Front Burner - Election watch: The major parties’ early days

Episode Date: August 24, 2021

As we roll into the second week of this federal election campaign, Éric Grenier and Althia Raj look at where things stand in the polls, and break down how the major parties are faring thus far.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. So I just got back from some summer holidays, and maybe you've taken some holidays too. Or maybe you just haven't really tuned into this federal election campaign yet. You would not be alone.

But the thing is, it's fully underway now. In fact, election day is already less than a month away. So today, to catch us up on what the polls are saying and how the major parties' campaigns are going so far, we've called up Poll Whisperer, the man behind CBC's poll tracker and the founder of TheWrit.ca, Eric Grenier, and CBC at issue panelist Althea Rush. Eric, Althea, thank you very much for being here. Oh, thanks for having us. Eric, I think we'll start with you. I think it's fair to assume maybe that Justin Trudeau called this election because he thought he and his party would benefit from it, right? And so now that we're a week and change into this thing, I understand the polling landscape has really been shifting. And I wonder

if you could explain to me how so. Yeah, I think going into this campaign, the liberals thought that this was maybe their best shot to have a majority government, or at least better than it might be maybe next year when the opposition could decide to force an election. And the polls going into the campaign were looking pretty good for the Liberals. They had a lead in every single poll. They were ahead by big margins in places like Ontario, Quebec, and BC. And the numbers that we've seen so far out of this first week, they do suggest that liberal support is softening, that the conservative vote is coming back. A lot of the pre-campaign polls had the conservatives

at really historically low numbers, and it looks like a lot of their supporters are coming back to the fold, and that's closing the gap between the liberals and the conservatives. And the chances for a majority right now for the Liberals, not particularly good. It is still early, but certainly the trend line is not going in the right direction for them. Well, one question I have is that I know polls can be fickle sometimes. And at this stage in the game, I wonder if there's anything you think we should keep in mind when we hear poll numbers and variations like this sort of bandied about? Yeah, it is still early and, you know, engagement and people's attention spans are not as high as

they'll be later on in the campaign. So you do have to take the polling with a little bit more of a caution that some of these shifts that we might see from day to day aren't going to be really important things that are actually happening. Right now in this campaign, we have a few pollsters that are putting out numbers every single day, and those numbers are just going to go back and forth naturally. And it's not necessarily a sign that the campaign is having an impact on each party's support. But certainly at this stage, the numbers are really close for the Liberals and the Conservatives.

So when you have two parties that are more or less tied in the polls, you're going to have some polls that are going to have the liberals ahead. You're going to have some polls that have the conservatives ahead. And it's not always going to be a sign of a new trend that's developing. I think it's also accurate to say, to kind of loop back to your earlier point, it's not just an assumption that the Liberals engineered this election, asked for this election because they thought they could get a majority. It's a fact. They believed that if they did not go now, that they would have to wait probably more than a year. And then who knows what happens in a year. A lot of unknowns. It's better to go in their minds

when you're in charge of the timing than when the opposition is in charge of the timing. their minds when you're in charge of the timing than when the opposition is in charge of the timing. At the same time, though, their own polling before the campaign kicked off had them just barely in majority territory. So just around the 170 seat mark, according to their own pollster. So it wasn't a sure thing to go now. They just felt like this was the less risky of the alternatives. And the other thing I'll say is that both the liberals and the NDP say that in their own focus groups, one of the kind of the wildcard factor was most people didn't really know who Aaron O'Toole was, and they didn't have a negative or positive impression of him. They just didn't have an impression of him. So there

was always the risk. Both parties knew this, that Aaron O'Toole would put his best foot forward and that Canadians would like what they see and that that could really change the direction of the campaign. I think it's too early to say that that's what we're witnessing, but certainly I think the Conservatives had a very good first week. And so tell me more then about the Conservatives' first week. What did it look like? What stood out to you? Well, I'd say it started off on the wrong footing. The Prime Minister, when he came out of the governor generals to announce the election, kind of threw a shot across the bow on the vaccination issue, suggesting that, you know,

not all the political parties share the same opinion on mandatory vaccination, whether that's having all of your candidates vaccinated or having all the passengers on planes and trains vaccinated or having members of the public service be vaccinated. And Aaron O'Toole was unable to answer the question, especially the question about his own candidates at a press conference with reporters. And then that was clarified later in a late evening statement to reporters and then an email directive to candidates two days later saying that they had to be vaccinated or else take a daily test. I expect my team to follow all the public health measures in this Justin Trudeau fourth wave

pandemic. That includes expectations with respect to vaccines or an expectation to daily rapid testing. But I think that that mandatory vaccination question kind of got a lot of conservatives, at least the conservatives I spoke with, scared. A lot of progressive conservatives, conservatives in Eastern Canada were like, what? Like, that's an easy question. Why weren't we able to answer that? But it was like a rocky start.

But then he seemed to get the train back on the tracks. I think releasing the conservative platform on day two was really smart because of COVID. We expect a lot of voters will cast a ballot by mail. So having your platform early is really smart. It gives your candidates something to talk about at the doors and people who choose to cast a ballot by mail have all that information at their fingertips earlier on in the campaign. And then I think the last thing I'll mention that was really smart of them to do was to get ahead of the abortion question. They had to know the liberals were going to make hate of this issue because vote on abortion question, on conversion therapy, on those social issues that are important to a large part of his caucus, and even allowed, you know, Kathy Wigenthal, a Saskatchewan MP, to bring forward a piece of legislation that would restrict a woman's right to have an abortion. And two

thirds of his caucus voted in favor of that bill. And so he had to know that that was going to be a big issue and he announced it in Quebec, where we know the party had huge roadblocks in the last election campaign when Andrew Scheer was unable to answer the question if he was pro-choice during a French-language debate. I have a personal obligation. I have a responsibility to make sure...

Scheer dodging whether he personally supports abortion, but today a big shift. I am personally pro-life, but I've also made the commitment that as leader of this party, it is my responsibility to ensure that we do not reopen this debate. And so he came out and he just had a 15-minute statement saying, I'm pro-choice. Well, as you know, I'm pro-choice. And I want to make sure that access for women to those services are available across the country. It's an important right I will not only defend. I think we can also defend conscience rights for our incredible men and women on the front lines in our health care system.

Basically, I guarantee that a Conservative government will respect a woman's right to choose, and also Quebecers. I believe in climate change. He didn't take any questions. So the conservatives had like a clean message out for at least half a day before reporters were able to question him on really what that meant. But I think that was really smart and strategic in the way that they were trying to define Aaron O'Toole before the liberals or the NDP could define him. And Eric, I wonder if I could bring you in here. You know, how do you think his position on abortion, his position on climate change is going to vibe with his whole party. I think it is going to have some impact on how his own party supporters and members and donors feel about the party. The question is whether it's going to really have an impact on

their vote. We have seen that support for other parties like the People's Party looks to be a bit higher than it was in the last campaign. But it's an open question whether those people are actually going to stick with those parties or will come back to the fold. I think what Aaron O'Toole is doing here is he is trying to present himself as more of a progressive conservative, certainly not the candidate that he presented himself as during the conservative leadership race last year. And I think one of the issues and one of the weaknesses that he has, the vulnerabilities, is that while he is saying these things, a lot of his own party, a lot of his own caucus aren't on side with him. And we've seen votes in the House of Commons that

showed, in some cases, a majority of the conservative caucus voting in ways that do not line up with where Aaron O'Toole is right now. So campaigns are very leader focused. So the fact that Aaron O'Toole is saying this might work for a lot of centrist voters who are considering both the Conservatives and the Liberals. But there is the opportunity for the other parties to point out that while Aaron O'Toole might believe these things, a lot of his own MPs will not be voting alongside with him on some of these issues. I think what Eric brings up is a good point, but we're not going to hear it from MPs and candidates who have a chance of winning. alongside with him on some of these issues? I think what Eric brings up is a good point, but we're not going to hear it from MPs and candidates who have a chance of winning.

If we hear dissatisfaction with the way Aaron O'Toole is redirecting the Conservative Party, it will come from activists and donors. And in French, we call them les militants, like the people knocking on doors, because Conservative MPs just want to win. And a lot of them actually support the direction in which Aaron O'Toole is going. And they've been uncomfortable with his kind of the dance he was having with the further right part of his party, if I can say it that way. And when things are going well in an election campaign, you are not going to hear conservative MPs complain about the direction. I would be shocked if we hear that. I certainly am not hearing it from the MPs I'm speaking to. Or the candidates, I should say, at this point, the candidates who are running for the incumbents I'm hearing from. So that might bode well for him in the weeks ahead. But if we could just loop back to the

Liberals and talk about how their campaign is going so far. Althea, you mentioned that the conservatives have released their platform. It's probably worth noting here that the liberals have not, even though they called this election. And so what has the start of the liberal campaign look like so far? Well, I would say it's not unusual for a political party not to release a campaign in the first week of the election like that. It's unusual that the others have. The NDP basically recycled their 2019 campaign and even released it before the written had been written. Even with such a short election? Yeah, I mean, what they're basically running on is their

budget. And this extra stuff that we are waiting to hear from. I would say that the difficulty on the liberal side, well, there's two difficulties. Afghanistan has overshadowed the liberals' ability to get their campaign missions out. I don't want to go into details, operational details right now, but I can assure you, we have given the authorizations for the folks on the ground to make the right decisions to help as many people as possible, given the risks of this. And I guess this is one of the drawbacks of being the government and having crises come at you that require actually a whole of, I mean, you're thinking about immigration, global affairs, D&D, like it's a massive project that is going on in Kabul and that the government

has to be somewhat distracted. But also the questions at Justin Trudeau, the liberal leader's press conference every day are about this humanitarian crisis and this international relations problem that is happening, and not about what the Liberals are proposing that morning. So that's been a difficulty for them. And then the other thing is, frankly, they have not answered, I think, well, the question of why are we even having this election? Like, what is this great build back better that we haven't heard about yet? Because everything they suggested in their budget, for example, well, it got the support of the opposition parties and they could have kept going. So what is this great big idea, this great big project that you want voters to support? Why

are we having this campaign? In the life of our country, we are facing a moment of some very, very big decisions about how we get through the final months of this pandemic but even more importantly how we build a better future for everyone those are the decisions we're taking right now that's why we need Calgarians and Canadians across the country to step up I'm going to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To

listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Eric, I heard you on your podcast, The Writ, with our other friend of the pod, Aaron Wary, calling this the Seinfeld election, an election about nothing. Yeah, I don't know if actually people are calling it that. I did. But I think that's one of the issues for the Liberals is that they did launch this campaign without a very clear reason for a lot of voters why it was necessary to reelect the government and what they need, you know, the kind of mandate they need from voters to move

forward since they were able to more or less do what they wanted to do before. And I think that is something that we're seeing with the Liberal campaign is that it doesn't seem as sharp as maybe the Conservatives or the New Democrats. And when you see what happened in Nova Scotia in the provincial election there. CBC is projecting a progressive conservative win here in Nova Scotia tonight, and that is a massive upset in Nova Scotia politics. The Liberals went into this election buoyed by a strong pandemic performance,

but early on, Ian Rankin's momentum evaporated as the opposition came out hard. PC leader Tim Houston... Voters aren't going to re-elect a government just as a sign of appreciation for what they did over the last year and i i think for the liberals that we're already hearing that they're shifting a little bit their focus in terms of how they're going to prosecute the next couple weeks maybe but having a much clearer argument as to why it's really important to re-elect the liberal

government and not elect an Aaron O'Toole government. I think we're going to have to hear more of that from Justin Trudeau if we're going to see the Liberal numbers get a little bit better over the next couple of weeks. Okay. We've talked about the Liberals and the Conservatives, but I do want to spend a little bit of time before we go talking about the NDP. Eric, what can you tell us about the NDP's position in this election so far? Well, they're starting it in a much better spot than in 2019. At the beginning of the 2019 campaign, we were wondering if the NDP was going to manage official party status. Instead, they're starting this campaign somewhere around 19, 20% support. They seem to have some momentum going

into the campaign. It's a question of whether they're continuing that momentum over the first week. But for the New Democrats, what's interesting about the focus that they've had, it is about sending more NDP MPs to Ottawa to have that balance of power in the House of Commons in a minority government. And Althea, I wonder if you could just elaborate for me on who you think the NDP is appealing to here, and I guess potentially taking votes from in this election? Young voters and women under 35, two key demographics that the Liberals are very worried about. Young voters help basically give Justin Trudeau's majority government in 2015.

And women under 35 who traditionally have voted for Justin Trudeau and the Liberals now are favoring the New Democrats. And that has liberals quite worried. I agree with everything that Eric said about the NDP's strategy, although you will hear Jagmeet Singh still say that he's running to be prime minister. But unlike 2019, they actually have a lot more money and they plan to spend a lot more money during this election campaign to support the leader and to be able to kind of boost him if the campaign seems to be going well. And that's something that they felt like they were unable to do in 2019 when after the English language debate, Jagmeet Singh seemed to be connecting with voters in a way that he hadn't prior to the debates. But they didn't have any funds to kind of support him with an ad campaign on the air, on social media. Traditionally, they want to be the party that pushes the liberals to the left. They're the actual progressive party, they would argue.

And they have a record to run on this time, which is different than in the last few campaigns. They can point to things that they feel they had a tangible impact in delivering for Canadians. I think that does help them. Right. Can you give me an example of what he says they've been able to push the Liberals to do? I think sort of governing through the pandemic. Yeah. Well, three things. The wage subsidy, they say that they were the ones who, I mean, truthfully, I think it was going to increase because of stakeholder engagement on that issue. And the Conservatives were also pushing them. But they they argue that they helped the liberals boost that, that they helped increase the CERB by basically a thousand dollars to two thousand dollars that they helped bring in

a sick leave. People know that when they were down and out or when they were struggling or times were tough, New Democrats fought. Thank you. Thank you. New Democrats fought to bring in more CERB to people so they could stay in their homes and put food on the table. We fought to increase the wage subsidy to keep millions of people in their jobs. And we saw them on the sick leave question, probably more than anything else, really hold that out as a carrot. Like if the liberals wanted their vote in order to survive, then they had to agree to this. And then liberals did push for it with the provincial premiers. So that's not insignificant, I think, for the NDP. It helps

voters on the left who feel like sometimes, well, if you vote for the NDP, are you wasting your vote? Now the New Democrats have a powerful argument to say, no, your vote counts for something. Right. Okay, guys, thanks so much for this. Really appreciate it. Oh, thank you, Jamie. Thank you. Before we go today, an update from Afghanistan. On Monday, the federal government confirmed for the first time that Canada's special forces are operating outside the airport in Kabul, working to bring people to evacuating

aircrafts. We're following this story very closely and we'll keep you posted. But that is all for today. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner and we'll talk to you tomorrow. for them.