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Front Burner Transcript for September 5

Host: Jamie Poisson

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

TAMARA KHANDAKER: So this Thursday, for the first time since Pierre Poilievre became leader of the Federal Conservatives, party members from across the country are gathering in Quebec City for the Conservative Party convention. Over three days they'll talk about and vote on the policies they want Poilievre to prioritize in the next election. While Poilievre's messaging recently has been focused on the economy, a quick look at the agenda. And it's clear that that's not the only thing on party members' minds. Policies up for debate touch on everything from affordability to more controversial cultural issues like gender affirming care for minors. And it's an important event for Poilievre himself as he's working on his own image and has been doing a bit of a rebranding.

SOUNDCLIP

CAMPAIGN AD: His neighbors know him as the boy who used to deliver the morning newspaper. His children know him in Francais as (indistinct) in English as Papa.

TAMARA KHANDAKER: I'm Tamara Khandaker. And today on the show, my colleague J.P. Tasker is here to go through what the party's grassroots is asking for at this convention and what it could mean for the future of the Conservative Party. Hey J.P.

J.P. TASKER: Hi. Thanks for having me.

TAMARA KHANDAKER: Thanks for joining us on your birthday. Happy birthday.

J.P. TASKER: Thank you. Yeah, another year around the sun.

TAMARA KHANDAKER: Okay, so let's start with the significance of this convention. So there are 60 potential policies up for debate. They may or may not be adopted. So for people who don't really know the role that the conservative convention plays in shaping party policy. Tell us a bit about why it matters and what can we learn from it.

J.P. TASKER: Yeah, so this policy convention, it's essentially a chance to draw up the playbook before the next federal election campaign. It's a time when, you know, an election could happen at any day. You know, we're in a minority parliament. The NDP could pull support from the government. We could be plunged into an election next year or the year after. And the party has to be ready to take on that fight. Pierre Poilievre wants to take the fight to the Liberals and the Prime Minister personally and campaign on affordability and inflation. But it's clear that some Conservative Party members are itching to take part in the culture wars. They want to have a conversation. They want to litigate some issues around sex and gender, abortion, vaccines, the trucker convoy type protests. They want to overhaul the Emergencies Act. So, you know, the media sometimes criticized for focusing on social conservative policies. You know, it's said that we we emphasize those too much. But it's clear when you look at this playbook, these policy proposals that are going to be before delegates in Quebec City, that a number of them fall into that category of social conservatism, A lot of the party's electoral district associations or other grassroot members, they want to engage on these issues. There's clearly a backlash in the party to the liberal policies that have ruled the day for the last eight years.

TAMARA KHANDAKER: Yeah, that's really interesting. And we'll get into some of those issues and depth and look at what's on the table in a bit. These policy proposals are coming from the party's grassroots, and when we say grassroots, what do we actually mean by that? Who is coming up with these proposals?

J.P. TASKER: Yeah, so let's be clear. This is a party function. This is party members that we're talking about. It's not just anybody off the street. It's people that have paid their $15, have joined the Conservative Party, are active in their local ridings. People within the EDAS, they're called the Electoral District Associations. So Mississauga, Lakeshore, Toronto Center, Lou Trammel, you know, Halifax Center, wherever it might be, all across the country, people come forward with some ideas that they want debated at the local level, ideas that could then possibly make it to the policy convention be debated among the delegates that assemble in Quebec City. And then they're voted on actually on the floor of the convention. And if they pass muster, then they're actually put into the conservative policy playbook. And those are theoretically issues that the party should run on on the next election and they should be implemented if they actually make it to government. But it is important because it gives us a sense of where party members want to take this party and what they're itching to fight about in the next election campaign.

TAMARA KHANDAKER: This is Poilievre's first convention as leader, and he's been really vocal on certain issues like affordability. But we don't know much yet about his actual platform for the next election. And you're saying just because policies are adopted at the convention, it doesn't mean that they're going to make it into his platform. But how much do you think the policies on the convention agenda could help shape his platform?

J.P. TASKER: Well, I think the party members and the leader are very much aligned. And we cannot always we can't have said that with every party leader in the past. I mean, Stephen Harper certainly had a lot of respect and commanded a lot of authority within the party, but he ignored the grassroots on many issues for sure. Same can be said for Erin O'Toole, but I think that Pierre Poilievre and the party delegates are very much simpatico. They're very much aligned on the major issues of the day. But I don't think that Pierre Poilievre wants to fight the next election on trans kids. I don't think that that's really where he wants to take it. I think that he really is going to zero in on affordability and inflation and the government's handling of those issues and the economy and jobs and what people are really dealing with the bread and butter issues, I think that's where he thinks he has the most opportunity to really win. I don't think he wants to engage necessarily in the culture wars during a general election campaign, but I think he's okay to do it now. You know, he is willing to kind of engage on these issues at this point in time when it's important to rally members, when it's important that donations start to flow in, that they have a lot of money in the coffers to take on the Liberals in the next election campaign. But when it really comes to that fight, that election, I think he's going to try and stay far away from them. And the party brass do not want these issues to dominate the media coverage of this convention. They don't want to scare away some of the more moderate people who are not necessarily card carrying conservatives.

TAMARA KHANDAKER: Let's talk about some of the policies that are up for discussion right now. And you mentioned affordability. I want to start with that because that's top of mind for a lot of people right now. The liberals have recently made it kind of their main focus and Poilievre has been going pretty hard at them about this for a while now.

SOUNDCLIP

PIERRE POILIEVRE: We had a deal in Canada, you work hard, you get a house. The rent in this country is up 93%. Mortgage payments are up over 100%. After eight years of Justin Trudeau, one in five Canadians are now actually skipping meals because they can't afford the price of food. 1.5 million going to food banks. We saw a defense lawyer come out the other day saying she's helped three clients who've asked to stay in prison rather than go face the housing hell Trudeau has caused out on our streets. I have a little donation to make to the Prime Minister. It is a calculator. To help him calculate the cost he is imposing because of his inflationary deficits and carbon taxes.

TAMARA KHANDAKER: And I saw one policy in there on affordable housing where lenders would be encouraged to take rental payment history into account when approving mortgages. But is there anything else on the convention's agenda that gives us insight into how the Conservatives would tackle the affordability crisis?

J.P. TASKER: Surprisingly, there is only one explicit reference to affordability in the policy proposals, and it's about abolishing the excise tax on medical marijuana. So kind of a niche policy. There's also a proposal in there to change the withdrawal rules for pensioners. And then, of course, there's other policy proposals that really adhere to what Poilievre's been talking about for a long time, and that's let's balance the federal budget, let's chip away at the national debt. And that's something that could potentially help with the inflation issue if the government is not printing as much money, if there's not as much money in circulation. If the government is living within its means, the theory goes, then inflation would fall down as well. And there are people who are backing those policies. At the convention in Quebec City.

TAMARA KHANDAKER: Right. Okay. And so he's talked a lot about affordability as part of this idea that Canada is broken.

SOUNDCLIP

PIERRE POILIEVRE: Do you ever feel like everything's broken in Canada? I mean, here we are, the most beautiful place in the world, beautiful British Columbia, the Pacific, the Vancouver skyline, and another tent city.

TAMARA KHANDAKER: He's pointed a lot to a rise and violent crime and drug overdoses. And he blames those things on the liberals. And I'm wondering, can you remind us of his criticisms of the liberals on those issues?

J.P. TASKER: Yeah. So he maintains that the government has been soft on crime and as a result, the number of violent incidents in our country has climbed rather significantly. He's not wrong about the statistics. We have figures from the government that show violent crime is up about 32% since the government took office. But he thinks that the Liberal policies have really been a major catalyst to the crime issues that we're dealing with in this country. So the liberal policy or sorry, the conservative policy proposals kind of reflect that. A lot of talk in this document that will be before delegates on crime. They also suggest that addiction treatment should be the way to go. They want to see some of those safe injection sites dismantled in some of the country's big cities. There's a lot of crime around those sites they maintain. And then this would be one way to kind of help deal with some urban crime that is popping up. And so you can see that this really is setting the table for probably even the conservatives to fight the next election on inflation and affordability issues. But also crime know he thinks that there needs to be tougher laws as it comes to bail. Bail should be reformed. So if people are on the streets as they await trial on a criminal matter, so they're going to really hammer the liberals on those two issues and hope that it gets them to power.

TAMARA KHANDAKER: Yeah. So so you mentioned the criticisms of the Liberals support for supervised consumption sites. And I think just for context, it's worth noting that there have been no fatalities at supervised injection sites, which saw 4.17 million visits over six years and there are only 38 supervised consumption sites across the country. And in some provinces like Manitoba and all of Atlantic Canada, there aren't any. That brings us to some of the culture war, identity politics, stuff which, like we talked about earlier, seemed to be a priority for some party members right now. So which are the policies on the table that stand out to you on that front?

J.P. TASKER: Yeah. So there's actually a number of them. Essentially, the main one that will probably be a hot topic is the conservatives. Some of them at least want to limit gender affirming care for people under the age of 18, so they do not want hormone related treatments for kids, treatments that are used to delay puberty. They don't want to see those policies in place in this country. They essentially want to ban it. And they've also jumped on another issue. They want what they call women only spaces in sports. You may remember a swimmer, Leah Thompson. She was a University of Pennsylvania student, the first known transgender woman to win an NCAA, a swimming title in the United States. That did not go over well in some conservative circles. There was a lot of backlash, particularly from the reactionary right, saying that trans women should not be participating in women's collegiate sports in the United States. Well, that debate has kind of trickled over into Canada. You know, there's a lot of overlap between Republican and conservative policies in the United States and what we have here in Canada. Some people travel in the same circles and they're reluctant to see some of these trans athletes participate in these sports. So there is a push within this conservative policy proposal to do away with that as part of an effort to really keep trans women out of these spaces. And there's a lot of language about protecting children. And of course, there's been this debate in New Brunswick and now in Saskatchewan about whether trans kids should be able to identify in school as they choose and not necessarily have their parents in on it to protect them potentially from from abuse at home.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER: Just weeks before the start of school, Saskatchewan's government announced a big change on a divisive issue.

GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL: As of today, schools must seek parental consent when changing the preferred name and pronouns used by a student under the age of 16 in the school.

REPORTER: Saskatchewan's policy on parental consent follows a similar move in New Brunswick earlier this summer. It prompted widespread criticism from child welfare advocates to members of Premier Blaine Higgs' own cabinet.

J.P. TASKER: This really is animating a lot of right wing activists, and we're seeing it we're seeing it in this document. They really do want to engage on these issues and they feel that trans issues should be close to the top of the agenda if we're to believe this policy book.

TAMARA KHANDAKER: Yeah, you mentioned these these policies that are being passed by provincial governments in New Brunswick and Saskatchewan. Poilievre hasn't said much about this. Beyond that, the federal government should let provinces run schools and let parents raise kids.

SOUNDCLIP

PIERRE POILIEVRE: Look, this is a provincial policy. I know that Justin Trudeau has butted into that. The prime minister has no business in decisions that should rest with provinces and parents.

TAMARA KHANDAKER: And you mentioned earlier that he may engage in these issues now, but you don't think that he's going to want to take them on in his platform, right?

J.P. TASKER: No, it's red meat for some people in the base. But I don't think that the usual general election voter is really all that concerned about these issues. You know, I think that that is not necessarily something they're lying awake at night thinking about. They're not thinking about how trans kids are identifying at school, right? That's just not a ballot box issue. But it is certainly something that some conservative activists want to debate. And so Paula is willing to engage in that. I don't think he wants to run away from it, in part because he doesn't want to see the People's Party of Canada, led by Maxime Bernier, try and suck up some of these voters that are really concerned about social issues. Poilievres attentive to the fact that the party base is now composed of a lot of social conservatives, what maybe some people would call reactionary conservatives who are transfixed with this issue of gender and sex and abortion and vaccines and all these sort of things that may or may not be all that appealing to, you know, a suburban housewife in Burlington who actually has to decide this election when it comes to the next campaign.

TAMARA KHANDAKER: I did want to zoom in on vaccines for a second because, yeah, that also seems to be a priority for the convention. Like there is a proposal about changing the vaccine policy to say Canadians have the right to refuse vaccines for religious, medical and other reasons. What do you make of so much oxygen being taken up by that issue?

J.P. TASKER: Yeah, I mean, there's more talk about vaccines and climate change in this document, just to put it into perspective. Obviously, the COVID 19 crisis has been it's been a motivator for some people who really do not want to see us go back to how things were in 2020, 21 and 22. They do not want to see vaccine mandates. They do not want to see shots forced on the people. There is a lot of people who feel like the government went too far with how they implemented some of their policies As it relates to COVID 19. They don't want to see a repeat of that. And there's also talk about how COVID 19 vaccines were approved. Of course, they were approved by independent regulators at Health Canada, they are safe and effective. And it's been proven time and again. It helped us get through that terrible health crisis. But a number of party members feel like the way they were authorized for use in this country was inappropriate and they want to change that. So they do kind of want to meddle in how health policy is is carried out. And it's something that, you know, maybe is not going to be much of a ballot box issue in 2024 or 2025 whenever the next election campaign is. But a lot of activists, you know, remember those times and they feel like it's now time to change how the Conservative Party deals with that. They feel like the O'Toole team was a little weak on these issues. They should have been a more harder line. And they love Poilievre. They think he's a champion, of course, because he was a supporter of the truck convoy that descended on Parliament Hill and he was a voice for some of these people that were rejecting vaccine mandates at the time. So it's a chance in Quebec City to relitigate some of the issues that really animated the political conversation only a few years ago, last year being, of course, the truck convoy. And we'll see how it plays out. But it is probably a concern for some of the people around Poilivre. They don't want to see vaccines dominating the headlines again. You know, I think they want to focus on some other issues.

TAMARA KHANDAKER: Heading into this convention. It seems like the conservatives have a lot going for them. They're up in the polls. Internally, polling has been extremely popular. But this is his first convention as leader and he's going through a bit of a rebranding moment. So what is at stake for him here?

J.P. TASKER: Well, it's a huge chance for him to introduce himself again to Canadians when he gives a primetime address to the convention, will be broadcast on all the networks. It's it's really it's coming out moment after, as you say, going through a bit of a rebrand over the summer, changing up his look, ditching the glasses, some things that he feels will maybe soften his image to voters. You know, it's tough for him in a way because he's not a household name. He's going up against the prime minister who's been in power for eight years. Everybody in the country has an opinion on Trudeau at this point in time. And Poilievre does not want his opponents to define him. You know, he wants to define himself in the eyes of voters. They've been running ad campaigns on television and social media for the last number of weeks, trying to present him as a more friendly sort, you know, someone who has a family life and he's got a wife and a child. And this is something that he wants to put front and center. He doesn't want people to see him as only the attack dog style politician in the House of Commons going after the government in question period. There is a risk that the party does come out of this convention looking quite right wing. And, you know, the moderate wing has been hollowed out. Old tourism is essentially a very marginal force in the party. This isn't Joe Clark's party any more. Brian Mulroney looks like a lefty to many of the current crop of conservatives. You know, the Reform Party takeover is complete in many ways. The progressive conservatives are not in the ascendancy. And so that does run the risk of making the party look a little bit too extreme in the eyes of some people. If some of these policies that we've been discussing actually pass through the convention floor and make it into the policy book, the Liberals are going to love it. If there's a lot of talk about vaccine and trans kids and the Emergencies Act and all these sorts of things, because really their playbook is to make the voter scared of Pierre Poilievre and the conservatives, that is essentially how they're going to run the next campaign. They know they're at risk. They know the economy is great. They know inflation has really been a motivator for some people and people are struggling to get by. What they're going to try and do is say, don't bet on Poilievre. He's too risky. Look at what his party is pushing. He has no plan for climate change. He has radical ideas when it comes to kids and vaccines. And that's they're going to they're going to be out front and center this weekend as the convention is underway, trying to make that point to voters. And I think that it's a delicate balancing act for Poilievre to emerge from this weekend, looking strong and prime ministerial and friendly and chipper and cheerful with, again, with a plan to actually help this country get through crime and inflation while not being overtaken by some of the more extreme elements of his party that really are behind a number of policies in this and this proposal.

TAMARA KHANDAKER: Okay, J.P., thank you so much for doing this and I hope you enjoy the rest of your birthday.

J.P. TASKER: Thank you so much. It's nice to be with you.

TAMARA KHANDAKER: All right. That's all for today. I'm to Tamara Khandaker. Thank you so much for listening. And I will talk to you tomorrow.

Pierre Poilievre's tightrope walk at the Conservative convention- Transcript

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