The Decibel - Campaign Call: Obstacles ahead for Poilievre, Carney and the NDP

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

Now that the election is over, we’re bringing you another edition of Campaign Call, The Decibel’s weekly election panel that makes sense of the major issues.Where does Pierre Poilievre go from here without a seat in the House of Commons? What kind of Prime Minister will Mark Carney be and how will he actually handle Trump? How do the NDP rebuild?Globe columnists Robyn Urback, Andrew Coyne and Gary Mason are on the show to discuss the path ahead for the leaders and their parties.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Welcome to Campaign Call, our election panel show. So the votes have been counted, and the results show that Canadians are very divided, but very engaged. Elections Canada says over 19 million people voted. That's a turnout of 68.7%. The Liberals and Conservatives each won more than 40% of the popular vote. And yet, the Liberals did not win the majority government

they were looking for. They are three MPs short. Their hopes for a bigger mandate were dashed by the Conservatives' surprising strength in Ontario, where the party picked up 16 seats. Meanwhile, the Bloc Québécois and NDP both got 6.3% of the popular vote. That translated into 22 seats for the Bloc, and only 7 for the popular vote. That translated into 22 seats for the Bloc and only seven for the NDP. But enough with the numbers. Today we're going to talk about the paths ahead for the leaders and their parties. Here's today's panel. I'm Robin Urbach. I'm a current affairs columnist

here at The Globe. I'm Andrew Coyne. I'm also a columnist at The Globe and Mail. And I'm Gary Mason. I'm also a columnist at The Globe and Mail. And I'm Gary Mason. I'm also a columnist at the Globe and Mail. And I'm Maynika Ramon-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from the Globe and Mail. All right, Robin, Andrew, Gary, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having us. Good to be with you.

So we're talking around 4 PM on Wednesday. Let's get right into it. I want to start with the conservatives. A big question on a lot of people's minds is what went on here? Because the conservatives managed to increase their seat count nationally. However, leader Pierre Poliev lost his own seat. So how can this be? Andrew, let's start with you.

Well, he lost his own seat, I think, for reasons particular to that riding. It's an Ottawa riding. There's a lot of public sector workers, as I understand it, live there. He's not going to necessarily be endearing himself to them. Plus, people have memories of the Ottawa convoy and his encouragement and support of that. These are what people talk about as being possible reasons, but it's very separate and distinct, I think, from the election as a whole. And yeah, they got 42% of the vote. That's better than any federal conservative has done since 1988. But that's the kind of thing you say

when you've lost an election. And I think the long and the short of it is they had a 25-point lead weeks before the election, and here they are still out of power. Robin, your thoughts on that? I think that's right. I mean, I think to a certain extent, some of it was outside of his control.

I know that we heard a lot about Doug Ford's campaign manager, Corey Tanai, saying during the election campaign that it was, I think he called it campaign malpractice or election malpractice to blow a 25-point lean. But I think if you look at when the polls started narrowing just the existence of Mark Kearney and more specifically his ownership of the Liberal Party and taking on the helm of that party that in and of itself just narrowed the gap. But that's not to absolve Pierre Poliev and the Conservatives of the mistakes that they made throughout the campaign which I think were numerous. And I think one of the most glaring ones of course was this failure to adapt to the changing conditions. It was almost as if they

wanted to run against Justin Trudeau so badly that they tried to jam their old campaign strategy into this new election climate. It's kind of like when toddlers have that toy where you have to put the star into the circle hole. They just kept banging that star, and it wouldn't go through the hole. And then finally, they realized, OK, well,

I need to find a different shape to get through. they did that eventually but I don't know I think there was this real authenticity problem as well when it came to the Trump question like you would hear Pierre Poliev say things like knock it off to Trump when Trump would threaten to you know just annex the country or something like that and he would say no don't do. And then he would turn back to Mark Kearney. And I think that there was this discomfort with him taking that line, which was particularly odd for a guy like Pierre Poliev, who has spent 20 years being an attack dog in the House of Commons, all of a sudden, he's like this little schnauzer that doesn't know what he can do. So I think those were just a couple of the examples of how the conservatives faltered throughout this campaign.

And obviously they did well generally, but not well enough to get it done. My look at it is, you know, the result isn't altogether surprising. But you know, as the race tightened, it became clear that this was going to be like a binary election. It was going to be the two main parties, the votes were going to coalesce around. To me the surprise was that the conservatives did as well as they did sort of in the 905 area because we were led to believe certainly looking at this race from the west it was like they were going to get blown out in that area and that they were completely mishandling how they were campaigning in that area. So I think, you know, there's some things that the conservatives are going to be able

to take from this. And I think that's one that they didn't do as bad in Ontario, in parts of Ontario, crucial parts of Ontario, as people said they were going to do. And also, I think that the narrative is that the liberals gained most of the votes at the expense of the NDP. I think that the conservatives also gained a lot of votes from NDP supporters, blue collar unionized supporters who turned their backs on the NDP

because they were tired of identity politics and they felt that Poliev did a better job speaking to them about affordability issues than Jagmeet Singh was doing. So to Robin's point, I mean, Poliev deserves a lot of blame for what happened as well, for sure. But nevertheless, I mean,

I think the main dynamic of the election wasn't so much the decline of the conservative vote, though it did go down from its peak, it's the collapse of all these other parties. And Gary's right that some of that NDP vote went to the conservatives, but I think the prevailing dynamic though was people from all parties, including some from the conservatives, going towards the liberals.

It wasn't that the Tory vote came down, it's that the liberal vote came up. And why was that? Well, I don't think you can divorce that entirely from Polyev. The abiding strategy of the Liberal Party in every election since I was a child, and probably before, is to say to NDP and progressive voters, no, no, no, you can't vote for the New Democrats. You can't actually vote for the party that you support. You have to vote for us because you have to work with us to stop the Tories from getting into power. And when it works, it's because the Tories and the Tory leader in

particular scares the daylights out of progressive voters. When it doesn't work is when the Tory leader is less scary. Pierre Paulyev was a definitively scary figure on his own and then add to that the Trump thing. And so unless you're committed to the conservatives from the start and you're worried about Trump and you're not terribly keen on Paulyev, and then along comes Mark Carney, who seems to have been custom designed for this kind of crisis. Then you know everything all adds up that people said okay I'm really worried about Trump I don't think Paul Yevra has it in him for various reasons to stand up to him. Partly because he's as one conservative called him a punk kid but partly because he's got

a base he's got to worry about. So for all those reasons I think to the extent that Trump dominated certainly the first part of the campaign and therefore to the extent that this was an election about leadership, then all these votes flooded towards liberals. We take that kind of as a given, but it didn't have to be that way. If Paul Yever had not invested a lot of time before then being as obnoxious as he could to virtually

everybody you could find, you could imagine another conservative leader where the crisis erupts and people go, let's get him or her. and being as obnoxious as he could to virtually everybody you could find, you could imagine another conservative leader where the crisis erupts, and people go, let's get him or her. They're competent. They're reassuring. They're unifying. They're authoritative.

They're exactly the person they need. It wasn't a given that it would go to the liberals. A lot of circumstances had to add up to that. But I think that really is the most important dynamic of the election, in my view. So if we take that and say a lot of the blame for this selection loss for the conservatives falls at the feet of Poliev, what is his future then? You know, he's lost his riding, he's signaled he wants to stay on as leader.

What are his options though? Well, he says he's going to stay on, that doesn't necessarily mean that he's going to. I think in the short term, look, he's been humiliated, frankly, and the party's been humiliated. And it's an awkward position for Pierre Poliev, who has always projected this air of sort of power about him. And with some justification too, he's always been, ever since he was that 25 year old punk kid in the House of Commons, he's commanded this sort of presence about him. And then he was promoted to cabinet and then he was in the opposition of Commons. He's commanded this sort of presence about him and then he was promoted

to cabinet and then he was in the opposition benches. He became the leader and he's always had this sort of success. And this is, I think, to my mind, the first real humiliation for his political career. I don't want to make any predictions as to whether he stays around or not. I think it would be in the party's interest where they stand right now probably to keep him around even though the conservatives, I mean from the last two elections, we know that they like to get these guys one shot and then kick them out. But if he does stay around, he's got some work to do in the short term and the long term. Like the short term, there's very practical

considerations. He doesn't have a seat in the House of Commons. So first off, someone's going to have to serve as the leader of the official opposition in the House of Commons because he does not have a seat. So that rule can't go to him. So he has to decide along with his caucus who is going to serve that role while he gets himself a seat. And to get himself that seat,

someone's going to have to effectively give up the job that they just won, step down. We're gonna have to have a by-election and he's gonna have to win in that by-election. So he's gonna have to pick a safe spot. So those are things that he has to do in the short term, but I think in the long term there are bigger existential questions if he does stick around about what type of leader he's going to be. And I think the dynamic changes a little bit after this election by virtue of the fact that the PPC, the People's Party, has been basically obliterated. Like they're a non-factor now. So

I think that frees up Polyev a little bit to kind of leave that right flank alone. He can pivot a little bit. And I'm not saying he has to pivot from his policy positions, but this sort of hard-nosed antagonistic persona that we see where he's picking fights with the media about his rally sizes, he's picking fights with premiers, he's seemingly picking fights with everybody, he's boycotting the mainstream media, even though that media could help him reach the demographics that he needs to appeal to, like boomers, boomer women. He shunned that during the campaign, and I think that was a mistake.

So I think the conservatives, if Pierre Poliev continues to lead the party, will have to decide, look, is this the type of party that they're going to continue to be in the future, or are they going to tone down those aspects of what the party has stood for under Poliev, and try to appeal more to people who have been put off by that sort of attitude. If you were a betting person, you would say it's more than likely he'll stay. Just it's very

difficult to remove a party leader, even if they've just lost an election. The one early indicator, of course, will be that first caucus meeting after the election when they are mandated by law to decide whether to avail themselves of the four powers under the Reform Act. And we won't, don't need to get into all those powers, but the salient one is the power to remove the leader, which the Conservative Party was the only one of the caucuses that decided to take that power in the last go around and they very quickly used it to get rid of Aaron O'Toole. And it will be interesting to see

whether Pierre Pauyev, who in the past, I think, was a fervent supporter of that policy, whether he will still be in favor of the caucus having that power and whether the caucus will nevertheless decide to take it. They're a little friskier in the conservative caucus than in the others. And the price that may have to be paid for having blown that 25-point lead may be that, if it's not directly to remove him. He's clearly going to be weakened by this. You know, he can say what he wants about how he did better than anyone expected us to, et cetera.

But you lose an election, at the very least, you're weakened, especially when you're a big part of the loss. He was an unpopular leader. He pulled behind his party, whereas Carney pulled ahead. He oversaw the strategy and the strategy was clearly faulty for the reasons Robin explained. So he has to wear this to a great extent. People are prepared to put up with a lot when you're the winner or you're heading to be a winner.

And I could imagine that, you know, when you think you're cruising towards victory, you may not heed that old showbiz adage about be careful how you treat people on the way up because you're going to beat them on the way down. So some of those chickens may come home to roost. My guess is he'll probably be allowed to stay, but he'll be kept on maybe a shorter leash than he has in the past. And I guess the final point I would make is I would bet money that Jenny Byrne, his campaign strategist, will have to go. Particularly this business of picking fights with the premiers. I mean, on election night, it was really interesting. You had Poyev giving the,

quite a gracious concession speech. But meanwhile, he's got his Lieutenant Jamil Javani basically declaring a holy war on Doug Ford and the Ontario government. Just tore a strip off them up and down. And I doubt very much that that was unauthorized. Well, how significant is that though? Could that actually have a meaningful impact on the federal party's path forward, this kind of animosity between the premiers and the federal party? I would think it would.

I mean, if you're picking a fight with the premier of the country's largest province, who has an enormous machinery that he can either put at your disposal or not. And you're also picking fights with the very popular premier of Nova Scotia. And you've also put a lot of noses out of joint by vetoing candidacies of really excellent candidates, Mike DeJong and BC, for example, because they didn't fit into the,

for whatever reason, into the playover mode. You've stored up a lot of trouble for yourself, in my opinion. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but. I think the Jamil Javani thing was particularly interesting and I noticed today he posted a meme too of Doug Ford kind of like ripping off a Hulk Hogan shirt to say liberal underneath.

They want to blame him for the loss, which is absurd. They're still going, but in a way, I mean, I understand the logic to it sort of, right? I think Pierre Poliev, this is sort of his way of kind of outsourcing those attacks. And I think you and I and people who are really plugged in know that, of course, this happened with the authorization of the leader.

Like, Jamil Javani probably was not freelancing when he decided to go off on Doug Ford on election night or to post this meme. He's not doing it without authorization. But I think to the average person who's only quasi sort of plugged in because they have real lives, they don't know that these things are happening with permission behind the scenes. And what they see is Pierre Paulyev actually staying out of the fray. Like he's not engaging in these sorts of behaviors anymore. It's that guy, Jamil Javani, if they know his name, who's launching these attacks against Doug

Ford. So they hear the attacks, the message gets out there, but it's not explicitly tied to Pierre Poliev, which could be to the leader's advantage. I think that anybody who thinks that Doug Ford and Corey Tenak are going to get rid of Pierre Polyev are mistaken because he's incredibly popular in the West. And the West is where the heart of the Federal Conservative Party is. So I don't think Corey Tenik is going to be calling the shots or nor is Doug Ford or anybody else. So I think Polyev is going to stay in the job. I think his biggest job is going to be uniting the conservative party. He's got some fences to mend,

but I don't think there's any question that he's going to stay in the job. He's just too popular in the West. And I think a distinguishing factor in this, after this election compared to the one that Aaron O'Toole lost in 2021 is that there was someone waiting in the wings, which was Pierre Poliev waiting to take it over.

To my mind, there's no one within the conservative caucus right now who would take on that position. Yeah, I didn't mean to say that Ford could take him out, but I just think it's not particularly smart in the wake of a bitter loss to be basically opening up a civil war in the party and losing that resource that you could have on your side

if you played your cards a little better. I just think that feelings were incredibly raw right after that loss. And sometimes people say stupid things and you know, it's just, I don't think, you know what politics is like. Sometimes these feuds can last forever and sometimes they can last a week. So you don't know how this is gonna turn out.

Well, the hardcore Poliev supporter, you saw a lot of this online, is very anti-Ford. Whether this is all spontaneous or whether the word has been put out that he's to be the target of the two minute hate, it was really interesting seeing all these people, spontaneously or otherwise, attacking a very popular three term conservative premier

is a really odd sight. We'll be right back. conservative premier is a really odd sight. We'll be right back. Okay, so let's turn to the liberals and Mark Carney now. Do we have any idea how Carney might govern? I mean, obviously, for being in a minority situation, he's in a pretty good minority situation. I mean, he's only a few votes away from majority status. I don't think I don't think it's going to be difficult at all finding votes from the NDP or even even the bloc to move his agenda ahead.

I just don't think it's going to be a problem at all. I mean, for all intents and purposes, he has a majority government, in my view. I don't even think he's going to have to make deals necessarily with the NDP, big deals, in the way that Trudeau did with Singh. So I don't think that's going to be a problem, the situation he finds himself in.

Well, to that point, actually, though, is there a chance that they will actually try to get a majority? Like I'm thinking about the possibility of enticing people to cross the floor to get those extra three seats. Like, is that a possibility here? It's conceivable that they may try. He's got to be careful he doesn't invest too much capital in it though. Tribal loyalties die hard.

I mean, the NDP are demoralized at this point, no doubt. I mean, they've lost official party status. They've had their worst result ever. But there's a reason why they're in the Democratic Party, not the liberals. I think it will depend, I suppose, on the course of things in the NDP. If they're able to pull themselves together,

elect a new leader who's got a little more appeal than Jagmeet Singh was ever able to muster, if things go south for Carney, I mean, he may be plunged very shortly into any number of different crises. Appeal than the Jagmeet Singh was ever able to muster if things go south for Carney I mean he may be plunged very shortly into any number of different crises Trump is still lurking out there and is a very combustible unpredictable force Secondly, we're gonna be possibly plunged into a recession and anytime you're in government in a recession Things don't go necessarily so well for you

He's at the helm of a party that until recently was in really bad odor with the public. And they put that aside for now because they were dealing with Trump and because they liked the cut of Mark Carney's jib. But does that come back before long because people are reminded of the mistakes they made in the previous terms.

So there's reasons to think that, okay, he's riding relatively high now, although on a relatively slim mandate. I take Gary's point that he can basically govern as if he had a majority, but if it's a strong minority, it's not a particularly strong majority. It's a weak majority, shall we say. And it was all one on the basis of Trump.

It wasn't a ringing endorsement of some massive platform that he brought forward. They brought the platform out at the very last possible minute. And let's remind ourselves, for all his undoubted talents, Mark Carney is a complete rookie at being a prime minister. Most people are, of course. But until now, he'd never run for anything. He's learning it on the job.

He's climbed that learning curve pretty quickly. Maybe he'll continue to do so. But that's another thing to give one pause. I think, Andrew makes a good point, I think to a certain extent Mark Kearney was elected because of the idea of Mark Kearney, like he was prime minister for a week and a bit, but Canada is facing this enormous crisis with threats from the U.S. and along comes a technocrat and Canada loves a technocrat, right? And he came over and he held our hands and he said, everything's going to be okay, put me in charge and I'll figure it out, right?

And that's what Canada effectively did. We're trusting him to get it done. I do find it interesting though. I mean, when we talked about the ballot question during the election, it was always about who would best deal with Trump, but it was rarely about how that individual would deal with Trump.

So I think the reality of the situation, that primarily being the unpredictability of Donald Trump and his volatility when dealing with anything, that's gonna bring the idea of Mark Kearney down to earth, right? There's going to be struggle with Trump no matter how well this first phone call or first meeting goes. But I do think Gary makes a

good point in that the opposition parties are weakened. They're going to be distracted with their own events, the conservatives certainly and the NDP. And we heard from Yves-Francois Blanchet, the leader of the Bloc, who basically came out and said, look, you have our support for a year. Let's get some things done. And all of that combined with the fact that I think the climate in Canada is one where we have endured this tumultuousness in parliament for the last several months. We had our finance minister quit. We had our prime minister resign.

Then we had to sit through a leadership race. And then we had an election. And all of these things were going on as we were being threatened with these punishing tariffs and possible annexation. So all of this was going on. And I think we're at a point now where, okay, we have a plan for government and we want to actually see things getting done now to the best of our legislators abilities with this minority parliament. I don't think there's going to be a lot of patience for whomever decides to stand in the way. So for that reason, I think Mark Kearney is in an advantageous position in that he can potentially put forward legislation and get it passed because no one wants to be that obstacle

after a volatile couple of months. Unless your name is Danielle Smith, in which case you don't really care what kind of obstacles are in the way. I mean, Andrew mentioned that Piotr Poliev was his own attack dog, or maybe it was you, Robin. But actually, Danielle Smith was his biggest proxy in that regard. And I think those two are tight. And she is going to try and make life as miserable as possible for the Prime Minister,

despite all this baffled gab about how Canada comes first and how she's always been lobbying for Canada, which is all bull. And there you have another internal fight, you know, because Doug Ford does not like Daniel Smith either. And you look at what's going on in the machinations of the conservative movement in Canada, and you have two of the most prominent conservative leaders in the country who basically don't like one another, and they have people behind them that are at war as well. So, you know, it could be that Mark Carney's greatest gift is that the conservative movement are going to be fighting amongst each other, and they're going to be so distracted that he'll be able to push ahead with his agenda. And anybody who, like Daniel Smith, who tries to put up roadblocks is going to be so rejected by the population at large that their voice might be silenced in the process.

Hmm. And this is the recklessness of, again, of Jamil Javani and the apparent strategy of going after Doug Ford. This is a still relatively newly created party out of two factions, the old reform party and the old progressive conservatives. And there's no doubt that the Puevra faction has the upper hand, but if the thinking is, oh, we'll just have some kind of massive purge of anybody who's not absolutely in lockstep with, I just think that's a recipe for disaster. Totally. They may be just foolish enough to do that.

I was on that panel on the set of the CBC that night, and all of our jaws were just on the floor listening to Giovanni, because it went on and on. When Giovanni made those comments. It went on and on, and the viciousness and the vituperation of it, as I say, I think it was a calculated strategy to distract attention and blame Ford for the loss, which is ridiculous.

All I could think of, Andrew, listening to him, was now I understand why he's such good friends with JD Vance. It sounded a lot like him, didn't it? It sure did. Similar tone. And he kept talking about how Doug Ford never wears a suit. I don't know where that came from.

That's a good point to pick up on, Robin. Yeah. Okay, so we've talked about the liberals here. I do want to get a question in on the NDP because we saw a lot happen with this party in this election too, right? I guess I wonder how they rebuild here without the support of official party status. They only have seven seats. They needed 12 to get that status.

They didn't reach that number. And for context, this status, of course, they get less funding without that. And of course, their leader, Jagmeet Singh, said he's stepping down. So how does this party remain relevant going forward? Well, first of all, of course, we should be wary of writing anybody off.

The NDP was flat in its back in 1993. They came back. The Conservatives were flattened back in 1993. They came back. The Liberals were dead in 2011. They came back. So it's not unheard of that party loyalties, party brands endure. This is clearly the worst result they've ever had. They too have their division between the sort of downtown progressives, you know, who are very interested in identity politics and the environment. And the blue collar workers may be fewer in number these days and certainly being targeted by the conservatives for support. But that urban rural split, etc. remains a factor. They do have two provincial governments in the West that they can draw on as bases of support. They've got a very popular premier in Manitoba, Wab Kanu, who people talk of fondly as a possible future leader.

He'll have some decisions to make in that regard. A leader can make a big difference, obviously, in our leader-centric politics. So I think I would urge them not to make any hasty decisions. Let the government make some mistakes. Carney may, you know, ran sort of to the left in some ways during the campaign, certainly that platform. May feel that, oh, now that I've got elected, I can, you know, go back to maybe, I think a lot of people think

he's more naturally a blue liberal. It's entirely possible that he'll govern, particularly dealing with these deficits, that he'll govern in a more fiscally conservative way and that can give openings to New Democrat causes and supporters. So I would just say, you know, take your time and lick your wounds

and what's that old thing of, you know, I'll lie me down and bleed a while and rise and fight again, would be probably the best advice. I think it really does start with the leader. I mean, for all his qualities, Jagmeet Singh, he seemed like an inspirational choice at the time. But, you know, he was never going to fly in Quebec. In a resolutely secular province like Quebec, a turban-wearing provincial politician was never going to accumulate wide support. And then Bill 21 came along that made it even more

difficult for Singh and the NDP to build in a province that they desperately need if they're going to call themselves a national party. That was a bill that talked about religious symbols. Exactly. So they've got a big problem in Quebec, which is an important province for any political party. And then they also have the bigger problem, which is what is the NDP now? What does it stand for? You look at NDP parties that have formed governments in British Columbia and Manitoba and elsewhere, and those are NDP parties and governments that govern from the center. Like John Horgan, the NDP premier, told me you have to govern from the center, like John Horgan, the NDP premier told me, you have to govern from the center because most people are centrist. They're not to the left or not to the right. So for an NDP party

that wants to form government, they have to have a centrist agenda. Now the last NDP federally that tried to do that was Thomas Mulcair. And we saw what happened to him. He got dumped when he tried to start talking about balanced budgets and not embracing the LEAP manifesto and things like that, which were political suicide. So I think maybe the biggest thing is, you know, they need a leader that can appeal to a broad swath of the population and that can articulate a policy platform that is appealing to a broader set of people than the NDP is appealing to at the moment.

I mean, I don't know, I'm not even sure that the NDP haven't lost some supporters, traditional supporters to the liberals permanently as a result of what we've seen happen in the last six months. I also wonder if they've lost some support permanently to the conservatives. If you look at the success that the conservatives had in southwestern Ontario this election and some writings that were heavily manufacturer based and even you know some of the writings was looking at like the Kitchener Waterloo area where there are a lot of students that seem to support the conservative

candidates. And that's very different, right? We would have thought that would have been solidly NDP territory. NDP had the workers, the students, and that seems to be shifting. My view is that an NDP revival has to start on the left. And there's room there now, frankly, because for the last decade, the liberals were basically just taking that land as their own, right, and claiming that progressive territory and calling it liberal, with all sorts of different initiatives and promises under Justin Trudeau. And of course, some of it was explicit with things like pharmacare and dental care. They basically took NDP proposals and made them their own. So I think the liberals have yielded that space now for the NDP to come back as that progressive party. And I think some of the issues that really hurt

it in this election won't necessarily be issues for the party going forward. Jagmeet Singh obviously is the first and foremost one, but also the Trump factor, which pushed people to Mark Carney. Hopefully, we're not going to see another four years after these four years, but you never know. So I think there is an opportunity for the NDP to reclaim that territory, but I think it's going to look very different. I don't know necessarily that the NDP of the future will be the NDP

that represents the autoworker in Windsor, for example. It might be a very different type of NDP, at least starting from the get-go with a new leader, because it seems as though Pierre Polyaev, even starting under Aaron O'Toole, Aaron O'Toole made a concerted effort to reach out to workers, to blue-coll collar workers. There are some NDPers who have gone liberal and are going to stay there. There are some NDPers who have gone blue and are going to stay there. But I think there's still a healthy proportion of Canadians who want that progressive option. And I think a renewed NDP can provide that. All right, we're going to have to leave it there. Andrew, Robin, Gary, thank you so much for being here. My pleasure.

Thank you. Pleasure. That was Columnists Robin Urbach, Andrew Coyne, and Gary Mason. That's it for today. I'm Maynika Ramon-Welms. Our associate producer is Azure Souter. Our intern is Olivia Grandy. Our producers are Madeleine White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham.

David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.