The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- After Ten Weeks What Do We Know About The New Prime Minister?

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

What have we learned about him that we didn't know the day he was sworn in.

Are you ready for good talk? And a little there, Peter Mansford here along with Shantelle Bear and Rob Russo. Um, it's been another interesting week. Lots of things happening. Uh, today marks 10 days or sorry, 10 weeks. It might feel like 10 days for some people, but 10 weeks since Mark Carney was sworn in

as the country's 24th Prime Minister. And I think it's fair to say that for a lot of Canadians, they really didn't know a lot about Mark Carney when he became Prime Minister. But through 10 weeks, a lot of different things happening, as I said, quite a few things just this past week. Here's my question.

Start in a general fashion, then we'll get into some of the weak stuff. But in a general fashion, what do Canadians know now about this Prime Minister? Chantelle, why don't you start for us on that? I'm not sure that they know a lot more, but they certainly know, and I think they already knew when they went to vote, that this is not a clone of Justin Trudeau. It's a different style of political management. I think Canadians also voted with their eyes wide open to the notion that Mr. Carney was a political neophyte. Those of us who are closer to the scene are coming to the conclusion that it's probably easier to win an election as a political neophyte and to run a government as a parliamentarian neophyte.

And I'm always, and I spoke about that last week, reminded of Paul Martin's comment about how consensus building or getting stuff done is different in the parliamentary political sector than it is in the business sector. And I think we're seeing some evidence of that. Listen, it's a brand new experience. And it is an experiment to have someone become the prime minister of the country without that person having spent a single day in elected office. And nothing totally prepares you for the realities of running a government. I'll give you an example this week, it doesn't go to Mark Carney's political character or

management character, but Mr. Carney is coming into office. He's got plans, perhaps too many plans, and too full an agenda for the coming month to couple reopening parliament with a first minister's conference, with the chairing of the G7, with the passing of legislation. Sounds like a lot. And now Canada Post may be about to shut down because of a strike. Well, that was not in the game plan of this very busy month. It hasn't happened yet.

At this point, it's an overtime strike that is taking place as of today, but it could happen. And certainly, Canada Post wasn't at the top of the list of things that the government expected to have to deal with between now and maybe summer. But that is the nature of government, that the best laid plans are at the mercy of everyday realities. And I think he's kind of finding that out the hard way. The other thing, and I know we're going to get to that more specifically, is one of the features of coming to government as Prime Minister without having gone through the political process, like Brian Mulroney who had a leadership campaign, sat in opposition for a while, Justin Trudeau, Stephen Harper, is that usually you have people who do the crossing of the desert with you,

and who are Parliamentary ready to take over and run the PMO. Mr. Carney doesn't have that. The people who came to help with this campaign were people who wanted him to become Prime minister, but it was clear that they were only there for the campaign. But because he doesn't bring that team, you are seeing it in the staffing of the PMO. It's not as if you have a lifelong school friend who is like Jean-Pierre Saint-Wilson, just willing to step in and has some political management experience for having been the mayor of a large city. So we are also seeing some of that. I'm reading and I'm hearing about Mr. Carney's tendency to micromanage.

At some point, he's going to discover that he cannot be both efficient and on top of every fire. And that, I suspect, has not happened yet, but the next man should teach him that particular lesson. We'll see. Rob, what's your take? What's your answer to the question? What kind of prime minister has Canada gotten? Well, there are two or three things that I think he's shown us. And let me get to some of some of the impressive things. First of all, he's very impressive during a news conference. He I think his his finest moments were in Rome the past weekend on

the rooftop of the Canadian Embassy in the National Press Theatre, I think on the 2nd of May after he was elected. He takes substantive questions, pointed questions, and answers them in substantive ways without any pretense, free of any kind of attempts at a particular performance, other than unmistakable expressions on his face that sometimes lets you know that he doesn't appreciate the question but but not in a grumpy way. So that's been

that's been refreshing in some ways. He's bloodless. You just have to look at some of the old hands. I know people have said that the cabinet is stocked with Trudeau retreads. There are a lot of people who were in Trudeau's cabinet. There are a lot of people who were in his election cabinet who didn't get the call to return to cabinet. And they felt like it was done in a very cold way. Mr. Carney will do what is necessary, but he will do it in a bloodless way. That may have to change. I think Chantel is getting at what some of the people who've been involved in the chief

of staff discussion have said is that in that he doesn't know what he doesn't know about politics. Because he's good on his own in front of a microphone, often cleaning up the messes of his ministers, as was the case in Rome over the weekend. He does have this sense that he can do a lot of this himself and as somebody who was in the positions he was in at the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, he did drive a lot of this himself. He will not be able to do that without somebody that he knows and trusts to harness his desires to the realities of

the machinery of government, be it the political realities, ministers, caucus, and or the public service realities. You know, I think I said a week or two ago this is a man who does not think that Dominic LeBlanc is going to be the guy who is going to be conducting the agreements with Donald Trump. He is going to do it. He thinks he is going to do it. But there is a problem with that. You won't be able to get it done. So this notion that he doesn't know what he doesn't know is beginning, I think, to percolate. And I think it's led us to the situation. Now, he did have a transition team, and that transition team should have asked him, is there somebody you know and you trust? Clearly, Tim Hodgson is one of those persons. I'm beginning to

think that somebody like that might have been, somebody should have gone home and said, who are the five people like Tim Hodgson that you would want around you as your chief of staff? And if he didn't have an answer, somebody on his transition team should have given him five suggestions of people who might fit that role because clearly he hadn't thought about it or he hasn't expressed a strong opinion about it. Otherwise it would have been done. So, he is going to have to learn on the job and he's going to have to learn in a hurry given the burden that he's placed on himself in terms of moving at speeds that we've never moved at before. He says that over and over again.

I don't want to make this sound as stupid as I often sometimes do, but do you think he clearly understands the difference between a chief of staff and an executive assistant? I don't think so. I don't think that he understands the importance of that chief of staff. I get the point about five people you trust,

but if the five people that he would have trust in that position bring no parliamentary and government experience to the job, then they should not be that person. Because it also needs, in this case, to be someone who complements the prime minister with knowledge of the machinery, what should land on his desk and what should not, and that he trusts to make those decisions, not someone that whose decisions he can review. I'm also not sure that Mark Carney totally understands

that Mark Carney totally understands that as solid as he thinks his position is politically as Prime Minister, it is far less solid than he seems to assume. Let's start with the Liberal caucus. This is not his caucus. This is a caucus that is mostly made up of people who were elected along the way under Justin Trudeau. Some of them have been around for 10 years. A number of them have gotten the message because of the way that he has shaped cabinet with the Secretary of State who looked like full ministers and waiting, that they will never be in his cabinet. They don't have a lot to lose. On Sunday, this caucus is meeting at the invitation of the dean of the caucus, not at the urging

or the invitation of the prime minister and the PMO, and has been discussing all week the notion of adopting the dispositions of the Reform Act, which allow caucus to show a leader the door, as the conservatives did with Aaron O'Toole. It's not because the Liberal caucus is in revolt against Mark Carney that this discussion has legs. It's because a lot of them still have memories of the last year of Justin Trudeau and the fact that they were powerless to send him a signal that he should go. But that it is happening this early on speaks to, I would say poor caucus management. And yes, a very poor, he may be bloodless, but he would have needed staff to make some

of those decisions about cabinet a bit less painful. Someone wrote to me, I have no doubt, no reason stood out what was in that message, a note that said a minister with eight years of service in cabinet was sent an email from the PMO that said, just don't get on the plane for the swearing in, which is quite a way to be told that you're dumped. Some of the people who did not make cabinet had been appointed two months before by Mark Kearney for the first time to cabinet. Imagine that, coming with your family to Rideau Hall to get sworn in, and then not make the cut for no reason. You did not have time to screw up.

So that's not why you're not in cabinet. These things have happened and they have felt this sense that maybe caucus wants more control over this bloodless person whose staff seems to not be in place to soften those blows, then think of the House of Commons. We were there for Joe Clark. Do we remember how easily a new government

can lose control of a minority House of Commons? Mark Carney thinks that he is doing well because he's very close to a governing majority. He's actually very close to being liable to be blackmailed by two or three MPs in his own caucus saying, I'm leaving, I'm not voting for this. And then what does he do? He doesn't have a majority of votes. Does he seriously think he can govern with the support of the conservatives for very long? And then there's the Senate. Refresh our course on the Senate.

There is no one that can, in the PMO, tell the Senate to pass legislation. It is now a house made up of groups of independents who plan to not be a rubber stamp and who will be wanting to look at legislation that come their way, not be told let's pass this within five days. Someone ran me through the math of the House of Commons procedure. I know it probably doesn't really matter yet to Mr. Carney, but do you know when you take away the de facto days devoted to the Trump speech, the opposition days that the government has to give the opposition parties between now and the summer, do you know how many real sitting days are left to debate legislation in the

House of Commons? Eight days. Yeah. So unless you think parliament, it doesn't really matter, which he made, you're about to find out that it does because eight days is a very short time to pass not the tax cut thing, which I think is not the hardest one, but some ambitious bill about national projects or projects of national interest. I'm not so sure that the eight days will do the job, but Mr. Carney clearly needs people who are sure footed on the score, who one can tell him the time of day and two that he will believe and not just make it happen

because that's not going to happen. It's there are too many variables that he doesn't yet seem to be able to take into account. You know, what I find remarkable really is this is the guy who led them from what seemed like certain death, right? And here it is literally within weeks of the election and he's already facing unrest in the caucus. Like I understand the things you said Chantel. I know Rob I want you to answer this. Like how could it get to that so fast? Of his own making. Well, it may be of his own making, but is it simply because, you know, I didn't get in cabinet or, you know, I, I wasn't treated nicely when I was

dropped from cabinet. Is it all about that? Really? I want to know who the genius was who figured out we needed all those secretary of states. Right. But there there is a sense among the people in caucus that they're in the dark. They're being treated like mushrooms being kept in the dark and once in a while they get sprinkled with fertilizer. And they want to know. They want to know. They want to help. In many instances, almost every instance of the people that I spoke to, they want to help, including some of the people who were dropped from cabinet. What can I do to help? What can I do to be useful? And you know, I do think that his failure to make it clear who was chief of staff was

going to be initially rankled. There are people who are upset about Marco Mendicino being the chief of staff in caucus as well. They're prepared now to live with that. Although it is bizarre that a temporary chief of staff has been confirmed as being, um, enduringly temporary. And if anybody should know what it's like to be dropped from cabinet, it should be Mendocino. Yeah.

You know, having been dropped by Justin Trudeau. Yeah. So there are people who feel like they've been left in the dark and they don't like that. The former caucus chair, Brenda, I cannot remember her last name now, didn't run again. So they were kind of adrift. And so they decided to go to Hetty Fry,

because she is the dean, and asked for this. But it should not have come to that. Somebody should have said to the prime minister, you need to look after this. It isn't a problem now, it will become a problem, but there is grumbling and there is restiveness and these people are your advocates. They want to help.

I think that, you know, a good chief of staff catches these things. What's a good chief of staff? He's a distant early warning system, right? A good chief of staff is somebody who not just sees the missiles incoming, but sends them out when they need to be sent out as well. You know, a good chief of staff is somebody who says to the PM, as well. You know, a good chief of staff is somebody who says to the PM, I'm going to be the one who is going to pay you the compliment of being blunt. You're screwing this up. Get on

this. And here's a system to do that. So Mr. Mendocino needs to start playing that role if he's not playing that role now. And it's difficult for Marco Mendocino without a doubt, knowing that the ice underneath him is very thin if he wants the job. And there are people in caucus who now believe he wants the job permanently. If that's the case, he's got to get on it. So if he wants the job and Mark Carney wants to keep him, what we should have been told yesterday is that he was staying on.

That is not the message. And rightly so, I think, CTV, for instance, and others have led with Marco Mendocino is to leave when the summer comes. It sounds, by looking at this, and I'm going to try the common sense approach to what happened yesterday, which was confirmation that Mr Mendocino will be staying on presumably until the house rises at the end of June. Can you imagine, even if you're really good,

and you know everything that you need to know about federal politics and this government, and you know everything that you need to know about federal politics and this government, and you know something of Mark Carney. Can you imagine stepping into the job of Chief of Staff on Monday, on the day that the House comes back, with the process already in play for the First Minister's meeting on June 2nd, with the G7 preparations already in the works and with legislation being prepared to be presented to the House at some already in the works and with legislation being prepared to be presented to the House at some point after the Trump speech. Even if you know what the job is about, even if you know this government, we are talking about people who are at this point, and the person mentioned, Mathieu Bouchard is one

of those, who yes, has good knowledge, worked in the PMO, was chief of staff to Stephen Gilbo, knows the ins and outs. But since he left, even if you've only left for a year or two, a lot of people have changed places. They're gone. You need to find your bearings. So by yesterday, the only thing that made sense in a practical way, and I know lots of liberals, because I read what they write to me, are saying this gives the PMO and Marco Mendicino more time to make bad decisions that will come back to haunt us.

Possibly, I don't know what they're talking about, so I'm not gonna go there. But the only decision that made sense was to go with the skeleton crew that you have now. When parliament pauses and all these events are behind the government and July comes, take the time to have the person who is coming in kind of settle the PMO because that is the situation and it is what it is. Logically, I have one friend who worked in a PMO who said,

if I stepped in tomorrow, I'd be okay. I said, that's not true. That's a delusion. You would find that the names in your contact list, they're gone. They're not responding. You won't know who these new people are, which ones are good, which ones are bad. which ones are good, which ones are bad. The notion that you can step in and save the day on Monday, I think that in logic went out the window this week, and that's logical. But if Marco Mendocino had been campaigning to stay in it, won that battle,

I would have expected him to be confirmed permanently yesterday, that did not happen. Okay, we're gonna take our first break. I think if there's anything we can say about the Chief of Staff stuff is that whether it's Marco Mendocino or any of the other names that are floated around, it's not really about who it's going to be. It's about the Prime Minister's understanding of what the role is. And it seems to me, if we're all right on this, is that his idea of what the role is and everybody else's idea of what the role is

are two different things. Anyway, let's take our first break. We'll be right back after this. ["Sky's World"] this. And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here, along with Chantelle Baer and Rob Russo. You're listening to your Friday Good Talk and lots to talk about. You're listening on SiriusXM channel 167 Canada Talks or on your favourite podcast platform

or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. Glad to have you with us no matter how you're connecting with us. is of Canada arrives in Canada and he will be reading the throne speech, which they say is going to be around 20, 25 minutes in length. And that'll be on Tuesday morning. He's here for, I don't know, 24 hours. It's a quick trip and it will be dripping in the, um, the sense of Canada's sovereignty, which is guesses the whole reason he's coming, uh, in light of everything that's happened with the president of the United States over the last few months. Tell me, what do you expect from

this throne speech? Aside from that, the optics of it are clearly going to be important for some people and especially for the prime minister or he wouldn't have invited the King to come. Rob, what is your sense? What do you think this throne speech is going to mean beyond that? Well, in terms of laying out the government's priorities, I thought that we got that in the form of a mandate letter that was released yesterday. I actually like the notion of the mandate letter that we got. I think governments that succeed have a small number of priorities. When I think of the people who were great leaders, they had only one or two things that they tried to accomplish

and they concentrated on them. I think Brian Mulroney was a great leader. He had a couple of things, repair the relationship with the United States to the benefit of Canada and try to bring Quebec back in into the constitutional fold. The second might have been a failure, but it was a noble failure. The first was a success.

I think of Ronald Reagan to try and make Americans feel better about themselves and the menace of communism. Just a couple of priorities, huge priorities in both instances. So I like somebody who doesn't have a lot of priorities. I know that there are seven of them on the mandate letters, but really they just come down to two or three. And that's come up with a new relationship with the United States, given the realities that we have south of the border, restructure our economy and make life more affordable. Perhaps we are going to get broader strokes or more detailed brushes

of the strokes to make a sense, give us a sense of what that portrait might look like. But I think that's the portrait. In terms of the man delivering the message. You know, we, a mordant observer of the show last week, Dan Gardner, pointed out that he can't really say very much because he's the king and the king doesn't say much on his own and that he's been instructed by the Prime Minister of England not to say very much. But I think as you pointed out and I've said it as well, he is also the King of Canada. The Prime Minister of Canada can give him direction. I think the Prime Minister of Canada has already mentioned that he was irritated by the invitation for a second state visit. Now

that in the irritation isn't necessarily with Charles because that invitation came from Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of Britain, but that shouldn't stop the Prime Minister, and I don't think it has, from giving Charles some instructions as he is the King of Canada as well. So I'll be interested to see how Prime Minister Carney's instructions to King Charles are manifested in the words that he reads in the Senate Red Room on Tuesday. I mean, let's face it, he wouldn't get on a plane, fly over here, give a speech, and then plant a tree and look at a fly pass and then fly back all in 24, 36 hours, unless there'd been a direct need for it to happen, which seems to have been the case.

Or at least a perceived need for it to happen, if not a direct need. But I mean, I'm not even going to go to who instructs who, but it does sound like logic that Keats Palmer does not have a veto on what the King of Canada says in Canada. And I guess I take it from there. Otherwise, what is the point? Are we saying that the UK Parliament has a say on how Canada is run via the King?

That sounds like a bridge too far even for me. So I'm going to leave that there. I'm looking at the Trond speech and the mandate letters, and I'm curious to see whether I will see mixed signals or signals that make sense. And why I say that is I agreed that the mandate, the single mandate letter sent to every minister, same letter seems to herald a focused government, one that is focused on key missions. The making of a throne speech often involves finding a little paragraph here and a little paragraph there so that every minister is kind of a little something in the throne speech. If that's what we

get Monday, instead of a very focused throne speech that reflects the mandate letters, I'm going to think that there is a serious brain issue at the top of the government. One half of the brain doesn't know what the other half thinks because I would like the trans speech to be as focused as the mandate letters if I'm going to take them letter seriously. Why I'm not convinced or I'm not sure it's going to happen until it happens is because I watched Mr. Carney's news conference this week when he was talking about that golden dome. And he said the days of being automatically on side with American moves, I'm paraphrasing

here are behind us. Well, if there is one issue on which we have not been automatically on side, it is the anti-missile shield, which Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush tried to push on Canada, and that was declined both times. So that is what I mean by mixed signals. You cannot come and tell me I'm on side with having this conversation about the Golden Dome, and at the same time saying, well, in the past, we always said yes when the Americans proposed something, and now we're not. Or can we talk about the Iraq war if we're going to talk about how non-automatic or the Vietnam war? So I want to see one on the other. I've seen a lot of mixed signals from the Carney team over the past

two months. That cabinet does not reflect the initial signal of a smaller team. And I don't care that they are called something else. It could have gone down differently. So I do the single purpose mandate letters, but then show me a trans speech that does reflect them. Yeah, listen, there have been lots of big ticket items over the years, dating back even before the Vietnam War, back to nuclear weapons based in Canada, where Canada has said no to requests from the United States. Star Wars, as you mentioned, with Reagan. And I, you know, I gotta say, I have a hard time reading this one,

whether Carney was really, was he saying yes to Golden Dome or was he saying, you know, we'll talk about it because there are lots of things to talk about in terms of mutual defense, et cetera, et cetera. I think the latter, but I take issue with the notion that this is a shift from a past where we only blindly said yes to things like that. Yeah. Rob on this?

Yeah. He said, I think he said that it was a negotiation. Now, in terms of Golden Dome, just the name, it's kind of ludicrous, okay? I mean, it reflects Donald Trump's fixation with everything that is yellowy orange, whether it's, you know, baubles in the oval office or the color of his hair dye. But we've got geography in Canada. And the next level of defense makes Canada vital to the United States because we're in the backyard of both the Russians and the Americans. And the Americans want to protect their backyard. We have the ability to place sensors in our high Arctic,

which will defend the United States and help defend the continent against hypersonics. Can we help with the production and placement of sensors? Yes, but the notion of a golden dome is still the gleam in Donald Trump's eye. No matter what he says about it being put into place before the end of his term, nobody believes that neither the Congressional Budget Office or the people at NORAD, they do know a next level of defense is coming. Mr. Carney has signed an agreement with Australia to buy new British radar about $4 billion worth. If you

listen to his press conference a couple of nights ago, he did suggest areas of cooperation with the United States that could deepen. He said again, the relationship is going to be different, except in two areas. One of them was the auto industry. And the other is the defense industry. And in some ways, in some ways, they are linked. So he is he is sending a signal that he's prepared to deepen our ties with the United States when it comes to continental defense, not necessarily on this issue, but again, on things like aluminum, on things like critical minerals. And when I say they're linked, I'm talking about batteries for EVs. But those critical minerals are also used to exponentially increase computing power for AI for things like chips that the

Chinese have a huge, huge lead on now in terms of their access to these resources. I keep thinking that much more was discussed in the Roosevelt room after that lunch than we were led to believe and that those discussions continue. I think senior trade officials spent a lot of time this past week in Washington. There are a lot of discussions. I noticed that a Senate members of a bipartisan committee of senators is coming up today, I think, to meet with Mark Carney. Those Republicans on that committee would never have come under Justin Trudeau. The relationship has changed. Mark Carney has moved the needle on that. But there are things that they're digging into in terms

of those discussions. Let me ask one. I want to talk about Let me ask one. I want to talk about Polyev and his handling of the conservative caucus in a moment, but give me a couple of minutes on the significance of the remarks by Carney, along with Starmor and Macron on the situation with Israel, which were quite stark and condemning in the words that were used. What is the significance of that for Canada and for Carney? Chantel? I'm waiting to see if action will follow words to decide that there has been a real shift in the Canadian position on this. I will note a couple of things. One, since he has been sworn in as prime minister, Mark Curly has gone out of his way to feature a different or a closer UK France Canada alliance. Triangle, the basis are that France and the UK

are the founding countries that brought Canada about, and that it's a natural alliance. And that has been interesting in all kinds of ways because it also allows Mark Carney to sell some of those policy tweaks to both Quebec and the rest of Canada based on historical ties. And that is interesting.

I think on Israel, I do believe that the Canadian government is hardening its tone, that it is less interested in trying to project the on the one hand and on the other hand, because what has been happening in Gaza and to the Palestinians goes way beyond on the one hand and on the other hand. I think it speaks more frankly, not to a shift in Canadian policy, but in the increasing isolation of Benjamin Netanyahu and his government on the international scene, but also in Israel itself. What you didn't hear this week as much as you would have heard a few months ago were many organizations identified with the pro-Israel lobby in this country up in arms over what has been happening. I'm sure no one liked it, this statement, but still it's becoming harder to go after the Canadian government for what

looks like picking a side more on the side of the Palestinians in light of what has been actually happening on the ground in Gaza and in Palestine. And so I don't expect as much of the watering of the Canadian position as we've seen in the past. Rob? What was also said around the same time and didn't get as much attention was Mr. Kern is saying that Hamas can play no role in the future of the Palestinians, that they must lay down their arms and go into exile. And then we had the statement on the Netanyahu government. I think what we're seeing is the government coming to the realization that there are nationalist zealots on both sides of this issue

in the Netanyahu government, and on the Palestinian side who don't want either to exist. And so there can be no peace or no two state solution, either with Hamas or with Netanyahu. And they're beginning to state that more boldly. That being said, this remains a powder keg issue for the Liberal caucus and one that will have to be managed. Mr. Mendocino made a very strong stand in support of Israel and was lauded for it. A lot of people thought that he stood a good chance when things were looking grim of actually holding his riding in Toronto,

which has a significant Jewish population. But this is an issue that Mr. Minaccino and the Prime Minister are going to have to pay very close attention to in their caucus because it came so close, so often, in the last parliament under Mr. Trudeau to blowing up. Okay. another Mr. Trudeau to blowing up. OK. Obviously, this story is not going away anytime soon.

And its impact on countries around the world, because of the decisions that are being made by governments about what to say and how to say it, and what to do and how to do it, continue and get harder and harder as we've witnessed this week. Okay, I'm going to take our final break and come back to talk about the conservatives. That's right after this. And welcome back, Peter Mansbridge with Rob Russo and Chantelle Bear. Good Talk Friday. A reminder that we're kind of into the stretch run before the summer break and our final

Good Talk of this season will be June 20th. We'll have a couple over the summer months, as kind of a special summer Good Talks. But holidays coming up to a degree. Okay, Pierre Poliev made an interesting decision this week. We talked earlier about the problems that Carney may be having with his caucus and a lot of it's due to the kind of responsibilities that were handed out as is the

case by the Prime Minister's office to certain caucus members. Smaller cabinet, extended a little bit because of the, you know, the secretaries of state positions, a kind of an outer cabinet, but in total still under 40. So, Pierre Poliev, who doesn't have a seat himself and wants to keep people loyal to him, had a decision to make. He's got 140 or so members of parliament. What's he going to do? I mean, there is a thing in the opposition parties to have a shadow cabinet where you pick members to take a particular interest in certain portfolios on the government side and be prepared to challenge those ministers in those comments. So there's shadow cabinets. I don't think they get anything extra. They don't get any extra money or extra research staff or extra offices or anything, but it is a title and it's a degree of prestige. And so there's usually an equal number roughly as to what the government side has. So what

does Poliev do? He says, we're going to have a bigger cab, the shadow cabinet. We're going to have 73 or 74, basically half his caucus are going to have a title. What do we make of that? Is that, um, I mean, it doesn't cost anymore. And it's clearly something to try and, I guess, impress people, um, by giving them responsibilities beyond the normal. Who wants to go first on this, Rob? You look eager to talk. There's so much shade in that shadow cabinet. It's got to be cold. I mean, I was expecting when I saw the number, I was wondering how come you didn't get called.

They were going to call us next, at that rate. Clearly Mr. Pogliev is trying to keep a lot of the people in his caucus happy because his leadership remains very much in doubt. That he is cognizant of their organized efforts yet to dislodge him in terms of other leadership candidates, but people are having quiet conversations. If Mr. Bolliev were to decide he was going to step away, embryonic campaigns would grow muscle and send you in a hurry. I was I was struck by the people who weren't in there. One name in particular jumped out at me and that was

Jamil Javani, who the Yale University chum of JD Vance. He is seen as somebody who was interested in the leadership. He was also seen as somebody who was interested in the leadership. He was also seen as somebody who operated independently, I'm told. And that's why he was left off the critics list. But he would be, I would think, an asset for the Conservative Party to use. They've chosen not to use him because they thought that he abused his access, is what people are saying. Others like Shivaloy Majumder surprised me that,

it surprises me that he's not on the list. Randy Hoback is another one who was a Canada US trade critic. These are people who were loyal to Mr. Poiliev and useful to him. Perhaps he's decided that because of their loyalty, he can leave them off this time. And then there's the issue of Jenny Byrne, Mr. Poiliev's campaign manager. A story by Christiane Noelle at Radio Canada this week says there's a growing number of people calling for her to be dismissed. Again, I'm told that that's not going to happen, that they are, Mr. Poilieff and Ms. Byrne are a team, that they're joined at the hip,

and that they may expand the influence of others on the campaign team, but she will remain in some capacity, and that he's insisting on that right now. So that might become a flash point, despite his handing out of a lot of these goodies to people in his caucus. Well, there are calorie-free goodies beyond the title and maybe the fact that it binds you to party positions and doesn't allow you a lot of leeway to act independently. It's not a meal. The problem with the Jenny Burns staying on thing is there are many senior conservatives

who could help Mr. Playa through the next year or two, who will not work under her. That's not going to happen. So it's not just that there are people who want her out because as one quote in that story put it, she treated people like garbage, but it is that there are a few people who want to take the chance of being treated like garbage by working under her.

The reputation is of a toxic management of the official opposition's office, leaders office. So I guess Mr. Poitier is going to have to figure that out. You can't expand the tent if people will not come in the tent because of the main person in the tent alongside the leader. As for the shadow cabinet. Well, when the House of Commons convenes, most Canadians will see very little difference between the question period lineup, pre-election and post-election. Why? Because it is not a two-tier, it's a three-level shadow cabinet. And the first level has 11 people. So starting with Andrew Scheer, obviously, they are mostly the same people as before,

same deputy leaders, same Quebec lieutenant. And they will be taking up most of the question period ice time. Forget the others. I'm assuming that one of the reasons why it's so big is that it also dilutes the impact of anyone in that shadow cabinet. You're drowned out by the numbers.

There's always someone else raising his or her hand saying, me too, you need to give me some space and in the process. What you are not doing, as in the previous Parliament, is giving Canadians a sense of what a Conservative cabinet would look like. The finance critic is the same, the foreign affairs critic is the same. Interestingly, most Quebec MPs are in relatively secondary roles. Gérard Deltel, who has been a party leader provincially, who is a media star in his own right, very adept in the House of Commons,

very adept also in media interviews, is now the critic for revenue. Do you know how many times a critic for revenue gets to ask questions and be efficient in the House of Commons. And the lineup pretty much looks like that. The finance critic, again, is someone who does not speak French. So if you're thinking that you're going to score on these issues, major issues against

Francois-Philippe Champagne, good luck. It's as if you are excluding yourself from being anywhere in Quebec. So I don't know, I heard a different story about Mr. Givani and I don't know which version is the actual one, but the sources on the other version were also good, that he declined the role that he was offered and decided that he would rather set out the shadow cabinet. He wouldn't be the first MP to do that. It happened in the previous parliament with other MPs who wanted to carve out a space of their own and with more freedom.

So I don't know which version. Of course, the version Rob has heard serves Mr. Poilier better than the version I've heard, but it tells you something when deeply sourced conservatives cannot agree on what happened in the case of someone who didn't make the cut for that of someone who didn't make the cut for that shadow cabinet. We'll see, but it doesn't kind of bode for a very different Ploiev team or Ploiev tone going forward, because most of the people who were the people who had that tone in the House of Commons

who were back in their jobs. And as far as I can tell, Andrew Scheer has not gotten the memo about taking a less abrasive, burnt scorched tone to politics and to the government. I'll just say this about the Jenny Burn situation that sometimes those of us who sort of are in the bubble or trying staying close to the bubble, maybe talk about more than the ordinary person out there. But the way it was put to me is, yeah, he's sticking by Jenny Byrne for the moment, that he needs to keep one thing by his side in

case he gets in serious trouble with his caucus over the next months to offer up. And that could be when Jenny Burn is offered up if he does get in serious trouble heading towards some kind of a decision by the party or caucus members about his future. So we'll see on that. Meanwhile, Andrew Scheer looks increasingly comfortable in his role as interim leader. He's churning out the social media video spots, looking very happy, big smile on his face, talking about the conservative position.

So who knows what he's thinking about the future? Because as he knows, strange things can happen when you're the leader and you've lost an election, even more so if you're the leader and you've lost an election and you've lost your seat. Can I make a, can I make a rare bet here with you? A quick one. Yep. Whatever happens to the conservative caucus and party, Andrew Scheer is not the next leader of the conservative party. I rarely put down wagers, as you know. But I will put that one down. And sadly, when you do, you usually win. That's why I have this rich place. I bet on Joe Clark at that leadership thing.

And I won 60 bucks from my colleagues who had looked down on me when they saw who I was betting on. So be careful. Going to leave it at that. Thanks to you both. Thanks to Rob. Thanks to Chantel. Have a great weekend. And all of you out there, thanks so much for listening.

We'll see you again in seven days.