The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Campaign Day 21: How to lose but still win, sort of!

Episode Date: October 1, 2019

Day 21 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

and hello there it's peter mansbridge this is the bridge for this day 21 of the election campaign we're on the down slope now we're heading we can see the finish line it's down there but there's still you know three weeks to go. And a pretty potentially exciting three weeks. There's lots going to happen in this next few weeks. And for many people, this is when the campaign really begins. Now, first of all, thank you for the many people who sent me messages about yesterday's special bridge on polling. You know, a number of things have kept bouncing back at me from that discussion I had with Shachi Curl and David Hurley. And one of them was what David said about how at this point in the campaign,

every kind of scripted comment coming out of any of the leaders' mouths is scripted because it's been focus grouped. They know exactly what they're saying, why they're saying it, what they're trying to accomplish by saying it. Now, that may be a bit of an overstatement, but I think the general thrust, I'm sure, is true, that that's exactly what's trying to happen, because everything can impact now the final result. And we're into some interesting stuff, you know, you saw, perhaps watched last night on CBC, on the National,

the town hall, with ordinary voters challenging. Last night it was Justin Trudeau. Tonight I believe it's Andrew Scheer. And then each of the leaders is going to have, the major party leaders is going to have a shot at this in the nights ahead. You can bet that they tested out that format, not the CBC, but the leaders.

They had some of their people challenging their leaders with potential questions that they thought might come up in a format like that. Because that's all part of this too. They're gearing up for what'll be, well, tomorrow night, the TVA debate, which is on the big, most watched network in Quebec, TVA, and that will be a big one. That'll be a, will have a huge impact on the Quebec vote. And if you've been watching the nightly tracking on Quebec voting, it's interesting

because, as I mentioned last week, the Bloc Quebecois has come back after being kind of written off by everybody. They're back again. They're either second or third. They seem to be challenging constantly the Conservatives for that position. The Liberals are ahead in Quebec.

So there are a number of things happening. There's the TVA debate. There was the extremely popular program in Quebec, Tout le monde en parle, which runs, I believe, on Sunday nights. And Justin Trudeau was on this week. Andrew Scheer has been on as well. No, sorry, Justin Trudeau goes on this weekend. Andrew Scheer was on last weekend.

I think I got that right. And Andrew Scheer has gone to a lot of trouble to learn French. It's one thing to be able to speak French. It's another thing to be funny in French in a second language. You know, that takes a particular skill. From what I've been hearing, that program is based on its humor. And from what I've heard, he sure did well, but he kind of missed the opportunity on being funny.

Trudeau is on Sunday night. Singh has already been on. These things matter a lot in Quebec. Jack Layton in 2011. Many people say that the orange wave started in Quebec for Jack Layton as a result of his performance on To Le Mans and Paul. So that'll be interesting. And that will be focus tested. And that will be rehearsed. You can bet

on the part of each leader before they either go on or have been on already. And then next week, the English language debate, Monday night. That's a biggie. You know, and you hear stories about past debate preparations where the parties, you know, got their leaders inside a rehearsal hall and really grilled them and really road-tested every possibility they thought could come up in a debate.

You have people playing the other leaders, and they kind of go at it. And I've been told stories of how the staff would really go after the leader if they didn't do well in the rehearsals and exactly why they were not doing well and how they couldn't afford to make the same kind of mistakes in the real deal. So a lot of pressure on the leaders this week as they get ready for various things in debate formats in both French and then in English next week

and then a second French debate later next week as well. So a lot's happening on that front, and keeping in mind the kind of things that Hurley and Curl were saying last night in terms of what the leaders go through prepped by their staff based on what their staff is seeing in the party polls, which are very different than the public polls that we often talk about. But I'm going to talk about something in terms of what the public polls are potentially suggesting. Was that couched enough? Potentially suggesting?

We'll talk about that right after this. Okay, well, if you've been looking at the polls, you've noticed, I'm sure, from the very beginning of this campaign, how close they are in terms of the top two parties. You've got the Conservatives and the Liberals right up there in the low to mid-30s. And usually the gap is one, two, at the most three points. Sometimes even tied.

In all those scenarios, even though the vote is kind of packed for each party in different parts of the country, and seats could make a real difference here, that while the actual percentage of vote may be roughly the same, the number of seats could be quite different. But let's play this out a little bit because I bet you if these numbers remain like this, you're going to start hearing this question asked of certainly the leader who represents the leader of government right now, that's Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister, he'll be asked the question about

what if no party forms a majority? And what if your party is a couple of seats behind the Conservatives when all the counting's done on election night? Now, the reason for that question is, as leader of the government, which he still is and will remain so even after Election Day for a period of a week or so before he has to go to the Governor-General and either give up power or say,

I want to try and meet Parliament and take my agenda. If the Governor General says, yeah, hey, but you don't have as many seats as the Conservatives. You have three less. And Trudeau could say, well, you know, I have the right to meet Parliament and try to govern, and I may have the support of one of the other parties. And in that case, the Governor General has to make a decision.

And it's entirely possible that the Governor General would decide, okay, he has the right to meet Parliament. And so he can try. If he meets Parliament and loses a vote, then the Governor-General has the right to go to the Conservative leader and say, do you want to try to meet Parliament? Or should I call an election? What's your opinion? So all these things are possible. But it starts with that question to Justin Trudeau, if that's the way this scenario, a very close situation, plays out.

So what you'll find is at some point in these next few days, or certainly in the next week or ten days, somebody's going to ask that question of Justin Trudeau. Would you try to hang on to power even if you have fewer seats than the Conservative Party? How will he answer that question? I raise this because I remember in 1979, his father was asked that very same question

because at that time it looked very close between the Conservatives and the Liberals. The Conservatives ended up winning by a lot of seats. There was about 30. And so there was no question as to who was going to meet Parliament. But he was asked a couple of weeks before the campaign by Mark Phillips, who was the CBC journalist covering the Liberals on that week. He was asked what he would do if the Conservatives had a couple more seats than him.

And Pierre Trudeau left the impression, well, I'd have to think about that. I just might keep governing. I might try to keep governing. And that caused a big, huge kerfuffle, but he was right. He did have that right to try to do that. But as it turned out, it never happened that way. But this is always a good question to ask in the midst of a campaign that's close. And it will, I'm willing to bet, if it stays close, that this question will come up. All right, it's mailbag time.

And we're going to go to the mailbag right after this. Okay, we've got a few questions I didn't get to last night because obviously we were just talking polls. So I want to do a couple that came in over the weekend and maybe one or two from last night as well. This one is from Mike Gibbons in Ottawa. Does the, and I'm condensing this down to his key point, and this is about Bill 21 in Quebec and how the federal parties are reacting to it.

Does the lack of a clearly articulated plan on the card of any of the leaders mean that they are waiting out the clock on this issue in order to preserve votes in Quebec, or are they really not that concerned with restricting religious freedom in Canada because they don't think it's all that important? I think it's more the former than the latter. They are all trying to, you know, dance along a fine line here on this issue. They know there's a lot of pressure, including from their supporters. You know, I was in Justin Trudeau's home riding in Papineau in Quebec

last week or the week before, losing track of time here, And people who are 100% behind him and are going to vote for him no matter what still want him to step out and do something on Bill 21. Take action against him. Veto its use on the part of the Quebec government. But he's not. He's saying how much he detests it, but he wants, he's saying, and so are some of the other parties,

that there's a legitimate move in the Quebec courts against Bill 21. He wants to see it play out. But this is a very popular bill in Quebec, and you can be sure that no federal party, no matter how strongly they believe against Bill 21, is likely to say anything against it in terms of moving on it right now before the vote.

Although, let's watch. It'll start to come up tomorrow night in the Quebec debate, the French language debate in Quebec on TVL. Let's see what happens. Some of you may have heard me on cross-country checkup on CBC Radio on Sunday, and Kelly Martin and Francisco and Gabrielle and Olivia wrote a letter saying, you know, my teens and I called into cross-country checkup yesterday to ask how do you think we can facilitate discussion between youth and adults

specifically on the topic of climate change. And she goes on a bit wanting to know whether I would, you know, facilitate some kind of national discussion on this because there are differences, as I think we all appreciate, between some segments of the youth vote and some segments of the older vote. Listen, this discussion should take place in every household in the country, and obviously it does in Kelly Martin's household, as it does and as it does in and has as it has in in mine but that's where it starts

and then you can facilitate facilitate these kind of discussions by you know trying to arrange a town hall in your community have a good and open discussion about it you don't need me for that. And that's what I would suggest you do. This is a huge topic. You saw hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets on Sunday across Canada. So you shouldn't have that much trouble getting a crowd in a well-organized town hall. And have that discussion and appeal to all sides of the discussion group to come. Not just one side. You want to have a real discussion, a real debate? I have some different voices there.

Donna Cripps writes a long letter about health care. I've circled a couple of key sentences. I work in health care, and as I've learned, Canadians need and want their health care to be available when they need it. But the difficult conversations about what we as Canadians can afford when it comes to health care seems to be a discussion that is not on the radar. So one of the biggest issues facing us in the next 10 to 20 years will be how to afford to pay for health care for all Canadians. And there has been little to no discussion about

this on the campaign trail. There have been lots of promises on health care. And Donna does point that out at different times in her letter. We've heard the promises on pharmacare and mental health. But the bigger question of health care overall and the hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars that will be needed in the next 10 to 20 years to deal with the health care needs of this country are not being discussed on that level. Partly because it is, you know, partly a provincial matter

and there has to be a federal provincial agreement. But nobody seems to be suggesting in the campaign trail how that would play out. So Donna's point's a good one. And let's hope that in these next few days, whether it's in the town hall format that the CBC is doing, or whether it's in the overall debates that all the networks are doing, that healthcare has a prominent spot on the agenda. Because it is, if not the number one, the number two issue that I've seen out there. Environment slash climate change being the other.

Healthcare is a huge issue for a lot of Canadians and not just elderly Canadians. So let's hope that's the case. And the final question tonight is really not a question, it's more of a comment. It's from a fellow named Kyle Brooks. He's kind of a, well he's

in production, technical production so he has comments about different things from podcasts to the way the parties perform in their production capabilities. And he asks me to say something about the crews that are out there. And, you know, it's a good point.

And he's not talking about the crews, or perhaps he's not talking about the crews that are following the TV campaign, which is a challenge for all those, you know, having been on a few of these airplanes at campaign time. I know what a crush it can be for the camera operators and the sound people and lighting, whatever. It can be quite something in there. So a shout-out for them.

Shout-out for the, you know, all these parties hire technical people to set up their microphones, to set up their lighting, to set up videos, whatever may be going on in the room where the leader is. And that's a challenge too, because it's constant. You know, it's set up here, break down, get the stuff to the plane, set up in the next spot. Sometimes there's two or three a day. So it's something. But there's also the other aspect of this is the camaraderie that takes place as a part of that group.

And I remember, and I hearken back to 79 and 80, those campaigns, when part of the traveling entourage for each of the parties used to be, in some cases, a band. A band would play. You know, a little, you know, five or six people at most. Kind of a rock band,

which was to get the crowds going. Well, part of that camaraderie involved in 79, I won't give names here, but one of the journalists fell in love with one of the people on the band. And sure enough, they got married. Happily so, and still are. I only see and hear from them every once in a while.

So there's your long-winded shout-out to the crews involved in campaigns, past and present. Thanks for that, Kyle. You got letters? Don't be shy. Send them in, and I will try to get to them. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com.

The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Have a great night. Thanks for listening. Thank you.