The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Bruce Anderson and Steve Schmidt with SMT on the influence from south of the border on the Ottawa occupation.

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

American political strategist Steve Schmidt joins us with his theories on how and why the American far right is trying to influence the protests in Ottawa, and Bruce Anderson has his thoughts on that.  Its Smoke Mirrors and The Truth for another week of talk about a situation that has paralyzed parts of the country's political and economic base. Plus the latest on the Conservative leadership race. 

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday, it's Bruce Anderson Day, it's Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. That's right, it's Hump Day. Bruce is in Ottawa. I'm in Stratford, Ontario. We're coming up on two weeks of all trucker noise in Ottawa, although the honking stopped. Court order, for the most part. But it's not just Ottawa. It's the Ambassador Bridge, Windsor, Detroit,

at a cost of, you know, whatever it is, hundreds of millions of dollars a day. That's blocked. You've got your situation in southern Alberta. You've got smaller demonstrations, convoys in different parts of the country. As we say, coming up on two weeks of this. So why don't you start us, Bruce? What's your assessment of how this is being handled? Well, I think, Peter, it's really hard a question to answer

because I don't think that, in my life anyway, I don't think we've had a situation like this. So yesterday, my wife and I took a drive out to the country and walked through the woods near Almonte. Just I needed to kind of get a little bit of distance from the kind of the sense of noise in the city about this and think about it. And I, you know, where I, how I see the enforcement issue or the political management issue is this. I think that people are frustrated that this is still going on. They're surprised a little bit that it is still going on because this is a long time to have this much protest going on, blockading streets in the city and now the Ambassador Bridge. And I feel like the politicians whose responsibility is have been kind of shell-shocked a little

bit and stymied by a few different instincts. One is they want to make sure that they are on the side of free speech and not looking like and not being able to be accused of denying people that right. Second thing is there are different layers of government and different jurisdictional responsibilities. And so just because everybody on Twitter is mad doesn't mean that you should run roughshod over those. And so there's a certain degree of hesitancy as people try to respect those different levels of jurisdiction. And then there's this third layer, which is that should politicians get more involved in telling the police how to do their jobs? And I think knowledgeable, smart people whose responsibility it is to protect that line between politics and policing

have been naturally careful about crossing it. Add all of that up that up though and 12 days in in ottawa and you've got a situation where it has to come to a conclusion i was glad to see the prime minister come out on monday night and say we're not negotiating with people who came to town to try to dissolve our government we're not going to decide our health policy that way and they have to go um that was two days ago and um they have to go i'm more and i'll finish on this point peter i'd love to know what you think about this i'm spending more time now thinking about trump style insurrectionism as a risk to national security and to economic well-being of canadians The Ambassador Bridge has really raised another, and the Coots protest as well, has said, in effect,

this doesn't feel like it's just about vaccine mandates. It feels like Trump-style insurrectionism with all of the attendant risks that that poses. Yeah, I mean, I think when it first came up early in this that there was money coming in from the states and elsewhere to support this, people kind of said, well, yeah, okay, maybe that's illegal. Maybe they shouldn't be allowed to do that. But, you know, I don't think anybody took it too seriously. I imagine the various security services are looking at it closely

and probably know a lot more than we know, obviously, at this point, about who's funding this and where the money's coming from and how serious it is. But in the last couple of days, there's been a voice in the States that's spoken out on this

that has said, hey, let's not be naive. What's going on here is pretty serious stuff. And there's a reason for it. And that voice comes from Steve Schmidt. Now, Steve's a political strategist in the United States, was a top one for the Republican Party. He worked for George Bush Jr. He worked for George Bush Jr. He worked for EW. He worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger

in California with successful campaigns, both of those. He was the senior campaign strategist for John McCain in 2008 against Barack Obama. They lost that election, and he took the rap for sarah palin um but nevertheless he's he you know he speaks out he's not a shy guy that's for sure he has a good sense of canada because he's a lot of his business and in consulting and strategy and speech making uh occurs in in canada every once in a while he's he's up here and has a lot of friends in Canada. He tweeted two days ago, and I mentioned this on yesterday's episode of The Bridge, about his concerns about the deep far right and their involvement in what's going on in Canada. I got a lot of mail last night reading, having read his tweet saying, what's he talking about?

Like, is this a theory or has he got proof? I think it's mainly a theory. But he speaks from some kind of past in terms of dealing with some of these groups, as he did when he was with the Republican Party. He's a very anti-Trump guy, was one of the founders of the Lincoln Project that has had some pretty significant stuff against Trump. Anyway, I found him last night to talk to him,

and I wanted to know exactly what he was thinking. So I'm not going to run you the whole conversation. We had a great chat. But I am going to run you a couple of minutes of this, about seven minutes of it. It's pretty interesting. If you never heard Steve Schmidt, he's a contributor on MSNBC. He's often on their political talk shows with his assessment of different things. So anyway, here's um here's

steve schmidt this was last night part of the conversation we had what's the end game for for american politicians like a desantis like uh well like trump um there have been a number of them who've come out in support of the truckers in Canada. What's the end game? What do they want out of this? Power. But power where? They want power. And what fuels this movement is grievance, is resentment, is victimization. They have attached themselves to this,

pretending that this is a grassroots movement of people frustrated by Canadian mask mandates. It's no such thing. You know, certainly, I think that across the broad spectrum of the polities in both countries, there's lots of room to criticize hypocritical politicians, absurd mandates, contradictory rules, a lot of frustration. I have school age kids. So going on, you know, for my daughter, who's a senior in high school, the third year of this, I get it. However, that's not what this is. And the reason we know that is because you can listen to the plain and clear words of the protest organizers. And they're getting a lot of support from the United States, the involvement of American politicians who have certainly engaged in this last year, two years in this country, not just in conspiracy

theories and wholesale lying, but increasingly intimations to violence. And so the chief propaganda organ of the fascist movement in America, Fox News, has has turned this into a cause celeb on the American far right. And what they're supporting is an occupation by people demanding the dissolution of the democratically elected government of Canada. I mean, this would be the plot out of a South Park episode. This is real life. This is happening. And this is happening at a moment in time when the Russians are about 75% of the troop capacity they need to invade and to decapitate the Ukrainian government, creating a catastrophe unequaled since the end of World War II in Europe

and producing a number that will be between 5 and 8 million refugees. Two more questions uh and one's about the money the uh canadian police investigators say there's clearly been uh american money put here into the into this demonstration into this occupation now should we assume that's you know like ten dollar twenty dollar fifty dollar donations from just like ordinary people or is this big money coming from big organizations that are want to support this you don't you don't know and i and i want to be very clear here right there's nothing inherently wrong with giving money in support to a grassroots protest. Unless it's in another country.

Well, I suspect that there's all manner of examples we could find of causes and actions where people have given money across the international boundary. It's the political connection, though, that bothers people. And it may be, quite frankly, against the law. I don't want to kind of get dragged down a point. I understand that. And I don't disagree with that. Here dragged down a point. I understand that. And I don't and I don't disagree with that. Here's the point I'm trying to make. If it's a violation of Canadian law, then it should be dealt with as a violation of Canadian law. Here's what I think matters. There was a and we know this from the evidence of the investigating insurrection committee, the one six committee.

We know enough now to know that there is and there was an ongoing conspiracy. And I don't say these words lightly to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States. There was a legal team involved in that. There were all manner of meetings, memos and planning and financing. Are people who were involved in the financing of that effort involved in the financing of that effort involved in the financing of this effort? Or the people that sought to overthrow through the financing of what became an insurrection and a conspiracy that involved fascist groups and militia groups like the proud boys who also seemingly have a presence in ottawa is there a coordination between elements of those groups who were involved in the one six

american insurrection involved now in the early 22 canadian insurrection and that is important to understand we're not talking about at the end of the day the five dollar donation from the person who looks at this and has been lied to by american media and says i'm going to send five bucks to these poor truckers right we're looking at mike flynn we're looking at the army of bots i I'll just say this, right, since I've weighed in, certainly my Twitter feed has been deluged by thousands of bots, a lot of them from offshore, off the North American continent, a lot of them from English as a second language speakers so yes there's a wholesale effort underway right to destabilize western democracies it's played out in the german elections the french elections the american elections and canada through all of this has been a country that's largely been immunized from this wave until now and and now it is center stage and what it's attracted uh like uh like a light does fireflies um is this menagerie of autocratic movements and personalities um that are seemingly

intent on destabilizing democracies uh across the democratic west and and all of these people are familiar actors familiar characters and we should stop being in my view so naive about what it is that they're trying to do but but let me tell you anyone who believes this is about about truckers upset about a Canadian mandate, boy, do I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. Well, there you go. Steve Schmidt, former Republican strategist, with his theories, not offering any proof, but his theories about what's behind the American involvement,

whether financial or organizational or what have you uh in the protests that are taking place occupations insurrections call it as you will um in different parts of the country so bruce what do you uh what do you make of steve schmidt's um theories here well i always lament the state of american republicanism whenever i hear steve schmidt talk because he reminds me of when the republican party could be counted on to be a kind of an important mainstream uh part of of not just u.s politics but world politics and um his frustration and fear of what's happening in his country is palpable. And, you know, to some degree, it makes me worried for the future, too.

I was a little bit reminded that the American political culture on spending money or intervening in other countries' politics is a little bit different from ours. I mean, he pushed back on you pretty directly about, well, it's not necessarily wrong for us to fund some sort of activity to disrupt politics in another country, whereas I think most Canadians have not really thought about that very much. What if America wanted Quebec to separate and started funneling money into a separatist movement in Quebec or in Alberta, I think we would take a pretty dim view of that. And obviously, Steve was kind of ring fencing the idea that America should be able to do that and everybody should just get along with it.

So I don't really know what to make of it, except think that we need to think more um carefully about the national security dynamic for the country in a world where america can't be counted on to play the kind of ally role that we've expected it to play since world war ii now it is to some degree under joe biden. And I was listening to David Ignatius on Morning Joe earlier this morning, and he was talking about the work that the Biden administration has been doing to repair alliances. And he was saying that it's been quite effective, that there's better sharing of information, there's an alignment of effort, there's a greater sense of trust. But at the same time, we know that the Republicans could regain control of the House and could win the presidency again in a very short period of time. And that, I think, is an important question for Canada. And I think it's an important question for all of us to kind of press on maybe whoever will be the next leader of the Conservative Party, whoever might

be the next leader of the Liberal Party. It's a question that is central to our political future as a country. How are we going to manage the possibility that those alliances don't work the way that we did and that we need to protect ourselves? I don't think that's very clear. And, you know, best evidence is Ron DeSantis, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida. The last data that I saw was a few years old, but Florida has an $8 billion trade surplus with Canada. We buy a lot of Florida goods and we travel to Florida. And so you would think that the governor of Florida before saying, I'm going to launch an investigation into why money sent up to Canada to disrupt Canadian politics isn't being used for that purpose. Do you think that he might pause just a little bit before

saying that's an obvious thing to do, given the degree to which our economies are intertwined. But it doesn't look like that's occurred to him. It looks instead as though there are a group of politicians who see this insurrectionism. Basically, this idea that if you're mad enough about something, forget about elections, you can overturn them or you should be able to. So the group of politicians who know that they should challenge that, but instead look at it as wind in their sails. And I think that's the most critical thing that I'm looking for from conservative politicians, because if you can't count on conservative politicians to defend law and order, to national security to represent this idea that free and fair elections need to be defended i don't know who you can count on for that and so i'm worried about it and i'm glad that

steve schmidt said what he said do you think um when he says we're being naive um in not recognizing what he thinks is really going on here do you agree with that i think that we're in danger of of watching it develop and either being naive about it or doing a kind of a canadian let's just hope that it doesn't become a bigger problem because it's unpleasant to talk about it or it's divisive to talk about it i kind of find it interesting that we're having this uh debate about is justin trudeau divisive right now. And I can't help but wonder how we got into the situation where with 90% of Canadians vaccinated and Trudeau kind of laying out a path. Now, I happen to wish that the path was a little crisper and a little bit more in the short term, but it isn't really, it shouldn't be my frustration and impatience with COVID that decides what that path is. It should be science.

And I recognize that the prime minister is gathering scar tissue because people are really, really impatient. But I don't see what he's doing as being divisive. I do think that when he says some of these protesters don't just want an end to vaccine mandates, they have other agendas in mind, he's absolutely right. And so his opponents will, because that's what they do, say, well, that's divisive and he shouldn't use such strong language. You could put me down on the side of people need to start using stronger language and tougher scrutiny on this phenomena of insurrectionism, because if we don't, we've seen south of the border what can happen. We've seen in other countries what can happen. We shouldn't be naive about whether it can happen here, whether it can change our politics in really important ways.

This is a great moment of truth for the conservative movement in Canada. And I am so hopeful that within that party, they have a vigorous debate and the people who say national security, fighting insurrectionism, bringing the country together around that is the right way to go rather than let's widen the wedge because we see some potential opportunity to take down Justin Trudeau. Yeah, yeah well we've seen both elements of that from the conservative party in the last 10 days um including your latter point from the uh the interim leader of the conservative party but a growing number of of mps some front some back bench, who have been coming out and saying, you know what, this has to stop.

What's going on here is wrong, and we have to stand up and say that. All this with the backdrop of a conservative leadership campaign going on. And, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, the leading candidate, I think the only one in the race so far, has yet to have a, you know,

a full-scale news conference on what his position is on any of these things. So we'll, you know, I think we should talk about that. But first of all, we're going to take this quick break. All right, Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. Bruce Anderson in Ottawa.

We're back with The Bridge, the Wednesday edition, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. And, you know, obviously, lots to talk about because the situation in Ottawa has not slowed down on any number of fronts. You're listening to The Bridge, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth on Sirius XM,

Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Welcome to you from wherever you're listening. All right, Bruce, let's move this into the second part of our discussion today, and that is on the conservative leadership race, which is kind of underway, although we don't know when the actual vote's going to be

or what the rules around that are going to be. We don't know how many candidates may be getting into the race. We know it's only been a week since they stuck the knife in Aaron O'Toole. And so far, I believe only one official entry, or at least he put out a tweet, Pierre Palliev, that he's going to be running for it. But since then, we haven't heard anything from him. He hasn't had a formal news conference to outline what his platform is or any of that. But I assume that's coming. What is your take on, I mean, you've already said a number of things about what you're hoping the conservatives will do. And as I said before the break, there are a number of conservatives who have come out in the last few days to take that strong kind of law and order position.

And these guys have got to go and they've got to get out of town um but what is your take on where we are in this kind of strange leadership race that's kind of in the background to the big story that continues to unfold here you know the one thing that i kind of was feeling as i was reading the story i think it was in the hill times this morning about the Poiliev campaign wanting the leadership to be settled by July or in July, is that there's nothing about the way this has unfolded that makes it look as though Pierre Poiliev was surprised that there was a leadership opening. It would normally be the case that people would take a little bit of time to say, I'm going to canvas the party and my family and my finances, and I'm going to come to a conclusion was a plan to end the O'Toole leadership coincident with kind of jamming him on the convoy. And then for the Polyev campaign to be the first out of the gate

and to be the first to argue a timetable, you could look at that and say, that's good strategy. And I'm going to be careful about how I evaluate Pierre Pauliev as the putative frontrunner of the party that would be the official opposition party and potentially a government in waiting because I want him to be more thoughtful and more centrist and more inclusive than he has been in the past. And I hope that that's how he campaigns for this job. But I also hope that people like Tasha Carradine and Jean Charest and others get in the race and others whose names we haven't maybe talked about very much get in the race to to really kind of challenge the reflexive well let's go back to revisiting the whole question of climate change and let's really make sure that those social conservative views where

one person has a view about another person's rights, you know, gain some oxygen again. I think it would be a shame if the Conservative Party retreated to those positions. I think that they should all remember that the last two Conservative Party leaders went from being relatively unknown, Andrew Scheer and Aaron O'Toole, to being the most unpopular leaders in Canadian politics in a relatively short period of time. At the same time, Jagmeet Singh went from being unknown to being the most popular leader. What did they have in common? None of them had to make any decisions.

They weren't running anything. Their job was to take political positions. And those two conservatives found themselves growing the negatives for them and their parties pretty quickly. So it shouldn't happen that way. And Pierre Polyev is a very smart person. And maybe if he wins, he'll figure that out. And he'll pursue a different course. And he won't look like a flip-flopper. But he's laid some track down in terms of the things that he believes and he's open to a challenge and I hope there's a good fight. The thing I think we should all keep in mind and the media front and center on this one is they shouldn't crown anybody this early in the game.

There's enough evidence in history to realize that that can be a serious mistake. I mean, you just have to go back to the last conservative leadership race where everybody assumed Peter McCabe was going to win. And in fact, I think the McCabe force has tried to, if my memory serves me correct, and I could be wrong on this,

but the McCabe force has tried to move up the vote or suggested that they should you know we shouldn't have to wait this long and you know we should have the vote now um for leader uh the party didn't agree and they they kept their original date which was you know a good six or eight months after I I think uh Scheer had stepped down. And of course, in the race at the end, Peter McKay lost. And it's not just the conservatives who've had these issues around leadership, past campaigns, John Turner almost lost to Jean Chrétien in 84. Chrétien did much better than everybody thought it was going to be a walk in the park for Turner in that leadership convention. Then, you know, the Conservatives in 93.

Everybody thought this is a gift for Kim Campbell. We don't even need to vote. Everybody knows she's going to win. And then she damn near lost to Jean Charestret uh who later became leader of the conservative party but um you know these things can start to take a life of their own during a campaign things are said questions are raised there will be a lot of questions around pierre paliet on his you know support uh parent support for the truckers in their um protest in their occupation now he's not been saying anything lately uh but he hasn't retracted what he said uh in the past or taken a new position uh on that um The interim leader of the Conservative Party.

You know, her statements before Erin O'Toole left, pushing Erin O'Toole, saying, we've got to support the truckers because it can help stick the knife in Trudeau. Now that's out there. That's there. It's in black and white. It's in the letter she wrote. So that, one has to assume is now the official position of the conservative party unless unless that's retracted so lots of things can change here uh in the days weeks possibly months ahead before an actual vote takes place and of course as you mentioned a lot will depend on who else, if anyone else, gets in the race. One of the best opportunities, Peter, I don't know if you agree with me about

this, but if I'm either a dark horse candidate or if I'm advising Pierre Poliev in this situation, one of the most important opportunities, I think, is to rally conservatives against what Max Bernier is doing. Now, I've been looking at clips of Max Bernier down at the Hill protests, and he's holding up these jerry cans of gasoline with the protesters, and he's kind of challenging the police and he's he is making no um bones about his support for this idea that these people should be able to dissolve government um that to me is a huge opportunity and a kind of an essential one to grab for some conservatives because if they don't beat back this idea of the people's party they're going to have a hard time winning elections. And there's never been a better time, I think, to say this is what the People's Party stands for. This is not the way that democracy should work in Canada. We're seeing it play out on a large

stage. And so there's, you know, if it's been true, and I don't necessarily accept this, but let's assume that it's always been kind of tricky for conservative to argue against Max Bernier, because you end up looking like you're the establishment or the kind of the low fat rather than the full fat version. I think that was Andrew McDougall's comment about, you know, people on the far right, they want full fat far right, they don't want something lighter than that. On the other hand, if you want to rally people who are worried about the far right, including people who might vote liberal, Max Bernier is giving you that target, the People's Party is giving you that target to work with right now. And I just hope that whether it's Pierre Pauliev, or any of the others. Peter McKay is another name. I read an op-ed that he wrote that sort of looked like a prelude to running.

I hope they take that up because I think that the liberals are vulnerable, more vulnerable than they've been since Justin Trudeau has been elected. Fairly or unfairly, there's a giant deficit, which at some point people are going to want to know what are we going to do about that. There's also a fatigue factor that sets in when anybody's been that visible in our lives as a politician for that long. You know, people get tired of hearing them, of seeing what they have to bring to the political conversation. So I think liberals are vulnerable more than they have been since justin trudeau was first elected i think the opportunity for the conservative party is great i just hope that they choose to recognize the existential

threat that the far right poses not to their party exclusively, but to the country. And they champion the fight against that. We're going to have to wrap this up for this day, but just a quick question on Trudeau and the visibility factor. Now, you know, he and his family have been dealing with a COVID situation, so that's understandable, but he did, I mean, the question surrounds, has he said enough, done enough, been visible enough in some fashion on this occupation that's been going on in the city surrounding him?

And, you know, a lot of people, and not just non-liberals, have been asking that question in the last two weeks. How damaging has this all been for him? I don't know. I don't think that we know the answer to that. And I also think that there probably has been a reasonable argument, setting aside the COVID challenge, that him having to take the microphone and stand in front of the camera one more

time and say, we're almost through this and just bear with me. And we've got our, your backs just continually saying that isn't going to necessarily make people feel less frustrated. So it's really their frustration with the situation that is bubbled up the question of whether or not he'll have scar tissue from this i think is one that we can't really know right now because so many things become the issue du jour and then they dissipate pretty quickly i don't know if this will be one of those things, but there have been more of them than there have been things that that created a lingering impact on on how people feel about him. And ultimately, he's always going to be judged in contrast with his competitors, whether those are conservatives or new Democrats or, suspected next leaders of his party.

I think he's heading into a different phase of his political career. And as we talked about before, maybe it'll be the time that he decides to hang it up. And and but I don't think we'll know the answer to that for for a while anyway. All right. Let's leave it at that for today. Good discussion. And can't wait till Friday. Good talk. And Bruce and I are joined by Chantelle Hebert, of course. And I'm sure some of these same conversations,

or same topics at least, will be taking place on Friday. Who knows where we'll be 48 hours from now on either one of these stories. Hopefully fewer trucks, right? Between now and Friday would be great. Fewer trucks. And fewer, you know, I think you were right to point out earlier about the situation at the Ambassador Bridge. I mean, as bad as the Ottawa thing is, and that's where all the reporters are,

and so it's obviously getting a lot of attention, and, you know, for a lot of good reason. But that Ambassador Bridge situation, that's a huge problem. obviously getting a lot of attention and you know for a lot of good reason but that ambassador bridge situation that's a huge um problem for you know the canadian economy overall what is it what's the figure three 350 million dollars a day or something 350 375 and the notion with you know 90 of truckers having been vaccinated and we don't really know what the economic cost was of the mandate, it might have been nothing. And already, we're seeing huge economic pain caused by this convoy, which really goes to the, it isn't really about that. It's about who's in charge.

Yeah, and if you're unsure about that, and you want more convincing, listen to Steve Schmidt again from earlier in this podcast, at least his theory about what's really going on here. All right, Bruce, thanks very much. We'll talk again on Friday, of course, on Good Talk. Tomorrow, your turn, your thoughts, your letters and questions and comments on whatever you wish to talk about. That will be on the bridge for Thursday. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford. Bruce is in Ottawa. Thanks for listening.

We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.