Inside Pierre Poilievre's Political Life
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
223.92561
Summary
A political life for a political life: The story of the life of Peter Polyaev, former MP for Toronto- Chinatown, and author of A Political Life for a Political Life: The Story of the Life of Peter Prokopchuk, the party leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada.
Transcript
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There's always a challenge in writing about something that is so contemporary.
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So my first book was on the Freedom Convoy and I wrote it after the convoy had ended.
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So it was more retrospective, whereas here it's a point in time.
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And well, you know, likely you could make another book in four years or eight years or 12 years,
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I am also convinced that it was important to have documented record of his life to this point,
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how he got to where he is, which for Canadians who are deciding how to vote for
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or Canadians that are just observers of politics, I think can be a really useful tool.
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Yeah, well, and finding out who Mr. Polyaev is, I mean, he's an outspoken, extroverted man,
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yet at the same time, he's very private about himself.
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We've had him here a couple of times, see to where you are for interviews,
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and great, fantastic talks about what he wants to do with the party.
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So, I mean, as an author, it must have been challenging because you want to write a bit about him as well.
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I mean, not getting, you know, exposing or embarrassing, but just, like, what makes this man tick?
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Yeah, no, I would have totally been all on the exposing and embarrassing stuff if I got it.
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And when he talks about his personal life, usually it's in a very curated way to make a point.
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So he's talked about, you know, the upbringing of his parents, schoolteachers from Calgary,
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He's talked about his parents having to downsize because of interest rates back a few decades ago.
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So there are little glimpses of this you get through.
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But the one thing for me, though, in writing this was that I was talking to a lot of the people around him,
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and they were a lot looser with their lips than he might have been.
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So I still think I got a relatively good picture of his life, you know, going back to his youth in Calgary,
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And a little bit of that personal stuff does shine through.
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I mean, and there's some interesting things with his history.
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I mean, his father came out of the closet late in life.
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He was a gay man and, you know, there was a split family.
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But it sounds like Mr. Polyev is very well, comfortably reconciled with that.
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But these are formative things with people on their way and growing.
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And I find some of that more fascinating to know those things, I guess,
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than just the policy statements that we tend to get.
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Yeah, I mean, no one exists in isolation from their experiences and their stories.
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So even if people know him in a political context,
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there's still a human experience that has led to that moment.
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And, you know, how much it has led to it, who knows?
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One example that comes out in the book and has not been reported elsewhere
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is that his daughter has quite a severe case of autism.
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And that's something that he as a father has had to grapple with while working in politics.
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So that's the type of experience that could very easily shape your outlook
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And I mean, it'll give, I guess, more of a direct, you know,
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sense of things when it comes to the challenges parents with kids with special needs have,
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We're in a job when you're flying and bouncing around with a child
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It's a very challenging role, which also shows, I mean,
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that was a large part of why Mr. Polyev didn't run in the last leadership
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I mean, something that was clear in the book, too, though, you know,
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there's people who did other careers and then fell into politics later.
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But it sounds like Mr. Polyev has always had a razor focus on the political life.
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The subtitle of the book is A Political Life for a Reason,
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And even the people around him have been, I don't want to say unchanged.
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He certainly met people over the last 20 years.
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But a lot of the relationships that he forged when he was first getting involved in politics
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are relationships that are still very valuable to him today.
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I mean, he interned with people that are now members of parliament with him.
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He volunteered on campaigns with people who are now working on his campaign.
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The internship coordinator when he interned for Jason Kenney
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was Jenny Byrne that he had a 12-year relationship with and is now his chief advisor.
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So all of these connections, again, many of which forged right here in Calgary
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or certainly in Alberta have really followed him throughout his entire life.