The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - How Justin Trudeau Lost the Confidence of Canadians

Episode Date: September 28, 2024

The Agenda this week looked at the fast fading fortunes of the Liberal Party of Canada, the Meta news ban one year later, the state of the child welfare system in Ontario, and how the French immersion program is fairing in Canada.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If it were a different leader at a different time, maybe with a different party, two absolutely groundbreaking shocking by-election losses might have caused a volcanic eruption from the party in which it was happening. That doesn't seem to have happened this time. And I wonder if you could tell us why Mr. Trudeau so far seems to have withstood any massive pushback despite losing Toronto St. Paul's, which we sit in right now, and Le Salle-et-Marre Verdun in Quebec. How come?

Look, I think that there was tremendous pushback after the loss in June of Toronto St. Paul's by the so-called 416 Liberal Caucus. It was furious at the loss, furious at all kinds of targets, the party machinery, the campaign organizers, the prime minister's office, the prime minister himself. And there was an uproar, but it was tamped down in part by the fact that there wasn't a giant national caucus meeting and the airing of grievances and that wasn't so much by design I'm told at the PMO it was actually because of a scheduling of they were quickly after trying to say close they were Parliament had broken there was no national caucus scheduled

He was at NATO and then on and on it went and then they started doing their outreach. So they tamped down some of that dissent in. And when it comes to Quebec and the loss in South Montreal of La Salamard, they're done. That's in large part a function of the fact that the Quebec caucus is actually not the four and six caucus. They're very much more united. They have a different dynamic. They don't air their laundry out in public. We were getting lots of people complaining to us, privately on background. And so we were able to publish a lot of those concerns, even if it was under, you know, confidential sources. But in the caucus, they're still pretty tight. There's a lot of grumbling, but nobody's outright calling for

the prime minister to go. Why is all of that the case? I think it is also a function of the fact that he's persuaded them that he doesn't want to go and most of them came on his coattails in 2015 or if not in 2015, 2019 or 2021. This is not the party of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin where there were divisions and the ability to control membership and executive directorship at the riding level. The party has changed all its rules. So getting rid of a leader who doesn't want to go is a whole new ball game. And so I don't, there's, there's all kinds of steam, you know, the steam valves are open. People are grumbling to Trudeau and his staff behind closed doors. But there's no mechanism by which to oust him.

No, there's no mechanism. But yeah, sure. But let me get Brian to build on that answer as well. Because, well, for example, we saw in your party, when Tom Mulcair led your party, the NDP, to actually not a terrible election outcome, they threw him overboard really quickly and with extreme prejudice.

And here we are, Justin Trudeau has been losing, losing, losing, losing, and losing. And there is no obvious heir apparent. And he seems to be able to quell any of the mutineers. What's the special sauce he's got going for him, you think, that allows him to do that? Timing. Look, I was at that convention in Edmonton

when my friend Mr. Mulcair was sent back into the private sector by the members. We should say you jokingly call him my friend because you ran against him for the job and you two did not emerge from that as bosom buddies but anyway keep going. So you know it was a post-mortem after an election in which which was viewed as devastating you know in a circumstance in which was building on the orange wave. We thought we had a shot at government and we ended up back in third place having lost an enormous chunk of our that that wonderful breakthrough in Quebec and

party members took it very badly. Here we've got a prime minister who's months away from an election. So, you know, changing your leader at this stage of the game when you only have a few months before you're likely to meet the electorate is extremely difficult. And it's not obvious that they've got anybody available who would do better. In those circumstances, you know, the calculus becomes maybe I could win. For them to win, they're gonna have to come up with a really good offer because I think to win, they're going to have to come up with a really good offer,

because I think in the alternate, they're facing a change election. The public has made up their mind. And you know, after nine or 10 years, that's often what happens to every government. Or in the alternate, what they calculate is that they'll do least bad under the Prime Minister, and then they're not handing whoever succeeds him a poison chalice, where the successor has to eat a defeat. Instead the successor can do the rebuilt. So you could argue that Mr. Trudeau is either looking for a really big reset, in which case they're gonna have to come up with it really soon, or he's doing the honorable thing and eating what's coming so his successor doesn't have to. I suspect people have seen this on their laptop screens or their desktop screens.

Sheldon, if you want to bring that up, there's something off the CTV news site. If you try to go to CTV news, you will see that there is a Canadian news band message that comes up. And let's do the next one as well. Maybe you go to CP24 and you're going to get the same kind of message. Sorry. Maybe you go to CP24 and you're going to get the same kind of message. Sorry, Canadian news ban in place and your, I think the technical term is SOL. Okay, Teresa Blackburn, let's bring you in at this point. This ban has obviously had an impact on you personally.

Describe what it's meant for you and your business. It's been terrible. We basically maybe got between $4,000 and and six thousand dollars a year from doing live events and sometimes advertising through Facebook. But we were a free paper. We set out as a free model. We started with no, you know, government funding. We started with no investors. It was just basically myself and a reporter going door to door with a piece of paper saying, do you trust what we're going to do? And we started that. And we used Facebook because it was free. We also used Facebook because there was some controls there. That was our only online presence for a number of years. And then, you know, the government starts with the C-18,

you hear the rhetoric back and forth, and we were like, okay, we better get a website started. So we started that process, but that was a costly process for us for a paper that we're already giving away and trying to make sure that people can access. So that was a huge cost for us, but it was also the removal of all of our archive. We can't even access it. So everything we put into that page over four years is gone. I live 12 minutes from Holton, Maine.

And if I have to get something in the archive back, or we want background information, if we can't find it on our computer or the pictures aren't there anymore, I mean, we have a multitude of people working for us, freelancing, I have to travel across the border to access my archive from those four years. That's insane to me. Well, let me ask you this.

Who do you think that who's the villain in this story? I think it's first off, Facebook has taken so much from us and they can't be community players. They say that they care. They don't care. They're willing to take all of the money, but they're not willing to help us inform the public. And the government, to me, way too little, way too late. And I'm sorry to the gentleman from the Ministry of Heritage Office, but we're talking about 450 news outlets that have died on this watch since 2008.

And we just start getting things rolling, you know. And COVID, I know COVID threw a big wrench into this, but this should have been started long ago. You know, we have a cart, you know, that's being put before the horse in terms of, the horse has already left the barn. So I don't know how we can get this back. All right, I'll get a comment from Tlaib in just a second,

but I want to hear from Angus Bridgman first. In your view, who's the villain in this story? This is kind of a tricky question. I really appreciate the point that sort of Google is taking the approach of sort of legacy telecom players where with corporate revenue, with a position of importance in society, there is a responsibility to give back to the community. And so I really sort of see what Meta has done here as a betrayal of that trust and confidence.

So for sure, that's an issue. In terms of sort of the government response, this has been an effort to address some of the monopolistic tendencies of Meta and Google. And it's one such effort. And thus far, yeah, Google's only playing ball. One thing, and maybe we can talk about it a little bit later, but the report we looked at showed that actually news content was still circulating on meta platforms. And so this is going to be really of interest to the CRTC trying to understand and interpret how C18 actually impacts and is consequential for the meta

platforms because they say, well, we're no longer in compliance because we've blocked news sites and we've blocked news links. But if news content is still actually circulating on those platforms in the form of screenshots or alternative links or other workarounds, then they may actually be subject to it. So this is sort of a complicated dynamic for sure, but I don't think the last word has been said yet in terms of the C18 meta contention. To leave, maybe you could help us understand this. We showed a couple of examples of quote unquote hard news legacy sites that are now blocked

and don't have the access to news anymore. But there are others, for example, Rolling Stone or BBC Radio One or Vogue, which I guess, you know, they're in the news business, so to speak, but does Metta not consider them news because they're not being blocked? Help us understand that. I mean, this again goes back to the whole point at the beginning. I mean, this is an arbitrary situation that Metta gets to decide what we see and what we don't see. And this idea that somehow,

meta has been hard done by as a result of this legislation is patently untrue. The ombudsman for the province is apparently investigating the use of hotels and Airbnbs, even office spaces, to house kids in right now. Is this a new phenomenon in the province? Absolutely. So hotels and Airbnbs are new, but hotels I had heard of,

usually teenagers, and few. And when we raised it, there were some rules about when to use hotels that the ministry put in place. Of course, I don't know if they were used. But what's new now, really new, and people should understand, this is not teenagers. And Solomon can correct me if I'm wrong, but I've seen the data. Not just your data, and the data that you gave to the Toronto Star didn't include the ages. There are children as young as three years old.

There's an 11-year-old in an office for 12 months who's autistic with social workers that, and I feel for you, and I know you've been living with this for decades. So this is new. It's come home to the rest of the province. Social workers who are not trained to be child and youth care workers, working overnight shifts to just manage this

child living in an office. 11 year old us to take... we take children... Solomon, we take children from their home. You're... and Kyrgios is right, it's a child protection system. We say to them, you are in danger. That's your job. That's your job. You are in danger, child. Timmy, John, Madeline, we have to take you for your own well-being and safety. We promise to care for you, to love you, and support you. And you put them in an office for 11 months. And the idea is supposed to return them home and help them deal with whatever they're dealing with in that quote-unquote placement you've created.

And you have social workers who are not trained to support the youth to learn how the child, to learn how to self-regulate. And we expect something to happen, some miracle, so they can go home. And then we've got the mom at home with her other kids with no nothing. So we are not fulfilling our commitment to these children. And I'm pointing at Solomon and looking at him. But I'm telling you this, and I hope you let me say this.

It's a context that Solomon and Irene are working in. And the context is a perfect storm. We've undermined child protection by trying to force it to be a child welfare system. And I wish the people in child protection would stop saying child welfare, because it isn't. It's built to be a system 130 years ago to surveil parents. Whether it's good or bad, that's it.

That's the system. Do your job. But we've also hollowed out every other support to families in this province, everything. And we, I mean, our province, our government, and it created a perfect storm that's battering our children and families. 136 deaths in 2020, 223 connected to child protection

system. 136, that's a record for Ontario. And you and I have been around a long time, that's a record for Ontario. And you and I have been around a long time, a record, every three days. And it's not acceptable. It's not acceptable. So we want to work here.

Yeah. So Steve, one of the things that never makes it to the news or the news media is that 97% of investigations that child welfare gets involved with, children stay at home. So it is not that child warfare brings kids into the child warfare system. In 97% of our investigations, children stay with families.

And families is always a first place CS is we want to go to try and find support for children. You will be looking at things like uncles, aunties, granddaughters, so all the supports within the communities. Over the years, one of the greatest support structure that we've had within child welfare is a foster caregiver system, where we've had parents that have showed up and said, listen, I'm putting my hand up. I want to take another child into my family. But we don't have enough foster parents anymore. Yes, just in the last three, four years, foster caregivers have dropped by 30%. It speaks to some of the economic

challenges and how that is affecting families and their willingness to take in some of the child children we are talking about. Is that because the province doesn't give these foster parents enough money to help support the kids? Is that one reason we don't have enough? There are a number of reasons. One of them, obviously, Steve, includes some of the legislative requirements. So foster caregivers are feeling like there's too much of a burden in doing this work from a legislative space. And then the other piece you're looking at, because of some of the complexities of care that we are seeing in the child welfare spaces. So when they talk about kids presenting with autism, sometimes a long wait list that they are on to be able

to get support on the other side becomes a challenge. Some of the mental health supports and it's not that this community service providers are not interested or willing to, it's just the same capacity issue we are talking about. And that is a challenge we're dealing with. I just want to jump in because something you said triggered me. This is exactly the same conversation we had 10 years ago. You know it is very common for the child welfare sector or the child protection sector to say look 97% of the work we do actually is really positive and so on and nobody wants to talk about that. And I tell you why nobody wants to

talk about that because it's an expectation. You exist for things to go well and so we're not going to talk about things that we expect to happen. We're going to talk about the things that we don't expect to happen, which is why it doesn't matter that 97% of the work goes well. That's just what we expect.

Looking at the French immersion debate that's obviously played through the decades, what are some of the barriers of producing fully fluent graduates? And I think it's important to recognize that the barriers I'm going to talk about are been I could tell you that these were the same barriers we identified in the 1980s. I lack one of the big ones is not having enough French immersion teachers to begin with being a challenge, not having adequate amounts of educational assistants who can provide support to students

with special learning needs. That's a problem not only in the French immersion stream but in any educational stream in the province of Ontario. Issues of socioeconomic access to French immersion classes is a challenge. But also, you know also those opportunities to practice French that people have been talking about so far. And I think that expectations of French immersion in terms of how it's promoted to parents have changed over the decades.

Societal expectations have not cut up with it. The message that is being put out by French immersion experts is that you shouldn't expect your kid to be totally fluent by the end of grade 12, but that they will have a much stronger foundation if they want to pursue that further as they go into university or college or other immersive experiences that expecting total fluency given the constraints on French immersion classrooms isn't realistic, but they're going to be way ahead of the core French students and have that confidence level. And I can say that as a core French student myself, that entering a university classroom with French immersion students, their oral French was way beyond mine, as was their confidence. Are those barriers being eliminated? You said that conversation we could have been having 40 years earlier.

What's the problem there? Money. Honestly, this is a problem of trying to run an educational system on the cheap, not being willing to invest the cost that's needed to overcome those barriers. And I think that we're seeing, if anything, in recent decades, that the situation is getting worse. That you have more and more cases of special, more and more students with special learning needs in those classrooms that often are being funneled out of French immersion classes into regular classes who also don't have adequate supports. That's just one of the problems. You do see provinces who have done, taken some strides to try to train more

French immersion teachers to try to address those shortfalls so that you can actually offer enough classes for, you know, the hundreds of thousands of parents who want to put their children into those classes. Capacity is a big issue. But a lot of this really just comes down to dollars and resources and an overall under-resourced education system. All right. Betty, I'm going to get you to respond because I also know that you wanted to get in there with Matthew's comment. Well, just in terms of barriers, what we're seeing in French Immersion is we've seen

five percent annual growth in the program in terms of enrollment over the last 17 years. So the demand is very, very strong. It's hard to keep up with the demand, clearly, but one of the well-touted barrier is the lack of teachers, so the supply and demand around teachers. That supply and demand is an issue that has, you know, kind of plagued French immersion over time. I mean it's been around for almost 50 years. It's a very cyclical problem. We had a big shortage in the 80s and we brought about, we funneled money into promotional campaigns, creating the awareness,

and then, lo and behold, the Ontario College of Teachers showed a surplus for many, many years until about 2015, at which point money was funneled into additional programming, promotional activities to bring awareness to the shortage and draw young people into the profession. I know even just anecdotally within my my you know sphere of friends I know of about five young people who have consciously made the decision to go into the teaching profession and teach French immersion. So what we say to those young kids is be proactive, do what you need to do so that by the time you get into that classroom,

your proficiency is really strong and you're able to support the kids along their journey. All right, Elena, I'll get you in on that as well. Yeah, I mean, the barriers there, it's a tale as old as time, right? We have been hearing this. I'm a product of the French immersion system, I should say, full disclosure, and proudly so.

So I think it's not just about money. I think the teachers need to have that support in the classroom. They are overworked. They do not have the time to kind of deal with even the slightest learning difference, right? They just don't have, of course they care and they're devoted to their class, but they just don't have the time.

And perhaps in many cases, the adequate training.