The first question period of the year 2026 between PM Mark Carney and Conservative Party Leader Pierre Pouvernage. Today's episode is a mashup of the Prime Minister's answer to a question from a Canadian journalist.
00:02:31.120Now, obviously, right there, you have here, Polly, of referencing the GST grocery rebate
00:02:37.540that Mark Carney had announced yesterday.
00:02:40.820That was a press conference where he obviously fumbled all over his words when a journalist asked him if we're going to have a snap election spring 2026,
00:02:49.160which means that we are probably going to be having a snap election sometime this year.
00:02:53.380And Mark Carney, in trying to run away from the fact that grocery prices are really high,
00:03:00.060is now basically just handing out money the exact same way Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did.
00:06:32.120When Trudeau announced his own grocery rebate, and actually GST isn't on many grocery products.
00:06:38.020The whole idea is that it's a rebate to help people with their grocery costs.
00:06:42.020When Justin Trudeau had done this exact same thing just a few years ago, back when he was Prime Minister, he was announcing that it was going to affect like 11 million Canadians.
00:06:52.740And I guess Carney was still using that old script instead of saying 12.
00:06:56.720But here's the problem for Carney, is that I don't actually think that many Canadians are going to have their vote driven by program spending.
00:07:06.980Like, the economy sucks so bad that a check in the mail just feels like placation at this point.
00:07:13.120And I suggest that the federal conservatives start going after the things that the Liberal Party does do, and actually basically frame those things as the bare minimum.
00:07:26.100Because it actually makes it sting more when someone helps you, but they don't really help you that much.
00:07:32.440They do the bare minimum to keep you happy.
00:07:35.260So I think that's what the conservatives should just keep hitting on.
00:07:38.240Well, you did something, but it was the bare minimum that you could do.
00:07:41.600You're effectively trying to bargain with people and take them for fools, thinking that if you kind of like to calculate how many beans you have to give them, they'll leave you alone for a couple of years and maybe give you a majority government.
00:07:52.480Because nobody likes to be taken for a fool, and I think the conservatives need to make it clear.
00:07:57.360If you fall for this, you're kind of being foolish.
00:08:00.220They're bribing you with your own money and then printing more when it's not enough, inflating prices.
00:08:04.900At the same time, they're trying to help you deal with higher prices.
00:08:07.720This is something that the Venezuelan government would do when people can't afford food, is just print up a bunch of money, give it to them, and then maybe people can run out of the house and buy stuff before the prices go up.
00:08:18.580But now let's go back to Pierre Pauly as follow-up here.
00:08:23.520Mr. Speaker, Canadians have never had it so good that 2.2 million of them are lined up at food banks.
00:08:29.480One of the reasons is that we can't get our resources to market.
00:08:33.080Now, while the Prime Minister, we worked in collaboration to give him exceptional powers to get things done.
00:08:39.580Instead, he spent the time on photo ops, signing ceremonies, re-announcing projects that had long ago been approved.
00:08:47.980His new bureaucracy, the Projects Office, has not approved a single new project.
00:08:54.260So why won't he get out of the way and accept our plan by passing the Canadian Sovereignty Act today?
00:09:02.360Mr. Speaker, part of how we move this country forward is collaborating with provinces and territories.
00:09:16.200I'd like to welcome the Premier of Nunavut is here.
00:09:18.260One thing we've done in six months is the three on Great Bay Point, which is going to open up Arctic Sovereignty, open up the future of this country, make Canada strong.
00:09:30.580This is the funny thing with Mark Carney, and I think there's one more back and forth here between the leader of the opposition and the Prime Minister.
00:09:38.640Mark Carney, despite the whole business background and being the former governor of the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, and, you know, working for Goldman Sachs and being the chair of Brookfield, he's really crap on the details.
00:09:53.820He tends to not be very good once you actually start getting him nailed down on specifics.
00:09:58.180That's where he starts getting more hesitant and being less willing to answer directly.
00:10:04.560He starts getting very nervous when you hit him on specifics.
00:10:07.320That's where, if I was the Conservatives, because sometimes it's the temptation of the opposition to ignore every single thing the government did and just focus on things that they're not doing or the things they failed to do or the things that they failed on.
00:10:23.460Go look through their successes and tear the successes apart.
00:10:27.780Make videos where you go over what the Liberals are effectively doing with the grocery rebate.
00:10:33.940They're taking all those taxes that they are secretly raising behind the scenes through the industrial carbon tax, the clean fuel standard, just the extremely high income taxes and corporate taxes, and they're giving you a little – they're tearing off a little strip of that and then giving it back to you so that you will leave them alone.
00:10:51.760And that's how, again, because this is a commentary channel, but I also do like speaking in how I would do things if I was like in charge of the Conservatives or I was doing the strategy.
00:11:02.500You effectively want to frame, and it's accurate.
00:11:07.600It is accurate to say effectively what the Liberals want to do with the school food program, with the grocery rebate, with a lot of the other things.
00:11:15.720Like the 1% income tax cut under $50,000, which is nothing.
00:11:21.220You don't even pay taxes on the first $18,000.
00:11:23.880So you're going to pay – the rate is going from like – I don't know what it is, like 11% to 10% or 12% to 11%.
00:11:30.080You'd have to remind me what the lowest bracket is.
00:11:33.720So you're going to take that, reduce by one point, so you pay a little bit less taxes on – I guess that's like the 38th – or like what is that?
00:11:43.500That's like taking $32,000 that you actually pay on?
00:14:28.200And they're like, oh, no, no, we can't do that.
00:14:31.180We're voting against it because you didn't include the entire text as well as my birthday and a greeting card for me within the text.
00:14:40.420If you had included that in a very beautiful haiku, then I would have voted for it.
00:14:46.180But for some reason, Mark Carney is even invoking that.
00:14:49.300Like, Mark Carney is remarkably bad at political optics.
00:14:54.080This is why he needs Donald Trump to run against rather than running against his actual opposition because he doesn't actually stand up very well in debates.
00:15:03.760He oftentimes puts his foot in his mouth in the – like, despite the fact that he's supposed to be like a business professional, very calm, cool, collected.
00:15:37.040This is always ridiculous liberal logic.
00:15:39.020Like, oh, my goodness, if you just do the thing, that thing won't get done unless you go through an endless First Nations consultations and environmental inspections.
00:16:15.740Just sign something that approves a pipeline.
00:16:17.780But that's the end of the exchange between Pierre Polyev and the Prime Minister for today.
00:16:24.400We will definitely be back in the future to break down some more question periods between the two.
00:16:30.980Mark Carney was criticized heavily last year for effectively barely ever showing up.
00:16:36.340Like, Parliament wasn't even really in session very much last year.
00:16:39.000And even then, if they were, let's say, in a three- or four-week period, you might see two appearances by the Prime Minister to answer questions from the opposition.
00:16:49.100Like, I'm somebody who works at the British Columbia Legislature, and the Premier actually does get up.
00:16:55.540You know, I can give David Eby some credit.
00:16:57.280He actually does get up and face down opposition.
00:17:00.020Where Mark Carney sometimes, even when he does show up, he'll have, like, one back and forth with Polyev, and then he'll, like, leave the room because it wasn't working out so well.
00:17:09.040And I guess he was thinking he was going to perform better now because he's gotten some fake achievements under his belt.
00:17:13.980But I don't mind Polyev's messaging on the fake achievements, too many photo ops, too many, you know, fake signings.
00:17:23.500The other part of the messaging is what I've been saying.
00:17:25.580It's that they are doing the bare minimum, and they are basically seeing what they can give you to make you go away, go back and sit down at the kids' table, and leave them and their friends alone at the adult table.
00:17:36.460Canadians are at the kids' table, and they are giving you the bare minimum to get you to leave them alone.
00:17:43.140They will give you back some of your own tax dollars and then hope that you'll shut up.
00:17:47.140That is effectively what liberal policy currently is in the year 2025.
00:17:51.160And you might notice this feels a lot like Justin Trudeau's policy.
00:17:56.500And it's because Mark Carney is not better at this than Justin Trudeau.
00:18:00.320You may remember Mark Carney was the economic advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
00:18:07.300It's almost like, almost, you might, it might be, I'm a bit skippy about the fact that maybe the guy who is driving the economic agenda for Trudeau,
00:18:17.160making him the Prime Minister is not going to improve the economic agenda of the government.
00:18:22.500But apparently it's a new government because he swapped out the face of, at the top of the party, even though that guy was, there was the economic advisor.