The Ben Mulroney Show - Do debates move the needle anymore?

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Do debates move the needle anymore? with Guest: Anthony Koch, Managing Principal at AK Strategies and former National Campaign Spokesperson for Pierre Poilievre If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Conditions apply. See Nissan.ca for details. Great to have you here. I am Alex Pearson, in for Mr. Ben Mulroney on the Ben Mulroney show. And he will be back, don't you worry. And I'm sure like me, he probably watched that debate last night, the French debate, of course. Now, the English debate is tonight. I will say this, pretty hard as an English speaking person to actually watch and understand

all the nuances and, you nuances and where someone went wrong. Did Mark Carney deliver in his French speaking? Did he fall flat? How will Quebec react to that? Did Pierre Polyev deliver anything? Did he move the dial? Was he too angry? Was he too quiet?

Those kinds of things will parse out. We're going to actually talk to Anthony Koch a little more about the dynamics and the politics and what we'll get out of this this how this could move the needle but certainly some takeaways I think are harder in the French for this side of the border than then let's say in Quebec but no question the Quebec vote is crucial so Mark Carney had to win by not losing in other words don't fall flat on your face and say there's something wrong in French and Pierre Pierre-Paul Lievre really needed to score some points with Quebecers to say, hey, I'm not so scary. So you can put your vote with me if you're not so sure

of where you're going to go. Right? Well, so we'll see where this goes because we're now into the back half of the campaign. And it's whomever has the momentum really, that will will close the gap on this thing thing and the polls are closing the gap You know you get jug meat singer there and he was a he was a disaster Why the hell was even there last night right? He did not show himself. Well, I think there were losers I think he was one last night But a couple of things that certainly came up and became the talkers There was one of course where mark Carney and it was an attack by Mr. Poliev, where,

you know, whenever you're bringing up your opponent's name or someone you want to forget, like the he who shall not be named, then you're raising something you shouldn't. But Mark Carney finding that he had to defend himself and the record of the party saying, you know, I'm not Justin Trudeau. I am not him. Right? But that is a problem. If, you know, Poliev's ideas,

put the past of the government onto Carney. He can't get away with running away from the past. So that's his job is make sure people are reminded in this country of who Mark Carney is and who he hangs out with. And of course, Carney is trying to say, you know, you're going to be just like Trump, you're a danger. Albeit Trump was a big, big topic in the debate.

I did find that it was a good chance certainly for the block leader to talk directly to French voters. He's not doing well, he might not even win his own riding. And if he can chip away at Mark Carney and bring a few voters to him, maybe Mr. Singh, I don't know if he did it with that performance last night, because he did look really kind of, he does look unhinged, but we'll see.

But if any of the vote moves out of Quebec, that could change some of Mr. Carney's fortunes, but again, we'll wait and see. But here is something that Mr. Poliev was asking, touches upon something that we talked about just a little while ago, and the role of independent media, right? There's an interesting relationship between Mr. Poliev and the mainstream media. They don't like him and he, well, he does what

he does, you know? He picks whatever fights he has to do but he is quite open to talking to others. Here's what he said. We are the only party that's willing to protect freedom of the press of all the media. And we will also repeal C-11, the censorship law. We will remove the censorship of Canadian news on web platforms like Facebook and Instagram. And we will fight back against any kind of Orwellian online censorship law like the one that the previous Liberal government instituted. It was designed to create the possibility of preemptive arrests of people where you could be arrested if you were suspected of sometime in the future planning to say something harmful online.

You could be under a peace bond. I mean, that is it really is our wellian. Yeah, look, I'm happy to hear that. I think it would be good to have the media back on social media, right? Facebook, you can't get Canadian content. You can't get Ben's content. You can't get my content. You can't get global news content because they don't allow for that. That was something that happened on the Truro government that should be reversed. You shouldn't have to go to the politicians or American outlets to get information and news on Canada.

So I hope that that can be fixed because it's done an awful lot of damage to our business, right? But again, the online harms bill. Don't talk about it much. This is a really big deal for the Truro government. They want to control what goes online and, you know, they don't want people's feelings hurt. So God knows how far that can go. Carney will continue on with that. And Carney comes from the UK background and in the UK, they are arresting people. It is absolutely crazy that they're arresting people for some of the things that they've posted on social media, you know, months, years ago. And again, kind of seems crazy, but you got to ask, could it happen here? Well, sure. If you let the government do it, they will.

So, you know, these are things you think about when you go to the voting booth is, do I really want draconian online you know regulation? Like where could it go wrong? It could go very wrong. We've had bank accounts shut on protesters in this country. I do think that this was one of his best answers right Mr. Poliev because the one attack on him certainly from Jagmeet Singh and Mark Carney you know is anti-immigrant. He likes to fuel the fire against immigrants because he's a white nationalist, whatever else.

But here was his message, you know, about immigration for immigrants. Take a listen. He had a tradition in this country before this government where you could come from places, the conflict ridden places in the world, and you would leave the fight behind. You might have a debate about the politics of that place when you sat down in a coffee shop in Montreal or Toronto, but it never overflowed into street violence.

We need to get back to that. You should know, we welcome people to this country, sure, bring your culture, bring your traditions, bring your family, but do not bring foreign conflicts onto our streets. We want, we're going to have peaceful streets again, and we're going to be united. We should put, all of us should consider ourselves

Canadian first and put foreign divisions behind us. That is not a controversial answer. That is how I think everybody should view this country. Those who come to it and those who live here, we should all be thinking of it like that because that's how it was thought of. There's nothing wrong with saying that. Immigrants themselves will say, yes, thank you. This is what we want.

We want people to come here, prosper, bring their traditions and their customs, share, but you are Canadian. You're right. You want our values and you leave all that stuff, the fighting and the wars, you leave that behind because why else did you come here? It was a really interesting, I think, part of the debate and I'll be very interested to see where this part of the debate goes in the English side of it because immigration is a very vulnerable area for the Carney Trudeau government. They screwed it up. There's no real, you can't say it politely.

They broke it. They let in far too many people. We have half a million people here who don't have any, too many. We can't, they can't put them anywhere. There's no housing. They're not sending them home. So that needs to be fixed because until that's fixed, we, our social services remain completely stressed

and the pressure on housing and costs and affordability of rents, stuff like that, that all stays up. Those things have to be fixed. And do you trust the people who broke it to fix it? Because I just want Mark Carney is asking, is don't worry about Mark Miller and the people that broke It or Sean Fritz any of these people I'm in charge now. We'll fix it Okay, but how will you fix it and the other thing to Paulie?

I have point is what are you gonna do about all the protests and the hate that we see on the streets of Toronto at Vancouver? Montreal, you know just because we don't talk about it every day does not mean it's not a thing. It's happening every single day and it needs to be addressed and it hasn't been addressed. And that is what Pauliev is talking about when he says leave your wars at home and in reference to Gaza, Israel, right? You can be very unhappy with it, you can be emotional about all these things, but what you can't do is then go out and target Jewish businesses, Jewish households, none of that. And we've got to get back to that.

So which leader is actually going to do something about it? And Pauliev has made pretty clear, if you're here on a student visa, if you're here on a foreign visa or any kind of visitor visa, and you're taking part in these things, you're going to be deported. And again, that's okay because we don't want that kind of people here. We want people who come here and will prosper again and enjoy the benefits of this country and add to this country. So again, what are they saying? What are the actions? I do think it's an interesting part of the debate tonight as to how Mr. Carney is going to deal with immigration because he does not want to talk about it and he has not talked about at all the protests and the hate and stuff we see in the street.

I said I'd get into the debate and the politics of the debate, the winners, the losers, were there any, and why does it matter? I would point out that the polling, either Ipsis, Abacus, and now Leger, they're starting to show a little bit more of a momentum and a dogfight. Leger now putting Carney and Poliev, you know, they are going to battle it out in the 905, if we believe the polls. So the polls starting to close that gap. But who won last night doesn't even matter. Let us bring in Anthony Koch, managing principal at AK Strategies and former

national campaign spokesperson for a guy named Pierre Poliev. Hello there. How's it going? It's going okay. You got two more weeks until the big vote. And so I got to ask you, because it was hard for me to watch this. And I think it's hard for anyone in English Canada to watch this and really understand if there was a winner or a loser. So just based on the French component,

did it matter and did Carney deliver? So there were a few points where it was pretty clear that Mr. Carney either didn't understand the question that was posed to him or had some difficulty responding. But at the end of the day, it was very clear, Yves-Francois Blanchet, just being the native Quebecois French language dominant person on stage, was most certainly the most proficient in French. Jagmeet Singh has always been surprising. I mean, he was an afterthought on the stage, but I have to say his parents put him in a really great French immersion program when he was a kid. It's funny because he speaks with like a pseudo-Parisian accent when he talks.

He doesn't sound very Quebec well, but the quality of his French is actually quite good. And then of course you've got Pierre Pauliev who is the single best French language speaker leader the Conservative Party has ever had with the notable exception of course of Brian Mulroney. Yeah, yeah, I thought he was right. Although I'll get to Pierre Pauliev's performance, I thought Jagmeet Singh lost it. I mean, all he wanted to do was talk about health, so he's just yelling it, and then his quips about Israel-Gaza genocide.

I thought he lost his mind last night. Having said all that, I mean, the bottom line is, you have to move the dial in these things. And again, Singh's going after Pauliev, and I'm like, does he know that he's supposed to go for a carney? Does Jagmeet Singh know what he's supposed to do in politics? No, well, you're absolutely right. This is the thing that I've always found funny, right? Like every party needs to understand who their accessible voter pool is and how they're supposed

to go after it. And like if I was a new Democratic Party strategist, which thank God I'm not, clearly you're not, I never will be. But if I were, I'd have a deep and profound understanding of the fact that my chief opponent in terms of trying to access voters is today, has always been and will always be the Liberal Party of Canada. So Jack Layton did this to great effect in 2011 against Michael Ignatik. We all remember how that played out. But it just seems the current iteration of the NDP cannot help themselves. And Jagmeet Singh at various points last night resembled more of a pit bull for Mark Carney

than he did somebody running for prime minister in his own right. Yeah, he appeared just a bit unhinged, almost like he was desperate to get something in because well, he's just got to get something in. I will say, though, on Pauliev's performance, he seemed a little more stoic than I think most people would assume, right? He seemed a little stoic. He had a good moment on, I think, pipelines. He was very clear about it, not an easy question to answer to K. Becker's, right?

He didn't waver. But why was he more stoic? And do you expect a different performance in the English debate? I know some of his advisors wanted him to put on some more of like a statesmanly type aura or performance last night. I think the record will determine in the next two weeks whether or not that was a good decision to make. But I have no reason to expect that the performance tonight, barring

the fact that Mr. Polyov is going to be in his first language, where he's much more comfortable and it's much easier to express mastery over the issues that they were talking about. But I don't think you're going to see the pit bull style thing that people were accustomed to maybe more in the House of Commons. No, but he can very well and I don't think it would hurt him to point out some of the long failures. I mean, I'm surprised that no one has really gone after Carney for his sudden reversal on pipelines and building and energy and things that six weeks ago he was completely against

were to believe him now, right? It doesn't really get brought up. I don't think as much mud was flung at at Carney Do you see that being different tonight? I? Actually, I'll put it this way I hope it's different night because the big issue that I had with yesterday's performance and this is a thing mark Carney Doesn't need to get a slam dunk in these debates. He doesn't need to have this resounding victory He just needs to survive and the fact the matter yesterday survived. You just need to survive. And the fact of the matter is, yesterday he survived.

He just needed to show up in pants, right? Like it's so sad we set the bar. That's the problem too. That's my only criticism that I would say. I think expectations were probably set a little bit too low for Mr. Carney, not only in French, but in debates at large. And by virtue of that, you know, he comes out yesterday and gives a middling performance at best. But because expectations were set so low, a lot of people go, oh, it wasn't actually as bad as I was expecting it to be. So in this industry, expectation management is crucial.

And I think there were maybe some errors that were made in that regard. Yeah, I gotta be honest. I mean, this is a job interview for, I think, one of the most, well, it is the most important job at the most important time in my life and your life. And I think a lot of people's lives, like we have to of the most, it is the most important job at the most important time in my life and your life and I think a lot of people's lives. Like we have to raise the bar,

just please raise it off the ground, right? Like Mr. Carney won't break, he can take it. He wants to be a prime minister. So can Mr. Poliev, let's see what they bring to the table. And again, this will, I guess, become the dinner time conversation over the weekend. Cause I don't believe that the race is decided yet. I think it's gonna be tough, I think it's gonna be a grind getting at the vote, but I don't I don't see this as we'll game over.

No, absolutely not. And again, right, this weekend is when advanced polls show up. So this weekend you're gonna see millions of Canadians are gonna start voting. Things have changed a little bit over the last couple of years as more Canadians have become acclimated to the idea of voting. But that's what that anticipation and English advanced voting, less percentage of voters are actually voting on election day than ever before. This debate is going to be the last thing that voters hear before many of them go to the polls. So it's going to be extremely important. But you're absolutely right. This thing's far from over.

Like you said, the Léger poll that came out very recently showed that the Liberals and the Conservatives are neck and neck in the 905 and the GTA. And that's the battleground of battlegrounds in Canadian federal elections. So anybody who thinks this is over one way or another, stay tuned because there's still a lot of game to play. No question.

And I think, look, I don't know if you've caught it online, but there is a new campaign. We're going to talk about it in the 11 o'clock hour, but there's a new campaign and it's gone viral with these young kids basically talking to their parents and putting out the plea to like, hey, think about who you vote for, right? Like there's a real generational divide. And I have to think that when people are talking this weekend, there might be some colorful conversations at the dinner table between kids and their parents. Without a shadow of a doubt. I mean, I wrote a piece about this in the National Post a few weeks ago that basically addressed this head on, which is this election is proving so far to be one of

the most generationally polarized and in the opposite of people's prior stereotypes, right? It used to be that the conservatives were the party of old people and the liberals were the party of the next generation. What we're seeing this time around is a complete reversal of that phenomenon with the liberals doing much better than the conservatives among people 55 plus, but the conservatives having an advantage among 18 to 30 and even 32 to 55. So we're going to see what's going to happen.

Turnout matters. But at the end of the day, it is interesting that if you would have told anybody, I think 10, 15 years ago that we were going to have a generationally polarized election with the young people behind the conservatives and more elderly people behind the liberals, they would have probably told you you were crazy. Yeah. And they would tell me I'm crazy anyway, but I totally agree with you. And the bottom line is, I wouldn't underestimate them. They're pretty angry. And I do think just to note, there's some

interesting pictures. The campaigns are so different because when you see a Mark Carney picture now, he's like hanging out with like, everyone's over 70. It's like it's a blue hair special kind of day. And it's just it's so polarizing just who they're clearly catering to so there's that. He's definitely leaning into it right? Definitely leaning into it and I gotta lean out of this so hey I'll wish you a happy debate watching tonight you have a terrific well I'd say have a terrific Easter weekend but I know you would spazze. Yeah nonetheless you had a terrific long weekend we'll talk again. Thank you. There you go that is is Anthony Koch, and he will be watching very carefully. I think, well, I know I will be. And I think a lot of people, we're supposed to get more watchers

on tonight's English debate than we've ever seen. So I do think people will be engaged. It's convenient that, you know, there'll be no analysis on the next day, on the Friday. Interesting schedule. But I do think it will be a conversation around the dinner table. Want to kick your cooking up a notch? This is the moment you've been waiting for. Flavor Network is giving one lucky viewer $15,000 to put towards the grocery bill. Oh, I love that. Tune into Flavor Network every night at 9 Eastern or stream live on Stack TV. Look for the daily code word and enter on our website for a chance to win $15,000.

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