Bullshit Bulletin, Week 5: Okay, okay, here's what Trump REALLY told us on the phone

Carney's self-serving bullshit, Poilievre's bullshit platform, Singh's bullshit excuse. And more!

It’s hard to believe that this will be the final bulletin of the campaign. A note of thanks to our readers, including the new ones who found us because of the bulletins — we love writing this, and we’re glad that you guys enjoyed them, too.

We’ve got lots of fresh bullshit to serve up in this edition. But first, remember the rules: When we say something is bullshit, we don’t mean partisan spin or things we just disagree with. We mean things that are either flatly untrue or torqued to the point where truth loses all meaning. We’ll also include room for conduct that may not fail a lie detector test but is, well, egregious bullshit.

We will also be partnering with our friends at Ipsos. Each week during the campaign, and for the week afterward, the polling and analysis team at Ipsos will be providing The Line with snapshots of their polling on the issues that are motivating the Canadian electorate.

The Bullshit Bulletin accepts submissions! Send anything you think qualifies to lineeditor@protonmail.com. We’re only doing one more after this, to wrap up the dying days, so get your submissions in for our final bulletin, which we’ll publish in a week, after the election.

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And now, the latest from the team at Ipsos.

Youth mental health in decline: Canadians much more likely to blame cost of living than international peers. ​

Whether young Canadians show up to vote or not, there is much at stake for them in this election, including their mental health. The cost of living, housing or employment challenges, and the overall state of the Canadian economy, are among multiple challenges young people face which are driving a decline in their mental health.​

Research by the Policy Institute at King’s College London and Ipsos Canada finds that 61 per cent of people in Canada blame the increased cost of living for a reported rise in youth mental health problems — far higher than the share of people in the U.K. (38 per cent) and Australia (41 per cent). It is young Canadians themselves who say this — Canadian Gen Z are most likely to say the cost of living is driving greater mental health problems among young people (69 per cent). By contrast, only around half of Gen Z in the U.K. (49 per cent) and Australia (51 per cent) select greater living costs as a factor. ​

Older generations, however, are more inclined to blame other factors. For example, Baby Boomers (37 per cent) are most likely to blame increased drug and alcohol use compared to Gen Z (24 per cent), while Gen X (62 per cent) most strongly attributes problems to social media usage.​

Canadians overall (37 per cent) are also more likely than those in the U.K. (29 per cent) and Australia (25 per cent) to say worse economic or employment prospects are behind the rise in youth mental-health issues. There are other factors ranging from the impact of social media to the use of drugs and alcohol that people see as contributing to the decline in youth mental health, but in Canada the weight of economic issues is clear. To access the full report, click here. ​

The hope that rallied young people to come out in force for Justin Trudeau in 2015 has turned to despair in 2025. Although all major parties are competing for the youth vote, getting their vote is a short-term political problem. ​

Longer term, the health of Canada and the mental health of young Canadians are linked. The next government should make addressing the financial well-being of young Canadians a top priority. Older generations have traditionally been supportive of youth initiatives, often noting “they represent the future of the country,” but if fiscal realities require governments to make generational trade-offs, this traditional support may be harder to rally. And if governments pursue policies that help older Canadians at the expense of younger Canadians, as they sometimes do, the next generation may feel short-changed again and see their mental well-being erode even further.

Click here to find out more about our ongoing measures of the health of Canadian society.

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We had some late-breaking bullshit on Thursday. It’s an interesting issue — there is, we admit, some nuance. But on balance, this more than passes our test for being bullshit. The offender? Liberal leader Mark Carney.

The issue is this: last month, Liberal leader Mark Carney, newly sworn in as prime minister, had a phone call with U.S. president Donald Trump. The call had been oddly delayed, a fact that was cause for some commentary and speculation. After the call, the Liberal leader said that it was cordial and productive and the leaders agreed to talk more later. All the usual stuff. But Carney also said this: “The president respected Canada’s sovereignty today both in his private and public comments.”

And that isn’t quite, you know, true.

The in-public part is true. The president’s comments on social media have referred to Carney as the prime minister, not the governor, and though he brought it up again this week, Trump has generally avoided talking about annexing Canada as a state since the election began.

But the in-private part wasn’t true. Radio-Canada reported on Thursday that Trump did indeed bring up annexing Canada during the call with Carney last month. Asked about this, repeatedly, at a public event on Thursday, Carney tried to bob and weave, but eventually admitted that the president had discussed statehood for Canada.

Two comments. A little one and a big one. The little one is that, whoo boy, Carney’s inexperience shows. A lot of politicians — most politicians — try to avoid directly answering uncomfortable questions. That’s bad! But some of them eventually develop some natural talent for the evasion. Carney hasn’t. We don’t know if we find that awkward or perversely endearing, but it’s … notable.

The bigger issue, though, is that Carney bullshitted the Canadian people. And in a pretty blatant way and for a pretty obvious reason. By portraying his call with Trump as meaningfully different from the ones the president had had with Trudeau, Carney was offering himself as an upgrade — the president might think he can get away with that sort of thing with my predecessor, but Mark Carney ain’t having it.

Except, well. That’s not true. The president brought it up, and Carney told the Canadian people otherwise.

It’s late in the race. We don’t think this will end up mattering. But we think it should. This was a pretty egregious serving of bullshit on a matter — perhaps the matter — of great importance in this election, and Carney bullshitted the voters to make himself look better.

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The Line hasn’t commented much on the party platforms. We wish people cared about platforms, but in general, they don’t. And we try to live in the real world, not one we’d prefer. To the extent we’ll offer any comment on the platforms, stay tuned for a column by Jen Gerson, which will be published shortly.

But we’d like to call bullshit — a strong and passionate bullshit, in fact — about something related to the CPC platform. Your Line editors have been reassured, over and over in recent years by many a Tory, that Poilievre is more than slogans. That he’s not just all about verbing the noun. That the party was making a strategic choice to keep their powder dry, and would have binders full of detailed policies to announce when the time is right.

The time is right. We’re past that time, in fact. And, we can’t help but notice, this CPC platform is thin, thin gruel.

The insane thing is, The Line has been watching Poilievre long enough to know that he’s a smart guy. And, indeed, policy minded. The whole three-wold-slogan thing was a political veneer Poilievre put on because he thought it would be electorally effective. If the CPC wanted to come out with a bunch of policies, Poilievre would be able to select a bunch himself, and then defend them from criticisms. This is why we found it plausible when CPC insiders insisted that there were indeed reams of detailed policies coming.

We don’t believe it anymore. The CPC platform is barely a pamphlet. Its revenue projections are absurd. That’s some kind of bullshit, from a leader who could do better and from a party that promised better.

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This article, about a recent meeting between Singh and the Toronto Star editorial board, is just absolutely bonkers. Jagmeet. Our dude. We like you. We do. But this is some epic bullshit.

This passage, in particular:

The NDP leader stood by his decision not to plunge the country into an early election last fall while support for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals plummeted, telling the Star’s editorial board he “couldn’t stomach” the idea of causing Pierre Poilievre’s seizure of power, and that he made the choice to put Canada’s interests ahead of those of the New Democratic Party.

“While we could have won lots of seats, it would have meant a Pierre Poilievre majority Conservative government, and I could not stomach that,” Singh said, making the argument that an election would have jeopardized progress on pharmacare deals and dental care expansion. “I love my party. I care deeply about it. I want us to win. I want us to up our seats. I know we’re good for people. But in that moment, I made a decision for the interest of the country ahead of my party. And that was a decision I made wide-eyed, and I stand by that decision.”

Hmmm. Okay. So. Let’s take that at face value. If only for the sake of argument.

Singh realizes what the logical endpoint of that argument is, right? … right?! The story of this election, to the extent there is a single one, is that the NDP collapse made it impossible for the Conservatives to win. We have lots of criticisms of the CPC campaign; we’ve made some already and we’ll have more to say when it’s over. But we recognize the truth that without a strong NDP, even a perfect and flawless Conservative campaign was always going to be an uphill battle. It’s just a really difficult situation for the Conservatives to overcome.

And you know what Singh could do to make that a permanent state of affairs? Give up! Tank the NDP completely. Do a national tour asking everyone to vote Liberal. Defect and become a Liberal. Spend his post-politics career, which seems set to start sometime early next week, campaigning for a two-party system, under which the Liberals defeat the Conservatives over and over.

End the vote splitting by ending the NDP. That’s a case that many Liberals have made before. And fair enough. But it’s some kind of bullshit to see Singh himself making it, and we can’t imagine his NDP colleagues are particularly pleased to see their leader taking a position that the Liberals took years ago: that the best way for left-leaning voters to stop the Conservatives is to put the country first, and vote for them.

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A quick one, friends, and it’s one we wanted to include last week but chose to hold off. And we’re glad we did.

You might have seen a social media post in recent weeks claiming that federal correctional officials were coaching prisoners to vote Liberal. This exploded onto Twitter after Larry Brock, Conservative incumbent and candidate in Brantford-Brant South-Six Nations, tweeted photos of documents that appeared to prove this. His tweet was seen by countless thousands and widely shared — your Line editors were sent Brock’s tweet directly, more than once, by readers wanting to know our reaction.

The problem was, the documents were bogus. Fake. We had looked at them before last week’s Bullshit Bulletin and considered hitting Brock with a full blurb for spreading bullshit. What stayed our hand was the nagging feeling that Brock and his campaign might have genuinely screwed up and been duped.

It happens. It can happen to anyone. It already happened once this campaign, in a less mortifying way; Liberal candidate Evan Solomon, readers may recall from an earlier bulletin, tweeted a photo of what looked like the Liberal campaign bus. But the photo had been edited to include some, ahem, inappropriate language.

It’s worse with Brock. Solomon’s error related to a juvenile slur; Brock’s was literal fake information being spread for political purposes. But we still think it was an accident, not malicious, and we acknowledge that Brock’s campaign owned it and apologized: “We should have verified it more thoroughly. We became concerned about the authenticity of the document, and we removed it from all our social media channels. We sincerely apologize for any confusion this has caused.”

Okay! But gosh. Let’s do better next time, guys. There’s enough deliberate bullshit out there without us needing to make things worse by being sloppy and lazy. Verify, guys, before you accuse. That’s not too much to ask for.

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When a Liberal starts talking about abortion or guns, we at The Line know one of two things is happening: either the party is in trouble domestically, usually for an ethics-related bungle, or we’re near the end of an election campaign and the party is hitting the bottom of the barrel of talking points.

So it was this week, when Carney accused Poilievre of being a threat to abortion rights. The rationale? Well, because Poilievre would use the notwithstanding clause to restore back-to-back sentences for multiple murderers, clearly there would be no end to the abuses. Inevitably, obviously, Poilievre would similarly invoke the NWC to limit abortion rights as well.

Sigh.

This is a big old bowl of Cap’n Crunch bullshit.

Firstly, Poilievre has openly and clearly stated that he has no intention to govern on abortion. And, for what it’s worth, this really isn’t even much of a thing in Conservative circles anymore, and hasn’t been for years. There are absolutely committed social conservatives in this country, and they have a home in the Conservative party — but they are simply not a majority, and they are not dictating social policy in the broader movement. Nowadays, social conservatives tend to be more worried about demographic decline, supporting families, or defending things like faith-based conscience rights, than re-hashing very old, very played out, very losing arguments about abortion. It’s not to say that their views have changed on abortion, rather, it’s that this isn’t a live wire in the way that it once was.

Which is why Poilievre felt no need to be evasive about his pledge not to touch the issue.

Secondly, even hypothetically, Poilievre wouldn’t need to invoke the notwithstanding clause to pass legislation on abortion. Canada is one of the few countries in the world that effectively has no laws at all governing the matter. This does not mean Canada has unlimited abortion on demand, however. In practice, regulations around abortion are now handled by the professional guidelines laid out by the Canadian Medical Association. There really isn’t any reason to believe that an abortion law that tracked the CMA’s best practices couldn’t be considered constitutional. But as the CMA’s guidelines already govern the practice, there’s also no obvious reason to expend political capital to go here legislatively.

So all in all? Bullshit. And right-on-schedule bullshit, too.

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One other thing we will note, however, is that many secular commentators seem to believe there’s some kind of hypocrisy implicit in Mark Carney’s Catholicism. The Catholic Church being, rather famously, a socially conservative institution that opposes abortion and gay marriage.

We think a lot of that is rooted in unfamiliarity with actual Catholics, who, in reality, hold an ordinary range of opinions on matters of contraception, sex, and homosexuality. It may shock our resident atheists to know that the vast majority of Catholics — even devout Catholics — aren’t slavishly parroting the Vatican every Sunday. In case anyone had missed it, there is a notable absence of giant families crowding the pews nowadays. Further, the implicit assumption — that Catholics can’t serve two masters, the country and the Pope — is a very old form of anti-Catholic bigotry.

There’s nothing hypocritical or, frankly, even unusual about a Catholic political leader defending legal abortion rights in Canada. Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, Pierre Trudeau, Paul Martin — all Catholics. Although most observant Catholics would probably not obtain abortions themselves, and a good many would disapprove of abortion on moral and theological grounds, the question of whether abortion should be legal in a secular legal system is properly a matter of personal conscience, not church dictate. “Render unto Caesar” is a Biblical injunction, after all.

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Thanks, everyone. One more to come next week, after the ballots are counted.

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The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Please follow us on social media! Facebook x 2: On The Line Podcast here, and The Line Podcast here. Instagram. Also: TikTok. BlueSky. LinkedIn. Matt’s Twitter. The Line’s Twitter. Jen’s Twitter. Contact us by email: lineeditor@protonmail.com.