 So good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Faculty of Public Affairs Currents lecture. I'm André Pleau, Dean of the Faculty. As we begin, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that we are guests on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabek Nation. I'm very pleased to see all of you here tonight for what is sure to be an exciting and informative panel. We're less than five weeks away from the federal election, and the outcome remains quite hard to predict. I can assure you that this is a popular topic of conversation in the faculty right now. The conversations around the upcoming federal election really speak to our mission in the Faculty of Public Affairs, to support research that will improve public policy and to educate the next generation of leaders. That's why our students, faculty members, and alumni truly shine at election time. They contribute so much to the public conversation. And I would also like to invite you to our election night party on, yes, October 21st in this building in the atrium just next door. Just visit Carlton.ca backslash FPA to register. And so now I have the pleasure of introducing tonight's hot button election panel. Our moderator this evening is David Coletto, the CEO and founding partner of Abacus Data, a full-service market research and strategy firm based here in Ottawa. He's considered one of Canada's leading experts on generational change and millennials. David received a Bachelor of Public Affairs in Policy Management and a Master of Arts in Political Science from Carlton. We won't mention the next one because it's not here. He will be joined on stage by Anne McGrath, who is a campaign advisor for the federal NDP. She's been actively involved in all levels of the NDP and was chief of staff to the late NDP leader, Jack Layton. She's also an associate at Helen Nolton Strategies and an instructor in Carlton's Master of Political Management program. Tim Powers is vice chairman of SUMA Strategies, a leading Canadian public affairs consulting firm and the managing director of Abacus Data. He's also a media commentator, appearing frequently on CBC's Power in Politics. I will also add that he's one of the owners of the Dominion City Brewing Company in Ottawa and I won't say anything else about that. Can't buy it either, but that's a different story. Last but not least, Paul Thomas is a senior research associate at the Samara Center for Democracy, an organization dedicated to strengthening Canadian democracy through research and public engagement. He's also an adjunct research professor with Carlton University's Department of Political Science and the Clayton H. Riddell Graduate Program in Political Management. And I would now like to invite David Colletta to the podium to begin our discussion. David. All right. Well, thanks everyone for coming. I will have to first say that as you know, as you should know, and I'm feeling it every day, the elections for pollsters are like 40-day-long super bowls. We don't get much sleep. We have a lot of fun and once the fourth quarter comes, we can't wait until it's over. Tonight is also my fifth wedding anniversary. So my wonderful wife is here and we don't have to just know that in the vows, this was part of the vows that if there's any political events, we sort of deal with this. So thank you for that. So what I want to do today is, as I said, share some data and we've got a great panel to sort of talk more about it and then we'll open it up to questions from the floor. And a lot has changed. When I said yes to doing this, the election hadn't started yet. We kind of probably knew where this thing was going. But again, a few days ago seemed to have changed a lot. And so as a pollster, I own a polling company. It's easy for me to go and find out what Canadians are thinking. So I've got some data for you today that gives us some insight into what impact, if any, the events of Wednesday evening are having. But I do want to start my talk and I'm going to share about 15 minutes with the content and then we'll get into our conversation with some political history. As you can clearly tell, it was not around in 1972. My parents hadn't even met yet. But if you do remember that election or are a student of political history, you may find a lot of parallels between where we are today and where we were in 1972. If you recall in 1972, Pierre Elliott Trudeau was running for reelection. Four years earlier, he had won his first majority government. Trudeau Mania 1.0 had swept the country. You had women and men cheering for him in great excitement. And there seemed to be a love for this leader in 1968. Four years later, he ended up barely winning that election, winning a minority government, winning more of the vote, but only two more seats than the progressive conservatives led by, at the time, Robert Stanfield, who I did not know and I'm sure was a lovely man. But by all accounts, was not the most exciting campaigner. Also, lots of parallel with our current leader, the opposition. Lots of parallels. Nixon in the White House, some parallels today. Vietnam War, lots of insecurity around the world. People weren't quite sure what was happening. And so I want to show you a quick video because thanks to the CBC, we've got lots of great archives. And after the election in 1972, they did some streeters talking to folks. OK, so we're asking people what they thought of the election results last night. Now, what do you think? Very, very pleased. I'm glad that son of a bitch got a kick in my Frenchman. He deserved it. Now, why do you feel that way? Because he's been very, very disappointing to me. I've been a liberal all my life. I certainly didn't vote for him this time. No, no. But I think a majority of people are big backlash against the Liberals Party. And not enough people voted against the Liberals. I think that's all the election was to vote against the Liberals. And I think if they go to the polls again, I think we'll have a majority government and it will be probably the Conservatives. Do you think it was something personal or more general issues that put people's backs up? I think it was mostly unemployment. And I think you'll see another election, another six months. What do you think was responsible for the massive gains by the Conservatives? Well, probably the Trudeau government just not doing anything for the average worker in the last four and a half years. The bread and butter issues seem to be the ones that everyone is concerned about and find foreign policy and rearmament and all this kind of thing is very idealistic. But, you know, if you haven't got a job or you can't feed your family, this kind of thing is pretty important. My own personal feelings about the election, I think they must be typified by the buttons of them wearing happy face and the progressive Conservative colors. I'm a former Liberal, thoroughly disgruntled with the Prime Minister. Did you vote Liberal? Miss, what was your reaction to almost a photo finish last night? Well, as I said, it was just a disaster as far as I was concerned. He has a lot of courage to face up with all the difficulties that are around and the whole world is in very troublesome way right now and maybe if he had better men working with him, it might help. What particular issues bothered you? Well, his immigration and his stand with unemployment and his treatment of old age people and pensioners, ex-soldiers, everybody like that. See, he's a man who's never poor. He's always been in the lap of luxury. He doesn't understand our problem. So you can see lots of parallels. There's lots of great interviews. The CBC Archives is great for that, by the way. But it seems like if you did those streeters today, you'd get a lot of the same reaction, right? And so when we look at where the country is today and we start with, what's the mood of Canadians? It's clear to me that we are in a different place than we were four years ago. Four years ago, the Prime Minister was elected with a general sense of excitement, right? Donald Trump was not president, Brexit hadn't happened, and the Blue Jays were in the playoffs, if you recall, right? We felt good. We were ready to sort of throw out Stephen Harper. And Mr. Trudeau came along and offered us a hopeful, you know, optimistic version of a government that I think many Canadians were craving at the time. Today, in a very different place, right? When we ask Canadians, do you think the country's headed in the right direction or the wrong direction? You can see that more now say things are headed in the wrong direction than in the right direction. And you can go back to February 2019 to understand where that sediment changed, right? In fact, you can find the exact date. It was the day that Jody Wilson-Raybaud testified at the Justice Committee that those two numbers started to move in the opposite direction. For the longest time, Canadians were the more optimistic about where their country was going than if you did the same survey in the United States, in the UK, in most of the democratic world, who were much more pessimistic, right? And so that's the first point, is that we are much more defensive today, worried about where our country's going. At the same time, when we ask Canadians, and we compare it to the start of the last election, though, 50% of Canadians today say they definitely want to change a government, right? Another 21% say they want change, but it's not that important to them. And you can see that 16% are on the other end. They say they definitely want the Liberals re-elected. And when we go back to 2015 and we compare where was Mr. Harper and the Conservatives at the same time, eight points higher on that definitely want change. But to keep in mind, Mr. Harper was in power for almost a decade. After four years already, the Liberals are facing really a core voter of only 16% who absolutely will raise their hand and say, this government should be back in power. So a significant amount of headwinds that they're facing. And then Wednesday evening happened, right? And it shocked, I think, us all. It shocked the campaign. It changed the conversation. But as someone who studies public opinion regularly, I am no longer surprised that what the media think is important actually doesn't matter. And I'm not saying what Mr. Trudeau did didn't matter or that it won't actually affect the outcome, but when we ask Canadians, first of all, are you paying attention to this? And this survey was done, I closed it this morning, sorry, this afternoon. So we were collecting interviews all through last night and into today, we interviewed over 900 people across the country, represented a sample. Half of those that we surveyed said they had been following the story a lot, right? Another 36 had some. 15% of Canadians that we interviewed had no idea this had happened, okay? Including 25% of those under the age of 30, okay? So now that's higher reach than a lot of other issues that sort of come out of this city. But still, a sizable group haven't really followed this closely. Now among those who have followed it are aware of it. When we asked, what's your reaction to what you saw and what you heard? And if you start from the bottom, 39% of Canadians said, this didn't really bother me at all. And then another 37 said, I don't like it. I didn't like that he did this, but he apologized properly and I can move on from it, right? Only one out of four say this event, his wearing black face and brown face truly offended me and it changed my view of Mr. Trudeau for the worst. So the question is who are those 24%, right? That's the group of potential voters who if they change their mind, if they change their preference, could change the outcome of this election. And what you learn actually is among those who were offended and aware, when you ask them how would you actually vote? Almost all of them, 66% say they would vote conservative. And if you look at who they voted for in 2015, most of them voted conservative. So the most offended group from this event were conservatives. And you ask, well, why would that be? Well, one is they, if you ask conservatives, we can talk to Tim about the conservative mentality a little bit. They hate more than everything, the hypocrisy that liberals often show. But they say one thing and they do another, right? So if we actually distill it right down, I estimate there's about 4% of the electorate who were aware of this event. And this is the early days, this thing can continue. And I'm not concluding this won't make much of an impact. But 4% is basically the size of the electorate that is likely to be affected by this. Now you say that's four out of 100 people, that's nothing. But in an election, as I'm gonna show you today and which is so close, if you lose one or two points because of this event, it wasn't catastrophic necessarily to the liberals, but it could be determinate in terms of their ability to hold the election, okay? So let's go into some other data. How do they feel about the political leaders? Well, obviously the prime minister is important and we have tracked his impressions since the moment he became prime minister and even before. And you can see that over the last year and a half for a big period of this year and at one moment in March 2018, does anybody remember what happened in March 2018? India. India, right? Rarely do you see polls move like this, right? Where you see five, six point swings over the course of a month. But there was a moment in March in which his positive numbers went down eight points. It rebounded a little bit and then again, in February 2019, literally the day that Judy Wilson-Raybaud testified those numbers went down and he hasn't really recovered since. And in our latest survey, which we completed today or has included, we see an uptick in his negatives, but not as you might expect given the kind of coverage that this event had. And this shows us the power of partisanship that all of us, depending on what our political orientation is and how engaged we are, consume information and react to events very differently depending on who you are and what political persuasion you have. If you're a liberal, you will react differently than if you are a conservative or if you are not political, you might look at everything and say, well, everyone's a mess. If we compare the other leaders, right? Mr. Trudeau has a negative 17. That means 17 percentage points more people have a negative view of them than a positive view. We compare him to Mr. Scheer at minus seven, Mr. Singh at minus six, Max Bernier, minus 31. The only leader that has a net positive impression right now in Canada is Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party, right? And she's had that for quite some time, but you get also the sense, and this is not unusual that Canadians generally speaking don't like any of these leaders in any real way, right? But there are more people who say, I dislike them than like them, right? And so, here's gives us the context to where this election goes and why, for example, what could happen Wednesday happens and we have very little impact on how people might vote. When we ask people, who do you prefer to be the prime minister? As of today, six points higher for Mr. Trudeau than Mr. Scheer. And this, again, numbers have gone up and down, but Mr. Trudeau has led this despite some of the challenges that he's faced. So how does this translate into votes? Well, we ask, you notice, sometimes we leave it the horse race question. I think it's oftentimes the least important, but if we ask, as of today, how would people vote? 34% say they would vote conservative, 33 liberal, 14 NDP, 12 green, four for the block and three for the People's Party of Canada. In other words, a very close race, right? That is often overlooked when you actually look at some of the trend lines. This is going back to the end of August. We've been doing regular surveys since then and you can see pretty stable numbers for the NDP numbers have dropped off as the campaign sort of geared up, but they may be on a rebound slightly given some of the events, but nonetheless, the liberals and the conservatives are basically tied and they have been almost for five months now in our tracking. When we look at it from a regional lens, the conservatives do well in Alberta. They do well in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The liberals are doing very well now again in Atlanta, Canada and in Quebec. BC is competitive, Ontario, the liberals seem to have had a little bit of advantage and gain there, largely I think because of the unpopularity of the Premier here in Ontario, but it's still quite close and even the close Ontario numbers mask, big liberal lead in Toronto and a much more competitive landscape outside of the big city there. Now, one of the things that's important to note, even a week into the campaign, most Canadians say they're not following this campaign very closely at all. 8% say they're following it very closely, probably most of you in this room if you show up on a Friday night and thank you for doing that. 32% say pretty closely and you can see there's quite a number of us not tuning in at all and that is indicative I think of the modern day campaign where we are like on everything else just in time kind of folks, right? We will make up our minds just before we have to. We're not gonna spend too much time following this stuff. And so the fact that 15% didn't even know that those photos of Mr. Trudeau were released on Wednesday, that most people didn't tune into the debate during the first week and that most people probably won't make up their minds until some time after Thanksgiving means this campaign, even though it's shorter than last year, is still very, very long and a lot can still happen because most people haven't tuned in yet. Now we haven't talked about issues. We're gonna talk more about the issues but what are the issues Canadians care about? When we ask them to rank their top five issues in our surveys, affordability, healthcare, taxes, and climate change make the top four. And if you've watched the first week of this campaign prior to Wednesday, all the conversation has been about affordability. It almost seems like the parties are in an arms race to outbid each other for who can save you the most money or create the newest program to save you more money. And that explains why they're doing it because it's the top issue right now. People are feeling squeezed and they're looking for relief. Now what's interesting on the issue question, you're like, whoa, this is a very academic chart. But basically how to read it is those issues at the top that are blue are those in which conservative voters are more likely to say our top issues for them. So in other words, conservative supporters are 25 points more likely to say the deficit is a priority to them than liberal, green or NDP supporters, okay? Taxes, immigration and refugee policies, pipelines and oil and economic plan for Canada's future, all those issues, they are more likely to say are important to them. On the flip side are those that more, those voting for I will describe as more progressive parties, the liberal NDP and green voters, housing, mental health, cost and access to healthcare, poverty and inequality, but look at what's at the very bottom of that list. No issue in our country today is as polarizing and politicized as climate change. Those voting for the NDP, the greens or the liberals are 34 points more likely to say climate change is an issue that will drive their vote and conservative supporters. And so when you wonder why in the first week of this campaign Andrew Scheer, I don't think has uttered the term climate change unless he's been asked about it, is because for his universe, it's not a top issue. It's not a priority, right? Whereas for the center left parties, center parties much more important, okay? And so this dynamic is not just how people, what matters is not just what people care about, it's what, who cares about what? And I highlight the middle item, cost of living. It's the only real issue in which, whether you're a liberal voter, conservative voter, new Democrat voter, you think is a top issue. It's not that 1% say it's cost of living, it's that equally across the board, there's no differential between these two parties. So what does all this mean? Well I see right now today, an electorate that first, as I said, quite defensive, a little bit insecure about their future. They're not sure what's going on, right? Think about it for a moment. The world compared to 2015 is much more in doubt, right? Climate change is, we're much more aware of what's going on with climate change. There could be war in Iran in the next few days. Donald Trump is still president of the United States, right? And although the Canadian economy is doing very well and Canadians repeatedly say they feel the economy is doing well, they may not be feeling the impact of that themselves. And so that affordability narrative emerges. I think we're in a state now where it is very difficult to predict how this election goes. Not just because of what happened Wednesday, but because I don't think voters aren't really clear on what they want. What they know is they don't really love any of these leaders. They're not that excited about their choices, but they, I think, are increasingly recognizing that whatever choice is selected, the impact could be great. And so they're waiting to see whether this is an election that's gonna engage them or one in which maybe they'll get disengaged on. So on that note, that's all for me. I'm gonna turn it over to our panel and get us started here. So thank you very much. So, Ann, Tim, and Paul. I'm sorry. Well, you said you're work born in 72. You shouldn't have these memory issues yet. I'm an old millennial. Leave me alone. Okay. I'm aging by the end. I wanna start with a quick take from all of you on where do you think the campaign is from your vantage points? And if you can quickly sort of give us a sense of who do you think's winning? Who do you think's losing? And what are you looking for over the next four weeks that might give this audience a sense of how this thing might turn out? Okay. So again. Well, according to my Twitter feed, the NDP is winning. No, I mean, I think that in the first week it's true. Like, it doesn't even feel like there's an election campaign on except for probably people in this room. It just doesn't feel like it's been happening. And maybe that started to change on Wednesday night. But my sense of how the campaign is playing out is that the liberals were, until that happened, they were running a classic front runner campaign. The Prime Minister was not open to questions from the media that maybe because he knew this was coming, I don't know. But he wasn't, it was playing a very safe front runner campaign, very cloistered, kind of high energy, good photos, good visuals, that kind of thing. The conservatives I think were playing to their strengths, but in my view, a little too angry to come out right out of the gate and demand the resignation of the Prime Minister, it seemed odd to me on the first day of the campaign. I think that the NDP, despite having a lot of challenges, is running a pretty good campaign. I mean, the opening statement and launch were better than expected, I think, for a lot of people. The visuals have been good and the events have been good and the announcements have been good. And even though not very many people watched the McLean's debate, from my point of view, the goal of that was for people to look at it and decide that he was better than they had thought. And I think he did better than that. I think he outperformed expectations in a way that surprised people. So even though not many people watched that, I think that it adds to a kind of a narrative and the media commentary and those kinds of things. And if other things happened during the campaign, that could have an effect. I think the Green Party went in with very high expectations, which is often a problem. And I think that there have been a few stumbles and they're not necessarily living up to the expectations that people had from them. There's of course the wildcards that we might not get much time to talk about tonight, but things like the People's Party with Maxine Bernier being allowed into the debate, which I think was a huge mistake on the part of the Debates Commission is gonna change the dynamic of the debate. And the block, of course, I think is probably benefiting a bit in the last couple of days from some of the things that have been going on. So it's very, very fluid and it's so early in the campaigns, the other thing, right? People, most people won't start to pay attention until the first big debate, first big national debate. Just quickly on that. Why roll out so much policy early on? What's the strategy behind that if you know people aren't paying attention? Well, it's a good time to do it, to be honest, because people, you know, it is a good time to do it. I mean, it's, and it's also when you get your, you kinda get your sea legs in the beginning of the campaign, right? You test things out a little bit. I know in the 2015 campaign, we did an actual tour simulation before the campaign was even launched because so many things can go wrong in the first few days of the campaign. Like a bus driving under a wing of a plane. That's right, that's right. Or my favorite was one of the elections in British Columbia, a provincial election, when the one where we lost government and went down to two seats. The bus got stuck under an underpass at Simon Fraser, I think it was, and we had to let the air out of the tires. Oh, bad visual. Bad visual, yeah. Tim, why do you think conservatives aren't for mass transit? Now you've figured it all out. What do you think conservatives are angry at? Jesus, that's not true, that never happens. Except for you. Yeah, too happy. I would agree with Anne on one key point to start. I think actually the best campaigner so far has been Jagneet Singh. Given the expectations though, we're so low. If authenticity matters, David studies that a lot. Lots of people here know that that's now seen as a real element in politics. He's come across as the most authentic. He actually has nothing to lose per se if you believe the stories about the imminent demise of the NDP that Anne has heard since day one of involving herself with the NDP. But I think Singh has been good. This election is like a Seinfeld election. It's been about nothing so far. Which is really, sorry, I'm going to use my new flint swearing now because it is Friday night and I would be drinking at Dominion City when I was in university at this time. I mean, it's just really goddamn infuriating, right? Yeah, you made the point about climate change. Okay, where is even Trudeau talking about climate change? Nobody's talking about the big issues. You mentioned Iran. God forbid any of these leaders try and weigh in on that because they see no political benefit in doing it but we should be talking about it. And then the massive disruptive change that is happening in the world that they're all trying to play off of to their benefit, they're not talking about that. They're talking about trinkets and bobbles. Here, I'll give you 200,000 daycare spaces which I can't do anything about and I'll give you a new fitness tax credit. Hey, that's great. And why are they doing it all now to answer your question to Anne? My perspective on that because that's about micro-targeting and any of you students who take that or study that, David's different classes here than some of the other programs on how you market to voters, this is all about announcing a program, finding them niche market and going hard for it. It is just so frustrating right now watching this campaign. Paul. So I, just for those in the audience to be sure, I'm not here to represent an liberal point of view but rather... But you're an academic so by default. Oh. You haven't gotten enough left-wing talking points from your professors, so I'll... No, so I thought it'd be fun to look for, how is the, are the institutions doing? And to pick up on something that Anne said, I think it's been really bad so far for the Debates Commission for two reasons. One was the waffling on whether Max and Bernier was in or out and the other was that the way the Prime Minister treated the situation. So you had one where he turned down McLean's and he turned down the monk saying, oh no, no, no, I'm only going to go to the officially sanctioned ones organized by the Debates Commission until Tevea invited him and then he said, no, I'll be there. And so his own rationale for declining to you and what have you has gone down, the Debates Commission has been an interesting experiment but I don't know if it will survive. I think it's also been a bad campaign for the people who vet candidates and that's just across all of the parties. No, and I think hopefully it may lead to a bit of a better discussion about what vetting means and about who should be in politics. Earlier this year, as part of a research project I sat down with the directors of each of the parties for a report we did on candidate nominations and one of them was quite up front saying every election that happens, we have more people with a social media presence. That social media presence is longer and it goes back to a time when they were adolescents, what have you? And so how can we navigate that process? And so, yeah, it's been a challenging one in that regard just in terms of how we try to bring people into the political system because now if the test is no one should have ever said something bad in public, given the pervasiveness of smartphones, we're all doomed. Interesting, so let's just deal with the big issue that's sort of come out in the last few days first and get each of your kind of reaction to those photos of Mr. Trudeauback and while there's multiple photos and video now and how, I'm curious on a few things. One is, was this a game changer in terms of the campaign itself in your eyes based on your experience watching other campaigns and just seeing how this has sort of appeared. Ignore my data for a moment and just, because I don't think it's settled. I think there's still more time in this and Paul, I'll start with you and I'll take it maybe from the view of like you've done lots of research looking at what, how voters and citizens sort of react to this. Like, does this kind of stuff matter and how does it compare to other kind of scandals in your mind? So I think this will be something that matters. The main way I think it will hopefully change the campaign from some of the non-campaign that you've seen. So far it's been very much focused on the past, the liberal and mentioned that the liberals have been running a front runner strategy but a lot of it instead of being focused on policy has been digging up as much opposition research and dirt and releasing it and I'm hoping we'll see that change. One thing that has, so every two years the Samara Center for Democracy does a poll looking at the health of Canadian democracy and the good news is that we've actually been getting a little bit better in terms of people's trust for the political system contrary to what some fearing populism might see but still the fear is there. So we have the majority of respondents or I guess I should say 49% of respondents thought our democracy was getting weaker and when we asked a bit why, two thirds of respondents said that politicians only seemed to care about our votes and so I'm hoping maybe the scandal might be an opportunity to get into some of the deeper discussions that Tim has presented to move beyond this front runner strategy of just attacking the people and actually have a debate about ideas and although it will I'm afraid just breed cynicism is the main thing that all politicians are just not presenting authenticity as you say. Could it do the opposite though? Could it have presented Mr. Trudeau as just an imperfect individual has faults and almost bring them down to the level where not all of us, hopefully no one in this room has done what he did but we've made mistakes at some point in our life, right? And so I wonder is it a human moment even though we're aghast by the behavior? Well the power center for democracy which consists of four women at a bridge table in St. John's, weighed in with me yesterday and none of them are Justin Trudeau fans but their analysis was just that, oh he finally looks human, yeah he did something stupid. I wish people would stop all this political correctness. These are women in their 70s, it was very interesting to me who aren't fans of Justin Trudeau. I've been on the radio for the last couple of, since this is broken and there seems to be, that seems to be the larger sentiment at play than the lesser sentiment at play. The problem for the prime minister though is less he had a human moment and more he's contradicted his brand. I think we can all recognize a human moment, we've all had them, I find this a difficult discussion so I don't wanna be a hypocrite, I have been at parties many, many years ago where it was not uncommon to see people dressed as the way Mr. Trudeau presented himself. I was not one of them but I would certainly know people who were and it was a different time, it wasn't right but it was 30 odd years ago so I'm not gonna be hypocritical in judging him for that but I will call him hypocritical for pretending to be at least in language somebody who was above the rest of us when it came to having the knowledge and the commitment to an issue. That doesn't mean he's less committed to the issue but it does make him look more sanctimonious and that I think is one of the weaker points for the prime minister even with some of his own people who for now are standing with him. Yeah, I think that the self-righteousness and the sanctimony and the fact that it was hidden for so long, the fact that it never came out, right? So I've vetted a lot of candidates in my time and rejected people for much less than that, and I have also accepted candidates who have done things that a lot of people would not consider to be acceptable because they owned up to it, they apologized for it, they made retribution and they had a redemption, right? So I think it was the hiding of it and not putting it forward and I think Canadians in general are not big fans of hypocrisy and that's the biggest thing I think that comes out of this. So again, I don't know if it's gonna make an impact in terms of voting intention or anything like that, but I do believe that you're right. I mean, from my experience in the last few days, conservatives have been so excited by this, I think it's almost gleeful because they dislike him so much and they want the rest of us to dislike him as much as they do, and I think that's a mistake. I think that they kind of, as my mother would say, they've lost the run of themselves. We got the mothers in this now. We can never go wrong when you're listening to your mother. But they've lost the run of themselves. Like I thought that Mr. Shear's response on the night of was just so overwrought. It was, I don't think he did himself any favors and I think that the reason that Jagmeet Singh's response has been garnering so much attention is because number one, he was authentic. Number two, of course, he is the only visible minority leader of a federal party and so he has the lived experience of racism but also he didn't make it about himself or his partisan party interests. He made it about the people who experience racism and I think that was, it was again, to go back to what you were saying, the authenticity. Paul, sorry. I mean, I'm hoping, just as you said with the vetting, what is the acceptable standard for behavior always depends on what comes after and what ownership and authenticity. And I was very much actually impressed by Mr. Shear's comments saying that, look, we're not just gonna throw every candidate out because you dug up a tweet from 2007. We're gonna have a discussion, we're going to see what happened. And then was a bit disappointed to see that measured response being thrown out when it came to what the prime minister had done. Yeah, I fully agree with that. That's why you have the two leaders in this hypocrisy box staring at each other. Oh, who could be more hypocritical? That's why I think Mr. Singh, not that he wanted to seize the opportunity. I'm sure he and most every one of us here never wanted to be in this particular discussion because it doesn't reflect on Canada well across the world. But I think he has maturely and responsibly dealt with that and I'm sure the pressure now will be on him to try and break away from that, but he can't. I think it is at the conservative default to find a way to constantly step on Justin Trudeau's throat. They haven't yet developed the political maturity in campaigns to recognize sometimes you have to let things play themselves out whether it was Klaus Witz or Napoleon. One of you academics will tell me who was the originator. I believe it was Klaus Witz, don't involve, don't erupt your enemy when he's in the move and making a mistake because it was all he's then. So that's why he's the term he. And that is classic campaign strategy, right? When your opponent is damaging themselves, don't get in the way, right? And but I also believe that what happened with the photos and everything like that fundamentally changes the nature of the debates because if you're a front runner or vying for front runner like the two, the liberal conservative, they want this to be a two party race. They want this to be you got this person or this person, that's what they're going for. So their whole strategy going into the debate would be to isolate the others and just like maybe pat them on the head and ignore them and make it about the two of them. They can't do that now because they have Jignet Singh on that stage and they will not be able to ignore him or diminish him or write him out. Can I, I know you got lots of questions but you're gonna, this is what happened. I don't have the moderator. That's another one, Jack. But Paul touched on this a little bit when talking about issues. So the beginning, if there was something emerging in the beginning of the campaign, it was the liberals trying to push a values-based campaign or as he's often described as the virtue signaling. Andrew Shearer is gonna, you know, he's gonna bring, he's gonna allow, he's gonna end any abortion rights. He's gonna blow up gay marriage. He's gonna throw in jail anybody who doesn't see his worldview, a Bible in every hand, nevermind the chicken in every pot, right? That's what was gonna happen. The world was gonna end because that's a strong suit that works for the liberals. And if you go back to their tactics, right back to 2000 when John Crutcham was running against Stockwell Day, they ran that campaign. And probably more often than not, it works. And then the, of course, the conservative pushback is he's unfit, he's a dunce, he doesn't know what he's doing. He's a laughing stock on the world stage. But those, you know, it's just not congruent with what you feel. David talked about, you didn't use the word anxiety. I don't know if we have a disruptive mood in the country, but we certainly have a degree of anxiety. We've seen it play out in different provincial elections. They're trying to tap into that from different streams. So if you're a younger voter, perhaps you care about values. The values that Justin Trudeau says Andrew Scheer doesn't have. And if you're slightly older, you care about your pocketbook and economic management. And that's where Scheer is going. And that's where they've been, but it just really doesn't connect more internally with some of what people are dealing with, I think. So one question on the media and campaigns, right? Like it seems, you watched coverage of, you know, the S&C, Lavelin controversy and we all live in Ottawa. So we're in the bubble here. But like most people outside of, you no doubt it had an impact, right? But when you look at a lot of the coverage that the media sort of focus on before and during a campaign, are they missing something, right? Like are we living in a world now where so much of that content isn't even being consumed by voters that it almost doesn't matter, right? And in fact, can inflate an issue and make people react in a different way. So the media has like this normative, this is wrong. Like the S&C was the worst thing that could happen in government. And most Canadians were saying it was bad, it wasn't ethical, but I don't think, like this is just politics, like. Well, they do bear down on certain things that they think are important that aren't necessarily that important to, you know, as we often say, Monsieur et mesdames to Le Monde. It's like it is not what people are talking about at their kitchen tables. And that's actually the struggle for a political campaign is how to get to the things that people are talking about at the kitchen table. So for instance, during this campaign, we will have Thanksgiving, a very important political moment. And if the media constantly focuses on when did you make the phone call? When did you hear about it? What did you know? When did you know it? Do you, you know, is this person important or that person important? And then they're constantly focused on those things and not on some of the policy issues that have come out. So this has been some good policy announced actually in the first few days. And some of it would have an impact on people's lives. And I think there is a disconnect with the positive economic numbers and what people are experiencing in their lives, the anxiety, the economic pressures. And because the media is so focused on who phoned, who when, and what time did it happen? And, you know, when did you first know and all of those kinds of things that it's great from a kind of a Hollywood celebrity kind of approach, but it doesn't advance the political discourse at all. I mean, there are journalists who do a very good job on the policy stuff, but I wonder if they're read as much. And it's almost like, it's all a horse race, especially when it is a horse race, like it is close, right? Yes, exactly, exactly. And also the horse race numbers can change dramatically in a campaign, late in a campaign. Right, Paul. I mean, I think the point you made about the policy not resonating or not getting through in the media, I think almost made the S&C Lavellen a fair more telling because it's spoken about the Trudeau brand. And so it wasn't as much the specifics of it, but that it challenged him as someone who was inclusive in his decision-making, someone who was supportive of women, someone who was supportive of indigenous people. And so if we often live in an increasingly leader-centric policy light world, I think that may have been more of the takeaways, in particularly with the final straw of putting Ms. Wilson-Raybould and Ms. Philpott out of the caucus. Those images, I think, do resonate even if the average person may not care about the phone calls. It's just, wait a minute, this is against the brand, much like more recent developments coming back to, and so it becomes more a matter of, is he another hypocrite? He came in promising to be something different, a new politics, sunny ways, et cetera. And so, yeah, it may not resonate in quite the same way. Let me throw out just a, maybe a sort of a counterfactual here or double, like in a way, it seems to me that, conservatives admitted they leaked at least the video that appeared of Mr. Trudeau behaving the way he did, that came out the next day after the first photos came out. In a way, it seems that you could argue that it took, they were, like if you looked at some of the polling, particularly the nanospall that was doing daily tracking, conservatives had some momentum headed into Wednesday. And it, you can't help but feel this completely changed the story of the campaign so far. If it was a campaign about nothing, I actually think the conservatives could easily win that election because it's just a, it's a transaction, right? It's, I'm going to give you $500, you're going to give me my vote and we all can go, you know, skip away. But now because it's about identity, it's about racism, it's about, even if it does challenge his brand, it allows the prime minister to make a comparison between what he stands for, even if he did this 20 years ago and what is, you know, particularly his primary opponent, Mr. Scheer, and allows him to continue to polarize it and keep Mr. Singh out of it. Unless Mr. Singh is able to come through there and an elevated NDP helps, arguably historically, it's been shown in different areas of the country, helps the conservatives. But back here, your media question, I think there's another challenge too. And Fritz Waddell here has worked in the media, great professor, great man, Chris, nice to see it. And I'm not setting you up right now, I'm not about to set you up. But unfortunately, Donald Trump's rhetoric has worked and it's seeped across the border, right? Like the conditioning of fake news and the media being an organization of equal elites is something that's had an impact in Canada and that's not true. And then the media, not all of them, but they tend to overcompensate. So okay, we feel like we haven't covered an issue, let's do 42 days straight on climate change and forget everything else. And not that you shouldn't spend 42 days on climate change, but most can walk in true gum at the same time. So there is this overcompensation, there is that embedded narrative and there's so many other outlets now to get information. But equally, I feel for the media right now, it is just hellishly impossible to come forward on a consistent basis to know whether what you're reporting is as accurate as it should or could be given everything else that is at play at the moment. So dumping on the media is fashionable, but we truly do need a referee, that being the media to help interpret what is going on, perhaps the way they do their work that needs to be examined and look at where they can add more value in times like this as opposed to reporting who said when. I'll tell you, Dave, one of the things I'll be looking for in the next few days is what the parties do about their leaders. So we are in a leader centered, these are leader centered campaigns, generally speaking, right? But you can watch and see when a party starts to retreat from its leader, when they decide that the leader might be a little bit toxic, right? So I'll be interested to see how much the conservatives continue to talk about Mr. Shear, how much the liberals continue to talk about Mr. Trudeau, how much the Greens continue to talk about Ms. May, and how much we continue to talk about Mr. Singh. And I would predict, and I'm totally prepared to be wrong on this as with so many other things, but that the NDP will start talking about Jevneet Singh much more than we have, that the Greens may start to play down Elizabeth May a little bit, given some of the recent things, and the same with the other two parties. And certainly even if the liberal central campaign doesn't do that, their candidates will. Quick warning, in about five minutes, I'm gonna open it up to the audience for questions, so just if you've got some, start percolating. I do want, you brought up Donald Trump. Can't have a political discussion. I do lots of focus groups, and literally the first thing people say is like, what's keeping up at night? And it's, they go around the table, it's like Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump. So. Imagine what happens to Melania. The first week of this campaign, the first week of this campaign, he hasn't come up much, right? What role, if any, does, first of all, Donald Trump specifically, but maybe foreign relations, relationships with the United States, play in our politics? Because it seems to me that, when we ask top issue, relations with the United States, relations with China, they're on the list, people don't choose them. We're picking a prime minister also sets our, in large part, our foreign policy. What role does those kind of policy issues, and let's, if you can, talk about Trump too, playing in this campaign likely. Well, yeah, you've heard more about Doug Ford than you did Donald Trump in the first week. But I think there's something interesting with Ford, Trump, and Trudeau now that puts Trudeau in a unique spot. Somebody was arguing today, and I think they're entirely right, that you can't apply the same parameters of judgment to the way Justin Trudeau is evaluated. It is more like he's a character from TMZ or from People Magazine. And I don't mean that in an insulting way, it's just the evaluatory mechanism. So, you know, Doug Ford was gonna be scuttled because he was allegedly a dope dealer. Remember all of that? Remember the great global male expose? What happened to that? Donald Trump and Billy Bush, what happened to all of that, right? Because the way, because they're built up as celebrities, though they have a celebrity path to redemption and escape. And I think that really is that play here. As for what role Mr. Trump plays in the camp, he weighed in today, and it was shocked, or shock was in his word. I don't know if he knows what shock is, other than when he charges his hair up like that. But I think we'll see him at some point, but I continue to believe we'll hear more about Doug Ford because of the perception that exists that Doug Ford is bad for the conservatives and good for the federal liberals. Well, and getting back to what Paul said, I mean, we, you know, about the monk debate. So the monk debate is the only debate on foreign policy. It happened in the last campaign. I would argue that we didn't do all that well in that one, but I think it is an important debate to have. And I think it's at risk because Mr. Trudeau has decided not to attend it. I'll be interested to see if he maintains that position or not given the recent events. You know, it's interesting to see, I mean, there's been a little bit of messaging from the conservatives that Andrew Scheer might have gotten a better deal that it was a weak deal out of the liberals on NAFTA. And so there is this element that he's not as adept at standing up to a strong leader. I do think though, a lot of people liked the contrast that we had such a progressive prime minister relative to the United States. And that is now in jeopardy. I think the, oh gosh, the Patriot Act episode with the Sominage, which if you haven't watched it, not to promote Netflix or Dominion City Brewering, which I hate the latter you can do. But yeah, it is worth a watch. There's two sides of Canada kind of perspective. He probably did a better job. The host of that show, ripping apart. I'm a progressive side than anyone's done of Trudeau, I think up to this point. On Mr. Scheer, before I open up to the floor, Paul, you've done research. One of your research focuses on your academic side of your careers on the interplay between religion and politics. And I'm curious, Mr. Scheer's sort of really struggled, I think, at least from an external perspective to come to terms with his own personal faith with I think the religious streak, to get the Christian religious sort of streak in the party and some public policy positions on abortion, same-sex marriage and so on. Give us some insight into sort of what's happening sort of both below the surface and within the party itself that helps us explain why that might be so difficult for him to do. Well, it's fascinating the conservative party is not a majority religious party, but it's disproportionately a religious party, relative to the others. So that over, pretty much since going back to that attack on Stockwell Day that you mentioned, you've seen a migration of people who take their faith seriously, be it Protestant, Catholic, and even with Jason Kenney's outreach to minority religions moving to the conservative party. So if you attend church, temple, what have you regularly, you're probably a conservative or more likely to be a conservative, but it's not enough to win. And so it was fascinating. I did some research with a colleague at Bishops University on, we tracked all the emails sent by every conservative leadership candidate and coded them for content, messaging. And what was fascinating was to see how Andrew Scheer positioned himself never addressing issues directly but using a lot of code words. So he was going to stand up for family choice, for parents' choice by creating a tax credit for private schools, which would allow Christian parents to send their kids to Christian schools. He also, it was quite one of those perfect moments that fit our analysis great. He didn't go to the campaign life coalition rally against abortion, but he sent a note of greeting. And it was like, I'm gonna make sure I send something out, but I won't be there in person. And so it's very awkward because it's a voting base that if they lose to the people's party, as you say, one or two points could shift. But at the same time, if he actively courts it, it's not enough. So I think he's trying to continue what you saw Stephen Harper do through symbolic gestures like the office of religious freedom or various things. But the main thing that he does is just to be honest, is speak in terms that doesn't alienate. And this is where we can see it in a bit of some of the, as you were saying about Stockwell Day, where faith is actively more ridiculed. At Stockwell Day was perhaps the exit, I think Warren can sound like he used him of thinking the Flintstones was a documentary. I was on TV. You was, it was like you were there Tim. I laughed. No, and so that kind of thing, but being receptive, but it is a very delicate line to walk where he needs those votes, but he can't, they're not enough. That's absolutely right. Any thoughts on Shear and what he's up against to become Prime Minister? It's interesting. You know the people who do his research as do I and had a coffee with one of them not long ago. And they said that one of the big assets they have at the moment, they meant it in a humorous way, but it was actually true, was Shear as viewed as boring. And the point that he was making in stating the obvious was that if people tire of celebrity, then the boring, predictable, minivan driving family guy may have enough appeal to win because that is the proposition they've come forward with as simple as it is. But again, we're into very basic, simple political marketing because the argument against Mr. Singh prior to what I think has been an evolution of people seeing him as being a capable leader that maybe others didn't see outside the NDP prior to this was that Mr. Singh was chosen by the NDP again in a very simplistic vein and providing us because he was in many ways, his historical and racial background aside, very similar to Justin Trudeau. Charismatic, dynamic, engaged, so Shear can possibly play off of all of this. Shear, my frustration with Shear, and I'm not the only person conservative or otherwise to have this, I just wish that he would explain his own personal evolution as it relates to why he now recognizes the legitimacy quality of same-sex marriage because I think he's missing something politically there. I respect a person's right to maintain their private feelings. However, when you're a political leader now, there is a greater expectation that you do the Oprah confessional, even if you're the boring dude with the Oxford suit and the shoes that have been the same for 25 years, you know? I've been surprised, to be honest, for a while now that the liberals have been portraying Mr. Shear the way that they have because I don't think it resonates that well, the kind of angry, scary, awful person. I think if I was them, I would be more going towards the insipid, personality-less, boring. Robert Stanfield. Yeah, I would be going to Robert Stanfield for sure. Yeah, he dressed up as doogie, howzer and Justin Trudeau, well, we know what he did, so, yeah. Default it too. You're good, thank you. So now we'll have about 25 minutes for questions. There should be ambassadors here with microphones so you can put up your hand if you have a question. Address it to one of the panelists or all of them. However, a question. A question. Speeches are good too. 15, 20 seconds after that, I'm going to start giving you a hard time because there's a lot of people who want to participate. We're going to try to do that. Start over there. Question. I have a question. I'm wondering if you guys, all of you guys, think that Bill C-21 in Quebec is going to become an election issue. I was really thinking there would be more discourse about that and anger, but not seeing anything so far. Thank you. See? I think it will definitely be an issue, particularly now that Bernier is in the debate. In the debates, it'll be a big issue. And I'm interested to know whether or not Mr. Trudeau is going to make a big step on it as a result of what happened on Wednesday night. I, listen, I would say all of the main federal leaders have been shameless cowards on it so far. All the goddamn thing out. Lead on it. Never mind playing around the edges. Somewhere, Pierre Trudeau's rolling over in his grave. Brian Mulroney's hitting the wall. Ed Brodman is not very happy, and I don't know who was the green leader before Elizabeth May. George Mulroney. Anyway, sorry, go ahead. No, I think it's a very difficult one, given that a lot of the religious voters for the Conservative Party are also concerned about the growing number of Muslims in Canada. And it is something that we saw most notably with Kelly Leach during the Conservative Leadership Campaign, but the anti-Islamophobia motion M231 became a buzzword. And Andrew Scheer spoke cordially, those who were supporters of it. Can I just, I just want to add one, let me just explain why I don't think they will do anything. No, they won't. It's because when you look at the data in Quebec and the fact, and I think the NDP is likely the only party to do it because they have nothing to lose in Quebec. They're at 8%, right? And so if you are the Liberals, the Conservatives, or in this case the Block, but they're already for it, you're tied outside of Montreal, tied, right? These are close races. And Tom Mulcair taught us what happens when you stand up for what's right and you speak out against something. If the voters don't agree, they don't vote for you. And so I do think that this is just a pure strategic play and it's unfortunate, but I think it's, when Quebec is so in play in so many seats, I think that's likely what's gonna happen. And keep in mind, Francois Legault, unlike Doug Ford, is incredibly popular right now in his home province, in part because he did this. And so it is a very, I think, unique issue in that province. As much as we may disagree with it, it's still very popular in Quebec. Okay, good, yes? Oh, hi there, thank you so much for the talk so far. So my question's kind of in a similar vein, but on a different topic. So you mentioned earlier that the economy is doing quite well in general, but that one of the sort of least partisan issues of concern was that of affordability. So I'm wondering whether you believe that wealth inequality is a topic that will likely become of more sort of prevalence in the campaign or that the solutions to it, things like, I guess, reducing corporate handouts, wealth tax, loopholes, that kind of thing are just too complex for them to become a hot topic issue to the election. Thank you. Well, I would say that even though the words wealth inequality haven't been used that much, certainly the NDP is running a campaign that is very similar to previous campaigns that we have run, which is talking about the inequities between the top and the bottom, right? I mean, the whole campaign is about who's standing up for the rich and powerful and that would be the two main parties and who's looking after the rest of us and that's the NDP. So and all the policy prescriptions are pointing to those things as well, things like dental care, pharmacare, housing affordability and a super wealth tax. All right, yes, next question. This is about the climate change. I was at the Broadband Institute seminar which you spoke at to David in the winter and I recall you were saying that climate change was polling at something like 3% in terms of people's thinking was the most important issue. And now you're talking about up there 41%. I know the times are different and polls are different but I'm just curious if you can give us some sense about what's going on with that. I don't know if I said 3% because I think even in the winter, it was still higher than it had been for a long time. Look, I think Canadians generally are waking up to the impact of climate change, right? I remember I was in grade 10 in 1997 talking about the Kyoto Accord and the protocol. This has been talking about for like 25 years but I think it's been the last three years that has really gotten people's attention and you can't help but feel something's different and you hear it. You hear people saying it's not just weather, right? It's something is happening, fires, floods, much more intense and those are opening people's minds to it in a way that it wasn't before. So I don't think we're at a tipping point where it's what I call a consensus issue which just means you can't win unless you are going to do something aggressive on it. The point is, to Tim's point earlier, no one's really talked about it and we're in day 10 of this campaign. Doesn't mean we won't. There's still lots of campaign left and there's a big event next week. There's a student strikes happening around the world. There's a big climate conference so there's stuff happening that could bring more attention to it but I do think the challenge in Canada, unlike in some European countries, is our geography and our regionalized nature of our country makes it hard for us to see eye to eye on this issue. Like the fact that the Conservative Party is caucus, is represented by over 30 MPs from Alberta means that Andrew Scheer, unlike Boris Johnson in the UK, can never say I will make Canada the net carbon neutral by 2030 or whatever Boris Johnson said, right? His caucus would never, Andrew Scheer's caucus would never allow that to happen because it's got a such representation from Alberta. So in a way, because of the way our electoral system works and the way that resource economies are so central means it's an issue for Canadians but I don't think we don't all yet agree that it's something we need to work aggressively on. Although hopefully Canadian voters will have noticed today that millions of people marched around the world for climate change, so. Okay, here. Thank you very much. I'm used to giving philosophy lectures. I'm sorry, I'm a philosopher. No, I'm not a philosopher. I do my research on John Stuart Mill. I grew up in an NDP dynasty in Winnipeg. I am solidly liberal. And my question is genuine confusion. I do not understand why when liberals commit what I consider to be minor transgressions, tempests and teapots, why people then consider going to conservatives who objectively are always so much scarily worse on these issues. I don't understand. I'm very big on voter responsibility as well as entitlement. How could pollsters formulate questions that would try to get at why people go from a little bad to much worse? I don't understand it. Yes. I have five children over on the way here. I'm terrible and I'm awful. Let me take challenge with your question. Seeing I'm also a pollster or his boss supposedly, though we're business partners, I think your language is yours. But I think that opinion, I think the liberals have done a very good job of suggesting that conservatives are somehow scary and Hellions in the world is going to change. I think people in the middle who aren't from the political backgrounds that we don't necessarily buy the polarities. They get tired of the polarities. David's job, our job is to try and cut through the polarities. I come from a progressive conservative tradition, one that, as you know, worked in to part. I dealt with human rights. I take a bit of offense when you suggest that to me, but I understand where you're coming from. I don't think you're a far left-winger. I'd like Anne. It's okay. So David's job, our job is to cut through that because people are tired of the polemics. Can I just, oh sorry. You go ahead. I would just also say that the liberals are a coalition of voters, right? They don't share sort of an ideology or a political, they share a political philosophy, but there is a phenomenon known as blue liberals, right? And they are more, they're right-wing liberals, right? And so for instance, in the 2011 campaign, when Jack Layton was taking off in the last few days of that campaign, we were polling higher and higher and higher and we won a ton of seats in Quebec and we were picking up steam and we were stopped in the West by blue liberals who decided that they would rather vote conservative to stop the NDP because they viewed the NDP as worse. And I was just gonna add, I think the alignment between liberal and conservative in Ontario makes sense, but in much of the rest of the country, they don't line up. So if you're a liberal, provincially in British Columbia, you're probably gonna vote conservative or maybe liberal, in Quebec, it's its own space. So that may also play a role. And you also assume that all politics is linear and that Canadians react in a linear way, that when we actually ask, for example, new Democrats and Green Party supporters, who would you rather have as Prime Minister Andrew Scheer or Justin Trudeau, a third of new Democrats and almost half of Green Party supporters say Andrew Scheer, right? And it's partly because politics is very personal, right? No, no, it's a great question, right? Because I think it's for those of us who follow politics really closely, it makes no sense how you can, at one point, be a new Democrat voter one year and then go and vote conservative the next. Or in the case of Ontario politics, you could vote for Kathleen Nguyen in 2014 and then vote for Doug Ford in 2018, which people did, right? That makes absolutely no sense. But people aren't rational. People are not rational. And you would have to argue in the Ontario election that a lot of liberals voted conservative there to stop the NDP as well. Yeah. Okay, sorry, next question. I was wondering what you guys think the role of women will be in this election? The role of women? Yeah, women voters specifically. Oh, okay. Well, there'll be half of the voters. Yeah. Oh, it's getting good. That's good. No, but I always wonder that question because it assumes that they will vote. They don't vote enough much in this way. And they will play a role, but I don't see, I don't view an electorate to say they will matter more than men will, right? Because if they don't vote in different ways, if there's not a differential, then they don't matter, right? They matter, but they won't make the difference. I think the key group in this election to determine whether Mr. Trudeau is re-elected is particularly younger women. He did very well with them in 2015. And that sounds horrible, but it's not what I meant. But that's why you've seen, in the early days, before all of this happened, the hard push on the ending of rights, the return to the dark ages, the days of Warden, June, Beaver, Cleaver, all of that, that's why they're doing that. It is to get at those female voters who perhaps haven't had the opportunity to form an opinion on Shear, and they want that to be the opinion. And it's also one of those things that's just very hard for Shear to distance himself from. Agreed. Okay, all right. Next question over there. Lots of questions. Do you think Doug Ford will be to Andrew Shear what Bob Ray was to the federal NDP in 1993, or will it be not quite that bad? Doug Ford's currently in witness protection. Ah. Ah. There's, David can speak to the data. For sure, he has had a negative impact on the federal conservative party. There's also historical patterns that are at play here, but this isn't Bill Davis. This isn't even Mike Harris. Or Ernie's or someone of that ilk. So yes, he will have an impact. He could also be helpful in some areas. He has a very formidable electoral machine, and for the conservatives to succeed federally, they need to win in and around where so-called Ford nation is. So again, it's another one of these dances that Andrew Shear has to do. He can't out and out ostracize Doug Ford. Doug Ford is an anchor at the moment. He hasn't sunk Shear, but he's certainly pulling him down. It's extremely ironic to me that Bob Ray was an anchor, you know, was used against us heavily, even decades after he became a liberal. I know it's true, eh? Yeah. Never will you care? Canada's coinage internationally has been pretty good. It's brand, you know, we've witnessed this because we lived abroad. What happens when, if Trudeau is reelected, what happens to Canada's image when he starts to talk about against racism? What happens to the perception of the Canadian voter if Trudeau is reelected? What happens at the next G8? At the UN? I mean, it's been interesting, the Guardian, I mean, which you would expect of the Guardian, had a piece out saying that what Justin Trudeau did was bad, but you should vote him back in just to, you know, avoid some Britain telling us what to do. But it was, yeah, colonialism dies hard. What you, I think though, it is a very valid point. It will be a very different G8 to have, you know, the alleged sex offender, the alleged racist, and it will also perhaps diminish the body to a greater extent. What, in many ways though, it was, he set himself up to fall by promising to go into those places. And I do think, to bring it back, there has been an increasing recognition, and this gets back to what was said earlier, that Canada is unwilling or less able to abandon its fossil fuel production in ways that say the United Kingdom has, or other countries. And so we, I think it will be part of a longer term structural trend, in addition to the person of Justin Trudeau. Okay, in the back. So my question is, in 2017, Mr. Trump announced that he was gonna lower the corporate tax rates in the United States. So on the competitiveness front, the green part of Canada announced that, you know, if elected, they would hire the corporate tax rate by 6%. And then Andrew Scheer announced a couple days ago that he would find $1.5 billion in corporate handouts or corporate welfare to cut back. So my question is, you know, the liberals have spent a lot of money in sort of like trying to like profile the economy. Where do they go in their campaign platform on competitiveness, corporate welfare, subsidies, incentives? And how do the electorate, how might the electorate react to that subject in the election? Well, the liberals would tell you what a wonderful job they're doing, this wonderful thing called superclusters. If it were after nine o'clock, it would associate another word with the word cluster, but it's not after nine o'clock, so I won't do that. So the liberals, what the liberals will say AI, which are coming from the superclusters, working on immigration, bringing people in, which they all should be doing. Clean tech. Clean tech. And you see the prime minister, again, before he got wounded, I'm sure this will return, putting himself in spaces with leading businesses around the world, Amazon. He did a great thing. He brought the Amazon warehousing system to Ottawa. It's upping our AI game significantly here. So they're gonna do that. Can I just make one sorry, quick editorial comment? I love when people are gonna go after corporate subsidies, but nobody goes after Bombardier. I guess they're not really a corporation who's perpetually been milking the system. Anyway, sorry. Good, over there. Hey, so Tim, you actually alluded to how when the NDP does better, it actually can end up well for the conservatives because the left wing vote is split, where the right wing vote is at least less split. So I was wondering how, I guess, particularly for the NDP, but how you think given how close the conservatives and the liberals are right now, what role strategic voting will play in the ultimate outcome and how particularly the NDP and the Greens are gonna be able to pull through or if they'll suffer because of it? Perhaps the party that's been more fearful of the NDP's alleged demise has been the conservative party. In parts of Ontario, the 905 areas where you correct me if I'm wrong, but often that vote splitting does work, can work for conservatives in different parts. I mean, I think everybody who's watching Mr. Singh intently, he hasn't had a, it's too early to see if he gets a bump up, but does he start to creep up to that 17, 18 territory, 19 territory and stay there? That may help conservatives a little bit, but again, it's less strategic voting, but it's vote distribution, where, who's gonna turn out to vote where? And has the NDP machine, which under Ann's tenure, when Mr. Layton was there, became a very well-oiled machine, knew how to seize moments, they seized the orange wave. They were able to mobilize and use airwars to do that. Is Mr. Singh's organization so decimated right now that even if he does well, he's able to see something because again, Ann would know the history better? The orange wave was effectively a Quebec thing that allowed momentum as well as some organization to come to fruition, is that a way of describing it? Yeah, I'd like to point out too that in that orange wave, in the 2011 campaign, we were polling at about 16 or 17% up till the day that the campaign was called. And on the day that the campaign was called, we finally hit the heights of 20%, that's all. We were at 20%, we were in heaven, you know? And we started to go up over 30% in the last 10, seven to 10 days of the campaign. And then we hit that wave in Quebec where we had for a long time been the second choice for block voters. We moved into being the first choice for block voters as a result of a variety of things that had happened, the Toulon-Mondon-Pal debates, the French language debate when Gilles Ducep basically said he couldn't be Prime Minister and Jack, it was obvious Jack could. So, you know, a lot of things happened to really kind of make us catch that fire in Quebec. And as I was saying earlier, where we kind of lost steam was as we went further west and the Blue Liberals voted conservative to stop us. Okay, great. Next question. That question was quite similar to the one I was going to ask, so I've changed it at the last minute. Electoral reform was a very prominent campaign promise of Justin Trudeau and the Liberals in the previous election and ironically wouldn't benefit them as much as it would the smaller parties like the Green Party and NDP. The NDP seemingly hasn't made this too central to their campaign, I suppose because it's not a very high priority for Canadians, but should the NDP do more to capitalize on that being a broken promise and one which would benefit them in future elections? Yes, I think we should be. I think we should be going very heavily on trust and accountability. Not like, because you're right, the thing about electoral reform is often people view that as a sort of not self-interested, but it's something that has to do with the parties. And that's not what people care about, right? So I think for some people, they care about it a great deal, but it's not a huge part of the voting population. But I think that the way to go after it is that it was a broken promise. It goes to trust and faith and Mr. Trudeau not being what we thought he was. Okay, next question. I'm not gonna get to all of you. I apologize, but we have a few minutes left, so. So I just wanted to, we're talking a lot about the parties obviously because you've all worked for parties and that's important, but what about the people who don't feel like a party represents them? What about the disaffected voters? This is the first election that Canada's having after Brexit, after Trump, after all that. So how do leaders of any stripe, whether it's whatever Max and Bernie is, the Greens, NDP consider themselves, how do they capture those imaginations of, especially up to youth, maybe who might be disaffected? Well, they're profiling it. You can be sure of that. And this is becoming more common, right? Partisan alignment is less. Shopping for votes is our friend Susan Delaco well described it in her book. It's about coming to understand where there are clusters of interest, not the kind of clusters the Liberals are dealing with, but actual clusters of interest. So they will look to find ways to figure out, is there one particular policy coupling of ideas? You might not like the rest of it, you recognize they're imperfect, but you're gonna go and say, all right, these two things benefit me or these three, that's how they're trying to do it. Nobody is out anymore trying to win over, if they ever did 60 to 70% of the electorate. It's too hard and the math says you only need 40. So maybe you'll get a policy, maybe you won't, not to sound cynical because it does drive me nuts. Okay, so last two questions, went over there. Sorry. Thank you. So how important do you think youth votes are going to be in this election and which parties do you think that they are more likely to gravitate towards? Well, I can actually tie that into this last one because I think that one of the things that, this thing about undecided voters, a lot of whom are young people. So I think one of the reasons that Jagmeet Singh has been talking about how I'm not like the other leaders, is exactly to get to those voters. Like he has a thing right now, a poster in it, it's him and it's basically, if you want different results, make a different choice. Okay, good, last question. Hi, I'm an alumni of Nipsia and my question is, what role does foreign policy gonna play in this election? What are the two, what are the candidates positions on foreign policy in this election? I think it will play into people's anxieties, but it won't be a dominant thing. Like people are anxious about Brexit and about Trump and about Bolsonaro and about just like the five star movement in Italy. People are very concerned about these things, but I don't think it will, so I don't think it'll be policy or issue related. It'll be around anxiety. Unless a war in Saudi Arabia sort of breaks out, then the question will be, is Canada gonna get involved? Yes. And then it becomes a question of, maybe it shifts to who do we want to be our, even though that yeah, Prime Minister's not the commander in chief, but who do we want to play that role? It does perhaps shift the lens a little bit. Great, well, before I would like to ask you to join me to thank David and Anne Thank you. Thank you.