The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Campaign Day 23: The Fallout and What Happens Now after Last Night's Debate

Episode Date: October 3, 2019

Day 23 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, I'm Peter Mansbridge. This is day 23 of the federal election campaign. You're listening to The Bridge. If you were listening to The Bridge just a couple of nights ago, we did a special on polling, and I really encourage you, if you didn't hear it, then you should probably go back and listen to it because it's pretty darn good, if I don't mind saying so myself. It's a little long, it's about an hour,

but it covers all the different issues surrounding polling. That's why we call it the good, the bad, and the ugly, because there's a little of each when you come to the discussion about polling. But we had two of the country's top pollsters on there, Shachi Curl and David Hurley. And there was something David said that I've been thinking about again today. David said from his time in working as a pollster

for one of the major parties, that during the debates, they'd do real-time focus groups. In other words, they'd have a group of people watching the debate and they'd be testing their reactions to what was happening. What lines worked, what lines didn't work. And then later that night, they'd sit down with the team and the leader and go over that to keep these things in mind

for whether there was another debate or just generally as the campaign moved on. I was thinking of that because within hours of last night's debate in Quebec of the leaders debating in the French language on TVA, the analysts were out with their assessment of what had happened, and very few were giving good marks to Andrew Scheer, the conservative leader. Not because of his ability with the French language, which is pretty good, but more about how he was answering questions, specifically questions surrounding the issue of abortion.

He was basically dodging the question, which was, what's your personal feeling about abortion? Where are you personally? Where do you stand on that issue? He didn't give an answer. Well, one assumes that if, and I don't know this, but if they were doing focus groups last night, the conservatives, like Hurley suggested parties do,

if they were, they may well have noticed, one, what the analysts were noticing, which was his performance wasn't graded as high as the other ones, other leaders, but that they didn't like the fact he was dodging on that one question. Now, I think that might have happened because, guess what? First thing this morning, Andrew Scheer was at a microphone answering the question about his personal position on abortion. And his personal position is pro-life. He has said that in the past couple of years ago,

but he didn't say it last night when given the opportunity in front of a key portion of the Canadian electorate. But he said it this morning. Was he trying to clear the decks of what had been a problem last night? If, in fact, he didn't do well last night in terms of the Quebec, mainly Quebec voters, then it kind of knocks out one of the Quebec, mainly Quebec voters. Then it kind of knocks out one of the pins from under which the Conservatives were hoping to gain seats.

Last time round of the 78 seats in Quebec, the Liberals had 40, the NDP had 16, the Bloc had 10, the Conservatives had 12. Now the NDP are expected to lose some of those seats. The Liberals could be vulnerable in some areas. The Conservatives were hoping to pick up seats in Quebec because they need to pick up seats, obviously, in different parts of the country.

And Quebec is one of the areas where there are most seats at stake. But if the analysts are right, that didn't happen last night. If it didn't happen last night, they have to pick up seats next door in Ontario. Because as you move west, the big chunk of seats sits in Ontario. 121 seats are at stake in Ontario, and the Liberals had 80 of them last time. The Conservatives only 33. Those two numbers have actually almost got a flip for the Conservatives to be in a position to defeat the Liberals in the campaign. Almost have to flip.

They certainly have to make substantial gains. So how are they going to do that in Ontario? Calling in the reinforcements this weekend. Traditionally, you kind of have the, especially if the premier of the province is of the same political stripe as you, you have that premier out there campaigning with you, appearing with you on stage. Doug Ford is the premier of Ontario.

He's a conservative. He only won a year ago, and he won big. But he's been nowhere to be seen. He must be hiding in his basement because he sure as heck isn't on the campaign trail with Andrew Scheer. He's not particularly popular right now in Ontario for a number of different reasons, which we won't go into now, but he's not around. So who is around this weekend? The Premier of Alberta is going to be here.

And that's unusual. I can't think back to a time when the Premier of Alberta campaigned in Ontario. Hasn't happened. There's always been a certain tension between Ontario and Alberta. But Jason Kenney, the Premier of Alberta, very popular in Alberta and popular in certain segments of Ontario. He's an Ontario boy. He grew up here.

And he spent a lot of time as a federal cabinet minister campaigning in Ontario, especially in ridings which have a large segment of new Canadians, very popular in that area. So Jason Kenney will be campaigning in what's called a 905. It's kind of the belt around Toronto. Downtown Toronto is a 416. These are area codes. 416, very liberal, and expected to stay that way no matter what happens

on October 21st but the 905, that's kind of up for grabs if the Conservatives are going to make gains in Ontario they've got to make them in the 905 I think there are 29 seats in the 905 Liberals won most of them last time. But this time around, the conservatives want to make some headway. And how are they going to do it?

Well, this weekend, they're going to try to do it by having Jason Kenney in town supporting Andrew Scheer. Now, keep in mind, Jason Kenney is an ambitious guy he's happy being the Premier of Alberta, no question about that but some say he'd be happy being Prime Minister of Canada one day, so he's keeping his options open and he's picking up IOUs

at the same time so there you have a sense of the stakes, especially for the Conservative Party over the last 24 hours and the next three or four days before Monday, which is the big English language debate. Now I've got something else I want to talk to you about. It's about the power of an image. And that image can be a single picture or it could be a video. But the power of an image. We'll how many of you saw this. I suspect quite a few of you saw it.

Yesterday it made news on television and radio and certainly online. Certainly online. And if you frequent cbc.ca, you probably saw it. It was headlined, Jagmeet Singh, in Montreal at the Atwater Market. It's a very popular area. But he was campaigning in the Atwater Market, and he was approached by this guy. They shook hands, and the guy leaned in a bit

and spoke to the NDP leader in English. He said, you know what? You should cut your turban off. You'll look like a Canadian. Jagmeet Singh replied, oh, I think Canadians look like all sorts of people. That's the beauty of Canada. Yeah, but, the man said, but Jagmeet Singh cut him off. That's okay. I don't agree, sir, Singh said. In Rome, you do as the Romans do, the guy says. Hey, but this is Canada. You can do whatever you like, Singh said, and walked away.

All right, take care, the guy yells after the NDP leader. I hope you win, he says. A snapshot of the campaign, but was it also a snapshot of Canada? Now, I know a lot of people are interested in this story because there were more than 400,000 people downloaded that story from cbc.ca yesterday before midnight. 120,000 downloaded the video, watched it. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of hits on that story. Three times as many hits on that story as any other story yesterday. Now, I imagine there are lots of different reasons for having

read that story. Lots of different emotions created by that story. But I tell you, I think it says, it asks us a lot of questions, of all of us. When you read that story and you see those pictures, it talks to this issue of who we are as Canadians. Who are we? What do we believe in?

There have been a number of times during this campaign, and you know what I'm talking about, where those questions have come up. And I think it calls upon us to have a deeper discussion about this issue, about who we are, what we find acceptable in this country and what we don't. It's a touchy see whoever wins this election campaign figure out a way that we have a discussion, a national discussion about the country. I know we've been through these kind

of things before at different times. You know, Meach Lake and the Charlottetown Accord and various referendums. This is different. This is a much more national picture, a national snapshot, a national image of who we are, what we want out of this country, what we want out of this country, what we find acceptable. Anyway, that's what I thought of when I not only saw the story,

but heard how many people wanted to know more about it. Those are overwhelming numbers, looking at that story. So I think everybody has a view on this, and we should find ways to discuss it. Okay. Mailbag time. Mailbag time. Mailbag! Okay, so we've got a few letters today, but I'm only going to read one. Because it's, well, because it's been a heavy podcast tonight.

And so I want to just have one today, save some for tomorrow and into next week. This one comes from Andre Odette. Andre doesn't say where he's writing from, but he did watch the debate last night. So he writes, love the podcast, been listening daily. I'd like to hear your thoughts on the exclusion of Elizabeth May and Maxime Bernier from the TVA debate. I'm surprised that a leaders' debate can even be allowed to take place

in a democracy without at least inviting all party leaders to participate. Okay. Andre, I don't disagree with you. I don't know TVR's reasoning and how they decided on who was in and who was out. But I got to say, I find it odd that TVR decided to begin this debate with a discussion about abortion. And they excluded the only leader of a national party. It was a woman. Doesn't make sense to me.

The Maxime Bernier exclusion from the debate, I don't know. I suppose you can make up reasoning behind that in terms of they don't hold a seat. It's the only seat they hold, which is Bernier's his own. He won it as a conservative, so they've never won a seat. They didn't even exist as a party the last time around. But I just find it odd. I do know that the two debates that are being held next week,

there will be representation on the part of the leaders of all the parties, both the English debate on Monday and the second French language debate later in the week. So they will all be there, both Elizabeth May and Maxime Bernier joining that group next week. Andre Odette adds one line to the bottom of his letter, and it was, hope you enjoyed the Leafs game. If you heard my podcast last night,

you knew that I was leaving early last night to get to the Leafs home opener, which they won. But I included in that reasoning for leaving early that I wanted to make sure I got there so I could see Austin Matthews score two goals. Austin Matthews scored two goals last night. How did I know that? I should be a sportscaster. Whatever.

Listen. If you've got thoughts, if you've got things you'd like me to try and answer, send them along. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. It's been great of you to listen once again. Hope you're enjoying the bridge.

I'm certainly enjoying bringing it to you. Thanks for listening.