The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Campaign Day Six

Episode Date: September 16, 2019

Day 6 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, I'm Peter Mansbridge. This is the bridge for this, the first day of the second week of the campaign. Already feels like it's been longer than that, but hey, every day is a new bit of excitement on the federal election campaign for 2019. Now, for those of you who've been a little concerned so far that you're not getting enough substance from the parties, that it's been too much that game of whack-a-mole they play where they're going after each other, and not enough what they actually stand for, well, this was the day for you. I mean, the criticism isn't entirely fair, but it certainly

wasn't fair today because three of the parties anyway, the three of the major parties, came out with major policy drops. So I'm going to talk a little bit about that because there's, I'm not going to go through all what exactly their policies are, but it's important, and I'll tell you why in a moment. First of all, the Conservatives dropped another tax policy thing. They dropped a big one just yesterday, but another one today on sports and arts credits, $1,000 credits for families that are supporting sports and fitness for their kids, $500 for arts for their kids.

If that sounds familiar, it is kind of similar to the program the Harper government had back when it was in power. Yesterday, Andrew Scheer dropped the announcement on the $6 billion worth of tax cuts for certain Canadians, mostly in the middle income bracket. Now, what he still hasn't done is added all these things up, all these promises up, but they're saying they will, of course, do that when they've dropped everything.

And it also, you know, some people wonder, did they rush these two on yesterday and today? They always knew they were going to do them, but did they put them on deliberately in the last couple of days to try and divert the talk away from their candidates who certain questions have been raised about to give Canadians who are looking for actual policy announcements something else to think about. Don't know whether that's true, but it's there,

policy for you to look at. The Liberals, they talked about spaces for kids, both before school spaces for those looking for childcare and after school spaces. Those are important to a lot of Canadians. So that policy is out. Once again, I'm not going through all the details on these. I just want to point these out for a reason. The Greens, they announced most of their package of promises, the transitioning the economy, more stuff on tax fairness, and more on the environment as they often do

but quite a few promises from the Greens party and leader Elizabeth May saying we will total this up by using the parliamentary budget officer to go through all our promises and give you a total before the end of the campaign that's an interesting approach it before the end of the campaign. That's an interesting approach. It's taking out of the partisan pocket and giving it to the parliamentary budget officer as a job for that department to do a number that one assumes would

be trusted by the Canadian people when it is announced. The NDP did most of their policy drops for the opening days last week, so today was more talk for them about candidates. Now, here's why I'm telling you this, because really, policy announcements are the real raw meat of election campaigns. Many of you are saying, I want more details. I want to know what the parties stand for. Well, these are those kind of days. So at this point then, it's up to you. It's up to you to look at these and decide what you think of them,

how realistic they are, whether they affect your life. Because these are the kind of decisions you'll have to make as you head towards the ballot box, because these policies will affect your life if they're ever implemented. So you want to have a hard look at them and see what they actually mean to you. now i told you last week that i've been traveling around the country for a documentary i'll be doing for the cbc later in the campaign trying to get canadians thoughts about the issues that concern them as they think about the election. So a week ago I was in British Columbia. This past few days I've been in southwestern Ontario,

going to everything including a rodeo near Hamilton, Ontario on Saturday, which was fantastic. I mean, it was packed. There were a lot of people there, but it was the real deal. I mean, this was not for the faint of heart. Saw everything, you know, bronco riding, horse racing. I mean, you name it, the whole bit. And there were some rough moments there.

But I wasn't there to interview the animals. I was there to interview the people and get their thoughts. There was really not as much interviewing as there was listening. And there was a real array of discussion on the part of those that I talked to, both on Saturday and then on Sunday at an arts show in downtown Hamilton. Everything from concern about the cost of housing to the cost of post-secondary education for young people to the environment to concerns about the kind of campaign

they've been witnessing up to that point. And it goes back to that earlier question about the game of whack-a-mole that goes on between these parties. There's been a lot of it in the opening week. That's not unusual. That often happens. But it seems to, when you combine that with the kind of stuff you read on social media, it seems to have been noticed even more by

many of those in the electorate who want a more substantive campaign. So I was, you know, I was kind of taken aback by that. But overall, in the people we talked to, we now have a full array of issues and thoughts already, and we've still got a long way to go. I'll be heading out into Quebec and New Brunswick over the next couple of days of this week, so the podcast will be coming to you from on the road,

which may mean a different sound quality to it all, because I won't have the kind of travelling studio. But nevertheless, we'll give it a go and see how it works out. But the main point that I'm trying to make here is that the discussions, the conversations that I've had with people have really brought out a lot of the concerns that Canadians have about the country they're living in right now

and the direction things are going in. It's interesting, as one person said to me, you know, the economy's, I keep being told it's really good. And I see all the numbers indicate that it is good. And yet I worry. I worry mostly about the future and about my kids. And so what I'm looking for is words of caution about the status of things by the parties, but words of encouragement about the way things could go in the future. Because I'm worried about whether my

kids will ever be able to afford a house, whether they'll ever be able to afford to pay off their education costs. So, you know, real-life concerns on the part of a lot of people who are still enjoying the fall, going to the rodeo, going to the art shows, but thinking already about the decision they'll have to make in another five weeks or so for the October 21st election. All right. We have letters. We have mail.

And lots of it. Lots more came on the weekend. And I appreciate hearing from all of you from coast to coast to coast. And the mail has been that way. There have been some repeat letters. In other words, mail from people who had written before. I will eventually get to those second timers, but I do want to kind of focus on those who are writing first-time letters.

So tonight we will focus just on those. These are in no particular order, but a lot of good questions here. This one comes from Nathan Smigiel from Lethbridge, Alberta. I'm going to be in Lethbridge. I think it's after the election sometime in November. I've got a speech in Lethbridge. Looking forward to it. Love Lethbridge. Love that bridge, that trestle bridge in Lethbridge. Okay. Nathan writes, he has a number of questions. I'm going to focus on two of them. Which ridings are the biggest battlegrounds in your mind? Well, battlegrounds are more than just sort of one riding. They're kind of areas. And the two major battleground

areas in the country, and there's nothing new about this. This has kind of been the way in Canada for quite some time. Ontario, the most ridings, 121 ridings. There's that saying that, you know, the election will be decided one way or the other in Ontario. Well, there is some truth to that, but it's not always true, as I'll point out in a moment. But anyway, Ontario is clearly one battleground. Whichever party does well in Ontario has a good chance of winning overall.

British Columbia is the other one. 42 ridings in BC. And it's a real three-way race. And you see it already in the early polls that are out, that the race between the—well, it's even more than the three-way actually, you've got the Tories, the Liberals, the NDP and the Greens already playing a role and you know when I was in BC last week at two different events I saw people who were supporting the People's Party of Canada. Only a couple, mind you, but they were there.

They were proud of the fact that that's who they were supporting, Maxime Bernier, and they were wearing T-shirts. I think one of the candidates was there at one event. When it comes right down to it, you know, I always, when I was anchoring the election night show, what you hoped for was keep it close all the way to BC. Let BC actually be the deciding factor. Never happened while I was anchoring. It was already decided before the polls were closed in BC under the old time format and counted under the new format

because BC closed a half hour after everybody else. But in 1972, I worked that election night, but I wasn't anchoring the program. 1972, it was a humdinger of a night, and it went right down. Most Canadians went to sleep that night. They had no idea who was going to win. The voting was slower.

It was extremely close. It was the night Pierre Trudeau, as prime minister, had come out of a majority government in 68, and he came very close to losing in 72. That night, he didn't know who was going to win, and he had one of those kind of Trudeau-type quotes where he was quoting a philosopher from the past saying, the universe is unfolding as it should.

109 liberals, 107 conservatives at the end of the counting there. So Robert Stanfield was still the leader of the opposition. And Pierre Trudeau, there was kind of a track record for him. He never had back-to-back majority governments. He went majority, minority, majority, loss, and then majority. So if Justin Trudeau is going to outdo his father on electoral success, he would have to do a majority government this time around. So there's your answer on that question.

The second half of your questioning was, which ridings historically have predicted the outcome of the election? Those are your so-called bellwether ridings. Off the top of my head, there's two of them that you should keep in mind and watch. Peterborough in Ontario and Kelowna in BC. They tend to go with the winning party overall on election night. Not always, but they tend to. So they have some historical significance in the prediction of the outcome of an election.

Jeff Lavery writes from Orleans, Ontario. My questions are how long before the election does a party have to put someone in a riding to run? And he's writing this because his riding in Orleans is where Andrew Leslie for the Liberals announced he would not be running again. There was a guy who a lot of people thought should have been in cabinet at some point, but a former general, Canadian forces. Anyway, he was not in cabinet. It might have had something to do with why he decided not to run again.

But they still haven't, or at least as of the writing of this email, which I believe was on Saturday, they still haven't nominated anyone in that writing. So the question is, how long before the election does a party have to put someone in a writing to run? And that date is September 30th. So they've still got a little while to go before all the parties, and I think the

Conservatives are the only one who have already nominated a full slate. Second question from Jeff, second half of his question is, what would some of the pros and cons be to waiting so long to place someone? Well, you know, there's a lot of cons. You got to knock on a lot of doors if you're going to be a successful candidate. You got to get to a lot of town. You've got to knock on a lot of doors if you're going to be a successful candidate. You've got to get to a lot of town halls. You've got to speak to a lot of people. You've got to be very evident. So that's the pro about getting in early.

The pro about getting in late, I'm not sure what it is. Unless there's a real problem in that riding and nobody has sort of leapt to the forefront and you come in with all the attention on you near the end. But it can be tough. It can be tough coming in late. Jared Gertson from Sherwood Park, Alberta. For us political junkies, we obviously watch, read, and listen to lots of different journalists.

As someone who has spoken to many pundits off air, do they try to remain neutral all the time, or do they have their leanings? As viewers, what recommendations do you have to make us smarter and wiser junkies? Well, on that point, I mean, there are, in the journalism field, there are columnists who are not shy about giving their political leanings and do so. And there are the day-to-day reporters. And if they have leanings, they keep them to themselves and they should remain neutral. You may have your suspicions about people, but you really need to be careful about that and ensure that you really look closely at their work.

Are they really biased? Are they really leaning towards one party? The odds are they're not, and if you look at them over time, you'll probably agree to that. However, columnists, that's a different question. Next question is from Will Holland. Where do you think the NDP would be heading into this election if Tom Mulcair had been allowed to remain as leader? Well, you know, Will, we'll never know the answer to that question, will we? Because who knows? I mean, Tom Mulcair was, you know, was elected in a by-election, I believe,

in Quebec for Jack Layton, and he kind of led the charge with Jack Layton to the NDP's incredible success in 2011, which was built mainly on Quebec, and he should and did receive a lot of credit for that. However, in 2015, he was the leader that lost many of those same seats. So where would he be today if he was leader of the NDP? Well, he'd be much more experienced.

He might not run a campaign that kind of moved the NDP closer to the middle in 2015 from its normal position on the left. Would he have moved it back to the left? Who knows? But, you know, it's one of those questions that we, you can have fun with, the what-if questions. The fact is, we don't really know. And I'm going to close on this.

It's more of a comment than a question. It came from Megan O'Connor, and she watched the debate the other night, the McLean's debate on City TV. My friend Paul Wells was the moderator of that. She's had a number of things to say, but this is the crux of, I think, her argument. She found it really hard to watch for a number of different reasons, but this one mainly. A type of

talking that I call arguing. I'm not interested in listening to that. Well, you know, Megan, I think you're not alone in that. I mean, a debate is a debate, and there's supposed to be some engagement on the part of the participants in it. But as I heard on the weekend from people, they really want a focus on policy. They don't want this kind of bickering that goes back and forth, and they're all doing it. You know, I heard Elizabeth May're all doing it you know i heard elizabeth may today talking about you know we're not going to be like the other parties where we won't allow the kind of punch and judy show that goes on in ottawa where they're all whacking each other all the time and

then five minutes later she talked about the the two choices of evil or some phrase like that on the part of the old line parties. Evil? Really? That's stepping up. That's stepping up the line. Anyway, I think what Megan's saying is that she wants to hear people talk in a fashion that allows them to explain their ideas and their policies and their promises. And I think there's a certain amount that at least I heard on the weekend of the country that would echo that. They may all have different feelings, obviously they do,

on who they support and why they support them, but they actually want to hear the promises in some detail. All right, that's a wrap for tonight's The Bridge. Keep in mind, if you have questions, I'll try to answer them. And you can reach me at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. That's themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. And we will be back with you tomorrow, probably from Montreal. I'm not quite sure how we're going to do it, but we will figure out a way to do it as we try to on each weekday night. So I'm Peter Mansbridge for The Bridge. Thanks for listening.