The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Canada Calls for "Humanitarian Pauses"

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

After a day of meetings in Ottawa, the prime minister has announced that Canada is joining the call for "humanitarian pauses" in the Israel-Hamas war so civilians in Gaza can receive aid. Is there a distinction between humanitarian pauses and ceasefires? Does it matter? Bruce Anderson joins to discuss on this week's SMT.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are listening to the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth, with Bruce Anderson, coming right up. And hello there, it's Wednesday of course, and that means Bruce is by, as he is on every Wednesday, with Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth, as we look at a number of issues that are confronting, well, confronting the nation, confronting the world, confronting the media, confronting politicians. A lot of confronting going on, and the issue by the way yes by the way we in our in our little pre-game conversation about what we should talk about i missed the opportunity to say well look there's some news about donald trump now you can decide later on peter if we have time to get to that but we have other stuff to talk about for sure what could the how could there be a day

without news of donald trump we will get to it i mean he's just like one one court loss after another uh but is it having any real impact on the end game i don't know we'll get to it but let's deal with uh matters of of life and death in Israel and Gaza and Canada's position on it. Because it's interesting to me, especially through yesterday, it's not a sense of whether we're speaking with one voice, but whether or not our voice is clear. You have on the one hand the defense minister who sounded very aggressive uh on the

on canada's position and we're not going to deal with discussions of a ceasefire because we can't trust hamas and there's a there's a real constituency for that feeling um and then you have the prime minister saying using the phrase which has gained some traction in different parts of the world uh of late which is we're going to have a humanitarian we're going to argue for humanitarian pauses to let aid in and people out now that seems to me like a version of a ceasefire, but that's what they're calling it, a humanitarian pause. Are we, and there was some time separating that. I think Blair spoke before a cabinet or caucus meeting, and the prime minister spoke afterwards.

Is it clear where we are in how to deal with this incredibly difficult situation? I think it's becoming a little bit clearer. I think that, and just because the way that you characterize what Bill Blair said, I think as being he wasn't for a ceasefire, humanitarian deposit, I think what he said, at least the part that I saw, was that he had no confidence that Hamas would respect a ceasefire. And so if I look at what the defense minister said before the cabinet and what the

prime minister said after the cabinet, Peter, my takeaway is that yes, they probably did have a conversation about the fact that they want to deliver both a harsh criticism of Hamas and not deviate from that. But at the same time, that they believe in this idea of a humanitarian pause that other countries are advocating for, because they want also to signal that the protection of civilian lives is the most important priority for the government of Canada. Now, I don't think that those two messages together will make everybody feel satisfied with what the government is saying. But I do think that they reflect the fact that the cabinet is talking about these issues and talking about both the need to reinforce the criticism of Hamas and to make sure that the people of the Jewish faith feel that Canada has their back and their interests at heart.

And at the same time, push hard for the protection of civilian lives, people who are unaffiliated with Hamas, who are collateral damage, as Israel steps up its effort to eradicate Hamas. But does it also not indicate that the government is trying to straddle differences within its own party, within its own caucus, because there are clearly differences there. It's possible. I mean, I think that it would be unlikely in any group of 150 people or so

that there wouldn't be differences of opinion on what are the right things to do in the right sequence with the right emphasis. And so if that's true in the general population, it's undoubtedly got to be true to some degree among these elected officials. I don't think that necessarily represents a problem. I think it represents a reality that, you know, very, very many people are horrified at what Hamas did to those Israeli civilians. And a good many people are also very worried about the impact of the conflict on, or the response by Israel in its own defense and the impact that that will have on the lives of innocent civilians

on the other side of that border. So the Prime Minister came out at the end of the day and he said where he thought that the Canadian government stood, which was generally in support of this idea of a humanitarian pause. The choice of language, humanitarian pause, I think is very deliberate. It doesn't say it's not ceasefire. Ceasefire kind of implies that the one side that is mounting an offensive right now, which is Israel, should stop doing what it's doing. And I think that there's legitimate

concern on the part of government that saying ceasefire sounds like you're telling Israel to stop what Israel defines as defending itself. A humanitarian pause, on the other hand, is language that reinforces that the purpose is humanitarian and that the duration is limited. And I think that language is well chosen to convey the sense of what it is that government in Canada and perhaps in other places too is trying to accomplish. I follow what you're saying. I guess it sounds a little smoke and mirrors to me.

I've watched ceasefires in that region and others for decades, and some last a couple of hours, some last a couple of days. Most don't last very long. Some do, but most don't. And they're used, it ends up them being used, one, to try and get humanitarian aid into certain areas, two, to rearm on both sides. I'm not sure that's at play here.

But I don't know. I think it's kind of a bit of a word game. You know, a humanitarian pause would, in fact, one assume, stop the firing to allow some movement of people on a humanitarian scale. But I, you know, I hear what you're saying and I can, you know, I can understand some of those arguments for the, for the difference in the wording of this. I think the choice of words for politicians on this generally is,

it's not the most important function that they have, obviously, but it is a very important part of what they do. a plan for the future that might make sense requires politicians to do the thing that alt-ex is, I think, ultimately meant to do quite a bit, which is to choose language carefully so that it has the impact that you want it to have, so that it motivates people to understand what it is that you're trying to do in a way that aligns with their values. Obviously, we see politicians use words in other scenarios where they try to divide and polarize and heighten tensions and exacerbate conflict and friction. And so, you know, if a politician feels as though it is more effective to talk about a humanitarian pause than a ceasefire

because it will be interpreted differently or heard differently, then I guess I don't look at that as being part of the fabrication that people don't like in politics, but rather part of the essence of politics is to use language to effectively describe what it is that you're trying to accomplish and why. Okay. Well, that leads me into the second topic, which is related in the sense that it has to do with the same overall story. And that was the decision by one of the committees on Parliament Hill, the Heritage Committee, I guess, to demand the appearance of the president and CEO of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to appear before the committee. And I believe that is going to happen, I think, next week, Catherine Tate.

And the Conservatives are very interested in discussing with the CBC its policy around the terror word, the terrorist word. You know, I don't work at the CBC anymore. It's been almost seven years since I worked at the CBC. So I've been in, I've seen this debate from all corners of the debate itself for years, for decades, because it is an old policy. It's been around for a long time. And it's not a CBC policy. It is used by many different news organizations around the world.

A decision not to use that word directly to allow it to happen. You hear it on the CBC and the BBC and in the New York Times and elsewhere all the time, quoting others, like quoting governments, quoting prime ministers, as the Canadian prime minister uses the terror word in describing Hamas and other terror organizations in their terms. So here we are again having this discussion at a time that seems to be the single focus on the part of this committee and the conservatives on the committee is demanding an explanation and hopefully the end of this policy. They seem to want that.

This is at a time when the CBC, like other news organizations, is full on in terms of the coverage of this story on the ground in israel in and around gaza 17 journalists 17 in less than three weeks have been killed covering this story 17 journalists from different news organizations around the world have been killed, trying to do their job in explaining what's happening on the ground. This, though, is the concern on the part of apparently some members of the Heritage Committee to demand an explanation on the use of this word. There's lots to talk to the CBC about on a lot of different fronts, but this seems to be the big focus at the moment.

What do you make of that? Well, look, I think that nobody should be surprised at this point that the Conservatives love to beat on the CBC. It is part of their constant drumbeat for their supporters. And so every opportunity that they see in the flow of events to take out the bat and beat on the CBC again shouldn't come as any surprise to the CBC. And whether that's the use of the, I mean, they're for sure all familiar with the fact that it isn't only the CBC that has this style guide, this style requirement. They probably do believe that this is the kind of stylistic point that seems a bit anachronistic in the sense that journalism today crosses all kinds of stylistic norms

that used to be in place. We can have that conversation another time if we want, but it doesn't feel to me that journalism exists within a kind of a set of reference points and style guide points and lines that they don't cross for the last several decades. In fact, it seems to me that journalism has changed quite a lot. So, you know, somebody could look at this and say it's anachronistic to say that if everybody calls all of the governments of the of the countries where we're talking about BBC or Canada, call this a terrorist organization. We won't call it a terrorist organization. We might say that we would say that they call it that. But I don't think that

that is really the main event here. I think the main event here is the CBC wants another opportunity to show that it's unhappy or that the Conservative Party wants another opportunity to show that it's unhappy with the CBC. And it believes that by calling

the president of the CBC to account at the Heritage Committee, they will show her to be an ineffective voice on behalf of the CBC, that they will kind of score more points about the irrelevancy of the CBC or the self-satisfaction within the CBC or the CBC's kind of fixation on the notion that politics shouldn't have anything to do with journalism or that politicians shouldn't have anything to do about CBC journalism. I might wish that politicians never thought about having anything to do with the CBC, but that isn't the world that we live in. The world that we live in is that one party leading by as many as 15 points in the polls projections showing that it would win 200 seats wants to come in and

defund the CBC. So from my standpoint, the statements that the CBC put out yesterday, um, you know, which seemed kind of like, why should anybody feel that they can ask us these questions? It's the wrong footing for the CBC. I think it should embrace this debate. It should embrace the fight because it's a five alarm fire for the future of the organization. And if they're not going to show up at every platform and every opportunity that they have to make the case for the CBC, then at some point they'll only have themselves

at least to partially blame if the Conservatives win the election and shut down CBC News or at least CBC News on TV or whatever it is that they're planning on, which would be quite significant and quite harmful for Canadian journalism and I think for Canada more generally. So I don't think the CBC served itself well by seeming to organize a kind of a counter lobby against this appearance. I think instead they should ramp up the fight for the organization and explain the things that they think are important for Canadians to know because we have generational differences where younger people don't know very much about the CBC because they don't have very much contact with it.

And if you don't address that and aggressively right now, the clock is ticking down. And I don't mean you. I mean, the CBC, the clock is ticking down to the worst day that the CBC will ever have experienced as an organization, which would be after the next election if the Conservatives win. You know, you and I actually in the big picture don't disagree on this. I'm, once again, uncomfortable getting in the position of being the CBC defender on any but one particular thing, other than the concept of a national public broadcaster, which I do deeply believe in.

But I also agree with you that they're facing crunch time at the CBC, without question. I think this is, you know, this issue surrounding the use of a word in the coverage of this story is not the big issue for the CBC. Look, I agree with that, Peter. I think you bat that down in two minutes. The original invitation, as I understand it, for the Heritage Committee wasn't about this. It was about, you know, this committee revisits or reviews appointees or something like that on a regular basis. So that's a normal course activity.

As they should. And they should. So go there. They should have that. It's a crown corporation, right? They should definitely have that ability. And we should understand, the CBC should understand that that's and obviously they did they accepted the invitation so all i'm saying is the fact that they now the conservatives are now trying to

gin up interest in um this brouhaha that they intend to create cbc should act the way that it you know that it should as a professional organization and make the case that it wants to make not be drawn into the fight about the should a politician ask us about the word that we use because we live in a world now where politicians say the most outrageous things as you and i have discussed so many days in the last couple of years that we've been doing this. Politicians don't live by those norms. They will ask ugly, awful, partisan, divisive questions. Wishing that they wouldn't doesn't make them stop. Taking those questions straight on and giving the best arguments that you can might have a chance

that's all i'm saying is that just kind of hoping that the world isn't the way that it is isn't going to make it better it's you got to fight this fight and and soon okay you know i as i said before i don't think we really disagree on this point. I would like to see if it's going to evolve into an issue surrounding Middle East coverage. And there is a legitimate conversation there that goes much beyond the use of this one word but i i would like to see i would like to see mps from all sides at least start by acknowledging the work that is being done by the journalists on the ground in israel in you know in and around gaza because it is dangerous bloody work covering a dangerous bloody bloody, awful story.

And the very fact that so many lives have already been lost just within the media circle, you know, 17 in two and a half weeks, that's almost unheard of. And these people are there not worrying about the use of a word. They're trying to tell a story about the terrible impact this is having on people in the Middle East. Yeah, no, we don't disagree. I don't have a problem with the CBC style guide on this. It seems a bit anachronistic to me, but I don't think that it matters, to be honest, in the sense of the – if we use it as a test of whether or not politicians are trying to bend CBC journalism, we don't need it as a test. We know they're trying to do that.

They're trying to do that all the time. They try to do that. They're trying to do that all the time. They try to do it constantly. Whether it's the CBC or that journalist that we talked about last week in British Columbia. So I can't get too worked up about that conservative saying, let's talk about this can't say terrorist thing. Because whether it's don't say gay, whether it's can't say terrorist, it's all part of the same culture war. And there's, you know, as far as some of these conservative MPs are concerned, there's no holds barred.

So telling them that, well, the norms have always been that politicians don't get to talk about this stuff. They love that. That's fuel. They, you know, it reinforces the idea that what they're doing is challenging these old anachronistic norms. And so it's not an effective counter argument. But what is an effective counter argument is talking about how people learn about what politicians are doing, about what governments are doing, about what issues matter in the lives of the communities

that the politicians serve, and challenging them to explain how, if you defund the only journalistic organization that has the breadth and the width and the capacity and the professionalism to provide this information to Canadians, how are they going to get that information? That's the fight that the CBC should take to the politicians that want to defund it. And I don't think they should be afraid to do it. I don't think they should hide behind the idea that there's a kind of a nice traditional line between populist politicians and journalistic organization,

or at least the CBC is a journalistic organization. Even if I wish we could roll back the clock and make that true or as true as it was a decade or two ago or three or four. Okay. End of discussion on that one. We're going to take our break, come back with something entirely different right after this and we're back peter mansbridge here with bruce, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth, the Wednesday episode of The Bridge. Bruce is in Ottawa. He's not in Ottawa.

He's outside of Ottawa. And I'm outside of Stratford and outside of Toronto. And we're talking. Here's the topic for you. Well, first of all, you're listening on Sirius XM channel 167 Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Or, you're watching us on our YouTube channel. Okay. So, a couple of years ago, the NHL decided it was

going to have, as it became allegedly more diverse and more inclusive. Their policy was going to be hockey's for everyone. Well, apparently not for gays, as their relationship on the pride front ended last year with some controversy. Some players didn't want to do their warm-ups in pride jerseys or pride-related jerseys or use tape on their sticks that indicated support for the pride movement. Now there's a fighting back going on on two fronts some players saying we want and we're

going to use tape on our sticks and some sponsors including one of the biggest ones certainly uh in canada scotia bank i think they they're big sponsors of the Toronto Maple Leafs in terms of the arena and everything, Scotiabank Arena. They're moving forward and offering up tape. What's the deal? 5,000 something or other? Scotiabank giving away 5,000 rolls of Pride tape at its branches across the country. Here's why.

I'm just reading here briefly. And this is just weeks after the NHL banned the rainbow-colored hockey accessory. The major bank is making the tape available for fans and players who want to show their support for Pride. Scotiabank announced on social media, adding that Pride always has a place in hockey. So, a little pushback here to the NHL and to some of the internal hockey organizations

that had pushed the NHL to back off on its policy a year ago. Interesting to watch this take place, and especially when some players, and now sponsors, are getting involved in the discussion and the debate. Your take? Yeah, I think it was an appalling decision by the NHL to to try to limit

the ability of teams and players to express their support for the LGBTQ citizens it's been rescinded I, at least partially as of late yesterday, predictably, because at the end of the day, the NHL is in the entertainment business, trying to reach a large audience, trying to reach an audience that's diverse,

trying to reach an audience that's young in many instances. And you'd have to be really thick not to understand that the large majority of young urban people don't see an expression of allyship with the LGBTQ community as anything other than a thing that they're entitled to express. And that in corporate environments, whether it's banking or anything else, the alignment of a brand with that aspect of equal rights is seen as extremely normal now. And something that if you tried to say, well, I don't think a bank should be able to say it, which, of course, are the kinds of things that Ron DeSantis has been doing in Florida, there's going to be a lot of Canadians who are going to have an issue with that. And so for the NHL to do it suggested to me that they had become overly interested in the views of a minority of the people who either play or follow the game and who aren't comfortable with those expressions. And that in worrying about whether they were being caught on the wrong side of

the culture war, they lost sight of the fact that by choosing to try to pull themselves out of any cultural statement of allyship with the LGBTQ community, that they would offend a lot of people, quite reasonably offend a lot of people, including players, including players who said, find me, I'm not going along with this policy. And so once you had the prospect of that, I'm sure the NHL realized it had no choice but to change its position. But if you were running the nhl and you took that position and you hadn't figured out that players were going to tell you go stuff yourself we're not going along with that and then you were going to have to back away from that position

if i were on the board and you were running the NHL, you'd be gone. You will have watched the Bud Light issue that developed. You will have seen the way that the world is going. You've got a lot of people who can help you figure out how to avoid making the mistake that the NHL made. So there had to be a lot of failures in the NHL to find itself constantly dealing with this issue months after it first came up and still not getting it right. And it really begs the question whether the leadership of the NHL is up to the job or whether new people need to take over. You're a lot closer to the game of hockey and obviously the Toronto Maple Leafs who've been, I think it's fair to say, some of the players have been leaders in talking about this.

And management too. And management too. And management too. And, you know, blustery brian burke for when he was in the nhl was a very much a leader on on this front and i'm sure has been horrified in the last year watching what's happened on it um you where i what i wonder watching what's happened in the in the last 24 48 hours on this issue, and you're much more of an expert than I am on this,

when you've seen and helped advise companies over the years on how to extricate themselves from certain problems, certain issues. When you look at what's happened's happened you know in the last couple of days is this um a professional league that is is this the extent of their their withdrawal from their their position of the last year um or is it you know is it the start of one or is it the withdrawal this is it this is all we're going to do. This is current management. What do you think? I mean, the old policy is, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, is if you know you're going to back down, go all the way right away. Don't wait.

Don't sort of dribble it out. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I think it's a good question. I think it depends on the degree to which the people and the organizations who were kind of horrified by what the NHL was trying to do to identify and remind people of the decisions that get made that are backing away from the idea of equal rights. Now, I know that there are people who think that these expressions are no longer needed because equal rights exist. I know there are people who don't see a backlash against the LGBTQ community that's been developing. I see that backlash. I sense that the degree of push on the LGBTQ community, and in particular on trans rights, has grown in recent months and years,

not just in the United States, but in Canada too. And so I think that advocacy groups need to look for those opportunities to make the point that what has become more normal in the acceptance level in society is at risk of being pushed back against. And that means that some people lose some rights when that happens. And so the NHL has set itself up in a position where it's now trying to finesse the ways in which the expression of allyship for that community can be demonstrated and the ways in which it can't be demonstrated, which is a stupid position to have put themselves in. And to your point, maybe they're going to be pushed to go further. But certainly what they've lost along the way is the ability to sound like a credible, thoughtful voice and a professionally run organization on this question. And if even their players are having a problem standing with their position, that should tell them something pretty important.

Because at the end of the day, the fans don't follow the league or the league management. They follow the players and the teams. Yeah, and to be fair, I think there's been some split in the players, right? They're not all like Morgan Riley of the Maple Leafs, who's been a very outspoken player in support of the pride issue for a number of years now. But clearly some players were very uncomfortable with being cloaked in the appearance of supporting this issue in a very public fashion. And they made their case last year,

and they seem to have initially won it. And now there's this kind of rethink going on. We'll see how far it goes. It didn't seem to me to be very many. Did you have the sense that it was very many? I think it was more than. You know, some of this came from the Players Association, right? The push to back off on it.

So there must have been some players, a significant number of players, who were uncomfortable being put in the position of the advocacy position on this issue. But I'm not an expert on this by any stretch of the imagination, but the fact that it has... It's interesting because the fact that it has been an internal issue for the last, whatever, six or eight months, basically held fairly quiet while they were arguing it back and forth until just the last couple of days where it came out,

is interesting. It's impressive. There's obviously a group working from inside to change the position of the league to a degree. Certainly if you were inside that Players Association meeting, you'd be well within your rights to make the point that the image of accomplished young hockey players is too associated with a toxic culture and that that is the priority that they should be concerned about not whether on occasion a team or an individual player wants to signal their support

for a particular community or a human rights issue. They've suffered some reputational harm as a group of professional athletes, and if I were them, I'd focus on that. Well, as we've mentioned before, and as hockey analysts have mentioned before, there are issues within the hockey world that go beyond this one that need addressing. And everybody seems to agree with that,

that hockey seems to be behind other sports on a number of big issues that can confront the sports world. Certainly behind pro football, pro basketball, pro baseball, all of that. All right. We only have a couple of minutes left for your favorite topic. Is Trump going to jail? I don't know if he's going to go to jail, but it's going to be a rocky ride, I think, for the next little while.

What we've seen just in the last 48 hours has been a number of people who have been prominent allies of Trump. Lawyers who worked for him in his efforts to overturn the last presidential election, have arrived at that juncture where they've cut heels with the prosecutors and said that they either have or will tell the truth about everything that they know about his effort to overturn a legitimate election, including the notion that it was well understood that he lost the election. But notwithstanding that he thought he and he accepted that he lost the election, that he was determined to try to overturn that result through illegal means. So I think

yesterday's indication that Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff, has been giving some evidence that would be harmful to Trump, that two lawyers who worked for him have indicated the same thing, really put the future of Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump in a lot more jeopardy. Now, it was expected that some of this might happen, but I think the extent of it will probably, I was going to say freak him out, but I've already seen the posts and I think it's definitely the case that it's having that effect right now. So he's in a lot of trouble, but it still is the case that he will,

if he gets a chance to run, there's a lot of people who will look at all of this and say, I don't care. He's good enough for me or he's the best of what's on offer. So we'll see. But it's been a good couple of days, at least for those who think that prosecution of Trump needs to happen on these charges in particular. There's nothing like watching lawyers run for the hills when they realize that they could be in a position of losing their license. And that seems to be the case on the part of some of these people who've cut deals. And they're not the bottom tier of the Trump crowd.

They're kind of like in the middle. And there's a lot of bottom there still to go on the charges in Georgia. I mean, there were 19 originally who were charged. Four of them have now cut plea deals. There seems to be an assumption that there are going to be many more now who are going to quickly follow suit. And you've got to time your plea deal at the right moment because depending on who you are, the deal gets worth less and less

the longer you wait. There's no value at some point. That's right, yeah. So we'll see what happens. But the big nut to crack you know meadows if if that has in fact happened if he has got immunity for saying what he's saying and in some of the cases he's not charged in i don't think he's charged is he charged in the georgia one i'm sure. Yes, I think he is. He's not in some of the other ones, the Jack Smith ones.

But the big nut is Giuliani. What's he going to do? What is he going to do? Because if he falls, it could be game over for Trump. But we'll see. It's fascinating watching Trump because one day the Jenna Ellis's and the Sidney Powell's and the Chase bro or cheese bro, whatever his name is. They were the best people two days ago.

Now I never liked them. I never liked them. They were, they were always. Hardly know them. Hardly know them. What was that name again? I don't know who they are. She worked for Giuliani.

Oh, well. It's been a while, but the wheels of justice are turning a little bit, so that's good news. Exactly. All right. Interesting discussion. And we'll have it again with Bruce when he's back on Friday with Chantelle Hebert for Good Talk.

Tomorrow it is your turn. So if you have things to say, and you always do, drop me a line at the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. And keep an eye out for our newsletter, which comes out that Bruce and I are both associated with National News Watch. mail.com and keep an eye out for our newsletter, which comes out to Bruce and I are both associated with a national news watch. That's national news watch.com.

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It's a great read. I loved it this weekend, Peter, and it's your take on the, on the stories that caught your attention and drew your interest and kind of pulled out of your mind the kind of the stories, the perspectives that you've developed over the years. And it's free, and it's every Saturday, and it's nationalnewswatch.com, and it's called The Buzz. So thanks for doing it, by the way. I think it's a great addition to what

we're working on over there. And we've got more changes to announce on that site, too. Great. Look forward to it. All right. Thank you for listening out there. And we'll talk to you again tomorrow.