The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Campaign Day 36: The Bromance Continues

Episode Date: October 16, 2019

Day 36 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, this is Peter Mansbridge with The Bridge on day 36 of the federal election campaign. And I love today. You know why I love today? Because something happened today which gives me the opportunity to talk about history and I love history. So here goes. In the early 1960s, the President of the United States was John Kennedy. The President of the President, the Prime Minister of Canada was John Diefenbaker. Diefenbaker, Kennedy.

Now, if you know a little about our history, you probably know those two guys were not fans of each other. They were very different in many regards. Diefenbaker came out of Saskatchewan. He had a history of fighting for the little guy, going through difficult races. He lost a number of times running to be an MP before he won, and then he worked his way up to eventually become the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, and then the Prime Minister. Wins in 57 a minority, 58 a

majority, 62 a minority, 63 he loses to Lester Pearson. That's the Diefenbaker story. Kennedy, very different. Wealthy family, beautiful wife, kind of a life of privilege. Was a war hero. But when he decided to enter politics, things moved pretty rapidly for him right up until, you know, through Senate and became the presidential candidate for the Democrats in 1960, wins the race, becomes president.

The first time they meet is when John Diefenbaker goes to Washington to meet John Kennedy, congratulate him on his win, and begin that great relationship between Canada and the United States. Shake hands. Kennedy looks at Diefenbaker and says, Mr. Diefenbaker, it's great to meet you. That didn't go over well.

Nor did it go over very well when, a year or so later, when Kennedy made the return trip to Ottawa, and I remember that trip because I was just a kid. I lined the highway going from the airport downtown along Dow's Lake in downtown Ottawa, and it was one of those standing at the sidelines waving as the presidential limousine went by. Anyway, it goes by. They go up, meet again in downtown Ottawa on Parliament Hill, and Kennedy looks at Diefenbaker and says, great to see you again, Mr. Diefenbaker.

Oh boy, not good. Not good on policy either. They had a number of differences on policy, including the big one in terms of nuclear weapons. Kennedy wanted to have the United States place nuclear weapons in Canada. It was the height of the Cold War. Diefenbaker wasn't 100% against that, but placed conditions. Said he wanted those weapons to be under Canadian control, and he wanted a full attempt at world

peace in terms of world nuclear disarmament. Anyway, the deal fell apart, never did happen. And as far as we know, there were never any nuclear weapons placed in Canada then or now. And there was that little episode of the note that had fallen on the floor in Ottawa. One of the briefing notes that Kennedy had been holding. And after he'd left, somebody picked it up, showed it to Prime Minister Diefenbaker, and on it was a number of the differences outlined between the two countries.

That's normal. That's what briefing notes are for. But in the margin, Kennedy had written, S.O.B., son of a bitch, about John Diefenbaker. Diefenbaker saw that, and that just made the relationship even more difficult. Not that that was the first time that things like that had happened.

Nixon was much more difficult on. Pierre Trudeau, when they met in the early 70s, they were no fans of each other either. However, Kennedy took it a step further. He was very welcoming to the idea of Lester Pearson winning the 1963 election. Now, I don't think he ever came out and actually said that publicly or in any fashion, but he was sure happy when Pearson beat Diefenbaker in 63. Now, why am I telling you that little story? Well, I'm sure you figured it out. It's unprecedented for an American president to get involved in a Canadian election.

And aside from a small little comment that Trump made, Donald Trump made earlier in this campaign around the brownface-blackface incident. That hasn't happened. But this afternoon, the middle of the afternoon, a former U.S. president, known for his bromance with Justin Trudeau, did enter the game by tweeting.

Tweeting this. Barack Obama. I was proud to work with Justin Trudeau as president. He's a hardworking, effective leader who takes on big issues like climate change. The world needs his progressive leadership now, and I hope our neighbors to the north support him for another term. Okay, game on. He's in the game. Now, how did that happen?

Do you think Barack was just sitting at home by the fire, reading a book, and stopped and said, Hey, Michelle, I'm going to tweet something about Justin. I'm going to say that they've got to re-elect him. Think that's the way it happened? I don't think so. Now, I don't know what happened, but I doubt it was that way.

I'm sure that before you take a step like that, you'd have your people talk to Justin Trudeau's people to see whether that would be a problem, to say something like that. And my guess is those are the kind of conversations that took place. And at some point in the last little while, they decided, you know what? That'd be a good idea. It would be wonderful if you did that. Once again, I don't know that, but I suspect that's the way it unfolded. So there it is, sitting there.

So let's talk about the risks and rewards here. The risks are that some people will see that as interference. It's not the president, but it is a former president and somebody with, you know, heft and weight from outside of Canada saying something about our election. But we also know that in this country there are hundreds of thousands of Barack Obama fans. So it might go over well for some people.

You can be sure a certain element of the population who weren't Obama fans will be upset that he interfered in their view interference, but also it won't make any difference to them. Others, it might make a difference. And who are they looking at? Well, to me, the key word in that whole tweet is the word progressive. The world needs his progressive leadership now. And i hope our neighbors to the north support him for another term could have just said the world needs his leadership now i hope our neighbors use the word progressive and why i find that interesting is the last five or six days

that word progressive has been out there a lot. Trudeau uses it all the time. You've got to vote for progressive leadership. Jagmeet Singh uses the same word. Not as much as Trudeau does, but it has come up. Describing himself as progressive and the parties from center-left as progressive, and the Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier's party to the right of center as not progressive. So we know where this is targeted, or it certainly seems to me.

Maybe it's just a fluke, maybe it's just an accident that you used the word progressive, but it could be designed to try and influence that NDP vote that's currently in the NDP camp, but might be susceptible to moving. And those who've studied these things suggest that a quarter, upwards of a quarter of the NDP vote, is susceptible in the final days to moving

almost entirely towards the Liberals. Would something like this push them in that direction? Who knows? But if you were, you know, somebody wrote yesterday about Hail Marys. Is this a Hail Mary? Or was this Barack Obama sitting on the couch and leaning over to Michelle and saying,

hey, I'd like to say something nice about Justin? Or is it a kind of Hail Mary? I don't know. We're going to find out the impact of it if something like this can be judged in the next few days. It's getting enormous numbers of likes on Twitter. I mean, you just look at it. Go to Twitter, search out Barack Obama,

and see the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands by the time this thing is out there, the numbers of likes. So that's interesting. And it's also interesting because it is precedent-breaking. So what's Andrew Scheer going to do? What's Jagmeet Singh going to do? Is Andrew Scheer going to say, we've got to counter that.

Let's get Donald Trump to tweet in our favor. I don't think so. I don't think that'll be happening anytime soon. Maybe he'll just ignore it. Maybe he'll say something about interference. We'll see. What does Jagmeet Singh do? My guess is Jagmeet Singh is a fan of Barack Obama.

So that's difficult for him, too. Interesting. Gives us something different to talk about for a change. Not sure how that'll play out. But we'll watch over these next couple of days and watch how everybody reacts to it. And we'll see what it all means and how it all may play out. Meanwhile, aside from that, the race continues to be really tight.

And the leaders, and we talked about this yesterday, you know, watch where they go, listen to what they say, watch what they do. They're all in areas today. They're kind of following each other around a bit. Everybody knows where these targeted areas are that are making a difference and could determine who ends up winning. They're Ontario, mainly in southern Ontario, in the Windsor to Toronto corridor. They're mainly in Quebec. 78 seats at stake.

The Bloc making big moves. The Conservatives were there today. The Liberals were there today. The NDP was in southern Ontario. You know, they were already being in BC this week, but you can be sure they're going to be going back to BC, because those remain your battlegrounds, as we said on the very first broadcast of the bridge on the night before the election was called. Main battlegrounds, Quebec, Ontario, B.C. No different today than it was then. So, watch them keep going. Short bridge tonight, but always time.

You know, for what? Mailbag! Okay. So I'm just going to read a couple of letters today. I want to keep this bridge short. You know, ever since I threw that little bit out last week about, hey, got to decide whether to be doing more podcasts, more The Bridge afterwards, there's been a lot of reaction. And I guess not surprisingly from those who've been listening to The Bridge, they want The Bridge to keep going. And people are coming up with different ideas as to what I could do.

And most people just say, do whatever you want. Do whatever's on your mind. Do whatever you find interesting out there in terms of news or events or trends. They could be Canadian. They could be news, sports. They could be international. They could be about Washington. They could be international.

Do whatever you want. Well, we might try that. But I love this. This letter came from Laurie Jahal. I think this is a southern Ontario. I just love her last line. I've enjoyed every episode and often listen more than once. I plan on listening to them all throughout the day on Sunday

before casting my vote on Monday. All? You're going to listen to them all? There's like 30 of them by Sunday. You're going to listen to them all? My gosh, Laurie. That's dedication. But gosh, Laurie. That's dedication. But I appreciate it.

Here's a letter from Graham Nowlin. An email. Graham Nowlin. I think he's in Ottawa. My question is about the speaker. Specifically, the outgoing speaker Jeff Reagan you hear that phone ringing in the background that's my son Will from the University of Toronto

and I'm just going to let it ring out and I will call him there. He's hung up. He's probably scored another great essay mark. Third year, he called me yesterday to tell me they got an 87 in, I think it was history exam or political science. 87.

Man, I never saw a number or anything like that when I went to high school. So congratulations to Will. Anyway, let's get back to Graham's letter. If you're wondering, hey, why didn't you just edit that out? Well, I can't because I do this all by myself most nights if Will's not here and I don't know how to edit. So that's why I ramble on and on. Okay, let me try this again. My question is about the speaker, specifically the

outgoing speaker, Jeff Regan. If the results are as close as predicted and both the CPC and the LPC are neck and neck, could you see Regan standing for Speaker, putting Parliament ahead of party, or would LPC leadership threaten expulsion from caucus if he did? I believe this happened in BC recently, where the BC Liberals kicked a member out of caucus for standing for Speaker in the

hung Parliament after the last provincial election. There's Will trying on the cell phone. Electing the Speaker will truly be interesting as a party would have to sacrifice a member in a tight Parliament where every vote counts. Okay, I'm not fully conversing on what happened in BC, but let me just go through the scenario here. First of all, I don't think they'd throw anybody out. I don't think they'd order him to do anything.

Anybody can run for Speaker. But here's where it could be interesting. It could be interesting if, in fact, this sounds like it's obviously important. Can you hold on a second, everybody? Hi there, I'm just recording the podcast. Oh, shit, sorry.

Oh, shit, sorry. Well, you just made just recording the podcast. Oh, shit, sorry. Oh, shit, sorry. Well, you just made it on the podcast. Made it on the podcast. Not the first four-letter word on this one. What can I... Is it urgent, or can I call you back in a couple of minutes? Yeah, call me back. Okay.

Okay, bye. What do you know? Now he's really going to be mad at me. Anyway, what I was thinking of, and there have been a number of examples of this over time, but if it is really close and it comes down to, say, the Liberals winning or having enough seats to form a minority government, but every single seat counts, they might try to convince Mr. Reagan not to run as Speaker. However, if the Conservatives are ahead, say by one,

and they're in the position where they don't want any of their people to be speaker, they may say, nobody run, we'll let Mr. Reagan run again, and we'll vote in favor of him. Now, the way they elect speakers now is a little different than it used to be. But back in 79, the liberal speaker of the House in the outgoing Trudeau government had been Jim Jerome. And when the Conservatives won the minority government in 79, they were very edgy about having any one of their people be speaker. So they asked Jim Jerome to remain as speaker, which he did. Didn't help. They still got defeated after six months or so in power

over the budget of December 79. But these things can happen. It can be interesting. So you'll see how it plays out. But that Speaker issue is an interesting one, and we'll all be watching it on Monday night, on election night, to see whether it's so close that the speaker issue becomes an important part of the evening

and how things are going to play out and of the decisions that all parties will have to make in the days after the voting has been counted. All right, that's day 35 in the books. I better get to Will. So thanks for listening, as we say here at The Bridge. This was day 36. We'll look forward to talking to you once again tomorrow.