Western Standard - Justin Trudeau's long goodbye...

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

00:00:21.740 With me today is Yaroslav Baran. He's the co-founder of Pendulum Group, a crisis communications and political analysis firm in Ottawa.

00:00:35.240 He's been doing Ottawa for 25 years, in government and out of it, helping people understand how Ottawa works.

00:00:44.240 And when I first met Yaroslav Baran, he was providing high-level advice for Stephen Harper in the PMO.

00:00:52.840 So we've got some important things to talk about this evening, and I think Mr. Baran is the man with some answers that matter.

00:01:02.180 Yaroslav, it's good to see you again. Thanks for joining us.

00:01:04.920 Good to be here, Nigel. Thanks for the invitation.

00:01:06.500 Yaroslav, in the wake of that by-election in Toronto-St. Paul's, that was one of the Liberals' safest seats.

00:01:18.500 If they're in trouble there, they're in trouble everywhere.

00:01:22.020 So there seem to me three big questions. Can Mr. Trudeau hang on as Prime Minister?

00:01:26.800 The 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?

00:01:40.020 And third, do you think we're going to have to wait until next year to find out?

00:01:45.800 Do you think Justin Trudeau can hang on for another year?

00:01:48.940 Well, you know, I think he can, but it's going to be a heck of a lot harder after that by-election.

00:01:57.360 And I'll walk you through some of the reasons why that is.

00:02:00.480 First of all, you know, maybe we should take a step back.

00:02:02.700 When 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,

00:02:13.500 all of the independent points of authority and power.

00:02:17.540 He excommunicated the Liberal senators, then he went after the local captains.

00:02:23.340 Captain Montreal, bang. Captain Toronto, bang.

00:02:27.000 The chieftains who served as gatekeepers to the Italian community, the Greek community, fundraising, membership drives, all of that.

00:02:35.760 He 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.

00:02:47.540 So that fact really strengthened his hand for a situation like now.

00:02:53.600 And 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.

00:03:04.160 People from outside the Liberal Party.

00:03:06.040 So their allegiance isn't necessarily to the Liberal Party because they've been a lifelong member.

00:03:11.740 It's to him.

00:03:12.940 So 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.

00:03:20.360 But, 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.

00:03:30.360 So 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.

00:03:41.920 And, you know, maybe we would do better with the new leader, but he brought us back in the wilderness.

00:03:47.880 He's earned it.

00:03:48.800 If he wants to run again, he'll get that shot.

00:03:51.140 Now, 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.

00:04:03.440 But it was, make no mistake, it was a, it was a safe Liberal seat and they lost it.

00:04:08.280 So now a whole bunch of Liberal MPs are saying, yikes, if we can, if we can lose St. Paul's, we can lose anywhere.

00:04:18.300 So they are now in save the furniture mode and every MP now wants to be part of the furniture.

00:04:27.060 So they're making calculations.

00:04:28.980 If he continues to lead the party, I could very well lose my seat.

00:04:34.000 If we have a different leader, frankly, anybody, I should re-win my seat because it's supposed to be a safe Liberal seat.

00:04:42.020 So that, that is a different, that's a significant difference from before the by-election to after the by-election.

00:04:49.100 There's going to be significant pressure on him to step down.

00:04:52.260 So this, this really was a tipping point.

00:04:55.320 It was, it should, it should be.

00:04:57.400 The question is, can he survive it?

00:04:59.060 Can he navigate it?

00:05:00.740 And it's going to take a lot of depth skill and they're doing it.

00:05:03.720 They're working on it.

00:05:04.520 For 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.

00:05:22.380 Where do we go from here?

00:05:23.280 What are we going to do differently?

00:05:25.400 Other than moral suasion though, Yaroslav, does the Liberal Party actually have any mechanism by which it can remove him?

00:05:33.400 Not really.

00:05:34.440 No, it doesn't.

00:05:35.500 It doesn't.

00:05:37.180 But if there were a full-on caucus revolt, you know, we've seen this, for example, in the UK many times.

00:05:44.800 Remember when Margaret Thatcher went into a caucus meeting as prime minister, came out as a backbencher?

00:05:49.840 That, that can happen, regardless of the by-laws of any party's constitution.

00:05:55.260 If your caucus revolts against you, you're toast, and they can just decide not to lead you anymore.

00:06:00.320 Well, 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.

00:06:19.740 So you had this drip, drip, drip, dragged it out over the weeks.

00:06:23.420 Would that work for the Liberal Party?

00:06:24.740 Well, it very well could in a situation like this.

00:06:29.880 Back then, and I remember that very well.

00:06:31.740 I was, I was working in the opposition leader's office, press office at the time.

00:06:37.320 So I was in the middle of all that, of all that drip, drip, drip.

00:06:40.760 But it's a little bit different now for them, because they're, you know, it's one thing to aspire to power.

00:06:47.780 It's another thing to have power.

00:06:49.720 And when you have power, you've got a lot of vested interests.

00:06:52.480 You've got cabinet ministers who kind of like their job.

00:06:55.180 You've got MPs in the governing caucus who, even if they're not in cabinet, they've been around a long time.

00:07:02.020 If they win again, they figure, hey, maybe this is my shot.

00:07:05.180 So there's a lot more, the stakes are higher for an incumbent party in a situation like this.

00:07:11.060 So it's going to be really hard for them, it's going to be hard for them to hang on.

00:07:14.360 Remember, Nigel, back in January, there was a, there was a backbench liberal MP, Mr. McDonald's from Newfoundland.

00:07:21.080 He stuck his neck out and said, we need a leadership review.

00:07:25.920 Guys, guys, anyone?

00:07:30.400 And his head was almost, it was almost chopped off by PMO.

00:07:35.120 He stuck his neck out, figuring, we've been having all these private conversations.

00:07:39.820 I know everybody in caucus agrees with me, but somebody's got to say it first.

00:07:43.320 He said it, nobody else followed.

00:07:45.660 They were all gunshot.

00:07:47.320 Now, we're starting to see more and more people say it publicly.

00:07:50.880 We've got caucus members saying it, former cabinet ministers saying it.

00:07:54.600 We've got PMO and damage control, cabinet ministers and damage control.

00:07:58.020 So it's, this is, this is a live issue now.

00:08:00.620 So, Jaroslav, let's just say that backbench liberal MPs,

00:08:06.740 whether driven by fear or by a sense of this is wrong, something's got to be done,

00:08:12.400 is there anybody in that caucus who could salvage their hopes at the next election?

00:08:19.620 Certainly, right after the by-election, there was a poll that came out that said the, you know,

00:08:25.560 Mr. Carney, Ms. Freeland were likely to do even worse than Mr. Trudeau.

00:08:30.800 So, who's the white knight who can actually ride to the rescue here?

00:08:34.640 To be honest, it's hard to find one.

00:08:37.140 And that, and I don't say that out of partisanship or out of any personal disparagement of any of the frontrunners,

00:08:44.860 the sort of the A-listers in the Liberal Party.

00:08:47.860 But you've got to, you've got to weigh them against the circumstances in which they would be taking over the party.

00:08:53.580 Why have the polls changed so dramatically?

00:08:56.820 Why is it the Conservatives are consistently about 20% ahead?

00:09:00.480 Really two issues.

00:09:01.940 One is the cost of living, dramatically higher than it was even five years ago.

00:09:07.700 And second, a subset of the first, but an independent issue, is the cost of housing, either rent or buying a home.

00:09:15.220 Neither of those can be fixed between now and the election.

00:09:18.780 Now, the government is trying to fix one of them, cost of living, but they don't quite seem to get that changing it or fixing it,

00:09:27.940 fixing it with statistics isn't the same as fixing it.

00:09:31.000 You can put out press releases, you can hold press conferences all you want saying,

00:09:34.880 hey, look, inflation is back down to 2.9%, just under the upper end of the Bank of Canada, Target, you know,

00:09:41.240 that doesn't mean that that single mom in a small town can afford to buy lunch meat again. 1.00

00:09:48.780 For her kids to put in this.

00:09:50.500 Well, it certainly doesn't.

00:09:51.220 I mean, you might have noticed we had Jack Mintz on last week, and he made the point that, yeah, sure, it's 2.9% this month.

00:09:59.080 But that's compounded on the 2.9% and the higher numbers than that.

00:10:04.020 That's exactly, yes.

00:10:05.240 So your groceries are actually 20% more expensive than they were two years ago.

00:10:09.960 So that's absolutely.

00:10:11.120 And look, even if mortgage rates come down, everybody, almost everybody will have renewed in this period of higher rates.

00:10:20.520 So they will still be paying 400 bucks more a month, 500 bucks more a month.

00:10:24.680 So to tell them, hey, we fixed it, will come across as fundamentally insulting to the electorate.

00:10:31.340 So there's no fix because these are longer-term fix problems driving these polls.

00:10:37.480 And if you look at the individuals, Ms. Freeland or Mr. Carney, they, in that kind of a political climate,

00:10:45.340 could easily, would probably easily be perceived as elites who can't relate to these cost of living problems because it doesn't affect them.

00:10:57.240 Remember that little controversy when Minister Freeland said, oh, I don't even own a car.

00:11:02.640 I take the subway, everybody, you know, everywhere.

00:11:05.120 Well, try saying that to somebody who lives in, you know, Weyburn where there is no subway

00:11:10.380 or to somebody who lives in Fort Mac where there is no subway.

00:11:14.440 It just doesn't work.

00:11:15.680 It just comes across as, you know, Marie Antoinette, let them eat cake. 0.71

00:11:19.000 And by the way, she also has a taxpayer-paid driver and car.

00:11:24.300 So maybe you don't own one, but the state is giving you a, you know, it just comes off as tone deaf.

00:11:29.100 So having people who come off as elites, who are higher socioeconomic, you know, background,

00:11:37.040 who cavort with millionaires is not going to be the fix.

00:11:41.640 Yaroslav is probably just as well she has that driver because when she drives herself, 0.97

00:11:45.220 she picks up speeding tickets all over northern Alberta.

00:11:47.660 So, look, this is the, but let's say, all right, there's not a shining white night.

00:11:56.080 We know that the prime minister has a very strong commitment to himself.

00:12:03.320 And I don't know whether you were amused by this or quietly horrified,

00:12:07.460 but the weekend display of, you know, the old 2015 style campaigning

00:12:12.380 when you're doing selfies and dancing for the camera and this kind of thing,

00:12:16.160 oh, my word, is he so out of touch that he thinks that that's going to work again?

00:12:20.760 And I'm going to ask you about that.

00:12:22.860 But when you have dealt with that, what is, let's say he goes the distance.

00:12:30.980 He can do one of two things.

00:12:32.460 He can either project change or he can double down on everything he ever dreamed of doing

00:12:41.140 as a sort of a vast legacy project and, incidentally,

00:12:45.380 something to make it more difficult for whoever replaces him.

00:12:49.380 So how about the dancing and what are they going to do?

00:12:52.800 I think your characterization is spot on.

00:12:55.220 Come September, the prime minister's office, the prime minister, the government, the cabinet,

00:13:00.720 they're going to be at a fork in the road.

00:13:03.160 They can choose one of two options.

00:13:05.760 One of them is look at the polls, except, you know,

00:13:10.140 it's been like this for a year and a half.

00:13:11.700 It's not going to change.

00:13:13.080 We know what's driving it.

00:13:14.160 We can't fix it, except that you're going to lose the next election and say,

00:13:18.660 all right, let's go into legacy building mode.

00:13:21.440 We've got 12 months to do everything we've ever wanted to do,

00:13:24.940 but couldn't because we got distracted by governing.

00:13:27.380 Let's just focus on what we are leaving behind, right?

00:13:31.640 And if they do that, they'll go hard on climate change and indigenous reconciliation

00:13:36.160 and then, you know, the core issues, the issue sets that have defined their brand, right?

00:13:41.540 So that's option one.

00:13:43.240 You know, yeah, we're going to lose.

00:13:44.180 So let's just go be as liberal as we, you know, as progressive as we possibly can

00:13:48.100 while we still have the reins.

00:13:50.860 Option two is, heck, let's win it back.

00:13:55.000 You know, we're down by 20 points.

00:13:57.200 Let's just give it our all.

00:13:58.900 Let's convince voters to come back home.

00:14:02.800 That would suggest, you know, more retail politics, focusing on people,

00:14:06.700 focusing on paychecks, focusing on disposable income and things like that.

00:14:10.280 The problem is if they choose the latter option, I'm not sure they know how.

00:14:14.920 Because every single time we have seen a so-called reset under this government,

00:14:22.760 they have, in fact, actually doubled down on those more ideological tenets

00:14:28.340 that have defined this government's brand.

00:14:31.620 Again, reconciliation, climate change policy, and so on.

00:14:37.700 Every single time they've done reset, that's what they've done.

00:14:40.160 Or they'd shuffle the cabinet and put a bunch of younger

00:14:44.320 and also less experienced faces in there that showcase superficial diversity

00:14:49.040 while, you know, there's been zero addition in terms of diversity of thought,

00:14:55.320 diversity of perspective to actually do something different,

00:14:58.840 which is what a reset is supposed to be.

00:15:01.240 So even though they'll be at this fork of the road,

00:15:04.000 I'm not sure they know how to do one of those two things.

00:15:07.940 Well, you know, we've often said in this office here,

00:15:12.980 the Western Standard, that Mr. Trudor has a kind of messiah complex,

00:15:16.840 that he is so deeply committed to the things that he believes in,

00:15:19.880 whether they are scientifically based or not,

00:15:23.500 that he feels that his significance rests in being faithful to the end.

00:15:30.260 Now, we could be wrong, but do you see an element of that in his behavior?

00:15:35.300 In fairness, to some degree, every party leader suffers from that.

00:15:43.380 Many party leaders, especially prime ministers,

00:15:46.440 if you're actually at the helm of government, fall into this trap.

00:15:51.460 Let me take a step back.

00:15:53.680 When you first become prime minister,

00:15:55.300 you don't know what you're doing because you've never been prime minister before.

00:15:58.060 You may be competent, you may be smart, you may be accomplished,

00:15:59.980 but you've never done this job before, so you're learning on the job.

00:16:03.860 You know, it's like building an aircraft while flying it.

00:16:07.160 It's tough, and you make mistakes early on,

00:16:10.100 you cut a lot of slack early on,

00:16:12.580 but you grow into the role, and this is true for every prime minister.

00:16:17.140 By the time you're eight years in or nine years in,

00:16:20.140 you finally know what you're doing.

00:16:21.840 You finally understand the machinery of government in the process

00:16:25.380 and really how to govern just when the public is getting tired of you.

00:16:31.640 And so most prime ministers fall into this trap of thinking,

00:16:36.820 okay, I actually know this job now.

00:16:39.000 I know what I'm doing.

00:16:40.040 Yeah, we're down in the polls,

00:16:41.400 but I'm better now that I'm better than I was eight years ago.

00:16:43.800 I'm better than nine years ago.

00:16:45.020 And they look around, and they think,

00:16:46.920 okay, I've got some competent, yeah, minister so-and-so is good.

00:16:50.520 Yeah, she'd be a good leader, minister so-and-so.

00:16:54.300 Yeah, he'd be good.

00:16:55.680 But they think, but I'd still be better.

00:16:58.460 I'm still better at this than they are.

00:17:00.260 I'm better at politics than they are.

00:17:02.060 I'm better at governing than they are.

00:17:03.780 So I'm going to give it one more kick at the can,

00:17:06.300 one more election, and then I'll pass over the reins.

00:17:09.820 You know, to be honest, our friend, our former colleague,

00:17:15.140 Mr. Harper, unfortunately, fell into this trap as well.

00:17:18.080 He realized only too late that it had already been time for him

00:17:22.740 to pass on the reins to somebody else.

00:17:24.840 And many, many prime ministers fall into that trap.

00:17:27.740 So that is true now with Mr. Trudeau.

00:17:30.680 And another thing that's true is he wants to take on Pierre Paulyab.

00:17:34.360 He's relishing the opportunity to be in the boxing match with him.

00:17:39.320 He will lose, but he doesn't realize he'll lose.

00:17:42.600 He thinks when he's in that ring, one-on-one, everything is going to be reset to neutral.

00:17:49.660 It'll be a level set.

00:17:51.000 And he can take him on by portraying him as a minor Trump or something like that.

00:17:56.200 He thinks he'll win against Paulyab, and I don't think he will. 0.99

00:17:59.560 Well, I don't know.

00:18:00.320 I watched them in question period.

00:18:01.840 And if I were Mr. Trudeau, I wouldn't be quite that confident.

00:18:04.920 Exactly.

00:18:05.280 Well, so there it is.

00:18:08.000 We have this prime minister, from everything that you've said, is likely to want to go the distance.

00:18:15.920 And judging by the – it's maybe too early to tell, especially with the by-election only being two weeks behind us.

00:18:25.600 But nevertheless, it does look rather as if he remains committed to his idealistic goals around climate change.

00:18:35.580 And 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.

00:18:46.600 So come to the big question.

00:18:49.440 In your view, are we going to go all the way to the next election in October of 2025?

00:19:00.140 Almost certainly, yes.

00:19:02.560 And there are several reasons for that.

00:19:04.800 One of them is the polls.

00:19:06.880 It would be basically a suicide mission for the Liberals, for the government, to call an early election.

00:19:13.380 And only they can call an early election.

00:19:14.840 So why would you drive your car off a cliff?

00:19:20.160 And the polls suggest that that would be the case.

00:19:22.940 You wouldn't be what Ricky Sunak is doing in Great Britain.

00:19:25.840 Yeah, kind of.

00:19:26.880 And Emmanuel Macron in France as well.

00:19:29.560 I mean, the polls – based on the polling, there's zero case for the Liberals to want an election.

00:19:35.200 So in a situation like this, they should want to hang on as long as they can.

00:19:38.960 Because the longer they hang on, the longer they can do stuff that they want to do rather than drive off a cliff.

00:19:44.840 So that's number one.

00:19:45.980 Secondly, 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.

00:19:58.800 Or in other words, if it's in every opposition party's interests, all at the same time to want an early election.

00:20:07.160 And that's simply not the case.

00:20:08.540 For the Conservatives, yeah, bring it.

00:20:10.680 You know, the polls suggest a, you know, a landslide majority.

00:20:14.200 The Bloc Québécois, they could take it or leave it.

00:20:16.380 The polls suggest they would do just as well as they did last time, probably a little bit better.

00:20:21.360 Probably pick up a few seats, but there's risk.

00:20:24.320 The NDP, the polls suggest that they would come back worse off than they are now.

00:20:30.700 They won 25 seats in the last election.

00:20:32.240 And we're seeing seat projections showing them maybe 18 seats, 19, maybe 20.

00:20:38.060 So why would you incur a whole bunch of debt or pay, you know, expend your war chest of five or six million bucks just to lose seats?

00:20:45.420 It doesn't make sense for the NDP.

00:20:46.940 The asterisk I'm going to put on this is actually two asterisks.

00:20:54.260 One of them is the NDP.

00:20:55.260 At some point, they are going to have to start to differentiate themselves from the Liberals.

00:21:01.200 Right now, they're the junior partner floating this government.

00:21:04.540 And they know well the lessons from other jurisdictions in being the junior partner.

00:21:10.500 For 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.

00:21:22.100 Three years later, the NDP actually won a majority and the Greens lost seats.

00:21:26.780 So they were punished for being the junior partner.

00:21:28.980 Same thing in the United Kingdom in 2015, the Liberal Democrats were the junior partner for five years, propping up the Tories.

00:21:39.480 And they were wiped out afterwards.

00:21:42.640 So the junior partner party normally gets punished because it's hard to run against a government that you've been propping up for years.

00:21:51.500 How do you do that brand differentiation?

00:21:55.080 At one point, the NDP will have to try.

00:21:57.140 One second, Arislav.

00:21:58.380 Where do those votes go?

00:21:59.740 Because, 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?

00:22:14.580 Stay home because you don't want to vote for the Conservatives either?

00:22:16.760 No, they're switching over to the Conservatives.

00:22:19.320 That's what we're seeing.

00:22:20.260 That is a phenomenon that we're seeing.

00:22:22.620 And a lot of this isn't just default.

00:22:25.160 Well, I don't like them.

00:22:25.960 I don't like them.

00:22:26.560 Who's left?

00:22:27.540 A lot of it is very deft of political positioning by the Conservatives.

00:22:33.160 And we're seeing this at multiple levels of government as well.

00:22:35.760 I'll give you an example.

00:22:37.040 The 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.

00:22:58.040 They stuck to their NDP home.

00:22:59.860 So that means that something is happening among working Canadians.

00:23:03.940 The centre of gravity is shifting.

00:23:06.300 The dividing line used to be unionised or organised labour versus non-unionised labour.

00:23:12.180 The new dividing line appears to be public sector unions versus private sector unions and ununionised.

00:23:19.980 So 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.

00:23:32.860 And 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.

00:23:42.240 Actually, 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.

00:23:55.840 They're really not.

00:23:56.860 Not anymore.

00:23:57.800 They are the party of the...

00:23:58.800 What was the phrase we used to use?

00:24:01.220 The ordinary Canadian who works hard, plays by the rules and pays his taxes.

00:24:05.320 Pays your taxes.

00:24:06.180 That's right.

00:24:06.680 That's right.

00:24:06.700 That needs to be the...

00:24:09.360 I'd be butsable to say the Pollyer line. 0.94

00:24:12.400 Yeah, that's it.

00:24:13.480 Yeah.

00:24:13.720 The only other thing I'd mention is there's one Hail Mary pass that might still be left in the Trudeau government's arsenal.

00:24:27.540 And 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,

00:24:37.280 I can foresee a political maneuver whereby Prime Minister Trudeau calls a press conference the next morning or the following week and says,

00:24:46.460 you know what, folks?

00:24:48.560 They just elected their Trump.

00:24:51.000 Now you decide if you want your own.

00:24:53.680 And don't get me wrong.

00:24:55.160 I'm not at all saying that Mr. Pollyer is similar to Donald Trump.

00:24:59.320 He is not.

00:25:00.020 I've known him for 25 years.

00:25:01.340 He's a man of integrity.

00:25:02.540 He's a man of principle.

00:25:03.360 But this will be the branding or the counter-branding play that the Liberals will use because that's all they've got.

00:25:13.660 So they will try to portray him as a Trump.

00:25:15.640 So there is a foreseeable tactic whereby the Liberals say right after the U.S. election,

00:25:21.560 knowing that most Canadians are not fans of Mr. Trump, saying, no, you decide if you want your own.

00:25:27.540 It would be very much a Hail Mary.

00:25:29.440 Throw the football, close your eyes, cross your fingers, and it almost certainly wouldn't work.

00:25:34.620 But it could arguably be their best play.

00:25:37.440 You know, that's a really interesting point.

00:25:39.600 And another thing you said in that was the consistency of Mr. Pollyer.

00:25:46.360 It's not commonly known, but when he was a student at the University of Calgary,

00:25:50.180 he contributed a number of columns to the Calgary Herald where I was working at the time.

00:25:55.800 And, you know, if you look at what he says in those columns, he says essentially the same thing today.

00:26:01.560 It's the same point of view.

00:26:03.160 It just doesn't take quite so much editing.

00:26:05.580 But you see what I mean?

00:26:06.820 He's been like Harper in this respect.

00:26:09.580 There is a principle that animates these conservative leaders,

00:26:13.720 and they're faithful to it through the years,

00:26:16.400 unlike so many other parties and politicians who will be whatever you want them to be

00:26:21.480 on the day that you're talking to them.

00:26:23.760 Yeah, that's right. It's all on the public record.

00:26:27.520 I've got one last question for you, if I may.

00:26:31.100 And that's having, frankly, a fairly realistic opinion of what motivates and drives a member of parliament,

00:26:43.540 I have to ask you about the pension.

00:26:46.220 Now, we had a fixed election date.

00:26:50.560 It was to be October the 21st.

00:26:53.420 But that chopped off the pension eligibility for about 80 members of parliament of all parties.

00:27:01.900 And then the excuse was used that, oh, well, October the 21st crashes with a religious holiday,

00:27:08.860 so let's make it a week later.

00:27:10.680 And everybody voted and said, my word, my pension is safe.

00:27:14.780 So, you know, do you think that there might just be a little bit of that in driving people to make this government last

00:27:24.320 as long as it can right up to the very end?

00:27:27.600 Well, you know what?

00:27:30.320 That may come into play, particularly with some of the opposition parties.

00:27:38.540 And here's why that matters.

00:27:39.820 First of all, you're right.

00:27:41.360 Moving the election by one week made the difference in pension eligibility for a whole bunch of MPs

00:27:48.840 who were elected six years ago or five and a half years ago or whatever it is right now.

00:27:54.660 Now, the reason it will matter for some and not for others is this.

00:28:00.620 If Mr. Trudeau decides to call an early election, there's nothing the backbenchers can do about it.

00:28:06.140 Ordinary MPs can't say, oh, wait, no, we will stop you because of our pensions.

00:28:11.580 MPs have no say.

00:28:12.880 It's always the constitutional prerogative, as you know, of every prime minister to go to the governor general

00:28:18.400 and say, we're having an election, please.

00:28:20.920 And the governor general obliges.

00:28:23.220 So if he chooses to call one, nobody can stop it.

00:28:27.660 If there is a push to bring down the government, and that would happen organically from the opposition parties,

00:28:37.160 those opposition MPs who fear losing their seats will get skittish.

00:28:43.040 They will want to wait until they're eligible for a pension.

00:28:46.100 And additionally, among the liberal backbench, even though they can't do anything to stop it,

00:28:54.580 there would certainly be pressure from within the liberal caucus not to go early,

00:29:00.200 even if that is the smartest tactical move, say, for example, this November.

00:29:05.560 So they'll think, okay, you're gambling.

00:29:10.360 It's your best move, but it's probably still a failing move.

00:29:14.300 So please don't do that.

00:29:15.900 Let's go the full distance.

00:29:19.320 Okay.

00:29:20.080 Well, I can see why you're doing the job you're doing, Yaroslav.

00:29:24.120 You always did it splendidly when I was there with you in Ottawa.

00:29:28.500 And this is the kind of talk that we need to hear more of.

00:29:32.700 And I would like to invite you back a little later.

00:29:35.300 Oh, I love it.

00:29:36.240 It was a real pleasure.

00:29:37.600 The options for the Conservative Party, now that we've exhausted the ones for the Liberal Party.

00:29:43.160 Ladies and gentlemen, Yaroslav Baran, co-founder of the Pendulum Group,

00:29:48.980 a crisis management, crisis communication.

00:29:52.280 I guess it's management, too.

00:29:53.840 Same thing.

00:29:54.500 In political analysis, you've just had a great analysis of what we're looking at right now.

00:30:01.120 Thanks, Yaroslav.

00:30:02.240 My pleasure, Nigel.

00:30:03.220 Good to see you again.

00:30:05.180 For The Western Standard, I'm Nigel Haniford.

00:30:24.500 The Western Standard.

00:30:26.180 My pleasure,증ran.

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Western Standard - July 09, 2024

Justin Trudeau's long goodbye...

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