The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Bob Rae - Unplugged! (Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth)

Episode Date: February 3, 2021

It's Wednesday and that means "Smoke, Mirrors and The Truth" with Bruce Anderson in his regular slot and joining us for a frank discussion about diplomacy in a covid world, Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations Bob Rae.  He's open, frank and pretty laid back.  Bob Rae on the Bridge. 

Hi there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the bridge where today the questions are for Canada's ambassador to the UN, Bob Ray, and the answers are fascinating. Hey, how do you like that? That's our music for Wednesdays. Because Wednesdays are smoke, mirrors, and the truth. And you know that means Bruce Anderson joins us from Ottawa. Bruce, how are you, buddy? It's great to hear your voice, Peter. That music, that's almost danceable. Almost. But let's not try that.

Yesterday I posted a picture of me in my podcast outfit which is basically plaid pajamas a little disappointing to see that yes a lot of reaction to that one so we won't try dancing anyway smoke mirrors in the truth and i gotta tell you i don't think there's ever been a better example of the situation with smoke mirrors and the truth before we get to Bob Ray, than this whole issue of vaccines. I mean, I'm telling you, I don't know who to believe anymore, whether it's government, opposition, the companies, other countries, the European Union. I mean, somebody's blowing smoke, somebody's bouncing their line off mirrors. Somebody, maybe somebody's telling the truth. I can't make it out.

I don't know what to believe anymore. This is a classic example. Where are you on this? Well, look, I do think that everybody is putting their best argument forward, Peter, and I think that's kind of the normal thing, but you sort of put the normal on steroids for something like the pandemic, where the political risks are so obvious and the sensitivities in the country are so high. But I can't help, but I'm a little frustrated, I'll be honest with you,

because I think that the very first cabinet committee meeting that I had a chance to sit into, I was a very young person. It was in 1980, I think. And the thing that struck me about the conversation around the table then was how complicated these decisions can be. What they were talking about then was nowhere near as complicated as the choices that have to be made during this pandemic. But I was stunned to see how much information, how many facts were brought forward, how the risks were discussed, how the choices were argued, and to realize that there's a lot of expertise that goes into all of these decisions and a lot of people of good faith. And so when I think about these pandemic choices that the

government's making right now, which have been criticized by a lot of people in the last week or so, largely around the question of when are the vaccine doses going to come? It strikes me differently, I guess, because of my experience. I look at it and go, well, if we just stop and think about this for a moment, we know that some really smart people, public servants, senior public servants with expertise, with long kind of knowledge of how to do this, are spending day and night putting all of their energies into trying to figure out how to make sure that Canada does as well as it can in this situation where there are 8 billion people in the world and everybody needs this this vaccination so there's going to be a lot of stresses there's going to be a lot of things that are uncertain there's going to be a lot of facts that change on a daily or hourly or by the minute basis and it's good to live in a country where we get to do the armchair quarterback thing but personally sometimes I find some of the armchair quarterbacking could stand to be a little bit more cautious about assuming that all of the people making these choices are incompetent or acting in bad faith or trying to manipulate politics for some electoral advantage.

That's not how I see it. And at least so far, based on our polling data, that's not how most Canadians see it either. You know, I agree with you on a lot of what you just said. My issue is, I think everybody here in this story is shading the truth to a degree to make their case look better. And when you have that kind of situation, it tends to push some to further extremes. Some push it further because they think they're losing in the battle of public opinion. And that's where you really get into trouble. I keep trying to go back to trust the science.

And when I talk to the doctors, at least the doctors I talk to, they're much more forgiving of the situation we're in. They understand what it's like in the in the background of trying to to do this um but they're saying hey you know this rollout is not a disaster you know it are things happening that we'd prefer they didn't happen sure but that's kind of normal in a situation like this so you know they they seem to be more forgiving than a lot of other people, but I still have. And this is why I love it as a discussion on smoke mirrors and the truth, because I think there's a lot of all three of those categories in this. Yeah, I think they wouldn't be politicians if they weren't trying to represent their effort as best they can.

So I think that's fair. And it is good that we scrutinize their decisions. I just find it, when it gets down to listening to an MP, say a first year law student would have negotiated a better arrangement with the EU, you know, that kind of assertion, really, we should challenge, or at least just acknowledge what it is. I mean, what exactly would that first year law student have done differently that the lawyers and the officials in the government of Canada couldn't think to do? Would have said, hey, EU, you have to sign this document. Otherwise, we won't undertake to buy these doses. Like there's literally no way to

extend that argument that holds up to any kind of scrutiny. And yesterday, you know, we had this whole debate about vaccine production. And isn't it a shame that there won't be vaccine production in Canada until next year, even though everybody also says, well, we should have had it before, but it went away years ago because of a prior government decision and so on. I think the government's probably got it right in trying to say, look, it would have been better if we had some now, but we won't. But we should have it for the next one. And in the meantime, we should do what we can to get those doses in here

as soon as possible. All right. Thanks, Bruce. I'm glad we had that little discussion on that. Okay. Coming up. that little discussion on that. Okay, coming up, Bob Ray, uninterrupted and unplugged. All righty. So, Bob Ray.

That name, I'm sure, is familiar to, well, if not all of you, certainly most of you. And for good reason, right? This guy has been involved in our political story in this country for decades. Rhodes Scholar as a student, member of parliament, joined the Ontario NDP after his time in federal politics, became premier of Ontario, the NDP premier of Ontario.

After that, he switched to the Liberals, became a Liberal MP, eventually the interim Liberal leader. Now he's the UN ambassador for canada and that's where we caught up to him um obviously the un is in new york and therefore where did we catch up to him we caught up to him and if you're why, why is he stretching this out? It's because I'm trying to find the cue for this recording of the interview that Bruce and I did with Bob Ray, and I found it. And here it is.

We caught up to him in New York last night. Ambassador, it's great of you to join us. I'm not used to you calling me that, Peter. Well, you're going to have to for the next little while. I know, I know, but it's hard. You know, I was thinking back to the different times that I've been at the United Nations, and the first time was 1979.

I was there for Flora McDonald's speeches, the first female foreign affairs minister. I think they called her external affairs minister then in those days. You know, she was speaking of the UN. You were back in Ottawa plotting how to bring down her government, but that's okay. But what struck me about that visit and every visit afterwards that I've been to the UN was that part of the way that place works,

the way diplomacy works in the UN is kind of face-to-face, in-person, in the hallways, people from different countries, ambassadors, senior officials from different countries, having the opportunity to talk to each other, you know, kind of off the record, casually. And a lot of things seem to get done that way. But here we are in the midst of a pandemic, and I'm assuming that that kind of stuff just doesn't happen anymore.

Very little. You know, and it is a real problem. And it's like everybody who's living this way. It's driving us all a bit crazy. I've got a meeting tomorrow of the Peacebuilding Commission, which is in the General Assembly. We're all going to be very far socially distanced. The rules just don't allow us to have a meeting where we accept the notes, the minutes, and accept the reports and do all this formal stuff we've got to do without having an in-person meeting.

And everybody is just so happy. They're sending me emails saying, can't wait to see you. A couple of them are saying, can't wait to meet you. Because the only thing they've seen is us on the screen. We do Zoom calls all the time everywhere. Everybody's Zooming or some other social media site platform. And we're basically stuck in our apartments or in our offices, uh, just trying to try to do a job and get stuff done, but it's hard.

Is that building basically a ghost town, the UN building itself? Not quite a ghost town. It started to come back a bit in the last, when I got there, it was a ghost town. I arrived in August and literally, uh, I was in the first day of of people coming into the building uh and and getting to you know getting to present credentials to the head of protocol and having a meeting where we're all socially distanced and you know not talking to each other and we're all masked all the time and uh and you know the secretary general is very friendly, but he's also very, you know, concerned about making sure he's okay. So he's kind of, you know, stay away, say hello, waves, you know, says hello, but it's no connection.

And it's hard. It's very hard to do the job. It's very hard to, you know, to get there. And you're right. A lot of diplomacy is quiet diplomacy and, and you know, we're all talking to each other, like we're giving speeches on a megaphone. So it's a little harder. I wanted to ask a question that that's kind of a bit of a riff on that.

Your dad was ambassador for Canada to the United Nations. And I think to Geneva, if well, if I Geneva as well, if I'm not mistaken. And, you know, so much has changed in the form of diplomacy and in the kind of history of the world since that time. I think it was in the mid-70s. Am I correct about that, Bob? Yeah. And so I wanted to ask you, what do you think is different about the job that you have to do now compared to the job that he was asked to do

on behalf of Canada then? Well, it was a smaller group then. I mean, it wasn't tiny. It was over, it would have been over 100 at that point, but it was not 193, which it is now. But the main difference I think right now is, well, there's so many, but it's COVID, certainly. He served in the Cold War. He served at a time when, you know, it was the Nixon administration, and it was a different era in every respect. The politics was all different. China wasn't what China is. Yeah, China was just coming through the Cultural Revolution.

They were hardly present and, you know, very limited international engagement. But it was also a very different time. I mean, I think one of the things that's true for him, what's true for him, not true for me, is that he knew a lot of people. I mean, he'd known them. He'd all, he'd been at conferences with them since the, since the forties. And so there was a whole group of people who were literally present at the creation of the UN who were still there. The guy, the key guy who was the undersecretary for political affairs was a brilliant British diplomat named Brian Urquhart, who had been there from the very beginning,

was a great friend of Hammersholtz and all that stuff. Was there more informality then? Was there more work that was done kind of in the evenings and the margins? Yeah, a lot more. I mean, that's the other thing. The other thing that's missing is there's no receptions. There's no parties. I mean, you have dinner groups, right?

You have dinner with two or three or four people. For a while, we used to have to go outside and freeze outside and now we can come into our houses, but you've got to be socially distanced. And not everybody's comfortable with doing that. I have, we get, we have a few people over from time to time, but it's very, it's very small. And that, that's a huge difference. I mean, in some ways it's, it, you know, it's, it's healthier for everybody. Nobody smokes, nobody drinks as much, you know, it's a different, a different world. Like, you know, it's like, you know,

a little bit like the old days, a little bit like Mad Men or something, you know, it was a different world, but not so much now. I want to ask you a question about something I witnessed on the weekend, which kind of surprised me in a way. And I'm wondering how much of it happens in the informal discussions that you're having in New York with your colleagues at the UN. Here's what it was. Jonathan Swan is a reporter for Axios, a great reporter, a great interviewer,

and he was over in Ukraine. He interviewed President Zelensky on the weekend. And the quotes he got out of Zelensky talking about what had happened in the U.S. on January 6th in Washington at the Capitol building. Let me read a couple of them to you. We are used to believing that the U.S. has the ideal democratic institutions where power is transferred calmly. In Ukraine, we lived through two revolutions. We understood such things can happen in the world,

but that it could happen in the United States, no one expected that. I was very worried. I did not want you to have a coup. After something like this, I believe it would be very difficult for the world to see the United States as a symbol of democracy. Now, you know, I don't think those words actually surprise any of us, except that they came from a world leader, like one of the leaders of a significant country in the world, saying it in public about what happened on that day in Washington and the way it looked in terms of the way other countries look at the U.S. as this great symbol of democracy.

Has that shaken the diplomatic world in what we saw happen there? I certainly think it's affected people. I think that there's been a narrative in the United States for a very long time that they're the greatest democracy in the world. And I'm a Canadian. I'm listening to this, and I say, well, what about us? We're a pretty good democracy. And Europeans, a lot of countries? We're a pretty good democracy. And, you know, Europeans,

a lot of countries have a pretty long history of democracy or they've come back to a democracy or they've set up, you know, very strong democratic institutions. I would only say that I've said something to an American diplomat the other day and he said, you know, we're looking forward to coming back and doing some stuff. And I said, yeah, but don't forget when you come back, it's going to be more of a round table. You're not going to be sitting at the head, you know, just saying this is what this this is what's going down. And I think it's I think that's a that's a good thing in some respects. I mean mean i have enormous admiration for president biden as a as a as a former politician myself and as somebody who's only 72 uh i i i can only

admire his resilience and his ability to you know to to regain uh you know to regain the office uh for for his party and to, you know, pull it off is quite amazing. Did you get a reaction? Did you get a reaction when you said that? Yeah, I mean, he said, I know what you mean. I said, I just think you've got to be thinking about the fact that a lot of us have been here, you know, you can, I mean,

they have a clear agenda now on climate change and on a number of issues. And we're going to see with, latest eruption in Myanmar, we're going to see how they respond to that and how we all respond to it. I think people are very willing to engage with the United States and and and are very interested in what what they what they represent. I mean, I grew up in the States, you know, so I, as a kid, my dad was posted in Washington for six years before, you know, we went overseas. But, you know, he's, I think that I have enormous admiration for American institutions and for how the country has been able to pull together in difficult circumstances. And I think it will again, I think it will come back. And I've it will again. I think it will come back.

And I've been saying to people it's going to come back. But I think there is a process that has to be gone through here to say, look, you know, and plus I think the level of polarization in politics everywhere is a challenge and it's a problem. But it's very serious in the U.S. And I think we're starting to, you know, feel that and understand it. But I also am serious in the U.S. And I think we're starting to feel that and understand it. But I also am fundamentally an optimist. I think the Americans are very resilient people, and I think they will come back.

And I don't believe that what happened on January 6th in any sense really represents the whole of the country or what the country is really all about. I found the reaction to it quite interesting. A number of people spontaneously saying, oh, wait a minute, this is not us. And you sort of say, well, it did happen and we got to all deal with what that means. But I also don't think it's the challenge that America faces is they don't face it alone.

We all face a similar kind of challenge. Let me ask you, Bob, if I can, about the challenges that the UN has. Because I think probably Canadians, when I was, well, when I first started studying public opinion, there was a lot of respect for this institution. I don't think that respect is completely gone or I don't think there's a lot of respect for this institution. I don't think that respect is completely gone or I don't think there's a lot of negativity towards it, but I think people wonder, has it become what it was intended to be or has it become something else?

Was it ever going to be able to do what we wanted it to do, solve problems together? Has it become a kind of a series of lobbies where countries align for the purposes of kind of expressing their power dynamic or something like that. And I read your comments after the Security Council decision. And, you know, I thought you were kind of professional and on point in saying we're going to move on, but there's some problems and there need to be other, there are other groups that are forming within the UN to try to solve specific problems.

Is that workaround permanent? Is that the way that this is going to have to operate in the future? Or is the UN going to be able to come back to something that's a little bit more aspirational maybe? Is that the way that that the word well you know i think when you look realistically look really hard-headed at the history of the un i think there were there were two great periods in the life of the united nations uh right after the war like right after the founding of the un and in the early days uh the passage of the of uh you know the declaration on human rights and and and the work that happened I think that as the Cold War began to take over, you had the war in Korea, which was basically the UN with the leadership of the United States defending South Korea from attacks. And you had the Chinese and the Russians and the North Koreans on the other side.

It was the Cold War personified. And I think the Cold War had the impact of the political level, in a way marginalizing the UN. They made up for it by doing a lot of other stuff, by working on refugees, by creating institutions like the WHO, like all the other global institutions that they've slowly but surely been creating. And, and then there was a golden period after the, the, the, the Berlin wall fell. Kofi Annan was the secretary general.

I think people felt that was a time when there was, you know, the duty to protect and there was the international criminal court coming in. There was a lot of stuff happening and people felt, you know, we've got our, we've got our mojo back. And now we find ourselves in the middle of a slightly different conflict between what I call authoritarianism, authoritarian governments like Russia, like China can go down the list of various levels of authoritarianism. But it's a real a real problem. And those countries don't really believe in this kind of human rights and liberal democracy that we believe in. And that actually is sort of part of what the founding of the UN was all about. If you go back to the early history of how the UN started, it was based on people coming together and saying, we can't just fight a war for no reason. We have to have a purpose.

Again, I'm an optimist. I think now we have to do the best with what we've got. I'm working on how do we get out of the COVID crisis? How do we get countries together on not only the health issues, but on the economy, the huge debt crisis, which is coming this year and next year in a number of countries around the world that are still very poor. And I think, frankly, I think the UN does its greatest work in the field. I mean, somebody said to me when I got here,

who works at the UN, works for one of the agencies, he said, you know, it's really interesting. COVID has demonstrated that on the ground, we're totally functional. We're able to respond to crises. You know, the World Food Program got the Nobel Prize. That was an indication people understood here was an organization that was responding to a problem and dealing with it in a very effective way. Politically, it's tough. It's really hard slogging to get things through the Security

Council, which is the political executive. But you've got this structure where you've got five countries with a permanent veto, and it's really hard to get the Security Council to move on stuff the way things have evolved. But you deal with what you got. And I also believe there's a saying that I think is worth repeating, and that is, you know, blaming the UN for, you know, what's going wrong in the world, for the fact that people are still fighting and killing each other and that there's still problems everywhere.

It's imperfect in every way. It's sort of like playing maple, the old maple leaf gardens or the air Canada center when the leaf loose, like, you know, it's not the building. It's, it's, it's the, it's the people in the building, the guys that are on the ice that are the problem. Oh, that's all different now. It's all changed. They're in first place. I know, I know. I'm just making the example. I'm just saying you can't blame the institution for the members of the institution who are pursuing their own narrow self-interest. And that's what makes it hard.

And I know that I haven't seen a poll lately, but you could probably tell me what, but I would think that there's still a very significant majority of Canadians who feel positively about the United Nations. I certainly get that in my, you know, the work that I do, the mail that I get, the emails that I get, the messages that I get.

There's a lot of people who are skeptical and questioning, but there's a lot of people who understand this distinction between what do we do on the ground and what's the politics of the situation. Sure. I think there's a lot of people that want it to succeed and believe that we need it and want, you know, and maybe just don't know enough about the success that it has on the ground and get caught up in some of the coverage of institutional failures,

which tends to, I think, probably get overblown sometimes. Canadians are not turning away from this idea at all. No, but I think the thing you're mentioning, though, is just in what you said there, it's very important. The UN doesn't do a great job of promoting itself or of communicating with the outside world. It's, it's, I've seen this in a lot of bureaucracies and in a lot of institutions. You know, George Bernard Shaw said the greatest mistake we make in communication is assuming that it's already happened. And, and everybody often makes the

mistake of thinking, well, I gave a speech on that. Surely everybody knows about it. You know, I was, I was just talking about it. How could you not know? Let me answer is because nobody's listening. Peter thinks that a lot and he makes a lot of speeches. Let me, let me ask a question about communications because it's a, you know, we've known each other for a long time and uh you know you you've always been your own person um no matter where you were i mean you've obviously been a team player with a couple of different parties a couple of different teams a couple of

different teams red wings but but still um in many ways you're your own person. And I'm fascinated to try to understand how you're dealing with this kind of new world in the sense of the job that you have now. Because one thing I've noticed that hasn't changed about Bob Ray, you still like social media. You're on Twitter. You're on Twitter all the time. Well, not all the time. Well, quite a Twitter all the time. Well, not all the time, but some of the time. Well, quite a bit of the time. I mean, it could be, you know, posting great sunset pictures from your cottage, or it could be something about New York, or it could be any number of different things,

but you're on there quite a bit. And I'm wondering just your feelings about that, especially at a time where we've had, there's been so much criticism about social media, so much discussion about its value in our society. And yet here you are using it a fair amount and also holding a really, you know, significant, prominent job at the same time representing your country. Well, it's, you know, I suppose it's a bit of a high wire act, right?

I mean, I like the platform because I can be myself. And because I think the one thing I've learned in communication, one thing I like about this particular medium is that if you are yourself, you can actually connect with more people than if you're just delivering, um, you know, a potboiler, uh, statement. I mean, people sometimes say, I don't know. I don't, I don't know why I don't have any followers. I said, well, what are you saying? Like, why would anybody, you know, if you're just giving the propaganda from whatever job you're doing, nobody's going to be particularly interested. But for me, it's a key way of communicating.

And, and I do think that it, and I say it's a high wire act because I do have to be thinking, luckily, Arlene is, is, is there saying, you know, maybe not today. You better delete that one. Maybe not today. Maybe that's funny, but not this time, you know? And so I have to watch it.

I know I have to watch it. Sometimes I don't. I mean, sometimes I fall off and, you know, people aren't happy and I have to kind of make up for it. But I think it's okay as long as I, I mean, one of the, the, the, the bigger issue I think is not just a communication, but it's also, you know, I work, I work in a, in a, for a government. I work for a, you know, I work for a, on the political side, obviously there's ministry. So I talked to on the bureaucratic side,

I have people who I report to and who, you know, ask me, you know, say, what's the report from this? What are you doing here? Your job is to go down and do this. And I do that. And I guess part of the reason I don't have any problem doing it is I grew up knowing that's what you got to do. That's what my father did. I mean, he does that. But I also give people candid advice and I think they know that's what they're going to get with me they're not going to get a potboiler answer and even in conversations at the un you find i find many of the people we do these zoom calls on uh you know we did one just today on the reform of the united nations and uh which this is all about know, the reform of the security council and changing the charter to sort of a sort

of like Meech Lake, you know, 3.0, you know, it's, I've been here before, I know where we're going and you know, let's, let's talk about it. So I said, well, explain to me the ratification process. And they said, well, you know, you've got to get the permanent members of the security council. So they said, you've got to get all five. Yeah. And then you've got to get two thirds of the general Security Council. So they said, you've got to get all five, yeah, and then you've got to get two-thirds of the General Assembly. I said, okay, you've got to get that. And then they said, okay, so why are we having these long conversations

about what we would like to do if we're not actually getting direct contact with the permanent members to say, what are you prepared to countenance in terms of reform? What are you prepared to countenance in terms of reform? What are you prepared to live with? And of course, those countries are very reluctant to say, don't do this because we won't support it because they don't want to be seen as the guys who are vetoing something or that's not their desired position. They're just sitting back. So in the course of the discussion today, I had a very direct conversation with the other delegates, the other permanent reps. I said, why are we why do we do it this way? And they said, well, we've never done it that way before.

We always do it this way. I said, well, but how long has this been going on for? They said 12 years. I said, OK, OK. I get it. It's obviously working. Luckily, it's not all I do. Okay. That's not the only thing I'm working on. They probably figured they just haven't, you haven't tried enough. Another 12 years, probably get it done. Bruce, do you want to, we're going to lose the ambassador here in a few minutes. No, no, no, I'm fine. Okay. But Bruce, you got another question there?

Well, I did have one, you know, Bruce, you got another question there? Well, I did have one. You know, you referenced your political career, and I remember watching you in the House of Commons the first time you were in the House of Commons. Quite a long time, the 70s. Yeah. 40 years ago. 78. Yeah, and you've been very impressive in the legislatures and in politics all the way through that period of time. And you've done other things as well.

But I'm really curious about all of that experience that you've had in politics and your voyage in politics has been quite. Well, I would say unusual in the sense of very few people are able to switch parties and succeed in doing that. And not only to succeed politically, but to succeed in sustaining and building public trust and public esteem, which I think you, you know, you're too modest to agree with that. But I think everybody else probably would see it that way. So what did you learn in your life in politics that you think is really helpful in your work at the UN right now? And maybe it's a little bit just, you know, it's the kind of thing you just told us,

that little anecdote about how you kind of heard a problem and sort of voiced it back to people. Maybe it's a manner of communication. Maybe it's a way of kind of thinking about how you move people along. But what's the, what were the big things that, that politics equipped you with the big skills that politics equipped you with, which you think really help you in this job? Well, I have to say that, I mean, I think that

leaving a political party is, is a very hard thing to do. So don't think that it was just a breeze, a walk in the park. There are a lot of New Democrats who don't like me and don't want to talk to me. Look, I did it once, and the Conservatives have been happy to see the back end of me ever since. But I did. I mean, I didn't kind of switch in the middle of the stream. I kind of got out for a while and then I came back in a different way. And I think everybody who knew me knew that I wasn't, my views haven't changed dramatically.

I haven't kind of gone through some metamorphosis about what I believe. It's more about how can I be most effective at, at working for the things that I really care about and understanding that, you know, there are other people who regard politics as kind of a, you know, you join up and that's, that's where you're going to be. And for the rest of your life, you're not going to change. And I also found that a lot of Canadians agreed with me in terms of saying, and I, when I ran for office again, they said, well, I voted for you before,

when you were new Democrat, I'm going to vote for you now. And I said, I said, well, what about your party beliefs said, well, you know, I think I'm kind of a little, a little more kind of where you are now than I was before that kind of thing. So I think that's kind of easy, but I think the main thing that I've tried to learn, I know that you guys will actually be shocked to hear this. I actually enjoy listening.

I really do. When did that start? I know, I know. I know you're startled by this, but I actually do enjoy listening. And one of the things I really learned in politics was you got to listen. And the mistakes that I think I've made in politics, I mean, just dumb policy choices or just mistakes of mistakes of one kind or another. It's basically because I didn't listen enough. I didn't ask enough questions.

I didn't elicit enough participation from my colleagues or from other people. And ironically, it was when I was interim leader of the Liberal Party that I was able to demonstrate an ability as a leader that I may not have even had when I was premier. Because somebody said, you're doing this so well. I said, that's only because I've screwed up so many times before I figured out how to do this. Now I can do it. I know it's a small group, but I can get this right. I can do this. And I think that that's one thing the other thing is is that um i i also have know that i can be as wrong

as often as i can be right and i've had the disadvantage i think which my father actually used to talk to me about when i was a teenager of being um you know so quick to react so quick to sort of get in the, get in my points that, uh, you, you gotta say, yeah, but what if you're wrong? Like, you know, you could be right, but you could also be completely wrong. Like, so what are you going to do? And I think at that point, you have to step back a little bit and say, okay, you know, so actually the first few times I went into the general assembly, I just sat there and listened and it, you know, it was not, um, you know, I mean, I can say, well,

that didn't teach me anything or I didn't learn anything from that one, but actually you, you, you're always learning. You're always kind of picking up stuff and what is it that's really, what's the, what's the way in which these things are stated and restated. And that really allows, I think, allows you to do that as well as to, um, as you can tell from my demeanor, I don't take myself that seriously. And I love, uh, to, to laugh and I love to share jokes. And, uh, and I think that people like people enjoy, enjoy that. I think that actually it puts people at ease. And I learned a lot how to do that from watching Tommy Douglas in our caucus.

Sure. I mean, and if you heard Tommy give a speech would know that he would never start the speech until he told about five jokes. That's right. And sometimes they were not very good, but you knew that he was, you know, he was always had that spark. And I think that's a good lesson. Yeah. Listen, you've given us lots to think about and lots to laugh about in this conversation. And it's been a great opportunity to talk to you. We wish you luck in this role in New York's difficult time to be there, difficult time to be trying to achieve diplomacy under the kind of conditions that you and your colleagues there are doing it.

But listen, it's been great for us to have this chance to talk to you. Yeah, Bob, it's been great. Thanks for doing that. Thank you, guys. Thank you very much. It's a real pleasure. Nice to be with you. Bob Ray talking to us from New York.

And, you know, I called it unplugged. Bob Ray unplugged. And it really was. I mean, there were so many gems in that conversation. And it was nice to listen to and pretty frank about some of the situations that he is watching unfold. A couple of quick house notes before we sign off. First of all, Habs fans, I know you're in first place today.

When we recorded that interview, the Leafs were in first place. For a couple more minutes, anyway. But the Habs are in first place. By one point, it's early in the season. But what a terrific result that could be, right? Especially for those of us down in central Canada, kind of a Habs-Leafs playoff series somewhere in the works, that would be terrific.

But just like it would be for Oilers-Flames or either one of those teams against the Canucks or the Jets, I mean, there is some real potential for excitement in this whole idea of the Canadian division in the NHL. Tomorrow, kind of a potpourri day. We've got lots of different things to talk about. Friday is the weekend special.

We want to hear your letters, so write about anything that's on your mind or about this conversation you just heard. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. That's it for today. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening.

This has been The Bridge. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.