The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Is  A New Canada Dawning or Sputtering?

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Four months and a day since the election and the summer ends with signs that the Carney government is moving on some of its major agenda promises. Or is it? That's the line item for Chantal Hebert and Bruce Anderson on this our final summer special before our new season begins next week. 

Are you ready for good talk? Hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, your final summer Good Talk special, right here on August 29th. Four months and one day since the federal election, and I guess that's where we're going to start, with Sean Tilly Bearman, Bruce Anderson. That question being, you know, more than four months now.

since the election, four months of suggestions about the shaping of what some are calling a new Canada. Are we seeing that shaping now taking place? As much talk through the summer about, oh, things are slow, we're not really seeing anything, what's going on? Are we starting to see that now, especially after the last week of various announcements here and there? Chantelle, why don't you start us? Well, in the real world of governance, I don't think things are going slowly. You just mentioned with a bit more than four months that include a post-election summer and a new team taking the reins.

So to say that things are going slowly is more a statement of naivety or ignorance about how wheels turn, than a statement of fact. That being said, it is probably a fact that the Prime Minister, upon his election, expected to make more inroads or more progress on the tariff front than he has. Because why else would he have been setting quick deadlines after quick deadlines

for things to happen that didn't happen? And why else did he end up spending the summer basically announcing what looks, unlike concessions, dropping the digital sales tax, dropping the counter tariffs, without very much of anything to show for it. I don't think, I'm not surprised.

I don't think any of us really expected to come back on August 29th and see a stabilization of the picture on the Canada-U.S. front. We've seen nothing coming out of the White House that talks about stability on any front. So how could this happen? It is also a fact that the initial strategy

of the government towards tariffs and Donald Trump which had been drafted at the time when the expectation was that Canada's allies would follow suit on counter tariffs, and that has failed to happen. On the other front, which is the what you call possible remaking of a new Canada, oh, wow, let's do this.

in three months. I don't think the rubber has hit the road yet, but it is about to, on two fronts. One obviously is the October budget, which is lining up to be a major challenge, both in the selling of it to Canadians, because I don't think it's going to be a good news budget for Canadians, and in securing opposition support.

And yes, I know the MDP is down to half a dozen Cs, and they don't have a choice, but that sounds like a bit of a shortcut. It depends on what is in that budget, but it's going to be a big deal. And the other big deal is going to be those projects as they are unveiled. It's one thing to have legislation that says you can suspend your own environmental rules to speed up projects. And it is another to do so in real life. I think the environmental movement has actually been waiting to have spent. specifics. This week, there were hints that one of those projects would be the expansion of

the port in Contra Kerr, not far from Montreal. And you can already see how that will not be as easy as well as anyone assumes. At the same time, a project you didn't see this week, but that the government sees as close to his heart is the Newfoundland in Labrador and Quebec Agreement on Churchill Falls, which, whose faith, I believe, believe will be determined in a provincial election on October 14. So events at some point will catch up one to the government, but also these two big deals are coming. And when they do come, the government is going to have to get a bit better,

I believe, at communicating than it did, for instance, over the course of the Air Canada's very brief strike. Okay, you dropped a lot on us there. so I want to get Bruce's sense to of how he sees what's being accomplished and if things seem to be kind of speeding up on the accomplishment front in these last few days, the last week or so.

Well, speeding up on the accomplishment front is, I mean, I understand the premise and certainly I'm aware that because I follow coverage of politics you know, to an unhealthy degree probably, that that is a conversation that you see in the commentary. I don't see it in the public opinion data. I don't find any evidence that Canadians are kind of tapping their watch

and saying, what is wrong? I haven't seen big projects built already. I haven't felt a turnaround in the economy. I haven't seen Donald Trump basically wave a white flag in his conversation with Canada. I don't think the public expects that that is the way that the last several months was going to go. And I think that they're anxious. They continue to be anxious.

They continue to see, 90% is the number that I saw last week, have the view that Canada is facing more severe economic challenges than in many decades. Now, that's a soft question in terms of who knows how many decades and what constitutes severe. But people are still very anxious about the biggest economic. issue facing the country, which is our relationship with the United States. I think that the public opinion, as I see it, looks at Donald Trump and says he is taking a pound of flesh from every trading partner barring a couple around the world. And it may be that the best that we can do is hope for a better arrangement than other

trading partners with America get and they seem also to be fairly patient with the way in which that is evolving now is there a point at a time where people will say well it didn't work or it's not enough or I'm dissatisfied with the tone or some piece of substance whether it's a digital sales tax or something else will disappoint them but presumably but I just haven't seen it yet On the question of projects and remaking the economy, again, I don't think that there's really an expectation that the government would spend billions and billions of dollars with almost no time for proponents to come forward with fully detailed costed plans and no time for government to vet those projects and decide which ones are in the public interest. it feels like if some of them are announced next month which I think is what the prime minister said

to me that will be faster than what we would have seen many times in the past so we'll have this conversation or a version of it I'm sure every month and that's the way it should be but I think as of right now remaking the economy is a big challenge

it's going to take a while but I see lots of signs that the pace is actually fast to Chantelle's point, that's what I see, is a lot of pace on a lot of fronts. You know, on the Canada, U.S. front, I think, I don't think most Canadians spend the summer fretting about the digital sales tax. But I think the anxiety level did go up because what they did see is that there were no trade-offs between whatever the prime minister was signing and what was happening in the U.S. I'm not sure what happened this week when there was a high-level meeting

that involved not only Minister LeBlanc who was in charge of the file, but also the Prime Minister's chief of staff and the clerk of the Privy Council. It's quite a number of people. I guess from the outside, I would fear that the three of them came back from Washington

to report on how or what the U.S., what more the U.S. wanted from Canada as opposed to how much ground it being gained in that meeting. But we're not there. And whoever they are talking to, in this case, Lefnick, it's not Donald Trump, so they can possibly find consensus on some issues with one. And then it all goes down the drain with the other. That is basically what the prime minister is dealing with.

So I think most Canadians do not believe. that someone other than Mark Carney would have done better trying to deal with Donald Trump and understand that Donald Trump is what he is, and that's basically, we don't have that much leverage on this,

but I think the test is going to be what happens to Kuzma, the Canada, U.S., Mexico trade agreement that replaced NAFTA, and its faith, you can hear in the government's messaging that it's

going to be on the table one way or another. And I think Canadians would probably be looking, taking a hard second look at the government if Kusma failed to survive or if it was greatly diminished. Okay. I know Bruce wants to get back in on this. I mean, the only thing I would say at this point about the Carney-Trump relationship and the Canada-U-S relationship,

I totally agree with Chantel, it almost doesn't matter what the Lutniks of this world say until it gets to the desk of the president, who knows what the approach might be of the U.S. And right now that desk is crowded with things that seem to be a lot more important to Trump than a trade deal with Canada. You know, whether it's Ukraine, whether it's Gaza,

whether it's, you know, Epstein, whether it's the troubles with Bobby Kennedy. I mean, the list goes on, and it's a daily, and he seems to be confronted with it daily, and it just seems in the last month, the issue of trade has been kind of off the agenda for Trump. He's dealing with too many other balls in the air. That doesn't mean he won't get to it.

It just means that right now it seems like a funny period. I do know that Carney and Trump spoke, as you both know, last week, and apparently it was a good conversation as much as you can tell with these things. So that, you know, perhaps that makes it. difference. There's more, I want to get back to the projects thing, but I know that Bruce wanted to say something here on the Trump front.

Yeah, a couple of things. I mean, first of all, I think that a few months ago, a lot of people could have reasonably expected that the severity of the tariffs that Trump was proposing, not just on Canada, but around the world, was going to create a public opinion backlash in the United States, a political backlash, a business. backlash, and it really hasn't done that for a variety of reasons that we can get into if you want to. The public has tended instead to come to see what he's doing as being a bit chaotic,

but maybe it's working. Maybe it's a little bit right. Maybe the net effect will not be a disaster for consumer prices or weakness in the economy, but more investment in America. and the consumer impacts will be muted. Now, that point of view might change next month or the month after. There's always been this thesis. It'll take a while for supplies to work their way through the value chain,

and then the price increases will be felt. But I think it's probably prudent to say, well, that might not end up feeling that way to consumers. And it certainly is the case that most businesses in America, in terms of the public statements that they made are not ripping Trump's policy apart. They're basically acquiescing. They're being silent. Some are showing up with gold bars.

Some are celebrating what he's doing. But in their, I was looking at the public statements of these Fortune 500 companies. Every time they issue their quarterly earnings, they talk about what are the factors that are weighing on their business or helping their business. And the references to tariffs typically sound to the outside observer more like, well, it's unhelpful, but we're figuring our way through it and we're going to try to minimize the impact on consumers. And by the way, we beat expectations and our business is well positioned for the future. Now, there are reasons why companies want to reassure investors and also reasons why they want to not tell consumers that they're going to really jack up prices.

whatever the reason, though, the impact on the American mood about this tariff agenda has, if anything, become more of a positive for Trump in the last couple of months rather than an issue that he needs to defend. And when you characterize Peter, all of these other issues that are coming at, I think the Trump administration feels like they're winning on a lot of fronts, whether it's immigration, whether it's the way that they're handling policing in American cities. I don't like those policies. I think the policies are really awful to see sometimes in the way that they're handling them.

But I don't see that is the perception of those American voters who are looking at the Democrats and say, well, if you don't like this, what would you do? And the Democrats don't seem to have really good answers. So on the relationship with Trump, the idea that at some point Trump will wake up and go, I thought this was a good idea, but it's turning out to be politically disastrous for me. I better just put that issue away, drop all talk of the tariffs. Let's go back to the way things are. That just really doesn't seem like it's plausible.

And so the best that we can hope for, the best that most countries can hope for, is a version of more U.S. tariffs that is manageable within the context of our economy. And I think that's where that conversation has obviously been going. If there's a bright spot that I see, and I'll finish on this point, it's that I think there are companies in America that are making the quiet case not to disrupt their value chains so much, not to put their businesses in harm's way. The difference from the original thesis was they're not doing it publicly. They're doing it quietly behind the scenes and it may be having some effect.

And if it is having an effect, that will speak to a better framework for the Kuzma conversation because it will mean that the U.S. has done what it wanted to do politically and economically, I guess, with tariffs, but then it wants to return to a more stabilized trading environment. At least that's the hope as I see it right now. If one of those industries would happen to be, like so the auto industry, that could make a huge difference in the Canadian. relationship. It would.

Yeah, it would affect steel. It would affect aluminum. And I think, you know, there must be a reason why those automakers are being fairly mild in their public criticism because the damage that is being done to their businesses is not mild at all. And they're also facing huge risks in terms of the role of China in the auto market around the world. So I think, you know, our fate in this relationship depends so much more.

on domestic American influences on the Trump administration, then on external or Canadian influences. And I think some of them will end up playing a role that works somewhat to our favor, at least again, that's the hope. Okay, I want to get back to the projects thing, because maybe I didn't frame it right, right, coming out of the gate. You guys are always so ready to pounce on it. We were polite about having to say.

I thought we were playing nice here. Well, as nice as ever. Here's what I was trying to get at. You know, listen, I totally agree. Four months is just four months. But you can start to see, is the question, or can you start to see, the shape of a different way the country's going to operate on the economic front. And, you know, Chantelle mentioned the Montreal idea, the Churchill Falls, Newfoundland.

You know, I, you know, my personal bias is, of course, to put the Churchill, Manitoba issue up front because there's a progress there. And that is an extremely expensive proposition to remake. You know, I lived in Churchill in the 60s. The port, for the most part, is pretty much exactly the same as it was in the 1960s. And so to update it, bring it into line with the kind of expectation they want, it's going to cost a lot of money. Not only that, but the rail service going into Churchill.

But when you start to add these things up and the prospect of the incoming budget and the big changes that that could mean, are we seeing the beginnings of a reshaping of the country and certainly the country's economic prospects? Is that what we're seeing starting to happen? I'm not there yet. I may get there, but I'm certainly not there. And why you mentioned these projects, the port of Churchill, having, I guess, some kind of a pipeline, and then going through the Arctic, it operates at this point four months a year, to stretching to six, because ice is still there, so you're actually betting on ice melting fast, which is probably a sane bet. the signs that we are doing something, not talking about things, would involve some private sector involvement, people raising their hands to say, we're in on this. We are not going to be

financing all of these things out of taxpayers' pockets, or else, yes, we will have transformed the economy, but in a straight run economy, basically. So those projects, the role of government and typically in major infrastructure projects is to help, but it's certainly not to finance 100%. And I am not convinced that at this point, and I'm no experts, but from where I sit, I am not convinced that private investment has gotten enough signals

that the government's plans will work out to necessarily buy in a, to the level that private money needs to buy into those projects. And I am also wary, possibly because of where I live, of governments announcing dream projects, North Volt, the battery plant that the Quebec government was so gone whole on, only to discover that a lot of knots were not tied before the announcement, and in the end, it becomes a major failure. And that is going to be a risk with all those projects.

You mentioned all the difficulties and the money involved in the Port of Churchill's project. Those are real obstacle. We're not talking here about putting pen to paper and then magic will happen. And so that and the budget, it's one thing to talk about reshaping the public service. but it's another to reshape it when you cannot even get someone to answer your phone call about your income tax report, which is basically the gap between reality that Canadians encounter and the fiction that we can do away with a lot of things and save a lot of money on X, Y, Z, and everything is going to be the same tomorrow. So I believe all the heavy lifting is ahead of the government, not behind it.

Bruce? I'm in between on that. I mean, I agree with Chantelle's point completely that the, that the signals that Carney has been hoping to send are that government can spend certain amounts of money to create the opportunity for businesses to invest in ways that will make them more money. And so drawing in that private investment has always been part of what he's talked about, the catalytic effect of putting a piece of infrastructure in place or putting a set of rules in place

that will make it more attractive for investors to decide to do something in Canada that they might do somewhere else or that they wouldn't have wanted to do because they might not have been as sure of the return on their investment. I do think that the bill that was passed by Canada Day to create the policy framework, you know, it generated a little bit of controversies probably too strong the word, a little bit of friction in the conversation. I think the government was careful to try to deal with some of those points of friction in terms of the Prime Minister meeting with indigenous leaders to make sure they understand the intention of the government on this. But I think that the point of that bill was to create the conditions in which over

the ensuing couple of months proposals would come forward. And I think that as we're talking today, today, as I understand it, is the day in which departments have to submit and proponents have to submit proposals to the center of the federal government if they want to be considered for inclusion in this year's budget. So that means that there's a period of weeks, not months, between now and budget day, because the government has said the budget will be in October, in which those proposals and it makes sense that while we hear about some of them that we're not going to hear about all of them.

Many of those things that are submitted I think will be done on a private basis because they're commercially sensitive and because it makes sense for them to be dealt with that way. But we'll see. I have a sense that there are a lot of ideas that have come out of the woodwork, if you like, for projects that could be helpful for the economy.

Some of them will have a shorter-term benefit. Some of them will have quite a longer-term benefit. There's been more talk about pipelines, I think, than anything else. Maybe Ports has more recently become a bigger part of the conversation. But I think there are lots of things. And I do think that the country has continued to signal a readiness to embrace a more economically focused agenda, a regulatory system that's not relaxed,

but definitely more tilted towards how do we bring more investment in, how do we make more private investment happen more quickly to create economic opportunities that otherwise wouldn't exist? If Bruce had been with us after the election, you would have been able to say exactly the same thing, which is why my point about the heavy lifting. coming because, yes, Mark Carney's election did signal everything that Bruce has explained. But I tend to believe, based on a few years of covering Canada and Canadian politics,

the proof is in the pudding, and it only happens once the pudding is on the table. At this point, we have a recipe at best, but it hasn't been assembled. We don't know what the end result is, and Canadians are like that, and that's okay. They do give, in French, the chance to courier, the opportunity, or the rope that eventually they can use to hang prime minister,

but they do give a lot of rope at first, which is intelligent on the part of voters, and we are still in the handing out a lot of rope period. But as you know, because you've seen it before, when they pull, they pull hard. You know, I think one of the keys to all this is, I think you both mentioned is the freeing up to springing out of, you know, private investment funds.

And the country has been waiting for years, you know, at least a decade, for those billions of dollars which have been sitting on the sidelines, waiting to see a government of whatever stripe, offer them the encouragement to invest. and clearly a lot of these projects, as you both have mentioned, will also depend on the private sector to put some of their still sitting on the sidelines cash into some of these projects. Okay, we've got to take our first break and come back. There's lots more to talk about, and we'll do just that right after this. And welcome back.

You're listening to Good Talk, the final summer special edition. The Bridge begins on its regular latest season on Monday, on Labor Day. Janice Stein will be by with her Monday talk. And through the week, next week, we'll be the regular schedule. More Butts conversation on Tuesday. Good Talk will, well, of course, be back with Bruce and Chantel next Friday. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks,

or you're watching our YouTube version of Good Talk. Glad to have you with us. Okay, I want to talk about Pierre Paulyev, but before I get there, I want to try something, I guess, because you've both kind of hinted at this in direct ways. I want to get Bruce's sense, because this is a guy who deals with, research and public opinion.

I heard somebody yesterday say on one of the American shows that, you know, trying to understand, you know, public sentiment on any particular issue is a combination of two things. It's data collection and its anecdotal evidence. This was to him. It was John Heilman, U.S. political analysts.

And what he said was that if you just take one of those two things, things, data collection or anecdotal evidence, you're unlikely to come up with a true reflection of what's happening, that you need the combination of both. And he was saying this in light of all the recent polling that's come out about Trump and Trump's direction. And it kind of touches on something you said earlier, Bruce, about, you know, maybe we're misreading where the Americans really are on some of the things Trump is saying. But I found it. interesting, I never quite thought of it that way, probably should have, but this combination of you need both data collection research and anecdotal evidence to draw any real conclusions

about where the public may sit. Do you agree with that? I do. I think that, you know, it's why over the years that I've been in the research business, there's always been a combination of quantitative and qualitative research. The qualitative research is meant to provide that panic data, as some people refer it to. Now, reporters do that in their jobs when they talk to people. And Chantelle, you know, I know is one of the best at being able to be around the country and have chats with people. You know, you and I have seen situations where people just kind of just grab,

gravitate towards her like she's some big magnet for their opinions to be shared and good for her. She listens to them and she, you know, interprets them and they form part of her analysis. So I really believe that is true. I also think, and I've been doing more of this work myself lately, that sometimes research in a quantitative setting, survey research tends to focus on asking the questions that you're pretty sure you want to know the answer to because they're pretty directly tied to the conversation that you're having. But if you just stay focused on that, you might miss some other signals that are happening out there. And I'll give you an example. I saw a piece of data in the United States a little

while ago. A survey question that was, I put the statement, I really only care about money and how much of it I get or how much of it I get to keep. And I thought, you know what, that's a blunt question. But if people feel that way or don't feel that way, it tells you something about their worldview and how they organize their thoughts about all kinds of things. So I ran at this last week. And it's about half of Canadians who agree with that statement. And it's a little bit higher among younger people. And it tells me something about the dynamic that people are living with that we've talked about yes, but we haven't really talked about it as an outflow of the COVID disruption and the cost of living impacts afterwards. But we haven't

really talked about it or I haven't been part of the conversation anyway where we talked about it is are we seeing a shift in the idea of the prioritization of things that we do together as a community towards, I've got to make sure that I can make a living, I can pay the rent, I can save for a mortgage, I can put my kids through university, all of those kinds of things. So I think that's important as well. I also tested, again, something that we looked at years ago, but kind of put away with the idea that climate change is a hoax. And I found, you know, more than a third, just a little bit more than a third of Canadians inclined to agree with that now. And a bigger number inclined to say, well, there's nothing we can do about it anyway, so why bother?

And for me, making sure in research that we look at things that we thought we didn't need to look at, again, that were settled matters of public opinion, or looking for evidence of things that are underlying shifts in how people organize their lives every day, how they think about the pressures. Last point is one of my daughters mentioned to me that she had seen some evidence about people feeling overwhelmed by the amount of stress and worry in their lives. And I thought, you know, I haven't really measured that. To find out how many people would use that term, I feel overwhelmed. And it's a very large number. And it's about two-thirds of young people, of people under 30 who say that they feel overwhelmed. And the difference between how people under 30 and people over 60 answer that question is miles apart. And that's telling us, again, something different.

So I know that went a little bit of field of your question, but I think it's really important for us to remember that underneath the surface of the political stuff that we follow all the time and talk about, there's just how people live their lives and what they experience in their lives and how it's making them feel and react. Do you want to say anything on this, Shantel? Seeing as you've been dragged into it with your, the way you go about it? I have found over time that anecdotal evidence, and that is why I, and I'm sure you tell them the same thing, I tell aspiring and young journalists to get their heads out of their phones and out of social media and actually talk to people. It's not the same as reading the stuff on social media. media, but I have found over time that anecdotal evidence is not something you want to take

to the bank to make ex-cathedral statements, but sometimes it tells you where things are going versus with the data is showing you at that point. It certainly helped me spend a year and a half before the last election, saying that the data showed that Pierre Poiliev looked like this election would be hard for him to lose, except that I couldn't measure how people would feel if Donald Trump was re-elected. I didn't get that from data. I got that from conversations.

There was always this yes, but, or what if. And I wasn't ever about what if Justin Trudeau was replaced by put a name. It was, what if Donald Trump comes back? And in hindsight, I thought, well, it didn't pay off to listen. to those feelings because they did result in a massive turn in public opinion towards what people wandered out of the election. And, you know, the changed thing in the sense of major change, taking a second seat to we want someone who looks solid enough to handle this challenge.

So it does pay off, but you always need to kind of make sure that you don't go off. on some limb because you were hearing all the kinds of stuff on the bus and forget about the data. Data does matter. You need both. You cannot do one with the other, but you have to pay attention to the other, even if it's usually considered this anecdotal,

so it's probably wrong. Well, no, not always. I mean, the orange wave was there before it was measured, and it was there when pundits, who didn't speak to people who were still writing that it was just a dream. Why? Because if you talk to people,

they would come out and voluntarily tell you they wanted to vote for the NDP. In Quebec, people don't do that because usually it'd have to be really nerdy to be that person who votes for the NDP. So, yeah, the combination is irresistible. That helps, Bruce says people come and talk to me. It does help because I'm not going to them

asking intrusive questions. which they wouldn't want to answer, right? So having said they're, you know, this enough, it's easy to turn the conversation around to what's on their minds. Sure. You know, I can remember the first lesson I got in that was arriving in Ottawa in 1976 from Saskatchewan, from reporting on wheatfields to suddenly reporting on politics.

And, you know, the star kind of reporter in the Bureau at that time, and was a young Mike Duffy, who never seemed to be in the office. The rest of us were always sitting in the office. And one day Duffy came in and somebody said to me, come on, Duffy, why are you never in the office? And he looked at us and he said, there's no stories in the office.

Duffy was always out. Chasing down stories, at least the young Duffy was. And it was quite very good at it. Okay. As promised, let's talk about Pierre Pollyette for a second. and, you know, he wins the by-election. He's back, you know, he'll be back in the House of Commons when it starts sitting, and he'll be there for the budget debate and everything else.

It's been interesting to watch his first steps because he gives a speech the other day about axing the tax, the carbon tax. Dejaveu all over again. And, you know, when asked about what do you, you know, what do you say to U.S. lawmakers about Trump? And he says, well, I'll deal with that. at the appropriate time, which was kind of the criticism he got

from his own people during the last election campaign that he didn't tackle the Trump issue. They wanted him to do. And as Carney was making grounds on. So what do we make of the reappearance and don't give me the, it's too early to tell answer again. It's only been a couple of days.

But what we've seen so far, how is that shaping up to be the battle this fall between the two main leaders. Bruce, you start. I'm having trouble understanding exactly what it is that is Mr. Poliiev's strategy. I think he's obviously, he's a very intelligent person. And he didn't get to be leader of the opposition,

didn't develop a 25-point lead in the public opinion polls without being intelligent and, you know, even astute in some respects when it came to politics. Obviously, I think that the way that he approached running against Justin Trudeau was a good calculation in some respects against Justin Trudeau, but it was a miscalculation in the context of what happens if Trump does X and liberals replace Trudeau with somebody more competitive. what is he doing now is really hard to tell one day to the next. I read the story that you just referred to, Peter, about him saying, well, there will be a time when I'll speak to the Americans about this, but it's important that, you know, we try to work with the government

or words that sounded like that. But meanwhile, every day on social media, he's trashing the government for what he considers to be its failures in respect of the Canada-U.S. relationship. So I see an inconsistency, probably a polite term for it, in terms of how he talks about that. I also see an inconsistency in that,

you know, on any given day, the conservatives, especially the ones who are close to him, will howl that either the government has done nothing or the government has ruined things or the government is stealing all of their ideas. now they may argue that all three of those things can be true and in theory I suppose that's that's plausible

but in terms of a narrative that you could say okay Pierre Paulyev has decided how he's going to approach his criticism and the opposition that he's going to lead to the Kearney government now that we are approaching the return to the house I don't see it it looks like it's a smattering of different things on different days and some of the voices like Andrew Shears, if I were pure Pauliyev and I were really trying to figure out

how do I get competitive with the Liberal Party that is more under Mark Carney, more oriented towards the kind of agenda that I as a conservative was championing, you'd want to shake up the voices, you'd want more message discipline, you'd want to make it clear which votes you're coming for

because his biggest problem, and I'll finish on this point, is there are too many voters who felt like he didn't really want their vote. He wasn't trying hard to get their vote because they weren't conservative enough for him. And I don't think he's making much of an effort to solve for that yet. Chantelle. So that recycling of the carbon tax battle from everything I've heard did not go down all that well within some conservative circles. who felt it made him look like a one-trick pony

rather than someone who had learned something from losing a 20-point lead and found a way to pivot to something that was more statesman-like and felt less stale than the resurrection of that rhetoric. They may or they may not be right, but the first battle of the fall for Pierre Puellev is not against Mark Keirley in the House of Commons, although he does have to lead that battle. It is in convincing a majority of the people who will vote at the party's convention

at the end of January to agree to have him lead the party and another, in a second election campaign. Where the battle against Mark Carney comes in on this is in polling numbers. If Mr. Playaev manages to close the gap, that some polls put double digits while others find is closing. If he does manage to close that gap,

it will have some influence on what those members will decide to do about his leadership at the end of January. But he needs to keep in mind that they will keep in mind that he blew a 20 points lead. That is a fact. It did happen. I can see the map that Pia Pruev might be concerned, I only need to keep the voters I had on election night because Mark Carney is bound as he takes decisions to lose some of the votes that he won on elections night.

And among those votes, many came from the left of center, from the NDP and from women and from Black Quebec voters. So those voters could go somewhere else. why I think that math is probably dangerous is because it doesn't take into account the fact that some of the conservative voters from the last election might like the Kearney policies that people who are left of center don't like and might decide to gravitate back to Mark Carney

rather than stick with Pierre Puev. So I think if the issue is simplistic math like that, it's a very dangerous gamble because there is no proof. Actually, polls suggest that many of those voters who supported other parties on election night believe that Mark Carney is doing a good job. And the policies we talked about,

the big projects that would be sped up by suspending environmental laws, a tougher budget, et cetera. There are policies that will please some of the voters who voted for Pierre Puehliev in the last election. So it's going to require a bit of a more sophisticated approach than what we've seen on a social media feed over the past few weeks since that by-election,

which he did win with numbers that were hard to get. That 80% number, it's quite something to achieve in the middle of a summer when you're not really from the place. and he did campaign hard, and he needed that score. Yeah, I thought that was interesting, too. And I want to just, if I can, Peter, pick up on something that Chantel's describing here. Okay, can I get you to pick that up right after we take our final break? Because we're just, we're running out of time here.

Back right after this. All right, quick final segment of good talk for this. this special summer edition. Bruce Anderson, Chantelle-A-Barre, both here. Bruce, you wanted to pick up on the point about Polly-Hugh. Yeah, two things. I mean, I think that if you're inside the conservative tent, you're trying to figure out how do we get out of the situation

that we find ourselves in. You're aware of the fact that this is, at least insofar as it's become, it looks like it's become a bit more of a set of elections about leaders, leader choices, in less parties, perhaps. And so if you're looking at data with the cold light of day between Carney and Polyev,

what you see is Canadians saying Carney is more thoughtful and calm. He's a kinder person. He better understands the economy, and he's got better ideas than Polyev. So you need to close some of those gaps in terms of the personal comparison if you're going to be competitive with Carney.

Because people don't go first. down the list and say, well, I want the guy who's the most bombastic. And that's it really been the calling card for Pierre Pauliev for much of his time as leader of the conservative party. The second thing is Chantown mentioned that yes, the liberals have a bit of a risk of losing some enthusiasm among people on the left as they pursue more of an economically focused and business-friendly agenda. So far, we don't see evidence of it in the data that those voters are moving, but it's early days, and I think her point is very well taken. But on the other side, the point that Chantal mentioned about there are going to be some conservative voters who look at Mark Carney and say, if I can get this kind of policy, why do I need a conservative party that has aspects to it that I've never felt comfortable with since the Reform Party. turned into the Canadian alliance, turned into the conservative party. And the best evidence for that that I'm seeing is that the approval level of the

Carney government in Alberta is running at about 57%, which is kind of an unheard of number for a liberal government in modern times in that province. And it has to be telling a conservative something about the risk of their base not being as secure as they had seen it in the past. You know, this comes after a summer. These assessments you both just made a summer, this means fairly quiet. Some movement, as we've discussed,

from the Carney government and also Pauliev's reestablishment on the political scene. We head into this fall where there's going to be a lot of stuff happening. A lot of opportunity for leaders on all sides of the house to make an impression. A budget, which could be a real, you know, which could be quite the budget, one unlike anything we've seen probably in 20 years. And so those kind of markers could really change the landscape somewhat.

To give you the final thought on this before we run out of time, Sean. Yes. And I can't tell you how they will, but for sure, when we talk in December, we will not be having the conversation that we're having now, where things have moved from, whether things are look more hopeful. And I'm not talking Donald Trump here, but just a sense that this is a government that's got his hands on the wheel. and knows where it's going. We don't know that yet, by the way. And how the opposition parties are dealing with all this in a minority parliament because it is still what it is. And how the conservatives navigate their way through what could be very conservative policies

and how the liberal caucus reacts to them. You must have heard, I've heard them. Rumors of people maybe going off for diplomatic postings. There are others who have their hands on the door, depending on what kind of projects are put forward by Mark Carney, their own leader and prime minister. So a lot can happen this fall, but it will be a more decisive parliamentary season

than the one we saw in the spring for that reason. And some of those rumors about diplomatic postings are definitely out there, which, if true, could lead to... Buy elections. By elections, minor shuffling in the cabinet? And possibly a weak of numbers, but major in the sense of portfolios. Sorry, Chantal?

No, and possibly a weaker liberal team. The people who would be going off on those appointments, possibly have not been sitting on the backbench for the past 10 years and may have had leading roles in previous governments. could be an interesting fall on a lot of different fronts. Okay, thank you both. Great to hear from both of you

and look forward to back to the regular schedule as of next Friday with a good talk with Bruce and Chantel. The week unfolds starting on Monday on Labor Day. We'll do a program with Janice Stein. A lot of you've been asking over the summer, can we please catch up with Janice? There's a lot of stuff happening on the global front, and there certainly is, so we'll do that on Monday.

Tuesday is the first episode this year of, or this season of the Moore-Buts Conversations, Jerry Butts and James Moore. And they'll be every second week on Tuesdays now. The other week on Tuesdays, I'll let you know about next week. Wednesday's the Encore edition. Thursday is your turn and we'll have a good question for you next week. You get your sense on things. And then Friday, of course, is a good talk.

So listen, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Enjoy the final long weekend of the summer. I hope the weather is good for you. It's shaping up nicely a little cooler here in southern Ontario. Thanks to Bruce. Thanks to Chantelle. And once again, have a great weekend. Talk to you soon.

Thank you, guys. Hello.