00:00:00.000Seconds before this guy gives the finger, which is in this viral photo, someone shouted out, quote, there's a lot of pedophile lovers here. Ask Carney about Epstein Island. Two seconds later, there's a live streamer, I guess you could describe this person, standing right there getting their camera right in these people's faces. And so I guess he just put up his hands and gave the finger to them.
00:00:26.120and if someone was yelling conspiracies at me and calling me a pedophile i might also flip them the
00:00:34.140bird hello i'm rachel gilmore your least favorite person's least favorite journalist welcome to
00:00:46.340bubble pop a weekly show where we break down the biggest headlines at least the political ones
00:00:51.040so you don't have to doomscroll. Then we'll dig deeper into something juicy that you should know
00:00:55.860about. In this episode, we've got one of the best journalists in Canada on this show. Luke Lebrun
00:01:00.880has been covering federal politics for press progress for 12 years. And he's joining us with
00:01:06.380his award-winning journalistic chops to talk about the Canadian election and several of his juicy
00:01:12.280scoops from the campaign. But first, the news. The election is just days away. This week we got
00:01:19.080costed platforms, some serious strategy moves, and some unhinged announcements. Oh, and Trump
00:01:24.680decided to get chatty about Canada's sovereignty again after a period of relative calm on that
00:01:29.940front. Let's dive in. Just three short days after this episode is released, we will know who the
00:01:38.100next Prime Minister of Canada is, and whose plans for the future of our country will be put into
00:01:44.080motion. So in the immortal words of Pitbull featuring Kesha, it's going down. Although for
00:01:50.1207.3 million Canadians, a record-breaking number, it already went down because they voted in the
00:01:56.120advanced polls. Anyways, we saw some major developments over the past week, not the least
00:02:00.960of which was U.S. President Donald Trump's re-emergence. After biting his tongue on
00:02:06.000annexation threats in recent weeks, on Wednesday, just days before Canadians head to the polls,
00:02:11.480he decided to spout off some of his greatest hits when it comes to his grievances about Canada.
00:02:17.680He even mentioned Governor Trudeau, saying he means the nickname affectionately.
00:02:23.700Trudeau, who I call Governor Trudeau, affectionately, I asked him,
00:02:29.760why are we spending $200 billion to support Canada, to subsidize Canada?
00:02:35.260And he was unable to answer the question. I mean, why are we doing that?
00:02:38.080And I have to be honest, as a state, it works great.
00:02:43.780Trump also mused about further raising auto tariffs.
00:02:47.220So yeah, just another day in the paradise that is living next door to a crumbling democracy
00:02:52.420that appears to be descending towards authoritarianism.
00:13:04.200Thank you so much for having me here, Rachel.
00:13:06.120You are so welcome. It is genuinely my pleasure. So I do want to start things off with a very
00:13:13.440broad question before we dive into some more specific reporting. You've covered federal
00:13:18.820politics for over a decade. How has this campaign been different from the ones you've covered in
00:13:25.560the past? That's a really good question. I noticed very early on, like I guess in late March,
00:13:32.660that a lot of people are talking about this election more so than I think previous elections
00:13:38.800over the last couple decades. I have this one anecdote that I recall going into a restaurant
00:13:44.800in Toronto and there were five different conversations happening and everyone was
00:13:50.420talking about Trump and kind of US relations and this you know 51st state kind of rhetoric
00:13:57.520And it was striking to me, too, because I noticed that the people, like, sitting right across from me kept mispronouncing Pierre Polyev's name.
00:14:06.020They kept calling him Pierre Polylever or something like this.
00:14:09.380So I could tell, yeah, I could tell that these are people who, like, are maybe not super, you know, following politics super closely.
00:14:16.840Although, to be fair, I hear people mispronounce his name on, like, national television, too, all the time.
00:14:27.520Oliver. I don't know. Oliver. That's another common one. That's right. That's right. In my lifetime, I can't really think of a time where I felt like the entire country was really focused on the same issue all at once. I think maybe the closest thing that I can think of would be the Quebec referendum in 1995 because everyone was obviously very fixated on the outcome of that vote.
00:14:49.580But this is definitely going to be a very, I mean, we've seen with the advanced polls that that turnout seems to be quite high. So I expect on election day, we will probably see that that will, that trend will continue.
00:15:03.780And, you know, it has become a very polarized kind of debate, not in a negative sense polarized, but, you know, it is kind of turning into a race between Mark Carney, who is the incumbent versus Pierre Polyev as the as the opposition, who's obviously pushing for change.
00:15:20.680But then it's interesting, right? Because before this election, there was this anti-incumbent mood, not just in Canada, but across Europe and North America. And since Trump came into power, I think we've seen that dynamic flip. And so now the pendulum's kind of shifted back to this incumbent mood, like people want stability.
00:15:46.320So I think that's kind of an interesting dynamic. It obviously puts the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois in a bit of a pickle because they kind of get squeezed out when things get wedged on that issue of national sovereignty.
00:15:58.860Yeah. Yeah. I think Trudeau stepping down helped with the anti-incumbency bias as well. Like Carney's not exactly an outsider, but he's done a pretty good job pretending to be. So that that served him well.
00:16:12.820um so you've broken some serious scoops over the course of this campaign um on a personal note
00:16:20.040thank you for reporting on that issue with ctv so well um i know some of my subscribers found me
00:16:25.160um in light of that so just a heads up luke is the one who broke that story so thank you luke
00:16:30.060um but that's not the only harassment story that you've covered recently you uh just spoke with
00:16:37.180the guy who the worst people on the internet have dubbed the Brantford Boomer, all because he
00:16:43.200flipped off a camera outside a Mark Carney rally. So Luke, first off, for those unfamiliar, can you
00:16:49.360explain what's going on here? Because I sometimes wonder how much of this actually makes it offline.
00:16:55.180Yeah, that's right. So how do I begin explaining this story? So basically, there was a Mark Carney
00:17:01.080rally in Brantford, Ontario. And at this event, there was a line of liberal supporters who were
00:17:07.960waiting to get into the venue. And there was basically a photo that emerged from, basically
00:17:14.680from this event, showing this guy who's giving two middle fingers to a cameraman. And it kind
00:17:23.960of took on a life of its own. And it became a meme online. And people were saying that this was,
00:17:29.320you know, the Toronto Sun actually called it the quote unquote defining election moment.
00:17:35.980And so I guess within the right wing media sphere, this is kind of turned into a meme
00:17:41.640and it's kind of turned into this meme with this idea of, you know, older liberal baby boomers are
00:17:47.400holding younger Gen Z Canadians who are struggling and can't afford a home in contempt. And they're
00:17:53.620kind of really misportraying this photo and it's yeah it's really been taken out of context so
00:18:00.240I talked to the guy who actually appears in this photo uh his name is Matt Janes uh he is a liberal
00:18:07.200supporter and what he told me was that what you're not seeing in this photo is that I guess a couple
00:18:14.020of meters away there was a group of about a dozen of these far-right activists uh who were basically
00:18:19.620standing there and they were just heckling and yelling at all the liberal supporters as they
00:18:24.540were walking into the venue. What kind of stuff were they saying? They were saying a number of
00:18:29.580things. A lot of them were calling the liberal supporters in line pedophiles. They were screaming
00:18:36.880stuff about getting vaccinated, you know, sort of taunting them. They were, you know, referencing a
00:18:42.940number of kind of far-right conspiracies. Some of them were using rhetoric that you might
00:18:48.020associate with sovereign citizen type groups. There's also one of them who, you know, I found
00:18:56.780his account online and he is pretty clearly a QAnon person or definitely references QAnon slogans.
00:19:04.940So these are the kinds of people that were standing there. They had some flags. There was a
00:19:09.960carny flag there is another flag that says paul you have 2025 bring it home um the guy with the
00:19:16.840q anon adjacent beliefs had a t-shirt that was like a pro trump shirt um so it gives you a sense
00:19:22.720of like just by how they're presenting themselves what they believe i think we can safely uh you
00:19:29.080know form some conclusions about that probably not liberal supporters probably not probably not
00:19:33.960Uh, so what happened according to Matt Janes was that, um, you know, they were waiting to go into the venue and, you know, as they were going through, basically they were facing these like really ridiculous, uh, taunts and people screaming at them, calling them pedophiles.
00:19:49.760Uh, what actually happened was that seconds before this guy gives the finger, which is in this, um, which is in this viral photo, uh, someone shouted out, quote, there's a lot of pedophile lovers here. Ask Kearney about Epstein Island. Two seconds later, there's a, uh, a live streamer. I guess you could describe this person, uh, standing right there, getting, getting their camera right in these people's faces.
00:20:13.880and uh so i guess he just put up uh put up his hands and gave the uh the finger to them
00:20:19.060and if someone was yelling conspiracies at me and calling me a pedophile i might also flip them the
00:20:27.060bird definitely not like just conservative gen z's versus liberal boomers exactly yeah and i mean
00:20:33.880this is what he told me he said that he was giving the finger to those uh people who were
00:20:37.680heckling him and uh this photo is just kind of taking on a life of his own and uh actually you
00:20:43.620know he he was telling me that he hasn't actually been following the fallout online um in fairness
00:20:48.980this does seem to be resonating within a pretty um i don't know i guess sort of very right-wing
00:20:55.660circles i don't think it's a very mainstream thing but it is now kind of bubbling up into
00:21:00.520like the toronto sun and some some of these other outlets um but you know he's saying that you know
00:21:06.160he's getting he's facing online harassment people are doxing him they're contacting his former
00:21:10.720employer yeah his former employer put out a statement like distancing themselves which i
00:21:15.280thought was a bit extreme but also reflective of maybe the scale of harassment going on like
00:21:20.460and he's he's doing okay is he all right yeah i mean i think he's just really confused about
00:21:25.640all this i asked him if he was familiar with the concept of doxing and i think he kind of
00:21:30.020understood it but uh this this stuff is very uh obviously something very weird for him i mean he's
00:21:36.060retiree he doesn't know uh doesn't really know much about these kind of like online harassment
00:21:41.660campaigns and things like that so i mean this is something that we saw a lot of um as you said
00:21:47.820very online right-wingers some folks who like kind of portray themselves as journalists like
00:21:53.660you know the pleb and things like that um we're all spreading this i i'm curious about the how
00:22:01.100you think this incident reflects the role that these sort of pretend journalists types have
00:22:08.060not only on individual people but on broader election discourse yeah that's a good question
00:22:16.700um you know i mean many of them will present themselves as citizen journalists and i don't
00:22:21.180think there's anything wrong with the idea of a citizen journalist yeah in like in theory right
00:22:27.740I think a lot of people, I mean, everyone has a phone with a camera nowadays. So anyone who would like to document things can now actually go out there and do that. And in some cases, do very legitimate work that serves the public interest.
00:22:42.000What is going on here is, I mean, I think there's this, I guess there's kind of an economy that's sprouted up like a bit of a cottage industry where people are filming these videos and then turning around and using it to fundraise.
00:22:56.280And I think that is what is kind of fueling a lot of this stuff because these people now have an incentive.
00:23:02.700Yeah, they have an incentive to find these viral clips, put it out there and then try to fundraise off of it.
00:23:08.680And I think that is what is kind of at the core of why this has become so toxic. I don't really know what the solution to that is, though, but it's definitely something that's very corrosive. I mean, something that Matt Janes told me was that he felt that these kinds of incidents are, I mean, will deter people from participating in their democracy.
00:23:30.640I mean, if you can imagine, these are people who were lined up to attend a political rally, and just to get in there and to support, you know, the party that they are supporters of, they have to kind of go through this gauntlet and face all kinds of, you know, torrents of harassment and abuse just to, you know, exercise their democratic rights.0.94
00:23:49.560It's pretty, pretty gross and ridiculous and toxic.0.91
00:23:52.740Yeah. And, you know, speaking of toxicity and discourse, you had a really great op-ed in the Toronto Star about that liberal button gate, where you basically pointed out that the liberal campaign staff's decision to plant, you know, pins to sow discord, I guess, at this conservative conference in Ottawa.0.97
00:24:14.320They had stuff like, you know, divisive rhetoric on about two different campaign managers who are disagreeing about the direction of the conservative campaign. And they also had election denial pins. And those are placed, it's important to note, without Carney's approval, but it kind of felt like they were just pouring gasoline on conspiratorial fires.
00:24:36.840And you made that point really well in that op-ed. Could you expand on that and kind of express how you view that button issue as a part of this broader problem or fueling this broader problem, I should say?
00:24:51.720Yeah, well, I mean, as you mentioned, I mean, there were basically stop the steal buttons that these liberal operatives planted.
00:24:59.980The liberals have confirmed that this was something that they did and Mark Carney apologized for it.
00:25:03.740so there's no doubt that they did it. But I mean, they are basically by planting these buttons at
00:25:10.220a conservative conference, they are, you know, kind of seeding these like, like January 6 type
00:25:20.380rhetoric, right? And they're putting that out there. There's a good chance that some conservative
00:25:24.460supporters may have been at this conference and seen those pins and then thought to themselves
00:25:29.100like, oh, this might be a very, this might be a mainstream opinion within the conservative
00:25:33.800movement, or they might, it might put the thought in their minds of maybe there's a
00:25:38.620election conspiracy to rig the vote. But, you know, and then with the liberals admitting that
00:25:44.940they actually planted it, then it sets off all these people who are already maybe primed to be
00:25:49.940conspiratorial. And then they start seeing conspiracies everywhere. And what's interesting
00:25:55.480is how these incidents are all connected. I mean, I guess with the example that we just talked about
00:26:00.280with Matt Janes, the guy giving the middle finger in Brantford, I mean, there is a reference to this
00:26:05.840Mark Carney Epstein Island conspiracy. And in this case with the buttons, I mean, there was a
00:26:12.780later story about this group called Do You Believe the Poles? And in that case, people kind of latched
00:26:20.240on to this previous conspiracy and then started to wonder if this group of conservatives casting
00:26:27.240doubt on the, like basically kind of promoting these election denial narratives, if they were
00:26:31.980actually a liberal false flag or if they were sent there by Doug Ford or something. So what's
00:26:37.900really interesting to me is just seeing how all of these different, you know, you can't look at
00:26:42.000these conspiracies in isolation because they're all kind of building on one another. And so there's
00:26:47.380this kind of causal relationship between uh you know you know one day there's a you know liberal
00:26:52.740planting buttons in in a canada strong and free network conference in ottawa and then three days
00:26:58.700later people are referencing that to spawn a new conspiracy so people have to be really responsible
00:27:03.320i think about uh the kind of information that they're putting out into the universe yeah and
00:27:09.180and you unmasked the people behind that do you believe the polls thing and it wasn't liberal
00:27:15.420false flag, a liberal false flag operation, correct? That's correct. Yeah. So it turned out
00:27:21.940it was a guy who owns a casino in Mississauga. And I mean, this group is pretty weird. I mean,
00:27:31.300I have to say, I don't blame people for having suspicions about this group. I tried to contact
00:27:37.180them. Basically, this guy's wife, who's a realtor in Mississauga, she hung up the phone denied it
00:27:44.980was actually her but it actually turns out it was her uh there was this other guy who was in
00:27:49.520montreal he's a uh he's a former talk radio host he was standing on this soapbox with a do you
00:27:55.500believe the pole sign and shouting outside of a montreal canadians game uh so i tracked that guy
00:28:00.860down and he told me that he didn't actually believe any of the stuff that he said he saw
00:28:05.340himself as a performer or he was just doing like a publicity type job and uh yeah he kind of
00:28:12.540distanced himself from those beliefs but just said that he was paid by that casino owner to to do
00:28:17.800these things um the casino owner is i mean you can find records where he's been donating to the
00:28:22.660conservatives uh so he it seems pretty clear that he's not a liberal false flag operative he is
00:28:29.320someone who's obviously very conservative but um yeah yeah i did find in some ways and like
00:28:36.800I'm curious, like I'm going a little off script here, but I'm curious what you think of this.
00:28:43.660Like, I felt like the panic about the Do You Believe the Polls in some ways felt not exaggerated,
00:28:53.040but, you know, a lot of folks in mainstream media and a lot of this started because of a conservative strategist putting this out there,
00:28:59.960viewed this as planting the seeds of election denial.
00:29:02.300But on the flip side, there's like a very long tradition of particularly losing parties, not trusting the polls. Polls are just a snapshot in time. They're not an election result. So there's plenty that you can critique about methodology for specific polls, especially.
00:29:17.880And I don't know, I guess, do you think that the, we have seen since then some election denial narratives emerge, like there was some creators on TikTok spreading falsehood about Elections Canada making you vote in pencil so that they could change the results.
00:29:37.180And then there was also the pleb has been saying some stuff like too big to rig or something.
00:29:44.300And I guess, do you think that the concerns about election denial were being overblown with the do you believe the polls or am I totally off base there and should see this as a warning sign?
00:29:59.160I think there's definitely greater sensitivity to these narratives given January 6 and just how we saw that, how that kind of evolved and spiraled out of control. So I think you're right about that to an extent, but I guess we also have a reason to be sensitive to that, given what happened.
00:30:19.320I mean, that said, I mean, yeah, you're right. I mean, people should not necessarily take polls
00:30:25.640as gospel. I don't even think any pollster would say that they are, you know, capturing objective
00:30:31.160reality. I mean, it's probably, as you said, like a snapshot, a best guess at where the public
00:30:37.500stands. And I mean, we could get into this whole conversation about methodology and do people
00:30:44.040actually answer the phone versus uh who's who is who's filling out these online polls and things
00:30:49.720like that so i mean yeah i guess there's a kernel of truth there in that sense and you know you
00:30:55.340could have uh you could have a good faith debate about polls or a good faith conversation about
00:31:02.460polls uh the thing about this group is that they were showing up to these they showed up to a
00:31:07.900peer poly of rally in there's about a dozen of them and they're wearing matching sweaters
00:31:13.900matching hats they have a giant banner that just says do you believe the polls uh so it looks very
00:31:19.820fishy uh i can see like organized yeah exactly yeah um so i think that's part of what caused
00:31:28.440people to to kind of scratch their heads and wonder what's going on here yeah totally okay i feel like
00:31:34.340i'm running through a bit of a greatest hits of all of the scoops that you broke into this election
00:31:37.940campaign but you just you have done a lot so you know maybe be a bit of a shittier reporter and i
00:31:43.240wouldn't have to jump through so many different stories. But another big story that you broke
00:31:47.700was about Conservative candidate Andrew Lawton, and that he was involved in a Freedom Convoy
00:31:53.420group chat. I mean, before I ask you a question related to that, could you maybe just break down
00:31:59.220the highlights of this story for any listeners who might have missed it? Sure. So after the
00:32:06.360Freedom Convoy, there was the Emergencies Act Inquiry in October of 2022. And so the Freedom
00:32:13.680Convoy was represented by a couple of lawyers who were affiliated with this organization called the
00:32:18.780Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, one of whom is a lawyer by the name of Eva Cipiuk.
00:32:25.620So what happened was Eva Cipiuk, the lawyer who representing the Freedom Convoy leaders at the
00:32:31.460Emergency Act Inquiry, created a group chat on Signal. Signal is an encrypted messaging app.
00:32:39.800It's kind of like WhatsApp, but maybe more secure. People may have heard about it.
00:32:43.040It's the one Pete Hegseth shared the war plans on, right?
00:33:22.240There's this person named Bethan Nodwell, who—this is a whole history.
00:33:26.120I won't get into it here, but, you know, so very far right activist from her has links with it online about white supremacy.
00:33:34.200That's right. And has links with figures from the European far right, from the alternative for Deutschland and this Dutch people involved with the pretty far right Dutch party, too.
00:33:43.920And then there were also – the main number of people in this group chat were people associated with right-wing media outlets such as Rebel Media, Western Standard, True North, as well as these kind of far-right influencers and live streamers and people who – even people who are just like Twitter accounts essentially.
00:34:08.200So that was what was – that was basically who was in this group chat.
00:34:12.500yeah and and andrew lawton i i you posted some screenshots of him uh you know someone would say
00:34:19.620oh this should be posted and he would say like on it is that a correct characterization yeah so
00:34:26.180what was happening in this group chat is it was part of their it appears to be basically part of
00:34:31.060this um like public relations strategy where they brought in all the influencers and media
00:34:37.300personalities. And then they were giving them suggestions on what to say on Twitter or what to
00:34:43.560report on their, you know, on their websites. And that was an example where, so Eva Cipiuk,1.00
00:34:50.280the lawyer, basically was asking someone to grab a clip from the Emergencies Act inquiry1.00
00:34:55.700and then offered some suggestions on what to say exactly about the clip. So Andrew Lawton says on
00:35:02.620it and then 15 minutes later on the on on twitter andrew lawton posts this video clip with the true
00:35:08.700north um logo on the actual video um and he says here you go eva and then eva says thank you sir
00:35:16.180so you can sort of see this coordination between the convoy uh lawyers and convoy leaders and these
00:35:23.840sort of media personalities and it is significant because i don't know that i don't know that people
00:35:29.100who are just casually scrolling through Twitter realize how organized the messages are that
00:35:34.740they're seeing, especially from these kind of convoy groups and these far right figures.
00:35:40.520And what we see here is that at least in one case, all these people are in a big group
00:35:45.280chat and they're all brainstorming ideas and giving each other directions on what to
00:36:44.160i think in this case this was a very um i mean this was a pretty deeply investigated story um
00:36:52.640and in some cases you know other outlets might not have access to the source materials
00:36:56.380and they might not have luke said he's really good at his job
00:37:00.160and as we know yeah sorry go ahead and as we both know rachel many of these larger
00:37:08.140media outlets don't have the bandwidth to do anything it seems like nowadays so you know I
00:37:16.400think that is part of it and I mean I guess in fairness or to be charitable to some of these
00:37:21.760bigger outlets they don't have the same resources that they once did so in some cases they might
00:37:26.700just be looking for an easy story to write and if it requires them spending a day or two digging
00:37:31.440into it they just don't like literally don't have the bandwidth you know in other cases you know I
00:37:37.220think there is a tendency to, you know, I guess there's sort of like this access journalism that
00:37:43.360a lot of the, you know, press gallery type reporters kind of engage in. And I think in
00:37:48.060those cases, they aren't doing maybe, you know, they aren't doing sort of deep research or
00:37:54.120investigations into things. To them, they're just sort of asking questions to party officials or to
00:37:59.100the leaders at scrums or press conferences. And so I guess maybe it just doesn't lend itself
00:38:07.200to the to those kinds of that kind of reporting i suppose yeah it does feel like we're kind of
00:38:13.440entering and and have been for a while entering a different era for journalism and as a result
00:38:21.340election coverage um like we've seen federal leaders do interviews with podcasters over
00:38:27.160mainstream outlets for example like on the fringier side we saw um also right-wing grifters
00:38:33.100disrupt media access at the debates. The Brantford boomer meme thing was the result of people who
00:38:42.660claim to be journalists posting decontextualized images online. And I kind of have three questions
00:38:49.480in one here. So maybe I'll just start with the first one. But actually, you know, I'll just
00:38:53.700throw them all at you and you can just play with it however you want, because they do feel like
00:38:57.420interrelated. I'm curious about what like what you make of this shift in our information ecosystem,
00:39:02.020system as well as how Canadians should navigate it and the responsibilities that politicians have
00:39:08.000within it I think it's good and bad um so I okay there's many ways you can answer this question
00:39:17.600I think let's start with being the nicest we can to the politicians I think that they
00:39:23.000like the idea that they can have kind of a uh I don't want to say a safe space but you know a
00:39:29.300space that isn't super a space that isn't super critical where they can just talk at length and
00:39:35.920don't have to worry about getting ambushed necessarily uh so that voters can get a sense
00:39:40.820of who they are and i think in some cases that can be valuable i mean i think we saw in the um
00:39:47.860in the u.s election uh like kamala harris went on um remind me about which podcast it was i
00:39:56.320there was oh do you know the podcast i'm thinking of i'm drawing a blank i actually listened to it
00:40:03.140but i can't remember oh i don't remember call me daddy is that what oh yes she did uh call her
00:40:09.140daddy call her daddy that's right yes um so yeah she went on on that podcast and i mean i guess
00:40:15.340that's an opportunity to reach certain audiences that might not normally um might not normally uh
00:40:24.540you know, be watching, I mean, they're not watching CNN, they're not watching Fox News
00:40:29.580necessarily. So you're reaching new audiences. I think they like that idea about it. And maybe
00:40:33.800there is some merit to it from that perspective. The flip side of that is they might not be facing
00:40:39.220critical questions. They might be given an opportunity to say things that are demonstrably
00:40:44.480false and no one's going to challenge them on it. And yeah, so I mean, I think it can be a bit of a
00:40:51.840a double-edged sword, I suppose. But yeah, I mean, the thing is, I think political campaigns
00:40:58.080are always looking for the next big thing, the next big medium that's going to reach all these
00:41:04.740younger Gen Z audiences or reach new audiences that they didn't connect with before. And I think
00:41:12.340that's kind of part of what's happening here. And it seems to me like every two or three years,
00:41:16.320there's a new hot new thing that's kind of on the scene like it's like it's tick tock one day
00:41:22.320before that i mean it was like facebook and twitter and now those things are kind of considered
00:41:26.460yeah i mean now it's almost legacy media at this point well except meta's not letting them show up
00:41:34.400there you know that's right that's right yeah yeah um so so yeah that's i think that's kind of
00:41:43.060what's what's going on with that and it's a double a sword a hundred percent um okay i have
00:41:49.200been a little greedy with your time here but i did have one last question i wanted to ask you
00:41:54.280which is was there anything you know you've been doing this for a while was there anything in this
00:41:59.880election campaign that you learned that surprised you oh my goodness um if not that's okay if you
00:42:07.940know everything that's fine what has surprised me about this election i think the biggest surprise
00:42:15.620for me is how pierre pauliev has completely blown his lead and now appears to be potentially uh he
00:42:23.460might lose his own riding according to the globe mail this morning um it's really really interesting
00:42:30.020i mean i i i will say i'm not surprised because i do know that politics uh is so unpredictable
00:42:36.500And no one should ever take, I mean, I guess to go back to the question of do you believe the polls, no one should ever, you know, fully believe that what's happening one day couldn't change the next.
00:42:47.180And I guess the takeaway is just to remember that, you know, world events, there can be external events that will just shake everything up and completely change the landscape.
00:42:58.720And that is kind of the way politics works, right?
00:43:03.240I mean, it's, you never know what's going to happen from one day to the next and things can completely change from week to week.
00:43:09.880Actually, to go back to 2015, which was the first federal election that I covered, that one was really interesting because it started off, it was actually the longest election ever because Stephen Harper decided to call it like a three-month election for some reason.