The Paul Wells Show - A Poilievre insider on the Conservative message

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Ben Woodfinden was Pierre Poilievre's communications director from 2022 until the end of April. He's no longer working for the Conservative party, but he defends the election campaign. He has a lot of thoughts about what just happened to Canadian conservatism, and what needs to happen next. 

How do you get your party's best result ever and still lose? As much as people say we blew a 25 point lead in the polls, you know, we didn't. It's not like our vote completely collapsed. The issue more than anything else was the votes of other parties collapsing. Today Ben Woodfinden, Pierre Poliev's former communications director. He has more spare time these days. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to the Paul Wells show.

This wasn't my first conversation with Ben Woodfinden, but it was the first one that didn't feature him looking around nervously to see who else might be listening. But it was the first one that didn't feature him looking around nervously to see who else might be listening. From 2022 until the end of April, Woodfinden was Pierre Poliev's communications director at the Conservative Party of Canada. Before that, he was a doctoral student at McGill. He's still only 31. Now, communications in the Conservative Leader's shop was generally conceived as a one-way-out activity. Everyone together decided what the leader would say, with Poliev himself taking most of the initiative, and Woodfinden playing a prominent role in the small team that supported the leader. But the whole process was pretty tightly controlled. Chatting with journalists in coffee shops

was not encouraged. That's all over. Woodfton is no longer working for the Conservative Party, his choice, and he has thoughts about what just happened to Canadian conservatism and what should happen next. He's been doing some writing since the election. He'll do more. And he dropped by my office the other day for an interview. He's still phrasing his analysis and his occasional criticism of the shop he just left quite carefully. He's still phrasing his analysis and his occasional criticism of the shop he just left quite carefully.

He's still genuinely happy to defend the 2025 campaign against criticism from journalists and from the Curse of Politics podcast. I think he brings a valuable perspective to this extraordinary year in politics. Ben Woodfendon, thank you for joining me. Thanks for having me. A lot of people who follow politics closely won't know who you are. It's probably a good thing for me. So.

How did you come onto Polio's radar? How did you get hired? My, I've been asked that question a few times. My, I wrote a piece for the hub in sometime, I think February, 2022. So just after leadership race had started and I was in. I wrote a piece for the hub in sometime, I think, February 2022, so just after Leadership Race had started. And it was a piece about this speech he'd given in the house called The Gatekeepers. In the piece that this turned into, I described

it as kind of a way to thread the needle between scratching a kind of populist itch, which is definitely, you know, in conservative politics is something you, it's growing, is a nice way to put it, and also kind of still speak to kind of conventional conservative issues and concerns, things about, you know, regulation, red tape, bureaucracy. But then the case I made in that piece, and this is, you know, I do feel proud, I'm very proud of the work that I did, we didn't win, but I'm proud of what I helped do. The case I made in that piece was that this message kind of creates an opportunity to build a new coalition between kind of younger Canadians,

newer Canadians, but people, working class Canadians, people who had been stifled by the gatekeepers, by these, you know, whether they're NIMBYs blocking housing, whether they're activists blocking pipelines, whether they're, you know, city hall bureaucrats, just over-regulating your life and creating this kind of sclerotic economy that we have now. There was a substantive message here that it was like, it's a populist message, but it was a way to speak to people, new people that you needed to win if you're ever going to form government and build this kind of new anti-gatekeepers coalition. That was how I kind of got on Pierre's radar is my understanding.

And then to be clear, I'm not the master architect of all this. I don't want anyone to think I'm, you know, claiming to be a puppet master or anything. But you know, I think the coalition that I called for in that piece, I went and reread the piece after the election, just as kind of a reminder of how it all started. And I felt vindicated that the coalition, broadly speaking, I'd written about there, was the coalition that we ended up putting together in the campaign.

And I think it's a coalition that it's worth trying to keep. It can stick together, and I think it's worth trying to keep it together. It needs to grow. But I think there's a good case to be made for what Pierre needs to do in the next couple years think there's, there's a good case to be made for why, what, what Pierre needs to do in the next couple of years to finish the job is to just expand this coalition as opposed

to trying to completely wipe the debt completely and start with something fresh. Are there models somewhere else of, uh, uh, uh, parties in other countries that are at other levels in Canada that have gotten to power on the same model? No, I think it's, and I think something I've had this conversation with many people that,

um, especially in Canada, that, um, the federal conservative party, obviously it's not formally affiliated with any of the provincial parties. And I'm, I don't think there's ever been any push to, for them to formally affiliate, but they shouldn't ever affiliate because the federal conservative party is a different

beast to any provincial party. There's similarities in some cases, but to build a national conservative coalition, it's much trickier than it is building coalitions provincially. I don't think there's anything like it at the provincial level. Internationally, I do think some of these, especially kind of the blue collar working class shift, you know, we did, I was very, I, so I went to high school in Cambridge and we flipped Cambridge this time around, which I was very, very happy about. And Cambridge is a good example of these kind of, these kind of like blue collary kind of Southern Ontario towns that we've, that historically the liberal, in the last decade, the liberals have done pretty well and they have a Cambridge.

The NDP, of course, held some of these, these course held some of these Windsor seeds and we flipped a ton of those and that was part of this kind of broader working class realignment to the right. And that is, I think we accelerated it and I think Pierre, we worked really hard on a lot of that. We did very well with kind of union endorsements, things like that during the campaign, which they matter as a signal to voters that you you know, you're actually, you are serious about this stuff, even if a lot of those union workers already vote for you. So those shifts, I think they're happening everywhere in the Western world. The newer Canadians and the

younger Canadians, I think that is, that's not entirely unique. Especially young men are shifting to the right in lots of different places. And we did quite well with young men. So, so there are, there are some parallels and like, look, I, I hesitate to bring this up because I don't want to make the comparison, but the coalition of people that voted for Trump did include like young men, right? And I don't want to call it the Trump coalition. It's the Poliev coalition. It's a different beast, but Trump also did better than you would perhaps in theory expect

with kind of, um, I hate this term, but ethnic voters. And we did very well with new Canadians, especially in places like the GTA. So yeah, there are similarities there, but I think that the poly of coalition, when you put all this together and you try and you then have to kind of mix it in and combine it with the unique kind of regional divides and conflicts and coalitions in Canada. I don't think there's anything quite like it anywhere else. I think it is a unique coalition that, I don't

think it could work anywhere else either. When did you come in as communications director? Directly after the leadership? Or? Just after, yeah. I think I started officially in October, about a month after, after he won the leadership. So October of 22.

Yeah. I asked because it seems like there were misfires at first or incorrect choices of issues to run on or simply that it took a while to catch on because, so he becomes leader in September 22 and it's kind of the end of the summer of 23 before you guys really start taking off.

of the summer of 23 before you guys really start taking off. So one of my hunches about that is that most of that intervening 10 months, he was on Trudeau's pals at McKinsey and the sort of consultantocracy and he was on especially foreign interference. And those were, those were not firing. And then when it became housing prices, then you started to get some traction.

Is that, is there anything to that? And feel free to say that. I sort, I, I agree. It, I will say, so, you know, it was very interesting being, um, on the inside for some of the kind of, it's been an eventful few years in Canadian politics. And so you, you get to have a front row seat to some interesting stuff.

I do recall the foreign interference stuff, which I forget exactly. I want to say it was kind of in the spring of the winter and the spring of 23. Yeah. But I might be wrong on that, but, um, this stuff is hugely important, but do I think it broke through with voters?

Not, not at all. And, um, you know, it's a shame because it's, you know, you wish that you would hope that This stuff is hugely important, but do I think it broke through with voters not not at all and you know, it's a shame because it's you know, you wish that you would hope that these kinds of important issues break through but I'm kind of I would what you call them kind of abstract intellectual terms I'm a materialist in that I think material interests are ultimately what drive voters and drive people more than anything else so things like house prices things like more than anything else. So things like house prices, things like inflation, things like the cost of living, things like crime too. These are the kinds of issues that drive voters because

ultimately they matter more than anything else in people's real, in people's lives. And I don't think that we, like I, part of, part of why we took off, I think probably in the polls, about a year after, like it was in the summer after that's when we first started going up. And I don't think that was so much about making mistakes in the first 12 months. I think it's more that they just took time for, it took time for people to kind of realize who he was. Being an opposition leader is hard to break through sometimes. And we, I think Pierre became the master of control in the narrative for quite some time.

One of the things that I learned in the job was that there's one advantage to being an opposition. Obviously, you prefer to be in government. There's one advantage to being an opposition, which is you don't actually have to talk about everything. You can pick and choose what things you want to talk about because you're not the government. It's not your job to respond to literally everything. It's your job to hold the government to account. But in terms of what you make your core message, the government

in some ways is actually more constrained, right? Because the government has to respond to the issues of the day. If there's something major that comes up, the government has to respond. In opposition, you still have to respond, but you can be more choosy and more selective about what you make your kind of core message. And I think, you know, we crafted a message, a core message that was focused on crime, cost of living, affordability that resonated with a lot of people. And so I don't think it was about mistakes so much as I just think sometimes that it takes time for stuff to break through, especially in kind of wider audiences. And I also think, look, that undeniably, what was, what happened was that there was fatigue

with Trudeau and Trudeau became very unpopular. And I think he became more and more, obviously became more and more unpopular as time went on. So I think there was probably a breaking point, probably around 2023 when people really, when he really kind of, it wasn't just that we started rising as that he started falling as well. I want to ask about two issues that really kind of, it wasn't just that we started rising, it's that he started falling as well. Okay. I want to ask about two issues that form kind

of the prehistory of this whole period, which are the freedom convoy and the COVID restrictions and vaccine requirements. Pauliev parked himself quite clearly in support of the convoy with the caveat that he was against people who destroyed property, property broke the laws and behaved badly. And sort of less clarity on vaccine restrictions,

but there were a succession of former Queens Park government staffers who were hired in Ottawa after having been sent packing because of concerns over the Ford government's vaccine requirements and at least two candidates, Roman Baber and Jamil Javani. Why were those the positions that he deemed worth taking and how do you think that played later on when, as memory started to fade a bit? Look, I don't think that the convoy and COVID featured all that much in the last campaign. I think the memories have faded and I think the

way we've, I don't know if this is provocative or not, but I think that something I learned during the pandemic was that just reading about the history of pandemics was that often you get these kind of collective societal responses where people, there was a pandemic in the 60s that I'd never heard of before, that people just kind of memory hole. And honestly, that's probably a healthy collective social response to kind of social traumas like this So we need to learn lessons from pandemic, but I think people have moved on it feels like a long time ago to people

So I don't think it played a role in the campaign really I think look the difference between say Between kind of the PCs in Ontario and the federal conservatives over some of the and the federal conservatives over some of the COVID stuff is probably, is a good example of what I was saying before that like no provincial conservative party is the same as the federal, it's a different beast. And Pierre has a well thought out consistent worldview and he's a freedom guy, right?

He wants to make this country more free place. And I think I will say, I am someone that kind of leans in the more of a kind of peace order and good government kind of type. But I also found by the end of the lockdown. You're more of a Tory. Yeah, more of a Tory, that's a better way to put it. But by the end of the pandemic, I was also very frustrated with a lot of the lockdowns

and rules and stuff. And I think a lot of people were too, and people can have difference of opinions on the convoy and exactly what it stood for and what it meant. But like I think broadly speaking, Pierre is a guy that he wants his country to be as free as possible. So I think that very much faded from memory. And now I think for me at least, it feels like a distant memory.

Is he an easy guy to be a communications director for? I mean, like does he sit around guy to be a communications director for? I mean, like does he sit around waiting to be asked, how should I communicate? He, Pierre is, and I mean this sincerely, he is the hardest working guy I've ever come across in my entire life. He is, and again, I mean, this is a compliment, but he is relentless.

And it's because he believes in what he says. And so he's hard to work for in the sense that you have to work hard to keep up with him. But again, I think that's what you want in your politicians. You don't want lazy, lazy politicians. And he thinks for himself. He's not just a trained seal who just says what he's told to say. And again, that's a good thing. One of Pierre's strengths is that he's authentic. The guy you see is who he is. And I would never claim, and I've never claimed that I was some sort of like messaging mastermind behind him.

Like his messaging is very much him. And even, you know, going back to the gatekeeper stuff, that was not me. You know, he used that kind of messaging, but it was his messaging, right? That was his speech in the House of commons that where it comes from. So, um, and Pierre, Pierre's, you know, he's been, he's been, as people point out, he's been an MP for a long time and, uh, he has crafted and honed those skills, right?

He's, I think Pierre is probably the most, certainly conservative politics, the most gifted communicator in a long, long time. By the summer of 24, you're like 147 points up in the polls. And especially after the Toronto St. Paul's by-election, the prime minister Trudeau was essentially hiding.

But there were two obvious potential wildcards on the horizon. One was that Donald Trump get reelected. It was a kind of common knowledge that the liberals were hoping that that would happen at some level. And the other was that Trudeau might leave and suddenly the easiest guy to beat would not be the guy you had to beat.

Were those concrete preoccupations, were there just discussions about how to handle each of those things if they happened? Look, I don't want to give away too much of kind of internal deliberations, but people were certainly aware of Trump and I think I, I know others internally also thought Trump was going to win.

So it wasn't like we were surprised by it. Um, the one thing I know that there's been a lot of kind of armchair quarter backing about this since but as much as Trump would have posed a challenge to us in some ways no matter what I don't think anyone saw coming the 51st state stuff the tariff stuff he didn't campaign on that Trump 1.0 didn't talk No didn't talk about that and so even if there was reasons to be worried about What Trump would mean for us, I don't think anyone saw that coming. And yeah, and it changed this country,

changed politics in this country almost overnight. And look, I think I'm of the view that had Trudeau still left and had Trump not won and currently becomes the leader, we have an election without the Trump stuff hanging over it. It just becomes the election that We have an election without the Trump stuff hanging over it. It becomes the election that would have been the kind of a cost of living change, affordability election. I don't think Carney's nearly as effective because I think a lot of what would have been Carney's weaknesses in a non-Trump world became strengths, right? He's not a particularly charismatic guy.

He comes across as this kind of somber banker. In a moment of kind of populist ferment, I don't know that that's actually a strength. I think that's a weakness. But all of a sudden when, I think it was Abacus that had data about precarity versus stability, like in a world where all of a sudden a lot of voters are looking for some sort of stability, he undoubtedly presented as a kind of reassuring figure in that regard. So I think Trump winning, then the 51st state stuff, and then Trudeau leaving, I think it was a perfect storm to kind of combine for what ultimately happened in the campaign. And, you know, like, look, I am biased,

obviously, because I worked on the campaign. I think the liberals got very lucky, quite frankly, and that's not to say that we didn't make mistakes or that there weren't things we could have done differently, but the reason that they recovered from polling collapse to the highest vote share in a long, long time was external factors or technically what you call exogenous events, events you can't control. You were getting free advice by the end of week

one of the election from Corey Tenik, among others saying, well, you're free to respond to exogenous events by pulping your platform and running on a different conception of the political space. Look, the one thing I, again, people can, people can have different opinions on these things. It's just wrong to say that we didn't, you know, talk about Trump.

We pre-campaign, so around February we did, you know, we had a kind of a push over space, of course, weeks that culminate in the speech on February 15th. And I remember this because I remember being, I spent my Valentine's day evening the night before with Pierre, we're helping him on a speech. And we did have a very, very, what I think was a good message there. And that was the Canada first rally in Ottawa,

the convention center. Yeah, the convention center. And, you know, I invite people to go back and read that. And so I reject this idea that we just ignored Trump and didn't talk about him. We didn't adapt our messaging to the new circumstance. But I will also say that, you know, we did not, I hate this word, but like we did not

fully pivot away from our core message, right, which was about cost of living, crime, affordability and ultimately about change. And that was the right decision. And, you know, it's a pointless kind of counterfactual, but I suspect had let's say we had completely just gone full Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, nothing else throughout the campaign, I suspect we might have lost a substantial number of seats because the I think what what the kind of Trump. And again, I'm going to go back to that stability and precarity kind of framing of it. What Trump did wasn't so much, I don't think he so much benefits any political ism in the ideology of any party.

I think he benefits incumbents. And you're seeing this all over the world, right? The same thing happened in Australia recently as well, where he destabilizes things and then people look for stability. And naturally people look to the incumbent incumbent to the government for that stability so I don't think there was ever a world where we could fully if we'd fully pivoted to Trump and we were trying to fight exclusively on those terms I think that would have been a mistake and it's not that again it's not that we didn't talk about Trump we did

and we incorporated into our messaging we made sure that it was you know we we did a series of announcements that were about responding to Trump. And we tried, the message we presented was that, look, we ultimately, we can't control Trump. But what we need to do is make sure this country is in a position of strength going forward so that we are not weak and vulnerable to these kinds of threats. And I will note that the government has, you know, that Pierre has been noting that they've been copying a lot of our ideas, which I don't think is a bad thing. If they actually get

good things done, then that's good for the country. But we did not abandon our core message, which was ultimately about change and about the lost liberal decade, as we called it, and how much harder life has become. And look, we lost, but if you had told me when I took the job in 2022, that we would get I think 41.3% of the vote was with the final, the final tally, we would get 41.3% of the vote. And you would have an election campaign where we'd barely hear talk about guns and abortion. I would have, I would have taken that without any questions asked, right? It's just that this happened to be a one in a hundred election that ultimately that wasn't enough because it became a two-party race. But I think the reason we still managed to build, make gains, build this coalition was

precisely because we didn't just abandon our message for change. And my advice publicly has been and privately has been that the desire for change is not going to, I think, go anywhere. Um, I think it might bubble down a little bit in the short term, but I think ultimately in the long term, unless the government actually does manage to bring in some serious changes, which I'm skeptical they'll be able to do, um, that desire for change is going nowhere. So. Is this play basically to hang onto his coalition and wait for Carney to lose his? Look, I, I am not involved in these internal kind of deliberations anymore. So my view is always that you control the

things you can control and you don't worry about the things that you can't control in the same way. So we can't control what happens to Carney's coalition in the same way that we can control what happens to our coalition. Um, so the goal should be to keep that coalition needs to grow.

And one thing I do think is that there's a very good chance that Federal politics is going to be in my I don't think the end of here may be dead forever But I think they're gonna have a hard time coming back anytime soon And so if this is a you know in a three-party race of the end up here getting Even 10 15 percent of the vote 41 percent of the vote for us would have been more than enough but if it's a two-party race, then it's not enough. So you need to figure out a way to grow. And I think what we need to do is we have this change coalition that we've assembled.

I think we need to kind of add final couple pieces to that change coalition. And I think Carney's coalition is unstable. He ran a campaign that was an anti-campaign more than anything else, right? It was about opposition to Trump and, you know, elbows up. And in doing so, he built this coalition of kind of, I'm going to, I'm painting a broad brush here, but he built a coalition of boomers and progressives. These were the people he kind of brought in to get to where he did in the vote.

And I'm not sure that urban progressives and kind of wealthy, home owning boomers are as a particularly stable coalition and that the desire for change, I suspect Carney actually does want to be quite a transformative PM. Doesn't mean he will be, but I think he wants to be. But that desire for change is not like the, the boomer kind of base that is now, I think the base of the liberal party.

They don't want change. Like they benefit immensely from the status quo. So like, I mean, you've said on Twitter, uh, that, that explains Gregor Robertson saying housing prices can't fall. And, and you said housing prices obviously need to fall. Is that a thing where the, uh, Carney's voters are stakeholders in the current system and

therefore can't handle change in the current system? Yeah. Like the, the fundamental reality and it's, it's hard for politicians to say this, but it's, it's undeniably true and everyone knows it is that housing is too expensive. Housing has gotten unaffordable and that the

only way housing gets more affordable is if it costs less and you know, everyone's talking about building more, some increasing supply. Increasingly, there's an on a more honest discussion about the demand side as well. But rule 101 of any basic economics is that if demand, if supply goes up and demand goes down, then the price will fall. And that is what we're doing.

That is what everyone's stated goal is. And the idea that you could kind of carve out, that you can have special, basically you can siphon off a whole section of the housing market that's affordable housing and then leave the rest, leave house prices untouched. Well, if you build enough affordable housing, then there'll be less demand for that other housing so the price will come down. So yeah, I think there is a, it is classic politicians having to be careful with, you know, what they say and trying to be all things to all people.

And as much as there is a increasingly broad coalition of people in this country that want change that do not benefit from the status quo and want to see some significant changes, there's also a big group of people who benefit from the status quo and who do not want to see change. And I will say housing was an issue that I'm 31, so I'm going to be okay. I'll probably be able to buy a house eventually. But housing, I won't say radicalized me, but it sort of did. It changed how I thought my life was going to look.

And so there's all these arguments about fairness and having having people break into that and fairness for young people making sure the the other argument for why we actually just need to Break our kind of addiction to real estate is that it's actually really bad for the economy more broadly. It sucks up so much capital and investment that You know real estate is fundamentally not productive. So if we want to kind of get out of this sclerotic So if we want to kind of get out of this sclerotic economic situation we find ourselves in, we actually need to, we need to break our addiction to real

estate. We've got a couple of big questions, like big picture questions coming, but a couple more details from the campaign that have stuck with me. One was the decision not to have a media plane. One was the decision to have sort of those reporters who could on the day make it to the event, hurling their questions across 200 yards of empty

space to the leader. Why did he do that and how do you think it went? Um, like I, to be clear, I was not, I was not involved in our media, in media stuff during the campaign, so I, um, I do want to be careful what I say here, but I quite frankly think media love to talk nothing more than to talk about themselves. So I think a lot of this was just inside baseball stuff. Do I think, do I think that could have things could have been done differently?

Yeah, I do. I don't want to really get into that, but I don't think we had an issue reaching voters. And part of the strength of what Pierre has built is that because he, because he's, he does politics a bit differently and he communicates a bit differently and he can reach voters directly in a way that other politicians don't and can't and it's because he has built large social media followings, large platforms and I think the way Pierre communicates and his approach to this kind of stuff is the future of politics broadly speaking as the media landscape becomes more and more fragmented and the kind of the legacy media, which is kind of, I don't want to be careful to say here too, but it's, you know, it's kept on life support basically by government subsidies, right? And I do think that the way that politicians

approach media is going to increasingly reflect kind of this more kind of different world we find ourselves in. Okay. This wasn't going to be my next question, but it follows logically. One of the most astonishing things in this campaign was that his platform commitment was

to keep the media on life support by and large. Double the local journalism initiative, keep Radio Canada, no mention of most of the other liberal subsidy programs. It appeared always been consistent on keeping RadCan. Now you can argue about how easy that is, whether you can just sever the two, but

that was not a new position during the campaign. The local journalism initiative and the news ... Look, I have my own views on those things. I confess I am not a... I do not think it's healthy for media to be on government support. So you can probably guess what I think about that. But in so many of these things, you're in guess what I think about that. In so many of these things, you're in a kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of position where let's say Pierre come out one day and just said, I'm going to cut all these subsidies. Well, what do you think every media question would have been for the rest of the campaign?

It would have been. And I actually do think, and this is, you know, with the local journalism initiative at Kwebbel, the way the program actually works, but I do think there probably is going to have to be some sort of role in Canada for some sort of government support for local media. Now, how you do that, I think is open for debate and the experts and the wonks can have those arguments, but it'd be very interesting to know what would happen in this country if, let's say you could just click your fingers and all those media subsidies disappeared overnight. You would have a moment, I suspect, of kind of Schumpeterian creative destruction where

a lot of stuff would collapse very quickly. And then new stuff would kind of pop up in its place. But what that media landscape looks like, who knows? And I will say, I may be an outlier on this, but I'm a... I think there is a conservative case for a public broadcaster of some sort. And I don't know if you know that CBC these days meets it, but I do think in theory there's a case for it. And if I was CBC, I would be pumping as much money as I could into opening

local outlets as many places, as many small places in much money as I could into opening local outlets as many places as many small places in the country as I could and ensuring that they were staffed with serious journalists that do serious local reporting because I do think that is something where I think there is a market for a lot of media but I suspect local media is one of those things where the market's a bit trickier and where the market incentives are not quite as aligned as they are for say, you know, they'll always be a press gallery. They'll always be people that are willing to cover federal politics, but. Well, what's going to be our next question is another big surprise in the

campaign was that he participated in the consortium debate instead of telling all of these legacy media to bugger off and he was gonna find his own places to make his message. I don't know if it was a surprise. I think, look, I hope that was the last consortium debate and I think it probably will be, but I had to guess. But again, it's just a classic Canadian thing where, let's say we had said we had said we weren't going to participate.

I doubt there would have been an alternative debate that all the other parties would have agreed to do. In fact, I'm sure, uh, the liberal team would have loved to just basically not have a debate. And so, um, you know, you got to, you, it's, it's not a game, but you play with, even if you don't like the rules of the game, you

have to play within them. So I don't know, I don't think people should be particularly surprised by that decision. Here's the big question. Why did he lose? Uh, that's a big question. Um, he. And you go first and then I'll tell you some

of the things that I've been thinking. Fair. And we'll compare notes. Yeah. I genuinely think that the, what has happened since Trump became president is a He has changed the world and changed history potentially I

Think he has done damage to the reputation of the United States now that I do not think he's going to be fixed by another president I think the rest of the world is less willing to trust America and I I think the way that that's changing the entire international order is significant. And so we had an election that was taking place in this kind of world historic moment. And like I say, plenty of people foresaw that Trump might be an issue for us. But I do not believe anyone that thought it would be an issue in the way that it ended being. And the 51st state staff, theiff staff was came out of nowhere and It changed politics in this country overnight by the end of the campaign. There was two elections

there was broadly speaking a change election and then there was a Trump election and We won the change one that we didn't win the Trump one and again These are all like kind of pointless counterfact hypotheticals, but I suspect had the campaign been two weeks longer It did feel towards the ends if the Trump stuff was fading a little bit and we did we did have momentum in those final Days, I suspect had the E-Day been a couple weeks later I think that's a very good chance that the result might have been different as well. So but even I also don't know that there was Even if we had done

Even if all the people that are saying we should have pivoted entirely to Trump or we should have done this, we should have done that, even if we had done all of that, I suspect we still probably would have lost because I think Trump again just benefits incumbents in a way that it's it's there's now a pattern emerging around the world. So that's the first one. The second reason we lost is that we lost a, we won a three party race and we lost a two party race.

And as much as people say we blew a 25 point lead in the polls, you know, we, we didn't, you know, like around Christmas we were at like 45% in some polls, I think we were never getting 45% of the vote. I don't think. And I think in turn there was an awareness of that too, which was not like our vote completely collapsed. The issue more than anything else was the vote of other parties collapsing.

So I'm a little hesitant to deliver sweeping pronouncements because this was the biggest conservative vote since the founding of the modern party. It was the biggest conservative vote since 1988. You didn't exactly get your teeth handed to you in this election. since 1988. You didn't exactly get your teeth handed to you in this election. But

I also think that in very dangerous times, a lot of voters said that they needed an adult and there was only one on offer, that Poliev had never shown any particular interest in governing, had put too much faith in the notion that opposition is meant to oppose. And therefore people had a hard time seeing him as a potential leader of a government. The other thing is I think he was fake tough. I think if you hide in your basement and you talk smack on social media about what an incompetent the premier of British Columbia is, but you've

never met the premier of Ontario, people notice that. Let me think how to respond to this. I do think, had we had an election 12 months ago, I think the. I hate to interrupt, but if he would oblige me with even a coffee, I would have told him that to his face at any time in the last three years. Look, Pierre is, he is, and I mean, this is

a compliment, he is a fighter. And that's how he, I think as he perceives of himself, that's kind of what he's built his brand on for lack of a better word. And one thing I don't think is that I don't think Pierre was in... Your job as opposition leader is to oppose and it's to attack, right? And so his persona is well built for that. And I think during the campaign, you know, we've had criticisms from other people for doing this, but I actually think that the person you saw

every day at the podium for Pierre was actually, I think he looked like a prime minister. I think he sounded very serious. Pierre has been, for the last couple of years, relentlessly focused on domestic issues, that's true, but I don't think that is where voters usually are. I think this was the one in a hundred election where that kind of international stuff, foreign policy stuff actually mattered a bit more and Again, I think a lot of this is not about so much Pierre about conservatives or liberals I think it's very easy to look like the prime minister when you are the prime minister and

Being an incumbent went from being an enormous liability very liberal leader took and said something hanging around their neck to an enormous advantage. And there's a reason like I would have to go back and count, but the, the, the amounts of days that Carney took off during the campaign to be prime minister, you know, I'm sure there was some real business needs to be done, especially on some of the days when the tariffs, tariffs were actually imposed, but he took other days off too, when he was just, they were, they were clearly, they saw that there was an advantage to him looking like a prime minister, being prime minister. And it's just, again, it's, it's an enormous advantage for incumbents right now. And there, there is a pattern emerging around the world where Trump destabilizes

politics and countries, and it benefits incumbents where voters were ready to throw them out, um, and then all of a sudden votes become a bit less certain of that kind of change. And the kind of change that I ultimately think Pierre wants to deliver is significant change. He understands that there's a lot of things in this country that need to change and that there are reforms that are needed. And he never ultimately shied away from them. So you know, some people might say that makes him look like less of a prime minister.

I don't think so. I think had he won, had he become, if we were sitting here now talking about Prime Minister Pyotr Polyaev, he would have wanted to be a transformative reform-focused prime minister. That again, he looks, once he's prime minister, he looks like one, but change, look, look, being an agent of change actually makes you look not like an incumbent. So again, I think it's, it's, I don't think it's so much about him not being an adult in the room. I think it's much more about the incumbency and looking prime ministerial in a moment when being prime minister went from being a disadvantage to an advantage. Okay. I gave a speech the day after the damned vote and someone asked when, uh, how long this

minority government would last. And I thought, I've never heard of a, a more unfair question, so I'll put it to you. How long do you think, how long do you think will last before an election? I look, I don't think we're going to have an election anytime soon. I think this is going to be a marathon and

endurance race for the conservatives now. And I don't want to spec, I don't, I don't know either. And I think a lot could change very quickly in the world. Um, and I think there's a world where if this Trump stuff does get resolved, I do think it's going to get resolved one way or another. Um, and if that kind of fades, um, and then the focus shifts back more onto domestic issues, shall we say. I think you could see the big change in polling quite quickly again as well. But if I had to get, look, it's a minority government, but right now it's certainly a functioning majority. There's no, the NDP are in no position to bring the government down, the block are licking their wounds. Pierre has to win a seat again.

So as much as it's a minority, it's a de facto majority. And I think this one will go for quite some time, if I had to guess. I think it could go. And it's ultimately now as well, it's a stronger minority than the previous government was. And it's one where ultimately the government will probably get to choose if and in the last two elections, they've picked moments of crisis, right? Or they've picked a, you know, in 2021 they picked COVID and the pandemic and then they used Trump this time.

Who knows what I think the world is becoming much more unstable or if I can say unstable, unpredictable. So who knows what's going to happen? You know, in the last couple of years we've had a pandemic, we've had this Trump, we've had Trump threatening to turn us into the 51st state. Who knows what's going to happen in the next couple of years. So if I had to guess, this is going to be a long minority. So I do hear it put to me that all it takes is an inexperienced whip to count the vote

wrong and you guys are off to the races. But my hunch is that Pierre Poliev has no interest in re-asking this question immediately. He needs the context to change before it becomes an interesting question again. The con- I also just think, look, voters could simultaneously develop an appetite for change, which I don't think has gone anywhere very quickly. But then still not once an election, right? Most people don't like elections.

They're exhausting and, you know, they are exhausting, try working one of them. But I'm hesitant to try and make predictions about the future right now, because I do think things are genuinely more precarious globally and domestically than they've been in a long time. You know, there's interesting things happening in Alberta, there's we could have a separate government in Quebec in in 18 months, I think less than 18 months. So the domestic context could change as well. And it could be good for Kearney. It could be bad for Kearney.

I ultimately think he, like I said earlier, I do think he wants to reform. He wants to be a transformative leader. I've had it put to me by, I won't name any names, but by liberals I've talked to, that it's not clear how long he wants to stick around. One can't imagine. Carney, I believe him when he says he kind of, as much as he's been angling to be Prime

Minister for a decade, this was a moment of crisis that he felt, you know, he was well suited for. So I'll take him at his word on that, that he thinks that. But what happens if that moment of crisis passes and, you know, he's, the day we're speaking, he's taking his, he's taking a seat in the house for the first time. I'd be, I'd be very curious to see if Kearney ends up liking or not liking Question Period, because he's never done it before. Right. And I think that kind of his desire for change and desire to be transformative and ability to deliver on it are going to be complicated by the fact that I alter as a city that can swallow people and the kind of the blob for lack of a better word eats people up and I don't see any reason to think that Carney in fact all the science at far suggest that blob is just kind of he's

being sucked into it quite quickly and he I suspect if he is and again that the tensions in his coalition of the desire for change versus the voters that don't want change, he's got a lot to juggle there. So as much as he might feel kind of all powerful right now, he's going to face challenges very quickly. And if he struggles to deliver that kind of change, he may find that frustrating. He may become very unpopular. He may not, who knows. One thing I've never quite understood is that politics is the only line of the only business,

the only line of work where inexperience is a strength and it's a profession in some ways, it's a craft in other ways. Learning how the house works, learning how to get legislation, so obviously you have teams around you that can help you with that. Learning how to navigate kind of you know the bureaucracy and the PCO and that kind of stuff. It's the kind of thing where experience actually, I think, probably is useful for the hard realities of governing. And as much as he's, you know, he has governed, he's been a governor of two banks and he's done other very impressive things, he's never done this before. And he's going to have to learn quickly. And he's also going to have to learn quickly and not get eaten up by Ottawa if he wants to be a change agent.

And if he doesn't do that, not only will he disappoint people, I suspect he will become quite frustrated with kind of what he's able to accomplish as well. Well, come on back when that happens and we'll talk some more. Yeah. I asked about half of the stuff I wanted to ask,

but I think we've got a good down payment on, on, on this discussion. Ben Woodfinnen, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to The Paul Wells Show. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica. 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. We'll be back next Wednesday.