The Candice Malcolm Show - The issues that actually matter to Canadians this election

00:00:00.000 Is this election being fought on the issues that Canadians really care about?

00:00:03.520 I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:00:10.680 Former Prime Minister Kim Campbell never won an election.

00:00:13.880 In the one campaign she ran in, she made misstep after misstep

00:00:17.380 and ended up losing in one of the biggest landslides in Canadian history.

00:00:21.720 One of her worst gaffes and most memorable moments on that campaign trail

00:00:25.100 was when she said this,

00:00:26.380 Well, Kim Campbell lost and I think for good reason.

00:00:34.040 Elections are a perfect time to talk about the serious issues that matter to Canadians.

00:00:39.380 And so in that spirit, we surveyed our True North audience

00:00:42.360 to find out what issues they care about

00:00:44.600 and what issues they'd like to see focused on in the election.

00:00:47.940 There were four major issues that came out in this survey.

00:00:51.140 The first one is personal freedom, including freedom of speech,

00:00:54.520 internet censorship, government funding of the media,

00:00:57.620 and the collusion between big tech and big government.

00:01:00.320 The second issue that True North Nation wants us to cover

00:01:02.620 is the health of the economy, including creating jobs,

00:01:05.680 growing the economy, balancing the budget, and attracting investment.

00:01:09.520 The third is the tax burden on families.

00:01:12.200 And number four is bringing more jobs to Canada,

00:01:14.940 specifically bringing manufacturing jobs back to Canada.

00:01:18.960 So are the leaders discussing these issues?

00:01:21.540 Are the leaders addressing the issues that actually matter to Canadians?

00:01:25.880 And to help us make sense of some of these issues,

00:01:28.580 we have our True North in-house pollster, Hamish Marshall, joining us on the line.

00:01:32.740 Hi, Hamish. Thanks for joining us.

00:01:35.240 Hi, Candice. Great to be here.

00:01:36.700 So I want to focus in on the campaign so far

00:01:39.980 and what each of the leaders have been talking about and their messaging

00:01:43.340 so we can sort of understand how they're doing in connecting with Canadians.

00:01:47.000 So first, let's start with Justin Trudeau.

00:01:49.120 I think he started off, it looks like a pretty rocky start, to be fair.

00:01:53.600 I think that he's flip-flopped on vaccine mandates.

00:01:56.000 We've seen the bungling of the Afghanistan file.

00:01:58.440 And then he came up with this weird she-session thing yesterday,

00:02:02.480 and he didn't even deliver the lines properly.

00:02:04.100 But I think he's trying to, you know,

00:02:06.900 criticize the conservatives for not being feminist enough.

00:02:09.300 So can you help us understand what it is

00:02:11.460 that Justin Trudeau is going for in this campaign?

00:02:13.960 Well, I think his core message is that things have been going pretty well.

00:02:20.380 We've done a good job fighting the vaccine, and, you know, keep going.

00:02:24.600 And we can do great things together.

00:02:27.040 Obviously, the last few days, I think, has been, as you say,

00:02:29.700 a few bumps along the road.

00:02:31.160 Although the one thing I will say about Trudeau and the Liberals

00:02:32.980 is that when they often get the initial reaction to something wrong,

00:02:36.880 Afghanistan, you know, fudging on recognizing the Taliban,

00:02:42.340 even on the vaccine mandates situation,

00:02:45.860 they often get their first initial gut reaction.

00:02:48.020 They screw something up.

00:02:48.940 It doesn't really click.

00:02:50.220 They fix it fast.

00:02:51.980 And, you know, what happened is, you know, Trudeau on,

00:02:55.300 I guess it was Monday, said,

00:02:57.800 we're, you know, we'll wait and see.

00:03:00.440 We're recognizing the Taliban.

00:03:01.340 But by then, the next day, he was saying,

00:03:03.340 we have no plans to do it, and they're terrorists.

00:03:05.540 They fix it fast.

00:03:06.560 And for those of us who obsess about elections,

00:03:10.120 we can say, well, he said one thing.

00:03:11.340 He changed his mind.

00:03:12.040 He flip-flops.

00:03:13.220 The vast, vast majority of people aren't paying that close attention.

00:03:15.840 It's the middle of August,

00:03:16.880 and he gets to the right point quickly.

00:03:19.260 He doesn't take a week to fix something.

00:03:20.980 So we might have noticed that he flip-flops,

00:03:23.280 but the vast majority of Canadians are just going to say,

00:03:25.760 well, he doesn't think we're going to recognize the Taliban.

00:03:27.340 So he has a problem, but he can fix it quickly,

00:03:31.140 and that's one of the reasons why he wins elections.

00:03:33.960 That's a really good point.

00:03:36.460 What do you think, just to focus in a little bit more on Afghanistan,

00:03:39.640 I mean, this was probably totally unforeseen by the liberals

00:03:43.260 when they decided to prompt this election.

00:03:45.520 And, you know, there is a lot of punditry out there saying,

00:03:48.080 you know, that this is a disaster for Trudeau,

00:03:50.300 the fact that he's hosting this election and forcing us into it,

00:03:53.720 while this country that Canada has had a stake in working on

00:03:58.060 and rebuilding over the last two decades

00:03:59.720 has been taken over by the terrorist group that we helped remove.

00:04:04.940 Do you think that will have an impact on Trudeau?

00:04:07.460 Do you think that will, you know,

00:04:09.020 create a negativity around him hosting this election in the first place?

00:04:13.580 Look, I would love to say yes,

00:04:16.380 but I think that the, I don't know if the liberals would have called the election

00:04:22.460 the same day that Kabul fell, if they'd known it was going to happen.

00:04:26.760 The problem he's got is that he's promised refugees, right?

00:04:29.740 He promised that we're going to bring 20,000 refugees over from Afghanistan.

00:04:35.220 You know, obviously, in some cases,

00:04:36.540 people connected to people who helped the Canadian forces,

00:04:39.340 which sounds good.

00:04:41.960 How that's implemented is where the danger is for him.

00:04:44.420 You know, if stories come out that people waiting for Canadian protection

00:04:47.620 or ended up getting, you know, taken away by the Taliban

00:04:49.760 or getting hurt or killed,

00:04:53.200 that's where it can become very, very, very dangerous

00:04:55.160 for people that Canada may have promised to

00:04:57.180 and while waiting for us to deliver,

00:05:00.000 end up in a very bad situation.

00:05:02.860 That's where it can be very dangerous to him.

00:05:04.780 I don't think anyone's going to blame him for the fall of Kabul.

00:05:07.960 I don't think, you know,

00:05:09.320 Canada pulled its forces out of Afghanistan years ago.

00:05:14.080 So it's not the same situation that's going on in the States.

00:05:17.720 Okay, let's move on and talk about Aaron O'Toole,

00:05:20.880 a Conservative leader,

00:05:21.780 because he has been focusing on the issues

00:05:24.560 that True North Survey found that our supporters

00:05:26.940 and our readers and our viewers really do care about.

00:05:29.280 I'm talking about consumer issues.

00:05:31.260 He had a really interesting idea

00:05:33.360 to get rid of the GST for the month of December

00:05:36.100 to try to spur retail shopping.

00:05:38.900 He's focused on innovation and attracting jobs to Canada.

00:05:43.340 So I want your analysis.

00:05:45.480 How has his message been breaking through

00:05:48.040 and do these sort of economic issues really move voters?

00:05:52.320 Well, I think they move the voters who care about them.

00:05:54.460 And as your True North Survey identified,

00:05:56.840 there's lots of people who do.

00:05:57.960 The people who are moved by those issues

00:06:00.680 are more on the Conservative side of the spectrum.

00:06:03.120 So he's talking about issues

00:06:04.400 that work with his Conservative base,

00:06:06.020 but they also work with voters

00:06:07.620 who are open to voting Conservative

00:06:08.840 who might just be kicking the tires right now.

00:06:11.600 So it's certainly the right message

00:06:13.000 for the sort of people that he needs

00:06:15.460 in order to get more votes and more CBEs to go.

00:06:19.420 You know, the GST vacation,

00:06:22.000 certainly interesting and eye-catching.

00:06:24.180 But we saw it tried in BC last year

00:06:27.020 when we're doing it for a full year.

00:06:28.640 So we'll see how it plays out in this election.

00:06:33.140 And I want to pick up on his housing policy as well,

00:06:36.100 because I was a little surprised.

00:06:37.300 I was reading an analysis in McLean's,

00:06:39.360 which doesn't really seem to usually be a place

00:06:42.280 where you'd find, you know,

00:06:44.260 complimentary material about the Conservatives.

00:06:47.060 But they said that Aaron O'Toole's housing policy

00:06:50.080 and his ideas to enable more houses

00:06:53.840 to be built across Canada.

00:06:55.140 I think he said that he wants a million new houses

00:06:57.460 to be built.

00:06:57.840 Do you think that's a strong issue for O'Toole?

00:07:01.220 And is that something that Canadians will vote over?

00:07:05.300 Well, Canadians are deeply concerned

00:07:06.640 about the price of housing,

00:07:07.720 especially in Toronto and Vancouver.

00:07:10.620 But frankly, it's in most major centres now.

00:07:13.280 It's becoming unaffordable to buy a family house,

00:07:16.120 you know, inside of a couple hour commute.

00:07:18.900 And that's a really big problem for a lot of Canadians

00:07:20.820 and any polling will show that.

00:07:23.900 The trick is what to do about it.

00:07:25.340 Research that I've done in the past

00:07:26.920 shows that people see it primarily as a demand issue,

00:07:31.000 not a supply issue.

00:07:31.800 It might very well be a supply issue

00:07:33.300 that we can do things to create a million new houses,

00:07:36.100 to reduce red taper at city halls and everything else

00:07:38.920 in order to get more houses built quickly.

00:07:41.220 Canadians see it as a function of,

00:07:44.020 you know, a good chunk of Canadians blame this

00:07:46.740 on foreign buyers, foreign investors

00:07:49.720 coming in and buying up houses.

00:07:51.760 Another group simply feel that, you know,

00:07:55.060 non-market housing should really just be constructed

00:07:57.020 by a provincial or federal government

00:07:58.420 or some municipal government or someone.

00:08:00.460 The number of people who think that it's,

00:08:03.480 we can open up huge amounts more housing construction

00:08:07.660 based on regulatory changes

00:08:11.560 in order to make it easier to build houses

00:08:13.080 is, you know, I think a little,

00:08:16.040 it's quite small.

00:08:17.340 I think it's a good idea,

00:08:18.420 but it's not something that,

00:08:19.860 it's a policy that needs to be explained.

00:08:21.580 I mean, Canadians have explained to them,

00:08:22.800 they get it,

00:08:23.580 but it's not their first gut instinct

00:08:25.400 of what the answer is.

00:08:26.740 Yeah, that's a good point.

00:08:27.840 All right, let's move on to Jagmeet Singh.

00:08:29.320 So the NDP is really focused,

00:08:30.680 it seems their entire platform

00:08:32.480 was focused on ways to tax the ultra-rich.

00:08:35.620 And, you know, this seems to be going back

00:08:37.480 to the sort of bread and butter for the NDP.

00:08:39.920 Do you think this is a good way for the NDP

00:08:41.700 to sort of threaten Trudeau and his base

00:08:43.820 by talking about these new tax,

00:08:46.000 a new tax regime for ultra-rich Canadians?

00:08:49.380 Yeah, absolutely.

00:08:50.260 I think, look, the NDP have one very,

00:08:52.100 very important job,

00:08:53.080 which is make sure that Trudeau

00:08:54.380 can't scare progressives into voting for him

00:08:56.740 and do the NDP bleed three, four, five points

00:08:59.420 in the last 10 days of the campaign.

00:09:01.400 That, for them, is the difference

00:09:02.420 between keeping around the same number of seats

00:09:04.440 and picking up a few

00:09:05.320 and picking up a bunch of seats.

00:09:08.220 So they need to do that.

00:09:09.600 In order to do that,

00:09:10.140 they need to keep furnishing

00:09:10.960 their true progressive cred

00:09:13.220 and put a wedge on Trudeau around these issues

00:09:18.300 so they can say,

00:09:19.400 well, Trudeau doesn't care about this

00:09:20.540 or Trudeau doesn't care about that.

00:09:21.940 He's not in favour of a wealth tax.

00:09:24.420 So he's not really truly progressive.

00:09:26.720 So I think we're going to see a lot more from them

00:09:28.360 in that vein between now and Election Day.

00:09:30.980 Interesting.

00:09:31.480 Well, Hamish, thank you so much

00:09:32.580 for helping us break this down.

00:09:33.840 We look forward to your continued analysis

00:09:35.760 throughout the campaign.

00:09:37.320 Hamish Marshall, Trudeau's in-house pollster.

00:09:40.080 My pleasure.

00:09:41.440 Contrary to what former Prime Minister

00:09:43.120 Kim Campbell once said,

00:09:44.560 elections are the time to talk about serious issues

00:09:46.720 and Trudeau will continue to be here

00:09:48.660 to push these issues.

00:09:50.220 I'm Candice Malcolm

00:09:50.900 and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - August 18, 2021

The issues that actually matter to Canadians this election

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