Let's Talk Politics

Ep 24: The King’s Speech and Carney’s Gamble

• Julia Pennella • Season 1 • Episode 25

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The political landscape has shifted dramatically following Canada's historic election, and we're here to make sense of it all. Political analyst Éric Grenier joins us to decode the fascinating demographic shifts that defined this election – older voters surprisingly breaking for the Liberals while younger Canadians moved toward the Conservatives.

We also explore why King Charles reading the throne speech created a moment of historical significance but reveals the monarchy's limited relevance for most Canadians. Grenier offers a candid assessment: "While some people are still very attached to the monarchy, there's not a lot of passion to get rid of it, and not a lot of passion to keep it."

The government's controversial decision to delay the federal budget until fall raises questions about transparency and strategy. Is Carney trying to accommodate economic uncertainty from Trump's tariff threats, or avoiding fiscal accountability? We examine both possibilities and what they mean for governance.

Cabinet appointments reveal Carney's approach to leadership – bringing in new faces while maintaining experienced ministers. But the unified mandate letter signals a departure from Trudeau's style toward a more centralized governance approach focused on economic priorities.

Listen now for these insights and more as we navigate Canada's political pressure cooker – a minority government facing economic uncertainty and a dramatically changed voter landscape. 

Quick heads up this episode was recorded on May 29, 2025 so while the news may have changed this conversation was recorded the thoughts and ideas still remain relevant. 

Subscribe for part two where we'll dive into the evolution of polling, social media's impact on politics, and fascinating regional trends including Alberta separatism and Quebec's electoral dynamics.

Follow Eric on:

X: https://x.com/EricGrenierTW 

The Writ: https://www.thewrit.ca/ 

The Numbers/Les Chiffres: https://www.patreon.com/cw/thenumberspod 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWrit 




Julia Pennella:

Welcome back to let's Talk Politics. What do you get? When you mix a minority government, economic uncertainty, wildfires raging across the prairies and a looming summer recess, you get one hell of a week in Canadian politics. On Monday, the Liberals narrowly lost a vote backed by all opposition parties, calling on the government to present an economic update or budget before the House of Commons rises for the summer. Meanwhile, ottawa dropped a massive new border security bill taking aim at asylum claims, fentanyl trafficking and financial crimes, all in one legislative swing and with Donald Trump once again threatening tariffs on Canadian metal Industry. Minister Mélanie Joly reaffirmed the government's commitment to protect Canadian jobs by prioritizing domestic aluminum and steel in major defense and infrastructure projects. Oh and, if that wasn't enough, more than 25,000 Canadians are now under evacuation orders. As wildfires tear through Saskatchewan and Manitoba, we're unpacking it all economic pressure, national security, climate crisis and what it means for Canada's political future.

Julia Pennella:

Joining us today is Eric Grenier, writer, podcaster and political analyst behind the Writ, where he covers all things Canadian politics and elections. In this episode, we break down Prime Minister Carney's cabinet picks and his bold move to issue a single, unified mandate letter. We also dive into whether the monarchy still resonates with Canadians what King Charles reading the throne speech really signals and whether the government is trying to dodge accountability by refusing to table a spring budget. Quick heads up this episode was recorded on May 29, 2025. So, while the news may have changed since this conversation was recorded, the thoughts and ideas still remain relevant. There's a lot to unpack and even more political drama, so let's talk politics. Eric, thanks so much for joining us today.

Éric Grenier :

Happy to be here.

Julia Pennella:

I'm really looking forward to the conversation. You know there's so much political chaos going on. We just had the throne speech wrap up and parliament's back in session. But the first thing I want to ask you what's your political hot take at the moment?

Éric Grenier :

I tend to be a bit of a contrarian when it comes to what the conventional wisdom is, and I think that my hot take if I'm going to call it that would be that when we're looking at what happened in the last election, I think that there's this perception that it was a one-off event, that you had Mark Carney coming in, you had Donald Trump shaking things up there, and so the results were a bit maybe a nominalist, maybe a bit of an exception. But I think that there could be some lasting effects from the election. One of them is that you hear from the conservatives. They see the numbers that they put up in the last election more than Harper ever got. It should be good enough to win in the future. So from their perspective, they might be thinking that they just need to hold their vote and kind of wait for the liberals to inevitably lose their vote.

Éric Grenier :

But I think that the numbers could be a bit more stickier than we would think, because it's not just about why people were voting for Mark Kearney. It was why they weren't voting for Pierre Polyev and the Conservatives and one of the reasons why I think that the Liberals did so well in the election and the Conservatives weren't able to win is that the NDP was so low, because a lot of their supporters did not want to see Pierre Polyev become prime minister. So I do think that the Conservatives do actually have a lot more work to do than they might think, because I do think that if Pierre-Paul Leif stays on as their leader, they have to figure out how to make sure that he's not too scary for progressive voters in order for that 41% they got in the last election to be enough to win. 41% is enough to win, but not when the other guy has 43% or 44%.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, well said, and it's hard to believe. We're like a month out from the election, a very historic one. So much has also happened in between. But I want to lean into a little bit more on the work you mentioned of getting that vote, and this maybe isn't maybe a one off anomaly. We saw the Conservatives have about a 25 point lead before Carney was entered into the race. What does that say about where the vote happened? Like, do you think it was a lot of the Trump factor? We know, but how much of that do you think it was? Also, I don't want to vote for Trudeau and then Carney comes in and maybe he's that knight in shining armor. I'm curious, from a data perspective, what your thoughts are.

Éric Grenier :

I think it was a part of all of that, which I think is what makes it a little bit more, like I said, stickier than it might have been otherwise. So I do think there was a significant chunk of voters who would not vote for the Liberals if Justin Trudeau was leader. They might be open to vote for the Liberals, but as long as he was leader they weren't going to vote for the party. So when he resigned and he announced that he was stepping down, that liberated that chunk of voters. And you did actually see some polling that was done at around the time of Justin Trudeau's resignation, that if he wasn't leader how much support would the liberals have, and it usually got them up another five to 10 points. So that was really kind of, I think, the starting base.

Éric Grenier :

The second one was Mark Carney. I think a lot of people did actually like him quite a bit, because when you saw polling that was done again during the leadership race, if you substituted in Christy Freeland's name instead of Mark Carney's again, you had that five to 10 point bump but not the 15 to 20 point bump that we saw with Mark Carney. And then I do think that the Donald Trump factor was a huge one. I think it gave Mark Carney a reason for being the leader of the party, gave him really an angle that I think he would have lacked if, let's say, in an alternate universe, justin Trudeau had resigned after either the Toronto St Paul's by-election in June 2024, or the by-election in Montreal in the fall of 24, that if Carney had come in then I think a lot of people would have said, oh, this guy's just kind of dull and maybe he's the same and it's not real change, that kind of thing.

Éric Grenier :

But because he was such a contrast to Donald Trump, both in style and the position that he was taking, I think that he made a lot of people feel like we needed someone exactly the opposite of Donald Trump as the prime minister, and I think that helped solidify him. So it was a mixture of all of those things. Do you remove any of those? It was just Trudeau and Trump Liberals probably don't win the election. It was just Carney but not Trump. Liberals probably don't win the election. I think they needed all of those things, that kind of coalesce at the same time.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, it was almost like a perfect storm when you think about the different situations. And, yeah, to your point, there's a lot of things that could have happened before. If Trudeau had resigned earlier, what been before? If Trudeau had resigned earlier, what could have happened? What would the outcome have been?

Julia Pennella:

And I want to point into as well, like the demographic shifts, because it was very interesting to see how voters were coming out. It was one of the most historic elections in the sense of people coming out to vote. We had record numbers at events polls but, most importantly, we saw that shift in the voter demographics. So we had a lot of seniors, older men, older white men particularly were voting liberals not typically the demographic, and we had that younger voting bloc going towards the conservatives. I'm curious again from your perspective, like, should parties be concerned about maybe losing that voter demographic or that voter bloc on either side? And I don't want to talk about a future election so soon, but you know it is a minority government, Anything can happen but what do you think that says about, maybe, where things are going? And I understand a lot of elections are in the moment, but are there any trends you're seeing particularly?

Éric Grenier :

When you think about it, you would say, like, well, you would want younger voters because younger voters will get become old and so you want them as early as you can, so they stick with the. But it doesn't actually work all that well that way, because people, when they're young, they vote for different reasons than when they do when they're middle age and when they're older, right. So while it's certainly better to have some younger voters within your party, within your organization and within your electoral base, if young voters decided elections in the future, then the NDP would have formed a government by now. And so I think, for the Liberals having older voters, even if they've only recently come to you, it's always better and I know this sounds awful, but it's always better to have older voters because they actually go out and vote, and I think that was actually one of the reasons why the Liberals did so well. If you look at some of the patterns of the election, you see that in a lot of areas where there are younger voters, suburban voters, particularly areas that are a bit more diverse those areas largely went to the Conservatives, or at least swung to the Conservatives. Maybe the Liberals held onto them, but the margins were cut down by quite a bit. But then you look at some of the surprising results. The Liberals had Parts of Eastern Ontario that are not very diverse, might have a lot of people in cottage country. You had places in the BC interior, again not exactly the most diverse area, but there might be a lot of retirees. So it did work well for the Liberals in this case.

Éric Grenier :

If Mark Carney is particularly attracted to these voters, as long as he's the leader, presumably they can hold onto those voters. But yeah, there is that kind of calculation that you do still need to have some younger voters to keep you in the running. But I think if I had to make a choice between which section of the electorate I'd like to have newly within my ranks, I'd probably want those older voters rather than the younger voters. Younger voters won't vote necessarily in the same numbers. We don't have the turnout figures just yet and also why their voting could change quite a bit. So I'd still prefer if I was the Pierre Pelletier or Mark Carney. With those kinds of shifts I'd prefer to have Mark Carney's shift behind me.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, really good points and I really like that breakdown you provided. So thank you for that. And it's yet to see with the data. We have obviously the baby boomers, who are strong voters. Millennials really came out in numbers this time, but now we're going to be seeing, in the next few elections, gen Z and Alpha oh, I forgot Gen X as well, but it's going to be interesting to see those shifts. And yeah, to your point like the younger generation was more adamant about voting around affordability and I think that's why that conservative rhetoric resonated with them. But the older generation, looking at the broader picture of the Trump factor, the Royals were in town. We had King Charles reading the throne speech a historic moment for Canada's parliament. Do you think this kind of symbolism still holds relevant in today's political climate?

Éric Grenier :

No, I don't. I do not take any political positions, but one of them is that I'm not much of a fan of the monarchy and as a Quebecer, it makes me in the vast majority there. But we have seen polls that while some people still are very attached to the monarchy, you see majorities in favor of keeping it and again, you do see huge differences between English Canadians and French Canadians in terms of that. Yeah, it's fine, it differentiates us from the United States, but whatever, there's not a lot of passion. I think on either side there's not a lot of passion to get rid of it. There's not a lot of passion to keep it. I think now and then we find it kind of neat. I mean, we do all stillilla Well, what she did during one of those episodes, which may or may not have even been true, but I don't think that it is.

Éric Grenier :

If the king was coming every year, I think people get pretty tired of it. The fact that we haven't had the monarch come and read the speech from the throne since the 70s made it kind of special, made it new and, in the context of Donald Trump, united States sovereignty issues, it made it, you know, an emphasis that we're different from the United States, but all the polling that I've seen related to actually this visit is largely that people are kind of indifferent to it. They're not opposed to it, upset by it, but they got other things to do than watch the throne speech. I guess that's it.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, and I think the throne speech is usually not like a big moment in history when we think of parliaments and different eras of governments. I think this was just historic for two reasons Obviously, the King coming and really a two party focus. We had the collapse of the NDP and the Conservative leader also was not in the House, so a lot of different elements there and I do want to ask you, like, what were your thoughts on the throne speech? Want to ask you, like, what were your thoughts on the throne speech? I know throne speech are very broad strokes and we're going to get into a little bit more about why we're not getting a budget or your thoughts around that. But yeah, what were your initial thoughts on the throne speech?

Éric Grenier :

More or less that. It was what we would have expected. There weren't really any shocking things in it, anything that was all that new. It was in many ways Mark Carney's stump speech in a British accent. So you know it didn't do much except kind of reiterate what the liberals were going to do, which is usually what a speech from the throne is. It's rare that there's some bombshell in it that we didn't see coming, and when we you know, when there is something new in it, it's usually telegraphed in some way. So I think it does kind of suggest how Mark Carney is pretty focused on his priorities, and I think that's what the speech from the throne kind of emphasized. And I think we're probably going to see that in the next little while with what they're going to get run through the House of Commons while I was still sitting and then what they're looking forward to do in the fall.

Éric Grenier :

So I think it was kind of that reiteration of that almost singular focus that Markney has when it comes to economic growth and development of the country.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, and a lot of ideas as well, and I do want to also point to. So much has happened since the election date. We also got our cabinet appointments. I'm curious as well, like from a polling perspective do cabinet appointments actually move the needle when it comes to either public perception on the government, or do voters even notice, understand or even care about portfolios and the ministers seeing them?

Éric Grenier :

Not as much as I think those in the Ottawa bubble would like to think. We've seen it pretty often that when we have had polling on cabinet ministers, on name recognition it's very low, Aside from the very kind of core figures and especially those who might already have a profile, whether they were in media before or they were a high profile politician before they got into the cabinet. But apart from that they're largely unknown. And there was some polling that has been done by I think it was Abacus Data had done some polling not too long ago where they showed people's faces of prominent Liberal cabinet ministers and a lot of people didn't know who they were. So we always have to take that into context, that people don't really know who a lot of these people are and so whether they got into cabinet or not probably doesn't matter too much. But of course it does actually matter a lot because these will be among the major spokespeople for the government over the next few years. So whether they're good cabinet appointments or not will have an impact and we have sometimes seen that it does change the dial.

Éric Grenier :

Obviously there's moments when it causes events.

Éric Grenier :

Think of what Jody Wilson-Raybould when she was dropped from cabinet, what that did, but also the cabinet shuffle that was supposed to be the big reset for the government in 2023.

Éric Grenier :

There was supposed to be this big reset and it did not go over well and it didn't do what it was telegraphed to do, and I think that it was more of a reflection that people were expecting change, expecting the new cabinet to reflect some new direction for the government, and because it was a cabinet that didn't seem to be all that different, it really kicked off. The liberals drop in the polls. So I do think that, while a lot of these people might not be well known, they do still sometimes signal something, some approach that the government's going to make. So you do have to be kind of careful about it. Even if people don't know the minister from Mississauga or someone who was just named that hasn't been in cabinet before if they don't signal some kind of change, when you're trying to project that you're going to make a change, that's when it can have an impact, and then that's when the polling started to drop for the Liberals and then the Conservatives went into first place in the fall of 23.

Julia Pennella:

I take your point, and we have seen a wave of new ministers recently. Some of them are not just new to cabinet but brand new to politics and parliament altogether. They're really political rookies. What's your take on that? I mean we've already seen a few of them take some headlines, for example the new housing minister suggesting that making housing more affordable doesn't necessarily mean lowering prices. So that did raise a lot of eyebrows. Is that a sign of inexperience, or are we just used to seeing a more tightly scripted centrist style of government, like we saw under Harper and Trudeau? That maybe this just feels a bit more jarring.

Éric Grenier :

I think that there is. There's a couple elements at play. One is that the media likes to have someone who doesn't follow the party line and they wish that more ministers and MPs did it. But then, as soon as they did, it's a big controversy, a big scandal and oh, oh, my God, they didn't keep the party line. What does this mean for everything? So I mean there's an element of that there too. But yeah, these in some cases these were more new people.

Éric Grenier :

Gregor Robertson, though not new to politics. Obviously he had been mayor in Vancouver. I think he was the longest serving mayor in Vancouver's history, so he should know when he's sticking his foot in his mouth. But I think that it's good, when you have a government that's been reelected, that you have some new life into it, and especially when Mark Carney calls it a new government, that this is supposed to be a new direction for the party. There should be some new faces in it and I think a lot of people might have been disappointed that there weren't more new faces in it, because it was, you know, I think, half of the cabinet's new, half of the cabinet's old.

Éric Grenier :

But you know, most people kind of focus on the old rather than the new. So there's that kind of element to it. But this is a minority government and it's an ambitious one. You kind of need a few people who know where the bathrooms are. So I think that it was a mix that was perhaps the kind of mix that they needed, whether or not it was the kind of mix that people might have wanted to see from what they thought was a different government from Justin Trudeau's from Justin Scherdoz.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, good point. And I was just thinking as well when you talked about the cabinet ministers and how the average person doesn't really know working in Ottawa, I remember I'd walk, be walking around with like my roommate or a friend and I'd be like, oh, there's the minister of transport. People don't know them and they're like, how do you know that? How are they walking freely? So, yeah, I think there's a unlike the US or maybe even the UK, where there's that celebrity nature around their politicians Canadians they can still kind of, I think, get away with it, depending on, maybe, what province you're in as well. And on the note of cabinet, you know we also had Carney release his government's mandate letter, but unlike Trudeau, he didn't issue individual mandate letters for each minister. Instead, we got more of this general statement outlining the government's priorities and direction. What's your take on that approach? Because you know some critics have maybe called that a step back in transparency. Do you think that's a fair criticism or is this just different, maybe strategic style of leadership?

Éric Grenier :

the mandate letters were something that Trudeau brought in right and they were actually kind of new for that. So the fact that Carney is not exactly doing exactly how Trudeau did is a break with that tradition, the same way that he's not attending the Wednesday question period, at least in a way that he's going to answer every single question, which again was something that Trudeau brought in. So whether it's like a tradition now already, when it was only just one prime minister who did it, I don't know. We haven't seen a lot of mandate letters from a lot of provincial premiers. So the fact that the liberals put out a kind of a generic one is at least a bit better than maybe what Harper would have done, but certainly a lot less than what Trudeau would have done.

Éric Grenier :

I think that again it points to what I'd said before at the speech from the throne it's more of a singular focus that Carney is trying to portray, that it's not a bunch of people doing separate things, it's everybody focusing around the same goal. Whether it's good for transparency or not, I find those mandate letters probably cause more trouble than they had benefits for the governments in the past, because it had this laundry list of things that became out of date after a couple of years. So I don't know whether it's really a good or bad thing. I think it matters much more about what they actually do, what they actually deliver the promises the public promises that they've made, and if they deliver on those the mandate letters. People in Ottawa in the bubble probably care a lot about it. People around the hill outside of that people probably don't even understand what the mandate letters are. So yeah, I'm a bit indifferent, I guess, on it.

Julia Pennella:

I mean yeah to your point. I don't think the average person cares or even understands it. Maybe organizations or stakeholders, who are maybe more prone on whatever those issues, are to hold them accountable. But yeah, I do take your point on that. So we have the mandate letter, we have the throne speech, we have cabinet, but this year we're missing a spring budget. That raised some eyebrows as well. What was your initial reaction hearing that we won't have a federal government delivering a spring budget?

Éric Grenier :

Yeah, I was a bit surprised by because of who is not delivering a budget. You would have thought that Carney, in his spare time, you know, did fund budgets, just, you know, on his weekend. So the fact that he didn't want to have one come out in the spring, I guess is a bit of a surprise, because he has made it very clearly that his focus is on the economy. There was a couple of times during the campaign when he said one of the differences between him and Trudeau was that he cares more about that kind of stuff. You know the reasoning that the government says that they don't have it, that they want to make sure that they have kind of all of the information that they need in order to create the budget, to have planning for the going forward. You know whether or not that's true or not. I'm not an expert in budgetary policy so I can't really say. But it did seem like a bit of a step in the direction that I don't think people are expecting from our country. So they will have to deliver it.

Éric Grenier :

There is some debate whether they were even planning on having a fall budget. At first it sounded like it was only going to be a fall economic statement or update, and now it is going to be a budget. I wonder if they had originally thought that they could go until next spring without a full-on budget and just go with the updates between then and now or now and then. But I think they probably felt the pressure that they needed to have something a bit more robust in front of voters, in front of Canadians, over the next few months. So a bit of a surprise, I guess, that they didn't go ahead and do it, because they can always set the dates, they can make people sit until July or August if they wanted. But I guess they thought it wasn't worth it.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, and building on that point, like from a strategic standpoint, does that make sense politically? And I'm also thinking from a public perspective. You kind of touched on it Like does that send maybe the wrong message or give the impression the government's avoiding accountability?

Éric Grenier :

I think it does send that message. I'm not sure if it will really kind of hurt the government, especially if they do come out with something in the fall. I think for the average person if it's explained to them that, well, we want to wait till this because we want to know what our defense spending commitments will be. We want to know what the impact of the tariffs is going to be. I think a lot of people are like, oh okay, that sounds reasonable enough. But it is also easy to make the claim that this is actually them not wanting that accountability, that they'll spend the way that they want for the next little while, without trying to put it in front of Canadians. Have the opposition look at it.

Éric Grenier :

So I do think there is an element of risk there and I'd be curious to know why the Liberals thought that that risk was worth it, that it was better to have a budget in the fall that might be better or might be more robust or be more in line with what they want to do going forward and take the hit for the next couple months, versus have something now that maybe looks worse than it would in the fall. I'm not sure what that thinking was. I imagine there was a reason for it, apart from just not wanting to do it, but it hasn't. I'm not sure if it's going to have that much of an impact. I think the liberals are also kind of expecting that whatever they do for the next few months, they're not going to get defeated and don't have to worry about an election. So you know, from their perspective, they'll deal with it when it becomes a problem in the fall.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, and I'm surprised also from like a communication standpoint, why they're not leaning into the uncertainty of Trump and tariffs, like I think that would have been an easy sell to be like hey, you know we want to hold off to just figure out what's happening. And you know, I'm sure you saw it as well recently with taco trade, which stands for Trump, always chickens out and coined by the Financial Times and really has spread across Wall Street and the Internet mocking the president's back and forth on trade tariffs. I mean, it is a reality of what we're experiencing right now One day Trump's tariffing the EU and then Monday decides to take them off. So yeah, I'm confused why that's maybe not the approach they're taking and kind of taking that full on hit from both the opposition as well as the public of not putting out that budget. So yeah, it's interesting to see We'll have to see how this plays out and if they do go on that summer recess and maybe regroup. I would also be curious too, like from Carney I know he did a few interviews with CBC, with Fasci and David Cochran, about we're strategizing behind the scenes. So hopefully they actually get those pens paper and sharpen their pencils and get to the books on that, but time will tell and we'll have to see.

Julia Pennella:

And that's a wrap on this episode, but don't go too far. Eric is back with us for part two as we continue unpacking the data, the drama and the headlines that make Canadian politics anything but boring. In the next episode, Eric dives into how polling is evolving, the role of social media and those sneaky algorithms in shaping political discourse, and we get regional with a deep dive into the rise of Alberta separatism and what really went down in Quebec and Atlantic Canada during the federal election. There's never a dull moment in politics and you won't want to miss what's next. I'm your host, julia Piniella. This is let's Talk Politics and we'll catch you on the next episode.