Monday 7am Guest - Tasha Kheiriddin

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1:02Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lugeric's disease, Myastthenia, Gravis, or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit Botox Chronic Migraine.com, or call 1-800-44 Botox to learn more. This is the Toronto Today podcast. I'm your host, Greg Brady. If you love elections, you are going to love this month of October. Tonight is Quebec. BC has an election on the 24th. It might be really ill-timed and ill-planned out by the ruling NDP party. The Alberta referendum is sandwiched in there on the 19th. And we obviously vote in Ontario three weeks from tonight. Our next guest loves elections probably like I do, but she's actually in that Ontario municipal election, running for school board trustee in Ward seven Toronto St. Paul's. But I want to get a feel for her for what to expect in Quebec tonight.

2:03She is Tasha Carradon. It's great to have you back on the show. Oh, great to be here. Thanks, Greg. Do you have a let me be beyond your own nightly sweats? Do you have election fever? I have the fever for this. I look we're going to be watching an election. It feels like every three or four nights this month. Well, we are. Yes, well as a political junkie and of course a commentator and a writer. I have it's it's mana from heaven, right? It's like what my editor was what do you want to write about this week? Oh, an election doesn't election easy, easy. Yeah. So yeah. So tonight, like everybody might remember you and I would 31 years ago in the fall. There was a Quebec referendum vote and it was barely no let's stay in Canada from the Quebec population. And we thought that night probably in 1995. I'm out as a university student and I'm thinking, well, who knows we might have a lot of these until the answer is yes, but we haven't had one for 31 years tonight. Yeah. It's likely the party Quebec while we'll get elected. They have promised another provincial referendum is the only debate tonight.

3:05Tasha between whether they'll get a slim majority government or have a sizeable minority government. Uh, that is what pollsters are predicting. They're saying it's looking like minority right now. There are in the cusp of 30% so 29% in the last poll. But it's the challenges that they have for other parties in the field. And usually Quebec politics is a two horse race between the the PQ and the liberals. A few years ago, well, two elections ago, in fact, a party called the co-alice still have near Quebec broke that binary. They came through they formed government premier swaths well ago. We all remember he resigned earlier this year, but he was the, you know, the sort of pastor familiar. So I guess during the pandemic, he's most popular premier in the whole country, more than Doug Ford. And he led the province on a sort of what they call middle or third way between independence and and staying in Canada. And that third way has been, I say, completely rejected by the population right now.

4:09It's not an appetite for separation, but it's not an appetite for the sort of machine machine, what the cack, they called it represented. People want choices and they have a lot. They have a left wing party called Quebec, Solidare. That's pretty socialist, really hard core actually in some things. But you have a conservative party that wasn't there around either two elections ago led by a former radio host Eric DuM, which is promising, you know, very conservative ideas and a promise that hasn't all gone to them. And then they have the liberals that are, you know, this sort of came back, but not really under a new leader. Charles Mollard. And then they have the cack which they don't want under a new leader and the PQ, which they are opting for under a young leader, a Gen X leader who's positioning himself as like, you know, the next thing. So and the the premier there, I mean, you can always sort of read the T leaves and there's people that get put in positions. I'd argue John Turner was one in 1984 where he knows there's going to be a bit of a come-up in sin. He'll be Prime Minister for as long as he can be until that election and Brian

5:13Moroni just decimates him. I think we just saw Rishi Sunak suffer through that in the UK with the conservatives. So was it all Christine for shed is the current premier? Was it always going to go that way for her? Was she just taking on a sinking ship knowing that the reckoning was coming or were there things you saw another saw with the CAQ, the ruling party that with Lagos party that they could have salvaged at least something. They may get people are thinking they may go from 79 seats to zero tonight, which would be a massive story. Yeah, it really depend regional and local turnout really will decide this race to that's a whole other that a whole other conversation, but it's interesting because the tax started off. Yes, under her didn't get a huge bounce when she took over. And then the beginning of the election, what happened? Donald Trump said no deal, Canada. We're going to put more tariffs on you. And there she was by Marcarny side defending, you know, Quebec's interest within the country defending Canada. Boom, her popularity shot up and she was tied to the PQ at one point in the first week of the campaign.

6:13People thought maybe she was going to surf the co-tails of, you know, carny and also this desire for security in an insecure world. It didn't last and it started going down down and then the debates came. And that was the end of it in the debates. The whole I guess the whole paradigm shifted again. She tried to keep it from this on this Trump versus, you know, the versus Canada. It moved again to what you talked about separation versus saying in Canada and the PQ is not going to hold a referendum. Interestingly, until Trump leaves office, so they they trumped her Trump card, right? No, no, God. I'm going to do it. So that's what the wind out of the sales and they moved it. They'll dial back to this paradigm and she fell through the crack. Boom, that's incredible. I actually didn't know that because I knew they in their they had pledged in their first term. They made a very clear commitment. They'll have a referendum on sovereignty, but I guess they don't have to have it until the end of 28 because they're set there's set until fall of 2030, even when they win tonight.

7:14Yeah, that's exactly right. So the debate shifted in the real issues and this thing, there's, you know, Quebec, like Ontario, huge issues around healthcare and education, crumbling systems in healthcare that people are just doctors are fleeing the province based on some of the stuff the CAC did last time around too. So come self-inflicted wounds here. But then immigration is a huge piece of that became the dominant issue in the last weeks of campaign. Quebec wants to control its destiny quotes on quotes on immigration. They don't like what's happening in terms of impact on housing, but also in the French language issue that's very particular to Quebec, French language and culture, they say we have to protect it. The federal government will not do it argues the PQ. We got to separate for that reason to I got 45 seconds. Do you think there's a genuine appetite and Quebec to separate or do the Quebecers just like this government's domestic policy and what they'll do for the province? No, there's a separation is pulling at less than a third.

8:15And the irony here is the Quebecers will elect a provincial PQ government, even though they don't want to separate and they also don't think a vote on separation will succeed. So they're kind of saying, well, there's no risk here. We'll elect them. They won't succeed in a separation referendum, but we'll get some of the, we'll be able to strong arm Ottawa. I think that's the idea is like we will push back into Ottawa with a threat of separation to get what we want. That is fascinating. How the door has been for you through weeks from tonight. You could be the next TV SP trustee. I would love to be and the doors are great. I'm hearing from parents across the world going to schools in Ward seven. That's Toronto Center Uni Rosedale and also Toronto St. Paul's. And it's a, it's a good race. I've actually written to my opponents too. And you know, I think we are going to have like I said, it's just hard work. Greg's hard work to get to the parents and talk to them. That's what we're doing and hopefully we will succeed. Best of luck. I'm sure we'll chat in the next 21 days, Tasha. Thanks for the look into Quebec tonight.

9:15731. That's Tasha. Karen and joining us. Best selling an author national political column is running for to be a TDSP trustee. That'll be fascinating. Honestly, fasting television tonight. They're voting for a separate party in. They're not that sure they want to separate. It's, it's a weird dichotomy tonight with what likely will be the end result. Thanks for listening to the Toronto today podcast. We drop the highlights of the daily show every weekday morning. Don't forget you can hear the entire show on the radio at home on your smart speaker, ask Alexa or say, Hey Google play 640 Toronto or Toronto today. You can hear us on between 530 and 9 weekdays on 640 Toronto. Have a great day.