Tonda McCharles (2:53)

They were as shocked as any Liberals were and any journalists covering the Hill were. She's not just someone who held some pretty traditionally right wing conservative views on social issues and whatnot. She ran for the Conservative leadership herself. So look, this came as a bombshell on the middle of the week last week leading into the Liberal convention. And there wasn't one Conservative I spoke to who wasn't floored by it.

Podcast Host / Advertiser (3:24)

This is not just a Conservative, this is a Conservative member. She sat and had dinner with the truckers. She questioned COVID 19 vaccines campaign Life Canada is asking about what the Liberal stance on abortion is now because Marilyn Gladue is now in caucus. So to say that Conservative jaws are on the floor all around this town today is an understatement.

Tonda McCharles (3:50)

You know, you mentioned off the top about 40 MPs being worried about losing their seats. I doubt Marilyn Gladue was one of them, to be honest. Marilyn Gladue scooped up a whole bunch of People's Party of Canada votes in 2025 to win her seat with 53% of the votes. She's got the Conservative lock on that riding. It's not that she feared losing her seat, but to hear her tell it at the convention, it was all about this. I want to be part of a government that's doing things and building things. And that is also the talking point of the Liberal. This is a moment for us to unite as Canadians to do the work to build the nation in response to unjustified U.S. tariffs. That takes serious leadership and a credible plan. And I know that Prime Minister Mark Carney brings both. And I'm ready to put my talents and experience towards the task as your newest Liberal mp. But what does it mean for the Conservatives if Marilyn Gladios cannot find her home in the, in the caucus of Pierre Poilievre? It leaves open the door that many, many others that you never thought would think of going could be thinking about that. And what we're hearing this, you know, there's conversations around, should they try and oust, take matters in their own hands and oust Pierre Poilievre? Will that happen? I don't know. But there are, according to Liberals, ongoing conversations with at least eight other Conservatives who are considering coming across the floor to join Mark Carney's government. That's astonishing. Some of the names we've heard, you know, and I would not even put them out there because honestly sometimes I can't even believe it myself.

Jamie Poisson (5:38)

Wow.

Tonda McCharles (5:38)

But it's from across the country and different sides of the spectrum of the conservative caucus.

Jamie Poisson (5:44)

Just astonishing that there are eight considering just to stick with. Glad you. For a moment I was listening to Fred delaure on power and politics. Conservative strategist Fred delaure and he said that he had been told that ultimately what set Gladio off was an email sent by Polya's office to the shadow cabinet and it asked them to give examples of their best social media posts, media interviews, that kind of stuff and

Podcast Host / Advertiser (6:11)

the way it was written and you know, do you still want to be in shadow cabinet? It was, it set a lot of people off, a lot of conservative and the shadow cabinet's huge conservative party. It's like half, you know, these are free rolled. It's not like the government of Canada, it's shadow. So you can give them out their free titles. But there's about 70 of them. So 70 of them received this and it's a bit insulted and they were insulted by this.

Jamie Poisson (6:32)

And so I know you talked about her official reason for why she said that she was crossing, but what do you make about that one? And then can you talk to me a little bit more about the fallout from that email?

Tonda McCharles (6:44)

There were many conservatives who were dismayed at that email. I mean it's kind of creating a Hunger Games scenario. You know, compete for your own job. Show us that what you can do. What have you done for us lately in terms of media interviews? A lot of them haven't been able to be doing interviews for a long time and some of that has changed in recent months. But I think that there was already a discontent that's been expressed to people like me from people in the conservative benches with the way the opposition leader's office has run things. You know, there is a sense that people aren't being used to their throughput true potential, that they're not given a fair shake. Gladio, I suspect that's what I've been told felt like that felt ignored for three years. Not well treated, not had her voice heard. To what extent all of that is a part of a bigger picture. I expect there are many things going on. It's not just perhaps a heavy handed caucus management that some are chafing under. I think it's also, let's face it, the polls, you know, this idea that There were some 40 MPs who were concerned about losing their seats, that's not just groundless fear. I spoke to Philippe Fournier with 338canada.com and he's a polling aggregator in Canada who looks at all the polls, the whole range. And his modeling has projected that 40 Conservative seats, if an election were held this week under Pierre Poilievre, they would lose 40 seats. So it's grounded in data. These fears are real. I think that's the electoral factor at play. And is it Poilievre's leadership style? That's probably a big part of it. But he has been doing the thing that his critics want him to do. Speak out more, speak to media, look more prime ministerial, don't always be in Newfoundland. We call it a crackie, don't be a cracky dog as someone always nipping at people's heels and bark, bark, bark. In fact, he's been proposing concrete policy changes or different approaches to, for example, the Canada US relationship. Different from Mark Carney. He's made proposals on cost of living stuff. His critics have wanted him to do all of that. But is it a daily, you know, a dollar short and a day late? I don't know. I think there is a pretty sour mood right now in the Conservative ranks. And I think vis a vis Mark Carney and his ability to pull from the left and right of the spectrum, I think they're very frustrated by.

Jamie Poisson (9:28)

Well, I know there's been reporting that some MPs are discussing whether to invoke caucus powers to force Poliev out here. Like, just how would that work exactly? You know, and coming a couple months off, he won his leadership review with very strong numbers. 87%. Right? Yeah. Just take me through that.

Tonda McCharles (9:52)

Okay. Well, just very quickly, he got, literally in January, an overwhelming vote of support from a convention held in Calgary of grassroots members. And to a certain extent, people questioned just how strong that really was because the convention was orchestrated in such a way that the delegates were largely weighted to the West. The Ontario PCs were having their convention at the same time. There was a, it's believed, you know, not as significant a presence of Quebec, Atlantic Canada and Ontario Conservatives at that convention. His bases in the west, and that was the people that showed up that gave him an 87%. Could he get 87% of his caucus to step forward? That's a whole other kettle of fish. So now to his caucus issue. The Conservatives were the ones who championed the power of a caucus to control the fate of a leader, to have a say in who the party's leader is. So there's a law that in fact was proposed by Conservative MP Michael Chong that was adopted. And it requires after each election, a caucus to adopt its rules.

Podcast Host / Advertiser (11:00)

And so this bill will restrain the power of party leaders in terms of expelling a member from caucus or removing them as a party candidate. And I think the direct result of that will be freer votes in the House of Commons, where party members, on a point of principle or on behalf of their constituents, can break rank with their party and vote accordingly.

Tonda McCharles (11:18)

So that's, I think the Conservatives have done that. It gives the caucus the power to basically gather signatures on a letter. If they get 20% of the caucus to sign on for a leadership vote in caucus about ousting the leader, they can trigger a secret ballot. In this case of what Pierre Poliope now has 140 MPs and he's down. He's lost four since the last election. 20% of that would require 28 MPs to sign a letter and to bring that forward on Wednesday in caucus if they were so inclined. And then that would force the secret ballot. That's the trick. Now, when Aaron o', Toole during, do you remember during the Freedom Convoy, he was ousted by just such a vote.

Jamie Poisson (12:03)

Yes.

Tonda McCharles (12:04)

But there had been a massive organizational move against him inside. And frankly, a lot of the people who now support Pierre Poiliev were involved in that coup to get rid of Aaron o'. Toole.

Podcast Host / Advertiser (12:17)

Aaron o' Toole has been removed as Conservative leader by his own caucus. He's been ousted in a secret ballot after a third of his MPs launched a review process on Monday. The count was 73 to kick him out for 45 to keep them in place as leader. Aaron.

Tonda McCharles (12:35)

So they know what they're up against. They know how to organize for one. They probably know how to organize against one. So I expect there's a lot of work going on these days ahead of Wednesday's caucus to make sure that does not happen. And frankly, I'm not even sure that the Conservative MPs who are really angry with Pierre Poliev right now, will they go that far as to try and take steps to eject him? It's a real question I have.

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Tonda McCharles (13:36)

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Jamie Poisson (13:39)

Oh, French dressing.

Tonda McCharles (13:40)

Exactly. Oh, that's good.

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Jamie Poisson (14:07)

Well, I wonder if you could just do kind of the pros and cons to that kind of strategy for me. Like, if you are one of those very discontented MPs and you're thinking about signing that letter right now, what would be the reasons why you would want to do it right now and what would be the reasons why you would hold off?

Tonda McCharles (14:29)

All right, let's just go quickly to the pros of that. In their view. If Carney has a majority on Monday, and even if there's one or two other floor crossers, you're looking at that and you're thinking, okay, well then there's no now he's got a majority now, there's no election for three years. Now's the time to get some somebody new in place and build the party up to be able to switch voters over to your side. And the other pro, I guess, I mean, would be rip the band aid off, you know, get the painful thing done now. But there are lots of cons to this strategy or this play. And I think the biggest one would be would there be a backlash from party members, grassroots members, to what would be seen as kind of an inside the palace coup by caucus MPs. Yes, they all got elected under Pierre Poilievre's banner, but also he did grow the vote significantly in the last election. He grew the share of vote and they got the highest percentage of vote share and diversified to a certain extent the vote as well into, say, some of the NDP writings. The Conservatives, not the Liberals, took advantage and took NDP ridings away. So, you know, strong worker, bread and butter voters voting for Pierre Poilievre. So lots of cons on that side. You know, do you want to take a chance and start forcing people to take a look at the party and whether or not voters should just simply cast their lot with Liberals? I think, I think there's pros and cons for both sides. I can imagine a lot of MPs really struggling with what's the next move, the big thing in all of this, I guess, and that it's also a con against this move. There are no internal or external replacements that are obvious for Mr. Poliev now. You know, sure, no one's stepping up right now and saying I want to be the next leader and I'm ready to carry the banner for the critics and I'm ready to replace Poliev. But you never know until, you know, kind of thing.

Jamie Poisson (16:28)

Right.

Tonda McCharles (16:28)

Like, I think if the reality were to hit, you might say soon, hear other potential leadership candidates express interest inside and outside caucus.

Jamie Poisson (16:39)

If there was like an open road.

Tonda McCharles (16:40)

Yep.

Jamie Poisson (16:41)

I know you said you talked about ripping the band aid off, but is there an argument that, you know, assuming Mark Carney gets this majority that everybody is expecting him to get on Monday night, that, you know, there's, there's quite a long road, three years ahead, ahead of them, and that maybe they do want to wait until they put somebody new up so that people don't get sick of them.

Tonda McCharles (17:02)

Look, it would easily take that long for, I think the party to be able to make its case, not only to sort of wait out how the Liberals handle the very real affordability crisis and concerns in this country around cost of living, around the price of housing, the price of a car, all of that, to sort of see their electoral opening, but it would take that long. You know, Avi Lewis, strangely enough, is somewhat in the same boat as any Conservative leader, be it Poilievre or anybody else. Right now. They have and perhaps welcome the chance to kind of buy their time, build a party, make their case. Because right now it sort of seems like the Carney coalition, one Liberal, senior Liberal told me this weekend at the convention, should best be thought of and described as an anti Trump coalition drawing, you know, both from the left and right, the NDP and the Conservative ranks. They've got time to wait and see what happens to that coalition. Does it hold? Right now it seems somewhat of a force. If you look at the polls today, there are. Every pollster in the country has sort of a gap over the, over the Conservatives, the Liberals having a wide lead either of 6 percentage points up to 13 percentage points and putting Carney squarely in the, in the range of a majority. So time, I think, would be something that anybody would welcome. The Conservatives certainly don't want an election today or tomorrow.

Jamie Poisson (18:35)

Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, just coming back to, to probably have. I hear you were talking before about how he's been making some moves lately to be more kind of conciliatory and prime ministerial. And his approach, he's talked about even working together with Carney on the US File. He's putting forward these policy proposals, I think, like the elimination of the federal tax on gas was very well received. He went on Joe Rogan Yeah, so

Podcast Host / Advertiser (19:07)

I'm a big kettlebell freak. I love it. And I really, I started to study

Jamie Poisson (19:11)

what Pavel's teaching and the diary of the CEO with Stephen Bartlett lately, and I think he had some pretty kind of human moments on both of those podcast you did.

Podcast Host / Advertiser (19:21)

It's reinforced my sense of compassion for people who can't provide for themselves. And you know, I've talked a lot about how government should be limited. I do think there's a very real role for government to help people who genuinely cannot provide for themselves, people who suffer from, with disabilities being probably the best example. And it has reinforced to me that we have to also have policies that recognize the inherent worth of every individual.

Jamie Poisson (19:53)

And so do you see a world in which he is able to kind of eventually turn this around, or do you think that this is kind of a foregone conclusion and it's just a matter of time at this point? And I. That might be an unfair question to ask.

Tonda McCharles (20:09)

But yeah, honestly, I don't have that crystal ball and I've been around this place too long to be able to make predictions. I honestly think that so much can happen. But to, to the point about him making the pivot in both his image and his style and substance, you know, I think he has made lots of efforts there. He's given substantive speeches both at at home and abroad.

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Tonda McCharles (21:00)

And yet it seems that there's very little that's piercing. Phil Fournier, the polling aggregator analyst, made a good point. He said, you know, what happens with leaders is the trajectory is rarely from you go from a high of being liked and see it come down, see your numbers come down, and then only to go back up. Usually they go, they rise or they fall. And Pierre Poliev's trajectory has never reversed after it started going down. So is he, is he able to recover that kind of support, bring in more or different voters into his coalition that could overwhelm the Carney coalition of voters that's forming? Boy, I really just don't know. I think that there are conservatives inside who think that just given time, the shine will come off the liberals and the conservatives will get to hit the end zone there. But there are also conservatives who believe he'll never be prime minister.

Jamie Poisson (22:05)

Yeah, so hard to say. He just lost his director of communications, Katie Merrifields, who was brought in last year, and I know she and Steve

Tonda McCharles (22:30)

Outhouse, you're his new camping man.

Jamie Poisson (22:34)

They're seen as two of the most significant kind of agents pushing for change in the way that Polly have approaches politics. Does her departure say anything to you or signal anything to you? Could it be seen as a sign that there was disagreement over this direction that they're taking or.

Tonda McCharles (22:51)

It's hard to get a read on that. She has said that she made the decision for her personal reasons, but you know, to what extent there were fundamental disagreements of approach inside that we can only guess at. It's a pretty tight ship inside there. But I do think that what's more notable and more of a factor in Poilievre's approach to politics has been the arrival of Steve Outhouse, who has been an advocate of this kind of outreach across a whole bunch more media outlets in the country and abroad. And you know, that works for them. Is it enough or is it too late? I really just don't know. I think that what I have heard still is and what I'm struck by is that despite some of those changes, what remains is a party leader and a tight inner circle who he trusts, who are prepared at times to be quite hands on and if not in some respects ruthless in the way they deal with people. At least that's what conservative mps have expressed to me. Now some of them are willing to sit it out and some of them are just putting their heads down. I'm told morale is at a complete and utter low inside there. And some are just ready just keep their head down until, you know, the next, the next time comes along.

Jamie Poisson (24:17)

And just fair for me to say some of them might be reticent maybe to sign that letter a hundred percent because of this right for kind of repercussions or consequences just kind of to wrap this up. How would you say Poliev is responding to all of this? Does he seem like a leader who feels very under threat right now?

Tonda McCharles (24:41)

If you watched his news conference on Thursday, the day after Marilyn Gladue left to join the liberals, he uses the same criticism of it as he had with the previous departures from his caucus. That is to say, they should have run in a by election. This is a dirty backroom deal by Mark Carney. He's, you know, undercutting democracy.

Podcast Host / Advertiser (25:05)

If you ran in an election, you went out and you said to little old ladies, to veterans, to truckers, to single moms, that you were going to stand up for the conservative platform of affordability safety and national sovereignty, and to do so as part of the Conservative Party that people voted for, then you should respect those people and honor your word. Mark Carney is saying is that your vote doesn't count, that he's going to use backroom dirty deals to reverse the election result in countless ridings, robbing people of their voice and giving him the power to raise your cost of living.

Tonda McCharles (25:44)

Which tells me that he still isn't prepared to publicly confront, confront any of the issues that have been raised about his leadership style. And he's not clearly doing enough privately to confront it, to satisfy his critics. Internally, I did find he gave a very forceful defense of his own mandates. He quoted the 8.3 million people who voted for him last spring, and he quoted his 87% result in the leadership review. But all that is quite beside the point. If you can't hold the confidence of your caucus MPs, the people who are elected alongside you to carry the message and to, and to come out and speak up forcefully for you, you do have some issues. And so we'll see. We'll see. He's a pretty adept politician. I think. His fundamental characteristic that we have seen, however, is that he, for example, a lot of his, he freely admits this. A lot of his philosophical, political, philosophical and economic ideas haven't changed since he was 17.

Jamie Poisson (26:45)

Right.

Tonda McCharles (26:45)

He fixes a view and carries it forward. I think he may not have absorbed perhaps, the need for other kinds of changes, and maybe he's one of those people who finds changing that stuff difficult. But I, I would not underestimate him or his, his team, because if time is of the, you know, if they have three years to get themselves sorted, you know, it's also a strong political

Jamie Poisson (27:14)

brand that seems like a really good place for us to end. Tonto, this is great. Thank you so much.

Tonda McCharles (27:20)

Thanks for having me, Jamie.

Jamie Poisson (27:29)

That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.

Podcast Host / Advertiser (27:45)

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