The Paul Wells Show - Butts, Bevan, Aitchison: what next?

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

Two top Liberal advisors and one Conservative MP look back at the election.  Andrew Bevan was the national campaign director for the Liberal Party. Gerald Butts was a senior advisor to the Carney campaign and formally acted as Justin Trudeau's principal secretary.  Scott Aitchison is the MP for Parry Sound-Muskoka.

Well Canada, you've elected a government. I hope you're satisfied. I for one was a quite frightened Canadian about what was going on in the country and what we were facing. Now a few weeks after Easter I'm very relieved that the country's in the hands of an adult. This week, two of Mark Carney's top advisors and one of Pierre Poiliev's least shy MPs. It's not the outcome we wanted or expected, but we've made some great progress too. We've got a lot to talk about. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to the Paul Wells Show. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to the Paul Wells Show. Well that was something.

Canadians turned out in pretty decent number on Monday night, and in the weeks leading up to it, to elect a new government. Or to refuse to elect a new government. Or to disagree about whether to elect a new government. Or after it was done, whether they had elected a new government, or to disagree about whether to elect a new government, or after it was done, whether they had elected a new government. Anyway, Mark Carney is still the prime minister, but his liberals seem to have fallen short of a majority. Pierre Poliev took the conservatives to their highest share of the popular vote in decades, but he lost in his own riding. The NDP and the Green Party had a lousy night.

The Bloc had a bad night, but not terrible. We'll be pondering the significance of all of this for months, but we might as well get started now. I spoke to Gerald Butts, a senior advisor to the Carney campaign, and according to legend, the guy Justin Trudeau met at McGill University. And to Scott Acheson, the re-elected conservative MP for Perry Sound Muskoka. But first up, I've got Andrew Bevin, who was hired as the Liberals' National Campaign Director for what he thought would be Justin

Trudeau's last campaign. He ended up running Mark Carney's first campaign. It's been that kind of a year. Here's my interview with Andrew Bevin. Andrew Bevin, thanks for joining me. I'm very happy to be here, Paul. Good to see you. It is good to see you and good to catch up. Where were you last night on election night? Well, first of all, in the hotel where the leader, the prime minister was hold

up watching the results and then moved over to a TD place where we were having the celebration. And we had a number of rooms there to watch the results come in. So was there from probably about 10 o'clock until almost three o'clock in the morning, I think. The results had to be a little shy of your best hopes.

Yep, that is true. The results had to be a little shy of your best hopes. Yep, that is true. Expected them to be a bit better than they currently are. I mean, it looks like there's some hope for a few more seats to come along, but it's certainly true that in Ontario especially, we didn't meet our expectations. We'll get into why that happened. And also just the astonishing rollercoaster that you

and the Liberal Party have been on over the last year. But what do you think this result means for a newish Liberal Prime Minister's ability to govern? Well, I mean, look, it looks like there's the possibility of a fairly stable minority given there are presently seven NDP seats. So I think that stability is certainly possible, but you know, it's the context of the life of a government changes quickly, especially in minority situations usually. So we'll see. I mean, I think that the prime minister was very clear last night in stating his objective of working collaboratively with folks. And I think that the prime minister was very clear last night in stating his objective of working collaboratively with folks.

And I think that on top of that, there are a number of areas, many areas actually, especially again in the context of our political times where there was some general agreement about where the country needs to go and how to get there. So I think it's going to be interesting as it always is in minority parliaments, but there was the prospect and possibility of some stability, I think. Now you were Christopher Freeland's chief of staff when she was finance minister in the latter part of her time there. Uh, you were brought in as campaign manager when Jeremy Broadhurst decided he didn't want to play

that role anymore. Have you done your time in Ottawa? Are you going to have a role in the new government? Obviously. I mean, I, you know, I have, I have not been thinking about it. I mean, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, Jeremy Broadhurst decided he didn't want to play that role anymore. Have you done your time in Ottawa? Are you going to have a role in the new government? Obviously. I mean, I, you know, I have, I have not been thinking about that until we got through yesterday.

I know for sure I needed to take some time at home. I've been away from home. I don't live in Ottawa, so I've been away from home for the last year and a half. So I have to, um, have to get to know my family again, but we'll see how things play out over the coming weeks. Um, I know I've been in and out of politics over the last 30 plus years, one way or the other, and I suspect I'll be in and out for a certain amount of time yet, but we'll see what happens next. So let's go back, as I say, to the events of the last year.

Hearst had been assigned, not for the first time to run a national campaign for the liberal party. He withdrew and suddenly the bottle stopped spinning and it was pointed at you. What was your reaction when asked if you would run the next national campaign for the liberals? Well, I mean, look, I mean, the prime minister called me and said, would you do this?

And I, two things came to mind immediately. And it wasn't a total surprise that, that going to ask me, to be frank. But first thing is, you don't say no to a prime minister in these kinds of situations, unless you've got a very, very good reason to. And the only good reason to say no in that situation to me was if I had thought that there was no possibility whatsoever of winning, then obviously I would have said no. But I said to the PM of the time that I you know I wanted to take on the role and I'm taking on because I do see a possibility not a strong possibility at that time but a possibility of how we could get from here to there and that was mostly because and just to give you some further context this call was

Thanksgiving weekend so before the US election but I was at that point pretty convinced that Trump was going to win the US election and Thought that the probability of that changing the complexion of our political situation in Canada Let alone around the world was high Didn't realize it was going to be quite as high as it's become over the last four months in terms of what? The way that the Trump administration has operated, but certainly thought that it was going to change political trajectories or had the possibility of doing so for everyone.

And so took it on and was happy to do so. And since then, as you said earlier on, it's been a bit of a roller coaster for six months. It sounds like you're saying that absent a reelected Donald Trump, you didn't see a path forward. Well, I don't know about that because it was such an overwhelming force, the possibility of Trump. Um, so I didn't have to think much past that, if you know what I mean.

Yeah. Organizationally, what state was the campaign in when you inherited it? Not bad. There was lots that had been done and you know, some of this is because the Liberal Party of Canada is a strong institution. It's led by a very impressive national director, Zam Ishmael, who and a bunch of people here who are permanent employees of the party who make sure that the party is in good shape

all the time. Now, having said that, we know we had a lot of work to do to catch up on where we were in the nomination process. We had a fair bit of work to figure out exactly what we're doing in terms of the strategic framework of the campaign to come. Although at that time, again, remember that we thought that probably there's going to be a fair bit of time until a campaign would actually be upon us. So on the one hand, we wanted to get as much done by Christmas as we could. Marjorie Michel came in with me as the Deputy Natural Campaign Director,

and she especially took on a lot of the weight of getting the nomination process underway in an accelerated fashion so that we could have candidates in the pipeline from the moment we needed them. There was lots to do, there's no doubt about that, but we certainly weren't starting from scratch. I have to ask because of the several other hats that you've worn, including as Christia Freeland's Chief of Staff, were you surprised when she resigned

from cabinet on the day she was going to deliver an economic update? I was shocked. I found out as walking into the office and my daughter, my younger daughter, texted me and said, Christie's resigned and I was like, before responding don't be silly, I thought I better look at Twitter and see what was up and of course it was true, that was at the moment she had released the letter. You know, I was very surprised. There was no indication that that was about to happen. You know, I had a bit of a front row seat to the back and forth on the

fall economic statement and other things in the prior weeks and especially the prior 10 days. And it was a big surprise. I've spoken to other people who worked in the PMO about that day and opinions are divided about whether it was obvious from that moment that Justin Trudeau's career was about to be finished. Did it take time for that decision to be reached? That's a really interesting question because I mean, I think that the initial reaction from those most senior in the operation would be, boy, that is a real body blow that is going to be difficult to come back from. But on the other hand, you quickly move into, okay, how are we going to manage this day, right?

And especially that day where we had to figure out was a foreign economic statement still viable, who was going to give it? What does that mean in terms of a finance minister? I mean, all those questions come into play right away and you have to start solving them immediately. So I think, you know, a general understanding that this was going to be a very difficult situation

But also not to make any rash decisions and hopefully that the prime minister himself would not do anything Too quickly in terms of thinking about his own future because let's see where we get to over the course of the day and over the following few days, but look it was pretty obvious that it was a Very serious situation from the moment it happened. Let's essentially skip to the beginning of the new year. Justin Trudeau does announce his resignation and there is a leadership campaign that begins almost immediately. You did not have a dog in that race because you were charged with helping to organize the leadership race. What did that entail? Yeah, look, I mean, I had to be neutral. I had to be neutral because of, as you say,

it was both then at that point, how to be engaged in both preparing for a campaign, but also help with making sure we had a very robust and credible leadership process because the two intersect. I mean, you know, we said to ourselves over here, LPC at the party headquarters that the most important beginnings to whatever happens with a new leader and the subsequent election campaign is to make sure that they are elected in an incredible fashion. And you recall at the time, you know, there was lots of worrying concerns, for example, about what foreign interference might do in making a campaign fallible to outside forces. And we managed to take care of that, I think, quite quickly in terms of putting

into place a very robust system that would deal with any attempts at foreign interference. And that question went away quite quickly. And I think the race itself, although it was unclear who was going to win, as you recall, that first week in January, it certainly wasn't obvious necessarily that Mr. Kanye was going to win. The race was a good one, it was very very fast which again put a lot of pressure on the party but it had to be fast because the other parties had already said that they were going to defeat the government at the end of March once the house returned. So doing all those things at once certainly gives you a good workout, but it got us also into a space as a party to be ready for the campaign to follow and we understood that one

was going to run into the other very, very quickly. A lot of people said, and sometimes I was one of them, that proroguing the House of Commons for for two months, so that the liberal party could get its shit together, as Pierre Poliev put it, strain the legitimacy of that government. Well, you know, I can't agree with that. I mean, on a couple of bases. I mean, first of all, the government was clearly in operation over the course of the prorogation,

and after the announced resignation to come of Prime Minister Trudeau. The government was dealing especially with the crisis that we continue to face from the US and in ways that were both public and private and in full and in ways that actually didn't require parliament to be sitting for a few weeks. But I don't think that anything happened over the course of January to March, into March, in terms of what was happening with our leadership race that in any way got in the way of the country's progress in dealing with that crisis or anything else. So in beginning of December, you were organizing a campaign for Justin

Trudeau to run someday. And then the new year you were organizing a campaign to run Mark Carney for reelection right now. How did that change the plan? And was it easier or harder the second time around? One way it was easier is that we had specific dates. So we knew what we had to get done week by week by week, because we knew we were going to be in a campaign one way or the other at the end of March,

because that had been promised by the opposition parties. So that really does focus the mind in terms of understanding what you need to get done week by week, in terms of putting the team and structure together in terms of all the elements you need to make real to have a fully running campaign by the time we get there. It made it more complicated and obviously in a couple of ways. First of all, it's difficult to prepare for a campaign in full without knowing who your leader is gonna be. So when I went and spoke to caucus in early January,

I said, look, we will commit to providing to whoever the incoming leader might be. And I call it a campaign in a box. I described what the elements would be in that box and that it would make up 60 or 70% of a campaign because the other 30 or 40% was dependent upon who the new leader was. But over the course of the leadership, of course, we were able to integrate what we saw

the various leadership candidates doing into our planning, which was fortunate because, you know, we had to make some decisions as a campaign, which couldn't wait for the new leader to be elected. So we had to do things, for example, like not just book a plane, but decide on what the wrap would be for that plane, same for the buses. So those sort of process questions that had to be taken care of and ready for the new leader to have the ability to press the button on a campaign after they're soon after they're elected in March all got done and now we did that in in consultation as well with the various leadership camps we would take our time to ask each of them

individually for their input on on certain decisions and also ask them for their advice on other things too so. So it was doing two things at once, which obviously was more complicated than it normally would be. On the other hand, we had a very clear schedule of what had to be done when. Partly by consensus among the leadership candidates and then partly by dint of decisions that Carney himself made, the Liberal Party was no longer advocating a consumer carbon tax. It was no longer advocating the capital gains changes. It was much more four square in favor of oil and gas exports. To what extent was Mark Carney running against Justin Trudeau? I think there's two things

that come together in one here to a certain extent. First of all, Mr. Carney was obviously and has continued to run against Mr. Trump. Now some of those things that you mentioned are part of the response to the threat from the US. But the other thing is, you know, the appetite for change amongst the electorate was pretty obvious. I mean, you do have to respond to what voters are telling you, especially when it is such a heavy weight of opinion. So the ability to show that you're different, which I think he was certainly able to do both through policy, but tone, personality, experience, et cetera, personality, experience, etc.

That was very, very important because at the end of the day, you know, there were three potential ballot questions in this, in the campaign to come the three intersect, but one being Trump, one being cost of living and the third one being change. And, you know, uh, change is an interesting one because our whole world had changed because of what President Trump had been had been doing to us and to others. Change also I would say had an effect on the conservative leader and so far as it's possible given the results of last night, it proved that he wasn't able to change enough,

both in tone and content, to be successful in the election campaign. So anyway, Trump change cost of living, three potential battle questions. If you know which one of those three you want, then you gotta take care of the other two. It's said that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

Did the conservatives do stuff that made you change your battle plan? Did the conservatives do stuff that made you change your, uh, your battle plan and did they do anything that surprised you either in terms of being smarter than you expected or missing opportunities? Well, I mean, I think that a couple of things there, and I think that this is, this is one of those times where both we and the conservatives

are trying to do what we wanted to do. And what I mean by that is, you know, very clearly, the very beginning of the campaign, this is unusual for an election campaign, in my experience, it was clear that what our successful ballot question would be, but more importantly, that the question already existed in people's minds and we didn't have to create it for them. We had to make sure that it was maintained. The same time, I mean, the conservatives had to try and make the ballot question something different and make it around cost of living and

change. And I actually think they were right trying to continue to fight for that. Because, first of all, they were going to do better on that than we would do. And perhaps more importantly, if they had tried to shift ever more so into the anti Trump sort of ballot question, the reality is that they wouldn't have been able to compete with us or at least their leader would not have been able to compete with Mr. Carney on that particular question. So unlike some others, I'm not surprised that the conservative campaign tried hard to stay on the ballot question of their choosing where they would have done

better. In terms of responding to things, the flip side of what I just said is that it made it easier for us to try and own further who would be best to stand up to Trump. And I think that the way that the tone of the conservative campaign and the conservative leader didn't change that much in terms of what others have called his potential trumpiness or sounding Trumpy, all those sorts of things. And also his inability to, especially the beginning of the campaign, to respond strongly to what was coming out from the US certainly helped us, but it could well be,

and I think the results sort of say something about this. I'm sure they thought they were helping themselves as well because they wanted to stay on their own question. Now what happens? What do you think, I don't know if you've given Mark Carney advice today, but if you were giving him advice, what would you say is his assignment

and his challenge over the next year? Well, I think that what he has said about purpose and action Well, you know, I think that what he has said about purpose and action around, especially the response to the US threat, there's an expectation there that that is going to be met, that the government, even if it's a minority, is going to have to make sure Canada is both prepared for what's going to come at us for the best of our ability in terms of building up an economy that is stronger than it currently is. And he's spoken a lot about that. But also our ability to fight in a way that hopefully

will, over the course of time, make it clear to the Americans, the American people, but also the American administration why what they're doing here is ridiculous and is at least as hurtful to them as it will be to us. So, you know, making that real and making that real in quick time, hopefully in collaboration with other parties, because this is a question for the nation as a whole, I think is where it's going to need to concentrate. Now, there's a lot underneath that, of course, and I think it means proving out that the government itself is going to be different than it's

ever been before. Because as he said, we're in a different situation than we've ever been ever been in before. And it is going to require all of us in government and out to be ready to win this thing to the best of our ability to come out of it better and stronger at the end of it. And I you know, I think that that's going gonna take a whole range of activity across a whole range of sectors to make it happen.

And that's a multifaceted government doing a lot of things at once and figuring out what the most important things are from the very beginning and prioritizing them is as usual gonna be crucial. Okay, Andrew Bevin, you've been generous with your time and I bet you're tired. Thanks for going through all this with me today. You're welcome, Paul.

Nice to talk to you. Next, here's my interview with Conservative MP Scott Acheson. Hey, Scott Acheson, thanks for joining. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Paul. Congratulations last night. You had quite a good result in your writing. Tell people where your writing is and how it went. Yeah, my writing is Perry Sound Muskoka.

That's sort of really central Ontario. We like to call it the gateway to the north. It's not truly central Ontario. I got like, we'd like to call it the gateway to the North. It's not truly Northern Ontario. Muskoka is, and Perry Sound are both famous for their waterfront recreation properties and the sort of the rugged Canadian shield upon which it all sits. And you won comfortably, but we were chatting earlier and you said the tone of the campaign was different this time. Yeah, I would say it was definitely a little more agitated. Generally speaking, affordability issues have been big here

in Paris, Salma Skoka for the last little while. And I would say that one of the things that Pierre did really effectively is animate and engage young people who I think were pretty agitated about what's going on in the country. But then Donald Trump, the mix of Donald Trump into our campaign and the anxiety that he caused made people anxious and a little agitated as well.

So the ongoing issues plus the new issue to the south of us made people on edge, I would say. How do you feel after three extraordinary years in politics and a very strange election result? Well, I feel amazing to be honest with you. I feel amazing because I spent a life in public life, mostly in municipal politics. This is my fifth year in federal politics, my third election, I won again here in Perisalma Skoka with a much bigger vote count than ever before. I'm humbled by that and I'm honored by that and it's exciting to keep doing that. I love

representing the people of Perisalma Skoka in the House of Commons. I always say that's not my chair, that belongs to the people of Perisalma Skoka and I'm honored to use it to advocate on their behalf. I live in just one of the greatest areas of the country as far as I'm concerned and it's a lot of fun to be their representative. I'm really thrilled about that. I'm obviously less excited about being in opposition for a little while longer, but that role of His Majesty's loyal opposition is an important one and we'll do it to the best of our ability and make sure that next time we do form government. So I feel like there's a sense of, you know, maybe a little sense of disappointment, but there's also a sense of optimism, I believe, too, that, you know, we've made great gains as a party, as a team. We've added more to our ranks. Pierre has done an amazing job of engaging a whole new generation of voters.

I think that that's progress and progress in the right direction. So the next election we will win. You've got to feel like the rug was taken out from under you to some extent. You spent the most of the last two years expecting to win handily against Justin Trudeau's liberals. That's not how it ended. No, and I, but I, I'll say this about that. I think that, you know, if you look at the

party's numbers and Pierce numbers, I mean, he's, he, he outpolled predictions. He, you know, maintained his level of popularity. I think the collapse of the NDP are a part of that issue and I'm sure that that was, you know, assisted in part by Donald Trump and what he did. So it's not the outcome we wanted or expected, but we've made some great progress too.

So what do you think is the message to conservatives and to the liberal government out of this complicated result? A couple of messages. Number one would be that in light of the terror threats and threats to our sovereignty from the President of the United States, it's important for us to work together and be united as Canadians and to defend Canada and our sovereignty and to work together in that regard. I think it's also very important for His Majesty's loyal opposition to continue in that role effectively.

And that means to sharpen the government, to oppose when necessary and to propose better ideas when we see better ideas before us. I gotta say, based on the last few years, I'm not expecting a lot of olive branches to be offered and to be blunt, not a lot from your leader. Do you think that he needs to change his tone a bit? Well, if you watch what he said on election night, I mean, that was his tone. His tone was that he congratulated Prime Minister Carney on winning and he made very clear that we need to work together when it comes to protecting Canada's sovereignty and these threats of tariffs. You know, we can find ways to work together. And working together doesn't always necessarily mean that we agree with each other.

But finding ways to be productive in our opposition is also working together. And I see maybe a shift in that tone, particularly when it comes to this, it's really an existential threat to our country. What do you think the Conservative Party has gotten right over the last couple of years, including in the way the campaign adjusted to the presence of a new leader and a new set of issues. I think that our focus, our relentless focus and Pierre's relentless focus on affordability questions, whether that's the cost of groceries, whether that's the cost of homes and trying to get more homes built in this country, reducing the burden of government on that process of getting

homes built was absolutely bang on. It continues to be an issue in our country. And I think that Pierre really, really was absolutely squarely on the money with those issues. I think that the Trump situation has only exacerbated those issues and heightened the fears of everybody. And I think that, you know, protecting Canada against some of these threats comes back to a lot of things that we've been talking about all along. You know, we need to reduce the burden of government. We need to unleash the power of the entrepreneur. We need to reduce the tax burden on Canadian business.

We need to make it easier to get homes built. We need to, you know, make groceries more affordable. Governments don't have revenue problems. I think this federal government has a spending problem and I think that message continues to be true and maybe even more so in light of this Trump business. A lot of the voters that you talked about who were already frustrated with a decade of liberal government, are they going to be more frustrated now and is that going to essentially be a governance problem for the liberals?

I think it will. I think there's a lot of people that are pretty frustrated about the way, you know, the vote turned out. That's why I think it's really important for the conservative party and for, you know, all my colleagues, just to focus on the issues that continue to matter to Canadians because, you know, let's imagine for a moment that you know, we sort things out with Donald Trump and uh, and we settle down these tariff issues, you know

Even if we get that accomplished in a short term, you know all those issues about the cost of living and the cost of government that I'll go back to housing again You know you and i've talked about this before, Paul, that, you know, the, the, every level of government has their fingers in the pie of getting homes built costs, charges, fees, taxes, delays, and the process is so long. And even after we get things sorted out with, with our American friends, that's still going to be a problem.

And it's still going to make homes too expensive when government charges so much tax on them. Pierre Poiliev didn't win power and lost his own seat. Are you aware of any movement to challenge his continued leadership of the conservative party? I've heard of no such thing and I certainly wouldn't encourage it. Here's the thing, you know, Pierre has done an amazing thing. I've heard of no such thing and I certainly wouldn't encourage it. Here's the thing, you know, Pierre has done an amazing thing.

He has engaged young people that I don't think I've seen in a generation. It's amazing how many young people have been motivated and animated by Pierre and engaged in the process. That's incredible. I think that the country owes a huge debt to Pierre. He's been one of the most effective leaders of the opposition ever, maybe because of Pierre Poliev. There's no longer Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was not very popular in our country. Because of Pierre Poliev, the consumer carbon tax has been reduced to zero. I'm still looking for a devote in the House of

Commons on legislation that eliminates that. But because poly poly prayer poly ev, uh, you know the the liberal government has reversed course on You know some of their tax increases namely the capital gains inclusion rate You know peer peer poly have You know his relentless pursuit of these issues Uh means he has been an incredibly effective leader of the opposition I think he'd be a really effective prime minister with that kind of relentless focus as well. It's not your business to give advice to a new prime minister, but probably Mark Carney would take all the advice he could get.

What do you think he should do to govern more effectively over the next little while and what pitfalls would you counsel him to avoid? First thing I would tell Mark Cardy is that you need to embrace the West. You need to recognize that Canadian energy is going to be the lifeline for this country and that clean Canadian energy has the potential not just to make Canadians wealthier, but to make the planet cleaner as well. And so he needs to embrace the West, embrace getting Canadian energy to market. I would say as well that when it comes to housing, particularly, as you know, that was

my portfolio, I would give him very, very specific advice about not trying to spend federal dollars out of the crisis, but that we need to reduce the burden of government and I can help them find all kinds of ways to speed up the process to get permission to build homes and also reduce the cost of government on that process. And I would advise him that he should keep going on reducing the tax burden on Canadian consumers. One last process question. Local candidates across the country were discouraged from participating in writing level debates and in talking to local journalists. Did you check with anybody before talking to me today?

No. Didn't work out too bad, did it? No, it never does Paul. I enjoy our chats. Spread the word, please. Okay. I will. Scott Acheson, thanks for joining me today and thanks for being a subscriber. Thanks, Paul.

I've known Gerald Butts since he was running the Canadian branch of the World Wildlife Fund almost 20 years ago. We spent a week on a Canadian Navy frigate in the Arctic. Long story. We spent a week on a Canadian Navy frigate in the Arctic. Long story. Later he became a key player in Justin Trudeau's inner circle. Then he wasn't. More recently he played some kind of role with Mark Carney's campaign. I'll let him explain it to you. Gerald Butz, thank you for joining me. Great to be here, Paul. Why am I talking to you?

Great question. You asked me. It's a bit of an inside joke. I wrote about the 2015 election that made Justin Trudeau, the prime minister. And, um, and, and you caught my attention by grumbling online that I had not described it properly. So I thought I would foreclose that result by asking you how Mark Carney became prime minister this year. Oh, that's. Um, what role do you play in the election? I had not described it properly. So I thought I would foreclose that result by asking you how Mark Carney became prime minister

this year. Oh, that's. What role do you play in that drama? Well, mostly a mentorship role with, I don't do this for a living anymore, as you know, Paul. But I did help the team on this campaign in a variety of ways from, you know, advertising and strategy and that kind of thing.

But mostly to be there as someone who's been around before, it was quite a unique group of people who came together for this campaign. A lot of people who knew each other for a long time, but many of whom had not worked together directly before. And we gelled really quickly. And what I enjoyed most about it was there were a lot of people who were very young staff when I left the government in 2019, whose talents I really appreciated.

And I'd hoped to get a chance to mentor a little bit, but I've been out of it for five or six years, as you know. So getting a chance to do this again on the Carney campaign to help them out was really rewarding. In 2013, when Trudeau became the liberal leader, there was a bunch of stories about the Trudeau team. And years before that, I wrote a bunch of stories about the Harper team. I haven't seen a lot of journalism about the group around Piropolyev or the group around Mark Carney.

You can at least help me with part of that. Who is the group around Mark Carney? I can at least help me with part of that. Who is the group around Mark Carney? I always hesitate to say this Paul, because I don't want to leave anybody's names out who made a serious contribution, but Braden Kaley, who ran the leadership campaign and was co-director with Andrew Bevin of the national campaign deserves just an enormous amount of credit for the success of both of those campaigns. I've known Braden a long time. I've never known anybody who works harder and sees things from as many different angles as quickly as he does. Tom Pitfield, Jane Deeks was in charge

of advertising, Andre Lynn Allais, Marie-Pascal De Rossier. There are a lot of people, some of whom your listeners will recognize their names and others you wouldn't. But we made a conscious effort not to be public with the team because we thought that distracted from the candidate. And it was, if I could go back in time, I probably would have done the same thing with Team Judo. Oh, we probably would have ferreted you out one way or the other.

My Twitter feed was hard to ignore at the time. No, you made sure of that. You will not be unaware of a school of thought that says that you and Pitfield grew Carney in an underground cavern and animated him and sent him out to do your bidding. Yeah, well that's, that's the little thought I can guarantee you has no students that have ever met Mark Carney.

What's he like? Uh, he's, he's largely has, as has been reported in some of the big profiles that have been written of him. He's one of the two or three smartest people I've ever met. He is a very high integrity individual. He's tough as nails. He doesn't suffer fools gladly. And he has an almost

preternatural ability to understand what the main point is of any discussion and to try and dig at it from every perspective possible in order to come to a conclusion. He's a very good person. He's a real positive adult. And as you know, I had never had any intention on getting back into this business in any capacity similar to this one. And certainly I'm taking my leave afterward. But your listeners will think this has been coming from me, Paul, but I for one was a quite frightened Canadian about what was going on in the country and what we were facing with the United States

heading into Christmas. And now a few weeks after Easter, I'm very relieved that the country's in the hands of an adult. And I really appreciate the fact that Mark jumped into this with both feet the way he did and that he campaigned so hard. And we should take a step back and you're going to expect me to do this, but we should take a step back because I've had so many conversations with people today saying, oh,

well, it's too bad you couldn't get those extra three seats to get a majority government. And there were a lot of people in liberal land being measured for political caskets in early January. So they shouldn't be measuring the drape so quickly. It's truly remarkable. The first time I flipped open the model that the Liberal Party uses to predict or forecast election outcomes, and I look back to early January because it's got a time

sequence on it, it was projecting 49 seats, right? And here we are three months later with 169 seats after an election followed by or preceded by a leadership campaign. So for the people who have been working with Mark, but more importantly, with the prime minister himself, this is a longer campaign than 2015, which you'll remember felt like an eternity. And the fact that he was able to conduct himself the way he did, having never done politics before, was pretty remarkable. Longer than 2015 because he needed to, it was two campaigns, leadership and then, and then right into a general. Yeah. It was a hundred and I think a hundred and 12 days between the day he

announced and the general election. Does he have a different style that dictates a different tempo of the campaign or a different kind of campaign? I guess it was making a virtue out of necessity that there was no way to try and package Mark Kearney in a month, which was basically what the campaign team had. So the strategy was we had a lot of faith in his ability to talk people through things. So our advice was basically go out there and answer questions, talk about the things you've written about in your books,

try and turn that into a platform. And that's what the campaign did, essentially. It was all built around how he sees the world, his experiences, and what he thinks needs to be done for the country, and let him talk about it in the way he likes to talk about it. And over and over again, I probably watched 40 focus groups over the course of the campaign.

And it's always instructive and, in my view, very comforting to watch focus groups, because you realize the country's full of regular people who are really smart and care about their community and they care about their country and they can smell bullshit a mile away. Right. And nobody at any time ever thought Mark Carney

was saying things he didn't believe for political gain. They thought they were getting the genuine article because they were. Will, will he learn to get over that and become, become another politician? You know, I really doubt it. I doubt it. I think, uh, I've known Mark, um, I don't know,

15, 16 years and, uh, um, I,. And I know people, it's funny. One of the funny things that happened during the campaign, you know, this happens to candidates all the time. Sometimes for the worst things they've done at younger ages are unsurfaced. And one of my favorite ones was with the Prime Minister. Someone had found this letter he wrote to the Edmonton journal when he was 11 years old. And that said, you know, the one I'm talking about, where his hometown is situated.

Was that the journal had said that Fort Smith was in Alberta and he wrote to correct the record because it was his hometown and he knew where it was. It's in the Northwest territories. And I thought there was something really both charming and direct about that, which is kind of his personality. Do you think there's a consensus within the Liberal Party about how much its path

from now on has to be about continuity with its record versus how much has to be about correcting its record versus how much has to be about correcting its record? That's a fantastic question. I don't know the answer to it. I mean, my view is that change was required and I've held that view for some time as you know privately held that for some time as you know privately. And not to be, you know, the traditional liberal about it but people were not hearing it. And I think that maybe I can answer the question indirectly.

When I started sort of talking to people about Mark Carney seriously in January, I talked to people I hadn't spoken to in years, literally, many of them across the country, significant active local liberals in places like BC and Alberta and Saskatchewan, all over the country. It struck me how despondent people were. It was beyond, holy smokes, I think we're going to lose the election. They were just despairing. They didn't think that a positive outcome was possible in any way. And I tried to talk them into why I thought there could be a positive outcome with Mark. And they were almost refusing to believe it. It was like, wow, you haven't been in this for a while. You really don't understand how things are going and nobody's ever done things like this before. But I never got the sense from any of them that they didn't realize deep in their bones

that a change in direction was required. So I do think from the things they didn't say, I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth. Who's listening to your pod, who I spoke to in that period. I don't want you to think that they said something they didn't say, but it was kind of what they didn't say that made me realize that they understood pretty deeply that change was needed. So I think the consensus is out there, but I'm not sure it's been articulated in quite that way.

Apart from having a leader who's more comfortable wearing all of his suit, what change is needed? Where to start? I mean, I think that having a realistic but consistently positive vision for the country is really important. And I think I never wanna be an armchair quarterback. This kind of armchair post game, so that game's over so I can tell you what I thought a little bit. I just felt like the government,

the Trudeau government kind of got suckered into this narrative that the country was broken and everything sucked and you know we couldn't be proud of our own history and we couldn't be proud of the things that we've accomplished together and those challenges came from both the left and the right and the government kind of got frozen like a deer in the headlights and couldn't articulate what was great about the country. And if you talk to regular people out there, most people love this country, right? And they're grateful to be part of it.

They want to contribute to it and they want to be constructive about its future. That doesn't mean that they're blind to the mistakes of its past. But I think the coincidence of the Trump entry, the elephant in the race and the prime minister's generally positive disposition about the country was a really welcome change in direction from the political dialogue writ large in Canada for the past few years. And I think people responded to that really well. So that's the first thing, I think the positive disposition. And then I think for better or worse, mostly for worse,

the government kind of took its eye off the ball in the economy and a bunch of changes in policy direction on tax policy, the inability to focus on what we used to call the middle class agenda, that nomenclature has probably outlived its freshness, but you've got to find a way to talk to people directly about what they're feeling, right?

And what they're, not what they're feeling, but what they're experiencing in their daily lives. And it felt this is common to governments that last as long as the Trudeau ministry did. It felt very remote from people, right? And I think that in their defense, I think that they were, I didn't live through COVID in government. Right. I can't imagine what that did not only to, you know, the physical and mental health of the people involved in trying to govern the country through that, but in the basic structures of how you govern the country, the fact that people weren't meeting in person and, you

know, everything became remote and they came out of it very tired. Are there different types of people who should be better represented in government? I'm not sure what you mean. Too many lawyers, too many white guys, too many what? Too many lifers, too many project-based people who go from file to file rather than having built something before they came to Ottawa. Well, my aunt, the late great sister Peggy Butts

used to express that very directly. She would say there's two kinds of people in politics, people who wanna do something, people who wanna be something. And there are too many of the latter and too few of the former. You should help people who want to be the former and not the latter. Right. And I do think that politics should be an avocation rather than a vocation. I've spent about, some of your listeners would know about my private sector life, but I've spent a little under

half of my professional life in politics and government. And I think that what success I've had, I've been useful because I have a perspective from the outside. And another mentor of mine, Jim Coots, once said to me that when I was asking him about going to work for Dalton McGinty, he said, well, if you go, stay no longer than five or six years and then get out. Because if you're there too long, you don't have a useful perspective on the world. And I took that to heart both times when I think about it. One more intentionally than the other, as it turned out. But I think it's really important for people

to come in and out of politics. I really do. And I worry about you certainly see the rotten fruits of this labor in the United States, where you've got, it's almost like there is a, there is a farm for politicians somewhere and they're grown under heat lamps and they go to the same prep schools and they study the same things and they're in

the junior Republican or Democrat club and they all want to be local state senators or something. And they're in politics their entire life. And I don't think it's healthy for the country. Have you talked to Mark Carney about his own sense of his longevity in this role? I have not. So many things to talk to, so let's talk about so little time, that one never really came up. We had this saying on the campaign about the moment we find ourselves in that no crisis, no Mark, right? Like if this weren't happening the way it's happening,

he probably doesn't take the risk of jumping into a party that was in third place in the polls and headed for an historic defeat because the risk of failure was so high, right? But I think he was compelled by the moment to do it. And I mean, it's pretty remarkable what the guy gave up to do it. Okay.

If I want to ask him questions like this, am I going to have to start a podcast in New York? I mean, he did Prof. G, his BBC interview was out. I know some folks at the CBC and a couple of podcasters around here who sure like to talk to the guy, what are their chances? I think they're pretty good, Paul, over the midterm, I think they're pretty good.

We'll see, but enough about me. Jerry Butts, thanks for chatting with me today and good luck getting back out of politics. Good to talk to you, Paul. Thanks for listening to the Paul Wells Show. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica and supported by McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy. My producer is Kevin Sexton. Our executive producer is Stuart Cox. Laura Regehr is Antica's head of audio. If you subscribe to my Substack, you can get bonus

content for this show, as well as access to my newsletter. You can do that at paulwells.substack.com. you