Western Standard - 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 of the

00:00:21.280 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.

00:00:33.400 These days, as co-founder of Pendulum Group, he's a political consultant in Ottawa.

00:00:39.420 Welcome to the show, Yaroslav.

00:00:41.820 Always good to be here, Nigel. Thanks.

00:00:44.320 Oh, good. Yaroslav, in just a week, conservatives from all across Canada will be gathering in

00:00:49.420 Calgary for the party's leadership review. Nobody seems to think Pierre Poitier's job

00:00:54.480 his leader is in jeopardy, but conservatives are paying $1,000 plus hotels, airfares, and bar tabs

00:01:01.940 to be here. So if it's not the leadership, what are the issues here for conservatives?

00:01:08.640 Well, I mean, I wouldn't agree that it's not just leadership because the leadership vote is going to

00:01:13.420 be probably the highlight of the weekend. It's going to be happening on the first evening of

00:01:17.720 the convention, and it's probably going to be the thing that at least that the media hones in on.

00:01:22.080 I haven't heard too many people paying too much attention to what the resolutions are for policy or party bylaw changes.

00:01:29.560 Everybody's really focused on the leadership.

00:01:32.120 But like in every convention, there's a lot of housekeeping that gets done, too.

00:01:36.240 They usually refresh the Constitution.

00:01:38.500 They tweak some bylaws and they pass policy recommendations from all over the country.

00:01:43.440 But I think the focus that we're going to see is going to be a message of unity.

00:01:48.720 conservatives as you note are coming together from across the whole country um and you know

00:01:56.720 since mr polly it became leader uh the conservative movement has grown it's strengthened and the

00:02:03.040 coalition has expanded uh witness the results of the last election uh actually can you remind us

00:02:09.440 of those era stuff yeah sure i mean yeah yeah i mean in the last uh in the last election mr polly

00:02:16.560 Poeliev, one of the conservative party under his leadership, received 41.5% of the popular vote.

00:02:24.720 As you noted, Nigel, I used to advise Mr. Harper.

00:02:28.960 He would have given his kidney for that kind of result, the kind of vote percentage that Mr. Poeliev got in the last election.

00:02:36.360 All parties dream about getting 41.5% because it translates not only into victory, but into a strong majority government.

00:02:46.560 under normal circumstances.

00:02:48.480 So the real story of the last election

00:02:51.700 was the implosion of the NDP, period.

00:02:55.280 That's what rewired the game

00:02:57.200 and meant that even with 41.5%,

00:03:00.800 huge voter support,

00:03:02.580 the Conservatives did not form government.

00:03:04.680 And I will eat my shirt,

00:03:06.540 I will eat my sweater

00:03:07.380 if that phenomenon repeats itself next time.

00:03:10.820 I think the NDP is going to rebound

00:03:12.420 in reaction to what they're seeing

00:03:15.000 from the Carney government.

00:03:16.560 We're not going to see the left coalesce around Mr. Carney again.

00:03:20.800 And that means that if Mr. Paulyov continues to lead with principle to demonstrate strong leadership,

00:03:28.400 if he maintains the support that he got last time into the next election, he will be the next Prime Minister of Canada.

00:03:33.680 That's a very interesting analysis.

00:03:35.780 Why would the NDP not cluster around Mr. Carney if their failure to do so would put Mr. Polioff in office again?

00:03:48.920 That sounds unlikely.

00:03:52.820 Can you flesh that out a little bit?

00:03:54.500 Yeah, look, I mean, the NDP and NDP voters are no strangers to strategic voting.

00:04:00.400 But in the next election, they're going to see genuine opportunity.

00:04:04.520 So it's not going to be just a question of, oh, we're going to be the kingmakers.

00:04:08.320 We're going to be hopefully a strong third party or anything like that.

00:04:12.280 They're going to see a genuine opportunity to grow because they see Mr. Carney having repositioned the liberals to the center.

00:04:20.920 Some would argue to the center right.

00:04:22.920 And the left feels betrayed.

00:04:25.200 Public service jobs are being cut by the thousands.

00:04:28.120 Progressives, capital P, so-called progressives, feel homeless.

00:04:32.440 And when the NDP elected a new leader in March,

00:04:36.840 I am convinced that we're going to see a normalization of Canadian politics

00:04:41.320 and a pretty strong resurgence for the NDP.

00:04:45.020 It's the voice of the left.

00:04:47.020 Okay.

00:04:47.680 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.

00:04:54.040 Are any of them coming with malice in their hearts?

00:04:57.140 You know what it's like trying to keep Conservatives together?

00:05:00.340 Well, yeah.

00:05:01.120 Any strong, successful party with a track record of success also has a degree of impatience.

00:05:10.920 Conservatives will not wait around forever if they feel that their dogs can't hunt.

00:05:16.400 Same is true for the Liberals.

00:05:18.440 But the evidence is that Mr. Paliyev can hunt.

00:05:22.460 Again, look at the results of the last election.

00:05:25.040 Look at how he continues to lead.

00:05:27.300 And he's a trailblazer in terms of putting issues on the agenda that genuinely connects with voters or that mirror the true preoccupations of voters.

00:05:40.360 He was talking about things like the cost of living well before it was on anybody else's radar.

00:05:46.180 In fact, the establishment in Ottawa was kind of laughing at him, thinking, what planet is this guy on talking about inflation?

00:05:53.460 like you know whatever fast forward a year everybody's talking about inflation everybody's

00:05:58.520 talking about the cost of living you know time and time again he's demonstrated you know on crime

00:06:02.620 on uh fixing the immigration system on on national security he tends to be a trailblazer

00:06:08.600 he's got his finger on the pulse so what does he have to score to win was 80 support sufficient

00:06:15.820 you know i'm not sure that there's a particular number um there's no you know there's no magical

00:06:24.480 number on the books in terms of the party constitution or anything like that um so there's

00:06:30.860 no there's no number he quote-unquote needs to get although i know many in the media are going

00:06:37.240 to hone in on that point but it's an arbitrary and academic point at best i'm not going to guess

00:06:43.460 whether he gets 75 or 80 or 85 or whatever.

00:06:46.500 But the real question, I think, will be the mood.

00:06:49.080 What's the mood in the room?

00:06:50.920 Will there be a strong showing of support?

00:06:53.480 And I think there will be.

00:06:55.460 There's nobody else agitating in the wings.

00:06:58.140 There's no alternative leader trying to build support.

00:07:00.440 And that, in and of itself, is a reflection of party unity.

00:07:07.040 Good.

00:07:08.180 Mr. Carney's speech to the World Economic Forum.

00:07:12.680 uh laid out an uninspiring vision of how the world's also rands could compete for third

00:07:17.960 place in the emerging multipolar world that he foresees how would you advise

00:07:25.400 mr polio to respond to that speech well first of all i'm not sure mr polio would have gone

00:07:34.760 to the world economic forum uh so he wouldn't he certainly wouldn't be responding or giving

00:07:40.920 an alternative speech there in person it's not exactly on brand for him but you know hey given

00:07:46.780 the global context and given the fact that mr trump attended and everybody wants to bend his

00:07:51.020 ear maybe he maybe he would have gone i don't know but i'm not sure there there is much to say

00:07:56.260 in response you know mr carney laid out really you know the world as it is as it really is i think

00:08:02.700 that was the point of his speech and you know he made a number of true points that we need to move

00:08:07.740 away from our naivete of the past and accept, you know, the real power dynamics in the world

00:08:16.100 might actually is right, whether or not we like that and whining about it doesn't do a thing

00:08:23.220 to help Canada. He also made the point that we need to keep diversifying and investing in security

00:08:29.100 in order to put actions behind words like sovereignty. And, you know, I actually quite

00:08:36.040 liked his point that many countries are being performative when they talk about sovereignty

00:08:40.240 while actually capitulating to pressure from Washington, even though he didn't actually

00:08:44.160 mention Washington by name. But that's why the Conservatives have always said that we need to

00:08:51.180 get serious about national defense. The Conservatives have always said that we need to be

00:08:55.920 serious about security, about maintaining confidence in our immigration system by

00:09:00.700 not being irresponsible in the way we structure and run it by partnering with allies and like-minded

00:09:06.900 countries not just the biggest you know international clubs that we can find so i agree

00:09:13.580 with you the speech wasn't inspiring it was sobering if anything but you know that doesn't

00:09:18.880 mean its contents weren't true it seemed like he was playing catch-up to a lot of the stuff

00:09:22.460 that conservatives have been saying for years well he certainly was although i don't think we've ever

00:09:27.760 put it quite the way he did. Perhaps for that particular audience, the bureaucrat ease of

00:09:34.880 variable geometry, plurilateralism, the gains from transactionalism,

00:09:41.360 the architecture of collective problem solving, what's a hyperscaler?

00:09:47.600 Yeah, I don't know what a hyperscaler is, and I'm not sure that I would have written a speech

00:09:52.800 for a prime minister that starts by quoting uh thucydides but you know that's mr carney style

00:09:59.680 that's the you know that's the the company he travels in and you know maybe you know maybe

00:10:05.120 and maybe for the devil set that place um i i personally prefer to see leaders make speeches

00:10:13.840 that their true audiences their own voters can relate to and uh you know that they can resonate

00:10:20.560 with people, if people are worried about

00:10:22.560 paying their mortgages, if people

00:10:24.600 are worried about the price

00:10:26.500 of bread.

00:10:28.640 My advice, and look, Nigel,

00:10:31.100 you've been a

00:10:32.560 professional speechwriter, and I might add

00:10:34.500 one of the best I've ever seen. I'm sure

00:10:36.620 that you also wouldn't have

00:10:37.780 stylistically employed the same

00:10:40.540 kind of rhetoric and the same kind of focus that we

00:10:42.500 saw in Mr. Carney's speech, but focused

00:10:44.460 much more on practical issues that

00:10:46.520 Canadians are preoccupied with.

00:10:48.240 Well, certainly my wife would have mocked me if I had, you know, I'd give it to her and say, I'm going to put this up to the boss, you know, what do you think? She would have probably told me to change the language a bit. While you were speaking, I looked up what a hyperscaler is, by the way, and that's a reference to the big tech companies, the AI people, you know, the invidias of the world and so forth.

00:11:12.300 I don't understand how they put the word together

00:11:15.080 but that's what it is anyway

00:11:16.220 so between the hegemons in China and the US 1.00

00:11:19.380 they've all got a piece of this

00:11:22.240 yeah if Mr. Carney goes into the next election

00:11:25.500 with that kind of lexicon

00:11:28.560 in his thumb speeches

00:11:30.260 then he's probably going to have some problems

00:11:32.080 and your wife would be absolutely correct

00:11:35.240 in mocking you

00:11:36.000 if she proposed a speech threat

00:11:40.240 yeah exactly

00:11:42.180 Huddy, should I open it up with Thucydides' quote or maybe Herodotus?

00:11:47.340 What do you think?

00:11:49.140 I will say this.

00:11:50.500 As an exercise in speech writing, and we're getting a long way from the conservatives here,

00:11:54.640 but he did follow the classic Aristotelian framework for his speech.

00:11:59.400 You know, he introduced his subject.

00:12:00.980 He presented his evidence.

00:12:02.280 He made the argument.

00:12:04.040 And then he finished fairly strong.

00:12:06.340 So as an exercise in speech writing, it's good.

00:12:09.560 But the technical proficiency of it and the vocabulary that he used really identifies who Mr. Carney is.

00:12:17.900 And he ain't one of us.

00:12:21.080 So I would want to ask you, do you think that, in fact, he is a closet conservative?

00:12:26.720 He's taken lots of Mr. Poilier's ideas and run with them and done very well with them.

00:12:32.000 And do you think that's where his comfort level is?

00:12:33.640 look you know what i i think there's a fair argument to be made that he is a closet

00:12:39.420 you know variety of conservative uh maybe sort of a a closet classical tory if you will

00:12:47.580 sort of comfortable on bay street comfortable um you know presenting uh you know quarterly

00:12:55.460 earnings reports that sort of thing um and you know that's reflected in his uh in his

00:13:01.260 verbiage in a speech. It's the kind of language that was probably fairly familiar to the actual

00:13:07.820 people in the room, the billionaire corporate set who was in the room listening to a speech

00:13:13.560 at Davos. I think that conservatism has evolved quite a bit in Canada. It's always been a coalition

00:13:20.440 of different groups. And I would also posit that that's likely why Mr. Kvalyev has been successful

00:13:28.580 as a conservative leader he doesn't belong squarely to any one of the factions or groups

00:13:34.660 within the conservative tent he's sort of a cross-pollinated kind of function of all of them

00:13:39.980 you know he's comfortable speaking with um with social conservatives he's comfortable speaking

00:13:45.860 with uh democratic reformers he's comfortable speaking with uh um what you know with with uh

00:13:53.380 you know sort of a populist uh resonant you know uh what's you know what's on the mind of your

00:13:59.100 barber or your cab driver or your small business owner and and that's that's certainly mr pauliev's

00:14:05.000 recipe for success um i would say that he is uh he's a bit more of a pan conservative than

00:14:10.760 you know whatever variety mr carney might be which might be a sort of a downtown toronto bay street

00:14:17.020 type. Yes. Well, let's say for the sake of argument that Mr. Carney is sort of something

00:14:27.400 of a conservative, then how is that going to affect his relationship with the NDP?

00:14:39.160 That's precisely why I think the NDP is set for a strong rebound in the coming

00:14:46.380 months or years

00:14:48.780 if it is that long

00:14:50.460 because many

00:14:52.680 people in the Liberal Party

00:14:54.520 itself are quietly grumbling

00:14:56.180 that they don't recognize their party

00:14:58.720 anymore, that their

00:14:59.960 leadership has deviated

00:15:02.480 far more

00:15:03.080 towards an

00:15:06.560 economic and business preoccupation

00:15:08.660 that they're comfortable with. They feel that

00:15:10.340 social justice and environment

00:15:12.500 are being sacrificed, etc.

00:15:14.060 etc etc so if liberals are are muttering that way then certainly new democrats feel that they

00:15:21.160 no longer can morally justify parking their conscience and and casting their vote for the

00:15:27.040 liberals i i think that that mr carney's repositioning of his party is ultimately

00:15:31.980 going to be his own downfall he's trying to appeal to a broad swath of conservative and

00:15:38.060 liberal vote switchers but i'm not sure that that's going to hold in the end you've got the

00:15:42.720 real deal of conservatives on one end and a revamped left that can actually be true to itself

00:15:48.520 on the other end. And Mr. Carney might end up squeezing himself out of a political home.

00:15:55.080 Well, that does bear very much on the possibility of an election this year. There's a lot of

00:16:03.600 speculation that Mr. Carney, in order to get a majority, that he feels he needs to advance his

00:16:10.940 his agenda will bring about the circumstances, but is that actually going to work?

00:16:21.720 He got elected on the basis of the NDP coming to his support.

00:16:26.620 If he alienates the NDP, then it's back to him against the conservatives and he running

00:16:34.200 on a conservative platform.

00:16:36.560 Can you put that together for us?

00:16:39.120 What should we be watching for during the convention?

00:16:43.900 Well, it's not just the convention.

00:16:47.000 I think it's the next few months that are going to be really telling.

00:16:51.180 Mr. Carney spent the end of 2025 aggressively trying to get a majority by stealth, trying

00:16:56.700 to get floor crossers, and you got two.

00:17:01.100 I don't think that there are more waiting in the wings.

00:17:02.920 This is not the kind of thing that you can strategically stage or we're going to announce

00:17:06.580 so-and-so in you know mid-february or anything like that it's too risky it's too slippery so

00:17:12.320 when you've got somebody when you've got a we've got a live fish on your you know on the end of

00:17:16.600 your poll you reel it in right away so i don't think that there that there's any anybody else

00:17:21.160 crossing the floor that's going to give him that majority and i think he desperately all the signs

00:17:26.040 are that he desperately wants one he doesn't seem to be that capable of governing at least in

00:17:31.780 parliament without a majority. His legislative progress has been really, really weak, like

00:17:37.840 really weak, weaker than I've ever, ever seen, uh, for any government. And he, he's, he's going

00:17:43.600 to try hard to get a majority. If he can't get it through floor crossings, I think he'll be

00:17:46.860 strongly, strongly tempted to call an early election. And, um, given, given that the North

00:17:53.340 American free trade agreement renegotiation or, or, or refresh exercise is going to be starting

00:17:58.380 this summer, it's going to give him all the pretext he needs. You're an old watcher of

00:18:04.400 politics, Nigel. You know that typically a prime minister announces a reason. And as long as it's

00:18:09.700 a reasonably plausible excuse, then you get away with it. So I could absolutely see him saying,

00:18:18.320 we're going into the negotiation of our lifetime with the Kuzma re-evaluation, and I need a

00:18:25.760 refresh mandate specifically for this i need a stronger hand so uh so i'm going to go to the

00:18:31.520 polls i would not be surprised at all to see that happen for say maybe a june election or

00:18:36.180 june july election i think oh you think that late i i was uh when i was thinking about it i

00:18:42.780 was looking at the ndp i think their leadership vote is at the end of march they need to have

00:18:49.280 somebody in place by then what why would you wait any longer well um the closer you get to summer

00:18:56.960 the closer you get to the beginning of the kuzma the free trade agreement renegotiation that the

00:19:03.200 the more the more credible your pretext is so people aren't really going to be thinking about

00:19:09.000 it necessarily in april they certainly will be in june but you know the time is going to be variable

00:19:13.140 and he's going to be watching the polls and right now he's doing well the polls the liberals and

00:19:17.160 conservatives are basically neck and neck depending on which poll you look at and he's not

00:19:24.280 i i can see him not quite realizing in time that the ndp is going to be a threat but once you

00:19:29.240 once the election campaign gets underway people start to pay attention they start to match their

00:19:34.520 own values and their own conscience to an electoral option and the ndp is going to rebound the

00:19:41.480 conservatives are going to hold strong and it's going to be really competitive so what do you

00:19:46.920 think is possible for him to do in the next five months, during which he's got to occupy,

00:19:52.600 you know, you've got to make headlines, he's got to be there and occupy the space.

00:19:56.200 What could he actually achieve? There is a number of controversial bills out there.

00:20:01.320 C9, for example, there's a lot of people talking about that. C2 as well, which...

00:20:07.320 Yeah, the border security bill, yeah.

00:20:09.720 Where's his priority going to be?

00:20:12.200 you honestly i think his his his priority is going to be on foreign policy i think we're going to see

00:20:19.160 a lot of foreign travel a lot of foreign visits a lot of foreign speeches a lot of announcements

00:20:24.200 about new free trade negotiations with this country or that country you know we saw indonesia

00:20:28.600 for example in the fall and we got some negotiations underway with india and so on

00:20:33.640 he he is strong in that kind of an environment it plays to his strength but actually getting

00:20:39.400 stuff done in parliament that's probably his his weakest suit because he doesn't seem to be capable

00:20:45.540 of of managing parliament well so i yeah i don't i don't think that we're going to see a lot happen

00:20:51.120 in parliament i think it's going to be largely continuation of what we saw last year i mean last

00:20:54.760 year um between uh parliament opening up and summer they passed one bill i'm pulling aside

00:21:01.960 supply bills you know the kind of stuff that finances you know keeps the lights on keeps

00:21:06.240 people paid uh they um out of like substance bills they passed one bill in the spring and

00:21:12.240 one bill in the fall i've i've never seen that you know that week a legislative record like it's

00:21:17.920 it's almost stupefying maybe he should call a meeting of european heads of state and uh

00:21:23.740 somewhere in greenland that's but that's the kind of thing i think we will see from him

00:21:28.680 because it's the kind of thing he doesn't need parliament you know a competent parliamentary

00:21:34.040 country management to do. You can announce meetings or announce the tours and give speeches and get

00:21:40.300 global audiences. So he's probably going to play to his strength. We're going to hear a lot of

00:21:43.900 foreign policy and trade policy and very little, I think, getting gun in parliament.

00:21:48.480 To be honest, Yaroslav, if I expected anybody to show up in Greenland and make a speech,

00:21:53.340 it wouldn't be Mr. Carney. It would be Mr. Trump. But we'll see how that whole thing develops.

00:21:58.360 We are out of time. Did you want to comment on that before we say farewell?

00:22:04.040 Well, Greenland is quickly eclipsing everything else as the issue.

00:22:12.080 It's certainly eclipsing the Canada-U.S. trade negotiations or trade relationship.

00:22:20.360 Globally, it's becoming the number one issue.

00:22:22.580 Unfortunately, I think it's taking the spotlight away from Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.

00:22:29.700 Greenland is the central focus.

00:22:31.460 We're probably going to hear a whole heck of a lot more about it in the coming months.

00:22:36.360 It's the darndest thing that that speech, whether it was a good speech or a poorly written one,

00:22:43.080 was all about the United States walking away from the so-called rules-based order.

00:22:50.300 There was no mention of the fact that Russia and China walked away from it about 30 years ago.

00:22:54.520 So I do find that when we're talking about that speech that he made in Davos,

00:23:01.200 the logical inconsistency there.

00:23:04.820 Yaroslav, I think you're coming to town for the convention.

00:23:07.800 We hope we see you there.

00:23:09.360 And thank you for taking the time to talk with me this evening.

00:23:13.420 Always a pleasure, Nigel, and I look forward to seeing you in Calgary.

00:23:17.700 Thank you so much.

00:23:19.180 For The Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.

00:23:24.520 Thank you.

Western Standard - January 23, 2026

Spring election and a change of government？ It could happen

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