The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Campaign Day 29: The Dog Barks!

Episode Date: October 9, 2019

Day 29 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 the bridge for day 29 of the federal election campaign. Getting close now. Here we are, sort of hump day of the second last week of the campaign, and it's around now where the people, the men and women in the back rooms of the parties are starting to figure out their final week of the campaign. They've got a good idea where they want to go, what they want to say, how they want to explore the possibilities in that final week and try to take advantage of their strengths and ignore their weaknesses. But it's crunch time. You at this point really have to start nailing down what you have to do in those final days to try and make things work in your favor.

And so that can involve some, you know, rescheduling. Some decisions will be changed around. A lot of this is based on their internal polling, which we, of course, never get to see as much as we'd all love to see it. And you heard last week when we talked with David Hurley and Shachi Curl about the kind of stuff that they get out of that internal polling, which is pretty important to determine things like this, the final day's scheduling. It's really important.

So while they're sitting in the back rooms working on that, in the front rooms with the individual leaders, they're looking at the next 24 to 48 hours because it's a big night tomorrow night. And I'll tell you why. First of all, it's all about the rock. In fact, it's nothing about the rock. And which rock are we talking about?

We're not talking about the movie actor. The rock I'm talking about is Rest of Canada. Remember we used to use that phrase, the rock, R-O-C? You've got to go back 20 years to talk about when we used it. But through the variety of different issues, referendums, the Charlottetown referendum, the Quebec referendum, all those stories that dealt with kind of Quebec's place in Canada. So there was Quebec and there was the rock, the rest of Canada. So in this next 24 to 48 hours, the focus is not on the rock,

where most of the seats in the federal election are up to grabs. The focus is on the 78 seats in Quebec. Tomorrow night is the major French-language debate. There was one last week on the TVI network. Tomorrow night's debate is sort of the flip side of the English language debate on Monday night. It's where all the other networks will be broadcasting and taking part in the debate. And all the leaders, all six of them, just like Monday night,

they'll all be there on stage. Same location, back in Ottawa. I don't know about the format. I wonder if the French producers have looked at that format and said, hey, it got numbers, got big numbers, but boy, it's being panned, and it's still being panned. Anyway, we'll have to wait and see what they do in terms of a format, but the stakes are high. And let me explain that to you. Because there's a tendency at times in other parts of the country to say, well, you know, I'm not going to worry about what happens in Quebec.

I'm going to worry about what happens in, you know, my part of the country or in Ontario where there are those, what is it, 121 seats. Okay, this is why Quebec tomorrow night is really important. There are 78 seats in Quebec. Last time round, the Liberals won 40 of those 78. The NDP won 16. The Conservatives had 12, and the Bloc Quebecois had 10. So

that was last time. And the Liberals were extremely grateful for those 40. That helped them build their majority government. They did really well in Ontario. They got 80 in Ontario, but those 40 in Quebec were really important. So this time around, how are the different parties looking at that? At the beginning of the campaign, you know, we keep talking about how not much has changed in the campaign when you look at the big numbers,

the overall numbers, the sum truth in that, but there's been movement inside Quebec and all the parties are looking at it. That's why tomorrow night, the ROC is not important. Quebec is important. And those 78 seats are a big deal. So going into this campaign, the Liberals figured,

hey, we're going to lose some seats. We're going to lose some in Atlantic Canada. It's only natural. They won every single seat last time, in 2015, in Atlantic Canada. They're bound to lose some. So we've got to... That's Bella. That's my dog. Thank you, Bella. She obviously agreed with that point. The Liberals figure, okay, we're going to lose some in Atlanta, Canada.

We can make it up by gaining some seats in Quebec, and we have the potential to gain seats in Quebec. We're going to lose seats elsewhere. We're going to quite possibly lose some in Ontario, quite possibly lose some in the West. Quebec is where we need to gain seats. So that's the way the Liberals looked at it coming in. The NDP were extremely worried at the beginning of the campaign. They were not polling well. They just got, you know, even with a Quebec candidate in Tom Mulcair,

they lost a lot of seats in Quebec in 2015, and they had the potential of losing most of, if not all, of those 16 with a bad campaign. The Conservatives were looking at, hey, if we're going to win, if we're going to win on election night, we have to make gains in Quebec. And they were hopeful, extremely hopeful that they would make gains. And the Bloc Québécois at 10 seats last time round were just, would be grateful if, in fact, they could hold on to those. So here we are, with a week and a half to go before the election,

and things are looking a lot different than they did at the beginning of the campaign. First of all, the NDP have run a great campaign. There's no question about that. Even here on the bridge, we gave Jagmeet Singh the player of the week, first two weeks. And he's looking good for this week based on his debate performance Monday night. We'll see how he does tomorrow night.

So they've done okay. But they're still probably going to lose seats because it hasn't shown up in the polls in Quebec. What has shown up in the polls in Quebec is that the Liberals are leading, but kind of flatlined, at around the same place they were last time. So no big gains, obvious at the moment. The bloc has gone up.

The bloc has re-emerged. As so often happens in Quebec, things change in the campaign, in the federal campaign, especially in the last couple of weeks, so there's lots of time for more change. The bloc has gone up. The Conservatives have gone down. They have not had a good campaign in Quebec,

and it wasn't helped last week by Andrew Scheer's pretty bad performance, by all accounts, in the French-language debate on TVA. So he has a big opportunity tomorrow night to try and turn things around for him. That's why tomorrow night is so important. I didn't mention the Greens. They don't have any seats in Quebec. They have spent a lot of time in Quebec, and Elizabeth May was there again today. in the greens. They don't have any seats in Quebec. They have spent a lot of time in Quebec.

Elizabeth May was there again today. She was in Montreal. But I don't see it. I don't see it anywhere in the numbers. But tomorrow night is an opportunity for her because she wasn't in the debate last week. Neither was Maxime Bernier was not in the debate last week in Quebec.

They're both on the stage again. We'll see what happens. So those are the stakes tomorrow night and why so many people are looking at it closely in terms of what impact could happen from that debate tomorrow night. Could it change things? Justin Trudeau does really well. Could he grab a few extra seats,

position himself well for losses outside of Quebec? If he does poorly, that's a problem. Andrew Scheer has to do well. He has to change the tone in Quebec, or no matter what happens for him elsewhere in the country, it's hard to put together a story where they win with only 10 or 12 seats in Quebec. They need more than that. So, those are the stakes. And for the bloc, listen, everything's possible for the bloc, right? As Blanchette said the other night in the English debate, we're not going to be the government. But we could have an impact on who the government is.

Because if it's a minority government, somebody has to hold the balance of power. Somebody's got to negotiate with the governing party to perhaps keep them in power. It would be risky for any governing party to negotiate with the bloc in any formal arrangement. But they could hold the balance of power on programs and policies and legislation that they like

that's put forward by a government. So, let's see. Let's see what happens. And for the NDP, it's all about survival. 16 seats. That represented a lot of their eventual caucus. And if you think I'm padding for time here while I look that up,

that's exactly what I'm doing. Here's a quarter of their caucus. No, it wasn't that much. It was, I can tell you exactly what it was. They had 44 seats. 16 of them were in Quebec. So, what, third, roughly, of their caucus? So an important, very important chunk

of the NDP caucus in Quebec. All right. Short one tonight. Reminder that tomorrow night is the French language debate, but because I've got a speech in London, Ontario tomorrow night, I won't be doing a podcast right after the debate because I won't have seen it. I'm not sure the status of what tomorrow night's podcast

will be. It'll all depend on whether there's something to talk about early in the day that I can put together for a podcast for tomorrow night. But we always get mail. And I've got one letter I want to read tonight because it's kind of a follow-up to something we talked about earlier in this week. So why don't we listen to that right after this. All right. Well, I'm having a little trouble with the old control board here tonight. That's not the control board's fault. It's my fault. I reduced the wrong pot there.

But we've got it right now. Earlier in the week, we got a letter. I can't remember who it was from. But she lived in Toronto, but she was from southwestern Ontario. And she talked about this, something she'd noticed in her writing, her home writing,

that seemed to be a battle that was mainly between the NDP and the Conservatives, which seems a bit odd on the face of it. And she thought it was a bit odd, and that's why she was writing about it, because she said, that's happening there, and it seems to be happening in a number of different places. And I said, well, you know, and it seems to be happening in a number of different places. And I said, well, you know, maybe it's happening in that particular writing, but it does seem a little odd that the Liberals would not be in any way in the play in a contest between the kind of left and the right

and no involvement with the center in there. They go from the right all the way over to the left, bypassing the centre. Anyway, we had a little discussion about that, and I got this great letter from Katie Hurst in Sarnia, Ontario. So let me read what she has to say, because it fits into this discussion. I want to follow up on a letter you read regarding competition between the NDP and Conservatives. Southwestern Ontario is a perfect example of those two parties

being the top two in the race. My riding in particular, Sarnia-Lampton, could be described as urban-rural. Not strictly rural. And what was notable about the provincial election is the NDP did very well in the urban areas, but the PCs eventually won out due to a strong rural county vote. Based on how it's looking this time around, the NDP will finish in second, with the Liberals in third. An NDP-Conservative divide is not always expected,

but with a riding like ours, with strong rural ideals bordering a city that is filled with unions and a small but mighty contingent of progressive youth, it isn't entirely surprising. I don't know if I would go as far as to call it a trend, as your other letter writer did, However, it is certainly noticeable here. And I thought I would fill you in on this and give you a writing you can check out on election night. Well, you've done just that, Katie, and I'm glad you did.

And you've made me think about the writing I'm sitting in here right now. You know, I'm in Stratford, Ontario tonight, and our riding is exactly like that. There's a lot of the riding is in rural Ontario, and a lot of it is in urban Ontario. In other words, you know, communities like Stratford. And that split does give you that possibility, exactly. It doesn't seem to be happening here.

Traditionally, the fight here is between the rural conservative vote and the urban liberal vote. But, you know, what's happening in your area has the potential of happening anywhere. So I think you're raising a good point and giving the explanation for yesterday's letter writer as to how this could happen. And I've learned something here that I should have realized on the first go-round.

But you're right, and it's a good point. And we're all richer for your help and your letter tonight, Katie Hurst. Anyone with a question or a thought or a comment, you know, don't be shy. Send them along. We've got lots of mail here at the bridge. And, you know, i try to put some of the the best ones on air um some people are writing a number of letters and uh i want to you know share the uh opportunity to get everybody's comments in and everybody's questions in. So don't be shy. The address is themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com.

themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Day 29 of the campaign into the books. This is The Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening.