The Paul Wells Show - Election week 5: this peculiar campaign

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

With less than a week left until election day, Paul calls up a few colleagues to talk about what we’ve learned and what will come next. They also talk about how politicians have changed their relationship to the press.   Our panel this week features political journalists Vassy Kapelos, Hélène Buzzetti and Steve Murphy.    Season 3 of the Paul Wells Show is supported by McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy.

The Paul Wells show is made possible by McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy, where I'm a senior fellow. When this is over, what will we have settled? Like, I don't know if it's ever been because of the coalescing around the two parties, this divided, like you've got rural versus urban, men versus women, old versus young, and East versus West.

Like all of those divisions are just along one dividing line. This week, my last podcast before a very peculiar election. I called up some old friends to dish. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to the Paul Wells show. Welcome to the Paul Wells show. This has to some extent been a frustrating election for me to cover. I was mostly glued to my desk in Ottawa, pushing

out podcasts and video as well as my usual writing. I don't love the road as much as I used to, but I still wish I'd seen more of the campaign closeup. I was at Rideau Hall on March 23rd when Mark Carney kicked the campaign off. I was at Rideau Hall on March 23rd when Mark Carney kicked the campaign off. Since then I've been mostly thinking big thoughts in my office. What's been really encouraging is how many of you have been joining me and my guests for our weekly campaign updates on this podcast. This week in the last episode of the Paul Wells show

before we find out how everybody voted, I had two goals. One was just to have fun. I invited three of the colleagues whose work I admire most. Two have become regulars here. Hélène Bousetis is a columnist for most of the newspapers in Quebec outside Montreal, and a frequent French language television and radio commentator. Vassi Kappelos is the host of CTV's Question Period and Power Play, and of the Vassi Kappelos show on iHeart Radio. And it was a great pleasure to get a visit from my third guest, Steve Murphy. He's a special correspondent, commentator, and analyst for CTV Atlantic, and for many years was the anchor of CTV Atlantic's 6pm nightly news.

I greatly admire his work and it was great having him join the gang. So my first goal was just to hang out with colleagues. My second goal, which I hope we accomplished with a light touch, was to make the case for political journalism as an honorable way to make a living in this country. It's become a bit too cheap and easy for people in public life to blame their problems on journalism. Even mentioning that this bugs me is probably like waving a red flag to part of my audience. But it does bug me. So I called up my friends to let them know that I find their insights and experience valuable. And I hope so will you.

Hey everybody. Thanks for joining me. Hey, good to see you, Paul. Steve, I haven't touched base in Atlantic Canada, sadly until now. So particularly from Halifax and what you're able to see, but also in general, what, what do you make of this strange campaign?

Well, strange is a good word. It's been unique in so many ways. It's also a unique, a unique set of circumstances that brought us to this campaign. When you consider we had the resignation of the finance minister, followed by the resignation of the finance minister, followed by the departure of the prime minister, followed by the quick succession to the leadership and the prime ministership of Mr. Carney.

All of this has happened very quickly. And that's set a very unique table for politics in the country. And as a result of that, you know, it's been a very, very fast 35 days that is coming to an end on Monday. And I guess what's most unique about it to me, Paul, very fast 35 days that is coming to an end on Monday. And I guess what's most unique about it to me, Paul, is that we're down to this very binary choice in the nation. We're down to a choice between a liberal government and a conservative government in the minds of most people.

Even the people who don't support one of those two parties seem resigned to this outcome. The loss of support for the other parties has been dramatic and there are different reasons for it in different parts of the country. But it's been a totally unique campaign born of unique circumstances. And I guess the outcome is likely to be unique in the sense that it's going to be quite decisive and I think quite divisive. The question I think we need to ask ourselves sitting here today is what will Canada look like after the votes of Canada Monday? The first thing I started to hear from Pauliev's circle shortly after he became leader in 22 was things are starting to move in Newfoundland and then

there was the sort of carbon tax uprising among liberal MPs and a real sense that it was going away for the liberals in Atlantic Canada. Right. And now the latest projections I've seen are that the liberals are solidly ahead in all the provinces and look like they might run the table in Newfoundland. You've got to have a little bit of whiplash

watching that happen. Well, I think, I think whiplash is exactly what we've experienced in terms of public opinion. But what has become really clear to me, and I'm interested in hearing our colleagues on this, it's now very clear to me that much of the antipathy that voters were expressing toward the Liberal Party was really antipathy toward the Prime Minister. And when the Prime Minister disappeared, a lot of the antipathy disappeared. And certainly when the Prime Minister made it clear that he was going to go, then I think people said, well, let's take a lot of the antipathy disappeared. And certainly when the prime minister made it clear that he was going to go, then I think people said, well, let's take a look at the alternative. And for the first time, many Atlantic Canadians looked at Mr. Paulie Evans said,

well, you know, he was an alternative when we had Mr. Trudeau, but now he's an alternative. And we're not sure we're crazy about it because the kind of conservatives who've done very well historically in this part of the country are progressive conservatives. And bear in mind that in 2011, when Mr. Harper won a government and did very well in the Atlanta Canada, he won 14 of 32 seats. He didn't win a majority of the seats. He did well, particularly in New Brunswick, where he won eight out of 10 seats. But the rest of Atlanta Canada has never really been on board with this Conservative Party of Canada in a meaningful way. So I think when the alternative changed, people were able to say, well, okay,

we can now have someone other than Trudeau and maybe we'll take a look at Mr. Carney. The Conservatives also didn't have much time, nor did they do a particularly effective job at defining Carney, nor did they do a particularly effective job at defining Carney, nor did they do a particularly effective job at redefining Mr. Poliev who became very well known in political circles in the country as chippy and chirpy.

And if I might say so, and he'll hate this, but Trumpy, even before Trump came back, people said, Mr. Poliev seems Trumpy. And, and many people here just didn't like that and don't like it. Elin, it feels like a different story in Quebec, potentially even a different story from a couple weeks ago. I'm starting to hear anecdotal evidence that the Bloc might be up off the mat.

Yes, although the numbers don't allow us to draw any conclusion because we're in this zone where everything can happen. The Bloc Quebec was between 23 and 25%. At 25, they could hold on to maybe 20, 25 seats. At 23, they could pretty much lose all of them. In 2011, when they got swiped out, they maintained only four seats when they had only 24%. So we see we're in a very dangerous zone. My general take on this election is I'm struck when I look at the polls how things have not changed substantially for the past three weeks. After one week, everything, maybe aside from BC, everything seemed to be baked in. And I'm starting to wonder if Steve was saying that it's a fast campaign and I'm just starting

to wonder if people think that it's not a fast enough campaign. It seems like coming from Quebec that people would rather have a referendum than a campaign, an election campaign. It seems like an audition for the post of prime minister. And this was supposed 2025 was supposed to be a change election. We were tired of the guy of the Justin Trudeau and Mr. Poliev was the new thing on the block, right? He's been the new thing for two and a half years and all of a sudden the liberal leader changes and there's something even newer than Mr. Poliev.

So we Mr. Poliev is like caught is in own logic of novelty. And now he's not so new anymore. And I tend to agree with Steve, I think in Canada, there's, there are a lot of progressives. And that's certainly true in Quebec. When you look in the past, Brian Mulrooney was able to win a majority of seats in the province. There are a lot of conservative thinking Quebecers, but they don't necessarily like the conservative proposal that's been offered to them since frankly, the merger of 2003. And Vashe, what are you seeing from your cockpit? I would just jump off that point and say like the uniqueness of the moment

for the conservatives really is vis-a-vis the NDP in the rest of the country outside of Quebec. Insofar as I take the point that this brand of conservatism has not really resonated, but right now Pierre Poliev does have, according to public opinion polls, the same level of popular support that Stephen Harper did when he won a majority in 2011. The difference is the NDP. The NDP's support has collapsed from 30%, I think it was in 2011, to somewhere between 8% and 10%. And virtually all of that has gone to the liberals, which means that 39% for the conservatives, though it's a historic level of support for them. And he has grown the level of support from his predecessors. It's just simply not enough for them to form

government. And the liberals are in a position because of a higher level of popular support, the support of the NDP voters and the efficiency of their vote. Like if the only way they don't form government right now is if the polls are wrong. There's just no other way to look at it at this point. And so I think that to me is notable and it speaks to what Steve is saying, which I think will very quickly become our focus, which is like what happens after the election. When you have such a coalescing of support around two parties, so maybe three, four, five percent between them, you're dealing with a very disappointed other half essentially of the electorate post election, which could be a very challenging situation for all of us, but particularly whomever becomes Prime

Minister. The other quick note I would have more generally about the election is I agree that it's unique and that it's gone fast and I think all the stuff that happened before it was way more interesting. It's been a very, and I say that with like I'm not, you know, that my media judgy hat, I don't mean that in a, I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that's the moment that we're in, right? People wanted a serious election. They're struck by the gravity of the moment. And I feel like that was born out through the campaign itself.

The drama came with what Steve mentioned when Christopher Freeland quit and the drama of whether Trudeau would resign. And then he, you know, when he did and who the new leader would be and then Donald Trump's threats, which were so specific and became all about our sovereignty, like all of that was one of the most, you know, wild things I've ever covered in politics. But it led to basically the situation where people now think they have two serious viable candidates to lead the country and the election has in turn, I think, reflected that. I was reading somebody somewhere who's, who called this a boring campaign and I thought, are you off your nut?

Like this is, and then I thought, actually, wait a minute. It's not in a bad way. It just is. It's been very civil and serious. That's okay. Like the polls have been like this and, um, it's, it's not like Carney and, and Paulie ever throwing

a lot of curve balls on the trail. No. Like, uh. No, but, but Trump is throwing curve balls all It's not like Carney and Paulie ever throwing a lot of curveballs on the trail. No, but Trump is throwing curveballs all the time and that's made it very interesting as well. That has been a huge factor. I mean, the shadow of Trump has been over the country since he was returned to office in November. We had a looming sense that something was going to happen. I don't know if too many of us predicted it would be quite as dramatic as what has happened. But now we've had a campaign that's been conducted not only in the shadow of Trump, but based on the whim of President Trump. You know, look at what's been going on with the markets, for example. And, you know, one of the interesting things

that occurred was the phone call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Carney. And I think history may prove and I'd be interested in your feedback on this, history may prove that that was a significant call for one reason, and that is that after Carney spoke with Trump, Trump stopped talking about Governor Carney or Governor Trudeau, and he stopped talking about the 51st state stuff. And I wonder if subconsciously, at least, that did not benefit Mr. Carney by creating

at least the impression that maybe Mr. Trump took him more seriously and maybe took Canada more seriously because I think it's no secret that Donald Trump had no particular use for Prime Minister Trudeau. But at the same time, Trump has been a bit more silent in the past few days, maybe a week and a half, and it coincides, I don't know if it's a coincidence, but it coincides with what seems to be a softening of the liberal votes. It's as if the threat of Donald Trump is what revives Mark Carney. And when we start forgetting about Trump, it seems like we're looking a little bit more at the other option. It's even more specific. I could quickly interject. Nick Nannos has said, because he does tracks the overnights when Mark

Kearney is acting in his capacity as prime minister in response to something Trump has done, that is the biggest ascent that, that Nick sees in the overnights and support for Kearney, whenever that sort of subsides. And the, the threat is not as punctuated as it is in the moment that he's acting as prime minister. It becomes more even playing field. Daniel Smith was right. And saying to the Trump administration, stop doing this, you're making

a guy lose. Well, this is so it's not just that Trump hasn't been talking a lot about Canada, to the extent where when Katie Simpson at the CBC asked about that in a White House briefing, some of my conservative friends called that the CBC trying to bring Trump in off the bench, which I thought was a little silly. Uh, to me, if I was working in Washington, I would only have one question, which is why are you not talking about the 51st state? Um.

And just to quickly defend Katie, she's a person of great integrity and a journalist of great integrity. There is no way that would be the case. Oh, absolutely. But it's not just Trump, JD Vance and Elon Musk are also, it's like a pack of dogs that didn't bark in this campaign.

And I find it very strange. Surely some kind of word has gone out, but from whom and what the word is, is something that I'm sure people will be happy to speculate on in the comment boards. It's, it's, it's beyond me. No one will tell me, I've asked. Yeah.

What it indicates in part though is that if the silence of the American administration tends to blunt liberal support, then clearly Mr. Poliev is resonating with some voters when he speaks about the so-called affordability issues, which I prefer to call, you know, cost of living issues. The term affordability has always struck me as being a phony word. This is about the cost of life. And obviously his rhetoric and his comments do resonate with people when that becomes the subject of the debate. But in order for that to happen, there has to be that vacuum come from the other side of 49. I want to say a word about the people who are supporting

this podcast. Gill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy offers more than just a master's program. They strive to bring together different perspectives and disciplines through public lectures and seminars, strike a better balance between theory and practice in their research, and emphasize the various complexities of the policy process in their conferences. But if you are interested in earning a Master of Public Policy with global reach in just one year, applications are open now for next fall. Learn more at mcgill.ca slash maxbellschool. Now here's a question, has any of us interviewed Mark Carney or Pierre Poliev in the last five years?

Yes, just Mark, I have Mark Carney twice. Yeah, twice before he was a leader, before he was running. And I'm trying to think of, like Poliev used to do all the panels, particularly when I, when I was hosting at CBC. So there were like 500 times he was on a panel as the finance critic.

But then since he became leader two years ago, no. Yeah. So I interviewed Carney when he had a, when he was peddling his book in 2021. And that conversation was way more interesting as soon as I turned off the record button than it was while we were. Oh, aren't they always Paul?

Aren't they always Paul? Turned out he was interested in being prime minister. But yeah, no, since they become party leaders, it's the lockdown. Like, unless you're running some kind of tech bro podcast, you're kind of out of luck. Steve, you famously interviewed party leaders during campaigns. Are you struck by how much that has changed, by

how much less access people in our line of work have than we used to have? Well, you know, I was in the anchor chair during the last campaign and we had party leaders on. As I recall, Mr. Trudeau didn't come on. Then again, he didn't come on on the 27 times I invited him after the last interview I did with him. But my point is that it used to be commonplace

for the party leaders to sit down for long form interviews, not only with the Vashie Karpalis, I invited him after the last interview I did with him. But my point is that it used to be commonplace for the party leaders to sit down for long-form interviews, not only with the Vashi-capalysis of the world, but also with local regional media figures. I think that the public is not very well served by the decision, and it is an apparent strategic decision to not do this for reasons that I'm sure the political insiders can justify in their own minds but the public isn't well served by this and the public is also not well served by political parties waiting until the

end of the campaign to release platforms so that there can't be any serious long-form questioning of the party leaders about these things and you know again it does occur to me that interviews long-formform interviews of the sort that Vashi has done, of the sort that I used to do regularly, are important for viewers and voters because it's not only a policy study, it's also a personality study. And the viewers, listeners, and readers get an opportunity

to see how leaders react when they are asked persistent questions on important subjects. And I think that the whole process is poorer for the decision to absent the leaders from the long-form interview. And again, all of the parties appear to have made that decision. I guess Mr. Singh, I think, has done some more. But I haven't seen Mr. Carney and I haven't seen Mr. Pauli do any. May have missed him. Hélène, a partial exception in Quebec where the networks can deliver a big audience and so people show up

for events like the 5 Chefs, Une Élection, the serial interviews, but Hélène, it feels like, and this is not surprising, but it's still striking, the extent to which the media are a character in this little drama, what do you make of it? But they have been for quite some time. This is not new or specific to this election. I remember 2011 when Mr. Harper

was about to win his majority, the media and how the media were treated on the Harper plane, they had a plane back then, was a big issue in the campaign. Remember that's the first time the conservatives impose a limit of four questions during the campaign. They would put reporters behind a rope very, very far away from any action taking place.

And it became an electoral issue in it in and of itself. Reporters were making pieces about the treatment of reporters. And I remember one conservative operatives telling us, keep going, by talking about this issue, we will get our majority. I don't know if that's the reason why they got their majority. But the conservatives were making the assumption that being strong and aggressive towards reporters is a win issue for them with their vote base. So it's not just about, and I agree with what Steve's saying about the long format interview.

And that's very important. And they're disappearing. And partly because, especially in Quebec, we offer them an alternative. They can go on showbiz to do light interviews like, tout le monde en parle. Yeah, right. Every leader went to that. But it's not a tough interview. It's really a spin moment where they can just present their spin on every questions being asked. But it's more than that. It's about the conservatives not answering policy questions. I have this list of texts that I sent to some supposedly spokesperson of the conservative party, and it's only me asking questions,

and I never get an answer. And that's not because somebody called me back to give it to me. They just don't answer. So you have policy questions that don't have any answers. You look at in local writings where sometimes there are some local debates and conservatives candidates will not show up. Reporters going on the ground do a profile of a writing and they will say, well, we were not able to do canvassing with the conservatives, sometimes with the NDP as well.

But so there's something more profound to it. And there's this lack of willingness to be open about what they intend to do if they have power. And it's been going on for at least 15 years. Vashi, I get that a lot of people don't like what journalists do and they don't like what the more, you know, powerful and well-budgeted journalists do and they like this crappy independence and so on, but I think sometimes the conservatives overestimate the amount of pop they're going to

get out of that. Like, I don't know if there are millions of people who are going to vote based on who ruins our life the most. That seems to that seems to, that seems to overestimate our influence in all of this. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely a weird thing happening where it's our fault for bad stuff that goes on. And yet we're accused of being totally irrelevant at the same time.

I'm not sure how all of those things can, can be true necessarily at the same time. I mean, I'm not really exclusionary about the way that I view it. I think the more the merrier, I feel uncomfortable blocking access. And I understand that some of the distrust with the kind of thing that I do is born out of stuff that happened that justifies that mistrust. And I'm not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But I do think, just like Steve does, that they're underestimating, for example,

the degree to which traditional media is still consumed in this country. And I know in the Quebec example, they seem a little bit more aware of it. But it's in no way nothing. The sheer millions of people who watched the debates, for example, and I know there was a whole bunch of stuff in and around them, but the debates themselves were

hugely consumed across this country, across every major network. And who put them on? Who produced them? Who, you know, a consortium of mainstream media who are still the only ones able to lift a product like that? Same thing in the United States, everyone said, Oh, it's all the podcasts. Yes, that played a huge role. There's no reason not to do them. But who put on the debate that ended Joe Biden's career? It was again, the mainstream media. And so I think that it's to their detriment not to engage. And I'm not speaking just of the conservatives because I'm speaking of all three leaders in this case, for example. And I think it's also to the detriment of the public because behind the scenes, all the pushback I get is like, it's just too much risk. It's too much risk.

I've never asked a question that is outside of what they're trying to defend, their policies. Like it's just, I just don't let it go when they don't answer. And that in and of itself makes them uncomfortable. And they've made this calculation that it's too risky. And I think like the one piece of feedback I get from so many people who watch is their disappointment in that, particularly at a time when everyone's like, we got to go against Trump,

we got to go up against Putin. And yet like, you can't take a few follow-up questions on the policies that you insist are best to guide our country. Well said. As we record this, I'm following colleagues as they discuss trying to cover the release of the conservative platform. And I, with all my love to the conservative campaign team, you are wildly overthinking this. Put the thing on a table and let people ask questions about it. It'll all be over soon, you know? And instead there's this ridiculous. Defend your ideas. soon, you know, and instead there's this ridiculous, there's this ridiculous process of like, signing up for your turn for a private interview with their spin person so that none of the

reporters will hear other reporters asking a question so that no narrative can build. And it's like, you understand that they've got phones, don't you? It's the strangest thing, you know. Just to build on what she was saying earlier about the conservatives doing pretty well in that election, that 38% are almost as good as in 2011 when they won the majority. And I think that illustrates precisely the point, is that in this election where it's a two-way race, it's all about gaining supports from other parties, the Bloc Québécois, the NDP. It's about widening your base. And it shows that the conservatives, they keep hitting the same glass ceiling. They are stuck at 38 or 39%. They are unable to go beyond that. So they keep talking

to Alberta, they keep talking to Saskatchewan and people who are likely-minded, but they can't seem to find a way of talking beyond that. And that's why they will not probably win this election because they haven't been able to recruit people from the NDP. And the NDP and the conservatives, they are sometimes switching votes in the West and BC and sketch one, etc. So this philosophy of trying to not to talk to mainstream media, it's not helping them in widening their base. They keep talking to the same people over and over again. They already got that they have to talk to other people to gain their votes. And in prosecuting this issue, I think we all need to remind ourselves that we don't get a lot of sympathy from

voters when we complain about journalists, not being able to get interviews with politicians. Our case needs to be made directly to our readers, voters, and listeners, that when those folks don't sit down with us, they deny you the opportunity to get the information that you need. This is not a contest between us and them. This is a competition between the entire electorate and the political class about whether voters get the

information they need and deserve to make informed decisions. And there's another level to it, which is when they deny the legitimacy of obvious questions about whether their stuff will even work or even make sense, it corrodes their thinking about the governing choices they have to make. If, like if you do what team Trudeau did for the last couple of years, get your tunnel vision on and you say

everything will be fine and everybody who says otherwise is a naysayer, you start to make lousier decisions and, you know, a conversation like whether you're, it's your personal finances or your relationship with your friends or, or whatever, talking about it doesn't actually hurt. It ensures that you're still living in the real world. If I could even like tie a bow on it, just

tying, but what you're saying with what Elen is saying, I think that last year the conservatives were able to reach beyond that base because of exactly what you described from the Trudeau government. This sort of like insistence that the stuff that they knew people did not think was working was working. working and the refusal to accept any challenge to those premises had, I think, pushed people, particularly, for example, in Ontario and Atlantic Canada, where it was the carbon tax to support the conservatives in a moment when they normally wouldn't have. The conservatives got extremely, I guess, unlucky and the liberals were smart because it wasn't just a new leader.

It was someone who immediately decided that that stuff would be cut, like first day, get rid of the carbon. And then as soon as that stuff deflated, it's when that ceiling that Elin refers to was almost like put back in place because there were no real adjustments made. And the adjustments that were made to try and tie Carney to Trudeau because of the actions he took right away. And I get how frustrating it must be after years of saying that stuff wasn't good policy, but because he made those adjustments, it just didn't resonate in the way that it used to. Well, let's not forget that Carney has put some considerable distance between himself

and Mr. Trudeau on a number of key policy points. He has moved the Liberal Party back into toward the center of the political spectrum, which is the most Canadians are, well, yes, sort of. The platform isn't really, but yes. Well, no, but on some of the big ticket stuff, it seems a little more, shall we say, progressive, conservative than Mr. Trudeau ever did. And there is, again, I reiterate, certainly in this part of the country, and I believe in much of Ontario and other parts of the Western part of the country, there are still people who

identify as being conservative progressives. As Darrell Dexter, the former NDP Premier of this province used to say, I am a conservative progressive. There are conservative progressives who want incremental change and that is a very attractive thing to have on offer in a campaign like this. And while Stephen Harper was, it was not the only, the perfect example of a prime minister

by any means, he consciously reached out to corners of the party and corners of the broader non-liberal movement in this country that made him uncomfortable. People who'd worked closely with Brian Mulrooney and with Joe Clark, people who worked closely with Quebec nationalists. Um, it used to be that even someone who was really

good at exciting the base also understood the value of a big tent. What's more emblematic of that not happening than the war between Doug Ford and Pierre Paglia? Holy cow. Great point. But don't you think the Conservative Party of

Canada is fracturing along almost exactly the same lines of which it was jammed together? The progressive conservative side of the party is coming unglued from the Canadian Alliance and Reform, a side of the party in many, in many important respects. That's got to be really preoccupying to the conservative leader or interim conservative leader.

I have no real theory on which will be which, uh, if they don't win the election is there's got to be some party maintenance, I think. Elen, what are you looking for after like starting the day after, win the election is there's got to be some party maintenance, I think. Elin, what are you looking for after like starting the day after, after the election? Well, of course I'm going to be depending on who's winning the election, of course, but assuming the polls are right and that Mark

Carney becomes prime minister. I don't personally see how Mr. Poliev can retain his position. Wasting a 20 points advance in an election is kind of a message, a strong message from the electorate that they don't like him so much. So I don't see how we can stay in.

And if I can jump in on this, because we keep talking about Harper, like someone who did succeed in building a big tent. And you know what? I've never bought that reading of the situation, because if you think of it, Mr. Harper has needed four elections before getting his majority. He started in 2004. He should have won that one. It was after the biggest corruption scandal in the modern Canadian history, the sponsorship scandal. And even then, it didn't succeed in

winning the government. He got a very small minority in 06, wasn't able to turn it into a majority in an 08, and he had to wait 2011 to gain a majority because he was faced with probably one of the worst liberal leaders in history, and the Bloc Québécois was collapsing with the NDP. So I don't see Mr. Harper having built a tent. It's just that he was stronger than his opponents. And I think that because of that success, the conservatives don't do the soul-searching exercise that they should be doing, which is after the merger, it was really a takeover by the Reform Party Alliance,

Canadian Alliance. And this progressive side of the Conservative Party was just pushed aside. And I think that the real key to success is to bring back this wing of the party to have a real influence on the orientation of the party. and I'm not so sure it will happen after this defeat because like Vashe said we will have a lot of division after this election but this is what should happen. Vashe what are you looking for after the election? Well look I spent a long time at West reporting so I have you know a lot of I don't know what the right word is, but empathy for how isolated people out there feel. And I think that if the polls are correct, that those feelings of isolation will be exacerbated. And I'm worried about that. Just like not really as a reporter, but just as a Canadian, because I think that especially in a time of crisis, but all the time, there have been moments over the last 10 years where, and you wrote about this so eloquently in your book, it became very politically advantageous to exacerbate those.

And that's at the federal level with Trudeau and the provincial levels as well, to exacerbate those differences for political gain. And, you know, I'm sort of naive, but I hope that isn't the case. I hope that there is resistance to doing that because particularly, like, I don't know if it's ever been because of the coalescing around the two parties, this divided, like you've got rural versus urban, men versus women, old versus young, and East versus West. Like all of those divisions are just along one dividing line instead of many. And so I have some level of concern about that. And just jumping off what Elan said, I think particularly, you know,

that the conservatives in the Poliev years felt as though they finally could reject a thesis that she put forward with success. I think there are many people in that party who don't want to acquiesce to the sort of progressive side of things because they don't feel it's reflective of what they believe their version of conservatism is. And many of them live in the West and in the prairies. And that is born out of their feelings of being overlooked, their feelings of not being represented, I

guess, in Ottawa. And so it's like a real thing, not just like an ideological thing for them. And I think, you know, should the polls be correct, that will be an interesting development as well. Like how does the party end up reconciling that? Do they actually come to the determination that adopting more progressive policies is necessary in order to win elections? Because I think what they felt they finally had in Polyev is someone who could successfully reject that thesis on their part. So obviously, if he's successful, that's a different story. But if he's not, that will be sort of a new thing for them to grapple with. I think there are also those in the Conservative Party who feel that Aaron O'Toole had his chance to do that

in the last election and he didn't succeed. Let me underscore, and we've alluded to this several times during our conversation, the Conservative Party of Canada has won the popular vote in the last two federal elections. If it doesn't win the popular vote in this federal election, it is because the NDP vote and the Green vote has migrated to the Liberal Party. But that base of 38 to 40 percent of Canadians cannot, cannot be overlooked. We as a nation need to listen to such a large number of Canadians even if their votes don't translate into power. Their votes represent their feelings and you this country, we are united right at the moment in feeling very vulnerable when it comes to our American neighbor. Let's not let our own internal divisions tear us apart

at a time when we just, we can't afford it. This is all very reminiscent to me, Paul, and you're probably even too young to remember this, but the first Trudeau government in the 1970s, when this country was badly divided, East and West, liberal and conservative. And I, I wonder what the map is going to look like come Tuesday morning when we look at Quebec

and then we look at Canada, East of the GTA and Canada, West of the greater Toronto area. I worry that we may see three or four Canadas and that won't be helpful. All of this will go a little better if we have a functioning parliament after the next election, if we have real federalism, where different levels of government in

different parts of the country talk to one another, and if we have real conversations. These are cans I've started to bang on a little bit because I sometimes worry that we're a little too obsessed with election day as the only important event on the calendar. Agreed. Just nod your head sagely, that's all I need.

All right. I promise to let you get back to your day jobs. So, Elan, Vashe, Steve, thank you so much for joining me. It was a great conversation. A real honour being with you three today. Back, actually such a joy to be with you all. Thank you.

That's the show for this week. My show next week will be about how the election turned out. I've got some very high level campaign officials from the big parties to dish on how the campaign went down from the inside. I hope you'll join me. 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. If you're enjoying this show, give us a good rating on your podcast app. It helps spread the word. We'll be back next Wednesday.