Yaroslav Baran is the co-founder of Pendulum Group, a crisis communications and political analysis firm in Ottawa. He s been in politics for 25 years, in government and out of it, helping people understand how Ottawa works. And when I first met Yaroslav, he was providing high-level advice for Stephen Harper in the PMO. So we ve got some important things to talk about this evening.
00:00:00.000Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to this week's edition of Hannaford.
00:00:21.740With me today is Yaroslav Baran. He's the co-founder of Pendulum Group, a crisis communications and political analysis firm in Ottawa.
00:00:35.240He's been doing Ottawa for 25 years, in government and out of it, helping people understand how Ottawa works.
00:00:44.240And when I first met Yaroslav Baran, he was providing high-level advice for Stephen Harper in the PMO.
00:00:52.840So we've got some important things to talk about this evening, and I think Mr. Baran is the man with some answers that matter.
00:01:02.180Yaroslav, it's good to see you again. Thanks for joining us.
00:01:04.920Good to be here, Nigel. Thanks for the invitation.
00:01:06.500Yaroslav, in the wake of that by-election in Toronto-St. Paul's, that was one of the Liberals' safest seats.
00:01:18.500If they're in trouble there, they're in trouble everywhere.
00:01:22.020So there seem to me three big questions. Can Mr. Trudeau hang on as Prime Minister?
00:01:26.800The Liberal brand being as tarnished as it is, is there anybody in that party who could do any better at the next election if Mr. Trudeau were to leave the stage?
00:01:40.020And third, do you think we're going to have to wait until next year to find out?
00:01:45.800Do you think Justin Trudeau can hang on for another year?
00:01:48.940Well, you know, I think he can, but it's going to be a heck of a lot harder after that by-election.
00:01:57.360And I'll walk you through some of the reasons why that is.
00:02:00.480First of all, you know, maybe we should take a step back.
00:02:02.700When Mr. Trudeau took over as party leader, the first thing that he did is he took out all of the capital regimes in his party,
00:02:13.500all of the independent points of authority and power.
00:02:17.540He excommunicated the Liberal senators, then he went after the local captains.
00:02:27.000The chieftains who served as gatekeepers to the Italian community, the Greek community, fundraising, membership drives, all of that.
00:02:35.760He put those micro institutions out of their misery, out of existence, creating a party that had only one focus of loyalty, and that was to him.
00:02:47.540So that fact really strengthened his hand for a situation like now.
00:02:53.600And frankly, even the way he did candidate recruitment, he went after so-called, you know, star candidates, Olympians and star bankers and notable journalists and so on.
00:03:04.160People from outside the Liberal Party.
00:03:06.040So their allegiance isn't necessarily to the Liberal Party because they've been a lifelong member.
00:03:12.940So at a time like this, when the going gets tough, he's in a stronger position than most party leaders would be in this kind of a situation.
00:03:20.360But, but, and there's a big but in that, there's a pivot that came around the St. Paul's by-election on June 24th.
00:03:30.360So before that by-election, Nigel, the, the, the general narrative, what you kept hearing from Liberals here in Ottawa was, yeah, well, you know what, the polls aren't great.
00:03:41.920And, you know, maybe we would do better with the new leader, but he brought us back in the wilderness.
00:03:48.800If he wants to run again, he'll get that shot.
00:03:51.140Now, when you look at what happened in St. Paul's and the vile action in Toronto, that was a safe Liberal seat, regardless of whatever spin, every party always tries to spin these kinds of things.
00:04:03.440But it was, make no mistake, it was a, it was a safe Liberal seat and they lost it.
00:04:08.280So now a whole bunch of Liberal MPs are saying, yikes, if we can, if we can lose St. Paul's, we can lose anywhere.
00:04:18.300So they are now in save the furniture mode and every MP now wants to be part of the furniture.
00:05:04.520For example, there's been organic pressure from, from inside the Liberal caucus to have an immediate national caucus meeting, to go over the entrails of this by-election, read the tea leaves, whatever, whatever interesting metaphor you want to use, and figure out what the heck happened.
00:05:37.180But if there were a full-on caucus revolt, you know, we've seen this, for example, in the UK many times.
00:05:44.800Remember when Margaret Thatcher went into a caucus meeting as prime minister, came out as a backbencher?
00:05:49.840That, that can happen, regardless of the by-laws of any party's constitution.
00:05:55.260If your caucus revolts against you, you're toast, and they can just decide not to lead you anymore.
00:06:00.320Well, now, you've been around there for more than 25 years, and you must remember that time when Stockwell Day was leading the Canadian Alliance, and there was a group of MPs who were members of the Alliance, but they had lost confidence in Mr. Day, and every week one more resigned.
00:06:19.740So you had this drip, drip, drip, dragged it out over the weeks.
00:06:23.420Would that work for the Liberal Party?
00:06:24.740Well, it very well could in a situation like this.
00:06:29.880Back then, and I remember that very well.
00:06:31.740I was, I was working in the opposition leader's office, press office at the time.
00:06:37.320So I was in the middle of all that, of all that drip, drip, drip.
00:06:40.760But it's a little bit different now for them, because they're, you know, it's one thing to aspire to power.
00:10:11.120And look, even if mortgage rates come down, everybody, almost everybody will have renewed in this period of higher rates.
00:10:20.520So they will still be paying 400 bucks more a month, 500 bucks more a month.
00:10:24.680So to tell them, hey, we fixed it, will come across as fundamentally insulting to the electorate.
00:10:31.340So there's no fix because these are longer-term fix problems driving these polls.
00:10:37.480And if you look at the individuals, Ms. Freeland or Mr. Carney, they, in that kind of a political climate,
00:10:45.340could easily, would probably easily be perceived as elites who can't relate to these cost of living problems because it doesn't affect them.
00:10:57.240Remember that little controversy when Minister Freeland said, oh, I don't even own a car.
00:11:02.640I take the subway, everybody, you know, everywhere.
00:11:05.120Well, try saying that to somebody who lives in, you know, Weyburn where there is no subway
00:11:10.380or to somebody who lives in Fort Mac where there is no subway.
00:18:08.000We have this prime minister, from everything that you've said, is likely to want to go the distance.
00:18:15.920And judging by the – it's maybe too early to tell, especially with the by-election only being two weeks behind us.
00:18:25.600But nevertheless, it does look rather as if he remains committed to his idealistic goals around climate change.
00:18:35.580And if the weekend's display of retail politics is anything to go by, he still thinks that selfies and socks are the way to the hearts of the Canadian people.
00:19:45.980Secondly, if you look at the composition of seats in the House of Commons, the opposition cannot take down the government unless all of the opposition parties vote non-confident all at the same time.
00:19:58.800Or in other words, if it's in every opposition party's interests, all at the same time to want an early election.
00:20:55.260At some point, they are going to have to start to differentiate themselves from the Liberals.
00:21:01.200Right now, they're the junior partner floating this government.
00:21:04.540And they know well the lessons from other jurisdictions in being the junior partner.
00:21:10.500For example, they know what happened to the Green Party in British Columbia in, you know, in 2017, they were the junior partner in a similar arrangement with the NDP.
00:21:22.100Three years later, the NDP actually won a majority and the Greens lost seats.
00:21:26.780So they were punished for being the junior partner.
00:21:28.980Same thing in the United Kingdom in 2015, the Liberal Democrats were the junior partner for five years, propping up the Tories.
00:21:59.740Because, I mean, if you're an NDP voter and you're fed up with the party because it supported another party that you don't like, so you don't want to vote for the NDP, but you don't want to vote for the Liberals, what are you going to do?
00:22:14.580Stay home because you don't want to vote for the Conservatives either?
00:22:16.760No, they're switching over to the Conservatives.
00:22:37.040The provincial government in Ontario, Conservative government, in the last election, Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario, was endorsed by every major private sector union in the province, whereas the public sector unions continue to endorse their traditional NDP.
00:23:06.300The dividing line used to be unionised or organised labour versus non-unionised labour.
00:23:12.180The new dividing line appears to be public sector unions versus private sector unions and ununionised.
00:23:19.980So the Conservatives on multiple levels of government have been eating in to traditional NDP term, which is sticking up for the little guys, sticking up for workers, sticking up for ordinary Joe.
00:23:32.860And we hear a lot of that from Mr. Paulieb, as we've been hearing a lot of that generally in the Conservative movement, not only in Canada, but internationally.
00:23:42.240Actually, that's one of the struggles for the Conservative movement is that they're constantly presented by people like Ms. Freeland as the party of the wealthy, the party of big business and so on.
00:24:13.720The only other thing I'd mention is there's one Hail Mary pass that might still be left in the Trudeau government's arsenal.
00:24:27.540And that would be, depending on what happens in November south of the border, there'd be a possibility that should there be a Trump victory south of the border,
00:24:37.280I can foresee a political maneuver whereby Prime Minister Trudeau calls a press conference the next morning or the following week and says,