The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Crazytown Two -- A Special Tuesday Good Talk - Encore

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

An encore of a prime minister is considering his future with most of his remaining caucus considering theirs.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge, and it's an encore episode, and we only have to go back 24 hours for this one. This is yesterday's special edition of Good Talk. Now, as you may well know, a few things have changed since 24 hours ago, but still, this is a great basis for the conversation that's been taking place in home after home right across the nation over the last 24 hours. Enjoy. And hello there. Well, we couldn't resist. We could not resist doing an early good talk for this week.

We'll still do one this coming Friday, but my gosh, after yesterday, which is probably, certainly in my books, the worst day I've ever seen a prime minister face from within his own party in all the years that I've covered politics in this country. It was an amazing thing. And yet, last night, according to a piece in Politico this morning, listen to this. Later in the evening, this is last night, the Prime Minister addressed liberal donors at the

Canadian Museum of History, quote, it is the absolute privilege of my life to serve as your Prime Minister, unquote, he told the partygoers. Several people in the room described the party conversation, and General Good Cheer is oblivious to the events of the day. Trudeau urged the Liberals in the crowd to enjoy their holidays. Listen to this sentence. Recharge by spending some time, some much-needed time, with your loved ones. Come back ready to show Canadians we have a serious, positive vision

for the future of this great country that is worth fighting for. What planet is this guy on? The deck of the Titanic. Is it that straightforward? Is it that simple? Oh, well, I mean, if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it is a duck no matter whether the duck believes it is a geese. And this only looks at a time when Canadians are looking at what looks like an imploding government with MPs asking themselves

not if, but when Justin Trudeau will resign, and if not, when and not if the government will fall earlier rather than later. I don't mean next week, I mean February. You've got the prime minister whistling right past this graveyard because it's only full of dead bones, old bones. I don't need to worry about it. What else could it look like? This is a government that yesterday introduced a fiscal update, which would be the fiscal roadmap of the government with less than a month or about a month to the arrival of Donald Trump as president. A fiscal update that its political author has already disavowed.

How much worse can it get before you notice that what happened was not a little block of ice, it was an iceberg, that this kind of grievously injured your ship. I'll just say something about, I've watched days like this twice. One of those days was when Lucien Bouchard quit Brian Mulroney's cabinet. And the other one was when Paul Martin quit, was resigned, whatever, from Jean-Claude Chétien's cabinet. And in both cases, over the short or longer term, the governing party did not recover. Mr. Chrétien had to put an expiry date on his own leadership. And Brian Mueller only tried, but eventually failed to convince Canadians

that he was still leading a party that was worth supporting. So, you know, there's no history here that says a day like yesterday is a fond memory that you can talk about when you boast about recovering from something. The closest I came to thinking back was 1975, when Turner quit as finance minister, the Pierre Trudeau government, over, among other things, wage and price controls that they had promised not to incorporate in the 74 election, but ended up doing exactly that.

But that was just a year after an election that elected a majority government. Pierre Trudeau was on a much different position. Nobody on that day thought he's going to have to resign. They recognized the difficulties that a Turner resignation produced, but nothing like yesterday. I've never seen anything like that in my career. Bruce, what is your take at this point? Well, last Friday, I don't know if we all agreed.

I think we did. Certainly I felt, and I think Chantal did, that in the end, Justin Trudeau probably wasn't going to, I certainly felt like he was not going to get to run in the next election as leader of the Liberal Party. I didn't think that the collapse of his leadership would happen within a few days, but I did think that it would happen. So on one level, I'm not surprised. I also interpret the words that he said last night as more of a signal that he knows how this story

is going to end. It's going to end with his resignation. And the question that he's trying to figure out is how can he make it seem less like he was decapitated and more like it was a choice that he made in the interests of the country. And to get to that place, I don't think it'll work because I think he squandered all of the previous opportunities where he could have left that impression that he was public spirited. But I think that his best analysis probably yesterday was that he needs a few days between the events of yesterday and him saying that he's going to step down in order to make it look more like it was his choice. Again, I don't think it's going to be credible that way. And I don't think he made the right choice. I think he should have resigned after both of the two by-elections that he lost earlier this year.

I think he should have been making plans to leave after the last minority election. So when he but I do remark on his words that it is the privilege of his life to serve as prime minister. He acts as though it is a right, not a privilege. And his treatment of his caucus, of his cabinet on every possible occasion where the rest of the country has a chance to see what that looks like, it looks like a guy who believes only his opinions matter, only his choices matter to him and maybe to the country. The job of prime minister has two facets to it, to lead the country in a direction and to manage the issues that come up on your watch. He seems at this moment, in a moment of serious economic crisis in terms of our relationship with the United States, to be unable to muster a sense of direction to lead on that issue. And as far as issues management goes, I've never seen a prime minister's office less able to imagine scenarios that could go

badly and to try to figure out what they could do to prevent them from going badly. He gave Chrystia Freeland an offer that she could refuse, and he had to know that she would refuse it if he was sentient about who she was as a person. Only somebody who never thinks that they would surrender their job in politics can imagine that somebody else wouldn't walk away from their job as well. It's impossible for me to understand how he thought he could offer her what he offered her and not have this turn out badly, let alone in that devastating way that she did, that brilliantly written letter that was maybe the single most gifted act of political management that we've seen from the government in some time. And so we'll see how this goes, but I'm absolutely convinced that this

is going to end with his resignation and that it wasn't going to be his choice. And it won't in the end be his choice, but he'll try to find a way to make it seem as though it was. Who could possibly have been whispering in his ear, if anyone, that this was a scenario that could work, starting with last week? I mean, his chief of staff was away on the weekend on holidays, and nobody's denying anyone holidays with their family at this time of year. But she wasn't around. Is this a lone man strategy?

He's had the same approach to any questions about his staff forever. And in any other organization, you know, think about private sector organizations, there would be a board of governors, of directors, depending on the kind of organization. But there would be some governance mechanism where the conversation would be had that we're losing ground. We're getting beaten up badly. What are we doing wrong? Who's doing it wrong? Don't we need to think about some changes? And the notion that he would

never even tolerate a conversation about that, let alone kind of embrace it and ask for it, I think has been a kind of a mark of the kind of approach that he takes to his own political management, the management of his party's interest in politics and the government overall. So it doesn't surprise me that this was equally poorly managed because that has been a consistent failure on his part and on the part of the most senior people around him. And it might be more explainable if it was not laced with déjà vu. I remember back in the days when Mr. Trudeau decided to shift Jody Wilson-Raybould from justice to, was it veterans affairs? Yes. something that was clearly a demotion. I remember asking people who were close to Justin Trudeau and who were in the PMO, because I knew there had been tensions between Jody Wilson-Raybould and Justin Trudeau, and that they went back further than just the SNC-Lavalin story.

But I also knew we were about to go in an election some months later. And the easy thing would have been, would be to shift her out of justice the day after the election. So I asked, who was it that felt that, you know, it was time to give himself or herself the gift of shifting Jody Wilson-Raybould out of sight? And the answer was, and it was a sincere answer from that person, it was Trudeau's decision. It's what he wanted to do. And we know what happened. So here we are years on, and it's the same sequence. You call up on Zoom your finance minister, having had two weeks of all kinds of rumors going both sides had a play in this. I'm not saying Chrystia Freeland led the charge, but some of those leaks came from finance about how unhappy people in finance were with the PMO's decision to spend money on the GST holiday, et cetera. And some of the counter leaks about Mark Carney being

in play did not come from finance, almost certainly. But you pick up the phone on Zoom, you call your finance minister, and you say, on Monday, you're going to present a fiscal update that will feature a record deficit that is way out of line with what you said last April, 60 some million instead of this red line of 40 million. And on Wednesday, I'm going to replace you with someone else, as in the message can only be, she really messed up on Monday, and we're sending a guy in to clean up aisle five on Wednesday.

This fiscal update is, of course, full of spending that you have not all, but some of it, opposed, pointing out that it may not be the most prudent course. But that's going to be on you because I'm going to stand up on Wednesday and say we need to fix this. Here's the guy who's going to do it. To assume anyone in his or her right mind put in front of that proposition, having been a good soldier throughout, would just say, fine, thank you. And then you offer a job that is one Canada-U.S. relations minister. That does not exist. There is no Department of Canada-U.S. relations. Hence, there is no deputy minister. There is no staff, it's a title. It's like being the deputy prime minister. It does not exist when you look at the chart of who does what in a government. So you offer this toothless title to the minister, who already knows, because if I

know it, she knows it, that Mark Carney was made the same offer and rightly turned it down and said, I want a real portfolio and I want finance. So it wasn't good enough for Mark Carney. Let's just give it to Chrystia Freeland and get rid of her. And this morning, you will have Monday morning quarterback saying, well, you know, Trudeau probably understood that Donald Trump doesn't like Christopher Lent, something we all knew already, and wanted to get her out of the way by offering her Canada-U.S. relations. Give me a break here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to interrupt you because I'm appreciating the flow here. But that, to me, you know, looking at Donald Trump's post this morning where he described her as toxic, he said she was totally toxic, Chrystia Freeland. Now, if you're Trudeau and the people around you know the nature of the relationship between Chrystia Freeland and Donald Trump. And this isn't to criticize Chrystia Freeland. Donald Trump is toxic. It is toxic. His judgment about what Canadians he would like to deal with or not is hardly what we should use as a North Star. At the same time, if you're the prime minister and you're offering Chrystia Freeland this toothless title, arguably the worst demotion that anybody could have offered to the most senior person in his cabinet, how do you think that's going to go?

How do you imagine that if she had accepted that, that you would not then be in another crisis where Trump is saying, I don't want to meet this woman, maybe not publicly. But clearly, there's been some friction there. Again, that's not to criticize Christy Freeland. Trump is mostly to blame for friction where it occurs. But the colossal mismanagement. And, you know, if you go back over time, you can look at all but the first shuffle, I think, that Justin Trudeau ever made, made his cabinet weaker. Every time they thought about a reset because people on the outside were saying, you know, we noticed that you're losing support. And of course, the people around Justin Trudeau have more than any other prime minister's office in my lifetime, kind of rejected any kind of outside perspective on how they're doing.

And they kind of make a virtue, they made a virtue of being the smartest people, even though they dwindled in numbers, and they shed talent and didn't replace it. They just kept on rolling as though every judgment that they could make was by its very nature, the best judgment that could have been made. One reset after another, always for the worse, in my view. I don't remember seeing one that I thought had a chance of addressing the points of friction or frustration that Canadians were expressing. And I was watching over the last few days as this crisis with the United States gets closer every day to a reality. And the prime minister is using his Instagram account to talk about how to make cinnamon rolls and, you know, eating spicy wings. As though this is still 2015, he's still that kind

of exciting character that people want to know, well, what's he like when he's kind of a bit stripped down, you know, unplugged. It's this latest communications reset more brutal than the others that preceded it. And that's saying a lot. So I kind of made a list and I'm probably forgetting people, but I have on that list all people who came with Justin Trudeau

and were part of his A-team when he ran in 2015 and made it to cabinet. So I have Stéphane Dion, obviously, John McAllen, Mark Garneau, David Lametti, Bill Morneau, Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott, Catherine McKenna. And I'm parsing social media to see if any of them is lifting his or raising his or saying, wait a minute, Justin Trudeau has been a great transformative prime minister. And what I'm finding are expressions of solidarity with Chrystia Freeland. I have never seen the likes of this either. All those people are, they have their faults. I mean, no one is perfect in politics, but they're all strong ministers who made up a rather strong team. And they all left.

And I've been trying to think, what is the thread between all these people? Some were dropped from cabinet, were still waiting to see what David Lametti did to deserve that, et cetera. And they all, at some point internally, disagreed with the prime minister on some policy. I say internally, I don't mean that they went public or that they whispered in my ear about Trudeau wanted me to do this and I didn't agree, but they all have a different perspective and eventually found themselves out in the cold with very little explanation. And then I got into, I know some of these people,

I've had conversations with many of them and many of the people who have been close to the Trudeau PMO. And what they also have in common is disappointment that Justin Trudeau was not the person that they assumed he was. Now one person who is disappointed is one thing. This is a rather long list of people who share the same disappointment in the person who brought them to government. So when Bruce says they've been made weaker with every cabinet shuffle, well, that will be true of the next cabinet shuffle too, considering the people who are leaving versus the people he has left to appoint in cabinet.

And no, I don't believe Mark Carney is going in 48 hours to replace Dominique Leblanc-Finance. It's surprising that it took some of them 10 years to come to that conclusion. Because, you know, when Jody Wilson-Raybould left, I know there was some disagreement out there in the sort of chattering classes about who was really at fault in that one. When you look back on it 10 years later, or not 10, 8, whatever it is now, you go, there was a pattern set there, and we've seen it played out again and again and again. You know, to me, we've got to take a break here, and there's lots more to talk about on this. But let me just say this.

The thing that I find absolutely shocking about what happened on Friday, this is his most senior minister, as Bruce describes, the deputy prime minister for whatever that's worth. And I agree with Chantel because it's not necessarily worth more than the title that you can print on a page. But clearly his most senior minister, the government's most senior minister, worth more than the title that you can print on a page. But clearly his most senior minister, the government's most senior minister, the government's most important minister.

And what does she get? I don't care where she was, that she gets a Zoom call from the prime minister. You know what? I know you want to get to a break, Peter, but I'm glad you raised this because what that title is, is a sign of respect. You know, it conveys a sense of this is somebody that we truly value and we want the world to know that. And so here we have the prime minister, like hours before, maybe two days before, he tears off the epaulettes of his most senior minister talking about what a great feminist he is, how proud he is that for him States made a fundamental mistake twice in a row, or two times, I should say, in not choosing to have a female prime minister. He's saying this in the week that he is about to tear off the epaulettes

of his most senior politician in his cabinet. By Zoom. By Zoom. It's just unbelievable. By Zoom. By Zoom. It's just unbelievable. By Zoom. And didn't have a strategy to say, hey, we're not going to end this call without me knowing if you accept this. And so let's just let it kind of float in the ether over the weekend.

Because what could go wrong with the financial economic statement or the fiscal economic statement coming up on Monday? For years in the future, there should be classes taught about issues management in this prime minister's office, especially in this last several months of time, because every prime prime minister or not every prime minister, many have faced internal frictions, revolts, revolutions, coup attempts, what have you. That is part of the business of politics. I've never seen anything managed as badly as this. Let me answer your question of what could go wrong. You give somebody who was a really good reporter and a very good writer, three days to write her exit paper.

What do you think's going to happen? And a head full of steam, three days and a head full of steam. Yeah. Okay. We got it. We got to take that break. Um, but as I said, there's lots more on this to come, and we'll get right at it after this. And welcome back to this special Tuesday edition of Good Talk. Both Bruce Anderson and Chantelle Hebert are here on a Tuesday. We'll still do our Friday show.

God knows what will happen between now and Friday. God knows what'll happen between now and Friday. Who knows what'll happen between now and the end of this day? Could be any number of things. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. We're also going to try and punch this out on YouTube today as well. Okay. Let's go through a couple of scenarios in terms of names.

And Christopher Freeland's the first one. She says she's staying in caucus, and she will run again in the next election. What's the strategic thinking in that one, Chantal? That she's going to run for the leadership, that she's going to be there come hell or high water. Hell is more likely in this case to the liberals in the next election. And that she wants to be around to pick up the pieces, which basically suggests that if the job opens up within the days, I expect that she may want to run. I don't know that that will work out well.

It might be the time to heal some wounds would be in order. But for sure, everybody yesterday, not just Chrystia Freeland, took all this as a cue that the leadership campaign was about to be in the offing. Now, if you look at the calendar, because you cannot not look at the calendar, there are, again, people saying this morning, how can we have a leadership campaign and an election with Trump coming in? Well, people, we're going to have an election. This is going to happen. 2025 is an election year. You cannot like it and suck it up because that's what it is. As for a leadership campaign, many countries, part of the G7, managed to replace a sitting prime minister within weeks.

I'm sure we could get this done between now and March 1st. It's not complicated. It's also not complicated. And we've done it prior to elections, by the way, when Brian Mulroney and Justin Trudeau left, Pierre Trudeau. They were both in their fifth year. So that is what happened. But the alternative, and I'm thinking that the NDP now really needs to look at its election preparedness plans, because if Justin Trudeau does stick around, and I, for one, do not believe that he will or should or can, but if he does, I cannot see after what happened this week

and what Jagmeet Singh said about not supporting the Liberals if Justin Trudeau is still the leader, I can't see how this government could last much beyond the end of February, assuming the House does come back at the end of January. So what happened yesterday, a couple of things were lost yesterday. One of those was the time. I, as opposed to Bruce, did not assume that Justin Trudeau would be going. But I assumed that he could well get to June and pass the budget until fall because the MVP is in such unhurried to go to the polls. This is gone. There's no scenario

now that goes to the fall if Justin Trudeau is still the leader. I also believed two weeks ago that the prime minister had maybe a narrow path to some recovery by being seen to have a really steady hand on the Trump front. I believe that's gone. The comments about being a feminist last week, compounded by what happened afterwards, compounded by the loss of Chrystia Freeland, kills the argument that he could make to people like Mark Carney and others, come and join the government at an existential time in the life of the country. We are now at an existential point in the leadership of Justin Trudeau, completely different proposition, and no one wants to be the savior

of that particular leadership. So, you know, you say you've never seen anything like it. I have to say that the magnitude of this mess and its consequences are maybe not unique, but the reasons why we are here is incredible. Because we are here because Justin Trudeau self-sabotaged himself. Self-sabotage, that's exactly right. This situation that we're in yesterday and today is a product of his own choices. He didn't have to make those choices. He made those choices and the thing blew up on him in ways that could have been predictable, should have been predictable, and the very least should have been gamed out. So that if you sort of imagine that there was a 2% chance that Chrystia Freeland was going to spend the weekend figuring out not only that she would reject the job, but that she was going to write the devastating critique of you as Prime Minister, you should know what you're going

to do about that in the event that that happens, as opposed to spend six hours then trying to decide what are you going to do with your fall economic statement? Is somebody else going to read it? Is there going to be a finance minister by the end of the day? Is it going to be tabled? There's such a degree of ponderousness, if that's a word, around some decisions for issues management purposes on the part of the Trudeau office that you kind of go, well, how could they not have spent the time thinking about the dynamics here? And to your point, Peter, or your question about why is christy feeling saying i'm going to stay around i mean i think part of it is exactly what chantal said which is that i think she's she probably wants to run for the leadership and probably thinks that she will help

catalyze a leadership race i think the second point is true and And I, you know, I think she'd be a very credible candidate in that leadership race. But I think she was also, you know, basically saying, you're not going to finish me, you might sort of look at it and go, well, she's out and he's still the prime minister. So he won, but that is not the way to analyze what's happened in the last 24 hours. You know, there's been this phrase that describes people who work in the prime minister's office. And this goes back to the Harper era as, you know, people in short pants getting in the way, they don't know what they're doing, and they just screw everything up. They use that phrase again now and have done, you know, for a number of years on some of the people in the Trudeau office. And, you know, you've got to wonder, especially over the last year,

because the last week is just yet another example of supposedly strategic leaking going on, seemingly coming from that area. And as Chantal says, there were some unhappy people in finance as well. But strategic leaking going on from the prime minister's office that like 100% backfired. So they really, either they were unlucky or they were incompetent in terms of what they're trying to move information out

and the impact that it's going to have. Let me go to another name. I think it was us on this program who a couple of months ago first kind of raised this issue about Dominic LeBlanc and the potential that he could have in terms of moving up within cabinet and moving up to potentially the top position as a leader interim leader at least um and then that was picked up I think Lawrence Martin ended up writing something on that a few weeks later after that and other people have done since. But here we're at that point now where Dominic Leblanc is next to the prime minister,

the most powerful person in cabinet, and quite possibly the most respected, right, by a lot of that caucus and outside that caucus as well. So he's now finance minister. What do we make of that decision, not only on the prime minister to go to Dominic LeBlanc, but on LeBlanc to decide to accept it at this point? Bruce? Well, you know what? I mean, I've been so critical of the prime minister's decision.

That is one thing that I think he got right yesterday. Dom LeBlanc was the right choice to put into that role, which is really more, I think, about Dom LeBlanc than the prime minister's judgment. So I don't want to over-adorn it. I don't think there were a lot of other choices to be considered in that situation, perhaps one or two, but I think it was the

right choice for the government and then when i watched the um uh the press availability or the scrum that dominic leblanc gave after he was sworn in as finance minister i was marveling at his um at his communications effectiveness um you know it's not all of the job, obviously, but, you know, it was pretty much all of the job yesterday because the economic statement had been tabled. So what did I see that made me think, OK, this is a guy who is putting a steadying hand on the tiller and who will be a source of reassurance for others in the caucus and the cabinet. And probably also in an ironic way, because if the prime minister thought that having Dominic LeBlanc in this role would be a buttress against criticisms of him, instead, I found myself watching Dominic LeBlanc saying, if you were interim prime minister, that would probably be not a bad situation for the liberals. He communicates with clarity. He doesn't mince words. He doesn't sound

like he's inauthentic and posing in a role as prime minister. He managed to, in the course of that scrum, not answer the question of whether he thought Justin Trudeau should stay. Which is interesting in itself. It's supposed to be the last of the loyalists. And he never said, yeah, he should stay. He just said, wow, the focus of our conversations has been the economy and the people that we need to serve. It was, in contrast anyway, brilliant.

And to me, he is a reassuring voice. It's a good choice. Obviously, he's fluent in English and French. And he sounds like somebody who recognizes that the moment is not for politics. It's for getting serious about the threats to Canada and the need for leadership. Okay. Dominique Leblanc is something that most members of the cabinet

do not have, with possibly the exception of Mark Miller. He is a real friend of a prime minister who doesn't seem to have very many real friends, really. But that does and has allowed him over the years to kind of use shortcuts to get to Trudeau and get around the palace guard. I'm sure he lost battles, but he does have better access to the boss than Christia Freeland or Bill Morne or any of those people ever had, which is up to a point an asset. I'm amazed or curious about this notion of an interim prime minister because it has not been my experience that prime ministers who resign as party leaders resign as prime ministers at the same time. Pierre Trudeau remained the prime minister until John Turner was sworn in. Brian Mulroney and

Jean Chrétien were still prime ministers after they said they were leaving and their party was in the process of picking a successor. So I think it's much more likely that if Justin Trudeau were to decide to leave, he would remain as prime minister until a new liberal leader is appointed. And I happen to think that's probably a good thing because the government has to keep going. And it's hard to get to keep a government going while there's a leadership campaign that is ongoing around the cabinet table. But the one asset that the sitting prime minister has is a staff that knows what the business of being the prime minister is, an interim prime minister. I don't know, you guys have better memories than I do,

but can you remember an interim prime minister? No, I don't think it's happened. And I think there's a lot to say for what you're saying. The downsides of it, I suppose, are if you're the Liberal Party and you're trying to renew and refresh and manage the relationship with the United States, having so much Justin Trudeau still in the window is a downside. There's no question he's a drag on the idea of the Liberal Party repositioning itself the more visible that he is. The second thing I think is that Dominic LeBlanc, I have always assumed, would be a credible and potentially successful leadership candidate. Does being in the role of finance minister in this situation mean that he would have to step off that role? Probably it does.

Which takes us down the road to, okay, let's imagine Justin Trudeau arrives at the point where he says, you know, not because of anybody else, but because of my own consideration for the country and myself, I'm going to step down. What happens then? Is there a more open race or is it a caucus selection? And if it's a caucus selection, is it a selection that's limited to people inside the caucus? How do they do that? There is no real obvious mechanism. So they're going to have to do what people in politics do sometimes, which is come up with a fix, something that hasn't been done before. And, you know, for everybody that you'll find in the community who talks about politics saying, well, there's no mechanism for that, so it can't be done. I'm here to say I've been around a long time. People find a mechanism or they make one up if something needs to be done. And I think that's what will happen here. I don't know what it will be, but there'll be something.

When Stéphane Zion quit as liberal leader, there was not a leadership battle and a leadership campaign. Michael Ignatieff kind of became leader by virtue of a virtual vote, I think, of riding associations and caucus. But for that, you would need to have only one candidate, no one raising their hand saying, whoa, wait a minute, I want to run too. And I would argue that it's possible that you could pick, for instance, since he's flavor of the day at least, Dominique Leblanc to be that person. But I suspect that whoever would accept such a process and such a role should understand that he may be just a transition leader

to get to opposition benches and a proper leadership process. I would not assume that that person would be a leader for very, very long, depending on election results. Because you can talk all you want about replacing Justin Trudeau. It may save the liberals from a historical defeat, but it is unlikely at this point to save them from defeat. You know, trying to think of interim leaders. I mean, after Ignatieff, it was Bob Ray, wasn't he? Wasn't he sort of always technically the interim leader, but he was the leader? He was in opposition.

In opposition. Yes. I don't think there's been an interim prime minister, though. I think that's no... Interim prime, that's completely different. And it makes no sense because you need the government to operate for that period of time, and you need the staff in the PMO. I need to object, by the way, to the boys in short pants.

I don't think that that is the problem of the PMO, and nor do I see the people there as boys or girls, in this case, in short pants. But I do think that over time, the sense that the PMO is the government and everybody who is elected is just there for the ride has become the culture of the prime minister's office, not just to those. Oh, no. the culture of the prime minister's office, not just Trudeau's. And probably also Poiliev's if he becomes prime minister. That's where we are. If you want power and influence in Ottawa today in 2024, go work for the prime minister. Do not assume that being a leading minister is going to make a big difference and give you a lot of influence.

You know, the other exit ramp for Trudeau would be if there was some kind of appointment out there for him, international, whatever. That sounds like washboard thinking. Yeah. Anyway, I'll just kind of leave it there um we got to take one more break and then we'll come back and we'll we'll deal with the mark carney question that's right after this And welcome back. Final segment now of this special Good Talk for this Tuesday after the incredible events of yesterday. And as we said, who knows what will happen today?

Who knows what's happening right in this very moment that we're talking as we're recording this program for today. We'll see if anything's changed today. Should I assume, for the moment anyway, that the Mark Carney talk is over with? Who wants to handle that? Don't everybody speak at once. I can't understand you when you all talk at the same time like that.

The question of is it over with, I guess, is who gets to decide that. I mean, I think people are going to keep talking about Mark Carney because he's a very smart person who's shown an interest in public service over a long period of time and continues to signal that he has an interest in helping the country. But a week ago, a week ago, when that Globe story came out, he was front and center in the conversation. Do I think that, so the second thing I was going to say is, does Justin Trudeau have the political standing now to build either a Team Canada approach that rallies people from different perspectives and

backgrounds to his side to deal with the Canada-US situation? The answer to that for me is no. Does he have the political credibility to convene a new improved cabinet involving people from outside, whether Mark Carney or other people? I don't think so. I think that anybody who wants to make a contribution to the public interest on the Canada-US issue or on other issues now would logically be standing back and watching how events unfold before making a decision about what would be a logical way to do this. And the best evidence for me, to some degree, on the Canada-U.S. issue is, you know, we're being hit every few days, it seems, by these dismissive, derogatory tweets or posts from Donald Trump. It's helping divide the country here. It's got the premiers

off doing their own things, coming up with their own strategies. It's tearing at the fabric of the country that needs to try to find some degree of unity around how to do this. So doing anything to help perpetuate Justin Trudeau's effort to hold on to his job and this file, I think is a poor choice. I don't think that I would recommend it to anybody who would say, should I get into politics and try to help him do that, whether it's Mark Carney or anybody else. I agree. Yesterday, they changed the optics on that, and you can't fix that. It's no longer about the Team Canada approach, it's a Team Trudeau approach. And why would you want to do that? Because that would basically mean that you would jump on board a sinking ship and in the process of doing that,

cutting yourself off from being constructive over the next four years. Donald Trump's not coming for a day. He's coming for four years. And, you know, all those names that you see of people who can contribute, I include Mark Carney in there, should not want to be tagged with the sinking cause that Justin Trudeau has become. They should keep their powder dry by now and wait him out. And for the sake of his party, I guess,

and the people who are planning to run under the liberal banner, one would hope that Mr. Trudeau would come to a decision to leave sooner rather than later. And when I say sooner, I do not mean next month. I mean next week or before, if possible. I'll wait till this show's over. Yes, yes. Okay, so you should probably stay for a few more hours. But the notion tonight is the liberal Christmas party

on Constant Hill. Parliament, for those who are confused about all the noise, Parliament is rising today. It is not going to be coming back until the end of January. So there is no confidence vote looming. We are not in a process

where the life of the government could be terminated any time between now and the end of January, except if the prime minister called an election, which I find very unlikely. But what do I know having watched this week? So when people talk about voting non-confidence, etc., They're talking about things that can only happen in February. The other talk we hear a lot about is prorogation. Prorogation means you shut down the parliament that you are in, all the bills are dead, and you start from scratch with a truan speech when the House returns. Again, there is no need to do prorogation until maybe a few days before the House is set to return at the end of January. And why do you not prorogue quickly?

Because if we have a war or an assassination or a major terrorist incident or a terrible social conflict and you needed parliament to sit, you would want to be able to do it at the call of the chair, i.e. tomorrow we're sitting. If you prorogue, you need to go through all the motions of opening that parliament. So normal, careful governments that want to prorogue and are not threatened with sudden death if they don't usually wait until they need to do so, which is why if Justin Trudeau or the government wants to prorogue, it's something it can do in January, late in January, and it can prorogue to whenever it wants. But in theory, one would think that if they had a leadership contest, they would probably prorogue till March and get the leadership done over January and

February. And then there would be a new prime minister with a neutron species, etc. And all of the things that you can imagine. But all of those notions yesterday, I was watching words, which I think came from the government's spin doctors about the prime minister hesitating between resignation and prorogation. That's the non-choice. One is not the answer to the other. It's like me telling you I have a stomachache and I have to choose between a stomachache and a bike ride. They're not the same thing. So it's not an either or question. The only question is, is Justin Trudeau staying? Can he stay? And the second question is, if he is staying and wants to delay the election,

or if he is leaving, how long will Parliament not sit either to save Trudeau from a non-confidence vote that would trigger an election or to give the Liberals time to change leaders? And all this will happen with Donald Trump becoming president under all scenarios. Great. A lot of ifs there. Tonight, I get a kick out of this Liberal Christmas Party tonight, and who knows what will happen at it. But there is a history to Liberal Christmas Parties, and the most famous one before, perhaps tonight, goes back to 1979, when, you know, they were in opposition.

They had their Christmas party. There was bold talk as the party began about how they were going to defeat the government the next day the joe clark government the next day on the budget question and as the evening progressed and the uh the the party favors started to flow quite handily in that room uh the bravery got more and more people thought they were nuts at first, except for one person, whose picture hangs on the wall behind Bruce, who said, we don't have the numbers. We can't stop them if the Liberals with their partners in the House of Commons can defeat this minority government.

And they went on to do exactly that the next day. So strange things can happen in the cover of Christmas party. Yeah, she's still the smartest person in our family when it comes to politics, and that competition is tough. I think I might be fourth, but she's on the wall. I was at that Christmas party, and I remember noting the rise in bravery, and I was in a meeting the next day with Jim Kutz and Alan McEachen and Keith Davey. And I forget who else was in it.

And just watched as they sort of thought, huh, we do have the numbers. Let's see what happens. And they sure did. Which led to the resurrection of Pierre Elliott Trudeau and welcome to the 1980s. Two months later, in February of 1980 during that election. And that was an encore episode of yesterday's special edition of Good Talk. A reminder, Good Talk will be back with its regular episode with all the latest updates coming up this Friday.

I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for joining.