The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Campaign Day Three

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

Day 3 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

Well, hello there. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This is the bridge for this Friday, end of day three of the campaign and end of week one of the campaign. So choose your end of for today. Because it's kind of the end of week one, you've heard a lot of talk on this day, certainly among the kind of journalistic and analytical crowd, about who won week one. I can tell you what I've heard and the different people I've talked to and listened to in the last, well, the last dozen hours or so. Most people are giving the end of week one, and it's only been three days, and it doesn't really carry a lot of weight, but they're giving week one to Jagmeet Singh. And they're doing that perhaps because the expectations were extremely low going into this campaign for the NDP leader. They haven't been doing well in the polls,

as you know. But that's what most people are saying. And so that interested me enough today, seeing as Singh is the only federal leader who at some point or another I haven't heard in person speak. I've heard the others, you know, whether it's Elizabeth May or Andrew Scheer or Justin Trudeau. I've heard all of them at different times over the past few years, but I've never heard Jagmeet Singh. So today in Toronto, he was speaking at the Canadian Club in downtown Toronto, right in the heart of downtown Toronto, right? You know, Bay Street surrounding it, all the big business towers, all the big banks, all the big businesses. And here was the NDP leader speaking to that crowd. So I thought, I'm going to go there. I'm going to watch and see what this guy's all about. So I did.

It was a good crowd. Not overwhelming, but a good-sized crowd, the kind of crowd the Canadian club often gets. He was introduced, Singh, by the head of the Canadian club. And in the intro was a line about how, as a child, Jagmeet had been bullied by other kids because of the way he looked. Now, that occasionally comes up, in a sense, in Singh's speeches,

and I've watched others and read others, watched them on television, read them in the paper. And I think he even mentioned it on his launch day. He has this line about how, as I was growing up, I never thought there would be a day where I could be leading a national party and trying to become Prime Minister of Canada. Well, he didn't say that today in as many words.

But the fact that he does say it made me think. It made me think about how those of us who have watched him take his place on the national stage, how many of us have sort of considered that thought for ourselves? Have we reached that point where we can look back and say, we never thought somebody wearing a turban would be a national leader of a political party in Canada and run to become Prime Minister of Canada.

Has it made us kind of confront our own biases? Now, this is one of those kind of issues, it's a kind of underground issue on the campaign. And those around Jagmeet Singh and Jagmeet Singh himself know this is an issue. So he's been trying to put other things in the window for people to think about in terms of his abilities as a leader, see beyond just the appearance, his appearance, but see what he stands for. And so that's what this speech was all about today, his 30, 35 minutes in front of the crowd at the

Canadian Club. And it was quite a speech. It was very progressive, some might even say radical, in terms of the suggestions he was making about what he'd do if he was very progressive. Some might even say radical in terms of the suggestions he was making about what he'd do if he was prime minister. I had one long-time NDP strategist come up to me after the speech and say, that was the most radical speech I've ever heard an NDP leader give since the CCF days. It's pretty radical. If he's trying to change the channel on thoughts about Jagmeet Singh,

he's probably doing a heck of a job by giving all these other issues to consider. So what was in this? What was so progressive and radical, perhaps, about this speech? Well, there was a lot of money being talked about here. Major help, even handouts on housing, on student debt, on post-secondary education tuition fees, pharmacare, healthcare, the environment, the climate crisis. All of these things were mentioned.

And, you know, as each one's ticked off, you're adding the billions and billions of dollars that this is going to cost. Where's the money coming from? Well, the main place that Singh talked about, in fact, I think the only place he talked about, was revamping the tax system where the wealthy would pay much more. So the money was going to come from the rich.

And so that was the speech, and there were, you know, it was an interesting room because there was a real mix. There were supporters there. There were just interested people there. There were people who I know work on Bay Street. So they were all kind of watching all this with some interest. So you've got to perhaps go beyond all of that and think, okay, why is he doing this?

What's the pitch? Who's the pitch to? So let's think about that for a minute. The NDP, when you go back through their years, where's their base been? Well, it started off in Western Canada. That was their base. And they could rely on that in most federal elections that they were going to do well in parts of Western Canada.

When that started to crumble and when, well, not necessarily. In some cases, when they just wanted to expand from just the West, but also at times when they were in trouble. Their support came from the labor movement, the union movement. That's had difficulties in the last couple of elections, as we've witnessed major labor leaders supporting other parties, not the NDP. Jack Layton worried about that. He worried about it enough to say,

okay, we got a new base, and that base is going to be in Quebec. And he moved things into Quebec and did extremely well, as we all know, in Quebec. But now that Quebec base is in trouble. The Union base is in trouble. The Western base is in trouble. So what's Singh trying to capture with the pitch like we heard him make today? And it didn't just suddenly happen today.

He's laid out some of these programs well in advance of the election. In fact, the NDP, more than any other party, has laid out their program in detail. So where's the pitch to? Well, look at those different things. Post-secondary tuition fees, student debt, housing, especially for first-time housing buyers or hope to buy someday, pharmacare, healthcare, environment, the climate crisis. Who are most concerned about just about all of those issues? Young people.

There's the pitch. The pitch in that speech today was to young people, and I don't mean like just first-time voters. I mean first-time voters right through to the end of the kind of millennial bracket on aging. That seemed to me anyway of the kind of millennial bracket on aging. That seemed to me anyway where the pitch was to. Now, none of that is an easy task. You think about it, he's coming into this campaign, the numbers are really down. But he's pitching to, I

think, to those who want to be a part of a movement. To be a part of, you know, a kind of new movement. You saw Leighton do that in 2011. He suddenly had the orange wave.

New movement. Trudeau, you could argue, in 2015 had the same thing. He had people latching on to him as a new movement. So Singh's trying to do that in 2019 would be my guess, and those are the reasons he's lined up that list of issues. As I said, not an easy task, but this was the kid who was bullied, didn't believe he could lead a national party, but overcame the obstacles.

Who knows what could happen? Remember 2011 and Jack Layden? He started off that campaign, I believe he was at like 10% or 11% of the polls. He ended up finishing second. Enough seats to form the official opposition. So you know what they say. Never say never. Okay, a lot of letters last night that we read on the podcast and a lot more letters came in late last night and on today.

I'm going to read a few of them. I'm going to save a few for next week. But let's get started with some of the ones for tonight. This one comes from Diane Sweeting. She's in Ennismore, Ontario. You know, I should look that up, because I do not know where Ennismore, Ontario is. I probably should, but I don't.

Diane, your question. How much do provincial politics influence the electorate during federal elections? If we're unhappy with the decisions being made in our province or territory, should we believe that similar policies, decisions, will be made by the same party at the federal level. Okay, this is a good question. The last point, you shouldn't, well, first of all, both federal and provincial levels of government are kind of responsible for different things. So in some cases, in most cases, it would be hard to equate the decisions

because the issues are different. However, the way they go about things, say deficit spending versus cost cutting, there could be a link there. There could be a link if you see the federal leader and the provincial leader arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand, campaigning on the same stage, touting each other on a constant basis. Then the linkage between the two becomes significant. A year ago in Ontario, as you know, the province with the most seats,

shortly after Doug Ford won election and was very popular in Ontario, Andrew Scheer was spending a lot of time next to Doug Ford. Have you seen the two of them together lately? Not much. In fact, I think Scheer was asked today, why aren't you campaigning with Doug Ford? And he said, oh, I'm going to be campaigning all over Ontario. Didn't really answer that question directly,

but people concluded and have concluded that they're trying to be distant from each other because Doug Ford is not popular in the province right now. A lot of the decisions he's made in the last year have not been popular with the people who elected him, and therefore tying yourself, if you're Andrew Scheer, to Doug Ford right now is probably not a great idea. But these things, you know, go back and forth. Jason Kenney's still very popular in Alberta. You're not going to see Scheer running away from Jason Kenney, I don't think. So, provincial

politics and how they influence the electorate during the federal elections, they can have an impact. But once again, it's one of these things that could go either way. Now, this is a similar kind of question. It comes from John Taylor. And I'm not sure where John is, but here's the question. We often hear about the effects of the Ford administration in Ontario

on the prospects of the federal conservatives in Ontario. But Ontario is hardly the only province whose local politics can change federal voting behaviors. We have recently had a historic election in New Brunswick, with huge implications for smaller parties, especially the Greens. I know you're ambivalent on the discussion of polls on the show. We're going to talk about polls at some point on this program, don't worry. But so far, the peculiarity of the New Brunswick legislature

does seem to have had quite an effect on federal polling in the Maritimes. The federal NDP has also already experienced pushback in the province, at least in part because of its provincial counterparts' failures. What impact could the compositions of the Maritime legislatures have on the results of this federal election? No matter the result of the election, it's good to have you back on the air. Thanks, John. Nice to hear you say that. Okay, your question. As I said, it's somewhat similar to the earlier one, but it also gives me the opportunity to take a different tack.

When you look at the history of this country, especially over the last 50 or 60 years, many Canadians in different provinces like the idea of having one party representing them provincially and another representing them federally. It's not always that way, but it's surprising how often it is that way. They kind of play off the two major parties against each other, conservatives and liberals, but not just.

You've seen many NDP governments in Western Canada, and we saw one in Ontario in the 1990s in Bob Ray. So we went through a period when Stephen Harper was in power where a lot of liberal governments were elected provincially. Then Justin Trudeau wins election. And what's happened? They've flipped. Many provinces have flipped back the other way

to conservative. So you have this, you know, back and forth going on between federal and provincial. And, you know, one assumes the voters think that that's good for them. That if they have, it's kind of like a counterweight. Not sure it really works that way, but it does play out that way when you look at election results. All right, Catherine Sheridan writes this from Markham, Ontario.

So I think we've had two from Ontario tonight, one from New Brunswick. Last night we were all over the country and two in the States. Catherine Sheridan writes, As a journalist, former journalist, I'm wondering if you could comment on the role of the media in our election campaigns. I can tell you there are going to be lots of comments on how the media operates in this campaign. And I direct you to a couple of

places. A couple of friends of mine who are right on the media now, Ellie Alboim, E-L-L-Y, first name, second name, Alboim, A-L-B-O-I-M. He's, among other things, is a prof of journalism at Carleton University. He's on Twitter quite often, and he's already been watching carefully how the media does. And also Paul Adams, who is another professor at Carleton University, wrote a piece for Policy Options. You can find them on the web as well, just yesterday, looking at media performance

and what he'll be looking at in this campaign. So I point you in the direction of both those, and there will be others. And when I get them, I'll let you know as well. All right. Catherine's letter now into the substantive point is this. It seems to me that the Globe and Mail intentionally held back their story about the RCMP and SNC-Lavalin until the first day of the campaign, which would indicate the intent to negatively influence the Liberals' campaign and reveal their conservative bias.

One might even hypothesize that this was a collaboration between the Globe and Mail or Post Media and the Conservative Party to immediately put Trudeau on the defensive and not allow all parties a clean start. Whatever happened to the media playing a neutral role? Catherine, I'm not going to agree with you on this. Mainly because of the strength of the journalist, one of the two journalists who wrote that story, Robert Fyfe. I've known Bob for, I don't know, 30 years. He's been at a number of different news organizations, including CTV, including Canadian Press.

I know he was even at the National Post for a while, but he's been at the Globe here lately the last few years, and he's done some big stories, not just on liberals, but on conservatives and elsewhere. Bob is a solid journalist, and I can tell you, the last thing he would do is sit on a story

waiting for the moment to drop it. Once he's got it confirmed, he's going to report it. And he'll report it if for no other reason than fear that somebody else would get it before he gets it out in public. So I think that there was a coincidence in timing. There might have been, I don't know, a motivation on the part of his sourcing on timing. But I have no doubt about the story, and I have no doubt about his journalistic integrity

and credibility. So I will leave that at that. But I think, you know, what's good about this, Catherine, is that you should be challenging. And you should be asking questions about what you read, about what you see, about what you hear, in terms of the media. These are all important moments during an election campaign, and when big stories happen, you want to be challenging about them, about their accuracy, about the motivation for them being placed where they are. So don't be shy and don't back off.

I just feel on this one, because I've known Bob for so long and have such enormous respect for him, hey, I tried to hire him too when I was at the CBC. That didn't work, unfortunately. Some of these stories would have been ours. However, that's my answer on that. As I said, there are going to be more questions coming from you, and please send them in over the weekend if you wish.

The best place to send them, the best website to send them, is themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Don't be shy. Send them along. There are others here that came in today, and I will get to them on the weekend. I hope you have a great weekend. I'm looking forward to it.

I'm going to be, as I think I mentioned last night, in southwestern Ontario this weekend, talking to more Canadians about what they see as the major issues, all part of what will be a documentary in roughly a month's time from now. And we're going on all over the country. There's many places across the country as we can get to and as we can afford to go to. So take care. Have a good weekend.

Bye for now. Thanks for listening.