Western Standard - HANNAFORD： A walk through Trudeau's mind

00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to this week's edition of Hannaford.

00:00:21.260 With me today is political consultant Yaroslav Baran. He's the principal of the Pendulum Group,

00:00:26.520 And he's been doing Ottawa for 25 years in government and out of it, helping people understand

00:00:31.980 Ottawa. Yaroslav, thanks for joining us again. Always a pleasure, Nigel. Yaroslav, you have an

00:00:37.640 amazing franchise on Justin Trudeau. So far, just about everything you've said about the Prime

00:00:41.880 Minister has been bang on. But did you see this coming? On Friday, he fires his finance minister

00:00:48.220 on Zoom, not even a text, but still expects her to deliver the fiscal update on Monday. And when

00:00:54.500 she quits he acts surprised what's going on in his head yeah that's quite the breakup you know

00:01:01.820 you break up with somebody on zoom and then and then you're shocked that they got offended by it

00:01:06.680 um based on what we know he he did tell her on friday on a zoom call that the fiscal update

00:01:14.940 the public economic statement would be her last public act as finance minister she was still

00:01:20.340 expected to do it, but she would be shuffled out shortly thereafter and replaced by the person 1.00

00:01:26.740 about whom PMO had been proactively leaking for several months now, Mark Carney, that he would

00:01:34.660 be replacing her. So any sensible, normal person would be pretty offended by that turn of events.

00:01:43.380 I think not expecting that that would be perceived as offense and humiliation

00:01:50.620 is a little bit short-sighted, a little bit lacking on the EQ, as the kids say.

00:01:56.200 You know, this has been said before, but it's ironic that just two days before,

00:02:02.180 three days before, he had criticized the Americans for not electing a woman president.

00:02:08.180 Well, I guess this is not exactly showing respect for women. 1.00

00:02:13.380 is it well and you know liberal mps themselves have started to comment on that that this is

00:02:19.780 becoming something of a pattern that uh strong women around him get unceremoniously pushed out 0.73

00:02:28.820 of the way uh at any moment uh we saw this with jody wilson ray bolts we saw it uh you know we

00:02:35.700 saw it with others along the way we've heard the criticisms from people like his former parliamentary

00:02:41.700 Secretary, Cesar Chavanis, and others. So, you know, remember Jane Philpott, there have been a

00:02:52.080 lot of strong women in and around cabinet who have been pushed over the cliff. 1.00

00:03:02.440 It certainly does invite a new definition of feminism, doesn't it? In October, he had a

00:03:10.780 challenge from his caucus. And basically, he just waited it out. And in my own head, I can sort of

00:03:18.020 construct a way that he could wait it out again. Everybody's gone home for Christmas, you know,

00:03:24.560 come back, the heat's off at the end of January, start doing business. Gosh, you know, pretty soon

00:03:31.420 you're getting into the writ period. You don't have to hang on for that long to hold your job.

00:03:36.520 Now, maybe that's not the right way to look at it.

00:03:40.000 What do you think is going on in his head?

00:03:42.240 Well, first of all, there's a significant difference

00:03:45.460 between the caucus coup earlier in the fall compared to now.

00:03:51.300 What we saw earlier in the fall was a move by caucus

00:03:55.360 to start to circulate a petition.

00:03:58.220 They tried to be discreet about it somewhat.

00:04:00.700 They tried to be respectful, do it behind closed doors,

00:04:03.500 asked him earnestly to think about his future and whether his leadership is really in the best

00:04:09.700 interest of the party. So there was a stressful caucus meeting at the time, a whole bunch of

00:04:17.460 people vented, but there was no mechanism to force him out. It's not like in the United Kingdom where

00:04:26.040 we've seen people walk into a caucus meeting as prime minister and then walk out two or three

00:04:31.800 hours later as a backbencher with a pool of political blood in the middle of the floor.

00:04:37.340 There is no mechanism to do that here in Canada unless a party adopts measures in the so-called

00:04:45.160 the Chong Reform Act that was passed several years ago. But a party has to adopt those

00:04:52.960 mechanisms at the beginning of a parliament, which the Liberals refuse to do. So the Conservatives

00:04:57.140 can do that because they chose to to apply those rules to themselves the liberals haven't

00:05:03.060 there is no mechanism to push him out so back in october it was a big venting of steam

00:05:08.980 but then there was really nothing that the caucus could do when he said okay i heard you but i'm

00:05:15.620 staying and interestingly after the trump election all those discussions about liberal leadership

00:05:24.340 just suddenly vanished because they were overtaken by new pressing emergent events this week

00:05:31.380 changed all that and also demonstrated that that steam had not bent it they had just put the lid on

00:05:39.060 but what happens when a when you've got a pot of boiling water with the lid on sooner or later

00:05:46.260 it's going to go kaboom that's what happened this week and do you think yaris laughed that that's

00:05:52.900 going to hold until the end of january which is when parliament resumes well back in october

00:06:02.020 going back to this liberal caucus petition back in october they had what some 25 maybe 30 names

00:06:09.780 out of a caucus you know pushing you know 150 mps um so that's a pretty small number we knew

00:06:17.780 that there were more people but a lot of people were unwilling to actually put their name on a

00:06:22.420 piece of paper because they know the party leader has to sign your nomination papers you don't want

00:06:26.500 to get in the leader's bad books if he's the guy who decides do i get to run again or not so um

00:06:34.020 that list that petition is now at about 60 names it's getting pretty close to 50 of his caucus

00:06:43.620 once it hits 50 that really kind of becomes a moral tipping point for him it's hard to imagine

00:06:50.980 being a prime minister going to work every day knowing that most of your caucus is against you

00:06:57.700 or we we may be at that point now but not in written signed form if we get to that point

00:07:05.760 that should be a game changer for most people it would be i get the sense there's something

00:07:13.800 different about this man well there is uh in that um and i'm not saying this necessarily as a you

00:07:24.920 know criticism of him or whatever this is just a fact he unlike most party leaders has less

00:07:33.800 attachment to his party brand than you would expect ultimately sees this as the trudeau

00:07:41.640 government. He does not see himself as a temporary occupant of the great liberal throne. He sees

00:07:49.160 himself as Justin Trudeau and this is the Justin Trudeau government. Most party leaders would be

00:07:59.480 far more attuned, sensitive to the state of the party that they will be leaving behind after

00:08:07.160 I'm not sure there's a lot of that kind of consideration going on under the present circumstances.

00:08:14.160 Do you think, Yaroslav, that he is convinced of the rightness of his mission,

00:08:20.160 thinking here perhaps principally of climate change, but there are a number of other issues that seem very important to him,

00:08:28.160 To the degree that he will actually carry on just to see that through

00:08:33.920 and cement in the things that he believes that he has accomplished.

00:08:40.080 Yes.

00:08:40.840 Until now, that has been his driving consideration.

00:08:43.960 He is, you know, you've got two different kinds of prime ministers historically.

00:08:47.780 You've got the managerial, transactional kind of steward prime ministers.

00:08:54.820 And then you have the big vision, we're going to change the world together.

00:08:58.160 kind of prime ministers he is definitely more in the latter he's got and he's being he's driven by

00:09:04.000 by progressive ideology he sees pierre pauliev as the great barbarians at the gates who must be

00:09:10.080 stopped at all costs and until now what has kept him going is that he has felt that he is best

00:09:16.800 positioned out of all the liberals you look around you think yeah she's pretty okay he's pretty good

00:09:22.480 he's kind of strong but i'm still better than any one of them so uh if we're going to stop the

00:09:27.680 the angry barbarians at the gates, 0.57

00:09:31.360 it really makes sense for me to lead the liberal party

00:09:34.600 because I'm gonna be better than anybody else

00:09:36.920 or sitting around my cabinet table.

00:09:39.060 That has kept him going and he's very much believed that.

00:09:42.720 But again, if we get to the point

00:09:46.320 where we have a majority of his caucus

00:09:50.180 telling him that they have lost confidence, right?

00:09:52.960 The whole fall has been a discussion

00:09:55.120 about when does parliament lose confidence?

00:09:57.680 But when you get to the point where your own where where your own caucus has lost confidence in you, it really makes it hard to continue with that kind of line of thinking.

00:10:08.040 And, you know, liberals in Ottawa right now, they're past the point of thinking, how can we win it back?

00:10:15.660 How can we turn the polls around? How can we how can we cling to power?

00:10:19.360 They are now in save the furniture mode.

00:10:23.200 So backbenchers are thinking they're making their calculus along the following lines.

00:10:29.180 If he stays and I run again with him as leader, I'm toast.

00:10:33.760 I'm going to lose my seat.

00:10:35.320 And I represent a fairly safe liberal seat.

00:10:38.500 But if he goes, I might have a chance of getting reelected.

00:10:43.580 That's what a whole bunch of liberal MPs are saying and thinking right now.

00:10:48.900 So that means that they can't simply vote against him in a non-confidence vote because he would still be the leader taking them into the election.

00:11:00.240 And the disaster scenario that they're predicting would actually come about.

00:11:05.900 They would lose their seats, even the very safe seats like they've lost in the last six months.

00:11:10.460 Well, we just saw yet another by-election this week on Monday.

00:11:14.700 I mean, we were all focused on the on the high drama with with former finance minister, Christopher, Deputy Prime Minister, Christopher Freeland walking out on him.

00:11:24.700 So as we were all focused on that, there was a by-election in just outside of Vancouver, where a previously held liberal seat in Langley City, another liberal seat was lost and went to the Conservatives.

00:11:40.700 Conservatives. So think about it. At the end of the spring sitting of Parliament, at the very end

00:11:45.700 of the spring sitting, there's a by-election in Toronto, a safe, quote-unquote, safe Liberal seat

00:11:51.080 that the Liberals lost to the Conservatives. They opened up the fall sitting with another

00:11:57.560 by-election in another safe Liberal seat in Montreal that they lost. And now they're closing

00:12:04.480 out this sitting of Parliament with yet another by-election loss of a Liberal seat. That's a

00:12:10.680 bad track record and believe me none of that is lost on anybody sitting in the liberal caucus

00:12:16.500 right now which brings me to the person of dominic lebon yeah um obviously as a as a liberal and a

00:12:25.920 progressive he's not said very much over the past years that i've wanted to congratulate him for

00:12:32.200 but he is a serious player he's not a fool that's true mr trudeau walked down the corridor knocking

00:12:41.700 on doors trying to find somebody to take on the finance role he finally after three other attempts

00:12:47.960 arrived at uh at mr sorry two other attempts he finally arrived at mr leblanc's door and mr

00:12:55.580 leblanc took the job in addition to several other portfolios yes he holds now what's in it for

00:13:04.060 dominic leblanc to do that for justin trudeau yeah you know frankly it was probably a very good move

00:13:12.260 to ask dominic leblanc to take this job i mean there's there was some technical uh you know

00:13:18.040 process procedural drama uh that unraveled according to tradition and the so-called order

00:13:23.780 precedents and so on. You always need a finance minister. There needs to be a finance minister

00:13:29.180 because there's certain statutory obligations that there needs to be somebody designated to

00:13:32.960 discharge them if and when required. There's certain key roles in cabinet that cannot be

00:13:38.380 vacant at any time. That's one of them, finance. So there's a process whereby if you find yourself

00:13:45.860 without a finance minister, it defaults to the industry minister, the minister of the economy.

00:13:49.840 They then automatically sort of become the finance minister.

00:13:54.100 Minister Champagne said, no, thanks.

00:13:57.360 My hands are full.

00:13:58.200 I got plenty on my plate.

00:13:59.400 I'm not doing it.

00:14:01.480 Interestingly, the next in line would have been Randy Boiseno, who was actually punted

00:14:07.180 from cabinet about a month ago over, gosh, three scandals, four scandals, five scandals.

00:14:12.860 I've lost count how many scandals he was suddenly embroiled in.

00:14:16.000 So he was, he was out of play where he would have been automatically the next in line as sort of a junior minister within the finance portfolio family.

00:14:24.600 So they found themselves scrambling to figure out what are we going to do?

00:14:28.520 We're unveiling a mini budget today and we have no finance minister.

00:14:32.780 I was talking to journalists who went to the media lockup.

00:14:36.360 You know, there's, there's a thing called a lockup where journalists get sequestered into a room.

00:14:41.940 they they lock their cell phones in a cubby and then they get a thorough briefing before a budget

00:14:47.460 or a mini budget comes out with the departmental officials so that they're ready to report on it as

00:14:52.260 soon as you know as soon as it's showtime and journalists showed up at the lockup and they

00:14:57.140 were told by finance officials um we don't even know if this thing is going ahead today because

00:15:04.420 the political order of government was scrambling to find a finance minister to actually deliver

00:15:09.700 thing. It was, Mr. Qualia nailed it. The quote of the week is, this is a clown show. And it really

00:15:19.960 was a clown show. The scrambling, the damage control that we saw on Monday, it was just

00:15:24.600 nonstop. I thought the quote of the week was when he said in during question period,

00:15:29.500 would the minister for Nats please identify himself? Yes, exactly. With a real slim shady,

00:15:34.180 please stand up. That's right. I'd like to ask you, we're running out of time, Yaroslav, but

00:15:40.360 I'd like to conclude on this note. There is a disaster scenario that you could speculate upon.

00:15:46.880 It may not, in fact, be likely, but let's just say that convinced of the rightness of his cause

00:15:53.280 and the sheer inadequacy of the people around him, in what would other circumstances even look

00:16:00.240 rather admirable the prime minister chooses to carry on and will not step aside there being no

00:16:08.720 mechanism for his removal he doesn't and tries to carry on what would february and march look like

00:16:20.160 as we prepare for a budget with a prime minister who was totally out of sorts with his caucus

00:16:26.960 trying to continue to govern well right now we've got two opposition parties the conservatives and

00:16:33.520 the bloc quebecois who are on record repeatedly and as freshly as yesterday saying we need to

00:16:39.360 put this government out of its misery as soon as possible so they are ready to vote non-confidence

00:16:44.480 as soon as parliament reconvenes at the end of january they may not have an option on day one

00:16:50.560 they need to last week yeah they yeah they they need to wait for an opposition day or

00:16:57.600 or an intrinsic confidence vote like a money bill something like that they can't just walk

00:17:01.360 in on day one and say non-confidence there needs to be you know a tool to do that uh but they're

00:17:06.240 ready to bring down the government asap all eyes now are on jagmeet singh uh it's in his hands

00:17:14.400 Will he join Mr. Kualiev and Mr. Blanchet to say enough is enough.

00:17:19.440 We're voting on confidence. We are actually codifying what is plainly evident to everybody

00:17:26.720 that this parliament is dysfunctional and the government has lost confidence.

00:17:30.720 He's unwilling to vote that way, even though everybody realizes that it's true.

00:17:36.240 What's holding him back is poor polling and poor fundraising.

00:17:39.680 He actually doesn't want an election. He's trying to differentiate himself

00:17:42.960 and the ndp from the liberal brand because they're about to fight an election against them but they're

00:17:47.360 not ready to have an election because the polling suggests that they they might even lose seats

00:17:51.520 that's yeah that's that's pretty bad shape to be in for an opposition party especially in these

00:17:56.240 kinds of circumstances so all eyes are going to be on on Jagmeet Singh there's one tool there's

00:18:01.680 an additional tool that the prime minister has to buy himself more time he could prorogue parliament

00:18:06.160 that's like hitting the big pause button that would prevent the house of commons reopening on

00:18:11.680 January 27th he can buy himself several months he could pause on right up until say the government

00:18:20.400 needs to pass another appropriations bill which isn't until the end of march he could buy himself

00:18:26.400 that much time if he wants but then as soon as it opens you're opening up with confidence votes

00:18:30.960 and that would probably end up being the trigger so he's got a prime minister has to weigh these

00:18:35.680 options do i buy more time and then almost guarantee that i fall as soon as we get back

00:18:40.480 Or do I reopen normally, whistle past the graveyard, pretend none of this has ever happened and just somehow try to limp along?

00:18:48.020 And one other observation I'll make, Nigel, is that the seat projections and pollsters and astrophysicists who design algorithms who are far smarter than I am have these elaborate systems of taking commercially publicly available polls, putting them through computer simulations to predict how the polling numbers would translate into seats.

00:19:18.020 that different parties win and most of the seat projections that we're seeing right now

00:19:24.660 show the liberals and the block quebecois roughly coming out around the same so there's a credible

00:19:32.100 a very plausible chance that the liberals could even fall to third party status and that we'd end

00:19:39.460 up with a conservative majority government a block quebecois official opposition and with

00:19:45.140 with the Liberals in third place.

00:19:46.900 That's what's going to happen.

00:19:48.280 The NDP rejected entirely because of its cynical actions

00:19:51.760 of its leader.

00:19:53.100 Yeah.

00:19:54.380 Well, it's a lot to look forward to, isn't it?

00:19:58.320 It's been a clown show.

00:19:59.600 It's been a clown show.

00:20:02.100 Well, that's, look, thank you very much

00:20:05.020 for your analysis on this.

00:20:06.960 I dare say it won't be the last given what you've just said.

00:20:10.140 We'll be looking out for the prorogation.

00:20:14.060 Meanwhile, on behalf of everybody who's here at the Western Standard,

00:20:17.740 Jaroslav, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

00:20:21.140 Thank you, and to you as well, my friend.

00:20:22.820 Thank you very much.

00:20:24.420 Bye-bye.

00:20:25.640 For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.

00:20:44.060 Thank you.

Western Standard - December 24, 2024

HANNAFORD： A walk through Trudeau's mind

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