The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Aside From Trump, Does Foreign Policy Enter The Canadian Election?

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

How risky are the US/Iran talks now underway? Aside from Trump, are there any foreign policy issues in the Canadian election campaign?  

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Monday, that means Dr. Janice Stein is here. And here's the topic for her today, Iran and the United States. How risky are these talks that are going on? Plus, it's debate week. What does she think of that? Coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here.

Yes, it's good to have another week of the bridge in store. And these are big days, big weeks in store right now because we're leading up to the April 28th election, so it's getting closer and closer by the day. This week is a big week. The debate's Wednesday night in French, Thursday night in English. You going to be watching? I suspect you'll be watching at least some of what's on this week in terms of the nation's political leaders vying for the job of prime minister.

And that, as a result, is the question for this week, for this week's Your Turn. Okay? I'm going to give you that now so you can give it some thought. And here's the way I want to frame the question. I want to know what your, as you know, there'll be five leaders on stage answering questions. Our friend Steve Pakin from TVO is going to be the moderator this time around.

He's had lots of experience of doing moderating of debates in the past. So no fear of what may happen there and so he'll be asking the questions the leaders will be answering them and it'll be interesting to see just how what the format's like you know these change always a little bit every time that's one thing but what's more important is the answers you get, whatever the questions are. So here's my question for you. I don't want to hear what question you want to ask.

What I want to hear is what are you looking for? On Thursday night, we'll focus on the English language debates because Thursday, of course, is your turn, so you'll have a chance to air out your answers on the day of the debates before the debates start. So, once again, the question is, what will you be looking for in the answers that come from the people

who want to lead this country, what are you going to be looking for? Now, you can take that any direction you want. You can say, I'll be looking for confidence. I'll be looking for inspiration. I'll be looking for how are you going to build this or that? How are you going to deal with the Arctic. It could be any number of things. It could be an issue or it could be

an approach on the part of these leaders. So what are you looking for? Here are the conditions. And you've been really good at this lately. 75 words or less. A lot of people have less than 75 words in their answers. They get right to the point, and that's great. If you're over 75 words, you're out. Can't help you there. Okay, that's just the way it is. So don't write saying, oh, I'm sorry, I went over a little bit. Well, if you went over a little bit, edit. That's the deal. And there are other elements

to the deal as well. You must include your name, the location you're writing from. Under 75 words, have it in Wednesday evening before 6 p.m. Eastern time, Wednesday evening. Okay? Come in after that. It's too late. So those are your basic rules. Name, location, 75 words or less, have it in by 6 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday. And where do you send it? You send it to

themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com We're getting down to the nitty gritty on the election campaign and you know

the weekend with some interesting stories on the weekend you know if you know, the weekend with some interesting stories on the weekend. You know, if you thought the Dirty Tricks campaigns were only happening in other countries, they don't. They've always happened here too. And there was another example of what appears to have been a Dirty Trick campaign going on with fake buttons

going out at a conservative rally, and it appears the buttons were planted there by liberals. So this isn't quite the degree of dirty tricks we've seen, especially in the U.S., but it's a dirty trick nevertheless because the buttons are trying to align the conservatives with the MAGA groups in the United States. Now, you can make that argument, just like you can make lots of arguments about different liberal groups,

but you don't do it by faking and phoning up stuff. Anyway, there'll be lots of discussion, I'm sure, about that. We'll probably bring it up tomorrow on Smoke Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson and Fred Delore. But that's tomorrow's program. Let's get to today's program. Because I think this is a really important discussion. And I'm looking forward to hearing what Janice Stein has to say about it.

Dr. Stein, of course, from the Munk School at the University of Toronto. And she's our regular Monday guest, dealing with things international and some domestic as well. So let's hear what she has to say this week. So Janice, we're living in an era where there's like so much to talk about every day and it's all related in some fashion or another to the president of the United States, that some things are getting kind of squeezed out for airtime and discussion time. So I want to try and make up for that with a discussion about Iran, because they finally

had their first meeting, Iran and the United States, over the weekend, and it seemed to go quite well. It went, you know, all the professionals, Peter said, it went as well as can be expected. I think it went really well. Very interesting to watch Steve Witkoff. You know, has three big files now. I think he's the icebreaker.

He must have very good interpersonal skills, sets a good tone. And he's, you know, he's opened up three files. One with Putin, one with Netanyahu in the Middle East, and now probably in some ways the most challenging one in Iran. And after each opening session, there's, as people would say, they're really good vibes. Now, he did something right out of the gate. He narrowed the focus way down. It isn't about eliminating Iran's nuclear program, contrary to what a lot of hawks would say. It isn't about eliminating Iran's missile program, which is what some people want.

He said it is very specifically about Iran not having a nuclear weapon. Well, that's the narrowest possible focus. You have to pay attention to levels of enrichment. You have to have a monitoring system. And those levels have to go down and inspectors have to be able to look at stockpiles. But that's within a set of goalposts. That's doable. That was a big opening first move. Now, the Americans, or at least Trump, have always said that the only reason Iran wants the nuclear capability is for weapons, is to attack some of its neighbors, namely Israel. Iran says, no, no, no, we don't want weapons. We want the ability to use nuclear energy for power, for what have you. And it seems to be that at least through this

first stage, that is being accepted at the negotiating table as what Iran actually wants. Is that fair to say? I don't know if it is being accepted as what they actually want. I think it is being accepted as the ground on which these negotiations are going to go forward, Peter, because if eliminating their nuclear program were on the table, there would be no second meeting. And they're equally adamant that they will not allow their missile program to be part of these negotiations, which was what, you know, the reasons Trump walked away, let's not forget this. He walked away from a hard-fought deal that was achieved in 2015. Why did he walk away? The missile program wasn't part of it. It left Iran with the capacity to enrich. And the third

and probably most important one, and we'll see how this plays out, it only lasted 10 years. It was limited to a decade, and then Iran could have gone ahead. He's now, or Steve Wyckoff, which is not quite the same thing, but Wyckoff has started the talks off by agreeing to the first two things that Donald Trump rejected in 2015 when he walked away. He walked away, sorry, in 2017. The agreement was made in 2015. What has Iran done in the meantime? Since 2017, what have they done with their program? Well, as long as that agreement was in place, their enrichment levels were at about 20%, which is far below what you need to make a nuclear weapon. walked away from the table. And only when it became clear that he was not coming back did they push their enrichment levels up.

Reports vary between 60 and 80%, which puts you, that's the crucial jump because it's then just literally a matter of days until you can reach enough to make a nuclear weapon. So they clearly now have the demonstrated capability to enrich uranium to the point where they can make a nuclear weapon. They've also kicked out the UN inspectors. So there have been no inspections of their program.

And they kicked them out because they said, well, we didn't walk away from the deal. The United States walked away from the deal. So for the Iranians, as we move ahead, what is going to have to happen for them to be convinced that Donald Trump will not do it again? This all sounds pretty iffy, pretty risky. Well, you know, this one, let's look at the three, Russia, Ukraine. There's, again, Steve Wyckoff got what seemed to be a 30-day ceasefire. That 30-day ceasefire has vanished into thin air. Each side is claiming the other violated.

There's no ceasefire. Look at what's going on in Gaza. There's no ceasefire so of these three files you might argue that this one is the one where there's the best chance of making progress and there's good reason for that why?

why would you think you might make progress on this one? because it is a big deal and I think we're far away from any deal there's two big reasons why Iran is actually at the table. The first, and the New York Times had an incredible story of the people who went to see Ayatollah Khamenei. It was, you know, the president of Iran who's elected, Peseshkin, who's a moderate.

So you'd expect him to say that. But in that room was, you know, was former commanders of the Revolutionary Guard. These are hardliners who told him that if Iran did not go to the table and Israel, with the assistance of the United States, bombed the Iranian program,

it would escalate to an all-out war and the regime is so weak because of domestic opposition, because of the terrible economy, that in their view, the regime would fall. That's pretty clarifying when your hardliners tell you that. Remind me, let me put it this way. me where uh and if i'm wrong here um we keep raising the name steam with steve whitcoff and we have before if my memory serves me correct he was initially appointed as the as trump's middle east envoy right yeah and this this is a

guy who his background is kind of real estate, right? That's all, real estate. Not kind of. So he's in real estate. He makes deals, Peter. And that's what he's making now, or trying to make deals. And as you say, some of them are a little iffy at the moment. But he's expanded from Middle East to Russia, Ukraine, and now to Iran. Which I guess in some ways all kind of falls under the same umbrella to a degree.

But, you know, for Trump, for a guy whose envoys are key men in certain areas of being a bit of a bust, I mean, just look at the whole terror thing. Witkoff seems to have accumulated a degree of trust beyond Trump. I mean, he seems to be fairly well regarded at this point, even though nothing's nailed down yet. Well, you have gone off the rails, Russia, Ukraine, and Gaza, right? This one, but he does, there's no question. And so I said, I personally am struck by his capacity to walk into a room, establish relationship, create a warm enough atmosphere that there's a second conversation.

And that's not easy to do when there's deeply distrustful and bitter feelings. But this negotiation, Peter, I think you're so right on the iffiness part of it. This is a very technical negotiation. When Obama got this done in 2015, he had highly qualified technical people. The Secretary of Energy, who was running a back channel, who is an expert in nuclear energy. You need really technical knowledge. And the Iranians have put together already a highly qualified team. You know, names that I think are known in the West, like Ali Larijani. Very experienced negotiators who've been on this file, opposed or in favor one way or the other. Who was in the room with Steve Whitcomb?

No one? You know, the U.S. ambassador to Oman. That's it. You always have to. Where's Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State? Where's the expert on nuclear weapons? So there's a quality about Steve Wyckoff where he wings it on the charm to open the doors, get those doors,

you know, get it started. But like everything else about this administration, if you don't follow it up with serious people who do their homework and know something about the subject, it's not going to end well. I want to talk for a moment before we move on about the risk factor that's included in all this. I mean, you know, I was consumed by all the other things

that were going on last week and the tariffs and the stock market and this, that, and the other. Until my ears perked up when I heard B-52s loaded and ready in different U.S. bases around the world and could fly and attack Iran at a moment's notice. Was that all just a big bluff to get people talking, or was that real? No. I think at the end of our, when we talked last Monday,

I snuck in just before we stopped, right, because I was paying attention to the same thing. And I thought, some things up, some things up. There's no question. And U.S. forces were on alert throughout the region. So that was a strong, strong message to Iran. Because he threatened Donald Trump. And it's very interesting.

You look at the threat for a moment. He said, I want Iran to thrive and be great. Well, I can't remember any U.S. president saying that about Iran in living memory, frankly. But if we don't get this deal done, there's going to be hell to pay or bombing like you've never seen before. And in the background is that alert throughout the region, which said to the Iranians, he really means what he says. If there's no deal, the United States is going to participate in a bombing campaign against Iran.

I think that was a big part of the calculation, frankly. Ayatollah Khamenei did not want to go to the table. He had said no already. And it was after that alert that that meeting took place that I described. And he changed his mind. So how would you describe the situation we're in now as it is going to, like a second meeting next weekend? Is this a high-risk moment?

I mean, we tend to look at Iran as this constant, and we have for the last, you know, 40, 50 years. Yeah, since the disastrous Jimmy Carter attempt to, you know, attack Iran or at least invade Iran to get hostages out. And it was just turned into a terrible mess. So are we at a high risk moment here or how would you describe it? I think there is real risk here. There is real risk here. There is real risk. If this fails, it is not like it was in 2017 when Donald Trump just walked away.

Didn't do anything. And the Iranians waited for a year before they enriched up to the level, frankly, they're at threshold nuclear power, Peter, they're nuclear power in all but name. That's not the case this time, because if these talks fail, it's inconceivable that Donald Trump would let this go without some kind of military action. And Netanyahu is chomping at the bit to take advantage of the opportunity,

because Iran's proxies are weakened, as well as not in a position to go back to war. His ally, Bashar al-Assad, is gone. This is the weakest that Iran has been in the region. Even in Iraq, al-Khamenei has been pulling back support for the Iranian militias. So this is a period of great weakness for Iran. And I don't think Donald Trump would lose face after these kinds of threats if these talks fail. What's the Iranian strategy? Who knows? But I think we know just enough here. When the United States withdrew from that agreement, Britain, France, and Russia did not. And sanctions snapped back on October the 18th.

That's what the agreement provides. After October 18th, those sanctions lapsed. No more opportunity to snap them back on. I think these talks will go well into October to get past that October 18th deadline because the British and French have been warning that they might snap them back. On the other hand,

I don't think they're going to go on forever. Iran literally has to be persuaded that it's for real this time, given what he did last time. And so I think this is not if there's progress, then it'll take years

to implement and all the technical experts will have to come to the table. But if there's not progress, we could be in it by early in the new year. Okay. Well, on that note, we're going to take our break, but we'll be right back after this. And welcome back.

You're listening to The Bridge, the Monday episode. That means, of course, Dr. Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto. Dr. Stein with us, and you're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Glad to have you with us. Okay, I want to talk domestic and domestic politics for a moment. We are, after all, in the middle of an election campaign. We've only got a couple of weeks to go. And this is a big week. I mean, people can talk all they want about the polls and make assumptions about what's going

to happen here. But things can change. They don't always change as a result of debates, but sometimes they do. And this is talked of as a consequential election, so let's talk of the debates as a consequential debate. And Janice, here's what I want to ask you, because obviously your area of expertise is international affairs. It's not often that international affairs, foreign affairs, are a major plank in an election campaign, that they get discussed a lot and Canadians get persuaded

in terms of which way to vote as a result of them. Now, this one's a little different because of the whole situation with the United States and between Donald Trump and whoever the next prime minister may be. But when you look, let's leave that, let's leave the Trump-America factor aside. Do you see, I mean, we just spoke for 15 or 20 minutes on a consequential event that's going on in the world

in terms of the Iran talks. Whether it's that or something else, do you see any issue in front of Canadian politicians that is garnering any interest amongst Canadian voters? Outside of Donald Trump and the United States, Peter, zero, frankly. Everything is pushed off the agenda. You know, sneaking around the side door sometimes, you get conversations like, well, we should sell more to Europe or we should do more with Europe or we should do more in Asia. But that takes about a sentence.

And then the conversation comes right back to Donald Trump and to the United States. And not even, it's really interesting, not even to North America and how this is reshaping North America. There is a, I'm really struck in all the conversations I'm having, there is a ballot question in this election. We can

debate often what the ballot question is. The ballot question is, what are you going to do about Donald Trump? And what's our future with the United States? That's what people want to talk about. And that works against, makes it harder frankly um or they've made it harder for themselves the tories because their campaign has not focused much on now there are there are pockets in the country that are obviously concerned about the ukraine russia story there are pockets that are concerned very concerned concerned, about Israel, the Palestinian question.

But not in terms of a broad-scale national discussion or debate. No, no. You know, I do hear, again, it's all filtered through Donald Trump. So the discussion about Ukraine, which touches, you know, we have, as we often say, the world's largest Ukrainian diaspora here in Canada. That issue was front and center. And it's, look, there's just a really, really bad attack on safe suing in Ukraine. But the discussion in Canada, well, it's about the future of Ukraine without backing from Donald Trump, or what's it going to take for Donald Trump.

So filtered even into that conversation, the pivot points have changed. It's about Donald Trump in Ukraine or Donald Trump and Russia. It's almost an obsessive preoccupation inside the country, frankly. This election is about Donald Trump. Is there any precedent to that? No, no. Well, you know, our memories fade a little bit. I think it's fair to say, Peter, the free trade election was about that. And that was a very consequential election.

It really was. You can't understand where we are today without that famous free trade election. And when you get a ballot question like this, which simplifies everything, are you in favor of free trade with the United States or not? And that's what Brian Mulroney defined as the ballot question. And it wasn't an obvious answer because the whole history of this country is about forming a country that is not the United States and about creating east-west flows and building railways that went across this country that didn't go north. And along comes the prime minister, and he says, no, no. We're going to change that.

We're going to open up trade. And fundamentally, that's the election that set us on the path to integrating our economies, the two economies, the Canadian-American economies, which we don't talk enough about this beer, are so deeply integrated that it's almost impossible to take them apart, frankly, because the integration is so deep and the supply chains are so interwoven. That came from an election which had one question. It's in a way sharper than this one because it was a yes or no.

And the other thing about it that was different was this one has become so much about personalities and one personality in particular. That one was about a policy. Yes. And you're quite right. I mean, it set the ball. Well, actually, the ball started rolling in the 60s with the auto pack. Yes.

And then the free trade kept it going, and it's brought us to this point that we're in right now. But that 88 election was the last time we had a significant turnout. Yes. We like to think 75% is a significant turnout in Canada. It's pretty paltry compared with countries that get, you know, in the 90s for election results. But nevertheless, it's a lot better than what we've had since 88.

And it'll be interesting to see whether this one has inspired or angered or invigorated Canadians to the point of which they're going to go vote. I bet they are. I bet we're going to get a higher than usual turnout, Peter. You think? Oh, yeah. What am I basing this on?

Very, very scientific. I was in the grocery store yesterday, and a woman saw me, and she's talking to me about raspberries. I don't want to buy these. They're from the United States. I said, actually, those raspberries are from Mexico. And she said, no, it doesn't matter to me. They're packaged by an American packager.

So look at the effort that's going into that conversation. All my life I've had, you know, I'm kind of addicted to orange juice, which is a bad thing. My doctor says, you know, there's so much sugar in oranges, you've got to be careful. But nevertheless, that's a side point. I eat a lot of oranges oranges drink a lot of orange juice and it wasn't until this all came along that i suddenly realized you know there are great

oranges elsewhere not just florida like some of the middle east oranges even from egypt from israel that you can get are like fantastic and when you taste them they, they taste pretty good. That's right. But look at that effort, right? And so if people are making that effort in their everyday lives, which they are, they're going to go out and vote. I would be shocked if we don't get a higher than average turnout in this. And your word is right. It's consequential. Now, the difference this time, it's hard to pull out policies. When you ask, what are you going to do about Donald Trump?

It's different from what you're saying about Donald Trump. The free trade election was due. Not clear yet what the due is, except there will always be a candidate. So, you know, one of the candidates dressed in a hockey sweater. But, you know, there are marketers who do focus groups and are tapping in

to a surge of nationalism in this country of the kind that we have not seen for decades, frankly. Here's my last question, and it's about the debates that will'm asking our listeners today to write to me about for a program that will go before the debate on Thursday, the English language debate, is what will you be looking for in the answers you hear on Thursday night? It doesn't matter what the issue necessarily is. What are you looking for from those people who want to lead the Canadian government? And I think that's a fair question to ask you as well. What are you going to be looking for? Oh, you're going to hear probably at least five years of frustration, Peter. I want to hear what they're going to build. I want to hear what they're going to build. I want to hear

what they're going to get done. And I want to know on what timeline and how they're actually going to break through the layers of obstacles that we have in place in this country, you know, it's just a second. Ezra Klein, who's an American journalist. And a great one. Just a terrific one.

Excellent. Really excellent. Really excellent. Has written a book called Abundance. And it's all about. So we're not unique in having this problem, but we are really struggling. We can't finish

a subway line in our biggest city in 10 years, and it's allegedly going to open. 10 years to open, and it's not even a subway line. Half of it is above ground. It's an LRT, right? We can't build a pipeline now. We're finally going to open one in June.

Almost all of the fundamental infrastructure of this country takes decades to build, that should no longer be acceptable to Canadians. And some of the solutions are easy and some are really hard. But if there isn't, I'm out of patience. You know, as you get older, you're less patient because I want to see this stuff done and we're laggards. There was a fascinating conversation that Ezra Klein had with Jake Sullivan, the former national security advisor.

And he's a very able, grounded guy, Jake Sullivan. And all he talked about was his frustration in the United States that, you know, President Biden passed the chips. How many factories have been built? How long did it take to build these factories? He said he underestimated really badly. That's what his deepest regret. He underestimated really badly how slow the processes were. Now, you know, in the United States right now, we're seeing a living example of how important process is.

Because this president follows no rules. He's completely unbounded. But in Canada, we've gone way too far in the other direction. There's too much process. Everything takes forever. We don't get anything done. The rest of the world is not waiting for us, Peter. How can we continue?

You know this better than anybody else. You've covered Peter. How can we continue? You know this better than anybody else you've covered. How can we continue to procure for our military at the pace at which we're doing it? By the time we get to the technology, it's obsolete. It's crazy. It's really crazy. And that's not what Canadians are like. And that's not how the rest of us run our lives. So we have to up our expectation. Don't talk to me about it. Show me.

And so I hope that they get asked, what are you actually going to get done by the end of your first year in office? Done. It's a great question. And it is, you know, it is a concern. And you hear politicians talk about it all the time in election campaigns. And then they kind of slide back into this area where nothing can get done because there's so many roadblocks to this, that, or the other thing.

It takes 10 years to get, not a project completed. It just takes 10 years to get it passed so you can start construction. Yeah. It's, you know, it's to me, and here's an easy fix, okay? I've been around the government for three years screaming about this one. We need permits, environmental permits. And there should be before we build major infrastructure. So how do we do it?

The federal government does it first. Then the U.S. Then the provincial government does it another long way. And then whatever local municipal authorities do it. Why can't all three levels of government come to the table at once? And we do it simultaneously. How hard is that? Exactly.

Let me give you one more. Let me give you one more because I hope Canadians ask these questions. You know, we have our defense procurement is a disgrace. That's all it is. D's. Well, in the United States, about two years ago, two and a half years ago, the people in the Pentagon realized that these nimble, flexible tech companies, which are producing the drones and the next generation technology,

it's so important, they can't wait three years for a contract from the Pentagon because they're small companies. They don't have the cash flow, right? They won't be there if you wait three years. So they put money in the window, a special window, and get this. You put your proposal in, six weeks, up or down. We're going to do this or we're not going to do this. Six months for the funding to flow.

It matters to this country that we keep our companies here and they don't exit and go to the United States. It matters. Well, I go and talk to people and back comes, great idea, but we can't get it done right now. Why? Why can't we get it done right now? So this country has lacked a sense of urgency, Peter. And one of the good things, the silver lining in the story that Donald Trump has thrust upon us, I'm hoping there'll be a sense of urgency. It feels like there is.

I'm optimistic. I'm actually more optimistic now than I've been for years. But it has to translate into a get-done mentality. It can't be feel-good. It's got to be get-done. Well, the only way it's going to get done, in my humble opinion, is if, and I'm not fighting for any one party here, but to me the only way it's going to get done is if it's a majority government.

We've done with the minorities, and there have been some benefits as a result of them. But right now, that does not seem like what we need. No. Okay, let's leave it at that for this week. Next week, well, we'll see where we're at next week. But it's, as always, Janice, great to see where we're at next week. But it's as always Janice, great to talk to you.

Thanks so much. Great to be with you, Peter. And there you have it. Dr. Janice signed for this week. Another week goes by with more great conversation with Janice. Love talking to her every Monday about a wide range of topics.

We've done over the years. And occasionally we dip into domestic as well. And this was one of those days. That last conversation and her anecdotes about getting things done and the length of time it takes in Canada always reminds me something happened to me when I was in China. It was 2008.

I was there to cover the Beijing Olympics. And, you know, they have a beautiful stadium that they built for those Olympics, the Bird's Nest, I think it's called. And I was staying at a hotel not far from there, you know, a walk, maybe a kilometer, no more than that. And it was also the way in for the huge crowds that were going to be coming to the Olympic Games. And they would come right by the hotel I was staying at.

And at one point, they had to cross the road to get on the other side of the road to go into the stadium. Well, there was nothing special built for them. It was kind of like a crosswalk thing. But they were really concerned about how this was going to stop the traffic and there was going to be all kinds of problems as a result of that. And so they decided, and this was, you know, like two days before the opening ceremony,

they decided we'll build an underpass for the people to walk under the highway or the roadway. And when I heard this, I thought, oh, yeah, right. The thing starts in two days and 48 hours. That'll never be done. That was at night in the evening. We heard about it at suppertime. Get up the next morning.

It's done. It's already done. They dug under the roadway. They established a really good underpass walkway. Looked like it had been there for years. Perfectly safe. In one night. Now, there's China.

It's not like there are any laws about, you know, certain kinds of road construction and, you know, unions to argue about this work or that work, or the numbers involved. You want labor? You want cheap labor? How many do you want? Hundreds?

Thousands? No problem. And that's what happened. So there's no issue about getting permits or environmental standards considered, any of that stuff. Boom, you decide to get something done, you just do it. Now, that's not what Janice is talking about.

But she's talking about trying to find some happy medium between what we got now and that. Right? Because nothing gets done. She talks about that, you know, subway construction in Toronto. Don't get me started. My God, trying to get around to, you know, there's an ad on TV about something. I can't remember what it's for, but it says, you know, I go into Toronto,

it takes me an hour to get inside Toronto. Like I'm already in Toronto, but it takes me an hour to get to where I'm going in Toronto. That's not a good day. Anyway, enough already. That's it for our Monday program. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.

Smoke mirrors the truth. Bruce Anderson, Fred Delorey, lots to talk about there. And we'll do that when we get together again tomorrow. That's it for now. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in less than 24 hours.