Trudeau goes off the rails against independent media
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Summary
Candice Malan gives her thoughts on the French debate, Trudeau goes off the rails against independent media, and why strategic voting could be the Tories' Achilles Heel. The French Debates Commission is the biggest loser in last night's debate, and we'll talk about why.
Transcript
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The Debates Commission is the biggest loser in last night's French debate, Trudeau goes
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off the rail against independent media, and we'll talk about how strategic voting could
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I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
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Hi everyone, thank you for tuning into the podcast.
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Today it's a big day for us at True North because we have a live broadcast coming up
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We're going to go live and give you analysis and live reaction to the English debate.
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The English debate is happening tonight from 9pm to 11pm Eastern.
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You can find us on YouTube or Facebook, so make sure you check that out.
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Now, today I want to talk about the French debate that happened last night because really,
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Look, if we want to have a debate about ideas where we invite all the candidates, all the
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And we can have a debate, definitely include Maxime Bernier.
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It was ridiculous that one poll yesterday was showing that he was polling at 10% and
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Meanwhile, we have Anna May Paul, the leader of the Green Party, polling somewhere around
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She has a pretty terrible party that seems to be going after her for her Jewish heritage
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and it's just really ugly over the Green Party.
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But watching her on the debate stage last night, she just seemed out of her element.
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She didn't really have substantive ideas on most issues.
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I could say the same thing about Jagmeet Singh.
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I could say the same thing about Yves Blanchet, the bloc leader.
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None of them really, really had substantive ideas for the country and looking at the stage
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last night with the five leaders, they basically all agreed on most of the issues.
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Most of the things that they were talking about, they all sort of agreed.
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They had little differences here and there with their plans and in order to really care
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about those differences, you actually have to trust the politicians to actually follow
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It's totally irrelevant to hear what the NDP thinks about an issue because they're never
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going to be, they're never going to form government.
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Jagmeet Singh is not going to become the prime minister.
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So it's sort of irrelevant and it lost its flow because there's just too many people
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So I would have much preferred to have two different debates, one with just Trudeau and
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Erin O'Toole, the two people who might actually become prime minister and have a battle of
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ideas between the two of them where they really hold each other to the fire and then have
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another debate where we have all the party leaders and let them talk about all their
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At least Maxine Bernier has a different perspective on most issues.
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So it would have been a breath of fresh air to just have something different on stage.
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They spent half the night completely bashing Canada's energy industry, all trying to one
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And it's really interesting because the issues that conservatives care about, the issues,
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True North's own poll, we asked and we found that the issues that conservative voters care
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most about are government spending and debt and jobs in the economy.
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And those two issues were just barely, barely touched upon in the debate last night.
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Now, for me, I'll just say the most interesting part of the debate wasn't the actual debate
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because the format was just, like I said, so bad.
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There wasn't really any holding anyone's feet to the fire.
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There was sort of one passionate moment where Justin Trudeau really lost it at the bloc leader
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and said that he's just as much of a Quebecer as the bloc leader.
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I mean, to anyone outside of Quebec, you just kind of roll your eyes at how much these guys
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pander to Quebec and how obsessed they are with their French Quebec identity.
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You know, this is supposed to be a national debate.
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You're supposed to be prime minister of Canada.
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The most passionate moment from Trudeau was him defending being a Quebecer.
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We all know you're from Quebec, Justin Trudeau.
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But for me, the interesting part, again, is the scrums afterwards.
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That's when journalists get to ask their own questions.
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Again, most journalists are just as boring as these politicians, so most of the questions
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But, of course, as you probably saw, the Rebel News had an emergency court injunction, and
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they were, once again, accredited at the last minute.
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So if you followed True North for a while, you know that back in 2019, we were in the same
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Our reporter, Andrew Lawton, was also barred back then.
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I was in the federal court in Toronto in 2019, and we won.
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And it was a great victory for us here at True North, but also for free speech and media
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independence, free press all over Canada, journalists all over Canada.
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And once again, a federal judge said no to the Debates Commission.
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No, you cannot pick and choose who is and who isn't a journalist.
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The Rebel are just as much journalists, and they deserve to be there.
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They add a little bit of color, a little bit of character.
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And unfortunately for the Rebel and their journalists, some of the politicians in the
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debate last night just flat out refused to answer their questions.
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So I'm talking about Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader.
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He was asked a very substantive question about his support of big pharma.
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Traditionally, the left has not been big fans of big pharma.
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And Singh himself rails into billionaires and big transnational corporations.
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And yet, when it came to big pharma, he seems to be an ally.
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Unfortunately, for Singh, the very next question was also from another Rebel reporter who put
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a great question to him and just said, look, this question isn't from me.
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This question is from millions of Canadians that want to know your opinion on this.
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You know, you're the guy that says that we shouldn't marginalize people, that we should
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And yet here you are refusing to answer questions from someone because you perceive them as being
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right wing and sort of made Singh look really stupid, made him look like the airhead
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Once again, he refused to answer that question.
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Here we have a debate where they refuse to let a right wing leader in and they refuse to
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They're completely excluding part of the country.
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He got a question to Justin Trudeau where he asked about genocide in Canada's history,
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whether Trudeau believed that we were committing genocide.
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And he asked a good question to Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, about Singh's position on hate
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speech and regulating free speech on the internet.
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So head on over to tnc.news to check out those clips because you're going to want to watch them.
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I want to show you one clip from the debate last night.
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This is what it looked like when a rebel journalist got a question to Justin Trudeau.
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And you can really see how Justin Trudeau turns and starts really just lashing out at this
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reporter, blaming them for spreading misinformation, saying that they don't report the science.
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And then how he pivots to start complimenting his friends in the media and really trying to,
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you know, make them feel good, make them feel warm and fuzzy.
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I mentioned this the other day on the show as well, that Trudeau loves to do this.
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He loves to give a little shout out to the journalists, make them all know that he's on
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It's not these journalists that are the problem.
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He just doesn't like the right-wing journalists.
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And he really, really demonizes, again, Canadians who don't want to get vaccinated, Canadians
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who are skeptical of vaccines, Canadians who are sick of lockdowns.
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You can see how he pivots and really starts demonizing, starts dividing and pitting Canadians
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The only reason that I'm allowed to ask you this question is because today the federal
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court ruled that the government doesn't have the right to determine who is or is not a
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This is the second election in a row that the court has to overturn your government.
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Do you still insist on being able to make that decision and why?
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First of all, questions around accreditation were handled by the press gallery.
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Organizations like yours that continue to spread misinformation and disinformation on the science
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around vaccines, around how we're going to actually get through this pandemic and be there
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for each other and keep our kids safe is part of why we're seeing such unfortunate anger
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Your, I won't call it a media organization, your group of individuals need to take accountability
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for some of the polarization that we're seeing in this country.
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And I salute all extraordinary, hardworking journalists that put science and facts at the heart of what
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they do and ask me tough questions every day, but make sure that they are educating and informing
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Canadians from a broad range of perspectives, which is the last thing that you guys do.
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So again, you can see Trudeau straight up blaming the rebel for the rallies, for the protests,
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for the anger that he's seen on the campaign trail at his rallies.
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Again, this is Trudeau just trying to divide Canadians, pit us against each other, and really
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creating a boogeyman out of the rebel, saying that they're to blame for all the problems
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It's kind of scary to see a leader of a party, the prime minister of Canada, really targeting
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Now, regardless of your view of the rebel, love them or hate them, if you think they're
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legitimate journalists or you think they're just provocateurs, it's still a little scary,
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a little disconcerting to see the prime minister of Canada, the leader of a political party,
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really demonizing and coming down on one media outlet, sort of blaming them for all the troubles
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That should make you feel uneasy, regardless of what you think of the rebel.
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So yesterday on the show, we told you about the exclusive, independent and scientifically valid
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poll that True North commissioned about the election.
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We told you about how the liberals blew a spectacular lead in the campaign and how it's too close
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Our poll had the conservatives up by two points, but the way that the vote is distributed,
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really it could become a minority liberal government or a minority conservative government.
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Right now, what we saw was that young male voters have really come over to support the conservatives.
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Meanwhile, the liberals have maintained their support of older women, women over 55.
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And we also tapped into that huge gain of support by the PPC, by the People's Party and Maxine
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Bernier's party, as he's seen a big grow in his popularity at the expense of the other
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protest parties, the ones that were included in the debate while Maxine Bernier was excluded.
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Well, today we're going to dig even deeper into that national poll.
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And to do that, I am joined by Hamish Marshall.
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So one of the issues that you asked Canadians about and you identified was what issues do
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So why don't you help us by breaking that down, Hamish?
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So we asked people what are the two issues that they think are most important facing Canada
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Number one, probably not a giant surprise, is getting through the COVID-19 pandemic.
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30% say that climate change and the environment is one of the most important issues.
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30% followed by government spending and debt at 25% and then affordability and the cost
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But what's really interesting about this actually is what issues you care about varies a great
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So conservatives care a lot about government spending and debt.
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51% of conservatives say it's one of those two most important issues, followed by jobs in
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the economy at 32%, and then COVID comes third at 28%.
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Whereas liberals care about something else entirely.
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And that's actually one of the reasons, 52% of them say it's the most important issue.
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What's actually interesting about that is that liberals were most concerned with the pandemic.
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And I think that's one of the reasons why calling an early election has backfired in Trudeau and
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turned off some liberal voters or dampened some enthusiasm, perhaps a little bit, because
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they're the ones that care the most about it, and holding an election in the middle of it
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They also care awful about climate change and the environment.
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And then health care, outside of excluding COVID, is the number three issue.
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The other thing that jumped out for me is that issues that have been talked a lot about in
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the media aren't necessarily cutting through to Canadians.
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So obviously, we've had a big blow up in Afghanistan and the fall of the Taliban and foreign affairs
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in the front pages of the newspapers, leading the newscasts for much of the last month.
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But only 2% of Canadians say it's one of the two most important issues.
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And then Indigenous reconciliation, which we heard an awful lot about in the spring, and
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a lot of pundits were saying it was going to be a dominant issue of the campaign.
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Again, only 7% say it's one of the most important issues.
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So that shows that often media-driven issues aren't what people actually care about.
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The other thing that we asked that I think was very interesting is we asked people, what
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Had lockdowns changed their view about government?
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And we basically give them the choice between choosing between lockdowns made them more
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35% of Canadians say that lockdowns made them more concerned about the power of government.
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But 65% say that lockdowns made them grateful that government has the power to take steps to
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But it is encouraging that there's 35% of Canadians that have that freedom-focused approach.
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What's most interesting about that is Quebec, where we've seen some of the biggest anti-lockdown
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Actually, that number who are more concerned about the power of government has risen, is
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It's 48% of Quebecers are more, lockdowns have been more concerned about the power of government.
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Maybe that's because historically, Quebecers have been more okay with the power of the state,
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and they've got bigger room to grow in terms of concern.
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But it certainly makes an interesting point that what's going on in Quebec in terms of
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the big protests is real and is concerned to a lot of people.
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And maybe, just maybe, that can help Maxime Bernier and the PPC, especially in his own
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I'm not making a prediction that he's going to run off with it.
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But it does show that there's a fertile ground for his message there.
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Well, and everyone was circulating that poll yesterday that showed that the PPC was at
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Now, I know that our poll showed something a little different.
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I think we were something around 4% or maybe it was 6%.
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But still, definitely growth and a lot more appetite for Bernier's message than in 2019.
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Oh, one of the interesting things that you tapped in on in this poll, Hamish, is the
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So every election, especially when it looks like a conservative is doing well and they
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might even win, we fall back to that old liberal strategic tactic of scaring progressive voters
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and getting them to strategically vote in favor of the liberals.
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You asked a couple questions about this in the poll.
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So we asked everybody who said they were voting either Green or NDP, we said, if it looks like
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the conservatives are going to win, would you vote for the liberal candidate in your
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writing in order to stop a conservative government or conservatives from winning?
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And the answer is, on the whole, a lot of them would.
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Another 21% say they're moderately likely to do so, which means overall it's 59% who say
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But, you know, if you take the NDP vote and the Green vote combined, even if just that
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20% say they're very likely to do that to stop the conservatives, they'll move to the
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If you add 4.6% of the popular vote on where the liberals are sitting today, we're in an
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environment where the liberals will be able to win the election by two or three points,
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So this is going to be a huge focus of the liberal campaign over the next 10 days.
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It's going to be a big focus of Trudeau in the debate tonight in order to drive those
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We've got them at 20% previous polls earlier in the campaign of a 22, 23.
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The liberals have got a little bit of their mojo back.
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If they can continue that trend, pick up another 3% or 4%, it's going to be very, very
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And again, yeah, the final week of the campaign coming up next week, that's something that
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Well, Hamish, I really appreciate you joining us to break down the poll.
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We're going to be going live during the debate before and after.
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Hamish will be there with me the whole night to break everything down and to provide
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So make sure you tune in starting at 8 p.m. Eastern.
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Thank you so much for joining us and see you again later tonight.
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I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.