Western Standard - HANNAFORD： Spring election and a change of government？ It could happen

00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show

00:00:21.040 of the Western Standard. It is Thursday, January the 22nd. With me today is our old friend Yaroslav

00:00:27.520 Baran. In a past life, he was communications director to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

00:00:33.280 These days, as co-founder of Pendulum Group, he's a political consultant in Ottawa.

00:00:39.600 Welcome to the show, Yaroslav.

00:00:41.120 Always good to be here, Nigel. Thanks.

00:00:45.040 Yaroslav, in just a week, conservatives from all across Canada will be gathering in Calgary

00:00:49.760 for the party's leadership review. Nobody seems to think Pierre Poitier's job as leader is in jeopardy,

00:00:55.920 but conservatives are paying $1,000, plus hotels, airfares, and bar tabs to be here.

00:01:02.480 So, if it's not the leadership, what are the issues here for conservatives?

00:01:08.480 Well, I mean, I wouldn't agree that it's not just leadership, because the leadership

00:01:12.720 vote is going to be probably the highlight of the weekend. It's going to be happening on

00:01:16.320 the first evening of the convention, and it's probably going to be the thing that,

00:01:20.400 at least that the media hones in on. I haven't heard too many people paying too much attention

00:01:24.640 to what the resolutions are for policy or party bylaw changes. Everybody's really focused on

00:01:30.960 the leadership, but like in every convention, there's a lot of housekeeping that gets done,

00:01:35.920 too. They usually refresh the constitution, they tweak some bylaws, and they pass policy

00:01:41.040 recommendations from all over the country. But I think the focus that we're going to see is going

00:01:47.520 to be a message of unity. Conservatives, as you note, are coming together from across the whole country.

00:01:55.040 And since Mr. Poliet became leader, the conservative movement has grown, it's strengthened,

00:02:02.560 and the coalition has expanded. Witness the results of the last election.

00:02:07.440 Actually, can you remind us of those era stuff?

00:02:11.440 Yeah, sure. I mean, in the last election, Mr. Poliet, one of the conservative party under his

00:02:19.040 leadership, received 41.5% of the popular vote. As you noted, Nigel, I used to advise Mr. Harper.

00:02:29.040 He would have given his kidney for that kind of a result, the kind of vote percentage that Mr. Poliet got

00:02:35.440 in the last election. All parties dream about getting 41.5% because it translates not only into

00:02:43.280 victory, but into a strong majority government under normal circumstances. So the real story

00:02:50.480 of the last election was the implosion of the NDP, period. That's what rewired the game and meant that

00:02:58.640 even with 41.5%, huge voter support, the conservatives did not form government.

00:03:04.560 And I will eat my shirt. I will eat my sweater if that phenomenon repeats itself next time. I think

00:03:10.960 the NDP is going to rebound in reaction to what they're seeing from the Carney government. We're not

00:03:17.120 going to see the left coalesce around Mr. Carney again. And that means that if Mr. Poliet continues

00:03:24.400 to lead with principle to demonstrate strong leadership, if he maintains the support that he

00:03:29.920 got last time into the next election, he will be the next Prime Minister of Canada.

00:03:33.920 That's a very interesting analysis. Why would the NDP not cluster around Mr. Carney if their failure

00:03:43.440 to do so would put Mr. Poliet in office again? That sounds unlikely. Can you flesh that out a bit?

00:03:53.760 Yeah. Look, I mean, the NDP and NDP voters are no strangers to strategic voting, but in the next

00:04:01.120 election, they're going to see genuine opportunity. So it's not going to be just a question of, oh,

00:04:07.120 we're going to be the kingmakers. We're going to be a hopefully a strong third party or anything like

00:04:11.920 that. They're going to see a genuine opportunity to grow because they see Mr. Carney having repositioned the

00:04:19.440 liberals to the center, some would argue to the center-right, and the left feels betrayed.

00:04:25.280 Public service jobs are being cut by the thousands. Progressives, capital P so-called

00:04:30.080 progressives, feel homeless. And when the NDP elected a new leader in March, I am convinced that

00:04:38.320 we're going to see a normalization of Canadian politics and a pretty strong resurgence for the

00:04:44.160 NDP as the voice of the left. Okay. Just coming back to the conservatives,

00:04:49.440 we already agreed between ourselves that they were coming from all corners of the country.

00:04:54.240 Are any of them coming with malice in their hearts? You know what it's like trying to keep

00:04:58.240 conservatives together? Well, yeah. Any strong, successful party with a track record of success

00:05:07.040 is that Mr. Polioff also has a degree of impatience. Conservatives will not wait around forever if

00:05:13.680 they feel that their dogs can't hunt. Same is true for the liberals. But the evidence is that Mr. Polioff

00:05:21.360 can hunt. Again, look at the results of the last election. Look at how he continues to lead. He's a

00:05:28.720 trailblazer in terms of putting issues on the agenda that genuinely connects with voters or that

00:05:36.560 or that mirror the true preoccupations of voters. He was talking about things like the cost of living

00:05:43.360 well before it was on anybody else's radar. In fact, the establishment in Ottawa was kind of

00:05:50.160 laughing at him thinking, what planet is this guy on talking about inflation? Whatever. Fast forward a

00:05:56.080 year, everybody's talking about inflation. Everybody's talking about the cost of living. Time and time

00:06:00.400 again, he was demonstrated on crime, on fixing the immigration system, on national security. He

00:06:07.440 tends to be a trailblazer. He's got his finger on the pulse. So what does he have to score to win?

00:06:13.680 Was 80% support sufficient? You know, I'm not sure that there's a particular number. There's no,

00:06:23.440 you know, there's no magical number on the books in terms of the party constitution or anything like

00:06:28.880 that. Um, so there's no, there's no number he quote unquote needs to get. Although I know many

00:06:36.400 in the media are going to hone in on that point, but it's an arbitrary and academic point at best.

00:06:42.560 I'm not going to guess whether he gets 75 or 80 or 85 or whatever, but the, the real question I think

00:06:47.920 will be the mood. What's the mood in the room? Uh, will there be a strong showing of support? And

00:06:53.760 I think there, there will be, but there's nobody else agitating in the wings. There's no alternative

00:06:59.120 leader trying to build support. And that in and of itself is a reflection of party unity.

00:07:05.680 Good. Mr. Carney's speech to the World Economic Forum, uh, laid out an uninspiring

00:07:14.640 vision of how the world's also-rans could compete for third place in the emerging 0.94

00:07:19.840 multipolar world that he foresees. How would you advise Mr. Paulyev to respond to that speech?

00:07:30.080 Well, first of all, I'm not sure Mr. Paulyev would have gone

00:07:34.800 to the World Economic Forum. Uh, so he wouldn't, he certainly wouldn't be responding

00:07:40.320 or giving an alternative speech there in person. It's not exactly on brand for him, but you know,

00:07:46.080 Hey, given the global context and given the fact that Mr. Trump attended and everybody wants to bend

00:07:50.800 his ear, maybe he, maybe he would have gone, I don't know, but I'm not sure there, there is much to say

00:07:56.400 in response. You know, Mr. Carney laid out really, you know, the world as it is, as it really is. I think

00:08:02.560 that was the point of the speech and you know, he made, he made a number of true points that we need

00:08:07.280 to move away from our naivete of the past and accept, you know, the, the real power dynamics in

00:08:15.600 the world, um, might actually is right, whether or not we like that and whining about it doesn't do a

00:08:22.800 thing to, to help Canada. Um, he also made the point that we need to keep diversifying and investing

00:08:28.400 in security in order to put actions behind words like sovereignty. Um, and you know, I, I actually

00:08:35.760 quite liked his point that many countries are being performative when they talk about sovereignty

00:08:40.640 while actually capitulating to pressure from Washington, even though he didn't actually

00:08:44.320 mention Washington by name, but that's why the conservatives have always said that we need to

00:08:51.120 get serious about natural depends. The conservatives have always said that we need to be serious about

00:08:57.040 security, about maintaining confidence in our immigration system by not being irresponsible in

00:09:02.080 the way we structure and run it, uh, by partnering with allies and like-minded countries, not just

00:09:08.240 the biggest, you know, international clubs that we can find. So I agree with you. The speech wasn't

00:09:14.640 inspiring. It was sobering if anything, but you know, that doesn't mean its contents weren't true.

00:09:20.080 It's, it seemed like he was playing catch up to a lot of the stuff that conservatives have been saying for years.

00:09:23.920 Well, he certainly was, although I don't think we've ever put it quite the way he did. You know,

00:09:30.880 perhaps for that particular audience, the bureaucraties of variable geometry, plural lateralism,

00:09:38.240 the gains from transactionalism, you know, the architecture of collective problem solving,

00:09:44.640 uh, what's a hyperscaler? Yeah. I, I don't know what a hyperscaler is, and I'm not sure that I would have

00:09:52.160 written a speech for a prime minister that starts by quoting, uh, Thucydides, but you know,

00:09:58.240 that's Mr. Carney style. That's the, you know, that's the, the company he travels in and, you know,

00:10:03.680 maybe, you know, maybe, and maybe for the Davos set that place. Um, I, I personally prefer to see

00:10:12.480 leaders make speeches that their true audiences, their own voters can relate to. And, uh, you know,

00:10:19.600 that they, they can resonate with people. If people are worried about, uh, paying their mortgages,

00:10:24.160 if people are worried about, uh, the price of bread, um, my advice and luck, Nigel, you know,

00:10:31.360 you, you've been a professional speech writer and I might add one of the best I've ever seen.

00:10:36.160 I'm sure that you also wouldn't have, uh, wouldn't have stylistically employed the same kind of

00:10:40.720 rhetoric and the same kind of focus that we saw in Mr. Carney's speech, but focused much more on,

00:10:45.120 on practical issues that Canadians are, are preoccupied with. Well, certainly my wife would 0.51

00:10:50.400 have mocked me if I had, you know, I give it to her and say, this is, I'm going to put this up to the

00:10:55.680 boss. You know, what do you think? She would have probably, uh, told me to change the language a bit.

00:11:01.760 While you were speaking, I looked up what a hyperscaler is, by the way, and that's a reference

00:11:06.320 to the big tech companies, the AI people that, you know, the invidias of the world and so forth.

00:11:12.960 Don't, well, I don't understand how they put more together, but that's what it is anyway.

00:11:16.320 So between the hegemons in China and the US, uh, they will, they've all got a piece of this. 1.00

00:11:22.880 Yeah. If, if Mr. Carney goes into the next election with, uh, you know, with that kind of lexicon,

00:11:28.480 uh, in his thumb speeches, and he's probably gonna have some, some problems. And your,

00:11:32.960 your wife would be absolutely correct in mocking you if, uh, if she, if you can prove to. 0.51

00:11:40.800 Yeah, exactly. Honey, should I open it up with, uh, uh, uh,

00:11:45.200 Thucydides quote or maybe Herodotus? What do you think?

00:11:49.440 I will say this as an exercise in speech writing, uh, and we're getting a long way from the

00:11:53.680 conservatives here, but he did follow the classic Aristotelian, uh, framework for his speech. You

00:11:59.360 know, he introduced his subject, he presented his evidence, he made the argument, he, it was,

00:12:04.800 and then he finished fairly strong. So as an exercise in speech writing, it's good,

00:12:09.520 but the technical proficiency of it and the vocabulary that he used really identifies who Mr.

00:12:16.320 Carney is. And, uh, he, he ain't one of us. So I would want to ask you, do you think that in

00:12:24.480 fact he is a closet conservative? He's taken lots of, uh, uh, Mr. Polyero's ideas and run with them

00:12:30.880 and done very well with them. I mean, do you think that's where his comfort level is?

00:12:34.640 Look, you know what? I, I think there's a fair argument to be made that he is a closet,

00:12:40.240 you know, variety of conservative, uh, maybe sort of, uh, uh, a closet classical Tory, if you will,

00:12:47.920 sort of, uh, comfortable on Bay street, comfortable, um, you know, presenting, uh,

00:12:54.320 you know, quarterly earnings reports, that sort of thing. Um, and you know, that's reflected in his,

00:13:00.480 uh, in his verbiage in his speech. It's the kind of language that was probably fairly familiar to the

00:13:07.440 actual people in the room near the billionaire, you know, corporate set who was in the room,

00:13:12.000 listening, listening to a speech of Davos. Um, I, I think the conservatism has evolved quite a bit

00:13:18.640 in Canada. It's always been a coalition of different groups. And I, I would also posit that

00:13:24.480 that's likely why Mr. Polyev has been successful as a conservative leader. He doesn't belong squarely to

00:13:32.640 any one of the factions or groups within the conservative tent. He's sort of a cross pollinated

00:13:38.320 kind of function of all of them. You know, he's comfortable speaking with, um, with social

00:13:44.160 conservatives. He's comfortable speaking with, uh, a democratic reformers. He's comfortable

00:13:48.960 speaking with, uh, um, what, you know, with, with, uh, you know, sort of a populist, uh, resonant,

00:13:56.240 you know, uh, what's, you know, what's on the mind of your barber or your cab driver,

00:14:00.400 your small business owner. And, and that's, that's certainly Mr. Polyev's recipe for success.

00:14:06.080 Um, I would say that he is, uh, he's a bit more of a pan conservative than, you know, whatever

00:14:11.520 variety, uh, Mr. Carney might be, which might be a sort of a, uh, downtown Toronto Bay street type.

00:14:19.040 Yes. Um, well, let's say for the sake of argument that Mr. Carney is sort of

00:14:25.680 something of a conservative, then how is that going to affect his relationship with the NDP?

00:14:39.200 That's precisely why I think the NDP is set for a strong rebound, uh, in, uh, you know, in the coming,

00:14:46.400 um, months or, or years, if, if it is that long, because, you know, many people in the liberal party

00:14:54.560 itself are quietly grumbling that they don't recognize our party anymore, that their, uh,

00:15:00.160 that their leadership has, uh, deviated far more to, far more towards an economic and business

00:15:07.680 preoccupation that they're comfortable with. They feel that social justice and environment are being

00:15:13.040 sacrificed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So if liberals are, are muttering that way, then certainly

00:15:18.560 new Democrats feel that they no longer can morally justify parking their conscience and,

00:15:25.760 and casting their vote for the liberals. I, I think that, that Mr. Carney's repositioning of

00:15:30.960 his party is ultimately going to be his own downfall. Um, he's trying to appeal to a broad swath of

00:15:37.200 conservative and liberal vote switchers, but I'm not sure that that's going to hold in the end.

00:15:42.000 You've got the real deal of conservatives on one end and a revamped left that's, that can actually

00:15:47.600 be true to itself on the other end. And he, and Mr. Carney might end up squeezing himself out of,

00:15:52.160 uh, you know, out of a political home. Well, that does bear very much on the, uh,

00:15:58.240 the possibility of an election this year. Uh, there's a lot of speculation that Mr. Carney, in order to get

00:16:06.720 the majority that he feels he needs to advance his, uh, his agenda will bring about the circumstances.

00:16:16.880 Uh, but is, is that actually going to work? He got elected on the basis of the NDP coming to his

00:16:25.520 support. If he alienates the NDP, then it's back to him against, uh, the conservatives, uh, and he

00:16:33.840 running on a conservative platform. Can you put that together for us? What, what should we be

00:16:39.760 watching for in the, in the, uh, during the convention? Well, it's not just the convention.

00:16:46.880 I think it's the, the next few months that are going to be really, really telling. Uh, Mr. Carney

00:16:51.520 spent the, the end of 2025 aggressively trying to get a majority by stealth, you know, trying to get

00:16:56.800 floor crossers and, um, and you got to, um, I don't think that there are more waiting in the wings. 1.00

00:17:02.720 This is not the kind of thing that you can strategically stage or we're going to announce

00:17:06.480 so-and-so in, you know, mid February or anything like that. It's too risky. It's too slippery.

00:17:12.080 So when you've got somebody, when you've got a, we've got a live fish on your, you know, on the

00:17:16.320 end of your poll, you reel it in right away. So I don't think that there, that there's any,

00:17:20.480 anybody else crossing the floor that's going to give him that majority. And I think he desperately,

00:17:25.360 all the signs are that he desperately wants one. He doesn't seem to be that capable of governing,

00:17:31.120 at least in parliament without a majority. His legislative progress has been really, really

00:17:37.200 weak, like really weak, weaker than I've ever, ever seen, uh, for any government. And he, he's,

00:17:43.200 he's going to try hard to get a majority. If he can't get it through floor crossings,

00:17:46.240 I think he'll be strongly, strongly tempted to call an early election. And, um, given,

00:17:51.680 given that the North American free trade agreement, renegotiation or, or, or refresh exercise is going to

00:17:57.840 be starting this summer, it's going to give him all the pretext he needs. You're an old watcher of

00:18:04.240 politics, Nigel, you know, that, uh, typically a prime minister announces a reason. And as long as

00:18:09.440 it's a re as long as it's a reasonably plausible excuse, then you get away with it. So he, I could

00:18:16.480 absolutely see him saying, we're going into the negotiation of our lifetime with the, with the

00:18:21.760 KUSMA, uh, re-evaluation and I need a, a refresh mandate specifically for this. I need a stronger

00:18:28.880 hand. So, uh, so I'm going to go to the polls. I would not be surprised at all to see that happen

00:18:34.320 for say maybe a June election or June, June, July election type thing. Oh, you think that late? I

00:18:40.240 haven't said when I was thinking about it, I was looking at the NDP. I think their leadership vote is

00:18:46.320 at the end of March. They need to have somebody in place by then. What, why would you wait any

00:18:53.440 longer? Well, um, the closer you get to summer, the closer you get to the beginning of the KUSMA,

00:19:00.080 the free trade agreement renegotiation that the, the more, the more credible your pretext is.

00:19:06.640 So people aren't really going to be thinking about it necessarily in April. They certainly will be in

00:19:11.120 June, but you know, the time is going to be variable and he's going to be watching the polls.

00:19:14.880 And right now he's doing well, the liberals and the conservatives are basically neck and

00:19:18.800 neck depending on which poll you look at. And, um, he's not, um, I, I can see him not quite

00:19:26.000 realizing in time that the NDP is going to be a threat, but once you, once the election campaign

00:19:30.560 gets underway, people start to pay attention. They start to match their own values and their own

00:19:36.640 conscience to an electoral option. And, uh, the NDP is going to rebound. The conservatives are going to

00:19:42.400 hold strong and it's going to be really competitive. So what do you think is possible for him to do in

00:19:49.280 the next five months during which he's got to occupy, you know, you've got to make headlines.

00:19:53.840 He's got to be there and occupy the space. What could he actually achieve? There is a number of

00:19:58.960 controversial bills out there. Uh, C9, for example, there's a lot of people talking about that.

00:20:04.400 C C2 as well, which, uh, you know, the border security bill yet, uh, where's his priority going

00:20:11.920 to be? Honestly, I think his, his, his priority is going to be on foreign policy. I think we're

00:20:18.800 going to see a lot of foreign travel, a lot of foreign visits, a lot of foreign speeches,

00:20:22.640 a lot of announcements about new free trade negotiations with this country or that country.

00:20:27.520 You know, we saw Indonesia, for example, in the fall, you know, we got some negotiations underway

00:20:31.760 with India and so on. He, he is strong in that kind of an environment. It plays to his strength,

00:20:38.240 but actually getting stuff done in parliament, that's probably his, his weakest suit because

00:20:44.160 he doesn't seem to be capable of, of managing parliament well. So I, yeah, I don't, I don't think

00:20:49.840 that we're going to see a lot happen in parliament. I think it's going to be largely continuation of what

00:20:53.440 we saw last year. I mean, last year, um, between, uh, parliament opening up and summer, they passed

00:21:00.000 one bill. I'm pulling aside supply bills, you know, the kind of stuff that finances, you know,

00:21:05.120 keeps the lights on, keeps people paid. Uh, they, um, out of like substance bills, they passed one bill

00:21:11.280 in the spring and one bill in the fall. I've, I've never seen that, you know, that week,

00:21:16.240 the legislative record, like it's, it's almost stupifying.

00:21:18.800 Maybe he should call a meeting of European heads of state and, uh, somewhere in Greenland.

00:21:24.960 That's, but that's the kind of thing I think we will see from him because it's the kind of thing

00:21:30.160 he doesn't need, you know, a competent parliamentary management to do. You can announce meetings or

00:21:36.480 announce the tours and give speeches and get global audiences. So he's, he's probably going to play to

00:21:42.400 his strength. We're going to hear a lot of a foreign policy and trade policy and very little,

00:21:46.400 I think getting a gun in parliament. To be honest, uh, Yaroslav, if I expected anybody to show up in

00:21:51.680 Greenland and make a speech, it wouldn't be Mr. Carney. It would be Mr. Trump, but we'll, we'll see how

00:21:57.040 that whole thing develops. We are out of time. And I, did you want to comment on that before we say

00:22:02.480 farewell? Well, I, uh, Greenland is, is quickly eclipsing everything else as the issue. Uh, it's, uh,

00:22:12.560 it's, it's certainly eclipsing the Canada, us, you know, trade negotiations or trade relationship.

00:22:19.600 Uh, globally, it's becoming the number one issue. Unfortunately, I think it's taking the spotlight

00:22:24.480 away from, uh, from Russia's, uh, war of aggression against Ukraine. Greenland is the central focus.

00:22:31.440 We're probably going to hear a whole heck of a lot more about it in the coming months.

00:22:34.880 Yeah. It's the darndest thing that that speech, whether it was a good speech or, uh, uh, uh,

00:22:41.440 a poorly written one was all about the United States walking away from the so-called rules-based

00:22:49.280 order. There was no mention of the fact that Russia and China walked away from it about 30 years ago. So

00:22:54.720 I, I, I do find that from the, when we're talking about that speech that he made in Davos,

00:23:00.800 the logical inconsistency there. Uh, Jaroslav, I think you're coming to town for the convention.

00:23:07.680 We hope we see you there. And, uh, thank you for taking the time to talk with me this evening.

00:23:13.440 Always a pleasure, Nigel. And I look forward to seeing you in Calgary.

00:23:17.840 Thank you so much. For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.

00:23:30.800 Thank you.

00:23:39.680 Thank you.

00:23:40.480 Thank you.

00:23:41.680 Thank you.

Western Standard - January 26, 2026

HANNAFORD： Spring election and a change of government？ It could happen

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