The Ben Mulroney Show - Does Mark Carney have a Quebec problem? We dig into the numbers

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Carney's boomer bet could go bust with Guest: Tasha Kheiriddin, Political Analyst, Writer 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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With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student. Join for just $4.99 a month. Savings may vary, eligibility and member terms apply. I'm very happy to welcome back to the show Tasha Carr4.99 a month. Savings may vary. Eligibility and member terms apply. I'm very happy to welcome back to the show Tasha Carradon. She's a political analyst and writer. She's written a great piece in the Calgary Herald. And we're gonna get to that in a moment,

but first let's say hi to Tasha. Hey, Ben. Hey, so listen, I'm a guy who sits here getting annoyed every single day with Mark Carney who doesn't seem to wanna answer any questions. You know, you're in media. If you had the opportunity to sit down with him, what sorts of questions would you put

to him immediately? I would ask him first off how he plans to deal with Donald Trump, what's his strategy, what's his game there. I would secondly ask him how he's going to deal with the economic issues that we're facing, housing shortages, cost of living, things that are on Canadians' minds, because those are the issues that we want to know what his answers would be and what happens around the corner. Yeah, and not just as in scrums where somebody asks a question, he fires out an answer and there's no pushback, there's no follow-up because you can't do that in a scrum situation.

There needs to be a sit-down interview with this guy where he is pushed to answer questions and then justify them. You're around liberals a lot. Do you sense that there is optimism on that team right now? Do they feel they have the wind in their sails? Yes, they do. 100%. There's a lot of optimism. It's guarded because the polls still show the conservatives are leading, but very small. Yeah. And, you know, this is, it's the momentum piece that they want, right? If you're on an upswing, you don't necessarily want to go into the election in the lead,

but you want to have the momentum. And that's what they feel right now. Well, it's interesting because I'm trying to make heads or tails of some of these polls. You know, you've got polls that say that the vast majority of Canadians can't even identify a picture of Mark Carney. So I don't understand where the enthusiasm for Mark Carney comes from. It's very confusing However in your piece in the Calgary Herald you sort of drill down on more interesting data points like there's for I thought it was really interesting that you looked at the numbers as They related to who was voting for Mark Carney and where they were coming from and how old they were

in the liberal leadership race and you to who was voting for Mark Carney and where they were coming from and how old they were in the liberal leadership race. And you postulate that that might not be a harbinger of good things to come. Well, yeah, I looked at the numbers because they were all accessible, which was really interesting to see where the votes came from.

And first of all, the percentage of people who voted in this leadership was not high. It was a 38% turnout of registered liberals. Yeah. Compare that with 65% in the conservative race in 2022. So you had a lot fewer people bothering to vote. And I think it's partly because you can be a liberal supporter without actually paying anything. Right. You just sign up and, and all, you know, full disclosure, I signed up my cat. People were signing up their pets one day on Twitter and I did. Sorry for your noise. I'm in an airport. That's going to stop at a second.

But anyway, the second thing is very important is that their organization in Quebec looks very weak. He's polling well in Quebec, but on the ground, they only got less than 50 people voted in 24 of the bottom 25 ridings. They were all in Quebec. Yeah, and Tash, again, that's where the numbers just, I don't understand how these polls are coming out with the numbers that they have because when I hear your numbers,

that 24 of the bottom 25 ridings were Quebec ridings, and in almost all, there were fewer than 50 people who voted, and yet I believe it's a Leger-TVA poll that said that he is the runaway favorite in Quebec to be the man of the hour as it relates to Donald Trump. I don't know how you get from your numbers to those numbers. Well, I haven't seen the breakdown of a Leger poll. I did see that top line and the question is where are all those people? If they're all concentrated on

the island of Montreal, that's not going to help the liberals very much, right? Because those are the traditional liberal writings. They have to be stronger. They have to contest the bloc Édouard off island. So that's really, it's a writing by writing breakdown that they have to do and that will tell us the real story. And then the last piece is really important, are young voters. You mentioned the age issue.

So when you look at who voted in this leadership, the big numbers, the big numbers of votes that were actually turned out, like over a thousand people kind of thing, were all in writings that were more affluent, that are older. The younger people who you would think that would have turned out for Karina Gould, that was the big hope that she was to get. She only got 3.2% of the vote. And that's telling because the millennial energy she thought she'd bring, it wasn't picked up on. Where were the millennials and the Xers? And I think, I mean, partly the people vote for who they think will win. That does affect the result. But I think it's also, just when you look at it, if Trump is a ballot question, who's got the most of fear from a Trump administration? Are people with skin in the game? People who have houses, who have savings. Those

are older people like X actors and boomers. And the younger people, they worry about even being able to buy a house. Those are Pierre Pauliap's people. So the question is, is this gonna be a generational election? If the liberals don't appeal to those voters and offer them something,

then you might end up seeing that and who knows which way it'll go. Yeah, I mean, I'm struggling to see. I mean, when you see how poorly, I mean, I don't know if it's a demonstration of how poorly they organized they were in Quebec with these poorly performing ridings, as we just discussed. Is that indicative of the ground game that they are capable of mounting in the province of Quebec? Because I always was led to believe that the Liberal Party's Quebec machine was as sophisticated as they come.

Yeah, well, Pablo Rodriguez, who is a Quebec lieutenant, has gone, right? He's running for the Quebec Liberal Party. So he's no longer manning that store. I don't know, you know, why they didn't pull out more voters. And I mean, Carney got the most in those writings, which tells it less than 50, and he had the most. And other people had, other people had single digits. That's pretty sad because you would think that exactly that, that Quebec is a place where, especially now with the conversation around Donald Trump,

Quebecers are getting super patriotic. They're like, oh, okay, Canada, we love you now. That's a benefit to liberals. So where were these people? Why didn't they show up to vote? Yeah, so we've been talking data and numbers. I wanna take that hat off and I want to put the speculation hat on and let's, let's imagine for a second, a best case scenario where Daniel LeBlanc and

Doug Ford come out of their conversation with Howard Lutnick with a promise and a path to remove the threat of tariffs altogether. All of a sudden they are not looming anymore. There's an agreement in principle where we will renegotiate NAFTA 2.0 in good faith. And because of that, the tariffs are gonna be removed altogether. We're going back to the way things were two months ago.

If that happens, what happens to this election? Does it go back to being a carbon tax election or is Donald Trump still the big ticket item? I don't think we're going to have a carbon tax election. I think that that ship has sailed. Economic election, yeah, which is tied to Trump. But sadly, I was hopeful when I saw what happened if Ford got this meeting. And then I read what Howard Letnick said about Doug Ford and how he basically said that Trump brushed off the threat as a little threat,

and Letnik told CBS on Tuesday Trump's 50% tariff threat was a tactic to break some guy in Ontario. You know what? They don't respect us at all. If I were for it, I wouldn't even go. I wouldn't go. I was happy at first. I thought, wow, big score. And I'm thinking, these guys are just jerks. No, but yeah, and by the way, I want to apologize. I kept saying Daniel LeBlanc. I don't know why. It's Dominique LeBlanc. I don't know where my head was at.

I do apologize to the minister because I sincerely want him to go down there with as much wind in his sails as possible. But Tasha, as somebody on this radio station said, you win if you're talking. And so to close up, they're the ones who called us, right? And there is so much pushback, increasing pushback and pressure on this administration

for what is being increasingly called boldly. There are people speaking now that were silent just a few weeks ago saying this is asinine, this is idiotic, this is dumbheaded, this is the wrong thing for America. And meanwhile, on this side of the border, you have people who are ready for a war, willing to sacrifice and willing to get dirty

and willing to put themselves in a precarious situation to get to the other side of this in a stronger position. So we're ready for what they're gonna send our way. Meanwhile, he's getting pressure and they're getting pressure. So to me, this talk by Lutnick and Trump, it's all bluster in order to sort of tap down on the criticism. I hope so, Ben, because honestly, this trade war is stupid.

It is dumb. It is all those things. And yeah, if they come to some kind of discussion on Thursday and they some kind of, sorry, today some kind of consensus, that would be amazing. It also would affect the election because if Trump is off the ballot as a question, it changes the whole complexion of the election. I don't think it will be a carbon tax election, but I think it would go back to being on the

economic issues, jobs, housing, because that is the number two issue people raise. Number one is Trump, 36% to the most recent Nana's poll. Number two is economy and jobs, 29%. So that could vault ahead ahead depending on what happens. I've been speaking with Tasha Carradine. Her article in the Calgary Herald is Carney's boomer bet could go bust. Absolutely worth a read. Thank you so much, Tasha. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Ben. Bye. Survivor has been calling me for a long time.

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