The Paul Wells Show - Election week 2: ideas for governing

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

Our election coverage continues!   Stephen Gordon, economics professor at University of Laval, evaluates the economic policy we’ve seen on the campaign trail so far, from tax cuts to housing plans.    Author Mark Bourrie talks about his new book, Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre.    CTV host and chief political correspondent Vassy Kapelos trades notes with Paul on the campaign so far.

The Paul Wells Show is made possible by McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy, where I'm a senior fellow. Are we having fun yet? Generally people are interested in hearing about really dumb economics, because dumb economics is good politics and that is the curse that we bear. This week, the federal election campaign, policy, people and events. We've got a full slate of guests to make sense of it all for you. We're all about the election this month. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to the Paul

Wells show. Judging from last week's download statistics, a lot of you liked my decision to bump this podcast's regular programming in favor of a weekly look at the federal election campaign. Which is a good thing, because I'm going to keep focusing on the election. Not just the horse race, although be honest, don't you like watching horses race? But also a closer look at the ideas, the policy proposals, and the personalities behind this election. As I always say, we've got a lot to talk about, so we might as well talk.

First up today, Stephen Gordon, the head of the economics department at Laval University in Quebec City, to talk about a couple of the policy proposals from the two biggest parties. Then, Mark Bourie, an award-winning historian, is here to discuss his new biography of Pierre Poliev. Finally, I'm really glad to have Vashe Kapelos, one of the country's most prominent journalists, so we can share our impressions of the campaign so far. First, here's Stephen Gordon on tax cuts, homebuilding, and how the devil's in the details. Stephen Gordon, thank you for joining me.

It's my pleasure. Do you get excited during election campaigns? Do you get horrified? What's your reaction? That's the second thing. Generally, people are interested in hearing about really dumb economics because dumb economics is good politics and that is the curse that we bear. So it's generally unpleasant. We're forced to look through things that haven't really been thought through as economic policies. There are some pleasant surprises, but generally when people put together platforms, they don't really care about the economics. A decade ago, a friend and colleague of yours,

Jean-Yves Duclos, got up and decided he was going to run for parliament and he spent most of the intervening decade as a minister in the Trudeau government. I ask you because I've had the same thing happen to me. Suddenly a friend decides they want to be in parliament. How did you feel about that? And how do you think it's worked out? Well Well on a personal level, and we haven't really talked about that since, because you know in some sense he's gone off to do something. I have the greatest

admiration on a personal level for someone who's willing to sacrifice what is a very pleasant comfortable life as a university professor to do something that is extremely unpleasant and messy. So I can see the personal sacrifice, you know, to fly back and forth from home into Ottawa every weekend. It's not fun. So I will always admire that dedication. I mean, he did not, he's not in it for the money. He's not in it for the glory. He really felt he wanted to do some public service. And so I'm not going to comment publicly about what I think he's done. I mean, I personally am still very proud of him. And I'm not even publicly I'm willing to say that I don't think I've ever seen him embarrass himself, which is actually kind of rare for this, Kevin.

Yeah, I think on a small number of occasions, they embarrassed him. But that's a conversation we can have over coffee sometime. Now I want to talk about a few ideas. First of all, because you often lament on Twitter that not enough of that happens in politics. And secondly, because we tend to complain as pundits that these folks only run on slogans or they only run on stagecraft and they don't put anything forward. But in fact, they push a lot of stuff to the middle of the table. And it's worth considering that. And maybe the place to start is within the first 24 hours, both party leaders had announced

billions of dollars in income tax cuts. How do you react to that? Well, I mean, going up to the election, there's a lot of talk about the structural problems facing the Canadian economy. And my reaction was that cutting the rate on the lowest tax trench, income trench addresses basically none of them. So it was a very expensive way of doing nothing to actually address real problems. It's just one of those things what, you know, it sounds good for the politics, you know, everybody gets it. That's a thing. Everybody who pays taxes gets it. So, you know, it's going to be broad based. Everyone sees a tax cut. It's, you know, it's a little sugar pill for everybody. But it's, that also means that there's like, you know, billions of dollars

that have been dedicated to that and not to something else. We're also in a situation where public finances are starting to become tight, and that's a pretty low priority. It's really hard to think of a problem that those facts got solved. Is that an argument that assuming we want about as much government as we're getting,

that we need to be paying more for it? I think that's a very brave case to make. I've always thought, I mean, we still haven't really recovered from the GST cut from the Harper years. The Liberals never really bought into the argument of government is worth paying for, let's pay more for it. It's basically, well, it turns out we can run deficits for forever. So let's not bother about that second thing. We'll just keep on spending more and just watch the debt GDP ratio. It is a dangerous game because of course, when things get out of hand, that ratio goes up and doesn't really come down very fast.

Like during COVID, it spiked up, come back down, but it's not back to where it was before. Now there's two, oh, and incidentally, just a while ago I said both parties. Of course there's like a half dozen parties with real skin in the game, but I do tend to presidentialize. This is my quirk. The NDP, I think they played with the threshold

for the lowest tax rate, or was it the person exemption? Anyway, they went to the same area and tried to dig up something new, yeah. Okay. But going back to both parties, in other words, the liberals and the conservatives, each of those two parties has produced an idea that I think is interesting

and I wanted to see what you think of it. First of all, on the weekend, Pierre Poliev addressed the feeling that industry doesn't invest, that private sector investment constantly lags in Canada with this quite simple idea, which is that there would be no capital gains tax charged on capital gains if the proceeds were reinvested in Canada.

So you reinvest in Canada, you don't pay capital gains tax on the amount that you reinvest. Sounds pretty good to me. Yeah, it sounded pretty good to Stephen Harper too. That's basically the same thing he promised back in the day. It never actually happened because it turns out the devil's in the details

and whenever you're gonna start making it possible to, for really rich people, who are the ones who are gonna have important capital gains, to, you know, for really rich people, who are the ones who are going to have important tax against to not pay taxes, while the tax lawyers and the tax accountants are going to get right on that. And it turns out the Harper government never really could figure out a way of making that idea work without being completely fleeced.

Reading the conservative version, reading the Polia version this year, do you get the impression that they have figured out how to plug any of the holes in that row? Well, since they haven't mentioned it, I'm guessing not. So that's, yeah. This gets at a kind of an ambient malady of our times, which is that none of these parties go into any detail

about what they're proposing. I mean, you get three paragraphs and when you ask for more, they give you three paragraphs with wider spacing. Like, it's a problem. Yeah. One example that I always go to look back to is what the liberals did in 2015. They had like that council, they had like an advisor council, people who weren't necessarily partisan liberals, but who were professional economists and were willing to say, if you want to do this, this is the kind of thing you have to do. And there are these various details.

I mean, like the Canada Child benefit is like a great example of something that this is, if you want to do this, here's how you can do this and da da da. So it is possible, but it does take a certain amount of investment and you have to sort of abandon various things like even for example, the liberals for the Canada child benefit, they had to abandon their tendency to prefer providing directly day care services, you know, the giving cash to parents was a conservative thing. The liberals basically finally went around that,

it reversed themselves on that and went farther than even conservatives ever dared doing. So, you know, these kinds of things are possible, but they are too rare, yeah. Okay. So let's go over to the liberals. Mark Carney has proposed solutions to the housing crisis, including $25 billion in debt financing

to double the rate of home construction. That $25 billion would apparently pay for 500,000 new houses a year. Have you given that a look and what do you think of it? Yeah, I mean, it seems to be going back to things that we did like right after the second world war. And again, in the way the government just intervened directly into just, you know, the CMHC, that was what its original world was just to create and to build, you know, to finance new

housing. And the other thing too, like the MURB, multiple unit residents benefits, something like that. That would go back to the seventies and eighties. And that also seemed to spur a lot of apartment houses. Like that's basically the, that's the basic thing. So, on the face of it, there's once again, devil's in the details. To what extent will that money actually turn into housing? Like the liberals are pretty good about, you know, announcing spending,

delivering on the other side is often an issue. That said, but you know, in some sense, this is the housing is getting to a situation where you almost kind of expect and need dramatic gestures. And this looks like one, and some elements might not work very well. For example, trying to get certain municipalities

to cut back on their development charges. They're gonna have to pay for them to make sure that their municipalities don't lose money by cutting back on development charges. But then again, that means the federal government's gonna be giving money to cities that had abused development charges and all the other cities that had behaved properly,

who didn't do that, aren't gonna get anything anything. So there's going to be something of weird politics with that. So who knows how far that will go. But just basically, okay, let's just build houses. You know, you might want to quibble about details. Well, wouldn't be better for the market, did it? Well, yeah, I guess. But I mean, like, in desperate times, desperate measures, you do what you have to do. My understanding of this term, $25 billion in debt financing means that it wouldn't cost, you wouldn't have to book 25 billion dollars. No, I think it's basically they would be the ones who offer the mortgages, like in some sense they would get paid back.

But you know, there's always going to be some initial debt financing of any kind of construction project and you know, the government would be up there to perhaps offer better terms than they would get in the private sector. Both in Canada and elsewhere. I mean, last autumn, Mark Carney proposed the creation of essentially a new green growth fund for the UK. He's a big advocate of sort of Canada infrastructure bank type models where the federal government fronts

were a national government, Canadian or British. advocate of sort of Canada infrastructure bank type models where the federal government fronts were a national government Canadian or British fronts some money and that encourages skittish investors to get in the game. The problem is that the only reason that they would ever invest in something is that they're going to get some kind of return like that Canadians also don't like to pay tolls on their roads they don't want to pay tolls on their roads. They don't want to pay for their infrastructure. You can get perhaps some kind of foreign firm to build a bridge, but they're going to put a toll on it. And they're always going to be looking for a way to extract money to get their money back from this investment. So I don't think it's any really difficulty about

getting investors to invest in a project that's going to generate revenue. The problem is will Canadians accept projects that generate revenue? Yeah. The sweet spot is a magic project that people want to build and nobody has to pay for. Right. And you know, not surprisingly, the, uh, that's why the, all these other infrastructure banks

don't really go anywhere because, um, it's really hard to, I mean, just, you know, just thinking the episode, just the example of the highway 407, like that's never going to happen again, it's really hard. I mean just you know just think the episode just the example of the highway 407 like that's never going to happen again I don't think. It's too bad because highway 407 is a sweet highway to drive on. Oh man whenever whenever I drive from Quebec City to Cambridge my sister my sister in Cambridge I go around that kind of thing it's keep it twice the price. Okay so to sum up we're now like coming on a week and a half into this campaign.

Is it better or worse than other campaigns that you've seen from the perspective of concrete ideas? Um, so far, like the, the liberal housing thing is probably the best one I've seen so far, just because sometimes a real problem, real money is being thrown at it and you know, then sometimes we're interviewing directly at something, you know then something's intervening directly, it's not we're not trying to hoping that some third party is going to intervene on the way

you hope that they will. So far like that seems you know housing is one of the most important things then that's probably a good one. Of course in the backdrop of all this is the specter of whatever Trump is going to do tomorrow. Now we're speaking on April 1st. There's not much that the Canadian government can do right at this point, but I guess we're going to have to see what happens in the next days. When Mark Carney last week put on his prime

minister hat and said, the relationship between the United States and Canada is over and we will now have to. The relationship to the extent that we were always going to be more and more deeply integrated and a lot of sweat to essentially build up muscles we haven't been using and diversify our trade relationships. That seems to me like the definition of something that's easier said than done.

Oh yeah, I mean, whenever you know, all the determinants of trade, you know, things like geographical balance, you know, the way that we're going to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able That seems to me like the definition of something that's easier said than done. Oh yeah. I mean, whenever you, you know, like all the determinants of trade, you know, things like geographical proximity, the size of the market, similar languages, similar legal structures, everything points to the United States. Yeah. It's going to be really hard to, you know, get water to flow uphill. Okay. On that cheery note, happy Liberation Day.

Steven, the thing is like, we're talking about what's going to happen for those travels. But the big thing so far is just uncertainty. Yes, he's going to announce something. We have no idea what he's going to decide the day after or the day after that. So I think that really the biggest thing that we're dealing with is just uncertainty. People are not going to be able to commit to big projects until they know something. And in some sense, you know, in Carney's comment that the old relationship is over,

it's like, we're gonna have to do things regardless of what Trump does. And that's the only certainty we're gonna have. Well, this is, I mean, I think this is why he does this sort of cheat and retreat thing where he announces that he might do worse or that everything's contingent, it's to wreck any possibility of having planning assumptions.

Right. I mean, certainly in the United States, that's what the other thing is. Nobody's going to invest billions of dollars on multi-year projects based on whatever Donald Trump had for lunch that day. All right, well, now that no hope remains, I'll have all the answers. multi-year projects based on whatever Donald Trump had for lunch that day. All right.

Well, now that no hope remains, all that remains for me is to thank you for your time. Steven Gordon, it was good catching up with you. Thanks a lot. Bye. Next, Mark Bury on Pierre Pauliev. I want to take a moment to thank the people who support this show. Tackling the complexity of global challenges demands a different approach to public policy. The Max Bell School of Public Policy's teaching, research, policy engagement and public outreach develops the skills and understanding to solve the most important issues facing Canada and the world today.

They offer several public lectures and conferences throughout the year on current policy conversations and provide an 11-month intensive master's program to prepare the next generation of policy leaders. Learn more at mcgill.ca slash maxbellschool. This is the second time I've had a Pierre Poliev biographer on the show. Last year I interviewed Andrew Lawton, who was so impressed by what he learned about Poliev when he was working on his book,

that he ended up running in this election as a conservative candidate. It's fair to say Mark Bury won't be doing the same. Bury is less sure that he likes Pierre Poliev, although there's room in his book, Ripper, for some praise of his subject. Mark Bury, thanks for joining me. Hey, Paul, how are you doing? Very good.

Now, the title of the book is The Ripper, The Making of Pierre Poliev. It's just Ripper. There's no definite article. And it comes from something that David Brooks, the New York Times columnist wrote, which is that some people in public life are weavers. They integrate different strands and they try and build something delicate and beautiful York Times columnist row, which is that some people in public life are weavers, they integrate different strands and they try and build something delicate and beautiful and some people are rippers.

And David Brooks did not suggest, but you're quite sure, that Pierre Poliev is a ripper. First question a lot of people are gonna ask is, is this book a hatchet job? No, no, I admire him for quite a few things that I talk about in the book. Things that I look for in the book, things that I look for in people like the ability to work hard, the ability to devote your life to things. And I

signaled him out a lot for praise on his advocacy for autistic kids, which he started to do before he had any children of his own. So I don't see as a hatchet job. I try to be fair. I'm not a political fan. I believe that we are right now in the early stages of a revolution or at least an attempted revolution in the West and Western democracies. That includes Canada, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, France. Good day from Marie Le Pen. And, you know, that Paulie was part of that, that revolution, which may or may not happen. And I very much opposed it because he's is anti democratic. And, and so that would come through in the book. So this is, it's not as negative as Andrew Lawton's book was positive,

but I put him in that context because I think it's really important not to forget that he is in an environment, a political environment right now that is really frightening to a lot of people. As I read it, it struck me as a book that is unhesitating often, unhesitating, often unhesitating in its praise of the guy, praise that we often

haven't seen in a lot of the news coverage of Poliev, but also not shy about criticism. And one difference in your writing about Poliev and my writing about Poliev is I have resisted the comparison to Donald Trump because I think there's other ways to talk about him. But on the jump off the first page, you head into your first comparison between Paulyev and Trump. Why do you think that comparison holds and why do you think it's, I mean, the second

question is almost naive. Why do you think it's germane during this election campaign? I think there's, there's, there are different politicians and I think Paulia has a lot of Canadian values instilled into him. Um, that would probably even make him a, you know, a right-leaning Democrat in the States, but they're both tapping into the same working class anger, the same working class frustration and offering very simplistic answers to that. The other issue I have with Trump and Poliev and people who sort of fall into the political

umbrella that they hold is that there's a certain dehumanization that they bring to politics, dehumanization and lack of respect for their political opponents. There's just no collegiality at all and no respect for people that they disagree with as people and no inclination at all to listen to other people's take on things and come at it from the point of view of traditional conservatism and liberalism, I suppose, in Canada, that you may be wrong, but at least I'll respect you for it. And I'll actually cherry pick things from what you say and maybe incorporate them into my beliefs and my policies. But that's not what we're seeing on either side of the border. It's us against them. And that is the most frightening part of this.

Frightening. How come? Because I see democracy is not as a system, but as a goal. And this is not something we'd probably have started by any means, but we're seeing more and more power concentrated in small cliques at the center of power and legislatures, legislative bodies, ministers, cabinet secretaries of the states, cabinet ministers in Canada, becoming just basically props for a core group of people who run things. I think this is contrary to democracy. Democracy took an awful long time to happen. It's not an invention of the American founding fathers. It's something that people push for in the Enlightenment and applied ideas of reason to and applied ideas of social contract to. And I think if it's trashed, if democracy itself is disrespected and it becomes sort of labeled and pushed aside, that we'll never get it back.

That we'll always live in a society run by plutocrats and by ambitious groups of people who are able to, you know, to get control of political parties and then get control of, say, the prime minister's office or get control of the White House and the states. That is my big concern. So this suggests a big difference between Pierre Pauli and Stephen Harper. Stephen Harper had and did things that could easily be criticized, but he was also explicitly a Berkian. He believed that one job of conservatives is to move institutions forward rather than jettison them.

And if I understand correctly, you would say that Poliev has none of that in him, essentially. Well, none is a big, you know, I'm not a big fan of Bolliev. Less. Oh, well, you know, part of the problem in Canada is, and you can look at Harper's government and find it, is the lack of strong

regional ministers and the lack of real connection to parliament. So I think some institutions, you know, Harper was a policy wonk, wanted to do certain things with certain institutions and kind of derail other institutions. I think he had a healthy respect for, the idea was separated judiciary

and appointed judges accordingly. But then he, you know, he didn't see the media as legitimate, a legitimate overseer or sort of part of the overseeing bodies that keep checks on governments and provide feedback to government and communicate government to the people. And, you know, this has been happening since, you know, Per Trudeau. I just was reading Eric Nielsen's book, The House is Not a Home, and just thinking about those kind of strong ministers that Brian Mulroney had, you know, like Baskinkowski and Nielsen and Bouchard, you know, and how we don't have those anymore, and how those people brought something to Ottawa from the regions and were able to go out and represent Ottawa

in the regions. I think that contributes a lot to the fragmentation of this country. And then when Justin Trudeau came in, the things that I complained about in 2015 were never fixed either. I mean, we see even more concentration of power at the center, very few strong ministers and none of them be particularly regional ministers, and a very tiny clique running the country. And if things are going well, that's great. But if they start to screw up, then the screw ups are big. One of the things that people keep saying

throughout your book is that Piyarpolyev didn't particularly change after he was a high school student, that he developed a set of strong ideas early and that he's hung onto them ever since. I find that he developed a set of strong ideas early and that he's hung onto them ever since. I find that fascinating because one of the things I look out for in people who are older than 20 is some sense that they can learn from experience.

And I mean, to some extent, you're not even the first person to point this out. Andrew Lawton, whose biography of Pauli of last year was a prelude to Andrew going off and running for parliament. It's a small world. To join Poliev's caucus. He makes the same kind of point that Poliev at 14

doesn't have the chops, doesn't have the kind of road testing of an older Pauliev, but on the fundamentals, it's still the same guy. Do you have an explanation for that? I think he's lived in a bubble all his life, even as much as Justin Trudeau. It may be more so as Trudeau took off and hung around the bars and things in BC

and did God knows what as a kid. We'll probably find out eventually. But with Pauli, he's in a family that's very conservative in a part of the country that's very conservative in a time when I hate to even use the word conservative for reform because I don't see them as conservatives. I don't see even see Poliev really as a conservative. But anyway, I digress. The time, the place, the family, the friends, the local media, everything buttresses that worldview and his take on things so that he develops it early and he just keeps going with it. You know, and, and he's never really challenged on it. As you watch the campaign unfold and as I keep reminding myself, we've only seen a week of it.

I know it feels like a year. Yeah. Well, this is it. I mean, are there elements of quality of finally getting a chance to campaign for the office he's wanted all his life? Are there parts of it that surprise you? Are there parts of it that you think reinforce the arguments in your book? How do you match the Pauliev in your book

against the one that you're seeing on TV every day these days? The sort of stubborn rigidity reinforces what's in the book. What surprises me is I thought he was better at politics than he is at this point. Now, I think he's better at politics than me. So maybe he's got it right and I don't, and we'll count the marbles in four weeks. But he's sticking to the plan doggedly, even though some nervous Nellies are losing it and trying to push out Jenny Byrne. But it's real poly up. This is the campaign that he has wanted to have for two years.

Is he campaigning in 2024 when everybody else is in 2025? Or is he playing a game that might pay off in the end where he can be like Harper and sell enough things to enough sort of groups in society, you know, throwing policies out to older people, throwing policies out to working people, like giving them write offs for their tools and things for the many, many independent contractors in the country, that might work. You know, it may be, you know, when the Carney blackface pictures show up or the video of Carney peeing in a cup shows up, you know, the wheels might come off the liberal campaign too, and he might win. So, you know, who knows? But to answer the question, I see that he isn't changing for the campaign, but I really, I've always seen him

as a skilled politician and I don't know why he would stand in front of a sawmill in BC where I'm sure everybody is scared to death they're going to lose their job and talk about fentanyl. Like, this boggles the mind. We're talking like a Tom O'Kare level of inability to gauge a situation. Okay. On that note, I guess we'll both be comparing notes as we go forward on how this amazing election continues. It's a real pivotal election. This is like 1891 or 1945 where McKenzie King was able to turn back the NDP threat. And then, you know, for the first time, really, in more than a hundred years, we have this existential threat to Canada. And that has to be addressed by everybody.

And I'm able to get that into the book, thank God, that, you know, we were able to close it after that came up. But I think that's what's on people's minds. It's what I think about every night when I go to bed. And it's pulling the country together in strange ways and it's tearing the country apart in strange ways. And whoever can harness, not harness it, understand it and become the sort of symbol of Canada

will win this election. That's my take on it. The book is called Ripper, the making of peer poly of it's on w Oasis, uh, and, uh, the author is one of the country's leading historians. Thanks for joining me, Mark. Talk to you soon. Thank you. And thanks for, thanks for reaching out.

Most of you know, my final guest this week. Vasya Kapelos hosts both of the big politics shows on CCV, plus her daily show on iHeart Radio. It's a great pleasure to have her here as a guest so we can compare notes on the campaign so far. Vasya Kapelos, thanks for joining me. Hi, Paul. Happy to see you. Was that the longest first week of an election

campaign you've ever seen, or was it just me? It's definitely not you. It felt like forever. It felt like two weeks into one. The first few days felt like the first week of a regular campaign and then the Trump stuff and everything that followed felt like the second week of a campaign. It felt long. Yeah. Like I was just thinking on the weekend, I was marveling on the weekend, we've still got a month to go of this stuff. And it looks like there's sort of two questions before us. One is, is this an ordinary election or is this a future of the country election? And secondly, can Pierre Pauliev fight back

against this kind of massive rolling narrative concocted by our colleagues that he's toast? It's a perfect framing, I think. Yeah. I don't know the answer to either. Yet. What struck you in the first week? I think what struck me is sort of, you know, in line with the two things that you just mentioned, on the first part, what struck me was the degree to which, if we are talking about the future of Canada, the two parties that likely have the chance at forming government, how similar the ideas that they're putting forward are, like how much lack of daylight between their views of what policies will actually create a situation where we're not as vulnerable as we are right now. On the affordability front, they want tax cuts.

Everybody wants to build an energy corridor. It's very similar, right? And that actually stood out to me because you got hints of it in the first few weeks leading up to the campaign. But now with actual policies that they're putting forward, I think it's like cemented that there is sort of a convergence where that is concerned. The other thing that stood out to me was the second part of what you said, right? This sort of narrative that dominated the weeks going into the campaign again, but kind

of came to a fever pitch after those tariffs were announced or the executive order was signed and then a few hours later, Corynike was like, you guys are toast. And I, right. Cory Tonnike for everyone listening, who probably knows him, but who ran Doug Ford's campaign, who was, you know, a big part of Stephen Harper's campaign in 2015, who identifies as a federal conservative and has for a long time, basically saying, if you continue down the path that you're on, you're going to get obliterated and, produce number you know polling in

Ontario to that effect I think that really took a narrative that was being discussed in the abs abstract and made it a lot more pronounced and more of a challenge for the Tories going forward and going back super far young Corey tonight and young Jenny Byrne were both fixtures on the Reform Party youth caravan in the 90s. Out times have changed, Paul. They've been, I think mostly friends for as long as they've been in politics.

Even I think as recently as a few months ago, cause I remember talking to Corey, cause he's on our show on Sundays about their interactions in reference to his appearances, right? Like it wasn't, it wasn't the way it was last week, all year or anything. Yeah. It's interesting what you said about the

re response to the, to Trump. Um, which is that it's hard to slip a dime between what Carney is concretely proposing and what Pauli is concretely proposing. And it's the difference between the extraordinary polarization of our campaign rhetoric. And so Rory Stewart, who's the former UK Tory MP who co-hosts the Rest is Politics show in Britain,

he was in Canada a while ago ago and he was remarking on how everyone in Canadian politics seems angry at each other, but they would all fit quite comfortably within the Democratic Party in the United States. And I see it in my comment boards on my newsletter when Carney proposes something that is nearly verbatim, something that Poliev could have said or has said. A bunch of my commenters say, yeah, okay, yeah, sure,

except Karni doesn't believe it and he's only gonna, it's only gonna be toys for the boys and it's just a spoiled system for the liberal hack network. And then when Poliev says something that's entirely within the ambit of what Carney might say, everyone says, yeah, but he's a Nazi. And it sort of leaves me wishing that we could actually talk about real things in this

country, but we're not there yet. No, I think you're absolutely right. Like there's just, I mean, a lot of that has become hard. And you wrote about that in your book around like how politicians in general, particularly over the last decade, have been able to use that polarization to their electoral advantage. And that has cemented the lens with which, and I even have examples of that. So when the government is sitting, when the government's been the liberals for the last number of years, I get a ton of mail from people saying, you're too hard on the

liberals. What's wrong with you? You bias conservative hack. Since the election has started, the majority of the mail has been the other way, saying we thought that you were actually tough on the government, and now look at you, you're just like the same as every bot and paid for a liberal media show, only because there's an equal application of accountability to all the parties because we're in a campaign. It's just striking to me that they're looking for

examples of something that underscores what they already think. And I think that is further manifested through what you're describing in the way that they're viewing the two candidates right now. Because there is tone differences, there's definitely a lot of differences between the personalities. But as far as the concrete things they're proposing on

this existential question we face around how to avoid ever being in this position again, like not a lot of daylight. Are you going out on the road at all? I am not. No. Yeah. Too many shows. You're stuck hoping they all get to air. Yeah. You're glued to a microphone a little bit. Yeah, I would love to. I would love to. I miss it

very much. It's fun watching all my colleagues, but no. What's the first all my colleagues, but no. What's the first federal campaign you covered? 2011. Okay. Well, that was a biggie. That was- It was, yeah.

That was Orange Wave. That was Liberals in Third Place. We always have this sort of running debate about whether it's useful for reporters to be that far forward, whether we're missing what the country is saying because we're so glued to what the leaders are saying. What do you, where do you stand on those questions? I think there's value in both.

And I think it doesn't have to be mutually exclusive. I think like, you know, any news organization can leverage the assets they have in a way that produces the most, I think comprehensive coverage. I'm not saying that everyone does, but I think it's possible. You have a ton, like for example, we have local reporters who have extensive experience in their communities. It's not like they don't understand federal politics. So there's an ability to cover stuff that's happening in areas and in places that you don't

see the leaders. I do think it's necessary to be there for true accountability, though. I think there's a ton of examples even happening as we speak around this candidate. For example, for the liberals, like Mark Carney getting grilled about the liberals' response to that. I'm not sure if you weren't on the bus, you didn't realize that it was a vulnerability, you weren't having those conversations, and you weren't able to see, you know, day after day after day, how the evolution of the response is taking place. Like if you would be as well placed to ask those questions or to figure out why this might be a potential vulnerability for a party or a challenge or a wider issue moving forward. So I see value in both of them. And I think like, you know, especially somewhere like where I work, we're aiming to do both.

And I think you can. Yeah. Uh, the candidate you referred to is the Toronto area liberal MP who invited people to deliver his opponent to the Chinese consulate to collect a bounty. Uh, apparently that's a no-no. And then said, sorry, sorry, didn't really mean it.

And there was an actual bounty on this individual who, by the way, had been defending democracy in Hong Kong as China essentially attempted to obliterate it with their national security laws. Like, very confounding situation that the liberals refused to sort of acknowledge the severity of at this moment in time, which is again a story that might not be the story of what's happening in rural Ontario at the moment. And that's, that's fine. That's understandable. They've got big things to worry about there as well, but both stories should matter. And I think if you have reporters, you know, stationed around the country, plus you have them following the leaders,

you'll have the most comprehensive way of, of understanding that. I should timestamp this conversation. You and I are speaking on Monday morning. The podcast goes out on Wednesday. It's entirely possible that Mr. Carney will come to his senses by Wednesday and send that candidate home with love and run an empty slate in that writing. On the conservative side, there is the question of can they win if the ballot question is Trump? I mean, because we've got a prime minister, he's not Poliev, Poliev can't get any space to make his case if the ballot question is,

is the bilateral relationship. But I don't know how on earth he's able to haul it over to cost of living questions, you know, if everyone is on edge over, over Trump and tariffs. Like I, you know, I don't, I don't know how you changed the dial, uh, because the dial kind of tends to set itself. Yeah. I sort of see, see there being two issues for them.

One is out of their control and one is within their control. And, and as you mentioned, the first part, you know, he's not prime minister and it's so analogous to Doug Ford, right? Like the poor opposition in Ontario tried all they might, you know, to, to, to break through in that election. And ultimately because he was premier and held the job of premier in that period, he was at a huge advantage. I think the same is true of Mark Carney.

And that's not, that's not the fault of the NDP or the fault of the conservatives, that's the way the cookie crumbled. They're at a deficit because of that. I think the other part though is more on them. In my view, and I'm not sure what you think of this, but I am constantly reminded of the first six months of covering, even longer, eight months of covering the cost of living crisis and the degree to which the liberals were like, come on, we're the best in the G7. What are you guys talking about?

Stop asking us, and I'm paraphrasing, but stop asking these questions about what we're gonna do about housing. It's not our role, it's the provincial, like all sorts of answers that took them almost a full year to get to the point where the conservatives had been for a year in recognizing how big of an issue it was for people.

And they suffered greatly because of that, right? They lost two safe seats in by-elections. They were 25 points behind the conservatives. And I get that not everything there was at, you know, in inflation was out of their control as well, but they were late to recognizing how important it was to people. And as a result, that cost them.

And I feel the same way now. That's the exact feeling I had where it's like, now you're recognizing how big of a threat this is and you're responding in the way you did. But for a long time, you weren't in the same way that other parties, in particular the liberals were talking about it. And that might have been a misjudgment. Time will bear out the answer to that question. But it feels like if they've been able to close the gap, the way that every single public opinion poll shows

right now that the liberals have been able to, that there was a misjudgment there. And I don't know again, what the right prescription is to adequately recognize that, but it, or, or seem like you are, but clearly Canadians felt like they, they weren't in the same way. They felt like liberals were totally late to the game on issues of affordability. It's almost got a feel for Pauliev because he like famously has been hoping to be prime minister since he was 14. He's been writing essays about what do you do as prime minister?

He's been planning this campaign for many months and it's almost like he like a for many months. And it's almost like a kid down in his basement workshop who's been working on the perfect balsa wood glider to take to the balsa wood glider competition. And then he shows up and it's actually a sled dog race. And he's like, all I got is this really nice glider. It's hard to put it. But imagine he got a notice two months ago that said it's going to be a sled dog race. So I, you know, I get it from like 50 feet away.

Yeah, you feel bad for that individual, but why didn't they open the mail and look at the invitation? Yeah, that's funny. Maybe he read it over the weekend, we'll see. Or maybe something crazy is going to happen and suddenly we all need gliders and he's going to be the only kid who's got one. I don't know. To be fair, like I will just quickly interject and say, like, I would say they've put maybe something crazy is going to happen and suddenly we all need gliders and he's going to be the only kid who's got one.

I don't know. I don't know. To be fair, like I will just quickly interject and say, like, I would say they've put as much, if not more specific policy on the table in the last few weeks about how to insulate Canada going forward, how to build from within, like very specific stuff.

So I don't know if people are looking for policy in the same way they're looking for something more from the person who's auditioning to be prime minister. And I think the something more is where they're at more of a deficiency for whatever reason, whether it's past endorsements from people who are associated with Trump or a successful liberal narrative and ad campaign to link the two together. Whatever it is, his tone, his tenor, it's not resonating in the same way that it used to. And I feel like, so I get the defense, they're saying like, we are talking

about this, we're putting policy and they are to be fair, like I said, maybe even more than the liberals in some cases, but it's falling flat for a reason or flat, you know, flatter than the liberal stuff is. And, and you've got to think it's something to do with the delivery. It's true. I mean, even on the weekend, he had this proposal that you don't have to pay capital gains tax as long as you reinvest within Canada, lagging private sector investment is a longstanding problem in the country. Here's a simple answer that's at least worth a conversation. Totally.

And, but the debates are two weeks off and he can't get the economics nerd on the campaign plane press corps interested in this because he doesn't have a campaign plane. So. Nope, nope, yeah. Which is all of that's a conversation, I think for another time, but,

hey Vash, thanks for joining me, I really appreciate it. Thanks. Appreciate you having me. 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

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