The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Democracy Debate

Episode Date: September 16, 2022

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. This week’s edition of Friday Focus analyses the sweeping victory of the new leader of Canada’s conservative party in its recent leadership race. What does Pierre Poilievre’s big win say about the future of Canadian politics, especially on the center-right? Has populism now firmly supplanted the older strains of conservatism that made up the conservative party in Canada? Given this trend seems to be happening in almost all western democracies, what does this mean for the future of democracy? Janice and Rudyard dig into it all and share their analysis and insights. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

These statues have to come down. It's always been a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The problem now is it's a pandemic of the willfully unvaccinated. Falling birth rates are good. They're good for our planet. They're good for our societies. We're not responsible for the escalation with Russia. We're not the ones who invaded Ukraine.

I don't think it's fair to portray people of color as victims. It is a very dangerous time in American politics. Hello and welcome to Friday Focus. I'm Roger Griffith. I'm Roger Griffith. I'm the moderator of this program. Chair of the Monk Debates. It's my pleasure, as always, to welcome Janice Gross Stein, founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs, internationally renowned author and scholar, Janice. Great to be in dialogue with you again this week. And great to be here, Richard. Yeah, so we've got a new name for the show, Friday Focus. We're excited about that. We're also excited to announce the following kind of changes to the program. We're going to be investing more in you, our listeners, providing you with more opportunities to interact with us, to influence the show. We've got a bunch of ideas for kind of user-generated episodes coming out this fall.

But we also have a favor for you to ask. Janice, very kindly has been at this. I think Janice, this is our 85th episode with you. That's pretty amazing. So you've been super generous with your time. But this show, you know, requires producers. It requires a budget. And we want to ask you as our valued listeners to help contribute to the success of this program.

So what we're going to do starting in early October is make the full editions of Friday Focus available to all of our donors to the Monk debate. So if you're a member, a curator, a supporter, and you've made a donation in the past, you will have access to the full-length editions of Friday Focus, starting an early October. If you're not a donor yet, we have a new program. It's up on our website right now. You just have to click on the Friday Focus button in our navigation on the top of our site, Triplew Monk Debates.com. And for as little as a $25 annual donation, which you also get a charitable tax receipt for, Janice, you will get access to all 50 plus episodes, the full length editions of Friday Focus, you know, 50 plus, what is that chance, 50 cents an episode. Yeah, that's what it is.

And that's, you know, we are far away from being able to buy a cup of coffee for 50 cents any longer. Exactly. So I hope that people understand why we're doing this. We're a charity. The Monk Debates is a charity. Yes, it's generously supported by the Peter and Melanie Monk Foundation. but we also rely, as all charities should, on donors to show that our content is relevant. I'm a big believer, Janice, you know, in the market test of ideas.

If people aren't willing to pay for something, then I question, what is it worth? And I also just want to remind listeners, again, that you will always be able to access a sample of the episode, regardless of whether you become a donor or not. We'll be making that free and available to everyone. every week. But if you want the full episode and you want to be part of the community we're building around Friday Focus, please consider making a donation. Do that before early October. And it's all this information on our website, triple W. The Monk Debates.com. Just look for Friday focus in the navigation at the very top of the site. Okay, Janice, let's dig into our topics this

week. I want to begin with the big, big win by Pierre Pollyev of the Canadian Conservative party leadership. Basically achieving a result that really is going to go down the annals

of Canadian politics as a I mean to put this in the least charitable terms, a hugely, hugely dominant win. I mean, every single writing I believe, but two 60 plus percent of the complete vote is nearest competitors back in the teens in terms of percentage support. What do you make of this victory? And what do you think it says more

importantly about the future direction of Canadian politics? So let's just stop for a minute, Rudyard, and explain why this was so overwhelming. 60% of the vote in modern democratic politics is astonishing. We've got us almost the electoral system you have, but the electoral system that the conservative party uses actually doesn't lean toward majorities of that sort because the way that going to the details of owning system is complicated. It actually works against it.

So 60% is mind-blowing, but it wasn't only 60%. It was the number of writings across the country in every province where riding by writing, Pierre Pahliav had a majority. This is the most overwhelming endorsement of a candidate in a primary leadership race. If he were fantasizing, he could not have dreamt about more powerful numbers. and he comes to leadership now with an overwhelming mandate. It is his party now. And dissenting voices in that party are going to have to live the democratic life

and acknowledge that it is his party, that he has won it with no ifs, ands, or buts here. This is a strong, think it's, frankly, stronger than Stephen Harper's men. It really is. So what does this mean for the future of the party? Let's look for one of the things you look at after an overwhelming but contentious race is who left the party the morning after? Well, nobody, frankly, one MP left the party.

Jean-Garee, who was his most serious opponent, went out of his way to say, I support the leader. But now I'm going back to private life. I'm not staying in politics, but I support the leader. So any morning after regrets were really insignificant. What does this mean? The third thing I looked at, Rudyard, was what was his speech like? Well, the stuff that has driven, the chattering class is crazy about Pierre

probably every. for the last year, and I include myself in the chattering classes, frankly, or was not there. There was no dog whistling to the World Economic Forum. You know, vaccine mandates didn't show up. Actually, that speech, the acceptance speech, was, I think, within the boundaries of what we could expect of a conservative leader. So what does this tell us? Is this a beginning of Polly Everett's movement to the middle now that he has overwhelmingly

solidified the base? That's what you always expect. My hunch is no with him. That's not who he is. We will see a more populist. And it doesn't fit neatly into these right-left categories. We're going to see him more popular. conservative party than we've seen ever because Stephen Harper was no populist.

Whatever you think about Harper, he was no populist. And I actually think, and I'm going out on the limb here, I think this will prolong Justin Trudeau's stay. I think he is a, he is somebody who thrives on political. political combat, whatever else he may like. And I think the anticipation of an all-out, knockdown, drag-out fight with Pierre Poli Evra, probably and here I'm way out on the limb, tells me that Trudeauville the Liberal Party at least one more time.

That's my guess. Yeah. What are my contributions here? I think the speech was notable in terms of, you know, when you win with 68%. That's what it was in terms of points. You kind of get to say whatever you want. And people had hypothesized for a while that he would pivot. He made, you know, mention of, you know, his adopted father being there with his gay partner, his Venezuelan wife.

His birth mother was there. This is, you know, someone who went through adoption and then divorce and the part of it. You know, he has a personal story that I think is interesting and compelling in many. Canadians are still going to have to learn about that. And I'm sure they're going to try to play up those softer sides. But I think what maybe people should realize is that the majority now of the membership of the Conservative Party is completely new members who have signed up during this campaign. And let's be honest about why they've signed up. They've signed up because a lot of those popular. and at times I've written about them, I think really dangerous, you know, hawking of, you know, or playing footsy with conspiracy theories like Weff, the World Economic Forum, and it's presenting it somehow as if there's credence to the idea that it's controlling the world and controlling the Canadian government and Canadian politicians. So you now have a party,

a completely new conservative party. I guess that's my point, Janice. I think we need to understand that this is a bigger watershed than just a politician winning a leadership with an incredibly commanding result. I would posit that the Canadian Conservative Party of old died last week and that there is a new party with new members who are animated by new issues, some of which are on the fringe of of Canadian political discourse. So he will try to pivot. It makes a lot of electoral sense for him to try to pivot.

He's going to need to pivot if he win, if he's going to win. But he is now in a party shaped and animated by members who have ideas that are deeply outside the political mainstream. And I don't know if you can just walk away from what is effectively a new party, the old party of brokerage between, you know, Bay Street and Red Tories and reformers from the West and the Quebec party, which was its own complete entity within the Conservative Party of Canada, that is all gone. And you have a new party, a new membership, a new leader. And I don't know. I don't know how to think about that yet.

What's your view? You know, really, really interesting because I do agree with you, Roger, that this is not just the average transition, the rotation of leadership. But frankly, the conservative party has gone through for the last four or five years with no success whatsoever. But there are some fundamental dynamics here that don't change no matter how new this is. One, people who sign up for party membership during leadership races fall off. it is the excitement of the leadership race, but these thousands and thousands of new members that he's probably hundreds of thousands,

Janice, two thirds of all the membership is new. Yes, because they're completely new people. But generally speaking, what happens to these people, they don't get involved, they don't stay active.

They many, many, many fall off because we've seen this before in leadership race. So we don't have to assume there's something so compelling about his message and his new kind of politics that he's going to be able to succeed in keeping these voters engaged. Secondly, and you just put your finger right on it, he has to pivot.

Still, despite these hundreds of thousands of people, he has to pivot if he's going to win a majority government or even a minority. Now, he has assets going into this. He's a fluent French speaker, right? and he has traction in Quebec. We saw that because it was head-to-head competition between Jean-Soré and Pierre-Poliette, and he won. So there is traction there in Quebec that could help him, but he still has to pivot. Now, what happens when you pivot in many races of the kind that he's just run?

Your base, those new voters who joined because you were the promise of a different future, become alienated. And it starts to feel to them like politics as usual. So I don't want to, and we've seen this, where do we know this from? We know this from the way populist politicians have run in Europe, signed on thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. And then when they start, and they have to compromise because they have to build a coalition, the edge comes off.

At least one of the wheels comes off the bus. and people are disillusioned. So I don't underestimate the challenge that probably ever faces, not in maintaining the leadership in the party, but in winning. Yeah, I mean, the counter example is Trump, who everyone thought would pivot. And the Republican establishment in 2016 thought, oh, you know, don't worry, he's going to pivot.

When he becomes president, he'll rejoin the country club, you know, faction of the wing and all these nutters. Well, you know, they're just kind of collateral damage to, you know, our Trump's ambition to reiterate the usual mantra of, you know, GOP politics. That didn't happen. I guess what, I don't know, I just think there's something bigger going on here, you know, that conservative center right parties, you're right in Europe, the United States, English-speaking world, Sweden just this week, I believe, elected a far-right government,

they have all in a sense succumbed to the febrile swamps of world economic forum, anti-vaccine, in Europe, ugly, you know, under an overtones of anti-immigration. You know, in a sense, the conservative part of Canada was the last one, in a way, the last one standing. And I think what happened here in a sense was inevitable, that this was a, this was something that's coming. Pierre Pollyev, as in most cases, is not moving history. He's, he's simply being buoyed along by larger forces. It's not a criticism. I think that's the nature of the nature of things.

And if we think that we're all Napoleons and the hero of the story, we're probably actually deluding ourselves a bit. So I think this was inevitable. I think it's come to Canadian politics and more importantly, it's come to the center right in Canada. I don't think there's any putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. And I think, Janice, I would just be a little bit critical of you. I think you're, I think you still think somehow that there's normality here, that that he'll pivot. It'll be okay.

He has to compromise. The brokerage system will, will come in place. He'll dump the wackos. I just don't know. I don't, I don't see that as the next. stop on the crazy train that is American politics, a lot of center-right politics in Europe. Why is Canada going to be different? Thank you for listening to this edition of the Friday Focus podcast.

I'm Rudyard Griffith, the chair of the monk debates. I was joined on this program as I am each week by Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs. Janice and I would love your reactions to what you heard on the program today. Also, your suggestions and ideas about future topics that we should cover on Friday Focus. Please send us your suggestions now to podcast at monkdebates.com. That's MUNK Debateswithan S.com. This podcast is produced by Aidan Moscovic and generously underwritten by the Peter and Melanie

Monk Charitable Foundation. Please visit our website, www.w.w.w.munkdebates.com to access hundreds of podcast. dialogues and debates on all the big issues and ideas shaping our world. Again, you can do that right now at triple w monk debates.com. While you're there, consider if you're not already becoming a free monk debates member. You get all kinds of great benefits and perks as a complimentary monk member. You can grab yours right now at triple w monkdebates.com forward slash membership. Thanks for listening to this program. We'll do it all again soon. Bye bye. Thank you.