The Paul Wells Show - The panel: pulp that platform

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

Someday we should probably sit down and have a talk about election platforms. Count this week’s instalment of The Panel as a down payment on that conversation. Platforms are weird: if you release yours on Easter Saturday, after the television debates are already over, and a month after the election campaign started, your body language doesn’t say “Key piece of voter information.” But nobody dares not release one. Anyway, we’ve got Allison Gifford, Marci Surkes and Jason Lietaer to discuss the platforms, the debates, and the home stretch of this fascinating campaign.

Hi everybody, welcome to the Whatever This Is, All El's show. And thanks for joining me panel. One last time? Second last time? One of the late times. Allison, where are we heading into the last week? What's going on? We're heading in to get out the vote this week.

So everybody's got, all of our war rooms are gonna be dissolving and people are going to be going to the battleground ridings, which I would think are Edmonton, Calgary, greater Toronto, greater Vancouver. So the platforms were dropped over the Easter weekend, which I think was a little bit pathetic. I don't know about you guys, but I didn't really love looking at platforms while trying to hang out with my parents and my children. But those are out. I don't think they're changing a lot of minds. Voter turnout has been pretty high.

So we'll see if that turnout is the result of people galvanized to vote in the national interest or whether that conservative base is as strong as Mr. Kholayev has said it is. I think the only things that change the show at this point are events. If we see Donald Trump dipping his head in in the last week, strategic voting is always a big thing. So you'll see the NDP going out and reminding people in battleground writings that it's in many writings across Canada It's New Democrats who defeat the Conservatives And from there on I think it's just a Geo TV game. So typically the NDP and the Conservatives are strongest

I think that both those parties will need to do a lot of a lot of work in BC right now and and Singh and Blanchette will both need to remind voters that they do have options. It has always seemed to me, Alison, that the NDP has the most ability to reassign people from the entire national movement to whatever the battle of the moment is. So, you know, our friend Sally Hauser from Newfoundland would suddenly be working in an Alberta campaign or a BC campaign or a Manitoba campaign. She finally got elected in

in in Saskatchewan. I assume there's a lot of that going on now too. No doubt that's that is the NDP calling card is that they have incredibly strong local campaign fortresses and to witness it is something else. But yeah, you know, we fan out all over the country and it's where you will learn the most about politics too. Yeah and take out food I assume. Indeed. Everyone wants the strong nona riding where there's like good nona cooking. Oh yeah? Yeah. The things I learned. The same way, the best, yeah. Marcy, is this thing baked in? I mean, so I was thinking through my little history trove of elections that still moved in the last week.

And I thought of Paul Martin pulling victory from the jaws of defeat in 2004. last time I thought of the orange wave, which was, which was very much a post debate phenomenon in, in, in 2011, but it seems to be those are, um, those are continuations of preexisting trends. Like, like, you know, if it's been steady for a while, like it has been in this race, it's really hard for anyone to move the needle in the final week.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. are continuations of pre-existing trends like like you know if it's been steady for a while like it has been in this race it's really hard for anyone to move the needle in the final week. It is hard to move the needle entirely in the final week um that being said uh we have seen and we've discussed on this on this program since really the first week of this election that the polls have been highly volatile until they solidified, but that volatility is not old, it's still fresh. And so I would say there is still the opportunity for movement. I certainly don't think this is necessarily a hundred percent

yet in the can. I do think the liberal campaign is treating it very delicately. Yes, they've been, they've been forerunners for the last number of weeks, but they understand that volatility too. And volatility means that some of those voters who have been coalescing or suggesting they are gonna coalesce around the liberal vote still could go home. They could go home to Alison's friends in the NDP.

They could go home to the Bloc. Mr. Blanchet was very persuasive as he always is during the debates. And so I don't think anyone is taking this yet for granted on the Liberal side. Certainly I am not. And the examples that you provide, Paul, are good cautionary tales for why you have to continue to be incredibly focused and not assume that you've got this thing. To the points Alison were making, which were excellent points for people to understand the real shift that has happened over the course of this weekend, we moved

from the air war into the ground war and the platforms were really the last big milestone of that so called air war, where it's really the war room and control in terms of message and narrative and content. If you're somebody like me who's lived in the war rooms and worked on the policy team and the platforms, up until platform release day, you are one of the most important people in the war room. Like you're getting time with the leader every day to brief, everybody's looking to you,

you're at the center of life. And then just like that, it's like an instant oblivion for policy folks as people are redeployed almost instantly overnight to the mobilization campaign, to different local campaigns, to the regions, etc. So this is a real palpable shift in the campaign and we are going to see which machine is operating the most effectively right now to bring home that vote. Liberals brought out, liberals and the new Democrats brought out their platform on Easter weekend.

Is that something you do when you want people to read your platform? No. I'll say quickly, and then Jason probably will want to weigh in on it because I think the conservatives that maybe they've waited for an to weigh in on it because I think the Conservatives that maybe they've waited for an opportunity to get more eyeballs on it after Easter weekend.

I'm not sure about the timing, but in terms of putting it out over Easter weekend, obviously it means that the platforms for the most part were one secondary considerations for that fully costed piece to most of the big marquee planks really have been rolled out already. So from a war room or from a campaign's perspective, the platform is is really just the table stakes that they have to put out, but they feel they've already communicated their main policy conviction at this point. Jason, Mark Carney brought out his platform this weekend, Pierre Pauliev didn't, which one is smarter? It's hard to know, which neither of those

moves is probably going to swing the election one way or another, Paul, is my view of this. And I just want to pick up on something that Marcy just said. Platform release day, just for everyone out there, is one of the most terrifying days for any campaign. Because everyone's trying to figure out

whether or not their numbers add up behind the scenes. Behind the scenes, those platforms look published and polished and ready to roll. And they look like they're all bolted down. The truth is, five minutes before, somebody was having a crisis of confidence over whether or not these numbers added up. And you saw yesterday, it happens to everybody.

Like the liberal campaign has to pull their platform down for a couple of minutes and check a couple of things and put it back up. So those days, I will say they're great for journalists. The journalists are, you know, obsessed over when are you dropping your platform and when your costed platform, I will say, most Canadians aren't waiting with bated breath on whether they say, and this isn't been a platform election by the way,

I'm actually a little surprised that Mr. Carney dropped a platform at all. There was some debate over at the beginning of his campaign amongst liberals about whether or not he would just sort of essentially run against Trump and not really do much on the policy side. Now they've done a little bit on the policy side. I think they couldn't help themselves, but here we are.

So it's hard to know which of those moves is smarter, Paul, but I'll just say that Poliev has been especially policy heavy over the course of the campaign as well. That's one difference between him and some of the past conservatives over the last little bit too, not nationally maybe, but there's been essentially policy every day from Poliev and you know, I've heard a lot of that from people as well. So we're going to see whether or not this is a policy election. I actually don't think it's a policy

election. I think it's a leadership election. I think the policy is just what's in the background for people to just discuss. But I think this is a, which of these two guys do you want in charge? And the policy is mostly just background music. Alison, I mean, let me make a claim and then you can tell me whether I'm full of shit. To the extent that Mark Carney's selling proposition is that he is the change that Canadians want. That he is sure not Justin Trudeau. It felt to me on Saturday like that platform with that cover and that language was a bad way

to advance that claim. Cause it felt awfully liberal. It felt, you know, and they're out there with pie charts showing that they've got much more capital spending and much less operating spending. But it sure felt like the fourth Justin Trudeau liberal platform. Am I blowing smoke or? No, I don't think you're blowing smoke. It did feel like the fourth Justin Trudeau platform.

And I think it was right down to the branding and the messaging. It was pretty, it looked pretty similar to previous platforms. I think it sort of speaks to who Carney is, that he felt the need to put out a platform, but they put it out in probably the most low risk way possible by dumping it out on Easter weekend. And, you know, every party, I guess, other than the Greens, is guilty of that. I just don't know. Why bother? Honestly, it wasn't for Canadians. It wasn't for votes. Marcy.

If I may. So, look, I mean, platforms serve a certain function during the course of the election campaign in that they are instructive to voters about what the mandate is that they are electing, whether or not people read them in detail or go through Jason. You were giving me some some PTSI flashbacks in terms of costing tables. But whether or not Canadians actually go through the line by line and dissect the costing, I think is probably fair to say that's not the case. There is a credibility factor, which is why it's table stakes in terms of why the major parties need to put something out. But do you consider that the platforms are actually the basis of the mandate letters of the next government, of the instructions from much a signal to the system of what the incoming government's intent is to govern as they are communications documents in the confines of a campaign. So they do serve another role that we don't really see that's a little more behind the curtains but that does

matter a lot to stakeholders, to Canadians, to public servants who have to carry out and implement that mandate. So there is a reason why the Liberals would put one out no matter what with a costing affixed to it run by the parliamentary budget officer to ensure that it can hold that it holds water. So my strong feeling is that if the Liberals form the next government for the sake of good governance in this country, it's really important to jam a fork into that whole process. Pulp the platform, send out mandate letters to the ministers and say,

you tell me how we need to improve life in your portfolio. And, you know, I mean, I'm kind of eager to get off of this hamster wheel that we've been on for a decade. I don't know. But what about the lobbyists? The lobbyists need something. But what about the lobbyists?

I won't argue with you, but look, but the platform letters actually can be iterative processes. The platform informs the mandate letters. And then usually that first meeting between the prime minister and the incoming minister is to discuss what's in the mandate letters and to seek some feedback from the minister. So it is not all set in stone before the minister has a chance to weigh in.

There is an opportunity for that too. But I'm not going to argue with you. And the platform felt very liberal red book. It absolutely had all the hallmarks of a traditional liberal red book, even if it was quite a bit slimmer than what we've seen in the last few go-rounds. Paul, you're a man who's never managed a caucus or a new minister who doesn't have a clue what they're doing. It's the first day in Ottawa gets there and tells you, you know, it's it, I'm laughing because I think we've all been there in one way or another where you're like, you know, you get these green

people who come in and, you know, they've got no experience or little experience, certainly in the portfolio. They know very little about the portfolio that they're in. And anyway, I'm joking, but I will say you're probably right. That maybe somewhere in the middle is a little better of joint priorities. But I will say this, I was a little shocked with the positioning of Arne's portfolio, by the way, Paul, like I really, I, or his, his policy document, like I will say, he's been presenting himself as essentially of an economist and, and, and a fiscal conservative,

for lack of a better term with term, with a heart, I would say, is how he's presenting himself out there. And that document, they had to have known, and obviously this is a strategy for your listeners out there, is meant to solidify the left. That document is meant to make sure that nobody who's currently thinking about voting for them bleeds back to the NDP. And so that's a very interesting choice for Mark Carney, right? Like, Mark Carney, that's not Mark Carney. It's actually not who Mark Carney says he is.

So to get him after a couple of months in politics to sit him down and say, hey, sir, we've got to actually present a document that is, like, at least as leftward leaning as Justin Trudeau. Um, and to have him not and say, yes, I'm sure that that behind the scenes, there's going to be some stories come out about how sort of that process went. Because I will say that that's not who Mark Carney says he is. And from an, I will say too, putting a first time campaigner, Mark Carney,

who's had his wobbles, but he's, he's gotten better over the course of the campaign, or at least certainly during the debates, have to sell for the last sort of seven, eight, 10 days of the campaign, essentially a leftward leading plan. When he, I think is somewhat of a fiscal conservative, or at least pretends he is, that's a really weird choice,

or it's an interesting choice for me, because authenticity really matters. And if he's sort of questioned day after day after day, how come you're spending so much? You're spending more than Trudeau, all of that kind of stuff. I'm not sure that it's the easiest position to put a new prime minister and a new campaigner in, because it's difficult to sell a message you actually don't believe in.

Yeah. I mean, so in his shoes, what I would say is my friend, Stephen Harper and I ran gigantic deficits in 2009 when we were saving the country and now we're going to do it again. But it's not what he said up until, up until Saturday, right?

That's the weird part is it's not what he believes in either. The other thing that's happened since last week is a couple of debates and some other stuff in Montreal. Alison, what's the story out of the debates? What, I mean, does anybody know what the story is? since last week is a couple of debates and some other stuff in Montreal. Alison, what's the story out of the debates? I mean, does anyone in Canada even remember

there were debates on this Monday morning? Or did they change anything? I think everybody showed up and did what they had to do, but I don't think it changed anything. Could it have? I mean, is the only way for debates to make a difference anymore is if somebody really messes up?

I think if somebody really messes up or somebody's just much more fiery than you expected them to be or just really found a moment and pounced on it and caught someone else off guard. I mean, I think Brian Mulrooney was good at that. Leighton was good at that. I don't see anybody right now good at that. I think Polyev could be, but I think that he has had to kind of give himself a personality makeover that kind of boxes him in a little bit. I kind of feel for the guy because his frustration is a frustration that I feel too.

I'm tired of the status quo as well. I think there are, change is needed. I just think that he played to his base for far too long and he played the same role for far too long and it's hard to break out of that. So, you know, as I said, I think everybody showed up and said what they needed to say, but I didn't see anyone come out as a clear front runner. Marcy, I just thought, especially the English debate, which was a little sort of cleaner and people had, first of all, more room to say what they wanted to say and And secondly, more ability to say what they wanted to say. I just thought that that one in particular was a fantastic debate. But did it, like, does it leave any residue in the popular consciousness? I agree with your assessment. I thought it was a very strong debate in terms of getting a real

feel for who these gentlemen are and what their intent is with respect to government. Does it leave a residue? No, I think in this case, I agree with Alison pretty much completely. I don't think it's moved the dial. I think what it allowed for were the two front runners who are to Jason's earlier point, the leaders that people are really kicking the tires on, it truly allowed the opportunity to, you know, ensure that they have the jelly that either of them have the stuff if you were thinking about voting conservative. If you wanted to see that Mr. Carney could remain cool and composed under fire and not dissolve into a prickly mess or anything that was forecast, then you got that. You saw them both. You saw them both as very able, capable. Either of them could represent Canada on the international stage. I think in terms of this debate, whatever residue there is, that's all there is, is that we have two leaders presenting themselves with different, really, you know, and actually a lot of ways, different perspectives on how to move the country forward, which one feels like the better fit for you.

So to that extent, Paul, I do think it was a useful exercise. I think it was important for Canadians to have that opportunity to help cement their decision. Jason, if we had seen that Pierre Poliev 10 more times in the last two years, would he be in a better shape today? I've seen that Pierre Poliev more than 10 times in the last two years and it's a good question. I think the answer is mostly yes, Paul. It's interesting, I mean, Carney and Poliev are both first time people we forget

about that, right? Like Carney has been prime minister for 10 or 15 minutes. Paul Yev was in his first national debates, never really tested like that up until now. And I've seen how nervous whether it's I've presented, you know, I've got premiers and prime ministers and leaders and I've seen how nervous people can be. Canadians don't actually maybe empathize with that, but I can tell you that both of those guys was shitting bricks before that debate. I promise you that. Carney, am I really going to blow a lead?

I might do something tonight that does this. And Paul Liev, which is like, I have to do well tonight, otherwise we probably don't have a shot. And I, again, I thought it was interesting to watch both of them. I thought, to your point, every new leader finds their footing at a different time of the campaign. You know, you hope that it's earlier on, you hope that it's before the campaign, you hope it's, you know, five years before the campaign, right, Paul? I will say, I thought Pauliev, and just in the tweaks that he made to his presentation over the last week or two, and I think it's right to say it's a little softer, but I think that it was also, it was also, he didn't pull his punches either. And I thought particularly in the second sort of half of that debate, as the debate wore on, I thought he got quite a bit stronger and

really found his footing. Like it all of a sudden you saw the comfort level of this is how I go at Carney without looking, you know, like I'm lambasting him or scaring people quite frankly. And so I thought that was really good. And I did think as well that it was. Anyway, kudos to Steve Pagan, kudos to, you know, Mr. Wah in French. I thought that the debate moderation was terrific in both sides and yeah, I mean, Mr. Poliev, the question is, the one thing that, the last thing I wanted to say is,

I think Marcy and Alison were right. The one good thing for Poliev was going into that debate, he's seen as like not as strong a leader amongst, to this, the phantom, the CV and all those things that are Carney. And I actually think that that it leveled the playing field. That's one thing that I think what people will take for the debates is like, either of these guys could probably be the prime minister. And I think that that's mostly a great, great news for Mr. Poliat as people make the decisions over

the next 10 days, because up until then, he was competing against the specter of Mr. Carney's resume. And I think when you saw both of them on the level, it was like, okay, these two guys are a lot closer than I thought. And maybe I even like Poliette better, even if I was thinking about going for Carney. So I think that's the impact of the feeling of watching the debate. I'm glad somebody mentioned Bacon to team me up for for just to say it was really great to see him moderate a debate again. I did one of those things 10 years ago and my model even at that time was Steve Paken. And so seeing him come out and put on the suit again was like that James Bond movie that Sean Connery made in 1983. It was like, good to see he still got the moves. So on that note, we will call it quits for this week.

Sprint to the finish. We'll talk again after it's done about how it all went. Thanks everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.