The Paikin Podcast - Everything Political: Does Poilievre’s Comeback Begin Now?

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

On this episode of “Everything Political,” former MPs Martha Hall Findlay and Tony Clement break down Poilievre’s upcoming byelection in Alberta, if he can bounce back from a historic election loss, his campaign manager Jenni Byrne’s decision to step down, and if PM Carney’s push to build big things in Canada again is stumbling out of the gate. Follow The Paikin Podcast: TWITTERx.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAMinstagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKYbsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.social

Well, as we all know, the beauty of cottage country in central Ontario is that it is peaceful, it is placid, you hear the water lapping up against the shore. It's, Martha, you've got all that happening in Pointe Barrel, don't you? I do right now, but if you can tell the relaxation in my voice, it's because I'm coming off of a fairly long period of time of seven adults, or gosh, was it eight, six grandkids, seven and under, and at least one dog, all on one island. And so, yes, it can be tranquil, but it wasn't so tranquil last week. Did you like that, though?

Oh, my God, wonderful chaos. Absolutely wonderful chaos. Wonderful chaos, like a liberal caucus meeting. Would you put it that way? We're not going there. Oh, not yet. This is my family, Steve. Come on.

Oh, sorry, sorry. Okay, kids, it's time to talk everything political. Everything political, presented by the Canadian Bankers Association. Happy to welcome back, former members of Parliament, Tony Clement, and Martha Hall-Finley, and, of course, the top of our docket this week is going to be the by-election coming up in Alberta on the 18th of August where Pierre Polyev is going to try like hell to get back into the House of Commons. And Martha, since you're the Albertan, let's start with you. The guy whose seat he's taking on won it with 83% of the vote during the last general election just a few months

ago. In your view, what percentage does Pierre Polyev have to get on by-election day to show, yes, I won this, I conquered it, I'm back. Well, I'm actually pretty terrible at predictions, but I will also hopefully add to the conversation by saying when the fellow before 1.83%, he didn't have 99 other candidates on the ballot. It's more. This time, it's 200 candidates on the ballot? Is it 200 now? They're over 200.

So, I mean, I really do think elections Canada needs to put a stop to that kind of thing. I think it undermines democracy in a weird way. You'd think, oh, more candidates. but I think this is out of the realm. And I think it really confuses some of the big issues. And I don't know that with that many people, Pierre needs to match the percentage that happened in the last election. Who knows with that many candidates,

how many weird votes are going to happen. Having said that, Tony, you know, if he wins the seat with 40% of the total vote, you know his opponents are going to seize on that to say, He's a parachute candidate. He's not all that strong. He's still got trouble. Well, I think that anything that Pierre Polyeb does, his opponents are going to jump on it as a point of weakness or. No, but this time there'd be some legitimacy. There'd be some legitimacy if you only got 40% of the votes. Yeah, I'm not expecting that. I expect him to get higher than that. I'm not expecting him to get 83% of the vote either. And really, this is a kind of an indoor baseball kind of discussion that the four blocks around Parliament Hill are going to talk about by-election, but I'm not sure most other people.

The important thing is hopefully all things going well. And I know Pierre, and I've talked to damn hard in that writing, not taking anything for granted. And so assuming that the voters see that upon that, and he is back in the House of Commons, that is. to me is the bigger story, that finally the leader of the official opposition is back in the House of Commons in September. Do you think, as Martha does, that we ought to be raising the threshold on who's allowed to compete in these by-elections or elections period, that 200 names on a ballot is kind of screwy? It really is an abuse of the process, and it makes, obviously, Elections Canada decided that they

aren't going to print a ballot for that by-election. You actually have to write the name in. All of the voters have to write their preferred choice in. So presumably there'll be a long list at each polling station so you can look at it and then go to the polling booth and then do your thing. But it is... Does polliev is hard? It's hard to spell. Well, I think, as you know, Elections Canada looks at it to see, to divine the intention

of the voter. So if somebody writes in Pierre P and there's no other Pierre P, on the ballot, then I think that that's going to be good enough for a vote. Don't, voters in, don't take that as gospel, talk to elections Canada, but that's how I think it should go. But I do think that it is a mockery. They're making a mockery of the process and that the fact that it's happened twice to the leader of the opposition is also part of the mockery. And I think there are things you can do that are not anti-democratic. For instance, one of the things that I've been pressing for in my discussions is each of these candidates,

should have a separate, you know, a separate elections agent, official agent. They can't all, all 200 can't have the same official agent. I mean, that's clearly part of a campaign rather than an individual candidate who wants to get elected. So things like that can be done that I think can allow the process still to be open to candidates while at the same time some of the chicanery can be washed out of the system. Martha? I agree. I think there are things that could be done and I do get a bit upset at what feels like it's almost making fun of the process, right? This is a serious issue. This is a serious by-election. It is a leader of the opposition. So it should be taken seriously as such. So I agree with Tony and that. I think a bigger question, Steve, though, is he is an Ottawa guy, right? He's been there for ages. the line that it was because of his proposals of reducing the federal public service

were reasons for him not to run in Ottawa and completely ignores the fact that he was very supportive of the convoy, which completely upended Ottawa and the lives of people living there for some time, not very popular at all. The other thing is there has been a rise in Alberta's separatist sentiment. We've talked a little bit about that before. He, it seems a bit odd for me to run in probably the safest seed in the country, but in a province where the first question he's going to get asked when he gets elected is, are you in Alberta or are you a Canadian?

Like, where do you stand on this? It just seems to have invited unnecessary confusion and potential criticism. You can be both in Alberta and the Canadian. You absolutely can be both, but I think it's just an unnecessary, to me it was an unnecessary attraction of even more kind of political commentary that probably isn't necessary. Well, I think the thinking was that Pierre Polyev needed the quickest, safest way to get back in the House of Commons. That was job one. And this writing hopefully provides the solution to that issue. And I actually think it benefits to have a national leader from Alberta who can talk to

Albertans, but also talk about Canadian issues to Albertans and Alberta issues to Canadians, for that matter, like Stephen Harper did. And so it's not untoward to have a national leader from the province of Alberta, in my opinion. Oh, I don't disagree with that. I just think he's an Ottawa guy. He's been in Ottawa and an Ottawa politician for almost forever. So I can think of other people who would represent Alberta. Saying he's an Ottawa guy for most of the country is not a badge of honor. I just want to make that clear. Given that you and I both served in Ottawa. Okay, well, while we're talking about national politics here, I do want to bring up another name, which has significant connection to Pierre Polyev, and that name is Jenny Byrne. Jenny Byrne ran his

last campaign, and Tony, let me go to you first on this one here. I suspect if before the campaign began that you had said to Jenny Byrne, I want you to design a campaign, campaign for me that will get the conservative party over 40% of the vote, you'd have taken that 10 times out of 10. This was one of those weird times where that actually wasn't enough. She has now confirmed that she's not going to run the next federal election campaign for the conservatives whenever that takes place. And I want your reaction to that. Yeah, I think that was the right decision for Jenny and the right decision for the party and for Pierre. Jenny's got a, she's got a lot of other things going on her life. And 24-7 worrying about everything, all of the minutia of the House of

Commons and the strategy at question period and nominating candidates and all of these things that she was involved in until Election Day, you know, she's got to move on with her life. And I respect that. And look, I'm, you know, okay, this is going to take a little bit of analysis. But, you know, the half glass analysis, Steve. So the half glass full is, of course, two million extra votes for the Conservative Party. They got 44% of the popular vote in the Providence, Ontario. One new seats in northern Ontario,

southwestern Ontario, in the 905, did all of those things. I myself campaigned in Sudbury East, Steve, not far from you. and we flipped a seat that was a liberal seat to a conservative seat, even with the NDP crashing. And there were seats like that in northern Ontario and southwestern Ontario. The rest of the country with the NDP crashing, that was not as felicitous to the conservative party as the couple of examples that I've just mentioned. So that was a problem. At the end of the day, I can tell you Pierre Pahliev, in my view and many others view, he worked so hard.

in that election period and left nothing on the table and did us proud with the way he handled issues as they came up during the campaign. And so my view is that he deserves another shot at this. The half empty part of the, I promised you the half full and the half empty, the half empty part is, and Jenny knows this, is we didn't actually win the election folks, which is the primary goal. And the leader lost his own seat. Yeah. And he lost. his own seat. And Jenny in her interviews, her sort of recent interviews, expressed the most regret about that, that she didn't cotton on, that this was going to be a problem for Pierre in his own seat until it was too late. So I think that ultimately campaign managers are judged on

whether you win or lose. I mean, you can talk all you want about two million more votes and 24 extra seats and all of this, but we didn't form the government, folks. And so we have do better next time. And Pierre has acknowledged that. We have to do better next time. And maybe that takes a little bit of new thinking. Martha, your take on the fact Jenny Burns standing down and will not run the next campaign? I think that's the right decision. But I will go significantly further than Tony. One, I think the tone, the tenor of that campaign was very much not what Canadians wanted or needed at the time, especially given Donald Trump. Jenny is not I don't think there are too many people who would refer to the way Jenny approaches life as being

kind and empathetic and sweet and gentle. Jenny has a manner and a way of dealing with things that can be very sharp and very critical and frankly downright nasty sometimes. And I would say that in any campaign, if you want to call yourself the leader, the leader is the one who sets the tone, who sets the tenor. And so I've heard in some circles people blaming Jenny Byrne for not pivoting, for not understanding that Canadians saw an existential threat south of the border and needed to have a much more grown-up conversation. That to me can't just be Jenny's fault. It has to be the leader's fault as well. And Tony, yeah, the party lost, but the party was in a position to have an absolutely

landslide victory only a few months before. Yeah, but there was an incredible anti-liberal. There was two factors. There were a couple factors. Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump. But it wasn't just Justin Trudeau. There was a very strong anti-liberal sentiment. People were tired of the liberal.

government. But, you know, even during the campaign, you would hear Pierre saying things or people in the party saying, you know, it's the same old team. You know, it might be a new guy. Mark Carney's a new guy, but he has the same people on his team. One of the things that I kept feeling when that was happening was, yeah, but Pierre doesn't seem to have a team at all. Like, it wasn't clear who would become finance minister, who would be responsible for natural resources. It was Pierre, Pierre, Pierre all the time, even to the point the campaign plane didn't say conservative party.

It said Pierre Pueleev. And so to me, it's partly Jenny's fault. I think it's very much tone from the top was an inability to recognize that the world had changed. They couldn't just ride on anti-liberal, especially

with the arrival of somebody like Mark Carney, with the gravitas of Mark Carney. And so to continue with the sort of nasty negative criticism. It wasn't nasty negative criticism. Oh, it was pretty nasty. It was normal criticism by a leader of the official opposition about the direction of the country, which he, which he, and he won that debate. And here's the thing.

First of all, I'm going to go out on a slight limb and say if there was an extra week in the campaign, the conservative party would have won the campaign. Things were turning in our direction. The only place where it wasn't turned. After they had, after they had turned so. No, no, but you see, I think that the message, and I'm with Jenny on this, you know, everybody was pressuring her. A lot of people were, including Corey Tenike and others. Oh, you have to pivot. You have to pivot. I think that was a loser strategy if we pivoted because Carney was already there as the elbows up guy.

There was no way that Pierre was going to dislodge him on that. So that would have been a loser strategy, and we would have lost a lot of the support that we had. We had the support of the 18 to 25s. We had the support of the 25 to 44. We had the support of the 44 to 59s. The only group that we did not have the support of was the 60 plus. Our generation. And so Martha, your group.

Steve, your group. Tony, my group. They were not with us. And significantly, especially amongst females, although amongst females generally, we were only seven points behind the liberals at the end of the campaign with females. So I want to make that point. And Pierre Pollyev's plus minus by the end of the campaign, he was a plus two, Carney was a plus 17.

But Pierre Pollyette wasn't a minus two or a minus 20. So all of this, oh, he was a terrible leader. Everybody hated him. Bologna. The fact of the matter is one age demographic, which was significantly skewed to the liberals because they bought into the elbows up. Mark Carney is the savior that's going to save us from Donald Trump. Well, I guess we're going to all see that now, whether that's true or not. But at the time, the strategy laid out by.

Pierre Pollyev and Jenny Byrne, that was the only strategy that could win us seats. It wasn't enough seats, but it did win us seats. See, I might be of that demographic, but I know an awful lot of people, and it's always anecdotal, so you always have to be careful with that. But I know an awful lot of people who were going to be voting conservative, who did not in the end. And I don't think it's because of Mark Carney being seen as a savior. I think it was Mark Carney in contrast to a continuing, and I will call it nasty. The political discourse has deteriorated so badly.

I find that really unpleasant, and I think a lot of other people did. But I think really there was a sense of gravitas. We're talking about issues that are really important to the country that Pierre was not addressing and that Mark Carney was. Well, I think that it depends on your point of view. If you were a blue-collar worker in southwestern Ontario, Pierre Polyev was talking to the issues you cared about, the issues of affordability, the issues of whether someone in government was actually talking about, you know, paying for a new house or paying your grocery bill. Those were the issues. And Pierre kind of solidified a change that was happening. and the NDP kind of accelerated it with their poor campaign

where blue-collar workers and unionized blue-collar workers, I might add, we're not only looking at the Conservative Party and the Conservative Party's positions, but actually voting for the Conservative Party and Pierre Paulyette. And that's a sea shift that hasn't happened in decades in Canada. And is so... Tony, let me jump in here, though, just to ask you whether, can you speak to Martha's point, which is that Jenny Burns,

obviously an immensely talented person. She has run numerous campaigns. She's got a lifetime of activity and politics. Let's put all of that on the record. But there is a reputation that follows her, which is that she is an incredibly polarizing person. And at the end of the day, if all you want to do is try to attract what you think is your conservative universe without reaching out much beyond that, you're going to have a hard time winning elections in this country. And of course, I think it's fair to say, her philosophy has always been, if I can get people who self-identify as conservatives to vote for us, will win every time. And that didn't happen. A lot of things didn't happen. And there were some issues of election preparation that I know my fellow past candidates

are talking about. And all of those have to be addressed. And I'm sure that I know that Pierre Poliev, as the leader, is listening to a lot of people because he's been. on the phone lines a lot to address these issues. I'm sure all of this will come up at the Calgary Convention in January as well. So yes, I think things we didn't win, folks. There's no way I can get around that now. The liberals thought they had a way to a majority government. They didn't get their majority government. We didn't win. You know, there's a lot of water and wine going on with this election. There's no question about that. But I do think that we do have to recalibrate some things if we're going to get over the top for next time. And I know the leadership feels the same

way. So yes, I acknowledge your point. Some things didn't go as planned. And we thought that it was with Justin Trudeau as prime minister and Donald Trump worrying about the Gulf of America rather than Canada, we probably would have won. But that didn't happen. And we have to accommodate the reality of the situation. I think I'm very optimistic about the future of the party under the current leadership and with some new caucus members who are whipsmart. So it's not all horrible, but we have been going through, I'll be honest with you too, we and the party have been going through a grieving process these last few months over what we thought was going to be a win so we could help the country. And whenever, by the way, whenever Mark Carney,

was getting into a spot of trouble. He would just steal another policy platform from the Conservative Party. We're looking around wondering, what the heck do we do now? He's now against the carbon tax. He's now for a balanced budget. Oh my gosh, you know, where's this all coming from? The reality will be what the reality is over the next few months. But that was part of the issue that we had. Can I just do one quick follow up with you, Tony, which is you've been in the conservative party. I mean, practically your whole life. Uh, you've run for the leadership of the party. You're a former senior cabinet minister in the party. I would expect that the current leader of the party at some point would have reached out to you or somebody representing him and

said, Tony, what do you think? What do we need to know? What do we need to do better? Has that happened? It has actually happened several times in my case. And, you know, I with a leader. Absolutely. And I'll tell you a little anecdote. You know, I have the, uh, I have, um, the blessing of, of being able to message Pierre whenever I want, which I don't do, I don't do, but I do. And, you know, he always, even during the midst of the campaign, he would always reply with an acknowledgement or a thanks or so on. Now whenever I message Pierre, I get a phone call back immediately,

almost immediately, saying, I just want to, you'll say, I just want you to elaborate on this point or that point that you're making. What should I do differently? What should I do better? And I'm I'm not idiotic enough to assume that's only me. Okay? Like he must be doing that a lot. And I think that's a good sign of a leader who's a little bit humbled and chastened, perhaps, who is looking at the situation saying, you know, I got to maybe broaden the bandwidth here and talk to some more people and get some more ideas out there, which is all a good thing. and all, that's a quality that you want in leadership, right?

So, you know, and I don't know what to say about nasty. I mean, I thought he was very even keeled during the campaign. Before the campaign, he was being a leader of the opposition. And they've got to hold the government to account. During the campaign, I think you saw a softer side of him. You know, he was advancing clear policy alternatives. And I thought during the debate, Steve, you might want to comment on this since you were moderating it, the English language

one. I thought Pierre Polyev was a fount of reasonableness, but maybe that's just me. I wouldn't go that far because it would not be my place to put it that way, but I think it's absolutely fair to say he showed a more prime ministerial side and much less of a, you know, a leader of the opposition who was nipping away at the heels of the prime minister who was right beside him. So I think that's absolutely a fair statement. And, you know, I heard it from a lot of people that they thought he won that debate, not just conservatives, open-minded people, not that conservatives aren't open-minded people. Let me get myself out of this trouble that I'm in right now. What do you mean, Steve? Nonpartisan people, people who are not aligned, people who didn't necessarily

have a dog in the hunt who said that they saw something in him in that leader's debate that they hadn't seen before. Martha, bail me out of this quickly. I am happy to jump in, Steve. How many you jump in, you did a wonderful job, by the way, moderating, as you always have done. As opposed to the last 30 seconds where I haven't done very well at all. Steve, shush, I'm trying to help you. I actually think that now is an opportune time to take the conversation in a slightly different direction. As an Albertan, it's extremely frustrating to know that a federal election has already been decided before you even get to counting the Alberta votes, regardless of what party you see.

support. I do think, and we've had promises from past, you know, Justin Trudeau, part of his campaign was to, was electoral reform. The riding I represented in Toronto, Willodale, had the same population as the entire province of Prince Edward Island, which had four ridings, and I represented one. That is only one example of how we have really not adjusted our electoral politics to our population. And I know there are constitutional reasons for it. There are Senate seats in question. There are an awful lot of reasons why it would be hard to change. But it is extremely frustrating to feel that it doesn't matter how you vote because it will already have been decided in the eastern half of the country. Gotcha. Very fair point.

Okay. Let's move on and talk about one more thing, which is to say, since we focused a lot on the conservative party just now. Let's focus on the liberals a little bit. And to that end, it wasn't that long ago that the new prime minister said on numerous occasions, we are going to have to do things in this country differently from the way we've done them before because the times call for it. We are living in emergency like times. We've got to get national infrastructure projects going faster and more deeply than ever. And I think, Martha, it's an open question to say, to look at things and say, okay, admittedly, you've only been the prime minister for a few months, but if you're talking about unprecedented speed within which we have to start doing these

things, where is it? We're not seeing anything yet. Fair criticism or no? I think some of it is fair. I think the prime minister and his team were surprised at the vehemence of the reaction to Bill C5, the bill better, better, bigger, faster bill from a number of indigenous communities. And I think that has really caused them to just, oh, wait a minute, we maybe didn't do that right. And I don't think they did. I frankly think they underestimated what might happen with something that fast. And what they didn't do is engage with Westerners, who, whether you're an indigenous community, non-treaty indigenous community from BC, treaty communities in Alberta, communities in Saskatchewan.

I mean, I've asked lots of people, what do you think of C-5? People in indigenous communities are engaged with them. And in Saskatchewan, Alberta, BC, we think it's fantastic. You're hearing a lot of anti-C-5 headlines that purport to be based in indigenous communities. They are, they are from indigenous communities, but unfortunately often they're from indigenous communities that historically haven't understood or benefited from the whole value of major resource projects. The communities that have, for example, Saskatchewan, Alberta, B.C., have in the last number of decades,

last couple of decades, last 10 years even, the entire approach to working with proponents, indigenous communities, finance, investors, has been very different than it had been before. And some very significant lessons learned about how we can actually partner, in some cases, full equity partnerships to benefit from those projects. And so you hear people in the western part of the country saying, we think C5 is fantastic, but you hear people in other parts of the country saying, well, wait a minute, this is going to abrogate duty to consult this is going to and and what's really fascinating is that in so many put so many of these conversations now in the western part of the country the the duty to consult the idea that

somehow you do it all and then you have a duty to consult with indigenous communities after the fact simply doesn't happen anymore the consultation all happens up front the engagement the you know these are some hard lessons learned right but they have been lessons learned. And so I don't think the Carney government understood, one, just how complicated that is, and two, how strong the reaction was likely to be from some sectors. Can I just say, I'm having difficulty, much respect to Martha, but I'm having difficulty with that argument because Mark Carney ran as the insider outsider who knew everything about government and everything about world affairs and everything about, you know, fiscal management and everything about

building back better. And basically all the people around him are either liberals who were in the Trudeau government or near liberals who weren't part of the government, but have the same kind of mentality. So I, I, we're still early, Steve and Martha, but at some point, this podcast is going to ask the question, where's the beef, right? Like, let's get something going here. We're not there yet. And I have an add-a-boy for a bit later where I want to praise the Carney government, as well as amend the record on something Steve you know about.

But until then, I think we're getting to a point, especially this government ran on the idea that there was a major emergency for Canada and Canadians, Trump, et cetera. we got to get going on something. Decisions have to be made. We can't just keep rolling around. I know it's August in the dog days of summer, but this was supposed to be a national emergency folks.

Well, and I can, and although I do feel a bit frustrated that the Carney government did not come at this with full engagement of people in different parts of the country, in my case, the western part of the country, who could easily have given them some advice on how to roll this out and prevent some of the backlash, which I think has now made everything pause a little bit. I'm Albertan. I spend a lot of time in the energy sector.

I spend a lot of time in energy policy. There are a number of things that are being said by Prime Minister Carney, by Minister Hodgson, And there's a cautious optimism because the things that are that are being said sound right. But August or not August, they've been in office for a while now. And I can guarantee that there are more and more people saying they don't say where's the beef because actually they know that most of the beef is already in Alberta. But there are a few things that could be done that are not necessarily a big project, but that would. ease an awful lot of concern among a lot of people in the West who are, you're saying the right things, but it's been a pretty rough 10 years. We need you to actually do something. And it's not,

let's all of a sudden build a major pipeline. Some of them are dealing with the emissions cap, dealing with the timeframes, dealing with some of the major issues in the impact assessment. I don't throw it out, but there are some things that could be done. And we haven't seen it yet. So I'm hoping. Here's my contribution to this little part of the conversation, which is to say we three are old enough to remember the first politician who used that expression, where's the beef? And I'm inviting one of you to jump in now and tell me who it was. Is it Walter Mondale? Hey, Tony, good on you. Well done. And we did not set this up. No, we didn't know. But that's absolutely right. Yeah. Walter Mondale, who was running for president. And who did he say it to Ronald Reagan. No. No, he said it to Gary Hart. You got lots of new ideas.

Gosh, scary, Hart. But it came from the... You got lots of new ideas, Senator Hart, but where's the beef? You know, it was a rip-off, the Wendy's commercial. Yeah, exactly. From the Wendy's commercial. See, I would have been tempted. I'm glad Tony said Walter Mondale and got it right, because I was tempted to think, was that

Ralph Klein? And I said, no, because he's Elburton. He knew where the beef was. So, same thing. Exactly right. Now, we're going to do with that, sorry, did you want to correct the record on something, Tony, before we go on? Steve.

you write a very well researched blog for TV Ontario and your last topic was the art I don't know what else to call it the art installation on in honor of William G. Davis in Brampton and it was all very emotional and very correct except for one thing now I want our viewers to know that I was a member of provincial parliament before. before I was a member of parliament. And my seat was Brampton, Brampton South and then Brampton West. And you mentioned how,

I guess, Bob Ray was there. I can't remember the exact details, but you mentioned an anecdot. Go ahead. Yeah. The, okay, so former Premier Bob Ray, who's now our United Nations ambassador, said to me for the book that I wrote on Bill Davis,

that when it came time to build a new courthouse in Brampton, that Mr. Ray wanted to name it after his predecessor, former Premier Bill Davis. And Mr. Davis said, I can't let you do that. I didn't practice law for 10 minutes in Brampton. My father was a crown attorney here for three decades. If anybody in the Davis family should get it named after him, it ought to be my dad, whose name was A. Grenville Davis. He went with a first initial, A. Grenville Davis. And Bob Ray apparently pushed back and said, well, how about I name it after both of you? and that was the compromise that I was told, came forward, which was to name it after both of them. And if you go to here Ontario Street in Brampton, you will see the A. Grenville and William G. Davis Courthouse. Now that's where Tony picks up the story.

So I want it said, and Bob Ray has done a number of things in a number of different capacities for the province and for the nation. However, he never funded the Davis courthouse and he never built Davis courthouse. At the end of his term in 1995, it was a notional thing on a scrap of paper somewhere in the bowels of the Ontario government. No funding was ever sourced and no, he may have made an announcement that they wanted to build a courthouse, but they never did it. I was elected in 1995 as part of the Mike Harris government. I was a backbench member of provincial parliament for two and a half years. And immediately upon getting elected, I lobbied Charlie Harnock. who, Steve, you may remember as the first attorney general for the Harris government and said,

look, we got to build this courthouse there. The courthouse was actually being done in an abandoned light bulb factory on Clarence Street. That's what the courthouse was. I kid you not. And I said, we got to get this thing done. And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's get it done. And immediately when we started the ball rolling, Mr. Davis, who was a constituent of mine, called me up and said, you're going to head with the courthouse? And I said, yes, sir, I'm very proud to have a Davis courthouse in my writing. He said, yeah, but it can't be the William G. Davis courthouse. It has to be the A. Grenville courthouse. And then we got the compromise of naming it after both. And so that's my story. And I can, I'm sure I can find the records of when the actual shovel went in actual ground.

And believe me, it was not during the Bob Ray era. So thank you for allowing me. No, because he lost he lost the election. And we were the ones who actually got the thing done. So I thank you for allowing me this opportunity. And Martha's shaking her. We're happy, we're happy to broaden the record. And Martha's shaking your head thinking, these guys are so deep in the weeds right now. Get me out of here. Anyways. Okay. We're going to, speaking of correcting the record, we are going to do what we always do when we finish off this everything political segment. And that is, no, Tony, it's not called Ataboy because we're in a gender neutral world now. Thank you, Steve.

Good on you. Yes, we call it. Thank you for that. Good on you, which is, despite all the death and destruction we talk about in the world of politics, we do like to finish off by you two pointing out something that you liked that somebody did in the past couple of weeks in public life. So, okay, Martha Hall-Finley, start us off. Who gets your good on you this time? My good on you goes to two township of the archipelago counselors. And so for the listeners, the township of the archipelago is basically a big chunk of what is. is referred to as the 30,000 islands on the east shore of Georgian Bay, which is, Georgia and Bay comes off of Lake Huron, it really is the sixth Great Lake. Township of the archipelago was formed as a municipality, I think, 50 years ago now. But the two counselors I want to do, my shout out to are Scott Sheard and Earl Manners. They have both worked very, very hard, and I'm looking just to make sure I have the right name, the Great Lakes, Great Lakes, St. Lawrence City's Initiative.

There are 325 municipal and regional members, all working toward Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River restoration and protection. The reason I want to do a special good on you to those guys is that they take that opportunity to do an awful lot of cross-border relationship building. And at this point in time, when it's so easy for people to say, oh the Americans this or you know Donald Trump that we share the Great Lakes and it is a really important opportunity for them to come to meetings here and talk about how welcoming the American mayors were to them when they went and had this discussion negotiation so not only are they

involved in doing good work for the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River but they also I think are doing Yeoman's work in ensuring that although we might have political differences the relationship between our two countries, especially with respect to things that we share that are so important, continues in a very positive way. Good stuff. And can I check, is that the same Earl Manners,

who used to be the head of the secondary school teachers' federation? It is indeed. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, same guy. Well. Same guy. Okay. And my mother.

And he's now an elected counselor. He is. He's an elected counselor. And just a small little anecdote, my mother had been on town council in a small town called Thormond. where we lived at the time, didn't like that, but then ran for school board. And she was on the Grey County School Board for three terms, which is nine years. She was amazing, a little white-haired lady, very shy, but she was passionate. And she ended up, of course, on the school board having to

negotiate with Earl Manners as a union rep. And so although technically on opposite sides of the table, they ended up hitting it off. And so every time I see Earl, it says, you know, he reminds me of how well he and my mom got along in the day. So there you go. Isn't that great? That's wonderful. Okay, Tony, let's have your good. Well, I think we have to bookmark this again, Steve,

because I'm going to have to give the honors this week to the government of Canada, which is currently led by Prime Minister Carney, for the raises, the salary raises for the Canadian Armed Forces, 20% for lower ranks and 13 and 8% for upper ranks. two billion dollar commitment. It's a lot of money. I think it's well past due that those serving in our armed forces get paid more. I don't mind paying that out of my taxes. And I think it was the right decision. It was a little bit late in coming. It could have happened 10 years ago. But okay, Carney did it. The cabinet did it. The government of Canada did it. And I think that's

important for the young men and women who serve, and it's also important for our natal commitments, and generally it's important to do the right thing. I must say I am loving the ecumenical nature of the good on yous that come out of this part of our program. Oh, no, I think we should try to keep it going. This is really nice. This is great. I love it too, and I just want to see.

Yeah. Go ahead, Martha. Just, and good on you, Tony, that totally agree that that was something overdue and really important to do. So thanks for giving the government the shoutout. Excellent. We should also remind people who are either watching or listening to this that they are able to get in touch with us if they want by sending us an email at the Paken podcast at gmail.com. That's the Paken podcast at gmail.com. And we're starting to get some emails coming in now.

And in a future episode, we'll read some of them out and get some of them out and get. you folks to respond to them. So keep those cards and letters coming, as they used to say on the letter and review us on Spotify and Apple and YouTube wherever you can. Yeah. I've got to remember how to do all that stuff. Only if, only if you like that. Well, no, no, no, how it works, man. I know. You know what? I got to say, you guys on the YouTube, which I got to learn to stop calling by YouTube. You guys on the YouTube, I think of the last episode that we did together, I mean, we got, What was it? Like 30, 40, 50,000 views on YouTube with another six or 700 comments below as well. Anyway, we're often not a bad start here, folks. So as they say, peace and love and let's keep it going.

See you next time.