The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - A Smoke, Mirrors And The Truth Year Ender -- Bruce And I And Our 2021 Hopes.

Episode Date: December 30, 2020

The podcast within a podcast and its special year-end quiz. Enjoy.

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the podcast within a podcast that means it is the bridge daily here you're listening to but it's wednesday that means bruce anderson joins us from ottawa it means we're talking smoke, mirrors, and the truth. And today, as the last Wednesday before the end of 2020, we're doing a special contest. And many of you have taken part in it as well. And we're going to start that in a minute, but I cannot help, given our title of Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth, at least starting off, Bruce, with some discussion

about Ontario's woes this weekend dealing with the pandemic. I mean, first of all, as we talked about yesterday, they got off to a bad start on the week when it became clear they had shut down the vaccine program for the Christmas holidays for three or four days, which seems ludicrous in light of the fact we're in the worst of the pandemic so far. And they took their heat on that one and Rick Hillier had to, you know, fall on the sword on it. And in terms of saying, hey, this was my fault and it won't happen again. That actually pales in comparison to what's happened since. You have the finance minister who is generally regarded, Rod Phillips, generally regarded as one of the kind of top-notch people within the Ontario cabinet, sending out a Christmas message

on Christmas Eve about, oh, you know, this is difficult for all of us. We've got to stick together. We can't be with family and blah, blah, blah. And there was this government has, you know, called on people not to travel and not to see family, such and such. Turns out he did this video from St. Barts in the Caribbean. He's out of the country.

He's enjoying a holiday, doing exactly what the government had been saying people shouldn't do. This does not look good. And obviously he's now fallen on his sword with a big apology. But man, oh man, this raises so many questions about who knew how they let this happen, how it could ever have happened, how it conflicts with some of their arguments and policies in the past when condemning other politicians from other stripes of doing similar things. But in terms of Smoke Mirrors and the Truth, it's a classic, right? It's a classic. It's a classic. It's a classic. It's one for the books, for sure.

On the Hillier thing, Peter, here's what my take is. Declaring with such great fanfare as Premier Ford did, the introduction of Rick Hillier, a retired general, former chief of defense staff, to the file, saying that he is going to lead a team of crack experts that are going to make sure that when Justin Trudeau finally gets his act together and gets some vaccines in the hands of the province of Ontario, Ontario is going to be ready to deliver them. This has become a question of competence. I separate that out from the Phillips issue, which I think is a question

of entitlement and judgment, I guess. So I think, you know, everybody's now taking a look at Hillier and Ford on vaccines, and they're going to judge them on the basis of how do they respond to the reaction now that they said, we got it wrong, we got to speed things up, and we'll see how that plays out. With Phillips, it is a question of judgment and entitlement. And I guess there was a story running around last night that said that he'd also taken a vacation in August somewhere, it wasn't clear where. And I think for Premier Ford, he came as close as I've ever seen in the statement that he put out about his finance minister just saying, you're fired. He did such damage to the reputation of Phillips with the

words that he chose, saying that he was extremely disappointed that he ordered him back immediately. Now, I think Ford may have put himself in a little tiny bit of jeopardy. His office put out a statement that said that he didn't know that Phillips was out of the country. I've been seeing emails and notes from people saying, well, they knew that he was out of the country two weeks ago. Not that Ford knew, but that these other folks knew. And I don't know what's exactly the truth here, but I do think that the smoke will clear at some point, and we'll have a sense of whether people around Ford were aware of this, and if so, that might create another chapter of this story, and certainly Phillips might decide at some point that he's tired of being beat up, if in fact he did tell people that he was going away, and they didn't tell him not to do that.

At the end of the day, though, I think it does kind of come back to Ford as a question of, is he running this government in a way that reflects the values that he professes to have and the confidence that people expect the government to have? And yesterday was a very bad day, I think, for the Ford government. Yeah, bad week for the first couple of days, last few days of 2020, on a year in which they've had their ups and downs in the Ontario government, as other governments have had as well. But overall, Ford's actual numbers still, at least I think from the last time you were in the field, are not bad, all things considered.

I mean, they're in the 50s somewhere, upper 50s, which is pretty good for any government at any time. I think it reflects the fact that we've got a piece of polling coming out today that sort of looks at where public opinion was in Canada in January and where it was at the end of December. And, you know, my first takeaway from it is that people are not really paying attention to the partisan politics and the day-to-day politics. They are taking a look at the pandemic and the economy and the health risks and all of those things, and to some degree, the politics that surrounds that. But mostly they're ignoring politics. And I think that's one of the reasons why people are saying, well, the economy is bad, but it could be worse. The health situation is bad, but it could be worse. The health situation is bad, but it could be worse.

Ford isn't as populist as I thought he was going to be. Remember, he ran on things like Bucca beer. And when you think about that kind of a campaign promise now, doesn't it seem silly that it was only, you know, a couple of years ago that somebody was running for the office of Premier of Ontario? It's a reminder of the infection of populism and what it's done to make politics a bit crazy, I think, is that we had him running on that. And he's been acting differently, at least tonally. But I think now he's getting into situations where the confidence of him and his government is going to come into focus in this next year. People want to get back

to normal, and they want to get back to normal as fast as possible. And it's going to be on him and on all of the other incumbent governments who've been enjoying this relatively elevated sense of things are okay, in part because I think they could be worse. And we'll see in the coming year where politics for Ford and Trudeau and other governments have been enjoying that lift to fall. All right. We should mention that when Bruce mentions that he's got more research coming out today, that's with his firm, Abacus Data,

where he is the chairman? Is that what you're? Chairman. Chairman. Do you get like a special office and a car and you'd get your own jet and all those things? A yacht. I chose a yacht because I just like the sea. We better say we're kidding.

We're kidding. People are actually going to believe that. Anyway, that we assume is coming out later today. So you can always find that at what, abacus.com or.ca? Abacusdata.ca. Abacusdata.ca. Okay. The issue at hand today is the contest that actually Bruce came up with.

He's great at asking questions, as one would have to be in the polling business. And he's come up with some that we're going to try and answer here, but we floated it out to you. And some of your answers have been pretty good on this, too, like really good in some cases. And I will read some of them, not all of them, because there have been a lot. But, Bruce, why don't you get us started, seeing as this is your questionnaire? Yeah, the first question I thought we should tackle is what one or two international stories, global stories, are you hoping to read this year? And I spent quite a bit of time thinking about it because I could come up with a fairly long list, and I focus and sit on two. One is that I just touched on it when I mentioned populism, I want to see a new generation of politicians who tackle populism and take it on and challenge it in the

coming year. I think that if we look at different parts of the world, whether it's in the United States and the influence of Trump or in the UK and what happened with Brexit, you know, what seems to be happening or have been happening, and I hope it comes to an end, is basically a whole bunch of politicians saying knowledge and thoughtful policy doesn't matter that much to many people. And so I'm going to give them ideas that sound like what they want, even if they're not tethered to knowledge, even if they're not tethered to science, even if they're going to put the economy or the lives of people at risk. And, you know, as we watch the Republican Party of the United States today, we realize that there is no challenge function to that kind of populism right now. The party's kind of paralyzed by this idea that whatever

people want, even if it's not really more to any sense of what's really in their interest, is what we're going to parrot back to them. So I'm hoping that one of the things that we see this coming year is the creation of a competitive dynamic to that. And not just from the left, but maybe more particularly within the broad right. I think that's something that the world needs and a lot of places would benefit from. And the second one, and maybe the more optimistic one for me, is just as science produced a vaccine for COVID so quickly, much more quickly than we've ever seen before. The pace of scientific advance on renewable energy technologies has been remarkable. And I'm hoping that this coming year

is the year that we see that next big breakthrough that makes battery storage highly efficient, makes renewable energy extremely cheap, and produces that kind of step change in the way that the world consumes energy. I think it could happen any time now. There are breakthroughs every year, and I'm hoping for an even bigger one this coming year. What about you, Peter? What are you thinking about in terms of that?

I'll give you my two. First, I'll mention that the most common answer from people who wrote in, in terms of what story are you looking for in 2021? What headline do you want to see? What news story do you want to see or read about? And the most consistent answer was from our audience was the Trumps are in jail.

That's, that's what they want to see. Um, which I, like I find interesting. in jail. That's what they want to see. Which I, like, I find interesting. I know that many of our audience, just like the Canadian public at large, based on your data, is very anti-Trump. What is it? It's upwards of 80%.

So it doesn't surprise me to see them knocking on Trump. It just surprised me that they want to go the whole way. They don't want just a slap on the hands. They don't want him kicked out of office. They want him in jail. Not just him in many cases, but he and his family. So my stuff is kind of related.

It's not on the trump thing but but in terms of the international scene what i'm looking for what i would love to see is a real um sense of unity on the part of the so-called allied nations which has fallen apart over the four years of the trump era um and that has been incredibly damaging to the relationships between those, you know, long-time partners led by the U.S., but France and Britain and Canada, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, you know the group, Italy. The fact that they have been seeming to be kind of offside at times with each other, certainly with the Americans, has hurt in ways that we haven't even understood. I mean, clearly, when you have a united kind of allied front, you tend to have a disorganized opposition front, whether it's the Russians or whether it's the Chinese, they have not looked

disorganized over these last four years. They've looked more organized because we've looked disorganized or disunited. And so I think the combination of the Western nations, if you want to call them that, getting their act back together, led by the United States as the most powerful country in the world, will put the other guys a bit offside, a bit sort of jarred a bit because of the unity on the Western nations. That's what I'd like to see.

That's what I'd like to see come forward in the year ahead. So it's kind of a double-edged thing. So that's how I get my two stories out of it. So moving on to Canada. Yeah, to Canada. Two stories for me. The first one is I've been fortunate enough in my work to do quite a bit of research into how people feel about the mental health issues associated with COVID. And in particular, the dynamic with young people.

And it's been a preoccupation for me to realize how many young people are, and I'm talking about people in that kind of 18, 19, 20, 21 year age range. Their world seems very different from the world that I experienced at that age. change, challenged by an economy that keeps on changing naturally because of the role of technology and economic patterns that are more disrupted than perhaps have been in a long, long time, and challenged now by COVID. And I'm hoping that for them in particular, some degree of normalcy comes back into their lives. I'm hoping to read that they're all going back to campus this fall if they're going to college or university. For me, the restoration of some normal rhythm for those young people and some sense of a predictable future. It'll never be as predictable maybe as it seemed like it could be 20, 25, 30 years ago, but it should be more than this. Because I think the longer that it persists, the harder it is for them to grapple their way

through the really trying times that we're dealing with, the mental health stresses that we all know and see. And in our data, we see them a lot. We see those stresses a lot. So I'm very hopeful that we see young people going back to campuses, going back to schools, and resuming some degree of normal rhythm of their lives. And the second Canadian story for me is a little bit of a story about unity. I've been anxious in the last few years watching the evolution of public opinion and politics in Alberta and really distressed to see, you know, somebody like Jay Hill, who used to serve in the federal cabinet, trumpeting this Western separation idea. And the reason I'm concerned about it is in our work in Alberta, we see a lot of people who say, we've got to stop challenging this idea that the world's moving to renewable energy. We need to get

on board that train. We need to figure out what our economic future is within that context. And right now, they're led by a premier that doesn't really want to embrace that. And it's supported by a lot of people who say, well, it makes me feel comfortable that he's not embracing that. But it's probably say, well, it makes me feel comfortable that he's not embracing that. But it's probably not. Well, it's definitely not the right long-term policy prescription. And it's creating more tension in the Canadian relationship than there should be.

And our former colleague, Andrew Coyne, I noticed, wrote a piece yesterday about equalization and the fact that Alberta's got this referendum coming up on equalization. And it'll happen just around the time, as he puts it, that Alberta might have to benefit from the equalization system. And it's a reminder for me that this country works best when it works together. And so I'm hoping that Alberta, that there's a challenge function in Alberta's politics going forward, whether it's from the federal level or within the province, where somebody comes forward and says, look, here's another path for the province that doesn't sort of try to pin everything on anti-oil sentiment from Ottawa, which isn't really a thing as far as I'm concerned. And looks at Alberta's prospects with a fresh lens. So I'm hoping to see that. Let me just make one comment on the kind of Western separation or Western alienation, call it, you know, what you want.

There is something somewhat cyclical in this issue. You know, I lived my start of my career in the West. I spent 10, almost 15 years there. I've been back many times for different things. So I have seen it. This is in no way dismissing the concerns that some people have who live in Western Canada who feel that Confederation hasn't worked for them the way they had hoped it would. And as a result, they think about options.

But, you know, I can remember covering this story so many different times. And it was, you know, at a high point in the 70s and the early 80s after the National Energy Program. I remember talking to my old friend Izzy Asper, the late Izzy Asper, former liberal leader in Manitoba, former media baron, about this. And he, you know, he often would lead the

charge on this, but he would tell me in his more private moments, this will come and go just like it comes and goes in Quebec. And it's a, it's a matter of trying to remind the rest of the country of, you know of certain things that we need, we want, and we need respect. So that was kind of his argument, and I know this, I didn't raise this to play it out as a debate on this issue, but the fact of the matter is it does come and go,

and it comes and goes in particular at times when economic issues are not playing in the West's favor. And we're certainly seeing that now, and it is a huge issue and one that we should all be aware of. Moving on, here's my issue, and I was really pleased to see more than a few boiled water alerts in Indigenous Canada. We have solved that problem. That's the headline I want to see. Now, there has been progress made. I can't take that away from the fact that this government and the previous government, the previous Trudeau government, had committed to reducing that to zero. They're nowhere near zero yet, but they're down in 50 or 60, I think, Indigenous communities still, where they've got to boil water. This is Canada.

It's 2021 in a couple of days. That people don't have drinkable water is outrageous, especially when we lecture countries in other parts of the world about certain basic rights that people have. Well, water is one of them. Fresh air is one. Don't have air. You don't have oxygen. You don't have water.

You don't live. Fact is, we would love to get that reduced down to zero. Now, I'm going to read one letter from Karen Bosche in Edmonton, Alberta. And you'll like this, Bruce, because you and her are obviously on many of the same wavelengths. I'm hopeful that by late summer 2021, I'll be hearing and watching back-to-school commercials and cheering for the welcome return to normalcy within Canada's schools. Having taught 39 years in elementary classrooms before retiring several years ago, I've witnessed firsthand the importance of education and the role that schools play in the lives of our youth.

The flowers of tomorrow are in the seeds of today, is a saying that comes to mind. Our seeds, our children, are suffering through a serious cognitive drought, followed by a series of social, emotional storms this year that may have lifelong consequences to their physical and mental well-being. Mental health issues are increasing. Research is already showing a decline in reading skills in many K-3 children, and this is very distressing. With the unquestionable significance

literacy skills play in determining future achievement and success in life. During those most impressionable and crucial early learning years, the social, emotional, and cognitive development of a generation of children is being compromised. Getting kids and teachers back to school, feeling safe and able to learn is a priority in my mind for 2021. Karen Boshy in Edmonton. Good for her. Yeah. All right. Next question.

So the next question is what sports story are you hoping to read this year? And mine is not a Canadian story, although it's kind of a global story in a way. Peter, you probably follow this. In 2016, Colin Kaepernick, who was the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, decided that he was going to sit during the playing of the U.S. National Anthem prior to a game as a protest against the racial injustice that he saw.

And basically, he was blacklisted by the NFL after that. And he hasn't played a game in the NFL since he was let go by the 49ers, even though some teams from time to time appear to show some interest in him, and by all accounts, an enormously talented individual. He sued the NFL. There was a settlement reached, but he hasn't played. And when you think about everything that's happened since then, the Black Lives Matter movement, the reactions to the George Floyd killing and the generally agreed upon set of circumstances. I say generally because obviously there are some people, especially in the United States, who don't see that situation the same way. And Trump made quite a fuss of saying that all of the players who decided that they were going to kneel during the anthem should be fired. And the NFL owners, for the most part, said, we're not going to do

that. We're not going to, we're going to encourage our players to do what they think is the right thing to do. But Kaepernick really started that kind of expression of deep frustration with racial injustice in America. And he was punished pretty badly for it. And while he still has the skills and the ability to play, I'd like to see a story that he's playing in the NFL happen for whatever team, for whatever number of games. I'd like to see him take the field this coming year. I'd love to see him take the field as well. It may only be for one series. I mean, there's no question this man is a hero on the landscape of this issue.

There's no question about that. His football skills had diminished somewhat in his last year in the NFL. I mean, his best year was the year I think he took the 49ers to the Super Bowl one year, or awfully close to it. But those skills had somewhat diminished, and we're talking four or five years ago now. But it would be great for any number of reasons to see somebody sign him,

bring him in, and give him a series of downs or a quarter or a game if he's still got it. He's 33 years old. He could still have some years in him. When you've been missing that much time, it's tough. Nevertheless, Colin Kaepernick is not going to be remembered for his football skills. Nor should he be tested on those, quite frankly. He will be remembered for the fact that he is a signature leader on the civil rights front and on this particular issue. That's right. And that should never be forgotten.

And, you know, there will be a day when we'll see a president of the United States hanging the Medal of Freedom around his neck, as it should be. Okay. What about you? What's your sports story? Probably, you know, I won't do the Leafs thing because I think it's too easy. Obviously, they're going to win this year. But the thing I'm looking forward to, the headline I'm looking forward to, is that the Olympic Games do, in fact, happen next year in some form in Japan.

I think it's important. I think it's important for the world. The world has come together on the, on, on, on, or at least attempted to on the pandemic issue, especially in terms of vaccines.

And the one thing having been to so many Olympic games myself over the years, uh, there is nothing like that, that moment in the stadium of the opening ceremony when the nations of the world. And I think there's, you know's almost 200 of them now that take part in the summer games, when they have that parade of nations coming in,

and in that moment, in that moment, the world is together in common cause, not only on the floor of the Olympic Stadium, but in homes around the world. There are literally billions of people watching that ceremony. And there's reason for hope and some sense of international unity, at least in that moment. And I would look forward in many ways to seeing that. Viewers wrote in with ideas. They'd, you know, one fellow would love to see a Montreal-Toronto hockey final. That would be kind of cool.

That would be cool. It would be cool for us, just like, you know, an Edmonton-Calgary or Edmonton-Vancouver final in the Canadian division would be cool for Western fans. But, you know, Montreal and Toronto, the oldest rivals out there, that would be quite something. Okay. So, entertainment was our next category. And, you know, I think that my pick has been influenced by a few things. One is that it's been a particularly tough year for me to watch some of my musical heroes, people like John Prine, who died of COVID earlier in the year, and several others who lost their lives in the past year. And, you know, at each one of those passing, maybe because I'm at home a lot, and I'm listening to a lot of music, I'm kind of reminded of the power of music to,

you know, the restorative power of music, the kind of the energy giving power of music, the feeling that everybody can enjoy something across different generation lines, different cultures in music. Music's become a really important part of my life over the years. And you and I have been fortunate enough to do a fundraising thing every year, just outside of Ottawa, in the town of Walt Wakefield. There's an old hotel that's really a kind of a honky-tonk. It's called the Black Sheep Inn. And so having gone from a global story, the Colin Kaepernick story, the story and entertainment that I'd love to read this year would be that the Black Sheep Inn opened its doors again for local

musicians, Canadian musicians, touring musicians to perform live music. I feel a deep sense of empathy for all of those musicians who, before the pandemic, did what they did because they loved it. In most cases, not because they could make a lot of money at it, but because they loved giving the gift of music to others and having audiences respond to them. And I think it's been a really hard time for them. And I hope to see them have opportunities to recover some ability to earn some money at this, to recover that sense of enjoyment and energy that they get from performing in front of a live audience. And obviously, selfishly, I look forward to going to live music as much as I can as soon as it's safe to do that, because that's something that my family and I have done a lot of over the last decade or two. So the reopening of the Black Sheep Inn,

that's my story and the entertainment side. And mine is somewhat similar, not surprisingly, because I'm talking to you from Stratford, Ontario, where we live, where we have the Stratford Festival. And of course the Stratford Festival, like the Toronto theaters, like the Halifax theaters, like Vancouver theaters, you name it. The theaters across the world have gone dark as a result of the pandemic. London, New York, they've all closed.

And that's tens of thousands of jobs but it's enjoyment for hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who love live theater just like bruce loves the the black sheep inn and and what happens on stage there um but live theater the return of live theater will happen at some point in the next year. Maybe if we're lucky, it'll happen next fall, but it may be a little later than that, but it's going to happen. Great. That would be great. It will be a big, a big moment. Let me read this letter.

And this comes from one of our kind of regulars. David Oliver writes from Victoria a lot, and it's usually crapping on me for one thing or another. But he's a great writer, and he does have a great way with a story. So let me read a couple of lines from this note he sent. Because it fits a couple of bills, you know, the story you're looking for, the return of entertainment. Here it is. Hi, Peter.

Every year the bell ringers of Christ Church Cathedral in Victoria perform the traditional ceremony of ringing out the old year and ringing in the new. The bells are rung, half muffled, giving an echo sound used at funerals, before midnight for the death of the old year. The muffles are removed, the big tenor bell rung 12 times at midnight like a clock,

and then the bells are rung again, fully open to celebrate the birth of the new year. This year, I would have particularly enjoyed it, as 2020 has been such a garbage year, to use Bruce's poetic word, and 2021 holds such promise and hope for better things. Truly a time to ring out the false, the grief and strife, and ring in the true, the healing and peace. Sadly, the bells will be silent this year because of the COVID restrictions. It will be the first time in at least 50 years and one of the very few times since the bells were installed in 1936, 84 years ago.

Looking forward to resuming ringing the bells in 2021. That's a great story. Isn't that great? Yeah, love it. Love it. Okay. So, Tripp, where would you go as soon as it's safe to go somewhere

and all of the authorities say, go, have fun, do what you want to do? For me, I know that there's only supposed to be one answer to this question, but I would stop in two places. The first place I would stop is a little town called Pienza in Italy. And I've been lucky enough in my life to visit Italy a lot. I love a lot of different parts of Italy.

But I particularly love the Val d'Orcia region of Italy where Pienza is situated in. And I love it for a lot of reasons, but most spectacular scenery that I think I've seen in Italy. And Italy has, as you know, Peter, a lot of spectacular scenery. And one of the things that I learned early on is that one of the reasons it's so beautiful is that it's the best place in Italy, at least by the accounts that I was given, to grow both wheat and grapes. And the combination of the colors of wheat fields and vineyards, and the fact that the colors of those products, those crops, change every season, means that at different times of the year, Pienza and the Val d'Orcia region are going to look beautiful, but in different ways. And so every time I've been there, I've just been completely absorbed by the beauty of the Italian countryside there.

Obviously, the people and the food and the wine is fantastic as well. So Pienza would be my first stop, and I'd love to go there with my wife and visit there again. We've been there a number of times. And then I would go to Dornick and, you know, hopefully you and I could meet up in Dornick and play a little bit of golf. We've been, I think we've probably been to Scotland together, I'm going to say about 20 times. It's something that we started a long time ago and fell in love with the highlands of Scotland in particular. And very different climate, very different terrain, very different people. But I feel so at home when I'm there. I feel so energized when I'm there. The golf is great, but I'm not great at golf. So I just enjoy it for what

it gives me and the camaraderie and the sense of, you know, my roots, I guess, are from that part of the world. And so, like many people, when I go to the place where my people are from, I somehow feel a certain sense of I'm at home even when I'm away. So those would be my two stops. What about you? Where do you want to go? Well, I'm looking forward to being able to go anywhere in our country, this country, that we want to go to. And it's been hard for the last year. I mean, for all my life, I've traveled all over Canada all the time

because of my job. And this year, it's just hasn't been that way. And I miss it. I miss it a lot. And I especially miss going to the North, going to the Arctic. And I've got another trip, hopefully, through the Northwest Passage planned for later in 2021. But it's obviously totally COVID conditional in terms of the restrictions that are placed on travel. But I look forward to that. But I also look forward to, as you do, to Scotland.

Cynthia and I are doing a little work on a little property that we purchased a couple of years ago, and we're looking forward to hopefully seeing that because we're only getting to see it in pictures right now, which is a difficult way to work on a place. But nevertheless, if we get there, that will be great as well. And I will look forward to be doing the podcast on occasion from Scotland, from the Highlands, if that works out. I'll read you

one really fast letter. It's a one liner. It was a number of our listeners used humor to describe the answers in their questions. I love this one. Although Randy Shantz in Toronto may be serious about this, but in terms of

what he's really looking forward to going to, to seeing, it's plain and simple. Maybe you want this as well. I want to see Top Gun Maverick. That's the new Tom Cruise movie. In a movie theater, probably. In a movie theater. Yeah.

Top Gun was, of of course from another era but it was tom who was the fighter pilot in that movie whenever it was like 30 or 40 years ago well he's still up there flying and uh i've seen some of the uh outtakes from this movie it's gonna be like unbelievable. So I'm looking forward to seeing that too. Back to the big screen. Yeah, that'd be fun. So the last question, Peter, was what's the phrase or the word that should define or will define the coming year? And for me, it's pretty simple. I got the shot. That's what I think is going to be the, hopefully, the sound heard around the world as quickly as possible, reverberated every quarter of the world and on every social media platform.

I got the shot. And let's hope that a lot of people get the shot as quickly as possible and that we put this pandemic behind us. And I think that's a pretty uniform answer right across the board in most of the emails I got. Some version of, you know, I got the shot or, you know, vaccine or vaccination, excuse me, those are the words. That's the key words for 2021. So much is riding on the success of the vaccine,

and let's hope it's more than just a word. Let's hope it is the savior that we're all looking for to get this really behind us. And I close out on a poem. A number of people have really got creative over these last few weeks. Bruce is writing some poems. I like this one.

It's from Barb Butler in Regina. Here's what Barb writes. I listened to Mansbridge today as I usually do. In 2020, despite all the bad, he always had something new. This time he had two great questions to ask. I felt in my soul that I was up to the task. Traveling next year, maybe back on the plate. I'm already packed. I really can't wait. The question is, where will I go? Any way the wind doth blow. And what should our word be for next year? It's obvious to me,

only one word we need here. To all the world, no need to mope. In 2021, we all must have hope. That's a pretty lovely sentiment to wrap this up on today, for sure. Thanks, Barb, for that. And thank all of you. As I said, there were many more. I don't know, a couple of dozen letters came in, and we want to try and mix them in with some of our answers.

So that is, in fact, what we have done. Great to talk to you. All these Wednesdays since we started this, really, and I guess it was somewhere in the middle of August with the U.S. elections being fun, and we kind of broadened the topics and the discussion and now have it under that banner of smoke mirrors and the truth and looking forward to a 2021 where we can we can deal on that issue

a lot and on a on a weekly basis as we are doing yeah me too peter i really enjoy the conversations and look forward to the coming year we're going to do a lot more of it. It's just a great way to have a conversation between us and also with the people who enjoy the podcast and enjoy kind of hearing a little bit of talk about Canadian politics and maybe world politics from time to time and a little bit, I guess, about life in general. So here's to many more podcasts in the future, and thanks for reaching out to me today.

No problem. Listen, have a great New Year's Eve and a great new year, and we'll talk again soon. I just want to let the listeners know that tomorrow in the final broadcast of the 2020 year. Amber Mack is joining us, who is an extremely talented person on any number of different levels. She's a broadcaster and an author, a podcaster. She's on SiriusXM. She does it all, and one of her focuses are her foci.

Would that be the plural of focus? Foci. I think so, yeah. She's a terrific person. This is great that you have me on this. Yeah, she's coming on tomorrow. We'll talk about a number of things, not the least of which will be some sense of the kind of year that tech had. Because in many ways it developed at an incredible pace because of the challenges of the pandemic before it.

But also there were hits and misses in the tech area too. So we're going to talk all about that as a nice end of year closeout with Amber Mac. So that's tomorrow. All right, Bruce, thanks again. We will talk soon. All right. Take care, Peter.