Western Standard - No fear, no surrender, Poilievre not going anywhere

00:00:00.000 Mark Carney has three passports, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, a globalist with

00:00:12.280 options. He hasn't seen Canada in a decade, calls himself a European, not a Canadian.

00:00:23.160 Told U.S. Congress last year, he's a Brit. He's back to lord over you.

00:00:30.000 Canada's not his home, it's his throne.

00:00:51.480 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show.

00:00:56.000 It is Thursday, May the 1st.

00:00:57.760 On our minds tonight is what's next for Canada's Conservatives.

00:01:02.520 Since 2011, they have never won more seats in Parliament than they did on Monday,

00:01:07.480 and with 41% of the popular vote any party leader would expect to be Prime Minister.

00:01:13.240 But thanks to the migration of the NDP vote to the Liberals,

00:01:16.680 Pierre Polyev is not Prime Minister.

00:01:20.380 In fact, he lost his seat.

00:01:22.820 With me tonight to talk about these things is Ginny Roth.

00:01:25.740 She is a partner at Crestview Strategies, former communications director for the party, and a long-time Poilier of Interpreter.

00:01:35.340 Good evening, Jenny.

00:01:37.040 Lovely to be here, Nigel.

00:01:38.940 Very nice to have you. Thank you for taking the time.

00:01:41.240 Jenny, there's a lot of talk about here in Western Canada, in Calgary, in the circles in which we move, about how Mr. Poilier will now have to face a leadership review.

00:01:51.800 Does he have the support to stay as leader?

00:01:55.740 Yes, much more so, historically so, I would say. If you look at the last two leaders and Aaron O'Toole and Andrew Scheer, people might remember they had to go to many ballots to win their leadership race. I mean, they just barely won the leadership race.

00:02:10.280 They then, you know, maybe more members fell in behind them and supported them as they went on. But when they lost, they really had to confront some members who were already displeased with them and just were not predisposed to be big fans.

00:02:23.320 Pahliev is sort of in the opposite situation. He has a strong hold on the membership. They're all

00:02:29.860 naturally big fans of his. There will be people who will certainly be disappointed with the results.

00:02:34.820 But I think that there's quite a bit of unanimity, both in the membership and in the party caucus,

00:02:40.900 in the parliamentary caucus, that he is just the best chance we have at winning the next election.

00:02:45.720 And that he grew the coalition, he increased the vote share, he increased the seat count.

00:02:51.040 And so, you know, the wrinkle of him having lost his own seat is unhelpful, certainly.

00:02:56.640 It allows for a media narrative that's a bit more negative.

00:02:59.340 But I don't think that will ultimately be something that undermines him with the membership,

00:03:03.540 which feels actually, I think, quite energized and excited about getting to the next election.

00:03:10.280 Certainly, when you see some of those vast rallies that he assembled,

00:03:14.140 it's hard to imagine how that level of support could just melt away in a moment.

00:03:18.820 uh jenny where when is the uh leadership review as i understand it there is one uh scheduled uh

00:03:27.320 at a convention in the fall i think it's september um and i think if i were probably

00:03:32.260 i would really welcome that you know i would sort of say um you know we shouldn't try to delay this

00:03:37.200 we've got a mandated process in our constitution the members should always have their say and i

00:03:41.940 really look forward to a leadership review because i'm just confident i'm going to i'm going to do

00:03:46.320 well and i'm going to give a strong endorsement from the membership um i think that that presents

00:03:50.620 a kind of a confidence um and uh and the comfort that that the members will support him um and it

00:03:56.840 gives him some time to kind of speak to caucus speak to canadians um maybe maybe you know talk

00:04:03.260 about what was successful and maybe potentially talk about areas for improvement and there and

00:04:07.260 ways that we can maybe do better next time do you think do you think he can get a seat between now

00:04:12.900 and then? I don't know that he could get a seat between now and then, in part because the prime

00:04:19.280 minister gets to control the timing of the by-election. And if I were the prime minister,

00:04:23.980 I would say, you know, what would Pierre Polyev do for me if I was trying to get a seat in that

00:04:27.740 house of commons? And I don't, I think he would be right in suggesting that Polyev would not give 0.98

00:04:31.400 him any grace. And so I don't expect, and I think Polyev should plan that the liberal to the prime

00:04:37.000 minister will make the timing as difficult for him as possible. And I believe they don't have

00:04:42.180 have a by-election until six months after a vacancy so um so there they could drag that out i think

00:04:48.100 it's fine um because polyev can appoint someone to lead question period in the house of commons

00:04:54.660 uh he can still talk to media in ottawa the way he would after question period working the leader in

00:04:59.540 the house of commons and he can tour canada he can meet with numbers he can meet with canadians

00:05:04.340 he can host rallies he can do everything else he would do as a leader he could post social media

00:05:07.860 videos etc okay well that's uh any ideas who might volunteer to take one for the team

00:05:15.620 i don't know there have been some rumblings about alberta uh you know he has quite a deep

00:05:19.860 connection to calgary having grown up uh in the city uh and calgary also has the benefit of being

00:05:25.780 a safer um environment in the city for for conservatives there are parts of calgary as

00:05:30.100 you know that are very safe territory for conservatives um someone will have to give

00:05:34.660 up a seat uh you know they it'll have to be done voluntarily he's not going to make someone do it

00:05:39.460 uh i think someone would have to come forward and think it makes sense you know maybe maybe there

00:05:43.700 are some mps who were giving it one last shot thinking i'll get i'll get to be part of a

00:05:48.260 governing caucus who are now a little bit disappointed and ready to move on um i don't

00:05:52.500 know i don't know i'm sure these conversations are happening behind the scenes um my hope for

00:05:56.900 him is that he gets a strong conservative seat so that he can have the support there build some

00:06:01.940 relationships there do some constituency work but mainly focus on trying to lead the conservatives

00:06:06.260 across the whole country jenny before we examine the entrails of the campaign itself a lot of you

00:06:13.380 you're right that he has a very large following here in calorie can you just tell people who are

00:06:18.900 concerned about him personally how he's doing and he and anna they have to move out of stornoway i

00:06:23.460 guess so there's lots of things happening all at once i think they will have to look we're only

00:06:28.020 three days from the election um and this is a guy who goes non-stop um i don't know if you i think

00:06:36.100 you know him a little bit and you know he's almost he's a borderline workaholic and for those who saw

00:06:41.780 some of the video footage from the last rally he had at home in ottawa before election day uh they

00:06:48.500 looked they looked exhausted and almost emotional um and who can blame them uh you know i would be

00:06:54.100 too. And so I think they're trying to get some rest. But he's still working, you know, I think

00:06:59.300 he's basically spending all day on the phone with supporters, with members of caucus, trying to talk

00:07:04.460 about trying to gather insights on how people felt the election went. I think he's meeting with his

00:07:09.240 advisors, he's giving a lot of thought to all of this. And as I understand it, caucus is likely to

00:07:15.340 meet next week in Ottawa, there's there's orientation for new members of Parliament, so that's a natural

00:07:20.200 time to do it. And I imagine the public will be hearing a bit more from Pollyov around that time

00:07:24.920 as well. I wouldn't be surprised if he sort of speaks to the plans nearly up to the next election.

00:07:31.320 Maybe there'll be some sort of review that's undertaken to look at ways the party can do even

00:07:35.760 better. I think he does need to do that, by the way. I think he needs to sort of take some

00:07:40.120 accountability for not having won. He should dwell on the successes, certainly, but he should

00:07:44.900 also take some accountability for not having won and maybe gesture at some openness to change.

00:07:50.760 and to evolution. Knowing him, even though he probably needs a lot of rest, I actually imagine

00:07:57.400 he's not taking much because he cannot sit still for very long.

00:08:01.160 Yes. Well, look, that actually segues into where I wanted to take you next, and that is

00:08:07.800 what went wrong. I know Trump appeared on the scene, but Trump will all be over in months as

00:08:13.880 far as things will get resolved one way or the other. Once they're resolved, then we're back to

00:08:19.560 dealing with the same things, young people who can't afford homes, haven't got jobs, older people 0.95

00:08:25.480 fighting with inflation, all the same problems that we went in. So there were some people who

00:08:31.560 thought that he should have become a militant anti-Trumper. He didn't. He said what he needed

00:08:37.800 to say, I think, but he focused on those same issues that were there before and that will be

00:08:43.560 there again. I didn't think he made a mistake, but you're saying there are elements where he

00:08:49.720 needs to take accountability. So what are they? Yeah, I agree with your assessment, by the way.

00:08:55.720 I think it's very simplistic and not good analysis to say, well, he should have talked about Trump

00:09:01.160 every day, or he should have been very hardline about Trump and talked about him every day.

00:09:05.080 I think had he done that, he would have accepted that as the ballot question,

00:09:10.120 And voters would have chosen Mark Carney as their preference for that question.

00:09:16.100 Instead, he sort of, he addressed the Trump issue.

00:09:21.180 He presented his plan, but he spent more time talking about cost of living and crime,

00:09:26.320 two major areas of contrast where he and Carney are different

00:09:29.060 and where voters were, I think, much more motivated to vote for him

00:09:32.200 if they felt like he was right on those issues.

00:09:34.200 I think that was like basically the way to go.

00:09:36.440 And I would say, I think strategically, the campaign was almost right on the money.

00:09:40.120 I think it was very well done. The areas for improvement that I see are on the sort of tactical operational side of things. For instance, you know, thousands and thousands of Canadians showed up to these rallies. And these were not people who'd been Conservative Party members before, maybe not even Conservative voters before, maybe not even voters at all before.

00:09:59.700 And they had a real emotional connection to Polyev, a real connection to the issues, people who showed up at rallies and also people who engaged with his social media content.

00:10:09.660 I'd like to see more thought go into over the long term.

00:10:13.480 How do you convert those people into activists and volunteers?

00:10:16.640 How do you get them to join their writing association?

00:10:18.460 How do you get them to show up on E-Day and poll vote like we all do, those of us who have been activists for years?

00:10:24.620 How do we how do we how do we get them to get their friends to show up?

00:10:27.560 How do we basically convert those rally goers and voters and, you know, give them credit?

00:10:33.200 They didn't just show up rallies. They definitely voted. But how do we get them to volunteer?

00:10:37.460 How do we get their manpower on Election Day? How do we nominate candidates sooner so that we can have more candidates identifying more vote at the doors and then getting out the vote on Election Day?

00:10:51.220 These are problems, I should say, that plague all political parties.

00:10:54.000 political parties just in 2025, they just can't get enough volunteers, they can't get enough

00:10:58.060 activists. But I think we have an opportunity that the other parties don't, and that we have this

00:11:02.800 movement that Polyev has built. So converting that movement into a machine, a political machine,

00:11:09.320 I think is like the biggest area for growth and opportunity.

00:11:14.080 Right. Given that the NDP collapsed almost entirely, is there actually anything

00:11:23.600 that a cleverer, smarter critic

00:11:27.400 might have been able to do

00:11:28.900 that the campaign didn't do?

00:11:33.240 Well, you make a good point.

00:11:35.480 So there are a lot of areas of the country

00:11:37.500 where the Conservative number

00:11:39.440 is higher than it's ever been.

00:11:41.220 But because the NDP number was so low,

00:11:43.780 so historically low,

00:11:45.120 the Liberals still beat us

00:11:46.060 because the NDP collapsed almost entirely

00:11:48.340 in some writings to the Liberals.

00:11:50.580 Having said that,

00:11:51.480 The NDP collapse is also attributable to many NDP voters voting Conservative.

00:11:58.440 So whether it's Windsor or Hamilton, Ontario, or more blue-collar working-class parts of the province, or North Vancouver Island.

00:12:08.060 Also, you know, more natural resources, fishing community, blue-collar type Conservatives who are worried about drugs and crime.

00:12:16.140 These are many voters who went from the NDP to the Conservatives.

00:12:20.300 And I see that as a huge opportunity.

00:12:22.460 I also think it's a good reason why we shouldn't hang our future hopes on some hope that the NDP will do better, because we want to keep those voters.

00:12:31.220 And so we really have to think about how do we go from 42% to 46%, 47% in a potentially almost a two-party system.

00:12:38.940 I think the number is 49.3%.

00:12:41.140 Yeah, sure, sure.

00:12:42.520 Now, look, we may get lucky, right?

00:12:44.540 The NDP are likely at a low watermark historically.

00:12:47.520 You know, if they get a new leader and that leader gets some engaging media, they may pick up a few points.

00:12:52.720 And if they do, I think it will be at the expense of the Liberals.

00:12:55.040 That's great. I hope that happens.

00:12:57.860 But we need to build a sort of like a 50% plus one style movement, to your point, or 49.3%,

00:13:04.980 because that, to me, is the more durable way of building a long-term coalition that can succeed in a potentially two-party system.

00:13:13.180 Certainly, I think it's pretty possible to hang on to some of those blue-collar NDP supporters.

00:13:19.500 They are actually true conservatives in the sense that they don't want anything to change.

00:13:24.460 They've got things the way they want them, and that's Vancouver Island. I happened to be there

00:13:29.740 when the Reform Party was becoming established, and people were coming across from the NDP to

00:13:36.620 join hands with conservatives who were fed up, and that's how the Reform Party started out there.

00:13:41.900 Same thing is possible today, I do believe. This is a touchy subject because it's got to do with

00:13:54.700 the internal struggles of the Conservative Party. We've seen this every decade that

00:14:00.220 Conservatives would rather fight with each other than the Liberals. You have this bizarre

00:14:04.700 situation that there's bad blood between the Polyariv campaign and the people who work for

00:14:11.820 Doug Ford. And the only explanation I've seen in print is that, oh, well, somebody said something

00:14:17.780 nasty to somebody else and everybody took umbrage. And then with that, they started to bring down

00:14:23.280 the person most likely to replace the liberals after 10 years of misrule. That doesn't make

00:14:28.620 much sense to me. What do you think happened there? You know, I think conservatives care

00:14:34.120 more. And that's why we have these fights. Really, I think there's more substance to the

00:14:40.100 disagreement, as you implied. And I think it started at the tail end of COVID, when many of

00:14:47.760 us were saying that some of the restrictions were just too significant. And indeed, Polyev was,

00:14:53.560 I think, quite successful in his leadership campaign, in part because he questioned a lot

00:14:57.760 the remaining discriminatory restrictions. And in hindsight, it seems like most people agree that

00:15:04.800 we shouldn't have had kids out of school for so long, etc. And the Ford government was quite a

00:15:10.400 bit more dogmatic about keeping things shut down, about restrictions, etc. And I think that that was

00:15:16.560 sort of the beginning of the disagreements. And then over time, you had, you know, people like

00:15:22.000 Jamil Javani and others who were drawn to the Federal Conservative Party around a lot of the

00:15:26.400 anti-woke stuff. And PolyEv was very committed as well to coming out against DEI and the federal

00:15:33.940 government, cutting funding for universities that pursue this ridiculous ideology, etc.

00:15:39.780 And you just didn't see the same thing happening in Ontario, despite us having a majority government

00:15:45.240 there. Us meaning conservatives, like ostensibly conservatives are in control in Ontario and have

00:15:50.480 been for some time, and yet you don't see progress on some of these issues. And so I think there are

00:15:54.500 genuine ideological differences. Ultimately, I think probably did become personal, as many of

00:16:00.280 these things do. And I hope that we can continue to disagree on the key policy areas, because that

00:16:07.060 is, you know, a substantive area where you want to tell the orders where you stand. And if it's

00:16:11.560 different from others, you should make that clear. But the sort of like added personal stuff is

00:16:17.720 probably not necessary and probably not additive to a big coalition. And so I hope that part can

00:16:22.720 kind of be put to bed and we can stick to the issues.

00:16:25.040 Well, I guess we all held that, but you make a very good point. There were people saying

00:16:29.460 before the election that although the Liberal Party called itself Liberal, it didn't look

00:16:34.200 like any Liberal Party that we'd ever seen prior to the Stephen Harper government. It

00:16:40.400 seemed much more like an NDP government, but I don't think even the NDP was always quite

00:16:48.060 that crazy that's right um at any rate and so now we've got a what have we got in ontario a

00:16:54.700 conservative party that's not it's sort of a populist centrist party i would say like i don't

00:17:00.340 know that there is much of a core worldview there um or a set of objectives this is a i mean this

00:17:07.720 is it's a it's an old thing when it is actually conservatives who want to change things

00:17:11.740 how do we how do you market the idea of being a conservative and wanting to reform everything

00:17:17.480 you see in front of you reform i think is the right word um and i think the way you know the

00:17:22.120 the rationale for me because i i am a conservative and i sort of have this like intuitive uh fall

00:17:28.520 back to common sense and to not wanting to disrupt uh etc but i think the reality is when you apply

00:17:35.720 that uh worldview to a country that's been under not just as you say liberal but pretty hard left

00:17:42.920 progressive rule for a decade um that is so that that has uh it has moved so far away from common

00:17:50.920 sense that there is a sense that reform is needed in order to restore um like i think of it more as

00:17:56.680 restoration than i do reform um towards some brave new future i think it's much more about

00:18:01.720 a return to common sense but that but that requires reform um do you make do you jenny do

00:18:08.040 Do you make a connection between this intra-party spat, between that and somebody's bold leadership

00:18:16.640 aspirations, who may even have engineered the situation to weaken Poliev so that somebody

00:18:23.360 else could step up and claim the leadership?

00:18:27.320 You know, I honestly don't know.

00:18:29.800 When I don't see an obvious rationale behind someone's behavior, I sometimes think,

00:18:36.840 is there something else going on here you know either in politics sometimes that looks like

00:18:40.460 ambition um or personal interest business interest whatever um but i don't know i can't i can't tell

00:18:47.020 you um you know i i don't know uh how albertans um or people at west would feel about a dud ford

00:18:53.180 uh as a federal conservative leadership candidate um i don't know how uh francophone canadians would

00:18:59.540 feel about someone who doesn't speak french you know there's a bunch of reasons why it doesn't

00:19:02.380 seen to make all that much sense to me, but you never know.

00:19:07.000 Well, you know, having editorialized for many, many decades, I have peeled back the onion

00:19:13.040 layers. 1.00

00:19:14.000 When you get right down to the bottom, you often find just plain stupidity and malice. 1.00

00:19:18.960 So it could be just nothing more than that. 1.00

00:19:21.360 But I had to ask.

00:19:22.880 I also have to ask, Mr. Carney is very, very close to a majority.

00:19:30.700 I think 172 is needed.

00:19:33.180 He has 169.

00:19:35.400 If I can ask you to do something really hard, and that is to imagine that you were advising the liberal prime minister, would you perhaps suggest he recruit a few people from the opposition?

00:19:51.900 You know, that isn't so hard.

00:19:53.040 As a consultant, I often have to put myself in the shoes of my opponents in my private life.

00:20:00.700 What I would advise is, I would say to Mark Kearney, look, you actually have three dance partners. You have NDP MPs, you have the Bloc, and you even have Conservatives. And were I him, I think I would try to approach a parliamentary agenda by having smaller bills, not these big omnibus trying to jam everything into a fall economic statement or a big budget. Obviously, you have to do those things as well.

00:20:27.320 But I would go on a case by case basis and say, who is the best dance partner for me on this legislation to advance what I want to advance? And surely he'll find it. I think on a lot of his progressive climate agenda, etc., yes, he will go to the NDP. But he may have a major project piece of legislation he wants to bring forward.

00:20:48.320 the Conservatives may feel pressure to support if they want to see major projects built.

00:20:52.300 He may have an approach to dealing with Trump that the Conservatives may feel pressure to support.

00:20:58.780 He may have other policies that the Bloc could get behind if he can't get the NDP to support him.

00:21:05.120 And the NDP, look, more often than not, I think the NDP are going to fall in with the Liberals.

00:21:08.660 But I think that if I were him, that is how I would resist being just drawn into this dynamic

00:21:13.400 where I have to move to the West, left on every issue. Now, will he do that? I'm not so

00:21:18.280 sure. I think there are a lot of people out there who think Mark Carney is this great business

00:21:22.860 liberal, Paul Martin-esque, you know, blue liberal type. And I don't think that's true. I mean, this

00:21:27.180 is a guy who wrote the book on, literally, the book on net zero, on like the radical climate

00:21:32.680 agenda. He wears an expensive suit, but that is not making business liberal. So we will see if

00:21:38.540 he takes my approach. I think more likely he will take a Trudeau-like approach of appealing to the

00:21:43.540 NDP and running as though he has a de facto majority. And I don't even think he needs to have

00:21:47.700 them switch parties to do that. I think they'll just vote with the Liberals.

00:21:51.960 So what you're really recommending is the model that Stephen Harbour used in 2006.

00:21:56.800 Exactly. Yep. I think that was wise of Harper at the time. And I think it would be wise for

00:22:00.560 Carney to do it now. I'm not sure he will. Well, fascinating insights. We're almost out of time.

00:22:07.460 And I want to thank you, Jenny, for coming on the show. Any last words?

00:22:13.340 No, all I will say is actually, I feel a lot of optimism as a conservative. Obviously,

00:22:17.160 I wanted to win the federal election. There's no question that's disappointing. But this new

00:22:21.260 coalition of voters is young and energetic and different from anything we've seen. And I think

00:22:26.980 it is more durable and easier to grow than the Liberal Coalition, which I think has hit its

00:22:31.580 ceiling. And so I hope some of your views will take some hope in that message.

00:22:36.700 Well, I have one last question from which they might derive. Do you think we'll be

00:22:40.440 going to the polls again within 12 months?

00:22:43.300 Unfortunately, I don't have a hopeful answer to that question.

00:22:45.960 I think because the NDP is so not functioning like a proper political party right now,

00:22:53.040 they're broke, they have no future, they don't have a leader.

00:22:59.700 I think for all those reasons, it'll be easy for the Liberals to pass legislation.

00:23:03.240 I don't think anyone apart from the Conservatives is going to want an election in the next couple of years.

00:23:08.580 Jenny Roth from Crestview Strategies.

00:23:10.940 thank you very much for joining the show today very much appreciate your insights

00:23:15.820 for the western standard i'm nigel hanaford

Western Standard - May 02, 2025

No fear, no surrender, Poilievre not going anywhere

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