HANNAFORD: Immigration, inflation and Canada's fading Carney romance
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Summary
In less than two weeks, Parliament resumes after a recess of three months. What s top of mind for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when the House resumes on September 15th? Would it be temporary foreign workers? With me tonight to talk about these things is Ginny Roth, a partner at Crestview Strategies, a former communications director for the Conservative Party of Canada, and a long-time Polyerve surrogate.
Transcript
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Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show.
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It is Thursday, September the 4th. In less than two weeks, Parliament resumes after a recess of
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three months. But Canada has not been without a government for all that time. It has just been
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without a supervised government, and importantly, without a budget. What has been going on? Should
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we be worried? With me tonight, to talk about these things is Ginny Roth. She's a partner at
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Crestview Strategies, a former communications director for the Conservative Party of Canada,
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and a long-time Polyerve surrogate. Good evening, Ginny. Good evening, Nigel. Nice to be here.
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Good to see you again. Thanks for coming back. Ginny, what's the top of mind for Pierre Polyerve when
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the House resumes on September the 15th? Would it be temporary foreign workers?
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I think that's up there. If you look at the latest polling, not on popularity of the leaders,
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but on the issues. This issue of Donald Trump and the Canada-US trade relationship
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is starting to fall. It's just not as salient as it was during our general election campaign.
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Cost of living is still a huge driver of concern and anxiety for people. Immigration is part of that.
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Crime remains a challenging issue for people. And housing, continued shortage of housing, which also
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is tied to the immigration issue. So I think part of the reason you saw Polyev talking about temporary
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foreign workers today is he wants to point out that while the Kearney government has curtailed
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immigration on some fronts in some ways, they continue to pursue programs that bring thousands
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of newcomers into the country at a time when we have a shortage of supply of things. We have a shortage
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of supply of jobs. We have a shortage of supply of housing. We have a shortage of supply of healthcare.
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And I think a lot of Canadians now think that's because we have just brought in too many people
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for the amount of things that we have. You see youth unemployment really quite high, concerningly high.
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And so he's talking about temporary foreign workers to sort of say, I've got real solutions
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to these problems. And Prime Minister Carney doesn't.
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Now, Jenny, obviously, you have better insights into what Mr. Polyev thinks than what Mr. Carney
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thinks by the nature of your past positions. Nevertheless, can you make any sense of what
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the Prime Minister has done when he's promised to cut back on immigration? And apparently,
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So to give the government some credit, the levels that they've set are quite a bit lower than the
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levels of the previous government for new permanent residents, for all sorts of categories across the
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immigration plan. But the only reason that they're lower is because they were so, so, so high.
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They were generationally high. The challenge is, one, actually sticking to those levels is a challenge.
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So they're already tracking to be above the levels that they've set for this year, which is concerning.
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And the people that were brought in at the peak of the deluge are still here.
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The people who have overstayed their visas are generally not being deported.
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So there's a bit of, you can't get the toothpaste back into the tube,
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which I think is why you see Polyev calling for the flat population for a number of years
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until we can get the supply and demand dynamics right again.
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And even though Carney sort of pulled back a bit from Trudeau era immigration,
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you can tell he doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to take further measures.
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And I think that's because he's so close to corporate Canada
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and so many big employers just like having this constant influx of labor available to them.
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And I don't think Carney wants to be offside of that. I think he's close to corporate Canada.
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I think he's sympathetic to their wants and their needs.
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And he thinks an economy needs lots of new labor. That puts him against public opinion.
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Public opinion is saying too much, too far. You have to pull it way back.
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And while he may think that Carney's pulled it back a little bit,
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Well, that's certainly the opinion of most people by the sounds of the polls
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and by the sounds of the news stories. The fact of all this immigration has been to depress wages
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and actually to make it very difficult for people who've been here for years to get work.
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But you have to give Mr. Carney, I think, the benefit of the doubt for about another two weeks,
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which is when Parliament comes back. Although he was an advisor to Mr. Trudeau,
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I get the sense that when he finally got into government, it was a little bit like parents
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coming home and finding that the teenagers had a party while they were away for the weekend.
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A total mess. What do you think? Should we give Mr. Carney a break for just taking over from Mr. Trudeau?
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I think you're right that part of what Mark Carney has done successfully is he's taken some middle-of-the-road
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common sense positions that Justin Trudeau refused to take, whether it was canceling the carbon tax or
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suggesting that we should continue to develop oil and gas in this country. Just some basic things that
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Trudeau was offside on. He's taken those up and said, yes, I'm onside with that. And that has made
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people think that he is reasonable, moderate, etc. But I don't think that he's gone far enough. And the
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challenge is he's banking on the fact that expectations were so low after Trudeau that even
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the slightest improvement, you know, putting your shoes on the right feet looks like the height of
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competence. And I think Canadians for a while have been happy to see that. But I think that will wear
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thin quickly. You know, the Canada-US issue is dropping in salience, but it is still important for a lot of
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people. And for those people, they believe that Mark Carney promised them that he would solve it. And that really is
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what he ran the election on. He said he was the guy to deal with Trump. Well, we have no deal. Canada remains
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heavily tariffed. We're about to enter the renegotiation of KUSMA, our most important trade agreement and
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terms of the Americans do not seem like they're good. Things do not seem to be going well. And so while Carney, I
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think has a bit of a honeymoon, because his demeanor, the sort of vibe he gives off, gives people a feeling of
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competence and calm. I think that's starting to wear thin. And you're right that when Parliament comes
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screaming back in a couple of weeks, I think Paliyev is going to spend a lot of his time trying
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to lay that bare for Canadians and make it clear to them that progress has not been made.
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Well, I see that he's laying down a narrative now that this will be an austerity budget.
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Obviously, he is still committed to delivering a budget in the fall, but it's going to be a tough
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one. So how tough do you think it could be? I mean, I think that's sort of hilarious because
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it's not going to be an austerity budget. He's taken all these areas off the table. So
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he's done this trick where he's going to separate operating and programmatic spending from capital
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spending, as he calls it. But he's considering capital to be anything that's deemed to be an
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investment into the future. So any kind of infrastructure, I think he's going to include
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sort of social infrastructure in that. He's also said he's not going to mess with transfers to the
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provinces or social programs. So dental, childcare, all these huge new multi-billion dollar programs are,
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I don't think, being touched. So that really only leaves him with sort of like narrow ministerial
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program spending. And yes, he's talked a big game about cutting back there, but I think ultimately
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that's because he'll settle for less. And I think what he knows is that the public right now is not
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terribly sensitive to big deficits. They will become sensitive to those big deficits as they add to the
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debt. And eventually we have bond rating agencies expressing great concern with the size of our debt
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and the cost of servicing it. But for now, because we have decent fundamentals, he can sort of take
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advantage of that. He could just push off the cost of that to future generations. And I think that's what
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we'll see. I think you'll see historically high deficit with tons of new spending, some of it on defense,
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but a lot of it in social programs, a lot of it in infrastructure. And he will say, this is what we need,
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this is what people wanted. They wanted more defense spending. They wanted more infrastructure spending
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because people did, I think, want more major projects built. People in Western Canada want to
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be able to get the product that they sit on to market. I just think that they wanted the private
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sector to do that. They wanted government to get out of the way. Curry's interpretation seems to be that
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government's going to go to the table with taxpayer money to get this done. And that's a different
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that's a different take. And it's going to lead to massive, massive deficits.
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I mean, we saw this. We saw the room that, ultimately, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin had
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in the 1990s. And then the premiers, in the years following, had to, the political room,
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they had to cut back on spending. That was because things got so bad that the public understood it was
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necessary and that this sort of tough medicine was actually what they wanted from elected officials.
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I just don't think we're there yet, sadly. I wish we were because it would be easier to
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deal with it now than it will be whenever this time comes. I think a lot of it comes down to
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debt to GDP ratio and other markers of the extent to which our economy can handle that level of debt
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servicing. There is some concern, like you see some initial concern, for instance, in BC, the credit
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rating agencies are starting to express real concern with the size of their debt and deficit.
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That will happen eventually at the federal level. It's just that I think Mark Carney's view is,
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it's not happening to me this year, so I'll get away with what I can get away with.
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I worry that the chaos that he has inherited gives him an excuse for just about anything that he wants
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to do. Does the Conservative Party leadership have anxieties that things will just be taken to a
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different level of chaos and irresponsibility that, frankly, we can never recover from?
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I think that what happened in the election that helped get Carney elected was there were sort of,
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I don't want to oversimplify, but there were sort of two types of people. There were people who are in
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a precarious state due to the challenges related to cost of living. They either couldn't afford to buy
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a home or if they did have a home, their mortgage was taking up a huge percentage of their take-home pay.
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In some cases, people were struggling to get food, to fill their car with gas, etc. They were living
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a life where Canada was just not delivering for them, where they felt like their children would be
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worse off than they were, that they were worse off than their parents were. And those people voted for
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Pierre Paliyev and the Conservatives. And there were a lot of them, don't forget. I mean, Paliyev did
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quite well by historical standards in terms of the size of his voting coalition. There were also a number
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of people, mostly older, mostly in homes that were bought and paid for, with stocks that fared well in
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an inflationary environment, who were worried about one thing and one thing only, and that was their
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distaste for Donald Trump. And those people spent a lot of time watching CNN, watching this man they
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didn't like at all, and wanting a prime minister who was going to share their distaste for Donald Trump.
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And those voters voted for Mark Carney. I think those, many of those voters cared about Donald Trump and
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they also wanted someone they felt was like serious and competent, could do geopolitics. So if those issues remain
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pressing, and the world seems chaotic from that perspective, that will help Carney, because he is
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perceived to be branded as someone who can deal with that. If, however, the the microeconomic issues
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of domestic economic policy become problematic, cost of living gets worse, inflation maybe goes up in
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some key categories, or worst of all, I think for a government, unemployment starts to really climb,
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because the economy softens. I think Carney will try to blame that on Trump, because that allows him to
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then talk about Trump again. But I don't know that Canadians are going to totally buy it. At a certain
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point, they're going to say, Okay, but what's your plan to fix the economy? You seem to be doing a lot
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of what the last guy did. And, and I think Pierre Polyev's chance is really to say, I would treat our
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economy differently. I would get government out of the way, I would deregulate, I would reduce costs,
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I would lower taxes, and say to Canadians, like, that's how we fix this problem we're in. And so it depends
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what kind of chaos you're talking about, I guess. And that I think will determine who can be successful.
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All right. Well, let's move on. Let's talk about Mr. Polyev. He's won his election handily. He's,
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he must be in good spirits as he heads back to, to Ottawa. What do you think, say,
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what's it going to be like? Should we all be tuning into question period on the, on the second day of the
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new parliament? I mean, I think parliament is an area of strength for Mr. Polyev. He likes to debate.
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He likes the cut and thrust of debate. He likes to put polls and arguments show where his opponents
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are weak. And question period is the forum for that. And it's important. Canadians, you know,
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see clips of question period, it, it trickles through into the news that they consume. But it's not
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everything. I think Polyev needs to keep that in mind. A lot of why he was successful over the last
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couple of years as he built his popularity, popularity and toward the country was meeting
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Canadians where they were. He would host rallies, he would hold round tables, he would go into
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communities and meet with people. And he wouldn't just talk to them, he would also listen. And that
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gave him this incredible ability to see where problems were arising for people in the moment. All of this
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was happening at the same time as Justin Trudeau was very stuck in his Ottawa bubble. He just seemed
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more and more out of touch with regular people. You know, Chrystia Freeland was telling people that
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they should cancel their Disney Plus subscription if they were suffering from inflation. I think Kearney
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risks suffering from the same problem. I don't think Mark Kearney likes meeting with regular
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Canadians all that much. I think he'd rather be touring European capitals or chairing cabinet. And
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I think that's a huge advantage for Polyev. If he can, yes, handle question period,
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but also get out there and keep meeting with Canadians, he will get the forefront of where
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they're suffering. And he can then bring their problems to Parliament Hill and show where the
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Well, certainly he has. He's demonstrated the talent for doing that. Mr. Kearney seems to have,
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as you say, he's developed a great talent for charming foreign leaders. Is that actually very helpful for
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I think it has over the last six to eight months. Donald Trump, I think, really made Canadians care
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about geopolitics again in a way that they hadn't for a long time because of the urgency of inflation
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and the challenges of their economy. That might remain important to people or it might not.
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If they're losing their jobs or cost of living is getting worse, I think, you know, whether
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Mark Kearney gets along with Emmanuel Macron is just not going to be as important to them.
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I think not. I mean, factually, you could make the case that when leaders get too popular overseas,
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then often there's a, it doesn't play so well at home.
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Indeed. And, and especially when things are bad at home, you know, when Justin Trudeau
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was first elected and he was on the cover of Vogue, he was beloved by world leaders. He was kind
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of a global celebrity. Canada was doing really well at that point. People were excited to legalize
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marijuana and see Canada have a handsome prime minister. When inflation's up or unemployment's
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up, I just think those are lower priorities. Yes. Well, that's, that's kind of the way,
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that's what I thought you would probably say, but it does bear on the, who do you want to be popular
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with? And that comes up to the leadership review, which is what in January of next year?
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It is. Yeah. Late January in Calgary. Um, you know, now that, uh, Mr. Polly, I grew up in,
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Alberta and Calgary. And now that he's an MP from the greater region, I think it makes sense for them
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to host the convention there. And I think the leadership is something that the party and the
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leader need to focus on, make sure that they're prepared for, make sure that he's talking to party
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members a lot over the coming weeks. But I also think it's fairly safe territory for him. Um, don't
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forget how much he won the leadership race by, uh, and when it very handily was not a close race,
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really at all. And that's because I think the party membership really likes him. He just,
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he's in sort of inherently popular with the party membership. He can't take it for granted, but if
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he is sort of himself and follows his instincts and pursues, granted the same principles that have
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been driving him since he was 18 years old, I think he will fail well in that review.
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Well, let's just push that a little further, Junie. I mean, I, I, it's not that I don't understand what
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you're saying, but the narrative that's been pushed out by the other side is that, well, you know,
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people don't really like Mr. Poliarvia. There were some young men who were impressed when he
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took apart a reporter or two, and maybe those reporters deserve to come up. But he did it too
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much and he seemed to enjoy it too much. And he's really not a very nice guy. So, uh, I'm going to vote
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for that nice Mr. Carney who seemed so quietly reassuring. And of course, that's what in fact
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did happen. There was a demographic that just outright, um, rejected, uh, uh, Mr. Poliarvia,
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even as there was a whole unexpected, one of young blue collar, uh, working class guys who said,
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Hey, this is the guy. So look, what about it? Is his likability something that he has to
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deal with? Or, uh, do we just carry on? Um, I think if you focus on likability, personality looks
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too much, you risk losing what, uh, what, what made you appeal to people in the first place.
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The reason voters vote for Poliarvia is because of the issues and because he seems like the kind of
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fighter who will fix those issues for them. And I think that's a great true north for him. He should
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stick to the issues that, um, speak to people because they're hurting and to show and show them
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that they, that he's sort of the fighter for them. Now, could he do that in a way that shows that he
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is both a fighter who can, you know, tear apart a journalist with silly questions, um, and also that
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he is a good guy? Uh, I think he can. I mean, it's interesting, but people think he's not, not likable.
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Um, there are a couple, uh, subject matters that he really can't even talk about without,
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without crying, without breaking out in, um, getting emotional. And I think because he's so
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sort of laser focused on getting his message out, I don't know that he likes that when that happens.
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Um, you know, it happened during the English language debate. It happened on a podcast episode
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he recorded during the campaign. Personally, I think it's great when it happens because Canadians
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get a little small glimpse into the sort of soft side of him. The, the part of him that is a dad
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and a husband and, uh, who really is doing this for the right reasons. He's doing it because he
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cares. And because when he travels the country, he needs people who are suffering and he wants to try
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to find a way to help them. And I think that, that piece, the sort of what motives, the why,
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why are you doing this? Not just what are you going to do for me, but why are you doing it at all?
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That connects with people in a different way. Uh, and with different voters who, and I think there are
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voters who need to see that side of him so that when they're making a decision, they say maybe
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they like him on the issues, but, but Mark Carney gives him, gives them some comfort, um, on the
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personality traits front. I think there's a way for Polyev to give people that comfort on the
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personality traits from front that is authentic to who he is. And that sticks to the core issues that
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work for him, like immigration, crime, cost of living. Um, and I, I hope to see more of it. I think we will.
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I'm going to last question is going to be in a degree disagree one. I'm going to put words in
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your mouth. I'm going to say that the worst thing, the worst that things get for Canadians as a
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consequence of the, the economy that the liberals have produced over 10 years and Mr. Carney's inability
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to do anything substantive about it, the worst things get for Canadians, the better they get for
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Mr. Polyev. Agree or disagree? Sadly, I think I agree with that.
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Um, it's unfortunate, but it's the life of an opposition leader.
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Mark Carney It's a pity it couldn't be won on the grounds of philosophy and that we all have to
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suffer so much. All right, Jenny, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. And I do thank you for
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coming on the show at very short notice. Perhaps we'll talk to you again after the, after Parliament
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resumes. Thank you. For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.