Craft Politics
Craft Politics
Podcast Description
Join Craft Politics, where politics meets business over a pint. Hosted by a former politician and a seasoned political staffer, this podcast translates world events into actionable insights for business leaders. With populism on the rise, understanding this intersection is more crucial than ever. Why beer? Because the best political discussions happen with a pint in hand. Joseph Lavoie and Andrew Percy bring decades of experience in politics and business, offering concise, targeted insights to help you navigate the political landscape. Cheers to making politics work for your business!
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast focuses on the intersection of politics and business, covering a range of topics such as polling dynamics, the Conservative movement in Canada, economic tariffs, and the influence of American politics on Canadian affairs. Episodes include in-depth discussions like the implications of Trump's tariffs on trade relations and insights into leadership changes within Canadian political parties.
Craft Politics is a cross-border political podcast, which sounds grander than it is. Mostly it’s two friends — Joseph Lavoie, a Canadian public affairs strategist who used to work in a Prime Minister’s Office, and Andrew Percy, a former UK Conservative MP — asking the experts who’d know the answer to one sharp political question. Canadian listeners get the UK context they’re missing. British listeners get a Canadian lens on their own politics. Everyone comes away slightly better informed.
Five weeks ago, Sean Speer was on the show to help us pick through what was left of the B.C. Conservatives after Kerry-Lynne Findlay quit. Two days later, David Eby called an election two years early. On Saturday the Conservatives won 63 of 93 seats, their first win in their own right since 1928, under an interim leader who has never sat in cabinet.
So we brought in Todd Stone, who has. Todd was B.C.’s transportation minister under Christy Clark and Kevin Falcon’s House Leader, with Lorne Doerkson as his caucus chair. He now runs the Association for Mineral Exploration, which has a lot riding on what this government does next.
What we got into:
- A Cinderella story with a pop-up shop. Todd compares the Conservative campaign to a Christmas kiosk at the mall: thirty days to find a leader, a platform, the money, and the inventory, then sell.
- “You might as well call it brand X.” Social Credit, B.C. Liberal, B.C. Conservative. Todd on the coalition that keeps changing its name, and what always holds it together.
- Who is Lorne Doerkson? Rodeo MC, dunk-tank volunteer, and the MLA who grabbed a hose and went behind the fire lines. Todd shares what Doerkson told him the night before the vote.
- A cabinet with no cabinet experience. By Todd’s count, nobody in the incoming government has been a minister. He names his pick for finance, and the MLA he thinks could lead the party one day.
- The quarter-million who stayed home. The NDP vote collapsed, but it didn’t go anywhere. Todd’s warning to his own side about reading too much into the mandate.
- DRIPA, carefully. Todd voted for it in 2019. What he was told at the time, and how he’d handle a repeal without losing the first year to it.
Also discussed: the B.C. Conservatives inviting Andrew to their caucus retreat (“desperation, capital D”), why voters didn’t need a premier to fight Trump when they’d already hired Mark Carney, John Horgan as “Premier Dad,” Andy Burnham’s breathing-space budget, and Andrew noticing we’d assembled a balanced panel of three conservatives.
Todd’s call: the books are worse than anyone has been told. We’ll have him back after the first budget to check. His predictions, he says, are “worth what you paid for them.”
Find Todd at the Association for Mineral Exploration (ame.ca) and on X at @toddstonebc.
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