No, it sounds a bit like "pursed" to me, too! Although I'd say, rather, that his pronunciation of past is "strangely British", despite the fact that his overall accent is typically North American. I also noticed that he pronounces "had/bad/add" with a different vowel sound than in "past" -- I guess this must be a Canadian thing. As a US English speaker, I would use the same "a" sound in all four of those words.
P.S. And I'd be curious to know if he pronounces the adjective "past" differently from the verb "passed" -- in my own dialect, these two words are exact homonyms.