This offers an interesting place for Trudeau and Trump to align, especially because Trump has long been a supporter of an end to the drug wars. —David Woolley Allie, Colin and David talk about the Special Committee on Electoral Reform, Trudeau’s comments on negotiating NAFTA with Trump, and the opioid crisis in Canada.
When you have Michael Chong, Maxime Bernier and Kellie Leitch as your top three candidates, you actually have fundamentally different ways of viewing conservatism. —David Woolley After our week off, we return with our regular panel. Allie, Colin and David talk about public-private partnerships, the carbon tax, and the Conservative Party’s leadership race.
When Obama was elected the first time around there was a sense of history being made, and I feel like that isn’t quite here this time around —Travis Kann Allie and David are joined by Travis Kann to talk about the fall economic update, CETA (again), the Liberal government’s pay-to-play scandal, and of course, the American election.
Maybe one of the barriers to entry a new EU is that national governments have to have the authority to speak on behalf of their country —Colin MacDonald This week Allie, Colin and David talk about CETA, Canada’s refugee policy, and Trudeau getting heckled at a youth labour forum.
We haven’t had a party like the Bloc Quebecois that was expressly talking about provincial rights in parliament for the last six or seven years. —David Woolley Colin MacDonald and David Woolley join Allie to talk about health care transfers, carbon tax, and the presidential debate.
To the victor go the spoils, and we often just don’t take the time to analyze what went wrong — or what went right — with losing campaigns. — Joseph Lavoie Parliament is on break, so this week Allie and Joseph are talking about their favourite podcasts and why they love them so much.
If you were to ask me who won the debate on the levy or tax on carbon, I would say both the Conservatives and Liberals won. They achieved what they need to achieve on these issues. —Travis Kann On deck this week: The Liberal government’s carbon pricing scheme, the new BC LNG project, and provincial health care transfers.
‘I’d say [Trump] is very similar to Trudeau in that they focus on things that are cultural. He’s running a cultural campaign.’ — David Woolley This week we’re talking about Canada-China relations, moving expenses (again), and — of course — the US presidential debate.
With President Obama exiting stage right and Donald Trump ascending to the top job, Justin Trudeau will be the symbol of progressive leadership in North America. — Colin MacDonald The House is back and so are we! Welcome to season two of Political Traction. For our first week, it’s a good news/bad news situation for the Liberal government.
‘ Making America great again’ is a politically correct statement. Hillary Clinton can make that statement. Every party in effect, promises it in a way. — Professor Nelson Wiseman He says outrageous things. He lies. But somehow, he still has a lot of supporters. We explore what’s going on with Trump and how we can explain voter behavior.
The whole Mulcair thing went out with a whimper. Even just the fact that he remained as interim leader…it was such an odd climax to their post-election angst. – Colin MacDonald We have come to the end! This episode marks the end of our first official season. The House have risen, and after this week, so shall we – or, at least, so shall our regular format. For our season finale, Allie, David and Colin go over the top issues since March and weigh in on whether they were (in our opinion) undervalu...
It feels like a different country today. – Ashley Prime This morning, Canada awoke to shocking news as the United Kingdom voted to exit the European Union, roiling the world in political and economic turmoil. By now, you know the numbers: the leave vote won 51.9 per cent of the popular vote, for which 72.2 per cent of voters turned out. Put differently, yesterday evening, 37 per cent of Brits singlehandedly altered the course of European history for decades to come. Further complicating the pict...
There is a segment of the population that is tied to a notion, somewhat romantic I think, of Canada being this great peace-keeping country, this great honest broker. — Colin MacDonald It’s been a sad week. The Orlando shooting dominated discussions in Ottawa and on our Canadian panel. From broadcast news to Twitter, everyone was focused on the tragic massacre and its aftermath. Part of this aftermath has involved discussions on gun control policies, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s responses, ...
There is a segment of the population that is tied to a notion, somewhat romantic I think, of Canada being this great peace-keeping country, this great honest broker. — Colin MacDonald This week we’re talking about electoral reform (again), doctor-assisted dying legislation (again) andﾅfighter jets! Also, we have special guest Travis Kann filling while David is away on vacation.
As a Conservative, I am concerned that we’re trying to out-Justin-Trudeau, Justin Trudeau: trying to be younger, hipper, than Justin Trudeau. — Will Stewart Allie and David talk about the issues of the week and Allie follows up with Will Stewart on the Conservative and Liberal conventions and talk about which party got traction.
Now that Stephen Harper is going to transition into the private sector, I think his main selling point is that he was a successful leader for a decade of a G7 country. And that’s no small feat. — Will Stewart Parliament was on break this week, but lots still happened. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Japan for the G7 Summit — where he managed to fit in some anniversary time with his wife — and both the Conservatives and the Liberals held their conventions over the weekend. On top of that, t...
Now the rhetoric seems partisan, seems self-motivated, seems over the top, and therefore, I don’t believe will gain traction with the average person. — Randi Rahamim ‘Twas the elbow felt around the nation. On Wednesday, May 18, 2016 there was an event of epic proportions in the House of Commonsﾅkind of. Elbows were misdirected. Words were thrown. Insults abounded. And we are all left to consider the aftermath. In this week’s episode, Allie and David discuss the incident in the House of Commons t...
They don’t see themselves in Justin Trudeau and Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, and that’s, I suppose, fine — that’s their prerogative. But I think a lot of this is just really contrived. -Colin MacDonald Lately the government has been getting some heat for how it is spending taxpayer money — specifically with the size of the delegation Justin Trudeau took to the state dinner in Washington. Is the Liberal government spending money inappropriately? This week, Allie talks with regular Colin MacDonald abo...
It’s easy to have sympathy and be captured by the moment, but really the challenges are in the long-term, and in many ways the worst is yet to come, outside the actual danger. This week, our thoughts are with all those affected by the wildfires in Fort McMurray. For the most part, Ottawa and Canada were talking about different things this week, but both conversations were dominated by discussions of the emergency situation in Alberta. Allie talks with Jason Hatcher about the government’s respons...
I don’t know that we can go backwards anymore, for any politician in any country. This is the world now. It is social media. Even Hillary Clinton is trying. He’s just not ready. He’s got great hair. He’s the Internet’s boyfriend . This week we have a very special episode. We’re talking about the celebrity status of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with some very special guests. To get some perspective on the intersection of celebrity and political culture, Allie talks with CTV’s THE SOCIAL Co-host ...
He might have just become the most popular man in the senate they should take 10% of what they were going to spend on legal bills and buy Senator Duffy a car or something. We’re not big on scandals in Canadian politics. Compared to our neighbours south of the border, ours are few and far between. The biggest in recent memory, is Senator Mike Duffy. In 2014, he was charged with 31 criminal offenses, including fraud, breach of trust and bribery. And this week, he was acquitted of all 31 charges. T...
Really what the leadership vote demonstrates is an unwillingness to move back to third-party status. Ottawa is still abuzz with the results of the NDP Convention and the NDP is now looking for a new leader, and so, this week it a number of our issues blended together. As sometimes happens with politic, and any major issues really, it can be difficult to distinguish where one ends and another begins. So our top issue for the week is really an amalgamation of a few topics: the NDP convention, Rach...
Really what the leadership vote demonstrates is an unwillingness to move back to third-party status. For our special update on the NDP leadership vote, Allie gets Sally Housser’s perspective on what it means for the NDP moving forward now that Tom Mulcair is no longer leader of the party.
It’s more a difference in interpretation of how they’re presenting the numbers than any sort of error or lack of thought of what’s gone into the budget. Big news from last night! Tom Mulcair is officially out as the leader of the NDP. In order to give due attention to this change, we will be providing a special update on the NDP leadership vote later tonight, rather than covering it in this episode.
We’re in a dangerous kind of precarious sense of federalism right now, not just over the EIﾅwe’re already getting a bit close to the old sense of western alienation. This week on Political Traction we’re taking a look at regional issues and how they affect communications plans. Certain areas impacted by the downturn in oil prices are excluded from the recent benefits made to Employment Insurance in the federal budget, and it’s creating an East vs. West mentality against Ottawa.
It’s the first time we’ve really seen the media be critical of this government. There’s always dissenting paragraphs in articles, but now we’re seeing headlines and full articles about broken promises. It’s federal budget week! Ottawa was abuzz with the release of the Trudeau government’s first budget, so this episode of Political Traction focuses exclusively on items from the federal budget.
This week we have a special episode of Political Traction. Parliament is on a break week, so we are going beyond Parliament Hill and taking you to Lebanon. This week, we’re talking about garbage — literal garbage, and literally mountains of it. For months now, garbage has been piling up in Lebanon. The rivers in the country are lined by actual walls of garbage that are four, five, six feet tall. There is so much garbage that this is beyond just a waste collection problem, or a municipal problem,...
It really is a celebrity-comes-to-town type of coverage [ﾅ] everybody knows who Justin Trudeau is, and Sophie as well. Welcome to episode 5, ‘Mr. Trudeau Goes to Washington!’ This week was a big week for Canadian politics on the global stage. Prime Minister Trudeau visited Washington, and he is the first Prime Minister to be invited for a White House state dinner in 19 years.
Whether you agree with the policies of Prime Minister Trudeau and the Liberal party or not, it’s very obvious they ran on a very different type of platform than what’s generating the [American] headlines. Welcome to episode four! Last week was our ‘Welcome to Ottawa’ episode, and this week, we’re taking you out of Ottawa. This is our ‘Get out of Ottawa’ episode. We’re not focusing specifically on Ottawa this week because it’s an interesting week for Canadian politics for a few reasons. First off...
Every week, we assess how much traction political leaders, pundits, and media get with the people they’re trying to reach: every day Canadians. We look at the top political issues in Ottawa and assess how much they resonated with Canadians. If you’ve just discovered us, this is technically our third episode. We have an introductory episode, where Allie talks about how this podcast got started and speaks to Navigator Chairman, Jaime Watt, about the how the idea of Political Traction came about. W...
