Front Burner - Understanding Pierre Poilievre: Part 2

Episode Date: September 13, 2022

Now that Pierre Poilievre is leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, how will he lead? Today, in the second part of our two-part deep dive on Poilievre, the Globe and Mail’s Shannon Proudfoot returns to talk about the leadership campaign he ran, the criticism he’s faced and where the Conservative Party could go from here. Plus, we hear from more supporters on the floor of the convention about what they think Pierre Poilievre’s Canada will look like, his "angry" reputation and whether they think he’ll change, now that he’s leader, to broaden his appeal.

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. Hey, I'm Jamie Poisson, and today we're picking up where we left off last episode, at the Conservative Convention this past weekend, where I was with our producer Imogen, talking to people about what they think Pierre Polyev's Canada will look like if he gets that chance. We put this question to a lot of his supporters and some themes came up

over and over. We heard about how it would be more efficient. I see a Pierre Polyev Canada looking like there is less government interference. There is less red tape, less bureaucratic red tape. We implement a few more efficiencies in things. When you do have an eight-month long wait to get a passport, or whatever the passport wait is now, come on, what are we doing? That cutting back of bureaucracy and red tape, it came up a few times, specifically in reference to the professional certification of immigrants to Canada. It's honestly more freedom towards people to do stuff without having too much bureaucracy on their hands. You know, for example, immigrants being able to successfully get certified.

That's one of his another proposal. My mother is a teacher. She has two master's degrees, but she isn't able to become a teacher in Manitoba, for example, because she needs to be certified by the Teacher Society. And it's an extensive process and very bureaucratic as well. We'll see a lot more enterprise and more opportunity, I think. As we've seen from immigration, for example, allowing immigrants, Canadians to come into the fields that they want to be, I think we're going to see a lot more openness and a lot more transparency from the government as well,

which is something I think is desperately needed at the moment. And of course, in the eyes of his supporters, Pierre Polyev's Canada is defined by freedom. I think Pierre Polyev's Canada will be very free, as he always says. I think it would, first of all, look like a free Canada again. A place where you can make your own health and vaccine choices. A place where you can take back control of your money. Where you can buy a home. Where you can teach your children your own personal values.

Where you can worship God in your own way. That's what I see. A freer nation than it is right now, you know. I think that's one of the things he's based his campaign on. It's one of the things that he preaches and one of the things that I really like. You know, I want to be able to make my own decisions, you know, when it comes to my home, my finances, my family. You know, I want to be able to make decisions for myself

and not be told by the government how to live my life. Do you feel like you can't make those choices now? Do you feel like you're not free now? To a large extent, no. I mean, we're stuck paying high gas prices. We have no choice in that, right? I'm self-employed, and yet I still can't afford a home. There's something wrong with that picture.

So off the top of my head, I can't think of anything specific, but I definitely feel the pressure of the government. Today, we're going to talk about Pierre Polyev's leadership campaign, the criticisms he's faced along the way, and where he could take the party. Shannon Proudfoot of the Globe and Mail is back, and we're going to pick up our conversation at the point where Pierre Polyev's leadership run began. at the point where Pierre Polyev's leadership run began, just days after former leader Aaron O'Toole was ousted amidst the trucker convoy protests this past winter. So Polyev's sort of own fortunes, the door opening for him to run for Conservative leader, opened up simultaneously with the convoy occupying downtown Ottawa, just because all of those dominoes fell so quickly.

He had had a campaign ready to go when O'Toole ran a couple of years ago, and then decided not to make a go of it for family reasons. So, he sort of had some of the infrastructure and the help in place. And this time, like immediately, he was the first out of the gate with this very kind of polished video where interestingly, he did not once mention the Conservative Party itself. He said he was running for prime minister. That's why I'm running for prime minister, to put you back in charge of your life. So there was this sort of sidestepping of the institutional party brand and setting himself up, and I would argue that that continued right through to the convention and to his victory, setting himself up as sort of this independent satellite. That's not to say that, you know, he stands in opposition to the

party or anything like that, but he very clearly has been tapping a different vein of enthusiasm from kind of the mainstream or sort of party stalwarts. But his support of the convoy was interesting. They come here not for the warm weather, but for our freedom. And that's why we are gathered here today. Freedom, not beer. Truckers, not Trudeau. freedom not beer truckers not trudeau and i think a really difficult circle for him to square because he kept saying he supported people legitimately fighting for their freedoms but he didn't support anyone you know infringing on other people's rights or doing anything illegal i agree we should always call out evil symbols and the individuals who are individually responsible for putting them up.

I think that it is possible to hold individually responsible anyone who says or does anything unacceptable while showing support for the hard-working, law-abiding, peace-loving truckers who are fighting for their freedom and their livelihoods. And as the convoy went on and on and on, to me, it became impossible to separate those two things, with any sort of legitimacy or straight face. And he just kept doing it because I think he must have known that to denigrate the convoy or criticize it would have been a big no-no with the part of the base that is most energized and most excited about him. And all the way through the leadership campaign, we saw he had so much, there was so much energy

and enthusiasm associated with him that the other candidates just could never capture. He looked like the prohibitive front runner from the word go, and it kind of never stopped. Yeah, yeah. Can we talk a bit about what he campaigned on? Of course, there was this big slogan of freedom, but in some ways that's hard to define, right? Or at least attach specifics to. So what does that actually mean in practice? What does he say that really means in practice? So there's sort of a couple of answers to that question. Number one is a leadership campaign, arguably, it's very distinct from a general election, right? He doesn't need to have, none of them need to have a fully formed platform. So I don't want to be sort of cheap in taking him to task for the fact that

he doesn't have a whole fleet of policies to offer. But you still need to offer people some substantive idea of what you stand for, why are the members voting for you? I think all along, what he's really been selling is a feeling and not a set of policies. And it's been very much this feeling of like, I'm mad as hell. Are you mad as hell? Let's be mad as hell together. And we'll be mad at the same people. Now that had a very different form and we're love given, but enough's enough. Get out of our buildings now. Nazi flags, it's not cool, but I think just we want to make our point that we are not the fringe minority and we want to be heard. the convoy was like the living example of that you had thousands of people converging on ottawa just furious and setting up shop downtown for weeks on end because you know it started ostensibly as like this trucker vaccine mandate but it was never really about that that was just kind of the proxy excuse for it to happen but there was this level of sort of fury this feeling that like they capital

t are running your lives and that there is an us and a them polyev to his his appeal all along has been explicitly populist like explicitly like textbook there is an us there is a them and they are trying to screw you over and i am going to prevent them from doing that. Like, I am the one standing in the breach. So there's been a real intensity to it. But I wondered all along, like, what happens to that intensity as time goes on? Because as the pandemic sort of receded from acute status, and more and more of those policies fell by the wayside, that kind of fury became centered more on things like inflation, cost of living, gas tax. And I kept wondering through it all, I mean, we heard sort of partway through the leadership campaign that I think it was like between six and 700,000 new

members were signed up and over 300,000 of them were signed up by Polyev's campaign. So there was this sense of just a juggernaut of energy behind him. But I kept wondering how that would play out, because you think about it on a sort of individual human psychological level. We saw huge crowds at his rallies. The reason I am running for prime minister is to put you back in control of your life by making Canada the freest nation on earth. There was so much enthusiasm. It actually reminded me, the energy of it reminded me a little bit of watching Doug Ford rallies in 2018, where there was just this sense of like, people had so much pent up

anger and frustration, and they could all get in a room together. And it was like a revival tent kind of level of shared energy. So those people would line up, they would show up for these rallies, it was very loud and enthusiastic. His team was really clever, they would, people would line up for like the selfie line. In the old days, it would have been the handshake line, but this was the selfie line. And they would go up and down the selfie line. In the old days, it would have been the handshake line, but this was the selfie line. And they would go up and down the lines with a clipboard and they would sign people up as members, you know, for 10 bucks and your signature

on a clipboard, off you went. But then you think there's many more steps after that to electing him as leader. You have to, you know, photocopy and send off your ID. You get this package in the mail. It's got to go back. You've got to have the energy, the trust in the institutions to do all that. I mean, obviously, they pulled it off, he won the leadership. But the next step after this is to sustain

some level of interest and energy and to draw more of it from a broader pool before you can contest a general election. So I always sort of wondered about like the conversion rate, if you will, like a campaign that has had so much energy and so much success on the strength of a real kind of gut level rage. Where does that go? And how does it sustain itself as the supposed source of the rage kind of recedes, you know, as pandemic restrictions become less of our everyday lives, even as we have signs that inflation is maybe kind of loosening its grip a little bit. It'll be really interesting to see where he sustains interest and where people still feel he's listening to them and speaking for them as those sort of sources of angst and discontent maybe become less relevant in everyday life.

This angry reputation he has, it's something we wanted to hear his supporters' thoughts on. Amanda and Scott, who you heard from yesterday, both think what he's doing is simply channeling what a lot of people are feeling right now. I think that he is a reflection of the Canadian population. So I think that he is just as angry and upset as the vast majority of Canadians at this moment. So I think that's why it goes back to my first comment, why he's so relatable, because he is reflecting how people are feeling right now i don't think i don't see it being angry i see that there are a lot of frustrations and a lot of hurt and pain in this country right now there's a lot of people who have been hurt by two years of lockdowns there are a lot of people who are out of work a lot of people have lost jobs inflation's hurting a lot of people so there's a lot of that going on right now.

So I don't necessarily think that it's anger at, it's not an angry campaign. He wants to bring back hope. He's telling us. Brett also doesn't think that anger is quite the right word for it. But I would say he's more on the side of, you know, passionate. There's a lot of pain there, the people he meets.

And if you actually, you know, he posts a lot of this stuff about the people he meets across his tours and you know, he takes the time to listen to them and give them honest, true answers and you know, I think in Prince George there was, I think, who was it 200 people lined up, he sat to the last person, I know because I was one of the last in line

so he's got a heart and a passion for people and that's honestly I knew I made the right choice when I saw him in person and just kind of there's more to him than than of course what you see on on TV and what his opponents are sharing and I think that's something people really should look deeper into for sure. 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. Well, one example that stands out to me because it's something that we talk about a lot on this show is that he talks a lot about housing or the 32 year old stuck living in his mom's basement because he cannot afford the 868 000 a cost for the average house even though we live in the second on the second biggest land mass of any country on earth a country where we have more land where there's no one, that there is land where there's anyone. And yet we cannot find a way to house our people.

What is happening is that after 400 billion dollars... But what is he saying specifically that he's going to do to address the frustrations that people have around? Yeah, so his housing policy is sort of an interesting one. So he has said that he will use, he said carrots and sticks are the only way to get this done, that he would use, I guess, depending on how you wield it, it's a carrot or a stick. It's a carrot shaped stick. Let's go with that. That he would use federal infrastructure money as a way to force municipalities to build more houses. A parapolier government will make it a condition of getting federal infrastructure money that the municipalities speed up building so that we the construction of a million new affordable homes.

And I will sell off 15% of Canada's 37,000 federal buildings so that those buildings can be converted into affordable houses. Yes. And the proceeds of the sale can be used to reduce our deficit. In other words, build more homes, print less money. So he has said any city that's over 500,000, so he's exempting smaller ones, which is an interesting policy distinction because everything we've seen suggests that cost of housing going through the roof and out of reach for many people is not just a big city problem right now at all. It's maybe

worst in the big cities, but it is not an issue for smaller cities. But anyway, he has said for cities over half a million people, he, as prime minister, would expect them to bump up their building of new houses by 15% annually, or he would withhold some unspecified amount of federal infrastructure funds. He has also said that for every house a city built over that threshold, they would get a $10,000 bonus, that he would attach requirements for any new transit infrastructure, that it would have to have a certain quotient of residential and commercial kind of built into it and pre-approved. So the idea would be that you would be creating density along transit corridors.

What's interesting to me about that is his whole thing has been all about, you know, fire the gatekeepers, get rid of the gatekeepers who are getting in the way of people living their best lives. I can't think of many things more gatekeeper-y than clutching the purse strings of federal government money and telling cities what to do. It's to be sure he's framing it as a way to kind of kneecap the city gatekeepers and force them to build more and more varied housing. But it's still a form of gatekeeping. It's just that you're the gatekeeper and you're deciding which gate to keep. You know, it seems to be an acknowledgement. He likes small government and less government, except that sometimes he thinks you do need to use government to direct policy

and to direct what happens. So those have been his major offerings. But even there, again, I would say more than anything, you know, he released that, those policy pieces, I think back in the spring, but I haven't heard a ton of buzz about them. What I've heard buzz around is these very skillful videos he did all through the campaign and through the kind of middle and latter part of the summer, where what he's really doing is telling you that he's mad too, that he

thinks it's ridiculous. I mean, there was that one where he stood in front of like a shack that looked haunted in Vancouver that had just sold for like $4 million. Want to see a $5 million house here in Vancouver? Feast your eyes on the home of your dreams. Here it is. $4 million. Want to see a $5 million house here in Vancouver? Feast your eyes on the home of your dreams. Here it is, $4.8 million is the list. And it was really just a railing against this absurd state of affairs where normal people couldn't afford a house or a quote-unquote kind of normal middle-class dream. So that means that each unit is going to be over a million dollars.

A million dollars for the privilege of living in a multi-unit housing situation that would ultimately mean a mortgage for many people of $950,000. Who can afford payments on a $950,000 mortgage? Forget property taxes. And I don't, I want to be careful how I'm saying this. I'm not saying that in kind of a mocking or a denigrating way that he's selling a feeling rather than a set of solutions that can be legitimate. Like that can tell people that they're heard. The question is what you do with it next. And, and I, I think he might have a bit of a tiger by the tail here because he has spent so much time. He has harnessed so much energy telling people that he hears them and that he is absolutely livid about the same stuff they're livid about. The next step is, what are you going to do about it? And if you don't have a good answer for that, that tiger could turn around and bite you.

And so I think the next stage of all of this is going to be very crucial for him and very interesting for watchers of Canadian politics. Because it's like, okay, Pierre, like you, you've heard the people, they have felt heard in a way that they haven't for a long time. And that's a big deal. That is not nothing that is not hollow, but what next? Like, what do we do with this? What are you going to do for them? How are you going to solve those problems? How are you going to, instead of being the peanut gallery, if the show is yours to run, how are you going to run it? And I think that's where it's going to be really, really interesting to see what happens and what he does with that.

One thing I want to try to parse out here, even though he's running this populist campaign, is tapping into a lot of anger, is clearly provoking anxiety amongst many liberals, even moderate conservatives. I actually don't get the impression that he's like a boogeyman on a lot of the issues that we've seen turn Canadians away from conservatives in the recent past. Like, he doesn't seem to be running a socially conservative campaign. He says he's not anti-abortion. Mr. Polyev. A Polyev government would not introduce or pass legislation restricting abortion. He's not running a xenophobic campaign.

So many wonderful immigrants in this country and wave after wave have come because they wanted to carve a little piece of paradise for themselves onto this big coal patch of land. So how would you describe his flavor of conservatism? It's a really good and complicated question because I also feel like in part people project things onto him. Like I have heard people like close political watchers just sort of breezily talk about how his campaign is xenophobic. And you kind of want to go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, where did you get that? Like just because he's a bunch of things you don't like doesn't mean he's all of the things you don't like. I think the problem with him, and it's quite frankly, a problem he's created himself, is the confusion of tone for content or like style for substance. Like he is so combative and the whole tone of his leadership campaign, frankly, not just from him, but from

Jenny Byrne, from the whole organization has been like what I would call a no F you campaign. Like there's, that's been the energy all along. We will not participate in the third debate. Well, I can tell you there's no place I'd rather be right now. I'm told that I could have. Instead of being here with all of you in Saskatchewan, I could have been cooped up in a little hotel room around a small table listening to a defeated Liberal Premier drone on about his latest carbon tax.

Here are our membership numbers. The 311,958 membership cards that our campaign sold to expand our party. Like just piss off, we're doing what we want. So it has been a very take no prisoners kind of feel. And it's understandable enough for people to map that onto imagining his leadership, like there has not been yet, who knows, a conciliatory moment, a moment of, you know, that kind of that classic thing on election night, where you step back and say, I will govern for everyone, even the people who didn't vote for me. I mean, you know, clearly, a party leadership campaign is a little bit of a different thing. But that kind of moment where he shows an inclination to, you know, sort of throw open the flaps on the tent and welcome others in.

I think that's the big question with him is, what does this look like from here? Because in a lot of ways, his leadership campaign has been like the embodiment on legs of the current state of the Conservative Party and it's it's collective decision about where it goes from here the last few general elections in Canada we saw there was just a sense of the Conservative Party just being out of step with too many Canadians to get there like Like they kept, you know, the Liberals kept not running good campaigns and not having a great record to draw on, but they kept holding on. And in order for the Conservatives to get to the next level and unseat the Liberal government, you know, they need to get swing voters, they need to attract more suburban voters,

they need to not turn off the big cities. Like those are the big picture kind of demographic and geographic things they need to do to get the numbers to get there. And so what does that look like with Polyev at the helm? I mean, as you pointed out, he has very sort of almost surgically like been very careful to stay away from those kind of like social bombs. like he has nothing to say about abortion about say like in fact he explicitly says with things like same-sex marriage like my version of conservatism is you should marry who you want and that all tracks with that kind of libertarian version of conservatism from him like that that seems straightforward enough to me if what his message is is you should be able to run your life with minimal interference from the

government. It seems pretty obvious that that would extend to love and marry who you like, do what you want with your body. Like, I don't have a lot to say about all that. But because the tone of it has been so pugilistic, I think people map onto it a kind of take no prisoners sort of energy.

But even his, even his policies in the, as he trotted them out, like insofar as he offered kind of policy no prisoners sort of energy. But even his policies as he trotted them out, like insofar as he offered kind of policy planks through the leadership campaign, they were pretty middle of the road. It was the tone that was hard-nosed, not necessarily the ideas. And that is why I'm announcing today

that a poly-F government will make life more affordable by eliminating the federal carbon tax on gas, heat, and groceries. If the government wants to bring in another dollar of unbudgeted spending, it must first find a dollar of savings to pay for it. That would cap the cost of government while the taxpayer and the economy catch up. Let us phase out the deficit and balance the budget. Cut back on the wasteful spending that has driven both the money printing and the taxes in the first place. So we're going to cancel $100 billion in new slush fund spending that Trudeau promised. We're going to, too, we're going to get rid of...

You know, it's interesting. Like, he's certainly staying away from those social bombs. But at the same time, like, he's definitely not moderate, right? Like, he is deeply right-wing in some ways. It's like a different flavor of right-wing, right? He's going on Jordan Peterson's show. I don't think the political class in this country appreciates how much suffering there is in Canada right now. Bashing the World Economic Forum.

Freedom means making our own decisions here at home. And it means banning our federal ministers from attending the World Economic Forum. He makes it clear that he's no fan of mainstream media. The political media in the parliamentary press gallery are part of the establishment. And that defines me threatening. Talks about cancel culture. Aren't we going to put an end to this outrageous, politically correct, woke culture? These are like cultural touchstones, like social bombs yeah yeah i think the problem is when you couple like his very right-leaning sensibilities with this hardcore populist

approach like this like there's people on the in-team and then there's the elites there's the corrupt there's the ones who are trying to take advantage of you, that you get that. And I mean, sometimes like that's where I would argue that he just goes off the rails when he starts listing off all the various sins that he's against. They don't hang together, like the World Economic Forum and the Canadian government's going to dictate what you can see online and housing prices cost too much because of just inflation and also gas tax. Like what is your prescription for what is going wrong with all of those things? It's just a list of grievances. I don't mean to suggest that it's a moderate version of conservatism. I guess I mean, it's all about tone and not so much yet about substance and the substance remains to be seen. And the stuff that he has flirted with,

the kind of conspiracy minded stuff, I think is much harder to justify. And is what should I mean, it's ready made liberal attack ads, right? Like they're teed up, like when he goes off about the World Economic Forum, and these various kind of ideas. You just think like, like, he's, he's smart, he knows what he's saying, like, he's not, there are some people who might trot out stuff like that, because they just think it's like an applause line. And they're not really thinking about what it means. He knows what it means um and so i don't know where that goes when you're facing a general election when you're trying to convert swing voters it's already a thing we've heard it's it's not like a quiet conversation about like a schism within the

conservative party you have the center ice who are this group that are sort of explicitly trying to make the case for some sort of middle ground approach. Now, they were, you know, assiduously avoiding saying that they were endorsing anyone, but you'd have to be like an idiot not to understand that implicitly, they're not talking about Polyev being the right path. Or maybe I guess you could maybe they're trying to nudge him to the center. It's a conversation like I had, I remember talking like three or four years ago to Bill Fox, who was Brian Mulroney's director of communications when he won his massive majority. And he said at the time that he no longer had a home in the Conservative Party, and they've gone even further to the right since then. So I think like what Polyev is doing, and the degree to which

he succeeds, I just don't think it's too much to argue that it is a litmus test for the Conservative Party as a whole, for what it wants to be in this country, for who sees a home in it, for who doesn't, and for kind of the direction of it. So there's a lot riding on this. And I just, it's very hard to kind of see what shape that would take when you're not just preaching to the choir, to the membership for a leadership campaign. But I mean, I guess to be fair, that's something that happens every leadership campaign. You know, we saw Aaron O'Toole wrestle with it. Yeah, but O'Toole did pivot.

He moderated his message. You know, yesterday I mentioned Dwayne Easter, a former liberal MP who had this friendly, personal, but adversarial political relationship with Polyab. We'd have some fairly tense exchanges. At the same time, we would sit down oftentimes and have lunch together. He told us the story he thought was illustrative of Polyev as a leader from when they were both on the finance committee. Polyev was vice chair. Easter was chair.

They were questioning Trudeau over the WE issue. And as a chair, and this is something I've always tried to do, you have to cater to both sides. You have to be neutral and you have to try and be unbiased and nonpartisan. I'm going to ask you again because nobody believes you. Anyway, we had a lightning strike right around my office

and the system went down and I was knocked off the system. I've come to learn that the chairperson's power has gone out and is no longer part of this meeting. May I propose that we... That's okay, we can keep...

The Prime Minister and I can continue talking. No. I suspected that might be a problem. It's very convenient timing for the lights to go off. And so there's a little squabble among members of that committee. Well, who's chair? Someone to shut it down? Somebody, I believe the NDP said.

The general process is that the vice chair assumes the chairing of the meeting. So we'll continue. That would be me. And as a vice chair, I now recognize the member for Carleton, which happens to be me. And I now give the floor to the member for Carlton. And then he went to grill the prime minister. And eventually, five or six minutes later, I come on and I get back online and said, no, Pierre, you're done. You've had your time. Easter was basically saying, instead of

rising to the occasion, Polyev stayed in like partisan attack mode. In my view, instead of taking over as chair and using his authority as acting chair to recognize himself, you know, he should operate as a chair should and who's next on the speaker. And eventually somebody else would come in and they'd chair and he'd be able to do his questions. So I think that tells you something, because when he did have the opportunity to operate as chair, he operated in his own political and personal interests. He did say, despite that story, he remains hopeful Polyev can moderate. You know, when you've got a guy who is good on his feet, quite intelligent, has done a fair bit of research, is, I think, well-read, he will recognize that as leaders,

you can't take the kind of hard positions that you can in opposition, that you had to work with others to try and find the best way forward. And I believe that is possible for him to do. To date, I will admit, I haven't seen that in him, but I'm still hopeful. But as someone who has spent so much time looking at Polyev's record and looking at him as a politician, do you see him pivoting now? I mean, like, bluntly, no, because, like, what would that look like? Like, we were talking about him writing letters to the editor and giving interviews when he was a teenager at Reform Party conventions, like, it would have to be the most ridiculous pivot of all time. Like, I don't even know what sort of like dance skills you would have to have to thread that. Oh my god, I'm really mixing

analogies here. I'm very sorry. That is a lot of images in one. Anyway, I mean, I don't because he has been so much one thing like you're right, absolutely. Aaron O'Toole pivot one. Anyway, I mean, I don't, because he has been so much one thing, like you're right, absolutely. Aaron O'Toole pivoted, but it was like a milder version of it. Polyev has been so much who he is. And I would argue has even stepped it up and has been sort of like the er Polyev in the last six or eight months as he's been running for leader. How could you possibly moderate that, redirect it, recast it without just howls of hypocrisy? And also all of that energy that he's harnessed that got him the leadership, all of those people who've gone to rallies who have been so excited about him,

his campaigns seem to have this idea that they would draw in non-voters, that this would be kind of the new free voter pool they would discover, which I find political strategists always think, and there's just like no such thing as a free lunch, like non-voters are non-voters for a reason. But anyway, they seem to think that they sort of had tapped this new vein of energy. Well, what happens to that vein of energy when you all of a sudden stop speaking to them? When your whole message has been, I hear you and I'm mad about the same stuff you are. And then you start going, but maybe not like that would just even strategically, even in a purely mercenary way, if you're not inclined to be, you know, very kind of careful and thoughtful about it. Even if you just want to think about like what

side of your bread is buttered on that's poison. So I just, I don't know if a pivot is even available to him, much less if he would be interested in one. The one asterisk, like now I'm going to be like a weasel and like climb up and ride to the fence and wave to you from the top of the fence. But like the one asterisk I would put on that is that politics doesn't happen in a vacuum. And we're talking about the fortunes of Pierre Polyev and his Conservative Party as though they exist in a vacuum, and they don't. So depending on what happens with Justin Trudeau and the Liberals, and where public perception with them goes, it is possible that Polyev could just have a lot of strength as a protest vote. I mean, if things completely curdle and people are

absolutely sick of the Trudeau liberals, and even if Trudeau himself is no longer the leader, which inevitably is going to happen at some point, whether it's near or far away, then maybe it almost doesn't matter. I don't mean to sound really nihilistic and dismissive, but if people are just well and truly sick of this version of government, which has been a very particular version of government, right? Like you want to talk about tone, there is tone to the Trudeau liberals. If people are just absolutely done with that, maybe there's like a swing protest vote and people just kind of feel like, you know what, whatever, like we're done with this. Let's try something else. Like, yeah, like like throw the bums out energy is not something to be trifled with like you know ask the

Ontario Liberals like who were absolutely decimated by it they stuck around too long people were sick of them there was like a gleeful rage around Doug Ford's election in 2018 so I guess the asterisk is it depends what happens to the other team and then maybe there's a wider opening for a Pierre Polyev conservative party even if he doesn't moderate at all even if he just keeps punching people in the nose it's going to be really interesting to see what happens to that all right Shannon thank you thank you so much for this. Thanks. It was fun. Before we go today, I wanted to play you some final thoughts from Polyev supporters at the convention about what they think about whether or not he'll try to change or moderate his message to appeal to a broader base. At least one person told us they hoped he would

to bring more people into the party. Our parties right now, I think, have gone a little bit too polar opposites right now. And I do think that there is space to kind of maneuver into the middle a little bit. I do think that we need to attract more voters. And I think by having some of those policies and some of those policies that seem more centrist would definitely be appealing to people.

But most people we talked to told us he wouldn't change, that he shouldn't change. And some said if he does, it'll feel like a betrayal. If he did change like drastically in order to try to get more to the center, I'd be upset. Leaders that have tried to do that. I mean, we had our last leader, Erno Tull. He really shifted a lot. And I think that definitely made some internal damage within the party base. But I think that Pierre is not the type of person to actually just switch like that. I'd feel I'd lose trust in him and then as well as the greater whole of the

Conservative Party, because this is now our third leader going in against Justin Trudeau that is back down. And if that happens again, what's to say that the next leader we elect won't do the same? So I'd lose trust. We'll see. You know, time will tell. I'm not sure. It would be it would be very disappointing. Definitely. You know, he's he's he's made a lot of promises, You know, time will tell. I'm not sure. It would be very disappointing, definitely. You know, he's made a lot of promises, you know, given us a lot of hope through his campaign. And if he doesn't follow through, it would be very disappointing. But we'll see. Time's a test. All right, this is all for today.

This two-parter was produced by the wonderful Imogen Burchard. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow.