In the latest episode of The Line Podcast, recorded on March 6th, 2026, your hosts agree at the outset to avoid talking about Alberta for once, because Jen really needs a break. Fortunately, there was plenty else happening this week.
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They begin with a quick tour of the current geopolitical landscape and what it means for Canada. Much to Jen’s disappointment, it leaves the country in a position where our new prime minister is starting to sound a lot like our old one. Jen generously volunteers to head to Ottawa and fix the Carney government’s communications problems herself. Matt suggests the real issue is that the government communicates well only when it’s confident the public will like what it has to say. The moment it has to juggle competing domestic priorities — as happened recently with the India trip and the new war against Iran — the messaging turns muddled and incoherent. Matt ultimately agrees with Jen: she’d better get to Ottawa and sort it out.
From there, the hosts turn to Pierre Poilievre’s recent trip to Europe. Matt gives the effort some credit, even if it arrives a year or so late in terms of helping the Conservatives form a government. Jen is less charitable. She argues that Poilievre has already burned through several full personality reboots, and worries that each one seems suspiciously calibrated to whatever happens to be trending in right-wing social media echo chambers.
Finally, Matt and Jen have some fun with a column in The Globe and Mail and what they consider a wildly exaggerated response from the ambassador of the United States in Ottawa. The laughs give way to a more serious discussion about information echo chambers, and how ideas that sound outrageous to outsiders can be wildly popular — and profitable — within a loyal online tribe. That dynamic, they conclude, may be great for engagement metrics, but it’s a terrible way to run a civilization.
All that and more in the latest episode of The Line Podcast.
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