The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Campaign Day 9: The Day After The Night Before

Episode Date: September 19, 2019

Day 9 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

Hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the bridge for this day nine of the federal election campaign and what a 24 hours this has been. Hope you were strapped in for the ride since our podcast last night because things have been crazy. We told you last night when we filed that podcast right after Justin Trudeau's news conference that the next 24 to 48 hours would be critical to the life of this story, just which roads and pathways the story would take. Well, we can certainly update that after the last 24 hours anyway, because everyone has been talking about it, not surprisingly.

All the parties have been impacted by it, the Liberals especially, their schedule changed today. But the other parties as well all had to adapt to this story, make their leader available for speaking to the media about it and reacting to it in the speeches that they gave and to the crowds they talked to. And it's not just inside Canada. This was a huge international story.

It made headlines all around the world. The Trudeau name, you know, like him or not, is magic out there on the international media front. And I can tell you, having traveled to different places in the world, there have only been two prime ministers over the last 50 years that I've ever been asked about when I'm overseas. Whether it's from a cab driver or somebody I'm interviewing or what have you, there are only two prime ministers and both their names were Trudeau. So that gives you some

idea of the interest out there and on this story you've got this picture splattered, the picture of Trudeau, Justin Trudeau, in blackface or brownface, whichever color you want to choose, has been splashed all around the world. So people are talking about it and have strong opinions about it. So there are a number of things I want to talk about tonight in regards to this story. And let me start with a little story, with an anecdote.

You tell me you like these anecdotes that I tell every once in a while. So here's one. Keep in mind that the Liberal Party, over the history of this country, there's a reason it's been called Canada's natural governing party. Because for most years, the Liberals have been in power.

Much to the disappointment of Conservatives in Canada. And sometimes they take it out on themselves, Conservatives. About elections that they think they should have won if they just had a different strategy. So my story is about sitting down with a top conservative strategist. This would have been around 2004, 2005. They'd lost the 2004 election to Paul Martin put him in a minority government

but many conservatives felt they should have won that election but they had a chance to win they didn't because they kind of blew the last week of the campaign they thought they were leading their internal polling data suggested they were leading and they took it easy they kept the leader Stephen Harper

in Alberta that week instead of campaigning in key spots around the country. And he already had Alberta sewn up. Anyway, they fell short. The Liberals won the minority government. Paul Martin's only victory. So I was talking to one of their top strategists. He was still angry about that. He'd obviously argued for a different kind of campaign, especially that final week. And this is what he said to me. And I mean, he stole the line from, you know, other issues,

but it's a great line to use on this campaign. He said, listen, when we're fighting liberals, we're already up against history but when we have the edge we have to appreciate that we have the edge not let it go so when you have the foot on the throat of a liberal

don't let off don't let it off step down harder that was his theory that that's what you got to do. I thought about that story last night and this morning, watching Andrew Scheer, because clearly somebody, and perhaps it was Scheer himself, I don't know, but somebody suggested you got to take the high road here for your first statement on this last night after the story broke.

And so when he got off his plane and they dressed him up or he dressed himself up in a shirt and tie and suit to look prime ministerial, he got in front of the microphone he gave a very measured statement expressing his disappointment in the Prime Minister saying he was unfit to govern and left it at that no questions, no other points the whole thing lasted, I don't know, 15 seconds, 20 seconds

and he disappeared into the night, and that was it. Now, some people within that party would have argued for a much stronger performance from Scheer in the sense, talk longer, answer questions, be mad, be angry. Didn't happen last night. Did happen this morning. The old L word was being batted around again as Andrew Scheer was at the microphone this morning in a much more aggressive positioning of his views

on this story. And he called Trudeau a liar a number of times. And when you use the L word, you're being aggressive. You're putting your foot down on the throat. And that's what he did. Now, what about the liberals? What'd they do? Well, we saw Justin Trudeau once again speak to reporters and to the country because everybody was covering it live, including some of the international networks. And he was once again extremely apologetic, saying there was no excuse for this.

He was deeply sorry, knew he'd offended people, was working the phones trying to talk to people who he knew he'd offended personally as friends. And he went on beyond that in terms of talking about his upbringing as a privileged person. Because there is a body of opinion out there, you know, to put it mildly, that Justin Trudeau is a spoiled brat, doesn't accept responsibility for some of his actions. And he knows that some people say that about him, that they are pointing, in fact, to his privileged upbringing. He was the son of a prime minister, rich family, and he was benefiting from that. But he talked himself about this privileged upbringing,

which he says it cost him the knowledge of what blackface or brownface actually means in terms of the history of the country. And so he was trying to touch a lot of these bases. Why? Well, obviously, they're trying to get out of this scandal that's being called. And what they've learned from past stories that have been hung around their neck in the last year or two, from the Aga Khan story, from the India trip, from SNC-Lavalin. You don't get out of these quickly if you don't tell everything right up front. So it appears that's what he's trying to do.

Admit how wrong it was. Admit there were other circumstances. Confirm videos and pictures that come up hoping that all the lumps he's going to take and he's taking a lot of them are going to come in these first few days and then somehow the story's going to die out we don't know whether that'll happen

it's 24 hours in is the story losing some steam? Not in some circles. But we'll see. Where will the story be tomorrow? Where will it be Monday? Monday is the crucial day. This story is still being talked about on Monday. They've got real problems. And all the parties will be looking at the overnight tracking polls to see what they suggest in terms of how the people feel about all this. There was polling done last night, but it was far too soon.

Most people weren't aware of the story. If you've been following this podcast, you know I've been in Montreal for the last couple of days. I'm off to New Brunswick tomorrow. But it's all part of this documentary I'm working on near the end of the campaign about the mood of the country. But I spent today in Papineau riding, which is Justin Trudeau's riding. And it's a very multicultural riding. I talked to, you know, a fair number of people.

And I got to tell you, they love their local MP. To them, he can do no wrong. And they certainly found no wrong in this. They said, oh, come on, get over it. It was 20 years ago. And interestingly, I listened to the local CBC station in Montreal and some of Raja Canada, and they were getting somewhat similar responses, not just in Papineau, but in different ridings across the province. I see Les Perrault, who is a reporter I admire a great deal from the Globe and Mail, is also saying that his inbox is full of people, Quebecers, Montrealers, saying, hey, this is no big deal. He did warn us last night that this issue is looked at differently in Quebec than it's looked at in different parts of the country. And that seems to be bearing out in some of the early soundings.

But once again, it's early. Let's look for those overnight polls. They'll start coming out tomorrow. You'll see some on the weekend. You can bet all the parties are doing their own polling. I kind of mentioned this last night. But they do a very different kind of data collection. It's not like riding by riding like a lot of the publics do. A lot of the public polls do in province by province. It's issue-based. It's specific writings. They may pick anywhere from 12 to 60 writings across the country that they see as key swing writings that will reflect opinion in a region of the country, not a province

but a region. And they'll make judgments about where they go, what they say, how they campaign in those areas based on the data they get coming back from that. So there's a lot of movement going on behind the scenes right now, and we'll get a sense early next week. We may see and hear some polls on the weekend, but we'll get a sense by watching the parties early next week of how they deal with all this. So that's my kind of thoughts on this 24 hours in.

And it is going to, once again, dominate the podcast today. I am going to do one letter from the mailbag in a moment, but I wanted to focus on this. I have a lot of other stuff that I've collected that I want to talk about that I was going to do last night, but I will save it either for tomorrow night or the beginning of next week, because this story is kind of top of mind for right now. But anyway, in a moment, the mailbag. Don't go away. All right, welcome back.

Mailbag time. Lots of letters still to catch up on, and I will catch up. As I promised last night, I will read these, and I will try to answer them. There's some very good ones. But I want to stay, in a sense, focused on this issue. This particular letter came in before this story broke, the Trudeau story broke. But it's interesting because it eventually gets to the point that he's impacted by this story. So here's the letter. It says, Hello, Peter. I've been enjoying the podcast very much. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? What's next? DJing?

Tom Power must be quaking in his Converse sneakers and torn tight jeans. I was trying to do a Newfoundland accent there, but I'm not very good at trying to do a Newfoundland accent. I'm not very good at trying to do any accent. It's from Mark Critch. Your friend, my friend, 22 minutes. Great guy, I was at his wedding a month ago. Him and Melissa got married in Trinity, Newfoundland. It was fantastic.

Went whale watching, went cod fishing, did the whole bit. Mark makes a joke about one of the other guests who was at the wedding who played up on stage, Tom Power, a great host on CBC Radio. We don't make jokes about Tom. Tom is great. And if you're anywhere near a radio tomorrow morning, listen to Tom. He's got Céline Dion on his broadcast, and that doesn't happen often. That was one

of my great thrills, meeting Céline Dion in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. She'd sung in the opening ceremonies and came up to the booth and talked to Brian Williams and I. I was a little starstruck, but nevertheless, tried to do my imitation of Titanic. How much better the movie would have been with me up there at the bow instead of Leonardo DiCaprio. But I digress. Let's get to the point of Mark's letter. Here it is. I do have a question for you. Do you think there has been more bold-faced lying than usual in the campaign?

I'm shocked at the amount of misinformation out there, and at the reluctance to correct. How does this track with previous elections? Are we just noticing more nowadays because we can screenshot a lie? Or are candidates lying more because the lie continues to be shared long after the apology, if there ever is one, has been made? So that's Mark's question. It's a good question, and I know it's on the minds of a lot of people because lying has become part of the art of politics didn't start with Donald Trump he's perfected it or abused it in such a way that we now have news organizations like the Washington Post and the

New York Times and CNN adding up lies and they're upwards're upwards of, I don't know, 12, 13, 14,000, I think, one of them, says that Trump has stretched the truth in that many things since he became president of the United States. And so it's kind of an accepted way. I mean, we report it, the news organizations, we show it, but it's not like he stops because of it. In fact, just this week, Corey Lewandowski,

who was his campaign manager for a while back in 2016, testified before the U.S. Congress, and he sat there and he said, I only feel I have to tell the truth when I'm under oath. I don't feel like I have to tell the truth to the media. Hey, at least he was speaking forthrightly about that issue. But it's stunning. People were sort of aghast, but that's what they do. And has that drifted over into Canada?

Yeah, sadly, I think it has. But as I said, Donald Trump wasn't the first politician to stretch the truth, to lie. It's been done before. It will be done long after he's gone and it's up to a responsible media to call this out when it happens so the media whose role is

to tell the truth that's where it starts to tell the truth to find out the truth to search out the truth to get the truth, to find out the truth, to search out the truth, to get the truth. Does the media always do that and do it well? Don't think so. There are problems on that front.

And the media knows itself that it has to be more transparent in the way it does its work, explain to people how the decisions are made within news organizations, and to be as transparent as possible when telling stories about where the information comes from and why we know it to be accurate. So, Mark, is it more obvious this time around than last? I don't know. I haven't started counting lies. I know some news organizations are. They'll say, you know, the politicians say, well, I'm not lying. I'm just not telling you the truth. Or don't assume that what I'm telling you is the truth. So we've got to be careful. All of us have to be careful and it's up to the media to do its job. It's up to the public

to question the information it's getting and where it's getting it from. I was talking to a woman the other day as part of this documentary and she said to me, we were talking about what she thought of politicians, and she said, well, you know where the word politician comes from? It comes from poly meaning many, and shins meaning this tick, this insect, this disgusting little thing. And I looked at her, I said, are you serious? And she said, yes. I said, where did you read that? She said, on Facebook. And then we both broke

out laughing. Because of course there are as many questions about Facebook as there are about anything else. Listen, thank you Mark Cr Critch, for the letter. It's our first celebrity letter, and I'll frame that one and put it on the Bridge office wall, if only we had an office. Thanks, everybody. If you've got letters, please don't be shy about sending them. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. The

Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. That's it for day nine of the campaign. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This is The Bridge. Thanks for listening. Thank you.