At Issue - Liberals vote against Bloc’s early election ultimatum

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

At Issue this week: The Liberals vote against the Bloc Québécois’s early election ultimatum to increase old age security. Prime Minister Trudeau gets candid on an MP’s podcast. And is François Legault using immigration for political gain? Rosemary Barton hosts Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj.

Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goltar and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all true crime podcasts. But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast Crime Story comes in. Every week I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey there, I'm Rosemary Barton. This week on At Issue, the podcast edition for Thursday, October 3rd. A motion by the bloc to increase old age security payments for seniors has passed the House without the support of most of the Liberal caucus.

You have to use a filter of what's logical, what makes sense for the country, not what's going to please a political party at any particular moment. The Bloc is still threatening to push an early election unless the government gets on board. They just want to get some more time and to keep not deciding about anything. They might, they might hope that they will go further than October 29th. They will not. So this week we're asking, what does the Liberals' vote against the Bloc mean for their future? Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Althea Raj join me to talk about that. Plus, we'll break down Trudeau's appearance on a Liberal MP's podcast. Chantal, I'll start with you.

Is there any way that you can see the Liberals fulfilling this part of the bloc's ultimatum around the old age security? Well, technically they still could. Yes. They still could say we kind of bow to the will of the majority in the House. Every party voted for this, the Conservatives, the NDP, the Bloc, the Green Party, and most of the independents. And we're giving this a royal recommendation. Why royal recommendation? Because a private member's bill cannot commit the government to spending without the government

agreeing to having that happen. And they would have cover now because the Conservatives voted for this. So technically, if you want to be cynical about it, the Conservatives get to have to pay for this if the polls hold and they win the next election. I don't necessarily expect that to happen, though. I think it is totally possible that the liberals will make a move on seniors, but that they will make a move that is more targeted to the seniors who need it most. I think the criticism from the liberals on substance was that this is too broad for how much it's going to cost. And if they do so, I believe it's possible that the NDP will support them. So the notion that the government will fall before October 29th from that clip,

I find that really more of something you say than something that will happen. And it also doesn't really align, Andrew, with who the Liberals are going after, which has been young people. That's what a lot of their measures and things that they've been talking about have been for younger generations. Yeah, if they give in on this, then what else are they going to give in on?

I don't think they need to. I don't think the NDP is going to vote to bring the government down anytime soon. So they're not in a position where they have to have the bloc's support on this. It's certainly crazy policy, as we discussed last time. You know, this is transferring funds to a group that has a lower rate of poverty than the general population without targeting it by income, making, basically chalking it up on the debt, making future generations, including young people

today, having to pay for it. It just doesn't make sense in all kinds of ways. It doesn't really make sense as parliamentary procedure either. If you've got the parliament basically instructing the government, giving it demands about what it has to spend in the billions of dollars that the government itself does not agree with, then either you need a new government or you need a new parliament. But you can't just pretend that this is just business as usual and there's no loss of confidence involved. That's a pretty fundamental, even though it's not a formal confidence vote,

it's expressing something pretty close to it. So that's not particularly sustainable. And the final point I'll make is, what on earth is going on with the Conservatives? If you thought that the Conservatives were any kind of, if Pierre Poglieva was any kind of principled Conservative who wanted smaller government to cut spending, etc., it's pretty hard to square with their support for this particular motion. I noticed a lot of fiscal Conservatives online expressing quite a great degree of dismay. They should get used to it. This comes after voting in favor of the ban on replacement workers,

after ducking on the issue of subsidies to battery manufacturers, you might call it pragmatism, but somebody else would call it just an absolute lack of any kind of principled compass. For a party that is cruising towards power anyway, you'd think this would be a time when you'd be starting to try to assert some kind of mandate. And at this point, they still seem to be willing to go with wherever the wind is blowing. Well, we did try and get an answer from them today about whether this now means that this is official conservative policy. If they were to form government, there was no clear answer given to that. Just because they voted for it, why would that mean it was their policy? I don't know why we would assume such a thing. Althea, give me your thoughts. A few things. I agree that the Conservatives' vote this week is eyebrow-raising, especially

when you put it in the context of them not giving a clear answer on whether or not they would keep the dental care program, insisting that that program doesn't really exist, and not shedding much light on what they would do about the child care programs and the child care deals. So it is odd if they're going to kind of curb some liberal programs that here they are saying that they would actually increase OAS payments to a group that, as we discussed last week, may not be the ones who need that money the most and would continue to further plunge the country into a structural deficit. And again, the Conservatives have promised $1 of new spending means $1 of cuts. So what $3 billion annually part of the federal budget would they cut? I think it's possible to get a roadmap out of this quagmire.

I do find it rather fascinating that Yves-François Blanchet, the leader of the bloc, has put a very clear line in the sand on October 29th, delivered the way they want it to be delivered through these two private members' bill. So you don't have any of this messy, nuanced language that the NDP and the Liberals have had in their supply and confidence deal. Here would be very clear, these are bloc bills that have passed

and therefore the bloc should get the credit for it. I think from my conversations that maybe the government is more in line with doing something for seniors, doing it through the fall fiscal update, but they have clearly left the door open by saying that this is a procedural tactic to explain their votes this week to still engage with the bloc on this issue. That being said, what they really need to figure out is if the NDP is willing to support them for a little bit longer or not, because the bloc, I don't know who it was who said it, is going to ask for more. Some of the things they're likely to ask for more is employment insurance and immigration. Pharmacare, I should say, passed the Senate today. So it's cruising

towards the finish line, which is the thing that the NDP cares probably the most about right now, Chantal. I thought it just passed clause by clause. Yeah, but in theory, it's going to be out of the Senate by the end of next week. Yeah, go, two things. The NDP maybe want pharmacare, and I'm sure they do, but they also don't want to be plunged into an election when they are not ready for one, and I don't think they are. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, you can talk about October 29th all you want, but the fact is that the last Le Québécois opposition, they came and went this week. So at this point, Mr. Blanchet no longer has the initiative to move non-confidence in the government until the fiscal update.

So he's either saying he's waiting for the next conservative motion, which would have to be phrased in such a way that he could support it, and the NDP could support it, or he's just talking dates that are not in the picture. So I know, I don't think that you can rule out an election before Christmas. But I don't think that you should necessarily put your money on it. That's still, I only have about 30 seconds, Andrew, but that, you can't see me, but I made a face when you said that, that we can't rule out an election before Christmas, because that, I was kind of thinking we were trucking towards spring, but it at least opens the door a little

bit. 30 seconds, Andrew. I think the chances of an election before the spring are extremely remote, and I think they're even remote in the spring. But I just would say I'm struck by one particular line of attack the Liberals were using, which is that the Bloc and the Conservatives are now objective allies. The Bloc is spoiling for an election because they would like the Conservatives to get into power because that would help the Sovereignist Project. And I wonder whether we're going to be hearing more of that line of attack in the days and weeks to come. At issue, Trudeau on the defensive. The prime minister spent an hour talking to Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith,

trying to explain what he wants the next election to be about. People are saying, oh, it's going to be a changed election. Yeah, it's going to be a changed election. Everything is changed. And why he didn't like that Jagmeet Singh ended their deal without even a phone call. For him to do that that way, it bugged me. So did we get any insight in how the Prime Minister is responding

to this challenging times, how he hopes to frame the next election? Chantal, Andrew, Althea, all back. I guess the Prime Minister's never been dumped badly by a partner is what I thought when he said he was sorry he didn't get the phone call. But I don't know how much you listen to or if you just listen to a little bit. But it was interesting because it was a long conversation with a liberal who is proven to be difficult for the prime minister from time to time. Althea, what stood out for you? Well, I don't know that I would say North Isk and Smith has been difficult. I think this is a backbench MP that took the Prime Minister to his word back in 2015 and represented

his riding as he thought he should be doing. And in so doing, that meant voting a very, you know, not a lot, but a few times against the government. So he has been outspoken and he kind of does his own thing. What struck me from this podcast was that either the prime minister doesn't understand what's going on or has chosen to sidestep the issue because he doesn't have a good answer or any answer, frankly, to why he wants to stay and run a fourth term. Nate Riskin-Smith, I mean, congrats to him. I had the balls to ask him why he wants to stay, why he's the right person to stay. And the prime minister's answer was, well, would people be asking this question if I was 10 points ahead in the polls? Well, no, they wouldn't be asking the question if you were 10 points a hole

in the polls, but you're not. That's why caucus is asking the question. And what struck me from listening to an hour of this podcast is that Nate Erskine-Smith is a much better spokesperson for the things the Liberals have actually done and tried to do than the Prime Minister himself. Any leader is supposed to be the spokesperson. And that's why Liberal MPs, some of whom are vocal, some of whom less so, are not sure that the prime minister should keep his job. Chantal. I too was struck with the reply, would you ask if I were 10 points ahead? The fact is you're not,

you're 20 points behind. Would that not be asked of anyone who is 20 points behind, be it the prime minister or someone else? And by the way, liberals asked that of Jean Chrétien when he was 10 or 15 points ahead. So it's not even an answer. But I also found the answers on what do you regret most? And the answer being electoral reform. And then this statement that the prime minister is sorry that we are going to be going into this election without having a system that is not as brutal as first past the post. Well, let's be serious here. That regret comes at a time when that system is about to crush its Liberal Party. And it comes about eight years too late.

Yeah, it's also, and he alluded to this, kind of the easiest answer you could give when you're talking about your regrets, the most sort of obvious broken promise. Andrew. I was struck by the Prime Minister's trademark mixture of fantasy and cynicism. The fantasy part was I think he is caught up in his own narrative. He's a prisoner of his own narrative. Narrative was what helped him win in 2015, which is to say, I always liked that line of our old friend Bruce Anderson,

that the liberals wouldn't have won if they hadn't started in third. That there was a kind of a comeback kid or a prince hal narrative in a lot of people's minds of the the feckless youth who's tested by adversity and grows up to be the king and people sort of watched him through that campaign and lo and behold he surprised everybody and and you know pulled it out and in not only this interview but in a lot of interviews i've seen lightly with him he you really got that sense of they counted me out before they they're they're going to be wrong again this time, I'll show them. And look, narrative can be powerful. If that were to take hold in the public that, look, he's the comeback kid, he's doing it again, that would be one thing.

But it's getting late, and he's 20 points behind, and he certainly doesn't seem to think that he needs to make any major adjustments. Not in policy, not in tone, it's all just doubling down this and doubling down on that. So that's, I think, the fantasy part. The cynicism on a couple of things. One is on electoral reform, where as much as it says to him, the only reason I dangled the prospect of proportional representation was to get the electoral reformers on side, but I never had any intention of doing it.

And, oh, I kind of regret misleading that way. Well, okay, that's a little late for sorry on that. And on the why haven't you attacked Polly Evermore? It wasn't, well, you know, we have too much negativity in our politics. We really ought to be talking about policy and what we would do differently. It was, oh, well, we're saving that to do it later. So points for honesty on that one, I guess, but it's not a particularly appealing portrait. Okay, I want to play the clip that I thought was interesting. And then I don't have a lot of time get you guys to respond to it here's another little clip of the PM. Are there a lot of Liberals who are thinking that

Justin's priorities aren't in the right place or Justin doesn't have the fight in him or Justin you know is wrong to be continuing to believe in protecting the environment and growing the economy and protecting women's rights and stuff in terms of the substance of what we're doing, I think that's pretty much the fight. What did you make of that response, Althea? It's all about him. No one is asking if he doesn't have the fight in him or what his values are. They're asking why he is the best spokesperson, why he is the leader that should lead the party,

what he wants to do with that fourth term. It should be about Canadians. And yet the entire conversation seemed to be about him. He wanted to talk about him. Like, I feel like I'm going to get a ton of messages and being too mean, but it really, even at the end, when he says he's hoping the next election is next fall so that his son will be 18 and can vote for him, it felt like you're not getting the moment. You're not. And I don't, it is the most striking interview because I think he was comfortable.

And so you saw that come out in ways that doesn't seem to emerge in other interviews. Chantal. You know, for a long time, many of us have been saying that Canadians have tuned out Justin Trudeau. But listening to that interview, it sounds like he's tuned out Canadians. And that's pretty devastating. Andrew, last word to you. There was a whiff of that old line that Crutching used to say about liberal values or the Canadian values, and that sooner or later Canadians will come to their senses, and they'll see through Poirier.

Well, people had a good look at Poirier, and I'm not going to say there's an overwhelming passion for him in the country, but people certainly seem to be prepared to vote for him because they do seem to have a passion to see the back of this government. So I'll join with my colleagues and say I'm not sure he has absorbed that message. Yeah, I mean, just to add on to that, what struck me about it was that it's maybe not the things that he's presenting to Canadians that Canadians have an issue with. It may be the person who's trying to sell them. And I don't know that he got that part either. It might be a bit of both.

It might be a bit of both. That's right. And I guess he's counting on us asking harder questions of Pierre Poiliev about his policy, which, you know, to be fair, we'll get eventually. Quebec Premier François Legault is offering up solutions to his province's immigration issues. Legault floated the idea of waiting zones for asylum seekers and called on Ottawa to relocate half of the asylum seekers outside of his province. But the federal government says the premier is using immigration for political motives. So what should we make of Legault's comments on immigration?

Let's bring everybody back. Chantal, Andrew and Althea. These are not new complaints from Quebec. They have been longstanding complaints that, and it is true, that they take more of the asylum seekers than the rest of the country. And the government has looked at ways of spreading them out and giving them money and all sorts of things. But what else is going on here, Chantal? Why is this an issue that the premier can't seem to stop talking about? That is a question that I think by now his own caucus is asking itself. There is Premier Legault

on a visit to France, making all kinds of suggestions that he clearly has not taught true. When he was asked today, how would this work? Didn't you get advice that this couldn't be done? The answer was, well, that's not my problem. It's the federal government's problem. His proposal to create those zones where, I guess, camps where you would keep asylum seekers, and then shipping them off, half of them,

to other provinces went down like a lead balloon. Not just in Quebec, where not a single opposition party had anything good to say about it, or anyone who was a commentator, but also on Parliament Hill, where even the Bloc Québécois said, we're not comfortable with this notion, whatever the Premier is thinking of doing. It seems that Premier Legault, who has been on a downhill race to the bottom quickly in public opinion polls, seems to believe that if he throws a tantrum and, you know, just bangs his forehead on the floor saying, I want this, it's going to happen. The fact is that this has been going on for a year and a half of improvisation, back of the envelope suggestions that backfire on the government, to the point where today François Legault is less popular in Quebec than Justin Trudeau. I mean, a Quebec premier always loves a fight with Ottawa. That's for sure, right? And that generally helps them. I don't know if that's the only motivating factor

here, Andrew, but it doesn't appear to be, it doesn't appear to Chantal's point to be working or helping him. Well, and some fights are more irresponsible than others. You know, there's no doubt that this is a very contentious file that the government has mishandled in various ways. But far from the expected backlash that a lot of people predicted, I've been struck by how civilized the discussion has been on the whole. People have been making constructive proposals. Let's trim back this program there. Let's tweak this program there. And the refugee thing is a particularly nettlesome thing, but it's particularly important, it seems to me, that people stay within the bounds of responsible advocacy. It's not to say there isn't a problem, but it is nowhere near the kind of problem where we

need to be proposing what are basically nice names for internment camps. Europe, where they have these kinds of things, has a much more severe refugee problem than we do. But we are all part of a global issue where there are massive numbers of people on the move, some of them legitimate refugees, some of them gamers who are gaming the system. But we don't deal with the problem of gaming by denying people due process of law or treating them like escaped convicts. And I think it's worrisome that the premier is that desperate that he's reaching this low into the bag of tricks to bring this sort of proposal and spring it on the public unawares. Althea? I'm not even sure if this is constitutional because asylum seekers are actually protected under the Charter of Rights and they have mobility rights and rights to being able to

live their life. So anyways, that's an important little asterisk. I think there are a few things that came out of this discussion. One, why isn't anybody putting pressure on the federal government to put many, many more resources in the Immigration Refugee Board so that these cases can be dealt with swiftly? That is the problem that we have at the moment. The equivalent of a small town is arriving every year in Canada, and this problem is not going to get any smaller. So the federal government has to find a way to have a permanent solution that allows the federal government to expedite these cases and people who should not be here to send them back home. The other thing that I was struck in this story is that the immigration minister came out and said, well, I don't know

where this idea came from. Never heard of it. They never mentioned this in any of the round tables that we've been having with the provinces. Well, apparently the Quebec government wrote the minister in July. Well, who is the sleep at the switch in the minister's office that the premier of Quebec or the minister writes you a letter and you don't bring it up? Like this speaks to a whole other issue about like we're on to like c team here in the liberal government and nothing seems to be happening so much is falling in the cracks right i can see chantal wants the last word then i gotta go yeah to be fair the federal government did provide quebec with a an options paper where it made totally clear, and that did happen after

that letter, that there is no legislative power that allows the federal government to say, I'm going to send 2,000 refugee seekers, asylum seekers to Nova Scotia or Saskatchewan without their consent. And what would Quebec say about the federal law that allows the federal government, whether it's constitutional or not, to decide to move 2,000 asylum seekers to Quebec? In the reasoning of the Quebec premier, the premier of Nova Scotia or Saskatchewan or wherever

do not have the capacity to decide whether they accept this or not. Okay, thank you all. Good conversation. I'll leave it there. That's at issue for this week. Do you think seniors deserve a pension top-up? Did you hear anything important in Trudeau's podcast appearance? Let us know what you think. You can send us an email. We're at ask at cbc.ca and you can catch me on your TV and screens on Rosemary Barton Live Sundays at 10 a.m. Eastern back here in your podcast feeds next week. Thanks so much for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.