We’re going to bring you several different perspectives on the federal election campaign as it proceeds. I’ll have journalists, subject-matter experts, authors and practitioners lined up through the big vote at the end of April. And yeah, sure some of them will also have partisan perspectives. Different perspectives at different times. To me, a background in this craft is an asset more often than a burden.
Hélène Buzzetti is one of a few esteemed journalistic colleagues I’ll be hearing from over the course of the campaign. She’ll be new to many of you. She’s one of the busiest and most respected political commentators in Quebec. By the time we catch up on Thursday nights, where she and I are two-thirds of the weekly journo panel on the French-language Radio-Canada flagship newscast Le Téléjournal, she’s already had a full week talking about the news on radio and television. Her column appears in the six most prominent Quebec daily newspapers outside Montreal. She provides a perspective on the campaign in a key province — where the Conservative vote is holding up, and where Mark Carney’s reluctance to showcase his shaky French is not, so far, hurting him.
My other guest is Lisa MacLeod, who was the Progressive Conservative member of Ontario’s provincial parliament for the suburban Ottawa riding of Nepean for nearly 20 years. I asked her on for a chat before I realized how significant her political stomping grounds have become: she used to work for Pierre Poilievre, and the new Liberal candidate in the federal riding that overlaps her old riding is Mark Carney. She likes her Conservative colleague more than the Liberal, but nobody knows this part of Ontario better, and I was glad to hear from her.
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I am grateful to be the Max Bell Foundation Senior Fellow at McGill University, the principal patron of this podcast. Antica Productions turns these interviews into a podcast every week. Kevin Breit wrote and performed the theme music. Andy Milne plays it on piano at the end of each episode. Thanks to all of them and to you. Please tell your friends to subscribe to The Paul Wells Show on their favourite podcast app, or here on the newsletter.
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