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In this podcast episode, host Bill Kelly discusses the focus on Ottawa and specifically the debate around Pierre Poliev's security clearance. Dr. Laura Turnbull from Dowhouse University joins the program and speculates that Poliev's clearance may have expired since he was a minister under the Harper government. It is suggested that Poliev's refusal to obtain a security clearance allows him to criticize the government without having access to the classified documents. The discussion also touches on Poliev's strategy to distance himself from global issues and focus on domestic concerns. It is noted that Poliev remains silent on foreign policy matters and is building support based on the economy and affordability. The conversation ends with speculation on whether Poliev's avoidance of taking a strong stance on issues like the Gaza conflict is a strategic move to maintain his growing popularity. welcome to the bill kelly podcast critical discussions in critical times here's your host bill kelly and welcome once again this is the bill kelly podcast critical discussions for critical times i'm your host bill kelly uh... what's going on on a global picture we're going to talk about those uh... through the course of the week today but uh... a lot of focus on ottawa and a lot of focus on a couple of different things about what's happening in our nation's capital and to do that we're so pleased to welcome back to the program dr laura turnbull from dowhouse university laura great to have you with us today thanks so much for being on the podcast anytime bill thank you for having me can i get a point of clarification because i'm sure you've seen some of the chatter on social media over the uh... the last couple days about pierre polyev and there's the now famous apple interview uh... whether or not that was staged etc i mean we can get into that i'm sure at some point but the other element too came down to uh... a seemingly a debate about security clearances uh... you know polyev refuses to have a security clearance won't be able to see special documents uh... some of his advocates i guess are suggesting oh no he was on cabinet under the harper government of course he's got a security clearance uh... others are saying no he doesn't uh... from what you've seen and what you've been able to ascertain from this what what is the status right now is is mr polyev avoiding this or is this something that people are calling for that is really not even necessary yeah it's it's interesting like i think and i don't know this because i don't i don't know what his exact status is but if he was a minister under the harper government he would he must have had secret clearance but it would have expired by now probably like i had it too when i was in government it expires in ten years like it's for a ten year period so i'm assuming it's probably lapsed for him and he's not going to get it and it seems like it's come up a number of times like including with the foreign interference stuff yeah where the leaders were given opportunity to go and get that clearance and they could see all the things that were to be seen that can't be made public and he hasn't done it i mean i guess like there seems to be some possibility that's giving him leeway to be able to criticize the government for things that he hasn't seen he hasn't he can't like he doesn't know what the documents say so that he can use that sort of veil of ignorance to then go at handling things properly and he wouldn't be able to do the same thing if he was if he saw them i mean i think at the end of the day this is one of those things that is a strategy i i don't know it's going to pay off hugely i i think obviously if he's going to be prime minister he's going to have to get clearance then and then he well that's i guess the point that a lot of people are trying to dance around here uh... is is if he wins the next election becomes the prime minister you kind of need that security clearance and of course now you've seen some of the the accusations flying back and forth well what's he hiding uh... i don't know that he's hiding anything i tend to agree with you i think it's more of a a political strategy at this stage you know uh... see no evil hear no evil that way i can make up the evil uh... and that seems to be something he's developing a knack for these days but at some point uh... to have access to these documents you've got to have that kind of a clearance now what does that entail this is background checks and everything it's not just squaring an oath that you're not going to tell anybody is it right and so uh... i think they do like they would do things like a criminal background check a credit check like that sort of thing to just sort of see what your see what your footprint is and uh... again like you have to fill out a whole bunch of documents about all of your employment history your travel history where were you this place and that place like it was it's quite detailed like you it's it's a very thorough like this is everything i've done over the past you know however many years everywhere you've lived that sort of thing i mean he's an MP he's probably traveled all kinds of places and uh... like i i i don't i don't get the sense that he's uh... hiding anything at all like i think that's probably not the case i think it's uh... one thing i was thinking as you were speaking he has like part of his strategy seems to be to distance himself from what he's calling like global elites and he seems to want to distance himself from the whole world of you know why are we getting involved in things that are happening abroad we should be focused on what's going on here that kind of thing and so i think the whole it could be a small piece of that distancing himself from from the whole foreign like he wants to focus on Trudeau what's wrong with the Trudeau government more than anything else and you're right he seems to be strangely silent on some of the issues that most people around the world are are concentrating on the conflict in Gaza uh... the Ukraine war uh... you don't hear much foreign policy discussion from from Mr. Pollio at all, do you? yeah and again like that's that's you know you said that better than I did but that's that's the point I'm trying to make is that he seems to be just taking a side step away from all of that and I mean he's he can see his numbers are good he can see that he like Trudeau's negatives are up he's ahead in terms of you know preferences for who people would want to be prime minister he is building trust on the economy on the affordability issue the housing crisis and he doesn't want to pivot he doesn't want to switch to any topic that he might see some agreement with the liberals right like and he's also happy to see um not happy I shouldn't put it that way but he's probably he's he's going to sit back and let whatever divisions are happening in the liberals over some of these issues and how they're being handled he like we you can see the reports today there's divisions in the caucus over how uh how we're responding to the Hamas war and you know how Trudeau responded to the the situation with India and all the rest of it and so if there are divisions around the prime minister on those things I would think Polyev would probably just want to hang back and let those divisions be Trudeau's problem and he also doesn't want to show any kind of agreement with Trudeau on anything and maybe some of these foreign policy issues are actually issues that allow for a more united approach from the parties and Polyev doesn't want to do that at this point he doesn't want to get close to Trudeau but is he going to get dragged into it nonetheless I mean look at Gaza and just about every city in Canada not just cities towns there are demonstrations almost on a weekly basis now about treatment of Palestinians about the the rate of on the Israelis and it's gone back and forth very heated discussion and that's an understatement of course uh and I know you know you're just talking about divisions within the caucus it seems to be splitting the liberal caucus because of some of the the mindsets that some liberals have about who's right who's wrong who should be doing what uh Polyev hasn't really weighed in on that uh his old boss Stephen Harper had a pretty decent relationship I thought kind of chummy with Netanyahu uh I don't know if Polyev wants to go down that road necessarily but uh can he can he survive with something as important as as this in in Gaza right now by sitting on the fence I mean I would think that some of the old guard and the conservative party to the extent that that's still left are looking for leadership from the party they would have a strong stance on this issue that would be very uh salient for them and they would have expected um you know from previous leaders again a strong strong stance on where Canada is on that regardless of whether it was aligned with the liberal position or not whereas Polyev seems to be appealing to a different kind of audience he's courting a different kind of vote and I think that the people who he's building his support with are not necessarily people who are going to be looking for him to make this a priority issue or to be verbose about it um doesn't mean they don't care about it it just means I think the people that he's he's speaking to he's building um he's building a constituency of people who are angry and frightened about the affordability crisis and he doesn't necessarily want to um divert from that message or you know why I mean and at this point like he's he's seeing his numbers go up and I don't think he's he's building like this is the other weird part of it too I don't think it's because he's building any personal popularity he's building a something a bit maybe more precarious which is he's coming across as perhaps someone who understands the house housing crisis better the affordability crisis he's getting to a point that more people are willing to give him a chance that's not a ringing endorsement of polyeth that is a very transactional thing and I think he doesn't want to run the risk of saying something wrong putting his foot in his mouth as many politicians have done on this issue and then had to try to backtrack clarify he doesn't want to do that he doesn't want to say anything that's going to turn anybody off or polarize right like and I mean you know political leaders still should still say where they are on things but I wonder if it's part of a strategy to just sort of sidestep this right now to a certain extent well it's that's rival reagan approach to politics isn't it that famous debate that that reagan had against jimmy carter are you better off than you were four years ago and you got to figure that seems to be where polio was going on this on the other side of that though lori uh the prime minister has to have a stand uh you know he is a member of the g7 he's getting pressure about what's going on in ukraine uh and he's seen these demonstrations that are going on and and i'm hearing stories the hill times was reporting on this again this morning uh that this is causing a huge division within the liberal caucus now as as you and i have discussed over the last couple of months now uh there's not a lot of love in the liberal caucus in some circles from the prime minister right now they're looking at the polling numbers too and saying i i listen if this guy's going to drag the ship down i don't want to be one of the casualties here uh you know he's he's not their favorite and all of a sudden you're going to have to almost take sides in this uh you know who's right who's wrong and gas in the middle east right now the prime minister can't really avoid that what what what is that doing to that that that liberal caucus right now uh it's going to be very very difficult i would think to show some sense of unanimity here yeah and i think i think you're right i think we can see um over the past number of months there's been and even you can stretch it longer than that uh there's for a while there have been questions about whether the prime minister will take the party into the next election there are caucus members who are very nervous about whether or not they're like what kind of time they're going to get on the door when they campaign and they don't necessarily feel confident in that and i think we can see too that some of the push that has come from atlantic canadian mps on how the carbon tax is affecting people seems like is this stuff resonating with trudeau right because now he's coming back and say okay well we can talk about some we're going to go ahead on some relief from atlantic for atlantic canadians who are relying on home heating or oil for their home heating and things like that like he's he seems like he's willing to pivot um after the caucus meeting and in the summer it seems after the caucus retreat it seems like maybe he's reconsidering some things and so it's possible that he's not immune to concerns about his leadership like it's possible that he's not trying to ignore this and he's actually responding but whether that's going to be enough and of course poly up is responding to that and saying look this is all election games don't don't believe this this is this isn't a real reversal of the carbon tax this is him trying to make sure he doesn't totally get gutted in atlantic canada the next election uh an old name from uh bygone liberal days came up this past weekend the crew that being david hurley uh david is a strategist i know you knew him uh very very prominent in the paul martin government and uh as and someone suggesting the skullduggery that got paul martin that the leadership of the liberals got that that was a pretty messy situation back in the day but he has opined over the last couple of days no lori that the liberals may be shying away from the carbon tax understanding that look at we need a winner here and and it was pretty easy when when crudo i guess was doing relatively well in the polls to simply say this is the policy and it's all for the better uh of the planet not just for canada uh they seem to be backing off i know they've made some changes to it already hurley suggests that maybe by the time that next federal election rolls around uh this might not even be a plank in their platform first of all is that realistic i mean you know political strategy just like early uh sometimes tend to you know maybe overextend just a little bit to try to get some reaction from people uh but but this was a trademark policy it still is a trademark policy for the prime minister can you really see he and the party trying to back away and and take a different turn towards doing that policy okay so i think a couple of things like i think um the reason that they are looking at the carbon tax differently now is not because they have re-evaluated this as a climate strategy and they think maybe it won't be effective as a climate like they have been there's been all that right like like you know i can think of like over the last number of months there's been a lot of back and forth last number of years there's a lot of back and forth about whether the carbon tax is really an effective strategy to begin with the conservatives are trying to say yeah we care about climate we just don't think carbon tax is the right way to go about things biden has said as much like you know so there's it's not totally clear about whether or not this is going to be the you know it's not going to be the only way forward but the liberals have held on to it ideologically as part of their strategy um i don't think they're abandoning that i think the problem is that they're the the carbon tax from many people's perspective is colliding with the affordability crisis creating a burden that that's their pivot out it's not that they're changing their environmental stance it's not that they're giving up on climate strategies and it's not that they'll never come back to it it's that they're kind of listening to or seeing the writing on the wall that right now this is politically very difficult for them particularly in parts of the country where they rely on support if everybody in alberta hated it well i think they'd still keep doing it but if it's causing an issue for them in their safe ground then yeah they they're going to react to that i also think it's going to be interesting to see um how they respond more broadly to the court challenge right because the legislation that gave them some latitude in terms of managing climate policy and moving toward their what they want to do in terms of net zero that was struck down in court they were you know that the big part of the strategy was recently struck down in court and so they've got to do a major rethink on climate even if they don't want to and so this might be part of that too even though they don't want to back away from the climate the carbon tax they might be doing it for that reason i'm interested to see how well they're going to do at this kind of reversal right because we can see at the same time doug ford is doing a reversal of things with respect to the green belt he's saying oh no never mind right like sorry we we don't want to do things wrong we're going to start again we're going to cancel the m the mz o's that that were done improperly we're going to you know make everything right and given the bump in the polls that he got it's sort of like you know maybe politicians can apologize and the public will say okay as long as you face it and i'm not sure that that trudeau has the same runway as ford to make that kind of reversal and i don't obviously it's not the same type of thing at all but it's the key to like to me it's like what what happens when a politician says okay never mind you hate this i won't do it here's not yeah but it's one thing for a guy that gave it early to say something like this but if there's even a hint that the prime minister himself is starting to waffle on this how does jack may sing respond i mean you know they hey i mean just go hey whoa time out here buddy wait a second you know they've got an agreement here and and if sing is looking for a back door to get out of this thing you know the liberals dropping this whole idea of carbon pricing all of a sudden is as good a way as anything to say okay deals off yeah i mean to me the liberals have given him back doors front doors side doors to get out of this and he still hasn't walked through any of them so i'm not sure if he's going to do it now either although the ndp seem to be getting closer to um a fiscal scenario that would allow them to go to election if they wanted to do that and it seems to me to be getting clearer that this confidence and supply agreement has not been paying off for the ndp in terms of bumping their numbers they're not getting any cred for this and that's only get we're going to get worse i think rather than better and you might have seen that um ed broad broadbent has said recently like they should have done this for a year not two years they shouldn't let it go this long maybe there are conversations happening in the ndp that they're they're getting warmer to a point where they might walk away from this and i think this is a harder one uh to walk away from it's like this is the the carbon tax change is harder for them to manage because there's going to be a lot more pressure on them for people like they can't come out and say we held the liberals to the fire on on climate if the liberals back away from the policy and the ndp don't do anything like it's not just that they're propping them up it's that they can't take credit for something they were planning on taking credit for if the liberals don't do it which is why i guess mr sing is talking about what pharmacare and all these other elements figuring okay that's going to be it but now you're getting into the deep philosophy of this uh and and where the prime minister is going to go one quick point on that though we're talking about some possible dissension within the ranks of the liberal caucus uh i think it's probable not just possible because of some of the things that are happening right now uh we've seen this in the past laurie whether it's with the with well not so much stephen harper but certainly brian maroonie uh jumping before they get pushed uh well you know you could suggest that john kretchen did that too uh but kretchen was the sort of guy that didn't ever want to leave the impression that he was being told what to do or that he was bowing to the pressure that's just not in his dna trudeau seems to be pushing back almost on principle right now like don't tell me when i'm leaving don't tell me what i'm going to do here uh some going to the point of even suggesting that maybe he's sticking around just to spite some of the people in caucus that are that are you know waiting for him to slip on that banana peel uh does he stick around just for the hell of it or just to show them or or does he does he read the tea leaves here like others have done and simply said it's time for me to back down well right now i'm i'm wondering if it's sort of too late for that i mean he can do it whenever he wants but would he be leaving the party in a really tough spot as we seem to be getting in closer whenever that election is going to be it still might be two years away but if he wanted to leave the party in anything other than a miserable spot he'd have to do this sooner rather than later to give them the runway to choose a new leader because it's not like there's anybody in the wings like krenchen would not be pushed because he wouldn't let paul martin push and there's no person that we know of that's like creating that dynamic with trudeau and so it's harder i think for people to get their minds around what would happen when you don't know who the other person would be like martin walked into the prime minister's office at that point it was a coronation for him that's not clear at this point what the heck would the liberal leadership race look like we don't know who would be in it what if no like what if some savior doesn't show up because they need a savior at this point they need a savior just as badly as they needed that when it was trudeau so i think it would be a huge gamble at this point i'm not sure whether um i mean i can imagine if somebody came in and they didn't have the kind of name recognition that trudeau did and nobody does uh would the conservative machine not define them immediately because that's what the conservatives are great at is defining someone before they define themselves well they certainly did that to stefan or stefan diana and well and to a certain extent i guess ignatius at the same time uh and and those guys were dead in the water before they even got started simply because of the way that they had the conservatives went after them and you have to wonder i mean because we've heard names you know whether it's anita anand or minister jolie or whomever may be interested in this uh but on the other hand when people are really angry uh like in 2015 when trudeau won his big majority government i mean there were an awful lot of people in this country and a lot of in the ndp caucus that thought you know tom mulcair was going to be the next prime minister and uh he didn't he didn't win and a funny thing happened on the way to the policy convention a couple of months later that they basically dumped him said tom you're gone that's it uh and they didn't have any i mean it took almost a year didn't have to get jagmeet singh in there and there are still some people in the ndp caucus that don't like him as the leader and wish they'd gone in another direction uh this is going to be i don't think a very bloodless uh changeover when in fact mr trudeau decides to either step down or get pushed um i guess can you choose your poison here i mean does he step down before this uh my brian marudian let kim campbell take a lot of the heat for this uh or does he wait until after this like mulcair did and and get the heave hole in a in a leadership convention or a you know a vote of confidence etc like this it's it probably is not going to end well for the liberals and maybe even after mr trudeau i think if there was a time for him to walk away on a high note that's over like unless some weird series of events happens that pumps him back up again i think even now right like if he walked away tomorrow it would be you know like this has been a long parade of your popularity draining and if that's going to happen like it's going to happen to any political leader you run at capitol and you run out of um you know you just sort of the shine comes off it but i think in his case they're like the again the idea of leaving on a high note leaving when things are good i i don't think that's i don't think that's going to happen for him at this point whether you want to take it on yourself i think there's something about him that really wants personally a confrontation with polio i think that's like to me their their dynamic the tension between them is something on its own and i think that trudeau is not going to step away and let somebody else go at go at polio because trudeau is an excellent campaigner love him or hate him he does really well on the campaign trail he comes alive he stops with the kind of what seemed like rehearsed lines sometimes and he speaks much more directly um he seems to be a bit a bit angrier he seems to be a bit more fired up and maybe he you know it's that sort of energy that could deliver something for them but i mean god when you look at the polls in ontario even like the liberals are not in a good spot yeah and uh and you've got uh premier ford and mayor chow now asking for more federal money and they can't afford to lose the gga i mean if they have any chance at all but you're right i mean the last two elections uh you know the forecast is or i'll say that trudeau is going to get his butt kicked there too and he's still on the corner office uh we shall see interesting developments in the nation's capital laurie always great to get your perspective on this thanks so much for being with us on the show today thank you for having me bill thank you dr laurie turnbull from dowhouse university uh and that's it for for this edition of the bill kelly podcast uh pick us up anytime spread the word and by all means of course we're always looking for your feedback too uh you can reach us at this is bill kelly at gmail and uh give us your ideas about future shows and what 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