The Paul Wells Show - Wells, Gerson, and Ling on Freeland and the Liberals' future, if any

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

In a conversation that took place less than three hours after Chrystia Freeland resigned from the federal cabinet, Paul Wells is joined by Justin Ling and Jen Gerson to discuss what this astonishing news means for the Liberal Party and the Trudeau government. Season 3 of The Paul Wells Show is sponsored 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. We're live. Hello to the 50 people who joined immediately. It's like TV, except somehow better. Hi, I'm Paul Wells from paulwells.substack.com. And I'm Justin Ling from bug-eyedandchameless.com. And we are waiting for Jen Gerson from the line to join us. I have some other guests that I hope we can get on sequentially after Justin has said his piece and if Jen manages to come and join us.

There's a lot going on. Yeah. Christopher Freeland released a letter this morning saying she's resigned from cabinet. You spend your whole career waiting for a day like this. The fall update is supposed to come out today. Last I heard from inside the lockup, they had not yet taken the cloth off the covers of the fall update, and reporters are not allowed to see it because they don't know whether the government is going to release it today.

There's a by-election underway. People are voting. Polls are about to open. They've just opened in Cloverdale, Langley City in British Columbia, where the Liberals were going to have a hard day anyway. And this is my favorite part. There's a fundraiser tonight across the river at the Museum of History for the Laurier Club club which is the biggest donors of the liberal party and the prime minister is supposed to address the cream of uh of the liberal donor class tonight what the hell is he going to say anyway so that's that's this that sets the table uh justin what do you uh what the hell yeah no what the hell is right like i i was thinking today that there must have been some

bet made at the last g7 leaders meeting to see which liberal leader could tank their government most effectively. Between Macron and Olaf Scholz, Trudeau was giving them a run for their money. Listen, I mean, this is catastrophic, right? Like I've been talking to a couple of liberal MPs and staffers in recent days who are just sort of beside themselves, who say that, you know, Freeland has made herself an enemy inside the government and the government has made her a traitor to the cause. Everyone expected something to happen. You know, some people started speculating in recent days that all of the leaks that

have been kind of weaponized against Chrystia Freeland in the news over the last week you know all of these revelations um that she's at odds with the prime minister overspending that um you know she's tried to put her foot down so that the government can't send out 250 checks to everybody uh this this uh winter um has had basically you know made her a position untenable within the government but really no one knows no one knew in real terms what that meant. And now today, like everyone is just sort of scrambling. Like I've been talking to some staff and some MPs over the last hour

who are just kind of beside themselves. Like they don't know if this government survives now. Like people who were adamant that the government's going to go to an election next fall are now saying like, I don't know, like we don't know if this is going to continue for days, let alone months. I actually looked it up in 1980 when the Joe Clark government fell. No, in 1979 when the Joe Clark government fell. It was on December 13th

and the liberal government's Christmas party was underway. So this is only three days later, and there's a Christmas party tonight for the Liberal party. Well, and tomorrow is the staff Christmas party. So the fundraiser tonight, tomorrow is the staff Christmas party, and the cabinet shuffle is scheduled to happen Wednesday. I don't even notice anymore whether they have Christmas parties for the journalists. It's been so long since I've been to a garden party so sad but uh you know i mean listen so i i just finished editing my column

on this for the star i don't know how i managed to vomit out so many words so quickly but i somehow did i think there's going to be a lot of speculation that this is kind of the byproduct of machinations over the last week or so but But really, this is a story of a government that has just completely seized up, calcified, rusted, and broken down. And now we're witnessing the actual kind of consequences and practical effects of what happens when you kind of have a government run by three people. And eventually those three people

are going to disagree on something and things sort of will fall apart as we're watching right now. I've always thought that, you know how an American president on something and things sort of will fall apart as we're watching right now. I've always thought that, you know how an American president is always carried, followed around by like a naval officer with the nuclear football. Since 2020, at least, Chrystia Freeland follows Justin Trudeau around with his political credibility and she's got the codes. And what she did this morning was she inserted both keys and turned them simultaneously. And when you use gimmicks to describe your own government's fiscal policy,

and you're the deputy prime minister and the minister of finance, look, I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that's bad. Yep. Yeah. So listen, we know 500 some odd people joining us maybe it makes sense to sort of go sequentially through just what the hell happened over the last couple of days how we're watching a government collapse in real time maybe that's a useful thing i imagine there's some people who woke up this morning to realize that you know the country no longer has a deputy captain

to mix my metaphors a bit, and it might be useful to sort of break it down a little bit. So there is naturally in the normal course of things, a fall economic statement delivered by the finance minister. Traditionally, it's not a big deal. It's simply saying, here's the current state of economic growth. Here is our expenditures to date, our revenues to date, and our expected budget balance. But increasingly since the 90s, finance ministers have often used it to announce little goodies, which, you know, new policies, new programs, new tax measures. That requires a vote in the House of Commons to see whether MPs agree. It's a supply, it's a money vote. So if the members in a minority parliament, if the opposition were able to gang

up and vote against it, that's the end of the government. We go to an election. And it's been weird because this fall update has been delayed for weeks, for many weeks. And a couple of weeks ago, they announced that they were going to go today. And the prime minister also announced himself personally in a photo op in a grocery store. I was going to run a screenshot of Justin Trudeau standing next to a rack of stuff that was labeled white bread. And I was going to ask, invite readers to tell which was which. That's pretty good. I like that. invite readers to tell which was which. But what they announced was this two-month GST break from September 15th to February 15th, and these $250 checks to everybody in the country who is employed and is making

under $150,000. The opposition, NDP and Bloc, howled because the checks were not going out to seniors. And fiscal hawks howled because it cost a hell of a lot of money. It's literally giving away money. And we're heading into uncertain water with the new Trump government.

And some people suggested this was irresponsible. Then stories appeared in the Globe that suggested that a lot of this delay and confusion was because the prime minister the finance minister disagreed about whether these measures were a good idea and now this so what are we going to look for what are we going to look for next yeah i mean this seizing up of you know this fight between the prime minister and the finance minister or the deputy minister is so fascinating because you know freeland is 100 right here right like these checks this gst rebate is complete electoral gimmicking it is fiscally irresponsible it is

nakedly cynical it's kind of it makes people feel gross hold on we have a gen we have a gen gerson so this is den gerson from the line and she is she has just downloaded the stuff It makes people feel gross. Hold on. We have a Jen. We have a Jen Gerson. We figured it out. So this is Jen Gerson from the line, and she has just downloaded the Stuck Back app. I'm going to let Matt know that I'm in. Okay, here. Sorry. I'm with it. I'm with it.

I'm here. I'm together. So here's the thing. Jen, Justin was just catching us up. But let's let you talk. What do you make of the morning's events? No, it's funny. So I was snuggling.

I was giving my son a little snuggle in the morning as I was trying to convince him to get out of bed. And so we were snuggling up. And my husband snuck upstairs, saw us snuggling. And he poked his head over, over his head over mine and said, Freeland resigned. And I just started laughing hysterically and woke up. And then he's like, oh, and you should read her resignation letter. It's quite great. So, in some ways, yes, it's a momentous pivot and a turning point,

but the degree to which it will be those things is yet to be seen because we don't know how everybody in the caucus is going to react to it or not react to it. So a lot of this is, it's hard to analyze at this point without the benefit of hindsight. I mean, it was a spectacular resignation letter. I mean, my husband and I were literally debating as to whether or not it was written on Friday night and then carefully edited

to be a careful hit. I think it wasn't. I think it was written sort of Sunday night and read over once and thrown out. So clearly there's a lot of emotion behind the letter. I'm not sure that there's an enormous amount of strategy, like the people who are suggesting that she's setting herself up to be leader through this later. I don't think that's so. I really don't. My theory of the case here, and hey, I could be wrong on this, is that the Trump election essentially snapped Freeland out of it. There was a real sense that after the Trump election, the sort of partisan haze more or less cracked for her. And I think she's actually been much more with it and much more clear-eyed about the situation that the country's in and the situation that the party's in since Trump was elected. And to me, what I loved about reading the resignation letter, it was like basically a confirmation of everything Matt and I have been screaming at the liberals for the last year and a half.

So it seems to me it's almost like she kind of came around on a couple of different files. And I think she just kind of, I mean, the obvious insult of being fired right before being asked to deliver a fall economic statement, very few people would have tolerated that. Most people would have quit. And the fact that, you know,

Trudeau didn't have enough managerial new to see that one coming is pretty indicative of the state of his, I don't know, interpersonal managerial skills at this state. I don't know. I'm just kind of rambling at this point. No, I actually think that does seem wrong. So we'll revive our old oppo days, Jen. Okay.

Because here's my read of it based on talking to people. Does that mean I'm Jesse? Oh, God, I'm sorry for you, Paul. I think for the sake of your mentions, please don't be Jesse Brown. But listen, from my understanding of people I've been talking to in and around the government over the last number of days is that, yeah, listen, these $250 fuck you vote for me checks is the thing that fundamentally broke the relationship broke the triumvirate which is you know katie telfer justin trudeau katie telfer being the chief of staff and christia freeland right like they for the last number of

years have have decided on all things big and small they are the they are the real center of power in this country and the fact that christia said no to these checks was the kind of the rupture point. But here's the thing. I don't think she had changed fundamentally because of Trump. I don't think anything about Freeland's politics have shifted in any way, shape or form. It's that she has always been more spendthrift. Ukraine being the exception is the thing I always hear. But she's always been skeptical ofthrift. Ukraine being the exception is the thing I always hear. But she's

always been skeptical of spending, right? Like she's thought of herself as the adult in the room that keeps saying, No, we can't afford this. The country can't afford to this. I hear she's been the one of the big blocks in getting Canada's defense spending up, which is something we ought to be prioritizing right now in an era of Trump. I've been told that she is the one who's inclined to say, you know, we'll give you 50% of what you want in order to get this thing then that you're not getting everything you asked for. She's trying to be, you know, the voice of fiscal prudence inside the government such as it is, not that she's done a spectacular job of that, but apparently she's trying. And I think this was just kind of the last straw. And it's worth noting that over the last number of months and years, the prime minister has had this sort of break in relations with other ministers in the same way. Apparently,

Trudeau and Melanie Jolie didn't talk for months at a time, because Jolie had a fundamental disagreement with how the prime minister was handling the issue of Gaza, not that Jolie has much of an alternative plan. But all to say that this is just another break in a long line of breaks. Bill Morneau was a similar circumstance. Jody Wilson-Raybould was a similar kind of divorce between the prime minister and senior ministers. So I think this is a trend more than it is, you know, something that changed fundamentally about Freeland. And I think that's kind of where we're going to. I think it's a fair point. And of course, I mean, you're better connected in Ottawa than I am. I'm kind of out here in the boonies and I like it that way. So, you know, I would defer to your analysis on that point. And like I said, I don't think that her politics changed. I think that

whenever anybody gets into a partisan party situation, particularly when they're in power, they have a tendency to get into bunker zone. Like there's almost like a partisan culty brain fog thing that happens. And my sense from Freeland is that that is what kind of cracked after Trump. I think she genuinely got scared and genuinely realized that we need to, we can't do this anymore. And we have to be a serious country now. And my suspicion is that she found the cabinet and the caucus and the leadership didn't get on board with that and instead engaged in what she would call the political gimmickry and the stunt of the $250 check. I agree with you. I think that probably was the breaking point, but there's more in that letter that suggested there were deeper problems there. I mean, the comment about the premiers was also really indicative. I mean, again,

this is something that Matt and I have been screaming about. The reason why all the premiers in the country are going off half-cocked on their own sort of save our province strategy and they're not getting behind a team cannabis strategy, that's a direct reflection of a vacuum of moral leadership at the federal level. That doesn't happen unless all of these people are looking to people like Justin

and saying the leadership's not there, the vision's not there, The vision's not there. The strategy's not there. So that's just kind of my theory of the case. But like I said, you're better connected and onward than I am. So she's at this extraordinary moment. Where did she arrive at this moment from? I want to point out two previous big moments in her career as a member of this government.

The first one is in 2019 when Jane Philpott quit the cabinet over the SNC-Lavalin affair, which, strictly speaking, did not involve Jane Philpott. She resigned as a matter of principle. And that was the first of several moments where Christopher Freeland made quite a show of announcing that the prime minister still enjoyed her confidence as the winning one, and that she was going to remain a loyal part of the team. And that was a gut check moment for the entire liberal government, really for the entire liberal party, was it was clear that the prime minister's behavior in the SNC-Lavalin, his treatment of Jody Wilson-Raybould, least debatable. And the question

was, were you going to criticize him or were you going to stay? And just about the entire party said, we're going to stay. And Christopher Freeland was part of that game. So she, given the choice, she laid out her credentials as the loyal. And the reward came in 2020, only a few months into the COVID crisis, a global fiscal calamity, which unfortunately here in Canada was compounded by the We Charity affair. And Bill Morneau was a Team We Charity. He was much more actually kind of tight with the Kielburgers than Trudeau was.

And partly because of that, because his ethical lapses in judgment looked too much like Justin Trudeau's ethical lapses in judgment when it came to the Kielburgers. And partly because he disagreed on spending. They launched this astonishing leak campaign against Morneau and then the PM accepted his resignation. And in comes Christopher Litt, where she was the one who understood the importance of a generous government that spent like a drunken sailor.

And she was not going to be a stickler for fiscal probity the way that idiot Morneau was. And so now this is the thing the loyalist has detonated on the day of of like it's it's prom day and she's dumped her day and uh happy to spend liberal becomes the guardian she has become bill moreno it's a hell of a projection you either resign as christia freeland or live long enough to see yourself become Bill Morneau. There's something in there.

I haven't quite figured it out. Just actually a little bit of criminology here because this is super interesting. The PMO official who is suspected of being the leaker targeting Bill Morneau is a guy named Ben Chin. Paul, what's Ben's title? Senior counselor, senior advisor, something along those lines. All of the jobs are meaningless in that government anyway. Yeah, he's one of a few people with the same title,

but he's essentially in the tier immediately after Katie Telford. He's like deputy chief of staff. I believe he's actually... I think you're right. People have suggested that he's the new Jerry Butts, right? Jerry being the former chief strategist for the prime minister, but he doesn't quite have the same gravitas or weight in the government. Ben Chin was suspected of being a leaker targeting Bill Morneau. Over the last couple of days,

people have been going to Ben and saying, wow, I can't believe you're doing the exact same shtick targeting Chrystia Freeland. And he's done a big to-do of saying, oh, no, no, it's not me. This time, it's not me. This time. It's not me. I didn't do this. So there's a bit of actually palace intrigue about who exactly has been running these leaks on Christia Freeland, right? Like, is it Katie herself that's doing it? Is it another minister like people have started wondering, is it Melody Jolie, Melody Jolie and Christia Freeland don't get along. Neither does she get along with Anita Anand. These are the three suspected leadership contenders,

if and when Trudeau ever leaves. So there's a second level of intrigue here where no one's quite sure who's running these leaks against Freeland, but I'd be very curious to know the truth. It's possible that you're putting too much thought into this, that essentially this is what's happening. Well, someone has to be weakening. No, but I mean, it's entirely possible

that the entire caucus is in such a state of total disarray. Everyone's talking about everything. Everyone's, everybody's gossiping. Everybody's spilling tea

about everybody. And eventually, that's going to find its way to us. Because... The problem with that theory is that no one tells caucus anything.

I speak to these MPs and they're asking me for information. Like, if... If there's tension between freeland and trudeau that's gonna make the rounds like people are good people can read into that people can read body language people can like people gossip right like it may not there may not be some grand strategy behind how this leaked out is kind of what i'm saying unlike in

moreau's case this might have just been that the tensions between them were so obvious and so over the top that it was impossible to ignore. And eventually someone just started blabbing because as we've seen, the Liberal caucus has lost its internal discipline, right? And we've seen that that's happened. Earlier this week, there was what, there was a big fight that spilled out into media between two Liberal MPs whose names elude me. But, you know, that the lack of sort of psychological and emotional discipline that is spilling out at all levels of the caucus is now impossible to ignore. So there may not be some 4D chess thing behind all of this.

I mean, Paul, I'm going to use this question, Paul, but, you know, my general assumption is that you can't actually maintain a government for very long unless you have allies, unless you can actually maintain allies. And yet nine years later, here we are. It is the same story over and over and over and over again from the prime minister's office. And yet there seems to be never any, any shortage of people willing to step up to be another Trudeau loyalist. I don't understand why, but that's going to be because I'm borderline autistic and the world's greatest monster as a result. But why do people keep on doing this? I wrote this when around the time Maxime Bernier quit the conservative party.

Loyalty is the highest virtue in politics. It is the highest virtue in politics because it simply works better than not being loyal. Like not nine times out of 10, 99 times out of 100, we hang together or we hang separate. And people who've written thoughtfully about this, like Ian Brody in his book, At the Center of Politics, there's an interesting passage in there where he says he feels poorly for people who have never been partisan. He feels bad about people who've never been partisan because we don't understand what it's like to put our selfish interests aside for an imperfect but more effective greater good. And if you read any political... That's slightly arrogant, isn't it?

But that's fine. Slightly self-aggrandizing, Ian. Like, only we could possibly understand what it's like to put my selfish interests aside for the greater good. Fuck the soup kitchen, man. Those people, they don't know nothing. Or he disagrees with you. But you won't read a biography of a successful political leader that doesn't have cases where they put loyalty ahead of intelligence and competence on their priorities. It's simply, I mean, it's near the end of Robert Caro's first volume on Lyndon Johnson. It was like that. He found a bunch of stone idiots that he kept close for his entire career in politics because they would jump into traffic. And that mattered to him more than somebody he could have a fun debate with. And I believe we will now see what happens when disloyalty is allowed into the chat because the Liberal Party is

now in big trouble. Incidentally, there's another theory on math geek stories, which is the one I wrote last night after midnight, which is that Freeland was the leaker or, you know, someone sympathetic to Freeland was trying to get this out of a face-to-face conversation between christia and katie telford and put it on the front page of the globe because there's a long track record of this government reacting and i like i suspect that that's what led to the government icing the checks they thought let's try this and see if it's enough to keep christia on board apparently the answer is no i think that's a it's a very likely explanation for what happened.

Also, just a little self-promotion. My column is finally just went up. I'm frankly proud of myself of getting a column up within hours of the resignation. But just to give you a sense of the Star editorial decided that the headline should be, Christina Freeland's exit seals it. Justin Trudeau's government is falling apart. I think that's pretty pretty apt yes but it's not on the front page of the globe justin so we know they're not gonna that's true there's one thing we haven't even talked about so you know talking about

loyalty you know loyalty is to some degree a two-way street the caucus has always sort of and this under your cabinet has always believed if we stay loyal to dear leader dear leader will look after us and the sun will never set and we'll have a thousand years of productive grain production. But there's something really funny about this whole saga, which is that the lingering open questions, whether or not the prime minister appoints Mark Carney from out in, you know, la la land to join cabinet, which is a pretty offensive decision to make over the heads of all of your MPs and lower cabinet ministers who have been passed over for the job, who are apparently seen as too ineffective, too stupid, too unwashed, too uneducated to possibly fill up the upper echelons of cabinet. But I'm hearing just over the last hour, Carney is not joining. Like, Mark Carney is not joining. He has already passed up the invitation before, back when the prime minister was trying to push Bill Morneau out the window,

not interested in joining a government at odds with itself, and it seems like he's making the exact same decision today in watching a government eat its own. He has slowly backed away saying, no, thank you, I'm not interested. So now the government has, now the prime minister has kind of, you know, shirked his own MPs to go attract new talent, a new outside consultant

who has declined. And now he has to go back to his party and say, oh, I guess one of you will have to do. Yeah. Welcome finance minister, Nate Erskine-Smith. But could I just say that today would be an excellent day for Mark Carney to grow a pair, get up on his hind legs and use his words and say, I am not interested in working in this government, rather than having it put about by people that they've heard what he thinks. That shit is lame and it's over. And he's got to either demonstrate that he's ready to play big boy politics or that he needs to go off to whatever fabulously lucrative consultancy he stays busy with the rest of his time. It's good for everybody in this government, by the way. Counterpoint. He is not in fact ready for big boy politics.

Not deciding is deciding as we like to, as we like to say. Here's my unanswered question. Maybe there's a better procedural wonk who can answer it for me. Okay, so the fall economic statement doesn't have to be a confidence motion, because it depends on what's in the fall economic statement. If there's appropriations for new spending, for example, then it is effectively a confidence motion. So was the fall economic statement effectively a confidence motion? And if it was, because it had stuff in there that was to appropriate new spending, what happens to it now? A lot of the reporters who were supposed to attend that fall economic

statement were told early this morning, essentially, that the 10 a.m. bar go basically has been indefinitely put back, which suggests to me that the entire goddamn document is going to wind up in a shredder, because there's no way in hell the federal the government is going to test a confidence motion like five minutes after their deputies just resigned like that i just don't think that's going to happen so i think i can answer answer this because i'm almost positive there was new spending in there because the prime minister has promised the premiers that there will be new money in the FBS for border security, right? This was the big request,

not only from the premiers, but also from Donald Trump. Of course, what's more, I heard from Melanie Jolie herself Friday, she was doing an event here in Montreal announcing their new Arctic strategy, which the, but she apparently,

well, I heard her relay the fact that during their dinner with President Elect Trump, Trudeau and Dominic LeBlanc promised not only money for more staff at the border, not only money for new helicopters, not only money for new drones, but also more money for our ship, sorry, our icebreaker capacity, we want to start building them icebreakers, apparently something Trump was very, very impressed by. What's more, Bill Blair has announced that there's going to be a deepwater military base in the Arctic. All of this costs money. When does the money come from? It will be too late to put it in the budget next spring. It has to be the fall

economic statement. There are going to have to be billions of dollars of spending in this document. And now it's all in limbo. They won't be able to release the things they've actually printed out because Chrystia Freeland's name is all over it. They must be shredded. All new documents have to be printed off. Who knows how long this will take? We could be in Christmas Eve getting a new fall economic statement. We could be Christmas Eve getting a new fall economic statement.

But also at the same time, if they're spending in there, it would also be a confidence motion. So could you imagine in my beautiful chaotic mind? Pierre Pauly, I was speaking. I'm going to see if we can hear him. Oh, okay. Oh, he's doing his 14-minute French statement before he speaks.

You see the genie? Okay, I'll check in with Pierre in a minute ken white uh friend to all of us i believe uh put a question in ken is uh the writer of sutherland house publishing and he's reliable he freaks out when everyone else is calm and vice versa he's the he's the voice of calm today he says why can't the prime minister just replace his finance minister with sort of any random uh liberal mp and carry on as though nothing had happened i think that that that answer is sorry that answer to that lies in what was in the fall economic statement because if the fall economic statement was a confidence motion there's there's no way in how any government is going to be confident that they can pass a confidence motion after freeland resigned

that just strikes me as being self-evident. Like, too many Liberal caucus members have to be just willing to stay home at this point. Just, they're not going to show up. Well, to kind of point, there now has to be money in, and by the way, Paul, interrupt us if Paulio switches to English.

But there has to be money to buy off the Bloc Quebecois, right? The Bloc Quebecois have put their price out. They basically said, if you can increase the GIS for seniors and, I don't know, fund a new statue of Bonhomme in Trois-Rivières, then

we'll be happy to keep supporting you as long as we get to go back to Quebecers and say, look, we're the only party that matters in the House of Commons. The Bloc is so easy to buy off. They do not have principles. All they want is more money for Quebec, and if they can get it, they'll keep keep supporting the government the government would now have to pay that price if it wants to continue so uh one one reader says uh the fall economic statement is not a confidence

motion in itself no and that's true but if it proposes any measures there has to be a money bill that goes to the house of commons to enable that and um so what they could do is like stockpile and burn all paper copies of the statement they were going to put out, strip out the four chapters that propose any fiscal measure. And as for naming any finance minister, it is true that if I was any one of 90 backbenchers who understood clearly that I only had a few more months as a member of parliament at all,

I might take a finance minister appointment. But you would stand described by your predecessor as the minister for costly political gimmicks, which we can ill afford, and which Canadians doubt that we recognize the gravity of the moment. That would be, you'd need some chutzpah to take the job after she's described it thusly. I saw, I'm just looking through the chat. I see a couple of people wondering about the internal dynamics of cabinet. You know, oh, is it true that Freeland and Anand don't get along? Very true. Not only is it true, there are three ministers who I know of, maybe four, who have staff

in their offices who are running their proto-leadership campaigns, right? Staff whose job it is to think about and worry about how to replace Trudeau if and when he goes. Chrystia Freeland is one of them. She has far from decided that she's going to run for the leadership, but she has staff dedicated to getting ready for it if it happens. Anand is another. Jolie is another. I hear Dominic Leblanc has tapped a staffer to do exactly that as well. The leadership politics are already happening internally. And the prime minister apparently is not super thrilled about it, but he's tolerating it. And it is a dynamic that is affecting this whole thing is that they're all jockeying for some degree of position. And I think

Freeland's resignation has to be seen in light of her setting herself up to replace the prime minister. She might be the only MP left at this point. And this is just me rambling about this, but is it not beyond absurd that Justin Trudeau isn't essentially cultivating a successor, cultivating multiple successors potentially? Why should he be angry about that? Shouldn't he be actually working to make sure that his successor is as well equipped as possible to take on the next job like you've been in government for nine years my dude like it gotta end eventually like you there has to be something this is this is something that's always really bothered me about trudeau is like there doesn't seem to be any forward planning beyond him

no right and i don't understand that you know everybody understands that they get into this job and that eventually they're going to leave this job. And if your interests are in for the good of the party in the country and for the government, you have to put your own political legacy aside for a moment and start thinking, okay, well, who would actually be well equipped? And it doesn't have to be one person, it could be multiple people that you work with. But the idea that he regards any kind of political or sorry, leadership organizing as being some kind of threat to him is really bizarre in my mind. It's really weird. I don't know that it's seen as a threat. I think it's more seen as a distraction. And ministers, I think have been, he has made it clear to some ministers and not in particular, that he's not thrilled with the overt campaigning, especially as they're still ostensibly governing. Although frankly, they've been governing less and less as time goes on. Yeah, I know.

Ostensibly is doing a lot of work there. I mean, at this point, there has to be a certain point at which every political leader can recognize that they're the distraction. He's the distraction. Yes. I mean, some of us were pointing out

a couple of years ago that if this government wants to continue existing, not only past the next election, but well into the next mandate, then it's got to have a plan. And it's got to propound that plan that explains to people what their vision of government is. And you could argue that it really all started to fall apart. Like the end game began for Justin Trudeau when he gave Nate Erskine-Smith that podcast interview. And an MP of his own caucus said, what's the plan, Stan? And he said to continue to meet the moment. In other words, my plan is to occupy the office. And he posted at me.

And I will respond. Like it's like an old red at AMA, you know. And well, here's the moment. He's AMA, you know? And, well, here's the moment. He's met the moment. He's meeting the moment today. The moment is named Christopher Freeland

and she's got teeth. So there you go, big boy, meet it. What do you got now? And I think, I think the answer is not a lot.

Here is, the other thing I would just add to that particular point is, and the thing I would add to that particular point is that as this government drags itself on, the cost for its continuation goes up, right? Like the cost in pure financial terms goes up, the cost, the block demands or the NDP demand goes up. But not only that, but there's a psychological and a moral cost. Like Canadians are getting more pissed off the longer this is dragged out.

They're getting more alienated. We're getting more and more frustrated with the usual stuff. The cost of dragging out this government goes up and up and up every successive week it continues. And what I always don't understand, or what I don't understand about

the thinking here, is that what are you getting in exchange for that cost? Canadians were already anxious. the thinking here is that what are you getting in exchange for that cost? What is the vision? Let's listen to the guy. Canadians were already anxious. Can you get us our back? We've got a billion of guns that we got last spring, but today

in mere hours they were expected to level that it was much higher than that. We could be here all afternoon, but all three of us ride for a living. So let's say farewell. Thank you to Pierre Polia, our third guest. Or natural.

He'll be going on. He'll be there all day. So let's just wrap it up. Hey, I want to thank the nearly 1,300 people who are joining us right now. And that number has grown throughout this call. So people sure seem to be getting something out of this talk. Justin, Jen, where can people find you? www.readtheline.ca.

That's where we are now. And I'm on bugidenshameless.com where I write about mostly not Canadian things. I'm in the Toronto Star where I write about mostly Canadian things. Now that we have figured out how to do this, we hold an awesome power and we may use it again in the future. Thanks to everyone for joining us. For Christopher Freeland and all of the gang

over at the Happy Liberal Party of Canada, have a great day. Cheers. Yeah, book a spa day. 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 Reguerre is

Antica's head of audio. Kevin Bright wrote the theme music and Andy Milne arranged Kevin's tune for the closing theme. If you subscribe to my sub stack, you can get bonus content for this show, as well as access to my newsletter. You can do all of 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.