The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - ANITA ANAND UNPLUGGED

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

The minister of defense on dealing with the Generals, fighting Putin, and what she's learned about leadership.  Anita Anand has only been in cabinet three years but in that time has had to deal with the vaccine crisis in one portfolio, and a war that could go global in another.   She's received both criticism and praise -- what's it taught her about leadership? 

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. That's right, we're back! And hello there, and man it does feel good to be back. You know, June was a long time ago. That was our last regular daily episode of The Bridge. There have been a couple of specials over the summer, but for the most part, it's been downtime. It's what we call in the business a hiatus. You know, it's kind of vacation, right? But we call it a hiatus. And that's what The Bridge has been on for basically July and August, which were two really interesting months for me. July, I had COVID, so it was a wipeout.

August, I was in Scotland, much different. It was fun. If you've listened to me in the last couple of years, you know I love Scotland for golf, for the oceans, the beaches. You know, it's a little-known fact about Scotland that Scotland has some of the best beaches in the beaches. You know, it's a little known fact about Scotland that Scotland has some of the best beaches in the world. Long strips, miles they call them over there, kilometers of sand,

where you're probably not even going to bump into anybody else. It's great. It's beautiful. So there's lots to do in Scotland, just like there's lots to do in scotland just like there's lots to do in canada i've spent my life visiting every corner of canada and still it's numero uno for me as a country but i enjoy my times in scotland as well i've got a lot of friends there um so what else do i do you know if you follow me on instagram or twitter you know that every summer usually in july i love to jump off this cliff in the gatineau hills into a lake i mean i call it a cliff it's really just a rock but when i stand on top of the rock it looks like a cliff and i jump off and i yell my age and still jumping do it every summer i didn't do it this summer covid

got in the way i was planning had it all planned out i'm 74 and still jumping. That didn't happen. But in Scotland, I swam in the North Sea. That was an accomplishment. The beaches are great. The water is cold. It's like 60. But I did it. So I felt refreshed and I felt like I'd accomplished something in the water. Hadn't had my big jump, but I had done that. Also in July and August,

I, you know, along with my good friend and colleague and co-author, Mark Bulgich, we've been writing our next book. We met, you probably remember a couple of years ago, Extraordinary Canadians, did very well,

number one bestseller. We're doing another book for next year. It'll come out in the fall of 2023 with Simon & Schuster once again as our publisher. So we've been working at that, and it's a fascinating process. We're talking to people. I'm not going to give you the take on this book.

It's different. It's not Extraordinary Canadians Part II. It's a very different kind of book. But I think, I hope that you'll enjoy it as well. So a lot of time on that, and both Mark and I love writing. It's a challenge writing. I'm sure you find it if you're writing a letter or a poem or if you're writing a book.

It's a challenge. You've got to be in the right headspace when you're writing. You've obviously done your research and you're studying. But when you sit down to actually start to put those words on paper, you've got to be focused. It's a challenge, but it's fun. What else did I do in the summer? Well, I watched the politics of our country

I might not have been doing the podcast but I kept an eye on things I've watched this forever conservative leadership race which finally comes to a conclusion this weekend everybody thinks they know who's going to win.

We'll see if that in fact is true. And we'll talk about it this week, both on Smoke Mirrors and the Truth on Wednesday and on Good Talk on Friday. So I've watched that. I've watched, I've watched Pierre, I've watched Justin Trudeau.

And, you know, I, I'm kind of being on the record for ever since the last election that I thought he would probably quit before a year was out. So in other words, before October, I don't think that's going to happen now. I don't know if you've been watching him lately, but he sure doesn't look like a guy who's going anywhere. He looks like a guy who's decided, I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to take on the latest challenge, and I'm going to try and see what I can do about all these people who hate me. I could be wrong.

I've been wrong again before. But let's see. Let's see what happens on that. But today, that's not what we're here to talk about. Today, we're here to talk about and to talk to a leading federal cabinet minister, one who has been in controversy at times, one who has been praised at times.

And she's relatively new to the business of politics. She won election for the first time in 2019, went right into the cabinet, was named the Minister of Procurement, and suddenly faced, within a couple of months being on the job, the pandemic and the rush to get vaccines. And once vaccines were finally discovered or created or researched to the point where they were going to be usable, the immediate controversy was why can't Canada get them? Partly because Canada didn't have a vaccine production place. That's a whole other story, because we used to have one.

But it meant we had to go out on the world market and buy them, and that was Anita Anand's job. And while she took a few hits in the opening couple of weeks, because it didn't seem like we were getting delivery of vaccines then suddenly we had so many vaccines that nobody was talking about a non-supply of vaccines anymore and they haven't ever since then anything, the talk about vaccines is on the part of those who don't want them. Anyway, she was judged a success in that portfolio, and when the election came around last year,

and a new cabinet was named, she was put into the next challenging portfolio, which at the time was defense. And why was it challenging then? It was challenging because some of the senior leadership of the Canadian Armed Forces, and we're talking senior,

we're talking generals, were being accused of harassment, sexual harassment. And people were saying, what the hell is going on in the Armed Forces? And that's what Anita hell is going on in the armed forces? And that's what Anita Anand was put in to sort out.

Well, she barely started doing that and had to keep doing that when the war broke out between Russia and Ukraine. And on her plate became, how do we help Ukraine? So, I want to talk to her about that, and I want to talk to her about it in the way you can do in podcasts, which is more of a conversation than a sort of a grilling news interview.

I'd like to try and understand who these people are, what makes them tick, how they define themselves, what leaders should be. What makes them tick? How they define themselves. What leaders should be. So that's the basis of the conversation we're going to have with Anita Anand today. Second time she's been on the bridge. And, you know, the whole idea with these kind of conversations is to try to break them away from the message track

that so many of them are trained to give. Sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes it just takes a few minutes. We'll see what happens here. So Anita Anand on the bridge when we come back. Minister, it's good of you to join for this day. You know, it's been a long summer for everybody, but for you, an incredibly busy summer.

You've been all, you know, all over the world. Have you had time for yourself as well in your family? I had some time with my four kids during July, and that was one of the highlights of the summer for sure. They're all studying at different institutions, and it was just great to be together. And those are the times I laugh the most. And of course, everyone loves to laugh. So I really miss them a lot. Well, and not too many opportunities to laugh and some of the other things you've had to deal with. So let's go go over a few of them but first of all let me set the scene with you because it was almost a year ago now that you were handed this portfolio and when you were handed it by the prime minister i mean it was basically the the mandate seemed to be and you know excuse the language but you know clean the place up in the defense department there

were there were issues and we all know what they were. So here we are almost a year later. Is it a different Defense Department today than it was then? I would say that we have a very strong leadership team. We have now a permanent Chief of defense staff in General Ayer. We have a new defense minister in Bill Matthews, and we have a relatively new minister in myself. And as a leadership team, we have really jelled about the importance of the top level items that we need to keep working on and indeed sexual misconduct and the broader culture change issue in the Canadian Armed Forces is still at the top of the agenda.

Did you meet any resistance when you were when you were first put into that position and you had to deal with those kind of issues? I have not. And I think that is because I am very strong in terms of what our agenda must be. Now, we have to acknowledge that this is a very complex organization with a history of buckling up against systemic change of and to deliver the message of the importance of culture change in the Canadian Armed Forces. And every base I go to, whether it's Esquimaux, Edmonton, Borden, Shearwater, Valcartier, I talk about culture change. and by the same token, these words about the importance of culture change in the Canadian Armed Forces are heard with open ears. And that's because I believe that there is a willingness to embrace change at this time.

There is an understanding of the necessity for change at the current time. And that is something we all need to work on. This is not just a question for leadership. It's everyone's issue at the current time. So are you telling me that when you travel to all those bases, and some of them I know well because I was in them many years ago, but are you telling me that there would be times when you would sit down in those initial meetings with the leadership of whatever base it was or whatever uh area it was

and to a room full of not exclusively men but probably mainly men uh that you really felt the room was responding? They weren't holding back? Actually, it's really a great question to ask what we do at the bases themselves when we're having these conversations. So by and large, we have, General Laird and I have town halls with members of the Canadian Armed Forces on the basis and we take questions across a spectrum of topics to make sure that we are understanding what are

the top level items for the Canadian Armed Forces and some of those questions relate to culture change for sure and indeed in my opening remarks, I always talk about this era in the Canadian Armed Forces, because we're not talking about a solution that is going to be found today or tomorrow or this month. This is going to continue to be an issue that we have to work on in the long term. And the importance of it is, I would say twofold. First of all, we need to be effective as a means for national defense. That's the first item. And the second item is that how? How do we be effective? Well, we are effective if we can continue to grow and build and include and ensure that we have from an operational perspective, a Canadian Armed Forces that functions for this country.

And that's the operational imperative. So quite apart from the moral imperative that eliminating sexual misconduct and eliminating discrimination from the Canadian Armed Forces is important, there is also an operational imperative as well. Well, let's talk about some of that operational imperative because you know it was within a few months of you getting into this portfolio that suddenly you were confronted with a huge international issue and that was of course and still is the war in ukraine um are we doing as much as we can do to help ukraine i

know we've done a lot and i don't want to you know i know the list of all the things that we have done but are we doing as much as we can do to help ukraine so let me just take you back to my first few months as minister okay in the first week of being a minister i accepted the recommendation of madame arbor to transfer the cases from the military justice system to the civilian justice system and those cases are ones that relate to sexual misconduct and sexual harassment. So that's a huge issue that we tackled right away. And we're continuing to work with the provinces and territories to transfer those cases. At the same time, I was receiving briefings relating to the Russian buildup, the buildup of Russian troops at the Ukrainian border.

And so what I realized very soon after being appointed is that we can never let the culture change piece recede from being a front top level issue. But at the same time, we have another international situation brewing that we need to be on top of. And so in terms of our military aid to Ukraine, this is something that I also was thinking of at the moment of being appointed. We saw that a Russian invasion of Ukraine,

should I say a further invasion, because 2014 they invaded Crimea, was indeed quite possible. And February 24th changed all of our lives because what we had been contemplating and understanding could be the case did become the case. But suffice it to say that given that we knew that this was possible, we wanted to make sure we had everything in order from a military perspective that we possibly

could. So in January, January 26, I announced the extension and expansion of our operation in Ukraine, which is Operation Unifier, under which we've trained 33,000 Ukrainian troops. is a mark that Canada's been there since well before the end of 2021 and 2022. We've been there since 2015, recognizing that training is absolutely essential for Ukraine if it's going to be able to defend its own sovereignty. And then recently we announced that in England, we will be continuing to train Ukrainian new recruits. So in terms of your question, everything we are doing, I think it's really important to remember that Canada's contribution in this area of training is really recognized internationally as being an area of expertise for Canada. In my first conversation with Secretary Austin, the Secretary of Defense of the United States,

for example, he himself highlighted Canada's expertise here. And we've shown that in, you know, we showed it in Iraq, we showed it in Afghanistan. Exactly. It's not new for us. And the commitment on Ukraine has been very much there. The commitment has also been in expending tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in helping Ukraine in this situation now and in sending over equipment, the big heavy artillery, shells, etc., etc. But is there more we could be doing because you hear the constant refrain

you've heard it you hear it in the in the house of commons from the opposition but you've heard it also um elsewhere that we're not doing enough we're not doing as much as we could do that we have more money we have money we don't use in the defense to budget each year a couple of billion dollars um that we could be doing more so how do you respond to that issue of could we be doing more so uh to date we have um we have committed more than 600 million dollars of military aid for Ukraine. That ranged from hand grenades and rifles and ammunition to anti-tank weapon systems and heavy artillery, the M777s. And most recently, 39 armored vehicles from GDLS in London, Ontario, and over 50 cameras for drones.

Have those gone already? Have those military vehicles gone yet? Very shortly. They're very large, and it's very complex to transport them and we had to add at the request of the ukrainian government uh additional armor in them and so they're they're very close to departing this country okay i know i know you're trying to put everything in context and and that that is needed but you are kind of ducking the question, which is, could we be doing more? I don't think I'm ducking the question, Peter.

I'm about to say that what we are doing is significant. And we have continued to make sure that we're responding to the requests of Ukraine. So Defense Minister Resnikov will call me, he will specifically ask me to provide X, Y and Z items and we get those items out the door, drones, cameras for drones, the military vehicles, the N777s, for example. At the same time, Peter, and this is perhaps the most important point, we have to remember that we are balancing the needs of the Canadian Armed Forces, on the one hand, with the military aid for Ukraine on the others. has what it's what it needs from an operational perspective to actually learn how to use the weapon systems that we are donating so that we can continue to train um ukrainian soldiers for example and also on the other to make sure that we are doing whatever we can from a military

perspective to support ukraine in the short and the long term so it is a balance and that's the balance we are aiming to get right and are we are we at a point at which the balance can be pushed much further either way the key moment that we are at right now is to make sure that we are partnering with industry so that there are others in this country along with government who are aware of and acceding to the moral imperative to assist Ukraine in its fight for sovereignty and security. So when I was visiting L3 Harris, for example, that's the manufacturer of cameras for drones that we contracted with shortly after receiving the request from Minister Resnikoff for these cameras. They told me that they were so committed to providing these cameras as quickly as possible, that they spoke with all of their other purchasers

to ask them whether they would mind waiting for those cameras so they can get the cameras to the government and over to Ukraine as soon as possible. That's the way in which industry has been and needs to continue cooperating to get the job done. This is a joint effort. We're all in this together. And it has been wonderful to date to speak with Canadian firms to see what they can do to assist in the effort to support Ukraine. Last quick question on Ukraine. I've noticed that almost since you took the portfolio and you actually mentioned it yourself, that you've had these constant conversations with your counterpart in Ukraine, Minister Reznikov. What are those conversations like? What can you tell us about those conversations? usually a, Anita, we really need this kind of conversation? Or is it a sort of update on

where things are on the conflict? What's the primary reason for those conversations? Well, I have the greatest respect for Minister Rastnikov, I have to say. My first in-person meeting with him was on January 31st in Kieveefe and at that time we really set the the tone of our relationship which has continued to this day which is I am here to help you in whatever way I can on behalf of the government of Canada and you should feel free to speak with me about whatever it is that Ukraine needs.

And so the tone of those conversations is very frank and I would say very collaborative. And indeed, on a personal level, he is just a wonderful human being. And despite the fact that his country is besieged by war and devastation, he continues to be a positive force for Ukraine and for all defense ministers who speak with him. And I will say defense ministers around the world are very close, close and closely aligned. We meet regularly as part of the defense contact group organized by Secretary

Austin to put on the table exactly what we are doing what more we can do what are ukraine's needs and how can we collaborate with each other to do better for ukraine so we're all committed in the short and the long term we've got one other question on the defense related matter and it's about procurement which is something something that's close to your heart. You were an expert in that area or a degree of expertise in that area before you got into politics. You certainly became an expert on it in dealing with the vaccine situation and the pandemic.

Now you're dealing with procurement on the defense level. And here's my question. It's not about any one particular issue but why does it seem when it gets to dnd that it takes so darn long to get stuff procured signed contracts whatever i mean how long have we been looking for a replacement for the f-18s how many governments have have been through this and we still don't have them? But it's not just aircraft. It happens with, you know, naval warships.

It happens for the army with tanks and armored vehicles of different sorts. What is the issue when it gets to defense that it takes so long i mean the one of the things that you were praised for in your former role was how quickly you moved on things now it was a pandemic and the you know but uh the situation was a little different but nevertheless here it drags on for years sometimes decades to get these things done. Well, can I just mention the fighter jets for a second? We're in the final stages of contracting for the fighter jets, the F-35s. You know how many times I've heard that over the years? Well, we're in the final stage and hope that the contract is lined up before the end of the year. jet procurement that we've been working with suppliers at a non-political departmental level

to make sure that these fighter jets are procured. They're a necessity for the Canadian Armed Forces. We need that capacity desperately, and speed is extremely important. But in terms of your actual question relating to procurement writ large, we do need to make sure we get major procurements right because they are for the Canadian Armed Forces long-term use. And the reality is that the technology that is utilized in these procurements, whether it is the surface combatants or whether it's the fighter jets has to be compatible and has to be top of the line so we'll continue to work but i've got to say uh peter procurement is often painted with a one stroke and that is you're terrible at procurement which was basically

the tenor of your question and i just do need to mention that things are becoming more efficient from the contracting and delivery standpoint. Of the six Arctic offshore patrol ships that we've contracted for, three are in the water. One is being delivered today, the Max Bernays. One of those has circumnavigated the north american continent so that's really important we will continue to move on ships and planes but procurement it does need to get better and what do i bring to the table is expertise in contracting which was useful in the pandemic with the procurement of vaccines so i've said to my team we need to make sure we've got clauses in those contracts relating to schedules, relating to exits if necessary, because continually renegotiating contracts for delays is not something that I am comfortable with as a general matter.

And finally, apart from the Canadian Armed Forces, which needs this equipment, we have to think about the Canadian taxpayer. At the end of the day, I always ask my team, we have to remember who is paying for these procurements. And we have to actually say is this something that would sit well with the canadian taxpayer that's got to be our our question when we are engaged in complex and expensive procurements two quick things um i was on the arctic uh patrol vessel last summer going through doing the circumnavigation for part of it um the harry de wolff and it was a great experience crew was

great captain was great people were welcomed in different parts of the arctic uh although i got to tell you there were times when you were on that vessel and you were thinking this is it this is like our arctic defense structure i know that's an overstatement of things, but it did seem it's such a massive area that if we're going to get serious about Arctic defense, it's going to take a lot more than a couple of patrol vessels, which, by the way, the Harry DeWolf is back in Halifax right now because it had an engine problem, but that's okay.

Still a great vessel. Now, I know you're going to slap me around here. I have to. I have to. I have to stop you, Peter. I'm not sure if you were following, but we made a massive announcement in Continental Defense and NORAD modernization in June of $38.6 billion over 20 years to upgrade our continental defense and our surveillance systems

so we can make sure that we have surveillance that moves further and further north and is able to detect the most recent innovations in missiles, cruise missiles, hypersonic missiles, etc., as well as from a command and control standpoint, making sure that we have the technology in place to deliver the information that is gained from that surveillance to the decision makers so that they can make decisions. We have to remember that continental defense occurs in conjunction with the United States. And again, almost $40 billion over 20 years gives you a sense of how important the Arctic is and continental defense is to our government and to Canadians. Generally, I was just in Nunavut with Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and the Prime Minister to view the North Warning System, which is our current surveillance system.

And while we are building this new surveillance system, we are also upgrading and maintaining the current system. And we recently executed a contract of $600 dollars with nasa tech corporation and just from a standpoint of reconciliation i want to make it clear that we are undertaking the upgrades and the modernization of norad in conjunction with important stakeholders, the most important of which is the Indigenous communities in this country. And so this is going to be a process that respects their wishes and their understanding of how the land should be used and contracts like that where we can ensure economic benefits accrue to Indigenous communities is just one aspect of this.

Canada is taking a leadership role, and so am I in this one. Okay. In my defense, I was talking about the feeling last summer, not this summer. And I did hear this announcement. And, you know, for a lot of people in arctic and for a lot of people who care about what's happening in the arctic and arctic defenses it's a welcome decision uh and we'll actually want to see it happening you know as quickly as possible even though it's a 20-year plan um i gotta move on or i'm gonna lose you here i'm already going way over the time i promised you

but it's great to have this conversation. It's really important, I think. Two areas to close out on. The first one is you were quick to respond, as some of your cabinet colleagues were, a week or so ago when Chrystia Freeland was accosted in Alberta. My question to you is, we were going through a very bizarre time in the polarization of different forces in the country, and we've seen these kind of incidents happen to senior members of all parties, actually um not just the governing party is

has anything like that ever happened to you since you've entered the political arena oh yes i i am not immune and certainly have uh been subject to my fair share of online abuse as well as in person. I had someone come to my home on a Sunday morning recently. My garage door was open and my daughter was working out in our home i would say very messy garage but home gym and um i wasn't home and he walked right up to our garage and started speaking to my daughter asking where i was wanting to talk to me about an issue that he's concerned about. In an abusive or harassing way? I wasn't there at the time, be visited by people who are wanting to raise an issue with me in my role as Member of Parliament or as Minister.

And so that was just the latest example. But I'll just say that I do have concerns about security. It's an issue that we have to take very seriously, especially given that we are so much in the public domain. And certainly in a time of war, I find myself in front of the public quite often. And regardless of which political stripe you wear, I know that we are all as elected officials, people who want to serve. And I believe that we should be engaging in rational debate on these issues I got into politics because I felt maybe I could bring something to bear to political discourse

you'll have to remember that I was a prof for almost 25 years before I got into political life. And let me just tell you that when we wanted to talk about a topic as academics, we'd sit around a table and somebody would pop on the table the most recent draft of the paper that they're writing. We would all ask questions to the author about the paper and engage in rational debate. And it was fact-based, often empirical, and the discussion did not consist of ad hominem attacks or abuse of any sort. I think that we all in this country should try to engage in more rational discussion about serious political and public policy issues. This is a time where we have to remember the importance of rational debate, but also the integrity that you need to bring to those discussions regardless of who you are just on the you mentioned as you began that that you think security is an issue that needs more discussion do you do you feel that members of parliament, cabinet ministers, or all members of parliament should have a better system of security for themselves, not only at work, but away from work?

I think that we need to give some serious thought to what type of security members of parliament as a general matter should have? We are all public figures. We are all representing our communities to the best of our abilities. And I certainly would welcome that conversation. How can we do better for our public officials in the area of security last question it's on leadership not uh political leadership or party leadership but on this the general question of leadership um you've been a leader you've been a leader in both the uh private sector and the public sector uh so you know what it takes. So what does it take?

What does it take to be a good, strong leader? I think it takes someone who has the ability to understand the daily lives of the people you are leading, whether it is your department or the Canadian Armed Forces or the constituents in your riding or the people of our country, for me, empathy is the most important thing. I'm a pretty emotional and empathetic person myself. And for me, trying to figure out how I can best understand or put myself in the shoes of the person who is the subject of the decision that we are considering is perhaps the foremost thing I think about in decision making. Of course,

costs and benefits and ensuring that stakeholder views are accounted for are also important. But I never let that question of empathy or how that person is feeling escape from my mind. How do you do that at a time when there are, you know, such divisions on certain areas in the country, you know, whether it's, you know, vaccinated against, you know, versus unvaccinated, Indigenous versus non-Indigenous, homeowners versus those who feel they'll never own a home. How do you deal with those kind of divisions? What challenges do they

present for a leader? Well, it's such a good question because what you're saying is that some of these issues are intractable or conflicting and require resources and attention all at the same time and how do you do that how do you be empathetic to everyone when you have conflicting views about how best to address a problem. And that is a fair and perhaps the best question from the answer that I gave you. But I would just say that what I have learned in government is that the problems are extremely complex, but we have to be good at complex decision making in response. We have to be able to take into account scarce resources while understanding how individual communities will be affected by the decisions we make. And that is just a framework of the way I approach decision making, given that you asked me a question about what it takes to be a good leader. But I will just say that it's never the same calculation and balancing in any one situation but you have to go into it in my view

with empathy first and foremost and a sense of determination to do your very best for the canadian public while being empathetic for to them minister it's been great to talk to you again. You've been very patient in the conversation and it's great to, you know, to hear you talking about some of these issues in the way you've talked to us today. Well, thank you so much, Peter. I really enjoy our conversations and certainly last year when we were speaking about vaccines, I said to myself, you know, having these interviews actually allows me to express how important I take the work that I do in a more informal way. And so I appreciate the conversation as well. Thanks again. Thanks again.

Thanks again. Take care. Anita Anand, the Minister of Defense. And, you know, you'll make your own judgments about how you feel about some of the answers you just heard over the last 35 minutes. But what I like to take away from that is it's a conversation as opposed to, you know, a regular news interview of which I've did for years and I enjoyed doing them and they were important. This is different. This is an opportunity to try and understand somebody from, uh, you know, uh, kind of the raw feelings that they have on certain issues and certain subjects.

So I hope you took something away from that, that you found it helpful for your understanding of some of these issues, no matter how you feel. And I say that frankly. You may not agree with a lot of what the minister said or you may agree with a lot of what she said but you had a chance to hear it in more than a you know 10 second clip so that's always a good thing um okay that was our opening feature interview for the new season and um let me give you a hint of what's coming up through the rest

of the week um because we'll you know we we achieved certain things last year with the formatting of the program in a certain way and we're going to continue that uh this is a shorter week than normal uh this being the tuesday Tuesday of the week that we're starting off. Tomorrow, Wednesday, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson will be by. And Bruce, I'm sure, we'll have a lot to catch up with him on in terms of what's been going on, some of the areas of which we think Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth plays into very well. Thursday is your turn. It's the mailbag edition. Now, it's early, and so don't be shy.

If you have thoughts about anything, it could be about Anita Anand and some of the things she had to say, or it could be on any other issue that's on your mind. I was thinking of one question that I'd love to hear answered by any of you, all of you, is what did you learn about Canada this summer? I'm not looking for, you know, a magazine article. I'm looking for a few sentences or a paragraph on what you learned about your country this summer. It could have been on a trip. It could have been on something this summer. It could have been on a trip. It could have been on something you heard.

It could have been on something you saw. What did you learn about Canada this summer? So if you can answer that question, write it to me at the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. And that'll be part of our program on Thursday. Something new and different on the Thursday program this year in the mailbag, your turn edition. We're going to hear, I'm still kind of playing with the idea of what title we'll give it.

Kind of like the posties diary. We have somebody who's going to remain anonymous. They live in the western half of the country, so somewhere between Thunder Bay and Victoria. I'm not going to tell you where. You may have to try and guess where. But the idea is to hear from the postie on Thursdays. It's not an interview, but it's kind of the postie,

and what the postie has to say about whatever he chooses to say, whatever the topic may be, we'll hear from the postie on Thursdays. And it's only a couple of minutes. It's not going to take away from your time with your letters, your emails. But I thought of the idea, some of you, the older folks, will remember a show that used to be on CBC Radio on Sunday mornings, back in, I guess, the early 80s. The Senator's Diary.

It was an anonymous senator. I put senator in quotation marks. And kind of what they were hearing around the Senate that week. Well, this is the postie's diary. And we'll find out what the postie has on his mind. That'll be on Thursdays. Friday's, of course, Good Talk.

And how have you missed Good Talk this summer? There were two special editions, one near the end of July, one near the end of July, one near the end of August, when Chantel, DeBear, talking to us from Montreal, or Bruce Anderson talking to us from Ottawa.

And they collect their thoughts on the issues of the day. Now, this week's edition on Friday will be the day before the Conservative leadership vote is announced on who their new leader is. Surprise, surprise. Will it be a surprise? Or will it be like what we witnessed yesterday in Britain when they announced the new prime minister was going to be Liz Truss, which is basically what everybody had been saying for weeks. So on Saturday, will it be Pierre Palliev,

like everybody's been saying for weeks? Or no, will it not be Pierre Palliev? Will it be Jean Charest? Will it be somebody else? Well, who knows? Maybe they'll tell us on Friday on Good Talk. So that's your snapshot of the week ahead and how we're going to progress through this year some new twists and turns in the bridge

and some of the favorites of the past hope you enjoyed the the debut edition for season whatever this is I think this is like season two and a half of The Bridge after our hiatus. All right, it's been good talking to you

right here on SiriusXM Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform. That's where you can find us and you can always find us if you miss the SiriusXM edition just subscribe on any of your podcast platforms to the bridge and you'll be able to hear it at your own time on SiriusXM it rebroadcasts at 5 p.m each day the first broadcast is at 12 noon. Those are Eastern times. Alright, that's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in

24 hours.