The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Is It Really A New Pierre Poilievre?

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

Pierre Poilievre is getting generally pretty good reviews for his major speech yesterday outlining his vision for Canada-U.S. relations. It wasn't just what he said but the way he said it. Chantal Hebert and Bruce Anderson have their thoughts on this week's Good Talk. 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 Mansbridge here, along with Chantelle-A-Barre and Bruce Anderson. It is your Friday Good Talk. Glad to have you with us. As always, lots on tap here. We're going to start with Pierre Paulyev. The headline for this show is, is the new Pierre Paulyev real? And that's based on, in many ways, what we saw yesterday in Toronto. The opposition leader gave a speech at the economic club.

Now that's mainly a pretty conservative group. So he was well received. But his speech was, well, let's say it was different, at least in tone than what we're used to from Pierre Pahliav. It was headlined about his vision for the Canada-U.S. relationship as we move forward into negotiations. And he also went after Donald Trump. He's been criticized for not doing so. Now, some of the party stalwarts who have been critical of Polyev in the last while were saying things after today or after yesterday, like if he'd given this speech a year ago, it would be prime minister today. Well, I'm sure that's debatable.

But nevertheless, it showed that they thought, at least, that this is the Polyev they want to see. So we're going to talk about that a little bit. And I'll also run a short excerpt a couple of minutes from an interview I did with him shortly after that speech, which will run on Monday in its entirety. But first up, in general terms, Chantelle, what did you make of that speech? A couple of forward notes before we get emails. I listened to the introduction at the Economic Club. It seemed to me the person who introduced the event went out of her way to say the always. non-partisan club or whatever.

So just so we're safe here. Yes, I did hear that. And also, well, yeah, sure, running against Mark Kearney would still have been an uphill battle given the stakes last year. The speech I talked was interesting. It was actually a way for Mr. Poitiev to try to, fine or claw as way back in the central conversation

and the admission, belated admission, that the issue of Donald Trump and Canada-U.S. relations will remain central to enough voters to ensure the kind of polls that we've seen over the past few

weeks that show Mark Carney more than, you know, double digits over Piaplajev when it comes to assessing his performance. or even the liberals anywhere between 10 and 13 points ahead of the conservatives. It is also a way to signal, I taught his first audience with his caucus, to signal to his caucus that he is going to bring them back in the conversation.

There has been a lot of frustration in caucus about the notion that if you're going to fight this fight, that many Canadians are engaged in or watching, you absolutely need to move over to the liberals because the conservatives are staying out of it. They're picking it at other issues and the hopes of scoring there. It's not just a speech that is part of the makeover. It's also that Mr. Puelev is going to be spending last time

on the question period stage, which shows him always in an adverse serial role because that is what the leader of the opposition does. But Mark Carney is not every day in QP, and Pierre Puellev will not anymore be in QP, which will allow other RMPEs to be seen. Another criticism. And finally, this overseas trip,

overview overseas trip, it doesn't really matter where Mr. Puellyche is going. It's London and Germany, fine. But the issue is, why is the leader of the opposition? always criticizing the Prime Minister for going out to build alliances, while his predecessors all traveled and pleaded Canada's case. And as you know, if you're the leader of the opposition and you step out of the country in that role,

you cannot be doing it to shoot at the government of Canada from the sidelines. That's just not done. When Justin Trudeau, as leader in opposition, went to Washington, He went and supported the Keystone Excel pipeline. But I had, and this is my last point, I had two screens going, you can do that. So I had CPAC on computer and Mr. Puehliev's Economic Club show on my iPad.

And I did that because Dominique LeBlanc, the trade minister who runs that file for Mark Rahn, was speaking at the Canadian Club at the same time. And there were moments. There are differences. the positions and the prescription. But there were moments when they seemed like they were echoes of each other. I think overall it's good that I did think I had shut my phone.

It's a good thing that Canadians are on the same page or Canadian leaders seem to be speaking generally from the same standpoint. We're going to negotiate this. not fight among ourselves on this issue. Okay. I want to get Bruce's thoughts. Now, after he watched Pollyev, let me just say this,

because Pahlia mentioned to me in our interview that he's changing his tactics about where he goes and who he speaks to. That in the past, as leader, he's basically only gone to audiences or interviews where he felt he was going to be welcomed. Let's put it that way. But now he's reaching out, he says,

that he wants to not, he will let the invitations determine where he goes. He's not going to say no to anybody is what he says, implying, of course, that's why he sat down to talk to me that he wouldn't have done that in the past, but he did. And I, you know, I found it an enjoyable interview. You can make every judgments on Monday when we run it all.

but Bruce overall, what were your general impressions? Was this the same Polyev you saw a year ago, or is this a new Polyev and is it a real one? You know, I think it was a very welcome speech. I think obviously what's happening is that Mr. Pauliyev is decided he's reading the room and he's decided to join the conversation that most Canadians are interested in having

and has been at the center of Canadian politics for the last year and a half. I think there are going to be some questions that will remain and there are fair questions for people to ask. As we try to figure out, is he different or is he just talking about different things in different ways? I think that's a very valid question for people to ask. But for sure, it's better to have our two large party leaders, national party leaders, talking about the same issues so that voters can have a chance to hear two different ways of thinking about these. things and come to their own perspective as to which which direction they think is most helpful. Questions that remain for me.

I don't think that the thoughts that Mr. Poliev uttered yesterday, he just came to over the weekend. I think he's thought those things for a good long time probably, but hasn't said them so far. So important that we see this shift, but also try to understand why I think it was just last week, most of his rhetoric seemed to be about all of the problems in Canada that were caused by immigrants. And so I think we need to kind of keep an eye

on which of those channels that Mr. Poliev is using for the bulk of his communication. I think the second question for me is it's one thing to say that you want an all-party approach, a unified approach, which I think a lot of people would

take some cheer in hearing. But if you then go on to say, well, look, we should be approaching this from an all-party standpoint, well, we would still reserve the option to dunk on the team whenever we feel like it. I mean, practically speaking, it's hard to see how that would work, which is the implication of one of the things that he was saying yesterday. But, you know, it certainly sounds good to say that we want to all be on the same team. Just as from a practicality standpoint, it sounds good to say,

Here's how we would solve. We conservatives would solve the fight with the Americans over automotives. We keep the Chinese cars out. They let the Canadian cars in. Well, yes, except that is what the status quo was that the Americans said they weren't interested in. So it's a little bit like saying, I'm going to close my eyes and call it vision. It doesn't have that ring of, well, this would work. So I think there are still some important questions from a practicality standpoint there, but for sure, I think it's a better day for Canadian politics to have a conservative leader talking about these issues.

Did you want to pick up on something there, Shantel? Yeah, well, yes, where I see the shift is in Pierre Puelev saying, I would do better, and here is how, rather than I would do the opposite of which he had been, which had been his emphasis. since he became leader of the opposition. And not only is that more constructive, but a number of the... There is a lot of common ground. If you strip away the rhetoric about Chinese TVs, we know we are not getting into a partnership with China under Mark Carney.

And yes, those Chinese TVs, the... Not this number, and I'm sorry about my phone. If you keep hearing it, I'm very popular. You are. You are very popular. You don't have to brag about that. We knew that. We already knew that.

But whatever Mark Carney is going to be doing for as long as he is prime minister are things that you will need the next government, whether it is conservative or liberal to pursue. These are not short-term things that will happen in six months. So the notion that there's enough common ground that you can see the next government putting more bricks on a foundation rather than tearing down a foundation is probably, encouraging over the long term. Now, we talked about senior Tories who were happy about the speech. Let's talk about the part of the vase, very vocal on social media that was terribly unhappy about the speech and the trip. Treason.

And now he's becoming a liberal, et cetera, et cetera. Mr. Paulyev knows these people. He escorted them over his time as leader of the opposition. This is one of the first times where he is basically telling them, well, this is what it is and it's not what you want to hear. How long that last? I don't know, but for sure it has been part of this problem with Canadians that he is insisted on always catering to that section of the conservative movement,

which represents a minority point of view within Canadian society, within the electorate and is maybe Maxim Belnier's crowd if really that is where this is going. But you can't have both cater to them and have mainstream voters. Finally, on Bruce's point about saying one thing, I want to work with the government

and then going in the house and going after the government, that sounds awfully like the NDP strategy over the past few years over the course. over the course of the agreement with the liberals, and it didn't work well. There was a dissonance between they were in this agreement, and at the same time, Dracne Singh, getting on his high horse and QP to say, you're terrible and you're tearing apart the social fabric of the country.

So it's a difficult balance for the opposition to find. Okay. Peter, can I just pick up? Yeah, absolutely. Go ahead. I was really intrigued by what Chantyau was saying there. And it strikes me that in the point that she was making about the part of the conservative base that is going to be unhappy with this new approach that Pierre Paulyev is taking, including the fact that he's talking to, you know, people like you. And, you know, it's such a mark me.

Like what did I do to deserve that? Exactly. No, you're, you're, you know what? I mean, Air Pollyev's campaign war. organizer for the last campaign. Years ago, I had a conversation with this person. And I think it was about coming to a fundraising event that we've all been to. And she said, well, I'll never go to something like that because there are liberals at that as well as conservatives.

And I just don't ever socialize. And that spoke to a way of approaching conservative politics that I think Pierre Pauliev bought in. I think other conservative politicians have sometimes bought into. And my point isn't that people should socialize, although I do think that that's a helpful thing. But this idea that you would stand away from the conversation that other people were having was in fashion as a way of political organizing in the conservative party. And I'm cheered if they're moving away from that fashion.

But Chantelle's point made me wonder if Pierre Poliav is now stepping into you know, that kind of no man's land in the conservative party that Jason Kenney experienced, that Aaron O'Toole experienced where you know there's risk to you in kind of stepping away from some of the really harsh F these guys kind of rhetoric and into the more general conversation where people want to have a choice between more or less mainstream alternatives. it comes with some risk. So good for him for taking the risk. It will be incumbent upon everybody, I think, to watch whether or not he stays in that no man's land

and can survive that kind of heat that he's going to take. But I do think it's going to be there. And there's going to be constant references, I think, to a couple of things. He spent a lot of time saying Canada was broken. Yesterday, he said Canada's unbreakable. That's an interesting pivot. he said things that sounded kind of like Canada's being stupid towards the United States that are similar to what Jamil Jomani said about we're having a hissy fit about America.

But yesterday he wasn't saying that. He was saying America started this. And we need to be careful not to make this rupture permanent. He went a little bit further than that. Those kind of things will be flashpoints as Chantelle has a little bit. alluded to, I think, in terms of him being able to hold on to his base and access more mainstream voters. All right. Let me just run a clip from the interview with Polyev because it addresses some of these points.

And it starts on this issue of the trip he's about to take or he's taking, starting this weekend to London and Berlin. But this is about two minutes. And bear with me while I try to figure out how to make this work. You know, it's tough when pensioners got to sit here and figure out. out his computer. It's like kind of an ongoing dad joke with tech. Or the phone that keeps swinging. Yeah.

Here we go. Here's a couple of minutes from the interview that we'll run on one day. Have you considered it all going to Washington? I know you're off to what, London and Berlin over the next couple of days. Why not Washington? Isn't Washington where we've got to be doing the talking right now? I've always believed in the rule of one prime minister at a time. and what I wanted to allow was for the government of the day to have enough room to operate and negotiate on behalf of Canada.

And I never wanted our country to be divided. And I didn't want any foreign regime of any kind to say, look, we've got two different powers coming to negotiate, and I'm going to play one off the other. So that's the reason why I've left that space to the governing prime ministers. it's been Trudeau and Carney. I told Prime Minister Carney that if there's anyone he wants me to meet with, I'd be happy to do it. And at the appropriate time, I will do that.

And he did express some openness to it. But we've got to make sure that we put the country first. Has Washington as the White House invited you to come down? I don't think I've ever received any formal invitation to go down to the White House. No. What do you think of Donald Trump? And I ask that, you know, as you will know, and you've referred to it, as many Canadians are, they're more than just angry with him.

They don't trust him. They think a lot of things about him. Words I won't repeat here. What do you think of him? Look, I can't stand his talk about 51st state. I don't like his tariffs. I don't like the way he's treated my country, bluntly speaking. And various times I've been upset by the words.

he utters and the things he does just like everyone else. But as I age, I become more stoic in focusing on what I can control. And Mark Carney actually said something that I think is quite wise. He said nobody can control what President Trump does. So we have to focus on what we can control. And that means strengthening ourselves here at home so that we have unbreakable leverage when we negotiate with him or his successors. So, you know, Prime Minister Harper had a lot of wisdom as well.

He said, we cannot focus on how the United States makes us feel. We have to focus on what we have to do to adapt. And that's my focus. All right. You know, Chantelle, if that part of his base was upset of the speech, they're really not going to like what he had to say about Trump. And I am curious as to how that echoes when it comes to caucus management, Because there are members in caucus who represent that section of the base.

And there is, I believe, a majority in caucus that wants those colleagues to pipe down and get with the program. And where this goes from here and whether Mr. Puelev's hand is strengthened in regaining control, because I believe he'd lost a lot of control over his caucus over the past few weeks. You saw all kinds of private initiatives, you know, pay cut on the one hand, the trip to Washington of Jamin, Jiamine, Juvani. But by, but there will be more outbursts. On the same day, I watched Mr. Jivani on social media, tear up a shirt over the fact that Canada is going to be helping Cuba. That is, the party's position is to support the fact that we're going to be helping Cuba. he's becoming literally a one-man show within caucus.

How long can that last and not interfere with Mr. Puehliev's take that we can't be veering off in all kinds of directions and opposing whatever the liberals do for the sake of saying that they're wrong? One point, Bruce talked about risk. Yes, there are risks, and that is one of the risks of Pierre Paulyev's quoting. Trudeau, Pierre Trudeau in his speech talking about Mark Carney, who said the thing, this and that. But I think the biggest risk at this juncture would be an early election. And that the speech up to a point is also meant to make that prospect less palatable or less easy to defend for Prime Minister Carney. because the whole strategy of those who really want an election this spring on the liberal side

is being to show obstruction on the part of the Conservatives. It's no accident that yesterday the budget bill passed in the House of Commons and is now off to the Senate. The conservatives and Mr. Puehliev totally want to avoid an election. It's also no accident that we saw a story in the globe this week that said the liberals are going to start moving in. moving on with nominations for the next election, that's psychological warfare,

more than election preparation. It's meant to make the opposition parties go. We can't, because if there is an election tomorrow, Mr. Palli has odds of winning are slim, and that's the end of his career, literally, as a leader in the House of Commons. You know, I suggested to him that, okay, he now has his vision of how he'd like to see Canada-U.S. relations

progress down a path that he thinks is the right one, versus Mr. Carney, who has his own path, which is different. They're not vastly different, but there are differences. And so I said to him, I asked him, I said, given those two different paths and the critical moment that we're entering now, should those views be tested by the Canadian public? Should there be a mandate for who goes forward with these negotiations from this moment on? He said, no.

He said, we don't need an election now. Now, I think we understand why he may be saying that, but he seems sincere in the fact that this is not the moment for an election. This is the moment to try and work out some common path. Yeah, this is really interesting. I think from my standpoint, I agree with Chantelle, and I think it's good that you asked that question and clarifying that you got that answer.

It wasn't the answer he was giving all through last year, that's for sure. I think that what he's doing is trying to fence in his caucus at this point to prevent more people from having an obvious reason to say, look, I just can't get comfortable with this as the focus of my party, which we heard from MP Genereau. as part of his explanation for the switch that he made. I do think it also is effectively waving the white flag in terms of an election now. It's signaling we don't want one and signaling it in a way that is reflective of the fact that they understand the math,

that they see the same thing, which is that the more he has stayed away from or somewhat criticized the approach of Canada in the context of Trump, the more ground he has lost as a political leader, even if some of the polls looked like his party support was holding up. More recently, that isn't even apparent. He is, again, though, entering into this strange area where if you didn't know who was giving the speech yesterday and you just read the speech, there's certainly a number of sentences or passages and even phrases,

where you would go, oh, that's what Mark Carney said. and I find that quite interesting. There's a lot of the same kind of prescriptions in terms of the strategy. And I think Mr. Pauliyev was careful to say, well, Stephen Harper had that strategy as well. But for Pierre Pauliev to say a liberal leader who he's competing against said something wise is a pretty big change in the way in which Pierre Pauliev does politics. that challenge ultimately is if you go from saying there's a this is a big complicated issue these are the pillars that have to underpin our strategy

and then you prescribe something that is really oversimplified which is I think some of what's going on I mean it's going to be complicated to deal with the United States on the Kusma review it won't be as simple as saying hey I've got an idea why don't we just go back to doing what we were doing before. You know, we saw the American Cabinet Secretary Jameson Greer

yesterday. I think the quote was that the president, he says the president has been quite clear. He's half inclined to leave Kusma. Well, I was reading down as I was thinking, it's garbage day where I live. And if Nancy said to me, I don't forget to take out the garbage. I said, well, I'm half implying to do it.

She would not think that that was quite clear. She would think that that was the absence of clarity. So we're headed into a real kind of a fuzzy, fuzzy, fuzzy situation with the United States. And I think the instincts of the opposition leader are going to be to try to make it sound simple to people. And I think voters know it's not simple. And it's not going to be simple or linear. Okay. We got to take a quick break.

I did take the garbage out, by the way. Yeah, we did need to. It sounds like you better. Yeah, we did. clarify that. She probably won't. You'd be locked in that room for longer than you are for just doing good talk. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. There's more to talk about on this, and we'll do that right after this.

And welcome back. You're listening to A Good Talk for this Friday. Bruce Anderson, Chantelle-A-Bear in the house. I'm Peter Mansbridge. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks. Or on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. We're glad to have you with us, no matter which platform you have joined us on. There's one other thing that came up, and you kind of heard a hint of it in that clip we ran.

There seems to have been, and this is we're only hearing from one side on this, but there seems to be a new relationship developing between Mr. Polyev and Mr. Carney. And in the interview, Pollyev says, it's partly as a result of that trip to Tumblr Ridge. They spent a lot of time on the plane together. They talked a lot. And they didn't just talk about politics. They talked about family.

And it seems that they do on occasion run into each other, almost literally, as you'll hear him tell an anecdote, in the area of Ottawa that they both live in. Has anybody heard anything along those lines? Or is there evidence of that in watching how they deal with House Commons issues and parliamentary issues in general? We don't get to watch a lot of that in the House of Commons. Why?

Because Mr. Carney usually shows up about once a week. He takes the questions from Pierre Paulyev. It's the usual adversarial QP stuff. And then he hands the rest of the questions to the House leader or to whatever minister is being asked once the leader's round is over. And, you know, Mark Carney is not bad in QP, but no one would describe him as the kind of person who wants to go to QP to insult the people who are asking adversarial questions. So it's, you know, dear, it doesn't, it's never seen that Pierre Puelev got under Mark Carney's skin and QP, or vice versa. So no, we're not seeing a lot of that. And I think I fear that Pia Pueleev must have, which I totally understand, is the notion, and he tried to prevent it by saying it is still the role of the official opposition to criticize the government.

To not end up in coverage that says, but you said and that you would be constructive, and now you've criticized or attacked the government, which is a simplistic way of covering Parliament, frankly. But that is a risk that I was listening to Bruce and to you talking about Pierre Palliev and thinking it is still the worst job on Parliament Hill to be leading. of the official opposition

when you're not 20 points ahead in the polls because at that point your leverage is really limited you can't demote people remember Aaron O'Toole demoted that contributed to his downfall remember when Aaron O'Toole tried

to preemptively get rid of the carbon pricing issue in time for the election that was the beginning of the end of his tenure because caucus didn't want to go along. So the risk that Pierre Pueleu is taking with this, I'm closer to when we talked on the plane,

is the same risk that eventually cost Aaron O'Toole's job. And Mr. Puele has already lost an election and squander the 20-point lead. So he's not in a very strong position. I don't expect him, no, to spend a lot of time going for a beer, in downtown Ottawa with Mark Carney anytime soon. Yeah, I don't want to overstate it because he did make it clear, as you suggest, he's made clear elsewhere,

that he's still the leader of the opposition, and he is going to oppose when he thinks it's right, and they disagree on some fundamental issues facing the country. He made all that clear. It just seemed that there was a new degree of respect there, and whether it goes by the ways or not, I'm not sure. Go ahead. You know, what occurs to me, Peter, is,

I take Chantel's point. I think I agree with it. Mark Carney, it turns out he's a pretty good boxer in the boxing match of question period, but he didn't get into politics to be a professional fighter. That's not really what motivates him. And so it doesn't surprise me that his normal setting, which is to be curious about other people, to want to have conversations with other people,

to look for ways to try to work together, the same approach that he's taken to the relationship with the provincial premiers. it doesn't surprise me at all that that is essentially, I think what Mr. Poliyev is kind of revealing to you or suggesting to you has happened. The second part of that equation, though, is it only works if the person in the other side of the aisle or the other seat in the plane actually wants to have a conversation.

And that term that Mr. Poliyev used in the interview about how age made him more stoic, I thought was a really interesting one, a little bit of a glimpse into what's making him tick. Now, Stoic is one word to describe, I'm feeling battered and bruised by the way that politics is turned out for me, and some of that is circumstances changed in a way that I didn't see coming. Some of it is I was stuck in this kind of robotic version of myself

that looked like it worked, but made me feel like a robot that people didn't want to support, and now I've got to do something different. So for whatever combination of reasons and whether one wants to call it stoic or kind of life-shaped, you know, the experience teaches us to stop bumping into things that are painful, either way, I think it's encouraging if we have leaders who can actually talk to each other. And there will always be that spectacle, the show of the boxing match. And that's probably as it should be, as long as we understand, that's not the only thing.

that opposition leaders are doing or prime ministers for that matter. And just so we're clear, we all spent years of watching the liberals under Jean-Critzain tell the Reform Party that balancing budgets and eliminating the deficit with something that you did when you wanted, like, the conservatives in Alberta, to kill social programs or respond just prior to the referendum to the suggestion that there should be rules around secession issues as, you know, dangerous for national unity. And then what did we watch?

The two major accomplishments of the liberals balancing the books. Oh, well, by slowing the transfers on health care, which did have impact on the health care system in this country that we're still living with, by the way. And the Clarity Act that set rules around. secession issues. So, so the opposition parties, and it's not just the conservatives, but they do contribute ideas that are rejected, depicted as ridiculous by the government of the day in every parliament, and eventually become policy of the same party and the same government. So, so there is

an important role for the opposition to play. That's why we have a parliament. Okay, we're going to move off the polyev topic with one last question, which is the one we kind of build as the question of this program today. Is the new polyev that we're seeing starting to see, and we saw quite a bit of it yesterday, is it real or is it too soon to tell? It's too soon to tell because it could have been this change in tone, could have started with the speech at the Leadership Review Convention. And it didn't.

On Monday morning, things were back to where they'd been the Friday before that confidence vote. So we'll see. And we'll also see what the dynamics inside the party and inside caucus do and how it plays out internally. If he'd given that speech in Calgary with the audience in that room, which was mostly Western. would the vote of still being 87%? No, but it would probably have been 80%. So I don't think he was going there to end up.

I don't ever think his fate was in the balance, no, regardless of what he said. And, you know, partisan members sometimes hear only what they really want to hear in a speech. That's life, not just with the conservatives. So I think they would have voted before they really, to tons of analysis that there had been a pivot. Yeah, he made a risk.

He took a risk in Calgary. He made a bet, and he made a different bet, took a different risk yesterday. And I think that the biggest risk in some respects for him with the pivot to yesterday is that it won't show up as being beneficial for him in terms of the polls. it still is, in my view, a better thing to do, to try to compete for the largest pool of orders to support a conservative option. But if it doesn't materialize in terms of stronger support

for him personally or for his party, there are going to be those who say he, you know, deeped right and then he deeped to the center and at the end of the day, people just don't like him enough or they like Mark Carney better. Those are outcomes that are very possible. And that is the nature of the risk of he faces now. All right.

We're going to take our last break. We come back, kind of a pulpoury of things that are on each of your minds. We'll do that right after this. And welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week with Chantelle and Bruce. I got to throw it open here. No specific question. I mean, there are a number of the other issues bubbling the prime ministers on another one of his trips, various things happening.

But tell me what's on your mind as we head into this weekend. Chantelle, you start. Yeah, it's been an interesting week. As you know, we are headed for an election with a different premier, a different liberal leader next fall. and the Parts Quebecois, whose plan it is to hold the referendum on sovereignty, if it's elected to a majority government within its first term, has been leading in the polls for months. So this week, to no one's surprise, there was a big PQ gain in the Saguené region. The writing that they cacket won with 60% of the vote in the election,

and the PQ won back with 45% of the vote. But on that night, where they... PQ leader, Paul St. Pierre-Plamondon, did not say onward to this winning referendum. He made a speech to acknowledge for the first time, I think, as publicly as that, that he had heard on the doorstep that Quebecers are worried about Donald Trump, that he wanted to assure voters that if he became premier, was a responsible person leading a responsible government, that there would be time to see the Trump era

through the next presidential election, possibly before we get to a referendum. And clear, trying to kind of shift from elect me because I'm going to have a referendum. You don't want to which you are waiting to say no to me, to I will offer you good government. I almost heard the first PQ campaign that brought them to power, downplaying the referendum.

And why did that happen? Because a really interesting poll this week showed that the PQ still ahead. It's tightening up. And the PQ has been losing support in the suburbs around Montreal. And that is where you win or lose elections. So the game here may be changing. And it was always going to be hard to convince Quebecers to back a party that wants to hold a referendum. The numbers in that poll were 63-0 to separation.

So not a great poll on that score either. But that's a new dynamics. We will have a new premiere soon. And you can feel the urge shifting. And it's interesting to see how that is going to play out. So bottom line on that story is that the PQ do, in fact, have backup lights on there. vehicles just in case they need them.

They have watched someone squander a 20-point lead by not using that maneuver. Right. And they're trying to avoid making the same mistake. It is going to be complicated, though. I don't think anyone should call the next Quebec election until the campaign actually happens. I think everybody's getting a little shy about calling any elections these days based on what we witnessed last year. Bruce, what are you thinking? Well, I'm obviously paying a lot of attention all the time to this tariff debate and dispute with the United States.

And since we last spoke, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Trump's tariffs, at least a significant portion of those tariffs. And I think it's, you know, we're heading into meetings. It sounds like they're going to be next week with Dominic LeBlanc and his U.S. counterparts. So we're entering a different phase in terms of the tariff. conversation. I think it's a little bit more promising face for Canada, but it'd be interesting to watch. I'm also watching U.S. politics from a heading towards the midterms, and there'll be a really

interesting election in a primary in Texas. I think it's on Tuesday. There's a, you know, a really interesting young candidate named James Talariko, running against a popular woman named Jasmine Crockett. I think if Tallarico wins that primary, there's an interesting conversation about whether or not Texas might put a Democrat in the Senate this fall. So that's going to be interesting to watch on. I'm always very wary of the Texas situation because there's so many times we've been to that well over the last 10 years that the Democrats look like they were going to take Texas. Never happens.

No, that's right. And it feels a little bit like the Charlie Brown. football thing. But Talarico is quite an interesting and different kind of candidate. And this is a different moment in Texas, especially given the way that the ICE deportation agenda has played itself out there. It's different from the Build a Wall, Mexico phase of the Trump immigration policy. Two other quick things that I'm paying attention to. One is the U.S. Ambassador to Israel apparently told the people who work in the Israeli embassy there or the embassy there that today was the day to leave.

So we may be headed for a conflict in Iran. And the last thing is there was some good news about the Canadian economy that came out yesterday that the amount of foreign investment into Canada had hit a high that we hadn't seen since 2007, I think it was last year. So that's, you know, that's some good news to counter the sense of anxiety that a lot of people have about what's going to happen to our economy. Is there going to be investment in the country? How did you want to say something on that, Shant?

No, I just want to add one note. Possibly federal by-elections called this weekend for April. The first under Mark Carney and the one to watch will be in Quebec because it's a rematch. The other two are safe seats, Bill Blair and Christopher Williams, former seats. the one in Quebec is a rematch between the bloc and the liberals. They ended within one vote of each other in the last election. So a good place to test whether Mark Carney's great Quebec numbers pan out on the ground.

What do we make of this continuing talk about the possibility of a federal election? you know, and, you know, I added to it by asking Pahliav about it in the interview. But nevertheless, I'm trying to figure out the same old question. How real is this stuff? Or is it just an easy story to write? It feels like a scare tactic as far as I can tell. But it makes sense that a minority prime minister would tell the liberal organization to be ready whenever I'm ready

I can do this. But you need a narrative at this point to tell Canadians or explain to Canadians why you would be doing except that you think you can win a majority, which is not a great rationale. No, we've seen that movie before.

Bruce? Look, I don't even see this as a product of machinations by the government. I just see this as Ottawa makes soup and this is Ottawa's favorite soup to make, which is like maybe an election. I don't think it's real at all. How do you explain those trade figures from last year, not trade figures, the business

figures you were relating to? Well, you know, I think that amidst all of the chaos and the sense of disruption that exists around the world, when businesses and investors look at the variety of, places that they could invest. Canada does have some really important advantages that if you're investing for the long term, you're putting large blocks of money down with a view to making money over a 15, 20, 25 year period, you're going to assume that there's going to be some normalization of policy in the United States because that's the safer assumption than to assume it's always going to be chaotic, that this perpetual uncertainty that Trump has created is going

to be the new America. But you're also going to look for places that are stable, where there's a functioning democracy, where there's the rule of law, where there's advanced technology, where there's good health care, where people get along, even in the context of a diverse population. All of those things stand as assets that we always had as a country in this international investor conversation. but they were almost like the price of entry. And now there's something that the rest of the world can look at and say,

well, that doesn't exist everywhere. And Canada does have the resources, human and otherwise, that could be helpful to our businesses. So I think we're at the front end of a conversation about inbound investment that is going to get quite interesting. I know it's a big part of what the prime minister is focusing on and will continue to, I think, over the coming year. If that's the case, why don't we sort of generally see that in ourselves as a country?

Forget about the politics. Just right now, everybody's so nervous about the future for all kinds of different reasons, spearheaded by the relationship with the U.S., but AI, everything else. Yeah. Why don't we see it in ourselves? Well, we kind of do. I mean, I did a survey after Mr. Carney's speech to the Foreign Relations Council, I think, was called in the United States in December.

And I asked, you know, took the 23 things that he described as being those great Canadian attributes. And I asked Canadians, do you think this is a strong attribute that we have and do you think it's one that we should promote? And the numbers were like 80% for all of them or, or, you know, more or less 80%. So I think that we don't express it often as a collective because we don't really have the opportunity to express it as a collective. but in the context of, did last year help remind people or convince people that Canada was broken and didn't have anything to offer?

Or did it make us feel stronger, more resilient and a little bit more, we got to take our message to the world? For me, it was the latter. And possibly to go back to Mr. Poyev's speech, a bit less complacent about waiting for opportunities to come to us because they always come because the U.S. So up to a point, you know, the past year has been difficult, but it has forced people to look at strengths rather than find fault with whatever is. And I'm not saying that to say that Canada's situation is ideal or that it's working extraordinarily well. But the focus has been more on things that could work better

as opposed to things that are supposed to be broken. Completely agree. Okay, I've got, before we sign off, I got a question. It comes from one of our listeners, actually, who wanted to know when they watch good talks, or one of our viewers. When they watch good talk,

whenever Chantel's not talking, she seems to be writing something or scribbling on her notepad. And clearly what, that's it and that's just today yeah that's just this morning oh well clearly Bruce and I were talking too much

no put it into AI and see what what does it really mean what it really means is when I draw I listen more attentively than when I don't I've always done that those were my university notes by the way I can remember

everything I hear if I'm doing something else. Playing a video game while I listen to radio, I'll remember the arguments that the experts are putting forward. Well, you know what you should do, right? There's money in those notes. Oh, yeah, right. My grandchildren think so too.

My writer was saying, if she's drawing, how do I buy one of those? Where do I get it? There are words there, hidden in there. We can also those off for charity. There's a good idea. Yeah, right. That's right.

You know, I bet you at the kind of charitable events that Bruce and I are involved in, and you've been to some of them, Chantowne. We put that up and said you did it. Yeah. That sell for a thousand bucks. I tend to treat those like dirty diapers. So at the end of the day, they go where you think they go. Well, you should save those because I think we could do something with that.

That could be real money into some good charitable organization. Okay. I got to wrap it up. The much talked about Pierre Paulyev interview will be on Monday on the bridge in its entirety. So it's the whole program. And I know some of you will be saying, what about Janice Stein? Where's Dr. Stein? I need her on Monday.

Well, you'll get your Dr. Stein fix on Wednesday next week. Just a one-off. She'll be on Wednesday. Tuesday is a more butts conversation. We're going to talk sports and politics as a result of last week. It should be interesting to hear from both of them on that. All right, that's going to wrap it up for today. Thanks to Chantelle and her etchapad or whatever it's called.

Andrew Bruce. Have a great weekend, you guys. Talks. Okay, bye-bye. Bye.