsible policies, and that the relationship between Justin Trudeau and the Bank of Canada is too close.

00:08:22.820 And that there needs to be more protection and more of a safeguard between those.

00:08:27.260 That's fundamentally what Polyev is arguing.

00:08:29.300 And Ben Woodfine points this out.

00:08:31.620 He says, this is a quote from this piece in The Hub.

00:08:34.440 He says, he may be attacking the independence of the bank, but at least on his account of what he's doing, he's not attacking the notion of an independent bank.

00:08:42.260 Rather, he thinks he's trying to restore it.

00:08:44.480 In practice, what Polyev seems to be offering is liberalism, albeit a different flavor of it.

00:08:49.020 He doesn't seem intent on challenging Canada's liberal consensus in any meaningful way.

00:08:53.840 That's exactly right.

00:08:55.060 Polyev is saying that he wants more independence.

00:08:57.780 He's not undermining the institution.

00:08:59.820 He wants it strengthened, which, again, is the exact opposite of what his critics are saying.

00:09:04.820 Well, lo and behold, on June 2nd, guess what?

00:09:07.980 The Bank of Canada came out and said that it welcomes critics like Pierre Polyev, essentially admitting that Polyev has been right all along.

00:09:16.100 So this is a headline over at the CBC of all places.

00:09:18.600 The CBC writes this,

00:09:19.740 Following Polyev's attack, Bank of Canada officials says it's accountable for failure to check inflation.

00:09:26.380 So that is the Bank of Canada's own words that it has failed when it comes to inflation, which is exactly the criticism that Pierre Polyev had.

00:09:33.840 So this is from the CBC piece.

00:09:35.300 The Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada acknowledged Thursday the institution has been unable to keep inflation at its target rate and should be held accountable.

00:09:43.760 Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada Paul Beaudry made the remarks in response to Conservative Leadership Canada Pierre Polyev's claim last month

00:09:51.340 that the Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklin was surrendering his independence to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

00:09:56.700 through a money-printing quantitative easing program in response to the pandemic-driven economic crisis.

00:10:03.960 So during the party's official English language debate in Edmonton,

00:10:07.160 Polyev also said he would fire Macklin if he becomes Prime Minister.

00:10:10.580 Beaudry, who's the top bureaucrat over at the Bank of Canada, was asked by reporters Thursday to respond to those remarks.

00:10:17.020 He said this,

00:10:17.720 So a little bit of vindication for Pierre Polyev over all this, and he acknowledged so much.

00:10:28.220 So two days later on June 4th, Pierre put this out on Twitter.

00:10:31.820 He said,

00:10:32.280 I want to congratulate the Bank of Canada for accepting blame for its mistakes.

00:10:37.960 They did what Trudeau told them, print money for deficits, causing runaway inflation and a dangerous housing bubble.

00:10:42.900 But now they're doing what's unthinkable in Ottawa, taking responsibility, progress, Pierre writes on Twitter.

00:10:50.420 So again, vindication, because despite all of the attacks from the media and even from within his own party,

00:10:56.800 the Bank is now coming out saying, you know what, we made some mistakes and we caused some of those problems,

00:11:02.460 just as Pierre Polyev said.

00:11:04.500 Well, it goes even deeper.

00:11:05.300 On June 9th, the CBC had a follow-up piece saying this,

00:11:08.860 Following Polyev's attack, Bank of Canada governors says he welcomes criticism.

00:11:13.180 So it's no longer just the top bureaucrat over at the Bank of Canada.

00:11:16.020 It's Tiff Macklin, the person, the man himself, who was appointed by Justin Trudeau as the governor of the Bank of Canada.

00:11:22.400 So according to the CBC piece, it says that Tiff Macklin shrugged off conservative leadership contender Pierre Polyev's

00:11:27.860 pointed criticisms of him and the Central Bank Thursday, saying he welcomes input from elected officials

00:11:33.220 and he knows inflation is too high.

00:11:35.600 So again, Macklin says that he is going to leave politics to the politicians, defending his own performance,

00:11:41.040 but again, admitting to the fact that inflation is too high, which again is a central criticism of Pierre Polyev.

00:11:48.360 So Pierre is not all that offside.

00:11:51.180 After all, oh, and by the way, on June 9th, we also learn the Bank of Canada says that Canadians

00:11:56.040 could see a mortgage payment jump by 45% in the next few years, by 2025, 2026, as the rates continue to rise.

00:12:05.480 So some Canadians who took out mortgages in 2020 or 2021 could see their monthly payments jump by as much as 45%

00:12:12.440 in the next few years, given the rising rates, according to the Bank of Canada's scenario released on Thursday.

00:12:19.980 Elevated levels of inflation, which is currently at a 31-year high,

00:12:23.080 could also mean that households allocate more of their income to food and gas

00:12:26.980 if wage increases do not keep pace in this context.

00:12:30.600 Highly indebted houses are especially vulnerable to a loss of income.

00:12:34.820 Polyev again responded,

00:12:36.340 could you afford to pay 45% more for your monthly mortgage payment?

00:12:40.200 Justin Trudeau's inflation deficits and money printing have real world consequences.

00:12:44.960 Stop this now before Canadians find themselves no longer able to afford their home.

00:12:49.480 He also tweeted this, when the Bank of Canada surrenders its independence to print money

00:12:53.380 for Trudeau, it inflated a housing bubble.

00:12:56.120 If the bubble bursts, countless people will be underwater on their mortgages facing bankruptcy.

00:13:00.980 Another reason to fire Trudeau and his governor.

00:13:04.600 So again, rather than the media paying attention to the very real changes and the disastrous consequences

00:13:10.140 to Justin Trudeau's economic policies, again, they would much prefer to criticize

00:13:14.820 Pierre Polyev and say somehow that he is completely out of step.

00:13:18.560 That is wrong.

00:13:19.640 Polyev in this instance is right.

00:13:22.120 Obviously, it is a very big concern.

00:13:24.160 And Justin Trudeau has gotten us into a huge mess.

00:13:26.680 But what we're seeing now is, rather than admit that they were wrong,

00:13:30.000 rather than the media saying,

00:13:31.040 OK, it turns out that Pierre Polyev was correct when he was criticizing Trudeau and Macklin

00:13:36.580 for their printing of money and inflation and interest rates,

00:13:39.420 they're just going to quietly shift their criticism to another place,

00:13:43.560 never acknowledged they had made mistakes and even the Bank of Canada admits that they were wrong.

00:13:47.780 Now the media is starting to shift their criticism towards the broader Conservative Party of Canada.

00:13:53.560 I'm talking about the big news that the Conservative Party has managed to recruit

00:13:57.440 some 600,000 people to join the party to vote in the upcoming leadership race.

00:14:02.560 These numbers are staggering.

00:14:04.200 They're totally unprecedented in Canadian history.

00:14:07.580 And so, of course, there the media are to jump up and down

00:14:10.740 and criticize, again, the Conservatives.

00:14:13.420 How dare they?

00:14:13.900 This is something that I should have included last week in Fake News Friday, but I missed it.

00:14:18.140 And it's just such an interesting take from John Iverson over at the National Post.

00:14:22.820 He had this story that came out last week.

00:14:24.800 He said,

00:14:25.280 So many new Conservatives, but not even the party knows the real number.

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

00:14:31.280 He writes this.

00:14:31.920 There's something a little vulgar about Conservative leadership candidates bragging about the number of new members they've signed on. 0.91

00:14:38.360 It's like the toxic masculinity of men claiming sexual conquests. 0.99

00:14:43.820 Okay, so apparently Conservatives are just toxic men, 0.98

00:14:47.060 and they're not even allowed to tell you how many members they signed up,

00:14:50.080 even though it is incredibly impressive and the media are understating it.

00:14:54.320 Remember, we told you about how back in 2013,

00:14:56.460 Justin Trudeau signed up 150,000 members,

00:14:59.420 and the media were salivating and jumping up and down congratulating him.

00:15:03.160 Now we have the party signing up some 600,000 members,

00:15:07.260 300 and some thousand came from Pierre Polyev's website himself.

00:15:11.660 And if they even mention it, if they even talk about it,

00:15:14.180 well, according to the legacy media,

00:15:16.040 it's toxic masculinity, and it's sort of like claiming sexual conquests.

00:15:20.480 Okay, John Iverson goes on to just say,

00:15:22.600 the basic rule of thumb in journalism is to never believe anything,

00:15:26.320 especially from politicians.

00:15:28.020 Well, if only that worked both ways.

00:15:29.280 That is a standard that journalists hold Conservatives to,

00:15:31.820 of course, as we know, and we've shown over and over again,

00:15:34.760 on the Candace Malcolm show,

00:15:35.720 that is not the standard that they hold for Justin Trudeau.

00:15:38.240 They basically run with whatever the liberals say as their headline

00:15:41.640 without validating or verifying it.

00:15:43.440 We've seen many, many times they've had to walk that back.

00:15:46.760 But regardless, there's a theme in the legacy media

00:15:50.020 saying that, casting doubt on the credibility of the party,

00:15:53.960 casting doubt on these numbers.

00:15:55.840 CTV had a headline saying Conservatives say leadership vote won't be delayed

00:15:59.860 after many new members signed up, all in scare quotes.

00:16:03.320 So we're seeing this as the new narrative from the media,

00:16:06.700 again, questioning whether or not these numbers are real,

00:16:10.120 questioning whether or not the party can handle it,

00:16:12.160 saying that there could be some doubt on the credibility of this election,

00:16:16.100 just given that they frankly just don't believe the Conservatives

00:16:19.820 when they say that they're doing this well.

00:16:22.100 Last week, I had Hamish Marshall on the show to talk about this huge growth,

00:16:26.520 the excitement, and what it means for Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh,

00:16:29.540 who, again, should be pretty worried, pretty concerned

00:16:32.460 by the fact that Conservatives are able to appeal to so many Canadians

00:16:36.320 to capture the imagination, to encourage them to pay 15 bucks

00:16:39.360 to join a political party,

00:16:40.700 which is not something that normal, everyday Canadians do.

00:16:43.700 Most Canadians are never members of a political party.

00:16:46.220 So the fact that they have this excitement,

00:16:50.500 the fact that so many Canadians have joined this party,

00:16:53.960 really shows something.

00:16:55.560 And of course, legacy media is there to try to undermine that excitement.

00:17:00.540 And I think this is a good time, this show,

00:17:01.900 to bring in our friend Ian Brody.

00:17:04.420 Ian is currently the head of the Conservative Leadership Election Organizing Committee,

00:17:08.420 which is the body that runs the Conservative leadership race.

00:17:11.500 In the past, he was a former chief of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

00:17:16.640 He served as the strategic advisor to the Inter-American Development Bank

00:17:19.700 and was a professor of political science over at the University of Calgary.

00:17:23.460 So, Ian, thank you so much for joining the program.

00:17:26.360 Great to see you guys.

00:17:28.000 And so I noticed on social media over on Twitter last week,

00:17:31.480 you sent out a tweet basically just saying that you were in the Conservative offices last week.

00:17:35.560 Well, here, I'll read it.

00:17:36.120 I was in the Conservative Party office's headquarter office last week,

00:17:39.800 including for the membership deadline in the race.

00:17:42.740 I do not see a scenario in which the race could be delayed.

00:17:45.340 Candidates have signed up many, many new members,

00:17:47.440 and party staff are doing extraordinary work to produce a voters list.

00:17:51.140 I expect we'll meet the deadline set out in the Conservative leadership rules.

00:17:55.440 So what do you make of some of the criticism that is being directed towards your party

00:17:59.500 that you just simply cannot handle the number of new memberships that you've received?

00:18:03.840 Yeah, I should say since that tweet, Candice,

00:18:07.400 we've confirmed that we're looking at more than 600,000 members

00:18:10.320 on the final membership voters list for the race that wraps up in September.

00:18:16.820 So I think you mentioned last week,

00:18:18.140 all of those people to vote in that race have to be signed up as members by June 3rd.

00:18:21.960 So I was in the party office until the closing of the memberships on June 3rd.

00:18:27.380 Yes, it's a huge number.

00:18:28.540 I mean, we started this leadership with around 180,000 members,

00:18:34.020 I guess, at the beginning of the year.

00:18:35.520 And so just an enormous growth of membership signups,

00:18:38.580 which is, let's just say it's good news.

00:18:40.400 It's not just good news, it's historically good news.

00:18:42.540 And I think everybody involved is proud to be involved in this historic piece.

00:18:45.860 In the past, memberships for a leadership campaign or for a local nomination campaign

00:18:52.080 have traditionally been signed up on little, you know, paper slips,

00:18:56.900 you know, duplicate or triplicate slips with checks attached or whatever.

00:19:01.800 And it took months and months and months to enter all those names and addresses

00:19:05.720 into the computer to generate a voters list and to cash all the checks.

00:19:10.160 This time, for the first time in this leadership race compared to previous leadership races,

00:19:15.840 the party insisted that basically all of the members that signed up had to sign up

00:19:20.260 through the party's website.

00:19:22.260 That just cuts the processing time to put out a membership list,

00:19:25.960 not in half, but by like one-tenth of the effort that we've had before.

00:19:30.960 And then we can use, you know, all the tools of big data to go through and find duplicates

00:19:37.220 or people whose home addresses are not, you know, quite rightly formatted for Canada post-mail it.

00:19:43.740 So I think all these criticisms we've had from people who were involved in previous leadership races,

00:19:48.560 they're forgetting the huge advance in technology and the change of the rules that required

00:19:55.240 effectively all of the memberships to be entered into our computer system as the race went along.

00:20:00.280 So there's still work to be done.

00:20:01.820 The parties, membership staff and accounting staff, all the staff that head office are going through

00:20:06.480 trying to clean up that list.

00:20:08.220 As you know, lots of people live in rural areas in Canada.

00:20:11.900 It can sometimes be, you know, their mailing address and their home address are in different

00:20:15.460 ridings.

00:20:15.960 That matters for our race.

00:20:17.220 So that all has to be done manually.

00:20:18.780 But the idea that we're starting with, you know, a shoebox the size of the Skydome full of 600,000

00:20:27.060 paper memberships and I've got, you know, thousands of people at head office, keep punching them all

00:20:31.420 into the computer.

00:20:32.060 That's just, that's a relic of kind of 10 or 15 years ago thinking we've advanced since then.

00:20:37.600 Well, I'm glad to hear that you have the technology to keep up with the demand that it seems like

00:20:42.720 there's so much interest in the party right now.

00:20:44.800 So do you have an estimate of how many members?

00:20:48.140 You said 600 is a little low now.

00:20:50.100 Some of the criticism may be that some of the memberships might end up getting thrown out,

00:20:53.140 that they're not legitimate.

00:20:54.660 What's your estimate for how many current members there are in the party?

00:20:57.920 Well, we won't know for another couple of weeks.

00:21:00.400 That's a tricky job of cleaning up the list, although this is the third leadership race

00:21:05.580 we've had in the last six years.

00:21:06.820 So I have to say, party staff are getting very good at this.

00:21:09.540 And of course, for each election, the party runs a couple of hundred local nomination races.

00:21:14.600 They're smaller events, but it's the same problem of trying to clean up membership lists

00:21:18.800 to vote at local nominations.

00:21:20.780 I wouldn't be, I'm not too, too worried about fraud.

00:21:26.660 In a big leadership race, there's always, you know, organizers out there who are signing

00:21:31.060 people up faster than they can, faster than they can read the rules.

00:21:34.820 What I'm mostly worried about is in a big effort like this, especially as you get down to the

00:21:39.100 deadline, people signing up through multiple organizations just in order to make sure their

00:21:43.480 name is on the membership list.

00:21:44.720 We've seen that already in the staff review of the list.

00:21:47.500 People who signed up two or three times just to make sure they had the right to vote.

00:21:52.500 But I think that itself is also a good measure of intensity of interest here, right?

00:21:56.600 There are people who really desperately want to make sure that their vote will count in

00:22:00.200 this leadership race.

00:22:01.020 So they're not, they're not going to leave it to chance.

00:22:03.160 They're going to sign up two or three times.

00:22:04.880 That makes our, our job a little trickier.

00:22:07.620 But again, this is the sort of thing we've gone through before.

00:22:10.160 I think what encourages me here is that if you think about the Conservative Party, you

00:22:15.000 know, 600 and upwards of 600,000 members, bigger than the city of Hamilton, bigger than

00:22:22.400 the city of Halifax or Quebec City, bigger than Regina and Saskatoon combined.

00:22:26.900 We have now almost twice as many members as there were voters for the Green Party in the

00:22:33.740 last federal election campaign.

00:22:35.060 I mean, this is a huge, this is a huge mobilization effort.

00:22:39.380 And look, last week, Aaron Wary at CBC had a piece, opinion piece out about how the Liberals

00:22:46.740 aren't going to deal with rising prices until the fall.

00:22:49.720 A pretty laxity-based school approach to, I think, what is the number one economic issue

00:22:54.780 in the country right now for Canadians.

00:22:57.720 The NDP Liberal Agreement ensures that this approach is going to go on for the next three

00:23:01.680 years.

00:23:02.660 At 8% inflation, you know, that means we're all 25% poorer by the time this agreement comes

00:23:07.960 to an end.

00:23:09.400 Conservatives, on the other hand, we've had six credible leadership candidates out talking

00:23:12.980 to people in cities and towns across the country.

00:23:15.400 They're hearing about this and now they're pressing issues on the ground.

00:23:18.660 And I think that's what's driven really 400 and something thousand people to sign up new

00:23:22.740 in addition to the 180,000 we had at the beginning of this race.

00:23:26.620 Well, absolutely.

00:23:27.640 It's the Conservatives that are the only ones taking the issues in our economy and our country

00:23:32.140 seriously.

00:23:32.820 And I think that a lot of Canadians are waking up to that.

00:23:35.380 Ian, I read a lot of the comments and feedback from True North viewers.

00:23:40.380 A lot of them are new members to the Conservative Party, people who have never voted Conservative or

00:23:44.880 never been part of the Conservative Party before.

00:23:46.740 So I'm just wondering, too, the viewers of this podcast or listeners of this podcast who

00:23:51.620 are new to the Conservative Party, could you explain a little bit about how the leadership

00:23:56.480 process works?

00:23:57.600 Like, once you verify the list, what happens next?

00:24:00.940 Yeah.

00:24:01.160 So we'll have a preliminary list out to the candidates.

00:24:04.640 Each of the six candidates will get a preliminary list over the next couple of weeks once we've

00:24:08.900 done our cleanup of the list.

00:24:12.720 After that, each of the campaigns will get 72 hours to submit corrections to the list.

00:24:19.080 There may be people on the list they don't think are eligible to vote.

00:24:21.960 That gets a bit technical.

00:24:23.500 I can go into the details if you want.

00:24:26.040 Or they may think there are people who should be on the list that, for whatever reason, have

00:24:29.640 been missed.

00:24:30.520 Sometimes you get, you know, ENQ Public and ENQ Public Junior.

00:24:35.900 If they get merged as a result of one of our computer uploads, you know, maybe they should

00:24:41.200 be actually two different people.

00:24:42.460 We can fix that.

00:24:44.180 So it'll be 72 hours for them to come up with changes to the list.

00:24:46.860 We then have about 72 hours to make those changes to the list.

00:24:50.740 And at that point, the membership list is, the voters list is closed.

00:24:57.980 Everyone will get, everyone who has signed up and is on that membership list will get

00:25:01.460 a paper ballot in the mail.

00:25:03.320 The party's constitution requires if we have a postal ballot sent out to people.

00:25:07.500 So if you think about that, you know, from Central Canada, I always say we've got members

00:25:13.700 in Whale Cove, Nunavut, getting mail to Whale Cove, Nunavut, letting those members fill

00:25:18.260 out the ballot and send it back is, it takes a long time.

00:25:21.460 Counter Post has some challenges these years to try to get, during COVID, to try to get

00:25:25.440 mail out and back.

00:25:26.520 So that's many weeks.

00:25:28.200 Plus, you can't just print 600,000 outgoing ballots, you know, overnight and mail them

00:25:32.580 all on the same day.

00:25:33.280 It's going to take several weeks to get all those ballots out.

00:25:36.600 The ballot is itself a little bit complicated because in our party, we have a single ballot,

00:25:42.400 but people have an opportunity to rank, order their candidates.

00:25:45.940 So they may want to cast a ballot for a particular candidate as their first choice.

00:25:49.800 If the candidate gets dropped off a second round of balloting, they get a chance to have

00:25:54.360 a second choice and a third choice in this case, down to six choices altogether.

00:25:59.720 Each round of counting, we're looking for a candidate to get 50% plus one of the points

00:26:05.480 that are available.

00:26:06.760 The party's constitution, to a certain extent, equalizes the voting power of each writing.

00:26:11.540 So just, you know, think about the conservative strength in rural areas and in Western Canada.

00:26:18.560 The bulk of the points that are available, the bulk of the voting parts available in this

00:26:22.680 race, will be in a writing that we don't hold.

00:26:25.580 So it encourages the candidates to go out and organize in writing so the conservatives don't

00:26:29.260 currently hold in the House of Commons.

00:26:31.340 And in particular, remote writings where we don't have quite so many members, territories,

00:26:36.560 Labrador, and so forth, there's a huge incentive for the candidates to go out and organize strongly

00:26:42.820 in the writings where the party is particularly not very strong on the ground.

00:26:47.680 And so at the end of that, that'll be, I expect, multiple days of counting the ballots

00:26:53.260 when they come back to Ottawa.

00:26:55.220 All the ballots have to be back by September the 6th.

00:26:57.800 That gives us four days for the last ballot coming in until the announcement on September

00:27:03.200 10th.

00:27:04.160 And I don't see any scenario at the moment, barring a public health challenge in the fall.

00:27:09.460 I don't see a scenario that would have us changing any of those deadlines right now.

00:27:13.640 And so four days from the time the ballots are accepted to the time that the leader is

00:27:20.580 announced.

00:27:21.300 Why does it take that long?

00:27:22.440 So because this is a mail-in ballot, so unlike in-person elections during a general election

00:27:28.540 campaign where you have to show up at a ballot at a voting station and show some identification,

00:27:33.980 you know, show yourself in person to the returning officer and then mark the ballot, this will

00:27:39.480 all be conducted by mail.

00:27:41.380 So we do have to be a little bit careful to make sure that the ballots have been cast by

00:27:46.800 the people who they were assigned to.

00:27:49.040 So when people cast a ballot, they have to include a copy of some photo identification,

00:27:53.640 something like that.

00:27:54.340 That all has to be verified by hand.

00:27:56.800 There's no way to automate that.

00:27:59.040 And we have to make sure that the ballot that comes back hasn't been photocopied or otherwise

00:28:03.840 fabricated by someone.

00:28:05.140 So they have to be verified before they can be counted.

00:28:08.020 That's a very time-consuming process.

00:28:10.100 That process will start in July when we expect the earliest ballots to come back and we'll

00:28:15.020 proceed through August.

00:28:16.120 I don't expect we're going to get that many ballots at the very end on September the 6th,

00:28:21.300 but it's possible that we could get a last-minute search.

00:28:24.520 So there's a couple of days in there to go through that process of verifying that the

00:28:27.940 ballot has been properly cast.

00:28:29.840 And then I expect we'll take a few days to count ballots at the scale that we're talking

00:28:35.920 about here.

00:28:36.400 In the past, it's taken about a day to count, you know, 150,000, 180,000 ballots in the last

00:28:42.140 few races to 200,000 ballots in the last few races.

00:28:45.920 So if we scale up to 500,000, 600,000 ballots coming back, we're going to need a little bit

00:28:51.880 more time, even with extra people and extra counting machines to help us with accounting.

00:28:56.560 Excellent.

00:28:57.280 And just one final, well, one other question about the process here.

00:29:01.640 There has been some criticism specifically from the Jean Charest camp about the legitimacy

00:29:08.040 of the race.

00:29:08.960 I know that Tasha Carradine, who's a co-chair for Charest, said that the next leader will

00:29:14.660 have no credibility if the race isn't transparent.

00:29:18.520 What is your response to these kind of criticisms?

00:29:20.320 Look, this is always a challenge in a very long race. 0.80

00:29:25.900 People get antsy about the outcome, and I understand that.

00:29:29.520 Having been on the side, I've been on Tasha's side before, helping to run leadership races,

00:29:34.920 these are long treks.

00:29:37.300 That said, as I say, each campaign will get a three-day period to take a look at the interim

00:29:43.680 voters list and to make changes or suggest changes, corrections that they think need to

00:29:49.720 be made.

00:29:50.680 We'll then release the final list to everybody sometime in July.

00:29:56.380 Every candidate will have an opportunity to have scrutineers, their own campaign observers,

00:30:00.960 observing the verification process.

00:30:02.960 In the last campaign, the verification was webcast live on a web television facility platform.

00:30:11.240 I expect we're going to do the same this time, so you can see 24 hours a day what's going on.

00:30:16.020 And then each campaign will have the opportunity to have somebody scrutineer or observe the

00:30:21.520 counting process and to take a look at the calculation of the final result.

00:30:26.260 That's, I think, as transparent as a federal election in Canada.

00:30:30.860 I started out in this business as a scrutineer on races like this, so I think it's particularly

00:30:35.220 important that we be as transparent about the mail process, the verification process,

00:30:40.500 and the counting process as we possibly can.

00:30:42.300 Absolutely.

00:30:43.280 Well, this is a final question for you, Ian.

00:30:45.540 What do you think, what do you make of the scenario in Canada now where, you know, when

00:30:49.620 Dustin Trudeau ran for leader of the Liberal Party, he claimed that he had 150,000 members.

00:30:55.300 I think he ended up getting about 80,000 people voting for him in that race.

00:30:59.160 We see this huge surge in interest in the Conservative Party.

00:31:03.420 As you mentioned, upwards of 400,000 new members for this party.

00:31:07.220 What do you make of the enthusiasm?

00:31:09.740 What do you think is going through Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh's head right now?

00:31:13.760 Do you think they should be nervous about this huge growth in interest in the Conservative Party?

00:31:19.900 Yeah, I mean, look, in that leadership race, in the Liberal leadership race, when Mr. Trudeau won,

00:31:25.280 as I recall, you could join the party by liking the party on Facebook.

00:31:29.140 It didn't require much of an effort to join the Liberal Party.

00:31:31.980 These are all people in our party who have signed up and paid a membership fee and been

00:31:36.440 through the membership gathering process.

00:31:40.460 So the people who signed up had to make a particular effort to sign up.

00:31:44.440 We also make sure under federal law, if you're going to pay the membership fee, you have to

00:31:47.980 pay it yourself.

00:31:49.300 And so we don't have any more of the phenomenon in Canada of people, you know, some wealthy

00:31:54.380 donor paying for 10,000 members to sign up.

00:31:57.240 Each one of those people signed up themselves with their own credit card, or in some cases

00:32:01.360 with a personal check.

00:32:02.700 I mean, that is an extraordinary degree of the members that we have, people who really

00:32:07.020 want to be members of the Conservative Party.

00:32:09.000 They went through all of these hoops to get into the party in order to ensure that they

00:32:12.960 had a say over who the next leader would be.

00:32:16.620 I think this, just as a party building exercise alone, an extraordinary amount of new energy

00:32:23.040 in the private party is bigger than it has ever been in any party in Canada has ever been

00:32:27.420 before.

00:32:27.820 And I think the Liberals and the NDP are, if I were them, right now I'd be trying to

00:32:33.460 figure out where are these people, who are these people, where did they come from?

00:32:37.380 I think in some cases they're people that the Liberals and the NDP might have expected

00:32:40.460 to have in their own camp in the past, and maybe were their own camp in the past, that

00:32:44.280 they've been attracted by virtue of, I think, the damage that the Liberal NDP agreement

00:32:49.540 has done, and the case, the pitch that our six leadership candidates are making out in the

00:32:54.460 grassroots from coast to coast.

00:32:56.000 I just, I want you to comment though, because I saw a poll in, I think it was the Globe

00:33:00.740 and Mail that said that 60% of Canadians are okay with the agreement between the Liberals

00:33:05.540 and the NDP.

00:33:06.480 Do you think that's accurate, or do you think that there is this sort of underswell of people

00:33:09.940 who are really not okay with this sort of informal, formal agreement of governance?

00:33:14.940 Well, I think that 60% number was a snapshot, you know, a poll at the time when it wasn't

00:33:21.000 clear what the implications of that agreement were going to be, and insofar as it did head

00:33:26.360 off the risk of an election in the next couple of years, maybe people are relieved, we've

00:33:30.160 had several elections in the past couple of years, they're relieved not to be back to

00:33:33.520 the polls again.

00:33:34.600 I'm not sure that people were too excited about having the election we had in 2021 during

00:33:39.300 during the Omicron wave of the pandemic.

00:33:43.320 So, you know, I understand the 60% number, that doesn't mean that 60% of Canadians like

00:33:47.740 the idea of three more years of rising food prices, gas prices, housing prices, that kind

00:33:54.760 of lackadaisical approach to the economic growth and to the real economic pain that people are

00:33:59.660 feeling from coast to coast as a result of all of these cost increases.

00:34:03.040 So I think if I were in the governing side, I have been in government myself, I'd be watching

00:34:08.740 those polls with a big grain of salt, because all of the other indicators that touch Canadians

00:34:15.240 in their day-to-day lives here are going negative.

00:34:18.200 Okay, well, Dr. Ian Brody, thank you so much for your insight.

00:34:20.800 Thank you for clarifying the leadership process and all the best with this entire thing.

00:34:25.340 We're really looking forward to September 10th and learning who the new leader of the party

00:34:28.840 will be.

00:34:29.600 Good, great.

00:34:30.180 Thanks, Ken.

00:34:30.640 It's good to talk to you.

00:34:31.340 All right, thank you so much for tuning in.

00:34:33.620 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - June 13, 2022

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

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