At Issue - Pierre Poilievre returns to the House

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

At Issue special edition: Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre returns to the House of Commons after winning his Alberta by-election, facing off with Prime Minister Mark Carney for the first time in Parliament. Rosemary Barton hosts Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj.

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Tees and Cs apply. This is a CBC podcast. Hey, I'm Rosemary Barton this week on At Issue, the podcast edition, a special one for Monday, September 15th. Please forgive me for my late arrival to this session. I had some meetings with extremely important people in East Central Alberta, Mr. Speaker. I understand the leader of the opposition was busy. He missed the largest tax cut for 22 million Canadians. In the spirit of non-partisanship, we are simply going to hold this Prime Minister to his own promises.

He promised that he would spend less. He's already spending 8% more. I think if we are going to build the strongest economy in the G7, and we will, we need to be clear. We need to be clear about the scale of the crisis we are in. This week, we're asking what did we see in the much-awaited meeting between Congress? Carney and Paulyev. Are there any signs that anything has changed inside the House of Commons? So what did we learn and see in the much-awaited meeting between Karni and Paulyev, and are there signs that anything has changed inside the house? I'm Rosemary Barton, here to break it all down on that issue, Chantelli Bear, Andrew Coyne, and Althea Raj, a special mini-ad-issue.

And we've all decided collectively at a group that Althea is going to start. What did you make, Althea? This is the first time they've been in a room, probably, since the debate? How do you think they fared? Well, they have been in touch with each other. The Prime Minister said that he had spoken to Pierre Pahliav on Friday. I think they were all on their best behavior, frankly. There was a lot of, like, seizing each other up, and it was quite polite, and it wasn't like gloves off, and there was no name-calling. It was like a nice moment of civility that we don't actually often see that often in the House of Commons. Now, there was still hyperbole, of course, where the conservative say, oh, the liberals are

or they haven't changed it at all and they're still responsible for everything bad in the world and I'm not sure that you can really blame Mark Carney for that in the past six months that he's been there, but in any case,

it was, I thought, quite positive. The interesting thing that happened today, though, is I think that the liberals realized that it is not going to be a cakewalk this fall sitting because they don't have a natural dance partner. They started off with talking points that the prime minister repeated on Sunday

and that the House leader mentioned on Monday where he said that basically, you know, the premises getting along really well with the premiers across the country and stakeholders and the politicians in the opposition benches should just get along and side with the liberals. And at the end of the day, on CBC, Steve McKinn was not saying that at all. And so all the opposition parties have said today, we will support good things when we like them and we will vote against things that we don't like. and it's not clear what would be in the budget

that some people would not like and that some people would like. Was there anything in the back and forth, there, Chantal, that gave you any indication of like the strategy, I guess, for each side going into the fall? In French, the liberal house leader actually said, we're not here to haggle,

we're here to govern. So that doesn't seem like an overture to make a deal. And in the news conference, the blokevique was a leader was asked, so how do you feel about, you know, looking at the budget? Do you think there's a chance you could find your way to support it? And the answer was, it's really not looking good. So that's basically where things stand. There's a lot of positioning in there. I think the liberals have to take for granted that the conservatives will not support the budget. Hard to imagine,

Pierre Puelev, going to a leadership review having supported the budget. It's important for the liberals, I guess, to send the message to the NDP in particular that, you know, if you don't like our budget and you want to bring us down, we will have an election. Oh, do you really want an election? And that is the party that is weakest when it considers an election as opposed to the bloc and the conservatives. But that is mostly positioning, and it will take a few more weeks to see where things are really going. Me, I believe that the fate of the budget will hinge on public reaction to the budget.

And if I can remind you, in 2008, just after an election, suddenly the House caught on fire because of a section in a fiscal update that dealt with political financing. And the opposition parties came together and wanted to make Stephensio and the prime minister. So it's going to be a powder keg. I'm not sure. anyone wants to light it, but accidents do happen. They sure do. Talk about all that, Andrew, but also whether you think having Mr. Pauliev back in the House

will have any impact on how things unfold. I think it already did. Just by being in Parliament, he's closed a lot of the stature gap that it opened up. Frankly, I think we saw the benefits of his greater experience in Parliament. I thought he looked much more fluent and at ease. I thought the Prime Minister looked a bit wooden.

frankly. He can be that way the best of times. Look, it's good to see Parliament back, first of all. We're almost nine months into the year, and they've only sat for four weeks. So the long free ride that the government has had is mercifully at an end. And I think it showed they looked a bit rusty on the issue of immigration in particular. I think the minister Lena Diab looked not a particularly strong communicator, looked very uncomfortable in the file, had to be rescued on a couple of occasions by another minister. So that's, frankly, it's good to see a government having to scramble a bit and not being able just to take for granted where it's at.

I'll put one straw in the win. I don't know if this is going to turn out to be true or not. I thought looking at the conservative attacks and who was coming from where, we may be seeing the end of this bizarre period where Pierre Pauier was basically his own attack dog. I thought you saw a bit more of a traditional lineup there where he was a bit more statesman-like or as close as he gets to that and leaving the red meat to some of the, of his critics to really go after on immigration, for example. So we'll see whether that thesis holds up.

The last one I'll make is, I think what a lot of my colleagues were describing was a traditional minority government. You know, we kind of got used to this idea of, oh, it's a coalition or a semi-coolition. Now it's going to be where the government has to find support where it can find it. They only need three votes to pass the legislation. So I don't think the NDP wants a vote in an election anytime soon. So I'll repeat my skepticism that all this snorting about, we're going to vote down the budget and we're going to have an election,

we'll actually pan out. But, you know, welcome back to a minority government politics circa Stephen Harper. Yeah, or three abstentions. Or Justin should have earlier on. Yeah, you don't even need three votes. You need three people not to show up and vote on that day. I think that's a good observation. Chantal, you want in there.

No, nature calls and then the government survived. Yes, we've seen that movie before. The opposition parties, I'm talking about the bloc and the NEP, have two decisions to make. One, do they want an election? Do they want to support the budget? And two, do they want an election? And if they don't want to support the budget, that second decision is avoidable. It's up to them to decide how they go about it.

But I go back to my main argument. It will depend on whether the budget comes down to, fury amongst many voters. And you mean by cuts? Is that what you think will cause fury? I mean, you know, there are budgets that work well and there are those that do not. And if the public reaction, the initial public reaction is very negative, plus the business reaction, then the opposition parties will have a harder time finding that they need to

take a walk outside when the vote comes. Althea? I think the challenge for the government is that there is a poison pill in what looks like the budget for every political party. There will be so much spending that it's too toxic for Pierre Puella and the Conservatives to support it. It goes against, likely, like the government at the time will not have a comprehensive climate plan the way that we thought Mark Carney was going to release one back in January of 2025. There will be cuts. So will the NDP believe that it can get away with supporting this. Will the Black Quebecois believe that it will get, you know, it is to its advantage to support this? And Mr. Valche has been very clear, you know, to the Conservatives, I believe he said last week, you know, basically you guys tarnished us by suggesting that we were in bed with the liberals.

Now it's your turn to get in bed with the liberals because we don't want to have anything to do with them. this despite saying that he was going to give the Carney government about a one-year reprieve to get things on track. So it is a bit of a challenge because it's kind of hard to fit the Carney government on the political spectrum and see who its natural dance partner will be. And it's not just on the budget. It will also be on substantive pieces of legislation like C2, for example, that's going to have a really hard time in the House and in the Senate. And the other thing I just want to add is in November, there may be more than three votes that they're looking for. You know, there may be some people in the liberal backbench that decide that they want to contest for the Ontario liberal leadership.

There may be resignations. There may be diplomatic posts that send some other liberal packing. So the numbers may not look quite the same in a few months. 30 seconds or so do you, Andrew. Well, we shall see what the numbers will do. All I will say is the turkeys are not going to vote for an early Christmas. If the NDP is in the same shape that they're at now come the best. budget time, which I suspect it will be, they will find a reason. And, you know, my colleagues lay out a lovely scenario where parties are so offended in

principle that they can't possibly vote for the budget. They've done that in the past. They've swallowed themselves whole. They'll do it again if they have to. It'll depend, as Chantelle says, or a variant of that, it'll depend on where they're at in the polls. Okay. And we will see how things change between now and Thursday, because you've got to come back

on Thursday. Thank you all for that. I appreciate it. That is at issue for a special Monday edition. We will be back, of course, on Thursday. Let us know what you thought about that first question period. Between Paulyev and Carney, you can reach us on email, ask at cbc.ca.

Remember, I've also got that other place where you can catch me on Rosemary Barton Live. That's Sundays at 10 a.m. Eastern. Talk to you on Thursday. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.