The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk - "Do You Believe The Polls?"

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

When the Conservatives, or at least some of them, start to question the validity of the polls, that there's trouble in the Tory ranks.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Ransbridge here, along with Rob Russo and Chantal Hébert. Wow, we're past the halfway mark of the campaign. And, you know, it's an interesting moment you know when one party starts questioning the polls that they're probably not in a good good position some conservatives turning up now at their rallies with t-shirts saying do you believe the polls well polls have not been kind to the conservatives and i guess that is the point here But that is a trouble sign when your party membership starts to use as their major point questioning the polls.

At least some Conservatives are doing that. Now, both Rob and Chantel have been out for a little bit in the country this week. Chantel was on the East Coast, Rob was on the West Coast. What are you seeing out there? I mean, this is kind of a major point. We're past the halfway point. The debates come next week. If anything's going to have a major impact of change,

it could be debates, although we've placed too much faith in that idea in the past, and it hasn't turned out. But what are you seeing there? What are you feeling? Rob, you spent, I guess, a couple of days, more than that, in BC. Yeah, I've spent most of this week in British Columbia, and I chose the writing of Abbotsford, BC, which is as close to a near lock for conservatives

as there is in the country. If there's a race there, it's only because that there is a division on the right. There was a former finance minister of British Columbia, Mike DeYoung, thought that he was going to win the nomination there and was told shortly before and after he'd signed up thousands of people that he wasn't qualified, no other reason given. And because of that, there is a bit of a race there. But what I found, I think I found dread. I found shock.

I found resolve. And I found a lot of anger. There are a lot of angry people out there. But I also think that I found in many ways a microcosm of what's happening in the country. And what's happening in the country is a very, very solid and fairly lofty conservative vote that is showing no signs of frittering away. And I also found a united opposition to conservatives. The NDP vote is gone. I talked to lots of people in a couple of ridings in Vancouver as well. Richmond was one of them.

And the NDP vote is gone, and it's coalescing around Mark Carney and the Liberals. So the anger was very interesting. The anger is directed at, on one side of the divide, at Donald Trump. And that's really driving this coalescence around Mark Carney and the liberals. But there is a great deal of anger as well, directed at the liberals, at how they've run the country over the last 10 years among conservatives. And there is some anger at Pierre Poiliev and the conservatives as to how they're running their campaign.

Again, Mike DeYoung is considered an excellent candidate. So it was interesting. You get a lot of emotion in this election that you normally wouldn't have. You get a lot of engagement that you normally wouldn't have. And because it's right on the border, and I interviewed De Jong, and he told me, just drive down to the end of the road. You'll see the United States. And there it is. It's a ditch. That's all it is. There's no border across.

So they're their neighbors in Abbotsford, South Langley. So there's shock and there's outrage and there's dread at what's going on. And there's a lot of fear about how it's going to affect the farms, the agribusinesses, and some other businesses in that part of British Columbia. So I was very glad I went there, and people were very kind to me. Chantal, you were on the East Coast, not for long, but long enough to talk to a few people. What were you seeing? Yes. So I'll give you my week in three stages. I'll start with the latest thing I did, which was to go to Halifax to tape the at-issue panel. And I wasn't there for very long, but long enough to, you know, walk around, go to a restaurant, talk to people. It took place in the Central Library.

It's a good place to hide if you're not yet doing the panel. You can roam around and people will come and talk to you and no one will know you're actually in the building because it's a great place. I think many Canadian cities would envy that central library that Halifax has. And I have to say that of all of the things that I saw and heard over those hours, one of the missing in action pieces was any sign of conservative life in conversations or any sign of Rob talks about anger over Justin Trudeau's way of running the country. No sign of that either. I put it to someone that it felt like the campaign was over in Atlantic Canada, and there was agreement that that might be the case.

And if that's the case, it's not in favor of the Conservatives, who were poised to make gains in the region two months ago. So that's how it felt. Now, I'm going to bring it back to where I spend my weeks, which is not Ottawa, but the province of Quebec. And what Rob says about the NDP, you could say up to a point about the Bloc Québécois. Mr. Blanchet has been struggling to get in the conversation. And you can hear the anger in his voice once in a while. And the language he's been using, which has become fairly aggressive.

He had a quote I saw this week about Mark Carney doesn't give a damn about Quebec, was the way he approached it. I think what has so far happened to the Bloc is that they, the party rightly was hoping that last week's Radio-Canada show, which featured interviews with all leaders, would help put the Bloc back on the map at the expense of the Liberals. That has not happened. What happened was the first impression that one got. If you wanted to like Mark Carney, and that's part of the problem, there is a wish here, a desire to like him, that overrides his faulty French and overrides his mistakes. So if you wanted to like him, he gave you no reason to dislike him.

There is a big test coming for Mark Carney in Quebec. Not only the debates, but he is going on Tout le monde en parle on Sunday night. High ratings and high risk. And a lot of people will be watching. Pierre Poilier will also be joining him. But in this province, the Conservatives are not on the map. In part, it's their fault in the sense can read or hear that says, we tried to get the conservative candidate to do this. And the answer is always no. Rob was talking about Mike DeYoung splitting the vote. That is a self-inflicted wound. There was really no valid

reason to allow someone to run for the nomination and then pull the rug from under that person. And while Mr. De Jong is using his notoriety to run and get payback, there are many conservatives in this country who can speak to the same experience, that they ran, that they spent money, and that at the last minute they were told, we don't want you, with no real reason given. And finally, I'll go to insiders. We heard this week again from Corey Ten Eyck, the chief strategist for Premier Ford, who said this campaign, the conservative campaign, will go down in the books for malpractice, electoral malpractice. That is what I'm hearing from conservative insiders who are speaking off the record or for background. A lot of the anger that is coming through them

is directed at Pierre Poiliev and his team. And there is bewilderment the way the campaign is being run at the absence of star candidates, at the many Mike the Young that have been created along the way. It's about the fact that local campaigns are struggling to get responses from conservative headquarters about a lot of things. So not the best week. I'm sure we're going to talk about the impact of debates a bit later on. But it's getting late to turn this around. And the dynamics are so complicated, because if I'm telling you that the bloc isn't kind of re-blooming, and if Rob is saying the NDP is not, then the conservatives are in trouble

because they would need those two parties to get their vote back. And those votes are not available to Pierre Poilievre. At least get them away from the liberals. But we'll get to the debate in a minute. There's a couple of things I want to get on, but the debate really is the opportunity for whether it's Singh or Blanchet to really get back in the game. If they've been concerned about not getting airtime, they'll get it then.

So what they do with it will be critical for if there's going to be any change in the dynamics for those two. Let me get back to this issue about the conservatives because I'm sure like you, I get a lot of mail, I get a lot of contact from viewers, and many of them are conservatives saying, all you guys do is crap on the conservatives. Well, actually, that's not all we do.

We take our shots at everybody as the going goes. But part of the reason that the Conservatives are getting so much bad press right now is because of Conservatives, you know, like Corey Tanik, who is a leading figure in the back rooms of Conservative politics in Canada, not just in Queen's Park in Toronto. And the things he's saying are pretty out there. So is this issue about the polls. You know when parties start saying the polls are wrong, that's a problem.

The polls are pretty united right now in terms of a lead for the Liberals. Three points, four points, sometimes up to seven or eight points. Polls are pretty united right now in terms of a lead for the Liberals. Three points, four points, sometimes up to seven or eight points. All of which is a win, is a Liberal win. And a, you know, probably a Liberal majority win. So these T-shirts that are popping up at the rallies, which have thousands of people at them for the Conservatives, the T-shirts saying, do you believe in the polls,

are once again, it's an expression, it's like what tonight's saying. This just looks bad on everybody in terms of the Conservative party so where's that going i mean that the rallies thing it's been impressive that they've had the size of crowds but there's a great piece on cbc.ca today examining in hard terms the rallies both parties conservatives and liberals and saying they're way overestimated they've had crowd counters who actually make a living out of looking at the pictures the parties put out and counting the individuals in it. And it's nowhere near the numbers that have been suggested. They're big crowds, but not as big as they say.

Anyway, the polling stuff, what's the lesson of that, Rob? I can understand. I can understand in some ways the bitterness, but there's bitter irony there because the truth is these are some of the best polling numbers that the modern Conservative Party has ever had, except for Stephen Harper's 39.6% in 2011. Right now, these are the best numbers the Conservative Party of Canada has had since they split up and were decimated in 1993. The support is solid. It's not going down. The rallies are well run. Okay. Yes, too many people turned up, way too many people turn up more than they think,

and they have to get people out in the crowd directing traffic because they're so big. As we've said before, these are people who are not stacked and racked and brought in on buses. They're finding their own way. In Edmonton, they drove, it was like a rock concert. They drove in from far, far away, pushing strollers to get there. So be careful when you say that don't believe the polls. In some ways, you should believe the polls because these numbers are very, very good for conservatives in Canada. And when they start to use things like hashtags like too big to rig,

just like complaining about the polls, there's a Trump echo there. But that leads me to some of the anger that I heard from conservatives, particularly in the interior of British Columbia. There is a growing, as we've seen, secessionist sentiment in parts of Western Canada. And it's real. It is real. A couple of the people that I spoke to mentioned it. And some of them, particularly in a border riding like Abbotsford, where there's business on both sides, some of those people said, if we don't go, I'll go. I'll leave Canada because they've had enough. And even somebody like Mike DeYoung, who is a very reasonable guy, said that it's something that the next prime minister of

Canada, whoever that person is, is going to have to deal with and deal with sensitively and deal with directly. When you get pollsters telling you a third, a third of the people in places like Saskatchewan and Alberta would support a secessionist movement, that's about where support for independence is right now in the province of Quebec. And, you know, we've seen brush fires of nationalism and independence in the province of Quebec that have just taken off.

All of us were there in 1995. What was supposed to be a no-hoper referendum was a tissue-thin victory for those who wanted to keep Canada together. So I would highlight that there is anger and there is a sense that no matter what we do, it isn't enough. And as a result, they turn their anger towards Ontario in many, many instances. And the feeling now is they got the numbers, the seats, we got the money, we've got the resources. And that's easy to say, though. I mean, it's very glib to say that. Take a few out of the mix and there's not enough money. But it's real. It's real.

I understand that. But at some point, and that is one lesson from the Quebec debate, one must feel in reality. And to say people feel they're getting a raw deal or the level of in polls, and we have all learned how easy it is to say yes to secession in a poll and how hard it is to say it in real life. In polls, it is at the same level as it is in Quebec. Well, in Quebec, at that level,

it's considered not only dormant, but really not doing well. So if we're going to be serious about secession, we need to be serious about reality. Yeah, but in Quebec, the language and culture was under threat and is under threat. And it's not that way in this place, in this part of the country. But the Reform Party decades ago was also born out of those same frustrations. And yes, we talked about last week how the next prime minister, if that prime minister is not Pierre Poilievre, so Mark Carney, will have to convince the Liberal Party to step out of its usual instincts to say people who don't agree with us are just people who don't understand what Canada is about, which is what the Liberals have often done, including with Quebec. it will also be incumbent on the conservative leader, whoever he may be, Pierre Poiliev or the next one, to address that within his or her own party. Because at this point, there has been so much rage farming from the establishment, the current establishment of the conservative party,

so much outing people who could be called progressive conservatives as fake conservatives, as people who don't belong in the family, that this is an offshoot. This is something that was also created by the conservative leadership. The way that Aaron O'Toole is being treated, a former leader who did not do badly in the election campaign that he led and has been treated by high-ups with the blessing, presumably, of Pierre Poiliev, who did not put a stop to it, as someone who was a fake conservative for showing courtesy to opponents when they leave office. That culture has not always been the conservative culture. It has not been the real Reform Party culture either. I covered that party.

I covered the Canadian Alliance. I covered Preston Manning. It wasn't just about anger. But this is something else. And it's easy to say the liberals, the NDP and the Bloc will have to pay attention to this. But how about the conservatives paying attention to what's happening in their house and the rage that they are cultivating when they go around saying everyone in civil society who is not an outright conservative of our brand is someone that you should dislike.

Anyone who doesn't wear boots is probably someone who is earning his or her living off your backs. At some point, the conservatives after this campaign will have to give themselves a long hard look in the mirror if they want to win back the votes of the moderates who have left them. There were former conservative supporters that I spoke to who felt that way, particularly about the treatment of Mike DeYoung, a guy who brought in five surplus budgets as finance minister of British Columbia. And one or two women that I spoke to in the riding, former conservatives as well, who've turned their back because of the hard edge of this iteration, Pierre Poiliev's iteration of the Conservative Party.

So they have repelled some of their own vote as well. You know what bothers me about this conversation? I think it's a good conversation to have, and I know we'll be having it, you know, over the next while on different levels. What bothers me about it now, and it's not just you two, I think it is kind of the way the conversation is going on this election campaign, as if it's already over, like that it's a done deal.

And, you know, I understand what our role is. You know, we're there to cover things and tell people what's happening and what people are saying and the way the parties are reacting. But are we ahead of ourselves here? Yeah, in some ways we are. I would never declare, I sure wouldn't declare it over. I think, I talked about shock being one of the emotions that I ran into a lot. And the shock from the Conservatives is having gone from a 25 point lead to a five or six point deficit.

That's part of the shock. And they are beginning to ask why. Now, some of that they know that, some of that 45% that they had at the end of 2024 was due to vote parking because Justin Trudeau had driven people over. But they are wondering why they are in a race now. Some of it is also, they're fatalistic. They realize, I think like a lot of us, that Mark Carney has met a moment. He's been very, very fortunate in meeting a moment and meeting, let's call him a foe,

certainly a foe to Canada in Donald Trump. You know, one of the things I did was I went to a Mark Carney rally. He's not an impressive speaker. He stumbles. He's plotting. He needs to nod, it seems, to get people to acknowledge what are supposed to be applause lines. And none of it matters, as we've said before. It doesn't matter.

You know, I talk to people in the lineup, and it's the same thing. It's Prime Minister Dad is what it is. It's Prime Minister Dad is what it is. It's Prime Minister Dad. It's really interesting that Rob would say that because I was watching remotely, obviously, the news conference that Mr. Carney gave on Vancouver Island earlier this week, where he had just announced some nature-related measures, more parks, etc. And so he was trying to explain his announcement. I was going the way I was going. And then someone asked a question about tariffs. And it felt like you had a fish that was thrown back in water.

A different person started answering the questions. And that transition, it's rare that you see it so vividly, the transition from clumsy candidate, not particularly articulate, to someone who suddenly is so in his comfort zone that he is walking you through. And it felt from a distance like you would feel if you were feeling not so well and you were going to your doctor and your doctor was laying out, this is what we're going to do. Your doctor is not telling you I'm going to cure you, but he is saying things that make him look like he's on top of whatever ails you.

And I believe that is in no small part what allows him in this moment to get a pass on this. Now, about the campaign being over or not being over and that 20-point lead, well, I guess if the conservatives want to know how that happens and how that feels, they could speak to two people who are still with us. One is called Kim Campbell, who saw a similar lead vanish to, we know what, two seats over the course of a campaign. And the other is Gilles Sepp, who started off the 2011 campaign with a huge lead, especially on the NDP, boring can an Ontario campaign be until Bob Ray becomes premier with the majority? These things happen. The conservative brain trust did not seem to think it couldn't happen to them. Well, if it happened to Joseph and Kim Campbell and David Peterson, it can happen to you. And they didn't prepare for a campaign where they would be fighting tooth and nail to keep that lead or enough of that lead to form a government. And that, I think, is what drove Corey tonight to say it would go in the books as electoral malpractice.

Okay. Let's take our first break, and then we come back and try and figure out what to say about the debates next week. I guess there are two nights. First night is Wednesday, which is the French debates, and then the second night of the English debates next Thursday. We'll talk about that when we come back. And welcome back. You're listening and watching Good Talk.

You're listening on SiriusXM, channel 167 Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. And I'm Peter Mansbridge, along with Chantelle Hebert and Rob Russo. Okay, television debates. As previously warned, we often tend to make too much of these things,

and history has shown us that usually they don't make any difference at all. Occasionally, they could make a big difference. So obviously there are a couple of parties, at least, who are hoping next week makes a big difference. You're both extremely fluent in French. So I want to ask this. I know we've discussed this before, but I want to know the answer to this Mark Carney French question again.

I know Chantal, you've told us in the past that it seems to be that it's Anglophones who talk about this more than Francophones do. And you are proving my point. Exactly. But give me a sense of where it is in the minds of French Quebecers. You know, is it kind of like the way English-speaking Canadians used to listen to Jean Chrétien and his English? No, I think that's completely different.

There is no way. For one, Mr. Carney's French has European touches to it. You would never accuse Jean Chrétien of bringing British accents to his English. So that wouldn't happen. I think most Quebecers agree with Mr. Carney's self-assessment of his French, which was 6 over 10. And that is basically where the issue rests. It has not become, you know, it's no longer a topic for discussion.

It is what it is. It's basically where people are. Where the Bloc has been going with this has mostly been not about the capacity to speak French, but the fact that it reflects a lack of knowledge about Quebec and a lack of understanding of the province. And on that score, I suspect that the bigger test may be Tout le monde en parle than the leaders' debates. I don't know what's going to be thrown Mr. Carney's way, but I've watched James Moore when he was heritage minister. His first foray on Tout le monde en parle, he was asked a bunch of culture questions, Quebec culture questions. He didn't do so well. He still got enough points for courage that people started looking at him as an okay heritage minister, and he did go back.

But if there are, you know, surprises that go to he doesn't know much about Quebec, and here's the proof, it could happen on that set. I don't think Quebecers are looking at this from the angle of who speaks the better French, because in that case, we would have a what's the color of the bleu Québécois? Sadly, it's kind of a shade of blue because of the flag. So it's hard to call it a blue wave. I think they are really looking at a choice for prime minister between Pierre Poiliev, who in this province was never, it was the only province where the conservatives did not lead before Justin Trudeau resigned, and Mark Carney. So we'll see what the week brings. I just want to make one point about debates that have changed things. Usually, they change the dynamics when they take place early on in a longer campaign.

84, the debate between Mulroney and Turner took place quite a while before the vote on September 4th. And Justin Trudeau's rise through debates also took place during a long campaign that saw debates happen early on. These are coming at the very late end of the campaign. And I think that probably diminishes their impact on that. But that being said, if someone really makes a huge mistake, it means there's very little time to kind of fix it, especially with the Easter weekend, bringing people probably to discuss their choices around a meal at some point between the day after the last debate and the beginning of

the next week, which is the last week. Rob, any points you want to make on the French? Yeah, I spoke to somebody in Lévis this week while I was in British Columbia. And Lévis is a pretty reliable conservative riding suburb of Quebec City. And we talked a bit about Carny. And this person said what they're looking for is not as French, but les compétence, does he have the skills? That's what they're looking for. And I sense that that's where Quebecers are. They are where the rest of the country is.

Look, doing a lot of business with the United States and beginning to see people around Jean-Claire losing their jobs and they're worried about that. Those are the people in the aluminum industry in particular. Mr. Carney does not have cultural references. He's probably brushing up on them as we speak right now of the modern Quebec. We saw that in, call it Istanbul, whatever, but when it came to his candidate, Nathalie Pauvaux in Montreal with the Polytechnique. But you also hear, when you ask him,

when he starts to recite some of the cultural touchstones of Radio-Canada, and he mentioned something like La Petite Vie, which hasn't been on the air for a dozen years or something. Although there was a... A big reunion special. Yes, and it was really, really popular, and that was only a couple of years ago. Yeah, I'd be very surprised if he was tuning in to La Petite Vie.

No, you don't think so? On the campaign bus every day, watching episodes, they're not going to ask outlines of a prime minister. They are looking for a leader. And there is an antipathy, a palpable antipathy to Mr. Poiliev. And you see it in the Quebec-only ads that ran just before the election started, where he acknowledged people think I'm too br election started, where he he acknowledged people. People think I'm too brusque. I'm too pushy. Well, here's why I am. Right. He went he tried to get right at the heart of that. And it hasn't worked.

He is not connecting with the people of Quebec, even though I would say he speaks the best French of any conservative leader since Brian Mulroney, certainly. Brian Mulroney would be… And Jean Chagas. Yeah. So you don't forget a conservative leader. That's right. That's right. Well, it depends which year. That's right.

You know, his French is very good, and it's colloquial as well. Poiliev speaks a colloquial French. And that's part of the problem, because he thinks that he's great because he's colloquial, but some of the things that he says using that colloquial French come across as speaking down at you. The common sense thing, which he translates as gros bon sens, it comes across as, one, I'm speaking down to you to get to your level. And Quebecers in French are very sensitive to people toning down or speaking down to them. If I went and used some of the terms he uses, I would look like I'm trying to tell people that they are dumber than I am. And they don't realize that.

People will not say the gros bon sens anymore because they have been overusing it. And there's an allergy to slogans here when they are colloquial. It's okay if you're advertising beer or donuts. But if you're advertising a future prime minister, people think. And there is, you know, in this province, education is a big deal. And the notion that good people are people who wear boots and people who are not in the trades are not good, that doesn't work here. The notion that journalists are, you know, less than nothing people, that doesn't work in this province. It's the opposite. People trust their media compared to the rest of Canada in a way that

doesn't work with the way that Mr. Poiliev handles the media on his campaign trail. He's not doing it to francophone journalists, but all those stories are coming here, and they hurt. And the silence from his MPs. Gérard Deltel, who used to be a journalist before he was the leader of a party in the National Assembly, before he was an MP for Stephen Harper and whoever, is one of the most articulate, effective interviewee that the Conservatives have in Quebec. But you never hear him on national radio or television in French, because by all indications, he's been told to stay mute and, you know, not have,

not be the presence, the constant presence that he should be. And that's... They're being told to stay in their writings until we get there and not say much. And I did speak to one MP this week who said that there are tactical mistakes made in going after the media. And the tactical mistake is, first of all, you didn't let them on your airplane. So you go to a bunch of places like Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay, and the media can't get there. They can't get there in time.

And then, because they're not there, the momentum that you want to build in terms of your message gets lost. You know, almost everybody agrees that he, that Poiliev has put out some very serious policy during this campaign. And it's hard not to think that a lot of that policy isn't getting the forward push that it would get if there was a traveling media circus with them. Because it's often different reporters who are catching up if they can get there. So that message momentum is being lost. It's also that because of the way they've handled this, they do get their share of local coverage. But local journalists are not used to be treated the way that they have been treated

by the conservative campaign. And they write and talk about it in their communities. And that's no good. Because the people who are listening to this know that local reporters are part of their community. So they will listen a lot more to a story about how you're being put in a cage or pushed around from a local journalist and from someone who covers politics from Ottawa. And you know who else is important in those local communities? The mayors. And they've been trashed by Polyev as well, and they haven't forgotten that, and neither of their communities.

Anyway, moving towards the second night, the English language debate. Is there anything at this point that either Singh or, you know, the Green Party, Blanchet, is there anything any of them can do in these debates to get back in the game? Well, Blanchet did win more points on the English debates last time, thanks to the moderator, than he did in the French debate. And how did he do that?

By saying, look at all those federalist leaders. They're not even coming to the defense of Quebec and its choices. I'm the only one who stands up for that. I'm not sure that Steve Bacon will allow such a moment to take place. And, you know, it's the Thursday of a long weekend. That's right. Let's be realistic. A lot of Quebecers, Francophones, will watch the night before.

They won't be, you know, sitting at the edge of their seats for this. So, Mr. Blanchet's prospects may be limited. I don't see how the Jock Mead thing gets back in that conversation with Pierre Poiliev also on stage, but I guess we'll see. I think Mr. Singh's only hope is that he has to somehow insert himself in the Canada-U.S. equation. Somehow he has to convince New Democrats who are abandoning him. And they're not doing it because of him. Again, they're doing it out of fear of electing somebody they see as Trumpy if they don't vote for the liberals. But somehow he has to make himself relevant in the Canada-U.S. debate. That's his path to some sort of relevance on ballot box day.

Okay. We're going to take our final break. Come back, a couple of more things to tie the knot on. We'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk. Chantelle Hebert, Rob Russo, Peter Mansbridge here for your Friday discussion on politics. I want to say, just very briefly, I'll take this moment

to thank my son, Will Mansbridge, who yesterday hosted The Bridge because I was preoccupied with a speech I was giving yesterday. And he did a fantastic job. Somebody on the plane last night told me that he's a born natural. Yeah. But enough with the letters about how he's ready to take over, okay? Okay. But he was great, take over, okay? Okay.

But he was great, and I thank him for that. As we speak today, Mark Carney is sitting in the cabinet room in Ottawa on Parliament Hill. And as we kind of predicted, I don't know, before the campaign even started, that he would probably use that opportunity to divide his time between the campaign and running the government in a time of national crisis, which everybody seems to agree we're in. So is this working for him in terms of this? Because this is not the first pause in the campaign. I think it's the third or fourth time that he's kind of paused campaigning and reverted to governing as much as we know what's happening in that cabinet room.

Is this working, Rob? Yeah. I mean, look, there are so many interesting frames for this election. But if we just pull back a little bit and look at what the Liberal campaign has been, it has been to pretend to forget that the last 10 years in many ways actually ever happened when it comes to Liberal policy, to steal much of the Conservative policy and do that while crushing the DP and the bloc. So in other words, like it shouldn't be working. It really shouldn't be working. And he's not a great campaigner, as I've said before. He's a stumbler and a plotter. And yet it's working. And this is why it's working. For every day he's not campaigning, he's gaining votes. So it is an extraordinary, unique election that way. And he's reminding people of the issue. And everybody thought that this was the week when Donald Trump was going to take his finger off the scales one way or another, because he's not attacking Canada directly. But anyone

with an RRSP, anyone with a pension, and those who are worried about losing their jobs and their homes, we are all affected. You know, I keep saying that he is that dread, anxiety-invoking, two-tone motif from Jaws. Wait a minute, I've got to write all that down to figure that one out. He's that two-tone soundtrack from Jaws. Even when the shark isn't really there, the shark is looming. Even though this week the shark is clamping its jaws on China and not on Canada directly, we still hear the dreaded two-tone motif. Well, the shark is always there. That is the reality of this election.

After the election, the shark is not going to go away. And after this week, does anybody think that they know what's going to be happening going forward? If anything, we are in a very precarious position. We've got no atonk poshu, no real interest in becoming a China ally. But we are losing our alliance with the United States. We're not playing on that. We're

the soccer ball here. And there are the teams that are kicking the ball. So nothing that happened this week was good for Canada. And I do believe that Canadians, given all the turmoil, do want a once-a-week government appraisal of where we are at and where we are going. And I totally agree that it is to the advantage of Mark Carney. But there are some, you know, if you want to talk about frustration and conservative circles, you only need to look

at this week. There was a poll this week that asked who gets credit for making the carbon tax disappear. By a huge margin, Mark Carney gets credit for that. And with that single gesture, he convinced people that he was not Justin Trudeau's heir, but someone different who was. And that's why he gets away with stealing, adjusting conservative policies to turn them into liberal ones, because people believe he has cut his bridges with the lot of the Trudeau legacy. There's a Nixon to China element in there. Some of those policies, you're not too sure that they would work the way that Pierre Poiliev presents them, but if the liberals are doing them, it's like we wouldn't have, as voters, trusted necessarily Preston Manning to eliminate the deficit. But we trusted Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin to do the exact same thing. And they did things along the way, like slowing down the increase to health care that we would not collectively have forgiven if the Reform Party had done them. And that dynamics is not new in Canadian politics.

Liberals do get to do things that conservatives have talked about for years and that they would never be able to do because they would be killed on site, in the media, or by voters if they did. And that's basically this old recipe working again. You know, Rob mentioned, as we began this good talk this week that, you know, we had expected this kind of two-person race, Carney versus Polyev. It turned out the two-person race we got was Carney versus Trump. and there is no question that Trump sort of brought the Liberals back from the dead following the resignation of Justin Trudeau and elevated Carney to that kind of a status

as to be the main opposition to a degree. Is there anything Trump can do now to change the game for Polyev? No. And I don't buy it's just Carney versus Trump. I believe it's also Carney versus Pierre Polyev. A different conservative leader in the same circumstances might have done better. But when you say Trump did this, would that have worked if Chrystia Freeland had become the conservative, the liberal leader? Mark Carney, yes, did get that boost, but that is because he brought to this a CV

that fit the occasion and distance from the previous government. So it's not just Trump. Who else was running for the leadership? Oh, Karina Gould. Do you really think we would be having the same election dynamics if Karina Gould had won? Mark Carney brought something to this reversal. But that's my point. It wasn't just that he was an instrument. Yes, but it wasn't just an instrument. And I do think that

the NDP and and the black would have had a better time hanging on to their vote if pierre poiliev was a different kind of leader or had been a more consensual one you know i'll give you a little bit of an of something that might be emerging that reflects that at his rally there are there are not a lot of big applause lines, but there was one line. Whose rally are you talking about here now? The Carney rally in Richmond. At one point, he talks about how the world is being restructured and that the United States is, in effect, abandoning the leadership that it had before. And then he adds the line that if the United States does not want to lead, Canada is ready to lead.

And I talked to a couple of people, engineering students. That's the kind of thing they want to hear. They believe that this guy not only can fix and refurbish the plumbing and the wiring and the carpentry that's required in terms of the structure of the Canadian economy, but because of the things that he's done in the past, they believe that he can actually put Canada in a position where it could lead on some of these fronts because he's played in those leagues before. And that line actually stirred people a little bit. I found that noteworthy. Okay. Going to wrap it up for this week, but with a push towards next week

because it has the potential of being a big week. We'll see whether that delivers or not. But you can be sure that we're going to be around to give you our sense of the way the week unfolded. Chantelle, of course, will appear on every program that exists to Canadians in both the French and English language. And I also hate the way we have to call debates five minutes after. We won't have to call them, unless it's obvious. We're always asked to call them.

Yeah, we're always asked to do that. We'll try to resist that temptation. But, of course, we come last. Good talk will come last in the reviewing of things. We'll be on next Friday, which is Good Friday, so the morning after the English language debate. So we'll have had a couple of debate nights to think about, but

Chantel and Rob will be there for that one, and we look forward to it. The Buzz tomorrow, 7am in your inbox. You can subscribe at nationalnewswatch.com slash newsletter. No subscription fee.

Lots of things to think about this weekend as we head into next week, and I hope you take the opportunity to do that. Polling booths, by the way, are open. I voted a couple of days ago, like a week ago. So if you want to get into advanced voting, you should probably do that. Will this be another huge election turnout? Huge. Last big one was free trade, 75%.

What will this year's be like? Thanks to Chantel. Thanks to Rob. We'll talk to everybody next week.