Gerald Butts

And the people who are in the weeds picking on what one floor crosser or another may have said on their social media six months ago or

can the Liberal Party sustain a rightward tilt here or a more centrist positioning there or whatever your pet issue is, are missing the point.

And I think he has very deep conviction that he needs to fashion a broader coalition to keep the country together through this challenge we're facing on an indeterminate amount of time.

So I think what he's trying to do is to fashion a national unity government under the aegis of the Liberal Party of Canada, which, you know, if you listen to his speech yesterday, it was very much about the country.

It wasn't it was a speech to liberals about what he's trying to do with the party and why.

And sorry, sorry, James, go ahead.

Yeah.

And if I could just follow up on that, Peter, you can always tell what politicians really think by what they repeatedly say.

Right.

I know that's very obvious, but it's amazing to me how many people overlook this.

So the prime minister had a friend of his of 30, 40 years write him this note after he won the election.

And he quoted it yesterday in the speech and he's quoted it publicly.

since the election.

And this man, Bob Zettel is his name, he wrote the prime minister saying, look, everybody's focused, I'm paraphrasing, everybody's focused on the immediate issue here, the threat of the Trump tariffs, which is the way it was described at the time.

But the real issue is what has always been the issue in Canada, and that is how do we foster a sense of national cohesion

uh, and stick together in the public interest and keep that in mind.

And I think that that encapsulated, uh, in a really, uh, compelling way for the prime minister and for a lot of the people around him, what the main challenges facing the country right now, it's sure.

Donald Trump, sure.

Tariffs, sure.

Whatever, uh, um, the world, uh, the, the,