The Paul Wells Show - A new Poilievre biography from Andrew Lawton

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Pierre Poilievre may be our prime minister next year, so it’s a good time to learn more about him. Journalist Andrew Lawton’s new book, Pierre Poilievre: A Political Life, follows the Conservative leader’s life and career from childhood to today. Andrew talks to Paul about Poilievre’s political record, his particular brand of conservatism, and what we can expect from Poilievre if he becomes prime minister.    For more detailed show notes or to subscribe to Paul’s Substack, head over to paulwells.substack.com

Pierre Pauliev could be Prime Minister next year. Maybe it's time to read up on the guy. What he has advocated for and what he has talked about has not really changed in 20 years. This week, journalist Andrew Lawton gives us an exclusive first look at his new book on Pierre Poiliev. I'm Paul Wells, the journalist fellow in residence at the University of Toronto's Munk School.

Welcome to The Paul Wells Show. Andrew Lawton's new book on Pierre Poiliev has been selling steadily for weeks, even though it doesn't go on sale until next week. Or rather, it's not supposed to be available until next week. I see it's already on the shelves in just about every chapters in an Indigo store in the country. Indigo did the same thing with my Trudeau book a few weeks ago. Jumping the gun on release dates is getting to be a central part of their business model. But I digress.

So I might as well keep digressing, I guess. Indigo putting an Andrew Lawton book on the shelves ahead of schedule is an interesting development because his previous book about the so-called Freedom Convoy didn't appear on that chain's shelves for weeks after its publication. Indigo never did explain that delay. They kept selling the Convoy book online. They just didn't want anyone to see them selling it in public. My guess is that this is because Andrew Lawton's own politics are quite conservative, as are the people he often writes about. He ran as a candidate for Doug Ford's Ontario Provincial Conservatives in 2018.

He lost because of a bunch of tweets he wrote years earlier. He's apologized for all that. I have all the details on my show notes. Now he's got this new book about Pierre Polyev. It's a sturdy piece of reporting based on a lot of new interviews with people close to the conservative leader. Polyev didn't talk to Lawton for this book, although he's given Lawton a few interviews in recent years.

The portrait that emerges is of a guy who's basically been doing this since he was 14. Pauliev likes freedom. He doesn't like lobbyists or capital gains taxes, which is going to make the next couple of weeks interesting for him. And he's really good at retail politics. I'll let Andrew Lawton tell us the rest. Andrew Lawton, thanks for joining me. Hey, it's great to be with you Paul thanks for having me

uh why did you write a book about Pierre Poliev well I would love to give you this big grand answer about him being a once in a generation political figure and me feeling motivated by it but that would mask the my publisher asked me to uh answer which is a slight, they're both true to some extent, though. So my publisher, Ken White, who I know published your recent book as well, has been interested in this project. I've been interested in it. It's premature in some ways, because he has a tremendous length of time that he's been in politics and in the public eye, a tremendous length of time that he's been in politics and in the public eye, but he is not yet the prime minister, as polling suggests he will be.

And it was, for me, an interesting challenge in how do you explain this guy that a lot of people know of, but don't really know about? And that was why I was interested in doing it. This actually gets a longstanding preoccupation at Ken Leitz, which is that these people almost sneak into office. You can get really close to being a prime minister before someone tries to develop a sort of theory of why you're in politics and what you're trying to do. I remember when in 2004 or 5, because it took Stephen Harper two runs at it. Ken was complaining back then that nobody had done soup to nuts from childhood to last month assessment of Stephen Harper. So now you've done that for Pierre Poiliev, what do you make of the guy?

So I think that it's easy to look at him and see the career politician because let's face it, he has made politics a career, despite previously saying that MPs should be limited to two terms, which was one of the more amusing things he wrote in his younger years. But what's fascinating is that what he has advocated for and what he has talked about has not really changed in 20 years, since he was a campus conservative and he was involved in those early formative years of the reform party and the alliance and the merger and what's been interesting is that he has really tracked in his own personal evolution the evolution of the modern

conservative movement and he's influenced that movement and has been influenced by it and that was why for me as someone on the right it was such a fascinating story to tell. I've known, I've got inside knowledge, Ken White's my publisher too. So I've known this book is coming for a while. And I mentioned on one of the TV shows, hey, there's a new book about Pierre Polyev coming out. And a bunch of my colleagues said, oh, who's going to write it? I said, Andrew Lawton. And the eye rolling that that generated, if you'd hooked a generator up to it, it could have powered a small city. And the idea is, Pierre Polyev might as well have written this book himself.

We have nothing to learn from a book by Andrew Lawton about Pierre Polyev. So how would you respond to my colleagues? So I think there are two things to note, one of which is that my work speaks for itself in terms, interviews I've done with Pierre Polyev and other conservatives. And a lot of the time, conservative leaders, conservative politicians tend to be more fearful of conservative media because we attack them from a direction they're not really used to defending against. against. But the other aspect is just a practical one, which is that there are people who were taking my calls for this book that I don't think would take Susan Delacorte's calls or Althea Raj's calls if one of them were writing the book. And I think it actually allowed me to disarm a lot of the people that really do have useful information about this guy. And I look, it's a fair book,

and I stand behind that. I think there are things in there that the party won't like and that Pierre won't like that are in there. There are things in there that they will. And I think that that is something where I would just ask people to read it first. It almost feels at times

like you're holding yourself back a little bit from giving your own take or that you're pretty eager to just lay the facts on the table and let the reader interpret them? Yeah, a little bit. And I think that that was partially intentional because I didn't want it to be an analysis of Pierre Polyev. In fact, I think one of the things that has really set the context for how I approach the book is that there has been huge amounts of analysis and commentary and opining about Pierre Polyev, and I would say not enough of that exploration into who he is and where he came from. I mean, this is a guy who has been in politics as an elected official for 20 years now.

He's been a candidate in every election that the Conservative Party of Canada has fielded candidates in. And there have been really three profiles of him in that time, only one of them before he was Pierre Polyev, the leader. And that was one that was done by the Ottawa Citizen some years back, which was actually very interesting and had insights that really don't, or facts and insights that really don't exist anywhere else and don't appear anywhere else. So there's a lot, I think, of conjecture about who he is and what he is, but I found there was actually a pretty significant dearth of just the facts. So as you mentioned, this is a guy who gets active in campus politics quite early.

Before then even, at 14, he started going to, you know, Preston Manning's Riding Association meetings in Calgary. And phone banking for Jason Kenney, which is one of the three anecdotes you're going to get out of Jason Kenney if you ask about Pierre Polyev. I've got that too. But he's got an interesting, like, I mean, from birth,

he's got an interesting story. Tell me about his family. Yeah, it is. And a lot of people have heard the very condensed version of it that he talks about in his speeches, which is the adopted son of, you know, of an unwed mother adopted by two school teachers. And, you know And it gets even more complicated from there. His parents divorced when he was young. His father later came out as gay. What was interesting that is not as well known is that his brother, who is his biological half-brother, they share a mother, was also adopted by the same people who adopted him. And that was actually quite an interesting little bit that I had learned when I was writing the book. And it was his brother, Patrick, who lives and works in Calgary, that was the one that was

really interested in having those two boys get acquainted with their biological family, which actually became quite a meaningful relationship that they had going later on in life with their biological grandfather and their biological mother, who was of course in Ottawa when he won the conservative leadership a couple of years ago. So you're right, from 14 years old, he starts to get involved in politics at all levels, but basically federal politics in Calgary. And it's the time of the Reform Party and Ralph Klein is the premier. And he seems to stand out in the crowd even then with his poise and the fact that he's not shy around a microphone. Is that fair?

Yeah, it was. And I was very grateful for that, because when I was poring over newspaper archives, it was hard to find a reform assembly, what they called conventions, where he wasn't quoted in some news story by some reporter that was just walking around trying to get a sense of what was happening on the convention floor. And I was trying to put, you know, as someone who was a former campus politics rabble rouser myself when I was younger, I know the type exactly. He was either looking for this, he was seeking this out, I feel, or he was just such a big, loud personality that people couldn't help but find him. And it was interesting that he didn't just want to be involved. He didn't just want to be along for the

ride, like a lot of young people in politics where you know that's where the you know the girls are and that's where the beer and pizza are he really really wanted to be front and center in a lot of these fights and a lot of these meetings and discussions and that was i think quite interesting and just from a biographer standpoint it made things easier than it would have otherwise because you can actually track just through the quotes that he gives to the, you know, Vancouver sun here or the Calgary Herald here, all of these different conventions that he attended over the years.

One thing that jumped out at me is in the mid nineties, he writes to the Calgary Herald and says, why are people not more upset about this pension reform that Paul Martin has brought in? Pension premiums are going from five-ish percent to nine-ish percent. And he wonders why there hasn't been a storm of opposition. The thing that struck me about that was that that deal had been signed onto by all the provincial ministers of finance, including Jim Dinning, who was Ralph Klein's finance minister. Do you recall whether

he mentioned that or did he leave that part out in that letter? I can't remember in that particular piece if he had mentioned it, but I do know that he actually was fairly critical at that time of his life of the Alberta PCs. I mean, even Ralph Klein, who was just this venerated conservative figure, he would really nitpick on with his friends about, oh, but he's not conservative enough. He's not doing enough. He took aim at a lot of the, you know, really the career politicians at the trough in the Alberta PC government.

So I can't remember on that piece particularly, but in general, he was pretty willing to go against that party. His loyalty had always been to the federal reform and alliance and now conservative party. You do quote him at one point saying, Alberta missed a chance to have a real conservative premier while Ralph Klein was the premier. But I mean- Which is just, I mean, you would know the context better than a lot of people, but that's just heresy to Alberta conservatives at the time.

And even now, arguably. It's also true, as Ken Bosenkul has pointed out, that one reason Alberta has, in a lot of ways, quite admirable social services is it pays through the nose for them because it's got money. Like it's not, it hasn't been some clever market way to deliver healthcare. It just spends a lot of money on healthcare.

And I can imagine a young peer probably finding that unfortunate. So he goes to work for Jason Kenney, still during reform days, so like in 98, 99. He organizes a national tour for Jason Kenney to cut the capital gains tax. It's one of a couple references to the capital gains tax.

And in that context, I wonder whether you think the liberals have him over a barrel by stripping out the capital gains taxes from the recent budget. Is that going to be a hard call for him to make? A little bit. And just to give a bit of context here. So this was a throwaway line that I had in the book, because at the time I was writing this, of course, I didn't know that the capital gains tax would be the big fight of the federal budget. You know, the book was submitted back in January, and we were working through edits. And then the budget fight of the federal budget. You know, the book was submitted back in January and we were working through edits

and then the budget comes after the book has already been sent off to the printers. But yeah, so when he was interning for Jason Kenney, one of the things that he was doing was putting this tour together, as you mentioned. And, you know, I don't know if that itself is the issue as much as the coalition that Polly Evin and the conservatives have tried to forge in recent years

as really eating the NDP's lunch in a lot of ways. They're trying to say, we're the party of the working man. We're the party that's standing up against the elites. We're standing up against the wealthy. That idea of the Conservatives as the corporate wealthy party in Canada, I don't think has been true for quite some time, but it's especially not true now. I don't think has been true for quite some time, but it's especially not true now. And the capital gains issue is the one that really, I think, stresses that point and strains the conservative response to it.

Because if they oppose that, it's very easy to just revert back to that old, oh, the conservatives are the party of the wealthy, by people that really aren't delving into the nitty gritty of that. And I think that that's something that for him is going to be, as we've seen in the conservative response to that, a really tough needle to thread. We're talking about eight days before this podcast is going to get posted. So to some extent, we're speculating about a future that listeners may already know. But boy, if I had to bet, I bet he would vote in favor of that capital gains change. I think he's going to vote with the liberals on this for essentially the class reasons that you mentioned. Do you have a hunch on how that's going to go? That's a tough one. I mean, because at a certain point, we've seen the conservatives on some issues opposed for the sake of opposing. And I think this would be a very difficult one for them to sell to their base.

So I would say they vote against it, but I think internally there is probably much more debate than people might suspect from the outside. Fair enough. Hey, one thing that you sort of just drop at the beginning of the book, but you sure come back to it later, is this notion that as a young guy making his first steps in politics, Poiliev was a strong advocate of term limits. As a matter of fact, he was quite sure that he would only serve two terms in parliament.

And later he served seven. Hardly the first person to change his mind on that, but it's a striking moment. He's hardly the first person to change his mind on that, but it's a striking moment. Yeah, and what was interesting, and I actually have in the book a little bit of the explanation. Now, I should just say, for context here, Pierre Polyev did not agree to an interview for the book. I spoke to a number of the people around him, people that are friends, former colleagues, former friends, current colleagues, all of that. But he did not. And one of the things that I really would have liked to get from him is the how and why that changed, or when that changed. And I speculate on a couple of theories. One of them is that I think when someone goes into politics, they break down their life into four-year terms. And I think you assume you're going to get in,

you're going to be there for four years, and your two terms is going to be eight years. He was elected in 2004. His second term ended in 2008. So he had only had, after that, two terms, four years, because we were talking about two minorities. And then you are in government, you get re-elected, you still have a minority,

then there's that question of what you can do with your agenda, and then 2011 comes. So it becomes very easy to just stay in that because you haven't quite had that runway, whereas if you were elected and had two terms and you're in a majority government at both times, you could probably feel mission accomplished a bit more. So that's one theory. The other I found fascinating, and it came from someone who had worked with Polyev on his first campaign, and they would drive around, and one of the things that Polyev had said to them early on, I mean, he's 24, 25 at the time, and he's talking about getting elected to his first term as an MP in Carlton, is that he wants to be finance minister or prime minister at some point. So this is an idea that he has at least entertained.

And at the time, he had described doing a couple of terms, going out into the real world for a bit, and then returning to politics. That was, in his mind, what he thought would happen there. And there was a political realization that if you do that, you need to find a seat. And whoever's in the seat that you leave might not want to vacate it to let you back in. And there's a bit of context in this as well, because Pierre Polyev was working with Ezra Levant when Ezra Levant was the nominated alliance candidate in Calgary Southwest. And Stephen Harper wanted that seat, of course.

And Ezra didn't give it up all that easily. So I think that might have also influenced that. But there was a calculation that he was making that, yeah, if I want to stay in this and leave and then come back, it might not be as easy as that. And I think that was weighing on him as well. This is one of a million things that are going to be more significant for people who don't like a politician than for people who do.

People who like a politician never complain that he sticks around and keeps doing the stuff they like. So, you know, the term limit thing I don't think is going to hurt his appeal particularly, but it's one of the interesting, really clear cases where he seems quite, as you write, he seems to have changed his mind along the way. That Calgary by-election, it's 2002, Ezra Levant is the nominated candidate. He won the nomination. And Pierre Pauliev was essentially running his campaign for all intents and purposes. nomination and Pierre Pauliev was essentially running his campaign for all intents and purposes.

And then Ezra's got to go because Stephen Harper needs a place to run. And there was a little bit of controversy. The reason I bring it up is not that Ezra's icky and that you mustn't touch Ezra, but Stephen Harper maintained at the time, and Tom Flanagan has always maintained since then, that Ezra was on the way to losing that riding to Jim Prentice. Do you buy that? That Ezra was going to manage to lose Calgary Southwest as a Canadian Alliance candidate? I have a hard time with that just given the momentum and money

and energy that that campaign had. Now, obviously a nomination is different from a general, but they were bringing, I mean, it was the best finance nomination I think Canada has ever seen. Like, they were raising tens of thousands of dollars. It was the place to be. Like, people were going in from all across the country. Ezra had a bit of star appeal at the time. So I've heard the theory. I've never seen a compelling path to that happening, though. I've never seen a compelling path to that happening though. And soon after that, he, um, Ezra's working for Stockwell Day as, um, uh, opposition critic in, in Stephen Harper's caucus.

This incidentally is when I first, uh, yeah, sorry. Freudian slip. Yes. Pierre is working. This is incidentally when I first became aware of Pierre Poiliev. Because I talked about Stephen Harper's critics list. And I made some kind of light fund. This would still have been in the National Post of the notion that Stockwell Day was shadow foreign minister rather than foreign affairs critic. And I get this email from this guy, Pierre Poiliev, says, thanks for mentioning my boss.

And I thought, well, that's, that's cocky. And then a little while later, I was at Darcy McGee's, this pub on Spark Street, which was a very much a political hangout in those days. And this very young guy comes up to me and strikes up a conversation. It turns out he's Pierre Poiliev. He was never shy and always pretty comfortable making sure that people knew who he was. And even to some extent, if he had no guarantee that it would be a friendly conversation. He's never been known for being overly cautious, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Known for being overly cautious, I guess is what I'm trying to say. No, and I think there was also a point to be made about how he was not always... I mean, the Ezra Levant thing is a great example of this. That was a very high stakes fight. And he was going against his party's leader by sticking with Ezra. And to be honest, it was quite interesting that he wasn't cast out into political Siberia for that. And I think the fact that he did go and was able to work with Stockwell Day after I thought was quite noteworthy there. But you're right, he has never shied away from being in the middle of the fire and being the center of attention in that sense.

And then he tells Stockwell Day he's going to run. Stockwell Day says, off you go, but he's not super optimistic about Pierre's chances of winning. And he says, I'm not going home to Calgary to run. I'm going to run in the outer reaches of Ottawa in Nepean Carlton, which his own boss, Stockwell Day, was surprised by that choice. It's worked out pretty well for him, but does it strike you that it would have been a surprising choice at the time it was really weird on that front because on one hand a lot of people were thinking it was ridiculous that he would go in that riding but at the same time there was also this belief that a lot of people had which i think was borne out by what happened in 2004 that when you now have a united right,

which we did at the time, there was one Conservative Party of Canada, that all of these seats that were no-goes in 2000 and before were going to be easy. And Nepean-Carlton was one of those. So it was actually odd to me that so many people were skeptical of this plan, given that the Conservative Party itself, and I talked about this with Tom Flanagan, was pretty confident this would be an easy pickup, because the Alliance vote and PC vote combined from 2000 would be enough to unseat who was actually the Liberal Defence Minister at the time in 2004. Yeah, David Pratt, who was, to some extent, only just barely as liberal as you needed to be to be a Liberal yeah so so polyev strategy

was to like make sure that he had to wear the liberal brand that everyone knew he was a liberal the name that they gave him in that campaign was liberal pratt which they insisted was uh was not the old british insult pratt but it was just it's just his name it's the awshacks oh it's his name is pratt what do you mean? All righty then. So then it takes two tries, but Stephen Harper becomes the prime minister. And very soon there becomes a group within the conservative caucus that meets on Wednesday morning before the full caucus meeting to make sure that fiscal conservative voices are heard. And this group is called the Khmer Bleu.

Tell me about the Khmer Bleu. So this part was so much fun to write about because so they would meet Tuesdays before the Wednesday caucus. But because once I got the name and I mentioned that name to people, the first reaction was who told you about that or how did you know about that? So that's when you know you're on to something, as I'm sure you know in your career, when

people are blindsided that you're asking about it. And it did have some different names over the years. Like, I think it was the Freedom Caucus or the Liberty Caucus, and they had tried some other things. But Khmer Blo was the one that they tended to like. And just as a bit of an interesting aside, there's a bit of a dispute over who gets the naming rights on that. Andrew Scheer and Cheryl Gallant both claim they came up with it. So I'm ambivalent on that in the book, but that's the spat on it. But Pierre was

not just a part of this. He was like the charter member. He was the one that was there at every single meeting of the Khmer B'la, and by extension, he was the guy getting up at the microphone in the Wednesday caucus meeting every single week to make whatever pitch it was with his 30 or 60 seconds for why the Conservative Party needs to remain conservative. And one of the things that was interesting when I talked to people that were in the caucus at the time is that this was a direct response to what people you had to read between the lines because few people would come out and say it but it was in response to the Quebec caucus basically there was this belief that the Quebecers in the caucus were

pulling the party away from the right and you know you get some people that would fall into that red Tory category that aren't Quebecers but the Quebec caucus was very organized and effective, and they'd get up there and make these demands, and there was no one to push back against them. And one person had told me, one MP, that Stephen Harper had kind of given a hint-hint to a couple of his MPs, like, you know, when these guys get up there, if no one's there on the other side,

it's harder for me to say no to these things. And that was taken as kind of an invitation for some of the more conservative members of the caucus to mobilize themselves. And they claim credit for the reduction of the GST from 6% to 5%, which was an additional cut beyond the one that Stephen Harper had campaigned on. Hmm. Who else was in this group? one that Stephen Harper had campaigned on. Who else was in this group? It was a bit fluid. Chris Warkenton was one, Cheryl Gallant, Maxime Bernier, Andrew Scheer, Pierre Poliev, MPs like that, certainly a lot of the Western caucus.

There was a Democrat candidate for president once who said, I come from the Democrat wing of the Democrat party. Poliev was a leader in the conservative wing of the conservative party. Yes, that's very true. But I think very much on fiscal matters, though. Did they ever get up and say, we're not doing enough on abortion? No, no. And interestingly enough, one of the most keen insights I've gotten about his view on

social issues actually came from you and your book, Right Side Up, where you got an incredibly thoughtful answer from Pauliev on Harper's relationship with social conservatives. And I mean, you can perhaps give a bit of the context on that, but that was... It's going right in the show notes. I always like to remind people about that, about that chunk of my first book. I think it matters today. It does. And the relationship with social issues, it's a thread throughout the book. I don't really tackle it hugely because there's not a lot that he's said. And I think that there is with him somewhat of an interesting dilemma where in the past, groups have tried to claim him.

Pro-lifers in the early years of his political career claimed him. And it's not entirely clear why. He had been involved in his youth with some pro-life events and activism around Calgary. He had gone to a couple of the conferences. He had never really, the abortion had never been an issue that he did anything on significantly. The only thing that you could tie him to as far as the social conservative issues was his vote or votes, plural, against a gay marriage, first against gay marriage and then in favor of reopening the debate. But he was never really a social conservative in any meaningful way.

After the break, I'll talk to Andrew Lawton about Pierre Poliev's career from the Harper government to today. I'd like to tell you about a podcast called Higher Ed Spotlight, hosted by veteran journalist and higher education policy expert, Ben Woldawski. In each episode, Ben engages the brilliant minds of the people shaping the future of academia. In each episode, Ben engages the brilliant minds of the people shaping the future of academia. It's now in its third season, which features guests such as New York Times bestselling author Ethan Mollick and the vice chancellor of Australian National University, Genevieve Bell. Whether you're an academic, student, parent, or policymaker, if you care about higher education, this show is for you. It's sponsored by Chegg's Center for Digital Learning. Subscribe to Higher Ed Spotlight anywhere you get podcasts.

Let's skip most of the Harper government because it was mostly Harper's government, but near the end, he does become a cabinet minister. It's a position he likes much more than being a parliamentary secretary. In one of our last private conversations, he grumbled about being a parliamentary secretary. It's all the visibility and none of the freedom to maneuver. But he does get into cabinet as an election is beginning to approach, as the 2015 election is beginning to approach, and Harper wants to put some new faces in cabinet. How would you evaluate him as a cabinet minister? That's our one experience of Pierre Poilievre as a member of the executive, as it were. And I wonder what you make of it. He was certainly regarded by people that were in Harper's orbit as being a very effective cabinet

minister. I mean, in the case of his first cabinet appointment which was to democratic institutions this is not a big cabinet role at all and there was i think an inkling early on that maybe it would be something where he'd be able to tackle senate reform but of course that is kind of blown out by other things that happened in that era so the issue that he chose to make his own was electoral reform and doing this was something that was certainly of interest to Harper and the team around him, but it was not a huge part of their agenda, except when Polyev made it a part of his agenda. So he really took this policy, he took the opportunity, and he really drove the hell out of it, even though it was a policy that was

tremendously unpopular among a lot of people. And then when he got to ESDC, again, it's not a huge cabinet role in terms of the influence it has, but it's massive in terms of the power it has, just given how much money flows through that department. And this is, again, as the 2015 election is nearing. And he really took that role in a way that tried to leverage the politics of it. And, you know, this is where you get into the cynicism of politics and what people that like Polyev would love because, you know, yeah, he's, you know, he's effective and he's doing it. And people who don't like him would use this as the worst example of it. The one that was reported on was him wearing a conservative golf shirt while he was giving a funding announcement, which is, of course,

as big a no-no as it gets. And his approach that he shared with people was, well, Canadians won't care what color shirt I'm wearing. The media will. Canadians will just remember the check, and they'll associate it with the fact that I was a conservative telling them about it. they'll associate it with the fact that I was a conservative telling them about it. And there was another really interesting anecdote in the book where he insisted that the Harper government not send out the child tax credit by direct deposit. He wanted it sent out by check, so Canadians would physically get it, and it would just be in their face, and that was something the government could then claim. So he really understands the intersection of politics and policy and how to play those

things off of each other in a way that a lot of people don't. The conservatives lose in 2015. He's actually fairly zen about that. He talks at one point about how there's waves and there's not a lot you can do. You just try and hang on to your seat. Which he almost didn't, by the way. He very narrowly won that. And a big reason there is because

his writing is full of public servants, which I want to come back to in a few minutes. But he sits out the next two leadership races to find successors to Stephen Harper. Look, he wrote an essay called If I Were Prime Minister when he was quite young. So clearly the thought was not alien to him. But do you think that in 2007, 8, 11, 13,

he was interested in being prime minister? And do you think he's been preparing for a run at that for all of his time in politics? Or is it only more recent? It's, he certainly entertained it. I mean, I go back to conversations that he had, even in his 2004 run about, you know, coming back and being finance minister or prime minister. So he had clearly given it thought. I don't think it's fair to say that he was house of cards in his way through the entirety of his political career and trying to, you know, take the step that's going to get him there as quickly as possible.

And what's interesting, though, is the question of why he didn't get in those races. And in 2017, it's easy to understand because this is two years out from the Harper government. You had, you know, this field that was so large that at one of the debates, they had to break them up into mini groups because you couldn't fit them all on the stage. And you have people that all serve pretty significant roles in cabinet. And Lisa Raitt is a great example. I mean, she was a tremendously, tremendously significant cabinet figure. And in a leadership race, she's getting like 3% of the vote. Because it's such a crowded field, you have it dominated by Maxime Bernier and Andrew Scheer, and then you've got Stephen Blaney, Michael Chong, Chris Alexander, all these

people. So for him, he would have gone in there and just been a nobody, because he was known in political circles. He wasn't a household name to the conservative movement in that point, in a significant way, I'd argue. So there's no indication that he even thought about getting involved in that race. And then in 2021, the race that elected Aaron O'Toole, he was very, very close and incredibly close, like days away from announcing a campaign. He had assembled a team, he had booked media time, and then ultimately pulled back and said no. And there were all sorts of rumors circulating about the real reason, like, oh, maybe there was some, you know, big file of envelopes that landed on his desk that was going to come out if he ran, and no evidence of that. Then, you know, people saying, well,

maybe he didn't think he was going to win. And one theory that I heard from someone who, again, was partially speculating, they were kind of extrapolating from conversations they had had with Pierre, was that he didn't think his financial vision would be possible. Because this was, again, still in the throes of the pandemic. He sees money going out the door. He might have detected that this was going to be a losing mission for whoever won. But what's also interesting is that he was in neither of those races interested in being a kingmaker either. So he and Andrew Scheer are,

I mean, the way Scheer talks about it, the way Pierre talks about it, they're friends. They were elected together in 2004. They had a little trio with Jeremy Harrison at the time. They've been in the trenches of the Khmer Bleu

and other political fights. But Polyev didn't back Scheer when Scheer was running for conservative leader. Polyev didn't get involved at all. And in 2021, he similarly didn't get involved in the race. He didn't throw his support behind anyone. So that I find interesting because if you want to be finance minister, you want to at least have a favor owed to you by the person who's going to be the leader.

But he wasn't even motivated to do that. One thing I had no inkling of that happens around the time that Aaron O'Toole becomes the leader and shortly after is that Pierre Polyev had a book, whole book that he had written or quite close about the Canadian economy that's neveriev had a book, whole book that he had written or quite close, about the Canadian economy that's never appeared. Tell me about that book project. Yeah, it was a book called, it was going to be called Detonation, D-E-B-T, Onation.

And it was going to be his political manifesto, and it was going to be warning of the ticking time bomb that Canada's debt crisis was causing to the economy. And as I was writing the book, a video appears from Pierre Polyev, a documentary appears called Detonation. And he, in the video, has with his imagery and narration, a lot of the very same things that were going to be in this book. So he's clearly using the research he had from this book in a lot of the work he's doing now. There were, and again, it was never completed, completed, or if it was, I never saw a full manuscript, but he had circulated around to a lot of people. He had solicited feedback and canvas feedback from friends and

colleagues. And it was, I think, a very wonky book. I mean, it was not going to be this, you know, firebrand, culture warrior, crusading text that, you know, you might expect from the conservative movement of, you know, 2022 and beyond. But he had been laying the groundwork for this for several years. And one of the reasons he never published it, as I understood through it, was that some of the research had been done by his political staff. And there was an ethical question of, can you publish a commercial book that's been using government resources? And then also it was the timing, because the 2021 election comes, and then six months later, we're into a leadership race. And the timing just got away from him in that sense.

But it certainly showed that he had been really thinking about this issue in a much deeper way than I'd say a lot of people in politics do. Then there's this one fascinating moment for anyone who lives in Ottawa in the 2021 election, where he's going around the riding, telling people that he thinks it'd be a great idea public servants get to work from home rather than battling their way downtown to the office. That's, well, that's a subject of current controversy this week in Ottawa because the bosses of the public service have said, no, we're going to need you in a workplace three days a week. Do you see many instances where Pauliev is really conscious of the public service vote in his riding?

Yes. I mean, certainly before he was leader, yes. One of the early examples of this was the conservatives were, of course, elected in the shadow of the sponsorship scandal, were, of course, elected in the shadow of the sponsorship scandal, which was the case where you had the whistleblower who, you know, had really shined a light on what was happening. For the conservatives, this was a liberal corruption issue. This was an issue of liberal corruption. Polyev actually tried to take whistleblower protection and make it a pro-public service thing that he could canvas around his writing. So he took this thing that was on the national agenda, and he really tried to localize it by saying, hey, I want to support you guys. I want to protect you guys from doing this.

And he also was very keen. He wrote a letter to the editor to this effect at driving a wedge, at dividing the bureaucracy from the bureaucrats, and trying to describe what he called the two Ottawa's. And he was trying to sever, I think, the general conservative messaging about the public service from his representation of these public servants in his writing. I don't think he's done it as much now that he's been the leader. I think he's generally crusaded against government waste. I mean, CBC is a public service employer, whether you like it or not. So it hasn't been as much an issue for him now,

I would say. Now, I wanted to give you all the time in the world to talk through the work of your book before I get to the fun stuff, which is what's going to happen next. Because I've just come through a book tour and I have way too many questions about stuff that's not in the book. Is Trudeau going to run again?

Man, I don't know. Uh, so having allowed you to show your work, I want to ask what kind of prime minister do you think Pierre Polyev would be if he were to become prime minister? Oh, you're seeing, you're being generous. Cause that's also in the book. So I can, I can still promo the book by that. So I think, you know, I've tried to get the sense from people around him who have perhaps had that conversation with him. And then I'll talk about my own thoughts separate from those.

The best explanation I heard was that he is going to be like a Mike Harris, a term one Mike Harris, which for Ontarians, again, I mean, there are teachers in Ontario that haven't gotten over term one Mike Harris. So that might not be a positive, depending on who you ask. But it'll be a hit the ground running, very aggressive agenda. He will do exactly what he said.

And he has, I think, not left himself much room to hide on some stuff. Like Aaron O'Toole and Andrew Scheer, they started backtracking not long after their respective leaderships on a lot of the things they wanted to do. Pierre hasn't. I mean, he's ratcheted up the defund the CBC rhetoric. He's ratcheted up a lot of that stuff. So he hasn't left himself much wiggle room to get out of it. So I think that's going to be a big part of it. I think it's going to have to be a very aggressive first term, especially if it's a majority and you just don't have the ability or the guarantee to necessarily turn that into a second majority. Then I take it kind of on the

personal side, outside of what other people have told me and what I expect from him. And the one thing that I've learned from my own observations with him, him not for the book but for my show and elsewhere has been that he genuinely likes to go down these little rabbit holes i don't mean that in a negative way but he gets these little things that start as seeds and i don't know if someone mentioned something to him in a photo line or he reads something and i think the crypto stuff during the leadership is a great example of this like no one in can Canada was talking about Bitcoin or cryptocurrency except him but I think it was just a personal geek out of something he was interested in it he saw there was a an appetite for it in some subset of the Canadian population he could target for a leadership so he builds a policy around it and I think there

will be little things like that where he'll announce a policy that you might say, well, who asked for that? And it's not necessarily a bad one. It just might seem insignificant. But I think that's coming from him actually trying to look for the little things, not just the big picture. So I've got a few things I'm looking for. One is, can he stay on the right side of social conservatives?

That's essentially the topic of that page in my 2006 book that jumped out at you, was that he argued that Harper had essentially made a kind of a pact with social conservatives. You get this much and no more. But what we saw during COVID was that even Jason Kenney couldn't hang on to the conservatives in Alberta. And so that's one thing I'm going to look at. And the other thing I'm going to look for is, can he delegate at all? Because I haven't seen a lot of evidence that

he can hand off significant tasks to other people. And that's the sort of thing that burns out a prime minister pretty fast. So on the second one, I think it's going to be really interesting because I look around at the team he has and say, and I'm trying to think of who the cabinet is. And now obviously there are going to be really interesting because I look around at the team he has and say, and I'm trying to think of who the cabinet is.

And obviously there are going to be more MPs elected in 2025, but who the cabinet is going to be? And to be honest, what are the biggest issues on a government's agenda, finance and housing for the current landscape of politics? Well, those are issues that he has claimed as his own in a lot of ways, but he can't be his own housing minister. He can't be his own finance minister. I mean, technically he could, but unlikely that that will happen. So that'll be very interesting. And does he want a finance minister that's going to become the star or does he want someone that's going to be more of a muted,

understated role so that he can do the big picture stuff? I think you're right to point out that that's going to be something to watch. The social conservative issue I am less concerned about for him. And the reason why is because the social conservatives already don't really like him. And they certainly don't like the team around him. Social conservatives and Jenny Byrne do not, like, they hate her, like a lot of them. And that's a big distinction from the case in the last two elections, where Andrew Scheer was looked at by social conservatives as one of them, didn't really amount to all that much for them. So there was a betrayal aspect there.

And with Aaron O'Toole, he wasn't a social conservative, but he certainly courted them during the leadership compared to Peter McCain. He offered them things like conscience votes and things like that that weren't really being offered by anyone else. But then, of course, when, you know, Lesley Lewis is snubbed in shadow cabinet, like a lot of them felt, again, that sense of betrayal. So Polyev is in a very unique case in that he is the first leader in those last three leadership races to not owe social conservatives anything, to really win without actively going after their support. He didn't reject their support, but the thing that I've, and I've had this discussion with people that I know in that world, in the social conservative

activist world, is that a lot of them are one-issue voters. They care about abortion and that's it. But that's not the case of a lot of the people in the conservative movement who identify as socially conservative or identify as pro-life. And I think Polyev's leadership win really shows that. And that there are a lot of people that voted for him. They may be socially conservative, but that wasn't the motivating factor in how they voted. If it was, they would have gone for Lesley Lewis in that race. They were more motivated by objection to lockdowns, by, you know, financial stuff. And that I think is very key is that the social conservative movement is not just single issue voters. And that's, I think, shaped this leadership compared to the last two. What were you most surprised to learn about Polyev? Most surprised. So I would actually say that learning how much he canvases from others

in terms of feedback and input, it was actually quite a bit. To the point, actually, where it would belabor even simple decisions. Because everything is a calculation. Like, there's a silly little story in the book that goes back to something that John Iveson reported some years ago about when Pierre Polyev was elected and John Iveson asked him and Andrew Scheer and Jeremy Harrison, these three young guys, what are you going to call yourselves? And the context of that was that there had been the Rat Pack and the Snack Pack and, you know, these other little cohorts of rambunctious opposition MPs going back several years. And instead of just kind of shrugging and laughing it off and saying, oh, I don't know,

they convened this meeting. And late at night for several hours, they like tried all these different names out and tried to come up with something. So this little silly throwaway thing that a reporter had asked them became this convoluted process. And even during the leadership race, very simple decisions or what should be simple decisions like, hey, is Anna Polyev going to introduce him when he wins? We're really the source of just days or weeks of running all the angles, running all the scenarios. And a big part of that is because Pierre is internally trying to run these calculations, but he's also just calling up random people at all hours of the day and night to say, hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about this?

all hours of the day and night to say, hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about this? That struck me when I went out to Hamilton East, where Bob Bertina, the former Liberal MP, is supporting Ned Couric, the new Conservative candidate. And Ned mentioned a couple of times that he's gotten calls on files from Pierre Poiliev. And he wasn't even the nominated candidate yet. He's not in the caucus. I'm thinking, man, if Poiliev is calling this guy to ask him about stuff, he must be he wasn't even the nominated candidate yet. He's not in the caucus. I'm thinking, man, if Paul Yeba's calling this guy to ask him about stuff, he must be calling

like 40 or 50 people on the regular, you know? And that was a surprise because he's sure not calling me these days. Anyway, Andrew Lawton, thanks for a really fascinating look at a pretty significant character in our politics. Thank you, Paul. It's a pleasure. And congrats on your book as well.

Everyone's got a book. Andrews is called Pierre Pauliev, A Political Life. It's published by Sutherland House. It's coming out May 28th. And we'll talk again. Thanks for listening to The Paul Wells Show. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica in partnership with the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

Our producer is Kevin Sexton. Our executive producers are Laura Reguerre and Stuart Cox. Our opening theme music is by Kevin Bright and our closing theme music is by Andy Milne. And one more note, this wraps up our second season at the Paul Wells show. When we started last fall, I was planning to do 20 episodes. We've done 30.

They're archived on your favorite podcast app. You should go and check any episodes out that you've missed. And we'll be back in the fall, bigger than ever, I hope. Thanks for listening.