The Decibel - An interview with Pierre Poilievre

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, sat down with The Globe’s editorial board for an interview last week. They asked him about a range of issues, from the current state of the Conservative Party to the Alberta separatism movement and tariff-free trade. Patrick Brethour is the editorials editor at The Globe, and he’s on the show to discuss what they learned in this exclusive interview. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi, everyone. Hello. Good to see you. Sorry, I'm a little under the weather. We have a germ factory. If you don't immediately recognize that voice, let me fill you in. It's Pierre Paulyev, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and the official opposition and government,

sitting down for an interview at the Globe last week. He was interviewed by a few reporters and editors about a range of things, from his leadership and the state of his party, to Alberta separatism, to immigration, to how he would handle trade negotiations with the U.S. And why he's been doing more media interviews lately. Today, I'm joined by Patrick Breathauer. He's the editorial's editor at the Globe, and he organized the interview with Polyev. He's going to walk us through some of the highlights.

I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Patrick, thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks so much for having me. Okay, so Paulyev sits down in this big boardroom in the Globe of Mail. Wow, what a distracting view that is. Yeah, that's designed to hypnotize the witness. Until they put up condo towers. Can you just set the scene for me?

What's he doing here? What's this all about? So we'd had a standing offer to Mr. Pollyev's as long as he'd been a leader. And then I decided to sort of loop back with the Conservatives last Monday and say, hey, I've noticed Mr. Polly have quoted a Globe of Mail editorial in one of his speeches. How about coming in? And they said, sure. So, it was simple as that.

And then he came in for an hour long, freewheeling discussion. Interesting. Okay. And so this was part of an editorial board. Can you just explain what that means exactly? Sure. So the editorial board will meet with people from time to time. We've had politicians, business people, local politicians, the mayor of Windsor, for instance.

It'll be the core members of the editorial board, and then whatever reporters and editors whose interests and beats intersect, I guess. So in this case, we had a couple of people from the Ottawa Bureau, reporters from Toronto as well, and editors, including the editor-in-chief, David Walmsley, sitting in on this. And for those who might not be familiar with an editorial board, can you just explain what it is? Sure. So people-wise, there's a core group of editorial writers that, along with others, write the – editorials who read every day. More broadly, though, those editorials are sort of the voice of the globe. After a, you know, a debate internally, we sort of arrive at positions where this is what the globe as an institution, you know, expresses to the country. Okay, so he sits down with

Globe reporters for just over an hour. But today we're going to talk about the things that stood out to you in this meeting. Let's start on Poliev's thoughts on the state of the conservative party. This came up a couple of times in this interview, which makes sense given his spectacular federal election loss back in April. There was this interesting back and forth between Poliev and our colleague, Andrew Coyne, on this. So let's listen to that. Why did the conservatives lose the last election? I had a year to reflect on. I think that we saw a massive consolidation of the non-conservative vote around one-on option that had a consolidation that is unprecedented in a half a century and around one issue,

which was the United States. Why didn't it consolidate around you, though? Well, it did. We got by far the biggest vote count we've ever had. Our vote count went up by a third election over election, same massive increase. And it was the biggest vote count we had ever received, the largest share of vote the party got since 1988. At one point, you were 20 points ahead.

So did you make any mistakes? Was there any problem with the campaign the way it ran? If you had to do it all over again, what would you have done differently? Look, every campaign has mistakes, but at the end of the day, our 20-point lead, we did not disappear because we fell. It was because the Liberal Party basically inhaled the block

NDP and green vote. We took more votes from the liberals than they took from us, election over election. So can we do things better? Yes, and we will. And we'll learn from those lessons. But I tend to like to do strategy rather than talking it. Interesting there, Andrew Coyne,

kind of pushing Pollyev to talk about the election and perhaps the failures there. But it sounds like Pollyev is still framing that election as a win for the conservatives. What's your sense? What did you feel? He's not entirely wrong, but he's definitely not entirely right.

So it's true that the Conservatives haven't won that share of the vote since 1988, I believe, and certainly the number of votes and just total number of raw votes, you know, they've never had more. But you don't win on technicalities. You win by winning, and they did not win. And in fact, I think we call that losing. And it's true that the biggest part of that dynamic was Mark Carney scooping up green voters, NDP voters, block voters. But it's also true.

Mr. Pellier was a bit incorrect. The conservatives were polling in the high 40s, sometimes even hitting 50% before Justin Trudeau left office, and then they eased off a bit to the low 40s. Mr. Palliavs, 41% was not enough to win government, but Stephen Harper won a majority with much less because the NDP vote was very strong. What he doesn't mention is the obvious,

which he was slow to the blocks, slow to pivot in that campaign. and was too focused on his campaign plan for acts of tax and focusing on the cost of living, which was a concern, but it was the second most pressing concern that Canadians had during that campaign. Donald Trump and the threat to Canadian sovereignty was the main threat. And he was slow, I think, to acknowledge and adjust to that fact. It might not, ultimately, might not have made enough of a difference, but that certainly was a factor in what happened. I find it interesting that he's still pushing this focus, this idea that, you know, that the conservatives did well, even though they lost.

I mean, this is something, you know, the election was April and I feel like to keep hearing this, to me, is kind of surprising. To an extent, you're asking someone, do you do a good job? And their answer is, yes, I do do a good job. So, Puele, I've also talked about the state of his party compared to other conservative parties around the world. And I would just take a moment to celebrate the success of the Conservative Party, the relative success of the Conservative Party, compared to other center-right movements around. Look at what has happened. How is the Liberal Party in Australia doing? How are the Tories doing in the UK vis-à-vis the Reform Party? Look at what's happened in France, in Germany. We're one of the few parties,

right-centered-right parties all around the world that, despite some bumps in the road, is overwhelmingly still united under one party banner, where we have kept all of the different types of conservatives in one party. And I consider that to be a big achievement. Another moment where we're seeing him painting the conservatives as a success story. And the point he's making is that the conservative party remains united and there isn't a real fringe right-wing party. But then at the same time, people from his inner circle are leaving, right?

So his chief of staff announced this week he's retiring. His director of communications also announced she would be leaving. And of course, Poliyev lost four MPs to the liberals. So how does that square with what he's saying about the success of the conservatives being one party? So I think there are two dynamics at play there. So the first, I think he's on pretty solid ground in saying that the conservatives have managed to position themselves close enough to the senator to compete, but not so far away that people feel that. the mainstream conservative option isn't giving them a voice. So if I look at what's happening in the UK reform is outpooling, not just labor, but

the conservatives as well, and that is in the most generous sort of reading a very hard right option, if not something even further to write than that. Contrast that with what Pierre Poliev did, which obviously in his first months and days of leadership made it a point to ensure that the People's Party, for instance, you know, was not going to be a force, was not going to eat into conservative support. The way that it did in the 2021 election, and quite possibly cost the conservatives a few ridings. And I think Canadians ought to be all Canadians, whether they like the Conservative Party. And I ought to be thankful for that, that we have a mainstream conservative party

and a mainstream slightly left of center option. That's a great thing as opposed to a radicalized and polarized environment. Then there's the dynamic of staff changing over. given that an election is two to three, possibly four years away, I don't find that that surprising. It's one thing to say, I'm going to stick around in case there's an election and we need to, and we might be in government. It's another to say, I'm going to commit to being in opposition for four years with all the, well, frankly, thanklessness that that implies.

So it certainly the leadership, you know, sort of review numbers he got puts him solidly, you know, a solid endorsement from the party membership. Let's turn to a very big news story right now, which is, of course, Alberta and the separatist movement. There are a couple of questions about that, and here's what Poliyev had to say about where he stands on the issue. So I haven't had any caucus member tell me that they are aligned with the leave or go side. I think what you're seeing from us is we are unambiguously, unequivocally, a federalist party. it is possible for two things to be true. One is that Canada should stay united.

It's the greatest country on earth. It's given us incredible blessings as individuals and as a people. But that there are very legitimate grievances that Albertans harbor and that we can and should fix those grievances. What do you make of that? The first thing I would note is he didn't make this commitment, but I would think it would be fairly obvious. if any conservative MP expresses any sympathy or any hint of support for separatism, he's going to have to boot them out of the caucus immediately without hesitation. No consultations, no prevarication.

They have to be out. I mean, it goes against exactly what a federal party should be, right? It would hand the liberal party an unassailable weapon with which to beat the conservatives in the head from now until whatever Mr. Paul Yev left office. So beyond that, I also don't. what Mr. Poliav says. I don't doubt that he's a federalist through and through. His wider point about Alberta having legitimate grievances, I would say there are some legitimate grievances Alberta has, Albertans have, and there are some grievances that really don't stand up to scrutiny.

So if someone in Alberta wants to say that the equalization program doesn't work that well and ought to be changed, well, I agree with them. The equalization program is the billions of dollars that the federal government spends every year to send a have-not provinces so they can have roughly equal levels of service for things like health and education. But it is very oddly and badly designed, and it does silly things like, say, send hundreds of millions of dollars to the province of Ontario, which is not a have-not province, just because of that poor design. And then there are other grievances that are not so well-founded. If someone in Alberta wants to say, hey, federal regulations have gotten in the way of Alberta's development of its energy sector, well, I agree. And so does a fellow

named Mark Carney, who's been busy tweaking those regulations in order to speed up major project development. So there are points that people are unhappy with actions that federal government make. I would add this, though, in the context of if there is an or else at the end of that, then then I think that puts a different shine on the agreement. Once upon a time, you know, Robar Boros said he was going to negotiate with Ottawa by putting a knife to the throat, the federal government. My view would be once the knife comes out, the talk should stop. So if you want to talk as a province, let's do that.

If it's under threat, it's a different matter. Yeah, I think it's also important to point out that grievances and the threat of separation, which is, you know, it's a number of people, but it's a small group of people that are looking to separate. Those are two different things, right? Grievances and separatism. Indeed. You know, if your relationship with someone, I'm unhappy about how you, you know, where you leave the toothpaste cap, which is why I'm leaving. Like, no, you know, you deal with the disagreement.

Mm-hmm. All right. So on the topic of separatism, there was also a question about whether Pahliaev has a unique role in keeping Canada united, especially given that he's the head of a center-right party. which is popular in Alberta. He's also an MP for Alberta. His writing is in northeast of Calgary. So let's hear what he had to say on that point. I think my role is to make the case

for the benefits that this country has provided to Albertans over the broad sweep of history. Alberta has been able to become one of the most prosperous places anywhere on earth in part because it is part of this incredible federation of ours. I want Albertans to understand that this can be the best place in the world to develop an energy sector, the fastest place to get a permit, ultimately the wealthiest energy driven country anywhere on earth. I also think we should say to Albertans that they deserve to have all the same jurisdictional powers in their own domain that Quebec has. And why not?

And it doesn't have to take anything away from any other province. Like if if Albertans choose to have a police force of their own, that's their choice. Quebec has one and Ontario has one, actually. And the same should go for powers on immigration. I don't know why we wouldn't allow the province of Alberta to have the same immigration powers that Quebec has. So your thoughts on this? I'm curious about what you think around Polyev. And do you think he has a unique role in this issue of Alberta separatism?

So there's this old saying, only Nixon can go to China. And that was meant to say Richard Nixon had such impeccably good anti-communist credentials that when he went to communist China to meet Mao Zedong, that no one said, oh, well, you're a communist sympathizer. No, no, no one would say that. So similarly, no one's going to accuse Pierre Polyev of having undue sympathy for the liberals. No one's going to say, you're carrying water from our. Carney, no one will say that. So he, if he's making the case for Canada, that won't be a critique

law at him. But I do think, you know, he would have a role to play for sure. And I think could say things and reach people that perhaps the prime minister and the liberals couldn't. We'll be right back. Let's talk about immigration and how Polyev says he would deal with that. So in the past, he's come out strongly against liberals' policies, Bernian immigrants. He was saying our immigration is, quote, out of control. Let's listen to what he said about how Canada should be slowing down our population growth. I think we should get rid of the temporary foreign worker program. We can have a mild transition period.

I call it the 555 in regions where unemployment is below 5.5%. They should have five years to transition their existing individuals out of the country. But we don't need a temporary foreign worker program outside of farming. We don't have large scale labor shortage. in Canada. I think the student program needs to be cut back even further. I don't understand why we need to bring in that volume of students. When I was in university, we had lower tuition and we didn't have this volume of students from abroad paying the bills. So I'm curious where all the money is going at the universities. We also need to stop the fraud in the refugee

system. You know, if you look at the rejection rates, they're still very high. And then when they are rejected, the appeals are far too long, during which time we as a country are paying for housing, legal bills, and other things, for someone who is not in danger if they go back to their home country. Okay, so he has a lot of criticisms of the immigration programs in Canada. He wants to stop a lot of these programs. What did you make of what he had to say there? I think he's with one very big exception.

I'm fairly solid grad. So his points, I think, on the temporary foreign workers program are well. met and our sort of position at the globe is if your business is dependent on subsidized foreign labor, you don't have a business. Businesses will say, well, it's not subsidized. It is. It is. It's keeping wages lower than the otherwise would be.

You know, we generally don't think subsidies are a good thing, but particularly that. And then lay around top the sort of exploitative element of bringing in temporary foreign workers who were yoked to a particular position. The optics are not good. So, yeah, rolling back the program so that it's... is simply for the agricultural sector, which has some very specific challenges, a pretty reasonable point. Reducing the number of international students further, you know, I think we, you know, that's a good point. Where he's on not just thin ground or shaky ground or thin ice on just

plain old, unfrozen water is cutting off benefits to asylum claimants whose status is still under appeal. Yes, if you've been ordered deported, there's not a real great case for you to receive any social benefits from Canada. But that's not specifically, or at least that's not only what the conservatives are talking about. They're also talking about people who have lodged an asylum claim, had that claim turned down initially, but still have totally legitimate legal avenues of appeal that could conceivably reverse the decision.

I think that's an unfortunate turn into dogmatism and populism on the part of the conservatism. They ought to rethink that. Um, trade was also a topic that was talked about in this interview. Um, of course, it's a very big topic as well. Indeed. Um, and at one point, Paulyev was asked what he would do differently from Carney on the trade file. It's hard to say what my, uh, how I differ from Mr. Carney, um, without checking, uh, his position on a given day.

Um, because it, he has, you know, for a lack of better terms, it's been elbows up and then elbows down so many times. It's become a chicken dance. I literally have no idea what Mark Carney's vision is for the relationship with the U.S. more than a year after he was elected on that singular issue. But my position is that we need one to have a clear objective. That objective is tariff-free trade. And two, we need a means to get there. And that means is to build up our leverage and use it to get the aforementioned objective achieved.

What do we have as leverage? We have 10 of the 12 NATO-defined minerals. that are necessary to fight a war. And we should also add to the fact that we can lower the cost of 4-5-1-50 trucks, the price at the pump, the cost of building a home, and countless other things that American consumers are struggling with if we get back to a tariff-free trade agreement. Those are all things that I would bring to the table in order to get what we want.

The last thing I would do is build up. I would agree to the idea of exporting an extra 2 million barrels of oil to the U.S. to lower their energy costs and boost our GDP. You know, those are all the leverage points that I think we could use to get very close to tariff-free trade. I think we can all agree. Tariff-free trade sounds amazing with the U.S., but is that actually feasible?

Terri-free trade, poppy dogs that can talk and free ice cream every day. I love them all. Sounds wonderful. No, no, they're all fantastic. I think tariff-free trade's a great goal. It would be unlikely it's going to happen. And I think we should all be grownups and also realize that if Donald Trump strikes an agreement, that is not the end of the matter. So let's be grown up.

One thing I would say that I quite disagree with Mr. Poliav on is the idea of building a southern pipeline, a new southern pipeline to the United States. It sounds like a great idea, except for two things. One, it would likely preclude a pipeline to the West Coast, down to some people in BC, I cheer. But the fact of the matter is our chief economic and political challenge right now is that we're overly dependent on the U.S. economy. Yeah, we're trying to diversify away from the U.S. here. Indeed. And a pipeline to America would double down on that problem, not solve it. If he's looking for leverage, and if the prime minister is looking for leverage,

there's a very obvious thing that would also, by the way, help out Canadians, especially young families with children, and that is ending supply management. The Americans would really think that's important. That would open up markets for them, and for us and save Canadian families' money. Supply management, as you probably know, is the system of price controls for things like cheese, milk, eggs that the government's put in place that artificially inflates the costs of those products

in order to assure income for small family farms. The only problem is over time those small family farms have become big family farms. So we have Canadian families paying out extra for butter, eggs, and milk in order to benefit some very large, very profitable enterprises. Unfortunately, he, the liberals, the Block, Quebec, the NDP and the Greens have all agreed that they would never, ever, ever, ever, ever do that and have enshrined that in law.

So perhaps eventually someone will decide that taxing Canadian families and handing that money to large agricultural corporations is not the best policy, but we're still waiting. I mean, we can spend a whole episode talking about supply management, but... I look forward to that. For another day. Okay, so I want to talk to you more broadly about the interview itself because we've talked about all the issues here. But I'm curious about what he said about why he did this interview.

Recently, he's been agreeing to a lot more interviews. He was on Joe Rogan's podcast, for example. My approach is to talk to everyone everywhere. And so across the spectrum, you know, you saw me speak to everyone from Peter Mansbridge to Joe Rogan. I know I heard Mansbridge was upset, though I didn't bring. him a kettlebell. So I'm going to tell him I'm going to be driving up to Stratford this, this summer with a gift. But I just think the approach of speaking as broadly and openly as possible is the best one going forward. So we talked about kettlebells there. So just for context,

Polyev gave Joe Rogan a kettlebell with a maple leaf on it when he was on his podcast. And so he's saying he's trying to talk to everyone. And I'm curious what you thought of that, like being in the room with him. Like do you think? Do you think, it's working? Like, what were your impressions of him? So, one, in fairness to him, he's the first federal party leader to come visit us. We do have a standing invitation to the prime minister, and any day that he wants to take up us up on that offer, we'd be happy to do so. So I mean first leader coming to the editorial board? Yeah, okay. I think it's fair to say he's doing the rounds a bit more than he was before the election. And that was a media strategy,

a bit more focused on social media and a bit more very conspicuously disdainful of the mainstream media, which is fine, you know, we've got thick skin and we don't hold the guts, it's fine. I would note an absence of any slogans

we didn't hear about axing the tax or taxing the acts or anything like that. And it was a thoughtful discussion in which we really did explore the sort of corners of the room and could understand how we approached issues. So we'll get it. into this a bit in our Saturday editorial, which will be about Mr. Pauli-Eyev in his time with he spent with the globe. But to me, it was his point he made about freedom. That was sort of

what stitches together, the conservative coalition. And that's sort of his core pitch to Canadians. So we'll see when they're ready to hear it. I'm curious to find out from you what you made of him. I mean, and how he comported himself in this interview. Because I know, like, when it comes to leaders, when it comes to prime ministers and waiting as he wants to be eventually. You have to have that it factor, right? Like, what did you make of him as a person? One, he's this serious person who thinks about things seriously.

That might not always come across in YouTube clips or in Apple Orchards. But, yeah, I think, in fairness to him, that's clear of anything. And I say this as a professional nerd, maybe a bit nerdy. So I'd say that's probably a good thing. I would also say that to a degree the message the conservatives have might not be where the country is right now. They were there before Mr. Trump's provocations. They may be there sometime soon. But I think at the moment, and one of the reasons Mr. Carney won the election was he was a soothing presence.

I don't think anyone would call Mr. Poliev a soothing presence. He has other things to offer Canadians that he's willing to maybe disrupt things more than Mark Carney. And that was not what Canadians were in the market for last April. Okay, this brings me to my very last question for you, Pat. What were the big takeaways for you from this interview? Well, I think one of the biggest sort of takeaways for me was the answer to the very last question. I try to ask something a little bit unusual to him. And the question was, can you think of something that you and Mark Kearney agree on?

And his answer to that question, I thought, was very, very interesting. Well, we clearly both love the country. We have a, I think we, you know, on a personal level, we're both dads. So I think, you know, we love our families. And I'm sure that spills over into our political values. On public policy issues, look, I, you know, I think that we both want the country to be autonomous and independent while having as much terror-free access to other countries as possible. But I think we have different views on how to get there.

But as much as I respect him personally, I don't think that we have a ton of ideological overlap. I think that he is as different from the conservative philosophy as his predecessor was. he's just a lot more business-like about it. And when you look beyond the style and at the substance, I think the disagreements, particularly on economics, spending, size of government, interference in the marketplace, I think those disagreements are quite stark, respectful but stark.

It sounds like he had to really think about his answer there. And you said it was very interesting. Can you tell me why you think that? Well, I thought it illuminating in a couple of ways. One, he sort of said the obvious, but yeah, Mr. Carney and I both love the country, but we both love our families. Those things infuse what we do. True, but good of him to know.

He knows that. He respects Mark Carney personally. That's actually, again, I'm going to loop back to how fortunate we are in Canada to have two mainstream parties where in the United States, Republicans are busy calling Democrats pedophiles. I mean, that's just not something that happens in Canadian politics, thank God. But then he goes on to note, and it'll be an interesting case for him to make, and I would think probably his electoral fortunes hinge on the degree he can make this case.

Mark Carney is like Justin Trudeau. He just has a different packaging. If you look at budget deficits, Mr. Carney's budget deficits are bigger than Justin Trudeau's budget deficits. And there are other things that Mr. Carney is doing that are much different. And then he ends with the notion of we have very different approaches to economic, regulation, the role of government. There, I think, that's very true. But that message of, you know, we're pro-economic freedom, you know, we would have a less, but we, I mean, the conservatives, a less interventionist government, a less nanny state government, less restrictive

on provinces. That may very well be a message that resonates in a couple years. I don't think it is right now. It's not the moment right now, but it may be sometime soon. Patrick, we'll leave it there. Thank you so much for coming on the show and stepping us through this very interesting interview with Pierre Poliyev. Thanks so much. That was Patrick Breathauer, the editorials editor at the Globe. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland.

Our associate producer and intern is Cynthia Jimenez. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin and Mihal Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you.