The Decibel - A Trudeau-Poilievre showdown as Parliament resumes

Episode Date: September 18, 2023

Parliament is back for the fall session and it returns with a surprising shift in the political dynamic. Conservative Leader, Pierre Poilievre is riding high in several polls. And the Liberals are busy making housing announcements to show they are working on the affordability crisis facing so many Canadians today. Meanwhile, the NDP will be looking to push their agenda forward on dental care pharmacare this fall.The Globe’s Deputy Ottawa Bureau Chief Bill Curry joins us on the show. He’ll tell us what’s ahead for the leaders and their parties and three things to pay attention to during the coming session.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

It's that time of year again. Sweater weather is upon us, so are pumpkin spice lattes, and our MPs are headed back to the Hill. Parliament resumes today for our federal politicians. And this fall, there's an interesting dynamic at play between the Liberals and Conservatives. The Globe's Deputy Ottawa Bureau Chief, Bill Curry, is on the show. He'll tell us where the parties stand, what's ahead for the leaders, and what issues to pay attention to

during the coming session. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Bill, thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for the invitation. And congrats on your Giller Prize nomination. I haven't talked to you since. Thank you so much. That was exciting. Okay, well, I want to talk to you about Parliament because this is the time of year.

Parliament is back, right? And before we get into what to watch, I wonder, Bill, if you can just kind of give us a sense of how things are feeling in Ottawa these days. Like, is there a feeling on the Hill that's, I guess, any different than previous years when Parliament comes back? Yeah, I think the mood is going to be pretty different this week when Parliament comes back, because essentially the landscape has changed pretty considerably based on the public opinion polls. We've had several public opinion polls now showing a pretty wide gap between the Conservatives, who now have a strong lead, versus the Liberals. For years since Justin Trudeau won in 2015, the polls have never really moved much. They always had the Conservatives and the Liberals in the low 30s.

Sometimes one would be a couple points ahead than the other and kind of go back and forth and not really any dramatic change until just the last few weeks we've seen the Conservatives jump out ahead. Abacus was one of the more recent ones, had the Conservatives at 41% and the Liberals at 26%. So that's pretty significant. And obviously you take polling with a great assault, we're a good probably two years away from the next election. But I think what's interesting is that polling does have a real impact on the present, in the sense that it

affects kind of the behavior of the actors around Parliament. You're going to see, you know, the Conservatives are going to have, you know, they've got the wind at their back. They might be a little bit more confident, more united. And on the flip side, I think the Liberals are going to be a little bit more nervous. You know, you're starting to see some announcements from the government that perhaps look a little bit hurried, perhaps responding to these polls. So I think the polling, while you take it with a grain of salt, it does have practical impacts on kind of the dynamic of parliament as MPs get back to Ottawa. Yeah. And let's talk a little bit more in depth about these things that you were kind of touching on there. So what this means essentially for each of the parties, let's start with the liberals. They have had a rocky few months, right? There's these ongoing issues around foreign interference that we've talked a lot about. There's a housing crisis.

And we are going to talk about those issues a little bit later. But I wonder, what do these rocky few months, where do they leave the Liberals right now? Yeah, I think Justin Trudeau is finding himself in a situation that is pretty new to him. If you think back with the history of the Liberals, when Jean Chrétien was in power, he used to have a situation that he used to call the nervous Nellies, which were the MPs in his backbench who, you know, sometimes anonymously, sometimes on the record would second guess his decisions and say everything's bad and the caucus is grumbling and all that kind of stuff.

So he always had to deal with that, in part because there was a clear kind of challenger for his leadership in Paul Martin in the caucus and in cabinet. But Trudeau really hasn't had an alternative like that, right? Since he's been in power, he's kind of been the guy for the liberals. Exactly. And part of that is the dynamic of how he won, right? Because in 2015, the liberals were very low in party standings, and he brought them to majority government, largely on the strength of his own personality. So all of his backbench, many of them were rookie MPs in 2015, and they really owed Trudeau. And partly because of that dynamic, there really has not been a whole lot of second guessing from the Liberal caucus until now. And to the point about the polls, you're seeing that play out in the way that backbench MPs talk. We've seen some anonymous

grumbling, but we're also seeing increasingly a considerable number of Liberal MPs who are going on the record to express concern about the direction of the government, about the way the government communicates with the public. And that is new. That's really a new dynamic to the Liberal caucus and makes this session pretty interesting. When Liberal MPs speak out right now, they're talking about positioning and strategy. They're not directly criticizing Justin Trudeau and saying that he should be replaced by a different person. Can you get into just a couple of little details there? When you're talking about these kind of concerns about the direction of the

government, what are these MPs referring to? I think one of the most common criticisms that we're hearing from liberal MPs over the summer has been how to respond to Pierre Polyev. Because Pierre Polyev. The leader of the Conservatives. Yes, Pierre Polyev. He's got about a year now under his belt as the Conservative Party leader. I think his strength in communications is he really likes to do these videos. They're almost nonstop. There's a mix of paid and unpaid advertising. So the unpaid are his YouTube videos, which if you look

online, they get hundreds of thousands of views sometimes. And they're really focused on cost of living issues. And they're also spending millions of dollars, over $3 million on an ad campaign to kind of introduce Pierre Poliev to Canadians. And I guess the common theme you're hearing from Liberal MPs is where's the response from Trudeau in the prime minister's office? All right, let me ask you about Pierre Poliev, Bill, because you mentioned a little bit about this kind of rebranding these ads that are out this summer. There has been this focus from the conservatives on kind of reintroducing Polyev to the public. There was one ad in particular that came out last month that really did introduce like a softer version of him. The glasses came off right.

He's not wearing the suit and tie that we usually are used to seeing him in. That ad was even narrated by his wife, which is an interesting move. Who is Pierre Pauliev? Many know him as the common sense leader the country needs. His school teacher parents know him as the boy they adopted and raised in their modest home in the suburbs of Calgary. His dad knows him as the son he took to early morning hockey games. Can you tell us a little bit about this rebranding bill and what is it meant to achieve?

Certainly. Pierre Pauly, for those who cover Parliament Hill or those who follow politics really closely, he is not a new actor. He's been around for some time. And his persona, for those who know him, he's always been known as kind of an attack dog. He was the one, when Stephen Harper was prime minister.

He was the one who would really go on the attack against the other parties. And I think now that he's leader, they're trying to soften that a little bit. The party is trying to broaden his appeal. And so, as you mentioned, there's some aspects of that that are physical. You can see he's changed his glasses. He's dressing a little bit more casual. You can also see it in his speaking style. He is speaking a little bit more slowly and deliberately.

He's trying to smile more. And then I think the issues, on the issues where he's getting some traction, is just talking about cost of living. His message in terms of delivery is changing, and he is pretty deliberate in sticking to the topics that are of most concern to Canadians. I also, of course, want to ask you about the NDP and their leader, Jagmeet Singh. The NDP has this supply and confidence agreement with the Liberals, which of course means that the

NDP has agreed to support their minority government as long as they get some of their priorities met in return, right? So Bill, what will the NDP be looking for in this upcoming session? Right. So the NDP has, of course, this supply and confidence agreement with the Liberals where they are agreeing to keep the Liberals in power as long as they work through this kind of to-do list that the NDP and the Liberals worked out. And one of the main ones on there is dental care. This was a plan to offer subsidized dental care service kind of geared to income and it had a phased in timeline. Part of it is already

in place for young children. The age category is going to go up. It's going to be expanded to seniors and eventually by 2025 it's going to have an even broader reach. So the NDP, that's pretty important to them. They want to see that continue to be implemented. There's also a pledge in that deal for a national pharmacare law in place by 2023. I mean, that doesn't mean national pharmacare is in place by 2023, but it's kind of a step in that direction. But they've also got to consider, you know, they've got political calculations as well. If the Liberals become increasingly unpopular or, you know, if these trends in the polls hold, it creates some challenges for the NDP. Do they want to continue to be associated with the Liberals? At what time, at what point do the pros outweigh the cons or

vice versa? So I thought it was pretty interesting on Thursday when at the Liberal caucus, Justin Trudeau announced some measures, including on housing. He also talked a lot about grocery prices and Competition Act changes on grocery issues and having the grocery executives come to Ottawa and explain themselves. That is something that Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, could have said easily. It's one of his favourite topics. He's talking about groceries. Yeah, he's been talking about that for months, right? That's been Jagmeet Singh's line.

Yeah, and when the grocery executives were before Parliament earlier this year, Jagmeet Singh took the step of actually being one of the MPs on the committee. Normally leaders aren't on committees. He went there and was grilling Galen Weston and the others. How much profit is too much profit?

At a time like this, when Canadians literally are saying that they are struggling, how much is too much then? For you, is there no limit to how much profit you can make? A success. On the backs of Canadians that are struggling because they can't afford the groceries, there's no limit? So it's one of his favorite issues. So it was very interesting to see the Liberals really trying to, in that announcement

on Thursday, copy some of the things that Pierre Polyev has been talking about, but also echoing some of the concerns of Jagmeet Singh. So clearly trying to keep the NDP on board with the supply and confidence deal that helps his minority government stay in power. We'll be right back. All right, let's actually talk about some of the issues now that will be at play this fall. The biggie, of course, that's on a lot of people's minds is housing. And just last week, CMHC, which is the federal housing agency, they said that Canada needs 3.45 million new homes by 2030 to cut housing costs as the population grows. And that is on top of the 1.7 million homes that are already

expected to be built by that time. So Bill, what will the Liberals need to do to show that they're actually on top of this? Yeah, it's been an interesting dynamic because a few years ago, I mean, the last few budgets, there's been a lot of talk of housing. But a lot of the programs that have been announced, like, you know, the Housing Accelerator Fund in the 2022 budget, have been really slow to roll out. And so we saw the prime minister announce in London, Ontario, the very first piece of funding under that housing accelerator fund for London. So it kind of speaks to, you know, yes, it's been on the government's radar as a major issue, and there's been budget announcements, but very slow to roll out. So it sounds like the Liberals are starting to announce some things that they're actually doing on this issue. Can you just give me a sense, Bill, of what the government has said they're

planning to do on housing? Yeah, certainly. So the first announcement was about this housing accelerator fund. We launched the $4 billion housing accelerator fund, a fund to build more homes faster. We told municipalities that they could access those funds with bold plans to eliminate red tape. And the premise of that is to give municipalities money to make the zoning changes that are needed that are going to spur development. The idea is to replace a single home with a townhouse or something that might have room for four families in the lot that currently has

one. But again, the pace, this was from a program that was announced a couple of years ago. You know, and why is this slow? You know, it's easier for federal politicians to say there should be more density and older neighborhoods should be transformed to be more dense. The challenge is because, you know, you've got municipal politicians and counselors who are much closer to the situation and they've got to deal with the people who are going to have a large property right next to them. And they're, you know, they might really like their leafy neighborhoods to be exactly as they've been for the last 80 years. So that's the tension. It's easier to say this in Parliament Hill than it is to do it at City Council. What about Polyev? Does he have a clear housing plan?

Well, I think he's certainly been talking a lot about gatekeepers, which really gets into the kind of the municipal issues. It's, again, goes to what we've been talking a little bit about the Housing Accelerator Fund, pushing back against nimbyism or hurdles. And he's been talking about some of the things that actually are very similar to what the Liberals are promising. You know, he supported removing the GST for rental housing. That is something the Liberals promised in 2015 in the platform then and then abandoned it in 2017. Now, suddenly that's back on the agenda and Liberals say they are going to do that. Yeah, they were just talking about that last week, of course. Yeah. Pierre Polyev, some of his videos, he's been, you know, he did one that was pretty effective

where he was in Calgary outside of a transit stop showing all of the apartments that were around there and talking about his his in his uh university days how he could uh live in there live in an apartment with his father and take the public transit to his uh university courses and that's the kind of thing that needs to be done but you know there's a flip side to those kind of videos it's it kind of shows like transit oriented development is nothing new if you know they were in the backdrop of this video because the city of calgary has been doing that for some time it's already there yeah like these are not new ideas um the idea of building apartments near transit stations it's you know any urban planner would say that's the thing to do. And pretty much every government at all levels are already on the record saying that this is their plan. It's where the issues are, our pace and level of aggressiveness and actually

getting things done. And so on that front, I think that's where there's definitely traction in Pierre Paglia's criticism of the liberals. Bill, another issue that I think might not be so obvious to people, but I know that you're keeping your eye on, is the digital services tax. What exactly is that? You know, there are these large global companies like Google and Facebook and Spotify that operate in Canada. But the concern is that not enough tax is being collected on their business activities that occur in Canada. So Canada has said that it is going to move ahead with one of these digital services taxes. But while they've been talking about this for a few years, there's actually been these

global talks at the OECD that have been going on for some time with the goal of having everybody, all the main countries in the world kind of go at this at the exact same time. And they were supposed to do that a couple of years ago. Then they had a delay. And then there's been another delay. And this summer, at the most recent global talks on this, Christopher Freeland, the finance minister, essentially said, you know, enough is enough with this latest delay. We're going to go ahead on

January 1st, 2024. And this has generated a lot of concern in the United States from the U.S. government there because a lot of these companies, you know, whether it's Apple or Google or Facebook, they tend to be based in the United States and they really don't want Canada to go this alone. So Canada's kind of saying, you know, we't want Canada to go to this alone. So Canada's kind of saying, you know, we might go rogue here and do this on our own, even though other countries might not do this at the same time then. Exactly. And it risks becoming a major trade issue with our biggest trading partner, obviously, in the United States.

And can you just spell this out for me, Bill? Why could this be a trade issue here? Well, the U.S. would feel that Canada is unfairly targeting American-based companies and is acting unilaterally outside of the global trading order. And so then it could retaliate on the trade front. Essentially, if one country feels the other is not being fair on trade, then that tends to lead to challenges or rebuttals in terms of other protectionism coming the other direction. While January 1 is when this would take effect, the government will have to bring in legislation this fall and have a debate about it in Parliament. So I think that will be a pretty interesting thing to watch throughout the fall to see how Christopher Freeland handles this. OK, interesting. Before we end, Bill, I have to also ask you, of course, about foreign interference, because this is something that we've been following for months now.

A public inquiry has now been set up for the fall, so we're going to be hearing about this. How will this factor into how things play out in Parliament? Like, what should we be watching? Yeah, well, I mean, we've been talking about a potential public inquiry for quite some time, and it's just only been very recently that the government did actually announce one and named Marie-Josée Hogue as the person who's going to lead this. Obviously, once this gets going, this is going to attract a lot of attention. We know from past public inquiries that you kind of never know what direction they're going to take. You get interesting public testimony, but you also get a lot of news stories generated by just the documents that get tabled in public inquiries.

This is obviously going to be another major issue for the fall. And with that in mind, I mean, that's going to put a little bit more of the spotlight on the liberals as well, right? So I would imagine it's going to make sure that this is not going to be smooth sailing this fall for the liberals, it sounds like. No, definitely not. Certainly for Justin Trudeau, when you are behind that much in the polls, there's a lot of pressure, a lot of second guessing.

So it's going to be a challenging session, both in terms of policy and definitely in terms of politics. Bill, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Thanks, Menaka. That's it for today. I'm Menaka Raman-Welms.

Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor.

Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.