The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- What Was He Thinking?

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

Pierre Poilievre ends up with a group of F-Trudeau flag wavers in the Maritimes. Really?  What was he thinking? Chantal and Bruce have their thoughts on that and much more. Whatever happened to the newly hired comms director for the Prime Minister? Has anything made a difference? And Mark Carney seems to finally enter the ring.  

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. It's Good Talk for this Friday, and as often is the case, we have lots to talk about. And I want to start with this story. I think if there's a list of lessons that I imagine you learn when you're some kind of a political advisor at a senior level, you travel with your leader. One of those lessons is don't let your leader get into any kind of situation that you don't know exactly what it is or how it's going to play out. You want a good idea of these things before you let your leader, he or she, walk into something.

Well, I don't know who was in the back of the car with Pierre Polyev the other day when he decided to stop along the border between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, to basically join a group of F. Trudeau flag-waving people protesting against the carbon tax. Still some of them upset about vaccines. But off he went into a trailer and spent some time with these people, basically taking selfies, coming off like he agreed with everything they were doing. Now, what was he thinking in doing that?

Chantal, why don't you give me a sense of what you think he was thinking? I'll start with your assumption that this is a leader who listens to advice from the back of the car, I'm not convinced that that's the case. I think that Pyap-Valyov's main advisor is his gut instinct. And if he listens to advisors, it's usually after the fact, and only when it's totally obvious that he stepped out of line. The official explanation from conservative voters is that Mr. Poiliev goes out of his way to shake hands with voters. And he saw an opportunity to shake hands

with voters, like-minded voters, mind you, because I don't believe that if he'd be driving past the Earth Day demonstration for climate change, he would have detoured to shake hands with the people who were demonstrating. There were two flags there, one that was the main attraction, I'm sure a major attraction for Mr. Poiliev, that's the axe to tax flag. But there were other flags that kind of sent the message that these might be people who were liable to get an aspiring prime minister in trouble with voters or with at least some voters, those who are civil, and it's the F. Trudeau flags. Now, having stepped into that, he did not give the impression that he agreed with everything. There is enough video

online to show him agreeing with a lot of the assertions that he was hearing, including that the RCMP is on side with people who have convoy style demonstrations and the assertion that Justin Trudeau lies about everything, which is a very nuanced statement from someone who wants to be prime minister. Now, I tried to think back of the leaders of the opposition because it was put to me that leaders of the opposition always go out of their way to meet more voters. So I tried to think of those leaders of the opposition who became prime minister that I covered. That would be Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, Stephen Harper, and Justin Trudeau. I don't believe a single one of them would have walked into a group that had a F,

whoever was prime minister, flowing in the wind on the side of a highway because they would have surmised that possibly they would be agreeing with things or made to look like they were agreeing with things that were outlandish and that might hurt a lot of voters' sense of statesmanship and civility. So having done all that, and the pictures don't do any gifts or any favors to Mr. Poiliev. He looks like a dummy politically who walked into something without thinking

and now is trying to make the best of something that he can't make the best of. It tells me also that Mr. Poiliev at this point with his 20 point lead seems to believe that he's bulletproof. That's a dangerous assertion. And if we're all at least a year from an election. You know,

I know you want to say something here, Bruce, and I'm absolutely looking forward to it. I just want to, you know, I know you want to say something here, Bruce, and I'm absolutely looking forward to it. I just want to, you know, listening to Chantel and this assumption that some people have that, you know, an opposition leader can go into a group of any kind, you know, and they need to and they do it deliberately for, you know for increased support. There are lessons out there in politics, and one of them was expressed south of the border. Remember John McCain running against Obama in that first campaign? He was at a town hall organized by his own party, and somebody from his own party went after Obama

in a pretty disparaging way. And McCain said, whoa, wait a minute. That's not true. That just isn't true. And he's my opponent, and I disagree with him on a lot of things, but that basically said you've gone over the line here. That's wrong. Think of if Polyev had, I don't know what damage, if any,

this has caused him the other night. I mean, the media is talking about it. We're talking about it. But think of it the other way. If he got out of that car, went over there and said, you know what? I want to hear what you have to say, but get rid of that flag. Because that does not have a place in the dialogue in Canadian politics, the F. Trudeau flag. Think of what that would have done for him in the long run in terms

of support. Now, he may have lost some support, I doubt it, but he might have gained some support. Anyway, that's just my thinking. Bruce, you tell us what we should be thinking here. That's an interesting thought, Peter. I think the – first of all, I don't think it was a mistake. I don't think he did it in error. I think he did it deliberately. I think he knew what he was doing, and it's a reflection of the cockiness that comes with a 20-point or so lead, the belief, as Chantal said, that nothing can really go wrong.

And I can indulge this guilty pleasure that I have of letting myself be photographed with people who harbor such angry views and who associate with far-right groups. I think it's important to say he didn't just stop and talk to people who didn't like Justin Trudeau. He does that every day. It's hard to go anywhere and speak to people without having a lot of people in a room who don't like Justin Trudeau. This is different. This is qualitatively different. And I think sometimes in the way that this gets discussed in social media, people talk about diagonalon and flags and symbols and that kind of thing. And a lot of folks may miss what exactly we're talking about, but

he would have known and would have observed once he got out of the car that there were going to be pictures of him in a situation which would delight the furthest right part of his base. It would create some potential jeopardy with mainstream people. But it's hypothetical for him because I think he thinks he can't lose. As long as he's running against Justin Trudeau, I think it's probably true that he can't lose. But here's the thing. I think this kind of cockiness, this indulgence in that guilty pleasure is putting some risk on the table for him. When that bill comes due, I think depends entirely on what the liberals do and how they

approach the next election and who the leader is and what kind of challenge even Trudeau stays, what kind of challenge they're able to mount to Pierre Trudeau. But as we discussed before, I think if it's a Trudeau-Poliev election, still more people are going to say, I don't know, on balance, I'm just tired of Justin Trudeau rather than I'm worried about the people that Pierre Poliev occasionally is willing to associate with. Other people might have a different view about that. I get that. I see that on social media, too, from time to time.

But if I were Pierre Poliev, and I think Chantal is probably right, he probably does have advisors around him who are saying, why would we risk another picture like this? Why would we allow the creation of advertising down the road that will make us look like we're not serious, that we're not capable of kind of staying in the mainstream of Canadian politics. And as I said, I think it's a guilty pleasure that Polyev indulges, and I think it's risky behavior. And I think he doesn't feel any risk right now because he feels like he's got this great view. He doesn't feel any risks, but here are risks, and I'm not talking about the general election. There will be within months, unless the government doesn't survive its budget vote, and I guess we'll come back to that. But there will be a by-election in the writing of St. Paul's in Toronto. This is not a natural Poiliev writing.

And by that, I don't mean conservative writing. I think it could have gone to more progressive conservative writings. The instincts there would be liberal or red Tory. But for all kinds of reasons, fatigue, a solid Jewish consistency that is unhappy with the government at this point, the conservatives have a shot at St. Paul's. And it would be a big win to win within the old city of Toronto for Pierre Poilievre. But if there is one place where I think these pictures will play really badly, if they are used in advertisement during a by-election campaign, it's that kind of writing where people will be totally turned off by what they are being shown. And this is a real vote that is coming real soon.

Now, you could argue, if you really want to be cynical about it, that it's probably best for the liberals to keep St. Paul's because they'll hang on to Justin Trudeau. And if they hang on to Justin Trudeau, then the odds that Pierre Poiliev and the conservatives will win big are higher, possibly. But still, over the short term, this is bad. Another example, it's in a different range, but the Conservatives are having a hard time finding name candidates in Quebec to run in ridings that they don't own. By that, I don't mean the riding that former Quebec Lieutenant Alain Reyes is about to leave, which is a pretty safe conservative seat. But there are about 12 safe seats in Quebec for the conservatives. Since Mr. Ployev came to the province and told everyone that he felt that the mayor of Quebec City and Montreal are incompetent, there are more people who are saying, I'm not going to run for this person,

because he comes to the province from who knows where, because that's how it's perceived, and tells the people that, and tells Quebecers that the people they elected, more than half of them in the two major cities, are not worth the time, that they're incompetent, that he can set aside people who were duly elected with a mandate. So all these things, they do add up. They may not add up to a defeat on Election Day. We don't know that. But they certainly add up to a perception of Pierre Poiliev that will not play well in markets where he would want to bring

the Conservative Party to gains in the next election. I think Chantal raises an interesting point, which when I think about when Pierre Poliev is having his best days, it's when he is describing himself as an agent of the agenda that Canadians are preoccupied with. Cheaper homes, you know, bigger paychecks,

that kind of thing. And when he gets himself into a situation of hypothetical risk, I don't want to be confused as saying what he's doing on these days is causing him damage in the polls. I don't think it's the way it works. I don't think people are paying that kind of attention. But the risk scenarios for him are when he sounds like that guy who has it all figured out in his mind. He's got an agenda. If he gets first past the post in enough seats, he's going to impose it on the country. And that sounds like a different Pierre Poliev than the guy who says, I know what you want. You want more doctors and nurses. You want more houses

built more quickly and more cheaply, and you want bigger paychecks. I think there's two sides to this guy. And I think that when he says the things that Chantal just alluded to that relate to how homes will be built, he might have exactly the same position as the federal liberals under Trudeau have on that. I think, frankly, he does. But he can make it sound as though he's a strong man and he wants to bring that kind of force of his personality and his knowledge into play. And I think that's a different version of him. And I'm not sure it will play that well because on other issues, for example, in resources and environment, I think there's the development of an agenda there that if it comes to light too soon and too unvarnished way, we'll make Canadians at some point look at it and say, is that really what we want? Or is that what his personal kind of ideological fascination is. So I've always felt like as we get closer to the 2025 election, irrespective of who the liberal leader is, there is going to be more of a stress

testing of who Pierre Poliev is and how do we feel about him. I still think that's going to happen. I just think it's going to be a more pronounced stress test if the liberals are not the focus of, and the incumbency of Trudeau in particular is not the focus of the election. Okay, I don't want to. Just one short, short comment. Bruce is really polite with the word strongman. I'd use bully. No argument.

That was short. Let me just ask this. I saw saw it in your face we saw it in your face you wanted short sometimes you do a little bit of this with your finger for the youtube audience and if you're really sick of us you take off your glasses i don't even want to see these people anymore if they just disappear from the screen. I don't want to dwell anymore on this issue. I think it's been a good conversation. One we have to have we got to keep our eye on the ball and the ball right now is a 20 point lead for the Conservatives and Pierre Palliev almost certainly

the next Prime Minister of Canada unless something goes horribly wrong in the next six months or year for him. Let me just ask this. Is there any, do you buy at all into the argument that, you know, one of the reasons he would have done something like that is to ensure that that's kind of Max Bernier vote that left the Conservatives in the last election, the last couple of elections, comes home to the Conservative Party just to, you know, kind of cement the oncoming vote in favour of the Conservatives

if that's in fact what happens. Do you buy into that at all, Chantal? I think that job is done. I think he's sewed up that vote. I think that we never hear anything of Max Bernier anymore. And I think the prospect of a win is kind of bringing that discipline into the ranks of small C conservative voters, if you like.

So no, I don't think he needs to do it anymore. I think there was probably a time where you could argue that as ugly as it might look to other people, it might have been useful work for him to do to make sure that he created that 20-point lead and there was no real threat in public opinion terms on the far right. But I think that's where he is now. And don't forget that some of the Bernie vote was often in writings that that the Conservatives win big, with margins that they can afford to lose 10 points, they will still win by 20 or 30 points.

So yes, it can make a slight difference in some really close ridings, but I think by and large, it is people who voted Liberal and NDP that the Conservatives really need to win over. All right. Chantal flagged that we would talk about the budget a couple of weeks later now. And so we'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Friday episode. Good talk right here on SiriusXM, channel 167,

or on your favorite podcast platform, or as Bruce mentioned, on our special Friday YouTube edition. All right. It's been a few weeks now, and much longer if you consider all the leaking that went on. So people are fairly aware of what the budget was all about. Although it's a huge document, there's tons of stuff in there that most people will never hear about, let alone read about in the last couple of weeks.

But everything seems to indicate that it hasn't exactly lit the country on fire with, hey, this is a great budget and I'm going to change my mind and I'm going to vote Liberal. Bruce, you monitor all this stuff. What is the mood of the land on the budget? Is it basically something that had no impact at all, could still have an impact? Where are we on this? You know, I think to some degree, the answer to that question depends on what your expectations were of it. If you're the government, if you if you needed it to do something absolutely catalytic in terms of the public opinion landscape, it hasn't done that.

If you felt like you wanted to do some things that were going to cost a lot of money and you hope that you wouldn't get a lot of outrage at the size of the deficit, I think they probably would say we may have gotten away with that. If you felt like what you wanted to do was ignite a bit of a class war by saying there are some people who aren't paying enough taxes and we're going to go after them and they're going to help us buy things for you, middle class Canadians. I don't think they accomplished that goal. I don't think it was a good idea to begin with, but I don't think they accomplished that goal. So specifically, I think people think, well, I heard them talking about housing more than they did. I think that's good. Will the investments

pan out? How long? How much difference will they make? People are going to be skeptical about that. And so, you know, I think the government might have said, for all the effort that we put into talking about all kinds of new initiatives around housing, why don't we get a bump in public opinion? I think the answer is a certain number of people won't have heard of it. Only 40% of people under 30 heard of the budget at all. And among the people who've heard of it, some will be skeptical about whether or not the impact will be strong enough and soon enough. And then on the capital gains measure, what we see is kind of split opinion. And it reminds me of the small business tax changes that the government made early on in their mandate, where they thought that they had tested an idea almost in a laboratory environment, looking at the policy from the standpoint of,

is it good policy? And if we could get the attention of everybody for long enough to explain it in a way where they completely understood what we were doing and what we weren't doing, it would test well. It would go over well. But of course, the laboratory is not real life in politics. What happens in real life in politics with any kind of measure that sounds like a tax increase is a whole bunch of people kind of weigh in and say it's going to cost everybody more. And that's what we found in our polling is that 70% think you announced that you were going to have a $39 billion deficit, that you'd expect a lot of really negative reaction. What we get is negative reaction to this budget, but perhaps not to the extent that $39 billion on its own would have

not that many years ago. But it's a source of disappointment for people in this budget. So on the whole, I don't think it's done what the government wanted it to do or hoped that it would do or even expected that it would do. Chantal, what's your take? I think Bruce is right. The government wanted to fight on the battlefield of housing and wanted to fight on the battlefield of the capital gains tax change and needed an opponent to do so. And I think wisely, the Conservatives are giving this fight, these two fights, a pass. They're just moving on. They're not saying the housing agenda, which works, has been received positively. They're just moving on. They're not saying the housing agenda, which works, has been received positively. They're not saying we would trash this or it's terrible.

They're not saying anything except our agenda has this. They stole parts of our agenda, which is not the fight the liberals were looking for. And on the capital gains tax, you will notice that Pierre Poiliev is not on the barricades on it. He barely ever mentions it. He will not even say whether he would reverse those changes if he became prime minister. Many believe that he would not reverse those changes if the liberals want to wear that with the people

who are unhappy with it, doctors, etc. People who own cottages and stand to make a bundle of them. He's not going to be going there. And I think in part, he's not going to be going there because very quietly, every province, every provincial government, most of them conservatives, has actually benefited from this announcement or stands to benefit big bucks to put on their bottom line. There's a reason why Quebec, the only province that had to decide whether to move in tandem with the federal government because we have separate income tax reports at the end of the year, took three days to say we're buying in on this. It's in Quebec, $1 billion more in revenue to the province. So why would Pierre Poilievre go and tell Daniel Smith and Doug Ford and others, if I become prime minister, I'm going to go back to that old system,

when they too are saying, this is great, Justin Trudeau gets to wear this, but we are reaping benefits from it. So I think the conservatives so far, we'll see next week, because the House hasn't been sitting this week. But when you watch Pierre Poiliev, beyond this video thing that everyone has talked about this week. He is back to his script. He's not even pausing to make a big deal out of the main features of the budget. Me, I believe that in the end, the budget has managed to do one thing, and that is weaken Justin Trudeau's leadership, increase the sense internally that there needs to be a change

in leaders. And in part, because people are telling pollsters that they like big parts of the budget, but at the same time are saying we're not changing our vote because of this budget, which kind of tells me that if you were wondering whether the prime minister still had an audience that he could recapture, the answer at this point seems to be no. And if you notice that over the past two weeks, when we're supposed to be talking about this revival and the budget, and we're hearing about Dominique Leblanc wanting his name on the list of leadership contenders. Mark Carney is filling halls with the liberal establishment and others and speeches that increasingly look like leadership campaign speeches, all of which is to say that I believe that even within the liberal caucus, the sense that the prime minister could decide to go has increased.

That being said, and people keep telling me this, and I keep telling them, I'm guessing that the first thing that Justin Trudeau needs, whatever he is going to do afterwards, even if he were to reconsider, is to tick that box that is called, is the government surviving the budget? And in theory, that box is still not ticked. The NDP has not said that they would support the budget. So first things first, I'm guessing that if the prime minister were to decide to leave, he would first want to put the budget to bed and make sure it's safe to leave, not suddenly start musing about his future in the middle of an upcoming confidence vote

that so far is not officially in the bag. And correct me if I'm wrong, if the NDP doesn't vote in favor of the budget, the Bloc's not going to bail out Trudeau. No, no, no, no, no. That's done. From budget day, Yves-François Blanchet came out that very day to say we're voting against the budget.

So if the NDP bails, the government is toast. So our summer could be ruined yet. That's just the early part. I know you guys probably play golf and consider summer to start in may in other places in the world but we've had snow this week let me um let me ask you this and i i was thinking about it when i was toying with that opening question about advice you give a leader um back in November, I think it was November, October or November, there was a bit of a bump around the Trudeau office

because they hired a new communications director who was going to sort everything out and put the prime minister in a new light. I think his name was Max Valliquette. Does that person still exist? Well, that's what I was going to ask. I mean, you know, listen, I imagine a good comms director can operate without them becoming the story.

But I just wonder, is there any change in the way that the communications operates around the prime minister's office? I mean, is there any sense that there's something different here or somehow he's being cast in a better light than he was being cast in last summer and fall? Those are two separate questions. I think the answer to the first question is yes, there is. There has been some evidence of a more energy,

a more consistent approach to messaging and a strategic choice to spill the budget out in a series of very deliberate and staged announcements over a period of a few weeks leading up to the budget. And I think it cheered a lot of liberals. They felt like this was a much better way to get off the back foot, stop having to talk about uncomfortable issues, whether it was the foreign interference inquiry or carbon tax or what have you. And I think it did work. I think there was a slight flaw in the thinking, if you like, which is that then the budget day became how are we going to pay for it, which then turned into an extended discussion about this

capital gains tax measure, which I don't think has gone well at all for the government. But in that period before, there was a more concerted, consistent, and I think effective effort to say, here are some things that we're going to do. Please pay attention because they'll help you. And I saw across the cabinet more message discipline where ministers were uh i mean there were a lot of announcements so it still suffered a little bit from there was ai one day and there was housing the next day and then there was some more housing

the day after that and you couldn't really unless you were us the chances that you would kind of follow it and have some sort of additive, a positive reaction, I think were limited. But ministers all talked about what they were intended or what was hoped for, I think, by the senator that they would talk about. And they all talked about it in more or less the same way. I think that was good. As to whether or not it is presenting Justin Trudeau in a way that is more likely to succeed i don't see it i to me it looks like the same version of him it's the sleeves rolled up it's the it's the you know the dress shirt with a slightly loose collar it's the that kind of i'm rolling up my sleeves and doing the work for you i find he's in more interview situations now,

like the one that you and I talked about yesterday, Peter, with Matt Galloway, I think it was last week, where too many of the questions probably for his comfort are about why do people not like you and how do you deal with that and what does that feel like? Those are pretty awkward questions to have on the interview list over and over and over again. But I don't think they're going to go away.

And I don't blame the journalists for asking those questions. I think it's logical that they would. So I don't think it's really changed the way that Trudeau is presented to people. But I think there's been more effective government communications in the run up to the budget. Jean-Thomas? I agree that the way the pieces in the budget were presented was an interesting approach that I believe other governments will try, as long as their main budget is not all about cuts afterwards to programs that people like, which then would make the actual budget day coverage even worse than what we saw this year. I thought they did okay on the budget they coming out in the sense that they did manage to keep the deficit where it was forecast to be last fall, which is something most provincial governments or at least Quebec and Ontario could not manage. The capital gains tax, I'm not surprised, and I hope they're not, that it's taken on the shape that it has in the sense that it was the newest shiny object in the budget. So what else are you going to talk about? Plus, a lot of people had questions.

I don't think they've done enough to drive home the message that with these changes, someone who makes a million dollars from selling a cottage, for instance, is going to be taxed less than you and I when we go to work every morning and send a buck for every buck to Revenue Canada, in the end, people who own stuff and make a profit are still being taxed less than people who don't. And I think that was not driven home enough by the government. They were hoping, I guess, to make that point as a bounce back from attacks from Poiliev, which have not materialized. As for the prime minister, yes, he's been more assertive, sometimes more aggressive. But I don't think that people are watching saying, oh, this is a really different guy. I think they're so used to Justin Trudeau that except for people like us, they're not into nuances. And the coverage sometimes has not been favorable to that switch. The stuff that Justin Trudeau has said about the provinces, you know, on housing, for instance. Well, they may sound great to people who want the federal government to stand up to Doug Ford and François Legault, etc.

Except if you have a housing agenda that's going to work, you need the people like Francois Legault and Doug Ford and others to work with you. So there is no point in having a rhetoric that actually makes your own plans harder to accomplish in time for an election. So maybe it's beyond the capacity of a comms person to change that eight or nine years in. But this is not, you know, remember back when John Krasinski was leader of the opposition and he was in some kind of trouble, like it wasn't working out and they hired Peter Donolo. And over a period of time, which was not very long, Donolo managed to change the perception or the way that Jean Chrétien was presented to voters by first dealing with the press gallery and becoming a press gallery insider. Hillary Insider. That, as far as I can tell, and I'm not based on Parliament Hill, that has not happened with this new person. I don't think that they know him any better than I do,

which is not at all. I wonder sometimes, and maybe you touched on a little bit there, that it's not about policy anymore. It's about the person. And once you turned off the person, which many Canadians seem to be, it's awfully hard to get it back. Like, I'm not sure what a comp strategy is to make that happen. You know, I think you're right in the sense that it seems like it's about the person now, but I think it's, you know,

it will ultimately come down to what the choice appears to be. And I think that the choice that is more risky for Justin Trudeau is not that the people will really love Pierre-Paul Dieve and think that he'd be a better prime minister than Justin Trudeau, but just that they want change. And change, whenever we describe it in the polls as this is what people want, I occasionally hear from people who feel frustrated by that, that they say, well, why are people so myopic about this? Why don't they think about what the change is that they would get and whether they would really want it and everything else? And I think, well, yeah, why don't they?

But they don't sometimes. And it is a fact of life that people can sometimes end up with an outcome that they turn out not to like very much, but because they felt like they didn't really have a choice that they liked. So will it be, if it's Trudeau, will it really be about just the leader? No, I think it'll be a little bit about let's get an agenda that's different. And I think Polyev has so far done a pretty good job of saying, I'm going to lower the cost for you and I'm going to improve some of the services that you think are broken. We'll get some more houses built. What it'll be by this time next year, it might have something to do with policy choices. I think we can't ignore the reality that the U.S. is going through this massive electoral struggle that might result in another Trump

election or it might result in a kind of a hung jury election with a lot of stress and trauma around it. There's wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, which are hugely politically challenging and disruptive. So I think there's a lot that is unknown about what will ultimately be the ballot question next year. And so I'm reluctant to say that it couldn't be policy issues. It could be, but they would be, you know, things that would be only maturing over the next 12 months, not immediately. Okay. Let's take our final break.

We'll come back and we'll talk about Mark Carney. Because I think in many ways this last few days has been a, has really been Mark Carney stepping out into the fray in a way he hasn't before. So we'll talk about that when we come back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week. Chantel and Bruce are here. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada,

former governor of the Bank of England, kind of got the economic cred, and the issue has always been does he have the political cred having never run before having not sat as an mp and this he gave a speech to the what is it called canada 2020 2020 um And it's a pretty interesting speech. I watched it again today, earlier today. And it's interesting because, you know, obviously, as I said, he's got the economic cred, so we can talk about that.

But he decided to go after Pierre Polyev, and he really went after him. He basically called him naive about the economy. He doesn't have any background on the economy. He doesn't have the experience. He doesn't understand the big issues. And he kind of said, a guy's just a professional politician. You know, that's all he's done.

And is this really where we want to put our faith in terms of the future for the economy? Now, he did this at the same time he was openly criticizing elements of the federal budget. So it wasn't like he was being, you know, a Trudeau toady on the economy. He was striking out that kind of Carney position, going after the opposition leader, not necessarily supporting the wide spread of the budget. Was this a coming out performance by Mark Carney in a way we haven't seen before?

Chantal, you start us. The timing of it suggests as much. I don't think that this is a one-man show anymore. It's become pretty obvious that the team that has been behind this idea of Mark Carney as liberal leader in the next election is no longer so much a shadow team. It's real. It does exist. It also doesn't sound like what someone is saying who is looking for a seat in cabinet and a by-election to enter the government.

It really sounds more like a, I'm available to be leader and this is where I am. It hit a lot of places for the people who were in that audience, and in particular, blue liberals, people who are more on the fiscally conservative side of the equation and feel that Justin Trudeau has gone too far left, is spending too much and is losing the election because of that. I found it interesting that he used his experience. He was in the UK at the Central Bank during Brexit and used that experience to say Pierre Poilievre is a bit like the people who were promoting Brexit. They promised, that's not what he said, but they promised paradise and they delivered some version of hell, basically. And also the line about when people tell you from the right that everything is broken,

they're looking for a license to break more, which were interesting lines, but they're not lines you expect from an elder economic statesman. They are lines you expect from someone who wants to run in another election. In an election. It struck me that among the people who asked questions in the Q&A, two, as far as I could hear, were MPs who were part of the current caucus. I thought this is interesting because clearly if Mr. Carney wants to run, I don't believe that if Justin Trudeau leaves tomorrow, there will be a coronation of Mark Carney.

I know that there are people who hope for that. I know that the strategy is to create a kind of steamroller impression so that people say, well, I'm not going to run because this guy is going to roll all over us. I believe that Mark Carney's biggest problem is someone who is not on the scene called Michael Ignatieff. And the shadow of the Ignatieff experience, someone who came from the outside, who had no political experience, who was intellectually very strong, and who was a big bust, is in the back of too many liberal minds for a coronation to happen. I will say that it's not the same to have been an academic at Harvard for years, and to have run two central banks. But still, there is no cakewalk in the making, despite all the strategizing that is ongoing now. I also increasingly believe that the Dominique Leblanc

appearance in Lawrence Martin's column last week was kind of deliberate in the sense of telling people there's another team here that's got that takes a lot of boxes electorally and it is totally possible that someone who is a practicing politician like Dominique Leblanc a retail politician would do better electorally while Mark Carney would do better intellectually so but there is a there is a battle in the making. And I'm guessing Mr. Carney has a history of stepping very, very close to I'm running and then backing off. And I'm curious to see if absent the prospect of a coronation, because this is not a choice by the establishment of the Liberal Party, the next leadership campaign. Absent a coronation, will he pursue his idea that he wants to lead the party?

Or will he again back away as some kind of éminence grise who is full of ideas for the Liberals but never actually jumps into the fray? That's a question I do have. If he were elected in the old style, the conventions we used to cover, those that produced John Turner versus Jean Chrétien and others, I think that he would win hands down.

He's got the liberal establishment completely attracted to what he is saying. The real question is, will members and people who have to knock on doors and get elected feel the same way if there is a leadership campaign? What are you going to say about this, Bruce? I think that Mr. Trudeau's caucus and cabinet has arrived at the point, not, I wouldn't say the majority, I wouldn't say a large minority, I don't know what the number is, but a significant number of them have arrived at the point, not, I wouldn't say the majority, I wouldn't say a large minority, I don't know what the number is, but a significant number of them have arrived at the point where they think that it would be better to have a leadership change. And I think that that will increase as a feeling as the weeks and months wear on. It's why I have always believed that

that's how this is going to end up, whether it ends up kicking off in June, July, August, September, or later than that, I think is a question that is material for the Liberal Party in terms of being able to accomplish a leadership change and be able to adjust itself and prepare for an election. But I think that's why the next several months, I mean, barring the budget getting defeated, as you alluded to, I think that's why the next several months, I mean, barring the budget getting defeated, as you alluded to, I think that's why the next several months will be particularly interesting from my standpoint. If there is a leadership race, I think that the Liberals have a number of good candidates that could enter the race. I think from within the cabinet, Mélanie Joly, François-Philippe Champagne, Jonathan Wilkinson, Anita Anand, Sean Fraser.

Those are all names of people who would run, I think, effective campaigns and be interesting. I didn't mention Chrystia Fielding because I just don't really have a sense of whether or not she's really into that idea. And lately, I haven't felt that she was. As to Dominic LeBlanc, we talked about him before. I think he is a credible name, but it doesn't seem to me that he's done as much to kind of think about how he would position as a candidate as maybe some of the others have done. So I think all of them would be good. And I think from the outside, I think Mark Carney would be an excellent candidate. And I saw

elements of that speech. And I saw a few things in the speech that I felt were effective for him. First of all, if you want liberals to think that you could be an effective leader for them, you have to show how you describe the conservatives. And I think he did a good job of describing the contrast between how he approaches the economic questions of the day with how Pierre Polyev does. I think that's a, you know, whether or not anybody else in the Liberal cabinet today would have made the same arguments, I don't know. But I do think that somebody from the outside makes them, and particularly with his economic credibility and experience, and people pay attention to them in a slightly different way, maybe with a little bit more sense of, well, this could be interesting,

let's know more. I think he handled also this question of whether or not, why has he not been in politics before? And is it a handicap for him that he hasn't been in politics for a longer period of time? You know, Justin Trudeau wasn't in politics for that long before he became really successful in politics. So there are examples, not just the Michael Ignatyev example of people coming from outside and getting into politics and being successful. And I think, you know, from my standpoint, knowing what I see with Mark Carney, I definitely think Mark Carney is that kind of person who could excite a lot of interest.

On the question of whether he'll run or not, you know, I do hear that too. But I feel like the last couple of speeches have been fairly, you know, I do hear that, too. But I feel like the last couple of speeches have been fairly, you know, they've been almost billboards of somebody saying, if there's a race. I'm in. This is a good time for me to engage. And so I think I suspect that liberals noting these speeches will come away with less concern that he might back away from the idea and more interest in what he has to say. I've covered too many politicians who had intentions the night before they announced something they didn't announce. The poster boy for this is former New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord, who at least by my count went to bed two nights in his life,

now preparing to announce a leadership bid federally. And I'm sure he's got a nice job today, but that never happened. He changed his mind, having slept on it. I'll just show another name, Michael Iñáchev, The Way of Bruce, and his contention that you can become prime minister without having even won a riding and that would be Bill Morneau

became minister of finance having not sat for a day in parliament before that I believe that it certainly did him no good to bring zero on Hans political experience to the second top job in the cabinet. Oh, look, I think that's a good point.

And I'm not suggesting, and certainly I want to make sure I'm clear that I, like Chantal, do not think that this would be a coronation kind of situation. Quite the contrary. I think it'd be quite a vigorous race. I think that's the right thing for the Liberal Party to have. And I think that through that process, somebody from the outside like Mark Carney would be stress tested. Either he learns how to do the things that you need to do him in some situations where he had to have some political acumen. And so I don't think he's without that. Okay. A couple of things I want to mention before.

Gee, Bruce's picture is frozen. He looks so smart, though. The sound is perfect, but he's frozen. He's doing his best Donald Trump impersonation from the trial. He looks asleep. Two things I wanted to mention. On the Carney speech, there was a piece in the Globe and Mail, not surprisingly, and a piece in the Toronto Star about those speeches.

The similarity between those two news stories was both reporters asked for interviews with Carney afterwards. He never replied to either one of them, or at least he hadn't at the time that they were writing, which is interesting about whether that's going to be the strategy heading into the future. We've lost Bruce's picture altogether now, so I can now talk about him

another way I think you scare them away with that description well the other thing though and this is fully to his credit the rest is politics which is one of the great political podcasts out there in the world it's from here in the United Kingdom. Bruce was mentioned on that, high-fived on that.

He was talked about as one of the great pundits of analytic personnel in terms of Canadian politics this week. They clearly sounded like they loved him. They obviously listened to good talk and that's how they made that decision. Anyway, that's going to wrap it up for this day. Thanks Chantel and thanks to Bruce,

wherever he is out there in the wild world. We'll talk again in seven days. Take care. Bye.