The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Campaign Day 1

Episode Date: September 11, 2019

Day 1 of Canada's 2019 Federal Election. | Thank for subscribing and for submitting a rating and review! * TWITTER @petermansbridge | INSTAGRAM @thepetermansbridge ** https://www.thepetermansbridge.com/ *** Producer: Manscorp Media Services

Well, hello there. I'm Peter Mansbridge and this is The Bridge, my nightly election podcast. This one for day one of the campaign. Tonight, some thoughts about today's different party campaign launches and some things to keep in mind about polls, things you may not have considered. But first, I want to talk a little bit for a moment about planes. Because no matter where you live in the country, if you're close to a relatively major airport, you are likely to see planes you've never seen before, at least not in four or five years, coming in and out of your nearby airports.

And these planes, of course, are the planes that are chartered by the individual parties, especially the Liberals, the Conservatives, and eventually the NDP. They may be a couple of weeks late with their plane. But those planes are, some of them are up in the air as of tonight. So you'll see planes coming in the land with conservative, say, signs all over them, and Andrew Scheer's name on them.

Now, life on the campaign plane is interesting. It's very businesslike most days of a campaign week. Hardworking people. The candidate's hardworking. His or her staff is hardworking. And the reporters on the plane are hardworking men and women. So most days that's what it's like. Then there's kind of the end of the week when they're heading home

for a day or at best two days off. That can take on a kind of party atmosphere. People are relieved to get away from the grind. But the story I'm going to tell you isn't about either one of those kind of days. It's very different. Time, 1979, middle of May. I'm covering the Joe Clark campaign, the conservative campaign in May of 1979. We take off from Toronto.

We're heading to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. We're going to a lobster supper where Clark is going to give a speech. Now, that sounds great. It's mid-May. The temperature is warm. It's almost summer, and we're going to have lobster. What could be better? We're about 20 minutes out of Toronto,

and I'm sitting there next to my buddy David Hall, who's a CBC cameraman, and I hear this strange noise. And to me, it sounds like metal on metal. Not healthy. I look at Dave and I say, Dave, you've got your camera out and running. And he says, what are you talking about?

And I said, maybe just get your camera out and start it running. And he says, what are you talking about? And I said, maybe just get your camera out and start it running. He says, why? And I said, I think we just lost an engine. You know, lost, I use the term, it didn't drop off. It just stopped working. And he says, no way. And I said, Dave, you better just get the camera going. So he does, and sure enough, a minute or so later, the pilot comes on the PA system and says, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to have to return to Toronto. We have an engine difficulty. Well, the word travels around the plane fairly quickly

that engine difficulty equals engine failure, and we're now operating on one engine. It's a DC-9, two engines only, and one engine sounds pretty precarious. Although, as you know, these pilots are trained to handle any number of different emergencies, and an engine failure is one of them. Now, there are nervous flyers on this plane, mainly in the media group, and some of them are already positioning themselves in the head between the legs bit. And everybody else is trying to calm things down.

And suddenly Joe Clark appears from the front of the plane, comes walking back through the media and says, he has a smile on his face, looking very calm and cool, and says, don't worry, everything's under control. This is not a problem. And for Joe Clark, that was a gift, because one of the things that had been about him is that he, you know, he's a bit of a nerd.

How would he handle a crisis? Well, this was a limited crisis, but nevertheless, it was an awkward situation, and he looked pretty calm and cool in it. We landed back in Toronto, fire engines around, but the landing was fine. They took us over to a hangar and said we're going to have to replace the plane. It's going to take a while to fix that engine. So we got in another DC-9 and we flew out to Charlottetown. We lost about an hour and a half in the delay. And we enjoyed our lobster supper that night. So that, ladies and gentlemen, is my little airplane story.

Okay, time to get to business. What did you think about what you saw on day one of the campaign? Here's my take. To use the old political cliche, no one made a big mistake. Some rough edges perhaps, but nothing anyone will likely remember a few days or a few weeks from now. Certainly nothing that will determine the election outcome. Here are my kind of overall highlights of the day. Justin Trudeau wanted a clean start, but thanks to the Globe and Mail, he didn't get it.

Robert Fyfe's latest SNC-Lavalin story about Ottawa blocking the RCMP's attempts to break through cabinet confidentiality had the Liberal leader on the defensive right out of the gate. But he's learned not to linger on the stuff that is potentially damaging, and he managed to move off the issue fairly quickly. There were a number of questions, but he gave limited answers, and he moved on. He then danced the fine line, trying to own all sides of Quebec's Bill C-21 controversy concerning the banning of what public servants are allowed to wear when it comes to religious clothing and symbols. What that showed, at least

to me, was just how important Quebec's 78 seats are to the Liberals. They hope to pick up some of those seats to counter expected losses elsewhere, but today showed they aren't prepared to out-and-out call the Quebec law, popular in the province, as anti-Canadian. Andrew Scheer came out swinging, calling Trudeau a liar. That's the word he used. He called him a liar, and warning Canadians Trudeau would keep lying on the SNC issue. His use of the liar language was something he never would have used in Parliament, but apparently the campaign is different. All this happening as a result of the Globe story. Scheer stretched the truth himself, saying the RCMP was investigating the SNC story for

obstruction of justice by the Prime Minister's office, even though the Mounties have said there is no investigation underway. It seems to me the sheer strategy is simply to link a bunch of words, the Mounties, the word investigation, and the PMO, all together, true or not, with hopes of it playing like the Ralph Goodale story that helped sink the Paul Martin government in the 2006 campaign. Of course, when all was said and done, the RCMP cleared Goodale, but it was too late. By then, Stephen Harper was prime minister. Scheer also today, like Trudeau, had to dance around the Quebec Bill 21 issue, but most analysts seem to feel that he fell short of Trudeau's performance on that one.

Which brings us to Jagmeet Singh. He launched in London, Ontario, and to me, he just didn't look that comfortable, especially in his speech, which he read from notes on the podium. Now, when he answered questions, he looked much more comfortable as he tried to capture the inspiring talk of the late Jack Layton. Singh is not Layton, but if he's going to stop the bleeding his party is facing, he's going to have to do something soon or the NDP story is not going to be pretty. It's not been a good

past week for Elizabeth May either. She'd been pretty well getting a free ride for the past few months, but now suddenly it's one mini mess after another, the latest being one of her Quebec candidates calling for Quebec independence. May had to spend a good part of her newser today suggesting the situation was under control and it wasn't, and if it wasn't, she was going to have to boot the offender out of the party. Let's see where this one ends up. One way to look at this issue, May's problems were probably the best news Jagmeet Singh had today. I mean, it's generally considered that Singh and May

are kind of splitting a certain left-of-centre vote, and if May has been gaining on Singh from that vote, Singh's got to hope that today and the past few days may have cost her some of those votes. Maxime Bernier, he launched today as well, didn't get much attention or coverage. But one thing did happen to him this week, which is kind of interesting.

I'm not sure how it will play out. But the rhinoceros candidate in Bernier's riding, remember Bernier is the sitting MP. It's the one seat his party has. He didn't win that seat. He won it as a conservative, but he then formed the People's Party of Canada. So a rhinoceros candidate is running in that riding,

and guess what his name is? Or at least guess what the name is that he put on the papers. Maxime Bernier. So we have two Maxime Berniers running. That'll be fun. I'll have to sort that one out somehow. So no fatal blows today, just some scratches for each of the leaders and getting out of the day like that

is as good as a win remember you rarely win votes on call day but you can lose them not sure anyone had any real harm done to them today. Okay, I want to say something about polls because I think you need to be cautious about how overanalyzing the constant daily onslaught of new numbers from the various polling companies across the country. As I've said before, and I think I said it last night, I've always been a bit edgy about polls, and especially when different poll results are

weighted together. I just worry about all the different methodologies. Having said that, it's hard to ignore polls, and various commissions have clearly stated that polls do have an impact on the way some people vote and whether some others even vote at all. So for a moment, let's assume the polls are an accurate reflection, not of how people will vote, but how they would have voted if the election was held on the day the poll was taken. Let me explain that one again. Polls are not a reflection of how people will vote. They are a reflection of how people would have voted on the day the poll was taken. So listen closely when you hear a poll result or read closely when you're analyzing polls. When was this poll actually taken? What

was the sample size? What was the margin of error? You got to look at all these things when you review polls. So if we decide the poll is accurate, an accurate reflection of when it was taken, here's something to keep in mind that we often don't think about. Just because one party finishes ahead of another in the polls, or for that matter on election day, that doesn't mean that party will win. You can have a situation, and this election could be an example of this, where one party gets significantly more votes than the other parties, but it does not win in the overall number of seats.

That could never happen, you say. Sorry, not so fast with that conclusion. First, some history. 1979, once again, it's like the plane. The lobster dinner. 1979, Joe Clark gets just under 36% of the vote, 35.9 to be exact. Pierre Trudeau gets just over 40%, 40.1 to be exact. Often enough for a majority when you get over 40%. But who wins in that case?

Clark won with considerably more seats than Trudeau. Why? Well, Trudeau's vote was overwhelming in Quebec, winning seats with huge vote margins, big enough to push his national share of vote up over 40%. Clark used his 36% much more efficiently when in close seats in Ontario and BC. Okay, you say, but that was an aberration. Just happened once. Wrong old buckwheat. John Diefenbaker, the chief, he did the same thing twice to Lester Pearson, once in the 1950s and once in the 60s. And it happened at least once before earlier in the 1900s, but even I wasn't around for that one. This time with the Conservatives likely to pile up huge vote margins in the West,

especially in Alberta and Saskatchewan, and the Liberals hoping for big numbers in Quebec, the possibility exists again where a party could get the most votes, but not the most seats. Now, I'm not saying that will happen, but it's worth remembering. We have roughly 40 days to go here, so expect the numbers to bounce around a bit yet. Now, last night on the bridge, I invited you to write in if you had anything you wanted to ask me, and I did receive some questions.

So let me deal with a couple before I sign off on this day one of the campaign. First one comes from a chap by the name of Duncan Forster. My question is, in your opinion, why have the Greens gained so much support this election cycle? Do you believe it's because of the public's increased concern for climate change, disillusionment with the major political parties, a combination of these and other factors? I'd love to hear your views on this.

Well, Duncan, your question contains all of the answers, quite frankly. Climate change, there's no doubt, is a player in the issue front in this election. I'm hearing it a lot more, and the pollsters seem to indicate they're hearing it a lot more than in the last campaign in 2015. And when climate change is the issue, the Greens' support does tend to go up. Not just the Greens, but it does go up for the Greens. Any questions surrounding the environment? Disillusionment with the major political parties? Well, disillusionment especially on the part of some about the NDP.

And we talked about this earlier in this podcast. When the NDP vote drops, it either goes to the Liberals or to the Greens. And there's clearly some indication that some of it has moved from the NDP to the Liberals. I'll get this right yet. Clearly some indication that it's moved from the NDP to the Greens, which would indicate why they've bumped up. All right, the other question came in here. From Michelle Patterson in Nanaimo, British Columbia.

Beautiful BC. I was out there last week. I'll talk about that a little bit tomorrow on the podcast. Michelle Patterson writes, if Jody Wilson-Raybould wins her riding, what does that actually mean? What power and influence does she have as an independent? What can she actually do? Why would people vote for an independent in our party system other than to spite Justin Trudeau? Michelle, it's a good question. Let me talk a little bit about independent MPs. It's a tough slog for independent MPs. In the House of Commons, they usually get shunted aside to the back corner of the seating arrangements. They rarely get recognized to ask a question in question period.

They rarely get invited onto a parliamentary committee. That's just the way our parliamentary system works. It's not great for independents. They can still be great MPs at the local level. They can look after constituents' problems, and that's part of an MP's job, and good MPs do the local level, they can look after constituents' problems, and that's part of an MP's job. And good MPs do that extremely well, and that would include an independent MP. When constituents have concerns, they call their writing office

or they want to talk to their local MP, and an independent MP can do that. So it's a tough question to answer. It's hard to be an independent MP. Not impossible, not impossible to make a name for yourself. Think Elizabeth May. You know, she was the only MP there for a long time, and now she's only one of a handful, a couple right now. But she has a national image because she has a cause that she fights for, and it's the environment, and she's known for that. Now, if Jody Wilson-Raybould or anybody else running as an independent actually win their seat, they could attach themselves to a cause. Wilson-Raybould,

you know, it could be any number of issues. Let's say, for example, it's Indigenous concerns. She attaches herself, she speaks out forcefully on this issue, she's known on this issue. That can make her a voice and a force in Parliament. But the bottom line is it is tough going if you want to be an independent MP. Now, if you have questions, don't be shy. Send them along.

You can find me at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. That's themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Make sure you include your name and your hometown. I'd like to give a sense of where you're writing in from. Glad to hear from so many of you, by the way, who are enjoying the podcast. We'll keep trying to make it better as the days tick by. For the Bridge, on this day one of the campaign, we've got a long way to go. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening.