Maclean talked to Gerald Butts, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s chief secretary, and a major architect in the 2015 and 2019 liberal campaigns two weeks prior to the federal election campaign, on what he believed the campaign had been running up to now. Butts’ insider-now-in-the-off insights proved valuable, so that is why we are here again – this time we are talking about the preparation of the debates, reviewing the performance of the leaders and how this campaign is now effectively done, except for a ground game.
It depends, the formula sometimes allows. The first discussion in federal government for which I have ever participated was the 2015 debate at Maclean, and that took place, and I recall it very vividly. Each leader could speak to a person in the intermission and I talked to the third party leader at that time, Justin Trudeau, saying, “You do amazing things, keep doing what you do.” You claim that the individuals who have prepared the person for the discussion are nervous about it, imagine being the person in the debate without a true understanding of what the people are reacting to.
