The final stretch: Evan Bray’s political panel on key issues

In the final stretch of the federal election campaign, Evan Bray was joined by his weekly political panel to break down the week’s defining moments. With Quebec, Toronto and Saskatchewan shaping up as key regions, the conversation explored what’s resonating with voters and what’s missing from the party platforms.

He is joined by Doug Richardson, OF counsel to W Law Firm, former prime minister’s Chief of Staff in Ottawa and Liberal supporter; Cathy Sproule, former NDP MLA for Saskatoon Nutana; and Bronwyn Eyre, former MLA, broadcaster and Saskatchewan’s former minister of justice and energy.

Predictions:

SPROULE: Liberal Majority

RICHARDSON: Liberal Minority

EYRE: Liberal Minority

Listen here: The Evan Bray Show – Doug Richardson, Cathy Sproule & Bronwyn Eyre – April 24:

The following questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

BRAY: Did last week’s debates move the needle at all?

EYRE: They don’t appear to have a great deal. I thought they might, frankly, but I think what we’re seeing is the continuation of trends which were seeping into place before the debates. You know, the drop in NDP numbers, which seems to be benefiting the liberals, an increase in youth votes, which seems to be stabilizing around the conservatives, which is unusual.

I think that the debate showed, in many ways, the lack of debate. You know, I think that Canadians were hungry for those two debates, and then blink and they were both over and and I think what we’re left with is the fact that throughout the the election campaign, it would have been helpful to have had more more debate, because, Canadians tuned in, and they were very important to have and there it is, but again, doesn’t seem to have made an enormous difference in terms of some of the trends which were emerging before they started.

To me, Mark Carney was much more of a target in the English debate at one time; all of the other three leaders were really only focused on him. Your thoughts on the debates and did it move a needle?

RICHARDSON: My view is that this campaign is boiled down to four significant spots in Canada. So number one, I’d say the Quebec situation is very key. John has said several times on this show that there are 53 ridings in the Toronto area. If John were here, I would debate him a bit. It’s probably down to eight or nine GTA and related ridings.

Number three, I would say, is Saskatchewan. I think there’s actually a bit of a horse race, whereas the last two elections have been a slam dunk for the Tories. I fully acknowledge. I think Cathy would agree with me. There’s probably upwards of three ridings that might be in play, and the fact that the Conservative leader is showing up here tonight, in my humble opinion, confirms that the last and fourth part of this election, and this is exciting, I earnestly believe the election, unlike previous years, will not be known until the end of the night, because of British Columbia and the island and and the impact on the different campaigns that are going on. It really is a three-horse race in British Columbia.

I noticed a noticeable tone from Jagmeet that night. I felt like even more so than the French debate. He was chippy. I’ll be honest, I was frustrated sometimes with how much he was interrupting. Your take on that is, is that the fight is in him? Is that trying to help? Some people suggested he was trying to help Mark Carney.

SPROULE: I would use the word scrappy, not chippy. Jagmeet is a fighter. He’s fighting for what he believes in, and I think he’s been that way throughout the campaign. I think the biggest takeaway I have, I’m similar to Bronwyn and Doug. I don’t think the debate moved the dial, really at all. The only change I saw in the polls was in Quebec, where Blanchet, all of a sudden, started climbing back up again, and it certainly couldn’t have been from his performance at the debate.

So I don’t know what happened there, but that’s the only remarkable or commentable change since the debate. I think, yeah, Jagmeet Singh, and this would have been a strategy that he implemented in discussion with his team, and that was to come out fighting, obviously, fighting for NDP seats that we want to retain. But also, I think he equally went after Carney and Poilievre.

Is there the possibility of seats in Saskatchewan up for grabs, changing, if nothing else, a more tight race, knowing that we’ve got 14 blue seats today. And is that part of the reason why we’re seeing the Conservative leader in Saskatchewan tonight?

EYRE: Well, potentially. I mean, we haven’t seen him until now. I mean, frankly, I don’t understand any of this. I don’t get it. But what can I do? I mean, I can’t rail at the machine, not too much. If you know this is in play. And some of these seats are in play, they’re in play. I think part of the reason they might be in play is because of that urban vote, if you like, some of the trends which we saw in the latest provincial election, where obviously there was a move to toward the the NDP in the urban ridings, and I can speak personally to that one, but I think that some of the forces at play there might be leading to some of the forces that we are potentially seeing in this election.

I find it very, very difficult to understand that. I think that one can say that there has been a difficulty for the conservatives. And I’m sure my co-panellists will disagree with this, but in getting their message across, I mean, most recently, about this Privy Council Report. You know, as you’ll know, this is crazy. This is predicting, you know, basic socioeconomic collapse by 2040. People, hunting, fishing and foraging for food on public lands. And this is a Privy Council Report. My understanding is that the Liberal leader has not spoken to this certainly, Poilievre has tried in the last 48 or so hours to get this across. It’s a very bleak vision of the country.

And as I say, I can’t understand why, for that reason, for many reasons. I mean, let’s not forget another one, the fact that the parliament went into gridlock before all of this got going and Trudeau stepped down over the green flush fund, so called by the Conservatives for the you know, the liberal boondoggle of allegedly millions in unaccounted for sustainability spending, inside dealing and conflicts of interest. Why Saskatchewan might be flip-flopping and in any regard, I don’t get it, but there it is. And that potentially is why Poilievre is visiting the province.

Now, when Bronwyn was talking about the Privy Council Report, I saw you subtly shaking your head, Doug, you don’t agree with what she said. You don’t agree with the report. What? Quickly, what are your thoughts?

RICHARDSON: Well, lawyers have a phrase they love to throw around in their red herrings, and this is a complete red herring. Some official has written a report, and I think it’s disappointing. I’ve tried very hard in your show not to attack the Conservative leader, because I know how tough it is to be in politics, but I think he’s just creating fear about a report that’s written by a low-level official. Because of the nature of our country, people will never go hungry. We’re a caring country that reaches out to people in need. This is disappointing.

You have to admit that some of the wording that was used in that report was very provocative.

RICHARDSON: Yes, I would acknowledge that the wording was disappointing, but it doesn’t represent Prime Minister Carney’s views on anything, and if that’s what Minister Poilievre was trying to say, I think he’s missed the mark.

You’re saying it doesn’t represent Mr. Carney’s views. Does it represent where we’re at because of some policies that the government, current government has had? Is it an indication of, you know, the declining rate of of university graduation rates, or owning a house, or those types of things, because Terry Glavin wrote an article in the National Post basically saying this probably could be true for other places around the world, and could be true somewhat today.

RICHARDSON: So this is the same government under Carney that’s added an additional $200 billion to health care in the country, has confirmed that dental care, that PharmaCare, will stay, and particularly has signed on to ensure that we have $10 a day daycare,  something, by the way, aspects of our provincial government have vacillated on.

Listen, I’ve lived and worked in Ottawa a total of five years, and people come up with silly ideas a lot. You can’t be dismissive, but really, let’s focus on what Mr. Polievre was using this report for, sadly, and that was to create fear when there was no need to create fear.

Liberals, NDP and Conservatives all have their platforms out. And I’m really disappointed. I worry about that debt. Should we be seeing some sort of a plan or goal in reducing or ending the debt?

SPROULE: When I look at the platforms, it reminds me of being in the legislature and listening to the budget. These are basically fantasy documents. I heard nine provincial budgets come down, and it was all about wishes and aspirations. I heard a commenter this morning talk, there’s a French term, and it’s pious wishes is how they describe the platforms.

And I think you know when you see the kind of projections and the way the Conservatives have booked some of their future revenues, it is pie in the sky. So that’s one thing, I don’t put a lot of faith in platforms. I think they’re political tools to push ideologies. And I think we saw that from all three parties. On the other hand, the deficit is ballooning. COVID was a huge hit for our country, as it was around the world. But I think definitely taxation, tax havens and things like that, need to be addressed. And those weren’t addressed substantively in the liberal or conservative platforms.

EYRE: Well, I mean, they, I know they’ve talked a bit about, you know, foreign aid. They’ve certainly talked about cutting the bureaucracy, which is, of course, exploded these last 10 years under Trudeau, and they’ve talked about building opportunity. And I think that’s not, that’s not what, not overly optimistic, if you look at the effect that scrapping the carbon tax on the consumer side has already had, which, of course, is what poly ever has been on about for the last few years, and was shamelessly, you know, copied by by Carney, there is an impact on on something like that, on the supply chains, On trickle down, you know, quite significantly, which now we’re suddenly hearing about and weren’t hearing about for for many years.

You know, when it was in place, and now it has an effect. I think, when you look at some of the other policies that that the Conservatives would go after, whether it’s Bill C 69 whether it’s the oil cap and down the line, which Carney and the Liberals are very coy about and vague on, I think that that it’s not being optimistic to say that if you slash red tape and you you start rock and rolling economically, that that that could help. But, you know, we’re in a fix. Here we are in a, you know, a serious fix economically, productivity has plummeted and so on. And I think, you know, to Doug’s point about the Privy Council Report. I mean, I’m not sure how he knows that it’s a low-level official, but what is being put out there is, you know, economic disaster, or certainly a very dystopic view of what’s ahead.

And I think certainly the liberals would be, quote, unquote, using it if it were the other way around. But I think that one thing that, politically or otherwise, everyone should be looking at are these reports which come out. I mean, this is one in a chain of internal government reports which have come out, which have had a very, very bleak prognosis on liberal policies. I remember one coming out on the green plan, and it was similarly dire. So, you know, whatever the case is happening there, I think that on the platform, it’s really about redressing the situation.

RICHARDSON: You asked us to talk about debt. And any thinking person would say, Cathy, summed it up nicely, because of COVID, four hundred and fifty billion. But any thinking person would say that we have to start to address this issue. I spent time working as the chief of staff to the finance minister. Know the gravity of the situation, as does everybody. But one of the challenges I think we have is that Canadians expect, and it’s the reason I never got elected to public office, because I said this as a candidate, unlike Cathy or Bronwyn, I think Canadians expect too much of government. Ask too much of the government, and Canadians need to ask themselves, do we need all the things we’re demanding of government?

For the first time in two generations, we’re going to have over 80% of the vote going to two parties. And would we be better in Canada as a two-party system?

SPROULE: I do have very strong feelings about that, because I think we see the dangers of a two-party system when we look south of the border. And if you look to Europe, where they have multi-party governments and coalitions of all sorts, I think people behave better when they have to work with other people, and it just makes for better governance. So a two-party system is a dangerous road to go, and if we’re headed that way, I think it’s a dangerous place to go.

Provinces tend to have these two horse races more often. Bronwyn, do you have thoughts on this?

EYRE: In this federal election, we’re seeing a coalescing, you know, and obviously those numbers coming down, probably for the NDP. But there’s no real reason why there should be two main parties. I guess it would suggest the Liberals are more with the NDP, if it did. And you know that hasn’t traditionally been the case, that the Liberals are the NDP.

And to Cathy’s point, I mean, in Europe, it’s impossible, in many cases, to govern with all the parties there are. I know Germany, for example, with its coalition issue, it’s dragging on and on and on as the government tries to find a coalition partner. I think no system is perfect, but I think that the way it is federally right now has served us more or less well until this point, at any rate.

Richardson, what would you say that you’re disappointed in that you’ve seen happen in the current liberal campaign in this election?

RICHARDSON: There have been some positives that have come out of this from the other campaigns. I’ve said this on your show before. I think Jasmine Singh’s idea of the bond is first class, and I think that Mr. Polio was right about capital gains changes to generate investment in this country. So the challenges for us in this campaign were finding ways to make sure Western Canada was heard. And I believe the leader has tried. He’s from the West. We have so much ground to make up, to be candid with you, so we have to work three times as hard now,

Ground to make up. Why Doug? Because of mistakes made, or just because of the history that Canada has, or both?

RICHARDSON: If you go back to the 1980 election, unfortunately, no liberals were elected from Winnipeg west or east, but rather West. Sorry. So there is some built-in history that the Liberals have had to overcome. The provincial parties have become, frankly, in Saskatchewan, as a case in point, we have no provincial party to build a base. And the other thing that I think has always been problematic for the liberals in Saskatchewan, if I’ll be candid, is that the government, the provincial government, has railed day and night every single waking hour, and quite frankly, your predecessor piled on pretty hard on the Liberal government. They couldn’t seem to do anything right, when, in fact, they were making some contributions to this province, but there were no voices to respond to that.

Sproule, for people who believe in the NDP philosophy, would it be better to have more New Democrat MP’s and a Conservative government under Pierre Polievre, or fewer NDP MP’s and a Liberal government under Mark Carney?

SPROULE: Well, I don’t like either one of those choices, quite frankly. I mean, if we had forced an election last fall, that’s the former part of your question, where we would have ended up. We would have had a majority Conservative government, but we would have had more NDP seats. Now we’re facing the opposite situation that you described, and neither is comfortable, I think, for a parliamentary democracy where many voices should be heard.

And I still think back to 2015 when former Prime Minister Trudeau promised a proportional representation platform that just dissipated the minute he got his majority. So, yeah, no, we need that voice. We need it provincially as well. I think two-party systems don’t really work all that well, because you’re always dealing with a majority. I mean, you have a two-party system. So the only time the NDP have won provincially in recent years is when there is a third party. So obviously, for the NDP, it’s a helpful thing provincially as well. But I think that the voice of the NDP has been incredibly powerful and helpful for Canadians in the past Parliament, and I’m hoping that it will continue to be there.

Eyre, should Saskatchewan be hedging its bets and electing a few liberals, we complain about not having influence down east, if we do see a Liberal government back in running this country, is that something that would be better for Saskatchewan?

EYRE: Well, I would say no, because I think that it’s important to, you know, have every seat we possibly can if we’re speaking on along partisan lines for, you know, the things that that the West and Saskatchewan have found important. I mean, I think it’s not, you know, to Doug’s point about railing in the wind.

It’s about responding to harmful federal policies. And that is something that has been, you know, incredibly relevant to Saskatchewan and the West. And so I think that, you know, I’d be very surprised, and we talked about this, I mean, I’d be very surprised if there is a flip in light of the economic impact of federal policies over the last 10 years.

But I guess if there, if there is some softening, it is, you know, those same forces which, you know, maybe change some things in the last provincial election. You know, from an urban perspective, for example, I just don’t see really why having, you know, a liberal somewhere in Saskatchewan, that will necessarily help us economically.

I’ve been disappointed a couple of times recently. I feel like we haven’t seen a hard push on the canola tariffs. That, to me, is a missed opportunity, and this notion of becoming an energy superpower, but still having caps in place, not willing to relook at C69, even some of the pipeline talk to me, maybe not as strong as it should have been. Do you think the Liberals can do that?

RICHARDSON: Yes, and we have a change in leadership and a different approach, bringing somebody in who understands the superpower issue. I alluded to Don Braid, who’s a well-known conservative writer, in what he said. Carney has done an exceptional job explaining with clarity a superpower plan you talked about, canola. Cody Boys is the only and of the CFA debates that was held six days ago. That’s the agriculture debate. Cody boys sent out a six-point plan to deal with the canola issue. Little or no coverage on that.

The Western Canadian alienation thing bothers all of us on this call. It’s not what we want to see, the Liberals with a western Canadian leader if he’s fortunate enough to get elected, and we should stop getting ahead of ourselves here, because this race has become tight again. Everyone’s got a vote but but if they are fortunate enough to form the government, they do have a leader who is born and raised in Western Canada, understands the West and has demonstrated that.

Does the large number of voters that we saw at advance polls, some 7.3 million in Canada? Bronwyn, does that indicate anything positive or negative for the conservatives?

EYRE: One can certainly hope so. I think that whatever is happening there. There are voters galvanizing around the Trump issue, and I think that has galvanized people, and it’s making them come out. It’s hard to read the tea leaves on that one. I mean, I think that, you know, though, I have to disagree with Doug. I mean, on, on something like canola and other things, it’s heartbreaking as a Westerner to not hear a more passionate support for our farmers on that, when we hear such passionate words from him on auto workers, for example, I just don’t understand it.

If we’re going to go down this road, this is borrowed robes policy that we’re going to be seeing whether he’s from the West, literally speaking or not. He is not speaking like a Westerner. So I think this is obviously a very important time and election. I think that if the Liberals win, you know, we can wishfully think it’s going to be otherwise, but there is going to be more talk of variations on the certainly the alienation theme, if not the separation theme. And you know, I mean, Premier Legault and Smith. Premier Legault and Smith are proposing what’s being called the Autonomy Alliance, you know, a new era in Canadian federalism. You know, focused on provinces, focuses on getting focus on getting legislative bills through, which would include even the notwithstanding clause that’s Quebec and Alberta to dissuade court challenges so that provinces can actually govern according to their constitutional jurisdiction, which we have seen under attack for 10 years. Say it ain’t so. But you know, this is, this is a big one on Monday.

SPROULE: I think to myself often, what this election would look like if Mark Carney had said no to the liberals, we’d be in a very different situation than we are right now. If Christian Freeland, say, for example, were a leader, this would be a completely different situation. And so I know I’m a bit off topic here, but I just think that I’m we wanted to know what I’m impressed of the Liberals is the fact that they got Mark Carney to say yes, because I think that is a game changer for the liberals, obviously, but in my view, Western alienation is being fueled by provincial conservative governments. It’s a political boon for conservative provincial governments to have an enemy, and their common enemy in the last many years has been a liberal federal government. And we know there are many examples of the Liberals supporting the West, and certainly I think BC would have a different view, and they are part of the West of Canada. So this is more of an Alberta, Saskatchewan issue, and I think it’s being fueled by provincial conservative leadership.

Predictions:

SPROULE: Liberal Majority

RICHARDSON: Liberal Minority

EYRE: Liberal Minority