Poilievre's campaign against Alberta separation | The Big Story [15:11-20:19]

it doesn't seem to make sense or connect. Karnie's education, that's not a good, you don't want to be comparing resumes with Mark Karnie. There are other ways you can kind of dig in on him. That doesn't seem to be the right thing. And then on the recession. Okay, so the news comes out on a Friday, statistics cannot put this report up saying they've revised the growth figures, the GDP, for the last quarter of 2025, the last three months of 2025. And then also put out the numbers that just came in for the first quarter of 2026, which was an extremely, I think it was 0.25 growth. But when the way they calculate the statistics is they calculate them on an annualized basis. So if you do that on the annualized basis, we had a negative 1% growth last quarter of 2025 and a negative 0.1. So a tenth of a percentage point growth in the first quarter of it. So by some definitions, and this is controversial within the field of economics, the dull science as some people call, two consecutive quarters of negative growth is meets the definition of recession. So soon as that comes out, Paul Evgo's 100% full on attack mode. We are in a full blown recession is the word he used, even though everyone was speaking as responsibly as using the phrase technical recession because yes, it is, but most economists don't consider that to be, that us to be in anything like a true recession, which is usually matched by, you know, stronger prolonged periods of negative growth, usually with big job losses, whatever. Then last week, the CD How Institute, which is a, you know, a small-sea conservative think tank here in Ottawa, very well respected on issues of economics, they put out a report and they are considered to be kind of the arbiter of whether or not we are or are not in recession. They put out a report saying, no, we're not in recession, this is a recession for recession. You know, the negative growth has to be pervasive, you know, in an alliteration, you're pervasive prolonged and I forget what the other one was. But saying that it had to be, you know, it has to be substantial. You can't just say it's a, you know, statistical thing, fluke, and yes, and Paulie have been, but he had called for an emergency debate in the House Commons and the speaker who was liberal, said, no, this is, we're not going to have this. And then the CD How Report comes out and kind of takes the wind out of his sails on that. And there was also sort of the sense, I mean, I see a lot of this expressed online and I think the liberals were expressing this as well is that, you know, they were accusing Paulie have essentially a cheering for a recession. They wanted a recession because it would give him more ammunition politically to attack the prime minister. So, I mean, this is, you know, look at our economy is, you know, we are in a difficult situation here. We have kind of the global forces right now, the war in Iran, which is obviously having a really negative impact, Canadians are feeling it at the pumps every day. They go to fill up gasoline prices are much higher than they were this time last year. And of course, the trade situation with the United States is really, really sinking in. And I think it's, you know, for the first year of this, maybe Canada got through this okay. We had some government programs, multi-billion dollar aid packages to various, you know, steel, aluminum. The auto sector is still a worry, but we have seen some job losses in the auto sector. Aluminum seems to be going okay. Like, we're kind of exporting aluminum to other markets and maybe the hit isn't that bad from the tariffs. But clearly this is having an effect. And these economic numbers are very likely, I think, over the next six months to maybe continue to get a bit worse, but, you know, most governments say, you know, Polly, I might like to say we're in recession. Yeah, we aren't. I want to move to something that's even more recent. Polly have on the separatist sentiment. How has he been showing up for what's going on in regards to Alberta separatism? Yeah. And this speech out in Alberta this week on the issue of separatism. And this is a tough one for him to play, right? Because there is a suspicion that a lot of his support, especially in Alberta and that it kind of mirrors the U.C., the United Conservative Party of Daniel Smith's support in many ways that they're, they're efficient in the same tank often. And there is certainly a constituency within the U.C. VP Caucus and probably in the Alberta Federal Caucus that favors at least the question on the table. The way Polly Ebb seems to be dealing with this is rather than being kind of a camp in Canada here and trying to shoot this down as bad for Alberta, bad for the country, he is