David Coletto: The Liberal Party’s base may now be just 7 percent of Canadians. A hard look at the numbers - "For decades, the Liberal Party of Canada has been described as Canada’s “natural governing party.” It’s a centrist party in a country that’s rarely, if ever, been governed from the extremes. But over the past year, the Liberal vote share has fallen off a cliff. Our latest Abacus Data survey, released yesterday, has the Liberals 22 points behind the Conservatives nationally and even trailing the NDP by three points outside of Quebec. This has left many asking: where’s the bottom? Centrism in global politics is a rarity, and it’s even rarer for a centrist party to dominate as long as the Liberal Party of Canada has. Duverger’s Law, a staple in political science theory, posits that electoral systems with single-member districts (like Canada’s) tend to support two-party systems because voters coalesce around two dominant options. Most democracies with majoritarian systems, such as the United States or the United Kingdom, follow this rule. In Canada, however, the political landscape defies this expectation. The Liberal Party has managed to hold the centre of the political spectrum for much of its history, and this dominance—often bolstered by its control of Quebec—has contributed to its success. While other democracies have experienced sharp ideological cleavages, particularly along class lines, Canada’s political divisions have been shaped by linguistic, religious, and cultural questions, particularly between Quebec and the rest of the country. The Liberal Party found itself occupying a federalist, pro-Quebec stance in the province while presenting itself as a moderate, centrist party to the rest of Canada. This dual positioning has allowed the Liberals to avoid the traditional Left-Right polarization, but it’s created volatility in its voter base. Quebec’s support, while essential, has often been fluid, and when the province has swung away from the Liberals, the party has found itself vulnerable, as seen in elections like 1984 and 2011... What was once a broad tent of voters from various demographics and regions now appears increasingly concentrated and fragile, with the party struggling to hold onto even many Canadians who continue to self-identify as Liberal. To understand what the “bottom” looks like, we have to understand the Liberal base. The core group of Canadians who vote Liberal no matter what... Today, 24 percent of Canadians identify as Liberal. In comparison, 37 percent identify as Conservative and 14 percent identify as New Democrat. But just because someone is a Liberal “identifier” doesn’t mean they will always be a Liberal voter. Case in point: about one in three Liberal identifiers in Canada today are not committed to voting Liberal right now... When we distill this further, the core base—the people who say they identify as Liberal and would only consider voting Liberal—represents just 7 percent of the electorate. For context, the Conservative base is nearly three times that size, at 20 percent, while the NDP base is under half the size at 3 percent. And this is an important insight: the Liberal base in 2024 is no larger than it was in 2015. This is despite nine years of governance and three election victories. Over that period, the base of the party has stayed static. In contrast, the Conservative base grew from 13 percent in 2015 (arguably a low point for the party) to 20 percent today... Today, the Liberal base is predominantly older—47 percent are over the age of 60, with only 13 percent under 30. This is surprising given the energy among young people the party created in 2015, where we saw a surge in young Liberal voters. A newly sworn-in Prime Minister Trudeau even appointed himself minister of youth. The party has since failed to establish a long-term, deep relationship with Canadian millennials and generation Z... The Liberals’ presence in Western Canada, particularly in Alberta and Saskatchewan, is virtually non-existent. The urban-rural divide is also stark. Fifty-five percent of the Liberal base lives in urban communities, while only the rest is split between suburban and rural communities. This urban concentration is far higher than the general population, emphasizing the party’s disconnect from especially suburban Canada. The Liberal base remains, as you’d expect, loyal to Trudeau, with 79 percent holding a positive impression of him, including 34 percent who are very positive. For comparison, only 4 percent of all other Canadians share this view... the party’s floor is now extremely low, and so is its ceiling. With only 7 percent of the electorate forming the core base, the Liberals are vulnerable to a collapse like the one they experienced in 2011... the Liberal base lacks any strong demographic markers beyond being older than the general population. In contrast, the Conservative base is more distinctly defined: it’s more male, more rural, with a high proportion of homeowners, and includes a significant number of people working in trades, natural resources, or manufacturing sectors. There’s a clearer cultural and socio-economic alignment within the Conservative base. On the other hand, the Liberal base is more diffuse and harder to pin down. It doesn’t exhibit the same degree of demographic or occupational coherence. Instead, its defining characteristic seems to be its connection to the party itself or the party leader, without a clear or consistent identity rooted in shared experiences or values... Political science literature, such as Duverger’s Law, suggests that centrist parties often struggle to sustain themselves in electoral or party systems that favour a Left-Right divide. In the U.K., the Liberal Party was overtaken by Labour as class became the primary political cleavage and the franchise was expanded. In Canada, linguistic and federalist-separatist divides have traditionally defined politics, allowing the Liberal Party to thrive. But today, those divides are less salient, and the Liberals find themselves without a clear constituency to rely on. Michael Ignatieff, the former Liberal leader who oversaw the party’s disastrous 2011 result (the worst in its 157-year history), recently gave an interview with Bloomberg, where he pointed out that centrist politics today struggles because it lacks a clear identity. He could have been speaking directly to his former party. Instead of rebuilding a political base on shared values or interests, the Liberal Party rebuilt itself around the personal brand of Trudeau. That brand worked in 2015, but it’s fading fast."
Teachers who organized 'field trip' to anti-Israel protest double down - "The Bloc Québécois has officially laid out the conditions under which it will prop up the Trudeau government: Pass Bill C-319, which would raise pensions for seniors aged 65 to 74 by 10 per cent. Pass Bill C-282, which would prevent the federal government from ever negotiating trade deals that compromise Canada’s protectionist policies regarding its dairy industry.
The conditions are not cheap. The pension hike alone would cost an estimated $16 billion, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. And that would be on top of the $15 billion per year in extra spending that the NDP demanded as a condition of its support for the Trudeau government. Although the NDP has since withdrawn their support, the programs they demanded (such as dental care) are all entrenched and continue to draw on the federal budget. The cost of the Bloc demands just happen to add up to about the same amount as the revenue expected from the Trudeau government’s controversial hike to the capital gains tax."
ISED on X - "Congratulations to Nancy Déziel, the new Chair of the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s Board of Directors! Learn more about the CFI and her appointment:"
G.M. Forbes on X - "The Trudeau Liberals just put the leader of the Bloc Quebecois wife in charge of a federal government program handing out billions of taxpayer's $ in research grants."
Liberal collapse accelerates: Abacus Data - CPC 43 / Lib 21 / NDP 19 : r/canadian - "This looks a lot like the 1984 polls and results, which was the second largest majority win in Canadian history. The bloc and greens eat into this a bit, so the numbers are different, but the point leads are similar. If the election was held now, you can bet we'd be looking at a CPC supermajority."
"Voting out the first Trudeau s policies. History does repeat itself."
"Atleast his dad was self-reflective and logical enough to quit a year before the election and give the party a chance to prove itself."
"a narcissistic psychopath like justin trudeau will never resign on his own.. you know it, i know it, everybody knows."
Your man on the inside on X - "People don’t realize that Canada is about to witness the first election in postwar Western Liberal democracy in which young people vote en masse to the Right of old people. This is absolutely unprecedented. Can’t imagine a more damning indictment of the country’s elites."
Neil Sharma: Liberals big government has left Canadians struggling for the basics - "The federal Liberals are proving that big government does indeed impoverish the populations they govern. Canada’s in the throes of a seemingly endless cost of living crisis, and while it’s doubtless a consequence of federal policies like mass immigration and the increasingly punitive carbon tax, the country’s over-inflated civil service is an outsized factor. Since Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were elected in 2015, the federal public sector has swelled by 42 per cent to nearly 370,000 employees. But because the government doesn’t produce revenue for the economy, bureaucrats are remunerated in taxpayer dollars and freshly printed money. In 2014, the prime minister infamously claimed “the budget will balance itself,” but his government’s reckless spending has maintained upward pressure on inflation — which Statistics Canada says surged by over 19 per cent between 2015 and 2022. During this period, 31 per cent more executive-level bureaucrats were hired, and their total compensation surged by 42 per cent from $1.4 billion to $1.9 billion, with their average salaries growing from $193,600 to $208,480. The government confoundingly hired 635 new public executives between 2020 and 2021, when it shut down the economy because of COVID-19. At the same time, billions were printed for income subsidies that were often excessive or poorly targeted. In total, the Fraser Institute estimates that “COVID fiscal waste” will accumulate to $110 billion by 2032. Moreover, the auditor general found in 2022 that $4.6 billion in Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and other payments went to ineligible recipients (dead Canadians, prisoners and children), and $27.4 billion was deemed worthy of a government investigation. Another $9.9 billion in COVID subsidies was linked to more than 51,000 ineligible employers. The federal government’s deficit per employed Canadian was $1,246 before 2015, but it’s since nearly tripled to $3,482. It’s worth noting the post-2015 deficit per employed person would be much higher without Canada’s recent population boom, prompting the question: are the feds bloating the population through immigration, even though it’s immiserating Canadians, because they’ve lost control of the deficit? Whether through scandals like ArriveCan or generally pointless transfers, Liberals overspend with predictable results... Outside of real estate and construction, investment in Canada’s economy has dropped and, therefore, flatlined wages. Canada’s deindustrialization has been especially acute in the energy, mining and manufacturing sectors, with the latter’s contribution to Canada’s economy halving since 2000. Those private sector productivity shortfalls have adversely affected the country’s GDP and stripped Canadians’ earning potential. But you wouldn’t know it looking at unemployment figures — and that’s because the government is juking the numbers by growing both the civil service and the country’s fleet of food delivery couriers, who are typically desperate newcomers. And in contrast to the former, the latter live in abject poverty like most of their new compatriots."
The Trudeau government should stay in its lane - "The experience of the mid-1990s through to roughly 2015 shows the tangible benefits of having each level of government focus on its areas of responsibility. Recall that the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien fundamentally removed itself from several areas of provincial jurisdiction, particularly welfare and social services, in its historic 1995 budget. But the election of the Trudeau government in 2015 brought a marked change in approach. Its tax and spending policies, which broke a 20-year consensus, favoured ever-increasing spending, higher taxes and much higher levels of borrowing. Federal spending (excluding interest payments on debt) has increased 76.7 per cent — from $273.6 billion in 2015-16 when Trudeau took office to an expected $483.6 billion this year. Federal taxes on most Canadians, including the middle class, have also increased despite the government having promised lower taxes. And even with the tax increases, borrowing has also increased. Consequently, the national debt has almost doubled: ballooning from $1.1 trillion when Trudeau took office to an estimated $2.1 trillion this year. Despite these massive spending increases, there are serious questions about core areas of federal responsibility. Consider, for example, the major problems with Canada’s defence spending... although the Trudeau government has increased federal spending markedly, it has not spent those funds on core areas of federal responsibility. Instead, Ottawa has increasingly involved itself in provincial areas of responsibility. Consider three new national initiatives that are all squarely in provincial areas of responsibility: pharmacare, $10-a-day daycare and dental care... while the Trudeau government has deprioritized core areas of federal responsibility, such as defence, it has increasingly intruded on areas of provincial responsibility. Canada works best when provincial and federal governments recognize and adhere to their roles within Confederation — as was the norm for more than two decades. The Trudeau government’s intrusion into provincial jurisdiction has increased tensions with the provinces, created what very likely are unsustainable new programs that will ultimately put enormous financial pressure on the provinces, and led to a less well-functioning federal government"
Federal Liberals support cratering in cities: Poll - "Angus Reid’s Shachi Kurl told the Toronto Sun the numbers represent a foundational change in Canadian politics from previous elections, when cities were largely considered untouchable Liberal strongholds. “The Harper Conservatives gave up at that point and acknowledged and recognized that the downtown cores were never going to be there for their party, and their path to victory was to get those vote-rich suburbs, which they were able to convert to their party,” she said. “This time, you look at the way the Poilievre Conservatives are competitive and even leading in those super-urban centres, that’s the big change and the big difference.”"
It’s time for Justin Trudeau to walk away - "Trudeau is more confident than anyone I have ever met... That extraordinary confidence is what allowed Trudeau to rebuild the Liberals and win three elections. Now that same confidence may destroy the party he controls. The country is done with Justin Trudeau and he can’t, or won’t, recognize it. He seems as confident today as he was when he climbed into the ring with Patrick Brazeau. If Trudeau is not getting the message, it is because he is not listening. Voters are telling him plainly that it is time for him to go. Three days after the House rose for the summer, there was a byelection in Toronto-St. Paul’s, safe real estate for the Liberals since 1993. The party ran Chrystia Freeland’s former chief of staff, the energetic and articulate Leslie Church, and the Tories ran Bay Street guy Don Stewart, the sort of low-profile cannon fodder they usually put up in no-hope Toronto seats, someone with good manners who won’t get the party in trouble. But the Liberals had to glumly watch Monday — on the first day back in Parliament — as the Conservatives applauded and Pierre Poilievre, grinning like a Cheshire Cat, marched Stewart into the House to take his seat... most voters want him to go — only 14 per cent think Trudeau deserves to be re-elected... Over the summer, Trudeau called his MPs to ask about the dire situation the party is facing. After they got over the surprise — Trudeau normally ignores them — many told him he should go. “He said the same thing to them all,” a Liberal told me. “Thanks very much, but I disagree.” When I was researching my book on Trudeau, I spoke to many people who know him well — friends, colleagues, former ministers and staffers. None of them told me he has ever privately expressed any ambivalence about running in the next election... This is how our system works. It has been nine years since Trudeau came to power and you do not have to be a conservative to think that it is time for a Conservative government. Public debt is up. Productivity is down. A rapid, poorly planned influx of temporary foreign workers and international students has contributed to a housing crisis that is making life miserable for too many people, including those temporary residents themselves. Trudeau’s unpopularity is limiting his ability to fix all of those problems. To do anything useful in Parliament or with other levels of government, he has to work with others, and no one — premiers, mayors, other party leaders — wants to risk getting tarnished by proximity to Justin Trudeau right now... When I was working on my book on Trudeau, several former ministers and senior staffers told me that they believe he is narcissistic, that he sees politics chiefly as an opportunity for people to enjoy Justin Trudeau. One told me he had “gotten to a place now where he actually believes what he’s doing is good for the country, irrespective of anything else, which I think is hugely scary and problematic.” I am not sure that is fair, because I think he has a sense of the country that he has worked hard to protect — with mixed results, but with diligence and sincerity. He will destroy that legacy if he drives his party into historic defeat. If Trudeau leads the Liberals into the next election, he will be putting his own self regard ahead of his love of country. I think he is smart enough not to be that guy. I believe he will announce his departure before long. If he doesn’t, the verdict of history will be harsh."
There are no more safe spaces for Trudeau’s Liberals - "All political parties eventually lose power, but they usually maintain their safe ridings. This outcome is a testament to just how unhappy voters are with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s leadership, which is trailing 20 points in the polls. The Liberal government is seen as widely out of touch, and obsessed with boutique identity issues, as the country faces multiple overlapping problems, including soaring housing prices, inflation, crime and disorder, and a stuttering economy. Voters have had it, and although Trudeau has said he will stay on as leader, until an election scheduled for next fall (if a vote isn’t forced earlier) the calls for him to resign will only grow louder now. The Liberal loss in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, as well as June’s loss in Toronto—Saint Paul’s, another stronghold, suggests that support for the Trudeau government has not simply waned, it has evaporated. Voters in these ridings are refusing to be thought of as “safe.” Both byelections had dozens of protest candidates, with Monday’s ballots featuring 91 names, 79 of which ran to protest Trudeau’s 2015 broken promise of electoral reform. There are simply no more safe spaces for Trudeau’s Liberals. No ridings are “safe” from the effects of poor leadership and a riding’s “safeness” should never be presumed. Former NDP leader Thomas Mulcair learned this lesson in 2015, when he made the mistake of assuming that the seats his party won during the “Orange Wave” of 2011 would be held in 2015. Rather infamously, he’s quoted as saying, “The NDP only needs 35 more seats to defeat Stephen Harper, the Liberals need at least 100 more to do that.” As a result, the NDP lost 43 of the 59 the seats they previously gained in Quebec. In response, the party ousted Mulcair, their strongest debater and most qualified MP, from leadership. The lesson — never assume Quebec, or any riding, is yours. Montreal ridings are typically a Liberal candidate’s to lose, and they rarely do. Montreal is Trudeau’s home. Its airport is named after his dad. His family legacy, or what’s left of it, resides there. These are the most stubbornly Liberal-friendly ridings in the country. If you were to ask people why they vote Liberal, they probably couldn’t answer. They just do. These are the ridings and votes the Liberal party have historically been able to rely on the most. But the winds are changing and Trudeau knows it. Perhaps that’s why Trudeau took drastic and desperate actions in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun to ensure his pick, Laura Palestini, would be the Liberal candidate for this byelection to, I assume, make him feel safe, although it is unclear why she was the pick. Palestini’s post began with a scandal. Although she was elected to Montreal City Council for the same area she hoped to represent federally, Trudeau did not appear to trust that Palestini would be the riding’s first choice if other candidates had been given the chance to compete for the nomination. And so, there were no open nominations. Palestini was hand-picked and Trudeau-appointed. So much for representative democracy. Would-be-candidates in the riding,had already done the work of knocking on doors and signing up new members, only to find they wouldn’t be given a chance to run. Reportedly, they were “shocked” by Trudeau’s undemocratic move of bypassing the nomination process. They shouldn’t have been. This is a man who has turned the government of Canada, not just the Liberal party, into a vehicle for his own ego, tossing allies overboard whenever it suits him."
Justin Trudeau under pressure as his party loses Montreal election - "Canada’s ruling Liberal party has lost a once-safe seat in Montreal, a result that is likely to put more pressure on the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to quit. Elections Canada said that with 100% of the votes counted in the parliamentary constituency of LaSalle-Émard-Verdun, the separatist Bloc Québécois candidate, Louis-Philippe Sauvé, had beaten the Liberal candidate, Laura Palestini, by a whisker: 28% to 27.2%. The New Democratic party (NDP) candidate received 26.1%... Trudeau insists he will lead the party into an election that must be held by the end of October 2025, but some Liberal legislators have broken ranks to call for change at the top... A Leger poll last week put public support for the Conservatives at 45%, a level rarely seen nationally in Canada, with the Liberals in second place at 25%."
Trudeau says 'all sorts of reflections' for Liberals after loss of second stronghold - "It is the second time in three months that Trudeau's party lost a stronghold in a byelection. In June, the Conservatives narrowly defeated the Liberals in Toronto-St. Paul's. The Liberals won every seat in Toronto and almost every seat on the Island of Montreal in the last election, and losing a seat in both places has laid bare just how low the party has fallen in the polls. Ahead of the weekly cabinet meeting in Ottawa, Trudeau's ministers put on brave faces and insisted they still support the prime minister, even as many acknowledged the tough climb ahead... The NDP did hold on to a seat in Winnipeg in a tight race with the Conservatives, but the results in Elmwood-Transcona Monday were far tighter than in the last several elections. NDP candidate Leila Dance defeated Conservative Colin Reynolds by about 1,200 votes. Singh called it a "big victory.""
No reflections for Trudeau, of course
Andrew Coyne 🇺🇦🇮🇱 on X - "With 29 per cent of the vote counted in Elmwood-Transcona, the Liberal candidate has 4 per cent of the vote. Anyone know the record for the lowest share of the vote by a candidate for the governing party in a byelection?"
Justin Trudeau dropped the ball on national security - "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused “agents of the Government of India” of murdering Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C. New Delhi denied any responsibility and said that Canada had refused to extradite Nijjar, even after Interpol issued two red notices. “He (Nijjar) had over a dozen criminal cases of murder and other terrorist activities against him in India. The details of the cases were shared with the Canadian authorities, but no action was taken except putting him on a no-fly list,” an Indian official told the Economic Times. On Sept. 21, the Hindustan Times reported that, “Overall, there are 21 key gangsters based in Canada who are wanted by Indian agencies and their list and detailed evidence against them has been shared with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) on more than one occasion in the past year.” The Indian media has questioned the fact that the man propping up Trudeau’s government, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, has been sympathetic toward Sikh separatism, and accused him of pulling the strings on the India file... In 2013, India denied entry to Singh (a member of Parliament whose parents immigrated to Canada from India), after he criticized New Delhi’s crackdown on Sikhs following Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination by Sikh bodyguards in 1984. Canada’s immigration policies, on the other hand, have not been so strict. Last year, deportation orders were issued for 700 student visa holders from India for using fraudulent university letters to obtain entry, but the orders were frozen by then-immigration minister Sean Fraser... The problem outlined here is not about India or Sikhs. It’s about incompetence. Last year, Bangladesh also attacked Canada for refusing to extradite Noor Chowdhury, who was convicted of assassinating former Bangladeshi president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. “Canada must not be a hub of all the murderers. The murderers can go to Canada and take shelter, and they can have a wonderful life while those they killed, their relatives are suffering,” then-Bangladeshi foreign minister AK Abdul Momen told India Today"
Blacklock's Reporter on X - "DOCUMENTS show @CSIS warned feds 163 times that Chinese agents were active, contradicting @JustinTrudeau claim as late as 2023 that he was never told since "it wasn't significant.""
Andy Lee on X - "CSIS is fed up. Good. “We asked what happened to that information, was it ever briefed up out of CSIS? It was not. CSIS made the determination that it wasn't something that needed be raised to a higher level because it wasn't a significant enough concern.” - Trudeau, May 2023"
Protecting the 'traitors' - "As one CSIS report stated: “State actors are able to conduct (foreign interference) successfully in Canada because there are no consequences, either legal or political.”"
Ivison: Trudeau won’t be able to demonize Conservatives this time, says Erin O’Toole - ""I’ve never seen (the public) turn on someone to the degree that I have with this prime minister. I’m being respectful here. You may remember what the media dubbed Harper Derangement Syndrome in 2015, where I would encounter people that just wanted a change from Stephen Harper, couldn’t even explain it. They would just get upset…I’m meeting lifelong liberals, including from groups like the Ismaili community and others that Pierre Trudeau was seen as helping come to Canada, for whom the Trudeau family was almost mythic. Yet, they’ve said the entire family is tired of the prime minister and want him to move on. It’s really quite amazing how that has developed to the degree it has. And I don’t see him being able to change that by bringing doughnuts or getting into respectful conversations. “He’s pivoting, he’s going back on tour, but I can’t see him pulling this out of the hat. And I can’t see him really finding an issue that he’s going to be able to demonize the Conservatives with. I think he’s gone to that bag of tricks too many times and I think people just want change,” he said... O’Toole said he found Trudeau’s recruitment of former bank governor, Mark Carney, as the chair of new Liberal economic advisory committee to be “a very strange move.” “Mark Carney is a very accomplished individual. I have a lot of respect for him. Obviously, as Conservatives, we appointed him to head the Bank of Canada and then the Brits seized upon that (to become governor of the Bank of England). He is quite out of touch, though, with the needs of regular people. And I think sometimes that will happen when you’re in those sort of cocktail circuits around the world. He doesn’t realize the real impact of inflation (or) the cost of living… While he’s from Western Canada, I don’t think he realizes that the policies on energy and on pipelines that Mr. Trudeau has brought in, have not just been bad for our economy, they’ve been divisive for our country. And I think Mr. Carney has been a major advocate of many of those reforms. And whether it’s some of his global banking initiatives or ESG work, a lot of that stuff is tumbling down anyway because of global populism. So, I think he’s probably the least in touch with the average Canadian family in that room in Nanaimo. I’m not sure how he’s going to help the Liberals reconnect with Canadians who’ve lost faith in this government. But he’s certainly a name and they’re trying to bring in a flashy name to show they understand the economy, but the poll numbers indicate otherwise,” he said... One topic that may not have been in Poilievre’s election playbook, but which has created opportunities for him due to unforced Liberal errors, is the immigration file. The consensus for mass immigration is under pressure because the Liberals opened the floodgates to non-permanent residents, depressing wages, contributing to youth unemployment and exacerbating the housing crisis. Poilievre has promised to lower temporary immigration and bring it into line with housing construction. O’Toole said he has never seen a national consensus on any issue change so quickly. “I think it’s for a number of reasons: rising populism, economic uncertainty, but also the Liberals have mismanaged a program that generally was run very well. We had record numbers of new Canadians come when I was part of the Harper government and it had bipartisan support. But when you start accelerating dramatically temporary foreign workers and students, when there was quite frankly, ridiculous rhetoric, like you saw with the Century Initiative, saying we needed to reach a hundred million people in Canada, a lot of that was coming from the liberal consulting class."