The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- He's Back: The New Old Pierre Poilievre

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

Almost two months ago, Pierre Poilievre seemed to have rounded a corner.  The "attack dog" politician became, or so it seemed, the friendly one, talking about respect and a time for unity.   Well those days are gone, long gone, after a week where the old Poilievre seemed back in full force.  Bruce and Chantal are back with their assessments of what all this means. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter VanSbridge here, along with Chantelle-A-Barre and Bruce Anderson. It's your Good Talk Friday. And as we always say, we have lots to talk about. So let's get it started. You know, it was about six or seven weeks ago that Pierre Paulyev was on this program, and it looked all of a sudden like a new Pierre Paulyev. This was going to be a different kind of guy.

He respected the prime minister. He wanted to find a way that all the parties could work together for the benefit of Canada. And he seemed to turn a real corner as part of his kind of reinventing himself. And this week comes along. And there have been a few hints of this in the last couple of weeks, but this week was quite something. It was like a new old Pierre Paulyev. A lot of the old tactics were back. And he was attacking the prime minister on the floor of the House of Commons,

questioning his ability to do anything on the economic front. What training is he had? What did, you know, this is a guy who was a former governor of two different banks, national banks, you know, Bank of England, Bank of Canada. But that didn't stop Pollyup. He went after on a week when the other guy across the floor. attained a majority government, and was still reaping some praise in different parts of the world

for his stand against Donald Trump and the devil's speech. So here we go. Are we now looking at a new old Pierre-Poliev? And if so, why is that happening? Chantal, why don't you start? I'm guessing many of those who've been observing Pierre Paulyev from inside the Conservative Party or from outside as I have. would have tended to say that the issue is not if the old Pierre Poyolev would be back,

but when the old Pierre Paulyev would be back. And that is basically what everyone was watching this week. It is still mystifying in the sense that of all of the issues or all of the angles that one would want to take to attack Mark Carney, questioning the fact that he's got economic credentials. that are beyond the reach of the vast majority of us, including Pierre Puehliev himself and the people around him, seems to be a way to highlight your own weaknesses,

and that is exactly what happened. All that this resulted in was independent observers, pointing out the difference in education on economics of both of those persons, And then the work experience. I'm not sure that being in politics forever as your main job quite stacks up when it comes to economic credentials to running to central banks. And that's, I mean, that's a no-brainer.

It doesn't require a political science degree to come to that conclusion. So the fact that the conservatives would go there seemed to me more of a symptom of frustration on the part of Mr. Puelev, I'm not saying of the Conservative Caucus or the party, but on the part of Mr. Puelev, who is now facing three more years as opposition leader and possibly an end to his career in opposition having never led the party to government. It's much too early to tell that. So will that help?

Does it do something for morale? I don't think so. I've tried to see what resonance these assertions had in real life. And basically, they tend to confirm to people who have come to the conclusion that in this era, the best person for the job is Mark Carney and not Pierre-Quayev, that they are right. I was also curious, and I guess we'll come back to that. I saw this week that a number of other statespeople of the conservative establishment, Jason Kenney, former Premier of Alberta, James Moore, Lisa Raid.

People who hail from various sides of the conservative movement were basically saying, three years is a good time to kind of prepare, better to take on government. But none of them were going where Mr. Puev seemed to want to be leading the party's message, i.e. Mark Carney is not qualified. He's just got fake diplomas, and I'm the person who knows best. economics. So not, I think, quite what the doctor ordered, or even with those people, ordered Kenny, more others as to how Pierre Puelev should be using the time that he is now getting to spend in opposition. He didn't really say fake diplomas, did he? No, but he sounded

like Harvard diploma is not worth the paper. It's written. I'm compared to his own death's belief. It was a strange strategy. I mean, there are ways to try and go after the government on different things, but that one was just a pathway that just seemed so odd, you know, given the facts that everybody kind of knows. Bruce, it's kind of like a gift to you to ask you what you thought of it all. But, I mean, what did you think of it all? Well, you know, I think what's becoming clear to me is that Pierre Polyev is really, really fluent at speaking politics.

I think it's probably the thing that he does the best. He gets up and when he gets on a rift, he doesn't stop. He doesn't hesitate. He makes his points. He punches the language through. He's good at that skill. But that doesn't mean that he's a good politician. He's just good at speaking politics.

And I think that there are two problems that he's got right now. One is that he doesn't have a political strategy. It feels like there's no theory of the case. If you decide that you're going to stay in an interview with you, not very many weeks ago, that you really respect the prime minister, and then you're going to stand up and say that he's badly educated and present the idea that you're going to be a smarter person about the economy, even though there is video of you talking about how crypto is a great hedge against inflation.

Like that where's the theory of the case there that that's ever going to become a successful strategy for him? You have to be able to persuade yourself logically that there's a whole mass of kind of middle-of-the-road voters who are going to hear you say that and they're going to go, you know what, he probably is smarter about the economy. And I just don't believe that there's any way that you could come to the conclusion that that's a good political strategy. But I think the bigger challenge that he has is one that's about the mood of the public. Right now, 85% say the country's facing more serious challenges that it has in a long time. People don't want a politician. They want answers.

They want solutions. They want serious people. And one of the reasons why Mark Carney is successful in the polls and in these by-elections is that he doesn't seem like a politician. He doesn't approach the job sounding like a politician or looking like he's preoccupied with the politics of his situation. And I don't think that Pierre Paliev has figured out at all how to position himself in a world where people say, well, I can choose a politician or I can choose somebody who knows something about what I care about. isn't really coming at me like a politician. I don't think that Pierre Poliyev could step outside of a politician's skin.

I think that's who he has been all his life. And I think that he's found himself in a time shift, a time warp, basically, where all of a sudden the world doesn't want what he has to offer in terms of a politician. And he's only good at speaking politics, not good at strategizing his, way out of the situation that he's in right now. And three years will only help him if he recognizes those two challenges and gets hard at work on dealing with them. And I'm not sure that he's built for that, to be honest. I haven't seen any evidence of that. I'm not even sure that the people who step forward to defend him as in the proper leader at the proper time were actually, actually

think that. I read all. all those analysis, Jason Kennings in particular, but also part of James Moore's op-ed. And they literally were endorsing him in the role of leader of the opposition. That's what they were doing. There was no regret to be found in either of the texts I read and in anything I heard, no regret to be found that the opportunity to have a conservative government has now been pushed back three years. And I thought that was quite striking. What that tells me, and I do not read people's mind, but looking from the outside, knowing how the conservative vote

declined in those violent actions, looking at the polls, looking at Mark Carney's approval rating, I suspect some senior members of the conservative movement are by now of the same mind as most of the public on the notion that Mark Carney is the proper Prime Minister to have at this particular juncture and that they are not necessarily sad that there is now stability that ensures that they have three years, one to look at Pierre Puehliev again and eventually decide, not tomorrow, there is no rush now whether he should be the person leading the party in the next election. Now, that is where elder stateswoman might think with his seat back. The problem Mr. Poyev has, after this week, looking at this is not necessarily that those senior people are going

to come at him and backstab him or even front stab him. It is that he is at the mercy of events such as, if you are a conservative MP, you do not want to become a federal liberal, but you were thinking you would have an easy exit because there would be an election within 12 months and you could decide not to run again. Well, now you are pondering whether to announce that you are leaving politics early. And in the process, triggering by-elections that could be risky for Pierre Puev. Because by-election losses in Cs where the party is king would be devastating. Or if you are an MP that knows that you were not going to run,

again and you would possibly like to spend your last three years in politics on the government side, then the notion of floor crossing becomes more attractive. Sying to yourself, would I like to spend the next three years going after Mark Kearney for not being someone who knows anything about economics, or do I want to spend it more constructively inside a government caucus? and any of those events, more defections, by elections that go south because of the current mood in public opinion, will shorten, if not end, Mr. Puelliev's life.

So he is a lot more vulnerable than the endorsements in his future job that he landed this week from senior conservatives who are basically telling caucus, you know, we've got three years, let's think this true. because we're not going to be changing the prime minister. Whoever wants to run, if Mr. Poliyev quit tomorrow, would be stuck leading the opposition for the next 36 months. That's a long time to be the leader of the opposite.

Yeah, yeah. If I can't, Peter, I just pick up on a couple of things there. One is it, I do believe, as Chantal is suggesting, that there are a lot of people inside that conservative caucus and the party elders who recognize, what they won't say publicly, which is that he has not been that successful as a political leader of their party, that he was an opposition leader against an unpopular incumbent prime minister and Justin Trudeau.

And during that period of time, Pierre Palilev became more unpopular, became a lost popularity, which is a which is kind of a hard thing to do. It should have been easy for him to have net. positive favorables. It should have been easy for him to build up some sense of enthusiasm about him, except he didn't seem to want to do it. He only wanted to do it with those base conservative voters, which then alienated a whole bunch of other people. So if people are thinking rationally about his track record as leadership, you know, it won't just be the fact that he was, he squandered a 25-point lead and lost to a guy who'd never been in politics before.

It was that he created the conditions in part himself where a new liberal leader could restore the liberal party's kind of fortunes politically. In the by-elections that were just held, you know, conservatives on the talk shows and everything else are quick to say, well, these were liberal-held writings. True. But the conservative party lost a lot of vote share in each of those ridings. compared to what they got last year. And so if you're looking at what those by-elections tell us about Pierre Pauliev's leadership, it's not a good story. It's a story of lost support.

He never went to those writings. Now, I understand why. But this has been the best-funded, arguably often the most organized political party in modern Canadian politics. and to lose what it was 10 or 11% of the vote relative to the results that they had last year in these by-elections when you've got this guy saying, I should be the prime minister, I know how the economy works, he doesn't, I'll get a deal with the United States, let's, you know, I can fix gas prices and housing prices and everything else, it's not working.

And I think they know it. And I think that it won't be quick that they decide what to do about it. but I don't think that he's out of the woods in terms of his leadership, not at all. Have you, you're always analyzing numbers. Did you look at turnout numbers on those by-elections? And I only raised that simply because everybody assumed, especially in the two Toronto writings, the liberals are going to win. So if you're conservative, are you even going to go vote?

Yeah, the turnouts were, I think, in the range that they normally are, which is half the turnout rate of a regular election, it's a little bit higher in Terban. But I think the others were kind of high 30s, if I'm not mistaken. But you know what I'm getting at, you know, it wasn't necessarily people who voted conservative last time going to vote liberal. It was just people who were voting conservative last time not going at all. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. They weren't motivated. And, you know, the job of an opposition leader is, and sometimes when you see by-election is to say, well, we've got to get out there and make our. message known. We've got three candidates. We've got tons of money. We've got time. We've got a leader that we think is a good pitch man. They didn't do that and they lost vote and they knew that there would be some judgment about whether they lost share or held their share. I think the NDP probably held its share. Actually, the NDP share went up a bit. Actually, the NDP share went up in University Roastale. So these new Democrats did not stay home or many of them probably

returned home. And I think, to tell you the truth, looking at the Pierre Poyeux situation versus, for instance, the NDP's biggest break this week was that Mark Carney became a majority prime minister. And I don't say that just because they need the time to organize, just because they need to fundraise. I say that because, and that works for the block up to a point, fear of Pierre Paulyev becoming Prime Minister is now being taken off the board.

And that's a big deal for many voters who like to vote for the NDP or like to vote for the Blyck to have distinctive voices in the House of Commons. People maybe who are closer to their values if they're very progressive or very sovereign-test, but who have been held back by the notion that if they toy with their first choice and go with their hearts, they may end up with Pierre-Walev. Prime Minister and the removal of that factor, I think, as a plus for the third parties, that we have not totally measured. Yeah. Okay. I want to get back to the NDP in a minute, but let me, there are two other areas I want

to cover in this Polyoev story. I mean, if you're a payer of Polyev this week and you want to, you want to begin more of the traditional leader of the opposition role of going after the government, and not necessarily attacking them, but challenging them on the key issues. You probably had two choices. Well, at least two choices. You could do what he did for some reason and go after the integrity of Mark Carney's background

on economic matters. Or you could say, listen, you've been prime minister for a year now. What's really being accomplished? Now he did both of those things, but it was the challenging and questioning of the prime minister's credibility on the economic front that made the headlines and achieved the most dominance. I don't get it. Why would you have chosen that path?

When the other path is a legitimate one to be challenging on. You know, you've had a year. You've promised certain things that haven't happened. yet. I know it's a tough situation, et cetera, et cetera, but when you know, where's the beef? Yeah, well, I'm not sure that I find this to be

a paved road as opposed to a gravel road on a week when voters have kind of confirmed with the polls have been telling us that, i.e. a year later, Mark Carney, and that is very rare in politics and difficult time, Mark Carney actually has more political

capital to spend today than he did a year ago. So to go down that road, you're going to have to have really solid tires because you're going to have to drive it for a long, long time to get to some destination. I'm not so sure that there are, this is not a great time to be the official opposition. Let's just agree on that. And if there are failings or flanks that are vulnerable, for this government over the past year that have become more apparent. It might be on the other side where Mr. Pueleva has no leverage, i.e. the progressive side. I don't think it was an accident that the three winning candidates for the liberals were women.

This has been a weakness or a possible weakness for the Kearney team, the old boys network or etc. if they were vulnerable on something this week, it wasn't that they were not bringing down the price of gas by 25 cents instead of 11. It was that they were bringing down the price of gas and sending a signal on climate that was not seen positively. But those chinks in the armor are the opposite of what Mr. Poliev can address. And the dynamics are such that he kind of helps the. government fixed them because when people look at the alternative for government, they are seeing a party that would do even more of the things progressives don't like.

So he's kind of part of the liberal solution at this point in many ways rather than part of a big problem. That may change. But today, this is where the party is at. Yeah. Look, I think that some of the conditions are potentially good for an opposition leader and others are bad. So what I mean by that is that the stress levels in the country are high. They're very, very elevated. And they become almost normalized at a high level where people are saying,

this is like this is a difficult time, not sure if the world is going to get back to a position of stability. So those would normally be situations where incumbents are a little bit vulnerable to, you know, the fact that people feel that stressed and opposition parties can get share of voice by speaking to the stress and offering an idea or two that people might appreciate. But the other factor that's different is that polarization is down. And that doesn't play to Pure Paulia's strengths. He has been a polarizer by for strategic reasons, all of his life in politics. And we're seeing people say, I don't want that.

I don't want to hear that because it sounds like it's not my agenda. it's your agenda. And also there is an instinct to be more nationalistic that cuts across a whole bunch of domains. And we've seen plenty of evidence of it. And so if you're a polarizing politician, you need to unlearn that skill. You need to decide that that's not going to be a thing that you're known for. And I don't think he has that, has crossed that, that thought has really crossed his mind or he's settled on it. And instead what happens is,

He sounds like he's saying two things more than anything else. That Trump is easy. I could fix it. I could sort of work out a deal with him about vehicles. And people don't believe Trump is easy. And they don't think that a deal is something that Pure Poliyev could easily kind of achieve. And the second thing that he says over and over and over again is like, let's just build the pipeline. And people can be for a pipeline or against the pipeline.

But I don't know very many people outside of that base of the conservative pipeline. party that think a pipeline is really the magic formula for economic resilience or economic growth. And so he's continuing to kind of harp on those kind of messages. Instead of doing what he probably should do, if you kind of zoomed out to 15,000 beat, you'd look at his situation and say, he's put other polarizing and unpopular figures beside him as the front bench of his party, even though he's got lots of other talent, but nobody knows about his other talent because he doesn't give them a share of the space on the stage.

He should really shake that up. He's got some good people there. We saw some of them in the leadership race, but we don't hear from them now. And I remember, as you guys do, way back, that. I remember that Joe Clark, progressive conservative party when it was in the opposition benches. It had a whole bunch of talented people that you would see recurring. Now, part of that was, I think, Joe Clark recognizing that he alone wasn't popular enough bigger to propel his party across the finish line. Part of it was just recognizing that a party looks more fit to govern if the voters can see more people saying sensible things,

talking about a variety of issues. I listened to a podcast the other day about the looming issue of AI, which in the United States is kind of, you know, there's people on the left and people on the right who are saying, we've got to do more about this. We haven't figured this out. We've got these AI founders who are cheerfully talking about how AI is going to destroy civilization and jobs along the way.

We've got hyperscalers who are saying, let's build these big data centers right beside communities and let the communities pay for the electricity. They're big issues like that. We don't hear from the Conservative Party about these issues. And it just feels to me like they're stuck in this. Let's do a pipeline. I can solve Trump.

And it's a one-person operation. I think all of those things are very, very limited in their potential. If I can just build shortly on that. Mr. Pueyev has been trying to compare himself to Mark Carney. but where he might have an advantage, because what Mark Carney has been kind of hiding, is a team that isn't as strong as a cabinet as it should be. There are strengths in this cabinet, but there are glaring weaknesses. And it may be that the conservatives would do better highlighting a team that looks more solid and fresher than the current liberal team, which is mostly the former to the liberal team, then I'm showcasing the comparative strengths and weaknesses of their two leaders,

because on this front, we agree, Palyev loses. But if he presented it in, and me, frankly, I failed to see how someone who was rejected for a prime minister and has convinced Canadians that it was the right thing to do called Andrew Shear should be the regular points person, always talking political games and tactics, and saying just about anything about anything. how that helps give credibility to the...

It's a single worst choice that he makes every day is to have Andrew Shear out there. We're going to take our break. I have one more question on the Poliov situation, but I'll ask it after the break. So we'll be back right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the Friday edition of the Bridge,

which is, of course, good talk with Sean Telle-A-Barre and Bruce Anderson. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Glad to have you with us. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Channel 167, Canada Talks, are on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our wonderfully successful YouTube channel. And glad for those of you who watch it on that.

Okay, here's my final question on the Polyev situation. First of all, I agree with the point you're both making about the team surrounding. And what we've, you know, and we don't really know who it is other than a former failed leader. And, you know, when you look back at past situations going back in 50 years, there's always been this attempt by whichever the party is to show the team around the leader and give them some opportunity to achieve the front of the stage

and talk about whatever their issues might happen to be. And we don't see that here. And, you know, we've known. not seen it there since Pierre Polyev was elected as leader. And we're certainly not seeing it now. But here's my question, because one of the things that, no matter who you listen to on this subject about Polyev and about the conservatives, you hear the same phrase,

there's no one waiting in the wings. And I find that remarkable about a political party. Now, either they're very quietly in the wings and they're operating at stealth in trying to position themselves or there's no one in the wings. You know, like, really? How could that be?

Especially given what's happened over the last, well, especially over the last year. We find wing in the scope of it. By wing you mean caucus. this is or has not been a great time to be doing a Paul Martin, a giant thing, go down the Brian Malroney thing. But I think if you're thinking of a larger wing, i.e. the conservative movement, where more any Brian Mulroney come from an outside situation for the next leadership in the minds of

many conservatives. I'm not saying that's going to happen. than a within caucus kind of choice. There are people who are drawing up dream lists. And on those dream lists, you'll find James Moore, you'll find Jason Kenney, and you will find others who are seen as strong possible contenders for the role. And I think most objective observers would agree that, for instance,

those two names would be strong successors. there is no necessity for the next conservative leader to come from inside the current caucus, for one, but two, it shouldn't be drawn as a conclusion that the next campaign, leadership campaign, whenever it comes who will not feature strong candidates just because they don't come from caucus. On the contrary, I do not for a second believe that the conservative movement in this country doesn't have as strong. contenders as the liberals would have should Mark Carney decide to vanish tomorrow. That, to me, sounds like a very simplistic conclusion. So me, I would not, I also don't belong in the group that worries about the party

splitting up if Pierre Puellev is suddenly not the leader anymore. Possibly because I was around when the Reform Party came up and the Conservatives, and the situation is completely different. The conservatives were in government. You remember that Brian Mulerone made some unpopular decisions that led to that breakup. And one of those, and people weren't there, seemed to not be able to remember the impact that the Meets Lake debate had on Canadian unity and on the unity of the Conservative Party. We do not have that kind of a major heart-wrenching conversing.

about what Canada is that did fuel the Reform Party, but also the Black Quebecois, and that fueled the 1995 referendum. And it is impossible to just take the outcome of that discussion without the cause and say, we're going to replicate it. This is not where the conservative movement really is at this point. Bruce? I think that there are probably six or seven people in the caucus who, if Pierre Polyev left tomorrow would run and would seem like very credible and interesting candidates.

I think the question, and I think there are some people from the outside, I think James Moore would be an excellent candidate to lead the conservative party. The question, maybe Jason Kenney as well. So I think there are people from the outside. I think it becomes more difficult, the longer Pierre Polyev is there. if what he continues to do is to say Andrew Shear is my co-leader effectively or Melissa Lansman and nobody else gets any kind of air time. That will tend to over time make it harder to attract candidates, good candidates, make it harder to attract support for the party and continue to position the party as a kind of a polarizing force in Canadian politics that doesn't want polarization. But the big challenge for for people like a James Moore, I think, would be the thing that

Jean Choray experienced when he ran in the leadership, which is that the membership of this party or the voting membership of this party might more closely resemble those conservative voices that we see on the Twitter or the X platform now. And if you and if you've had any of that experience and I have because I post sometimes on on X what you get the the vitriol the hate the you know that the rage it is not going to attract a lot of people um to run and if those are indicative of the kind of people that choose the next conservative leader um they're going to choose somebody who who more fits the mold of uh of let's do rage and let's do rage against the left and the woke and And all of that stuff, which I think is very limiting strategy for an opposition party.

Let's agree, though, that the conservatives, like the liberals, do not pick their party based on whoever brings the strongest crowd to the vote, but rather based on writings. And that basically means that urban Ontario, suburban Ontario, Quebec, Atlantic Canada, suburban BC have a majority of the votes when leaders are picked. And what Bruce is describing, which is quite real, has zero or very minimal traction politically in Atlantic Canada, in urban areas of the country for the most part and certainly in Quebec. I want to mention that that's just me having fun here, that neither of us mentioned Doug Ford. So just a note to Queen Spark people around Mr. Ford. I don't know how his French lessons are going, but yeah, let's focus on running Ontario, maybe. You know, I still find it amazing.

I don't know, perhaps the, you know, the Calgary Convention in January, you know, tamped down some of this issue about a new leader. I mean, I don't know, Bruce, in the data that you do or that you've witnessed some of your colleagues in the polling industry do, is there any evidence that the conservative party itself, the larger number of conservatives, actually want a new leader? Well, no, not if you're looking at the party.

I don't think there's that much evidence. I think if you look at the public opinion, though, and he sort of said, well, let's say I didn't know anything about politics. I would look at data that say that most people are on the center or center right now rather than the center or center left. The country has kind of shifted in a direction that would generally be more propitious for a conservative party, but a progressive conservative party.

And so in that sense, the data suggests there's a market for a progressive conservative message. many people think that Mark Carney is dominating that market and that Pierre Polyev has decided not even to compete in that marketplace. So that's kind of how I see it, is that Carney has managed to pick up support from the left and from the center right, and Polyev has never decided that he cared to pick up boats on the center right. He just seems more comfortable firing away at that right side of the spectrum.

in the hopes that 34%, 35%, 36% can be enough one day to get across the finish line. I think it's bad math. He says that Mark Carney's been badly trained in economics. I think he's got a different problem. He does bad math in politics. Okay. All right. Let's leave Paul Yev aside.

I want to go back to something that Chantel mentioned earlier, because I think it's a really interesting thing that's happened in the middle of all this back and forth between Polyev and Karni and this sense that there is no kind of united position or unity on the political front at all. And that was the fact that all the parties, all of them, decided we're going to kick in some cash to the NDP,

let them be better organized as a party on Parliament. Mitt Hill. They're not entitled to any special funds as a result of them not reaching official party status and they're even lower now than they were after the election down to five seats. But the other parties agreed to give them, what was it, almost a million dollars in funds to set up a better office structure and research facilities. That was quite a move and probably would have achieved the major headline of the week if these other things that we've already discussed hadn't happened.

What do you think about that? What did that say to you? Bruce, why don't you start this? Well, I prefer politics that isn't winner take all. I prefer, you know, the idea that people who are in the House of Commons can look at one another and say, we're not going to agree on a lot of of things and we're going to fight like hell against each other in campaigns. But, you know, I was sort of struck yesterday. I was in an all-day session and I listened to a number of people, senior people from the government, talk about what they were doing, including people in politics. And what really stood out for me wasn't, you know, that they were liberals and not conservative.

So it was the difference between how politics is done in Canada and how it's done in the United States. I was listening to thoughtful people talk about the work that they're doing in a thoughtful and passionate way, but it wasn't so full of partisanship that everything was kind of a winner take-all, dog-eat-dog zero-sum game kind of way. And so what I saw in this this week was a little bit more of that Canadian tradition, which is that we don't, you know, as a country, regular people, talking about politics with each other, with their friends, with their family, their acquaintances, don't treat it that way for the most part. It's more of a, you can have a disagreement. You can take a

different point of view, but you might hear another point of view and you might hear an idea that's worth taking on board. So I thought it was a positive sign. I don't know if it's going to be kind of thing that will help the NDP come back from the near extinction experience that they've been living through, but I thought it was a good thing. And I'm going to do the cynical side of the argument here. I believe that politics is also all about calculation. And for the two main opposition parties at the table deciding this, the Bluquebeco and the conservatives, and notwithstanding the fact that the Bluque is basically won back as well from the NDP in Quebec,

and probably will get to keep it for the foreseeable future. and notwithstanding Mr. Poldia's efforts to dig in the union vote of the NDP. Both understand that a stronger NDP, a more present NDP, is mostly at the extent currently of the federal liberals. And the real enemy is the currently liberals for both those parties. So to give a bit of oxygen to the NDP is actually good politics and good policy on the part of both the Bluque and the conservatives. And I think the liberals can't afford to look mean to all those progressive voters

who are supporting the Kearney government at this point, but sometimes with trepidation, and do not want the government to look mean. So when you put all of those things together, you find that you arrive at a decision that I think most Canadians think, is something that is in sync with political values in this country. Not a bad thing for diversity in Parliament, but there is also good politics in play on the parts of the three parties

that made that decision for strategic but also for optic reasons. And that kind of works out to a more interesting life, I guess, for the NDP. I should mention that how this was done was to tweak one rule where the threshold, which is the same normally as official party standing, 12 members, was brought down to 6. But six at the time of the election, what I'm trying to say is, should Alexandre Boulliers, the MP for Rosamont, decide to leave, it will not change that decision, because it will be based on how many MPs were elected, not how many MPs were elected, not how many MPs are still in the House of Commons.

That's an interesting little twist and an interesting way around that six number. Okay, let's take our final break. Come back and we'll do our normal, or what's become a normal, what else is on your mind question. We'll do that right after this. And welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week, Chantelli Bear, Bruce Anderson, Peter Mansbridge, all here with you.

Okay, it's that point in the program where I ask what else is on your mind. And for Chantel, we know, we already know she's hiding all her HAB's paraphernalia, her HABs sweater, Habs hat, all of that stuff. Did something happen while I was away? Hey, listen, even I'm going to be cheering for the abs on this thing. It is a big deal. Our bus served signals are being in. adjusted this morning to go abscond.

Well, there are some interesting possibilities for the Canadian side, which we keep waiting since, you know, what, it's been more than, it's almost 35 years since the Stanley Cup was in Canada. Ottawa Senators are playing extremely well. Oilers are the Oilers. They've got the guy. That's a maple leaf fan trying to find solace. I switched to baseball 10 days ago.

A lot of good that did me. Okay. Bruce, you start. What else is on your mind, aside from the things we've discussed here. Well, you know, I don't spend a week where I'm not pretty closely following the U.S. political situation and the impact that Trump is having on politics there and what it means for Canada and our economic relationship and the disruption in the Middle East. So it's a big, it's a big thing for me.

And I spend a little bit of time just marveling again at how normalized, you know, outrageous things have become, including, you know, Trump having a feud with the Pope as well as with Alex Jones and Megan Kelly and Candice Owens and, you know, all these other Republican influencers. It's almost like he's, he just can't stop fighting with everybody. and who knows how that's going to go over time. So that's one thing. And the other thing really is this issue that I touched on before, which is the AI is coming at us fast. And the discussion I was listening to that I was quite captivated by was featured people saying,

look, we haven't even figured out how to regulate the Internet 2.0, which is these social media platforms that we know in some cases are causing a lot of harm. and at the same time, AI is coming at us with potentially bigger disruptions and no consensus really anywhere in the world yet about what kind of regulation, if any, should be put in place. I think it's a big issue and I am spending more time on that. You know, the AI issue, I absolutely agree with you. I know you listened to Ezra Klein.

He's had a couple of great programs. on AI in the last while I've had big discussions with my son, Will, who works on this program occasionally, who's deep into AI of a startup that he's involved in. I don't understand three quarters of what he says, and I have to get him to keep repeating it and explaining it. But I agree with you wholeheartedly, it's coming on fast. On gas prices, I was in New York.

City this week. And on that drive-in from LaGuardia into the heart of the city, which takes an awfully long time because of traffic. But I passed a couple of gas stations. And I saw something I'd never seen in gas stations in this country. Maybe it happened somewhere. I don't know. I hadn't seen it.

But the posted price on the day I drove in was $4.59 a gallon. $4.59 a gallon. That's almost double what it was before the war started. but below that was 449 if you pay cash. I'd never seen that before. So that was interesting. Anyway, I digress. Chantal, what's on your mind?

Just a note on the Pope and Donald Trump, if anything, was going to elevate the standing of the Catholic Church and the Pope in Quebec. It would be Donald Trump going after the Catholic Church, and I suspect, Quebec is not the only place where that phenomenon is in play. One day we'll talk about how Trump meddling or having conversations with the king over Canada's 51st state thing has probably helped the image of the monarchy in Canada in unexpected ways. But I'll bring you back to we are now in full pre-election mode in Quebec.

We have a new Premier, Justin Fischett, second woman to hold the office, and the election to be held in October. And I am amazed by how on English language panels, people seem to take for granted that we are headed in another referendum on sovereignty. So not so fast, my weekly update on polls. The Quebec liberals now lead the polls. That doesn't mean they would win. They still have some catch-up to do,

but they lead in the larger Montreal area. I don't mean where I live downtown, but I mean where elections are decided. And the second half of the poll this week was about the appreciation of leaders. And the leader who now has a record for negatives compared to where he was a year ago, is Parts-Khebiqueu leader of Paul Saint-Pierre-Plamondo. So when you think of the Terban by election and the fact that the bloc did not win, factor in the notion that when there is referendum agendas in play by the PQ and an election is coming provincially, there is a price for that to be paid by the bloc at the polls.

A lot of people who vote for the bloc are not people who want for a referendum or would vote yes. And so they kind of retreat back to federal liberals or federalist parties because if we're going to play this game, then we are going back to the old alignment, and that is not great for the blurt. But stop assuming that there will be a second referendum on secession, certainly not next fall, and maybe not for a long, long time. You know, that got me so interested. This issue about has the king's positioning, you know, positioning.

Canada bettered as a result of some of the things that he's said and done in the last little while as it comes to Trump. I'll tell you one thing. If he wanted to really increase his standing in Canada, he'd do what the Pope has done, which has canceled his trip to the U.S., which is upcoming in the next little while. You know, Trump keeps saying he's one of the best friends he's got and King Charles and blah, blah, blah, they get along, they're this, that, they both like gold. Wouldn't that be short-term gain for a long-term pain because it does allow him to whisper in Trump's ear?

And that has been more useful on the 51st state issue than snubbing Trump. He made a whisper louder because Trump's talking about it again. He's bringing up 51st state, Governor Carney, all that stuff. I'm sure it didn't go down well the fact that Carney is on this Times list of 100

most influential people in the world along with the Pope and Donald Trump. All right, let's leave it at that. We'll see what the next week brings on all these questions and we'll look forward to chatting again seven days from now.

Thanks to Bruce, thanks to Shantel, and thanks to you, our listeners. who we love to talk to every week. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening. Talk to you again in seven days on Good Talk. Have a great weekend. You guys.

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