World Report - Want one election question at a time? Try "House Party"

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

This Canadian election will be a sprint, not a marathon. Only 33 days remain! And so, World Report wants to help you find the best election podcast to keep you informed. Today we present House Party, a lively new election chat from the makers of The House. They promise their watch party is not (only) for political nerds. House Party brings you three hosts (Catherine Cullen, Jason Markusoff, and Daniel Thibeault) in three locations (Ottawa, Alberta and Quebec) who get together on Wednesdays to tackle one big, burning election question. Their episode today: Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is catching heat for what she said to Americans about Canada's federal election. In a resurfaced March interview with right-wing media outlet Breitbart, Smith suggested the U.S. pause tariffs to avoid hurting Canadian Conservatives’ electoral chances. She also said Pierre Poilievre is the best leader for Canada because he’s more “in sync” with U.S. President Donald Trump. Today on House Party, journalists Catherine Cullen, Jason Markusoff and Daniel Thibeault dig into debate about the differences between Poilievre and Trump, their style, their policies — and why the Conservative candidate needs to straddle a wide swath of beliefs across the political right, if he wants to be elected Prime Minister.More episodes of House Party are available here: https://link.mgln.ai/kv6axN

This is a CBC Podcast. Hey, it's Marcia Young. At World Report, we do our very best to tell you everything you need to know in just 10 minutes. But so much happens during an election and stories change fast on the campaign trail. So this week, we're including CBC's political podcasts in our feed. Today, we have a special election series from the House. It's called House Party and it drops every Wednesday. Three hosts, three locations, one big burning question

every week. I'll let them take it from here. So one of the interesting things about an election campaign is the unexpected. Those surprises that the candidates can't plan for. You mean like when the Alberta premier says she told the Americans to lay off the trade war for a while because it's boosting the Liberals' chance to win the election? Yeah, like that. I mean, could you imagine if, you know, Daniel Smith would go on to say the conservative leader is in sync with Donald Trump?

But I would say on balance, the perspective that Pierre would bring would be very much in sync with, I think, the new direction in America and I think we'd Have a really great relationship for that for the period of time. They're both in So that happened Danielle Smith was giving an interview to American right-wing news outlet Breitbart early this month And she weighed in on how the trade war would affect Canadian politics. That's what I fear is that the longer this dispute goes on Politicians posture and it seems to be benefiting the liberals right now. So I would hope that we could put things on pause, this is what I've told administration officials, let's just put things on pause so we can get through an election. Let's have the best person

at the table make the argument for how they would deal with it. And I think that's peer poly. Now some people are saying she's actually encouraging foreign interference in our election. It's worth noting the head of elections, Canada says this did not amount to that. But maybe the bigger political issue to come out of this is the way that she is tying Pierre Poliev to Donald Trump. I'm Catherine Cullen, host of CBC's The House. I'm Daniel Thibault, host of Radio-Canada's Poli-le-Courchon, Les Coulisses du Pouvoir. And I'm Jason Markossov, producer and writer for CBC in Calgary.

And this is House Party, a weekly podcast diving into the big, burning questions driving us towards a federal election. This week we're asking, is Pierre Poliev really in sync with Donald Trump? And let's be clear, Danielle Smith is on the same political team as Pierre Poliev. They are both conservative. So is what she's saying true? Are Poliev and Trump in sync? Dan?

Well, there's definitely part of his base that feels like, or connects really well with Trump's idea. I nerd out last night and I was looking at that. Then I went back to a poll that was conducted two weeks ago, only two weeks ago by Léger in Quebec. And the question was, your favorite candidate in the last US election, and 42% of the conservative base that was asked said Trump. Now that's last election.

If you ask today, it goes down slightly, 33%. That's after the tariffs. That's after all the bad words and the let's make Canada the 51st state and all that. So there's definitely a part of Poliev's base that feels or is open to listen to what's going on in the states coming out of Trump's White House. What do you think, Jason? I mean, there is this group, and I read a whole bunch of political chatter on the kind of Alberta's far right.

There are quite a few people who are disappointed that Pierre Poliev is not Trumpy enough, that they wish he was more Trumpy. They wish he was harder against Ukraine and more magi and almost more friendly and embracing of the whole tariff attack or even the 51st state rhetoric. But that's at the edges. I think a lot of conservatives see shades of conservatism. I mean we live in a world where there are shades of conservatism. I mean Andrew Scheer, former leader, is not Erno Tull who ran the last campaign, is not

Pierre Pauliev, is not former prime minister Stephen Harper, is not some people in his cabinet. But the liberals and the EP are going to want to tie him to Trump because that's easy, that's shorthand, and Trump is, you know, is the five-letter word, the five-letter swear word of this campaign, right? Yeah, that's the idea of this, like the big blue tent, right? All sorts of people fit under the Conservatives' big blue tent. I will say, I don't know that the two are in sync, per se.

There are a lot of differences, I would say, between the two men and their outlook on the world, but they have some overlap. And that has the potential to be toxic for Pierre Poliev in this election. So it's certainly something to watch. Well, certainly in the advertisement that the liberals are putting out a lot on TV.

Yeah, which tells you something. Now, all the party leaders were asked to weigh in on this issue of what Daniel Smith said, the appropriateness of it. We'll start with the question that was put to Pierre Poliev of the Conservatives about this, then Mark Carney from the Liberals and Jagmeet Singh from the NDP. I want to return to what Daniel Smith said to Breitbart News. She said terror threats have helped the liberals and that she asked for a pause on the dispute between the two countries to get through the election. She also said that you are more aligned with President Trump's agenda than your Liberal counterparts.

I'm wondering if you feel these comments are appropriate. Are which? Appropriate. Well, people are free to make their own comments. I speak for myself and let's talk about my agenda. My agenda is to put Canada first for a change. There's a reason why Donald Trump wants the way... I take note of her alignment of Monsieur Poilier with Mr. Trump and would note that that's

one of the decisions that Canadians will have to make, whether they want a government that is unifying, that's standing up for Canada, or they want division and Americanism. And that's what Mr. Poliev seems to be offering and just endorsed by the Premier of Alberta. I think it is shameful if you break down what Daniel Smith is proposing. She's talking about taking steps to prevent tariffs in a political manner to create a political outcome. She should be talking about stopping tariffs to protect Canadians, to just stop them entirely. She shouldn't be saying to do it in a way that benefits one party or another. Like this is not a game.

And we have to add Danielle Smith, Alberta premier, has said this was not election interference in any way, shape or form that any suggestion to that effect is, as her office said, offensive and false. What's interesting to me and what we heard there is what Pierre Poliev didn't say. I mean, he said people are free to make whatever comments they want. He didn't refute it. What do you think, Jason? What was interesting was you listen to what he said and he said, well, it's like he wanted to say something about her, but he realizes

that he's in a tight spot. You know, he doesn't want conservative civil war. I mean, there already is reportedly quite the tensions between Priya Poliev and Ontario Premier Doug Ford that they only spoke to each other for the first time like last week, was it? And you know, rumors that he's asked for help and Doug Ford doesn't want to play ball, and they've been tense. Daniel Smith... We should say, we should say publicly everybody's denying that. Ford and Paul Yevra, like, no, no, no, no, everything, nothing to see here, everything's fine.

Oh, well, if they deny it. He did say, Mr. Pierre Proliéov did say in the past that question the level of conservatism of Doug Ford and the Ontario party, and that left a bad taste in the Ontario conservatives' mouth. But it all comes down to trying to find a balance, right? It's always been the challenge of the conservatives, especially on the federal level. How can I keep my base happy? And they acknowledge that there are people in their party that have their opinion.

They're closer to what Danielle Smith is talking about. And at the same time, if they want to win an election, they have to go and reach out to people on the other side of the political spectrum. And that's not something that you can do if you basically just repeat the same kind of speech that you hear from Daniel Smith or those more right-winger conservative would like to hear. You have to broaden the tent a little bit and in this campaign it's been a little bit complicated I think for him. The question at the core of this though, right, to what extent is Piyarpolyev in sync with Donald Trump? Again, they're very different people. Like Piyarpolyev spends a lot of time thinking about policy, something he's

been doing for years. He really is fundamentally like a political animal, whereas Donald Trump, I think we all understand the man is shooting from the hip. But there's, there is that overlap I talked about, right? Things like cutting foreign aid. That's something that Pierre Poliev has been talking about since he won the leadership. But now we have Donald Trump coming along and he is talking about that at top volume. He's not just talking about it. He's doing it, right? Cutting USAID. It's making international headlines. So now when Pierre Poliev comes along and talks about it, people say, oh, just like Donald Trump is doing. And I think in Canada, where for a massive group of voters, the majority of Canadian

voters, where Donald Trump's name is mud, that's a real tripwire. That can be toxic for the conservatives. So they have this problem of how to think about both their plans and their message and move forward with what their objectives are without alienating people. And the extent to which I guess that's even possible. Yeah, and I think back to that point where what Danielle Smith was saying

in this Breitbart interview about what they were in sync on, she wasn't talking about tariffs or first state stuff at all. She was talking about energy policy, that they both want to expand energy more aggressively, oil and gas particularly, as well as the idea that both are against woke-ism, this idea about politically correctness, diversity, equity, inclusion. And this is where you see the liberal ads coming in, attacking them and overlapping Donald Trump talking about woke-ism and Pierre Paulie F saying the same thing with part of it also be the tone is

using the words he's using wacky Trudeau and competent mayors in Montreal in Vancouver and it sounds like what Donald Trump would say or what you hear from Donald Trump that probably resonates as well and the thing about that stuff right like the real attack dog part of what Polyev is doing is like that is Pierre Polyev. That is his style. Like it or not, he is, he's out there. He's a, he's a pugilist. He's a fighter. It's been interesting since this election campaign has been launched. You see, there's a little bit of like smoothing of some of those edges. They've had him out with his wife and his two children and, you, it's a very nice image of the family sort of playing together. He's picking

up his children, bringing them to the microphone. There's a little bit of a softer edge being put on things, which I think is sort of a tacit acknowledgement. But then he speaks, sorry. He's been being really nice to reporters though, and that's unusual. Yeah, for the four reporters he's talking to or he takes questions from. But then he speaks and it feels like the soft edge kind of goes away. He still sounds like the Pierre Poilier of We Saw in the House of Common. He still sounds like... I don't feel like he was so... that the edges are so much smoother at this point.

All this, I think, let's take a step way back for the person who's not paying a lot of attention to politics, and that's a lot of people out there, except for you lovely listeners on this podcast. Thank you so much. It's that people will, you know, they think a conservative is a conservative, that Donald Trump is a Republican and Pierre Poliev is a conservative. So that link will be there in some people's minds no matter how many edges Pierre Polyev smooths out,

no matter how many pairs of glasses he takes off or how many reporters he jokes with. The thing is too, like we talked about that big blue tent and if you look at sort of the conservative spectrum, I mean, Pierre Polyev is more closely aligned to let's say, the Republican worldview than Aaron O'Toole or Doug Ford, right? Like he is a more right-wing conservative.

And you know, I understand we're not going to hear him use the word woke, let's say, as much because of the ties to Donald Trump, but he's still out there talking about like radical globalist agendas, accusing the liberals of that. And again, this is very much Donald Trump, but he's still out there talking about like radical globalist agendas, accusing the liberals of that. And again, this is very much Donald Trump language. Well, there's a reason he still uses these words like globalist and talks about the radical agenda and will, you know, I don't know if he's talked about World Economic Forum lately, but he has.

And that is because that is language for people who are hardcore supporters, people who are giving him money, who are volunteering, who are excited. And they want those people to keep coming out, keep feeling the urgency, keep loving this guy that they fell in love with who helped him surge in the polls to a 20-point lead. On the other hand, if he doesn't excite them, where do they go? I was about to say from the Eastern guy's point of view, I mean, you're looking at Pierre Poilier, you're trying to think, if he wants to appeal

to some of the voters on this side of the country, in Ontario and the difference in conservatism, there are people, obviously, who are interested in hearing from a conservative in Ontario, they've elected a provincial conservative government. They just don't want to hear it the way Pierre Poiliev is telling it right now. So how many of your Western people would you lose if you soften your speech a little bit to try to appeal to people in Ontario, people in Quebec?

There's a, I mean, where would those people go in Alberta? They just stay, I think, you you know the stay home thing is a risk I don't know how big a risk it is so people you know I think it was a it might be a bigger risk now because People don't see Mark Carney necessarily at least at this point as the same Terrifying threat and person we need to have F. You know F. F his name on flags just yet you know, F his name on flags just yet. But if people are disenchanted or not excited, they might just stay home on that. So you end the writing by 55% instead of 75?

Well, this is the thing. There, you know, in the West, there are these writings in Edmonton, in Calgary, where they had, you know, those are gonna be in play. The polls are showing, yeah, we're still seeing 50-some percent for the conservatives in places like Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. But 30 percent for the liberals, this big surge, means a lot of urban seats potentially for the liberals. And in the electoral math for the conservatives, they can't afford to lose too much of that. The thing is, though, too, your premise, Dan, suggests that if you just stop talking about

like somebody as a globalist or stop saying woke, that you, that doesn't stick to you. And of course, your political opponents, namely the liberals, are going to do everything in their power to say, listen, the last two years, you're talking like this. Yeah. So you kind of already have that baggage. So if indeed that's how you view it, certainly that track record. Yeah, but it worked for the past two years. Now it's not working anymore.

Because everything's changed because of Donald Trump. Yes, and you're not changing. He's not changing. It feels to me, from what I've seen since the beginning of the campaign, that he's not pivoting that much. It feels like if he wants to go back to a place where he was in the past 24 months, he would need to change his approach, at least slightly, so that it appeals to more people who are interested by Carney right now.

What would that look like? I think you need to move towards something that's a little more reassuring to the average voters. I don't think that cutting foreign aids is a really good line right now, given what's going on in the states. I think it reminds people of that. I think you need to set aside some of the ideological stuff, like maybe you won't be able to balance the budget the way you thought you would.

Maybe you can't say, I'm going to cut the dollar for a dollar save, because that reminds people of what's going on on the other side of the border. Maybe you just need to look at the new reality you're facing and adjust the message accordingly. What's really funny about all this is that one of his big pivots was his slogan. For months he'd been using bring it home as a slogan, which seemed like a closer slogan. Then he brought out Canada First, which has more of a patriotic vibe, but also sounds a lot more like America First, the Donald Trump slogan, which is why we saw yet another

iteration of this, they must have focus group something new. And his slogan starting on election on the campaign launch day was Canada First for a change. But I don't think that's about being Trumpy. I think that's about reminding people that the Liberals have been in power for almost 10 years. Although I do think there's something very funny about not being able to bring it home with Bring It Home. But fundamentally, I think the addition is just a little nudge. In this last crucial stretch of the

the sort of political runway, we want to remind you change. Don't you want change? Because if the ballot question is change, then the odds are a lot better that Pierre Poliev wins this election. Well, also, because kind of the first four change kind of softens the kind of like broadens it out. So it's not just America first. Yeah, it needs to and you need to change the ballot question, which I'm not sure you can do at this point. Okay. So some people suggested those comments by Danielle Smith were a tantamount to encouraging

foreign interference. She has said no way. The head of elections, Canada, has said no way. But foreign interference has also been creeping into the political discussion this week in a different way. The Globe and Mail published a story on Tuesday about the Indian government attempting some foreign interference in Canada's political system. Dan, can you bring us up to speed? Yeah, my colleagues, Louis Bleuin and Laurence Martin, confirmed some of these details. So CISIS learned at some point in the past two years that Indian government agents were allegedly involved in fundraising and organizing within

the South Asian community in support of Pierre Poiliev. That was during the leadership race, before the leadership race in 2022. Now CISIS did not, and the material we've seen did not indicate whether it worked, whether it was super organized, whether it was widespread, and there's no evidence that Pierre Poiliev actually benefited from that. So it probably didn't make him win. But it brings back mainly the idea of the security clearance that Mr. Poiliev never got, because a chunk of the article in the Globe and Mail is,

well, CSIS couldn't tell Mr. Poiliev about this because he doesn't have the security clearance. And that's a big thing, right? It was a big thing over the past few months. It was kind of in the back burner for a while, and now, boom, it's back on the forefront. Yeah, and the security clearance basically getting vetted by Canada's security apparatus so that they can then brief Pierre Polyaev on top secret information. So that some secret agent can walk in with a brief gaze and show it to you and then walk back. Okay, and the party leaders have been weighing in on this too.

Let's listen. We've got the Liberals and Mark Carney here, the Conservatives with Pierre Polyaev, and then the Bloc Québécois, y François Blanchet. I find it beyond baffling. I find it downright irresponsible that the leader of the opposition day after day, month after month, year after year, refuses to obtain his security clearance. On the security clearance, I've already had a security clearance. What I will not do is have, because I was a cabinet minister so I've already been cleared, what I will not do is commit to the oath of secrecy that the Liberals want to impose on me. They don't want me to be able to speak about these matters.

So they bring me into a dark room and they'll say, we're going to give you a little bit of breadcrumbs of intel and then we'll tell you you can't talk about any of this stuff anymore. I never felt muzzled in my whole life. I say what I have to see and I respect that the report which was presented to me contains some information which cannot be manipulated without care. And we gotta say the way Pierre Poliev is characterizing this like the liberals are going to bring him into a dark room which would be very inconvenient for looking at secret documents, I have to say. You'd want them to be well

lit. And then they wouldn't be able to talk about any of this. That does not jive, both with what we're hearing from other party leaders, but also what people like the former heads of Canada spy agencies have had to say about this. One who pointed out that any number of people over the years have received this kind of briefing other countries do it other Commonwealth countries brief members of the opposition It's true. You can't go out in public and sort of like spill all the the beans right because some of this Information comes about through human sources Basically spies and things like that and you have to be careful about how that information is received

You really could put people's lives on the line But it doesn't require you to like put a piece of duct tape over your mouth. Living in Ottawa, and Catherine, it's probably the same thing, I know I have friends who have security clearance. I don't feel like they can't have a dinner party conversation with me. I've never felt, and they've never indicated to me that they couldn't go in certain directions. I'm sure there's stuff they don't say, but it doesn't mean we can't have a conversation. Jason, do you have any idea

why he's not getting this security clearance? I was gonna say, I wonder, I do wonder if he's gone so far down this road after so long of saying, I don't wanna do it, that he feels he can't walk, he can't backtrack, that he's a strong man who's not going to who's not going to be at be one for turning I want to say something else about these though. What's interesting is that while Blanchette and

Carney and I'd imagine Singh as well and Liz May who's had the security clearance if not mistaken They're talking about the security clearance issue. They're not talking about the foreign interference Allegations what CSIS was alleged to have found out about the Indian government trying to meddle with fundraising and the leadership campaign. Because I don't think anybody is going to try to take his leadership victory away from him or saying he's compromised. And I think that's important to underline.

I don't know what the public is going to take from this. The whole foreign interference thing has been very confusing thing for the public. It's kind of it's sometimes in fine grain and fine shades of gray on what's happening, who's trying to interfere, what success they're having. There'll be some people who take it as innuendo that says, you know, if foreign interference touches you, you're completely compromised or you're a dark agent, you're a Manchurian candidate or whatnot. But the reality of it is that, you know, these are very complex issues and a rather reckless political leader might run to the races and say that, you know, this means X, Y, Z about Poliev. You know, I think we should take note that the the leaders who oppose him are not saying that yes There's absolutely no evidence that that has ever been I've never even heard of evidence suggesting that there's some nefarious reason that he can't get his security clearance I think what you guys are saying about the idea that he just doesn't want to back down

Jives what we know I will one thing don't you find it interesting that this story comes out now? Because that thing happened two years ago, right? On day second of an election campaign? I don't believe in coincidence. I want to say that Pierpolli even said something to that effect when he was asked about it, right? Suggesting that the timing was not a mistake, that it was all some liberal plant, which is, I think, maybe another part of this though to talk about. The language he was using

in the clip that we just heard, it's the liberals who want to take him into this dark room and put duct tape. No, but this is actually important even though it might seem like nuance, which maybe speaks to Jason's point about how some of this stuff is a bit complicated and loses people. But this is supposed to be an apolitical, non-partisan, not politicized process, right? Like it's really important around security issues that there is trust. That is a fundamental thing. And so it would not be members of the Liberal Party of Canada briefing Mr. Poliev. It would be people from, for instance, CSIS Canada spy agency or CSE, Canada's electronic watchdog. And he has sort of implied in all of this that maybe there's something partisan there

or that they're trying to manipulate him in some way. And so there is this like bit of distrust that he has put in that conversation. It's going to be really interesting if Pierre Poliev wins this election to see what his relationship is like as prime minister with the security apparatus in this country because he's kind of called them into question a few times. And speaking of distrust, it was really interesting as well how quickly he went from trying to answer about that and dodge the whole talk about the whole security clearance issue to alleging

foreign interference of a different kind against Carney, saying that when he was still Brookfield company chair in the fall and serving as economic advisor, that he as Brookfield chair had a meeting with senior officials from China and then Brookfield was able to renegotiate a loan with a Chinese state-owned company and creating this innuendo that somehow Mark Carney was under the thumb of the Chinese government. Now we're taping this on Tuesday and Carney hasn't responded to this yet, but that's quite a lot of shade to throw when you're trying to dodge your own foreign interference allegations.

And there's a lot of questions slash holes in what Pierre Poliev is saying, right? He called this a secret meeting. You can see that in fact Chinese official announced that the meeting was happening at the time. Pierre Poliev is trying to insinuate in the language he's using that Mark Carney was the one who personally got the loan when that's clearly not the case. But I think what is interesting about it is how Brookfield Asset Management, the company of which Mark Carney was the chair, and Markney's time in the private sector. I'm not a politician. I worked in the private sector as well as being governors of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England.

How that is now being used against Mark Kearney by both the Conservative Party and the NDP, right? They're looking at everything Brookfield has ever done and they're trying to hang that on Mark Kearney's shoulders A lot of the stories are nuanced and complicated and there's questions about the timelines But I do think it's gonna be interesting to see If that starts to stick over the course of this campaign and we've seen that those kinds of questions about his integrity are not Questions mark Kearney likes that's when he gets prickly. He doesn't yeah He doesn't like that and we saw it in London when he was asked about that he was oh he got his got his back up super quickly and again again this week a

couple of times I was looking at him in Scrum or a newser after the election announcements and it's not something that he's he doesn't feel when from the outside he doesn't feel like he needs to explain that he doesn't feel like he feels like he did everything right and so it and and he can't really go into details and he's not gonna tell you how much shares of Brookfield he has and he doesn't go into details about what the company did when he was there and all that so maybe that expose him a little bit. A couple of touchy subjects Donald Trump and Brookfield asset management and

ones that we know are going to come up again and again on the election campaign. Okay. I love talking to you guys. Exciting to finally do this now that the election campaign is on. Why don't you say we do it again next week? Next week. Sounds good. And that is it for House Party this week.

Thanks to my co-hosts Jason Markossoff in Calgary and Daniel Thibault in Montreal. Thanks also to the production team here with me, Caitlin Crocker, Jennifer Chevalier and Carla Hilton. Be sure to give us a follow in the podcast feed for The House so you can catch both House Party and my other show, The House, every week. That's two shows in one feed. What a deal! The House will be with you on Saturday, and House Party will be back next Wednesday with another big, burning election question. [♪upbeat music playing -♪》

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